<< BERKELEY BIKERS BAWL ~ MAIN ~ KNIFE TAKEN TO GUN FIGHT >>
DOCKERGANDA
Anyone watching the ABC’s Bastard Boys? If those salt-of-the-earth union characters were any saltier or earthier, they’d be pure amalgams of soil and sodium.
I’m watching Eurovision which is, I’m sure, a far more intelligent take on politics….and anything else too.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2007 05 13 at 07:34 AM • permalinkThe simple fact that the ABC has made this makes it biased. It is incapable of doing anything else.
Unbiased in ABC terms is something between Labor’s left and right factions. When the ABC says it is it is giving both sides of an argument, it means that it is allowing the right-wing of the Labor party to get a say.
But it’s natural position is to align with Labor’s left, which means far left is North Korea, not the Greens or the Socialist Alliance. They are merely a little left of the ABC’s “centre”. There is no extreme left. Far right is a left wing Liberal or Democrat, extreme right is rest of the Libs and lunar right is the Nationals. Family First is simply off the dial, along with the Jews and US Republican party.
I could only stand watching the first 90 seconds or so. In that time, it showed all the signs of the usual ABC lefty rant so I switched it off.
I am rapidly becoming convinced that I can live a more contented life without TV.
Thanks anthony_r. Toenail clipping is a great idea. While I’m at it, I’ll do the Dobe’s too.Yeah, too busy with Eurovision…hang on, Moldova, null points?!..
The MWU was the most corrupt union in Australia after the (deregistered) BLF, and I say this as the son of a wharfie. For all that, the laziest wharfie who ever lived probably did more work before lunch than any ABC luvvie did in his whole life. ABC? Null points!!
I was channel surfing and caught about 3 seconds of it. That took Aunty off my surfing list for the evening.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 05 13 at 08:15 AM • permalinkDockyard unionists = legends in their own lunchtime, which generally speaking lasted most of the day, (at time and a half of course, psst, wanna buy a cheap video recorder?).
Posted by surfmaster on 2007 05 13 at 08:27 AM • permalinkEven as a Melbourne supporter, I decided it would be less painful to watch the replay of Melbourne getting beaten by the Bullies instead.
Posted by Tony.T.Teacher on 2007 05 13 at 08:31 AM • permalinkThese would be the same “salt of the earth” blokes who refused to unload ships in WW2? The ones who pulled the same stunt during Vietnam?
They can go choke on a dick for all I care.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 05 13 at 09:00 AM • permalinkTrue story. When containers were introduced in the late 1960’s, the unions demanded a pay increase on account of the wharfies’ opportunities to pilfer goods being diminished (containers being padlocked).
Their record during WWII was the behaviour of craven traitors.
Hal Colebatch in an article entitled Who killed John Curtin? relates that:
the departure of medical staff of 2/ 13th Australian General Hospital aboard the hospital ship Wanganella to Malaya before the Japanese attack was disrupted when wharfies refused to load supplies and equipment;
tThe 2nd/2nd Commandos embarking at Darwin for Timor in December 1941, had their delicate radios thrown into the ship’s holds by wharfies annoyed their beer had not been unloaded;.
in 1942 wharfies refused to unload ammunition being returned to Australia from the Middle East to prepare for the defence of Australia;
on the Adelaide and Brisbane wharves U.S. aircraft and aero-engines were deliberately smashed by wharfies. In Adelaide, U.S. Servicemen fired tommy-guns and dropped stun-grenades on wharfies who were deliberately dropping aero-engines from slings;
at Brisbane, aircraft to be unloaded were ripped apart by wharfies in revenge for American military police inspecting their lunch-kits for stolen cigarettes.
as the S.S. Tasman ferried troops from Townsville to New Guinea in early July, late July and early August 1942, a period when the whole Australian position in New Guinea was desperate, there were waterside strikes that delayed the loading not once but on every occasion; and
at the end of the war strikers prevented Australian servicemen repatriated from Japanese prison camps being disembarked from H.M.S. Speaker.
Chris Corrigan is a national hero for his rout of the waterside unions.
The major problem I Have with the program, was that it was a blatant “party-political” advert for Combet.
If you google the major protaginists; Combet + Corrigan, you get nothing prior to 1998. Even then it’s all from one side of the fence.
I read the papers, and quite honestly, Combet never appeared on my radar until Beaconsfield. Even then, I wondered who are you?
I ask the question from this learned forum. When was the first time you ever heard of Combet?
There was an attempt at balance.
Corrigan, flicking a dollar across the desk, was a classic.
Having said that. The dogs were wrong. Always wrong, always will be wrong. Balaclavas are completely out.
Jack Thompson trying to mow down security with a crane, is equally as wrong.
In about 1983, my brother-in-law was in the midst of a marriage beakup and sent a sum of money over to my wife to buy a one year old Jaguar XJ6 (we were in the UK), keep it for a year and then send it back to him in Melbourne after a year after all the messy divorce details had been settled.
She did it, albeit with some moral misgivings and the car arrived back in Aust after a year. When he went to collect it he was told at the docks by a union heavy that he owed an extra $500. He protested that he had paid all monies owing and asked what the $500 was for. “In case it gets damaged during unloading”, he was told, “sometimes the cranes drop them”. After a bit of research he found that this happened frequently and always to the owners of cars that hadn’t paid the $500.
He paid.
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2007 05 13 at 09:43 AM • permalink#18 you show a lamentable understanding of the melbourne waterside culture. with payback in triplicate for any imagined liberty taken or slight registered, balaclavas & dogs were sensible precautions. and corrigan remains a hero for dragging the mua into the 20th century, where they remain, with container movements still below those of decently run ports, even after a marked improvement. first curtin, now this trash. the abc needs another corrigan in the driving seat
I learned a new word tonight.
Hagiography.
I believe it should be applied to the lives of saints, but the ABC obviously feels that union hacks and political opportunists are similarly elevated beings.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2007 05 13 at 10:45 AM • permalinkAnd the portrayal of that lefty ambulance chaser, Burnside QC, as some sort of apolitical arbiter of legal niceties was nothing short of nauseating.
Give me back back my two hours of wasted life, you thieving mongrels masquerading as the “National Broadcaster”.
Blecccch.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2007 05 13 at 10:51 AM • permalinkI didn’t watch because I know the MUA and WWF from the inside, through family connections. For instance, one “colourful waterfront identity” that I knew well in my younger years is still collecting a “wage” at the age of 83, and has at least three unsolved hits to his name (overboard in the middle of the night in the Bass Strait & Tasman Sea). One of those he sent overboard was the stepfather of a school friend of mine, a 2nd engineer who ran the gambling on an ANL ship in the 1970s. Nobody saw a thing, nobody said a thing, but back in port everyone knew how and why it happened. Including his family. The Seamen’s union, as it was then called, even took up a collection for the wife and kids.
Only you watching, Tim.
Russia and Sweden clearly the best on Eurovision. Serbia wins WTF?
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 05 13 at 05:52 PM • permalink#17. The Seamen’s Union added to the treacherous behaviour of the wharfies by mishandling the commandos’ cargo when it was unloaded in Timor. See “Timor 1942: Australian Commandos at War with the Japanese”. By Christopher Wray
I thought at the time that Messrs Corrigan and Reith should have shared Australian of the Year for their demolition of the MUA.
Can’t say I have seen or heard anything since to change my mind.
I knew it was going to be a polemic, but bloody hell, how the fuck did Chris Corrigan let himself be included in this bollocks? I’ve been involved in the maritme industry for close on thirty years, andthe only difference between the MUA and the Painters and dockers was a matter of scale; a pack of lazy, criminal rent-seeking douchebags who held the trading industry to ransom for years. unfortunately the federal government lacked the bottle to carry through with ridding the waterfront of these thieving paraistes, and a lot of them are still there- it’s taken a combination of technology (Patrick has automated wharves now) and a takeover of P&O by Dubai-based DP World who run an open shop to finally break the stranglehold on stevedoring held by the MUA. Likewise, the only way the coastal shipping trade was freed of the yoke of the MUA was to deregister in Australia and register offshore- cabotage is now a thing of the past; 30,000 ton ANL boxships used to have a complement of 55, a similar foreign ship would get by with 10 or twelve, and they were less likely to break into containers and be trafficking drugs. It’s a pity Coombes didn’t wind up like his fellow Jack “Putty nose” Nichols from the P&Ds;, cut up and used in a few crabpots- for once the idle sod would have performed a useful task.
What’s the betting on there ever being a factual account of the waterfront, with the pillage, ghosting, standover tactics, rorts and pathetic work rates? How about an account of the tough life of a “weatherman”, whose sole job it was to check a rain gauge and thermometer, so the rest of his crew could piss off to the pub if the mercury hit 30, or there was more than a few points of precipitation? Or the rigours of a tie-up gang, who’d turn up (20 or so strong) five minutes before a vessel was due to berth, then loop a bow and starboeard line ove a bollard when the crew threw them down, the stand around and watch while the ships gear pulled it alongside; after the back-breaking labour they’d fuck off to the pub until the next ship, and collect a four hour minimum.
A portainer driver currently pulls about 150K a year, and works 4 out of 8 hours per shift- this is AFTER the reforms.
Also remember these are the same arseholes who wouldn’t load munitions ships during the Kokoda campaign until they were paid danger money- the PBIs up on the track fortunately didn’t make such altruisitc demands. A pox on them all, and all their descendants, who are also heavily representedin criminal prosecutions, especially in Melbourne.
Have a gander at this bollocks from the git who played Corrigan:-
“It’s about the dispute but it’s also about the families involved in the dispute,” he says. “I spent a day with Chris Corrigan and really think he’s a nice bloke, and one of the reasons he wanted to be involved was that he was incredibly demonised at the time and he wanted people to see another side.
“It does humanise him and the script humanises the whole event. It doesn’t condone the MUA, but does provide evidence of how important unions are to the fabric of a working-class community.
“But I don’t think it hides away from the excesses of the MUA. That’s really important because if you are just going to do a left-wing polemic then it’s really of no use. So I don’t think it comes down on either side.”
If it was any more predictably biased, it would’ve been on UTube, produced by some dingbat from the socialist Alliance; while it will play well to luvviedom, it merely reinforces the need for the ABC to be demolished, its ruins plowed with salt so it can never re-emerge.
And have a dekko at the moonpie who wrote this drivel; as expected, the SMH thought it was the ducks guts.
That’s a bit unfair Tim.
I love watching actors that claim worker status on the basis of the few months they spent washing dishes between semesters at NIDA, boganing it up for these gritty worker roles.
Posted by Pig Head Sucker on 2007 05 13 at 09:23 PM • permalinkHappened to snag this on tape - thanks for the heads-up or it would have been taped over (the timer is set at this weekly slot in case a half-decent Beebs drama pops up - rare these days!).
Anyway, was difficult to sit throught even when one can pause it on tape.
The bias was incredible - and Combet - was he confused with Clark Kent?
Next week Combet will discover a cure for cancer, and Coombes moves to Calcutta to bathe the open sores of lepers. Meanwhile, Corrigan takes a break from disembowelling kittens to release lissa virus in the ductwork of an orphanage, Reith is discovered naked in a roomful of likewise boyscouts and Howard reveals his admiration for Heinreich Himmler.
where’s my 6 mill, mr fundy
manperson?The ‘insightful’ title alone turned me of this little treatise. So this is what home grown Australian television has arrived at, (funded by the ‘muggins’ taxpayer again). To me, the ‘plot’ line sounds like something out of the old communist era, you know; ‘brave worker takes on capitalist exploiter of the worker’ type of crap. I remember Aussie wharfies were the biggest overpaid bludgers and a blight on our overseas business and international dealings. This was well known overseas. Not to mention some of the other nefarious ‘incidents’ that have happened in the past.
Just caught a bit where a Senior Constable popped into the picket line to apologise, and to invite the wharfies to the early opener at Williamtown. Whatever the writer of this is on, I want some- you don’t get that level of delusional hallucination from blotter acid, eccies or pcp.
And what you need to snort, inject, smoke or insert to imagine Burnside QC as being competent, let alone a brilliant advocate is porbably beyond current chemical capabilities, let alone the capacity of the human brain to get that twisted and not suffer spontaneous strokes and aneurysms.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
Hasn’t started here in Perth, and I won’t be watching it. Don’t think insurance would cover a foot-through-telly claim.