• Time to say goodbye
    To me, Ad Astra, “Time to say goodbye” are among the saddest
    words in our language. Yet say them now we must. I chose Ad Astra
    as my moniker because my secondary school’s motto is ‘sic itur ad astra’,
    which can be liberally interpreted as: “Here is the way to the stars”.
    How inspiring these words have always been to me.
  • Have we got a deal for you
    There is a conspiracy theory that suggests that birds (in the USA
    at least) aren’t real. The claim is that all the birds in the USA were
    hunted down by the government between the late 50’s and early
    70s and replaced with bird like drones to spy on you.
  • Get out of the gutter
    You may not have heard of Mike Rinder. A Scientologist for most
    of his life, at the age of 52 he walked out, and as a result lost his
    family, friends, employment and pretty well everything else in his life.
    RInder has written a book on his time in Scientology, runs a
    website that questions Scientology beliefs and practices...
  • Was Amtrak Joe derailed?
    Prior to becoming President, Joe Biden was a US Senator for around
    36 years. He is known as Amtrak Joe as he routinely took the daily 90
    minute each way train trip (on the USA’s national passenger train network
    - Amtrak) from his home in Delaware to Washington DC to represent his state.
  • If employers can measure well-being...
    Last September, you might have seen Qantas CEO Alan Joyce
    received a pay increase of $278,000 per annum. It seems that Joyce
    has met or exceeded the performance goals set by his employers and
    contractually has earned the reward. It does, however, raise a larger question.
  • Coming back to haunt you
    In his recent Budget reply speech, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton
    laboured (pun intended) on the increasingly difficult to achieve promise by
    Prime Minister Albanese that power bills will be $275 less in 2025. While the
    government is claiming the modelling done in 2021 supports the accuracy of
    the promise, 2021 modelling doesn’t account for changes in circumstances since then.

The Political Sword

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The genesis of social disintegration

As an ordinary citizen, do you sometimes survey the social landscape and recoil in bitter disappointment as you witness the social order crumbling around you? Do you despair as you survey the rubble of social disintegration that now defiles our world? Have you thought about the origins of this so...

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Karma

Karma is that feeling when you drive past someone beside the road obviously getting a ticket soon after they weaved around you and others on a busy highway. Others would call the feeling poetic justice or note that the situation was rather ironic. Either way, it is a feeling of someone getting their...

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Turnbull’s metamorphosis

Once upon a time there was a boy christened Malcolm Bligh Turnbull. Bligh is a name the family uses in honour of Governor Bligh, of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ infamy, the fourth governor of NSW. Greatly admired by the family, this moniker evokes the aura of a distinguished person. Born in 1954, Malc...

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Speak even if your voice shakes

In the past couple of years, we as a society have removed the stigma around some previously ‘taboo’ subjects. Assuming the Turnbull conservative government ever stops infighting, they might actually get around to legislating the support mechanisms recommended by the Royal Commission into Institution...

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Can political honesty be resurrected?

To the seasoned political observer, placing the words ‘political’ and ‘honesty’ together is an oxymoron.  Everywhere we look, we see the opposite - political dishonesty. Every day the President of the United States of America lies – often. He denies he’s lying. He repeats his lies. His l...

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The system works – pity about the politics

Remember the ‘South Australian’ power failures? The ones that Prime Minister Turnbull and Energy Minister Frydenburg still claim was due to the over-reliance on renewable energy? The first happened in September 2016. At the time, the ABC published an account and timeline on how and why it happened. ...

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Turnbull's End

About the same time as Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition won the last general election, Nick Earls wrote an article in The Guardian discussing how various groups are victimised based on some concept of their ‘danger’ to society at the time. In the article, he suggests: These days if you’re Irish, rac...

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We wish all our visitors a Happy Christmas and New Year

This is the time to wish all our readers a Happy and Relaxing Festive Season with your Family, and to thank all of you who have sustained The Political Sword throughout 2017. First, thanks go to our writers. Ken Wolff and 2353NM, who joined me to author countless articles on TPS and TPS Extra dur...

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We need to understand entrenched belief

Have you noticed how entrenched belief pervades our political and social life? Of course we have been accustomed to it in religious life for eons. There, for many people, it is the basis of their unswerving allegiance to a particular religion or sect.  But its insidious permeation into poli...

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Watch this space in 2017 - redux

Normally around this time of the year, we write an article that discusses some of the themes and issues that we looked at through the year that has nearly finished. In 2017, we’re going to do something different. You may remember in March this year, we announced with great sorrow of the passing of...

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A tale of two regions

The Queensland state election was held on 25 November 2017. Due to a number of factors, the results as they came in on Saturday night were so complicated, it took Anthony Green and the ABC computer until around lunch time on Sunday to make the call that the ALP would win 46 seats with a potential 48...

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Politics for good

Poliomyelitis is an infectious disease with consequences ranging from a mild illness, through lifetime disability to death. The disease is also known as polio. It is spread by contamination of drinking water and food and those affected may be contagious for up to six weeks without being aware of the...

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Unravelling Polliespeak

This is a sequel to The ugly language of politics, published in November. It endeavours to unpick and describe the many variants of what I have named Polliespeak, the language that politicians use. Sometimes it’s ugly, sometimes it’s simply irritating.  How often have you fumed as you ...

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Abbott’s down, but is he out?

Tony Abbott has been on the way down for years. His time in the sun began unexpectedly on the 1st of December 2009 when he became Leader of the Opposition after toppling Malcolm Turnbull in a spill brought about by Turnbull’s support for Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme. Abbott had the backi...

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The ugly language of politics

It was with some trepidation that I embarked upon this piece. Language is complex. Embedded in the language we use is a constellation of concepts, ideas, beliefs, facts, prejudices, and biases. Teasing out these elements is a formidable task. It was therefore with keen anticipation that I tuned...

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Careful what you wish for

You might have heard of an aircraft manufacturer named Boeing. They are based in the USA and have been happily manufacturing 737s (a twin engine jet that can carry somewhere between 100 and 190 people, depending on the subtype and configuration) in the USA since the 1990s. Competition comes from Air...

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The iniquity of homelessness

What thought do we, who curl up in a warm bed after a good meal and an evening watching our favourite TV shows in the comfort of our homes, give to those who have no home, or worse still, nowhere to sleep? How aware are we of the extent of homelessness in our own country?  What follows here...

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Fake news – or lousy reporting

A few weeks ago, there was another mass murder in the USA. This time the shooter, a 64-year-old male, holed himself up on the 32rd floor of a casino hotel complex in Las Vegas, Nevada and massacred 60, including himself, and injured more than 500 (at the time of writing). All the victims did wrong w...

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What’s wrong with PM Turnbull?

As a weary electorate approaches yet another holiday season, looks back over the year and asks: ‘How has our federal government improved life for ordinary Aussies’, the answer is depressing. Our self-styled ‘adult government’ has achieved so little for so long. We have had to endure indecision, p...

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Football, meat pies, kangaroos and political storms

Last weekend, we saw the grand finals for both the Australian Football League (AFL) and the National Rugby League (NRL). Coincidently it was also a long weekend in the Eastern States which probably allowed those with a particular allegiance to return to some semblance of normality before they had to...

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