John Hewson writes in an Op-Ed in the AFR today that he has observed over a long period of time that a particular petrol station raises it prices by between 15 and 25 cents on Thursday mornings.  He deduces that this is a simple case of “gouging customers”.  I have heard this argument quite a few times, even from people at FuelWatch in WA.  Read more »

Reading the latest piece from Michael Stutchbury got me thinking, is the reason why The Australian has turned into Fox News with words because of a relatively recent demographic shift in their audience?

Is it a case where large demographic slices of people with any get up and go, simply got up and left the musings of The Oz, leaving behind an old, but educated audience of has-been conservatives, getting their world view tickled by one ideologically soothing editorial line after another to shore up market share?

It would explain a lot if it were the case. Read more »

You bet Read more »

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Back in the 1990s, I can remember being asked by a state government agency to comment on their proposal for ‘revenue regulation’ of a state utility. For the reasons stated below I told them it was stupid.

A few years later my colleague at RSSS at the time, Rohan Pitchford, was asked a similar question by a regulator. I can still remember him talking with me about it – something like “this is just nuts isn’t it?” Read more »

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John Hartigan : The Uastralian iS Stell Aa Qaultiy Newpaper

By Darryl Mason

I'm absolutely loving how many blog posts the speech by News Limited CEO, John Hartigan, is producing for this blog. All that free content courtesy of Harto himself. Brilliant. And all from a speech where he berated bloggers and independent online news sites for taking a free ride on "original content" produced by News Limited. Read more »

Long time columnist for The Australian and man of letters Frank Devine has passed away at the age of 77.

Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating, who would have believed it? Both criticize the obscurely Sino-phobic tone of the White Paper and advocate—in place of a more belligerent regionalism, or reliance on the US alliance (for something it is not designed to deliver)—a more effective regional engagement. Read more »

With the new Newspoll quarterly aggregates out, we can combine these State based breakdowns with the breakdowns from the 2 Nieslen polls taken over the same period and run some election simulations to find out what would most likely have happened were an election held last quarter and had results the same as the polling.

You can the see the mechanics of how the monte carlo simulation works over here. Read more »

The Australian farewells a former editor:

Inevitably he figured prominently on the hate list of the Left: right-wing ranter, senile fascist, CIA agent, were among the many corrupt libels loaded on him. Paul Keating sneered at “that old fart”. Although Devine sometimes fancied himself “an IRA hitman manque”, he never retaliated in kind.

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The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cBurka Banthedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorJason Jones in IranBookmark this on Delicious

Here’s The Australian’s editorial today.

Old media, by Crikey

Newspapers will prosper long after e-scandal sheets are gone.

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JAKE Friend will slip on the number 9 jersey and run out to play for the Roosters tonight. It will be just under a week since he, along with teammate Sandor Earl, allegedly assaulted a 31-year-old woman in a Sydney nightclub.

Despite being formally charged, they are free to wear the colours of one of rugby league’s foundation entities – and even the most ardent Roosters fan must see that there is something terribly wrong with a club that allows it.

It doesn’t take Jack Welch to point out that a badly managed organisation tends to rot all the way to the bottom.

Imagine you were using a glass to transport water, I don’t know why you are transporting water, maybe your dog is on fire.

The problem with the glass is that you can’t get much water in it, if you drop the glass it will break, and your hands are slippery from all the water.  This is your 5th glass already, having smashed the others.

You decide there must be a better way, so you go looking for a bucket.

There are no adequate buckets, but there is one that has no handle, a crack in the side, and a hole in the bottom. Read more »

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