10 Results

In a recent issue of the new york review of books (Sept 24), Tony Judt described social democracy as the “ideology that dare not speak its name”, such has been the decline of the political ideology that once dominated Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and ‘new deal’ America. (Obviously, Judt doesn’t read Kevin Rudd’s essays.) [...]

From The Australian: (Rudd) has asked Terry Moran, secretary of his Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to put together an advisory panel which will develop a discussion paper seeking ideas for reform by the end of this month. Unfortunately the syntax here is confusing but I guess that it means that the advisory panel [...]

The crowd in Willunga on Saturday was fabulous. The Tour Downunder is as much community carnival as it is a bike race. There was a wine and food festival and the cafes and pubs were doing a roaring trade and the weather was wonderful. People get talking, after a bit of a chat to establish [...]

Paul Dillon, the director of the private consultancy Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia, has got himself a fortune in free media coverage today with the highly colourful (and media friendly) statement: “They’re sort of like a lost generation, because of the culture they’ve been brought up in. Their views around alcohol have been pretty [...]

This is a sensational story. I can’t wait to see some Australian bar staff doing this. Now, what if, the bar guy at Iguana’s had been a blogger? There’s a lot of buzz here in the Belgian blogosphere and mainstream media about an incident involving a New York-based blogger, who was fired from her job [...]

This is the question I get asked all the time, and it is hard to give a succinct answer to why Australian businesses should be lagging behind their US and Western European catalogues. There are, however, a range of possible explanations which may all be contributing to the adoption gap: It may simply be the [...]

If 1960 was the year television came of age as a political force then maybe the same is also true of the Internet in 2008: Huffington says flat out that if it wasn’t for the Internet, Obama would not be president. Trippi notes that Obama’s YouTube spots gathered an aggregate of 14.5 million viewing hours. [...]

Our political obsession with ‘working families’ has gone too far. All through the Howard years and now in the Age of Rudd, handouts like today’s stimulus package, have sought maximum political effect by focusing their blandishments on those voters most likely to switch electoral allegiances i.e. parents. Parenthood is wildly expensive; to an extent that [...]

This was as a pretty dull and predictable affair. Both candidates were more polished than in the first debate but there was little new and McCain didn’t score any punches, in what was supposed to be his new ‘gloves off’ approach. Obama matched him again, comfortably, and McCain is behind in the polls and losing [...]

I hope Nathan Rees can make this work. No-one in the last twenty years has been able to succeed, let’s hope we’re going to turn a corner. I’m not wildly optimistic, but hey? Sydney desperately needs a public transport system that works. We need it for four reasons: 1. A modern city simply can’t function [...]