[Matt79]

OUCH! Copping some fairly harsh criticism on the previous page!

Yeah, look I probably went overboard in the rant - I did acknowledge it was a rant rather than a fair and balanced critique. I was fairly tired and cranky (a bub who doesn't think that night time is a good time to sleep and hence 3-4 hours sleep a night for six or seven days on end have that effect on me), and had the ****s with politics in general.

The teenage/uni thing has obviously upset a couple of you - Saggers, you snuck it in in another thread, and if that's the case, I'm happy to qualify it by saying that the conversation in this thread is actually very good - to the point that it reminded me of when I used to go to political meetings at uni, as a teenager, and got me irritated by realising how disillusioned with the whole thing I'd become. I think a lot of my irritation was actually directed at myself because I hadn't realised how much I'd stopped caring and it was bothering me.

I don't think its exactly ceding the field to the Howards of the world to say that you've ceased to find the process interesting. My point re: Beazley remains - he's simply failed to either present himself as a sufficiently credible alternative, or more importantly, failed to score a really telling blow against Howard. I've still voted ALP in the last three elections, and will have a little party the day Johnny calls its quits.