Quote of the day - Oz cricket

Rob Lyons on Spiked, with a minor edit:

Now it’s Australia’s turn to engage in another sport that Britain gave to the world: national self-flagellation masturbation. After the winning mentality of the previous generation, has the country gone soft?

Well, if you persist, it will get hard again . . .

Oz Labourites double up on lefty bet

The Australian Labour party has dumped Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, whose popularity has plummeted following attempts to introduce a jobs-killing supertax on the minining industry and an emissions trading scheme.

In response to popular rejection of these two core leftist projects, the Oz Labourites have chosen Julia Gillard, the further leftist daughter of a Welsh family that emigrated when she was four. Rather a touching story, actually: it seems baby Julia had chronic lung problems and they emigrated for her health.

The Labour party's choice seems, on the face of it, perverse. If the wind is blowing from the jobs-creating quarter of the political spectrum, why go with someone who is almost genetically programmed to sail into the statist doldrums?