Trevor Cook

Can you really ban lobbyists?

Edwards Pledges Ban on Lobbyists - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog.

“When I am president of the United States, no corporate lobbyists or anyone who has lobbied for a foreign government will work in my White House,” Mr. Edwards said, speaking at a public library.

Will it really make any difference? It strikes me as tokenistic. Australia is different to the US. But Kevin Rudd's chief of staff, David Epstein, was a lobbyist for many years before joining the new prime minister's staff six months ago. I don't see any issues with it myself.

My favourite live performances for 2007

Even in this day and age, nothing beats 'live' - so here in no particular order are my most memorable outings for 2007:

1. Toy Symphony, Michael Gow's new play at the Belvoir theatre was simply wonderful. Great writing, great acting, great direction - a bloody good night out.

2. Kane, Welch and Kaplin - saw these stars of the growing 'americana' circuit (roots and country) twice this year, at the Vanguard and the Basement. Some of the best stuff going around today in my view. Intelligent music.

3. Bob Dylan - well, sad to say I've never seen him before so I just had to go. I also love his latest album. I enjoyed the concert but the vocals were unintelligible at times to say the least. Backing band was great.

4. Exit the King - front tow seats for a great performance by Geoffrey Rush (he literally sweated on me!) is hard to beat. What an actor, good play too. Again at the Belvoir.

5. Dickens Women by Miriam Margolyes at the Glen Street theatre. Simply magnificent. Makes you want to go out read Dickens all over again, and read all those ones that I somehow overlooked along the way.

6. Macbeth - I saw two productions of the scottish play ithis year (one of my faves) in London and in Sydney. Both had strengths and weaknesses. I think Macbeth is a great psychological study of power and how it feeds on and destroys those who behave unethically to acquire and retain it. In Sydney, I didn't think that the lead actor was strong enough to carry off the psychological anguish. In London, I thought it was overproduced, too much emphasis on the blood and gore. These criticisms aside I just relish the opportunity to see one of Shakespeare's great tragedies.

7. Beethoven's 9th Symphony - part of the Sydney Symphony orchestra's beethoven festival in JUne this year - transporting, exhilarating

Internet creates demand for print journalists

Why a Cable-TV Network Is Hiring the Ink-Stained - WSJ.com.

"As more money moves towards the Internet, you're going to have to have talent," says John Skipper, ESPN's executive vice president for content. "The talent is going to have to come from traditional media." Someone like Mr. Reilly, he says, is worth a lot in such an environment. "Content is increasingly valuable, particularly differentiating content. There just are not that many guys who can provide that."

As it turns out, everyone can publish but not everyone can create content worth publishing.

Best Buy's employee driven communications

Management Leaders Turn Attention to Followers - WSJ.com.

Best Buy also learned the hard way that rank-and-file employees -- not bosses -- determine the fate of clever-sounding software tools designed to share knowledge within big organizations. Best Buy's bosses have bought several such tools and urged employees to embrace them. "But the problem is, people don't use them," Ms. Ballard says.

Instead, she says, front-line employees at the 140,000-worker company created their own site, www.blueshirtnation.com, where employees share tips, gripes and personal interests. It's proven far more popular than its management-driven predecessors.

I'm sure many more organisations will have to move down the path of having employee driven comms sitting beside the usual range of management-driven stuff. Usually, the idea of something like this fills managers with fear and anxiety but the times have changed. In an age of self-publishing and social networking, the excuses and rationale for not letting people talk amongst themselves are rapidly evaporating.

Call for enquiry into Pacific Solution

Seeking Asylum Down Under: Pacific Solution & Nauru- "Aid: With Strings Attached".

It is necessary for the new government to investigate this dark chapter. I hope my oft repeated call for an enquiry to shine a light into the dark recesses of the Pacific Solution pork barrel will be realised.

Two centuries of rapid improvement

FT.com | Economists' Forum: The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy.

I think the idea that standards of living have improved, say, 20-fold in advanced countries over the past two centuries is an understatement. Consider the range of products and services that did not exist two centuries ago (trains, cars, aeroplanes, modern pharmaceuticals, anaesthetics, indoor plumbing, sewage treatment, electricity, refrigeration, washing machines, telephones, computers, the internet, etc, etc, etc).

Consider the massive increased in life expectancy and collapse in infant mortality. Ask women what difference it makes to them that they can have two children with virtual certainty that they and their children will survive against having 12 pregnancies, in the knowledge that half of their children will not survive to maturity and they themselves have a good chance of dying in childbirth or, exhausted, in their 40s or 50s. Consider the relief from physical drudgery in factories, mines and, not least, the home. Moreover, much of the meticulous work on price indices suggests that inflation has, if anything, been exaggerated when one takes account of new products and services and improvements in quality, too. I can accept that further rises in measured living standards will bring modest improvements in welfare. But I really do not believe this has been the case over the past two centuries.

It really has been an amazing time for humanity but have we become addicted to this rapid growth in living standards. I wonder whether sociities like North America, Europe and Australia could remain politically stable at a lower rate of growth?

Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

The Raw Story

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

Extraordinary stuff and sad that after 150 years native americans are still second class citizens in their own land. Strong parallels with some of the problems facing Australia's indigenous people.

Human Rights Watch - Letter to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

Seeking Asylum Down Under: A long agenda, let's hope trade and global warming are not the only topics that get attention under the new government.

Sydney Theatre Awards confirm the decline of the Sydney Theatre Company

Sydney Theatre Awards snub STC - Arts - Entertainment - smh.com.au.

Sydney Theatre Company, the city's largest mainstage company, has been practically overlooked in the nominations for this year's Sydney Theatre Awards.

The award nominations simply acknowledge the reality that the STC has had a very bad year, especially those productions involving the actors company. The choice of plays has been bizarre, the actors often miscast and the direction uninspired to say the least.

You can't help wondering whether the STC is puting on plays for the audience or for themselves. Perhaps, it receives too much by way of public subsidies and has become self-indulgent. It certainly seems to have lost the idea of theatre as an enjoyable and invigorating experience for the audience. I left at intermission of three or four STC plays this year because they were just an endurance test for the audience and I was getting absolutely nothing out of them; including most recently the truly awful 'Tales from the Vienna Woods'.

In any event, it has a big job ahead of it to claw back some ground from the Belvoir's Company B which, as a subscriber to both theatres, I can tell you is so far in front of STC that its not funny and its no accident that these award nominations strongly favour the Belvoir. Toy Symphony, Exit the King and others like Parramatta Girls and Paul were all wonderful and memorable theatre experiences. Nothing the STC did came anywhere near them.

Second Life set to take off

Work-related Blogs and News:

It's an enchanting thought that we may spend most of our daily lives in one world and our spare time in the other - perhaps some may leave the real world bar basic human functions!

Maybe I'm a luddite but I still think swimming at a real beach or visiting a real museum has to be better than any virtual equivalents.