Round Up.

Australia has selected a government, for now.

The nations General Election on August 21st ended in a dead heat with both the ruling, left-wing Labour Party and the opposition, right-wing Liberal National Party winning 72 seats. This left neither party with the 76 seats needed for a Parliamentary majority. As is now standard practice for Commonwealth Countries with majority white populations this forced both Party's to begin the torturous process of courting the one Green Party MP and three independent MP's in the hope of forming a coalition government.

Today (7/9) two of the independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott announced that they would join the Green MP, Adam Bandt in coalition with the Labour Party. This allows Labour leader, Julia Gillard to continue as Prime Minister atop of a four party coalition with a majority of one. This result positions Australia to follow in Canada's footsteps. Shortly a controversial issue such as the mining tax or carbon pricing will come up and paralyse the Parliament. Under the guise of solving this problem the Governor-General will suspend Parliament and rule the nation directly on behalf of Queen Elizabeth, the British Queen. In order to soothe Australia's Republican movement their cricket team will be gifted a hard fought victory in the up-coming Ashes series.

Yesterday (6/9) the UK Parliament returned from it's summer break. Apparently this was a controversial start with the Prime Minister's Head of Communications/Press Officer caught up in a criminal investigation into illegal phone hacking and Conservative backbench MP's threatening a revolt over a bill that would allow for a referendum to change the voting system. This referendum was the price the Liberal Democrat MP's demanded in return for joining the Conservatives in the ConDem coalition. The Prime Minister, David Cameron managed to stay above all this controversy because he was on, conveniently timed, paternity leave. His new daughter was inexplicably born prematurely by Cesarean section on August 24th. That kind of makes you wonder just how cynical one man can be.

On Friday September 3rd the General Medical Council (GMC) concluded it's hearing into Dr Freddy Patel, the pathologist who carried out the controversial first autopsy on Ian Tomlinson, the man who was killed by the police at London's G20 protests. Although the GMC hearing did not include the Tomlinson case it found Dr Patel guilty of 27 counts of unprofessional behaviour, gross misconduct and bringing the profession into disrepute. For this he was suspended for three whole months. The only reason he got this stupidly light punishment rather then being struck off the medical register was to further protect PC Simon Harwood, Ian Tomlinson's killer. If Dr Patel had been struck off he would be unable to appear in Court as an expert witness and his autopsy report couldn't be entered into evidence as the work of a qualified doctor. Despite the light sentence it is obvious that Dr Patel will be unable to continue as the Crown's cover up specialist in London. Therefore the hope is that at some point during his suspension he will decide to retire gracefully. That way the state can use his pension as a leash to bring the whole matter back to the public attention anytime they want to relive the controversy.

Tonight England will be playing Switzerland in a Euro 2012 qualifier. Do I really need to explain the parallels between the controversy about Wayne Rooney's mental health and this Court of Protection business?