Ken‘s hit the deck, so we need some filler “¦ a perfect excuse to blog about the new Lucinda Williams CD World Without Tears.

Country blues fans who love melancholy (i.e. all) have got another large meal here, courtesy of the professor’s daughter from beyond Nashville. The critics are going nuts, and she’s bound to make it three emmys in a row.

The CD’s actually much too big for snap judgements, but Lucinda is clearly drawing on a deep well, and still has a lot to say. An early favourite, that just cooks, got me wondering who this might be about:

I climbed all the way inside
Your tragedy
I got behind
The majesty
Of the different shapes
In every note
The endless tapes
Of every word you wrote
With real live bleeding fingers
And broken guitar strings

People like Lucinda Williams make me feel for all the good folks who are actually in the US. Gees, it’s bad enough here, but to hear Lucinda sing “American Dream” is to break your heart. The fading chorus goes like this:

Everything is wrong
Everything is wrong
Everything is wrong
Everything is wrong

And, well, you just wouldn’t believe it, but the last number supplies a blog vision statement, finishing up:

In the silence of the roses
Words Fell
Words Fell
Words Fell

Contrary to Geoff Honnor’s opinion, I have little respect for Dodson and I think that many of the endemic problems that beset ATSIC, are at least partly the fault of Dodson in his previous incarnation. His recent address is the same old same old; long on rhetoric, short on solutions.

Back in the early 90′s when I worked for AusIndustry, I wrote a paper of over 4000 words on my assessment of the reasons why indigenous enterprise development has not been successful. I circulated the paper widely throughout the NT government departments responsible for enterprise development and made a submission to the Senate Standing Sub Committee, but as has been the case with anything remotely suggesting practical solutions, it has disappeared into the abyss. Amongst other things I suggested that another legal entity, in addition to the incorporated association, be created to receive and account for enterprise development funding.
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It seems the Teachers Union Health Fund has got itself in a spot of bother with government regulators over some of the financial deals the TUH board has done using members funds. In an article by Colleen Ryan as a sidebar to a feature on health funds in the AFR 13/6/03 (available online to those who have paid), she details how millions of dollars of members funds have been written off as provisions for losses.

The comparisons to Credit Union governance issues of the 1970′s are amazing. The WA Teachers Credit Union imploded over questionable investment practices during the WA INC era. It seems that health funds are a considerable distance down the same path. Here you have a bunch of amateurs (teachers in this case) ‘investing’ in some deals that Bond and Scase would have considered speculative.
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When David Morgan suggests (AFR 12/6/03) “…accelerating the phased increase in the preservation age for superannuation from 55 to 60…..” those of you currently aged less than 50 who are anticipating (semi)retirement at 55, should be re-assessing your plans. It’s most unlikely you’ll be able to access your super until you are at least 60, even then I suspect you won’t be able to take it as a lump sum.

With the demographics of employment fixed into an unalterable decrease in the number of workers, resulting in the inevitable decrease in income taxes; and the dominance of the ‘baby boomers’ who will not countenance any restrictions in health care, where will future governments find extra taxes ? From superannuation that’s where ! If you think that legislation governing super has altered a great deal in the last 10 years, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

UPDATE: to Down on the Farm.
Where it isn’t your main job, a business that can’t satisfy the commercial business rules can defer losses to a future date when one of the tests is passed. A detailed explanation of the non-commercial business losses rules, and the four tests and two special circumstance entitlements, is given in a tax ruling, TR 2001/14.