Despite my election-related criticisms of the Greens political party, the deal announced today between Julia Gillard and Bob Brown is a good one. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has agreed to a swag of demands from the Greens as part of a formal deal to join forces as Labor tries to secure a parliamentary majority. Immediately [...]
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Great News for Tony Abbott: Tony Abbott is not a tech head, doesn’t understand economics either
There was a lot of reporting about Tony Abbott’s interview on 7:30 Report last night about the Liberal’s risible broadband policy. Tony Abbott repeatedly said “I don’t claim to be any kind of tech head in all of this”, basically admitting he didn’t have the faintest clue about his own policy. After all, no one [...]
The “boring” election
Political journalists contribute significantly to misinformation about Australia’s political process, policies and civil society. They distort and distract, and with only a few exceptions their gutter-obsessed herd-mentality results in myopic and shallow commentary. Over at the Political Sword (an excellent blog whose authors’ commentary rivals that of the most experienced Press Gallery hack), Ad Astra [...]
LabourStart’s video of the year and the state of union videos
LabourStart recently held it’s LabourStart Video of the Year competition, which aimed to get showcase the best union videos of the year. Like the LabourStart photo of the year, the shortlisted videos included a few good videos, but really only served to highlight the parlous state of union film making globally. The winning video, a [...]
Are meeting toxic?
I’ve been reading Reworked – a new book by 37 Signals – which suggests that work meetings are “toxic”. (Download a short sample here.) The worst interruptions of all are meetings. Here’s why: They’re usually about words and abstract concepts, not real things. They usually convey an abysmally small amount of information per minute. They [...]
Don't prosecute the messenger
I subscribe to the Google Public Policy Blog and get updates every few days. Today, I got sent a story about a case in Italy where three Google executives have been prosecuted for a video of an autistic student being bullied at school. In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and [...]
Complaining about Jon Faine
I sent this complaint into the ABC today after hearing some outrageous commentary from Jon Faine. If you were unfortunate enough to tune in as well, I encourage you to also make a complaint. You can do so here. I tuned into 774 to hear Jon Faine “interviewing” Dr Peter Singer. I understand that Jon [...]
Don't get Internode
Having recently moved house, I decided to ditch Optus and go with the 50gb Internode ADSL2+ Naked Plan. Internode promised that it would take a month to install, but they would send the modem and it would be pre-configured, so I could just plug it in and start surfing. After waiting for a month for [...]
Young people don’t blog
For my Project 52 post, I thought I’d comment about a recent Pew report has come to my attention via DownloadSquad that says that young people are blogging less: Pew Internet released a report yesterday called Social Media and Young Adults that shows teen blogging down by 50% over the past four years, even as [...]
Highrise unions?
Just found an interesting post by Eric Lee suggesting that union organisers use the CRM (customer relationship management) tool Highrise: Highrise is what one user calls a “Rolodex on steroids”. At its core is a contact manager. But it is also a task manager too, and an events calendar. It’s also completely free of charge, [...]
Beat up: Election authorisation for blogs
The latest confected outrage to come from the blogosphere is the draconian notion that people who comment on elections, candidates or parties during an election period, should have to own up to them. Asking whether it is “taking responsibility or being silenced”, Deborah on Larvatus Prodeo suggests that she may not make election comment since [...]
The iPad letdown
After months of hype, the legions of Apple fans are experiencing a kind of collective “meh”, as they realise that the iPad could never meet their impossible expectations. I’m no fan of Apple, but even I watched the fever-pitch rumours about the iPad with interest – perhaps they really could pull off something incredible. Of [...]
Joining Project 52
Via Adii of Woothemes, I’ve stumbled across Project 52, a “personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year.” So far this year, I reckon I’ve managed one post per week. A challenge like this may help me keep [...]
No Clean Feed and Hoekstrian exaggeration
Back in June 2009, US Republican congressman Peter Hoekstra wrote on Twitter: Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House. This outrageous and ludicrous comparison comparing the adjourning of Congress to the brutally suppressed uprising in Iran, spawned a (short lived) Twitter meme: [...]
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Lessons from the (Modern) Prince, Part 4: Understanding the Greens in Tasmania
- No Clean Feed campaign needs to drop their "censorship" obsession
- Alan Kohler shows he doesn't know about politics
- The Robin Hood Tax
- Seven ways for unions to use Twitter
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The Labor-Greens deal
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Blogging will recommence when the count is resolved
- Five articles I’m reading today
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Election Diary, day 35: Why I’m betting on Labor
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Good news for Tony Abbott: Off the deep end on climate change
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Jeremy: Oh, you're right that Labor hasn't been ...
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Alexander White: In the last term, almost everything that Labor tri...
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mark: Tony Abbott would like to pensioners and old austr...
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