The Conservative's Prayer

Takes courage (?) to fly in the face of scientists and evidence. Unfortunately the power of economics has the upper hand and under our present system this is understandable. The expense involved in making radical changes for all of us is quite a cliff to climb.
Progress is being made but it is slow and it's not clear that we have the luxury of time on our side. We seem to be delaying the inevitable. Time, unfortunately, will tell.

FIFA Germany

Always a powerful contender,  Germany has  reached the latter stages of the World Cup not a few times . Disciplined and strong in attack and defence, they have a good chance of "being up there". They are  a youthful side and have the potential to outlast many of their opponents. They never seem to give up and will try to the last second to win by an even greater margin or strive to avoid losing the match. I'm not much of a connoisseur but by all accounts they should doing well. The main disadvantage as with many European sides is that they will be playing in an atmosphere abuzz with South American temperament , where soccer truly is  King.

Excited chatter

The chattering classes

"I expect my senior front benchers to be ambitious. There's nothing wrong with ambition," so said Mr Abbott, earlier this week. (Below an excited executive).

Blowing things up "a bit".

Talk Back

 During a stoush about leadership challenges and on the airwaves ,  Malcolm Turnbull did indeed talk back to the yabbering of Alan Jones,  who mouthed off on air , accusing Turnbull , 

''No, there's no challenge to his leadership because you have no hope ever of being the leader, you've got to get that into your head but because of that you're happy to chuck a few bombs around that might blow up Abbott a bit."

Well!

Abbott ended up by defending everybody, Jones, Bolt and Turnbull. You can judge a man by the company he keeps. Jones and Bolt were singled out as being friends. 

However how does blow up someone a bit? Perhaps the cold war wasn't such a threat with the U.S. and U.S.S.R only dropping  "bits" of nuclear thingos on each other. The best commentary on Alan Jones is to ignore him completely and let him speak for himself..which he does, ad nauseam!

A "bit"of Alan Jones

Troubled by gas?

"Friends always, nyet?"

The recent gas deal between Russia and China has been described by some as "historic". Worth some $400 billion (insane amounts) the deal nevertheless has some major
glitches,  namely the issue of pipelines for shipment to China. The Chinese government wants its own direct pipeline which will cost somebody about another $22 billion. Looks like Gazprom may have to cough up but this is still under negotiation.
It's importance at this stage appears to be more symbolic. Faced with sanctions and the Western concern over Putin's political manoeuvres , the deal can be seen as precautionary and a sort of "up yours "to the West. Considering the reality that exports will not commence until 2018 and that China cannot absorb any more gas imports
( nor does it need to ) the deal is fraught with potential disputes and economic pitfalls , particularly for the Russians.
So on the economic front Putin's raspberry may well go pear-shaped. Politically however it does signify that Russia and China are ready to step up their mutual cooperation.