Club Troppo

The Parliamentary Library released a research paper which divides numerous economic trends up by Governments from Whitlam to Howard . It turns out party hats don't work so well in analysing these trends. This is an interesting graph with a nice trend. Economic policy makers ov...

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Another day, another blogger... or, in this case, another member of the Missing Link crew. Ken Parish is leaving us temporarily (although he will be back, be assured of that). This means the Centrist Bloggers require a new custodian, and we'd like you to make gilmae welcome. A...

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Why is it that, in the endless discussion in the mainstream media about who had a 'better record on interest rates', we never hear any mention of the real interest rate? If you go on nominal rates, then no matter what interest rate you pick, or what period, Labor is going to l...

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I'll be doing another round with Geraldine on her Saturday Morning Radio National do this week on blogging - I expect with one or two other people. The Executive Producer has suggested we talk about the way in which blogging can take you into a discussion between people who re...

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Well I'm a friend of Crikey's Christian Kerr. He wanted to be my friend and I wanted to be his - it's Facebook you know. I guess his email contacts just twigged with mine and all of a sudden we're friends! Another degree of separation - gone! Anyway, we were gonna meet up for...

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Thank God you're here is a lot of fun. Here's the best effort I've seen. From Shaun Micallef a truly funny and very silly fellow. In the (likely) event that Wordpress won't properly embed the screen, you can click here .

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"It really is social science pornography," says Murray, as he pulls income and IQ statistics off his laptop computer. In a 1994 interview with New York Times reporter Jason DeParle , the think tank researcher talks about race, intelligence, poverty and Thai bar girls. Murray i...

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Many years ago I took up the Microsoft email client Outlook. It's a good program. At least in theory. It combines a powerful e-mailer with a few gimicks that I don't use and a calendar that I do use. Oddly I don't know any other email clients that offer that integration of cal...

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Today must surely be a watershed moment in the lead up to the 2007 election. Malcolm Farrs revelations concerning the secret Liberal party polling conducted by Textor Crosby, the findings that the voters see Howard as old and dishonest and its recommendation to respond by blam...

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Gam has been busy with Photoshop since JWH urged us all not to over-react to Australian soldiers getting pissed and dressing up in KKK outfits at Darwin's Robertson Barracks. 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and...

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Peter Whiteford, an Australian working with the OECD in Paris will be presenting a seminar in Melbourne next week at the Brotherhood of St Laurence in Fitzroy (details below the fold). People who are regular visitors to this blog and some others such as Andrew Norton's and And...

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The Barber of Seville is the most popular opera buffa in the contemporary standard repertoire and, according to one estimate , the seventh most performed opera in the world. This is for good reason, because the work is a gem, and also one of the most accessible. However, opera...

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With the national government digging its selective anti-federalist paws into the Tasmanian health system it might be a good time to look at the nationalist (as opposed to federalist) structure of government. This usually takes the form of state abolition ; where the states are...

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On Thursday 26th July, we had another policy discussion meeting figuring Nicholas Gruen as the introducer of a potential policy reform. The issue debated was whether we should have a national information policy. Ben Ives argued in favour, Tony Beatton argued against. The under...

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Via Gummo Trotsky's Tugboat Potemkin This edition of Missing Link is not only a little late but also rather abbreviated. Writing and commenting about the Haneef case has consumed all my blogging time, so there is no coverage in today's edition of either blogs that we classify...

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Kevin Andrews is a sanctimonious, god-bothering twerp who acted as John Howard's cypher in torpedoing the Northern Territory's ground-breaking (if slightly flawed) euthanasia legislation some years ago. In fact, he's one of the few politicians on either side whom I instinctive...

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Political thought can be classified in many different ways, having regard to ones attitudes to economic freedom, the environment, personal morality (abortion, gay rights etc), welfare, income inequality, inequality of opportunity, etc. Trying to build them all into a comprehen...

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