Linkage

For Norway, it’s a consistently rosy picture. The top 10 per cent rank second for living standards among the top deciles in all countries; the median Norwegian household ranks second among all national averages, and all the way down at the other end, Norway’s poorest 5 per cent are the most prosperous bottom 5 per cent in the world. Norway is a good place to live, whether you are rich or poor.

Britain is a different story. While the top earners rank fifth, the average household ranks 12th and the poorest 5 per cent rank 15th. Far from simply losing touch with their western European peers, last year the lowest-earning bracket of British households had a standard of living that was 20 per cent weaker than their counterparts in Slovenia.

It’s a similar story in the middle. In 2007, the average UK household was 8 per cent worse off than its peers in north-western Europe, but the deficit has since ballooned to a record 20 per cent. On present trends, the average Slovenian household will be better off than its British counterpart by 2024, and the average Polish family will move ahead before the end of the decade. A country in desperate need of migrant labour may soon have to ask new arrivals to take a pay cut.

Funny 'cos it's true:

Political novices put far too much value on winning. Think about a game of basketball against your eight-year-old son. You may have scored more points, but now his feelings are hurt. Wouldn’t it have been better to simply let him win? The same thing goes for the Democratic Party. When progressives like Mamdani are too focused on winning, they don’t consider the feelings of more-established candidates who deserve to win because they want to. Or because it’s “their turn.” Or their dying wish.

Let’s imagine that Zohran Mamdani does win, with a coalition of multi-class young people, immigrants, unions, renters, faith leaders, and pansexual mustache men. What does that mean for the losers? The investment bankers, the landlords, and the Wall Street guys who ask women on the street if “they’re sisters or something”? Was winning worth their tears?

As someone who won one time, I can tell you winning is often not worth it. You know what happens after you win? Governing. You know how hard that is? Who wants that kind of responsibility? Making people’s lives better by advancing policies? Responsibility is incredibly stressful.

A really nice quick piece on induced demand for parking, and the solution. (i.e. Stop doing it!)

A nice little potted history of Australian telecommunication privatisation failure:

A closer look at the record tells a different story. Technological progress in telecommunications produced a steady reduction in prices throughout the 20th century, taking place around the world and regardless of the organisational structure. The shift from analog to digital telecommunications accelerated the process. Telecom Australia, the statutory authority that became Telstra, recorded total factor productivity growth rates as high as 10% per year, remaining profitable while steadily reducing prices.

But for the advocates of neoliberal microeconomic reform, this wasn’t enough. They hoped, or rather assumed, that competition would produce both better outcomes for consumers and a more efficient rollout of physical infrastructure. […]

The failures emerged early. Seeking to cement their positions before the advent of open competition, Telstra and Optus spent billions rolling out fibre-optic cable networks. But rather than seeking to maximise total coverage, the two networks were virtually parallel, a result that is a standard prediction of economic theory. The rollout stopped when the market was fully opened in 1997, leaving parts of urban Australia with two redundant fibre networks and the rest of the country with none.

The next failure came with the rollout of broadband. Under public ownership, this would have been a relatively straightforward matter. But the newly privatised Telstra played hardball, demanding a system that would cement its monopoly position in fixed-line infrastructure. The end result was the need to return to public ownership with the national broadband network, while paying Telstra handsomely for access to ducts and wires that the public had owned until a few years previously.

Meanwhile the hoped-for competition in mobile telephony has failed to emerge. The near-duopoly created in 1991, with Telstra as the dominant player and Optus playing second fiddle, has endured for more than 30 years. 

Queensland’s controversial ban on puberty blockers and other hormone therapies is unlawful because of a failure to properly consult health executives on a decision affected by political interference, a court has heard.

The supreme court in Brisbane on Wednesday heard the ban should be overturned as part of a legal challenge launched by the mother of a transgender child. The mother cannot be identified for legal reasons.

Her lawyers told the court that Queensland Health’s director general, Dr David Rosengren, was required by law to consult with the executive of any service affected “in developing a health service directive” before he issued the order, banning such transgender hormone therapies for new patients aged under 18, on 28 January.

[…]

On the day the directive was issued, the state’s health executives were called to a Microsoft Teams meeting at 10am for consultation on the decision, which lasted 22 minutes.

At the same time as that meeting, Nicholls was announcing the decision at a press conference, the court was told.

Mark Steele KC, representing the mother, said Rosengren had signed off on publishing the health service directive an hour earlier and had repeatedly urged staff to ensure it was published at 10.30am.

The directive was published at 11.06am.

Steele told the court that Rosengren must have done so to line up with the end of Nicholls’ press conference.

“That can’t be genuine consultation if it’s just a fait accompli,” Steele told the court.

A majority of Victorian renters have experienced a "significant tenancy issue", yet only half of them made a complaint due to fears of landlord retaliation, a new report based on a survey of 1,000 renters has found.

The survey by the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC) found 79 per cent of renters in Victoria had faced at least one problem in the past 12 months.

The most common issues were delays to repairs and maintenance, "unreasonable" rent increases and excessive photos and videos being taken during inspections.

But only 52 per cent of the affected households lodged a complaint, and even fewer — just 2 per cent — escalated their complaint to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).

"What we saw is that there is a broader challenge that even where legal protections exist, renters may not feel safe or supported to use them," CPRC deputy chief executive Chandni Gupta said.

Um… You've heard of the Nazis, haven't you?

During the final day of the hearing on Tuesday, the court heard from a member of the public who observed the rally on December 3, 2023.

Mark Doery was a witness presented by the defence.

"It just looked like a bunch of boys in a group, going for a walk," Mr Doery told the court.

"Nothing stood out as offensive to me, but that's just me."

[…]

"The prosecution has not proved the behaviour of the accused was offensive," Mr Sewell said.

Ultimately, Magistrate Mike Wardell agreed and said he had not been convinced of Victoria Police's case that Mr Sewell's behaviour during the rally was "deeply or seriously insulting".

"Behaviour deemed unacceptably offensive by some, may not trouble others at all," Magistrate Wardell said.

"The test … is whether the impugned behaviour is so deeply and seriously insulting … as to warrant the interference in the criminal law.

"Society is evolving in attitudes all the time … Fringe groups are arising all the time."

This is an absurd claim. As an Australian who grew up in arguably (and famously) the most homogenously small-minded and bigoted part of it, I can assure you that "Russian operatives" did not turn Australia racist overnight via Facebook. Australia is a big box of racist fireworks; forty years of fiscal austerity is the match tossed in.

ASIO is investigating pro-Russian social media influencers who are working with an offshore media organisation to condemn Australia's support for Kyiv, while also using "social media to spread vitriolic, polarising commentary on anti-immigration protests and pro-Palestinian marches", he said.

"These state-sanctioned trolls are more than propaganda puppets; they want to turn hot-button issues into burning issues, tipping disagreement into division and division into violence," he said, giving the annual Lowy Institute address.

A large neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Network, had also attempted to leverage recent anti-immigration and cost-of-living rallies in Australia, he said.

This is quite sweet…

… but what's really amusing is the response from fellow USians:

Your regular reminder that solving every problem by creating a competitive market of private sector "service providers" does not work.

Just 11.7% of jobseekers in Australia found long-term employment through a job provider in the latest financial year, according to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations’ annual report.

Service providers are allowed to claim publicly funded outcome payments when clients have completed four, 12 and 26 weeks in employment – regardless of whether the client or provider found the job.

[…]

Jeremy Poxon, a welfare advocate at the Antipoverty Centre, said the system was failing “en mass” to help get people into meaningful work.

“The government knows full well that this system is failing on this basic metric to help people into work,” he said.

It came as Guardian Australia revealed Centrelink has threatened payment suspensions to jobseekers at a rate of five a minute, despite serious concerns from social security experts that they are illegal.

Poxon said the data showed the system was better at punishing people than helping them into employment.