Legal historian Evan Whitton says white collar criminals in England and its colonies have been a protected species since 1275.

from Crikey …..

Don't write Tony Abbott off yet. But if you do ...

from Crikey …..

Royal commission on child abuse will be transformative

Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham, will become Archbishop of Canterbury when Rowan Williams steps down at the end of the year.

An Argentine court has ordered to seize US oil giant Chevron Corp's assets in the country in order to carry out an Ecuadorean court ruling that awarded $19 billion to plaintiffs in an environmental damage lawsuit in the Amazon, said a lawyer representing Ecuadoran plaintiffs on November 7, 2012 [1].

from Antony Loewenstein ....

According to a new BBC global poll (via the Jerusalem Post):

The workforce in the electricity industry has more than doubled over the past six years although the actual amount of energy supplied to consumers has remained flat.

That's right. Zero growth in supply to the national electricity market but a workforce which has bloated from 35,000 in November 2006 to 71,900 in 2012.

When James Packer had his stomach stapled the event made national headlines. We were supposed to be impressed that, unable to master his own appetite, he paid someone else for surgical help that would change the look while leaving the core infant intact.

The indefinite detention of asylum seekers on Nauru is ''an egregious breach of international human rights law'', says the Gillard government's hand-picked human rights commissioner, Gillian Triggs.

from Crikey .....

No cameras please, we're British.

Are Prince Charles and wife Camilla playing a little hard to get?

Eric Roozendaal has revealed he submitted false information to the Roads and Traffic Authority when he was roads minister regarding the Honda CRV at the centre of a corruption probe.

I still remember the morning in 1993 when Sydney was awarded the 2000 Olympics. About the same time the state of Victoria was almost declared bankrupt.

I, like many others at the time, thought Sydney would catapult ahead and leave Melbourne in its dust. Almost the complete opposite has occurred.

One of the most tasteless terms used in the federal political arena is the ''killing season''.

It refers to the final sitting week for a parliamentary sitting, when MPs sometimes decide to change leaders before leaving Canberra for several weeks.