“A female jockey has won the Melbourne Cup,” said the ABC’s Gerard Whateley in calling the winning moment. Indeed she had, along with Prince of Penzance, a 100-1 outsider. Had Prince of Penzance been at shorter odds the ride would have been given to a bloke. Almost certainly. Continue reading Saturday salon 7/11
The WHO pronouncement on the linkage between processed meats and cancer generated a lot of misleading stories, like this one from The Guardian:
The Climate Change Authority has been a thorn in the side for the Abbott Government, as we’ve seen over time. The Abbott government tried to kill the Authority, but was thwarted by the Senate.
Now Bernie Fraser, John Quiggin, David Karoly and other good people have been replaced by a bunch who support Direct Action as a policy and seem less than enthusiastic about renewable energy. If the comment by Larissa Waters at the end of the linked piece is correct the Nationals did a “deal with Malcolm Turnbull to keep Tony Abbott’s woeful climate policies in exchange for support.” Continue reading Climate clippings 154
The ‘sharing economy‘ has crept up on policy makers. Perhaps best known are Uber and Airbnb.
Uber, which competes with the taxi business, has chalked up 2.5 million rides in Brisbane in just 18 months. Andrew Leigh told the ABC that one in 200 homes in Australia are listed on Airbnb to be available for accommodation. Continue reading Saturday salon 24/10
Abbott’s fall and Turnbull’s ascension was the first news we got from home, via a text from our son.
I must admit I didn’t see it coming. I’d written Turnbull off as unacceptable to the Liberal Party. Now suddenly he’s there and Shorten looks like a dead man walking.
Mark has a piece in the Guardian. Continue reading Saturday salon 17/10: late edition
Craig Emerson in the AFR lifts the lid on what is really going on with the Chinese free trade agreement and the right to bring in their own workers on projects worth more than $150 million. Continue reading Saturday salon 5/9
Not just the hottest July, we’ve just had the hottest single month since records began in 1880. It’s also been the hottest first seven months of any year, so we are heading into new territory. Continue reading Climate clippings 153
Four of the Bahnisch siblings and their partners have decided to meet up and invade Europe again. Back in 2008 it was the Rhine, this time the centre-piece is a trip down the Danube, if it has any water in it. I’ll be away from 8 September to 13 October.
This time I think it best for the blog to lie fallow. John D has been busy doing good works, and there are no other active bloggers to keep the site going.
I’m expecting my posting to taper in the coming week. We’ll see.
I think the idea may have come from former Labor minister Craig Emerson and Nick Cater, the Director of the Menzies Research Centre. The National Reform Summit was sponsored by The Australian, The Australian Financial Review and KPMG and everyone that mattered was there – business groups, community groups, the unions, addressing all manner of social and economic issues, and apparently reaching furious agreement.
Laura Tingle says the key question is now how the debate now feeds back into politics. My feeling is that the ideological fissures will again reappear as we get back to sound bites and point scoring.
Joe Hockey said we can’t go into the future looking out of the window od a Holden Commodore. I’d just like a government with its hands on the wheel. Hockey said consumers will lead the way.
Martin Parkinson said we are sleepwaliking into a real mess if we don’t get a grip.
Roy Green and John Hamilton Howard tell us what we need to do to ensure Australia remains an innovative nation.
I couldn’t believe what seemed to be going on. Something called Border Force. People who looked like cops. Stopping people at random on the street to see whether their visa was in order!
Under the Migration Act, an authorised officer can ask for information from someone the officer “knows or reasonably suspects is a non-citizen”.
The information can include evidence of being a lawful non-citizen and personal identity papers. The person must comply with the request within a time period “specified by the officer”.
If the officer “knows or reasonably suspects” the person is an unlawful non-citizen the officer must detain that person.
In effect the immigration system was being militarised.
Any way it seems to have stopped before it started.
That was 1600 years ago on 24 August:
It was the first time in 800 years that Rome had been successfully invaded. The event had reverberations around the Mediterranean.
It must have seemed like the end of the world at the time.
Gillard has been getting a bit of a razz for saying that she now supports same sex marriage. A bit bloody late, they say.
Actually she’s repeating what she said in her book some time ago. Her position has been misunderstood, by people who either don’t listen or hear only what they want to hear. There is a statement in the link, but let me try again.
Gillard as a young feminist saw the institution of marriage as hopelessly patriarchal and wanted it nixed in favour of civil unions. She would do nothing to support the institution.
She has come to realise that history has spoken. The institution of marriage will endure and even be cherished. That being the case she now recognises that it should be open to all.
She has been seen as strangely conservative, or sucking up to conservative interests, whereas she was actually more radical than most.
Because of the way the blog currently presents posts on the home page I think it’s better to remove the introductory material to a different place. For new readers, here’s the rationale for this space.
An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.
For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.
The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.
Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.
The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:
The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.
Glaciers observed in a recent study are losing between half a meter and one meter of ice thickness every year – two to three times more than the corresponding average of the 20th century. Continue reading Climate clippings 152
Kathy Jackson who once posed as a whistleblower has been exposed as a liar, a thief and a hypocrite. The $1.4 million she lifted from the Health Services Union makes Craig Thompson look like a petty thief. Continue reading Saturday salon 22/8
It’s happening, he says, through the action of consumers and industry.
