Michael Duffy had a column in the Sydney Morning Herald today with some (I hope) last gasp global warming denial. Before I got into blogging, I suspect I would have read it as making some valid points. Unfortunately, for Michael Duffy, I had already read the comprehensive demolition from theContinue Reading
I managed this week to avoid jury duty, mainly by politely begging them to give me an exemption because it was end-of-financial year (which is one of the three or four busiest weeks for me at work). I do feel somewhat guilty about it. The jury system is a vitalContinue Reading
There have been quite a few articles recently (all behind subscription walls, alas) about low cost housing in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald (in the Good Weekend last week) had an article about the fabulous Department of Housing apartments that still exist in Sydney’s Rocks area. Some with magnificent HarbourContinue Reading
There’s a great opinion piece (from Lenore Taylor) in the AFR this weekend about the school vouchers that were snuck into the budget this year. Briefly, $475 million has been budgeted to provide $700 tutoring vouchers to the parents of children who fail national reading and maths tests. The articleContinue Reading
Corporate Woman in the AFR this week had a disappointed commentary on the Federal Budget. The column was calling for a bit more compulsion from the government around flexible working hours – pointing out that business needs to become more friendly towards women/carers who are working, rather than government using the taxContinue Reading
There was a fairly impassioned article in the SMH today about how the Australian health care system has very definitely become a two-tier health care system. “the wealthy and privately insured get timely health care and the rest, unless they are critically ill, can wait.” Except, as I blogged recently,Continue Reading
Since Wednesday, Chatterboy has been in Royal North Shore Hospital being treated for pneumonia. On Friday, when he’d turned the corner, the doctors admitted to us that they had been quite worried about him on Thursday, when nothing seemed to be working, and he was lying there, listlessly, on oxygen,Continue Reading
John Howard had a column recently in the SMH about education. It was mostly a rant about the way education works these days – “Many of the fads and politically correct fashions that have found their way into our schools undermine the quality of education. Where Big Brother or a text messageContinue Reading
As I was reading the Financial Review this morning, this quote caught my eye: “The Howard government has raised the art of hypocrisy to levels not previously seen by mankind, but …. to actually block the [Qantas] takeover would be breathtakingly bad policy, politics and plain dumb.” I haven’t reallyContinue Reading
Today I’m reviewing one of the Quarterly Essays – The History Question; Who owns the past? by Inga Clendinnen. Quarterly Essays are 20,000 words published quarterly, with responses generally in the next issue. I’ve previously reviewed Clendinnen’s Dancing with Strangers, which is a detailed deconstruction and pieceing together of the historyContinue Reading
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