Kevin Rudd with Annabel Crabb tonight was clearly more relaxed and comfortable than "Hah.Hah.Hah" Abbott, especially in the first half of the show. There's no doubt that, despite his terrible reputation for being a difficult boss, he is close to his family, and there is no reason to question his assessment that he considers them his closest friends. His daughter seemed, quite frankly, smarter than the Abbott daughters. (For one thing, she doesn't dress like Sporty Spice all the time, like one of Tony's daughter does, where ever she is.*) And he has a nice dog: seeing him interact with it was definitely a humanising touch.
But in the "one on one" with Crabb, there were plenty of flashes of the old fakery and over calculation in answers, and there is every reason to suspect he would still be a boss capable of making people very, very nervous. It strains credulity to believe that he is felt worse about losing his 1996 campaign to become an MP than he did about the 2010 loss of leadership. (Then again, maybe he was spectacularly emotionally immature in 1996, and had improved in that regard by 2010. Who knows - he's a very hard man to judge on his self-reportage of his emotional state.)
I think he is obviously significantly smarter than Abbott, and can judge better who to take advice from. On the other hand, it would seem his problem has always been over confidence in his own abilities, and it is very difficult to know how much more carefully he would listen to advice before making decisions if he were to be PM again. He certainly failed to give a good impression of change in the way he came up with what appeared to be (even if they weren't) ad hoc ideas in the course of the campaign. I really think it was the way he announced these, without any explanation of how they had been decided upon, which started his leakage in the polls.
But tonight, overall, he came out better than I expected. I particularly liked his daughter's story about there being a good chance he would be sitting up reading a book at 4 am she arrived home as a teenager: it confirmed his nerdiness, but also made him seem a bit more human. I think he probably would be a better PM this time around (in the unlikely event he wins government) as a result of his time on the backbench. Keeping in check the old urge to make decisions quickly on the assumption that he is the smartest person in the room may be his burden for the rest of his life, though.
* Too bitchy? :)
Thursday, September 05, 2013
The Joke
A pretty devastating assessment by Michael Pascoe of "Hockeynomics":
Remember all the times shadow treasurer Joe Hockey furrowed his brow, shook his jowls and growled that Australia had a budget crisis? Turns out he was only joking.
Either that or his “costings” disclosure is a joke. Or both.
After all the huffing and puffing, Hockeynomics is only proposing a $6 billion improvement in the budget’s cash bottom line over four years. In light of the past four years of hyperbolic fiscal posturing, this is genuinely astounding.
Even if you take year three and four budget projections seriously (and you really can’t, as everyone should now know), that works out to be an average improvement of $1.5 billion a year on a $400 billion budget – all of 0.375 per cent. It’s not even a rounding error. A half-decent Queensland storm can blow that away in half an hour.
By way of comparison, Tony Abbott is blowing $1.8 billion on reviving the novated lease/FBT tax lurk enjoyed by a minority of new car buyers, let alone an even smaller minority of voters. Consider the massive percentage increase in the Coalition’s budget improvement goal that could be obtained by implementing just this one tax policy based on principle and equity instead of subsidising a few salary packaging firms. Hey Joe, do the math.
Thanks for the "so late it's useless" fact checks, Peter
Is Tony Abbott's $350 carbon claim hot air?
It's worth reading anyway. (And watching the video on "can the GST be increased without the States consent". Short answer: yes.)
It's worth reading anyway. (And watching the video on "can the GST be increased without the States consent". Short answer: yes.)
Local intelligence
I cannot explain how, but entirely by accident, in the course of work this morning, I learnt which street, and pretty much which house, in Brisbane barking mad billionaire wannabe politician Clive Palmer lives, and it's only a suburb or so away from me.
Should I drive by his house on election night? Is he having a party I can gatecrash? Does he have a child easily kidnapped? (A joke, a joke, Federal Police! Mind you, he does remind me a bit of the mad furniture shop owner in Raising Arizona, who was willing to forgive on the return of the babies. [Still a joke! Seriously!])
Quite a surprise anyway.
Update: I see by Googling that the street he lives in has been noted in the Courier Mail more than once. My intelligence was less of a coup than I realised.
Should I drive by his house on election night? Is he having a party I can gatecrash? Does he have a child easily kidnapped? (A joke, a joke, Federal Police! Mind you, he does remind me a bit of the mad furniture shop owner in Raising Arizona, who was willing to forgive on the return of the babies. [Still a joke! Seriously!])
Quite a surprise anyway.
Update: I see by Googling that the street he lives in has been noted in the Courier Mail more than once. My intelligence was less of a coup than I realised.
Jericho on costings
Policy costings about more than the final figures - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
A good explanation from Greg Jericho here of the games being played with "costings".
A good explanation from Greg Jericho here of the games being played with "costings".
We need to know the final number, and it's great to know that it is accurate, but we still need to know how they arrived at that number.His explanation of the difference the Parliamentary Budget Office has made is important too, but I won't reproduce that here.
The problem is many editors and news directors have focussed on the number and not the assumptions and parameters that determined the result. The ALP also fell for this old way of thinking when last week they announced that the Liberal Party had a $10 billion black hole.
In reality what the ALP had demonstrated was not that there was a black hole, but that if you used the assumptions and parameters previously announced by the Liberal Party the savings amounted to only $21 billion as opposed to the Liberals' announced $31 billion.
Both numbers are right. But we have no idea why they are different, because we have no idea how the Liberal Party arrived at its final number.
To use the running analogy, at best we know the vague distance they ran, but little else.
The ALP over-egged their case, but when the Treasury and the PBO released statements pointing out that the costings released by the ALP were not the actual costings of the Liberal Party policies, the media for the most part took that as meaning the ALP's $21 billion figure was wrong.
The Treasury and PBO had said no such thing. They had merely announced that the costings depend on assumptions and parameters. Do we know the assumptions or parameters of the Liberal Party's policies?
Nope.
The quiet economists
I have been rather annoyed with the general silence of economists on the issue of the Coalition approach to climate change in the lead up to the election.
As far as I can tell, there is virtually no economist who thinks "direct action" is a better longer term plan for achieving its stated goal than pricing carbon. The evidence is strongly suggestive that the carbon pricing is having an effect already on reducing electricity consumption. The Coalition's Greg Hunt used to champion carbon pricing, until he was told he had to come up and sell with an alternative simply so that Abbott could have a different from policy from Labor. Government seeded clean energy financing has been underway in other countries - I have not heard any economist talk about whether that has been considered successful or not.
As I have argued recently, there is plenty of room to be skeptical of long term economic modelling of the effects of climate change; but shorter scale economics modelling of how to be push society in a cleaner energy direction can be expected to make sense.
So why are the great majority of economists who support carbon pricing sitting on their hands on the topic during the election?
As far as I can tell, there is virtually no economist who thinks "direct action" is a better longer term plan for achieving its stated goal than pricing carbon. The evidence is strongly suggestive that the carbon pricing is having an effect already on reducing electricity consumption. The Coalition's Greg Hunt used to champion carbon pricing, until he was told he had to come up and sell with an alternative simply so that Abbott could have a different from policy from Labor. Government seeded clean energy financing has been underway in other countries - I have not heard any economist talk about whether that has been considered successful or not.
As I have argued recently, there is plenty of room to be skeptical of long term economic modelling of the effects of climate change; but shorter scale economics modelling of how to be push society in a cleaner energy direction can be expected to make sense.
So why are the great majority of economists who support carbon pricing sitting on their hands on the topic during the election?
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
Still don't like him
Tony Abbott, and his daughters, were on Kitchen Confidential tonight.
I'm thoroughly sick of the PR use of his daughters throughout this campaign. Transparent as a tactic, I hope this is the last we see of such persistent manipulative use of children in politics.
As for Abbott himself: sad to say, but his psychological make up only came out of the interview as being shallower than expected. He's quite open about not being able to be open any more, confirming my oft stated assessment that he was more likeable as a somewhat contrarian Minister, than as the the um-ing and ah-ing, self censoring, constipated looking Leader that he is now. [And that awkward "hah.hah.hah' laugh - maybe it's natural, but sounds very self aware to me.]
Left the seminary because a mate of his from Uni was getting to travel overseas and sign up really big contracts? I thought souls were meant to be more important than money, but there you go. (Actually, isn't it said that he did not fit into what he considered virtually a "gay" seminary culture, but I suppose it is too much to expect him to be too open about that on national TV.) He made mention of feeling his education (making a specific mention of his Rhodes scholarship) was being wasted. Actually, he has had a career in which his economics qualifications have made little contribution, and his colleagues have said he has no natural interest in the topic. Turns out it was wasted after all...
He re-confirmed his upset at Gillard's misogyny speech, yet once again, he gives not the slightest indication that he recognizes his own provocative echoing of "died of shame", or years of not-so-subtle references to Gillard's childless status. He accepts that he sees more "shades of grey" now than when he was a university conservative hard man. Yet his political message over the last three years has been built around exaggeration and confrontation.
The funny thing about him is that he appears to be an introspective man, yet the explanations that he come up with about himself seem to fall well short of reality.
I hope he loses the election due to his policies, and the interview confirms that there is no particular character reason for the public to regret such loss.
I'm thoroughly sick of the PR use of his daughters throughout this campaign. Transparent as a tactic, I hope this is the last we see of such persistent manipulative use of children in politics.
As for Abbott himself: sad to say, but his psychological make up only came out of the interview as being shallower than expected. He's quite open about not being able to be open any more, confirming my oft stated assessment that he was more likeable as a somewhat contrarian Minister, than as the the um-ing and ah-ing, self censoring, constipated looking Leader that he is now. [And that awkward "hah.hah.hah' laugh - maybe it's natural, but sounds very self aware to me.]
Left the seminary because a mate of his from Uni was getting to travel overseas and sign up really big contracts? I thought souls were meant to be more important than money, but there you go. (Actually, isn't it said that he did not fit into what he considered virtually a "gay" seminary culture, but I suppose it is too much to expect him to be too open about that on national TV.) He made mention of feeling his education (making a specific mention of his Rhodes scholarship) was being wasted. Actually, he has had a career in which his economics qualifications have made little contribution, and his colleagues have said he has no natural interest in the topic. Turns out it was wasted after all...
He re-confirmed his upset at Gillard's misogyny speech, yet once again, he gives not the slightest indication that he recognizes his own provocative echoing of "died of shame", or years of not-so-subtle references to Gillard's childless status. He accepts that he sees more "shades of grey" now than when he was a university conservative hard man. Yet his political message over the last three years has been built around exaggeration and confrontation.
The funny thing about him is that he appears to be an introspective man, yet the explanations that he come up with about himself seem to fall well short of reality.
I hope he loses the election due to his policies, and the interview confirms that there is no particular character reason for the public to regret such loss.
Who's that successful and visionary business leader again?
I had to remind myself about Roger Corbett, who is getting a lot of attention for having criticised Rudd and Labor (and praising Tony Abbott) on Lateline last night.
Oh that's right: he would be the Chairman of Fairfax who in 2004, as Eric Beecher told us last year, was confident the company would be the media "envy of the world":
Update: the fact that Corbett worries about the ABC "crowds out" Fairfax, and thinks Workplace laws are holding up the economy, does make him more likely a Coalition sympathiser. At least he does acknowledge a need for greater tax revenue, though. But my real annoyance with him is the inappropriateness of expressing his highly partisan views as member of the Reserve Bank Board in a crucial part of the election campaign cycle.
Update 2: so, he's actually a member of the Liberal Party, but it wasn't mentioned last night? And the story ran this morning without that being mentioned? Great job, media.
Update 3: Actually, it occurs to me that it was also an obvious failing on Kevin Rudd's (or his team's) part too. When asked about it yesterday morning, the first thing Rudd should have said "well he's a member of the Liberal Party, what do you expect him to say about me?"
Oh that's right: he would be the Chairman of Fairfax who in 2004, as Eric Beecher told us last year, was confident the company would be the media "envy of the world":
After listening to my prognosis that the company faced a potential collapse of its traditional business model — I sketched out what I described as a “catastrophe scenario” under which The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age would lose much of their classified advertising in coming years — the Fairfax board studiously ignored my plea to implement overlapping strategies as “insurance” against that possibility.Gina Rinehart.doesn't like him either. How easily I forget these things. I wonder how she feels about him today after last night's performance?
One director, in particular, became quite agitated about what I was saying. “I don’t ever want anyone coming into this boardroom again,” he told his colleagues as he held up a copy of one of Fairfax’s hefty Saturday papers, “and telling us that people will buy houses or cars, or look for jobs, without this”. He then dropped the lump of newsprint onto the boardroom table with a thud.
That board member was Roger Corbett, now the chairman of Fairfax. He spent 40 years as a retailer, never worked in media or journalism, holds a handful of shares in Fairfax, and was paid $412,000 last year by the company. On the day he was appointed Fairfax chairman in 2009, Corbett presented a glowing picture of the way his company was handling its task. “The decisions taken in the last few years by management and the board have, I believe, put Fairfax in a position which is envied by media companies around the world,” he said.
Update: the fact that Corbett worries about the ABC "crowds out" Fairfax, and thinks Workplace laws are holding up the economy, does make him more likely a Coalition sympathiser. At least he does acknowledge a need for greater tax revenue, though. But my real annoyance with him is the inappropriateness of expressing his highly partisan views as member of the Reserve Bank Board in a crucial part of the election campaign cycle.
Update 2: so, he's actually a member of the Liberal Party, but it wasn't mentioned last night? And the story ran this morning without that being mentioned? Great job, media.
Update 3: Actually, it occurs to me that it was also an obvious failing on Kevin Rudd's (or his team's) part too. When asked about it yesterday morning, the first thing Rudd should have said "well he's a member of the Liberal Party, what do you expect him to say about me?"
Hopping to church in Luxembourg
Here's a charming story from the BBC about a centuries old hopping parade in Luxembourg. Watch the video too.
Speculative physics in Nature
Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News
Haven't had time to read this yet, but looks interesting...
Haven't had time to read this yet, but looks interesting...
A fair summary from John Quiggin
John Quiggin's take on the Coalition and Tony Abbott in this election campaign is pretty accurate, I think:
The case put forward by the LNP is based entirely on lies and myths. These include the claims that
* Labor has mismanaged the economy and piled up unnecessary debt and deficits
* Australian families are ‘doing it tough’ because of a soaring cost of living
* The carbon tax/price is a ‘wrecking ball’, destroying economic activity
* The arrival of refugees represents a ‘national emergency’
None of these claims stands up to even momentary scrutiny.
Then there’s Abbott himself. After 20 years in politics, I can’t point to any substantial accomplishments on his part, or even any coherent political philosophy. For example, I’m not as critical of his parental leave scheme as some, but it’s totally inconsistent with his general political line, a fact that his supporters in business have been keen to point out. On climate change, he’s held every position possible and is now promising, in effect, to do nothing. His refusal to reveal policy costings until the second-last day of the campaign debases an already appalling process. He treated budget surplus as a holy grail until it became inconvenient, and has now become carefully vague on the topic.
Tuesday, September 03, 2013
Economic failure and climate change
As an antidote to Tony Abbott talking about claimed long term economic benefits of removing carbon pricing to justify its removal, I would suggest people read this post by Michael Tobis and the comments that follow, particularly as to how they relate to economic modelling and climate change.
Tobis has been banging on about this for some time, but it seems to me that not many people pay attention.
I find him quite convincing. Just as I would not expect an economist working in 1913 to have a good set of predictions about the global economy in 2000, even if there was no great intervening issue like climate change, I just do not see how it is plausible to trust modelling that is trying to anticipate economic costs of a 100 year change to climate that will have greatly varying local effects around the globe.
Now, its true: environmentalists use modelling to justify carbon pricing. So how fair is it to criticise the likes of Abbott when he uses economic arguments against carbon pricing?
It is fair, for a couple of reasons: climate change will have much longer term effects than a mere century. Some of those effects that are very plausible/ likely in the longer term are simply obviously disastrous - work out what 2 or 3 m of sea level rise around your favourite global cities is going to do to them, for a start. But on the shorter scale as well, changes to the hydrological cycle are likely to have some very serious effects, and soon, and common sense suggests that they are not readily capable of effective adaptation. The effect will also hit the poorer countries hardest. Have you noticed the flooding in India and China this year? You can only build so many useful dams in a country, even if it is rich. Is there anywhere in Western Queensland you can build a decent drought fighting dam that won't evaporate at a furious rate?
[And even if the unlikely assumption that climate sensitivity is only 1.5 degree for a doubling of CO2, you still have the concern about what ocean acidification is going to do to the food chain in the oceans, with recent work indicating that krill in Antarctica may collapse, and a very uncertain future for pteropods as well. There is no good way to really guess the knock on consequences of the failure of very large elements of ocean food chain like that, I reckon, although scientists are trying.]
Criticisms of economic modelling to show that other economic modelling is flawed therefore misses this whole point. It misses the common sense of the situation.
So ridiculous exercises by small government/libertarian poster boy Topher, for example, are not just a waste of time; they are a dangerous waste of time. At least Greenies who use economics poorly to get to the right political response anyway can't be accused of that.
Tobis has been banging on about this for some time, but it seems to me that not many people pay attention.
I find him quite convincing. Just as I would not expect an economist working in 1913 to have a good set of predictions about the global economy in 2000, even if there was no great intervening issue like climate change, I just do not see how it is plausible to trust modelling that is trying to anticipate economic costs of a 100 year change to climate that will have greatly varying local effects around the globe.
Now, its true: environmentalists use modelling to justify carbon pricing. So how fair is it to criticise the likes of Abbott when he uses economic arguments against carbon pricing?
It is fair, for a couple of reasons: climate change will have much longer term effects than a mere century. Some of those effects that are very plausible/ likely in the longer term are simply obviously disastrous - work out what 2 or 3 m of sea level rise around your favourite global cities is going to do to them, for a start. But on the shorter scale as well, changes to the hydrological cycle are likely to have some very serious effects, and soon, and common sense suggests that they are not readily capable of effective adaptation. The effect will also hit the poorer countries hardest. Have you noticed the flooding in India and China this year? You can only build so many useful dams in a country, even if it is rich. Is there anywhere in Western Queensland you can build a decent drought fighting dam that won't evaporate at a furious rate?
[And even if the unlikely assumption that climate sensitivity is only 1.5 degree for a doubling of CO2, you still have the concern about what ocean acidification is going to do to the food chain in the oceans, with recent work indicating that krill in Antarctica may collapse, and a very uncertain future for pteropods as well. There is no good way to really guess the knock on consequences of the failure of very large elements of ocean food chain like that, I reckon, although scientists are trying.]
Criticisms of economic modelling to show that other economic modelling is flawed therefore misses this whole point. It misses the common sense of the situation.
So ridiculous exercises by small government/libertarian poster boy Topher, for example, are not just a waste of time; they are a dangerous waste of time. At least Greenies who use economics poorly to get to the right political response anyway can't be accused of that.
The future of taxes
Why taxes would rise under Abbott
Ross Gittens does some useful number crunching about why the tax take has to increase somewhat if either side wins the election.
Should Labor or the Coalition wear the most blame for not being up front about this? This gets confusing. Labor has run a scare campaign on Abbott and the GST. Abbott & Hockey deny emphatically that it is at risk. But then, Abbott and Hockey have run, of course, a 5 year scare campaign on the deficit and their ability to get back to surplus faster than Labor. Yet they do not face up to the fundamentals.
I think the best outcome may be that either Abbott or Rudd gets replaced in the next term, and the new leader gets realistic on this.
Ross Gittens does some useful number crunching about why the tax take has to increase somewhat if either side wins the election.
Should Labor or the Coalition wear the most blame for not being up front about this? This gets confusing. Labor has run a scare campaign on Abbott and the GST. Abbott & Hockey deny emphatically that it is at risk. But then, Abbott and Hockey have run, of course, a 5 year scare campaign on the deficit and their ability to get back to surplus faster than Labor. Yet they do not face up to the fundamentals.
I think the best outcome may be that either Abbott or Rudd gets replaced in the next term, and the new leader gets realistic on this.
Folks are dumb where I come from....
Rudd fails to rally voters in his home state
Well, how harsh should I be? It's not as if I supported a return of Kevin Rudd, and I have puzzled many, many times over why he was ever popular in Queensland. The State is not exactly renowned for supporting urban quasi-intellectuals. Did they think his "folkiness" was genuine?
Anyhow, after first encouraging Labor's party machine that Kevin was going to do well in Queensland, people polled here have decided they don't like him much after all.
What's more, they are apparently looking at voting in fairly significant numbers for Clive Palmer's nutty rich man act, and he seems to have taken over the "Eccentric Politician We'll Vote For Because We Don't Like Politicians" role from Bob Katter.
If they collectively have 15% of the vote, their preferences are going to be pretty important, and the article claims that more of those voters claim they will preference Labor. Especially those voting for Clive Palmer.
This is all very peculiar. But the State that continued voting for Joh endlessly has always been a bit of a political mystery.
Well, how harsh should I be? It's not as if I supported a return of Kevin Rudd, and I have puzzled many, many times over why he was ever popular in Queensland. The State is not exactly renowned for supporting urban quasi-intellectuals. Did they think his "folkiness" was genuine?
Anyhow, after first encouraging Labor's party machine that Kevin was going to do well in Queensland, people polled here have decided they don't like him much after all.
What's more, they are apparently looking at voting in fairly significant numbers for Clive Palmer's nutty rich man act, and he seems to have taken over the "Eccentric Politician We'll Vote For Because We Don't Like Politicians" role from Bob Katter.
If they collectively have 15% of the vote, their preferences are going to be pretty important, and the article claims that more of those voters claim they will preference Labor. Especially those voting for Clive Palmer.
This is all very peculiar. But the State that continued voting for Joh endlessly has always been a bit of a political mystery.
Barry's depressed, with justification
Barry Jones: the 2013 election and the death of rationality
The article is taken from a lecture, and so wanders a bit, but his end take on Joe Hockey seems particularly accurate:
The article is taken from a lecture, and so wanders a bit, but his end take on Joe Hockey seems particularly accurate:
I have watched, with some pain, election telecasts being given by the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, somebody who I have always had some regard for, balanced, recognisably human, and not a fanatic, with touches of self-mockery.
He could have taken a more subtle, nuanced approach in his pitch, saying, perhaps, “while it is true that Australia has had some outstanding successes, such as the AAA rating and 21 unbroken years of growth, nevertheless there are some worrying indications that…”, and go on from there.
Instead, he plays the catastrophist card, that the past six years had left the Australian economy as a smoking ruin, and the rest of the world is looking to see when Australia will turn the lights back on. Catastrophic? Disaster? Tsunami? The clear suggestion is that practically every nation, with the possible exception of Somalia, is performing better economically than Australia.
Does Joe Hockey really believe what he is saying? I hope not.
Uncertainty Queen's failure
Well, there you go. Tamino has a good post about that "ENSO masks global warming paper" paper, and points out that Judith Curry has mis-read it spectacularly.
I predicted that she would soon be shot down, remember.
I predicted that she would soon be shot down, remember.
Monday, September 02, 2013
The biggest mistake Julia Gillard made
...was in not promoting hard the argument that a fixed price for carbon permits for an introductory period is not a carbon tax.
Listening to Rudd agree with journalists that this was a mistake only confirms this. He gets no traction from saying that - people who have been brainwashed into thinking its the worst thing ever done by a government are not interested in his half baked apology for it.
Labor would doubtlessly have been better off by arguing it is not a tax, and not a broken promise.
Listening to Rudd agree with journalists that this was a mistake only confirms this. He gets no traction from saying that - people who have been brainwashed into thinking its the worst thing ever done by a government are not interested in his half baked apology for it.
Labor would doubtlessly have been better off by arguing it is not a tax, and not a broken promise.
Let them eat oysters
To Live, the Oyster Must Die
I had read before that oysters used to be the food of the poor in England, but I didn't realise it was quite to this extent:
I had read before that oysters used to be the food of the poor in England, but I didn't realise it was quite to this extent:
As the population of London boomed, doubling again and again from the 16th century onwards, these little nuggets of protein became an irresistible way for the fishermen of anywhere within reach of the capital to make a living....
The oyster boom expanded as industrialisation accelerated, with oysters fuelling industrial Britain’s industrious workers. Modern machinery made them easier to catch, store and transport, and oysters became the signature food of Victorian Britain.
“The poorer a place is, the greater call there seems to be for oysters. Look here, sir; here’s a oyster stall to every half dozen houses. The streets lined with ‘em. Blessed if I don’t think that ven a man’s wery poor, he rushes out of his lodgings and eats oysters in reg’lar desperation,” remarks Sam Weller in Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers.
That was published in 1836, and Londoners were only just getting going. In 1864, they consumed 700 million oysters. That’s five oysters a week, every week, for each man, woman and child in the city.
The same was true elsewhere in Britain, with predictable results. Oyster fishing began to collapse in Scottish waters in the 1870s, and had all but ceased there by 1920. In the 19th century, fishermen discovered a 200 by 70 mile oyster bed on the seabed between England and Germany, and had cleaned it out within decades.
And we have still not learned from our mistakes. In the 1970s, fishermen found oysters in the Solent, the channel between the Isle of Wight and the South Coast, giving hope that the industry could be reborn sustainably, but we ate them all instead.
Of course...
Tony Abbott willing to break emissions pledge over funding hole
Malcolm Turnbull on, I think, The Drum last week, called Abbott an "intelligent skeptic" on climate change.
No: Abbott is not smart enough to take sensible policies to reduce CO2 seriously. He is the triumph of political opportunism and shallowness over making a genuine attempt to deal with an important issue in a sensible way.
Turnbull should be appalled at this, but there is a possibility, I suppose, that he could still be leader if Abbott implodes. His keeping quiet might therefore be good in the long run. At least, I hope so.
Update: I had forgotten how outspoken Turnbull used to be on this issue. From 2009:
Malcolm Turnbull on, I think, The Drum last week, called Abbott an "intelligent skeptic" on climate change.
No: Abbott is not smart enough to take sensible policies to reduce CO2 seriously. He is the triumph of political opportunism and shallowness over making a genuine attempt to deal with an important issue in a sensible way.
Turnbull should be appalled at this, but there is a possibility, I suppose, that he could still be leader if Abbott implodes. His keeping quiet might therefore be good in the long run. At least, I hope so.
Update: I had forgotten how outspoken Turnbull used to be on this issue. From 2009:
....the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.Yes, that's the pathetic political calibre of the man about to be PM, apparently.
Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is "crap" and you don't need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing. After all, as Nick Minchin observed, in his view the majority of the Party Room do not believe in human caused global warming at all. I disagree with that assessment, but many people in the community will be excused for thinking the leadership ballot proved him right.
Remember Nick Minchin's defense of the Howard Government's ETS was that the Government was panicked by the polls and therefore didn't really mean it.
Tony himself has in just four or five months publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and if the amendments were satisfactory passing it, and now the blocking of it.
His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with "Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but....."
Politics and singing noted
It seems that Rudd got good reviews for his campaign launch speech, but with Newspoll doing another leap, this time in the wrong direction, no one can envisage the possibility that Labor will win.
But I did think the Abbott attack ads I saw while watching X Factor last night with my daughter were pretty good. Even on a very soft interview on Insiders yesterday, Abbott still hesitates and ums and ahs like there is no tomorrow whenever a journalist asks an even mildly difficult question. This makes for pretty good ads, for Labor.
Speaking of X Factor: it's a very good show for parents to watch with pre-teen daughters, I reckon. It leads to easy conversation about the inappropriate dress, make up and song choice of teenage contestants, and the silliness of raunchy choreography. This year is better than last year: there are far fewer tattoos on display in the judging panel, and on stage, and there are fewer contestants about whom I cannot comprehend why they are still there.
I have only seen a bit of The Voice - I thought it was pretty awful in comparison. The X Factor has more likeable judges (it's not even clear this year that they have one in the role of "contrary and hard to please" judge), and (I think) less of an intrusive concentration on the personal lives of the contestants. Now if only the show could fire the person who applies eye make on all of the females with a trowel, it would be perfect.
This year, the star is no doubt Dami Im, whose amazingly powerful voice seems so incongruous coming out of a modestly proportioned Asian body. And she's just married, Christian (I think - she has made brief reference to singing in Church), almost certainly free of tattoos, and appears a very genuinely nice person with a very happy husband. What's not to like?
My wife said she has seen on TV that she has had lots of publicity in Korea now too, due to her performances here. Barring a nervous breakdown, or a vocal cord catastrophe, they may as well hand her the recording contract now and finish the show early. But the producers probably have an entire store room full of short female skirts, and eye make up in 44 gallon drums, that has to be used up, so it won't happen.
But I did think the Abbott attack ads I saw while watching X Factor last night with my daughter were pretty good. Even on a very soft interview on Insiders yesterday, Abbott still hesitates and ums and ahs like there is no tomorrow whenever a journalist asks an even mildly difficult question. This makes for pretty good ads, for Labor.
Speaking of X Factor: it's a very good show for parents to watch with pre-teen daughters, I reckon. It leads to easy conversation about the inappropriate dress, make up and song choice of teenage contestants, and the silliness of raunchy choreography. This year is better than last year: there are far fewer tattoos on display in the judging panel, and on stage, and there are fewer contestants about whom I cannot comprehend why they are still there.
I have only seen a bit of The Voice - I thought it was pretty awful in comparison. The X Factor has more likeable judges (it's not even clear this year that they have one in the role of "contrary and hard to please" judge), and (I think) less of an intrusive concentration on the personal lives of the contestants. Now if only the show could fire the person who applies eye make on all of the females with a trowel, it would be perfect.
This year, the star is no doubt Dami Im, whose amazingly powerful voice seems so incongruous coming out of a modestly proportioned Asian body. And she's just married, Christian (I think - she has made brief reference to singing in Church), almost certainly free of tattoos, and appears a very genuinely nice person with a very happy husband. What's not to like?
My wife said she has seen on TV that she has had lots of publicity in Korea now too, due to her performances here. Barring a nervous breakdown, or a vocal cord catastrophe, they may as well hand her the recording contract now and finish the show early. But the producers probably have an entire store room full of short female skirts, and eye make up in 44 gallon drums, that has to be used up, so it won't happen.
Physics of interest
I wonder how many readers are actually interested in my posts pointing towards odd physics papers that I usually don't fully understand myself. Who knows, but here's some examples of recent physics stories I liked for their novelty:
* Great title here: Can the Higgs Boson Save Us From the Menace of the Boltzmann Brains?
I can't be the only person who thinks of the Futurama episodes with giant floating brains whenever I hear "Boltzmann Brains", can I?
In any event, the paper notes that one of the simplest present explanations for the universe carries with it a serious "Boltzmann Brain" issue, and asks whether there is a way around it. The answer seems to be: maybe. Here's co-author Sean Carroll giving an easier to read explanation of the paper. I should have read that first.
* The Economist, of all places, notes a paper that argues that dark energy, causing an acceleration in the expansion of the universe, does not exist at all. Instead, the universe is just getting heavier:
* Someone from CERN complains that the LHC has not come up with any significant surprises for the Standard Model of physics, which is very annoying for physicists. Here's the abstract:
* Someone (I have no idea who) from Hungary seems to think he has found a way that you can get Einstein's results without Einstein-ian physics. The paper has a charming title: A simple minded question: Do we live in the four-dimensional spacetime? and starts in a very modest fashion:
* If you are interested in the "fine tuning of the universe" issue, Catalyst on the ABC had a pretty good 30 minute summary last week, which features some short interviews from some of the big names in physics. There are the more extended interviews with them here, I think, although I haven't watched them yet.
I saw from the show that Paul Davies, who moved from Adelaide University to Arizonia State University (he seems to showing greater affinity for "dry and remote" as he ages) finds a sort of backwards causation causation appealing, although I don't really understand the mechanism he thinks might work. As Frank Tipler's similar idea, that the future God causes the past, seems to have sunk under the experimental finding of the mass of the Higgs boson, I should look up what Davies is saying on the topic.
* Great title here: Can the Higgs Boson Save Us From the Menace of the Boltzmann Brains?
I can't be the only person who thinks of the Futurama episodes with giant floating brains whenever I hear "Boltzmann Brains", can I?
In any event, the paper notes that one of the simplest present explanations for the universe carries with it a serious "Boltzmann Brain" issue, and asks whether there is a way around it. The answer seems to be: maybe. Here's co-author Sean Carroll giving an easier to read explanation of the paper. I should have read that first.
* The Economist, of all places, notes a paper that argues that dark energy, causing an acceleration in the expansion of the universe, does not exist at all. Instead, the universe is just getting heavier:
In Dr Wetterich’s picture of the cosmos the redshift others attribute to expansion is, rather, the result of the universe putting on weight. If atoms weighed less in the past, he reasons, the light they emitted then would, in keeping with the laws of quantum mechanics, have been less energetic than the light they emit now. Since less energetic light has a longer wavelength, astronomers looking at it today would perceive it to be redshifted.I like to think that God has given us a direct clue to this, by ensuring that from middle age, a mass increase takes place in nearly all human bodies for no obvious reason. So goes the universe too, possibly.
At first blush this sounds nuts. The idea that mass is constant is drilled into every budding high-school physicist. Abandoning it would hurt. But in exchange, Dr Wetterich’s proposal deals neatly with a big niggle in the Big Bang theory, namely coping with the point of infinite density at the beginning, called a singularity, which orthodox theories cannot explain.
Dr Wetterich’s model does not—yet—explain the shifts in the shapes of galactic clusters that the Dark Energy Camera, SuMIRe and ACTPol are seeking to clarify. But perhaps, one day, it could. Dr Wetterich is a well-respected physicist and his maths are not obviously wrong. Moreover, his theory does allow for a short period of rapid expansion, known as inflation, whose traces have already been seen in the CMB. Dr Wetterich, however, thinks this inflation did not happen just after the beginning of the universe (the consensus view), for he believes the universe had no beginning. Instead, a small static universe which had always existed turned into a large static one that always will exist—getting heavier and heavier as it does so. There was thus no singularity.
Probably, this theory is wrong. As Cliff Burgess of Perimeter Institute, a Canadian theoretical-physics centre, puts it, “The dark energy business very easily degenerates into something like a crowd of people who are each claiming to be Napoleon while asserting that all the other pretenders are clearly nutty.”
* Someone from CERN complains that the LHC has not come up with any significant surprises for the Standard Model of physics, which is very annoying for physicists. Here's the abstract:
The first three years of the LHC experiments at CERN have ended with "the nightmare scenario": all tests, confirm the Standard Model of Particles so well that theorists must search for new physics without any experimental guidance. The supersymmetric theories, a privileged candidate for new physics are nearly excluded. As a potential escape from the crisis, we propose thinking about a series of astonishing relations suggesting fundamental interconnections between the quantum world and the large scale Universe. It seems reasonable that, for instance, the equation relating a quark-antiquark pair with the fundamental physical constants and cosmological parameters must be a sign of new physics. One of the intriguing possibilities is interpreting our relations as a signature of the quantum vacuum containing the virtual gravitational dipoles.As with many papers on arXiv, you should read the introduction, which paints a comprehensible summary of the problem before venturing into scores of equations and terminology which are hard to follow.
* Someone (I have no idea who) from Hungary seems to think he has found a way that you can get Einstein's results without Einstein-ian physics. The paper has a charming title: A simple minded question: Do we live in the four-dimensional spacetime? and starts in a very modest fashion:
The author of the present paper is not sure that the following ideas are worth for publication or they are more similar to a somewhat lunatic conception.I don't really follow the argument at all, but have only looked at the paper quickly. Still, if this is ground breaking new physics, you read it here first.
* If you are interested in the "fine tuning of the universe" issue, Catalyst on the ABC had a pretty good 30 minute summary last week, which features some short interviews from some of the big names in physics. There are the more extended interviews with them here, I think, although I haven't watched them yet.
I saw from the show that Paul Davies, who moved from Adelaide University to Arizonia State University (he seems to showing greater affinity for "dry and remote" as he ages) finds a sort of backwards causation causation appealing, although I don't really understand the mechanism he thinks might work. As Frank Tipler's similar idea, that the future God causes the past, seems to have sunk under the experimental finding of the mass of the Higgs boson, I should look up what Davies is saying on the topic.
Sunday, September 01, 2013
That was un-necessary
I liked a couple of recent articles about the [lack of] merit in much modern writing.
The first, in the Fairfax Good Weekend magazine (get your digital subscription now, and be hip and fight the Murdoch hegemony, like me) is about a spate of 20-something "hyperconfessional" women writing autobiographies, sometimes making much money in the process. The question is - should any 25 year old who has done nothing extraordinary really think they should be writing autobiography? The obvious answer is "no":
The first, in the Fairfax Good Weekend magazine (get your digital subscription now, and be hip and fight the Murdoch hegemony, like me) is about a spate of 20-something "hyperconfessional" women writing autobiographies, sometimes making much money in the process. The question is - should any 25 year old who has done nothing extraordinary really think they should be writing autobiography? The obvious answer is "no":
Summerlandish reads like an engaging blog; the prose is restless and flecked with Gen-Y pop-culture references, as if Carrie Bradshaw wrote it after a night in with a bottle of Prosecco and The O.C. box set. She has the "cute girl with the dirty mouth" routine down pat. A certain audience will love it. But good or bad, the question remains: is Summerlandish necessary? Are any of these 20-something memoirs necessary? If acclaimed British singer Adele, 25, could turn down a seven-figure book deal because she felt she was too young to say much of anything, what do these Oscar-less, Grammy-less writers think they can offer the world?
Disagreement with the Uncertainty Queen
Learning From the Hiatus | Climate Abyss | a Chron.com blog
Judith Curry's "blown mind"about the recent paper on the East Pacific being behind the hiatus in global surface temperatures has been criticised as in error by conservative climatologist John Neilsen-Gammon. His post above contains a detailed look at the issue, and is not all easily understood, but his strong belief that Curry is wrong is clear.
I still expect others to weigh in on this.
Judith Curry's "blown mind"about the recent paper on the East Pacific being behind the hiatus in global surface temperatures has been criticised as in error by conservative climatologist John Neilsen-Gammon. His post above contains a detailed look at the issue, and is not all easily understood, but his strong belief that Curry is wrong is clear.
I still expect others to weigh in on this.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
But it's a dis-aster
Life is much better under Labor after all, says study
From the above article:
Politicians of both persuasions will always, during election campaigns, claim that they know "families are doing it tough". But that's just politics. John Quiggin had a column recently about the false perceptions that flourish and why, and ended with this:
Amazingly, too, I note how little attention there has been in the media (and how unsuccessful Labor has been in talking about) the reductions in government family support the Coalition is committed to (such as ending the School Kids bonus) while at the same time promising that families will be $500 a year better off because of the carbon tax going.
Families, do your maths!
From the above article:
Politicians of both persuasions will always, during election campaigns, claim that they know "families are doing it tough". But that's just politics. John Quiggin had a column recently about the false perceptions that flourish and why, and ended with this:
Another possible explanation of the ‘doing it tough’ perception arises from inconsistent responses to price variation. Despite sustained low inflation and falling interest rates, many Australians perceive themselves as facing ‘cost of living’ pressures. Over the past decade some highly salient prices such as the retail price of electricity have risen sharply, but consumption continued to grow until recently, driven largely by the increased use of airconditioning. By contrast the cost of telecommunications services has fallen , but households have responded to lower prices and the availability of new products by increasing their total expenditure. It is easy enough, though misleading, to see this as a story of ever-increasing bills for everything.
Despite all of these partial explanations, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the ‘doing it tough’ perception is nothing more than a manifestation of some of our less appealing human propensities: envy and chronic dissatisfaction. This can be seen all the way up the income scale, to the point of British bankers who complain that they can’t live on a million pounds (roughly 2 million dollars) a year.
News media have an obvious commercial interest in telling stories that make their audiences feel victimised, and politicians have made the judgement that telling voters the truth is too costly. At current rates of growth, incomes will double by 2050, but we will doubtless still be living on Struggle Street.
Amazingly, too, I note how little attention there has been in the media (and how unsuccessful Labor has been in talking about) the reductions in government family support the Coalition is committed to (such as ending the School Kids bonus) while at the same time promising that families will be $500 a year better off because of the carbon tax going.
Families, do your maths!
Introduced last year, the bonus provides eligible families with $410 a year for each child in primary school and $820 for each in high school.If you intend voting Coalition, you probably think you are "doing it tough" and that your electricity bill is a dis-aster. Yet if you have kids at school, this one item alone shows, what the Coalition "gives" is going to be more than taken away.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Good news
Remember the awesome trailer for Gravity? The movie has opened in Venice, to pretty much ecstatic reviews.
It's a must see for me....
It's a must see for me....
Labor policies people might like, if they ever heard about them
Amongst all the "it's a disaster!" analysis coming from News Ltd and Fairfax and now even Lenore Taylor at the Guardian (Lenore, pull yourself together!), it seems to me there are some policy things that are more Labor than Coalition, and which most common sense people would support, with little need for explanation:
1. an emphasis on high speed rail from Sydney to Canberra, and then perhaps Sydney to Newcastle. The Sydney to Canberra route is particularly apt - the distance seems too short for a plane flight, it takes too long to get through the outskirts of Sydney in a car, and people are always going to need to travel there. If the train connected to Sydney Airport, it would be perfect. Why doesn't someone commit to that, at least?
2. the commitment to bring some Navy ship construction forward at Williamstown. Everyone thinks we should be able to build ships, don't they? It's manufacturing, it's a bit high-techy; it's the next best thing to having an aircraft industry.
3. the support to the car industry. Everyone sensible likes the fact that we can design and build cars, and I gather that lots of countries give support to car builders in one way or another. The Coalition presumably thinks it is quite OK that we attempt to emulate New Zealand, which is trying to build an economy on making frozen food, soap and Hobbit films, as far as I can make out. The way the Coalition is going about the FBT has let them off the media scrutiny hook on this one - it's a disgrace.
The other odd thing is that ideas which Rudd has flown seem to be being treated in media talk as if they would actually happen - the Northern Territory tax reduction, and the wholesale removal of the Navy from Garden Island. In fact, these were kite flying exercises and don't need to be treated all that seriously. There is plenty of scope for them not to happen at all, or on reduced scale.
But no, it's a disaster.
1. an emphasis on high speed rail from Sydney to Canberra, and then perhaps Sydney to Newcastle. The Sydney to Canberra route is particularly apt - the distance seems too short for a plane flight, it takes too long to get through the outskirts of Sydney in a car, and people are always going to need to travel there. If the train connected to Sydney Airport, it would be perfect. Why doesn't someone commit to that, at least?
2. the commitment to bring some Navy ship construction forward at Williamstown. Everyone thinks we should be able to build ships, don't they? It's manufacturing, it's a bit high-techy; it's the next best thing to having an aircraft industry.
3. the support to the car industry. Everyone sensible likes the fact that we can design and build cars, and I gather that lots of countries give support to car builders in one way or another. The Coalition presumably thinks it is quite OK that we attempt to emulate New Zealand, which is trying to build an economy on making frozen food, soap and Hobbit films, as far as I can make out. The way the Coalition is going about the FBT has let them off the media scrutiny hook on this one - it's a disgrace.
The other odd thing is that ideas which Rudd has flown seem to be being treated in media talk as if they would actually happen - the Northern Territory tax reduction, and the wholesale removal of the Navy from Garden Island. In fact, these were kite flying exercises and don't need to be treated all that seriously. There is plenty of scope for them not to happen at all, or on reduced scale.
But no, it's a disaster.
Pretty much how I see it
From The Economist:
The choice between a man with a defective manifesto and one with a defective personality is not appealing—but Mr Rudd gets our vote, largely because of Labor’s decent record. With deficits approaching, his numbers look more likely to add up than Mr Abbott’s. Despite his high-handed style, Mr Rudd is a Blairite centrist. A strategic thinker about Asia, he has skills that will be useful, especially as Australia has to balance its economic dependence on China with its security dependence on America. It would be nice if he revived his liberal approach to asylum-seekers. And, who knows, he may even live up to his promise to be less vile to his colleagues.
An upset possum
The Possum who runs Pollytics is very cranky about the reporting of the costing issue yesterday. It is fun to read an argument between two furry animals:
Surely the problem that Possum alludes to is the "sound bite-ese" which is used in all political reporting, but particularly at election time. That elevates an exaggerated bit of rhetoric into an unqualified claim, and both sides of politics both use it, and are victims of it, all the time. (Even Malcolm Turnbull, who has been happy to repeat a claimed $90 billion plus estimate for the NBN many times, completely without running through the questionable assumptions.) But this time, an out of context Rudd made some public servants worry that people might think they had been used inappropriately, and they made it clear they hadn't.
Meanwhile, the fact that the Coalition is playing silly buggers with paper that is already in their hands gets ignored in headlines.
Surely the problem that Possum alludes to is the "sound bite-ese" which is used in all political reporting, but particularly at election time. That elevates an exaggerated bit of rhetoric into an unqualified claim, and both sides of politics both use it, and are victims of it, all the time. (Even Malcolm Turnbull, who has been happy to repeat a claimed $90 billion plus estimate for the NBN many times, completely without running through the questionable assumptions.) But this time, an out of context Rudd made some public servants worry that people might think they had been used inappropriately, and they made it clear they hadn't.
Meanwhile, the fact that the Coalition is playing silly buggers with paper that is already in their hands gets ignored in headlines.
Free Advertising
Having paid for a digital subscription to Fairfax, I have put the App on the Samsung and iPad at home.
I had previously used the apps without paying for the subscription, and found the advertising intrusive and the navigation a bit annoying.
The subscription makes it a much, much better experience, and my wife is happy that she a supply of suduko.
Go on. Do it.
I had previously used the apps without paying for the subscription, and found the advertising intrusive and the navigation a bit annoying.
The subscription makes it a much, much better experience, and my wife is happy that she a supply of suduko.
Go on. Do it.
Headlines, headlines
Fairfax has had its fair share of "it's a disaster for Rudd!" headlines this campaign too; often with the headline sounding more extreme than the article itself.
And Tim Colebatch, who I have been quoting a lot over the last 12 months, actually said at the Hockey/Bowen press club debate on Tuesday that he assumed Hockey would be Treasurer.
So is it much surprise that he is running a "it's an absolute disaster!" column today about the costings issue yesterday?
It's interesting this self fulfilling prophesy business. I suggested a couple of times at places like John Quiggin's blog that if you keep talking down how Gillard is a failure, of course you're helping the public perception of that and assuring a Labor loss, even when you think the Coalition would be the true disaster.
It's also interesting how clearly David Koch on Sunrise this morning was doing what I would do - telling Hockey, who has transformed himself into a unlikeable s*#% for the purpose of getting government, that the real problem here is that the Coalition is sitting on papers which they claim support them, and could release them anytime to support their argument. The Coalition is hiding its assumptions, except, it would appear, to selected friendly journalists.
Mind you, Rudd himself did this in 2007. He faked his way into government, and Abbott and Hockey are doing exactly the same this time.
I was unhappy in 2007; I am very unhappy now, because the Coalition will seek to disassemble some decent policies and replace them with crap ones.
And Tim Colebatch, who I have been quoting a lot over the last 12 months, actually said at the Hockey/Bowen press club debate on Tuesday that he assumed Hockey would be Treasurer.
So is it much surprise that he is running a "it's an absolute disaster!" column today about the costings issue yesterday?
It's interesting this self fulfilling prophesy business. I suggested a couple of times at places like John Quiggin's blog that if you keep talking down how Gillard is a failure, of course you're helping the public perception of that and assuring a Labor loss, even when you think the Coalition would be the true disaster.
It's also interesting how clearly David Koch on Sunrise this morning was doing what I would do - telling Hockey, who has transformed himself into a unlikeable s*#% for the purpose of getting government, that the real problem here is that the Coalition is sitting on papers which they claim support them, and could release them anytime to support their argument. The Coalition is hiding its assumptions, except, it would appear, to selected friendly journalists.
Mind you, Rudd himself did this in 2007. He faked his way into government, and Abbott and Hockey are doing exactly the same this time.
I was unhappy in 2007; I am very unhappy now, because the Coalition will seek to disassemble some decent policies and replace them with crap ones.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
The Coalition trusts Rupert, but not you?
So, according to The Australian, Treasury is perhaps a bit peeved that Rudd is using some figures they did before the election was called to contradict Coalition costings of savings. But, says Treasury, their work wasn't a true costing of Coalition policy: it was more a hypothetical exercise and different assumptions would give different results.
OK.
But here's the thing: The Australian is saying it has seen the Parliamentary Budget Office costings on public servant cuts that Abbott and Hockey are refusing to release. (Maybe next week you'll some of their work?):
I think I should assume that the Coalition is leaking to Rupert what they won't give directly to the public.
How ridiculous is that?
OK.
But here's the thing: The Australian is saying it has seen the Parliamentary Budget Office costings on public servant cuts that Abbott and Hockey are refusing to release. (Maybe next week you'll some of their work?):
The costing, seen by The Australian, assumes that natural attrition would see the size of the federal public service cut by 6,000 positions by June 2014 and another 6,000 by September 2015.So who leaked this to The Australian - the surest source of a sympathetic account for the Coalition that is possible?
I think I should assume that the Coalition is leaking to Rupert what they won't give directly to the public.
How ridiculous is that?
It is done....
Inspired by the appalling standards of the Murdoch press (and, I have to admit, the paywall that kicks in after 30 visits in a month) I have just for the first time ever paid for a digital news subscription to Fairfax.
Go on, join me. Keep alternatives to Murdoch alive (at least while ever Gina isn't telling them what to write.)
But please - don't pay for the AFR with their Murdoch escapee Stutchbury. He should not have been let into the place.
New subscribers will be sent my entertaining video "Hey Kids! Make your own Tony Abbott Voodoo Doll!" in time for the election.
Go on, join me. Keep alternatives to Murdoch alive (at least while ever Gina isn't telling them what to write.)
But please - don't pay for the AFR with their Murdoch escapee Stutchbury. He should not have been let into the place.
New subscribers will be sent my entertaining video "Hey Kids! Make your own Tony Abbott Voodoo Doll!" in time for the election.
Short answer: no, they don't
Do Hockey's clean energy cuts add-up? | Business Spectator
Read it for some explanation of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and how Coalition claims of where money will be saved is on very, very shaky grounds.
Read it for some explanation of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and how Coalition claims of where money will be saved is on very, very shaky grounds.
Andrew's band of twits
Cooling ocean blamed for hiding missing warming | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
You have to wonder: does Andrew Bolt take pride in being the ringleader for a band of followers who don't have a clue about science, and aren't bright enough to even realise they don't have a clue about science?
Read some of the comments following the article for illustration. It's gobsmacking.
Mind you, I reckon Judith Curry is about to get some heavy smackdown from other climate scientists for her [mis] interpretation of the implications of the study, too.
Sometimes, it's quite OK to not understand
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub has noted this letter from the Financial Times:
From Mr. K N Al-Sabah.Which is a relief. I mean, my lack of knowledge of the geo-political significance of this civil war is now fully justified as being one of those things just a handful of my fellow citizens probably understand. (And note, the letter doesn't even mention Russia backing Assad.)
Sir,
Iran is backing Assad. Gulf states are against Assad!
Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi.
But Gulf states are pro-Sisi! Which means they are against Muslim Brotherhood!
Iran is pro-Hamas, but Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood!
Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the US!
Gulf states are pro-US. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro-Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states!
Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.
K N Al-Sabah
London EC4, UK
History to drink to
Gin and tonic kept the British Empire healthy: The drink’s quinine powder was vital for stopping the spread of malaria. - Slate Magazine
I didn't realise the full extent of quinine's historical importance:
I didn't realise the full extent of quinine's historical importance:
Quinine powder quickly became critical to the health of the empire. By the 1840s British citizens and soldiers in India were using 700 tons of cinchona bark annually for their protective doses of quinine. Quinine powder kept the troops alive, allowed officials to survive in low-lying and wet regions of India, and ultimately permitted a stable (though surprisingly small) British population to prosper in Britain’s tropical colonies. Quinine was so bitter, though, that British officials stationed in India and other tropical posts took to mixing the powder with soda and sugar. “Tonic water,” of a sort, was born.
And another bit of quirky history from the article:Still, tonic water was basically a home brew until an enterprising Brit named Erasmus Bond introduced the first commercial tonic water in 1858—perhaps not coincidentally, the very same year the British government ousted the East India Co. and took over direct control of India, following the so-called Sepoy Mutiny, a violent rebellion and counterattack.
Bond’s new tonic was soon followed by Schweppes’ introduction, in 1870, of “Indian Quinine Tonic,” a product specifically aimed at the growing market of overseas British who, every day, had to take a preventative dose of quinine. Schweppes and other commercial tonics proliferated both in the colonies and, eventually, back in Britain itself.
Quinine proved as critical to the battle over the Pacific in the second world war as it had to the struggle over India. As Amy Stewart notes in her new book, The Drunken Botanist, Japan seized Java, the home of huge cinchona plantations, from the Dutch in 1942, cutting off nearly all of the Allied supply of quinine. The last American plane to fly out of the Philippines before it fell to the Japanese carried some 4 million quinine seeds. Unfortunately, the effort was largely in vain: The trees grew too slowly to provide sufficient quinine to the Allied war effort.
Some more skepticism needed
Abbott to hit business with hikes
Apart from Colebatch's column linked above, there seems to be little in the way of commentary about on whom the Coalition's claimed savings are falling.
In fact, there seems to be little skepticism about the claim that the Paid Parental Leave plan would actually save money in the long run. To give just one example, I'm pretty sure that in the summary Hockey provided, it made mention of savings from double dipping being reduced in State public service schemes. How does that work? Why is a saving to a State budget being credited to a Federal bottom line?
But back to Colebatch:
Apart from Colebatch's column linked above, there seems to be little in the way of commentary about on whom the Coalition's claimed savings are falling.
In fact, there seems to be little skepticism about the claim that the Paid Parental Leave plan would actually save money in the long run. To give just one example, I'm pretty sure that in the summary Hockey provided, it made mention of savings from double dipping being reduced in State public service schemes. How does that work? Why is a saving to a State budget being credited to a Federal bottom line?
But back to Colebatch:
The Coalition will pay for its campaign promises by raising taxes on business, cutting support for middle-income and low-income earners, and cutting environmental programs, under the list of savings given out by shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey and shadow finance minister Andrew Robb....
The decision to hit business - mostly small business - with $4.6 billion of tax hikes was politically shrewd. Not one business lobby came forward on Wednesday to criticise the Coalition's new taxes on its members. They would have screamed had Labor done the same.
The Coalition made its riskiest cuts known long ago, and they don't seem to have hurt it.
The savings claimed are surprisingly large - $4.6 billion from axing the Schoolkids' Bonus, $3.7 billion from scrapping superannuation contributions for low-income earners and $5.2 billion from cutting 12,000 public service jobs.
These claimed savings are higher than previous estimates, even by the Coalition. It was a surprise to learn that the Coalition will over-fund its controversial paid parental leave scheme by $1.1 billion in its first two years. The policy it released two weeks ago made no such claim.
There are some errors in Hockey's costings. Innovation Minister Kim Carr pointed out that the Coalition could not claw back the $680 million it claims from axing two business programs without breaking contracts: the money it already committed.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Save a bit of money now, pay more later
Can Australia afford the Coalition’s NBN?
No doubt the writer is biased, but this article does set out in pretty good detail the reasons I have read elsewhere why the Coalition's planned revision to the NBN is not technically or financially a good idea.
No doubt the writer is biased, but this article does set out in pretty good detail the reasons I have read elsewhere why the Coalition's planned revision to the NBN is not technically or financially a good idea.
Hint to Kevin Rudd No2
Kevin, a politician who has a video in circulation containing what seems like 5 minutes of swearing to the camera and room in frustration at not being as good at something as you thought you were should not talk about the poor temperament of your opponent.
The way to attack Tony Abbott on how he would conduct foreign affairs is to note that he's never shown much interest in the topic, as Peter Costello said about him with respect to economics; he would take over-simplified lines with no nuance ("Go Israel!" would be the guiding principle for anything to do with the Middle East, just as it is with the Tea Party), and he keeps putting his foot in his mouth with odd comments on all matters. (What was that line about "maybe you shouldn't be there" in reference to being king hit in Kings Cross at 2 am all about?)
The way to attack Tony Abbott on how he would conduct foreign affairs is to note that he's never shown much interest in the topic, as Peter Costello said about him with respect to economics; he would take over-simplified lines with no nuance ("Go Israel!" would be the guiding principle for anything to do with the Middle East, just as it is with the Tea Party), and he keeps putting his foot in his mouth with odd comments on all matters. (What was that line about "maybe you shouldn't be there" in reference to being king hit in Kings Cross at 2 am all about?)
Well, that's odd
I could have sworn I heard Judith Sloan on the Drum last week saying something about how she was writing a column about all the ways she considered the Coalition's Paid Parental Leave scheme a bad idea.
So what do we get today? A Sloan column that boosts the suggestion that the PPL will not actually cost any money to the budget at all! So, does that mean you actually like the policy now, Judith? One could be excused for thinking so. (And by the way, you caused a bit of a stir a year or two ago amongst Labor types by talking about how it probably made sense to increase unemployment benefits. I haven't seen that mentioned in an Australian column for a long time - or did it ever appear there?)
The headline to her column, which she presumably did not come up with personally, is of the "Ha! Take that Rudd!" variety, which is very, very popular at the Australian at the moment.
If a photo like this was real, the Murdoch headlines would be:
So what do we get today? A Sloan column that boosts the suggestion that the PPL will not actually cost any money to the budget at all! So, does that mean you actually like the policy now, Judith? One could be excused for thinking so. (And by the way, you caused a bit of a stir a year or two ago amongst Labor types by talking about how it probably made sense to increase unemployment benefits. I haven't seen that mentioned in an Australian column for a long time - or did it ever appear there?)
The headline to her column, which she presumably did not come up with personally, is of the "Ha! Take that Rudd!" variety, which is very, very popular at the Australian at the moment.
If a photo like this was real, the Murdoch headlines would be:
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Looks familiar
Record-breaking floods in Russia force thousands to evacuate - ABC News
The story carries this photo, which looks remarkably like much of Australia in 2011:
Actually, the long buildings also put me in mind of the scenery in the zombie infected world of DayZ, which I have played a bit with my son in the last 6 months. I've never written an appreciation of that game - I should do so one day.
The story carries this photo, which looks remarkably like much of Australia in 2011:
Actually, the long buildings also put me in mind of the scenery in the zombie infected world of DayZ, which I have played a bit with my son in the last 6 months. I've never written an appreciation of that game - I should do so one day.
Some good Krugman
This Age of Bubbles - NYTimes.com
I've been forgetting to check in on Paul Krugman. (How I wish he lived here for some clear and erudite commentary on what passes for economic policy in the Coalition now!)
The column at the link above notes the renewed economic worries in India and Brazil. He doesn't think it will cause a world meltdown, but sounds slightly nervous. (He expressed worries about China recently too. From a lay man's point of view, the publicity that it has recently had with its "ghost" empty cities has certainly made me think - surely this is a bad sign.)
But he writes with common sense on most topics he touches. Have a look at his post on Microsoft and Apple, for example. I feel pretty much the same.
He's also taken delight in noting that changes to Singaporean health system will no longer make it the free market poster child for health that US Republicans used to claim it was.
As for his summary of the current state of American politics:
I've been forgetting to check in on Paul Krugman. (How I wish he lived here for some clear and erudite commentary on what passes for economic policy in the Coalition now!)
The column at the link above notes the renewed economic worries in India and Brazil. He doesn't think it will cause a world meltdown, but sounds slightly nervous. (He expressed worries about China recently too. From a lay man's point of view, the publicity that it has recently had with its "ghost" empty cities has certainly made me think - surely this is a bad sign.)
But he writes with common sense on most topics he touches. Have a look at his post on Microsoft and Apple, for example. I feel pretty much the same.
He's also taken delight in noting that changes to Singaporean health system will no longer make it the free market poster child for health that US Republicans used to claim it was.
As for his summary of the current state of American politics:
If you haven’t been reading the political blogs much — say, Greg Sargent — you may not have a sense of just how dire the political environment is. But here’s the situation. You have a Republican base that truly believes that guaranteed health insurance is the work of the devil. Meanwhile, there’s a Republican majority in the House that owes its position not to broad popular support — Democrats actually got more votes in 2012 — but to a district map that concentrates Democrats in a minority of districts, which in turn means that most Rs are more afraid of Tea Party challengers than outraged independents.How depressing...
And the debt ceiling looms, with many ideologues assuring the base that Obama can be bullied into gutting his main achievement, which he won’t.
Everyone seems to assume that this will be worked out somehow, but nobody has even a halfway plausible story about how this will be done. Default looks like a real risk.
Hint to Kevin Rudd
Stop announcing things that appear to be, or are, all your own idea.
That was the problem with you the first time around.
You must emphasise the consultative process by which you came to a policy or initiative. Assuming you did consult.
And if you didn't consult with more than Bruce Hawker or your daughter or son - do not announce the policy or initiative at all.
That was the problem with you the first time around.
You must emphasise the consultative process by which you came to a policy or initiative. Assuming you did consult.
And if you didn't consult with more than Bruce Hawker or your daughter or son - do not announce the policy or initiative at all.
Piffle
Why Abbott is right to abandon surplus promise
Geoffrey Garrett is saying Tony Abbott is doing the right thing in abandoning a promise to get the budget back into surplus in a few years.
What piffle.
Everyone knows that the "budget emergency" will be declared worse than they thought, and that greater public service and spending cuts than claimed will be made in all of the areas a large slab of the Coalition thinks it is having a "cultural war" with - climate change, science generally, education - in particular.
Abbott should be given credit for shifting on nothing in the run up to this election.
Geoffrey Garrett is saying Tony Abbott is doing the right thing in abandoning a promise to get the budget back into surplus in a few years.
What piffle.
Everyone knows that the "budget emergency" will be declared worse than they thought, and that greater public service and spending cuts than claimed will be made in all of the areas a large slab of the Coalition thinks it is having a "cultural war" with - climate change, science generally, education - in particular.
Abbott should be given credit for shifting on nothing in the run up to this election.
Yurt thoughts
I am having the strongest feeling that I should be designing an "urban yurt", a bit like the "urban sombrero" from Seinfeld...
I think it's an idea I could "sell" to Clive Palmer.
I think it's an idea I could "sell" to Clive Palmer.
A tired genre considered
Why does live-action fantasy fail at the movies?
I've never been keen on the fantasy story genre, and this is not a bad discussion about why so many of them fail as movies.
(And despite the success of a few movie series in the genre, the article notes that those are based on already fabulously popular novels, thus helping ensure their audience on screen. I still say Lord of the Rings is boring, though, in book or on screen.)
I've never been keen on the fantasy story genre, and this is not a bad discussion about why so many of them fail as movies.
(And despite the success of a few movie series in the genre, the article notes that those are based on already fabulously popular novels, thus helping ensure their audience on screen. I still say Lord of the Rings is boring, though, in book or on screen.)
Free campaign advice
1. Kevin Rudd: stop going to childcare centres and talking to children about infrastructure projects:
2. Tony Abbott: stop bringing up sex appeal when talking to or about women:
On second thoughts, Tony: please, keep talking to women about how great it is to be women in a workplace dominated by men. I'm really interested, as are the women of Australia.
ASHLEY HALL: Playing with building blocks offered him the chance to share a campaign slogan.Oh please...
KEVIN RUDD: We're just going to keep building up, because we've got to build things up, haven't we? Making sure we are building and building for the future.
2. Tony Abbott: stop bringing up sex appeal when talking to or about women:
On second thoughts, Tony: please, keep talking to women about how great it is to be women in a workplace dominated by men. I'm really interested, as are the women of Australia.
In short: it's complicated
Improving the scientific foundations for estimating health risks from the Fukushima incident
The article points out the complications with trying to work out the risk from radioactive fallout on humans. It seems to be written by someone mostly concerned that risk is probably always being over-estimated, but it does end with a call for some hard work to be put in on the issue.
In any event, if you are a parent with kids in an area around Fukushima, of course you are going to lean towards the side of caution.
The article points out the complications with trying to work out the risk from radioactive fallout on humans. It seems to be written by someone mostly concerned that risk is probably always being over-estimated, but it does end with a call for some hard work to be put in on the issue.
In any event, if you are a parent with kids in an area around Fukushima, of course you are going to lean towards the side of caution.
Monday, August 26, 2013
NBN talk
I noticed this blog a few weeks ago, that takes a very technical and detailed look at the NBN and the Coalition's alternative, and falls very heavily in favour of fibre to the premises and hence the NBN.
I've always been unsure whether the NBN was really worth it. But the fact is, it seems hard to find people with detailed knowledge in IT and communications who doubt that the NBN is a good investment that will last many, many decades.
On this basis, I've stopped worrying about it.
I've always been unsure whether the NBN was really worth it. But the fact is, it seems hard to find people with detailed knowledge in IT and communications who doubt that the NBN is a good investment that will last many, many decades.
On this basis, I've stopped worrying about it.
And now for something completely different (well, not really) - some anti-Coalition stories
1. Lenore Taylor has a great explanation of the obviously calculated Abbott bulldust that he's the guy who's trying to rise above tawdry politics:
For three years he conducted a relentless, deliberate and effective negative campaign against the Gillard government, a campaign at times so aggressive that many on his own side were deeply concerned it was causing irreparable damage to voter perceptions of Abbott himself.And, as I have noted before, the tactics being used against Rudd this time are those he used against Howard:
But with negative views of Labor’s record apparently entrenched – aided, it must be said, by Labor’s own self-destructive leadership saga – Abbott is flipping to positive just in time.
Slowly but surely his personal approval ratings are improving. He has toned down the attacks. His colleagues and his daughters talk about his “authenticity” as a community member and a family man. They label Rudd a “fake”.
And all the while Abbott refuses to deviate from his strategy of claiming to have a “real plan” without setting out what it is and how it will be paid for in anything like the detail provided by previous oppositions.
The last time we saw “the flip” exercised with such confidence and dexterity was in Rudd’s campaign launch speech in 2007, when he managed to flip the economic management debate to one where John Howard, who had just presided over 11 years of consecutive growth and record low unemployment, was on the defensive over the economy.2. Lenore also had a good column a few days ago about the Coalition's deliberate delays to disclose funding for policies:
Rudd had made $45bn in spending promises during the formal campaign, just $5bn less than Howard's $50bn in campaign promises, but when Rudd told the party faithful “this reckless spending must stop” he looked like the competent and frugal economic manager.
.... while oppositions of both persuasions have tried to game the formal costings processes, individual policies have almost always been released with their full price tags detailed over four years.3. Abbott's mysteriously unanalysed by Rupert's papers "let's go to Indonesia and buy boats!' scheme has apparently not gone over well in that country:
The Coalition's health policy, released on Thursday, had one line under costings which read: "The Coalition's policy to support Australia's health system will cost $340m over the forward estimates." Some of that – we were told on "background" – would come from cuts inside the health portfolio, and some from "elsewhere". In other words: they'll get back to us.
The "PBO has still got our homework" schtick has also worn thin since the Coalition has been telling us for months they already have everything fully costed and figured out.
The "Labor is running a scare campaign" excuse worked for a little while – aided by the ALP's silly insistence on using the $70bn figure for the Coalition's costings black hole, which by a quick reckoning is clearly overstated.
The buyback plan has met with heavy resistance in Jakarta, with a senior member of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's ruling coalition saying it showed Mr Abbott lacked understanding of Indonesia, and the broader asylum-seeker problem.
Mahfudz Siddiq, the head of Indonesia's parliamentary commission for foreign affairs, said on Monday that it was Mr Abbott's right to suggest the policy but warned that it had broader implications for the relationship between Jakarta and Australia.
"It's an unfriendly idea coming from a candidate who wants to be Australian leader," Mr Siddiq said.
"That idea shows how he sees things as [an] Australian politician on Indonesia regarding people smuggling. Don't look at us, Indonesia, like we want this people smuggling.
"This is really a crazy idea, unfriendly, derogatory and it shows lack of understanding in this matter."
Quick! Send us money! These cigars don't buy themselves, you know...
Interesting report at The Age on Sunday about the IPA.
For a "think tank" (using the term loosely) whose executive and members get a lot of screen time on the ABC and columns in the Murdoch press and elsewhere, it's always handy to read how they're viewed more broadly. Their mere ubiquity gives an impression of credibility.
The main point of the article, though, is that it seems many prominent corporations who used to support them no longer will, because they recognise that it devotes a lot of effort to running a nutty extremist climate change denying line.
At the same time, they are doing very well financially due to a recent surge in donations. We still don't know who the corporate donors are, although it is openly acknowledged that Gina Rinehart helps fund it. (That's no surprise: their "we think everyone should be on a level playing field, except when it comes to those parts of Australian our favourite billionaire Gina Rinehart invests in" policy made that obvious.)
The article says British Tobacco was (or is still - it's not clear) a donor. That's not news, really, but it's worthwhile reminding people when you get IPA mouthpieces like Chris Berg rubbishing cigarette plain packaging in the media. Mind you, Chris Berg was also writing in 2010 that internet material for terrorist bomb making was not really worth worrying about:
You don't have to be wrong about terrorism, climate change, stagflation, the health effect of wind turbines, and tobacco plain packaging to work for/be associated with the IPA, but it certainly helps.
In any event, it's amusing to read the reaction Andrew Bolt which I will now paraphrase as follows:
"Look! The Age says the IPA are corporate shills, but then admits that more money comes from donations! Stand up, everyone, and be proud that the IPA has become a mutual support club for climate change nutters, and for people like me who do lousy research on aboriginal issues and then get taken to court and lose and want to act like a martyr for the next 2 years.
And send money - more money! The price of freedom, especially my freedom to do lousy research via Google and ridicule people based on mistake, is not cheap!"
What Andrew doesn't address is how much more money the place needs. I see that, after a fairly lengthy delay, the IPA financials for 2011/12 are finally available (I have been checking for them for the last year or so.)
They indicate that in 2011, it received $562,000 in donations; in 2012: $2,612,000. How much of that is loose change from Gina's deep pockets is not clear. (And seriously, Andrew Bolt, do you think a donation from any body controlled by Gina should not be counted as effectively coming from a corporate interest?)
Total income went from $2.4 million to $4 million.
The current year income surplus after expenses went from $217,000 to $313,000, with a total retained surplus of $1.544 million.
And yet, Andrew Bolt and Sinclair Davidson have been big on asking for donations over the last year or so, and there is no doubt that the martyrdom of Andrew Bolt played big with his fanbase.
So, yeah, the anti-mooching "think tank" is very big on panhandling. Even though I would have expected the cigars for the board meetings are free....*
And Tony Abbott says that the IPA "...has supported capitalism, but capitalism with a conscience."
Yeah, sure. To put it at its most charitable, Abbott is living in the past.
To be less charitable, and more realistic: he's a dill who doesn't know who to listen to....
* reliable details from John Roskam to dissuade me of how I like to imagine meetings there are welcome. I wonder how many ex smokers are on staff too.
For a "think tank" (using the term loosely) whose executive and members get a lot of screen time on the ABC and columns in the Murdoch press and elsewhere, it's always handy to read how they're viewed more broadly. Their mere ubiquity gives an impression of credibility.
The main point of the article, though, is that it seems many prominent corporations who used to support them no longer will, because they recognise that it devotes a lot of effort to running a nutty extremist climate change denying line.
At the same time, they are doing very well financially due to a recent surge in donations. We still don't know who the corporate donors are, although it is openly acknowledged that Gina Rinehart helps fund it. (That's no surprise: their "we think everyone should be on a level playing field, except when it comes to those parts of Australian our favourite billionaire Gina Rinehart invests in" policy made that obvious.)
The article says British Tobacco was (or is still - it's not clear) a donor. That's not news, really, but it's worthwhile reminding people when you get IPA mouthpieces like Chris Berg rubbishing cigarette plain packaging in the media. Mind you, Chris Berg was also writing in 2010 that internet material for terrorist bomb making was not really worth worrying about:
When they're not utterly stupid, they are oddly banal. Another Inspire recommendation is to shoot up lunch spots that are popular with government workers. So in a decade, al-Qaeda has gone from targeting the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - the two symbolic organs of American power - to threatening Starbucks outlets one at a time.That was, of course, before the Boston bombings killed 3 people and maimed and injured 264 others.
Then there is ''Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom'', which suggests repurposing a home pressure cooker to become an explosive device. Such a device is weak, apparently, so the magazine recommends it is placed ''close to the intended targets''.
It is surprisingly hard to detonate explosives successfully.
You don't have to be wrong about terrorism, climate change, stagflation, the health effect of wind turbines, and tobacco plain packaging to work for/be associated with the IPA, but it certainly helps.
In any event, it's amusing to read the reaction Andrew Bolt which I will now paraphrase as follows:
"Look! The Age says the IPA are corporate shills, but then admits that more money comes from donations! Stand up, everyone, and be proud that the IPA has become a mutual support club for climate change nutters, and for people like me who do lousy research on aboriginal issues and then get taken to court and lose and want to act like a martyr for the next 2 years.
And send money - more money! The price of freedom, especially my freedom to do lousy research via Google and ridicule people based on mistake, is not cheap!"
What Andrew doesn't address is how much more money the place needs. I see that, after a fairly lengthy delay, the IPA financials for 2011/12 are finally available (I have been checking for them for the last year or so.)
They indicate that in 2011, it received $562,000 in donations; in 2012: $2,612,000. How much of that is loose change from Gina's deep pockets is not clear. (And seriously, Andrew Bolt, do you think a donation from any body controlled by Gina should not be counted as effectively coming from a corporate interest?)
Total income went from $2.4 million to $4 million.
The current year income surplus after expenses went from $217,000 to $313,000, with a total retained surplus of $1.544 million.
And yet, Andrew Bolt and Sinclair Davidson have been big on asking for donations over the last year or so, and there is no doubt that the martyrdom of Andrew Bolt played big with his fanbase.
So, yeah, the anti-mooching "think tank" is very big on panhandling. Even though I would have expected the cigars for the board meetings are free....*
And Tony Abbott says that the IPA "...has supported capitalism, but capitalism with a conscience."
Yeah, sure. To put it at its most charitable, Abbott is living in the past.
To be less charitable, and more realistic: he's a dill who doesn't know who to listen to....
* reliable details from John Roskam to dissuade me of how I like to imagine meetings there are welcome. I wonder how many ex smokers are on staff too.
Another Jericho
Wage rise blowout a figment of Coalition’s imagination | Business | theguardian.com
Another good, clear column from Greg Jericho here, with lots of graphs, and ending with this summary:
Another good, clear column from Greg Jericho here, with lots of graphs, and ending with this summary:
For the past six years there has been a lot of hoo-hah said and written about industrial relations. As soon as the ALP moved to change IR legislation, warnings came from the Liberal party and conservative commentators of a wages boom. They also warned that the Fair Work Act would destroy productivity.
It didn’t.
In his campaign launch speech on Sunday, Tony Abbott talked of returning IR to the “sensible centre”. It’s a claim based on the view that unions now have too much power. If that is true, there is scant evidence they have used it to gain excess wage rises which have decoupled earnings from productivity.
When the Liberal party does finally announce its changes to IR after the election, it would be nice if they could keep themselves to fixing problems that actually exist, and not ones that occur only in their imagination.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)