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Posts Tagged ‘tony abbott’

When the bible was written humans* didn’t know: About bacteria and viruses and parasites Blood circulation Earth going around sun More than 5 planets About galaxies There was a southern hemisphere Earth round What lightning is That whales aren’t fish What mental illness involves About genes and inheritance About Chinese, Aztecs, Zulus, Aborigines, Navaho, Japanese, [...]

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You all remember Old King Canute taking his throne down to the beach, right – “Cnut set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet “continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal [...]

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It’s one of those historic events that still, 630 years on, resonate with modern times and make your blood run cold. In 1381 the so-called “Peasant’s Revolt” led by Wat Tyler massed tens of thousands of poor people protesting the new “Poll Tax” which, like our GST, made poor people pay as much tax as [...]

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The other day a storm erupted on Twitter and in blogs about an article in a magazine. The argument was about little*, really, a storm in a teacup, but it raged for several days. The even odder thing was that it didn’t pit right against left, but consisted of feminists, female and male, arguing with [...]

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Boo

Every day commercial tv finds new ways to scare its viewers – bacteria in kitchens, exploding tables (yes, really), food poisoning, internet fraud, faulty electrical wiring, incurable diseases, end of world “prophecies” (yes, really), and so on and on and on. The reasons are simple, a belief that many readers will think “thank goodness that [...]

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When I was a young fellow, turned 14, the minimum age at which you could leave school, people demanded of my mother that I leave school, get a job, support the family. Fair enough. No one in the family had ever, for financial reasons, stayed at school past that age. And it was what people [...]

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It is becoming increasingly clear, as time goes by, that, just as is the case for Obama in America, Julia Gillard is facing a media determined to force Labor out of office, backed by a ruthless Opposition, supported by an army of Tea Party-style astro-turf groups backed by billionaires. These groups are determined that no [...]

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Look forget about the Monarchists for a moment. The ones with flags and funny hats and collections of Charles and Diana commemorative mugs; the ones who camp out for two days on the street to possibly catch a glimpse of a gloved hand waving from a speeding limousine; the ones who spontaneously sing “god save [...]

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The horrible lot (Bachmann, Perry, Cain and the rest) seeking the Republican nomination in the states, and the equally horrible lot trying to overthrow the government by bombast in Australia, have more in common with radio shock jocks than with the politicians of the past like Eisenhower and Kennedy, Menzies and Whitlam. It is politics [...]

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Long long ago, as the oldest of my Watermelon friends may just remember, there used to be talent competitions in community and media. At Eisteddfords performers performed, judges judged, winners grinned, losers were praised and encouraged, audiences applauded loudly in appreciation. Then the geniuses who produce tv programs decided this was all wrong. In the [...]

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