The return of Essential Research provided the BludgerTrack mill with its first grist for the new year, but the model is at its least robust when it only has one data point to play with after a long gap. This means BludgerTrack strongly follows the lead of a poll that was less bad for the Coalition than their usual form, resulting in a substantial reduction in Labor’s still commanding lead on two-party preferred. Labor is also down six on the seat projection – one in each mainland state and two in Queensland. The Essential poll also included a new set of numbers for the leadership ratings, and these produced a weak result for Bill Shorten that has blunted his recent improving trend. Full results through the link below.
Kakuru
It shows the danger of hanging out with your father in law too much.
Mundine left the Labor Party some time ago.
Brendan Nelson was a true and loyal servant of the Labor Party right up to the moment he gained pre-selection for the LIbs.
This coming election will be a complete rout like the W.A. and VIC ones: Labor with 102 seats.
Also, I predict KayJay will predict 149 seats to Labor with Kevin Andrews as LOTO
Fozzie Logic @ #2503 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 7:33 am
With one or two seats they wouldn’t have Party status, would they?
They’d have to sit on the cross benches. 🙂
guytaur @ #2493 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 11:21 am
Oh, I do have to laugh at that one. Gilmore is my seat, and I remember being polled. Naturally, I said I would prefer Warren Mundine … as a joke.
Now, I wonder how many others did the same?
I expect a significant local backlash at this latest “Captain’s Call” idiocy.
I enjoy reading Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, Patricia Cornwell, Stephen Donaldson, Linda Farstein, John Grisham, John Le Carre, Lisa Scottoline, Marcia Muller to name a few.
Fiction rocks.
Allan, I’d have to go and look at the most recent stats – they change over time – let me find out and I’ll get back to you. I used to be pres or the writers’ assn and got sent all those things – now I have to go find them like everyone else!
Greensborough Growler @ #2502 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 8:32 am
People are entitled to change their minds. It can be a sign of maturity.
26 billionaires own as much wealth as half the world
A sobering new report by the charity Oxfam has laid bare the stunning levels of global wealth inequality.
According to the report, published Monday, billionaires have never had it better. The combined riches of the world’s 26 most wealthy billionaires equals $1.4 trillion — this is equal to the total wealth of the bottom 3.8 billion of the world’s population.
Billionaires have increased their wealth by 12 percent this year, the report states, while at the same time the wealth of the poorest half of the world has fallen by 11 percent.
Not only are most of the billionaires in question American — Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are together worth nearly $400 billion — but wealth in America is increasingly concentrated at the top.
https://thinkprogress.org/26-billionaires-own-as-much-wealth-as-half-the-world-6948c7e2d411/
Well the most recent immigrant in my family tree is a grandmother who was the child of White Russian refugees, the only language I speak even passably well is English, and I don’t accept Andrew Bolt’s values either!
P1,
Haven’t you had the lecture about the consequences of playing with matches?
Have at it ScoMo!!!!
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/scott-morrison-to-parachute-former-labor-boss-warren-mundine-into-marginal-seat-20190122-p50sts.html
You picked a lot of my faves Peg – when I am writing in a particular genre I always read outside it to avoid the temptation of subconscious plagiarism.
Peter Robinson is also one I love & Lisa Casey, and the later Graham Masterton (early stuff TOO grizzly but Maguire stories are good if you can get past the Irish colloquialisms).
Player One @ #2505 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 8:36 am
Hold on P1 I thought we were respecting the outcome of local preselection outcomes?
Player One @ #2470 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 7:56 am
Slow suicide? Seems to be speeding up dramatically.
grimace…maybe predictions of the final number of seats won by the LNP and/or Independents is also called for…
For example, I’m hoping….Labor 94/ Independent and Minor 8/ LNP 49….
If things go especially badly for the LNP – a result greatly wished-for – they may return fewer than 40 members.
zoomster @ #2468 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 10:49 am
I’ll have you know that I have been told, by those that know, that I am a brilliant comedy writer! I know that I should be proud of this ability, but I am not. I was writing romantic drama…
Thanks, jenauthor. 🙂
For many years the ALP had a policy to establish a government owned newspaper based on the same principles as the ABC. With the way the ABC has extended into electronic news sites this abandoned policy seems to have been achieved in a modern context. What is now required required is to fund the ABC properly and correct the damage that the tories have done to the management.
Captain James Cook
There’s an interesting sculpture in the Art Gallery of NSW of Cook. It took a New Zealander, Michael Parecowhai, of mixed Maori and European descent, to get past the almost endemic hubris around Cook and the East Coast, and present him if not as he was, who knows (he was forever changing his diaries), but as he could, or should, have been.
Of polished steel, it dissolves the bells, buttons, and bows, rather presenting an enigmatic reflective surface that defies detail and the closer you look, the more you see of yourself. He is reflective, uncertain, and yet to step ashore. The weight of history seems already upon him.
In a twist, the sculpture was initially placed with Cook looking across Woolloomooloo towards the harbour, through a northern window. He is now moved, to much better effect imo, and placed among the pre-modernist Australian paintings (the first gallery on the right when you enter). He looks out of place, lost, alien even.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zf22HJiOG64/XEZer3slJSI/AAAAAAAAGu4/b-XhtrLcXNQFx_eKjU9inHDOlgrU0yMNgCLcBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_3333.jpeg
In contrast, here is the Cook statue in Sydney’s Hyde Park. It was recently vandalised.
(The Nats are an embarrassment, and put petty vandals to shame)
Are these defections, from Labor to One Nation and now the Liberals, a sign that the Party is moving left?
🙂
Morrison making Captain’s calls. Does that mean Captain Cooked?
grimace,
I actually don’t have a problem with Mundine running for the Libs. His life circumstances changed and he re-assessed his personal political preferences as part of that change.
Nelson, on the other hand was simply an opportunistic carpet bagger of whom I have never had much regard.
J
We all have something in common!
When I was in primary school my favourite author was Rosemary Sutcliff who wrote historical fiction, though not of the romantic type.
phoenixRED
Well done the plutocrat demographic for their great effort in improving efficiency and productivity. How good were they ? It was only a couple or so years back it took over 40 of the blighters to do that. I hope they choke on their Almas caviar blinis at Davos.
Especially when they leave Labor and join the Greens.
This country is facing an ecological catastrophe. There is no sense that our political class has any awareness of the urgent need for action.
I really despair. The coming election will just affirm the same old fetish for destructive growth: just in a more “reasonable” way.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/22/adani-2000-hectares-black-throated-finch-habitat-removed-from-conservation-plans
This article (linked by BK) makes is pretty clear that it is the cotton growers that are contributing most to the plight of the Narran, Namoi and Barwon rivers, now all completely dry. They are holding massive amounts of water upstream for commercial use while the rest of the system dies.
Why do we need to be growing such a water intensive crop as cotton in such a water scarce environment anyway? How can that possibly make any sense? I don’t know about Bill Shorten, but there are some politicians and decision makers somewhere who certainly have some serious bloody questions to answer.
/www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/22/murray-darling-river-aboriginal-culture-dry-elders-despair-walgett
Pegasus,
You can never go back to Labor’s Garden of Eden once you have committed that original sin!
Allan, on a quick search the latest I could come up with (mostly from US was this in 2015) – interestingly, crime fiction has risen somewhat, whereas romance has stagnated (maybe since I stopped writing it! 😆 )
Adult general fiction encompasses many smaller and cross/genre areas:
Adult General Fiction (35,101)
Adult Romance (28,031)
Adult Suspense/Thrillers (21,783)
Which Genres Make the Most Money?
At $1.44 billion, Romance and Erotica are #1 in sales. That figure includes self-published romance as well. With 30 million dedicated readers, it’s hard to miss if you write in this genre. As anyone in advertising knows, sex sells.
According to Bookstr, Crime and Mystery novels come in second at $728.2 million. People have a fascination with murder, whether it’s a “cozy” murder in the Cotswolds or “torture porn.” The fact that most murders are relatively mundane crimes committed against family members, neighbors, and friends does not lessen the appeal of hunting for “who dunnit.” “
“People are entitled to change their minds. It can be a sign of maturity.”
Or too much Kool-Aid.
Another certain win for Labor.
GG
lol Love your wit!
Peg – I am not religious, but I loved Taylor Caldwell’s books in my teens.
jenauthor @ #2533 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 11:59 am
She of “Dear and Glorious Physician”.
Anyone else remember Ngaio Marsh?
As a party member living in Gilmore, yessssssssss! We will bury him, if the blue rinse libs here don’t first.
Pegasus
Especially when they leave Labor and join the Greens.
The Australian Greens birth was based on the success of the German Greens, have you noticed that Greens are doing well in the German polls & likely to form an alliance Government with Merkels CDU.
Meanwhile the Australian Greens diminish into oblivion by ignoring their roots.
Fozzie Logic @ #2503 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 11:33 am
Cripes ⁉ I was thinking more in terms of Mr. Chris Pine.
I really must try to keep up.
Is this the one ⁉
With my limited technical knowledge I suppose that the (dazzling) penis in question has been either silver or chrome plated.
So yes. 149 to 1 sounds about right. Should be 149 to 2 perhaps. 😵
Grimace
Put me down for 89 seats
Cheers
SGH
Derryn Hinch said on 3aw this morning that he was told by a sitting Liberal member that the party fears they could be left with just a single seat in Victoria, Goldstein. That would mean a loss of 11 seats in Victoria alone.
I find that very hard to believe, but after the thrashing meted out to the Victorian Liberals in last year’s state election a very substantial loss of seats down here is certainly on the cards.
Of course. And Josephine Tey.
I tend to return to Agatha Christie (her tec novels) when recovering from a romantic disappointment, because they’re cerebral, just a puzzle without too much emotion.
Intel expert says ‘we really should talk about the smugness of guilt when it comes to Donald Trump’
Matthews noted that the Trump Tower Moscow deal that Trump was working on during the 2016 presidential campaign was expected to make $300 million for the Trump family.
“What do you think?”
“Absolutely,” Nance replied. “We talk about consciousness of guilt with regard to the way Donald Trump talks about Putin and his policies, we should talk about the smugness of guilt when it comes to Donald Trump.”
“He was actually briefed by the FBI, given a counterintelligence brief that stated that he may be involved in a situation where Russia is trying to gain leverage on him — and he already knew this,” Nance argued. “Donald Trump has been playing this nation from the beginning.”
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/intel-expert-says-really-talk-smugness-guilt-comes-donald-trump/
jenauthor @ #2530 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 11:26 am
Crime, particularly with a female pathologist as the lead character, is my top genre.
My current audio book favourite is crime fiction, set in Quebec, with a bi-lingual male detectives, focussing on a village of quirky inhabitants.
A Fatal Grace, by Loiuse Penny.
Itza
Still regularly re read some of Marsh’s work. As I do Allingham, Christie, Sayer & Josephine Tey.
grimace, if you’re still around,
Do we have an update on the seat prediction poll? I can’t remember now whether I voted for 96 or 98 seats. I’m pretty sure it was 98, but could well be wrong.
lizzie @ #2540 Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 – 9:09 am
I’d expect a brace of Agatha Christie movies and TV shows coming out in the not too distant future as a number of her works are now in the public domain. That means that TV/movie production houses no longer have to pay royalties to use her works.
Seat Poll
Grimace can you put me down for 94 ALP?
John Kelly said getting fired ‘would be the best day I’ve had’: report
Former White House chief of staff John Kelly reportedly once said that getting fired would be the “best day I’ve had since I walked into this place.”
“This is the worst [expletive] job I’ve ever had,” Kelly said to former West Wing communications aide Cliff Sims, as reported by The Washington Post. “People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired. If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/426328-john-kelly-said-getting-fired-would-be-the-best-day-ive-had-report?rnd=1548113187
This cumulative effect is easy to dismiss, for developers and large scale agricultural clearing. 😡
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/feb/09/coalminers-given-approval-to-clear-nearly-10-of-endangered-forest-commission-told
Dan G
Example “Ordeal by Innocence” on ABC recently?
Princess Di’s step-grandmother Barbara Cartland found writing fiction a breeze – some 500 romance novels, all of which I’ve keenly read. That’s what you get for being a romantic. I must say, though, that some were slightly repetitive, even derivative.