MICHAEL SANDEL’S “WHAT MONEY CAN’T BUY” – SURE TO BE A HIT AT THE SYDNEY WRITERS’ FESTIVAL It’s a trivial time when “rock star moralist” is not a tautology but that’s the tag the compassionate culturati have attached to Michael Sandel, who headlines the Sydney Writers Festival on Wednesday. [i] The job description made the [...]
ARE YOU BEING SERVED? WHY RETAIL ONLINE WORKS Stone the crows! No, we’re not being served The Crows bought a suit the other day and some shirts to match. The suit was made by Manly tailor Steel and May and the shirts came from UK online outlet Charles Tyrwhitt. Neither of which have a bricks [...]
POWERFUL PEOPLE DIFFICULT QUESTIONS STONE the crows! We’d be in strife without Kate McClymont and Judith Sloan. The Crows admire journalists who ask powerful people difficult questions and keep asking, journalists like Kate McClymont and Hedley Thomas. Without McClymont asking questions and reporting answers, or the absence of them, former NSW MP Edie Obeid would [...]
Rarely wrong often ignored: Why the Crows enjoy The Economist Some media, like species, seem to make periodic leaps in progress. The Economist is one of them. A century and a half elapsed between when James Wilson began the newspaper and the breakthrough by Margaret Thatcher that turned the product into the ubiquitous, mass-market item [...]
STONE the crows! The country has attention deficit disorder. Yes, there is a bipartisan consensus that we should pay approving attention to government budget deficits – which strikes the Crows as an especially dangerous disorder. On Thursday, Treasurer Wayne Swan dusted off the Whitlam political playbook and “criticised the world’s biggest developed economies for shacking [...]
THE WELFARE STATE IS BACK IN BUSINESS STONE the crows! What’s to be done when welfare is a zero sum game? Much of the media spent much of last week explaining how people slugging savings into super was stealing from those innocents at the Australian Tax Office - “Superannuation is designed backwards. It gives the [...]
MARKETS, FEDERATION AND PROTECTION – THE CONTROVERSY CONTINUES STONE the crows! Is that the sound of a paradigm shifting? Ever since the end of the 1980s just about everybody, other than union activists and manufacturers in search of a subsidy, has accepted that the twentieth century Australian economy under-performed due to protectionism, industrial awards and [...]
LIGHT RAIL IS GOOD – EXCEPT WHEN THE GREEN LEFT SAYS IT'S BAD (AND TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT) Some trams are more equal than others STONE the crows! But it’s good to see the Greens protecting us from the global warming, meat eating, capitalist conspiracy that is – light rail. Yes the Crows are cawing [...]
“UP, UP PRICES ARE UP” BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN EXPLAINS WHY NOBODY SPEAKS UP FOR SUPERMARKETS STONE the crows! Is the government seeking solutions from Springsteen, again? Close students of rock ‘n’ roll rhetoric will remember last August when the Treasurer approvingly endorsed Bruce Springsteen’s pop populism.[i] Well, now, it could be that the PM’s adviser Malcolm [...]
LET’S HEAR IT FOR OLDER CAUCASIAN BLOKES WHO PAY TAXES – THE CASE AGAINST DISCRIMINATION STONE the crows! Here’s one to perplex the human rights industry – age discrimination against a powerful white male. During the WA election campaign (well prelude to the push-over more like), somebody back grounded against Premier Colin Barnett suggesting there [...]
