Good to read your comment on the man himself. He loved the Blues. They should have made him president. Elliot’s love of mammon got them into the shite.

So come on Andy…tell us who would the late BA Santamaria back in the current H SU poll?

Mannix” go-to man. A true Australian hero who preferred the Princes Park outer and would never have been comfortable with Elliott’s bluster.

Another year is nearly over again Kate and as I rest up on your Victorian settee with a delightful cup of organic bramley apple and camomile tea I can think about my busy 12 months and all I’ve achieved in government for my subjects in Victoria. Um, um, ah Kate maybe you can help me and refresh my memory as to what I’ve done?

Swan has now dumped the surplus commitment, ALP will now lose the next Federal election and be in Opposition for at least a decade. Thanks heaps Gillard we now have that swarmy lowlife Abbott to look forward to as PM.

Anyone got a job?

Don’t tell Mamma but I love to ‘rub one out’ looking at a photo of Danny.

I love porn and horn. As a young man I nearly ripped my dickie off. Now I just use young ladies of Dandenong, hopefully they won’t recognise my fame, defender of Christian values, like porn!

Is this the same creep who supported the Vietnam War and conscription but sought and was exempted from fighting in the Second World War.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for making Vex one of the last bastions of free speech in the auspol website sector up until last week.
Until then, moderation was not required for each and every post which allowed for a diverse range of opinions. Now that every post will be moderated and censored by Andy, it has joined the ranks of every other bloody site that does not publish comments deemed critical or not in line with the publishers views.
RIP Vex 2012. It was fun while it lasted. Time to start an Australian order order blog methinks. Who’s in?

VEXNEWS: Currently, for legal reasons, we are auto-moderating more comments than usual, hopefully our merry band will be onto those that are held up on suspicion of breaching our KFC good taste guidelines. Those making excessively vile or racist or misogynist comments in the past will find – as Chris has – that all comments from a particular IP or person are auto-moderated, meaning they sometimes have to wait before they get read and allowed on. Hope the frustration isn’t too much to bear. Go in grace.

this is a test to see if Andy is full of shit or not

I am done here

I wonder of BA Santamaria knew about the problems that existed in the Romanist church with many of the priests back in the 1960′s when we use to watch his show “Point of View” after the wrestling on Sunday afternoon.

Thank you for the gracious words about BA Santamaria. Everyone respected his intergity.

B. A. Santamaria was one of the most significant figures in Australian public life for nearly 60 years from his time at Melbourne University to his death.

His views on economic issues were complex and it would be wrong to regard him as being in favour of regulation and state control.

He believed in small business and local communities and was equally concerned about the centralising control that was exercised by communist governments and cartels or monopolies. He railed against deregulation when barriers to entry remained so true competition couldn’t exist. He believed it was better to have investment funds (especially superannuation)delivering new infrastructure and jobs rather than asset price inflation through churning share holdings in publicly listed companies. He also wanted a more benign lending environment for small business and farmers.

I appreciated his incisive analysis of the problems confronting a modern economy as we moved from a domestically focussed manufacturing industry of unionised full-time workers to a domestically focussed services economy of part-time non-union workers underpinned by export focussed mining and to a lesser extent agricultural sectors that weren’t quite large enough to achieve a positive balance of trade due to the import of intellectual property and manufactured goods. He understood that Australia would need to balance its trade deficits with foreign capital inflows and this would in time exacerbate the balance of payments on the current account due to the repatriation of royalties and profits.

Having analysed the problems correctly, many of his policy prescriptions unfortunately were simplistic, idealistic and impractical.

Unlike many politicians from the major parties, he believed the role of government was to encourage strong community spirit and a vibrant volunteer sector by having local industries owned locally and employing locally.

His advocacy of the self-sustaining town or village or suburban centre was unfortunately overtaken by the globalisation of industry brought about by the rapid deployment of information and communications systems and the rise of global capital and the development of a sophisticated financial sector. He was right to question whether the financial system was unstable – had he been alive in 2007 and 2008, he would have seen his warnings come to pass.

I believe that the correct response would have been to let the financial system collapse rather than prop it up with huge borrowings and massive distortions of market forces. I don’t know what B.A. would have suggested but I suspect he would have wanted the money the government spent propping up those that had screwed up being directed instead to protecting the honest borrowers rather than the stupid lenders.