Club Troppo

There was an interesting debate in the Senate on October 16th between Andrew Murray, Chris Evans and Eric Abetz. It pretty much represents all that was good and bad with the Senate. Andrew Murray argued for discrete budgeting, line by line, in parliamentary entitlements which...

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I have a particular dislike of Richard Dawkins and enjoyed this demolition of Dawkins' latest attack on God. If you read carefully you'll notice that it's not done on behalf of religion. It does not presupose religious belief. The author - Terry Eagleton concedes, having concl...

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The Victorian Government is interested in taking Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) into education as the Blair Government has done. PPPs have so far represented a scandal of economic reform. A method used to shift debt off governments' balance sheets so they can commit to deb...

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I was going to do a brief post congratulating Muhammad Yunus for his winning of the Nobel Prize and mentioning a similar great Austrailan initiative of a similar vintage which you can donate to - Opportunity International . If I could do one tiny fraction of the good these peo...

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If you've been having trouble connecting to Jason Soon's group weblog Catallaxy then maybe you've been looking in the wrong place. If you bookmarked the old site at badanalysis.com then it's time to update -- you won't be automatically redirected anymore. Catallaxy is fast eme...

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The readers of Melbourne's Herald Sun went into deep shock yesterday, when former Dutchman, and contrived controversy confectioner, Andrew Bolt launched his missiles of mockery in support of international pop sensation Madonna's right to spend her wealth on acquiring African o...

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Here is a brief extract from the beginning of a staff discussion paper (pdf) on the regulation of the professions published by the National Competition Council in 2001. I think there's something missing from it - do you agree and if so what do you think it is? The challenge of...

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Fred's last post prompted several commenters to mention subsidies for private schools. It's worth taking a closer look at this issue in isolation. As Harry Clarke reminded us some time ago in a related discussion, subsidising private education is efficient if it reduces the bu...

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Well boy anyway. It's the 13 year old . . . Well here's another clue - the whole picture. It's the most prodigious chess player that ever lived - the amazing and now pretty much certifiable R. J. Fischer. This picture was taken in 1957, the year Bobby burst onto the internatio...

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Today's AFR has a letter of mine on education inequality. What follows is an extended version of the letter, drawing on material from my other writings. The current passionate crusade by Howard Ministers to weed out the so-called "left-wing" bias of the education establishmen...

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If I'm not mistaken the Beazer is actually getting some traction right now. Witness yesterday's delightful poke in the Prime Minister's eye in Parliament, where the Beazer with an admirable paucity of prolix jabbed out these belly punches on the failed strategy in Iraq. One: S...

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[photopress:cat_lady.jpg,full,pp_empty] Time for a cartoon, methinks.

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One of the curious aspects of an open economy is that economic liberty is synonymous with economic integration. In this respect immigrants have taken to Australia with a will and make up a significant proportion of our productive output. According to the 2003/2004 Tax statisti...

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I promised myself I'd post a couple of very cute chess puzzles on Troppo when I saw them. Now after the chess fest of Kramnik's great victory (he can't have made too many trips to the dunny when he was playing rapid chess with Topalov which he won), and after a long day at a b...

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The Pew Charitable Trusts are spending $2.2 million to start a national discussion on income mobility in America. The initiative attempts to raise the profile of income mobility by forging consensus on the issue with leading thinkers representing a broad spectrum of think tank...

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"Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you're half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose and teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you're going a hundred miles an hour down a suburban side street....

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There aren't many topics that can tempt me out of self-imposed blogging retirement, but Coolhand James McConvill is one of them. I have to confess I've been wondering idly what happened to McConvill ever since his blog suddenly disappeared a few months ago at about the same ti...

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Apologies for not keeping you all up to date on the Great Match. My excuse - well I got less excited because Kramnik dug himself out of the hole he was in. He's won 3 games to Topalov's 2 over the board. But right now as I type there is a play-off because (if you recall from t...

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