Roy Morgan returns to its normal Friday routine with a face-to-face poll of 1055 respondents conducted last weekend, showing Labor’s two-party vote again has a six in front of it after dipping below in the previous week’s phone poll.
Other news:
• The ABC reports the hearing into Labor’s appeal against its 12-vote defeat in McEwen has been adjourned, and will “resume next month”.
• In an article in yesterday’s Australian, former Labor Senator and professional number-cruncher John Black reported on research conducted by his firm Australian Development Strategies indicating that Labor’s pitch to “working families” in fact led to a swing away from it among childless women. This did much to explain the phenomenon demonstrated on this map of swings in Melbourne showing a stable result in the city and inner suburbs giving way to progressively larger Labor swings in the mortgage belt. Black goes so far as to claim, a little extravagantly, that “a continuation of this trend in 2010 could give the Greens enough primary votes to come ahead of the Liberals at the next election and could cost Rudd Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne), Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek (Sydney), Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese (Grayndler) and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson (Batman)”.
• In further number crunching news, Antony Green and Possum Comitatus have drawn my attention to a demographic review of Newspoll data published in March at Australian Policy Online by Ian Watson, freelance researcher and Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University.
• Yet more number crunching news: the 2007 Australian Election Study, providing comprehensive post-election survey data from 2000 respondents, can be accessed from the Australian Social Science Data Archive.
• Much goodness from the Australian Parliamentary Library: Scott Bennett and Stephen Barber’s research paper on the 2007 election, and electoral division rankings on various measures from 2006 census data.
Gary Morgan thinks Nelson’s proposed 5c cut in fuel excise is too small. He wants 15c.
We all face a bit of adversity in our jobs from time to time, but just imagine how Dr Death and Allbull are feeling after being notified of the latest Morgan F2F.
Yowzer!
Rudd is going to have a baby while still on his honeymoon at this rate…
I hope his travel insurance covers it.
Looks like the Party room meeting for the coalition next Wednesday could be an eventful time.
There is also an EMRS poll for Tassie if anyone cares
preferred Premier
Will Hodgman 39% (liberal)
Paul Lennon 17 % (Labor
Pegg Putt 14 % (Green)
http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,23740341-3462,00.html
I care, Scotty – thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Scotty, funny that they forgot to mention how many were in the sample. It wasn’t just the Hodgman family was it?
Let’s have a think about the business of a pollster.
First, core business – the process of collecting and weighting data.
From there, one might branch out a bit and do a little bit of analysis. it’s really secondary to the process of collecting and weighting the data, and you wouldn’t want to do or say anything that dissuaded clients from wanting to pay you, would you? If you had a point to make it’s probably safest to stick a question in amongst the ones you’re getting paid for.
If the polling reveals something pretty obvious, then it can’t hurt to say it out loud:
Gary Morgan says:
“The Rudd Government’s first Budget has the “thumbs up” — 56.5% of Australians (up 4.5%) now say that Australia is “heading in the right direction” — a strong endorsement of the Government’s Budget.
(I’m not so sure, but I’ll get back to that)
What on earth would possess you to come out with:
Gary Morgan says:
“Soaring petrol prices are putting a strain on family budgets and working Australians need relief at the bowser if they’re not to stop the spending on retail and internal travel that help prop up the economy.
“Brendan Nelson’s pledge to cut the fuel excise by 5c is a small step in the right direction that the Government should follow — why not a 15c cut?
“Either the RBA must cut the high interest rates at its next meeting or the Rudd Government needs to respond to these concerns or risk sending Australians into a recession “we don’t have to have.”
The mind just boggles when I read that.
I wouldn’t have thought that knowing what the next opinion poll is going to say a couple of days before the rest of the country gives rise to any sort of expertise in economics, let alone the heady world of political economics.
Sheesh! Talk about watering down your core business.
Back to what the Morgan poll really says.
Yes – the movement is to the ALP, compared to the last poll which moved to the Fibs, which…… yada yada yada.
[according to a combination of face and phone Morgans] Since early March there appears to be a drift away from the Government, while the second to last poll seems a little iffy, meaning comparisons to it are pretty meaningless too.
steve @ 6
Steve i am sorry if i have given you the impression i was trying to mislead you. I was merely trying to spread the word of its existence. The lack of detail is more to do with me not being in the mood to be bothered with all that effort. The most significant statistic if you ask me is that around thirty percent are still saying none of the above. EMRS is not the most accurate poll in the world. But it is mostly in context of its past polls which are showing clear decline. Also that Tasmania is probably demographically less complex than most mainland states. As Newspoll does not do Tasmania, in short it is the poll we got.
New post up on the EMRS Tasmanian poll.
“Labor’s pitch to “working families” in fact led to a swing away from it among childless women.”
Well, it’s a good thing for the Libs that they have silver-tongued SNAGs like Bill Heffernan to woo this demographic over to the Liberal Party.
Kakuru
Maybe Big brother would have got better ratings if it was like Bill heffernan Wilson tucky, Barnaby Joyce and Alexander Downer ect.
ah Bill heffernan and those national’s press conferrances are funny. 🙂
While they came third in primary vote, the Greens passed the libs on preferences, got into the two candidate prefered and changed the seat from safe Labor to marginal Labor (54.71%).
http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-13745-228.htm
I don’t think Mark Riley of channel 7 news fame likes Kevin Rudd. He just presented a real hatchet job on Rudd’s comment that he has done all he can re petrol prices.
Riley stated that this comment by Rudd was the silliest thing he has said since coming to government. They even interviewed a typical working family. I’m convinced 7 are running a political agenda.
Channal 9 they suggested the rising petrol prices could be a life saver for Nelson.
Well it was a silly thing to say. He has done all he can… which means he is useless. It’d be better to just say his Government will continue working and doing all they can to relieve cost of living pressures in a responsible way etc. etc.
They should also be reminding people that a few months ago the Liberals were telling us we’d never been better off.
[I’m convinced 7 are running a political agenda.]
I’m surprised Andrew O’Keefe is still employed by them as he was very pro Rudd on the Election Day Sunrise special.
BTW, Did Prue McSween fulfill her promise to leave the Country if Howard lost ? Or was it a “Non-Core” promise, like her hero Rattus ?
Nelson has got to get a better line on Petrol. His suggestion the Kevin Rudd should be doing more on Petrol is almost laughable. I know he’s got his own wheelbarrow to push on his unfunded 5 cents excise cut but excise could be cut to zero and petrol would still be $1.20 a litre and the budget would be in the red (It would cost ~$21 billion). It is a worldwide market we belong to and they have got to get to that fact.
As Mr Black idea of the Greens beating the ALP inner city, this has supposed to have happen at the past 4 elections and so far it hasn’t happened. There are three things which have to be overcome.
1) The Greens need to get in front of the Liberals. They managed to do this last year but I think the inner-city Liberal vote is likely to have reached the low point last year. Howard was very unpopular with the small “l” Liberals, I can see some of these people coming back to the Liberals at the next election*.
2) They need to get the ALP primary significantly below 50%. That happen in Melbourne in 2001 largely as a protest vote on the Tampa issue. But an ALP primary vote of 49% is close enough because of preferences from micro candidates. Tanner last year was over 50% before Liberal preferences distributed on the back of FF and Democrats voters.
3) They have to stop a leakage of Liberal preferences to the ALP. Sometimes Liberal voters aren’t that keen on the Greens and prefer a Red to a Green. Hence if the Greens can’t get that under control, the ALP could probably get away with a primary vote of 46%. In Melbourne last year 17% of Liberal Voter preferred Tanner to the Greens candidate.
Of course, there is no guarantee that the Green will be able to keep any lower house seats that they gain at the next election. Previous experiences have shown that members of all parties often are no up-to-speed on all of their own policies and when you one of a very small group you tend to get picked on by the media.
All that said, the ALP does need to be careful of its left flank as it always a threat but as long as Bob Brown** is leader I would not suggest that there is going to be too much trouble.
* The Liberals might go down the extremist path of the NSW branch but then I don’t see them preferencing the Greens.
** The Greens supporter base has not grown very much given that they are now the new third force in Australian Politics. Question should be asked about his leadership but their is naivity on this issue within Green circles.
B. S. Fairman, I reckon, Brendon (I’m a doctor) thinks he’s on to an absolute winner with the petrol pain line. Perhaps he thinks it’s like putting someone in pain on morphine, or someone with anxiety on a benzodiazepine, preferably permanently, and in the case of benzodiazepines, multiple versions of the same. It still gives me the absolute irrits how ‘their’ ABC report stuff. I clicked onto the online site today, and I swear, every second story was about the Tories view on everything. That Penny Wong announced a significant return of water flow to the Murray via the water buy back number, disappeared within about 5 nanoseconds.
Federally the Greens are irrelevant, if they ever manage to get the balance of power in their own right in the Senate they will end up just like the Democrats.
It is easy to make a lot of noise when you are politically impotent.
How many Pollbludgers out there have adopted a pensioner because that wretched Mr. Rudd did not include them in the budget? According to Today Tonight here in Adelaide they were “swamped” with offers and presumably the same line was offered in every state. Hmmm I wonder how many offers they really got. Yet another example of blatant media bias. I know it’s been said before but where has the media been for the previous eleven and a half years when it came to the supposed plight of the pensioner.
15 LTEP – It was an honest thing to say, given that he doesn’t control world oil prices. The Libs can’t say he isn’t being honest about it can they? Their so called solution is looking more and more ridiculous as the prices go up.
Rudd has always said “there is no magic bullet” ,while saying they maybe able to help around the margins. Of course our unbiased media have taken that to mean he promised to bring prices down.
I am just hang out for Nelson to start calling for the nationalisation of our oil industry. It’s funny because he just might 🙂
The party of the free market is blaming Labor. . .for letting the free market work.
If the petrol price keeps going up I hope Labor will have a minibudget to cut more spending to give more tax cuts to the lower income taxpayers.
Now there’s an idea that I might agree with even if it did come from Nelson, Blair.
Harry, yeah the ABC irritates me too.
When the Libs were in government all we heard on The World Today was Liberal ministers spruiking on. Now that they’re in opposition, all we hear is Liberal ex-ministers spruiking on.
It seems that at the ABC they still haven’t realised the government’s changed.
Speaking of denial, Shaun Carney writes an article this morning about the Libs working to a “what will happen in the next three weeks” strategy. Generally a reasonable article, but then he says this:
What could he possibly be thinking to even offer as a possibility that the Libs could be back in power by 2009?
What I was getting at in my post immediately above was that there still seems to be an expectation, even a hope in the national media – from the ABC to the tabloids – that soon, one day, next week, in a month or two, in the near future… the Rudd government will crumble like a house of cards.
Almost every article this week has been roughly on this topic: “What do the Libs need to do to win the next election?”.
That there is no hope of the Libs winning the next election does not seem to occur to their spruikers in the press. Or if it occurs to them, they are keeping a stiff upper lip, trying not to speak the unspeakable truth.
Hartcher’s latest is like this, full of bluff and thunder of how the Libs can get out of the mire and take on the government.
Shanahan’s piece this morning was titled “Rudd’s honeymoon lingers on”… like a bad smell, Dennis? It’s not “lingering” on, it’s triumphing, beating all comers, making Rudd the second most popular PM in history (behind Hawke). “Lingering on” has an air about it of con, swindle, snow-job… not at all descriptive of the reality of the situation.
Carney quotes Lib insiders approvingly as thinking they can get back into government next year(!). When have they been right about anything in politics in the past three years. Why should they start getting wisdom now, all of a sudden.
Almost everything I read lately treats the Labor government as quasi-illegitimate. Full of tricksters and vapourware merchants, symbol peddlars and outright inept. While the Libs seem, by contrast, to have a real message somewhere, if only they could find a leader to uncover it, or wait for Rudd to inevitably implode, or something.
It’s becoming an unhealthy obsession with them: the Lib leadership, Rudd’s imminent collapse, his workaholic nature driving his ministers crazy, his con on Kyoto, Japan, whales, China… name your scam.
Can’t they see the new government is doing well because they are keeping their promises made before the last election? That people think they were let down by the Libs under Howard? That every chance they get the Libs call again for Work Choices or some other failed ex-policy and can’t seem to understand that the public didn’t make a mistake, they took deliberate aim and fired both barrels at the Coalition government last November?
No, it’s all down to some sleight of hand with leadership, a Messiah fixation that will somehow allow them to avoid the hard road of re-equipping their policy portfolio and actually going out and winning government, not stumbling into it.
They just don’t get it do they?
The LNP and its many varied Liberal supporters in Press, Radio and TV need to ponder long and hard on the fact that it was ONLY the incumbent Howard ‘aura’ that saved them from annihilation last election.
This entire group truly does live in denial. They should have realised before the election when all the Howard ministers after a decade in government were still out performed by their counterparts in the debates, that the Rudd team are competent individuals (which Bolt admitted was a problem for the LNP on The Insiders).
The still don’t understand that Howard, Costello and the team did very little useful in 10 years of government and, that the economy was mostly on auto-pilot all that time. They also forget that, all things being equal, that even Howard only scraped his elections in apart from the Latham effort and, that there has been solid Labor support for some time.
But their true denial is with Rudd.
They feel extremely jealous and spiteful toward Rudd because of the way he often humiliated Howard during the campaign and, outperformed the government in most ways. They simply couldn’t stomach that their hero Howard was shown up to be a shallow, limited man with his only claim to fame being often re-elected, however on the back of disgraceful Carl Rove type tactics….bigotry, hate, racism and greed.
They are truly in denial, they still cannot see it. They still cant understand that people like Gillard, Roxon, Pilbersek, Tanner, Swann, Rudd, Wong and others are actually intellectually and politically and publically more capable and gifted than their LNP counterparts.
They think Rudd is going to crumble? The man that held his own on the world stage 10 seconds after being elected, pulled off a tricky bit of work in China and is garnering international respect and admiration….the man who could sit for an hour in front of the public and answer any question that came along.
There must be some sort of mist surrounding the LNP and people like Hartcher, Shamaham and so on where reality doesn’t seep in.
They are hoping that the latest budget might be so unpopular as to cost an election? Or that somehow the Rudd government is going to Sepku?
I think the secret of their next 6 years in Opposition is being revealed in this. They are in the mindset that they will win an election because Labor will lose it…not because they will win it themselves. They are hoping that the other person will fail and thus they will be chosen. Oh how they failed to learn from Rudd, who went out and won the last election.
If Labor is to lose then the LNP will have to win it, take it away. They wont win because of any error Rudd will make. And who are their great hopes? Nelson, Turnbull and Bishop! Even with the benefit of being in government so long, having access to all the departments and briefings and information….yet they still are incompetent.
Wonder if they have stopped to wonder why Rudd has been very very popular for a very long time?
In the mean time they are probably thinking, the LNP wont have to do much, just turn up to the show, because it is their intention as media to try and promote the LNP and sell down Labor no matter what.
So we have the prospect of the LNP press, radio and tv lot ready to lie to Australia and ignore the right or wrong or good or bad of Government policy and performance.. they think they have no responsibility to Australia, only to their own partisan desires or maybe that of their boss.
So we will get read a lot of moronic and deliberately critical economic ‘analysis’ of the the Rudd government.
William, thanks for posting the link to the Australian Parliamentary Library paper, makes for fascinating reading, especially in the role of the media section. Have filed it away for future reference. Like many others here I am bloody fed up with our msm at the moment, pandering to that idiot Nelson and his ridiculous ‘fixes’, as Bushfire Bill said the public took deliberate aim and fired both barrels. Great post BB.
Bushfire Bill #27:
What you are saying is exemplified by the intro to a PM segment just yesterday in fact:
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2254238.htm
And why so many ex-Liberal Ministers spruiking on ABC constantly: Radio National and NewsRadio? Every little non-issue, and you can count on it: the failed and ousted Liberals will be there spouting their spite … often without the balance of a government reply.
[err, that should be Liberal ex-Ministers]
Kina
I agree with your summary of the MSM, the question is, with the opposition getting such a good run why are they having so little luck in moving the public opinion. It goes deeper than that, the comment sections in the MSM blogs are getting more strident in there criticism of the behavior of reporters.
On the ABC yesterday, the Liberal mouth piece from the Institute of public affairs got a royal ticking off, with several listeners making it vary clear they are sick of the crap.
Kina and Bushfire Bill – both great posts.
Watching QandA with my husband the other night, we both realised how incredibly across the detail Rudd was. (OK, we already knew he was a policy wonk, but seeing him in action always reminds you how competent he truly is). We tried to think back to how Howard would have handled some of those questions – for example about pensioners and carers. Rudd could list how many people there were in different categories off the top of his head, Howard would have been lucky to have made any kind of approximate guess that was within the ball park. And Kevin did not shy away from difficult questions at all.
At the end of that show I said to my husband that if this show becomes a regular feature, and Kevin appears on it in any kind of regularity, then the poll numbers are just going to get worse for the Libs. Back when Rudd was the Shadow Foreign Minister and was just getting his head on TV for interviews, you could clearly see what a clever performer he was. Smart, calm, makes the viewer feel good. We said back then that if he could extricate Big Kim from the leadership then he would be a force to be reckoned with, and that is exactly what has happened.
I think watching QandA made it very clear that the ALP are aiming squarely at the middle, and the more we see of Rudd, Gillard, Tanner, Swan, Wong, Plibersek, Roxon et al, the clearer it becomes just how competent they are – and the more popular the government in general becomes. I’m seeing this with the people I work with, neighbours and friends – I still hear occasional criticism, but everyone I am talking to is at least open to listening to the Rudd government – I am even hearing some distinct praise, even if it is a bit begrudging at times. And I live in Sophie Mirabella’s seat of Indi!
Our country has fundamentally changed with the new Rudd government. Suddenly, we are seeing intellectual debate back on the radar – but it is not being framed as elite or only for the “chardonnay sippers”. I would even go so far as to say that people feel that a general decency has come back to the government. I think we, and the MSM, had become so used to broken promises, obfuscation, and word weasling that it is a shock to the system that this new government deals differently. The MSM will be waiting a long long time if they are looking for Rudd to step on his unmentionables. I think he will go down as one of the best performing PMs we have ever had, and maybe our most popular.
Middle Australia loves Rudd.
This article by Mark Davis, should be compulsory reading for “ALL” MSM media commentators.
{Now the most definitive election exit poll undermines the revisionist interpretations being promoted by some of the protagonists in last year’s poll.
The survey shows:
? Industrial relations and global warming were the biggest vote-changing issues.
? Rising interest rates did not cost the Coalition as dearly as thought.
? Voters respected Mr Howard but were virtually in love with Mr Rudd, giving him the highest “likeability” rating in the survey’s 20-year history.
? Low-income battlers moved decisively back to Labor.
? The Coalition would have struggled under Mr Costello.}
{The Australian Election Study is a postal survey of 1873 voters at last year’s poll by a team of researchers led by Ian McAllister of the Australian National University. The Herald’s analysis of this data shows the election was a story of a politically-engaged electorate, a prime minister at odds with public opinion on cut-through issues, and an opposition leader who wrapped up the contest months before polling day.
Just under 70 per cent of the survey’s respondents said the Coalition’s Work Choices legislation had been important in their decision. A majority of 62 per cent disapproved of Work Choices. Labor had a strong lead among these anti-Work Choices voters, winning 66 per cent of their first preference votes compared with 17 per cent for the Coalition.
Global warming was also a strong vote-changer.
Asked whether Australia should participate in the Kyoto Protocol, 67 per cent of respondents said yes, 25 per cent said it depended, and 8 per cent said no (Mr Howard’s position). Of those supporting Kyoto, 55 per cent voted for Labor compared with 30 per cent for the Coalition.}
Clearly, the so-called “Howard Battlers” turned on the Coalition.
{Perhaps it was the battlers who had the last word. In 1996, 49 per cent of people in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations voted for the Coalition and 35 per cent for Labor. But last November, this was reversed as the Coalition’s share of battler votes plunged to 37 per cent while Labor’s rose to 51 per cent.}
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/05/23/1211183103011.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
This is a most telling statement in the whole article that most commentators have still not come to grips with.
{the election was a story of a politically-engaged electorate, a prime minister at odds with public opinion on cut-through issues, and “an opposition leader who wrapped up the contest months before polling day”.} (emphasis mine).
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/05/23/1211183103011.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
It’s mainly ABC, OO (and all News Ltd papers) and 7 who continue to shamlessly campaign for the return of the Coalition. But lets face it they have been doing this full on for the last 2 years and Labor is still riding high. It’s just that in their frustration at Kev’s continuing popuality they are getting more shrill and more nonsensical in their comments.
They don’t seem to be having any effect, their carers & pensioner beat ups didn’t shake the polls neither has all this petrol BS. Meanwhile Allbull has lost credibility and was shown to be a liar (to do with petrol tax) and Brenda is a figure of ridicule. No one would want the fool running our country he’s an embarassment to the planet.
enjaybe #20 hey those adopted pensioners had better watch it or nasty Mr Rudd might tax them on all this extra income the are receiving.
I reckon a lot of pensioners would be upset about this Adopt a Pensioner crap. If my mum was still alive she’d be one of them, a proud woman, brought up 5 kids in the 50s, husband WW2 vet with a drinking problem who worked in saw-mills for not a lot of money. Mum used to go pea picking to try to keep food on the table, there was no welfare then. She’d see this latest gimmick as an insult.
I sent this e-mail off to Hinch’s blog site. His reply was weak.
“As a person who prides himself as a journalist of integrity, it surprises me that you continue to misrepresent Rudd in regard to his so called promise to lower prices of goods and petrol. He, of course did nothing of the kind. He clearly stated that there was “no silver bullet” but would instigate ways of keeping the prices as low as possible.
My challenge to you Derryn is to find any Rudd quote, either before or since the election, verifying your contention.
You also said Rudd stated that “the buck stopped with him” in regard to prices. Wrong again Derryn. He said that in regard to hospitals and you know it.
You’re letting your dislike of Rudd and Labor get in the way of your journalistic integrity Derryn, big time.”
Derryn replied – “Gary. I have no ‘dislike for Rudd and Labor’ as you put it. My job is to question the government – the same way I questioned the Howard Government. dh”
This from the man who once said he thought Downer would make a good PM way back in … 2006-7.
So he signed it dh – sounds about right.
He left out the u in the middle
Nah, only the ‘i’, ‘c’ and ‘k’ in the middle and ‘e’, ‘a’ and ‘d’ at the end 😉
41
MayoFeral
I guess my ‘joke’ was way to subtle. You have spelt it out very clearly indeed. Hinch is a dh of the highest order. Likes to pretend that he supports those who can’t support themselves (the battlers I guess) but it’s a front to hide the fact that he’s really a society circle brown nose who uses populist issues to make out he’s a man of the people.
Steve K @ 42 – Like his ‘Struggle Street’ mate in Sydney?! LOL
And let’s not forget the “best friend workers ever had” currently living it up in Jamaica watching the cricket at the workers expense.
Hope all the ‘adopted’ pensioners are being paid in one dollar coins, I understand that they are the most suitable ones to feed the pokies.
The ‘best friend the workers ever had’ seems to be spending a lot of time out of the country since being WorkChoiced by the electorate. (What a pity he did not retire much earlier).
44- You too can sponsor a pensioner for just a dollar a play….
Rudd was late on stage for his speech. Channel 7 said the reason for his tardiness was that he wanted to make adjustments to his speech while over at 9 they said he became lost in the building as he tried to avoid the protesters. In fact Brumby, on stage, confirmed 9’s version. What are 7 up to? By the way, 7 headed their piece “Better late than never”.
The Poisoned Dwarf reckons Downer is “the comeback trail”.
[IS Alexander Downer on the political comeback trail? That’s certainly the view of a number of his colleagues.
The speculation has been sparked by Downer’s furious reaction to remarks by his South Australian right-wing factional colleague Nick Minchin, suggesting the former foreign minister was halfway out the exit door of politics.
To recap: Downer appears on the ABC’s Lateline midweek, calling for more discipline among Liberal MPs in the wake of the leaked letter from Malcolm Turnbull to Brendan Nelson that declared the Opposition Leader’s proposed 5c cut to petrol excise a policy dud. Ergo, the end of the Opposition’s Budget critique.]
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23751087-5005374,00.html
First its Costello, now its Downer. Please, oh please say its true. Hell, we just had an election to get rid of these clowns. If it takes another election defeat so be it.
Good old Dolly. Party in turmoil. Need of firm handling. No prospect of knight on white charger. Dolly to rescue in fishnet tights. Mercy dash. Endless enjoyment for observers from the left.