This (somewhat irregular)) regular feature is back. The idea is that, over the weekend, you should post your thoughts in a more leisurely fashion than in ordinary comments or the Monday Message Board.
Please post your thoughts on any topic, at whatever length seems appropriate to you. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
John Quiggin 
One of my hobbies is songwriting, and over the years the internal politics of political parties, trade unions and student unions have often awakened the muse in me. A newspaper article at this address:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/22/1085176042766.html
inspired me to write the following ballad, to the tune of “Bridal Train” by The Waifs.
A story in The Age today
Had the Labor Party on display
With its factions and their rivalry
And behaviour they wish we couldn’t see
The Age website beamed this tale
Of the silly big kids (and they weren’t all male)
The silly kids who think they’re smarties
The tribal brains who run the party
All the hacks from all directions
Came to stack the branch elections
And no-one on the meeting floor
Stood back to ask what all this was for
From Left and Right the punches came
All because of tribal brains
And it’s quite funny till we contemplate
It’s tribal brains that run the state
And here’s another one on the same theme, with apologies to Tammy Wynette and Billy Connolly.
Our party branch is six months old
And it used to be quite small
Now if the members all turned up
They wouldn’t fit in the hall
Most of them have the same address
And the same ethnicity
And now they are the subject of a D.I.S.P.U.T.E.
The V.O.T.E. at the A.G.M.
Was R.I.G.G.E.D.
And the Branch Secretary’s an
eff-you-see-kay-double-you-eye-tee
Who is totally I.N.C.O.M.P.E.T.E.N.T.
And that’s why there is gonna be a D.I.S.P.U.T.E.
And the D.I.S.P.U.T.E. Committee meets today
To investigate the R.O.R.T.
And the S.T.A.C.K.
But its final R.E.P.O.R.T.
Won’t have much to say
It’s been N.O.B.B.L.E.D.
By mates of Robert Ray
I would suggest that Rugby league fans make the best of this upcoming season and the next two or three. For this is likely to be as good as it gets. Soccer, which is a far more attractive, skilful, international and far less violent game, now appears to have finally got its act together in Australia. I think this spells serious trouble for this violent parochial sport which is only played by a small number of Neanderthals worldwide.
Here Here michael the world game is the football we should all be watching given the opening of the economy.
Alas Australia like the USA is inhabited by football xenophobes!
If we get into Asia, as seems likely now, Australia will thrive.
There is nothing in the sporting world I would like to see more than a competitive Australian soccer team fighting it out for the World Cup in both (preferably more meaningful) qualification rounds and the finals. I’m tired of watching one sided cricket contests. How can our great sporting nation tolerate so many disappointing results in the world greatest game? All the best to Soccer Australia.
You folk who subsist on the attenuated simulacra of passion that is the stock-in-trade of globalised sport deserve all the sympathy that you get.
For you have clearly not experienced the deep culture and the ancient memories that inspire Australian Rules Football.
Everything else is kissing your sibling. (Tasmania excepted.)
Homer and still working it out, we are all in agreement for once. The one blot on the horizon having hopefully sorted out the domestic league and forming contacts with Asia (at least, the food at away games will be an improvement on New Zealand and Europe), is the national team. I am normally ridiculously optimistic where they are concerned not only expecting them to qualify for world cup but make the quarter finals as well. However, the current manager is tactically naïve. With a solid but slow and aging back four he needs to play a sweeper system I think.
michael, I think you are correct, there is likely to be a very small number of neanderthals playing as they are mostly extinct.
Of course you meant it as an insult. So as one of those “neanderthals” I might draw your attention to the crowds at many soccer matches. Still I suppose if they consider the game as boring as I do, they would have to find some way to entertain themselves.
Rugby league probably is close to its peak, but it’s got nothing to do with soccer.
I really have nothing against soccer, but barring a temporary boost if we make the World Cup, it will remain a backwater sport for years to come.
No game in the world attracts as many violent thugs, skinheads, Nazis, racists and half-wits as soccer.
The game itself is ideally suited to women.
Katz, given that I am in the mood to agree somewhat with people I normally disagree with (it must be Friday) I will concede that Aussie rules is a vastly superior game to Rugby league. You and the Irish have just got to get your acts together and you might have the makings of an international game. WPC you clearly did not watch the last world cup –where South Korea came from nowhere to knock out Italy and Spain in extremely dramatic games and go onto the semis as did Senegal – who I think were 500-1 outsiders. Beats watching wests versus souths I think. And what about Chelsea versus Barcelona – what a game. Nevertheless, many professional sports, including soccer, would benefit from reducing the number of players on the field – the extra fitness of professional players in the modern era does allow them to restrict space and stifle creativity.
Michael B’s hit on a key point with Victorian Rules: it’s a sillier and less entertaining version of gaelic football, and the original is a better game. The idea of an “international” league comprising two countries is a suitably Irish idea.
P.S. before I get flamed by AFL tragics, I’m familiar with Blainey’s debunking of the gaelic football-AFL connection, but it’s all tosh. AFL is a silly game; I’d rather watch gaelic any day.
Fyodor, I’ll have to shirtfront you on the outer wing if you insist on posting treasonous remarks about Australia’s most noble institution.
Except for haircuts, uniforms and the graininess of the film, soccer and rugby league games played forty years ago are almost indistinguishable from those played yesterday. (Rugby Union has changed its rules in a commercially-driven attempt to make the game watchable, so it is possible to tell one decade’s game from another.)
Australian Rules has had few changes in its rules in the last 80 years. Yet a game played in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s is immediately recognisable.
The game is huge and fluid, like modern war and the paths to victory are many and dependent upon careful and sophisticated strategic thinking.
That is why Australian Rules is superior to all other team ball games.
Katz, that is a bit like saying music by posh spice is superior to that produced by Pink Floyd. Or David Beckham is brighter than Plato.
“Fyodor, I’ll have to shirtfront you on the outer wing if you insist on posting treasonous remarks about Australia’s most noble institution.”
It’s not an Australian institution if a big chunk of the population thinks it’s twaddle. As for shirtfronting, bring it on. I played Rugby so I know how to tackle.
Very odd analogy MB. I’m not aware that Beckham and Plato have ever competed against each other in either philosophy or in whatever Beckham does.
On the other hand, different strategies and systems of play are constantly being tested against each other when football is played. The successful thrive. The unsuccessful wither.
I would have thought a neo-liberal like your good self would appreciate the beauty of this ongoing proto-darwinian experiment in systems.
Katz rules! The most important move in globalization will be the worldwide export of Australian football.
Soccer is probably good exercise but it is impossible to take seriously a game of football that is played with a round ball. I have to admit that I have seen it done several times but shock persists, like watching a slow motion film of a serious train smash or a natural disaster of some kind.
At least the muddied oafs on the rugby fields and the human bolsters who play gridiron use a ball that is the correct shape.
Katz, well I am not a neo-liberal. However, when it comes to sport I am certainly a fundamentalist, and believe that all non-followers of the great game will be sentenced to eternity listening Barry Manilow music. Followers of hockey I can though excuse as if I am sufficiently pissed or stoned I can pretend that I am watching a real football match.
Rafe,
globalisation has already ruled. That is why football is played in more nations than any other game and why the World cup is the most watched event. The second is the Euro-Championship. The third is the Olympic games only because of the football.
Do you see the connection.
Enjoying soccer because everyone else does is as good a reason to enjoy it as any other.
I suppose that helps to explain the popularity of the missionary position as well.
Post-modern ballad
——————
Depose the driven dregs of truth
And throw no lifeline to the goats
Heal disorder with a cyst of radioactive moats.
Yea, come crimson clay, crouch athwart the scholar’s pocket watch
And hail the heathens swivelling on Neutrality’s hidden crotch.
Castrate, chastise, hasten your steps, chattering away,
Goatees aflame, placard in hand, Foucault between armpits
And Che Guevara on your lips …
Brazenly he brandished his prose-poetry
like a poke in the eye, it glimmered
mediocrity
yet he proposed to persist in his errors
Much obscurantism he hoped to garnish these
constituent atoms of beginners’ literary gambles (alpha bets)
with in the hope of invoking a mirage of
Joycean pregnancy in the near sighted glimmer of a
literary critic’s eye (though the overuse of asides of inelegant
length and ultra tangential significance protruded through the
aimless narrative like a projectionist’s oversight in a seedy cinema)
If I might steer the discussion away from the insufferably boring subject of comparative football, Monday is the one year anniversary of the Madrid bomb.
I have a question for all thoughtful commentators on terrorism – Michael Burgess, you can answer as well if you want – isn’t it strange how the RWDBs heaped praise on the former, right wing Spanish government, for pretending that it wasn’t Al Qaeda who did the bombing, while heaving excrement on the current, left wing government, for insisting (correctly) that Al Qaeda did it?
I thought RWDBs were against Muslim terrorists – after all, they tell us, the future of Western civilization is at stake – or are they against them only from time to time when it is politically expedient?
And, speaking of anniversaries, it is 20 years this month since Gorby became leader of the Soviet Union. How time flies.
Well, if you’re going to be all musical, consider the one in the old ALP songbook that goes “Our fathers cleared the bush, boys”. Obviously the stuff to tell the Greens.
P.S. I’m not prejudiced, I hate everybody.
I’ll go insufferable, and swing back to football, as in the game they play in heaven. Anyone following the super 12? Terrible, just terrible being a Tahs fan. Yes, we’re out of the box and leading the competition again. We cheer. And then remember this happens every year, and soon we’ll be mugged by reality. The only good thing is that Queensland are getting flogged, so we’ll probably safely finish in front of those dreaded banana benders, even though they will beat us. The Brumbies are playing the house down, I hear, even with heaps of front-line players out, and they must be the early favourtites. Bernie is in sensational form, is my word.
David,
there was some interesting polling done on the Spanish election ie qualitative.
They found that Aznar’s deceit not only improved the turnout but alsso that some voters who were going to vote for his party instead turned to the socialists.
Thus the only reason for the socialists winning was Aznar’s disgraceful handling of the bombing.
If he had played it straight his party would have won.
“If he had [Aznar] played it straight his party would have won.”
But Homer, if he [Aznar] was the sort of politician who played it straight he’d never have gone into Iraq in the first place, and his country would never have been singled out by the crazies.
Christopher Sheil, the ghost of bloggers past, makes a visitation! As a Brumbies fan, I would say that being a Tahs fan must be better than being a Reds fan. Poor old Reds always get their supporter’s hopes up pre-season and then dash them straight away.
As to soccer, it would be undisputed as a great game if they could change the rules to allow more scoring. I have an untested hypothesis that soccer violence has a particularly high correlation with nil-all draws.
If they could get soccer scores up in the same region as AFL, (not as in the total number, but the number of goals) this would definitely improve the lout factor. The game’s outcome would be in doubt for far longer, fans would have the opportunity to cheer a goal by their side more often, etc. However, it is not going to happen. Soccer has too long a tradition to make such radical changes. It would devalue the achievements of past heroes too much.
So Aussie Rules (why do you keep calling the game AFL?) has the capacity to keep morons amused while soccer can’t hold their attention. Sort of like like Blair vs Quiggin. Well I knew that, but I wasn’t going to say so. Anyway, it’s a good argument for preserving both games.
There is not enough scoring in soccer and, from the looks of the NRL season opener, far too much in league again this year.
“But Homer, if he [Aznar] was the sort of politician who played it straight he’d never have gone into Iraq in the first place, and his country would never have been singled out by the crazies. ”
So, DD, you disagree with Howard’s and Downer’s claim that signing up for the COW didn’t increase Australia’s profile as a target for terrorism.
I presume you’ve already notified AFP Chief Keelty of your support for his position while being vilified by the above-mentioned Hon, Gentlemen.
Apologists for the COW and its Iraq frolic seem to be talking at severe cross-purposes.
O what a tangled web we weave when we practise to deceive.
Geez why would anyone sign up with that mob when they can’t even tell the truth to themselves?
Paul Norton your D.I.S.P.U.T.E. is ripper.
Well done!
Katz – I am in fully in agreement with you – AFL is the greatest spectator sport in the world.
Yeah, gotta say I hate Australia and every bastard who lives there, but Aussie Rules is clearly the best sport ever devised.
The Super 12 is full of deja vu.
Mark Upcher, as a Reds fan we have learned never to get our hopes up. We suffer the same crap start every year, followed by a good finish that is all the more frustrating because it is too late. We savour one good moment every year when we beat NSW, then fondly remember the Super 10 year when finals come round.
The Waratahs supporters enjoy the first half of the season, reaching a high mark with the defeat of ACT. Then they have all their hopes crushed in the second half, culminating in an embarassing loss to QLD.
Brumbies fans have it easy.
Changing the subject slightly…
ABC News Online reported that
“The Prime Minister has dismissed an assessment by an international economic organisation that shows Australians face one of the highest tax burdens in the world.
“The OECD report on the way countries tax wages found that over the past eight years the average tax burden in nearly every developed country has fallen but in Australia it has risen.”
Even if it were true that we’re the only ones with a rising tax burden, this is not the same thing as having one of the highest burdens.
I couldn’t find the transcript on the Web, but as I recall the 7.00 News was even worse: it headlined with the same thing about having one of the highest burdens, and then went on to say, as if by way of elaboration, that the tax burden is rising (not even specifying that our tax burden is unique in this respect). The report continued with something about Patricia Apps’s latest criticisms of the high effective marginal tax rate on women.
I’m sure that any inattentive person watching that would have come away with thinking the story confirmed what they already knew – that Australia is a high-taxing country – even though that’s the one thing that doesn’t emerge from the details, and the one ting that actually isn’t true.
Does the ABC really want to help create a climate where government and opposition are forced into a bidding war to cut overall taxes and the services they pay for? Or are they just inept?. I suppose the specialists like Alan Koeler are so busy watching stock prices that they can’t keep an eye on how general policy issues are reported.
wpc, tell it like it is brother!
Aznar’s deceit was misrepresenting the bombing which was exposed just prior to the election.
If he had have played that situation straight his party, but not he of course, would have won.
Changing it again… Mark Bahnisch notes the passing of the peerless Dave Allen.
Just thinking about US offical interest rates.
As well as new borrowing to cover the current year’s deficit, the US has to roll-over old bonds.
When Bush’s tax cuts were first introduced, the rate of new borrowing went up. It’s now about 5 years later so over the next few years I’d expect the volume of bonds the US needs to roll over is going to increase signficantly.
Of course this depends in large part on the average maturation period of the bonds and I know many of them have terms of 10-30 years.
but it seems to me that the impact of higher offical interest rates on the budget is going to rise as the refinancing task increases.
We’ll shake on that one Razor.
Katz, that quotation goes “…when first we practise to deceive.” You should consider the implications for someone who is experienced in the area.
Anything to get off the excruciating topic of comparative football. For anyone who missed it, the SMH asked a hundred people to nominate then ten leading Australian public intellectuals. In terms of the number nominations, the top ten are listed here. The print edition also includes everyone who got two or three mentions; this list of also-rans includes four economists.
Ian Gould,
I have been wondering a lot about that issue recently.
The average maturity of all US government debt was 55.1 months in September 2004. It has been shortening because the new debt issued by the US treasury has on average been on much shorter terms than the existing debt. As a result the US will have to rollover “about $500 billion in 2005, rising to about $800 billion by 2009 and closer to a trillion by 2014” (see below link for sources). On top of that they will have to issue additional debt to cover the budget deficit.
Nouriel Roubini and Brad Setser have been blogging these very issues quite a bit.
Nouriel Roubini
Brad Setser
Roubini provides a a very nice explaination in this article. I would suggest giving it a read as it is quite good. Short version is that a rollover crisis for the US used to be unthinkable but it is not anymore.
Fun Fact – Shortening the maturity of new debt (which the US treasury is currently doing) is one of the things which Argentina and Mexico did in the lead up to their crises.
If that article is to be believed (and its written by one of the world’s leading experts on international finance) then it seems like a US debt rollover crisis is on the cards. We will be well up the creek without a paddle if that happens, especially considering our high debt levels as rising US interest rates would almost inevitably be part of the solution.
The real problem with scoccer is that the officials can be got at and games fixed eg. in Germany and now possibly in Scottish football (Rangers v. Hearts).
This is rotten thing to happen to a great game but it is inherent in the money game that it has become and the fact that in a game with few scoring possibilities a single decision can change a result.
‘…in a game with few scoring possibilities a single decision can change a result.’
I see. So you wouldn’t expect to see match-rigging in high scoring games like cricket.
All these non soccer fans wanting to widen the goals is like atheists insisting on women priests. If you only like games with scores in the thousands, play pinball.
Actually, there is an easy way to roll over debt: make debt instruments part of the “payment” of governmental creditors, particularly the more vulnerable ones like small suppliers and junior civil servants (and members of the armed forces, come to that).
Cheating by way of sovereign risk is an old if not hallowed tradition. But usually it is embarked on by senior advisors, an example of agency costs when they decide to bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain and be damned to the consequences (which fall on the state and the people under it, not on these its purported servants).
Maybe they could make their social security payments in the form of debt instruments instead of cash? Sounds like killing two birds with one stone. Fix the debt crisis and kill social security in one hit.
“Let them eat bonds” ??
I hope no Republicans frequent this site. Don’t want to give them dangeraous ideas.
James Farrell, the most interesting aspect of the story was the listing of who each of the 100 electors chose for their top 10. Tim Blair and Miranda Devine could not bring themselves to nominate anyone outside the Right for their Top 10. Keith Windschuttle also did his comradely duty, but with an obvious element of self-parody as Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt headed his list.