Club Troppo

Just-published ABS figures on income inequality are a good opportunity to blog on this topic, which I've intended to cover ever since co-blogger Chris Sheil blogged his hell in a handbasket post . Michael Costello also focused on the ABS figures in yesterday's Australian . The...

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Bite the bullet . Why is it easier to expose emotions and vulnerabilities to hundreds of strangers on a blog than to just one on a tram? The evolution of a trend towards blending of the personal and political in the blogosphere, arguably initially orchestrated by Gianna , is a...

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(Via Tim Blair ) After noting Uncle at ABC Watch's blogging of Andrew Bolt's response to Media Watch's slagging of him last week, I should also record that Crikey.com is hosting the ongoing slanging match , with a response from David Marr and a further riposte from Andrew Bolt...

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Readers not yet in the tertiary stages of Alzheimer's Disease will recall that a couple of months ago I conducted a contest where comment box participants were invited to nominate how long Tim Blair could last without mentioning his bete noire Margo Kingston . Sadly, all my re...

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Is plucky, Baghdad blogging, man of mystery, Salam Pax really Robert Fisk!? Scroll down to read this observation: "At that press conference there was a gentleman who asked an extremely important question which was answered by Sanchez with "that is speculation. Next question."...

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Living adjacent to a beautiful waterfront park is a mixed blessing. On Cracker Night (1 July) it's like being in the middle of the shock and awe bombing of Baghdad. It's made even worse by a mob of casino workers who rent the big house opposite and regularly have parties start...

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Malaysiakini one of the few truly independent Malaysian media voices, reports as follows: Three judges in Anwar's trials promoted Arfa'eza A Aziz 11:25am Wed Jul 23rd, 2003 Two infamous High Court judges who were involved in the controversial trials of jailed ex-deputy prime m...

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Forbes magazine carries an interesting graphical representation of the most recent OECD data on comparative total tax takes of the 48 member States (including Australia) as a proportion of GDP. As you'll see, Australia has one of the lowest total tax takes in the OECD, with on...

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The High Court's Cattanach v Melchior decision has attracted much attention both in the blogosphere and mainstream op-ed media. Angela Shanahan , Janet Albrechtsen and Sydney legal academic Regina Graycar have all published op-ed pieces about Cattanach (although not one of the...

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Today's Newspoll has been most perplexing. We learn that J. Howard and his cronies have mysteriously endeared themselves to the punters such that 45% of them would vote for the Coalition compared to just 35% for the ALP. Were this to be an election result the ALP would be shed...

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I'm not one of those people who plonk myself in front of Media Watch every Monday evening in the delicious anticipation of being Thoroughly Outraged and Deeply Disturbed at the manifest evidence of Left Wing Bias. That the ABC will largely reflect the broadly left liberal slan...

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Web design genius (and my former blog landlord) Mark Gallagher has kindly provided me with the code allowing comment boxes to be resized by users just like any other Window (by using the maximise icon at top right). It's a feature Ron Mead requested, and his wish was our comma...

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Robert Corr blogs a post about yesterday's demo near federal Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock's house. Rob effectively unpicks (I won't say "unpacks" because of its pomo denotations) the somewhat hysterical media coverage of the event, uncovering the usual mix of exaggerat...

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Caroline Baum had an interesting piece in the Weekend Age dealing with the stresses fiction authors may place on personal relationships when they use thinly-disguised friends or acquaintances as fodder for a novel or short story. As a blogger who occasionally pens "vignettes"...

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Shock news from Washington DC confirms the extraordinary power of the blogosphere. Scarcely had the Battle of Tim-Tim ensued on the net than the US House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee exploded in an uncannily accurate - and similarly acrimonious - reprise of that...

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In a previous blog The Business of Health I copied a paragraph from Penelope Williams's book, Alternatives in Cancer Therapy ; The economic argument is certainly compelling. The cancer industry, indeed the entire health industry, is a tangle of vested interests including the p...

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I see that Bright Cold Matt and James Russell are both in despair about the blogosphere in the wake of the Tim versus Tim blog wars. Matt's reaction is especially understandable, because it was a fairly innocuous post of his musing about Delta Goodrem and the nature of celebri...

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I have been known to be critical of Tim Dunlop's obsessive ongoing focus on Iraq and WMD. However, this post is Tim at his finest; careful, coolly analytical and even-handed (qualities of which you'd seldom accuse the other Tim). It's well worth a read.

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I blogged a couple of days ago in defence of the reasonableness of MPs' superannuation arrangements . I deliberately omitted any reference to the other most frequently mentioned alleged politicians' rort: overseas "junkets" at taxpayers' expense. Coincidentally, Alan Ramsey ha...

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Taking a break from his playground spat with Tim Dunlop (see here and here ), in which both Tims and their respective supporters are competing to see who can dream up the most childishly spiteful arguments against each other on an issue of mind-blowing triviality, Tim Blair bl...

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