@KevinRuddPM Tweetwatch Cockatoo

Our Kevvie’s recent incoming and associated twitbites make for fun reading … here’s some favs to date – the characteristic laconic, down-to-earth verging on shameless Aussie lingo is alive and twittering.

rogers: @KevinRuddPM Frosty handshake? Why didn’t you sock that arsehole in the guts…?

hortovanyi: @fang mate, I’m always well behaved on here .. the only person I’m not sure about is @KevinRuddPM

grodscorp: @KevinRuddPM Would’ve thought you wouldn’t need to do dishes at White House dinner, Kevvie.

ninjamoeba: I love @KevinRuddPM ‘s bio: “PM.” Surprisingly succinct.

After Kev’s first, very muted, ‘vpod’ offering:

jimbiosis: @KevinRuddPM Sir, “growing the cake” is a mixed metaphor.

owenhodda: What is this vpod @KevinRuddPM speaks of? I am not down with the cool kid lingo

jamesfehon: @KevinRuddPM you mean a vlog?

lenier: @KevinRuddPM Re: “vpod”. You may have developed a term where many already exist. Welcome to Web 2.0! You’re fitting right in.

chrissylvester: just watched @KevinRuddPM’s vpod about the G20 and wanted to let you know he wished we’d sent @TurnbullMalcolm instead – chrissylvester team

Several commentators express concern about correct twitgrammar:

calvinccc: @KevinRuddPM My first thought was: wow the PM’s twittering in the 3rd person

danupoyner: Shock! @KevinRuddPM has changed from 1st to 3rd person. I like to think that it is actually still Kevin, just talking in 3rd person 🙂

iusebiro: am pretty disappointed that @kevinruddpm isn’t even pretending that it’s my beloved KevOhSev tweeting 🙁

cinema_monster: do you think @KevinRuddPM is actually the one updating his twitter? i’m kind of getting the image of my dad trying to work the dvd remote…

Digs at Conroy’s profoundly idiotic attempts to censor the Australian internet:

alexrzem: @KevinRuddPM That’s nice that you recorded a message for us. But how do you know that in the future it wouldn’t be blocked by your Firewall?

SilkCharm: @KevinRuddPm Hi Kev, thanks for your video G20 email http://twurl.nl/hon8lp – Please enjoy our #nocleanfeed video http://twurl.nl/06dsl3 🙂

Other tweets are disappointed with Kev’s autistic twitter demeanour, particularly in comparison to the more experienced twitterer @TurnbullMalcolm:

Mediamum: Gee, @KevinRuddPM has over 2000 followers and hasn’t had a conversation with anyone yet! FAIL

perkler: @KevinRuddPM just emailed me to say he looked forward to ‘our continuing dialogue’. I didn’t know we were having one. I got the email tho

jedwhite: @TurnbullMalcolm Great to see your genuine engagement through twitter. Very positive contrast to @KevinRuddPM. Hope u r finding useful.

@KevinRuddPM is now Number 8 on the Aussietwit list, yet it seems some followers are dissillusioned.

a_lil_spaz: The novelty has worn off now. Defollowing @KevinRuddPM & others people of political note. Sick of big shots not using Twitter appropriately.

caitabee: @KevinRuddPM I just unfollowed you. Fuck yes.

TWITFLASH!

We have liftoff! @KevinRuddPM is responding – and the cat is cool 🙂

@KevinRuddPM meets with Madeline

Armenian holocaust denialTwo more tweets have appeared on the newly founded @KevinRuddPM informing us patient followers that he has respectively arrived in Washington and had briefings with the Treasurer and Embassy Staff in preparation for tomorrow’s meeting, and met with Madeline Albright, she of the blithe gaffe that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children through the hideous sanctions over Iraq were “worth it”.

No doubt Ms Albright, presently a top advisor to Obama on national security, would have some pertinent insights into the global stock market schmozzle, given her past position on the NYSE Board. Albright resigned in 2005 after the Grasso scandal.

Considering her past opposition toward recognising the Armenian genocide which occurred during the final days of Ottoman rule in World War 1, the importance of Turkey as one of the trusty US land-bound aircraft carrier vassal countries in the Middle East and the concurring predilections of newly appointed Chief Advisor to Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, along with Obama’s grovelling to AIPAC, it would be surprising indeed if the US shifted its current position to the Holocaust suffered by the Armenian people.

@KevinRuddPM in a Twatty Twitter

Pipped at the post by @TurnbullMalcolm by several weeks, @KevinRuddPM is getting off to an embarrassing, stumbling start. A couple of hours after we first followed Kevvie, all his followers were wiped clean – in a supposedly inexplicable Twitter crash. We readded ourselves quickly, yet were not followed back. In fact, we had to delete then add ourselves again later so Kevvie would follow us, after his Twitter Team announced all followers were to be automatically followed. Democratic governments are the servants of the people, not the other way around, after all.

Unlike Malcolm’s constant, urbane twitterings which are written by none other than the man himself and which include direct, pertinent responses to his followers, Kevin and his Twittering Team have managed just 7 flaccid, dead fish declarations, and no public responses. Twice, his eager followers have been reminded, groan, that Kevvie is off to the G20 in Washington. Has Kevvie no mobile with him on the plane to Washington whereby he could ameliorate his limp Twitter image? Should we infer that he is too busy collecting his thoughts for that great occasion and being a man can only think about one thing at once? With Conroy continuing to make a dill of himself with his unworkable, unpalatable internet censorship proposals, Kevvie is adding insult to injury with his inept handling of the powerful social networking and communication tool Twitter has become – creating the distinct impression Kevvie and his team just don’t understand the internet at all.

Surely his media advisers had studied @BarackObama and @DowningStreet prior to launching into the twitterverse? Get it together Kevvie – why didn’t you set up another identity a while back and practise with your friends to avoid being labelled a Twitter noob?

With love from a sorry lot

The absence of joy and applause from the Opposition (how pleasant it is to write Opposition meaning the Liebs at last) following Kevvie’s very pleasant healing speech of apology to the Stolen Generation was striking.

With manners we have come to expect of ignorance and mean-heartedness, several notable rightwing twits boycotted the event including Wilson Tuckey, Don Randall, Alby Schultz, Dennis Jensen, and Sophie Mirabella.

Questioned in Parliament later over two of Rudd’s staffers turning their backs on Brendan Nelson during his inadequate, typically miserly and patronising speech wherein he attempted vainly to absolve the government from responsibility for the Stolen Generation, Kevvie insisted the staffers apologise. Why apologise for shunning a bigot with a track record like Nelson’s (recall his woeful attempts at improving Aboriginal health when he was Health Minister)? So Kevve can insist on a sorry from everyone – he has a boat to keep afloat.

For the record, we here are sorry … very sorry and look to the day when an apology is extended for the seizing of Australia and the specious imperial Terra Nullius justification. Let the healing begin and we all live with the land sustainably in peace.

A Swing to the ABC

Kerry O’Brien’s delightful gaffe that there was ‘a swing to the ABC’ in Bennelong aroused our elated mirth at the woes of the rodent as the eloquent and lovely Maxine McKew looked poised to take his seat. The presence of the Chaser team in the outer election commentary area and prior interview of a non-committal Craig Reucassel had perhaps influenced his thoughts.

For the government under Rudd will be certain to attend to the needs of our ailing dear Aunty, debilitated by the mercantilist, corporate media influenced, wowserish rodent pack. Essential to the health of our similarly diseased democracy, our ABC is headed for better days.

Around the nation as the landslide results became clear, the joy was palpable. We were swilling our third bottle of pink champagne by the time Howard belatedly conceded defeat, advertising as he did so from the podium sticker that he was beholden to Sofitel Wentworth, in probable future Lieberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull’s electorate, for their hospitality to his wake. His farewell speech was lengthy, pompous and whiny, the gluttonous prime miniature scraping the barrel for the limelight he has craved to the detriment of his own party.

A 6% swing against the Lieberals with the loss of 26 seats so far and Howard likely to lose Bennelong mean the wolves will be feasting on dwarf carcass for some time. 88 Labor seats are predicted at this stage. We are pleased that Fringe readers were perspicacious, with 82% polling Team Rodent would lose.

Good riddance, little Johnny, and may you slink away from public life completely, not to reemerge in the form of a vocal statesman like your more admirable counterpart, Malcolm Fraser. And farewell, Costello, always a bridesmaid and never a bride, your career tainted by rodent droppings and a general lack of guts and ambition. We will never forget how you sold off Whorestralia’s gold reserves BEFORE the gold boom, or removed capital gains tax for foreign investors whilst offering no such relief to us locals.

Rudd’s victory address was littered with painful slogans, directed at the average yob who will today be examining their assets and debts in light of more imminent interest rate rises. Yet at least, Whorestralia can now revel in the fact that we can as a nation participate in enlightened ventures like the signing of the Kyoto treaty, removing our soldiers from Bush’s sordid Iraq debacle and repairing the public health and education sectors. All worthy of foregoing tax bribes for!

The restoration of Whorestralian workers’ protections and rights may have to wait till next July, when the Senate will fall to a Labor majority, though we would not be surprised if the some of remnants of the imploded Lieberals turn tail on their former dearly beloved dwarf leader’s draconic industrial policies.

Good luck to you, Kevvie … and keep the light shining. Breathing multiple sighs of relief, we won’t have to leave the country in disgust after all.