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Happy Christmas and New Year to all our Visitors

This is the time to wish all our readers a Happy and Relaxing Festive Season with your Family, and to thank all who have sustained The Political Sword throughout 2016.

First, thanks go to our writers. Ken Wolff and 2353NM, who have joined me to author countless articles on TPS and TPS Extra during 2016. Their pieces are of universally excellent standard on subjects of relevance to the political scene here and overseas. The insights that these pieces have brought to readers have been deeply appreciated, so much so that the The Australian Independent Media Network (AIMN) has reproduced many of these pieces on its site, courtesy of Michael Taylor who oversees the Network.

Backing them up is our coding expert Bacchus, who, working behind the scenes, ensures that the pieces appear in perfect shape with graphics in place. This is a time consuming and exacting process, for which we all thank him. He, with the other authors and my dear spouse, proof read the pieces to ensure that they appear error-free. We are thankful for their attention to this demanding task.

Even further behind the scenes is Web Monkey who maintains the backend of The Political Sword, ensuring that it opens consistently and performs as expected. The thousands of lines of code on blogENGINE are housed on a server in Singapore, which Web Monkey monitors and backs up regularly. We thank him for his support, now in its ninth year.

Lyn’s Links were an important part of The Political Sword in its formative years. They attracted many readers. When Lyn retired from this activity, Casablanca filled the void. We are indebted to them both for their contribution to the success of TPS over the years.

The TPS Ambassadors have given great support to TPS throughout 2016 by publicising on Facebook and Twitter every new piece posted on the site. We thank them for their continuing contribution to the site.

Finally, we thank those who visit TPS and TPS Extra, and those of you who leave comments that add so much to the vibrancy of the site.

Elsewhere you have been advised of the schedule for 2017, the ninth year of TPS.

We hope you have a refreshing break over the end-of-year period and join us again in 2017. There will continue to be much to write about in these turbulent political times, here and around the world.

With warmest Christmas Greetings and every Good Wish for 2017.

Ad astra

Time to say goodbye

To me, Ad Astra, “Time to say goodbye” are among the saddest words in our language. Yet say them now we must. I chose Ad Astra as my moniker because my secondary school’s motto is ‘sic itur ad astra’, which can be liberally interpreted as: “Here is the way to the stars”. How inspiring these word...

  • 19/12/2022

Have we got a deal for you

There is a conspiracy theory that suggests that birds (in the USA at least) aren’t real. The claim is that all the birds in the USA were hunted down by the government between the late 50’s and early 70s and replaced with bird like drones to spy on you. According to the theory President John F. Kenne...

  • 12/12/2022

Get out of the gutter

You may not have heard of Mike Rinder. A Scientologist for most of his life, at the age of 52 he walked out, and as a result lost his family, friends, employment and pretty well everything else in his life. RInder has written a book on his time in Scientology, runs a website that questions Scientolo...

  • 5/12/2022

Was Amtrak Joe derailed?

Prior to becoming President, Joe Biden was a US Senator for around 36 years. He is known as Amtrak Joe as he routinely took the daily 90 minute each way train trip (on the USA’s national passenger train network — Amtrak) from his home in Delaware to Washington DC to represent his state. If you liste...

  • 28/11/2022

If employers can measure well-being...

Last September, you might have seen Qantas CEO Alan Joyce received a pay increase of $278,000 per annum. It seems that Joyce has met or exceeded the performance goals set by his employers and contractually has earned the reward. It does, however, raise a larger question. Joyce's pay increase for t...

  • 21/11/2022

Coming back to haunt you

In his recent Budget reply speech, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton laboured (pun intended) on the increasingly difficult to achieve promise by Prime Minister Albanese that power bills will be $275 less in 2025. While the government is claiming the modelling done in 2021 supports the accuracy of the p...

  • 14/11/2022

The good economic units

Wellbeing and politics have collided in the past couple of weeks. Federal Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers has started a conversation about measuring the ‘wellbeing’ of the nation as a result of the measures in the budget. The Opposition, as you would expect, has poured scorn on the idea. On a purely lo...

  • 7/11/2022

Do you want to smile or frown

Recently, in what could be described as an epic fail in recruiting practices, the Essendon Football Club hired and accepted the resignation of the same CEO within a day. The issue was that the CEO was also the Chairman of ‘City on the Hill’, a church that seems to promote some conservative views on ...

  • 2/11/2022

We can do it better

It was probably co-incidental that the Australian Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was held in Sydney around the time the NRL and AFL finals were occurring. CPAC originally advertised the conference would be at Luna Park — until Luna Park claimed they had never had a booking. The Conf...

  • 24/10/2022

The voice

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong recently addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Accompanying Wong on the trip was Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and ‘Special Envoy for Reconciliation’ Pat Dodson. Wong told the General Assembly that Australia believed the UN an...

  • 17/10/2022

Kicking climate down the road

You’re probably aware of some who don't see the need to reduce emissions. They have a lot of different reasons or excuses for the position, including the current systems have served us well in the past, we’re only a small population so our changes won’t mean much or just a general reluctance to cons...

  • 10/10/2022

A home amongst the gumtrees

A local real estate agent rings me every couple of months asking if I am willing to sell my house. So far he's tried the 'look how much you could get' strategy, 'the market is moving, you don’t want to miss out’ strategy and telling me he could help me buy another house if I did sell; to which my re...

  • 3/10/2022

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7 COMMENTS

Michael Taylor

25/12/2016I am honoured to be associated in some small way with The Political Sword. I have followed TPS for about six years and have always considered it one of the best sites for indepth analyses of Australia's political 'circus'. 2017 is not yet here but we can expect more of the same as what we have seen in 2016. TPS will again be one of the sites I look to first.

Ad Astra

26/12/2016Thank you Michael for your generous comment, and for all the support you and [i]The AIMN[/i] have given [i]TPS[/i] during 2016.

Patriciawa

31/12/2016Miglo and Ad Astra! How nice to find my two favorite blogmasters here in the one spot. Over the years at Café Whispers, AIMN and TPS you have been such a help to me in developing my new late life career at polliepomes and as a commentator. So - Happy New Year to you both and all our mutual friends and acquaintances too! Increasingly I am finding the web difficult to navigate and had at first thought it was my own ineptitude. Sometimes I wonder if I am imagining it that the language is changing; there are more choices popping up on the screen, some of which lead to dead-ends and which interrupt my train of thought. The wrong choice can mean a lost hour, or an idea. I need to go so school again! I have tried that but I find my tutors taking so much for granted as their fingers whizz across the keyboard. e.g. I lost this below, even to my own site as a draft, when I got all excited about what Eric Abetz had to say about Abbott and Lombardi. The Pub, of course, is a very lively site but without the personal contacts like yourselves to whom I could turn for advice. Editorial mentoring is long gone, I think! eg I just can't get my title into Bold with a simple 'b' or Underlined with a 'u' and Italics for quotes with an 'i' - is that too much to ask? All, All Honorable Men? “Tony is an honorable man." "Cory is an honorable man." "Both of them are honorable men!” Said Eric Abetz, but then again, Is his opinion over-rated? I’d hardly call him educated, Unless he is trying very hard, To be our own Downunder Bard, And demonstrating subtlety, Referring thus to their treachery. Is he sick of them and of government, Secretly longing for retirement? I had thought I was working on a draft at The Pub, since that was where I saw the link via Leroy - which seems now to have vanished into thin air! No here it is...... http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/conservative-party-could-win-up-to-10-tony-abbott-hits-out-at-cory-bernardi-over-breakaway-20161229-gtjmc6.html … #auspol

Paticiawa

31/12/2016No! I've just checked that link and it's a modified version of the story I read yesterday - not very different, but it doesn't have the same details which originally appealed to me.

Ad Astra

31/12/2016Patriciawa Thank you for your comment and your polliepome, delightful as always. Thank you too for link to [i]The Canberra Times[/i] article that shows the disarray that exists in the Liberal Party. I can’t see them fixing this while Turnbull is leader. They are in self-destruct mode. The Internet is much more complicated and intense than when [i]TPS[/i] began, and with ads and other distractions popping up everywhere, one’s usage allowance is soon chewed up. To use emphasis, place an opening and closing square bracket around i b or u followed by an opening and closing square bracket with / before i b or u All the best for 2107 - we look forward to seeing you back regularly.

TalkTurkey

31/12/2016"All the best for 2107" - Ad astra :) Comrades All, This is the first time in many months that I have even visited this site. Why, you may ask. Well, I have agonised much and long over it. But as I explained to Ad per phone when he rang me weeks ago, it's because of a dilemma I find myself in. I used to write nearly every day when *J*U*L*I*A* was PM, and most of the time I used to end my contributions with my own battle cry, lifted from the magnificent Sandinistas of Nicaragua, VENCEREMOS! (We Will Win!) And I never said it without genuine conviction that we would indeed keep the barbaric RW hordes at bay. As soon as Rudd's perfidy overthrew *J*U*L*I*A*, I knew that Labor was in deep trouble. And since then I have not felt that conviction of the inevitability of justice and truth prevailing in Australia, seeing my countrymen turn to a thug leading a band of crooks, yobs and rorters, with a Labor Opposition Leader who at best is far from inspirational, and a populace deeply divided by the extreme Right and bedevilled by a complicit Media who vilify and persecute such tiny fish as Thomson and Dastyari while lionizing treacherous Jackson and exonerating criminal Sinodinus. And the Australian public swallows it all, or at least enough of them to return this fraudulent Government. And now the world has been Trumped. This creature is like Abbort-gone-Godzilla, the ultimate expression of populism of the uneducated masses whose stupidity has been so painstakingly nurtured by Murdoch and his minions. So now my outlook is more than ever doleful, as I watch the Poles melt and the life-forms go extinct and the population explode, militarism rule supreme, and religion - which in my early years I had thought could not survive the Age of Science - bedevil human relationships from micro to macro world wide. You see, this is no message to spread on the valiant Political Sword, which has ever been Defender of the Light on the Hill. But tonight will end in fireworks, and in the glare of the New Year, perhaps, just perhaps, the World will see through the inanity of the Trumpophiles and reject the bigotry of religiomanes, and clutch at an increasingly desperate chance of a Future for Life on Earth. There's nothing else to hope for, so it's a case really of, "Once more into the breach, Dear Friends, once more!" And since there's nothing for it anyway, let me yet again yell full-throated as we approach this watershed New Year, VENCEREMOS! NO PASARAN! HNY to All.

Ad Astra

1/01/2017Talk Turkey How good it is to see you writing on TPS again. I empathize with your feelings of despair about politics here and overseas. It is hard to explain why voters have chosen leaders and political parties that have flawed policies and seemingly little sense of direction. How those who fly in the face of the facts and eschew logic and reason can attract support is one on the political enigmas that bedevils our society as it attempts to adjust to the changes that are occurring all around us. The dominance of self-interest over the common good retards progress and heightens inequality. The power over political decision making of entrenched dogma and political ideology is not just astonishing; it threatens our way of life, the future of our nation, the destiny of the global economy, and indeed the fate of our planet. What we have witnessed during 2106 is that we cannot safely leave politics to the politicians. That has proved to be dangerous and unproductive. It is up to us as ordinary citizens to raise our small voices in protest, to point politicians towards more productive policies, to heighten the clamour for greater equity and fairness. There are better ways, which enlightened thinkers have described. It is up to us to thrust these before our politicians. It is through blogs like [i]The Political Sword[/i] and other strong sites such as [i]The AIMN[/i], that our voices are expressed, promulgated via social media, and eventually heard by our politicians. I hope you will find the time and enthusiasm to have your voice heard during 2017. Best wishes to you and J for 2017. VENCEREMOS! NO PASARAN! INDEED

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How many umbrellas are there if I have two in my hand but the wind then blows them away?

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before eighteen.

Albert Einstein

To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

The more one gets to know of men, the more one values dogs.

A. Toussenel

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

Karl Popper

A politician is a person whose politics you do not agree with. When you do agree, he is a statesman.

David Lloyd George