A History of Preferential Voting in Australia
August 16, 2010With the Australian federal election impending, once again it’s time to ignore the personality contest and concentrate on reviewing the policies of the various contenders in your electorate. Reading some of the news comments by non-Australians reveals little is known about preferential voting and it’s value to creating Australia’s stable political system. While this article…
The Renaissance of Trolley Buses
August 5, 2010As part of the upcoming Australian election, The Greens party of Australia have been strongly advocating rolling out light rail (i.e. trams) in Australian cities, in particular, in Perth. While I applaud the advocacy for light rail by The Greens, the greatest impediment to adoption will be the start up cost. This consists of the…
Shooting the Messenger
July 29, 2010Taking an almost random sample of the response to the Wikileaks revelations of the criminal slaughter of Afghan civilians by the overwhelmingly U.S military, Foxnews diatribe by Gutfeld is perhaps the local maxima. It’s curious that while Gutfeld is accusing Julian Assange of selectivity in what he is choosing to leak: “The fact is, their…
Anti-bike rhetoric and FUD from NYT
June 24, 2010In the New York Times piece reporting the planned introduction of rental electric cars in Paris, the piece opens with frightening tales of the number of the Velib rental bikes that have been damaged in the history of the operation of the system. This clearly is intended to communicate how much the system has failed.
Obamas score card
January 20, 2010In case anyone in the Democratic party is wondering why support disappeared in Massachusetts, perhaps examining the score card of the Obama administration will reveal why some people feel the behaviour of the executive is little different from the war criminal he replaced. Gave money to the banking executives and left the majority of victims…
Donating for Haiti
January 15, 2010To help the people of Haiti, I recommend donating to Partners in Health that already have offices in Haiti and a long history of provision of aid, without preconditions and excessive bureaucracy. I have donated to them during the flooding that occurred in 2004 and they do great work. They have already provided two trucks…
Climate displacement is happening now
January 2, 2010Via Jill, I learned of a documentary that is currently seeking funding, following the people of Carteret Island in the Pacific who are being displaced by rising waters. There are other climate refugees, such as people fleeing the conflict in Darfur, due ultimately to the evaporation of Lake Chad and loss of arable lands. However,…
My letter to the PM: Please pay our climate debt at Copenhagen
December 10, 2009Dear Prime Minister, I urge you to recognise Australia’s obligations to the world in it’s negotiations at the Copenhagen COP-15 summit. Australia heavily burdens the world with it’s continued reliance on coal and natural gas export industries. This is a short-sighted economy which is extremely exposed to changes in production, demand and political influence from…
My Letter to W.A. Newspapers: Expat climate disbelief
November 26, 2009As an expat Aussie living in France and watching the climate debate in Canberra, it is with a sense of shame and disbelief to watch the Labour and Liberal parties obscure the real issues of climate change. Prime minister Rudd’s concessions to the Liberal party climate deniers is simply enormous corporate welfare of $5.8 billion…
The Bag-men of Kennedy Bonds?
July 18, 2009There seems to be more intrigue in the situation of dollar stability. The financial news outlet Bloomberg reported about a month ago (this completely missed me) the story of two Japanese businessmen arrested in Italy for trying to smuggle $134B in U.S. Treasury bonds into Switzerland.