So it’s John Howard’s fault that Labor can’t balance the budget, because he was running a structural deficit? Well that’s not what the government’s figures, as submitted to the IMF say. As the graph below shows, since 1980 it has only been during the Howard years that Australia ran a structural surplus at all. And […]

They’re probably just using the ABC like a piñata, without expecting it to break, but it seems to be fashionable for commentators on the right to call for more diversity in ABC presenters (see James Allan’s piece from this morning’s Australian) and even applying on their own blogs for a job themselves. Andrew Bolt is the […]

Politifact is a well-established US “fact checking” site which has now expanded to Australia under the guidance of former Fairfax editor Peter Fray. It’ s a different take to On Line Opinion’s on the classic question “what is truth”. We take the attitude that most (but not all) facts are subject to some degree of uncertainty […]

The proposition that the Howard Government is responsible for the current deficit annoys the hell out of me. As I understand the argument, Howard and Costello irresponsibly granted tax cuts in a boom time with no regard for the fact that future governments might want the extra revenue. What’s really at the base of the […]

That’s the question we are posing in On Line Opinion’s May feature, and a recent news item might make it more newsworthy than I at first thought. A 2010 paper by Harvard economists Reinhart and Rogoff was thought to show that growth suffers when a country has debt in excess of 90% of GDP. But […]

Thank heavens there isn’t any climate change, at least any that humans are causing. Or maybe just any that the elite media in the US considers worthy of their reporting. Recently both the New York Times and the Washington Post have cut back their environmental reporting and blogging. This article on Grist reveals the crap […]

As I write this, the second suspect has been taken into custody. Obama says they will learn why. Not that any explanation can possibly make sense or be forgiven. If intolerance of murder and mayhem makes ME a barbarian, then someone has their sense of irony tangled up in the knot of blind justice. The […]

The chances of Julia Gillard winning in September are probably about 15% – better than many of use would think. That is if results in Australian elections are in any way similar to US elections. I’ve taken my odds from a table in The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver where he gives the probabilities […]

When I was in my early 20s I disapproved of most things that Margaret Thatcher did. Now I approve. What has changed? Well, apart from a huge increase in experience on my part, what she did proved its worth. She took the UK from being an economic and social basket case and made it “great” […]

I thought some readers might be interested in this link spam proposition from Omnibuzz Media and my response. We are getting an increasing number of these sorts of propositions, which suggests that they must be having some success somewhere, but operators like this are best avoided. While the money might be attractive – they’re offering […]