Well I’m a friend of Crikey’s Christian Kerr. He wanted to be my friend and I wanted to be his – it’s Facebook you know. I guess his email contacts just twigged with mine and all of a sudden we’re friends! Another degree of separation – gone! Anyway, we were gonna meet up for lunch some time, so Facebook doesn’t have that much to its credit.
The thing that amazes me is that when you ‘accept’ someone’s offer to be a friend, you get quizzed about how you know the person, and the choices are very – well Sept 10th. There’s no ‘we met on the internet, we know of each other but haven’t formally met, we are known within a group, we met blogging’. It’s stuff like ‘we lived together’. We ‘hooked up’ and so on (From memory – I can’t go back right now and check as I’ve just clicked through these fields as they didn’t fit). Strange.
In any event, the reason I wrote this is that Christian has two quotes on his Facebook profile. The first I was familiar with but it’s a goodie nevertheless.
All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.
Enoch Powell
But the second I liked so much that I’ve shamelessly (well to tell the truth shamefully) purloined it and put it up on our banner above – for your occasional delectation.
Always keep your bowler hat on in times of trouble, and beware of diabolical masterminds.
Emma Peel
All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.
How would you know it was midstream? What’s the end point?
As Dorothy Parker said to her boss when he asked her to write more stories with happy endings. “Mr Hearst, there are two billion people in the world and not one of them will have a happy ending” (or words to that effect).
Yes, I think the happy bit is the important component for our pollies bowing out – it reflects they’re on top of their game. Sensing loss of that would I guess be the thing, if it could ever be put in perspective amongst possibilities of regaining it.
And Dave Allen said, regarding endings, “I’d like to know the exact place I was going to die” – because he reckoned he wouldn’t ever go there.
Does Christian wear a bowler hat???
Heh. That Emma Peel quote is one of my favourites as well. We allude to Emma Peel’s penchant for foiling diabolical masterminds in the description section of Hoyden About Town.
I select “we met randomly” then type in “through the intertubes”.
Must dash – “we’re needed, Mrs Peel!”…