Peter A Clarke

The Age has a full page interview in today’s Age and an exclusive splash in the Age and an exclusive splash in the Herald Sun.  It is a clever enough piece in that it skirts sub judice restrictions.  Theophanous is now hinting at police impropriety (not illegality) and bias (again not illegal).  The reported comments in the Age on Friday was far more strident.   Today’s story seems to serve to smooth the sharp edges to Theophanous’ character.  That he makes admissions about not being a saint and hints about what might be discovered in his texts suggests that might pose a problem for him.

All of this is disturbing.  Read the rest of this entry »

I love the Lexington section in the Economist.  A vehicle for analysis of a person or topic not on the immediate news horizon but clearly relevant.  It is at its most useful when acting as a mini biography of an important but not reported upon personage.  Sometimes it analyses some aspect of the political landscape, often the state of the parties, their operatives or the electorate.  Usually first rate stuff .

The latest offering, Law v common sense, is just plain awful.  The same old trite lines about litigation ruining everything and causing gridlock.  The thread of the story is a series of  admittedly scandalous examples of appalling abuses of civil litigation process. The article does have a point in commenting on the exponential growth of the number and size of statutes and regulations.

What the article (but not the associated comments on the web) forgets is: Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the 59th anniversary of George Orwell’s (Erice Blair) death. He has always been my hero. That said he was hardly the pure sanctified oracle which is current view of him. It took a scarifing experience in the Spanish Civil War for him to develop his famous skeptisism of totalitarianism, humbuggery and intellectual sloth. Like Abraham Lincoln he has been turned into something a secular saint. That is a pity. Lincoln’s political path Read the rest of this entry »

What no candles.  Today is the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe.  A classic garret poet’s life, he died of one of the usual maladies of the poor, cholera, TB

Even with the sub judice rule applying the Theophanus case throws up some interesting stories in the press.  The Age reports in Secret search of Theophanous’ office that the police secretly searched Theophanus’ office.  The opening paragraphs set the scene and highlight the issue: Read the rest of this entry »

The quickest way of getting a middle class dinner party sniffy is to admit a liking for the occasional cigar, a view contrary to the Fairfax press opinionaters and a love of boxing. It is de rigeour to express a loathing of the sport, the participants and its admirers.  Funnily enough there is an inverse relationship between the vehemence of the detestation and the contect with the sport.

I boxed a little at university and in the years following.  Mainly as a way to keep fit.  Never stepped into the ring for a competative bout.  The closest I came Read the rest of this entry »

Today the Age gets scolded in its OP ED section.  By the Israeli ambassador no less.  There is many a time I would have loved to see the Age take a caning.  It runs “lines” often to the nth degree and beyond the point where the issue is newsworthy.  The Blue Wedge stories and the dredging of Port Phillip Bay channels is a classic case in point.  But A free press comes with responsibilities is an unmeritorious piece of argument and a call to censorship. Worse, it is a stodgy badly written polemic.

Whenever I see the phrase free speech comes with responsibilities (or the variants thereof) I know what to expect. It tends to run along the lines of Read the rest of this entry »

The Australian’s Luhrmann’s Australia saves local box office from record low sets out the grim, grim news about Australian cinema takings last year.  But for Australia it would have been an all time bust.  The sad and sorry story is summarised in:

The 22 Australian feature films and eleven documentaries released in 2008 represented 11 per cent of the 301 films released theatrically last year.

American films accounted for an 84.2 per cent share of Australian receipts, an increase from 2007’s 77.7 per cent, with British films taking 8.0 per cent of the Australian box office.

The second-highest-grossing local film was The Black Balloon, which earned $2.3 million, followed by Australia’s first-ever official co-production with China, Children of the Silk Road, which grossed $1.2 million.

Peter Duncan’s Unfinished Sky earned $1 million and tween comedy Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger earned $0.8 million.

The article ends on a postive note:

Expectations are higher for Australian films this year, with a number of commercially appealing films slated for release including the adaptation of Li Cunxin’s memoir Mao’s Last Dancer, Balibo, Scott Hicks’ The Boys Are Back, Disgrace, Charlie and Boots starring Paul Hogan and Shane Jacobsen.

I hope so but I am not holding my breath.

The Australian ran a couple of stories about the fate of ex Federal politicians. Christian Kerr’s piece,  Wanted: a suitable job for an ex-PM, is the more thoughtful of the two. Rebecca Urban’s Former pollies find spin’s not enough in the boardroom  is just glib. 

Urban’s premise, that politicians are fishes out of water in the corporate world, that their skills don’t translate well onto the board room, is at best unconvincing.  Read the rest of this entry »