“This is the West sir, and when the legend becomes fact, print the legend” says the reporter to the Governor who is returning to a town for the funeral of a friend,Tom Doniphon, in the final scenes of the 1965 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The quote came to the blog’s mind when reading an obituary of the economist, Alan Krueger, just after it had read yet another quote from yet another business leader saying that increasing the minimum wage would increase unemployment. And this wage-unemployment myth is very much part of a modern Western myth just as much as it was part of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance US western cow town myth. read more

If you were running the Victorian Government what would you do with a spare billion dollars? Education, health, clean energy, public transport, the arts, reduced taxes or something else entirely?

What you probably wouldn’t do is give it to a company to run an event which adds to greenhouse gases; causes noise pollution; refuses to adopt normal standards of financial accountability; and, consistently produces misleading figures on its State economic benefit. read more

Journalists bury the lead and PR people put the facts in the best possible light – but governments often just totally omit the critical information which might put their claims into context.

A classic example was the recent release of the Prime Ministers’ (why not the Australian Government’s?) Veterans’ Employment Awards. The blog’s friend Peter Thomas forwarded it a copy of the Veterans’ Affairs Minister, Darren Chester’s, media release on the subject. It was interesting enough for the blog to use it in a talk to a group of media professionals to illustrate the need for deep analysis of statements. read more

Seven years ago the blog asked: How would  George Pell be regarded in 50 years’ time, what will be his legacy to the Church and Australia, how will it compare to the legacy of that other controversial cleric, Archbishop Daniel Mannix and what does it say about Tony Abbott? Today there are some rather different answers to the question. read more

What do the latest Federal opinion polls mean? The superficial answer derived from political commentary is: almost anything – with the list of possibilities at least as long as the list of journalists reporting on politics.

A better approach is to use probability theory, which the blog has written about before, particularly in the light of Nate Silver’s work on probability – work derived from Bayesian theories and his long experience in sports and poker. read more

It is symptomatic of much that is disturbing and dangerous about Australian political discourse that Australia’s continuing decline in international public sector corruption rankings is given so little attention.

The latest Transparency International’s (TI) annual The Corruptions Perceptions Index (CPI) Index report has put Australia in 13th place – with Australia scoring 77 points down eight points since 2012. This decline has been going on for some years as we have fallen from the top 10 in the list. read more

Kim Jong-un has managed to achieve something that Presidents Johnson and Nixon couldn’t – get the draft dodging Donald Trump to Vietnam. Of course Trump didn’t stay long – soon leaving on a jet plane.

But it makes you wonder about Presidents and military service. JFK saw service and was hailed as a hero – partly because of ghost-writing paid for by his father, Joseph Kennedy, the old bootlegger, short seller and inside trader. General Ulysses S. Grant was a great General although the loss of life his troops sustained was horrific. Lincoln’s Presidential opponent, General George McLellan, might as well have been a conscientious objector given his reluctance to engage with, or even chase, the enemy. read more

As Australia is heading for the mother of fear campaigns for the next election it is significant that in the USA – home of fear, loathing and negative campaigns – voters are becoming alarmed about the most fundamental threat (other than nuclear war precipitated by Trump sitting on the button) to the future of our world. read more

The blog and its PR company enjoyed some campaign successes over the years for governments, companies and organisations. But it must admit that the success of the Louise Adler media campaign in The Age, and the word of mouth Catholic conspiracy version of the controversy, is up with some of the most effective communication campaigns it has known – albeit with lots of help from the newspaper itself. read more

Despite Donald Trump, Scott Morrison and others there is a significant change of opinion on climate change around much of the western world – particularly in the US of all places – for the better.

The evidence for this comes from a series of studies by Yale and George Mason universities’ climate change communications centres and other academics. A report based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication is a prime example of this. read more