Corporate compassion In our ongoing survey of the wonderful world of corporate communications attempting to leap on to progressive issues, there’s a remarkably common occurrence. When we in the bunker spot something so palpably and offensively insane we immediately take a screen grab, thinking there’s no chance it will be up for more than five minutes before someone in the organisation comes to their senses and deletes it. And practically every time it stays up. Here’s an example:
Yep, that’s the US Marine Corps celebrating Pride month above an image of a disembodied helmet a la Full Metal Jacket except with “Proud to Serve” instead of “Born to Kill” written on it, and — as a nice kicker — a fistful of rainbow-tipped bullets tucked into the band. We think it’s a beautiful sign of progress that US Marines want LGBTIQA+ Americans to choose them as the place to be given weapons of death and trained to kill by the state.
Pray for BoJo UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has, for decades, been able to exploit the British public’s natural diffidence to people who seem upper-class in order to cover his vast corruption and incompetence behind a “harmless bumbling posho” vibe.
His government is in freefall over “partygate”, the months-long scandal that has revealed Johnson and his staff had several parties in contravention of the lockdown rules they were enforcing on the rest of the country. When he sat down with parenting website Mumsnet, Johnson may have thought he could skate through a relatively soft interview on his surface-level “Hugh Grant’s weird dad in a rom-com” charm. It did not work out that way. The first question he faced was: “Why should we believe anything you say when you have been proven to be a habitual liar?”
Stretching Credlin-ulity Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff Peta Credlin’s long service to the Liberal Party has not gone without reward. You work to halt the progression of history long enough and News Corp will hire you to rewrite it. So it is today with her column “The 10 rules of opposition if you want to win”.
Apart from her lamentation that “policy courage and personal decency” didn’t save her former employer from being rolled as PM (and I suppose whatever else it was, the decision to knight Prince Philip probably does qualify as a brave policy), she has some interesting thoughts on what made Abbott such a good opposition leader. We particularly love the contention that “oppositions don’t have to be against everything a government does” from the chief of staff of a politician who appeared to be incapable of anything but opposition.
Also, Credlin argues that consistency was apparently one of his great traits — and who can forget his 17 different core climate change beliefs, or his consistency on funding for the public broadcasters?
Keep Mumbrella It’s a tweet for which the “eyes” emoji was created, as well an important lesson about being considerate in airport lounges. Founder of media news website Mumbrella and author Tim Burrowes tweeted about an unnamed company CEO “obnoxiously conducting a management meeting via speaker phone” next to him in the Qantas lounge:
I wonder if the (soon to step down, apparently) company CEO obnoxiously currently conducting a management meeting via speaker phone in the Qantas lounge realises he’s sitting next to a journalist. I hope they can sort out their Worksafe issues.
