I’ve just started reading Gwyneth Jones’ new novel Life, which so far is very impressive. I also, just today, found out she had a blog. I know, of course, that all of you already knew about this, but just forgot to mention it, but still… Anyway, on her blog, Jones mentions she’s handed in Band of Gypsies, the fourth ‘Bold as Love’ novel. I thought the first book was brilliant, the second almost as good, and the third solid. I’m eager to see the fourth, and penultimate book, so I guess I’ll have to see if I can get one from the publisher. Wish me luck. Oh, and I’d add a congratulations to the guys at Night Shade for having the smarts to decide to publish Bold as Love in the US. It’s dynamite.

I don’t know if I’m the only one who reads one of the outcomes of Saturday’s Federal election this way, but it seems clear to me that the Australian electorate has picked up the cudgel and is smiting the Democrats for their sins.

For those who may have forgotten, two elections back the Democrats rode a promise to oppose the introduction of a goods and services tax (GST) to their best-ever electoral result. Presumably power-drunk on their new level of influence, the Democrats then-leader Meg Lees negotiated a deal that allowed the GST to be introduced by the Howard government. It cost Lees her party’s leadership, her political career, and now the party seems to be poised on the edge of oblivion. Speaking as a voter who expressly changed his vote that year to support the Democrats and oppose the GST, I couldn’t be happier. The Democrats deserved then, and deserve now, to be removed from the Australian political landscape, and that seems to be happening. There’s a real chance they won’t even have the support to continue to be registered as a political party. Good. No retreat, no surrender and no forgiveness. Ever.