Thursday 26 February 2009

Why in Quetzalcoatl's name are people applauding this?

Ok, so I can get the part about how people are enjoying having their egos stroked, furiously. But take a step back from the initial good feeling, and you realise the guy has next to no clue what the fuck he's on about. Either that or the work experience kid (or more likely one of the uni labor students who work in MPs offices) got into the liquor cabinet.


South Melbourne FC celebrates 50 proud years with a big win

by Michael Danby MHR
Monday February 23, 2009
from Hansard


Mr Danby (Melbourne Ports) (6.53 pm) - On Saturday night I celebrated with my friends at the South Melbourne Football Club the opening of the 2009 season and 50 years of tradition of the great South Melbourne Football Club. I want to congratulate President Leo Athanasakis and his commilla on a glittering event marked by a beginning to the year, with South Melbourne winning the Hellanic Cup, defeating Heidelberg United by 3 - 0. It was a good beginning to the year and I hope the club will have continuing success under its coach, Michael Michalakopoulos.


Now I don't what the fuck a 'commilla' is, but I think it's married to the Prince of Wales. As for 'the event marked by a beginning to the year', I'm not sure that even Kevin Rudd's 'education revolution' can save us from words strung together in such a manner which might make intuitive sense to some clod out there, but will probably leave most people struggling to remember proper English syntax after encountering it. Ahem.



It is very interesting to see the development of the South Melbourne team. Its new captain is a young Turkish Australian called Ramazan Tavsancioglu. My friend, Martin Foley, the Member for Albert Park, and I are working very hard with the S.M.F.C on the refurbishment of the South Melbourne ground - the Bob Jane Stadium - with Victorian Athletics, the Victorian government is undertaking a $74 million proposal for the refurbishment of the whole ground.


Ok, so now the money's gone up from $50 million to $74 million. I take back everything I've said so far, and will say in my next paragraph. Just gimme, gimme, gimme!


Ultimately, South Melbourne deserves its place in the A-League - it will get back there as it must get back into national competition. It is now exclusively hooked up to the local community in training youngsters. It is not simply an ethnic based club anymore and South Melbourne will get its rightful place in the A-League when it is recognised as a more widely based club. When a new round of clubs are being asked to join the A-League, S.M.F.C. should be considered on its merits.


I don't know which youngsters being trained by us he's referring too. Surely not the ones out at Caulfield though. Unless he's talking about one of the junior girls teams... but somehow I don't think so. And where the fuck did he find this connection to the local community? Unless he means himself and Foley. And then he goes into this A-League thing... while we have unlimited space for me to go over this whole thing again, we sadly don't have enough people with unlimited attention spans.

To be fair, the version on the official Hansard transcription reads better, if only because it is not the result of something written by a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, but the sentiments to me are opportunist and typical of the hobnobbing efforts of local MPs within their constituencies. Maybe I've just read too many of Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan books. Or maybe I recall when we had the patronage of an even more prestigious political advocate, who pissed off when we he didn't need us anymore, and an important lesson was forgotten somewhere along the way.

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