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Site upgrade - more one-stop blogsites

The Political Sword has been upgraded with additions to the items under site pages in the right panel.  These include Blog Watch, Sword Watch, Liberal Watch, Nationals Watch and Greens Watch. [more]

Blog Watch is a feature that facilitates access to a wide variety of Australian political blogsites.  Like Favourites or Bookmark facilities, it is provided to assist visitors quickly target the sites they prefer, all from one site – The Political Sword.  It has been augmented with the addition of several blogsites, for example the political blogs provided by The Australian, such as Meganomics, Current Account Blog and Jack the Insider.  Links to several other popular sites have been added.  The Political Sword now has the most comprehensive set of links to political blogsites in the Australian blogosphere.  Ten of the most popular sites are updated daily with the new items appearing on those sites, sometimes more often.  Links to each new item are provided and added at the top of the list, which features the last few items on those sites in descending chronological order.  It is anticipated this feature will save visitors considerable time.

Sword Watch is a recent addition.  It is an index of all the items that have been posted on The Political Sword since its inception. There are now over 100 items.  Each title is listed and linked to the piece, and is accompanied by a short description of the subject of the item and the date of posting.  It is offered to facilitate easy access to previous postings.

Government Watch has been modified recently.  Instead of posting every media item on the Australian Labor Party website, Government Watch now refers visitors directly to that website which is updated almost every day.

Liberal Watch and Nationals Watch replaces Opposition Watch, which related to just the Liberal Party of Australia website.  Now visitors can access both websites to ascertain what the Opposition is saying to the media.  Like Government Watch, instead of posting on The Political Sword every media item on these two websites, Liberal Watch and Nationals Watch now refers visitors directly to those websites which are updated almost every day.

Greens Watch has been added as around ten percent of voters support The Greens.  Like the others, it provides a direct link, in this case to The Australian Greens website.

Don't forget the search facility in the right panel.  Use it to search the site for subjects, titles, names and keywords.  To include comments in your search, tick the box below the search panel. You can then search by name for the all the comments made by a particular commenter, and the replies made by Ad astra to that commenter, which appear as a numbered list at the foot of the search results.

It is hoped these changes will make The Political Sword a more useful site for visitors.  Suggestions for improving the site would be welcome.

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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6 COMMENTS

fred

10/07/2009Hmmm. A cunning move Ad. I may make you my primary port of call and radiate out back and forth from here. May I suggest you consider the addition of these sites: http://viv.id.au/blog/ Hoyden About Town. http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/archive/ David Horton's site. And for those interesred in aboriginal/indigenous/nunga and other matters I would recommend 'Northern Myth' at Crikey.

Bilko

11/07/2009Just a test to see if my new Avatar appears however I appreciate the changes and the quite calm it presents rgds

Bilko

11/07/2009yippee it works

Ad astra reply

11/07/2009fred, Thank you for the links, which I've added under 'Social and economics blogspots', and for your kind remarks. David, I've used your link for the Watermelon Blog. Thank you for your complimentary comments. Bilko, Now I know who you are! wandering and wondering, Thanks for your kind comments. I hope you all find [i]The Political Sword[/i] interesting and [i]Blog Watch[/i] a useful conduit to other blogsites. I find [i]OneStopPolitics[/i] a good site for daily newspaper news http://www.onestoppolitics.com.au/ and as I'm a subscriber, Crikey also. http://www.crikey.com.au/ I'm not sure if it's accesible to non-subscribers.

Kate

18/07/2009I hadn't been using my rss reader for a while and I have a huge backlog of stuff to catch up on. Glad to have taken to time to catch up on your blog though. Cheers.

Make Your Own Website

5/08/2009Great insights. I loved to read your article. Admiring the time and effort you put into your blog and detailed information you offer!

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How many Rabbits do I have if I have 3 Oranges?

Welfare is for the needy, not big and wealthy multinational corporations.

David Lewis

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Bernard Baruch

While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no State.

Lenin

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Albert Einstein

The broad mass of a nation...will more easily fall victim to a big lie that a small one.

Adolf Hitler