Club Troppo

Essays extolling the need for governments to get ‘connected’, lateral, vertical and all that kind of stuff – the need to find new models to engage stakeholders and to break down the silos of departments – are not usually my cup of tea. My problem with them is that as commonsen...

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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Years ago, Alan Seymour's play tagged Anzac Day the one day of the year . For mine (SL) this year's day brought the best out of Ozblogistan. Kicking off a plethora of fab...

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I've written briefly about my Uncle Dick once before, in the course of a rather sentimental piece about my family. This is another in similar vein. Most of my memories of Dick revolve around motor vehicles. When I was a small boy, before my mum and dad bought their first car w...

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One of my favourite quotes from World War I is John 'Jack' Wright, a flight commander with 4 Squadron Australian Flying Corps [AFC]. Like many of the AFC pilots and servicemen he came from the Lighthorse after having served in the Middle East. He missed Gallipoli as by the tim...

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This is a film with lavish sets and costumes, set in Vienna , about the last years in the life of history's greatest composer. We see his life and work through the eyes of a fellow composer who, though less talented, uniquely comprehends the extent of the composer's genius. Th...

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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Terry Sedgwick had a camera secretly filming the recent meeting between Rupert and Kevie There hasn't really been a dominant theme in the blogosphere over the last few da...

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Why are these people smiling? It's not really clear but perhaps they've got an Amazing Loan. If they own Amazing Loans they may keep smiling. If they have just taken one out, lets hope they didn't do it smiling, but out of grim determination to pull themselves back from the br...

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This column by Barry Cohen reminded me of an anecdote from the just concluded Radio National Hindsight four part series on the Liberal Party . In it someone explains how when Bob Menzies offered him a job in his office Menzies didn't want to know how he voted, and explicitly s...

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When President Bush announced his "surge" strategy for Iraq in January, he replaced General Casey, the last in the conga-line of Rumsfeld yes-men, with perhaps the sharpest General in the whole Iraq campaign, General David Petreus . Gen. Petreus is described as a warrior intel...

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Media ethics and psychology experts have been in great demand for their opinions on whether the American TV network NBC should have shown the video they received from Cho Seung-Hui, justifying his planned rampage. If you google 'Cho video public interest', the first page of hi...

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The Index of Economic freedom compiled by the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal has come out with its 2006 index of economic freedom. It again claims that the higher the rating the better the economic performance (measured by per capita incomes). But it uses a compos...

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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Inevitably, the mass killing at Virginia Tech University in the US brought forth commentary from around Ozblogistan, much of it bemused by US gun laws or - alternatively...

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After talking about it for years, its now official. Today's Australian announced that the University of Melbourne is going to copy the American liberal-arts style university system. They intend to do away with all specialisations and have 6 broad faculties. Students can pick a...

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This column was published by the Fin in early April and appears here as a matter of record - and invitation for comment. Peter Costello told us that he would relentlessly attack the oppositionâs $2.7 billion raid on the future fund for broadband investment. And he did, doggedl...

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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Nothing grabbed Ozblogistan's collective attention over the weekend, although as usual there was plenty of good stuff. Once again we at the Troppo Cabal (tm) are delig...

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Last weekend I decided I'd better do something about organising the shed. Well, to be accurate, I opened the doors of the shed to get the rake. The rake handle was just reachable if I leaned in over the clu tter, but in that awkward, out-of-balance posture, it was not possible...

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Coalition Ministers keep telling us that WorkChoices will boost workforce participation rates and that the job situation will be much better under WorkChoices than without it. The âevidenceâ of the last twelve months is quite inconclusive: the small increase in workforce parti...

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I just went to see the film Becoming Jane . Having read a couple of reviews, I didn't want to see it but I arrived at nine p.m. at the cinema determined to see a movie and it was the least bad of my options. On returning and doing a quick Google I can't find a good review of i...

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