o blithe and innocent joy

Yes, folks, we've at last seen the back of John Howard -- not just as Oz PM but also, probably, even as an MP: it currently looks as if he's lost his own seat.

People have been celebrating on the grounds that he was Il Buce's last bosom buddy among significant national leaders, so that now perhaps a little sanity can be brought back into international relations, but the real cause for rejoicing is surely that the incoming PM, Kevin Rudd, has committed to signing the Kyoto Protocol immediately and to making the combat of global warming a #1 priority. By comparison with the threat of climate change, wars, however vile and genocidal they might be, are trivial -- a statement that might seem callous until you reflect that, while wars can kill millions, climate change could kill billions. (Terrorism is the most trivial of the lot.)

At a personal level, I'm glad beyond belief to see Howard's departure primarily because of his calculated exploitation of racism for the sake of his own political power. Of course, he's far from the only successful politician to have done this -- think Ronald Reagan, just for starters -- but there was a particular pukesville ugliness about the way Howard served racist tactics up raw, without even the courtesy to disguise them.

Decades ago the Irish Times published a two-sentence obituary of the South African apartheid leader Verwoerd: "He was a rotten bastard. Hell roast him." Gotta admit that's the way I feel about Howard.