Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for July, 2009
China grows and the world takes a relieving sigh
17 July 2009
Did you see the news that China has seen a big jump in its growth for this quarter?
If you didn’t, I can tell you that the Chinese economy grew by 7.9% year-on-year, which is up from 6.1% at the last quarter, and better than expectations.
Now in this world where economies are struggling to schieve any growth at all, this figure seems ridiculously high. It’s not though, because China is a huge economy where any figure below seven or eight percent is seen as a recession-type number. The good news for China is that there are predictions that its yearly growth could get as high as FIFTEEN percent. We put this to one of our finance correspondents, Juliana Roadley from Commsec this morning, who said that 15% was a very possible outcome for this year.
The good growth figure is good news for the rest of the world, because despite the belief of some, the powerhouse of the world economy will soon be China first and foremost. With more than a sixth of the world’s population, the economic good health of that one country will affect all around it, including the U.S. and Australia. That’s one reason why the U.S. markets ended their session so well. That’s why the markets in the Asian zone will do well today (barring any surprise bad news coming out in the meantime).
The Stern Hu case is testing Australia’s relationship with China right now, but Kevin Rudd and his fellow Australian government ministers know that they are relying on China’s economic survival and economic friendship.
What Rudd and Co. have to decide is how much to accept China’s position in cases like Stern Hu, Tibet and the Uyghurs in order to gain the petty pennies in trade, pennies that, as it turns out, are not so petty.
– Phil
Getting sick. Getting the blues.
16 July 2009
Yowie I thought, Two days off work.
I had gone straight to the doctor after doing the program on Monday. My voice had started disappearing towards the end of the show, and the doctor gave me the news. I had to take two days off work to rest it and give it time to heal.
Hence the yowie. In four years that I have been hosting this program I don’t think I had ever taken a day off sick. I’m just not a get sick kind of person. So when I do get to take a sickie, it’s kinda like Christmas, except for the runny nose and sore throat.
Things were fine for the first morning of my enforced holiday. I slept in, a deep late lie-in that gave my body the most fabulous rest.
Twenty minutes later I was bored out of my mind. My body clock was telling me that at that moment I should have been playing a CD or interviewing someone. Instead, I was watching re-runs of Gilligan’s Island, and if ever there was a mind-dumbing activity on this planet, it is watching re-runs of Gilligan’s Island. It’s a show that wasn’t even remotely stimulating when I was seven.
So then I did my tax return, fed the dog, tidied my desk, put a load of washing on, search for Facebook friends, and returned to Gilligan’s Island.
Truly, sickness is one thing that confirms how little there is to do in your own home. I could’ve made the most of my enforced lay-off by practicing for our band rehearsal this Friday, but I just wasn’t up to anything quite so physical.
Back to bed. Read more of Tash Aw’s latest novel, about Indonesia under Sukarno. Too depressing for a increasingly depressed little mind. Back to Gilligan’s Island.
It speaks volumes that last night, after two days of this rinse and spin cycle of the home gulag, I ventured forth to the local multiplex to see the new Harry Potter movie (I had to practice being vertical for today’s return to work after all). And it came to something that a film as dark as the new Potter lifted my spirits. I found comfort in the rise of the most evil person in the universe, the death of a major character, and all the teenage angst about love. I left the cinema feeling a lot better than I went in.
The lesson here folks is that not working isn’t necessarily all that it’s cracked up to be, bad throat or no bad throat.
It’s good to be back.
– Phil
Mark Webber finally cracks it.
13 July 2009
For the best part of this deacde, Australian Mark Webber has been dubbed the best driver never to win a Formula One race.
That all changed overnight when he triumphed at the German Grand Prix, the first Aussie to do so since Alan Jones back in 1981. And boy was he happy. We played the audio of his screams, and it was like nothing we’d heard before from a grown man. He even made Lleyton Hewitt seem shy.
Webber is an extraordinary athlete. He is super fit, and cycles competitively too. In fact he broke a number of inconvenient bones just before the start of this F1 season in a cycle race in Tasmania, but still came back to put in a pretty impressive show right from the first race in Melbourne in March.
He has known the joy of podium finishes before, but today he doused himself in champagne. Actually more champers fell on his head than water falls on mine in my average morning shower.
Somehow I don’t think this will be the last we’ll hear of Mark Webber. Now that he’s got the ‘never won a race’ monkey off his back, he can relax and concentrate on his driving. With half the season still to come, he is a real chance here of shaking up the championship. Webber is currently third on points (45.5 points), only 22.5 points behind the leader, Jenson Button. Button’s Brawn teammate, Rubens Barrichello is only a couple of points behind Webber, but he had one almighty dummy spit after the race, blaming everyone associated with Brawn for this 6th placing.
Rubens, you ought to know that there are many drivers, including a few former world champions who would’ve loved a sixth placing in this race. Relax man. You can still be a world champion. It’s only one race after all.
– Phil
Malalai Joya. The self-proclaimed dead woman walking.
10 July 2009
Malalai Joya was the youngest MP in the Afghan parliament when she was first elected three years ago at age 27. Yes, she’s young. She’s also very loud. She must be the bane of her fellow parliamentarians in Afghanistan, because is forever accusing some of them of being corrupt murderers who are behind the country’s opium trade.
She started this ‘outing’ trend some years ago when she stood up at a convention and made the same allegations, naming plenty of people as criminals. The problem was that many of the people she named were at that convention. In a country where women had been oppressed for years, her words brought shock, and then outrage. Some were so angered that they suggested she be taken out and raped.
She hasn’t stopped accusing since, despite a number of assassination attempts, constant threats, and a suspension from parliament.
When Malaiai Joya came into our studio yesterday she started in a very softly-spoken way (her publisher warned us that she was shy about speaking English), but once she got into her stride, it was like the turbo button had been pressed. She got loud, very loud, very fast and stridently accusatory.
She started with us by sending best wishes to the families of the US, Australian and British soldiers who had died in her country, and then went on to say they should never have been there in the first place. The Taliban, she said, came to power because of the support of the U.S. The opium trade was allowed to flourish because of a corrupt government supported by the West. She said the only way for safety of the Afghan people was for the foreign troops to leave her country and leave it now. The on-going engagement, she says, is just making things worse.
Many inside and outside of her country would disagree with her opinions here, but that we have a woman here who is making such statements is itself a miracle. She acknowledges that members of the Karzai government are very strong politically and financially and that she is a permanent thorn in their side. In a country where killing is a daily thing in a region where political assassination has brought to end many a great political career, she knows that she may not be around much longer.
It’s not stopping her, and that alone makes her the most refreshing politician I have met in many many years.
– Phil
Paul McKenna. He actually makes sense.
9 July 2009
I have to admit it. I was sceptical.
When we got the publicity blurb that Paul McKenna promised to make you rich, thin, confident, healthy, happy and sleep better, well, I wasn’t so sure. People who promise to do just one of those things are usually snake oil salesmen or companies wanting to make a quick buck out of your distress. But for a man to promise to do all of these things? Nah. Especially when that man is a hypnotist.
We got Paul McKenna in the studio anyway, because he is hugely successful in the UK. In fact he is the biggest-selling non-fiction author in the Old Dart. Clearly there was plenty of money to be made in snake oil.
But the Paul McKenna who came into our studio sold neither snake oil or magic tricks. Everything he said was logical. Weight loss, he said, had nothing to do with diets and trays of frozen food sold by so-called diet companies. He said it was about habitual behaviour. There’s no point in being given prepared meal portions, if you have a tendency to binge on desserts, or eat a kilo of chocolate in front of the tele after having your healthy frozen meal (that may not be that healthy anyway). Neither are you going to sleep if you don’t know how to settle your mind once your head hits the pillow.
As I said, all sensible and logical stuff. Paul McKenna has made a fortune from his books, and to be honest he did make a lot of references to his books as containing the answers to peoples’ problems. But that’s okay. He has a product to sell, and selling is not a crime.
And there wasn’t a bottle of snake oil in sight.
– Phil
