Preparing for a deficit. The worst thing about political promises is having to explain to people why they are broken. Hence all the bad luck talk by Labor ministers in the run-up to this budget. All those promises about bringing the budget back to surplus that went on for a couple of years up until four months ago are well and truly haunting the government now. And it is impossible to imagine h0w, with all the spinning in the world, that the budget projections can be dollied up to look like vote winners.
Which makes the picture presented by the opinion polls a very gloomy one. With just five months to go to September 14 I’m starting to take notice of them at last, and with Newspoll this morning seeming to be in line with my favourite Essential, if I were in a marginal Labor seat I really would be panicking.
Remember this, you mainlanders! My old home town paper The Mercury strikes out this morning at the selfishness of states on the wrong side of Bass Strait trying to nick our totally justified extra share of GST revenues:
Just a comment to remind people that you can take the boy out of Hobart, but you can’t take …
Telling me what I don’t need to know. On the hour, every hour, it seems that the ABC news tells me the price of gold. But why? Surely it is an irrelevant piece of news for all but a minuscule minority. Give us the daily Chinese iron ore price or something else that is relevant to Australia’s fortunes.
A variation on the brown paper bag. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has handed over a white sack containing 250 million shillings (about $100,000) to a youth group in fulfillment of an election promise he made during the 2011 election campaign.
There’s none of that NSW-style back room dealing in Uganda either. The handover was done in public, reports the BBC, so it could be broadcast on national television.
The disappearing RSI. I’ve been seeing too much of medicos in Canberra lately, and as they go about the business of saving me from my own self-inflicted maladies there’s always a bit of small talk. Small talk where I learn things like the relative disappearance of repetitive strain injury. That common malady that once brought Canberra public servants crowding into doctors’ surgeries apparently disappeared after a few “sufferers” lost court cases when seeking compensation.
Funny that, but apparently there is a rash of new ailments taking its place. “Stress” caused by work these days is apparently the new fashionable complaint. Springing up throughout the city apparently with, following recent media stories, “bullying” a favourite cause.
I suppose it’s more fun for lawyers than chasing ambulances.
A hundred cut and pastes. I was very politely, but fairly, punished with a hundred practice cut and pastes after work by a reader for embarrassing sloppiness in posting incorrect links to some of the items highlighted in recent News and Views offerings — always involving the most interesting ones, I was told. I am sure the extra practice from the detention will make me do better in future. But while on the subject, your views on the kind of links people actually click on might make the section better as well.
A quote for the day
”Having done what I have done for a long time, I don’t believe anything that is written in a press release.”
— Alex Cramb, head of communications for a former Labor Premier yesterday.
News and views noted along the way.
- BBC to face inquiry over Rowan Atkinson’s Comic Relief sketch — “Sketch featuring fictional Archbishop of Canterbury saying ‘praying doesn’t work’ prompted more than 2,200 complaints — Jesus said love your neighbours but ‘it doesn’t mean shag your neighbours’ “.
- Plain-speaking PM might just deliver — “Some of Ms Gillard’s values are detectable through her speech. … The dour demeanour is consistent with trying to project that she wants us to feel we are in safe hands. We will know if that’s worked on election day, less than five months away.”
- Boston ‘witchhunt’ on social media sites — and a bad week for the old guard
- Boston and the new media: the far from madding crowd — “If it is to be trusted more than social media, the mainstream media must do better than the adage: ‘Never wrong for long’ “
- China consolidates sea claims as Asian diplomacy struggles
- Huzzah! The U.S. economy is 3 percent bigger than we thought. Thanks, George Lucas! and also Add 3% and some bad accounting
- What if demand for graduates falls? — “By far the most important thing I learnt at Oxford was a love of Hank Williams and Leonard Cohen.”
You may have been alerted to this already, but the SMH ran this clarification under the story from which you lifted today’s quote from (Alex Cramb): Clarification: An earlier version of this story failed to include the qualifying phrase “until I’ve checked it out” in this quote.
RE:On the hour, every hour, it seems that the ABC news tells me the price of gold.
Richard, well done! i’ll sign up right now.
But how about adding to our cry that the ABC just stops broadcasting news on the hour every hour – it’s just regurgitated tripe from the previous hour with very little if any of the breaking type, ie actual news.
i’d love to just hear it (if i have to at all) only at 6, 9, 12, & 3 etc.
Hourly is just toooooo much.
Re the “relative disappearance of repetitive strain injury”. The tone of the article suggests that much of the RSI complaints were, perhaps, “mental” rather than physical. Well Richard, I’d suggest that RSI is less common now because “we” have learnt how to prevent it through ergonomic workstations, computer keyboards & mice, and taking action if the problem starts presenting itself. I can assure you that RSI is not fun to have and can be totally debilitating. Thankfully the days where banks of girls pounded away at olivettis all day are over.
mikeb
I’m a bit of an expert on those Olivetti’s. Used one for hours a day for more than 20 years. Never had a problem with them and neither did any colleague of mine.
I think RSI was a product of the early computer age. Maybe you are right about the bad design of early keyboards.
Re: Atkinson sketch! Political correctness gone mad!! Censorship!!
Oh no, they call it something different when it’s conservatives….