I'm in too, but if it becomes all about Aussie politics :sleeping:
I promise Fern no Australian politics on this forum i can do that on Silverpeers
thus keeping it at home, see i am being nice.:angel:
Relax!
We won't be doing the silly personalized nyah nyah stuff we used to do about OZ politicians but I see no reason we can't even talk about it at all.
Politics is a global disease and although we have very different systems of Government it's surprising to find the similarities in the way that they're 'played'.
'Me too' seems to be rampant across the World. One Government announces it's found a magic economic bullet and they all clamour to follow. If there had been more different types of economics applied by governments the GFC wouldn't have had the effect it did. We're all in the same bag, forewarned is forearmed and learning what another Nation's government thinks is a good idea at the time, can be a heads-up to watch our own a little more closely.
Sure, we will strike differences in political preferences, if there weren't differences there wouldn't be politics. So what? Are any of us here politicians? Do we really have some life and death ideology to defend to keep our lucrative careers going? Are we afraid that our political preferences will be corrupted by hearing why someone else sees it from a different angle? Others views more often consolidate our own than shake them.
Is it a fighting-over subject to me? Hardly! I don't give a tuppenny toss about their basic ideologies really. I see politicians joining a Party to further their own careers. Duzzen madder what Party, just so's they can get elected. So their motivations and agendas interest me more than their Party's stated purpose. How they use the Party's ideology to their own ends can be illuminating.
Discussing, even arguing, but
not fighting over the differences is how we learn to understand what the b******s are up to! Politics is a game played by professionals, not much different to the games Bankers and Big Biz play, or the Entertainment Industry plays. Understanding their agendas, and how they go about achieving them is what we need to know to protect ourselves against being sucked in by them.
Simply taking Politics at a shallow level of WYSIWYG leaves us wide open to being treated as sheep. We all ultimately have to vote for someone, in OZ anyway where voting is compulsory, but at least knowing a little more about exactly how they're conning us will ease the blow of being ultimately let down by them.
It's a Group where people who are fascinated about how the spin operates, and how we're being manipulated, and how politicians think, should be able indulge their need to say "I know what you're up to" and air their latest epiphanies.
I want a bit of dessert with my main course. I want variety. I want to entertain myself and others by picking at the seemingly trivial doings of Politics... everywhere... to try and head them off at the pass. I want to reassure the Americans that they don't have the moron market cornered in Politics. I want to laugh about how stupid the people we are relying on to run our lives and futures really are.
BUT it's
not exclusively for that! Hell, I'll gibber on just about anything you want to talk about!
(Whether I know anything about it or not, if I don't know, then I'll learn something about it from you won't I? )
So why exclude OZ politics entirely? You can go do it on SP forum 'Lord Muck', they agree with you over there,
but why should the rest of us be barred from it here? Our pollies are every bit as bad as everyone else's, why discriminate?
If it's to be exclusively a boring seminar for discussion of legalities and morality pertaining to 'serious' subjects then I'm goorrn too. Some of the best laughs I've had have been over 'politics' threads.
We don't all need to be agreed with to enjoy discussing something.
It's a Group so we won't bother people who don't have the time or interest to go into the reasons for what's going on. Why would a particular thread on a Group site dealing with OZ politics be considered out of the question? Unlike voting down here, reading the thread is not compulsory.
(or not. 
