Election 2004 | Day 7 | Everybody Loves Howard

Technically Day 7 anyway, it's gone after midnight. I wish I had more time to research this, and could write as well as I used to. There's so many other blogs out there that cover this better than mine. But I'll keep bitching anyway.

Howard has been copping quite a lot of shit whilst out campaigning. Everyone's probably seen/heard of the cheese thing in Tweed, which, well, while it was admirable that the guy stood up to Howard and told him off, the whole cheese thing was a bit shithouse.

"On behalf of the working class people in the Tweed I'm going to present this cheese to you because you and your mate are past your use by date and you'll be looking for jobs. Go Labor."

That makes about as much sense as my rants on here. Good on him for doing it anyway.

Howard copped quite a bit of shit whilst campaigning in his home seat of Bennelong yesterday. Maybe everyone was pissed at him being stupid enough to resort to spamming people (no, really) via email, or maybe it's because he's a dick. Anyway, some of the highlights:

• Andrew Wilkie (now Greens, resigned from position of public service in disgust at the war in Iraq) and friends surrounded Howard and his Young Liberals, shouting "truth!" and waving placards.
• One person asked Howard why he bailed out on the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty aimed at reducing global warming. His response: "As far as Kyoto protocol is concerned, if we sign it in its present form, we will disadvantage industries and export jobs to other countries." Disadvantaging industries by making them invest money into their R&D to improve environmental efficiency.
• He copped some more shit from someone else, with this beautiful quote being yelled at him: "You claimed the lives of thousands of men, women and children just to get rid of one stupid, guilty one, Saddam Hussein. I do not accept the policy of killing the innocent to get at the guilty and that is a policy that you accepted and that is despicable."
• Another woman called him a "steaming pile of dog excrement."
• An elderly man criticising Howard on not listening to Australians: "I suffer from deafness, prime minister. Yours is a deafness of convenience."

Oh how I love this. There's a big campaign in Bennelong at the moment, kicked off by Margo Kingston's book, Not Happy John. You can read all about it at the Not Happy John Campaign site.