Blogotariat

Get ready for a radical rightwing insurgency that could be stirring within the Conservative Party.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 23rd July 2014

Beware the self-pity of the governing classes. Ministers of the Crown might look powerful and oppressive to us; often they see themselves as lonely heroes confronting a sea of troubles. That has been Tony Blair’s schtick from the month he took office. We now see him dripping with other people’s blood; he appears to perceive only the scars on his own back.

Possibly and since I want to make the case be warned this post is a tad self-serving.

Back in March I wrote the following:

Ask the minister responsible to explain Australia’s present system of support for childcare and she can’t. “It's impossible to explain,” she told ABC radio on Tuesday. “The current payments are so complicated.”Sussan Ley isn’t alone.

Cross-posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks. The China Banking Regulatory Commission’s (CBRC) Shanghai office is two for two in its previous warnings on the dangers of steel firm borrowing and copper borrowing. Now Yicai is reporting that it’s the real estate sector’s turn. The CBRC’s Shanghai office is warning banks about risks in the real estate market, […]

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You do of course remember Victoria Police groupie and podium bigot Debbie Stavro.

This week in Victoria the focus is on the International AIDS Conference which brings together scientists and activists from all over the world who are on the front line of fighting this devastating disease.

Preparations for a North American gas boom are going gang-busters. From LNGWorldNews: In another important step forward for the Alaska LNG project, an application to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) was submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy. The export application requests authorization to export up to 20 million metric tons per year of LNG for a […]

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An I can't believe my ears musing: The July 2014 Clarence Valley Council Environment, Planning And Works Committee meeting stuck in the memory of many in the valley because of the number of times various councillors stated that they were concerned about a development application/s but were going to vote for it anyway. One councillor stated words to the effect that he had concerns or objections covering one entire DA but was voting it through anyway.

The enduring international silence around Israel's assault on Gaza has prompted a passionate plea from four prominent human rights activists.

Peter Robinson is a very competent writer of police procedurals.  There are sixteen stories featuring DI Alan Banks before this one (2007), and three more after it. You can read my review of one of the newer Banks stories, Watching the Dark (2012), here. I enjoyed Friend of the Devil, but not as much as I usually do police procedurals. I don’t think this is Robinson’s fault; it’s rather that I’ve perhaps overdosed on the sort of story that seems a natural fit for the police procedural, and this one is a perfect example of it.

The boogeyman as promoted by the merdia press...

Have you ever been in a classroom where the same pupils seem to always get the blame for misdeeds?... Whether it's the class bully or the poor simpleton, it's rare the real culprit for a misdeed is punished. I've seen some angelic clever kids doing their worst to see how someone would react for being blamed for something they did not do...

Stan Shamu for Chris Weston, Chief Market Strategist at IG Markets The positive momentum witnessed post Barack Obama’s speech in US trade has extended into the Asian session, and seen most of the major Asian bourses edge higher. While US equities finished the session in negative territory, this is actually quite deceiving as markets managed to […]

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I was very pleased with my post on this topic, making the point that standard microeconomic analysis only works properly on the assumption that the economy is at a full employment equilibrium.

But, it turns out, exactly the same point, using the same title, was made by David Colander 20 years ago

Colander (1993), The Macrofoundations of Micro, Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall, 1993), pp. 447-457

And he wasn’t the first. The term and the idea have a long history, including a contribution by my UQ colleague Bruce Littleboy