Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

Il Gattopardo

Friday, February 19th, 2016

One thing struck me when watching this, and stayed with me:

Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è bisogna che tutto cambi.

If we want everything to stay as it is, everything will have to change.

(My translation’s a little different to what I found on Wikipedia, etc., and I guess what’s in the film. They have ‘things’ instead of ‘everything’ in both cases.)

It’s actually been floating round my head more like: If we change (give in on) this one thing, everything can stay as it is.

The guy in the film who says this is a prince, thinking about the coming revolution/unification. It reminds me of Australian politics. How we’re given just enough concessions, made just comfortable enough, that no one cares about getting any of the  bigger more important things we still need to fix / no one will risk losing things for bigger gains. ← speaking from the white middle-class here. The land of the mediocre status quo.

Ted Mack – The State of the Federation

Monday, November 18th, 2013

While I’m posting reading material I’d like to post this essay/talk by Ted Mack. It’s a broad-reaching reconsideration of how the Australian political system is organised and functions. It can be frustrating reading things like this: where there are exciting ideas that one can’t imagine ever coming about (not that I agree with everything in there), but also stimulating.

Here’s a link to the transcription (HPoration2013.pdf), but I’d also like to give credit to the place I found it: AustralianPolitics.com.