"Canberra News, Views and Opinion"
[First filed: October 13, 2008 @ 23:43]
Candidate websites are in decline.
Politicians seem to have realised that the web is hostile territory where people won’t always say what you want them to say. Much safer to stick to older school media where opinion can be safely bought and sold, to be ladled to the dwindling band of proles still receptive on their couches.
A minority of candidates, however, are still giving the interwebs a go.
I plugged the laptop into the tele and got my politically apathetic housemates to give their opinions of the various websites and, photography permitting, crumpet factor, of those who would rule over us for the next four long years.
For those unwilling to wade through the notes I can say it was an all Labor show.
Mary Porter has the best website by far. Adina Cirson (pictured) wins the crumpet factor, with Andrew Barr the only male to make the crumpet list (should have had a website Morgo).
Mike Hettinger also features with the ugliest website, possibly the ugliest website ever produced outside the educational sector.
It has elegant design. And it’s well set out. But making text deliberately small is just silly.
A decent effort, but unremarkable.
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Unremarkable and dull, lacking in appeal. But she seems like a nice person.
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A housemate thinks he looks a little insane
As for the site the fonts are too busy and it looks like a blog. A plain blog.
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When his picture came up the comment was “eahhh…”
But the site looks friendly, if a little empty.
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This page is super trendy with the centrepiece being a flash driven slideshow zapping gormless motherhood statements into your brain.
The problem is that periodically the same photo keeps flashing
It’s otherwise light on content.
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Wayne Sievers is a serious man, but perhaps the site could have benefitted from less photographs of him rather than more, because he’s no oil painting.
The use of hyper-emphasis which drops high level heading text into the middle of paragraphs was also not appreciated by the housemates who shrieked “STOP YELLING AT ME” at Wayne’s visage.
On the other hand he mentions RiotACT on the front page so he gets a plus mark.
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The Motorists Party are too busy reminiscing about Pauline Hanson to do web pages. But we did have lots of giggles looking at their photos. William “Andrew” Simington always got a laugh when spirits were flagging.
Anyone want to speculate on why all the AMP candidates are men in white shirts? Hasn’t history shown us poor results when political movements wear uniforms?
The housemates wanted to know why they’re all so ugly?
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The housemates quite liked the look of Chris Bourke saying he looks reasonable, with quite a pleasant face.
The website on the other hand is dull, sparse, with not much to it.
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According to her website Adina is “one of us”
Which made us wonder what if God was one of us?
And is she trying to hide being an alien?
The site has far too many colours. They clash. And the whole thing is not pleasant to look at.
In a rare break with convention the candidate appears to be the child standing next to the grownups, and is not the focus of the pictures.
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This is a very pleasant, very well laid out website.
By far the best on offer for any candidate. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what ails a site but this one is rolled gold.
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An ugly and disinterested site with mixed fonts and motherhood statements heavy, everything else light.
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Like Adina, Jacqui claims to be “one of us” with all the slightly creepy overtones entailled.
While not making the crumpet list she was considered to have a reasonably pleasant face.
Nothing too exciting about the site but no complaints.
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Andrea has a myspace page with all the ugliness that entails.
She also proves that scans of campaign literature don’t work on the web.
And she scored as crumpet.
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Mismatched fonts, and bad proportions were balanced by a link to RiotACT on the front page.
Matt on his soapbox did not impress. Although he was accused of looking at one of the housemates “funny” one night in the Pot Belly. Make of that what you will.
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Blurg.
Egocentric and yet with nothing on it other than the colour green, buttons and a photo.
It says “Hello, and welcome to my web site,” welcome to 1995.
And how many fonts do you need? Three? Four different fonts?
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It’s generally considered to be one of the better sites, and it didn’t make anyone’s eyeballs hurt.
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Adam was considered to be possible crumpet, but with insufficient detail in the photo no verdict could be reached.
The site design was considered harmless if slightly amateur.
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Popups everwhere!!!!! Nowhere is safe to mouse!
We thought it had the same picture over and over but down the bottom there lurked a new one.
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The only male crumpet in the pack the website also rated well with the layout especially pleasing.
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Housemates wanted to know why is her neck the same size as her head?
It’s dull, but well set out and she rated as Semi-crumpet
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“Our city is under a tack!”
This site bugged me so much.
So very much effort has gone into annoying the user.
It changed the mouse cursor to something blue. “Give me back my mouse bitches!” shrieked the housemates.
And if you have sound turned on it makes a HORRID HORRID noise – like a coin on glass – when mousing over the menu buttons. Why go to that much effort to upset visitors?
The big red tack stabbing into Canberra was thought to be a positive, distracting from Simon’s zombie like visage,
After some debate zombies were prefered to giant tacks.
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Despite a staggeringly dorky “Welcome to my new website!” message Katy scored as crumpet.
The site also featured far too much red text. But was otherwise workmanlike.
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“OH MY GOD” we all screamed.
“MAKE IT GO AWAY” followed forthwith.
Then we all fell around laughing for some time.
The housemates decided that young Mike was crumpet in his USAF uniform. Current Mike less so.
Outside of the education sector it’s possibly the ugliest website ever made.
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David’s eyebrows were thought to be on the scary side.
But on the plus we were able to find his page even though he shares a name with a rock star.
The website cunningly matches his grey suit and hair.
But it was thought he needs more information on the front page, and less begging.
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“welcome to my little part of Cyberspace” was not a winning message with the housemates.
Now was two shades of orange for communicating. And not much to communicate.
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Another Myspace page, and one of the more elegant ones out there.
Elena’s reputation of emo-hate had preceded her and the housemates were not pleased.
“I think the reason she hates emos is they’re so much more beautiful than her,” said one.
“It’s time to grow up and get a real website,” said another.
It also features leftover senate campaign information and puts her a year younger than her profile data suggests.
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“She looks like she’d be a nice mum,” was the verdict.
A good looking site at the top of the page, down the bottom it looks like her kids have been trying to help out.
Red buttons with bevelled edges and mismatched fonts urgh. Ticker blech.
But there’s some nice use of themes with imagery.
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“It is a pleasure to welcome you to my homepage,” is the opening piece of patronisation.
On the site there’s very little to indicate she’s a Liberal.
It makes nice use of simple points and benefits from a well thought out soft palette.
Definitely one of the better ones.
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This site is a triumph of style over substance.
It plays up his Army links but features such comedy boxes as:
It also starts an auto-load of video which is a great way to seriously annoy visitors.
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Grey text on white, with a grey background.
The site makes a point of flogging opportunities to help him, and fourteen mentions of the word “Gary”
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It’s a default template blogspot blog, hasn’t been updated since August.
It screams “I wish I’d never let them talk me into doing this”.
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Apologies if I’ve missed anyone, but frankly if you can’t get your site into the first couple of pages of google results you’re just not trying very hard.
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The expression MILF is definitely crude/crass, but in terms of intent and ‘denigration’ is it any better or worse than the than the term ‘crumpet factor’ mentioned in the original post? Why didn’t ‘crumpet factor’ enrage maryhow? Or our swooning over the meticulous, well-planned Jeremy? I think this thread, with all of its blatant sexism from both sides of the gender fence has been great fun .. especially Granny’s lovelorn diatribe … ‘an ode to Jeremy’. And if we are honest, a candidate’s appearance can influence their overall likeability and how they are perceived by the voting public.
Hey, how about that, the offending #81 has been removed – obviously not partisan whining then…
johnboy said :
I don’t care whether you rated men as well as women – sexism goes both ways. For starters – there’s a giant picture of the woman rated with the best “crumpet factor” (no other pictures, no mention of who else was rated). And it’s not terribly surprising that you would rate all the women ahead of the one or two men. A male acquaintance of mine used to have a saying “I haven’t seen an attractive man yet”. Men don’t need to be attractive in order to be considered good at their job, a standard which is sadly lacking for women.
Saying that women should somehow be grateful that you have deigned to rate them as attractive is demeaning, rude and at the very nub of the point I’m trying to make. It makes my blood boil.
If you’re going to talk the talk, start walking the walk.
L
Skidbladnir said :
Relatively inoffensive? My future mother in law will never see her sisters again because it is too dangerous for her to return to Mindanao. I’m generally supportive of secessionist movements and I have no illusions as to the virtue of the Government of the Philippines, but these people are truly horrible.
I think rape and murder are more offensive than sexual attraction.
If it makes you feel better, worse, or otherwise…
Johnboy did at one point have a go at Norvan in this photo for looking “like he has downs syndrome”.
Make of that what you will, but personally I prefer having a site editor who is human and willing to have (and change) an opinion, instead of one who is closer to Sir Les Patterson.
Absolutely jakez.
deezagood said :
My point exactly.
deezagood said :
A candidate’s appearance (for either gender) changes perception – that’s true, but not to the same extent. The public will vote for an ugly man with good policies before they vote for a ugly woman with good policies. Similarly, an attractive woman can have any policies she likes and will get votes based on looks alone.
That, right there, is inequality at its best (or worst).
L
whitelaughter said :
He seems to have a lot of libertarian leanings. I have problems with some of his policies though.
I think there is a correlation with some libertarian policy outcomes but he has a different philosophical starting point.
If I was In Ginninderra, he’d probably be somewhere in the top 7.
Loquaciousness said :
But that was not an inequality being perpetrated here.
So get off my back.
If you think that people aren’t more receptive to messages from people they find attractive you’re insane.
And it ain’t sexism.
The public will vote for an ugly man with good policies before they vote for a ugly woman with good policies.
Deb Foskey didn’t even have good policies. how do you explain that one?
johnboy said :
If you think it isn’t sexism, then I want nothing to do with this site anymore.
If you think I’m insane, I’d like to point to the female portion of your readership (if there are any left).
When a moderator has apologised in public, and promised not to continue (so far as they are able to do so) with the behaviour, and then continue to do so – that’s not just human, it’s blatant disregard.
Don’t bother moderating me, JB. I’ll see myself out.
L
toriness
(Picketer)
09:00, 14 Oct 2008
Quote
i don’t want government money spent on a dragway. if it is so in demand/viable – why don’t a group of bogans get together and pool their carton o’ winnie blue money and build it themselves?
You obviously know nothing about the dragway. A group of “Bogans” as you put it privately financed the old drag strip at Fairbairn. They operated it for over 20 years “without” government support (in fact they paid the rent on the site to the government) and “without” any noise complaints. In 1998 Brendan Smyth did a back handed deal with Snow, and others, to close it down with no consultation or compensation to the stake holders who had mortgaged their houses to provide the facility.
Just imaging the uproar if the government did that to any other privately run facility in the ACT.
Its comments from clueless ferals that dont understand that really gets up my nose.
Loquaciousness said :
Loquaciousness said :
I wasn’t planning on it.
Feel free to come back anytime.
gt; cool; go build a new one yourself with your own money on land that nobody else wants with no neighbours to get hacked off by the noise.
L, please come back.
i’ve been trying to stay out of this thread, but i will second the notion that it offends.
the comment rating women pollies in sexual terms should have been deleted.
and i’m still waiting for the male perve posts you promised some time ago in the interest of balance. (or – preferably – the end of the posts about the women as perve potential.
I gave you those posts Sepi and you didn’t like that either.
This one was balanced and if you don’t like it, well I’ll cry myself to sleep about it later.
Loquaciousness said :
It was the particular comment I thought should hvae been moderated.
Where are the male perve posts??
“If you think I’m insane, I’d like to point to the female portion of your readership (if there are any left).”
I’m female and I’m still here! Why can’t everyone just relax and see the humour? I think Adina Cirson is pretty and if the guys want to rate her as “crumpet factor” no problems with me. A few of us have put our oar in and rated Jeremy Hanson – I agree, perhaps he should get a piccie as well, but let’s face it, there are more attractive female candidates than male. I can see that. Doesn’t bother me if someone points it out!
I don’t even believe you are a woman. You say you are. So what?
Yeah JB – how about a nice, big piccy of Mr Meticulous?
Granny said :
Why? Does it offend your feminist ideology that a woman might actually like men? Or that a woman might uphold men’s rights as much as women’s? So much for sisterhood – apparently, it’s only for women who hold the “right” views! Anyway, it shouldn’t matter even if I weren’t a woman – are you saying my comments would be worth less if I were a man? Now, that’s sexism!
Firstly – Jeremy didn’t rate with the empaneled judges, so no photo. But he was linked to so you can go check pix his out.
Secondly – I thought in this enlightened age gender was a matter of self-assignment?
You slipped up earlier. You’re a bloke alright. Where do you get off pretending to speak for us? Try having a baby or even a menstrual cycle, jerk!
Granny said :
I’ve had two babies, actually, and menstruated since I was thirteen. You’re pathetic, Granny.
DING DING DING
Back to your corners please ladies
*guffaw*
Granny, I’m just intrigued that you followed up this comment:
Yeah, make sure you say that in front of her two little girls, won’t you? Just so that they, too, know that they may one day be respected or valued for anything other than their physical appearance.
With this just two posts later:
When you’re right, you’re right. And you are sooo right.
In all my born days I have never seen such a vision of loveliness.
A rose by any other name ….
But speak to me Jeremy, my love, that I may die happy!
and then sharing him with others:
<i?Alright then, we’ll share! Legislative Assembly. October 19. Be there.
*heh heh heh*
Can’t really have it both ways.
The reason I’m intrigued is that it is out of character for you (or your online persona) and your usually well -balanced postings.