Club Troppo

Here is the next exciting installment for those people who read my post of a few days ago on insider trading. I agonised over whether or not it was worth making the proposal that there be a civil remedy against companies where it can be shown - according to civil standards of...

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As a follow-up to the epic post on the graveyard of ideologies, here is a story about the graveyards of ideologists .

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The contrasts between Oscar Wilde and Ned Kelly are obvious. But reading Neil McKenna's (relatively) new biography of Oscar the parallels hit me forcefully. What follows is a subjective reflection on those similarities. I won't try too hard to justify what I'm saying, but rath...

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Editors place a high store in columns being topical. So, even when I've got some issue I'd like to run with in a column, if I can't think of a way of shoehorning it into topicality I often put it aside for a few weeks, until something comes up that gives me a 'hook' with which...

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News Online reports that the Howard government has today announced that it is seizing control of approvals for new uranium mines from the Martin Labor NT government: THE Federal Government has taken control over the future of the Northern Territory's rich uranium deposits, dec...

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I don't know about you but I'm a big fan of David Hare. I thought 'Plenty' was marvellous, and so was a David Hare play produced in Melbourne some years ago called "Skyliight". Here's a terrific little essay of his extolling the virtues of the lecture. I agree with pretty much...

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Here is the column I asked for assistance a couple of posts ago. The earlier post started a discussion that was a bit unsatisfying for me as it seemed to me to misunderstand what I was getting at. Essentially the point of what I'm arguing is that if the Opposition had handled...

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Limpopo farmers sell fresh produce by cellphone . Off the Blogafrica site . Off Jonathan Calder's Liberal England site.

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Here's last week's column . Its fairly self explanatory. I might say that I'm pretty disappointed in the debate on IR so far. On the one side we have John Howard arguing that it will promote productivity, when its pretty clear it will do the reverse - but that's because if it...

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I'm trying to write a column which argues that the 'Tampa' was John Howard's 'conviction politics' reduced (very successfully) to street theatre. His handling of the Tampa incident enabled him to embody his values in a way that the Australian populace found compelling (however...

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I wrote this a while back as a companion piece to my piece on Australian Idol. With Oz Idol coming round again, and Big Brother drawing to a close (these shows are best towards the end), here is the piece. If the format of the Australian Idol franchise is slickness itself, 'Th...

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Does the Centre for Independent Studies' Peter Saunders want you to believe something he thinks isn't true? Peter Saunders says that " we should endeavour to make the meritocratic principle work ". At the same time, however, he argues that we should roll back government involv...

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I'm back jetlagged from Japan, about which I may have the strength to post a little in the future. For now a thought - a big generalisation with only the sketchiest of evidence. Please don't take it too seriously - or think that I have. It just occured to me as the hours and t...

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Taking up a passing comment by Gummo Trotsky on the apparent failure of liberal education, it is tempting to compose a small essay or meditation to explore some points of entry to this rather large issue. Talk of failure (or of deferred success) raises the question, when do we...

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Jacques Barzun is one of the great pioneering figures in cultural studies and he is also a most illuminating commentator on the problems of education at all levels. In 1973 he delivered some lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. and they were published in...

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Toby Fattore, of the New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People has written an insightful and nuanced review of a book of international readings on child labour . Some of the more strident commentators on this topic are unfortunately still in the grip of the mora...

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Following a debunking post on Che Guevara , John Quiggin made an interesting comment. "The orthodox history I was taught at school consisted largely of glorification of people who were pretty much identical to Che in all essentials (Alexander the Great, Richard the Lionheart,...

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In an article for Policy , Peter Saunders of the Centre for Independent Studies compares life to a game of Monopoly. But over at Tug Boat Potemkin , Gummo Trotsky is unconvinced. The aim of Monopoly is to drive your opponents into bankruptcy. For decades arrogant older brother...

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You can't help wondering about legal academics. What with Deakin University's Mirko Bagaric waxing lyrical about the inherent morality of torture, and his colleague James McConvill arguing a variety of increasingly bizarre propositions (most recently today's article claiming t...

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On the eve of the first test in the Ashes series, with Brett Lee selected to play and some green in the wicket, Catallaxy appropriately has a thread "In defence of bouncers" . Not to be outdone, here is a piece from the Rathouse on the role of gambling and other commercial inc...

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