Club Troppo

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I was recently sent this correspondence by occasional Troppo poster, and person of considerable knowledge about the tax and transfer system, Spog. Here's what he wrote. Hello Nick, I haven't bothered you in a while, so I thought it was time to send you something out of left fi...

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I have only been keeping a casual eye on this - but this post is very enlightening.

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There's a bit of a thread running through three articles I've read recently. These two articles from the NYRB on Gordon Brown and Paul Krugman respectively both paint emerging responses to the excesses of yet another low dishonest decade. Brown is studied in his apparent desir...

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Gandhi's take on Miranda Devine's attempt to rescue fellow RWDB pundit Caroline Overington from her own ham-fisted effort at electoral rorting by the time-honoured RWDB gambit of labelling lefties "humourless". Nitpickers might observe that Miranda is actually a Fairfax Angel...

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Many years ago someone did up an animation for Peach Home Loans in flash and supplied it to me in an exe file . But you can't upload exe files onto YouTube. Cam Riley says that he thinks those with Apple OSX might be able to take a moving screen capture of the animation. If an...

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In The Shock Doctrine , Naomi Klein argues that radical free market reform requires some kind of crisis . Wars, terrorist attacks and natural disasters pave the way for authoritarian reformers to impose their fundamentalist visions on an unwilling population. Critics like Tyle...

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Trying to check up on some claims I made about Gordon Brown's promise to involve Parliament in any decisions to commit troops abroad, I found myself at pm.gov.uk. It's a much more interesting site than pm.gov.au - or at least what I remember of it. There are podcasts of often...

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Valid till 22 November.

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Black Inc's 'best of' series are in the bookshops - Essays, Short Stories, Poems. In scanning the latter of these volumes I read the poem below and bought the book. White -Water Rafting and Palliative Care for my late wife, Gloria If I had understood (when down the river you a...

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With the polls remaining seemingly immovably against John Howard, it probably isn't surprising that some left-leaning bloggers already have their hatchets out. Howard sacked 6 department heads after his 1996 election victory, and if bloggers have their way Kevie will be sackin...

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Here is a picture of Harrison's Chronometer (a late version), which was so accurate that it effectively solved a huge problem with navigation - enabling sailors to figure out their longitude when thousands of miles from home after many months. No other method had worked. Harri...

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Below the fold is a column of mine about 'me tooism'. In short, not all bad, and something that could be usefully extended in various ways. You Too Just as Paul Keatings penchant for divisiveness and cultural warfare was a prelude to his successor John Howards brand of politic...

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I don't s'pose that's news. but this graph from today's morning Crikey! provides the relevant "compared to whats".

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I was pretty impressed with this. From a real game at the highest level, between a world Champion who is white. It's his move. What should he do? He did the wrong thing. Find out what he did below the fold. Then work out how you can beat him.

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Courtesy of Terry Sedgwick (where there are more orangutan policy images) 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Today's Missing Link predictably publishes a plethora of political content, but we also have ver...

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From today's Crikey! by Greg Barnes. When the Howard government and its allies in the ALP fell over each other in their mad scramble to pass draconian anti-terror laws, there were some wise heads warning that such legislation would open the door to abuse by law enforcement and...

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Courtesy Terry Sedgwick I've been getting increasingly puzzled about the course of this election campaign. Both parties are promising tax cuts and spending programs that would make a drunken sailor blush, although the Coalition has decisively outstripped Labor ($65 billion to...

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At my request, Ross has sent me the text of at least three speeches he's given. I've printed out the last, but not read it yet, but of the other two I'm an admirer of his ability to write compellingly on a theme with references to the books that are current on the topics he's...

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