bLOGOS/HA HA: Roll Out The Red Barrel

David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.

25 October 2017

Roll Out The Red Barrel

AFP raids union offices

by Alex McKinnon

Schwartz Media's morning editor, and a former
editor of Junkee

The Australian Federal Police has raided the Melbourne and Sydney offices of the Australian Workers’ Union as part of an investigation into opposition leader Bill Shorten. Officers carried out the raids at the request of the Registered Organisations Commission, which is investigating whether donations to the federal Labor Party and left-wing activist group GetUp! breached union donations rules.

The ROC said the raid was justified because “documents relevant to this investigation may be on the premises of the AWU … and those documents may be being interfered with”. Shorten was on GetUp!’s board of directors in 2006 when the AWU made a $100,000 donation to the organisation.

Labor, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus and AWU national secretary Daniel Walton condemned the raids, with Walton calling them an “extraordinary abuse of police resources” and “a shameful new low for a government already scraping the bottom of the political barrel”.