The Australian 7 December 2011

Back in the old days day, when they had proper music on the radio, politicians used to be far better at pretending that politics wasn’t simply a matter of victory to the lobby group which was best at kicking and screaming. Of course, they were innocent times, and it comforted us to think that sometimes things happened because they were a sensible idea.

Then along came global warming, the solution to which (after all the kicking and screaming about the science had quietened down a bit) was a pretty straightforward try to stop burning fossil fuels as much as possible. 

Sadly, it turns out that this was in fact straightforward in the same way that smoking cigarettes will give you cancer/give you a heart attack/cause your foot to drop off/make you smell funny etc seems straightforward. That is, not at all, especially when there’s rather a lot of cash involved, which means the professional kickers and screamers get some gainful employment and everyone’s happy apart from the people with cancer, heart trouble, fewer than two feet or unusual odour who, to illustrate my general point about the straightforwardness of things as pertaining to human nature, had been pretty thoroughly warned.

Where was I? Kyoto. Yes, everybody got together at Kyoto where the idea of trying to burn less fossil fuels turned out to be extremely complicated and involve a lot of kicking and screaming, which, if you’ve looked into it at all, is a bit of a pity. Anyway, there was another meeting in Copenhagen recently where nothing much happened, mainly I suspect because somebody decided to call it “Hopenhagen” which was a pretty convincing argument against making any attempt at saving the human race from extinction whatsoever.

Anyway, the show has rolled on to Durban where most of the discussion will be about the Kyoto Protocol which was adopted in 1997, quite along time ago when you’re talking about potentially catastrophic changes to the planet’s climate, you’d think. Luckily though, there’s not that much you can really do with “Durban” as far as awful nicknames go, so you never know your luck.

The Australian, 6 December 2011

Okay, I’ve boldly called it for an interest rate on the front page of the Oz this morning, but I’ve always thought I’d be an excellent Governor of the Reserve Bank. Just front up once a month and press up, down or stay the same. Nearly as cushy as drawing pictures for a living.

Anyway, my thinking is that Europe’s going to do a reverse Santa and go around the world nipping down chimneys and taking all our stuff, so the Reserve is going to be reverse reverse Santa and give some of it back. So it’s kind of cheery news in a mildly terrifying sort of way.

Economics, huh? Anyway, if there is an interest rate cut, you definitely should splash out on a calendar and stimulate the economy. Do it for Australia, because otherwise I’ll be forced to become Governor of the Reserve Bank and then we’re all stuffed.

The Australian 2 December 2011

The current fallback argument against gay marriage, after all the other arguments against the Great Australian Fair Go have been exhausted, is of course that gay marriage isn’t that important an issue and there are more pressing things to be getting on with.

Now you will find, suspiciously, that the people saying this aren’t generally (a) gay and (b) wanting to get married. However, they do have a point, there are indeed more important things to be attended to and the best way to make an ugly squabble against basic unfairness disappear is to remove the basic unfairness as quickly as possible, especially if it costs nothing, the majority of Australians support it and it even has the advantage of being the right thing to do.

Over to you, Julia.

The Australian 1 December 2011

Full disclosure: I’m biased. I’m not homophobic, I’m not particularly keen on any sort of organised religion and I like to flatter myself that I’m not small-minded. I’m also rather non-controversially married to a female of the species, myself being a male of the same species.

Having put my hopelessly romantic nature in context, I’m quite okay with two blokes or two ladies also getting married, calling it marriage and having a lovely life. Cheers.

The Australian 30 November 2011

As the well-known economist and climate scientist Wilkins Micawber once said: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Whether this necessarily translates to running a country… well, I’m not a climate scientist, but when an election’s just around the corner, it seems to be a pretty simple case of black ink good, red ink bad.