Flagging problems with Scottish independence

Glen Frost writes: Re. “Rundle: Tony Abbott, Australia’s most powerful sycophant” (yesterday). There is a very good reason that Abbott doesn’t want an independent Scotland. The first act of a newly independent Scotland will be to request the removal of the blue triangles from the Union Jack flag.

The Union Jack will have to change, thus requiring Australia to change our flag (because of the bit in the top left of our flag) and thus, we’ll need to change every flag at every town hall, every army parade ground, every flag on every piece of stationery, tank, air force plane, etc, etc, — the cost!  But wait, there’s more. This could cause some Australians to think about changing our flag completely … it could spur a sudden bout of republicanism …

Michael Kane writes: After the PM’s ahistorical comments (and decidedly weird) about Scottish independence, and by implication Northern Ireland, he seems to believe the Western Isles will always be part of the contrived UK. Our Prime Minister is an English-born Catholic, trained by Jesuits in Sydney and a believer in the almost totally discredited neoconservative philosophy (or how you lose wars in the Middle East). He also believes in a Hollywood-derived Team Australia, based on some collectivist ideology that traditional Liberals would find asinine.

To be fair, given his background,  he is basically a key ethnic operator (i.e he is a white, male, Catholic conservative). Many others in Australia  are not white, not male and not Catholic (including many supporters of the Liberal Party). Currently he is our leader. Let’s have the debate about why his apparent project, as far aw we can discern, might be good or bad for us.

About that budget emergency …

John Kotsopoulos writes: Re. “Budget emergency needs to be addressed” (yesterday). When an ardent and highly successful capitalist like Clive Palmer rejects the federal budget as manifestly unfair it pays to remove your political blinkers and take notice. Here’s a clue. Smacking down people with the highest propensity to spend when you have a fragile economy is economic lunacy.