Egypt’s population problem
Glen Fergus writes: Re. “Crikey says: this is not a problem for Egypt alone ” (yesterday). Egypt is a politico-religious problem exacerbated by great power bastardry. But is it also a microcosm of something else, something the Crikey house line likes to reject: too many people crammed onto a fertile little oasis surrounded by desolate, uninhabitable space. There’s nearly 100 million, half under 20, educated, aspirational, and with nowhere to go.
Once the cradle of great civilisations, overpopulation long ago took it past the point where it could feed itself. (It’s the world’s largest wheat importer.) That didn’t matter much to an oil exporter with lots of cash to grease the wheels and fund the kleptocracy. But in 2010 declining oil output fell below rising domestic consumption. Now a net oil importer, it has precious little foreign income (from a canal business and moribund tourism) and rapidly diminishing hard currency reserves. The police state has already arrived. Currency collapse comes next, followed eventually by failed state anarchy. If there’s a way out it lies with that educated youth, but optimism does not seem reasonable.
Science journalism needed
Andrew Davison writes: Re. “What Rudd’s $125m could mean for regenerative medicine research” (yesterday). Thank you for including Ernst Wolvetang’s article on stem cell science. It calmed me down after reading Guy Rundle’s piece, which includes the phrase “I have no idea what I’m talking about, I just scribbled down words”. Would this sentiment be acceptable in a discussion on costings for paid parental leave, tax reform, or any of the political issues Rundle feels so strongly about and writes so well about? This is another example of the “science is too hard” sentiment, which brings us (among other things) “boffins”, the “climate change is unproven” meme and the current brain drain, which Wolvetang notes.
Perhaps you should employ a full-time science journo; there are plenty unemployed at present. Leave Rundle to do what he does best, which is politics (or something).
Had it up to here with how-to-votes
Colin Smith writes: Re. “Labor outrage as Greens HTVs pulped after ‘admin error’” (yesterday). I am co-ordinating the handing out Greens how-to-vote cards at the early voting booth in the marginal electorate of Melbourne Ports.
As the only party other than Labor and Coalition able to find enough workers to cover the first week of early voting, we Greens have always found it impossible to produce final HTVs over the weekend between the draw and the start of early voting. However, we did rather better this time by producing “provisional” open tickets before we knew all the names of our opponents and their order on the ballot paper. (The truth of this may be inferred from the failure of the ticket to tell the voter to choose box “S” to vote Greens for the Senate — this being something not known when we designed the ticket.)
We have done similar things less well in the past without it becoming an issue. This time, however, we have Labor making a fuss, claiming we had agreed to recommend a preference for Michael Danby ahead of the Liberal in exchange for Labor’s preferences to us ahead of the Liberals on its Senate Group Voting Ticket.
The first enormity about this is a so-called Labor Party requiring an inducement to prefer a Green-Left pro-union egalitarian pro-multicultural party for the Senate ahead of a neo-liberal anti-union anti-environmental pro-corporate party that appears to be on the brink of taking power — possibly in both houses.
And the second enormity is that we are being stood over to show our pro-Labor preferences and hurry up about it by the so-called “Labor” candidate for Melbourne Ports — whose own how-to-vote card has us not only below the so-called “Liberal” candidate but also below the candidates of the fundamentalist Family First party and the “Rise Up Australia” crank fundamentalist anti-Islamic party.
Kim Jong ill
Harry Goldsmith writes: Re. “Rundle: the Dear Leader, in a sea of lab-coated nerds, looks lost” (yesterday). Why does Guy Rundle go out of his way to alienate readers, and therefore make Crikey less worthwhile? Why does he refer to Rudd as “Dear Leader”? Is he just trying to be an unbearable smart-alec?
For the life of me, I could not be bothered reading his article to find out. He is just a turn-off.
I’m with Harry Goldsmith. Sick and tired of the smart ar+e comments of Guy Rundle. So he is a committed Green voter, but his first alternative for PM seems to be the rAbbott. Doesn’t even make sense.
And Guy, you are no better than those Ltd News journalists who continually sniped at former PM Gillard, when you turn your so called satirical pen on current PM Rudd. You should at the very least, have some respect for the office of Australian PM. The sooner you return overseas and write about all those far more superior European and American politicians, the happier I will be. That way I don’t have to bother reading your rubbish.
Colin,
Unless you are particularly naive, you are surely aware that the basis of the deal is to ensure that Greens and Labor effectively support each other at the point of exclusion in the Senate count.
However, Labor has a very particular interest in ensuring Green preferences flow to it as reliably as possible in all seats other than Melbourne (i.e. the constituency where the Greens are certain not to be eliminated before the final 2 Party count). The only other electorates in which Greens will finish 2nd to one of the majors – certainly in Victoria – is where one of the majors will have a majority on primary votes. So the Greens have no equivalent interest at stake in the Reps. and Labor would only do a deal on the basis of support in Lower House seats, three of which are very much in contention in Victoria.
Since the ballot draw was done at Midday on Friday, it should have been possible to have determined the recommended preferences to be promptly completed, and for printing to be managed by close-of-business, Monday. It’s understandable that Labor would be suspicious of bad faith on the part of the Greens, however innocent the facts are.