In an era of out of control climate change, the case for leaving gold in the ground is even stronger than that for coal. Investor and shareholder pressure has seen the likes of BHP and Rio Tinto divesting from the latter; but in practical, if not financial, terms ending the mining of gold is a Continue reading »
Economy
The latest Budget in New Zealand appeared to have been driven by the old idea that small government is the best government. Thousands of public service jobs have been slashed while the government reduced its own revenue by cutting taxes. The tax cuts were an election pledge. The National Party’s view was that as incomes Continue reading »
In her work, ‘On Death and Dying’ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote of the stages one goes through on being told one is dying. She called these ‘Five Stages of Grief,’ of adjusting to reality: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Such is descriptive of the attitude of much of the West to the rapidly changing world Continue reading »
Conservative-supporting newspapers today lead on an already repeatedly-debunked lie about Labour's tax plans
Both party leaders are promising to slash immigration numbers without being honest about the big costs it will inevitably bring to our economy and public services
Since my last report, the All-Ords share price index rose by 3.2% from Friday 3rd May to Thursday 16th May, but then fell by 2.2% to Friday 31st May. But for a 0.9% uptick last Friday there would have been no gain in the last four weeks. Market trends My technical models show: On short-to-medium-term Continue reading »
It has always seemed to me that the Northern Territory, and especially its Indigenous peoples, have been Australia’s ‘poor relation.’ Out of sight, inaccessible, incomprehensible, hostile, threatening. From the birth of what became a Nation, the vast expanses of the Northern Territory, and its unfamiliar peoples, were unwanted, bumped from one State to another, then Continue reading »
What is it going to take, asks climate activist Violet Coco, to stop the death machine, to save humanity and the living world? We first need to find the engine, the beating heart of this global materialist-consumerist-industrial civilisation. Jared Diamond observed, in Collapse, that some past civilisations’ greatest accomplishments came just as they began to Continue reading »
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has chastised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton for proposing temporary cuts to permanent immigration numbers, claiming the 25% cut would cost ‘the budget’ tens of billions of dollars. But the far bigger costs of providing durable assets for immigrants are routinely overlooked, or mis-counted as a plus because they add to the GDP. Continue reading »
Although rarely acknowledged, China is the world’s biggest economy, and it will most probably continue to grow faster than the US, its main competitor. A core American belief is that America is exceptional. A belief that is underpinned by the presumption that the US is the most powerful country in the world, both economically and Continue reading »