Rumour has it that there's nothing more embarrassing than a sore loser. Barranquero has it in spades and is trying to cling to brick and mortar at 2 Market Street aka 239 Kent St like a drowning avocado grasps at straws.
-Wing.Yee@asteron.com.au (Yee my virtual chinese comrade of chatswood fame ;-)
Always pretend to be stupid; then when you have to show yourself smart, the display has the addtional effect of surprise. When a situation is hopeless, never listen to counsels of hope. Fold the enterprise. If Chance ever got Herself called God, I should have been a very good Catholic indeed Taking the blame is a function of servants. When the orange is squeezed, throw it away
Nearly 20 years ago, when the tax department completed a secret investigation into a drug dealer who had evaded police for years, they hit him with a bill for $1,348,048.60. But instead of jail and certain financial ruin, the dealer was able to make a deal. Crime doesn't pay? At least it will pay tax now that the ATO is working with police to target the ill-gotten assets of major crime figures. In a crackdown flagged by Peter Costello in 2004 20 suspected underworld figures will be referred to the Tax Office each year A taxing strategy
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Sovietologists: The "Mystery" of the Soviet Collapse
As we approach the fifteenth anniversary of the demise of the Soviet Union, its sudden collapse remains mysterious
The failure of U.S. Sovietologists to anticipate the Soviet collapse may in part be attributed to the "Cold War revisionism" and anti-anticommunism that tended to exaggerate the Soviet regime’s stability and legitimacy. Yet others who could hardly be considered "soft on communism" were also left feeling puzzled by its demise. George F. Kennan, an architect of U.S. strategy in the Cold War, confessed that in reviewing the entire "history of international affairs in the modern era" he found it "hard to think of any event more strange and startling, and at first glance inexplicable, than the sudden and total disintegration and disappearance. . .of the great power known successively as the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union.
• Ethics is not a subject, it is a life put to the test in a thousand daily moments Every revolution is a surprise - Antony Loewenstein: Don't let any lobby shut down debate [The phrase is a spin doctor's concoction, intended to sound impressive but Flexibility of boiled frogs ; David Corn on how 2008 Looking Like 1968]
• · Underworld godfather Tony Mokbel would have lost his liberty this week - but he is not around to serve his jail term. John Silvester profiles the small man who wanted big things A rise of a drug lord ; The CRW (Crikey Revised Wealth) Rich List When you get the power, then you get the women
• · · Michelle Malkin: The arrest of Department of Homeland Security spokesman Brian J. Doyle on felony charges of sexually preying on a undercover cop posing as a 14-year-old girl this week is just the latest debacle for the bureaucratic behemoth THE FINE MESS AT DHS ; The Department of Homeland Security is moving ahead with its plan to change how it evaluates and pays employees, even as it tries to fend off unions in court. Homeland Security Pay Plan Goes Forward, but Unions Are Wary
• · · · Good Grief! National innovation systems: Finland, Sweden & Australia compared ; As part of a major overhaul of the Family Law Act, the federal government plans to spend $200 million establishing a network of Family Relationship Centres across the country Family relationship centres: why we don’t need them
• · · · · Since the kickback scandal involving Australian Wheat Board sales to Iraq was revealed last year, shareholders in AWB have seen their investment shrink by 41 percent AWB shares ; Another essay in The Fix series: Putting It Out There. “Among the changes that technology has given us, few may be as influential in the long-term as the irresistable movement forcing news organizations to open up. Putting It Out There
• · · · · · Created in 1970, the system of Senate estimates committees was intended as a more effective means for senators to put questions to ministers and public servants about government activities. Often a thorn in the side of government, the committees have played an important role in government accountability. Yet they would never have come into existence if the government of the day had controlled the Senate. And this, argues Harry Evans, Clerk of the Senate, is a reminder that we are in uncharted waters today. Estimates hearings and government control of the Senate ; As for my brother’s death in 1987, there were a number of factors behind the depression that drove him to end his own life. One of those was the gloom brought on by translating Kafka’s The Trial. Another reason was the effort it took him to write his last book, The Drowned and the Saved - it took everything out of him. The Machine Gun Under the Bed