Club Troppo

I've believed for some time that Australian governments need to spend more on health and education. That conviction flows not from a social democratic orientation but from a classical liberal democratic belief in maximising equality of opportunity (not outcomes) for all citize...

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I think I'm finally sufficiently motivated to be bothered implementing the MT-Blacklist feature to block the increasing number of spam "comments" appearing on Troppo Armadillo . My current best intention is to begin entering IP addresses in the Blacklist starting next time a w...

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I'm pleased to see that John Quiggin has debunked a recent article by that pathetic parody of Sixties radicalism Richard Neville , about the imagined political apathy and disengagement of "Generation X" compared with Neville's "Baby Boomer" generation. As John remarks: Of cour...

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Both blogging and reading blogs depends upon my mood for the day. It sometimes takes, I'm sure you will agree, a degree of fortitude to bear the tidal wave of crap that spews forth onto the blogpages of cyberspace. However, no matter what sort of mood I'm in, I usually take th...

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Melbourne historian John Hirst has an excellent article in today's Australian newspaper about aspects of Aboriginal self-determination in a post-ATSIC era. Hirst argues that local community co-operative control of service delivery has been a failure for reasons flowing in part...

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The SMH reveals - in a piece of shameless advertorial - that 1,000 Australian men were so sadly bereft of life-fulfillment options that they measured their penises and sent the results off to some vaguely-defined corporate entity - for marketing dept fun and company profit. Fo...

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In one of several grumpy posts last week, I described indigenous music as: " ... musicians with poor to mediocre instrumental skills, playing and singing boring, derivative songs out of tune ." I stand by the comment as a broad generalisation, and I justify it on more than gro...

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I was checking out Alexander Downer's bio the other day, as one does, and came across this: "Alexander Downer was born on 9 September 1951. He was educated at Crafers Primary School, Geelong Grammar School, Victoria; Radley College, Oxford, United Kingdom; and the University o...

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Tim Dunlop has a good post up about Brian Toohey's piece in yesterday's Sun-Herald . Toohey argues that much of the commentariat hand-wringing about malign shock-jock influence could be sensibly addressed by politicians simply not giving them the issue-based oxygen they requir...

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There's few things less attractive than a former enfant terrible who insists on clinging relentlessly to his former persona. OK, domestics in comment boxes comes close but Richard Neville's latest diatribe in the SMH surely plumbs the depths. In a call-to-arms to Gen X'ers (wh...

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Yay! The dry season's here; cool nights and crisp, windy mornings. After a few months of sauna-like Darwin weather you tend to forget how pleasant it is not to be always bathed in sweat. Friday was officially the last day of the wet season and, as if to commemorate its passing...

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I had an overpowering urge to waste a bit of time this afternoon, so I've begun re-instating the blogroll labels which were a feature of my previous blog The Parish Pump . I've only reached the beginning of the "C's" so far, because it's fairly time-consuming. Hover your curso...

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The ABC reports that the Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation aims to make Darwin "the Tamworth of Indigenous music"!! Why doesn't this fill me with joy, I wonder? Tamworth may be a valid comparison from more than one standpoint. Country music is mostly shithouse, and so is...

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The NSW Court of Appeal yesterday rejected (by a 2/1 majority) a claim by two profoundly disabled children (Harriton and Waller) for damages for wrongful birth. The doctor respondents had failed to diagnose their disabilities while in utero , effectively denying the parents th...

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News flash!! The High Court has just unanimously allowed an appeal by the Immigration Minister against a heavily-publicised decision of the Full Family Court which had ordered the release of some asylum seeker children from mandatory immigration detention. See Minister for Imm...

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Gummo's back , irascible and funny as ever. I wonder where he's been? Read his comeback post or I'll job ya!

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The mainstream media leftie thought police are in full cry in pursuit of the scalp of Australian Broadcasting Authority boss Professor David Flint. Media Watch's David Marr revealed a sickeningly sycophantic fan letter written by Flint to talkback radio King/Queen Alan Jones s...

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Just now I followed the Trackback link at the bottom of my Political Pooftah Bashing post immediately below, and found myself at Tim Dunlop's place . It was a fortuitous visit because, as well as kindly linking my post, Tim has just published a fantastic and fairly extended an...

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John Howard's inimitable brand of 'dog-whistle politics' is in full swing over the issue of gay marriage and alleged plans to amend the Marriage Act to prevent it. An article by Liberal Senator Guy Barnett in today's Australian is a prime example of the genre. Whether Barnett...

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Paul and Carl are a couple of self-styled "hideous curmudgeons" whose views are well to the right of this armadillo (I might conceivably sound a tad similar by the time I'm their age, although not if "B" is around to take the piss out of some of my more pretentious opinionated...

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