Club Troppo

The NSW opposition will quite certainly become the NSW Government, so any policy announcements they give should be taken as a guide to future government policy. Unfortunately, such policy is extrememely thin on the ground - sometimes to an absurd extent. In the edition changes...

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"A degree from Harvard or Yale is not a pre-requisite for president", says talk show host Glenn Beck while Christine O'Donnell begins a campaign ad by disclosing " I didn't go to Yale ". If there's one thing tea party champions agree on, it's that a new elite has taken over Am...

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Previously on this blog I've outlined a couple of themes of mine about Government 2.0. In a comment on a draft APS Social Manifesto I elaborated on both things and so I thought I'd reproduce them here. I think what you’re trying to do is worthwhile. However culture change is a...

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It is a nice thing that when you 'uninstall' a program on Windows, if you want to keep all your information, your profile etc, uninstall uninstalls the program but leaves lots of details about your profile in shape. It is not a nice thing however if you don't want this to happ...

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As I've mentioned previously, I usually participate on a Friday morning panel show on ABC Local Radio here in Darwin. It's called 3 Big Questions but it really includes 2 serious ones and a rather silly one to keep things entertaining. Today's silly question was a compound one...

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[caption id="attachment_13115" align="alignright" width="306" caption="Average size of equities trades plummets"] [/caption] A striking graph showing the effect of IT on finance - it's becoming economic to parcel up financial bets into much smaller parcels. From the RBA's Asse...

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I've posted on this a couple of times before - arguing that the populism of the left has gone missing and wondering why. This argues the same point in a different - shall we say 'genre'. I agree with most of the first half of it, but thought it got a little complacent about it...

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Welcome to Missing Link Friday -- a quick tour of a few of the issues Australian bloggers have been following during the week. Will it become a regular feature? Let's see. I'll be running this alongside Ken Parish's new reader-driven Missing Link where you get to share your fa...

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Over at Mr Denmore I commented on this post, which referred to an Annabelle Crabbe speech in which the the celebrated leaking of the federal budget in it's entirety is named as part of the rich experience of journalism which we should be valuing. Forgive my self indulgence as...

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A few people have sent me requests to recommend them on Linkedin but I've not really known what to say - recommend to whom? But perhaps the secret source was flattery, which as Disraeli once said should be laid on with a trowel. Whatever it was, I got this overgenerous recomme...

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Prompted by University of Queensland's Graeme Turner , Mark Bahnisch has a pair of posts over at Larvatus Prodeo asking rhetorically whether the Humanities at Australian universities are dying. As Turner puts it: ONCE, the humanities were fundamental to the idea of the univers...

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Bob Durnan is an old ALP colleague who has worked in Indigenous communities in central Australia for the best part of 30 years. Like me, he has witnessed the tragic deterioration of living conditions in many if not most remote communities and town camps in the Northern Territo...

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Unlike most of my fellow Troppo bloggers, my knowledge of economics could easily be encapsulated on the back of a small postcard. Perhaps that's why this post by Steve Kates on Catallaxy puzzled me: This article from The New York Times on the end of Keynesian economics in Euro...

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The current impasse between large mining companies and the Gillard government over its proposed resource rent tax looks like yet another example of inept public relations if not worse: JULIA Gillard says it is "obvious common sense" that higher state mining royalties would not...

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http://vimeo.com/15978330

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Tony Harris's AFR column from a few weeks ago. (posted by Nicholas G on Tony's account.) The Australian National Audit Office last week reported on the government’s abandoned ceiling insulation stimulus program. It found that the environment department should have given earlie...

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This post is what I would have written as a comment on Nicholas’s post Listen2Learners: 1 but it got a bit big. So is this post. The following lines of his post sparked my attention I impressed upon Peter the extent to which the online world of web 2.0 is one in which people a...

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See sidebar at right for links to Missing Link "best blog/alt media" reading recommendations. If you see an excellent post in your blog ramblings please link it here with a brief explanation/review so we can consider including it.

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Last week I ran a red light. I was tired. I thought it would stay yellow. I wanted to go home. In short, I was stupid. As I sailed through I saw the flash of a camera in the buildings in front of me. Today I got a warning letter. I'm happy enough about that. Fine's are expensi...

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Click here if you have 7 spare minutes or so to listen to an excerpt from an ABC Local Radio panel show I usually do on Friday mornings. Update - Roger from Values Australia has also milked the McKillop cow (though rather less light-heartedly than yours truly) as has Adele Hor...

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