Club Troppo

Good news everyone! Refreshed by a spell on the bench I have decided to line up with the Troppo team, or at least alongside the team. The major mission is to keep people up to date with developments in classical liberalism, critical rationalism and Austrian social studies. Jus...

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Blogger Beth Hamburger at the convention reports the comments of the Ambassador to Israel "Do we want to be more like France, Sweden, Denmark and the rest of Europe, with a hands-off policy when it comes to the Middle East, with a neutral love of life ?" Damn those Europeans....

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A column first published in the Fin on the 5th August. In the first days of the new parliament, the Opposition called for three Senate select committees. Its new found passion for accountability was deeply hypocritical: when the Howard government ruled the Senate it made sure...

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Yesterday, Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin, or the Palinator as some of her more excitable fans have taken to calling her, took to the stage in Minnesota to make her pitch. There must have been some trepidation in Republican ranks. She is to most af...

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If you loved The Wisdom of Crowds , easily the best economic bestseller I've read since The Theory of Moral Sentiments and that was published in 1759, you'll lerve this post by Michael Nielsen. Michael himself is quite an achiever. A graduate of the Uni of Queensland, he's not...

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George Osborne gave a surprising speech earlier this month. The Shadow Chancellor spoke about the egalitarian philosopher John Rawls and called for greater equality of opportunity. He praised Swedish educational reforms and argued that parents should be able to choose a school...

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Labor-leaning Sunday Territorian columnist Scott Stirling wrote last week about the challenges facing the CLP Opposition. However, they pale by comparison with the situation faced by the Henderson government. Some are purely political problems in the wake of Labors recent clos...

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From a Fin Review column on 22nd July. The February meeting of the Shellharbour council, on the NSW south coast, was to start at 7.15pm. But the majority of councillors, Labor Party members, refused to assemble until an undesirable left the public gallery. He seemed harmless,...

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Congratulations to Mathew Mitcham - I think I'm right in saying the only out gay guy in the Olympics. Congratulations for his coming through depression, and burnout and coming back and doing so well. Mathew was stoked to be getting silver. Then the guy coming first dived not s...

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"The rich beauty of Dr. James Orbinskis writing contrasts with the stark poverty and suffering of the people he has served. . . . This book exposes truths most of us would rather not know. Do not put it down. . . . See who you become after reading it. Canadian Medical Associat...

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Thanks to Ken Parish for helpful comments and corrections. The high price of justice Nazi Sex Romp! Now Ive got your attention Im going to talk about legal procedure. After the lecture well return to the sex romp. Attorney General Robert McClelland has joined the chorus of con...

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The short answer is that we'd better be able to because as various people of high authority have commented, the current system is unsustainable. Here's story as to why. A costs decision handed down in the NSW Supreme Court in February showed National Australia Bank spent $75 m...

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The recent resignation of former Labor MLA John Bailey and two other members from the Darwin Harbour Advisory Committee raises some important issues. The previous CLP government always had a gung ho attitude towards Darwin development, along with a seeming disregard for indepe...

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I am calling on all Troppodillians to nominate a worse research paper than this . From a very quick squiz the people who wrote the paper are against rape. After an introductory poem the paper begins thus: Women who are raped or who suffer domestic violence are somehow thought...

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It was an innocent age where the major threats to freedom were mustachioed men with hydrogen bombs and the monopolistic tendencies of big business. In the paradoxical world of Clive Hamilton , the free market liberals of the 1950s never realised that the most serious threat to...

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Last weekend I went to see Guys and Dolls. I had no idea it was such a good show. I remember it was on when I was a kid, so I figured it might have been written in the late fifties or early sixties - definitely pre-Beatles or Buddy Holly even if it chronologically coincided wi...

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There have been a bunch of things I've wanted to post about, but have simply not had the time. I still don't have the time, but I with a bit of enthusiasm and not much time, I thought I'd mention some good things. The first is that I listened to this podcast of Dan Pink talkin...

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When Margaret Thatcher said that there was no such thing as society , her enemies were delighted . Here, in a single phrase, was her heartless philosophy of individualism -- a philosophy which abandoned vulnerable people to the competitive violence of the marketplace and celeb...

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