Amid Panic, a voice of relative sanity.

This clip is an advertisement for the Labor Party for the Queensland election.

It offers a great example of the sort of leadership that nations of the world are suffering from at the moment. It starts with Obama, then British PM Gordon Brown, followed by Australian PM Kevin Rudd, and backed up by Obama doing a reprise of the ever popular, (among politicians, that is,) “the sky is falling, run for your lives,” message. The cynic in me thinks of it as:

“I ask you, is it possible to panic the population into such a state of hysterics as to allow us to take over the entire economy of the nation?” - “And I say to you, - Yes we can.”



The guy in the middle of the clip saying, “It’s not like the great depression, … , it is not like a war footing, that is absolute nonsense, it is not even a recession.” (The statement was made before Australia slipped into negative growth) is Lawrence Springborg, the Queensland opposition leader. I feel some of the worst aspects of the current economic malaise we find ourselves in, is the total negativity and panic stricken statements of world leaders, generally in order to push their own agendas. I am not a fan of Springborg, but in contrast to the others he sounds moderately sane.

There is a new one out on the same theme, this time with only Obama followed by Springborg. Following this there is some actress picked up from an amateur theatrical doing a Keith Olbermann browbeating the Borg impression.

The part about “war footing,” was from a statement made by the premier, Anna Bligh that the economy was on a war footing. Labor has a morbid fascination with war and has declared more wars in the last year and a bit, than were declared worldwide in the twentieth century. Some time ago the manager of Opposition business, Joe Hockey, referred to Rudd’s war on drugs, war on inflation, war on unemployment, war on whalers, war cabinet to fight disadvantage, war on downloads, war on poker machines, war against doping in sport and war on bankers salary deals, and asked:

"Prime Minister, how goes the war on everything?"

Good point.