Quoting Rohan McLeod (rhn@jeack.com.au):
Daniel Jitnah via luv-talk wrote:
People rarely vote for a Party or a Gov, they always vote against another mob. It was far easier to mount a campaign against Labor, than for Labor to convince people to vote for them.
Perhaps the explanation for Labour's failure to get elected is connected neither to policies or personalities; it's just that, that fraction of the 'silent' conservative working class and lower middleclass which are necessary; along with the rest of the progressive demographic to elect Labour; need to feel the economy is booming to do so!
This may fail to rise above a trivial digression, in which case my apologies in advance. You, Rohan, refer to ALP as 'Labour', which is good, correct Australian spelling of the word labour. And oddly enough is how I would tend to spell the word as either a common or proper noun, because of having been raised in the British school system in Hong Kong. OTOH, Daniel referred to ALP as Labor, which for utterly weird reasons is absolutely correct, because ALP decreed dropping the 'u' as part of a spasm of changes starting in 1918. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Labor_Party#Name_and_spelling So, I guess where I'm going is: Does ALP's insistance on non-Australian spelling for the name of a major Australian political party seem bizarre there in Oz? It certainly does for this Yank (who favours the 'u'). ;->