![jot](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jot.jpg)
Random Jottings in a Dark Season
Sometimes things strike my fancy that are not worthy of articles in themselves, but I still feel I would like to share them. I call them bagatelles. Here are a few.
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MARIUS BENSON, ABC Radio’s political commentator, interviewed Chris Bowen earlier in the week about Labor’s costings and noted that its projected deficits over four years were $16bn more than the Coalition’s. He wondered if this was ‘a gift to the government’. Not a bit of it, replied Bowen, as might be expected. “The difference is only 0.2% of GDP,” he told us, implying that this was too insignificant to worry about, a rounding error perhaps.
Benson must have swallowed this line because later, he and SMH’s Peter Hartcher both pushed the same line.
Perhaps it did not occur to them that the total four-year accumulated deficits of the government, $84bn, also only amount to a paltry 1% of GDP. Presumably nothing to worry about either – on that basis we could…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins