Joh goes

Former Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam (pictured at left), while he and Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen were both in office, called Joh (pictured at right) "that Bible-bashing bastard". Now Joh is dead, at 94, and the bastard who presided over one of Australia's most corrupt State governments, will be given a State funeral.

For almost two decades Joh's regime was notorious for unbridled environmental destruction, for union bashing and the persecution of free-thinkers and protesters. Joh was a great one for using the legal processes for his weird ends, and Australia has archaic defamation laws that help people like Joh get away with their activities, so today is the first chance I've had to call him a bastard too.

Columnist Phillip Adams, compared Sir Joh with Peter Sellers' character, the moronic Chance, in the movie, Being There: "Both (Joh and Ronald Reagan) have visions as limited as their vocabularies, yet both these grotesque garden gnomes are seen as colossi by their deluded followers. The louder we laughed at them, the more powerful they became. The more improbable their careers, the more certain their ascendancy."

Bye-bye, Joh. We get the last laugh, because we know how much you wanted to see Jesus.

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"During his 19 years in power, Sir Joh was renowned for his 'can-do' attitude towards development, and his uncompromising approach to unionists, protesters and political opponents.

"In the late 1980s, the Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption became increasingly embarrassing for his government.

"As the situation came to a head, Sir Joh tried unsuccessfully to sack five ministers for disloyalty, but instead he was dumped by his party and ultimately resigned as premier on December 1, 1987.

"In 1991 he fought a perjury charge arising from the Fitzgerald Inquiry, but a district court jury could not reach a verdict."
Source: ABC News