Labor won the last election by convincing enough people that it would be little different to John Howard while convincing enough other people it would be completely different. One group was always going to be crying into its beer, and that group was always going to be the “progressives”. […] Continue Reading…
January 23, 2008 | Ronda Jambe
The not so super sting in the tail
Having bitten the bullet and removed my remaining funds from my industry fund, other questions arise. Namely, who ‘owns’ the loss? The following is based on my understanding and limited knowledge of how super works and what was said over the phone, and is therefore hardly rock solid. I […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Ronda Jambe at 6:31 pm |
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January 23, 2008 | Graham
Terminator
Mark Bahnisch has taken to calling Lawrence Springborg “the Borg” which brings to my mind images of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Terminators. Queensland non-Labor politics seems to be caught in a continuous “B” Grade loop with a script they can’t change, which doesn’t make any sense, and which always leads […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 8:59 am |
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January 22, 2008 | Graham
Surplus of fashion risks economic growth.
Why is Kevin Rudd set on running a budget surplus of somewhere around $17 billion?
The conventional economic theory is that governments should run surpluses in good times so that they can spend them in bad times as a way of stabilising swings in the economy. But after 15 years […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 6:35 am |
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January 20, 2008 | Graham
Bush’s stimulus puny
$145 Billion sounds like a lot. That’s the amount that President George Bush is promising to pump into the US economy in an attempt to avert recession.
Using the latest World Bank data on a purchasing power parity basis this is the equivalent of releasing $7.86 Billiion into the Australian […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 12:17 pm |
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January 19, 2008 | Graham
Are they missing Warnie?
Just a thought. Australia’s been lucky not to have lost one or other of the first two tests against India, so losing the test in Perth was no surprise. I think it has been more a batting failure than a bowling one, so why would it strike me that […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 11:53 pm |
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January 18, 2008 | Ronda Jambe
In Praise of Older Goods
…or the African Freecycle Boogie.
I guess it is rewarding to live long enough to see my youthful concerns become mainstream alarms. Or at least fashionable. And that is what is now happening with recycled goods.
Second hand goods have appealed to me since my childhood. At about age 7, with […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Ronda Jambe at 12:29 pm |
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January 17, 2008 | Graham
Greennecks and Aqua Nullius
The general media narrative equates conservationists with civility, and their opponents are most frequently portrayed as rednecks. It’s easy to unconsciously slip into this dichotomy, so I found this thread on the bottom of an ABC article on the detention of two men who boarded the Yushin Maru […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 4:05 pm |
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January 15, 2008 | Graham
Biofuels – told you so!
I predicted 18 months ago that biofuels were problematic and would have negligible impact on greenhouse gasses at the same time leading to starvation. I didn’t touch on land degradation in the post, so the European Union’s ahead of me there, even though it’s taken them so long to […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 5:04 pm |
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January 15, 2008 | Graham
Whaling illusion stripped bare
Sometimes the illusion is worth more than the reality. Australia’s claim to an exclusive economic zone in the Antarctic was only plausible while we tried to enforce it against smaller nations because, for example, they were catching Patagonian tooth-fish. And while it was plausible it had some validity. Now […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 4:41 pm |
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