Ron says so long to John......

Ron Quantock has concluded that PM John Howard will lose the upcoming election.....and has penned a fond farewell to him:

"I think we can say with some confidence that Election 2007 is already decided. Soon Kevin07 will become Kevin0dear and John Howard will be but a self-funded retiree.

Australia08 will be different. There won't be the same intensity in political life. The more grotesque and brutal achievements of the past 11 years will be patched and painted over. And that's a pity because comedy depends on suffering. The more the merrier.

In a perfect world, a world without suffering, there would be no need for comedy. In a perfect world people would be perfectly happy. It follows — and I'm sorry if it doesn't, but I learned logic from Andrew Bolt — it follows that in a world of infinite, unrelenting suffering, comedians could command quite a premium.

One more term and Howard might just have legislated that world of infinite, unrelenting suffering into being. But he has legislated his last and we might have to wait for Tony Abbott to finish the job.

For now we can only guess at the comic possibilities of a fifth term and give thanks for what morsels of misery he let drop for the nation's comic imagination to feed on. We shall not see his like again — until Tony Abbott in 0mygod.

I am grateful for the opportunities the Howard Imperium has provided: it would churlish of me not to acknowledge my debt before he evaporates from public life. I penned the following personal tribute to The Rt Hon. (see it's funny already) John Winston Howard for the record."

Read on, here, for the "personal tribute".

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