Club Troppo

Expressions of interest are invited from people who are prepared to comment for The Real Game on the prospects and performance of the following teams: Geelong, Swans, Hawks, Lions, Eagles, Crows, Port, the waterside workers, Saints, Western Bulldogs, Carlton. No experience req...

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Actor Gary McDonald, whose portrait by Paul Jackson was another Archibald finalist (and my personal favourite) While I'm on the Archibald Prize, the Art Gallery of NSW now has images of all the finalists available on its website here . The winner was Marcus Wills' work The Pau...

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Portrait of Justice Michael Kirby in this year's Archibald Prize - you can see why it didn't win I have to confess that I'm one of those sad souls who's actually been reading the daily transcripts of the current High Court argument in the Workplace Relations Challenge (now int...

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Another top-notch article in the Age by Caroline Wilson looks at how the Brisbane Lions board was told in 2002 that the team was capable of four premierships in a row, but if they did try for it, there would be a long term price to be paid. The board took the short term option...

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Miranda strips down to the gym shorts and pom pom to barrack for Bill Further to my disparaging post on the ostentatiously ambitious Bill Shorten, there's something more than a little suspicious about an aspiring Labor leader who has uber-Tory Miranda Devine on his cheersquad...

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The inaugural award for mixed metaphors goes to David J Hunter for this passage in a poorly argued, but not otherwise woefully expressed effort. It's in an interesting e-zine (pdf) - Eurohealth hosted by the LSE . But the jury is out and the stakes and risks are high with the...

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Who said this a few years ago - I guess it's not that hard to guess who it might be. At the moment if you're on a 48 per cent marginal tax rate, and an employer makes a contribution into superannuation on your behalf, you get a 33 cent tax concession ¢â¬â if you are a million...

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Can a souffle rise twice? or a rich fruitcake with nuts? Paul Keating used to refer to himself as the Placido Domingo of politics, but judging by last night's performanc e on The 7:30 Report his political voice has improved with age and he can justly lay claim to the mantle of...

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Don't be misled by large government spending and tax cut announcements in tonight's budget. The Howard government is still mercantilist: it believes government finances are better off for having large under-used savings called surpluses. Mercantilism is the practice of buildin...

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Crikey has a write up of Carlton by Stephen Feneley which says this. "At his best, Carleton was THE best, and any journalism student wanting tips on asking hard questions need only dip into Carleton's archive for wisdom. For that we owe him an enormous debt." I beg to differ....

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He reminds me of someone, but who? Anyway, here is Parsons' Wikipedia entry Thinking alound about the way that economics and the human sciences could have evolved under the influence of Carl Menger and others, especially Ludwig Mises, Talcott Parsons and Karl Popper. Continuin...

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[photopress:Dreamtime_at_the_MCG.jpg,full,pp_empty] I watched quite a bit of the opening stuff on 'Dreamtime at the MCG'. I wrote a bit of a piece on aborigines and the AFL a while back on Troppo. It's nice to see the AFL flogging it for all it's worth. And apropos of the issu...

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Daniel Barenboim Through the wonders of podcasting, I was able to listen to Daniel Barenboim's forth Reith lecture on a plane back from Sydney to Melbourne last night. This was the forth of his Reith lectures in which he talks about the marvelous "West Eastern Divan" initiati...

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Andrew Johns tackles Benjie Marshall in last night's test It may not have been the result I wanted last Sunday but the Eels versus Sea Eagles was indeed the game of the season so far. There is something magic about watching league at the SCG recalling the great years of the 70...

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It may not seem that long ago that John Aloisi planted that penalty in the top-right corner of the net to send the Socceroos through to their first World Cup finals in thirty-two years. And with the kick-off of the World Cup in Germany now only six weeks away, how much can we...

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Shorten - ghoulish famewhore? Has anyone else wondered what AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten has been doing down at the Beaconsfield Mine in Tasmania continuously for the last week or so? As far as I know he has no expertise in mining or mine rescues, and no active role in...

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[photopress:King__s_College.jpg,full] This is one lovely building. Not sure the poem is up to it. But then again, I'm no connoisseur of poetry. Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge By William Wordsworth Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims the...

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The man in question? Gay? There IS a faint resemblance to Oscar Wilde ... Andrew Norton asked me to write a review of a new book on Adam Smith - so here's a fairly advanced draft. I'd welcome suggestions for improvements. Postscript: I'm hoping this is a final now, and comment...

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Australia's twin pillars of foreign affairs hypocrisy You need a keen appreciation of irony and hypocrisy to really enjoy the daily practice of Australian politics. Dolly Downer lecturing the Solomon Islanders about governmental corruption while his own supine "three wise monk...

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Parents' pensions may be direct debited for rent, power and food (photo courtesy ABC) Proposal from federal Family Services Minister Mal Brough : Family Services Minister Mal Brough is proposing that some welfare-dependent families could be forced to direct debit part of their...

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