Education, elitism and meritocracy
The Economist speculated this week that the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition government in the UK might come to be seen as “government by the southern rich for the southern rich”. Skepticlawyer has an interesting post at her eponymous blog, riffing off [...]
May Day, Paul Lucas, Australian Labor and class politics
In Queensland today, we celebrated Labour Day as a public holiday. In the wake of the privatisation imbroglio perpetrated by the Bligh government, expectations were that solidarity between Labor and labour wouldn’t be at the forefront of the Brisbane May [...]
On Movember, Tim Soutphommasane and civics
A while back I wrote – in rather skeptical vein – about Tim Soutphommasane’s claim that progressives should be reclaiming patriotism. Guy Rundle has now reviewed Soutphommasane’s book, Reclaiming Patriotism: nation building for Australian progressives, for Crikey (of which more [...]
Economic inequality and attitudes towards same-sex relationships
There’s a really fascinating post at scatterplot from sociologist Tina Fetner. She reports on research with Bob Andersen just published in the American Journal of Political Science. Their interest was sparked by a sudden shift in Canada and the United [...]
Quentin Bryce becomes Governor-General
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/bryce.jpg" align=left History has been made with the swearing in of Quentin Bryce as Australia’s first female Governor-General. I was interested to read in the Fin Review yesterday that there’s supposedly some social progress because she will become Patron [...]
Blogging political fiction
One of the rather egregious questions on last week’s Q&A asked the panel to comment on why there was no contemporary political fiction of the stature of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s. As with a lot of the queries posed on Q&A, it’s [...]
The middle-classing of Labor?
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/225208-upload-00005.jpg" The graph is from page 101 of a Parliamentary Library paper on the 2007 federal election. It shows voting patterns disaggregated by electorates ranked in four socio-economic groups according to income. As Brian Costar observes at Australian Policy [...]
Guest post by Aaron Darc: Morgan and the Multiplex
Aaron Darc, whose work will be familiar to LPers from his incarnation as Eye on Big Brother, recently interviewed film maker Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock came to prominence with Super Size Me and his new film Where in the World is [...]
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