Emergency information
Fires Near Me (NSW), Vic Emergency (Victoria)
Context
These photographs were taken on 28 December on Bells Line of Road, which runs between western Sydney and Lithgow. Bells Line of Road is the northernmost of two road crossings of the Blue Mountains between Sydney and western NSW.
As one of the longest and hottest days of the year dawned, Australians woke up to the news that two volunteer fire fighters, Geoffrey Keaton and Andrew O’Dwyer, are dead. The photos, published by the NSW Rural Fire Service, of each man smiling proudly and holding his baby for the camera are gut wrenching. They are western Sydney dads in their 30s, Aussie everymen.
Michelle Grattan from The Conversation puts it best.
Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has an opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review today, the complete article can be read on the Treasurer’s website.
What I have written below is a re-write of the Treasurer’s article from a Modern Money and Australian Real Progressive frame. Let’s see what the Treasurer really has to say.
Andrew Leigh is an incredibly nice guy and I used to follow his blog before he entered parliament. He had many very useful statistics on that blog which I believe you can find at PreviousLeigh (see a sense of humour too).
Unfortunately as a practising economist he has zero understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
See and read more at Australian Real Progressives
The thing is, Democracy will end.
At some point the current dominant expression of Democracy – Universal Franchise with mass political parties and redistributive taxation – will fail to deliver solutions to urgent problems: Climate; Migration;War; National Sovereignty – and it will be discarded for something else.
Talking Politics
I have just discovered the excellent Podcast Talking Politics which discusses UK, US and European and International Politics.
You must subscribe to Talking Politics. It is put together by David Runciman of Cambridge University and provides commentary and analysis in the best British academic tradition – informed, fair, objective, funny. It is absolutely brilliant.
I have awoken with the urge to blog for the first time in many moons and offer you this otter doing a backflip at Capron Park Zoo in Massachusetts.
The NSW government’s planned Aerotropolis is conning residents of western Sydney. It’s more about useful politics than plausible policy Will the Western Sydney Aerotropolis really deliver on jobs?
The only surprising aspect of the Victorian government’s decision to terminate Melbourne Bike Share is that it took so long Is ending Melbourne Bike Share the right decision?
Fringe suburbs have historically always had fewer jobs than workers. What policy makers should focus on is providing good transport links to the more central parts of the city where most of the employers want to be Is labelling the outer suburbs as ‘job deserts’ helpful?
We can learn lessons from cities like Paris, but we must be wary of the dangers in importing solutions that might work well elsewhere but aren’t matched to local circumstances Is Paris the right model for the Sydney of 2050?