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Showing posts from 2012

Is George Brandis Australia's worst performing politician?

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The Owl's readers on the Crikey website have been voting this week to provide an annual ranking for senior government and opposition politicians. George Brandis, the shadow Attorney General, is engaged in a close battle with Sophie Mirabella for the worst performing title. On the government side the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Joe Ludwig is building what looks like an unassailable lead as the worst performer. Overall the assessment of Opposition shadow ministers is much harsher than that on their Government counterparts. That probably tells us something about Crikey's  readership and a good reason to move voting out from behind the paywall to allow the broadminded followers of the politicalowl to add their tuppence worth.

Refugees harm selves on Nauru

I don't care what she did 20 years ago - I'm sick at what Julia Gillard's doing now! Refugees harm selves on Nauru : "TEN episodes of self-harm at the Nauru processing centre in 24 hours were a direct response to the government's decision to release thousands of recently arrived asylum seekers into the community, according to Nauru detainees. The Immigration Department confirmed that four acts of self-harm on Tuesday night were followed by another two episodes on Wednesday, saying some of the men received treatment for superficial injuries at the centre and none were transferred to the island's hospital. Another four incidents followed late in the afternoon, according to an asylum seeker. ''I cannot express what is happening here,'' the man said. ''Everyone is crying and saying, 'Why am I here?'''" 'via Blog this'

Beating question time hands down

  I did a rare thing this evening. I watched television and am glad I did. The program on the ABC's 24 hour news channel was a community Cabinet meeting in Brisbane. And how refreshing it was to see and hear ministers giving serious answers to sensible questions. A refreshing contrast to my normal political television watching -  question time in the House of Representatives.

New wave pollsters - Essential and Google

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About a month ago in my column for crikey.com.au I declared Essential Research to be "my favourite pollster". That conversion (I had many months previously, wrongly, rather dismissed its relevance for being some new-fangled internet thing) was based on what seemed to me to be sensibly small weekly changes in its findings rather than the dramatic ups-and-downs of the other pollsters. Essential results seemed to tally much better with what Rod Cameron and Margie Gibbs of ANOP used to present me with when working on Labor election campaigns. Now perhaps I have found an explanation, other than my own gut reaction, of why the pollster Crikey publishes each week might in fact be a better guide than Newspoll and AC Nielsen. Nate Silver, the election prediction guru of The New York Times , writes today how, as Americans’ modes of communication change, the techniques that produce the most accurate polls seem to be changing as well. In Tuesday’s presidential election, he says, a nu

Denmark to abolish tax on high-fat foods

Hooray! A setback for the social engineers! BBC News - Denmark to abolish tax on high-fat foods : "The Danish government has said it intends to abolish a tax on foods which are high in saturated fats. The measure, introduced a little over a year ago, was believed to be the world's first so-called "fat tax". Foods containing more than 2.3% saturated fat - including dairy produce, meat and processed foods - were subject to the surcharge. But authorities said the tax had inflated food prices and put Danish jobs at risk. The Danish tax ministry said it was also cancelling its plans to introduce a tax on sugar, the AFP news agency reports." 'via Blog this'

The slush fund story that refuses to go away

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This morning's Australian Financial Review story as it appears on the paper's website : (Click to enlarge) And a commentary on the slush fund from this morning's Weekend Australian: The story just keeps bubbling along. Fortunately for the Prime Minister any allegations of impropriety involve quite a complicated argument that is hard to summarise in a 30 second television or radio grab. It's only if comments like the one I noted in my Crikey column on Friday become commonplace that there will be a chance of it being really damaging: "Crooked lawyer" is a description that does cut through and it won't surprise me if the Prime Minister starts going down the litigation path sooner rather than later to prevent it.

Missing Megalogenis

George Megalogenis has his last column for The Australian this morning. Makes it something of a sad day for Australian journalism really. For years he has been one of the national daily's redeeming features with his thorough, but never boring, political and economic analysis. And always done in an even-handed fashion that, when you looked at his often pointed criticism of individual politicians and governments over time, defied attempts to portray him him as a partisan supporter of any party.

The sophisticated cigarette packaging

The only problem getting my weekly carton this morning was the difficulty the shop assistant had in recognising my brand among all those of a similar colour. The new label cigarettes have arrived in store and my congratulations go to the Department of Health designer. They look quite sophisticated in their black (supposedly olive but it seems black to me) and white way. To me mind there's no deterrent effect at all. Well done.

A Tony Abbott joke

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The Opposition Leader responding to a suggestion that Labor would be trying to portray him in a negative light: From this morning's Sydney Morning Herald

The propensity of politicians to sue

A glance at a dictionary would show you that a Sydney Morning Herald story used an inappropriate word to describe Martin Ferguson's role in renegotiating the mining tax after the sacking of Kevin Rudd. Take the word used literally and you would think that the resources minister had arranged things with mining companies for his own personal financial advantage. It is the kind of word that as a journalist conscious of the need not to needlessly defame people you would hope toavoid even if it was used by the person whose views you were reporting. Having done far worse thin g s during 50+ years in journalism, far be it from me to caste a stone especially as the context of the article makes it clear, to me anyway, that Rob Oakeshott did not think that the offending word had its dictionary meaning. How much better it would have been if he had responded to the letter from Martin Feguson's law firm's letter by admitting his error rather than complaining about legal intimidation.

Harsh political markers out there in the social media

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Those who comment on the US presidential election in the social media make mainstream media pundits look like softies. A study by the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism shows  Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are treated in a much more negative fashion on Facebook and Twitter than on television, radio and newspapers. Overall the media coverage veers to the negative with Obama being let off a little more lightly than Romney. Among the other findings of the study: Horse race coverage is down from 2008.  Overall, 38% of the coverage coded during these two months was framed around what is typically called horse-race coverage, stories substantially concerned with the strategy and tactics of the campaign and the question of who was winning. That is down from four years ago, when 53% of the coverage studied during a similar period was focused on the horse race. Coverage of the candidate policy positions comprised the second-largest category of coverage,

Is Labor's "momentum" really true?

There's food for thought about Australian federal Labor's recent polling improvement in these comments about the US Presidential election from Ezra Klein's Washington Post  Wonkblog: There’s an argument out there that the idea of “momentum” is largely a conceptual error. Momentum means something in physics: A car rolling down the hill gathers momentum as a result of it rolling down the hill. But that’s not obviously true in politics. There’s no reason to think that a candidate experiencing a few good days of polls or news will, by virtue of that good news or good polling, experience more good news and good polling.  But I’d go further: I’d bet that a careful study of media mentions of a candidate’s “momentum” would find that they tend to presage that candidate losing altitude in the polls. That’s because while “momentum” may not be real, reversion to the mean is. When a candidate has been overperforming where they’ve been in the race for long enough that the media h

US opinion polls - Make sense of them if you can

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Employment of youths falls but rises for older workers

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The OECD area employment rate – defined as the proportion of people of working-age who are employed – was 65.0% in the second quarter of 2012. This figure is 0.1 percentage point higher than in the previous quarter and 0.2 percentage point higher than one year ago but still 1.5 percentage points below the pre-financial-crisis level. Australia has fared a little better than the OECD as a whole. Its second quarter employment rate of 72.5 per cent was well above the average and only 0.7 points less than it was back in 2008. The OECD figures show that the biggest decline in the Australian employment rate has occurred among youth aged 15 to 24. There the 2008 rate of 65% has fallen to 60.1%. For those defined as being of prime working age - aged 25 to 54 - the decline has been from 80.3% in 2008 to 79.5% in the second quarter. For older Australian workers the employment rate has actually risen - from 57.3% in 2008 to a current rate of 61.4% EMPLOYMENT RATE IN OECD COUNTRIES Click

Who is winning the misogynist debate?

Quite a difference of opinion among the pundits about what impact the last week of parliamentary proceedings will have made on the general voting public. At Crikey we are running a little survey to see what the wisdom of our readers think will happen. I'd be happy to have your input as well. Just fill in the form below where we are trying to determine what result the next Newspoll will show but remember we are trying to estimate what will happen to public opinion not what people think should happen to public opinion.

The Gillard past - an underplayed but still damaging Fairfax story

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In the Sydney Morning Herald  it only made it to page 10 while The Age had it on page three but this story will still prove damaging enough: It marks yet another step in moving out from the relative obscurity of the internet into the mainstream the pursuit of details about Julia Gillard's past life as a lawyer and her relations with the Australian Workers Union. With the two Fairfax papers now joining, in a strangely understated way, The Australian in indicating this is a story that needs to be reported, the Prime Minister will find it increasingly difficult to dismiss it as the misogynist rantings of disreputable bloggers. You will find the full fascinating account HERE but this extract gives the flavour: A TRADE union association from which hundreds of thousands of dollars were stolen by a former boyfriend of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was only registered after Ms Gillard vouched for its legitimacy to authorities in Western Australia. Ms Gillard - then a salarie

Some news and views noted along the way - Saturday 13 October

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Twitter fiction: 21 authors try their hand at 140-character novels Not so super when someone drives offshore with your cash Smuggish Thoughts (Self-indulgent)  from Paul Krugman The harmful myth of the balanced budget Extreme Weather and Climate Change in the American Mind - new poll from George Mason University and Yale’s  Project on Climate Change Communication (click to enlarge)

A feisty and fiery but totally irrelevant Gillard speech before Slipper resigns

Attack is the best form of defence was the Prime Ministerial motto today when confronted with the nauseating revelations about the man she made Speaker of the House of Representatives. And it was quite a stirring speech if the subject had been the views of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. But the irrelevance of Julia Gillard's attempt to avoid the embarrassment of supporting a sleaze bag became clear when Peter Slipper resigned from the job. Yet another example of this Labor Government's ability to manufacture unnecessary humiliations.

Avoiding El Nino?

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The signs are emerging that Australia might escape the impact of an  El Niño this year. The Bureau of Meteorology reports that m ost dynamical models it surveys suggest that sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific will maintain values around El Niño thresholds before returning to clearly neutral values towards the end of 2012 or early 2013. Hence there is an increased likelihood of avoiding the dry conditions  El Niño's produce.

How people get their news - the young switching from television to on-line

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As someone who no longer buys a printed version of a newspaper I was not at all surprised to find in the latest survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that in the US the  transformation of the nation’s news landscape has already taken a heavy toll on print news sources, particularly print newspapers. What did surprise me was the finding that    there are now signs that television news – which so far has held onto its audience through the rise of the internet – also is increasingly vulnerable, as it may be losing its hold on the next generation of news consumers. Online and digital news consumption, meanwhile, continues to increase, with many more people now getting news on cell phones, tablets or other mobile platforms. And perhaps the most dramatic change in the news environment has been the rise of social networking sites. The percentage of Americans saying they saw news or news headlines on a social networking site yesterday has doubled – from 9% to 19%

Giving magic mushrooms a try

From the Financial Times of London comes the news that a    groundbreaking clinical trial funded by the British government to treat people with depression using a psychedelic extract of “magic mushrooms” is gearing up to start next year. Past research has suggested that a single exposure to psilocybin could improve psychological health for a year and decrease other symptoms of depression for six months, suggesting it has considerable therapeutic potential for the half of patients for whom antidepressants and cognitive behavioural therapy have little effect.

Rewarding vexatious litigants

Letting the sexual harassment case go to trial would have led to a "lawyers' picnic" that could have extended well into next year the Attorney General informed us as a settlement was announced with  House of Representatives Speaker Peter Slipper's staffer James Ashby. And that, of course, would never do.  The middle of next year would be much too close to election day to risk the Commonwealth Government actually losing. Far better to hand over the $50,000 now and pretend, as Attorney General Nicola Roxon did, that the payment did not mean admitting doing anything wrong.  On the contrary.  Ms Roxon said the government did not resile from its argument "that the claim was vexatious". Better to reward vexatious litigants, apparently, than avaricious lawyers. Unfortunately for a Labor Government anxious to avoid embarrassment in the run up to a polling day there still remains the main event of Mr Ashby's legal action against the Speaker himself. Ms Roxon

The Republican Brain: Constructing an Alternate Polling Reality for 2012 | Mother Jones

Another look at those American presidential election polls where Republicans are refusing (pretending?) to believe what they see in the numbers. The Republican Brain: Constructing an Alternate Polling Reality for 2012 | Mother Jones : 'via Blog this'

A Democrat bias in the polls? Statistically, speaking that's bunk

A further note on those American opinion polls. 'Unskewing' polls with party ID is, statistically speaking, bunk | Harry J Enten | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: The idea that current polling is 'too Democratic' and needs re-weighting for party identification simply doesn't pass muster. "The mainstream media is skewing its polls with too many Democrats because they want Obama to win." Statements like this one are zipping around the internet a mile a minute these days. The general idea is that there are too many respondents identifying as Democrats in public surveys compared to past elections' exit polls. There's even a website titled unskewedpolls.com that purports to adjust media polls to correct for these errors, based on Rasmussen Reports data. " 'via Blog this'

The misleading average of the opinion polls

When faced with a myriad of opinion polls all showing different results it is natural, I suppose, that people turn to an average of the findings to get a shorthand look at what is actually happening. So it is that the Real Clear Politics site with its RCP Average has gained such a following. But really, does this daily figure help or hinder an understanding of the likely voting intention of Americans at the forthcoming presidential election? On my, admittedly cursory examination, there are grounds for thinking that the RCP average is quite misleading. The reason is simple. Not all pollsters use the same methods. Some are thorough and others are slipshod. They use a range of different measures to weight the findings from their actual interviews to try and make their published figure representative of people likely to vote. As the reliable British site  UK Polling Report  stresses, "by averaging quality polls will ropey ones you don’t get better figures, you just make the better

Troubled about China

I start worrying when in countries with totalitarian governments like China we see demonstrations conducted with apparent government approval. Experience has taught me that there is invariably a reason not connected with what the demonstrators are complaining about. Hence my apprehension about the recent reports out of Beijing about crowds chanting anti-Japan slogans and surrounding  the official car of the United States ambassador. The fear must be that the Chinese rulers think a diversion from the country's economic problems is needed. If that is only half true then troubles are in store for  Australia

Now for something more serious

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My thanks to those readers who took the time to give me their answer to whether they had looked or not at those pictures of the topless princess. I'm somewhat reassured to know that the majority, like me, did not go searching the internet to have a peek but the high proportion who did confirms my view that trying to prohibit things is self defeating. For the record here is the final result from my Australian poll on this question: And from the poll I conducted on the US based newsvine.com site: Now for something more serious. I wonder how many people have actually looked at that video that has  caused such anger within the Muslim community. The form is HERE

Markets and polls

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The longest running market on political events that I am aware of is the Iowa Electronic Markets conducted by faculty at the University of Iowa College of Business as part of its research and teaching mission. Here is an example of why I take notice of them and the others that are now available of the net in predicting outcomes. Click to enlarge

The political speculator's diary: Tempted to back Obama yet again but ...

The political speculator's diary: Tempted to back Obama yet again but ... : "If it wasn't for the cautionary words years ago of the most successful professional punter I know that I always have a tendency to "overbet", I'd be having more on Barack Obama to win this presidential election. To me he is looking more and more like a good thing every day but I do have a considerable proportion of my portfolio on him already. I've got to continually remind myself not to be foolhardy so I'm letting the current 68% or so available from Intrade pass but if you have not already invested on the event now is the time to do so." 'via Blog this'

Peeking progress

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My little survey or my readers on The topless Princess - who has had a peek? currently is as follows:

The political speculator's diary: He who hesitates ...

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My instincts were right last week when I wrote that "the   momentum seems to be in Julia Gillard's favour at the moment for her to lead Labor at the next election." She has since moved on the Crikey Indicator from being a 52% chance of still being in the job come election day to a 57% chance.  A small earning opportunity missed but there will be others especially if the press gallery pundits continue to predict that if there is no push this year to put Kevin Rudd back in the job that it is all over red rover.The currently conventional wisdom is just nonsense as those of us old enough to remember the events of 1983 well recognise. There are still swings and roundabouts to go in this Labor leadership contest. The political speculator's diary: He who hesitates ... : 'via Blog this'

The topless Princess - who has had a peek?

I'm just curious about whether taking legal action to stop publication of something actually helps or hinders. Hence my interest in how many people have actually had a peek on the internet of those pictures of the the topless princess. Do me a favour and fill in my form here.

Acrtic ice receding? Who cares.

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If the judgment of my media peers is any guide I guess I've become a bit of a bore in my regular Crikey column by reporting on what is happening to the ice levels in the Arctic. Very few others seem to think it is a subject even worth mentioning. But somehow I still think that the rapid disappearance of ice cover in the northern hemisphere oceans isd a far more important story to be covering than the latest Australian opinion poll. Here is this morning's map of Arc tic ice cover: It is the lowest by far recorded since satellites first started recording the ice cover. Global warming looks real enough to me.

Duck torture prevalent

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Take a duck to water? Not likely. The only way most of those we eat can drink is from bell drinkers where they can not even duck their heads. Torture is what I would call it. Read the RSPCA's description and make up your own mind.

A sad truth about Muslim violence

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From the BBC website

Market moves Australian Labor's way

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The betting market has interpreted today's confusing opinion polls (see the item Opinion polling nonsense ) as indicating a slight improvement in Labor's chances of retaining government. The last time I calculated the Crikey Election Indicator a week or so ago Labor was rated only a 17% chance of hanging on. Tonight the Indicator puts it at just over 26%. That surprises me somewhat but so too does the lack of market reaction to the chances of Julia Gillard still being Labor Leader at the time of the next election. That Indicator was relatively unmoved by today's polls.

Opinion polling nonsense

Take a look at these and tell me what it means. Two party preferred voting intentions Newspoll - Labor 50% Coalition 50% Nielsen - Labor 47% Coalition 53% Essential Research - Labor 45% Coalition 55% All these results were published today by supposedly reputable pollsters. Pay your money and take your pick.

Stop Muslim migration? Prepare for a boat people invasion

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When you have a neighbouring country with 180 million or so Muslim inhabitants within small boat travelling distance it's common sense not to set out to deliberately antagonise that religion. When the government of Indonesia is struggling to contain the same kind of mindless religious extremism that inflamed the weekend troubles in Sydney then the argument for being careful with your language should be even greater. But not, apparently, if you bill yourself as "Australia's most read columnist." In the Melbourne Herald Sun  this morning Andrew Bolt was in there stirring up the idea that Australia should consider stopping Muslims to emigrate here. Now if you think a group of extremist hot heads preaching hate in Sydney is something to worry about, consider what it would be like for Australia if we offended Indonesian Muslims, moderate and extreme alike, by restricting all Muslim migration as Bolt suggests. For a start we could kiss goodbye all those efforts of our

Reinforcing Gillard's biggest negative

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With all the skill to be expected from an accomplished publicist, Maxine McKew has begun the previews of her forthcoming book about political life and it is the Prime Minister Julia Gillard who should be worried most about what it says. This was the headline in the Sydney Daily Telegraph  this morning: It concentrated largely on Ms Gillard's weakest spot - the extent to which what she says can be believed.  The book, Tales from the Political Trenches  is due in bookshops in November but there will be far more teases about its contents before then.

Tony Wright's view to agree with

The Fairfax National Times  website this morning contains one sensible summary of all the fuss about activities years ago of our current political leaders. Tony Wright writes: The new story about Abbott's assault upon a wall, of course, blends into polls showing he's not popular with voters, particularly women, and the current broader outcry about bullying in the workplace and on social media. He walks with the rolling gait of a colonial boss on a plantation. He's got to be a bully … why, he's been one since he was 20, as the story proves. It does nothing of the sort. If it did, everyone who has ever behaved like spoiled, overexcited and unrestrained jackasses when they were young would have to be judged by the same measure. To do so would be to deny that people are capable of growing up and learning a bit about acceptable behaviour. Julia Gillard has recently confronted old allegations about her behaviour when she was a young lawyer. It all went to the narrativ

The political speculator's diary: Backing Obama

I have unzipped the purse and backed Obama to remain president of the US. See: The political speculator's diary: Backing Obama : 'via Blog this'

When Do We Lie? When We’re Short on Time and Long on Reasons

It's the kind of study to keep in mind when considering whether a politician is telling the truth or not . I n a study forthcoming in  Psychological Science , a journal of the  Association for Psychological Science , psychological scientists Shaul Shalvi of the University of Amsterdam and Ori Eldar and Yoella Bereby-Meyer of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev investigated what factors influence dishonest behavior. In the absence of the article itself being available I can only quote the press statement summary released by the academics for details: Previous research shows that a person’s first instinct is to serve his or her own self-interest. And research also shows that people are more likely to lie when they can justify such lies to themselves. With these findings in mind, Shalvi and colleagues hypothesized that, when under time pressure, having to make a decision that could yield financial reward would make people more likely to lie. They also hypothesized that, when people

Guantanamo Bay - a wonderful place for butterflies

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Don't worry about the inmates at the Guantanamo Bay naval base - concentrate on the butterflies. That's the motto of a team of University of Florida scientists who have discovered a vast diversity of butterflies and moths on the apart of Cuba leased to the United States back in 1903 .According to the researchers  the land has unintentionally become a wildlife refuge, offering them the opportunity to better understand the island’s natural habitats. Located in the southeast corner of Cuba, its unique and complex geological history of volcanic activity, erosion and shifting sea levels resulted in geological deposits closely associated with marine environments. “We are comparing the moths and butterflies collected at GTMO to those recorded from the U.S., Bahamas, other nearby islands and Central America,” said   study co-author Jacqueline Y. Miller, curator of Lepidoptera at the Florida Museum of Natural History’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity on the UF campus.

Media not all powerful in politics

The easy re-election victory of Sydney law mayor Clover Moore should give us reassurance that the media is not all powerful in how people vote. The city's biggest selling newspaper, The Daily Telegraph , and the top rating talk radio station 2GB  have been almost hysterically anti-Moore for years. But today's vote has proved that people are quite capable of ignoring tabloid and shock-jock nonsense.

Tony Abbott and she said versus he said

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I find myself feeling quite uneasy about the Abbott as bully story from this morning's Sydney Morning Herald: So there we have what the SMH writer correctly describes as "a hugely damaging allegation" for which there are two completely different versions. One witness says something happened and the other says it didn't. How should an allegation like this one be fairly reported? Should it be reported at all? Perhaps when we have access to the full Quarterly Essay  piece by David Marr there will at least be an attempt to find some corroborative evidence to support Barbara Ramjan's version.

Apec summit: President Hu's pledge on China economic growth

Some hopeful news from the Apec summit. BBC News -  "Chinese President Hu Jintao has promised to maintain economic growth to support a global recovery, at the start of an Asia-Pacific summit in the Russian port city of Vladivostok." 'via Blog this'

The sniping about Gillard's past continues

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It takes a long time for political mud slinging to register with most voters. So nothing surprising to me that this morning's Newspoll in The Australian  shows little change in how it expects people would vote if they were asked to do so now. Labor would be soundly beaten at an election but perhaps do slightly better than predicted a fortnight ago. The stories about Prime Minister's relationship years ago woith a trade union official allegedly tickling the workers' funds have done no apparent harm.to her and her Labor Party. But the drip, drip, drip of stories continue with the Sydney Daily Telegraph having this contribution on page five this morning after a pointer on page one. As I keep writing, this is a story that will not go away.

Steve Gibbons - Labor's biggest fool?

Politicians might not like journalists. They might, in fact, despite them - think they are regular publishers of "blatant untruths." But threatening to fine journalists when they publish misleading or incorrect stories is hardly a way of turning publicity back in your favour. That policy would guarantee nothing more than a renewed expression of bias without any punishable factual errors. Yet fines are exactly what the Labor member for Bendigo Steve Gibbons advocated in the House of Representatives today. The ABC reported : Mr Gibbons, the Member for Bendigo, told Parliament that people were losing faith in journalism and voiced concerns about the lack of accountability in the sector. He said recommendations from the Finkelstein independent review of the media did not go far enough and journalists should be fined for their errors. "Fines such as these for publishing blatant untruths or misleading news reports, or temporary suspensions of the right to publish or br

Greece Austerity Plan Short by 2.5 Billion Euros as Crisis Intensifies

Greece Austerity Plan Short by 2.5 Billion Euros as Crisis Intensifies - SPIEGEL ONLINE : "Greek Shortfall Growing Ever Larger" The news of the  potentially greater financing needs  comes at a sensitive time for the country. Many in Europe, particularly in Germany, are  losing their patience  and there has been increased talk of the country leaving the common currency zone. Over the weekend, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble reiterated his skepticism of additional aid to Greece. "We can't put together yet another program," he said on Saturday, adding that it was irresponsible to "throw money into a bottomless pit." 'via Blog this'

The Aussie Tim hitting the top of British Labour

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Julia Gillard hired a Pom and in Britain Ed Miliband has gone for an Aussie. Albeit an Aussie with some Pommy credentials. Tim Soutphommasane, drafted into the office of the UK Opposition Leader, might have served some brief time with Bob Carr when he was a Premier and Kevin Rudd during his successful election campaign but he did complete his  Doctor of Philosophy in political theory at the University of Oxford, from where he also holds a Master of Philosophy degree (with distinction). Now he  has been drafted in to UK Labour's policy review. Of Chinese and Lao extraction, and a first-generation Australian, Tim was raised in the southwest suburbs of Sydney. On his website the explains f or those curious about the correct pronunciation of his surname, that the phonetic spelling of it is Soot-pom-ma-sarn. A recent interview for the New Statesman explained  Soutphommasane's thesis, elaborated in his book  Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-Building for Australian Progressives ,