The Abbott government has splashed more than $8 million of taxpayer money on a media blitz promoting its stalled higher education reforms.

Fairfax Media can reveal the government has spent $5.4 million on media bookings for the campaign, which has infuriated key Senate crossbenchers. 

This comes on top of $2.3 million spent on the design of the advertisements and $560,000 on focus groups and market research.

...

TWO EYEWITNESSES to the arrest of Iain Fogerty ‒ the man wearing the ‘I’m with stupid T-shirt’ near LNP campaigners in Brisbane earlier this week ‒ have told IA how stunned they were by the over-top-police response to a “harmless prank”.

The arrest occured on Thursday morning.

At least 12 people have been killed by gunmen reportedly armed with Kalashnikovs and a rocket-launcher who opened fire in the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

French officials said 11 other people were injured, at least four seriously, in the shooting at the central Paris offices about 11.30am (local time) on Wednesday.

I read Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian every day. I want to know what the fruitcake faction of capital is up to. That includes not just Murdoch’s journalists and his major ‘serious’ newspaper outlet in Australia but the Abbott government they serve and influence and the Liberal base they feed and incite.

On this same day, the British press was honouring the Great Leader... Winston Churchill was being hailed. His Body was going to lie in state for three days in Westminster Hall (built 1097 we are told) before being buried in St Martin de Bladon, Oxfordshire... next to his mum and dad.

But the article about US victory is quite fascinating... Same about Peking demanding a new "peace Body"...

I went down an alley, and I found a curry shop
I went down an alley, and I found a curry shop
And I heard somebody singing
and the song just wouldn't stop

Chorus:
Seeya later alley raita, after a wild crock of dahl
Seeya later alley raita, after a wild crock of dahl
Can't you see I'm constipated?
Don't you know you cramp my bowel?

The Federal Government says a review of Australia's natural disaster funding system is not being motivated by the need to find budget savings.

Federal government departments are spending eye-watering sums to know what the public is thinking and what the media is saying about them, new documents show.

In some of the more surprising disclosures, the Department of Defence is spending more than $500,000 a year on pay TV and, between July and October 2014, splashed $454,125 - or about $5000 a day, on newspapers, magazines and other publications. Another department also spent nearly $90,000 on books over four months.

The poor face onerous rules while rich corporations avoid tax with impunity.

Australian politicians love the idea of mutual obligation. But the disparities underlying it are becoming more and more extreme. Welfare recipients are painted as getting “something for nothing”, and pushed into more and more restrictive versions of the social contract.

The effects of fracking could be as dangerous as asbestos, thalidomide, or tobacco toxins, the UK’s leading scientist has warned, claiming the government has adopted the process without considering the side effects.