June, 2011

So it’s not really a carbon tax at all. Forget what the Prime Minister has been saying for months. What we are about to have is “a fixed price period for an emissions trading scheme.” Julia Gillard today put it this way: “What Tony Abbott likes to refer to as a carbon tax, a fixed [...]

In retrospect, I’m surprised that it has taken so long for animal welfare to join free speech and sexual violence on the list of them-and-us issues in Australian public discourse. Outraged stories about the cruelty of Muslim slaughter-practices have been a feature of European media coverage for some years. As Richard Farmer notes, the Netherlands [...]

Crikey work experience kid Ruby Krupka writes: Teenagers aren’t generally very political people, and I know this because I am one. I like to think I’m worldly, but in reality I am incredibly self-absorbed. However, politics have recently started having an impact on my world and I’ve found myself swept up in all things political. [...]

From National Public Radio: RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—On the “ladies’ level” at the Kingdom Centre shopping mall in the Saudi capital, winds of change for Saudi women are blowing among the racks of bras. Gender barriers are falling among the body-shapers and panties. In what Saudi activists argue is one of several potentially momentous moves this [...]

In San Francisco the only parrots available in pet shops may be dead ones! A proposal to ban the sale of pets within its borders is currently before the city’s legislative authority, the Board of Supervisors, after the Humane Pet Acquisition Proposal was passed this month by the San Francisco Commission of Animal Control and [...]

The lower house of the Netherlands Parliament voted overwhelmingly last night to ban the slaughter of livestock without stunning it first, removing an exemption that has allowed Jews and Muslims to butcher animals according to their centuries-old dietary rules. The Volksrant newspaper’s website said 116 members voted in favor, 30 opposed and the private member’s bill [...]

We keep hearing complaints from the country’s so-called business leaders about the poor products of the Australian education system and timid politicians are invariably only too keen to join in and suggest that changes need to be made. I say timid politicians because every time I see an international comparison of Australian standards compared with [...]

I’m not certain how His Holiness connected to the web but increasing numbers of people are going wireless. Figuresout from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development put the number of wireless broadband subscriptions in OECD countries at over half a billion by the end of 2010, an increase of more than 10 percent on June [...]

Cyclists are the Sydney Tele’s new whipping boys with Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore coming under almost daily tabloid  attack. Recently the criticism was based on Ms Moore being both an MP and the Council boss. Yesterday it was the use of the word “invasion” in some insignificant policy document to describe the arrival of white settlers. [...]