Yesterday the SMH gave some publicity to the latest version of the so-called Happy Planet Index , another of those dubious indexes that combines incommensurable things - in this case a nation’s life expectancy, life satisfaction ‘ecological footprint’ - into a single number. According to the SMH article, The results turn our idea of progress on its head,” the report said
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Blogs kill books. At least, that’s what I always thought. Between 1988 and 2000, I wrote four 1 books and edited a couple of volumes It’s 40th anniversary. I was there for the 20th and the 30th , and quite a few years either side. Last week I argued in the Canberra Times against the minimum wage, pointing out that last years minimum wage increase lead to no higher disposable income and 16,000 jobs lost (or not created). I went on to write: The commission will decide next month by how much it will increase the minimum wage Harriet Taylor Mill, an early English feminist, wrote this in 1851: Those who are associated in their lives, tend to become assimilated in their character. Annoucement here My take at BusinessDay Peter Martin is the economics correspondent for Australia’s two leading newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age . There is a theory running around some quarters that the financial crisis and world recession were caused by too much savings from countries like China and Japan. The theory runs that this excessive savings had to go somewhere so it wound up in a property boom in America, which eventually was unwound, giving us the crisis. If any good has come out of Utegate, it brought into question the integrity and efficacy of adversarial politics. How is it that the Murdoch press got something so fundamentally wrong and what were the journalistic standards which applied? These are just basic questions which we – I haven’t heard anything from the three editors in question, I haven’t seen any statement from them, but I did see that the Chief Executive of News Ltd organisation said yesterday that it was all fine and dandy. Kevin Rudd 2 July 2009 As soon as the email was demonstrated to be false, the Canberra press gallery focused its criticism on Malcolm Turnbull who had given the fake email unintentional credibility De-honouring Honourables The Times reports that the newly installed Speaker of the House of Commons, the 46 year old Conservative, John Bercow, is “poised to scrap the age-old practice of addressing MPs by the title ‘the honourable member’, (instead) MPs will be referred to by their first name and surname.” The article also reports that the new Speaker “has already come under fire for deciding to abandon the traditional Speaker’s uniform in favour of a lounge suit and academic gown.” Federal Parliament has thankfully done away with wigs and gowns for the Speaker in the House of Representatives and the President in the Senate. But the title of Honourable is still widely used. At federal level, an MP normally has to have been a Minister or Parliamentary Secretary to get the formal title of “The Honourable”, although my understanding is that at least some state Parliaments bestow it on every MP. |
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