Asylum Seeker Debate Hits A New Low

The asylum seeker debate has reached a new low level with Shadow Immigration Minister Scott Morrison calling for a suspention of bridging visas for all asylum seekers, further suggesting that households where those seeking refuge are released into the community should be notified by authorities.

His suggestion comes after a 21-year-old Sri Lankan asylum seeker asylum seeker, charged with indecently assaulting a student at Macquarie University last week.

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Australian Politics - A Year in Review 2012

It’s hard to think of a more bitter and divisive year in Australian politics and the scary thing is that it wasn’t even an election, that will be for 2013.

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American Politics: Who’s Running the Asylum?

American politics hey? Can’t live with it, past the table salt. The world’s greatest democracy is a fickle beast. It throws up all sorts of characters and odd balls and every now and then throws up situations that bring the country to brink of national crisis, I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about.

Take the tea party for instance. A movement that believes in very small government, reduced taxes (for the rich anyway), the constitution, but not federal government and they believe in guns – they love their guns.

Now I don’t know whether there should be too much read into this but the tea party movement was born in 2009 during the early stages of Obama’s Presidency as a protest against taxes and big federal government.

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The rise of the far right in the UK...

In a recent Simpleton blog there was commentary on the rise of the far right in Australia. You’re not alone – and if you come to work in the UK you may well be affected.

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The way the UN Security Council works - a Simpleton explanation

So, how does the world work? We sometimes watch the TV news in askance as the UN Security Council makes decisions we think are barking mad. This explains how the Security Council is made up, and suggests that such decisions are really down to which side of the table you sit. All democracies make crazy decisions but one side will always view that decision as 'right'...

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Political battling over the Falklands is about oil not people!

In 1982 Argentina invaded a group of islands in the South Atlantic owned by Britain. Famously Margaret Thatcher sent a fleet of ships and a load of soldiers 9000 miles south, and chucked the invaders out. I visited there 4 years later and already land prices were soaring over the possibility of oil under the islands…

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British Coalition Government Comes Under Attack for Increasing Retirement Age

When the Liberal Democrats formed coalition government with the Conservative party, they sort of knew what they were getting into. "The Coalition: Our Programme For Government" has drawn criticism from a number of major political analysts and of course the people of United Kingdom. The coalition has been pushing for stronger civil liberties, a significant premium funding for educating the poorer sections, and a marked resistance towards non-EU immigration. While many of these have found support with people, the Coalition has been criticised for many decisions that have been described as drastic.

The latest criticism that the coalition has come under is because of a new decision to increase the mean retirement age to 67 by 2026. The argument that people have a greater life expectancy today than the previous generation did, and that working for a year more or two would only enhance people's quality of life has been the coalition's favourite argument, which has also met stiff resistance from people who work in public sector. The decision would be enforced anytime soon, which means millions of people who are aged 50 or under at the moment would have to work for a longer time before they start receiving the pension.

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Revolution Australian Style

Here in Australia where the sun shines brightly, the wind blows fresh and strong across our sweeping plains, where the waves crash into our never-ending shoreline and where a bunch of truckies spurred on by a radio shock jock gathered in our nations capital to try and depose the minority federal government.

Why? You might ask, it would seem that the truckies and shock jocks didn’t like the result of the last election much and kind of don’t like they way our political system is governed, as enshrined in the constitution. The organizers of the event, who refer to themselves as the “Convoy of No Confidence” in the days preceding the protest predicted that thousands would join the protest on the lawns of parliament house Canberra.

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The Politics of Green: Lesson from Singapore

Ask any Singapore visitor and many will find the boulevard bridging the airport and the town imposing. Thanks to the discerning urban planners from N Parks, the official sector that deals with gardening and biodiversity, and meticulous gardeners, the lines of trees not only strike for their neatness, but also their varieties, which probably made the airport-to-town trip a brief overview of Singapore’s biodiversity. Locals are not surprised to hear such compliments, yet they will add that it’s more to do with politics and economy than to environment.

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The Need for Politics to Move Beyond Old Media

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