Australia around a century ago was considered a “working man’s paradise”. (Yes, the women didn’t do so well, but not as badly as they’re going to do now …)
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
The tough penalties, largely overlooked in the week’s legislative frenzy, dovetail nicely with the new industrial relations regime. Workers who quit over poor conditions – a workplace agreement that strips them of all but the Government’s five new minimum standards, for example – will end up penniless. Ditto for workers sacked for alleged misconduct, with no right to appeal under unfair dismissal laws. And those who would like Christmas Day off, or to be paid penalties for the graveyard shift, will think twice about rejecting a job that provides neither.
If the alternative is no money for eight weeks, no right to an unemployment benefit, then many will become compliant wage slaves in the new industrial order.
Note to the SMH – please! stop splitting all stories into two pages. Yes it might get up your click count, but it is intensely irritating.
* The “out of Africa” thesis of human evolution is, it seems, if not dead, then certainly in need of substantial modification. This report is quite technical, but well worth wrestling with. And if supported by further evidence, it means a total rethink about our origins. We’re all both African, and Chinese.
* David Mamet’s theory of how to write a play, via a heavy critique of The Night of the Iguana.
* The Guardian looks at whatever happened to the end of hereditary peers. Short answer: Tony Blair has left them there because he doesn’t have the guts to face the issue.
I’ve got a solution to solve the elected versus appointed conundrum – select members of the House of Lords by lot. (All citizens over the age of 18 included – and paid a reasonable sum for participation.) It has a perfect democratic pedigree (ancient Athens and all that), and would reproduce the delightful dottiness and eccentricity of the old Lords, combined with a dogged commonsense to restrict the Commons’ wilder flights of fancy.
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