Keating: They don't make them like Paul anymore

Keating: The Interviews
Tuesday, 8.30pm, ABC1

Four hours on a politician, any politician, is a big ask, but let's face it -- whatever your feelings for Paul Keating, he makes a fascinating profile. Kerry O'Brien spent 14 hours between March and July interviewing the former prime minister in his elegant Sydney office, stuffed with antiques, for this fascinating four-part series. Why did Keating decide to do it? O'Brien says the boy from Bankstown who left school aged 15 is comfortable with his place in history; perhaps it was to protect his legacy. Certainly no other Australian politician has agreed to the length and scope of these interviews which started last week with Keating talking poignantly about how his grandmother, mother and father influenced his early years, his hero and mentor Jack Lang, and his obsession, from the age of 18, with politics. (If you missed it catch up on www.abc.net.au/iview.) This week, Keating reflects on the heady years (1983-91) when he was prime minister Bob Hawke's treasurer. It was a powerful combo, one of the best, but put two such strong, single-minded bulls in the same paddock and they will occasionally lock horns. Keating and O'Brien obviously enjoy engaging (sometimes sparring) with each other here; urbane, witty Keating with his whimsical smile and O'Brien doing what he does best: thoroughly researched, intelligent journalism.

BANKstown BOY

Grief Over Missing Out

Securing a property in the inner west is like winning a lotto now...

It's a phenomenon fast becoming known in the property industry as ''GOMO'': Grief Over Missing Out. Prospective buyers who pin their hopes on a dream home and are outbid at auction by competitors are increasingly slumping into a state approaching clinical depression Chinese invasion without one bullet being fired

Experts are calling it the spring that will never be repeated. A property heatwave has gripped Sydney this selling season, with almost all of the city's boom-time records smashed: record listing numbers, record sales volumes, record house prices and, as of Saturday, the busiest auction day on record. This is a one-in-100 year perfect storm of auction conditions - I don't think it will ever be repeated Clever Invasion by Kommunist Strategists

Schmitz shines as tormented prince in Stone's Hamlet

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there's no such thing as Shakespeare's version of Hamlet.

‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it’

Everyone brings their own interpretation of the tragic Danish prince to the stage:

THE last time Belvoir did Hamlet, Geoffrey Rush played a Horatio who was always onstage, the moral core of the play, watching on sad and confused as this dreadful family tore itself apart and the state of Denmark was destroyed. In Simon Stone's production, Hamlet has no friend Schmitz Shines (and like Jeff Toby had to have a ciggie outside after the show

We all know that, to make a Hamlet, you have to break a few eggs and, if there’s anyone that’s known for doing that, it’s young gun director Simon Stone. Sometimes, said eggs are cracked with deft precision; at others, they fracture in an unexpected way and end up all over the floor. When critics laud Simon, he seems to exhibit no loss of composure but, if we say, now and then, ‘oh, Simon, what a mess!’, he’s tended to attribute it to our misunderstanding of cooking technique. Belvoir ~~ Artshub review ~~ Review over Dinner ~~~After few wines not so good review

Wilde Walk or Ride to Work and Live Forever ;-)

There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot...

~ Grandma Katarina Imrichova's saying / When real people fall down in life, they get right back up and keep on walking...

When so many of us spend most of our time in the workplace (perhaps sitting at a desk or behind a computer), it makes sense to incorporate more fitness into your work day ... Live Longer If Not Forever

Many moons ago when I pretented to work at Parliament House I spend zero dollars on transport, but my sneakers were replaced several times a year as I braved the shortcut from Darling Point through the Kings Cross to enter the entrance of PH at the Domaine. These days I approach the city walking same distance 5 km in and out braving the streets of Waterloo and Hills of Surry. 

People who walk to work, before or during work, are generally healthier, more productive and less likely to be sick or absent. It's in the best interests of all organisations to support and regularly participate in the Walk to Work program or Ride to Work Initiatives... 

People who walk to work are around 40 per cent less likely to have diabetes as those who drive, Riding to Work 2013 Innitiatives

Walkers are 'practitioners of the city,' for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities. Just as language limits what can be said, architecture limits where one can walk, but the walker invents other ways to go.

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The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an alleory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest).

k~Whild Walkers

Bridge Connected to Chez Dorman: George, Jean, Leo ...

The debate was ''partly a technical argument'', Professor Spearritt added, because ''the (Sydney) Harbour Bridge is really just a bigger version of the Hell Gate Bridge built in New York''.

In charge: John Bradfield, the engineer who oversaw the design and construction of the bridge, at his desk

Links to George Dorman

Koridors of Konkrete at Anzy & Beyond

Urban activation or urban disaster? It takes a village to stand up to those who socialise losses The consensus of the 250-strong crowd at the Randwick urban activation precinct (UAP) community forum at The Juniors last night was the State Government's plan would tear the heart out of the beach-swept villages along Anzac Pde. Urban activation or urban disaster? Documents leaked from initial UAP consultation sessions had revealed buildings up to 20-storeys high, or 65m, at Kingsford, Maroubra Labor MP Michael Daley explained to audience how strange the consultation for the proposal has been  ... Dal(e)y Battle Regarding UAP

It seems the main issues calling many of us to action right now are the lack of consultation surrounding the NSW government's policy on Urban Activation Precincts (UAP), and the proposed changes to Planning laws. The UAP policy is likely to result in a significant increase in resident numbers by allowing high density development in current low and medium density residential areas. 

As well as co-convening a public forum on Wednesday (with Michael Daley) on how the UAP will affect our area, in this issue of our newsletter, Matt Thistlethwaite opines on the demise of the NBN as we know it. Michael Daley, co-convener of Wednesday's public forum on the UAP, is the bearer of some good news in relation to our local beaches, reporting on much improved 'clean' ratings.  Residents with Views

"There are so many ways a building can be a bad building," says architecture expert Elizabeth Farrelly Truly Ugly Stories

Jay Rosen @ the House

Eurydice wants to speak to you.

But she can’t speak your language anymore.

She talks in the language of dead people now...

No one has studied the press and the woeful state of public knowledge more carefully than Jay
Preacher and practitioner - old-testament-and-new-testament-journalism/#comment

Susan Sontag took all of knowledge as her province. To be curious was a moral obligation. A taste for conquest was her intellectual style...Sermon by Susan

“It will not sell, and it will do immeasurable harm to a growing reputation. ... I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.” Thus an early publisher’s rejection of Lolita... Slavic Freud

Gabriella Backing the Bohemian Cup in Nostalgic Sydney

"The plays I love and the parts I love are the ones that make people feel less alone. That's a huge part of great art for me--human beings comforting one another with their shortcomings."

~ Cherry Jones sharing her wisdom with Ms Gabriella Imrich while she was in NY (as quoted in The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 20, 2013) 

"She was never ironic or sarcastic or cynical or nihilistic or contemptuous or any of those things, which are all the signs of the tarantula in smart people, the resentful small deadly creature that never fights...that only waits to bitefiercely and maybe kill you that way."

~ Tom Wolfe, Back to Blood

One way to know what you value, writes Francine Prose, is to see what you can't leave behind. A portrait of an elephant-head god, for example... Priceless. Nostalgia of our Strange Lives

Her father cut off his own right hand. Her mother killed a kitten with chloroform. The unhappy but strangely sustaining family life of Marianne Moore…All unhappy families ...

There’s nothing wrong with being a werewolf, as long as you can run off to the forest at the crucial moment... Bohemian Fairytales

A modern Marx. Jonathan Sperber's attempt to confine the man to his milieu misses the point. Marx's ideas shape our world... The Specter of Marx is haunting the entire world Now...

Income inequality will worsen, predicts Tyler Cowen, but revolution is not stirring. Our economic and social future will be a “hyper-meritocracy”... No more children of Velvet Revolutions

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

~ Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare for Sasha

Reading Tea Leaves

“You can’t ask me to explain the lyrics because I won’t do it.”

- Lou Reed

O

Who really knows if reading will make you a better person? More to the point, why should it matter? Reading Cold River


Amazon’s book recommendations are rubbish Amazon reading recommendations

Five (punj) kids’ books that work for adults just as well. The stories of Punjab

Is George Orwell’s 1984 the go-to guide to being a grownup? MLXXXIV

Follow the money. Here’s where it goes in the book industry. Following the Money

Brave Old Feudal World

“We’re in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one side are the nimble, unorganized, distributed powers such as dissident groups, criminals, and hackers. On the other side are the traditional, organized, institutional powers such as governments and large multinational corporations. During its early days, the Internet gave coordination and efficiency to the powerless. It made them powerful, and seem unbeatable. But now the more traditional institutional powers are winning, and winning big. How these two fare long-term, and the fate of the majority of us that don’t fall into either group, is an open question – and one vitally important to the future of the Internet…Government power is also increasing on the Internet. Long gone are the days of an Internet without borders, and governments are better able to use the four technologies of social control: surveillance, censorship, propaganda, and use control. There’s a growing “cyber sovereignty” movement that totalitarian governments are embracing to give them more control – a change the US opposes, because it has substantial control under the current system. And the cyberwar arms race is in full swing, further consolidating government power New Feudal Times

The detective, Dan Cohn, owned and operated Docusearch, a website that trafficked in personal information, and at the time, he was charging $35 to dig up someone’s driving record, $45 for his bank account balances, $49 for a social security number, $84 to trace a mobile number, and $209 to compile his stocks, bonds, and securities. The site offered a simple clickable interface and Amazon-like shopping cart. It’sstill around today, boasting similar services. “Licensed Investigators for Accurate Results” reads the tag line, calling itself “America’s premier provider of on-line investigative solutions I challenged hackers to investigate me and what they found out is chilling

It's a story he tells, breaking years of silence, in "Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man," which chronicles Calce's rise to becoming arguably the most famous, or infamous, computer hacker ever. Hacker who was 12

Chefs who live below poverty lines

In the memo, dated August 3, 2010 James writes: ‘HMRC have seriously underestimated the additional tax etc that was at stake and I cannot stress enough that we really have got away with murder here.’  Former tax officer with HMRC, Trevor James, claims his methods were ‘legitimate, of course’ despite talking of prosecution and admitting that he knowingly removed documents from the company’s personnel files. The memo says: ‘It would have seriously complicated ­matters had I left all the paperwork in... it could, potentially, have cost us many hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. Gordon Ramsays almost got away with murder

It alleges Messrs Gould, Leaver and Ross funded the offshore network by buying life insurance policies from Fidelity Pacific Life Insurance Company, which operates from tax haven Vanuatu and claims on its website that although ''death is inevitable taxation does not have to be''. Offshoring: tax arrangements described as 'Byzantine in their complexity'  The world of tax edens

 Global Witness submission to Select Committee inquiry into oil and mining sectors calls for:

• a public register of real owners of UK companies
• speedy passing of new EU standard into UK law ensuring company payments to governments are reported
• end to lobbying by Shell, others, to delay UK implementation of EU transparency law
• blocking of attempt to take ENRC private until official investigations completed
• the UK judicial authorities to freeze funds from a major Nigerian oil deal involving Shell, Eni and various offshore companies Lifting the lid on corruption scandals

The Circle of Corruption

Mr Temby said the inquiry would examine whether Mr Dunn and another former senior public servant, Mark Duffy, engaged in ''official misconduct'' by using their positions to benefit the Obeids. In 1989 Mr Duffy was sacked as Labor Council industrial officer for leaking internal documents he co-wrote with Mr Costa to an executive at transport giant Linfox. He later worked as chief of staff to former NSW treasurer Michael Egan Corrupt Label

Instead of coal, this time around the Independent Commission Against Corruption is examining the Obeids' interests in cafes at Circular Quay, water licences covering the family property near Mudgee and a canny solution to reduce sickies in the public service.  A succession of former waterways ministers, Carl Scully, Michael Costa, Eric Roozendaal and Joe Tripodi, will be called to give evidence in Operation Cyrus about Mr Obeid's alleged attempts to lobby them to renew two retail leases at Circular Quay, for the Sorrentino Restaurant and Quay Eatery, without going to tender. Troika of self interest

John Abood ~ The story behind the doctrine: ''How to live well on nothing a year'' from the classic novel Vanity Fair The money trail

Carr spent three days at Bohemian Grove. As socio-political tourism, it was a brilliant experience. But Carr would have been wiser to spend no days there. As diplomacy, it was foolish. Clayton Bohemians

The First Bohemians: Love and squalor

“Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.”

― P.D. James

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Before Soho was boho, there was Covent Garden. Its theaters, bordellos, and back alleys gave rise to a modern archetype: the poverty-stricken artist...First Bohemians

What could be more doomed in America than a socialist magazine? Dissent started in 1954 with enough money to put out four issues. Sixty years later... Dissent almost as old as Vaclav Havel

Our collective sense of irony, it seems, has never been in better health. We say, “How ironic!” as a politician’s hypocrisy is exposed; we laugh knowingly as Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter egos eviscerate their prey with perfect Socratic irony; we feel keenly the dramatic irony as Romeo takes his own life, thinking Juliet has killed herself. Irony, in all its forms, pervades our lives. Irony pervades our lives, but it tends to fall flat on the page. That’s an old problem. In the 17th century, the Rev. John Wilkins invented the “irony mark”... Hard core ironies

Big data erects “invisible barbed wire” around our lives, says Evgeny Morozov. The more we reveal, “the denser but more invisible this barbed wire becomes”...Iron curtains and barbed wires

The Land of the Roman Ls: Roberto, Philipo & Jozefo all L category now

Although free societies provide opportunities which criminals can exploit, in totalitarian states the worst criminals are commonly those in power.

~ Former judge Tony Fitzgerald

Mr Fitzgerald has warned Queenslanders that Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie's new laws are dangerous and unlikely to work.

In an opinion piece in The Courier-Mail, Mr Fitzgerald says it's foolhardy and arrogant for politicians to make major changes without consulting legal experts and then slander critics.

He says the government doesn't have a mandate to ignore ethics and attack fundamental values.

But Mr Bleijie insists his government has the support of everyday Queenslanders.

"We were elected with a mandate to make sure that we rebalance the scales of justice," he told reporters. Opinion tony fitzgeralds verdict on the tough law-and-order

A future without regret. We tell ourselves not to dwell on failure, that doing so is whiny and unuseful. To the contrary, regret is what makes us human... No Regrets?

Boonah, an Anglicised version of the Aboriginal word 'buna', supposedly means bloodwood tree. Located 84 km south-west of Brisbane and 100 metres above sea-level, Boonah is known as 'The Heart of the Fassifern'. It is a very pretty little town with lots of timber houses. Surrounded by hills it was established in 1882 as a service centre for the surrounding farms. The area produces vegetables for the nearby Brisbane markets (notably carrots and potatoes), cereal crops, beef, pork and timber Boonah ~ Drive 90 minutes from Brisbane and you'll reach not the Gold or Sunshine coasts but the postcard-perfect Scenic Rim. The Rim is the name given to an arc of mountain ranges, but the region includes the hills and valleys of rainforest and farmland at the foot of the range. At its heart is the tiny town of Boonah. Rim of Nature

God’s Workshop ~ Terrific first draft, but the female characters need some work. Composing Cold Rivers