Tuesday, September 28, 2004



As usual, it all comes down to Yeats: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Invisible Hands & Markets: Jobs for Political Donations
Something like this would be almost impossible to prove in NSW.
Jesse Wren Murphy dropped out of high school long ago and lives in rural Eastern North Carolina, where jobs with good benefits are hard to come by.
But Murphy has won three state jobs since 1983. He says that's because his uncle paid thousands of dollars in political contributions to a state transportation maintenance supervisor who boasted of his connections -- Eddie Carroll Thomas.

FBI widens probe of fund-raiser ; [ ]
• · Francis Snyder: (PDF version) Economic Globalization and the Law in the 21st Century
• · · Is market demand the lifeblood of capitalism? ; [Oceans of electricity ... Mick Perry, a former electrician and fisherman Aquanator will harness ocean currents to produce electric ones]
• · · · Wealth does not create individual happiness and it doesn't build a strong country
• · · · · Goodbye, Pension. Goodbye, Health Insurance. Goodbye, Vacations Welfare capitalism is dying. We're going to miss it
• · · · · · Everyone knows Parisians are snobs Steve Jobs, Apple, and the limits of innovation [Truth is, some of the most innovative institutions in the history of American business have been colossal failures.]


Excessive secrecy cripples everyone's ability to act by hiding government mistakes and corruption. Hence public knowledge is not inimical to national security, but integral to it.
-Nick Schwellenbach

Tracking Trends Great & Small: Secrets
Whistleblowers have become a fact of life - a seeming necessity - in our democracy. The most famous of them, Daniel Ellsberg, is touring Oregon this week to speak on behalf of what he feels is a vital part of the democratic conscience.
Ellsberg gained fame, as well as criminal charges that could have placed him in prison for 115 years, for making public in 1971 the Pentagon Papers, which awakened the nation to the illegality of the war in Vietnam.
I've gained insights into the psyche and courage of whistleblowers through correspondence with Ellsberg the past year.

Greatest Whistleblower's Message Still Rings True; [Secrecy is expensive. Over the same period the amount of taxpayer dollars spent on classification increased nearly $2 billion, to $6.5 billion annually Government Secrecy Grows out of Control]
• · The Unforeseen Fruits of Hope Proud to be a Dead Armadillo: There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow line and dead armadillos; [Charles Krauthammer: The Art Of Losing Armadillos: Of all our allies in the world, which is the only one to have joined the United States in the foxhole in every war in the past 100 years? Not Britain, not Canada, certainly not France... [ The answer is Australia ]
• · · If the United States can produce the best scientists, the most gold medal winning athletes, the greatest business minds and the hottest rock and roll, there is no reason we shouldn't have the best world class killers, ninjas, wet work specialists and dedicated sociopaths as well This is the essence of cold revenge, terror against terror, but 100% targeted and, when performed professionally, absolutely safe for innocent bystanders; [Hamas Official Killed in Syria ]
• · · · Around eighty papers are available online. Topics range from waterfront developments, public transport and telecommunications to spatial inequality, parklands and sustainability State of Australian cities; [Australian Oral Health Alliance Call for action: oral teething problems ]
• · · · · Vivendi Universal (France), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux (France), Bouygues-Saur (France), RWE-Thames (Germany) and Bechtel-United Utilities (US) have become the water barons who are taking over public utilities Just as we fought wars over oil, so will we fight wars over water by The Awakened Women
• · · · · · Both Parties See a Big Increase in New Voters ; [Swiss authorities have hailed as a success what they say is the world's first binding internet vote in a national referendum ]

Sunday, September 26, 2004



Our Lust For Wealth Made Us Civilized? A new scientific study says prehistoric hunters loved to be dripping in luxury goods, and the taste for flashy trinkets may have been what turned humans from savages into a civilised society with car number plates entitled IMRICH

Invisible Hands & Markets: Taxing Spiders Spread in All Directions
T am among the first to defend the IRS when it deserves to defended. It is underfunded, it is charged with administering a mess of a tax law, it is treated as though it wrote the foolish provisions in the tax law, and it is a favorite scapegoat of Congress for the latter’s tax legislation incompetence. But when the IRS does goof, it gets the headlines, and leaves the world thinking it’s like this all the time.
Modern culture needs to stop rewarding incompetence, laziness, greed, and crime, it needs to stop pretending something bad is good, and it needs to elevate the values of individual responsibility and accountability to the same level to which their counter-balancing forces, freedom and independence, have been raised.

Confronting the problem head-on rather than pretending that reality is a fantasy [link first seen at ]
• · Each semester I explain to my students that the worse thing to do when in financial trouble is to avoid paying taxes by hiding income Tax Woes for Philadelphia Restauranteur; [link first seen at Jim Maule ]
• · · Pontiac G-6 midsize 2005 sports sedans Someone made a killing? Tax Consequences of Oprah's Car Giveaway
• · · · Is the Middle Class Shrinking?
• · · · · Extraordinary James Cumes Who is Chaff; Who is Grain
• · · · · · It's State Vs State For Movies American states are battling one another trying to lure entertainment projects: tax incentives designed to encourage film, television, and commercial production in their states, the battle between bordering states has intensified

Wednesday, September 22, 2004



NSW Premier Bob Carr yesterday urged John Howard and Mark Latham to ensure the nation's corporate watchdog used its powers to prosecute executives of James Hardie Industries for conduct found to be misleading by commissioner David Jackson.; Czech out Crikey why James Hardie takes a pounding - again

Invisible Hands & Markets: Let's make a bet about public choice
In the first of these senses, one could certainly argue that public choice was deviant, in that it rejected the accepted Pigovian line of taking government as given and assuming that it could smoothly and efficiently correct all manner of supposed market failures. What public choice analysis showed, in a nutshell, was that market failure had its complement in government failure, and that the cure for market failure could well be worse than the disease.
Faustian bargain [ Don't Trust The Theories of Famous Intellectuals! ]
• · See Also Employees should be the first priority of a company entering bankruptcy -- not creditors
• · · Mystery buyer lifts lid on Crown land ; [Mystery of Colourful, Orange, Lobbying ]
• · · · Deriving long-run inequality series from tax data
• · · · · To find out which jobs in your community have been exported or lost due to trade: Enter your ZIP code or Enter the industry and ZIP code or Select a company Job Tracker - Working America ; [Sydney has done a much more comprehensive job in deporting its poor to the outer suburbs.]
• · · · · · Even shoes are named after him in Czech Republic Boty Tomas Bata Turns 90 (The first shoes I ever wore were made by Bata)

Sunday, September 19, 2004



Egan creating constitutional crisis: The federation is at risk because of unfair cuts to state grants
The way Peter Costello was talking about the GST, it has been transformed from tax pariah to godsend

Invisible Hands & Markets: Young entrepreneurs not afraid of risk
If ever there were an archetypal successful young entrepreneur, make-up artist Napoleon Perdis would have to be it.
Passionate? Check. Lateral thinker? Check. Cowboy? Czech!
This week, Perdis made BRW's Young Rich List - a showcase of nearly 100 of Australia's self-made entrepreneurs aged 40 and under. But unlike many more established multimillionaires, Perdis, 34, did not amass his $20 million through property, media, mining or industry. Instead, he saw a gap in the market for women's cosmetics, waved goodbye to his parents' fish and chip shop and started selling Napoleon Perdis lipstick, mascara and eyeshadow.

• BHP Billiton did not start in somebody's garage At the end of the day I started with nothing, so if I end up with nothing it doesn't matter
• · Justice Hill v Greg Ward Not earth-shattering, but certainly rare, and worth reading Millionaire Factory vs the tax man
• · · Monkeys v Gorillas: Exec salaries: it's all about not looking cheap

Friday, September 17, 2004



An ideal example of abandonment is the relationship between Linus and The Great Pumpkin. Every Halloween, Linus faithfully waits by a pumpkin patch, in the hopes that he will be blessed with the holy experience of a visitation by The Great Pumpkin. Of course, The Great Pumpkin never shows up, and He never answers Linus? letters. Despite this, Linus remains steadfast, even going door to door to spread the word of his absent deity. Does The Great Pumpkin exist? We can never know. But from an existential point of view, it doesn?t matter if he exists or not. The important thing is that Linus is abandoned and alone in his pumpkin patch.
Kafka and his Castle turn into Pumpkin

Invisible Hands & Markets: Mischievous Mitchell
While I'm on the topic of politically unthinkable policies, Alan Mitchell in today's Fin (subscription required) argues that we should raise the rate of GST and use the proceeds to abolish a bunch of inefficient distorting taxes. It's a sensible idea, but, given the way the GST was sold, it's politically out of the question. Still, it would be worth looking again at this in a decade or so, when all those associated with the original GST debate have left the political scene.
All that would need to be done is change or delete the lines in the GST Act that "give" the power to raise the GST to the states
• · It is about to become harder to find butterfly cakes, chocolate eclairs and cream puffs in the city, with a cherished cake shop forced out of the Strand Arcade by rising rents
• · · ‘What’s in it for me?’ Today’s rich are not giving enough of their wealth to good causes--the ancients would have known why
• · · · Bernie Fraser robustly debating: Governments have become very risk-averse, and there is this prevailing notion around that only the private sector can do these things properly ...; [ Sale of Telstra has Labor, Greens up in arms]
• · · · · Contrary to his international reputation, Kafka was merely a reporter of Czech daily life Going for brouk ... Keeping a low profile is a Czech survival strategy. Harness interpersonal networks to succeed
• · · · · · Your job is pointless, inane: You can be replaced by the cretin sitting next to you. So work as little as possible

Thursday, September 16, 2004



The Australian Greens tax and revenue policy
The Australian Greens say they aim to use taxation to achieve social equity and environmental sustainability.
The exact make-up of the next Federal Parliament could have a strong bearing on taxation

Eye on Politics & Media Bias: Media bias

A Roy Morgan poll released today provides insightful results on people's perception of media bias.
The press release reads:
86% BELIEVE NEWSPAPER JOURNALISTS ARE BIASED AS MEDIA HONESTY AND ETHICS RATINGS FALL
Australians are very critical of the media being often biased, with 86% of Australians saying Newspaper journalists are often biased, 75% of Australians said Talk-back radio announcers were often biased and 73% TV reporters and journalists, a special Morgan Poll finds.
Of Newspaper journalists, Andrew Bolt (3.5%) was most often mentioned by Australians as being often biased, followed by Piers Akerman (3%) and Miranda Devine (1.5%). Ray Martin (6%) and Kerry O'Brien (4.5%) were the most frequently mentioned TV reporters or journalists who were often biased, along with Laurie Oakes (2%) and Richard Carlton (1%).
Talk-back 'giants' John Laws and Alan Jones topped the list, mentioned by 28.5% (37% in NSW) and 26% (41.5% in NSW) of Australians respectively. The results also record a significant drop in trust for politicians. Only 9% believe that Federal MPs are trust-worthy.
A number of questions remain, however. Do people mind that their media commentators are biased if they're simply reinforcing existing prejudice? What exactly can be defined as objective journalism? And perhaps most importantly, how much election material interpreted by journalists is even vaguely believed by the reading public?

Counter Spin (15 September 2004) [We all know that magicians trick us by distracting us -- shift our attention in one direction while they work their magic in the other. Is that the case in these American and Australian elections? ]
• · See Also Obsession with economic track record and bowls of spaghetti: Magicians at work
• · · School Policy from the Age and Young Bloggers Greg Hywood in today's Age. [Rob Corr; Ken Parish; Chris Sheil]
• · · · Literary Gem, Gianna Should we talk elections? Come to Mama and much more...
• · · · · Latham Cut the greed, Latham warns top executives: 66.6 per cent pay rise for Qantas directors
• · · · · · Liverpool Live: Tragic Comedy Land sale not linked to site approval: Gazal

Saturday, September 11, 2004



Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Human with the magic cislo (number) 55 consider yourselves lucky. You are reliable workers. You tend not to go out partying and clubbing till 2am Treasury upgrade fuels election war chest, Horse trading, More rebates and Offsets



Music: the caffeine of love

Invisible Hands & Markets: Hard Labor Day, Hard Cross to Bear
Labor Day comes and goes - but Congress does little to improve the plight of workers in our country. In the last three decades our elected officials have too often chosen to side with big corporations rather than the working people in the United States.
Working Harder, Working Longer, Getting Nowhere
• · Central Europe: Utopia or Reality? Already existing model for what the EU bureaucracy seeks to create today?
• · · Grotesque Inequality
• · · · KM as an intranet trend…
• · · · · Jobs for the Boys Moral superiority
• · · · · · Whistleblowers finger ticket collectors' scam State Rail ticket collectors stalked passengers, kept an illegal database of their personal details and rorted millions in overtime


Read, every day, something no one else is reading (e.i. Cold River - smile). Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
Christopher Morley, American Novelist, Journalist, Poet (1890-1957)

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Russell Reich’s prophetic words
As long as self-publishing remains a viable and potentially lucrative alternative for many writers, I’m having a hard time hearing Gal Beckerman bemoan the standard failures of publishers and the publishing industry as a whole.
For writers who are already willing to take some responsibility for their book's design, marketing, and even editing, the additional work required for a self-published book (printing, fulfillment) is relatively benign as long as you believe in what you're doing and hire good people to help. When I co-authored, designed, and published my own book, I felt that no setback during the process ever rose above a level of minor inconvenience; I was simply having too much fun to let printer glitches or a few bumpy legal negotiations bother me much.

• One greatly needs beauty when death is so close - Maurice Maeterlinck
Even when it comes to inexact sciences -- Ms Universe competitions, federal elections -- creating odds for your book on Amazon is deadlier than most Samizdat - Self Publishing [First-Time Nonfiction Author A Learns That Getting Published Is Not Necessarily the Hard Part; Not materialistic enough. That is the problem with the young today. Less and less they want stuff, more and more they want experiences]
• · · Alcohol makes us happy for no reason. But wine – ah, it gives us a reason to let alcohol make us happy without one Trouble with political art and ghost circle; [Kerry Chikarovski's autobiography, Chika, will be disappointed to hear that there is absolutely no sex in the book, just plenty of politics. Chika co-author Luis Garcia assured our spy at the launch that he had asked Kerry if there was anything she needed to confess, and had been assured that there wasn't. "She's a good Catholic girl," said the Cuban missile Chik lit is no bodice-ripper] (Bob Carr would push a copy of his speech under your door, with a plaintive note saying 'Alan, can you give me five minutes on this tomorrow?')
• · · · The sacrifices needed to keep up honesty are simply too great. And thus I am afraid we can expect, in the future, from our artists only those kinds of extravagant behaviour that we know to expect, and we can safely enjoy the shocks and surprises that do not really shock and surprise, while we can note with satisfaction that the dangerous Other has been domesticated, that their unseemly clothes are just another kind of uniform, but deep down the artists are just like ourselves, no freer. Liberty is a mirror, and when we cannot bear to look at it, we smash it in order to pick up little splinters of freedoms-for. Artists are still important to uphold and to interpret notions of "freedom"
• · · · · How The Internet Saved Bookstores It wasn't too long ago that many were predicting that the internet would kill bookstores
• · · · · · Moving Kabala into the mainstream without much dumbing down ... The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus

Wednesday, September 08, 2004



Tax In Their Sights: Stranger Than Facts
Australia is a very fortunate country as it is peppered with solid scholars who put pen to paper without fear or favour. During my days of Deakin University I came across a number of lectures and professors who were walking political encyclopaedias and were not afraid to disagree with any party spin doctor or even a politician no matter how much their words might decrease their university funding.
First time I was exposed to tax issues when I read an article by Dr Neil Warren five years ago. In a way, his research wetted my appetite for issues other than strictly legislative. Although I am a failure, I somehow managed to complete four courses at the University of NSW as part of the Australian Taxation Studies Program. Dr Neil Warren is part of the academic tapestry at the University. Like Dr Cope, who writes so well about the myths and realities of Parliament, Dr Warren chooses his ideas and words with great care so any reader can follow his thoughts.
I recommend Dr Warren's latest observations about the myths and realities of tax regimes. Australian CPA June 2004 edition p 37 (all libraries can magically provide it via an interlibrary loan) features a story entitled The Tax Files: debunking the furphies. It starts ever so imaginatively:
You can almost smell the coming election - tax is in the air and facts are going out of the window. With an assult on our intelligence around the corner, tax big cheese Neil Warren straightens out fact from fiction
We need more movie scripts like this on subjects that are not so appealing to the public. How cool is this?
In the heat of a full-on tax debate, fiction often holds sway over fact. Just why this is the case is not dificcult to understand. After all, tax impacts directly on the hip pocket nerve and with so much at stake, it is in the interest of each taxpayer to argue their case strongly and persuasively, even if it appears to have its foundation in fiction. For government, the issue is how to respond. Should it counter fiction with the fact?
...
Tax fiction can arise from many sources. A constructive tax reform debate can only be had if the proptagonists avail themselves to the facts with the fiction stripped away. It was just this goal that the Australian Tax Reform Foundation (ATRF) sought to achieve through the publication of Tax Facts: Fiction and Reform at ATRF


David Marr of Media Watch Fame makes the digestion of election palatable ...

Eye on 32 Roll Out The Barrel Days: Pollies Showing They Can Take the Heat
It is only week two of the federal election campaign, and already John Howard and Mark Latham are switching sides to indulge in political cross-dressing
Election Edges
• · There's an old joke that journalists choose their career path because they're bad at maths Reading the poll leaves
• · · John Quiggin is tough on Labour tax package ; [Analysis of the Tax Package ; [The Report in PDF version: Rewarding Hard Labour ]
• · · · Blair is soft on Fox is soft on terrorists Instapundit Press Corps Autopsy

Monday, September 06, 2004



Invisible Hands & Markets: James Hardie: the great escape
For seven decades, all-Australian company James Hardie has marketed products containing asbestos which have become our biggest industrial killer. Mesothelioma has already killed 7000 Australians — within 14 years, asbestos will have caused an estimated 50,000 cancers. In 2001 James Hardie Industries made its great escape, 19,000 kilometres away, to the Netherlands. It's alleged the company used this move to escape the claims of thousands of future asbestos victims by not leaving enough money behind to fund them. The NSW Commission of Inquiry is due to hand down its findings on September 21.
How James Hardie used lawyers, public relations consultants and lobbyists to create and sell the escape ... ; [Sunday with Jana Wendt ]
• · Beware of promises to 'create' new jobs Elected officials have no gift in picking economic 'winners' ; [channel new asia]
• · · Circulation of Figures and Newspapers ; [PROFESSOR Ann Macintosh - Spreading the word online New e-democracy system can give workers a say in their companies]
• · · · The Ghost Shirts: Vonnegut's Cautionary Tale has a New Meaning
• · · · · Passengers on notice Kollins Kakalins Submarines on Rails: Tickets, please, we're already up for almost 1/2 Billion [WWII, a war of heroism, tells us never to back down from a bully ... October 15 is looming as D-day for the ailing NSW rail network, with 16,000 frustrated workers threatening to walk off the job]
• · · · · · There’s an excellent reason why economics is called the dismal science: no one is really sure of anything. Two economists arguing can seem like boxers bashing each other; TRUE COST & BENEFIT ECONOMICS Numbers can only tell you so much. If you're an economist, chances are the numbers you're looking at don't reflect the environmental and health and art factors in the subjects they are analysing ....
[Slovakia: A Culture Minister Who Gets It Slovakia's culture minister RUDOLF Chmel (hop is in beer) proposes that the country triple its spending on the arts and sports by 22010. Ignorance of culture is colossal; society is commercial, consumer-oriented and kitschy, and it seems this trend cannot be stopped. Australian tourism is getting amazing value out of Ian Thorpe’s Olympic success and the way he has captured the attention of the huge Asian market ... Already on Sony billboards around Japan where he has cult-figure status, Thorpe extended it to a deal to promote Sony in China ...]

Sunday, September 05, 2004



In the interests of impartiality, it is good to hear from all sides of political spectrum. This is what some right wing blogs, as classified by * Ken Parish, have got to say. (I wonder how you sounded when you screamed after being exposed to these men of corrugated (sic) iron?)
Andjam; ; Group blog with a libertarian emphasis (as the title suggests) Several excellent contributors and one or two complete idiots; Yet another right wing blog dealing with exactly the same subjects and saying exactly the same things with exactly the same tone of aggressive, self-righteous certainty as all those other right wing blogs ...; Blair, Tim: Conservative Oz-Amerikan; occasionally wickedly funny; 'Bulletin' magazine op-ed pundit; wannabe Mark Steyn (as if we needed another one); Another mysterious, double-pseudonymous plogger; Some think he's Imre Salusinszky, although the Prof Bunyip denies it; Andrew Bolt labeled it 'an excellent site' by Gnu Hunter; Extremely right wing, predictable subjects - Jericho, Mike; James Morrow is a US-Australian journalist, right-leaning and based in Sydney; Gareth Parker is young, Perth-based, right-leaning but not rabidly so, and an aspiring (cadet?) journalist; Slattery, Bernard is a Geelong-based journo; Tex is a right-leaning, Canberra-based, long-time blogger who posts as much about motor bikes and popular culture as politics.

Eye on 34 Days Ahead: King's Ransom
Immediately before facing the cameras at the Bondi Icebergs, Mr King sat in the gym surrounded by exercise machines and, watching himself in the mirror, phoned John Laws on his mobile phone to break the news to the nation.
Cool as an iceberg, MP freezes out Spy Catcher [ via It is not I who is disloyal: Conservatives have held the seat for 103 years; Mrs Sinclair King, the 45-year-old daughter of former federal National Party leader Ian Sinclair, is said to be Mr King's best asset]
• · The naked elections and branch stacking; [Labor branch-stacker Sam Bargshoon Is blowing the lid on political corruption in south-western Sydney]
• · · Election 2004: panel and swinging voters [Freudian slip I will be out there supporting Peter King ... Peter, er ... Malcolm Turnbull ]
• · · · After the Velvet One Now is Coming Near You the Green Revolution It was a virtual lovefest between the Australian Greens and Democrats this week
• · · · · Gianna on Morning Glory and Marking Sunrise
• · · · · · · Psephite Defines Quickie and and in a process masters to show off or tear down a number of Antipodian political sites

Thursday, September 02, 2004



Parliamentary democracy is an experiment and while that experiment is being made, we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to the PR spins produced by certain journalists who are on a receiving end of priceless gifts and strings attached promotions.
Fairfax Digital Tries the Hardest to Counterspin: Fresh Without Fear and Favour Election Perspectives

Eye on One Day in October: Kafka Style Transformation of Any Creature, Great and Small, Goes
If it was not for my soft spot for anything written by Kafka I doubt I would be able to consider myself a real cockroach. It is not an accident that I was attracted to Sydney from the night I discovered that the best way to morph into a cockroach is to marry one (smile). Still, it is hard to determine whether it is better to be described as a cockroach or a canetoad or a rodent. Sydney born and bred Prime Minister, John Howard, advised his followers today that after 30 years he had no choice but acquire a thick skin. Indeed, in politics as in the publishing assembly lines thick skin is a must. No one faces as many rejections and doors shut in their faces as the pollies do.
What makes politics the toughest business on earth is the fact that your real enemies are rarely in front of your, in fact they tend to be right behind you.
Although Don Arthur is not strictly a cockroach, what Victorian would be, he has some deep philosophical insights to share with us:
Years ago when I was an Philosophy undergrad suffering from a super case of ennui (it was probably depression) I picked up my housemate's copy of Schopenhauer aphorisms and ended up laughing out loud. The stuff was so fabulously morbid and depressing it was hysterical. I felt better straight away. Since then I have always had a soft spot for Schopie... but back to that quote:
Now the nature of man consists in the fact that his will strives, is satisfied, strives anew, and so on and on; in fact his happiness and well-being consist only in the transition from desire to satisfaction, and from this to a fresh desire, such transition going forward rapidly. For the non-appearance of satisfaction is suffering; the empty longing for a new desire is languor, boredom.

Schopenhauer of Obligatory Instapunditry [Friday 3 September, Peter King Early photo opportunity: 9.30am Bronte Beach cafes, then coastal walk to South Bondi: Malcolm in the Middle of Surf Kingdom]
• · The Economist and Ned Kelly of Blogging: The battle for mortgageville; Rating Interests
• · · The journalists from the land of Abraham Lincoln provide some trully amazing predictions on the likely consequences of a second term for President Bush What if Bush wins? 16 writers who are the walking literary gurus (Amerika ... what a joy to read!)
• · · · As I would not be any man's slave, neither would I be any man's master. This to me is the essence of democracy. - Abraham Lincoln... Southerly Buster on Independent Speakership: Clucking about the speaker ; Mark Kaplan on Election oral viagras: Turkey - If your opponent is criticising the policies of some state you favour demand that he talks about Turkey instead; Pros and Cons of PaPa McGuiness
• · · · · The election debate on Sunday 12 September is shaping up to be a ripper as the terms have been agreed but Seven's plans to run the worm could cause a big brawl Warning the catchy children song: Worms, Worms, Worms ; E(l)ection Ushering of the Black Rod War on Terror hits Parliament: Press Gallery heavyweights Laurie Oakes and Paul Bongiorno Declared a Danger to our Society
• · · · · · · Any opposition that leads in the polls as an election approaches has an informal hit list of government cronies they would like to roll