First up there are all kinds of figures going around. The big one – $9 billion dollars – is over 10 years. So the annual figure of less than a billion is a mere rounding error in a Commonwealth budget of around half a trillion. Nevertheless all dollars are accounted for, so Annastacia Palaszczuk is right to ask where the money is coming from. Continue reading The great GST fix
Category Archives: Sundries
Posts on sundry matters of life the universe and everything: Culture, Environment, Life, Politics & Government, Science, Social Science and Society, Technology etc.
Saturday salon 7/7
1. How realistic is space travel?
As reported in the New Scientist, Frédéric Marin, an astronomer at the University of Strasbourg, France and Camille Beluffi, a physicist who works for Casc4de, a data firm in Strasbourg, have done a thought experiment on the feasibility of reaching the nearest Earth-like planet, which happens to be Proxima b, around 4.25 million light years away, a mere 40 trillion km. Continue reading Saturday salon 7/7
Is the ‘kill Bill’ strategy working?
Last September I charactarised the politics we were getting from the major parties as Kill Bill or any distraction vs a fair go. The scribes in the Oz commenting on the latest Newspoll see Turnbull’s star rising, and the banner headline
Shorten pays for tax debacle
In the 5-8 April poll Turnbull’s satisfaction rating was 32-57 for a net negative -25. He’s been steadily improving and is now 42-48, a mere -6.
Shorten in early April had exactly the same figures as Turnbull. Now he is back there at 32-57, having only improved by a negligible wobble in the interim. Continue reading Is the ‘kill Bill’ strategy working?
Saturday salon 30/6
1. Bill’s bumblathon
In the Courier Mail the bold words leapt from the page:
Balls up
Schlamassel
Qué desastre
It was page 2, and a full-page advertisement from Optus, apologising for its soccer coverage, not a front page treatment of Bill Shorten’s backflip on taxing small to middle companies.
Tim Colebatch at Inside Story asks Is this Bill Shorten’s worst week?
One would hope so. Colebatch asks:
- What on earth was Shorten thinking when he made this “captain’s call”? It offers no gain, and a lot of pain. It could cost him the election.
A world drowning in plastic
A recent cover story in the New Scientist has the odd title Fixing planet plastic: How we’ll really solve our waste problem (pay-walled). Odd because the article tells us there is no perfect solution except avoidance, and that plastic is so useful that if we didn’t have it we would have to invent it.
The article tells us:
- the early 20th century, humanity has produced an estimated 8300 million tonnes of the stuff. Around three-quarters has been thrown away, and 80 per cent of that has drifted into the environment or gone into landfill. Eight million tonnes a year end up in the ocean – 5 trillion pieces and counting.
Saturday salon 23/6
1. Taxing times
The Turnbull Government was mightily pleased when the Senate voted for tax cuts worth $144 billion over the next seven years. Here’s how they voted:
Italy: too big to fail, too big to save
The phrase “too big to fail, too big to save” in this case comes from an essay in Der Spiegel by Henrik Enderlein which says that the time to act is now, but also says that all the options available for action will fail. I take it he’s saying that Italy must take ownership for its debt, but Germans must also stand in solidarity or the speculators on the demise of the euro will have a field day.
The article by Der Spiegel staff Italy’s New Government Is Bad News for the Euro is pessimistic. Continue reading Italy: too big to fail, too big to save
Saturday salon 16/6
1. You don’t need enemies when you have friends
You’ve probably been living under a log if you haven’t seen this photo:
They say Trump does not like G-7 meetings because they are short on people who massage his ego.
According to this account the photo was released by Angela Merkel’s office. Trump looks like a naughty school boy, recalcitrant and unrepentant. The bloke behind him is John Bolton, the National Security Advisor. Not sure what he was doing there. Continue reading Saturday salon 16/6
Trump meets soul mate in ‘Rocket Man’
Trump said he would know within seconds whether the deal was good.
He looked into Kim Jong-un’s eyes and saw a soul mate, so the world breathes a little easier. Or does it? Continue reading Trump meets soul mate in ‘Rocket Man’
Blog glitch plus dirty work at the crossroads
Probably everyone who attempted to visit the Climate Plus site on Wednesday and Thursday 14-15 June found a notice saying the domain name had expired, if they found anything at all.
In simple terms the domain name of the site was due to expire on 11 June. We thought it was on automatic renewal, but that turned out not to be so. Turns out there was more to it than that. The interwebs is a place where it seems the normal ethical rules don’t apply. Continue reading Blog glitch plus dirty work at the crossroads
Saturday salon 9/6
1. Banks behaving badly
When criminal charges were brought against ANZ and investment banks Citi and Deutsche Bank that sounded fair enough to me. Barbora Jedlickova, Lecturer in the School of Law at The University of Queensland says that criminal charges are more effective than fines and:
- Charging high-ranking bank executives will potentially make the deterrent more effective still, because high-ranking executives set the cultural tone for their organisations.
James Thomson in his Chanticleer column at the AFR says that victims are hard to find in this case, but it is a good idea because bankers should behave themselves. Continue reading Saturday salon 9/6
Saturday salon 2/6
1. CSL and Cochlear say ‘show us the money’
Or at least show a bit of interest.
Here they have to chase government, whereas other countries, such as Singapore and Ireland:
- “actively come out and court companies like ours” with a unified package of incentives and benefits, he said. These could include a lower headline tax rate, and other financial concessions or benefits in exchange for specified investment, jobs and revenue outcomes from biotech and technology.