What the people care about. You can get a bit carried away when politics is your game with the day-to-day happenings of who said what about whom or what. Which is why I regularly take the reality check of looking at those website listings of what people are actually clicking on. Here are last night’s findings:
And what do we find? The only political story among the most-read on all those sites is an item about Julia Gillard returning to her suburban home. Hardly an indication that voters are really engaged with this election contest. And that cannot be good news for Labor, the current second-place-getter.
Support for the Coalition returns. Support for the Coalition has improved since the initial slump following the replacement of Julia Gillard by Kevin Rudd.
The indicator this morning had the probability of a Coalition victory at just over 82%.
Find a new Pinochet. It is the flagship of the Murdoch newspaper empire, so presumably the editorial opinion is not all that different from that of the boss.
Ah yes, midwifing a way to democracy with torture and murder. And Rupert Murdoch controls most of Australia’s daily newspapers!
Measuring gross environment product. From the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand comes an attempt to broaden the measure of progress beyond GDP. From now on the state government will tabulate a “gross environment product’ (GEP)” — a measure of the health of the state’s natural resources.
Choosing an election theme song. This is my choice for the song that will best help us get through the election campaign — from “A Little Night Music“:
Don’t you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.
News and views noted along the way.
- TV election debates create “plausible tarts”, warns historian — “Televised election debates risk creating a generation of ‘plausible tarts’ as party leaders, a constitutional historian has warned.”
- CEO salary justification season is open — “The marginal impact of a CEO is extremely hard to estimate in advance, and any expected value you come up with will be swamped by the standard deviation. The only honest answer is to say that there are a bunch of people who could probably help your company a lot …”
- Why are unions unpopular?
It’s a good thing Murdoch’s Limited News wasn’t there to report on Moses coming down that mountain? They’d have had him carrying “two Panadol” and we’d have no Commandments?
Klewso, you have done it again! Why are you the only one who can see clearly what we idiots cannot?
Come on, there has to be a god out there somewhere who votes Labor!
Bhutan has the General Happiness Index so, given the recent floods & landslides (due to deforestation) in Uttarkhand a GEP would be a good way to wave to bolted horse goodbye.
What happens when news gets edited/sexed/tarted up for “entertainment” value and profits (circulation, ratings – to sell ad space).
When, in the edited “public interest”, the “boring bits” get left out.
Remembering of course that the Christian version was edited down from the Jewish account of 613 Mitzvot?