Give the general a call. So the Australian Defence Force is concerned about “the increasingly excessive use of alcohol during Anzac Day commemorations nowadays”. That’s what reports of a Department of Veterans Affairs study of public opinion  are telling us anyway.

Well perhaps the ADF should have a chat with their old boss General Peter Cosgrove and the Returned and Services League

The Victoria Bitter “Raise a glass” campaign, despite the token efforts of the Ogilvy Public Relations team that devised it, hardly encourages a decrease in “the use of alcohol during Anzac Day commemorations.”

That ethical guardian Rupert tweets. One thing Rupert Murdoch has never had to do is pay money to get access to the world’s political leaders. Which gives a certain poignancy to his tweets on the current British controversy over the fund raising efforts of the Conservative Party.


That Apple boom. Just a little further evidence to add to my colleague Glenn Dyer’s recent thoughtful piece “Barnstorming Apple’s iBubble will eventually go iPop“.

Glenn pointed to the considerable influence Apple had in the strong performance of the US S&P 500 share price index (a 6.8% rise this quarter that would have been only 2.8% without it) and now CNN Money points out how Apple’s outsized impact on the tech sector in isolation is even more striking:


Good enough for Britain’s Office of Budget Responsibility. All you doubters about the worth of the Crikey Indicators take note: Professor Steve Nickell, one of the independent experts brought in by UK Chancellor George Osborne to make sure Britain’s economic estimates are robust, is a believer in these market based indicators.

The professor gave his endorsement during evidence to the House of Commons Treasury Committee yesterday after being asked whether he thought the Euro was likely to fall. The department itself did not “attach probabilities”, said Prof Nickell.

“I go and look at [leading bookmaker] William Hill and they actually have the odds of these sorts of things. Last time I looked, the odds of Greece not using the euro by the end of the year were of the order of 40 per cent.”

At Crikey, where we look at market prices as a whole and not just one bookie in drawing up our Indicators, we think that 40% is a bit high. The Crikey Euro Usage Indicator of whether any country currently using the Euro will announce their intention to drop it by midnight ET on 31 Dec 2012 is 23.2%.

And as for events closer to home:


Some news and views noted along the way.

  • Bringing down the internet.
  • Climate change has a lot to answer for. Now it’s beware of the invading vampire bats.