At a time when the range and nature of communication channels has exploded it has never been more difficult to make yourself heard or heeded.

While we have an increasing number of ways to reach people the reality is that more and more of them have closed their ears and minds to messages which don’t fit with their belief systems or prejudices. It is this paradox that explains much about political surprises such as Brexit and Trump; the difficulty of convincing the minority that keep making poor health choices and of getting the Australians who are making obesity as big a problem here as it is in the US to eat less and more wisely; and why business and political leaders are proving incapable of convincing people that what business and conservative politicians believe as gospel is not nonsense. read more

The continued militarisation of Australian history and the consequent manufacture of ignorance about both our general and our military history suffered a minor setback the other day.

The setback was largely due to the intelligent leadership of someone who knows much more about military history than the politicians who cloak themselves in the flag and foster the myths about Gallipoli as the defining national Australian event. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan – the biggest battle Australian troops have been involved in since the Korean War – and one in which vastly outnumbered troops fought bravely supported by massive artillery support (from the blog’s old Battery, although on an earlier tour than his, and NZ gunners) and armoured personnel carriers. read more

Andrew Bolt

 The blog has read all of Peter Corris’ books and regularly reads his column in the Newtown Review of Books published by Gleebooks.

In a recent post he recounted his meeting with a matelot. “In April 1998 Captain Ken Blyth, a Scot and an experienced and respected merchant mariner, was in command of a tanker transporting thousands of tons of fuel through the South China Seas. The vessel, named the Petro Ranger, was boarded by pirates, diverted to a secure harbour and held for some time, with the crew under restraint, while negotiations went on between various interested parties.” read more

As the blog had a huge file of things which it thought interesting its annual taking a break is in three parts. This is part two.

It’s an exciting time to be an innovative, agile Australian researcher

Well up to a point according to the OECD’s latest science and technology data reported on by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Needless to say they don’t spend a lot of time analysing the Australian situation (although they do provide links to the full OECD data) but they do show that Australia is a laggard in the energy and environment fields and only has a modest investment in defence R&D – a good thing on the face of it until you realise that much US defence R&D is actually industrial policy under a name more acceptable to US legislators. read more

The blog is taking a break for a while. In the meantime some odds and sods until it resumes.

Celebrity

Long before the blog became a PR person it read Daniel Boorstin’s 1961 book The Image. The blog hadn’t thought of it much lately until reading a review of Donald Trump’s campaign autobiography Crippled America by Mark Danner (NYRB 26 May 2016). read more

Bismarck’s comment about sausages and legislation is probably apocryphal but it keeps being repeated because it is so apt.

How apt the blog discovered when it spent four and a bit hours at its local Council’s meeting to make a three minute submission which was misunderstood by one councillor; provoked a Kumbaya moment in another who was having palpitations about ‘negativity’ when obviously we should all be channelling ‘positivity’; and subjected to managerialist obfuscation by staff commenting on the subject. read more

Ten weeks ago the Canberra Press Gallery was swooning in appreciation of Malcolm Turnbull’s double dissolution strategy.

Last week the conventional wisdom was that the Government would be comfortably re-elected. The blog rated the probability of that at between 60 and 70% but expressed a niggling doubt (partly prompted by Tim Colebatch’s insightful piece in Inside Story) that it might be closer than we all thought.  Tim’s latest Inside Story piece is also very useful for analysing what might happen. For the blog this niggling doubt was reinforced initially by the close election eve polls and then the closeness of the exit polls. read more

As the Federal Election has been largely a leadership-free zone the blog has been visiting, and re-visiting, some important new reports on leadership in other areas – particularly in the areas of technology and the public sector.

The blog has referred before to the rich resources to be found on Brian Donovan’s leadership website and the series of Big Kahuna leadership survey reports he has produced. The latest survey is on digital disruption as a leadership challenge. It’s based on in depth interviews with influential leaders about digital disruption and the need for “game-changing digital and technology strategies”. But, as the report says, the big question is whether organisations have the leadership capability to respond and turn digital and technology strategies into opportunities for business growth. read more

While think tanks add many things to the political debate, activist groups rarely do. Worse we have to put up with the ‘Get Up illusion’ in which some activists believe that signing an online petition, or crowdfunding an ad, is effective political action or a way to deal with African war criminals. read more

The 2016 Federal election campaign will go down in history as one characterised by the exceptional depth and breadth of policy debate and analysis. Eh? Sorry, the blog was not referring to the political party campaigns but rather the contributions of various think tanks.

For those despairing of negativity, puerile slogans, scare campaigns and robotic responses turn off the TV, put the papers in the recycling and turn to the very impressive contributions made by think tanks such as the Grattan Institute, the Australia Institute, Australia21 and assorted others. read more