Personal opinions from a denizen of a land Down Under.
FOX News is now the most widely watched television channel in the US. One cannot call it a news channel because most of what it dispenses is right-ring propaganda.
It is doubtful whether it would spread to the extent it has in any other country. But in the US, lots of people are poorly educated and unable to tell fact from fiction.
Hence there seems to be a logical reason for Fox’s financial success.
FOR 11 years from 1996, the conservative Liberal Party and National Party, in coalition, ran Australia. During those years, there was a mining boom and loads and loads of money floating around.
But the government used it mostly to bribe middle-class voters by offering them, well, bribes. It ensured that they stayed in power. It’s called pork-barrelling in the country.
But it did the country no favours.
Continue reading “Australia begins to pay for Howard’s profligacy”
The vice-captain of Australia’s cricket team, Shane Watson, has stepped down from his post. Not from the team, just the post.
It’s good he did it, because that saves the selectors one job, of sacking him as vice-captain. Watson saw it coming and didn’t want to be humiliated.
But he may earn the ultimate humiliation anyway – he may not be in the team at all, the team that goes to England in June to defend the Ashes.
Continue reading “Good riddance: Shane Watson quits”
AUSTRALIAN rules football is a difficult game to understand. Difficult for anyone who has not grown up with it, difficult for anyone who has got used to other football codes because the structure and rules appear to be more loose than in other games.
One of the ways in which people grow to understand, become interested and then start following any game is dependent on the publicity that goes with it. With the AFL, the publicity is highly insular, nothing more so than the blather that passes for match commentary on radio or TV.
I grew up learning rugby union from the late Bob Harvey, one of the Sri Lankans who commentated on the sport on what was then Radio Ceylon. Most of my cricket was learnt from the commentary of John Arlott, Brian Johnston and Allan McGilvray, on the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Tony Cozier from the West Indies was another of those who contributed a great deal to my understanding of cricket.
Continue reading “AFL: exclusive to home-born Australians”
At times, the manner in which a batsman makes runs provides evidence of his ability. But the reverse is also true: at times, the way a batsman scores is indicative of reasons why he should not be picked.
Phillip Hughes of New South Wales has again been awarded a contract by Cricket Australia. On the tour of India in February and March, Hughes failed repeatedly. He showed an inability to tackle spin – and that was about all that was doled out by the Indian team.
Hughes’ scores in the series were 6, 0, 19, 0, 2, 69, 45 and 6 as Australia was hammered 4-0 in the four-Test series. During the knock of 69, he was like a cat on hot bricks. He survived 166 balls through sheer luck, and zero ability. He was as jumpy as he had been during his previous five innings.
Continue reading “Phillip Hughes rides again”
Back in 1967, the then Indian finance minister Morarji Desai had the brilliant idea of raising taxes well beyond their existing level; the maximum marginal tax rate was raised as high as 97.75 percent.
Desai, who was better known for drinking his own urine, reasoned that people would pay up and that India’s budgetary problems would be more manageable.
Instead, the reverse happened. India has always had a problem with undeclared wealth, a kind of parallel economy which is called black money. The amount of black money increased by leaps and bounds after Desai’s ridiculous laws were promulgated.
Continue reading “Black money drives the IPL”
Last month, Australia completed a miserable cricket tour of India during which it lost all four Tests, the first time this has happened since 1970.
On that occasion, a strong Australian team went to South Africa and was creamed 4-0; the South Africans were captained by Ali Bacher and included legends of the game like Graeme Pollock, Mike Proctor, Peter Pollock, Barry Richards and Eddie Barlow.
But in India, a weak Australian team came up against opponents who were not that formidable. The one thing that was clearly observable was the fact that the shorter forms of the game have had a bad effect on the Australians’ ability to stay at the crease and grind out the runs.
Continue reading “Brownwash leaves Australia shattered”
PATIENCE is a virtue that Australia’s national cricket team seems to lack. And impatience does not serve one well in Test cricket as the results from the first two matches against India indicate.
Australia has not merely lost, it has been humiliated. When the first Test ended early, with India registering an eight-wicket win, it looked bad. But given the nature of the wicket, some blame could be placed on it
But worse was to come when India thrashed the Australians by an innings in Hyderabad, on a wicket which was much better than the one in Chennai. It was all over and done with after one session on day four.
Continue reading “In Test cricket, patience is a virtue”
THE Liberal-National coalition which forms the opposition in Australia has just confirmed that it is the party of xenophobes by proposing that whenever asylum-seekers are allowed to move into a neighbourhood on bridging visas, the people staying there and the police should be notified.
This is dog-whistle politics of the lowest kind, but the Coalition will do anything to get votes. A federal election is scheduled for September 14.
Should this extend to the asylum-seekers who are granted permanent residence? Or does the granting of such status suddenly make the asylum-seeker a person of good character?
Continue reading “Coalition dog-whistles as the election countdown continues”
THE xenophobes in Australia — and that’s a goodly proportion of the population — will find themselves in a difficult position if Fawad Ahmed is granted citizenship and selected to play for Australia in the Ashes cricket series against England later this year.
You see, Ahmed is an asylum-seeker from Pakistan. Asylum-seekers are a class of human beings whom the average Australian, with his/her devotion to a fair go, deems to be sub-human and only deserving of being sent back to their country of origin. Or drowned at sea.
Ahmed applied for permanent residence last year and while he was awaiting a decision, it emerged that he was a more than capable leg-spinner. Australia was a few weeks from taking on South Africa in a Test series and so he was asked to go over and help the Australians in their net practice. South Africa has a spinner of Pakistani origin, Imran Tahir, in its ranks and the Australians needed to play a good spinner to prepare to face Tahir.
Continue reading “Xenophobes in Australia about to choke on their cornflakes”