Suddenly Kristina Keneally’s performance doesn’t look so bad. What happened to Labor in Queensland on Saturday is without any precedent in Australian history – certainly not since the Second World War, prior to which the party system tended to be more fluid. Labor can be assured of only six seats, holds the lead in only seven, and on the best case scenario will win only eight, for a total of 9% of the Legislative Assembly’s 89 seats. That compares with the “cricket team” of 11 members that Queensland Labor famously managed to return in 1974, at what was previously the gold standard for Australian election massacres – and at that time the parliament only had 82 seats. As for Keneally, she managed to win 20 seats in a chamber of 93, albeit that she did so with 24.0% of the primary vote against a provisional 26.6% for Anna Bligh.
I don’t normally presume to tell the voting public its business, but this is an unhappy state of affairs. While it might be argued that a useful example has been set for future governments considering breaking election commitments, the result is an unmitigated disaster so far as the effective functioning of parliament is concerned. Lacking anything that could meaningfully be described as an opposition, its sessions will henceforth resemble those of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The problem is exacerbated by Queensland’s lack of an upper house, both as a venue for holding the government to account and for providing Labor with a second-eleven to fill out a shadow ministry. The precise dimensions of the problem can be detailed with reference to an online cheat sheet for British high school politics students, which tells us that parliament has five functions: legislature, representation, recruitment, scrutiny and legitimacy. I shall consider the first three in turn, while also shedding light on the last two along the way.
It might be argued that the Queensland parliament’s legislative functioning will be little worse than usual: so long as a disciplined party has a majority of whatever size, a unicameral parliament exists largely to do the bidding of the executive. However, the result will hamper the vitality of the committee system, which offers the public and interested parties a point of access to the legislative process, and helps iron out problems in legislation to the extent that doing so doesn’t tread on the toes of cabinet and the forces to which it responds. Each of the parliament’s 10 current committees have three non-government members from a total of six (seven in the case of the Committee of the Legislative Assembly), requiring 30 non-government members to maintain the existing state of affairs. Since the election appears to have only turned up 11 non-government members, it is clear that these committees will be dominated by the government, tending to make them both less vigorous and less representative.
This brings me to the second function of parliament, which is the one that presumes to make the system democratic: representation. While nothing should be taken away from the immense achievement of the LNP on Saturday, it has still not on present numbers cracked 50% of the statewide vote (although late counting may tip it over the line). However, such is the system in Queensland that it has emerged with very few fetters upon its power. This is not a situation Queenslanders tend to lament. The public is very easily persuaded that good government can be equated to “strong” and “decisive” leadership, rather than apparent abstractions like accountability and consensus. Media players are eager to fortify this view, knowing that systems which concentrate power are most responsive the pressures brought to bear by powerful interests. It tends not to register that such issues lay at the root of the abuses of the Bjelke-Petersen era – for which, incidentally, Queensland voters were far more forgiving than they were for Labor’s failings on Saturday. Opponents of reform may argue that such abuses are best addressed by extra-parliamentary accountability mechanisms such as corruption commissions, ombudsmen and auditors-general, but none of these is a substitute for parliament’s role as the expression of the sovereignty of the people. For as long as it plays this role, democratic principles demand that it be chosen by a system which produces representative outcomes.
There is plainly no clamour for these issues to be resolved by restoring the upper house, which Queensland abolished in 1922. The obvious alternative is to replace the single-member constituency system, which is increasingly a peculiarity of the English-speaking world, with proportional representation. Such a system in its purest form would have given Labor 24 seats, a suitably humiliating total that would nonetheless have left it enough personnel to credibly perform the job of opposition. An Australian public schooled in the notion that power should be wielded singularly and authoritatively would no doubt complain about minority government and the empowerment of marginal groupings, which we are told has had such a disastrous impact in Canberra over the past 18 months. However, there are ways in which such impacts could be limited. One that is very familiar from Australian practice involves dividing the state into regions represented by, to pick a fairly conservative total, five members each. On the basis of Saturday’s results, this would have had the LNP winning three or even four seats in each of the state’s regions, giving it a substantial working majority without entirely demolishing Labor.
There is another possibility which, although foreign to Australian practice, would put to rest any complaint about minority or coalition government. This would be to introduce a directly elected executive along American lines, balanced by a proportionally represented legislature. Such a system would do away with the anachronistic notion that those wishing to hold executive office should have to pay their dues through a lengthy parliamentary career. The limitations of this model were illustrated by the need the LNP felt to pursue its perilous Newman-for-Ashgrove strategy, with potentially disastrous consequences if it didn’t come off. How much more rational it would have been for Anna Bligh and Campbell Newman to have faced off in a direct contest for the premiership with all of Queensland given the chance to vote, together with a second vote to determine the composition of a legislature giving voice to a broad range of interests.
Finally, there is the question of parliament’s role in recruiting political talent. Partisan critics may scoff, but Queensland has been done no favours by the wipeout inflicted upon Labor’s ministry, which has between three and five members left standing out of 15 who were re-contesting their seats. The 43 incoming LNP members will no doubt include many conscientious local representatives and a smattering of stars of the future, but there will just as surely be a number of ill-prepared and under-talented accidents waiting to happen, who will in no way constitute a happy trade-off for Andrew Fraser, Cameron Dick and Stirling Hinchliffe. Even before the election, the LNP showed that its vetting procedures were rather less than fail-safe, with three candidates in seats it looked certain to win forced to withdraw at various points. As noted, the government will not even be able to keep all such members out of mischief by providing them with committee work. More broadly, the election’s demonstration of the remarkable volatility of modern voting behaviour will act as a disincentive for talented people wishing to enter state politics, given the perilous lack of job security involved.
Now then, to what happened on Saturday and why. The following list is by no means exhaustive:
Negativity. Many decades from now, election campaigners will still speak in hushed tones of the day the Crime and Misconduct Commission’s announced it would not proceed with an investigation into Campbell Newman, forcing Anna Bligh to concede: “Right now all I have is questions, I don’t have enough answers from Mr Newman or enough material”. It was then that the Labor’s position deteriorated from disastrous to catastrophic. It is rapidly becoming the fashion to view this election as a morality tale about the dangers of negative campaigning, but this needs to be kept in perspective. When I assembled links to both parties’ television advertising on an earlier post, I found that the LNP campaign consisted of five positive ads and five attacks ads, which is presumably no coincidence: it is exactly how you would expect a balanced and effective campaign to look. The issue for Labor was the entirely personal nature of its attacks, to the extent that it took the appalling risk of involving Newman’s wife. As Dennis Atkins of the Courier-Mail reported on the eve of the election, Labor’s assault did have the LNP spooked in the middle of the campaign, albeit that it clearly need not have done if Newman hadn’t set himself the bar of Ashgrove to clear rather than just the foregone conclusion of a parliamentary majority. So clearly attacks on personal probity can achieve their desired end, but only if they squarely hit their mark. If they don’t, watch out. And if such attacks are all your campaign has had to offer, don’t expect voters to be receptive if you spend the final week pleading for sympathy.
Ashgrove. Labor’s other giant gamble was its total focus on thwarting Campbell Newman in his bid for Ashgrove, on the basis that uncertainty over that result was its only weapon to encourage waverers across the state back into the Labor fold. So it was that Labor wasted little of its campaign breath on the more traditional type of negative advertising which might have done the job – cuts to services under a conservative government being the ever-reliable standby for Labor at state level. A more artful strategy might have integrated such attacks with its anti-Newman theme, portraying the well-connected wheeler and dealer as out of touch with your proverbial working families. The irony for Labor was that the very collapse of its get-Newman strategy was what drove the polling into a tailspin in the final week, which appeared to convince many Ashgrove voters that it would be highly indulgent of them to decapitate an LNP that was unquestionably going to win the election.
It’s time. I’m going to be provocative here and leave Labor’s broken promises and policy failures off the list. My rationale is that the Peter Beattie went into the 2006 election encumbered by the “Dr Death” fiasco, and emerged with almost all of his huge majority intact. The fact is that every government has baggage which accumulates throughout its time in office, and a tipping point inevitably arrives where it can no longer carry it all. As this election shows, the consequences can be disastrous if the government scrapes over the line for one last term in office, which it very often achieves on the back of promises it proves unable to keep. This leaves the government with the problems noted previously: unable to convincingly run on its record, desperate scare campaigns and personal attacks are all it has left. By very stark contrast, it is simplicity itself for the opposition to offer the balance of positive and negative which, as noted previously, is the cornerstone of a successful campaign.
Anna Bligh. Going into the campaign, Anna Bligh’s poll ratings were not impressive in absolute terms, but relative to Labor’s disastrous figures on voting intention they were remarkably strong – stonger certainly than Julia Gillard’s, who for all her much-touted difficulties leads a government with a two-party preferred rating in the upper half of the 40s. Clearly the shine from Bligh’s response to the floods had not entirely worn off. This made her a net asset to the party which, used effectively, would have been a key factor in any less-bad-than-New-South-Wales defeat. However, Labor demolished all that by not only pursuing its personal attacks on Campbell Newman, but placing Bligh at the centre of them. For Bligh herself to use parliamentary privilege to suggest Newman might be imprisoned jettisoned the fairly elementary axiom of political strategy that leaders should be seen to be above this sort of muckraking, which should instead be left to a designated ministerial attack dog. Labor’s contrary rationale seemed to be that Bligh was the only thing the government had going for it, and that she thus had to bear the whole burden of its public communications. The entirely predictable effect of this was that Bligh’s personal ratings tanked as the campaign progressed, taking with it one of Labor’s few remaining assets.
Federal factors. “This was a state election fought entirely on state issues”, went John Howard’s Sunday morning mantra throughout the 2000s, as his state counterparts mopped up the blood after yet another electoral drubbing the night before. Yesterday came the turn of Labor interviewees on Insiders and Meet the Press to trot out this very same line. Howard of course was routinely mocked for this, but he usually came up looking pretty good when his own time to face the voters came around. Are things any different this time? I tend to think that they are. “Voters are intelligent enough to distinguish between federal and state issues”, politicians are wont to say, by way of finessing state election defeats and flattering their target market besides. However, one politician who memorably demurred was an earlier Queensland Premier, Wayne Goss, who after losing office in the twilight of the Keating years remarked that voters had been “sitting on their verandas with baseball bats”, waiting to take a swing at the first Labor government that came along – which, through not fault of his own, happened to be his own. That there was an element of this on Saturday cannot be seriously disputed: the only question is how much. Certainly federal Labor is doing quite a bit worse in Queensland polling than John Howard was at the time the Coalition was crushed at the 2001 Queensland election. In the corresponding Newspoll result, Howard’s Coalition trailed in Queensland 54-46, while John Howard’s personal ratings were 37% approval and 53% disapproval. This hardly seems a ringing endorsement, until you compare it with the most recent figures for Labor in the state: a two-party deficit of 59-41, with Julia Gillard on 25% approval and 65% disapproval.
Electoral geography. Compared with NSW, Labor looks to have performed about 2.5% better on the primary vote and 2.0% better on two-party preferred (I believe they are shooting at a bit below 38% on the latter count), but on seats their performance is much worse. This is because Labor’s support in Queensland is spread more thinly throughout Brisbane than in Sydney and Wollongong, where Labor enjoys concentrations of support that translate into a greater number of unloseable seats.
The media. Well, no, actually. From where I’m sitting in Western Australia, this looked nothing like the 2008 WA election campaign, when barely a day went by without The West Australian deploying its front page in pursuit of a vendetta against the Labor government, entirely irrespective of whether or not the day’s events had furnished it with any material with which to do so. Far from being annihilated, that government actually came within a handful of votes of clinging to office. Murdoch tabloid though it may be, the Courier-Mail contented itself with reporting what was actually happening. No doubt it was a different story on talk radio, but that is a medium which preaches to the converted: it is monopoly daily newspapers which truly have the power to shape the campaign agenda, and the Courier-Mail exercised that power even-handedly and responsibly.
Women’s issues. Women leaders contesting state elections are now batting one from seven (although the picture is somewhat rosier at territory level). It’s true that this is partly down to Labor’s apparent habit of turning to women when their governments are running out of puff and headed for defeat in any case, but there might also be a peculiarity of Australian culture at work here. On a possibly related note, female representation has taken a knock with the LNP’s triumph, as only 16 of their 89 candidates were women.
Labor’s issues. Landslides copped by Labor tend to be a) bigger than those inflicted on the conservatives, and b) suffered from government rather than opposition. But that is a subject for a future post.
Dr J
Reminds me of a story one of my brothers told me. He was on his property preparing to shoot a feral cat with his .22 when the local footie team straggled past on a training run. It was early in the season, hot and dry, and the locals were not exactly in good nick. So they were struggling.
Brother got various calls from team members suggesting that he shoot the coach.
Until the last bloke staggered past.
F**k shooting the coach for a bloody joke he yelled. Just effn shoot me!
[My father-in-law got each of his city grandchildren in turn to ‘test’ the fence for him. He also used the electric to get his heart into some sort of order when it became a bit arrhythmic. It worked a charm. He lived until he was 80.]
Boerward & lizzie – i was at a meeting a couple of weeks ago and three old blokes were telling me that when they needed a bit of boost they’d ‘test’ the electric fence. They’re all in their early 80s and still look pretty good to me but I’ m not going to have a go myself. I’m a spring chicken
don – great comment re strained relations! Poor lizzie’s OH.
Many workers will vote for TA and should he win, he will screw them by Work Choices II. Then the workers will come back to Labor who will have to undo the anti workers regulations.
Sometimes I scratch my head trying to figure out how the Auseie mind works.
Just read 449 and it doesn’t read right. Should be “if a cop does kill someone, not only is there a death which should not have happened, but the cop’s life is also ruined.
lizzie @ 449
Was that on the radio? I heard part of it.
You may recall the Port Arthur massacre and that poor man who lost his wife and 2 daughters. His best mate was a detective who, after supporting him through the aftermath of that, went to his superiors and handed in his gun saying he could not carry a gun any more. True story and I actually knew the cop.
l
That ringtail story reminds me of the story wherein one of nieces took her pet baby ringtail to the big smoke to stay with her auntie. During the night the ringtail must have got thirsty because it fell into the toilet bowl and drowned.
Niece reckoned that Auntie was a callous city slicking ringtail murderer.
BH
Go on! Give it a burl!
PTMD @ 450
The UK cops seem to manage.
It would force them to use their brains and not get into life or death situations.
Seriously, I’m sorry for Qlders, but it is going to be an interesting ‘experiment’ to watch what happens under a virtual dictatorship of the conservative kind.
adam abdool @ 453
Ralph Miliband (father of British Labour Party leader) wrote at least one book that explained such phenomena. A good read.
This has endless possibilities forfun and games, bludgers!
[A future coalition federal government could appoint a “Repealer in Chief” charged with cutting red tape for business and not-for-profit organisations.
Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos flagged the idea in Perth on Monday, where he was holding talks with small business operators and representatives from the aged care and mining sectors about regulation and bureaucracy.
Senator Sinodinos told AAP during a break from the meetings that the coalition was considering borrowing an idea from the US state of Kansas, where Republican Governor Sam Brownback created an Office of the Repealer, headed by a Repealer in Chief.]
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/coalition-looks-at-repealer-in-chief-20120326-1vu2m.html
Lizzie,
I agree. I feel sorry for Qld Bludgers but as a rats-in-the-maze sort of experiment it should be fascinating.
lizzie
Kansas is such a wonderful pace upon which to set one’s standards!
Puff
I think of a row of little furry faces peering over the border into NSW and wondering “is it safer there?” 😆
Queenslanders experienced a long right-wing dictatorship under Joh.
Perhaps an IT Bludger coould help me.
I have been sent a Microsoft Word document that purports to have been written in November 2007. I asked for this letter, as I had no recollection of ever receiving it, and no record of responding to it, either.
However, checking the “Properties” tab, I find that the “Date Created” was this afternoon at 12.58pm. It was further edited at 3.26pm, an sent at 3.29pm.
It is a .dot (template) file. Do any Bludgers know how reliable these “Document creation” and “Document last edited” listings are likely to be?
Could they be changed simply by opening the file, and re-saving it?
They say I owe them a lot of money. They claim this letter is proof I agreed to pay them. I AM prepared to pay something, but not three times what I reckon I owe them. The “Creation date” time of just this afternoon seems suspicious to me.
[Queenslanders experienced a long right-wing dictatorship under Joh.]
With Russ Hinze and Terry Lewis as stewards.
GG
[The Greens have so many excuses for poor their performance. Spin, baby, spin!]
VEC Results for primary first preference votes (percentages):
1999 – Labor: 56.77 ; No Greens candidate
2002 – Labor: 60.08 ; Greens: 7.27
2006 – Labor: 53.76 ; Greens: 9.13
2010 – Labor: 45.68 ; Greens: 7.76
2012 By-election with no Liberal candidate – Labor: 45.35 ; Greens: 10.11
In an electorate that is traditional Labor heartland, I think the Greens would be more pleased with their trend line than Vic Labor.
if this happened in UK, imagine one Party State of QLD:
[David Cameron ‘hosted dinners for millionaire donors in Downing Street flat’
David Cameron and his wife Samantha have hosted dinners in their Downing Street flat for millionaire Tory donors, it was admitted last night.
Mr Cameron found himself caught in a cash-for-access row after Peter Cruddas, the Conservative Party’s co-treasurer, was recorded in secret claiming that donors were treated to exclusive dinners in Mr Cameron’s flat above No 10 Downing Street and Chequers, the Prime Minister’s official country residence.
Senior party sources admitted that Mr Cameron had held talks in his flat with two large donors in the past year, although the source said it was “exceptionally unusual”. Michael Spencer, a former Tory treasurer, was one of the guests.
A senior aide to the Prime Minister denied the party was “selling” access to Mr Cameron’s flat, and insisted no public money was used at the “handful” of private dinners since the Coalition took office.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/9166469/David-Cameron-hosted-dinners-for-millionaire-donors-in-Downing-Street-flat.html
Repealer in Chief! What a wonderful title.
It makes me think of that Goodies episode where they had an inquisition hunting down boy scouts.
Will he be part of the Ministry of No?
TT
But since then their numbers have been swelled by many ‘southerners’ who weren’t conned by Joh.
BB
I once helped out a colleague who was being set up by a businessman claiming to have sent her a letter months before and that she claimed had never been received. He was good enough to send a copy. Interrogation of the document’s properties showed it had been created that very day. When confronted with this information and asked if he would still like to escalate the matter he very quickly withdrew and was never heard from again.
“Seriously, I’m sorry for Qlders, but it is going to be an interesting ‘experiment’ to watch what happens under a virtual dictatorship of the conservative kind.”
Sorry? Why? They have been screaming for years, threatening people with their baseball bats and the like. They knew perfectly well what they were doing and the consequences. Even today, we had Newman, who one might have thought could have been a bit more circumspect, saying that he was going to go full bore for Bligh’s seat. And he’s perfectly entitled to do so. But he is obviously thinking that he is going to be president for life and that those wild-eyed Queenlanders won’t ever come after him. No. He’s showing no remorse. Going to jump into her grave. Why settle for 83% of the seats with no opposition when you can have 84% with no opposition. I have said a couple of times that the Conservatives and, in particular, their media handlers aren’t satisfied with 83, 84, 93, 94 or 99%. They want it all. Why would this surpise anyone? After all, we’ve seen the new, improved Gee Whiz mouth-breathing those exact sentiments right here.
[Go on! Give it a burl!]
Sadist, Boerwar, but how about I try lizzie’s trick on OH first to see what happens!
lizzie
[bemused
I heard an ex-cop, now a lecturer, say just that today. He’d like to remove guns from police]
My sister is a senior sergeant in sheepen shagger land. Visiting a number of times as a tourist and on business she has always commented about NSW cops having a bit of an attitude. She puts it down to the fact that in dealing with the public they don’t have to bother so much with respect and politeness because they are armed. By the way she served on the streets of “Once Were Warriors” territory in her earlier days and still did not think wandering around with guns was necessary.
peg
seriously? 10% in a by election, with no Liberal candidate, and you think that demonstrates a growing trend line?
Roy O
I’m not certain that Qlders were aware of the consequences when they voted. Suspect they thought they were giving Anna a slap on the wrist. Didn’t expect a murder. It’s happened before, hasn’t it?
BB @ 466
Those properties are stored in the ‘meta data’ for the file.
There is software which you can easily locate with google that will edit meta data.
“Many workers will vote for TA and should he win, he will screw them by Work Choices II. Then the workers will come back to Labor who will have to undo the anti workers regulations. “
It’s been tried before and it’s worth trying again. If Abbott is stupid enough to telegraph his Workchoices punch, then Gillard should simply say that it won’t be repealed when Labor gets back in. In fact she should just say it anyway. They rescued the punters once and if they insist on voting in reactionaries, then they can be stuck with it.
[A CHINESE telecoms giant blocked by the Federal Government from supplying equipment to the national broadband network (NBN) has been courting senior Liberal frontbenchers and Labor figures.
Huawei Technologies, which is close to becoming the world’s largest telecommunications equipment provider, was advised late last year that it could not tender for NBN contracts because of concerns about cyber attacks emanating from China.]
http://www.perthnow.com.au/business/media-marketing/huawei-courts-julie-bishop-andrew-robb/story-e6frg2rc-1226310582880
[Could they be changed simply by opening the file, and re-saving it?]
BB – I’m not an expert but I’ve found when I go back to print off an old letter it does update the day it is printed. Only once did I go back and find the original date successfully. I seem to remember it was through Windows Explorer
While the lack of any real kind of opposition is to be deplored in Queensland, so be it for the time being.
However, to be consistent, the conservative numbers in the past, on occasions, have left them as virtually powerless in parliament as Labor is now. I didn’t hear too much about the problems for democracy when that was the political reality.
A tyranny of the Left is no prettier than one from the Right.
A good democracy needs a reasonably strong opposition – one which can, at just one election, have a reasonable opportunity to take power.
This is not the case in Queensland or probably NSW now.
However, this is not the case in Victoria or WA or even SA or Tas.
I just cannot see why some bloggers here are bagging the Greens.
If things to go pear shaped in 2013, the Greens in the Senate may be all there is between the progressives and some happy-land Right Wing Fascist state – especially with odd-ball parties such as Katter’s crew and the Christian Fundamentalists lurking.
AMANDA SHALLLALALALLALALA WEARING AN AMAZING BLUE DRESS
EVERYONE TURN ABC NEWS 24 ON FORTHWITH!
BB
I didn’t comment on this before.
It will not change the create date.
If they do anything to the file e.g. insert one character and then delete it, before saving, it will change the save date.
The date printed will change if they print it.
Bless BOF,currently spouting “workplace flexibility” aka “Workers assume the position http://tiny.cc/6esrbw ” on A-PAC .
[“Queenslanders experienced a long right-wing dictatorship under Joh”]
I’m too young to remember, but from what I read stuff got built under Joh.
Whats been built under Bligh?
Thank youse, Bludgers.
So it seems that either I found this “meta data” editing software and changed it myself (which I definitely did not), or they just made up the document today?
I might add that I have asked for this document three times and only today did they send it when I told them that without it I wouldn’t pay them a cent.
Lizzie, I guess we’ll know in a couple of weeks whether or not they meant it. If there’s a five or six percent swing back to Labor, maybe they did overcook it. Don’t know what Bligh’s personal vote was and what the story was in her electorate cwf the rest of the state. If it was a bigger swing, then maybe they already punished her. Maybe they will want to get on the gravy train, thinking they will get nothing from Newman as an ALP. Who knows what they are thinking? They are Queenlanders. And they are special. Particularly with a baseball bat in their possession.
@BB. Typically “Date Created” is only changed when a new file is made not when a file is copied between disks or otherwise saved. “Date Modified” changes every time the file is saved. If you have a file created today then it was created today not in 2007. It is of course possible to open an old file and a new one (because of a change in word versions perhaps) and copy and paste the contents into the new file and save it. In any case it is reasonable to question the veracity of a claim that it is an original 2007 file if it has a creation date of today. Be aware though that it is trivial to modify these dates and difficult to prove it’s happened.
[Whats been built under Bligh?]
Queensland… rebuilt.
Do you think the second Gateway Bridge and Ipswich Motorway got built by themselves, idiot?
Thanks, Bemused. Any idea what the title was? He has written heaps.
BB @ 487
Keep that document unaltered from when you received it.
If you open it and do anything, just don’t save it.
To be safe, make a copy.
Hey, the ABC finally gets something right.
Costa Georgiadis is the host of Gardening Australia.
http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2476106.htm
[“Do you think the second Gateway Bridge and Ipswich Motorway got built by themselves, idiot?”]
This idiot thinks those are toll roads built by private companies…
[So it seems that either I found this “meta data” editing software and changed it myself (which I definitely did not), or they just made up the document today?]
My advice is to never send original documents. Always convert them to pdf.
[Be aware though that it is trivial to modify these dates and difficult to prove it’s happened.]
Understand that, thanks Boinzo (have you commented here before?).
Have just found out that the document’s “author” {name supplied in “Properties” list} did not start working at the firm in question until AFTER November 2007, indeed she’s only worked there for 18 months
Interesting that someone who didn’t work there at the time the document was dated (November 2007) has time-travelled from October 2010 to write me this “November 2007” letter.
It’s a firm of accountants, that are purporting to charge me for personal conversations three years old, with my mate, one of their employees, at $295 an hour.
adam abdool @ 492
I think I have read a couple of his books. Parliamentary Socialism I recall but even after looking at a list I cannot pick the other for sure. Possibly The State in Capitalist Society.
Bibliography
Parliamentary Socialism: A Study of the Politics of Labour (1961). ISBN 0-85036-135-4.
The State in Capitalist Society (1969), ISBN 0-704-31028-7
Marxism and Politics (1977), ISBN 0-85036-531-7
Capitalist Democracy in Britain (1982), ISBN 0-19-827445-9
Class Power and State Power (1983)
Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism (1989)
Socialism for a Sceptical Age (1994)
Certainly a tad to the left of his sons!
[Interesting that someone who didn’t work there at the time the document was dated (November 2007) has time-travelled from October 2010 to write me this “November 2007″ letter.]
BB
You seem to have excellent grounds to take them to their professional body. It also has a distinct whiff of fraud to it.
Whizzer @ 495
Sheer brilliance!
As opposed to the members of the parliament on the govt side doing it themselves?
Most public works are contracted out to private companies you nong. But the govt commissions major works and funds them.