Yanis Varoufakis, the newly minted Greek finance minister and a dual Australian citizen, has courted controversy with both his anti-austerity economic policies and his fashion choices.

His leftist party Syriza came to power in the debt-stricken country in January and made headlines after it vowed to reverse austerity policies and end inspections by its lenders, the International Monetary Fund and European Union.

Mr Varoufakis's dress sense also grabbed plenty of attention, when he attended high-level talks with the British finance minister in Downing Street wearing a leather jacket and bright blue shirt.

Despite saying that his greatest fear was that he "may turn into a politician", the Greek-Australian is now at the centre of renegotiations of Greece's bailout, the result of which could end with the country leaving the eurozone.

read more: 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-19/who-is-yanis-varoufakis/6148862

 

For the "real" Magic Pudding see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Pudding

Take note of Bill Barnacle...

 

 

Scary Joe said the latest inter-generational report would be a "critical document for economists, academics, business and the community" and "not your usual inter-generational report".

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Well, actually, the three previous IGRs were critical documents for economists, academics, business and the community, so the next one does sound pretty much like the last three.

Note that Joe left politicians off the list of types for whom the report will be critical – perhaps because politicians delivered and largely ignored the previous three.

Oh, in fairness, they weren't entirely ignored. They were used as the reason to give policy a little nudge but never by enough to offend anyone. A Parliamentary Library report summarises it thus:

"Following the delivery of each IGR, successive governments have implemented policies that have been explicitly linked to the relevant IGR. For example:

• The 2002–03 budget included measures such as a rise in co-payments for medicines supplied under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and the introduction of the superannuation co-contribution.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/scary-joe-hockey-has-cried-wolf-too-often-20150220-13ker7.html#ixzz3SK9hnfMi

Scary Joe seems to want to give us old foggies a heart attack on the spiralling cost of zimmer frames... It would save him government money should we die earlier. The need to fill our vacant "family" home with younger generation would springboard the economy and uncle Joe is your auntie... Is this why there are so many adverts on repeats of repeats of old shows, from the 1980s (and earlier) on the box, promoting funerals insurance and cheap burials...?

 

 

 

It's a little rich, I think, for you lot to be mocking the PM for clearing the 100 year old barnacle of the National Census from the ship of state, while at the same time muttering mutinous thoughts about his plan to replace all that tired old paper-based data collection with a really spiffing super computer that could keep track of everyone all the time not just every five years or so. That's right. Don't imagine for a second we didn't notice. Why, the government spends of hundreds of millions of dollars every year monitoring your potentially seditious thought crimes on your subversive Twitters and interwebby things.

For instance, they know you weren't serious, Mr Preston Towers, when you suggested having the "useless" school chaplains collect the Census next time. The $240 million we spend on school chaplains would only cover half the expense of the much more expensive and, quite frankly, much more useless National Census.

And you, Ms Gigi Huxley (if that is your name, and the metadata will soon tell us) might have thought you were being very funny when you tweeted "Perhaps just a $7 co-payment when we fill in our Census forms…" You know very well it's not $7  and not a co-payment any more and once the government has finished building its omniscient surveillance apparatus from the money saved by getting rid of the Census, they'll know very well where and when you cross the road. Perhaps a little less snarky and subversive tweeting in future might help you avoid a nasty accident.

Perhaps Sarah Ferguson should have said, "Please, sir?" The ABC's most fearsome interrogator, except perhaps for Emma Alberici, seems to have come a cropper in the eyes of external auditor Colleen Ryan for a lack of niceness. Her post-budget autopsy on the still barely living Joe Hockey can't have been nice for the hapless Treasurer. But being interviewed by Ferguson isn't a nice experience for anyone who has something to hide.

And Joe had plenty.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/who-needs-a-census-when-theyve-got-your-metadata-20150220-13jkv5.html

 

 

Yeah... Joe has plenty more bullshit in store... At least at yourdemocracy, we watch the mongrels' every steps but unfortunately no-one is watching us. We don't count... as if we did not exist...