Baffled

Alright, here's a situation I just don't understand. Someone fills a prompt at a kinkmeme. It's an old prompt, from sometime in April, which makes it odd enough on its own. But it's a decent story, and hey, sometimes you just get inspired. Thing is - turns out a day later that half the story is plagiarized from multiple sources.

Ignoring the fact that it's a small enough fandom that the chances of getting away with it were slim to none... who the hell plagiarizes other people's work only to post it on an anonymous meme?!

End of the Road

The Gillard government would be swept from power according to the latest poll, which shows Labor trailing the Coalition 48 to 52 on a two-party vote.
 - Blow to Labor as Abbott surges

So, prediction*: Labor’s stuffed. There’s no way they’ll claw back enough ground before the election to recover.

In hindsight, dumping Rudd was a mistake – it effectively killed their incumbency advantage, fostered a narrative of a government in collapse, and all in order to quietly silence the mining tax issue, something which probably wasn’t going to win or lose the election on its own. If anything, it might have helped Labor – it would have forced them to defend a policy and their record, rather than their current strategy of fleeing at the slightest hint of controversy. And Gillard can’t present herself as a clean break from the past when she was deputy leader under Rudd the whole time.

(Nor should she try – Labor went to this election with a sound economic record, something it seems completely incapable of capitalising on.)

Of course, in hindsight, Labor should have kept pushing for emissions trading, with Rudd calling an election over that issue ages ago. Climate change is the one area where Labor was making an effort to clearly distinguish itself from the Libs, and it’s one of Abbott’s big weak points. Unfortunately, first Rudd put the whole issue in the political too-hard basket, and now Gillard’s making only the most token effort to keep the idea alive. Sooner or later Labor will have to realise it’s at its strongest when it stands for something… they needed a big issue to campaign on, like they did with Workchoices in 2007.

*sigh*

Trying to put a positive spin on things – the Green vote remains level, so any government will probably have to negotiate with them to get anything done… the image of Abbott negotiating with the Greens and Xenophon is almost amusing enough that I can stomach the idea of him as PM…


*I do tend to be hillariously wrong when making predictions, and hopefully this will be one of those times.