365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 175 : The Times They Are A-Changin'

What a day!

It started early when I had just got back in from walking, and I broke my sacred vow to ignore the Cup - sworn before a gathering of gay men in a secret club somewhere - and watched the last 5 minutes of the Australia v Serbia match. I quietly cheered along - my housemate was still sound asleep at 6.15 this morning, an eminently sensible strategy - and threw in an Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi for good measure (it's not so impactful when whispered) and while I wouldn't say I enjoyed the match, it was certainly fun to watch and I could at least talk football with some conviction this morning at work... well for the two minutes I could be bothered doing that at least!

I was not happy to find out, after investing 5 precious minutes of my time, that while we won this match - yay team! - it ultimately meant nothing as it wasn't an emphatic enough win to get us to the next round, thanks to Germany only barely beating Ghana instead of annihilating them. Still at least I did my patriotic duty and all that.....Oi Oi Oi! No, still sounds odd....

The BIG event of the day though was Julia Gillard rolling Kevin Rudd aka Rudbot aka K-Rudd as Prime Minister of Australia. While it is an historic day, and I have no doubt Julia will do a wonderful job as P.M., the farce of kicking out a largely successful, popular P.M. (enduring a temporary dip in the poles) just 6 months before an election was breath taking to behold. The uncanny thing was that Australian Story (a bio programme on the ABC on Monday nights at 8 p.m.) featured an updated profile of Julia this week, and my gorgeous guy has joked that these pieces are usually run as a pseudo PR piece when a politician is getting ready to tilt for the leadership. I laughed and said that wasn't really likely this week was it, when three days later it happens and in spectacularly fast fashion!

Whether it will aid the Labour Party in hanging onto power is another issue entirely and you have to wonder if Australians won't see Julia as the ultimate traitor, but the fact is that K-Rudd was on the nose, seemed unable to follow through on anything, had the convictions of a fair weather friend, and was a major disappointment to many people, including me, over his shelving of an ETS, treatment of refugees etc. I wish Julia well, but can't help but think that historic though her ascension may be, that it may well be short shelved unless she pulls an entire fur farm of rabbits out of her hat.