Blogotariat

What significant anniversary in Bob Carr’s life occurs this year?

Is Julie Bishop a better Foreign Minister than Bob Carr? What does the panel think?

read more

7.35pm. Now, all in one hit, we’ve got both primary and pre-poll results from all three ordinary polling booths, together with results from the Darwin pre-poll booth. The raw two-party result shows the CLP leading by 3.2%, and my projection is hardly different at 3.7%, a swing to Labor of 9.5%. I have the CLP primary vote down 15.8% on a booth-matched basis, or 45.5% in raw terms, but Labor is up only 3.2% to 37.5% thanks to the 8.3% vote for independent Matthew Cranitch. The Greens and Citizens Electoral Council, who did not field candidates in 2012, are respectively on 7.3% and 1.4%.

Agent99, Saturday, April 12

Why have so many of our media mob reduced a life of scholarship and leadership to a collective snigger behind the hand?

Bob’s a food snob for eating steel cut oats. Bob’s up himself for liking first class air travel. Bob bloody watches opera. Bob’s a girly man for not driving and he probably uses moisturiser and plucks his nostril hairs. (It’s not only the Americans that Kathy Lette could accuse of having an ‘irony deficiency’).

It is above all essential that a retired Foreign Minister should conceal what he feels about airline food. If he but once, in a work of a thousand pages, says what he thinks about airline food, he should be consigned …

Read more »

The ADL staggers from failure to failure, shooting itself in the foot as it goes.

First, a footnote from the failed anti-mosque demo in Bendigo from our friends at Aussies Against the Australian Defence League V.

(First published by Independent Australia)

Though strongly advised by his father Jor-El that he must not intervene in human history Bob Carr, the mild-mannered reporter, has flown backwards against the spin of the Earth and thus time-travelling restored the past and plumped us down in March, 2012, his finest hour, and shown us how things happened in that faraway time, and by doing this earned a lot of money for Interplast, his favourite charity, which adjusts the hare-lips of disabled children.

When Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas decided to defy the United States and Israel over stalled peace negotiations, he formally indicated to the United Nations last week that Palestine will join 15 international conventions relating mostly to the protection of human rights and treaties governing conflicts and prisoners of war.

Bob Carr is a Labor hero now, and his rather ordinary life, I suppose, will take on, like Chifley’s, legendary force.

Let me get this right. The revenue forgone on tax concessions for superannuation at $45 bn will soon be more than the cost of the pension (over $40 bn). Of that $45 bn in tax concessions $10 to $15 bn will go to the top 10% of income earners. Yet Australia’s greatest Treasurer, Joe Hockey, wants to rein in expenditure on the pension by for example extending the access age to 70 (after Labor increased it to 67 over time by 2023), reducing the yearly adjustment to CPI rather than Average Weekly Male Full-Time Earnings increase (although the two are now roughly equivalent) and tightening up the asset test to perhaps include the family home.

The rain does not seem to be going away. Of course, it is wise to be careful when wishing the rain away. However, Dexter and Hannah are not getting out as much as they would.

Yesterday, I went out regardless. I think Hannah thought this strange and I wondered about the wisdom, especially when there were flashes of lightning in the sky. We walked up the track and then turned around and came back.

Global Macro / Markets: Bitcoin Is Getting Smashed Right Now Business Insider JPMorgan Profit Falls 19% on Trading, Mortgage Declines – Bloomberg Why is Goldman shutting down Sigma X: SEC eyes test that may lead to shift away from ‘dark pools’ – Reuters Gross Says El-Erian Should Explain Reason for Exit - Bloomberg The best [...]

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]