Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes had three things in common – they all wrote extraordinarily well; they all went beyond pure economics and wove various insights from other areas into their work; and, they all share the problem that both their most fervent supporters and opponents constantly misrepresent what they said. read more

How will Tony Abbott be remembered? That might sound a tad premature particularly when the blog, along with Rod Cameron and a few others, declared authoritatively after Abbott was first elected leader that he was unelectable and could well be equally wrong again.

But, as the blog bitterly remembers from Victorian politics in the 1970s and 80s, once the leadership issue is out and about the media finds it much easier, and more fun, to write about leadership than other more complex subjects and the outcome is inevitable. So, much to the chagrin of Labor and others, it seems increasingly likely that he might actually be gone. Nevertheless, while the Liberals will be keen to ‘move on’, as everyone in politics says when trying to distract attention from train wrecks, his political impact has been significant even though that impact is more like that of Herostratus in Ephesus than that of builders of monuments or policy achievements. read more

Post-colonial societies face many complex issues– but like many countries facing complex issues – it is sometimes productive for them to focus on some significant symbolic ones, such as changing the names of places and things, to identify new priorities and new realities.

In India the names of cities and places have changed a number of times since independence – in some cases to remove British names and in others to erase memories of earlier colonial masters such as the Mughals. In lower Manhattan, some streets still bear their pre-revolutionary names and throughout the country from Charleston to Boston old English names survive, just as they do in Australia, demonstrating that change doesn’t require rejection of all the colonial past. read more

At a party last week the blog fell into conversation with someone who was shocked by the Murdoch media reporting on ABC audience share and the fact that the facts in the story were not actually facts but rather a distortion of significant proportion.

The conversation rapidly became a discussion of the fourth estate concept with the blog arguing that the concept of the media as an independent, fearless fourth estate truth teller was always a myth and that the times when media had acted in that role were the exception rather than the rule. The blog has been trying for years to get one of its quotes to appear in the media. The quote is in response to the question from journalists covering that perennial story – do PR people distort media coverage and have too much influence on the media? The response: name a PR person who has done more to distort media coverage than a Northcliffe, Murdoch, Hearst, Beaverbrook or Packer. Needless to say the blog is still waiting for a journalist to use the quote. read more

In 18^th century London the place to go for information about stock market speculation, political gossip, news media and the latest books and plays was the coffee house. No doubt some contemporary PR-type person trumpeted that this was a new media channel which could transform communications like no other medium before and that, for a large fee, they would explain why it was important and how to use it. read more

A US National Science Foundation survey recently found that a third of Americans deny the reality of evolution and believe that humans and the rest of the world’s animals have always existed in their current form and about a quarter believe the Sun revolves around the Earth.

The survey has been comparing scientific knowledge in various countries for more than a decade and tracking responses to questions about evolution, astronomy, radioactivity and other scientific facts. The questions are in true or false form and it is worth noting that some other countries do pretty badly too and that, before we scoff too loudly, we don’t know how badly Australia would fare in a similar survey although we do know, however, that the Abbott Government took more than a year to appoint a Science Minister and seems largely ignorant of the debate sparked over past decades by Vannevar Bush’s 1945 publication Science: The Endless Frontier. read more

For anyone wondering the blog has not been on holidays (well it has sort of) but the break in blog posts was due to some hacker rudely interrupting.

Now back up, secure and operating. thanks to the work of the blog’s inimitable technical team. The site looks a bit different and in the coming week or so there will be some more changes. In the weeks after some book reviews of new books on PR and the regular blog posts. read more

In the past week or so it is difficult not to think of the Abbott government as some sort of mash up of the BBC TV series A Very Peculiar Practice, Tacitus and a case study of how the Grunig’s theory of asymmetric and symmetric communications works.