Club Troppo

I was disappointed and perplexed that an excellent service run by Regional Express (REX) between Melbourne and Canberra was discontinued a few years ago. The tickets were a fair bit cheaper than the competition - and you just had to sit in a turbo prop for an extra half hour o...

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"It's like the Ferrari of bikes" says photographer Sam Ash. In Friday's Financial Review Magazine Ash is pictured standing next to his red Tommasini fixie -- a bike with one gear and no brakes . Given that the average age of AFR Magazine readers is 46 this doesn't bode well fo...

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I recently picked up a remaindered copy of a strange and compelling book by John Lukacs the author of Five Days in London: May 1940 a gripping account of five of the first days of Winston Churchills Prime Ministership in which he faced down the defeatists and appeasers in his...

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A sense of gloom settled in as I ploughed through The Weekend Australian yesterday. It felt like February 2003 again, only worse. Then, an optimist could at least excuse the thumping of the drums of war as the triumph of hope over experience. In the light of the last four year...

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Cub Troppo readers have presumably been following my discussion with Brendan Halfweeg on the comments thread of Nicholas's post on interest rates and tax cuts , with the eager fascination normally reserved for a match-point rally in a Wimbledon final. The ball is currently in...

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The column below the fold was published in the AFR two Thursdays ago while I was in Korea. It began as a post and then I decided that I felt strongly enough about the points - and wanted to do what I could to advertise them to others - that I'd write it as well as I could and...

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Alan Moir on the election, via Apathetic Sarah . If Alan Moir is prepared to put his reputation on the line, and so is Alan Ramsay (despite having forfeited his spectacularly in 2004), why can't bloggers and blog commenters be as bold? In response to last week's challenge, a f...

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We had an interesting recent economic policy discussion here at QUT about the topical issue of urban water management, chaired by Clevo Wilson, a senior lecturer in environmental economics. The full presentations can be downloaded here . The essence of the debate was whether i...

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For a limited time only - until Nov 1 to be precise. And if you might want to buy more than one book - I know it seems silly but print out multiple copies of the coupon - which is located by clicking on the image.

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The Age asked me to do another 300 word piece for today's production on the subject of wages and inflation. They haven't rung today so it looks like there'll be nothing from me tomorrow! In any event, below the fold, for the record, is my piece. It is a pleasant surprise that...

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Michael Short the excellent editor of the Age's excellent business pages asked me at pretty short notice to write a little op ed - 300 words - on the issue du jour - which is whether the bipartisan policy of handing back the revenue windfall from the mining boom will increase...

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One of Labor's proudest achievements is that it introduced compulsory super. A good thing too. What a pity that when it did so it did it in a manner that provided much larger benefits to the rich than the poor. Super has a flat tax of 15% - or rather a range of flat taxes whic...

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What happened today in 2136 BC? No doubt Google will come to the rescue of those who don't know (mutters beneath his breath that the world is not what it used to be)

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I seem to be the only one, that I have seen anyway, in the Australian blogosphere who is excited about the 37c tax bracket going the way of the dodo in Labor's tax policy announcement. Peter Martin even suggested it might be bad politics . Hopefully this policy becomes 'common...

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Hearts were aflutter and the paparazzi were nowhere to be seen as Jen McCulloch married middle aged sweetheart Ken "Troppo Armodillo" Parish in a deliberately low key ceremony in Fitzroy Saturday. Naturally your Troppo correspondent was there and enjoyed the proceedings immens...

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Which one do you like best? The Debate was a worthwhile exercise. The format worked pretty well, and ninety minutes was a reasonable time to cover most of the issues. I wonder why the ABC bothered to telecast it, given that Chanel Nine had both the worm and Annabel Crabbe. How...

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To which organisations do these two logos belong?

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I've written about this before. As the material I linked to in my previous post seemed to show, while there are a bunch of good reasons - both experimental and observational for assuming that mobile phone use will be associated with higher accident rates, it's still hard to fi...

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If you're not with us, you're against us. Thanks to Arleesher at Stoush.net . As was made clear in the previous edition, we don't discuss politics in the Introduction to Missing Link. Aussies prefer to talk about sport. On Election Day we watch TV all evening with the intent a...

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