Commentary on matters from the news

As a first point, blogger has been at it again and withdrawn yet more functionality. You really have to wonder whether they want to keep customers or not! In my case, I'll stick with them because trying to shifts thousands of posts from 14 years of blogging, and the hassles of trying to re-establish readership, is not something I'm interested in doing - particularly given the many other demands on my time.

So, moving on to the news. 

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First up, the poem that was read at Biden's inauguration was impressive: there is a copy of the text at https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/20/amanda-gormans-inaugural-poem-the-hill-we-climb-full-text.html. It is well worth going there and having a reads, as well as listening to the eloquent reading by the poet, Amanda Gorman (various links available from an internet search).

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Next, an excellent description of the political shift (from Ministerial competence to slavish political loyalty) that the utterly evil John Howard was responsible for: see https://johnmenadue.com/australias-political-talent-pool-more-like-a-puddle/. 

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Now, there has been a move for some time to get tech companies to pay news companies for the news stories that the tech companies use. One of the key inventors of the Internet has raised concerns about this (as have others - although I consider the tech companies bleating about getting more clicks is meaningless and suggests they do not understand how news companies work), but as the article at https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-bargaining-code-could-break-the-internet-hes-right-but-theres-a-fix-153630 explains, the problem is not links to articles, it is the re-framing of the news articles that allows the tech companies to profit from ads. 

Even better, the article suggests a small change that would fix the problem. 

For those of you in Australia, I suggest bringing the attention of your local MP to the article - I've already done so. 

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Finally, the notion of recovering student loans from the dead has resurfaced yet again - see https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jan/21/australian-government-urged-to-try-and-recover-student-loans-from-the-dead. Quite apart from being inhumane and a discouragement to those considering further training, this makes bad economic sense: 

• it hides the fact that the problem is in charges that are now too high (the neolib nitwits upped the charges); 
• it ignores the fact that the wider education goes, the more educated a community is, the more productive and creative that community is.

This suggestion just goes to show the ideological blindness and addiction to zombie economic ideas of neoliberals. 

Have a good day 😊