Club Troppo

Continue reading →

Suggested reason for a trip to the Old Country. The Bank of England announced the making of a new £20 banknote which will feature Adam Smith (see here , and here is what The Times says). It will come out in the Spring 2007. It is ironic in some way that the Bank of England fea...

Continue reading →

Just one day after the launch of the Victorian State Election, the Bracks Labor Government is facing a crisis with members across the State threatening to ignore the voting directions of the Party bosses by voting below the line on the ballot, and in an even more significant m...

Continue reading →

[photopress:Clive_Hamilton.jpg,full,pp_empty] The left got into trouble when it lost its ethical moorings, said Tony Blair. Influenced by the Christian socialism of John Macmurray , Blair saw New Labour as heir to the communitarian traditions of ethical socialism and New Liber...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Left and right are both calling for the manic Sheik Al Hilali to be deported from these fair lands. The left take offence at his comparing uncovered women to "raw meat". The right take offense at his support for terrorists. Listening to ABC radio this morning, I seemed to be...

Continue reading →

Great piece by Margaret in today's Crikey. Last Tuesday Crikey published an editorial criticising Chris Masters's Jonestown for the way in which it "outed" Alan Jones and treated its subject matter with "breathless, censorious innuendo." It took my breath away. It wasn't only...

Continue reading →

In early 1996 my father Fred fell from his motorbike on the farm and cracked a rib. He had blood in his urine, which the doctors called haematuria which means bloody urine in Greek. The doctor told him that the indicated procedure for haematuria was a cystoscopy to check the b...

Continue reading →

What would you call a situation in which a man . . . [P]unched his wife in the face and she fell to the ground. He kicked her before smashing her face with a rock. She suffered multiple fractures to her skull, ribs, vertebrae, and shoulder blades, as well as a ruptured liver....

Continue reading →

Why Rudd is wrong about Hayek Friedrich Hayek argued that human beings are "almost exclusively self-regarding", says Kevin Rudd . In contrast, modern Labor "argues that human beings are both 'self-regarding' and 'other-regarding'." But what Hayek actually argued was that human...

Continue reading →

Methinks this is a tad biased, but nevertheless an interesting run through the two contenders in the 'browser wars'. The authors conclude that in five out of five areas Firefox is better than IE7. I'd like to believe it but, as I've said, I think there's a bit of bias in there...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

There are few things we enjoy more here at Club Troppo than a good rant about morality and values. Some even think we're a bit precious about it. Anyway, I was mightily pleased to see bipartisan agreement between The Bomber and The Rodent about the desirability of making immig...

Continue reading →

On Insiders last Sunday, the topic of the day was the growing debacle in Iraq. It included sound bites from the PM, a longer interview with Paul Kelly and some predictable political tap dancing from Kevin stay-on-message Rudd . The armchair discussants included David Marr and...

Continue reading →

Today's newsletter to the finance industry 'The Sheet' outlines a series of unfortunate events by which a consumer was lent money that he could not repay. Again and again. Fortunately the nasty lenders lost their money and the poor consumer didn't have to pay - anything. Kremn...

Continue reading →

I am reading David Kuo's book, Tempting Faith . It is an entertaining read. Kuo is up and down like a dunny seat - running from radicalisation to depression to radicalisation again and then back to depression - but he is a good writer. It is also rare in that it is one of the...

Continue reading →

It is clear that the Work Choices legislation, coupled with the welfare-to-work measures, has strengthened considerably the power and autonomy of employers relative to non-managerial, non-professional employees. Even before Work Choices, there was a trend for earnings inequali...

Continue reading →

Its been harrumphing and gasping aplenty in Australia's two ring media circus this week, as the Alan Jones Biography hits the stands, and the pundit-o-rama gets all precious about Mr. Jones' secret life being public fodder. A loathsome attack bleats Tim Blair. Rank homophobia...

Continue reading →

https://youtu.be/NAn6iDCpK5k A while back I turned on the tele late one Weekend night and saw that they were replaying old Videoclips of the Beatles. I watched mesmerised for around 45 minutes after which they went onto something else. I think I would have stayed a fair while...

Continue reading →

Microsoft are a much maligned company. Their software's got better over the years. And I'm sure this won't happen to everyone, but I just downloaded Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. It took a long time to install as it installed about four other pieces of software. Then it asked...

Continue reading →