Club Troppo

Anyone who wants to participate in Troppo's bulk subscription to Crikey! should email me on nicholas at gruenxxx dot com dot au - and remove those 'x's. If you subscribed last year you should get an email from me. Depending on numbers the cost will be as follows. 3 5 Annual Su...

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian Andrew Bartlett was not surprised by the revelation that some of Howards ministers didnt know that WorkChoices might...

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Nice of you to join us Mr Stalin .

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I've never understood central bank's recent penchant for small changes in monetary policy - these days 0.25% per month. The idea is that the facts emerge slowly, economies respond to monetary policy slowly (with long and variable lags) so our changes should be slow too. But th...

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australian John Quiggin has a guest post by Bree Blakeman and Nanni Concu with a field assessment of the NT intervention, with p...

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"The Monkees are too hip for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ", writes Robert Forster . Is he right? Hired as actors for a TV series, Michael Nesmith , Peter Tork , Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones went on to feature in one of the most successful American pop bands of the 1960s. The...

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I'm having to do a lot more travel, so I want to buy an ultralight PC. I think I want to buy a Toshiba Portege R500. Here's a review . I'm also wondering what options I should choose. I understand it's available with a 120 Gig hard drive or a 64 K solid state memory if you pay...

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Photo by yellowrubberduck on Flickr Nicholas Gruen mentioned many moons ago an idea for a useful feature for Club Troppo. Apparently Crikey used to run an occasional roundup of interesting publications from thinktanks and other more academic sources, but subsequently discontin...

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To your right is an historic picture. A picture of the occasion on which Lincoln gave what he thought was his best speech. The Second Inaugural. There he is reading from his notes. In surfing around the subject when I posted my piece on Obama's rhetoric - Obama described Linco...

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Last week's Love Gods column was sadly blighted by the fact that our supplicant middle-aged lawyer was a distinctly unsympathetic character. This week it's different. Our plaintive female client is in a terrible pickle, albeit one involving a husbandly type presciently diagnos...

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Here's a nice decoding of those cadences in Obama's speeches. " In his speeches, Obama pretends to be a hero out of Joseph Campbell. He talks about being on a journey that is about more than just hope and change . If you want to walk together down his American road , he wants...

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Paul Krugman's latest column - below the fold. A Crisis of Faith By PAUL KRUGMAN A decade ago, during the last global financial crisis, the word on everyones lips was contagion. Troubles that began in a far-away country of which most people knew nothing (Thailand) eventually s...

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In a recent meeting with a person who is pretty senior in the automotive industry he was telling me that certain things close to his heart (which had something to do with the government subsidising his business!) would be 'good for jobs'. He's a bright sensible guy and, unlike...

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[caption id="attachment_30539" align="alignleft" width="317"] These types of tram-poles still exist at three Three Sites: Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda Peel Street, North Melbourne Victoria Parade, East Melbourne. [1. As explained on the Victorian Heritage Website "These three set...

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Are very often dodgy. Oddly only a few 'economic rationalists' have been willing to blow the whistle on them. Doing some research on our state governments' peculiar penchant for pecuniary populism - their focus on government net debt rather than government net worth, I came ac...

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australia Apparently Peter Costello is retiring from Parliament . As if anyone cared. The case of the Archbishop and Sharia Law...

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Photo by Pierre Pouliquin on Flickr Demands for compensation for the " stolen generations " seem to be reliable generators of fear and loathing on the part of many Australians, particularly (but not only) those of a conservative persuasion. RWDB QC and blogger Peter Faris is a...

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint. Politics Australia Right wing gay Christian blogger John Heard approves of the Rudd apology. Economist Harry Clarke doesn't, while Tim Bl...

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