The latest Newspoll has Labor’s lead up again after a period of moderating results since the leadership upheaval, the two-party lead now at 54-46, compared with 53-47 in the poll a fortnight ago. Labor is up a point on the primary vote to 39%, while the Coalition is down one to 36%, the Greens are down two to 9%, and One Nation are steady on 6%. Still more worrying for the Liberals is a reversal of the tide in favour of Scott Morrison, who records his first net negative personal ratings to date, with approval down four to 41% and disapproval up six to 44%. Bill Shorten is respectively up two to 37% and down one to 50%, and his deficit as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 45-34 to 43-35. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1646.
nath:
[‘Especially when you are old and probably haven’t got any since the Hawke government, like a few on here I suspect.’]
Cat found your post over which I accused you of being ageist. I should add that I take no offence whatsoever of being called a fogey, in much the same vein as when BB posted: “Bag your head Mavis.” In fact, I thought it was a hoot.
I’m now out of here.
briefly
says:
Friday, November 2, 2018 at 11:43 pm
I have met Chloe Shorten a couple of times. She’s gracious, warm, articulate, funny and poised….unlike Nath, who is clearly a pail of sludge.
_____________________________
Well… I don’t want to put shit on myself but you are probably right in the comparison.
I’m sorry I mentioned her name. But ‘fantasy pimping’? I think it was C@tmomma that took it to that level.
aunt mavis
i read news
the trial will not drag on
its the poorest case imaginable
but no more from me on subject promise – except speculation on the payout which will be massive
briefly:
Amplifying immigration issues is all about getting Republicans out to vote.
aunt mavis
i read news
the trial will not drag on
its the poorest case imaginable
but no more from me on subject promise – except damages
One thing is pretty much nailed on when it comes to the PC virtue signalling puritans. They have no sense of humour and no sense of irony either.
I second the recommendation to read Caro’s biographies on LBJ. I’ve listened to Grover Gardner read the first four (about 150 hours) and it’s one of the privileges of my life. Life changing.
Still one volume to go! I hope Caro, Gardner and I all live to see it through.
Of irony, bloody keyboard.
Diogenes
says:
Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 12:02 am
I second the recommendation to read Caro’s biographies on LBJ. I’ve listened to Grover Gardner read the first four (about 150 hours) and it’s one of the privileges of my life. Life changing.
Still one volume to go! I hope Caro, Gardner and I all live to see it through.
_____________________________
I read the first volume in a few sittings. It was an incredible pleasure. Not that I thought I knew a lot about LBJ before reading Caro, but the gap between the perceptions and the portrait Caro drew out was incredible. I also recommend Caro’s other great work on Robert Moses, The Power Broker. Moses made New York City his own fiefdom for decades. A truly brilliant researcher and writer.
Hey LU 🙂
Hey CC,
Contacts have been O/S. Meeting with one next week. Will be in touch. How often are you in Sydney?
nath
I read The Power Broker first as well. The LBJ biographies were too long for me to read so I listened to them in the car, on the plane etc etc. Perfection.
I hope the ticker issues can be resolved LU….all the best with it…
Nath….in your fantasy power game, you pimped Chloe. You’re the author of the game…the setting, the characters, the plot, the events…these are your constructions. It’s not quite Heart of Darkness, but the supplicant makes the journey to the seat of depravity…..your story involves the sacrifice of honour, love and duty for power. It’s an insult. You wrote an insult. Best not to attribute it to c@t, who was clearly affronted and not at all the co-writer. To blame c@t….that would be cowardly.
I’m in Sydney when I have to be Its a 4 hour trip each way urgh..
You can see why I’ve spent the last several years involved in the design of a high speed rail network that happens to include Newcastle 🙂
But I’ve decided not to include Gosford any more because C@t doesn’t like the idea 🙂
The federal government must dedicate some of its increased spending to directly creating jobs for the unemployed.
The most efficient way to do this is for the federal government to make an unconditional offer of minimum wage employment to anyone who wants a job.
A Job Guarantee would operate on a fixed price, floating quantity rule. That is, the price would be fixed (at the minimum wage), but the quantity of people in the Job Guarantee workforce would float in response to rises and falls in the private sector’s demand for labour.
The Job Guarantee workforce would serve as a buffer stock of employed people who are doing socially useful things that are interesting and meaningful to the workers. This is vastly superior to our current approach to controlling inflation, which is to maintain a buffer stock of miserable unemployed people.
Using unemployment as a price control mechanism is cruel, inhumane, and economically wasteful (because unemployed people are not contributing the output that they could be contributing if an appropriate job were created for them).
The federal government’s spending is constrained only by the availability of real resources (including labour) that are for sale in the government’s currency. There is no financial constraint on the federal government’s spending when it buys things in its own currency. The federal government will never go insolvent in Australian dollars.
A Job Guarantee should be federally funded but highly decentralized in its operation. Local governments, NGOs, community based organizations, cooperatives, and other not-for-profit groups should be the employers in a Job Guarantee.
These JG employers should pitch projects that a local community deems valuable. Local governments should have the final say in which projects go ahead.
JG workers would do socially valuable work that the private sector and the conventional public sector are currently not doing.
There are vast amounts of unmet needs at the grassroots level of society. These needs exist in the fields of social and community services, environmental services, artistic and cultural services, and small-scale public works.
There is no excuse for allowing involuntary unemployment. A government that issues its own currency, enforces tax obligations in that currency, and allows the currency to float in foreign exchange markets has no financial constraint when buying goods that are available for sale in its currency.
Therefore, the Australian Government effectively chooses the unemployment rate.At present, the Australian Government chooses an unemployment rate of 5.2 percent, an underemployment rate of 8.3 percent, and a hidden unemployment rate of 2 percent.This is unacceptable.
Genuine full employment would entail unemployment of no more than 2 percent (reflecting the frictional unemployment of people moving between jobs), underemployment of zero, and hidden unemployment of zero.
The Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) is a deeply flawed macroeconomic concept with no empirical basis, weak theoretical elements, and destructive social impacts. We should not be using NAIRU to guide the nation’s fiscal policy.
Instead we should adopt a Non-Accelerating Inflation Buffer Employment Ratio. This would be the ratio of persons employed by the Job Guarantee to all employed persons that is consistent with non-accelerating inflation (i.e. stable prices).
NAIBER, not NAIRU, should be the concept that guides the Australian Government’s targets for full employment with price stability.
Nicholas, have you ever thought of just putting in a swag of nonsensical words in the middle of your extremely long texts to test to see if anyone reads them?
You may be surprised how many people just scroll past them.
Good Morning Bludgers 🙂
Nicholas,
Every good boy deserves sleep! 🙂
New thread.
President Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims over 649 days
If President Trump’s torrent of words has seemed overwhelming of late, there’s a good reason for that.
In the first nine months of his presidency, Trump made 1,318 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day. But in the seven weeks leading up the midterm elections, the president made 1,419 false or misleading claims — an average of 30 a day.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/02/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cdfe2d506519
Michael Cohen Says Trump Repeatedly Used Racist Language Before His Presidency
As he awaits sentencing, Trump’s former lawyer says that he wants to clear his conscience and warn voters about what he sees as the president’s true nature in advance of the midterm elections.
4 racist things Trump has said, per Michael Cohen:
-“Black people are too stupid to vote for me.”
-“Name 1 country run by a black person that’s not a shithole.”
-“Only the blacks could live like this.”
-“There’s no way I can let this black f-ing win.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/michael-cohen-trump-racist-language
PeeBee @ #3069 Saturday, November 3rd, 2018 – 5:48 am
I’m pretty sure he already does.
I usually skim the first para or two to see if they could possibly be interesting. But as soon as you hit any of the usual acronyms, you know just to scroll on by …
@briefly
I concur with your summation of naths comments. He is free to attack Shorten about his actions,beliefs and policies, but I found his comments absolutely reprehensible when he impugned that Shorten would sell his soul for Rupert’s support and to mention Shorten’s wife too just went beyond basic decency standards of political commentary.
I don’t want nath delisted, but I believe some sort of moderation was required there by William. If I want to read such commentary,I’d turn to the DT or Herald -Sun. Not all’s fair in love or war.