Club Troppo

Lebanon has dragged public attention away from the progress of the Coalition of the Willing's Iraq adventure. But the blood continues to flow. Today's lead article in the New York Times reports that official US military statistics on the number of roadside bombs planted in Ira...

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I have no idea how reliable this article is. If people want to be influential (at least with me and I hope I'm not too alone) they should learn to conceal their political biases. Nevertheless I wish I could say that I'm confident that it's all rubbish. Like I said - I have no...

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The biggest story on the Eastern seaboard over the past few days has been about one man. Newcastle Knights half-back Andrew Johns . Even the the PM got involved . Bugger the Middle East or British terrorist plots. It is all about the footy in the end. As it should be. For thos...

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Andrew Landeryou , who I've faithfully promised not to call a "bovver boy", makes the following colourful observation on another Troppo comment thread: It honestly matters very little who they put on the ABC Board, it's the culture of the place that's the problem. It is stacke...

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I've just finished reading David Days very engaging and interesting biography of Curtin. It's an enjoyable, easy, long read. Early on I ran into the ten commandments of socialism. These were taught at socialist Sunday schools just after the turn of the twentieth century. Na¯ve...

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One audience member asked Albrechtsen what she thought of the media. She acknowledged the difficulty in speaking frankly due to her position on the ABC board, but thought the last five to ten years had seen steadily improving media, "such as Fox News."

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The current outbreak of floor-crossing conscience among federal Coalition backbenchers is an interesting phenomenon, not only leading to the demise of Howard's odious Indon-appeasing beefed-up Pacific Solution legislation but also to a graceful backflip on allowing a conscienc...

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A great video , that others have already linked to by Yobbo. If you've not clicked through - do yourself a favour.

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But occasionally we should look at their legislative work, if only to worry about it. Last week's debate on the proposed law to build a refugee-proof, legal wall around Australia highlighted their concerning contributions. One example is the Liberal Senator for the Australian...

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About three decades ago statistics a la USA arrived in rugby league. This had some interesting effects. One year (1976?) there was an epic battle between Ray Higgs (Parra) and Terry Randall (Manly) for a big prize for the leading tackler in the comp. Then someone realised that...

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We girly-men here at Club Faggot are nothing if not broad-shouldered. It's probably all that working out down at the gayboyz gym. So I thought it was only fair to re-publish Jason Soon's evaluation of Troppo: Club Troppo nowadays has such a prissy and precious atmosphere that...

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Well, after Round 23 the final 8 for the 2005 finals is all but decided. With a four point gap between 8 and 9 it will be to much for the Sharks, Panthers and Cowboys too make up. The Tigers, Panthers and Warriors have no hope. My atempt at predicting the 8 a few weeks ago has...

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Well this item seemed to draw some responses last week, so here it is again.

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The Fabians are emulating the CIS (I think) in establishing a essay competition for young people. The details are overleaf and if you win from the competition after finding out about it here we'll throw in an additional prize. A year's subscription to Troppo (if you win the pr...

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Here's Charles Richardson writing for Crikey today. I've been involved in politics one way or another for about 30 years; I don't think I had many illusions about it even when I started, and I certainly shouldn't have any left by now. But I was surprised how touched I was by t...

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Here's the second installment of my article on the GPI. Part One is here . I Last week I argued that, as well intentioned as it might be, the Australia Institute's Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) for Australia was systematically biased towards pessimism about our economic wel...

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This article (subscription required) reports on the US 401K super system getting a makeover. I have little doubt that the Congress has been pouring carefully over the ' Progressive Essay (pdf) I wrote for Craig Emerson advocating the 'backstop society' where we try to set 'def...

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"Mammon calls!" Thus spake me one day in Florence about fourteen years ago to Eva as we spent more and more time snapping up the cool, cheap clothes and other goods, and less and less time in the galleries. We finally got home with 80 Kgs of the stuff to somewhat alarmed airp...

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Helen Caldicott is one of the more notable distorters of truth among Australian "public intellectuals". Like the Australia Institute's Clive Hamilton, though on a global stage, she appears to rank making an ideological point well ahead of accuracy or acknowledgment of inconven...

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Clive Hamilton has an attack on Tim Flannery in The Age here . The criticisms of Flannery are of interest and generally well made. It's also interesting to see Hamilton's attack on green groups that he thinks are going over to the enemy - a theme which was taken up at greater...

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