Strange idioms
Gladys Berejiklian facing questions about an ongoing investigation into Daryl Maguire
Australia is at a critical point. A Coalition government that would cling to power to impose broadly unpopular policy threatens the very nature of our democracy.
Our recent research suggests that while group deliberation can indeed increase the accuracy of forecasts, it can lead you astray when it comes to making a final decision. - Harvard Business Review
Can Australia prosper without Sydney? It’s the diabolical question Gladys Berejiklian is asking of the national economy as she conducts one of the most challenging policy experiments in our history.
There is no margin for error in the NSW Premier’s plan to begin easing health restrictions once the state has vaccinated 70 per cent of its adult population. If she reopens too soon, the remainder of the year will be a write-off. The double dip recession that began in July could easily spill over into 2022, returning us to where we were at the bottom of the lockdown cycle in 2020.
Like most bullies, Trump favours hitting people when they are down. Understanding his deployment of sadism is fundamental to understanding his appeal. He brought together large numbers of people who would have liked to lash out, but didn’t have the courage. He made them feel that their anger and contempt – whatever its source – was legitimate. And, very importantly, he convinced people viscerally that the norms of civilised society were part of a rigged system
‘A change in the name of the US War Department to “Defense Department” in 1947,’ Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote in After the Cataclysm, ‘signalled that henceforth the state would be shifting from defence to aggressive war.’ I was reminded of this a few days ago, when the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, proposed the appointment of a ‘free speech and academic freedom champion’ for universities, tasked with investigating breaches and issuing fines. The move comes despite a 2018 parliamentary committee report that ‘did not find the wholesale censorship of debate in universities which media coverage has suggested’, and a review of ten thousand student union events which found that only six had been cancelled (four missed deadlines for paperwork, one was a scam, and the other was a Jeremy Corbyn rally arranged without sufficient notice). Williamson is not reacting to a problem; he is reifying the illusion of one. The government is reaching for the fig leaf of a ‘free speech champion’ after a year of escalating authoritarianism in education and
Around fifteen years ago, a story emerged about Bartali’s activities during the Nazi occupation of Italy. It was said that the great cyclist had saved dozens, perhaps hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Jewish lives, by cycling the eighty-odd miles between Florence, where he lived, and Assisi, a node in an underground network that helped to protect Jews, with forged documents hidden in his bicycle frame.