Author: Randall

Socialist Alliance stalwart and aboriginal activist, Sam Watson, warmed up the crowd for Liam Flenady, Socialist Alliance candidate for Griffith at the party’s Griffith launch on Boundary Street in West End today. (more…)

Gordon Fraser Quick, executive director of the Stop CSG Party was in Bulimba on Thursday night to build interest in the party and call for volunteers to help get it off the ground.

Mr Fraser has spent the last three years campaigning against coal seam gas and believes there is no existing political party that can unite the disparate groups of people opposed to the extraction of fuels from the coal seam.

“The Labor and Liberal parties are clearly in favour of gas extraction, and there are many people opposed to coal seam gas who would not vote for the Greens,” he told the small crowd who gathered for the presentation.

The party is planning to run a Senate ticket in Queensland and a potential candidate emerged from those present. Westender has agreed not to reveal further details of that candidacy until the party’s position is finalised.

Limited details about the party are available at stopCSG.org.au

A Democrat candidate has emerged for the seat of Griffith.

Paul Stevenson spoke to a group of single parents outside the Prime Minister’s office on Thursday 11 July. He described the impact of single parenting on his professional life as a psychologist and the years he has spent recovering from that economically damaging experience.

The party has dusted off its founding slogan saying “Whoever is Prime Minister after this election, keep that bastard honest.” It is also harking back to Gough Whitlam’s ’72 theme with “It’s time to bring back the democrats.”

The party polled just over 800 votes in 2004 and 600 in 2007. It did not field a candidate in 2010.

The cheapest two hour thrill available within walking distance of West End costs less than ten dollars and offers two hours of usually satisfying entertainment.

I refer to the iMax – not that we call it that any more. Cinema 5 at the Southbank Cineplex is a jaw dropping, stunning, immersive experience that still excites me, even writing about it now.

The jaw dropping moment comes when you first walk in. Even if you have been there a squillion times before, stepping into the near vertical incline of Cinema 5 carries a frisson of excitement reminiscent of a viewing platform on a cliff top in the Border Mountains.

I love:

• the homey reminders to pick up our rubbish so the owners can keep the ticket prices down.
• the local advertising promoting the sushi bars next door and across the road
• the fact that some big name movies just won’t appear because the family who owns the cinema doesn’t like them
• the exasperated sighs when it is a full house and the whole machine stops for ten minutes while the head-ticket-seller bosses us all into moving closer together so that late comers can take their seats at the edges.

That is what I call Going to the Movies.

Compare Randy’s love affair with the Cineplex with what happened Across the River