Best quotes found in the mad, mad week that was

Because news doesn't wait for dead trees.
Bartholomeusz quoted on the Business Spectator online banner 7 October 2008

In wartime, truth is so precious she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Attributed to Winston Churchill, whose dead words are still applied daily in the political and business spheres

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties.
William Hewlett in Quoteopia

Fortunately executives of ‘rescued’ outfits realise how important it is for them to reassure the rest of us by showing us that life goes on and we should continue to lead it (as best we can in our newly straightened circumstances) as usual.

Nicholas Gruen writing in Club Troppo, about the fact that a week after government 'bailed-out' failed insurance giant AIG its executives splurged on seven days of $440,000 worth of sybaritic pleasure.

The Budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

Bruce Whitney quoting Cicero in The Daily Examiner letters to the editor column 9 October 2008, thereby reminding us that the more things change......

"I know Mr Turnbull thinks that the whole world revolves around his ego," Swan said before jetting off to the IMF meeting in the United States. "But there are some events in the world which are much bigger than Mr Turnbull’s ego."
Well, that’s not literally true about the Zaphod Beeblebrox of Australian politics, but it’s a good line.

Bernard Keene writing in Crikey about the Leader of the Opposition's boast that he personally has the Australian banks on the run.

But the IMF doesn't have a network of purpose-built Australian spies to feed its impressions of the Australian economy. Its World Economic Outlook report is written using information obtained from member state economies themselves; from the Commonwealth Treasury, in our case.
So in effect, when Kevin Rudd quotes from the IMF, he is quoting himself; at the very least, he is quoting Wayne Swan.

Anabelle Crabb writing in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday takes a jaundiced view of the Prime Minister's assurances concerning the stability of Australia's economy and financial institutions.

NSW North Coast artist

Arthouse Australia is now showing the Men's Business exhibition, featuring the art of Curtis Edwards and Anthony Nugent.

Here are three of Anthony's pieces:

Riverbend Knee [oil on linen]

Golden Left [oil on linen]

The Three Sisters - Mt Chincogan V [oil on canvas]

One October far, far away................

A snapshot from the National Library of Australia newspaper archives:

WALL STREET COLLAPSE. FRENZIED TRADING. RECORD FALL IN VALUES. Banks Try to Check Decline. Heavy Loss on Leading Stock. NEW YORK. Oct. 28. The Argus Wednesday 30 October 1929, page 7. News 829 words... Loss on Leading Stock. NEW YORK. Oct. 28. The New York stock market crashed again on Monday under an ... overboard" as the stock market plunged downward, headed by- the earlier leading stock of the United States ... Surprises Officials. The stock market suffered a loss 1,000,000,000 dollars (£200,000,000), the sales... [full text not yet accessible]

AMERICAN LOSSES AFFECT ALL CLASSES
Toll of Market Collapse
WASHINGTON, Sunday.
Despite the stock market, crash 581
persons in the United States had in-
comes of more than 1,000,000 dollars
in 1929, according to the Bureau of In-
ternational Revenue.
There was a diminution of seven
from 1928. No less than 38,1150 per-
sons had incomes exceeding 50,000 dol-
lars, aggregating 5,952,000,000 dollars.
The money lost on the stock market
totalled 661,000,000 dollars of which per-
sons with incomes of less than 5,000
dollars showed 43,000,000 dollar losses
in speculative activities, indicating the
intense nature of speculation of all at
the time of the crash.
The Canberra Times Tuesday 17 March 1931, page 1. News 106 words

Cartoon was found at Slack B**tard

The True Blue Honour Roll of Academic Freedom

The Sydney Morning Herald published an article yesterday which had the Young Liberals demonstrating the depth of rigorous research that lies behind their finger-pointing before the 2008 Senate Inquiry into Academic Freedom and their listing of a number of 'bad' academics, when national president Noel McCoy pointed out that evidence for alleged teaching bias was basically found by Googling these same academics.

Because of that I was going to call this post; One man's Google or 4633 kilobytes that certain uni students will very likely be ashamed of when they reach retirement.

Then I clicked onto the Senate website and found this group's submission Make Education Fairer, dated 13 August 2008 .
One hundred and five PDF pages of the most malicious drivel I have read in quite some space of time.

Suddenly it wasn't so amusing anymore. This little witch hunt even named an entire university department in what boils down to charges of thought crimes against white, Anglo-Saxon males.

Especially jaw-dropping is the notion found in the submission that this excerpt is apparently considered a biased and unnatural aim:

2.1 1 Schooling should assist in overcoming inequalities between social groups, seeking to produce equal and high educational outcomes for all social groups.
[Australian Education Union, Curriculum Policy 2007]

I invite you to read it all here. Unfortunately at the time of posting this, the hearing transcripts were not up yet for 9 October 2008, when the Young Liberals presented their supposed evidence in person.

Those academics named in the Make Education Fairer submission deserve to be recognised and supported against such nonsense:

Wendy Bacon
Eva Cox
Peter Singer
Catharine Lumby

The entire Department of Critical and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, including Doctors Anderson, Francis-Cranny, Lambert, Murray and Sullivan

Peter Manning
Sarah Maddison
Carol Johnson
Tom Bramble
Jamie Doughney
Carole Ferrier
Martin Hirst

Rick Kuhn

Georgina Murray
Damon Riggs
Anna Szorenyi

Kathleen Conellan

Alia Imtoual

et al

This week's political blog giggle

Yes we can (hold babies) has just turned up on my radar.

This is a light-hearted piece of photo campaigning from a college student called Eliza:

Many political scholars have referred to the "baby kiss effect" as the penultimate test of the capabilities of a nominee. If a politician doesn't kill the baby with his partisan lips, the country knows he's capable of taking that 3am call.

Barack Obama, in his majestic campaigning, has kissed many tots, held many youngsters, and charmed many mummies. Photographers snap pictures of these moments, because the images have the power to charm more than just mummies. They have the power to bring joy to the most cold-hearted of politicians, the most unfertile of citizens, and the most cynical of young voters.

Here, on this webspace, I bring you those uterus-rousing portraits, those testis-rejuvenating daguerreotypes, those happiness-inducing tableaus.

Surfin' the Coldstream Festival, Yamba 24-27 October 2008

Surfin' the Coldstream is on in Yamba NSW between Wednesday 24 to Saturday 27 October.
It features a mix of free street performance and music.
Strong lady, sword swallower, human pinwheel firecracker, acrobats, jugglers, comedian, flamenco dancers, singer and muliple bands.

Tickets to the 7pm Saturday Tent of Marvels Show in the Kitchen to Table BigTop can be purchased from ArtHouse Australia or bookings can be made by phoning (02) 6646.1999.

Clarence Valley Council: Williamson's World

A letter to the editor in The Daily Examiner this week:

Williamson's world

When the Clarence Valley local government election results were published, it was obvious that residents and ratepayers would have a predominately inexperienced set of shire councillors.

Now under Mayor Richie Williamson it is also obvious that this council intends to throw what is left of local government access and equity out the window, in favour of a closed shop for the convenience of the mayor and certain councillors' private working hours.

By changing the time of day at which ordinary monthly meetings start from 9am to 4pm [Clarence Valley Council,telephone advice,03.10.08], Mayor Williamson has locked out electors - who have to rely on bus transport to travel to Maclean or Grafton and return - from staying for the full length of those monthly meetings.

Bus timetables for the Grafton-Maclean-Iluka-Yamba run do not allow for any weekday travel after 5.26pm and 5.32pm to 6.07 pm from Grafton and Maclean respectively. [Busways timetable].

Allowing time to walk to the nearest bus stop, Lower Clarence residents and ratepayers without private transport will only be able to stay at a Grafton monthly meeting for an hour and at a Maclean monthly meeting for and hour and fifteen minutes to an hour and three-quarters if they are lucky.
Grafton residents and ratepayers without private transport will have to leave the 4p.m. Maclean meetings before the bus back to Grafton at 5.32pm.
Iluka people relying on bus travel just won't have any access to any ordinary monthly meetings, as in practice there will be no timely Maclean transfers available.

With an aging population in many areas of the Clarence Valley and a dwindling pool of friends and neighbours capable of driving long distances as the light is changing or in the dark, many people will not be able to attend monthly meetings when issues that concern them come before council for consideration and vote.

It is my understanding that there was no real debate of this issue, that councillors "just voted".

If this is Mayor Williamson's brave new world, it is a tawdry comparison to that which went before.

JUDITH M. MELVILLE
Yamba