Climate change threatens Open
The Australia Institute goes backward in coming forward and who’s laughing at who?
First, the Great Barrier Reef. Now, climate change is about to destroy the Australian Open. SBS news, Monday:
The Australian Conservation Foundation reported that in recent years players have complained about the heat at the first grand slam tournament of the year … Analysis from University of Melbourne atmosphere and ocean researcher Ben Hague shows January temperatures in Melbourne have risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius each decade since 1987, but in the two weeks of the Australian Open the increase has been 1.25C.
But they constantly put themselves forward as experts on all kinds of financial matters. Footnote, Australia Institute media release, yesterday:
The Australia Institute does not provide financial advice. Financial decisions about carbon risk should be made in consultation with a financial adviser.
That’s one way of portraying events. Leslie Cannold, The Age, Tuesday:
Women’s rights have taken a battering this festive season. The Briggs fiasco, the Gayle insult to the professionalism of Channel Ten reporter Mel McLaughlin, and marauding hoodlums in Germany using women’s rights as a cover for a violent rampage against refugees all show the battle for gender equality is far from over.
Er ... We were laughing at white male racists in Kingswood Country 30 years ago. Lebanese-Australian poet Candy Royalle fumes about Nine’s new series Meet the Habibs on her blog, January 11:
The majority of the people who have told me to calm down are white people. People who sit at the very pinnacle of privilege in this country ... Apparently, Australia’s humour is that larrikin behaviour of good-natured laughing at each other. Well, who’s laughing at white people? On national television?
Socialism is back. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent, Monday:
Jeremy Corbyn has finally brought left-wing ideas in from the cold. The Labour Party leader deserves respect. He is a David taking on not just one but an army of political and economic Goliaths.
Working as well as ever. Pollster Peter Kellner, Prospect, January 2016:
The evidence is clear. Jeremy Corbyn is by far the least popular of any new opposition leader in 60 years of opinion polls. If he leads Labour into the next general election, the chances are that his party will not just be beaten but thrashed.
Just brilliantly. Matt Chorley, The Times’ Red Box website, Tuesday:
Labour … is currently trailing ... by an average of eight points. This is the biggest poll deficit recorded by Labour eight months after an election defeat since regular opinion polls began in Britain in the late 1940s.
All the big stories. From The Age website, yesterday:
The smashed avocado price crisis hits Melbourne.
The barbecue stoppers. The Sydney Morning Herald website, yesterday:
The best way to cut a mango.
Stories of cross-country significance. The Canberra Times website, also yesterday:
How shellac treatments at a cheap Perth nail bar ruined my nails.
The science is settled. Headline, Vogue.com.au, yesterday:
What we know about organic food and water is wrong, according to Miranda Kerr.