October 28 2021 Edition
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The big news in the US is that the Biden Agenda is looking more and more challenged as it actually the fate of the Democratic majority in Congress. Very interesting times right now.
In the UK and Western Europe the virus would appear to be on the increase again – especially in the UK. Boosters are on the agenda all over!
In OZ we are seeing the PM having lost control of both the COVID19 agenda and the Climate agenda with the Nationals running amok and causing all sorts of problems. Right now he is not looking like winning the next Federal election due in the next few months, most especially after his presentation of the Government's Net Zero by 2050 which was frankly a total scam - or attempted scam!.
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Major Issues.
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Exasperated and exhausted, education sector just wants a plan
Oct 17, 2021 – 5.08pm
The international education sector will launch a media campaign promoting the benefits it brings to society and the economy as the states and federal government squabble over border and quarantine responsibilities and the deadline for 2022 enrolments draws near.
Confusion and anger are rising to breaking point within the higher education sector as the federal government continues to delay any plan to welcome back foreigners.
Last Friday’s intervention by Prime Minister Scott Morrison following NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s unexpected announcement to open the state to vaccinated tourists, travellers and international students has pushed exasperated businesses and education providers to the brink.
Insiders say domestic politics is threatening to crush the once-buoyant $40 billion international student sector with focus group research – which reveals antipathy towards overseas students – trumping the national economic good.
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Lark aims to be the ‘Penfolds’ of Australian whisky
Simon Evans Senior Reporter
Oct 18, 2021 – 10.49am
Tasmanian whisky maker Lark Distilling is aiming to be the ‘Penfolds’ of Australian whisky as it steps up an export program from 2023 after a $40 million buyout of another Tasmanian distiller accompanied by a $53 million capital raising.
Lark managing director Geoff Bainbridge said on Monday the acquisition of Kernke Family Shene Estate, operator of the Pontville Distillery and Estate north of Hobart, would allow Lark to aggressively accelerate an export drive built on the high-quality “clean and green” provenance of Tasmanian whisky.
Lark is also planning to spend $13 million building a new greenfields distillery on the historic Pontville site, with a production capacity of one million litres. That would be up and running by June 2023.
The acquisition will bring in an extra 483,000 litres of whisky worth $24 million, which is in the maturation stage, and alleviate a potential shortage which had been a handbrake on Lark’s export plans.
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Eroding privacy: The murder of an MP could happen in Australia too
By Rob Harris
October 19, 2021 — 5.00am
The murder of British MP Sir David Amess while holding routine meetings with voters shouldn’t be dismissed as a problem unique to the other side of the world. We must not fool ourselves. It could easily happen here too.
Over the past decade, the tone of the public debate has fallen so far that most federal MPs and senators will readily concede they think it’s a matter of when, not if, a similar incident occurs here.
And a key factor in this? The erosion of the boundary between public and private life.
There is no longer a distinction between places of work, public events, private homes or personal time. Nor between elected officials and family members. Partisan media commentators don’t have a problem with publishing the personal phone numbers of MPs they don’t like on social media.
Worse, when politicians are “egged”, the perpetrator is often held up by their critics as a hero.
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Economists cast doubt on RBA rate hike plans
Cecile Lefort Markets reporter
Oct 19, 2021 – 4.00pm
Economists and markets strongly disagree with the Reserve Bank of Australia’s firm stance that the cash rate won’t rise before 2024, believing surging prices in housing and energy will bring sustainable inflation back to its targeted band well before then.
On Monday, the inflation reading of neighbouring New Zealand overshot expectations to reach a decade high, prompting financial markets to bring forward the RBA’s lift-off in interest rates to mid-year next year from October 2022.
A survey by The Australian Financial Review of 26 economists points to the RBA first raising rates mid-2023. It would be the first increase in the cash rate in more than a decade.
Forecasts ranged from a move as early as November 2022 to 2024 with the magnitude of the increase varying from 15 basis points to 40 basis points. The survey was taken on October 15.
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The great interest rate debate takes another turn
Stephen Grenville’s claim that he wants interest rates to actively be pushed up because it is “inevitable”, is like saying we’re all going to die some day, so let’s stop taking care of ourselves.
Richard Holden Contributor
Oct 19, 2021 – 1.19pm
Stephen Grenville’s article in reply me usefully pushes the debate about interest rates forward.
As he notes, I consistently argued throughout 2019 that interest rates were too high, contributing to stubbornly high unemployment and stagnant wages growth. The Reserve Bank of Australia cut them well before COVID-19 hit.
The resulting pick up in the economy and absence of inflation vindicates this view. RBA governor Philip Lowe, to his great credit given he was responsible for failing to cut rates sooner, seems to think so, too.
As Stephen observes, there is much on which we agree.
We live in an age of secular stagnation. Fiscal policy is a crucial tool to combat this phenomenon. Austerity after the 2008-09 financial crisis was profoundly unhelpful. He even clarified that monetary policy “should be set so it doesn’t inhibit what little growth the private sector is supporting”. Since the neutral rate is negative, this means the near-zero interest rates we currently have.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/don-t-underestimate-the-underclass-20211018-p5910c
Why you shouldn’t underestimate the underclass
They are damaged, lacking in trust and discipline, and highly self-interested. But the poor are still a force that Australia needs to properly harness.
Pru Goward Columnist
Oct 19, 2021 – 12.44pm
“If there is hope, it lies in the proles.” So said one of the 20th century’s greatest philosophers thinly disguised as a novelist, George Orwell, in his spookily prescient work, 1984. I believe my lifelong fascination with the underclass began when I pondered that declaration of independence against a futuristic form of government oppression, which has turned out not to be so futuristic.
As a shopkeeper’s daughter, I understood poor people; they obeyed the law, worked hard, sent their kids to the same primary schools I attended and were equally ambitious for their children. But the underclass, small as it then was, behaved differently.
Like the stoats and weasels of the Wild Wood in The Wind in the Willows, yet another English children’s book on the topic of class, they rejected the rules and lived by their own. They were to be feared and were, to use my mother’s words, not very nice. It took Orwell to turn the noble Marxist proletariat into the proles.
Since the 1950s there has been a remarkable growth in the number of proles. The welfare state is not entirely to blame, as the world of Dickens attests. Government agencies view them with alarm as huge cost centres; they are over-represented in their use of government crisis services and are always the last to give up smoking, get their shots and eat two servings of vegetables a day.
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Freedom of speech is important, but so is a commitment to listen
7:44PM October 19, 2021
Two fine principles – freedom of speech and its cousin, intellectual freedom – are gaining ground in Australian universities.
Recent court decisions have buttressed the right of two people, at opposite ends of the political spectrum, to say what they want.
First, there’s Peter Ridd. Although the former James Cook University physics professor lost his case for damages against the university in the High Court last week, the court strongly upheld his right to intellectual freedom.
Ridd is famous for expressing his view that the Great Barrier Reef is not being damaged by global warming or agricultural run off. His right to say this was confirmed but he lost the case over breaches of confidentiality clauses in the university’s code of conduct.
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The tremors from Evergrande will rumble on for Australia
The real estate giant’s problems will not trigger a financial crisis, but they show that China’s economy must change, and that will have long-term implications for Australia.
John Kehoe Economics editor
Oct 20, 2021 – 1.14pm
How serious is the unfolding collapse of Chinese real estate giant Evergrande Group, and what are the implications for Australia?
Evergrande’s unsustainable $US300 billion ($402 billion) debt load and its missed bond repayments are posing big questions for local investors and economic policymakers.
The opaqueness of China’s system makes it challenging to draw firm conclusions.
The likelihood is that Evergrande’s carefully managed demise will not trigger a financial crisis, unless there is a serious policy misstep by Chinese authorities, which have a long track record of deftly managing problems.
Most of Evergrande’s debt is denominated in China’s currency. As a net exporter of capital, China can avoid the worst consequences of foreign creditors pulling the plug, and can choose its timetable for a domestic debt restructuring.
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Australia’s choice about China has been long in the making
Australian leaders and strategic analysts have been quietly preparing for the day when China decided to put its authoritarianism ahead of partnership.
Fergus Hanson
Oct 21, 2021 – 1.55pm
September was a big month for Australia’s international relations.
There was AUKUS, there was the diplomatic tour of the Indo-Pacific by ministers Marise Payne and Peter Dutton, and in late September there was the first in-person summit of Quad leaders at the White House, attended by Scott Morrison.
But lost amid all the meetings and activities and submarines has been a far more powerful development. It is one of those inflection points that will bend the arc of Australian history.
For nearly three decades, Australia experienced an unprecedented spell of economic growth, largely off the back of China’s rise. During that period, every successive Australian PM would confidently tell the public that Australia did not have to “choose” between its top trading partner, China, and its most important ally, the United States. We could have our cake and eat it too.
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Foreign students are choosing the UK and Canada over Australia
Julie Hare Education editor
Oct 21, 2021 – 12.53pm
One in five international students have changed their intentions on where to study, with Canada and the UK capitalising on frustrations around Australia’s closed borders, a new survey has found.
There has been a 15 per cent decline in Australia as the preferred destination, while interest in Canada surged 36 per cent and the UK 21 per cent.
Nearly a third of students who had intended to study in Australia had switched their preference to Canada, the survey by international student recruitment firm AECC Global found.
There is also complexity around international student flows, with students from many source countries inoculated with vaccines that are not approved by health authorities.
The survey of 7000 foreign students found that while 50 per cent had been double vaccinated, 53 per cent of Nepalese students had been jabbed with the Chinese Vero Cell vaccine, which is not recognised by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia, or health authorities in Canada, the UK or the US.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-dream-decade-that-produced-modern-australia-20211021-p591ul
The dream decade that produced modern Australia
The 1960s were a decade of optimism during which Australia swapped the sheep’s back for massive resources industries. Ironically, some of it was financed by an old foe.
Oct 21, 2021 – 7.44pm
“It was obvious long before the end of 1959 that in 1960 Australia should enter its most exciting decade,” The Australian Financial Review quoted economist Douglas Copland as saying a couple of years later.
But the 1960s started with a credit squeeze from Australia’s new stand-alone central bank and a call on International Monetary Fund reserves. The business and political reaction was “hostile and spontaneous”, reported the Financial Review.
After Australia’s first national newspaper went daily in October 1963, the squeeze claimed a string of finance-related companies that had prospered outside the Reserve Bank’s blunt bank lending controls. With Australia’s weak investor protection exposed, the sharemarket went into sharp reverse. Robert Menzies almost lost the 1961 election.
But Copland was proved right. The optimistic 1960s marked the beginnings of modern, prosperous Australia. Amid Britain’s postwar decline, development-led prosperity was built on the biggest resources boom since the 1850s gold rush that realigned Australia towards the Asia-Pacific and exposed its White Australia Policy.
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Revised draft curriculum gets C, must try harder
Alan Tudge Federal Education Minister
11:00PM October 21, 2021
I have previously made it clear I am disappointed by the draft national curriculum published by the independent Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. It does not increase standards, it has a negative view of our history and it is a ridiculously long and unwieldy document at 3500 pages. Put simply, I would not support it.
There were many areas in the draft where learning was delayed, not progressed. Learning the times tables was pushed back to year 4 from year 3. In other countries it starts in year 2. There are 20 concerns in maths alone. The peak mathematics association expressed alarm at the draft and asked them to start again.
Evidence-based content, such as phonics, was minimised.
The biggest problem, though, was in the draft history curriculum. It gave the impression nothing bad happened before 1788 and almost nothing good has happened since. It downplayed our Western heritage. It omitted significant figures in our history such as Menzies, Howard and Whitlam. It almost erased Christianity from our past, despite it being the single most important influence on our modern development, according to our greatest living historian, Geoffrey Blainey. It introduced ridiculous concepts such as asking year 2 students – seven-year-olds – to ask whether statues could be deemed racist.
Note – The author is a jingoistic fool I reckon.
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The cities may be opening but Australia’s politics are closing down
The federal government remains its own Hermit Kingdom, where pledges bear no resemblance to reality and the truth is what they say it is.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Oct 22, 2021 – 4.58pm
Australia was dubbed the “New Hermit Kingdom” earlier this year by Washington-based Australian journalist Amelia Lester in Foreign Policy magazine, and it’s a term that’s been used a fair bit ever since as Australia’s international borders have remained firmly closed as the rest of the world opened up.
We had the official photo opportunity early on Friday morning to celebrate the opening of the borders: the Prime Minister and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet beaming in an airport hangar in front of a Boeing 787 as Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce announced the opening of international flights from November 1.
Thousands of stranded Australians will hopefully be able to come home, and others leave, ahead of a broader opening allowing the return of international students, skilled migrants and other travellers.
It was an event to cap a generally celebratory day as Melbourne came out of lockdown and there were more and more announcements that domestic travel restrictions would be ending.
While the borders may be open, it feels like Australia remains stubbornly and dangerously closed off from the world in many other ways, like its Hermit Kingdom namesake: a country where declarations made by our political leaders about their policy successes and ambitions bear little resemblance to reality, where saying something is true is somehow expected to make it so, and where democracy feels ill-served, to say the least.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/exposing-esg-s-dirty-little-secret-20211022-p5927x
Exposing ESG’s dirty little secret
ESG is flavour of the month ahead of the COP26 summit in Glasgow, and this is causing some ironic smiles among women excluded from the conversations about diversity.
Oct 22, 2021 – 6.49pm
The explosion of interest in environment, social and governance issues ahead of the Glasgow climate change conference is causing some ironic laughter among female fund managers in Australia and overseas.
Katie Hudson, one of the tiny minority of women managing some of Australia’s $3 trillion in superannuation savings, says it is “hilarious” that the “G” in ESG essentially involves men lecturing male-dominated boards about issues such as gender diversity.
“We bang on to the companies that we invest in about diversity and the appalling job boards are doing,” says Hudson, who is a portfolio manager at Yarra Capital Management.
“They are told: ‘You don’t have enough diversity on your board or in management’ – and this always comes from three male fund managers sitting opposite them. I just love the irony.”
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How fundies are prepping equity portfolios for rise in inflation
Professional investors are tilting towards domestic cyclicals and away from sectors of the market more sensitive to movements in bond yields.
William McInnes Reporter
Oct 22, 2021 – 5.00am
T here’s one word on investors’ lips at the moment: inflation. Supply chain issues and shortages of key commodities during the reopening of the global economy have caused price spikes in everything from energy, industrial metals and lumber to food, agricultural goods and used cars.
Despite repeatedly being told by central bankers that inflation would be a transitory phenomenon, investors now face the proposition that consumer and production prices will remain high for some time.
While the large spikes in monthly and quarterly consumer price indices are unsustainable, professional investors predict inflation won’t be a passing phenomenon and is likely to be elevated through at least the next few months if not the next year.
“There is no denying it, every conversation at the moment between professional investors basically starts and ends with inflation,” says Andrew Mitchell, senior portfolio manager at Ophir Asset Management.
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Leaps tall stories in a single bound: a government with plenty of front, less substance
Political and international editor
October 23, 2021 — 6.21am
In one vital area after another, the Morrison government doesn’t so much produce policy as talking points. The government’s policies in some of the most fundamental areas of national responsibility have an outward appearance of sturdy solidity. But when you get up close and prod them, they are actually quite insubstantial.
Less core policy and more corflute, those corrugated plastic signboards favoured by politicians and real estate agents. You know the ones. They present a nice facade, but they last only as long as the electioneering effort or the sales campaign.
“The sign industry loves it because it’s cheap and easy to cut to size,” is how the Perth Graphics Centre explains the beauty of corflute. These are the very reasons that the Morrison government favours it.
Five areas are especially relevant just now. This week the most prominent has been climate policy, closely followed by the drive for a national anti-corruption body.
More details of the Morrison-Joyce climate policy will emerge over the next few days. But the government’s position on the two key threshold dates – 2030 and 2050 - now seem firm. Its achievement is that has decided to formalise a commitment for Australia to emit net zero greenhouse gases by 2050. But on the more urgent question of 2030, Morrison has made it clear that he will not revise Australia’s existing pledge. That is, the Abbott-era promise to cut emissions by 26 to 28 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030.
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Sinking feeling as submarine shambles dives to a new low
11:00PM October 22, 2021
Crucial testimony to Senate committees, plus parliamentary answers to questions, have gone substantially unreported but tell us one terrible truth – Australia is going to be completely unprepared militarily for any maritime security challenge in the next two decades, without any upgraded submarine capability and more completely reliant on the US than ever before.
As the government testimony unintentionally makes clear, the real weight of the AUKUS announcements has been to abolish Australia’s future submarine program and to effectively abolish, or at least radically diminish, our naval shipbuilding industry.
That this has effectively passed without comment is a sign of the shallow, debased nature of our national debate.
Our politics now deals overwhelmingly in symbols, the more distant the better
Australian defence policy now resembles a speculative mining stock at the height of a minerals boom. Whatever you do, don’t drill, was the speculator’s mantra. As soon as you drill, you destroy share value.
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How to make sure you’re financially ready for the looming ‘Great Resignation’
By James Gerrard
7:20PM October 22, 2021
Although lockdown restrictions are easing around the country, CBD office blocks remain relatively deserted. Corporates have not rushed back to the city – partly due to the end of year approaching and partly because many employees are comfortable and productive working remotely.
Meanwhile in the US, a phenomenon coined as “the Great Resignation” is occurring with a record 4.27 million Americans quitting their jobs in August – a record for the American market.
The ability to work from home for months has allowed people to rethink their priorities and make job and career decisions to achieve a greater work/life balance.
Although we have not seen this yet in Australia, as corporations transition their staff back into the office, this is tipped to be the breaking point.
New research from Microsoft suggests 40 per cent of global workers are actively considering giving up their jobs in the year ahead.
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Bondholders risk $2.6trn hit on even a modest yield rise
Liz Capo McCormick and Anchalee Worrachate
Oct 24, 2021 – 7.47am
After a wild week on Wall Street that saw inflation expectations reach decade highs, portfolio managers are staring down an ever-more dangerous prospect: A modest rise in yields that inflicts trillions of dollars in losses.
It’s a result of investors’ exposure to duration, a key gauge of risk for bondholders that’s near record highs. Even a half-percentage point jump in yields from here, to roughly the pre-pandemic average in 2019, would be enough to ravage funds of all stripes. It’s a threat with implications across asset classes, from emerging markets to high-flying tech shares.
This scenario is staring investors in the face after 10-year US Treasury yields bumped up against their peak levels of 2021 this week amid wagers the Federal Reserve will start lifting borrowing costs next year.
The potential for steep losses is a legacy of the tilt toward longer-term borrowing during the era of historically low rates. The higher duration is, the larger the drop in prices for each notch up in yields. And it’s not just the US: The risk is global as inflation threats have induced many central banks to turn hawkish.
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Upgrading from unit to house has never been more expensive
Nila Sweeney Reporter
Oct 22, 2021 – 10.06am
Apartment owners upgrading to detached homes are being forced to dig deeper into their pockets as the premium for houses over units blows out to a record high nationwide because of strong demand and low supply, analysis by CoreLogic shows.
The price gap between Sydney houses and apartments has now widened to 59 per cent – up from 54.2 per cent in July. This comes after house prices jumped by 28.9 per cent in the 12 months to September – more than double the 11.6 per cent gain in unit values.
At 59 per cent, or $486,781, the gap between what it costs to buy a median house compared with a median apartment has never been wider in Sydney. Other capital cities are also seeing record gaps.
The growing gap has been a challenge for apartment owners such as Monique Channells-Baker and Scott Baker who have been looking to upsize to a house for the past five months.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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Beware, workers are about to pivot with their feet
The workplace is going through a Great Realignment because of the pandemic, which has made many employees rethink what their jobs mean to them.
Kirstin Ferguson
Oct 18, 2021 – 5.29pm
Australian boardrooms and business leaders appear to be watching, and waiting, for the Great Resignation to hit.
This phenomenon, predicted by A&M University Texas Associate Professor Anthony Klotz, has already led to record “quit rates” among US employees, and, experts say this inevitable wave of resignations is due to appear in Australia in March 2022.
Research released last month suggested 40 per cent of Australians are thinking about leaving their jobs in the next 12 months. As we emerge from the pandemic, is the Great Resignation yet another workplace disruption we need to deal with?
I believe the answer is no. Or at least, not yet. What we are experiencing is what I call the Great Realignment.
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Coronavirus: Russia hospitals on brink with 1000 deaths a day
By Marc Bennetts
The Times
12:15PM October 18, 2021
Russia has reported more than 1,000 daily coronavirus deaths for the first time and one prominent doctor said that the situation was close to critical.
On Saturday the national coronavirus centre said that 1,002 people had died in 24 hours. Yesterday another 997 daily deaths were reported, bringing the official death toll since the start of the pandemic to more than 223,000, the most in Europe.
The Kremlin has blamed the increase in deaths on the sluggish take-up of vaccines, including the Sputnik V jab. Only a third of Russia’s population of 147 million people have been fully inoculated against Covid-19. There has been widespread mistrust of vaccines that has been fuelled by social media.
Although Russia is reporting fewer cases per million people than the UK, it is experiencing about seven times as many deaths every day despite a population that is only twice as large.
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https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/What-we-know-about-AY-4-2-a-delta-subvariant-16544024.php
What we know about AY.4.2, a delta subvariant that's spiking cases in the U.K.
Oct. 18, 2021Updated: Oct. 19, 2021 6:42 p.m.
The delta variant is still the overwhelmingly dominant coronavirus strain in California and the U.S., but one of its descendants is starting to gain traction overseas.
Known as AY.4.2, it’s on the rise in the United Kingdom. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner, in a tweet Sunday noted that it now accounts for 8% of sequenced coronavirus cases in that country and said “urgent research” is needed.
“There’s no clear indication that it’s considerably more transmissible, but we should work to more quickly characterize these and other new variants,” he said.
He and other experts, including in the Bay Area, are keeping an eye on AY.4.2 — an offshoot of AY.4, which itself is an offshoot of the main “parent” delta variant.
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Britain snaps up antiviral drugs as NHS sounds COVID-19 alarm
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Updated Oct 21, 2021 – 4.05am, first published at Oct 20, 2021 – 8.21pm
London | The British government has spurned calls to reintroduce COVID-19 restrictions, instead doubling down on vaccines and antivirals to stem a new coronavirus surge, even as senior health officials warn of an impending crisis in hospitals.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) said Britain’s “first line of defence” was still vaccination and antiviral drugs, revealing that the government had signed deals for 730,000 doses of new antivirals.
He admitted hospitals were coming under pressure, and vowed to “do what it takes to make sure that this pressure doesn’t become unsustainable, and that we don’t allow the NHS to become overwhelmed”.
But he said the government “won’t be implementing our Plan B of contingency measures at this point”.
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Fading vaccine immunity threatens Britain’s restriction-free co-existence with COVID-19
October 21, 2021 — 7.07am
London: Fading vaccine immunity is fuelling a spike in coronavirus cases in Britain, with the country’s early rollout success now working against it.
Weeks from the onset of winter, infection and hospitalisation rates in the United Kingdom are more than six times higher than large nations in Europe, while the death rate is three times greater.
The “unusual and slightly worrying” situation looms as a test of the government’s determination to live with the virus and keep the economy and society functioning as normal. It will also be closely monitored by other countries which started their inoculation programs much later than the UK and might soon encounter their own waning immunity complications.
New cases hit 44,000 on Wednesday - up 16 per cent on the previous week. Most were detected in children and younger adults.
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COVID-19 vaccine ‘mix and match:’ Benefits of an mRNA second dose
Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
A nationwide cohort study in Sweden has shown ‘mixing and matching’ vaccines is safe, just as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a mix and match approach for booster shots in the United States.
· Study shows that having an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose after an Oxford-AstraZeneca dose offers better protection against infection than two doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca.
· Until now, scientists have not known whether ‘mixing and matching’ vaccines offers the same or better protection than receiving two doses of the same vaccine.
· One of the most impressive scientific developments to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic was the development of effective vaccines in less than a year.
· Some of these vaccines, produced by Pfizer and Moderna, used mRNA vaccine technology for the first time. They have potentially laid the path for further vaccine development.
Others, such as Oxford-AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Sputnik, have developed vaccines using more traditional viral vector vaccine technology to protect against the virus.
The discovery of the small risk of thromboembolism from the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, alongside variation in vaccine availability, meant that some people have had to receive a different type of vaccine for their first and second dose.
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Climate Change.
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https://www.afr.com/markets/equity-markets/the-coalition-is-safeguarding-emissions-20211017-p590m3
The Coalition is safeguarding emissions
Grant Wilson Contributor
Oct 17, 2021 – 9.00am
The prickly response of Angus Taylor, Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction, to the Business Council of Australia’s abrupt support of a Net Zero emissions economy by 2050 last week was revealing in one key respect. The BCA made fully 63 recommendations, yet it was the proposed reform of the Safeguard Mechanism, which forms part of the Emissions Reduction Fund or ERF, that riled Mr Taylor most of all.
Speaking at this newspaper’s Energy and Climate Summit he said that “a substantial tightening of the Safeguard Mechanism is a backdoor carbon tax consumers will ultimately have to pay for, and that’s not acceptable".
Mr Taylor’s comments are best interpreted through the prism of the Coalition’s long standing neglect of climate policy. This dates as far back as the Kyoto negotiations of 1997, when Robert Hill, then Minister for Environment, held the talks hostage by insisting that Australia could expand emissions by 8 per cent through the commitment period of 2008 to 2012, and by what became known as the ‘Australia clause’, where our baseline in 1990 was inflated by the inclusion of land clearing.
He was feted by party colleagues, most notably John Howard, Prime Minister, on his return to Canberra.
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Australian farmers don’t want another sleazy climate deal
The peak farm lobby says that instead of just locking up private farmland to meet emissions targets, landholders must be rewarded for all the benefits of carbon projects.
Fiona Simson Contributor
Oct 17, 2021 – 3.01pm
Emission Reduction Minister Angus Taylor is talking up “technology, not taxes” and “carrots, not sticks”. We agree.
In August last year, the National Farmers’ Federation declared its support for an economy-wide aspiration of net zero by 2050. Our backing was subject to finding a pathway that was just, and supported those most exposed by the shift.
We support this fair and measured transition to net zero, because the alternatives are grim.
Farmers have always stood at the front line of Australia’s cruel climate, and many believe they are already seeing that climate change.
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Pandemic and climate add up to a big shock for global recovery
Labour shortages, supply chain blockages and the energy price crunch create conditions ripe for an inflationary spiral and a return to higher interest rates.
Alexander Downer Columnist
Oct 17, 2021 – 12.40pm
A few years ago the then Treasury secretary and I were discussing Malcolm Turnbull’s plan to increase the GST to 15 per cent and cut income taxes. He told me the Treasury economic model showed that such a controversial change to the tax system would have a negligible effect on the nation’s GDP.
You can understand why Turnbull dropped the plan. When the Treasury’s model was publicised it would have been ridiculed by opponents of the plan, not least the opposition. The Treasury model would have been devastating evidence in the court of public opinion.
I thought the model’s conclusions we’re counter-intuitive, and so did the secretary. He argued that ultimately economic judgments need a heavy dose of intuition, not just cold, passion-less models.
Which brings me to the here and now.
The models, the central banks, the treasuries of Western countries and the IMF are all telling us the global economy is recovering from the COVID-19 recession, and politicians tell us they’re going to “build back better”.
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Nuclear power back on the agenda for COP26
6:14PM October 18, 2021
An increasingly desperate search for industrial strength alternatives to coal and oil in the lead up to the Glasgow COP26 climate conference is rapidly changing the outlook for uranium.
Australian uranium miners have bounded ahead this year on the back of what might have been another passing burst of enthusiasm for the raw material that powers nuclear reactors.
But inside the last month a remarkable convergence of new commitments and recommitments to nuclear energy is extending investor interest in what had become a marginal commodity. Australia has roughly a third of the world’s uranium, but local interest in “yellowcake” had waned along with softer international demand since the Fukushima nuclear power plant explosion in Japan a decade ago.
Some professional investors see uranium as a re-emerging potential power source in the rush to decarbonisation.
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COP26 is the real thing and not a drill
While there seems to be a clear path towards a zero-emissions energy economy, it is a really difficult one. It is hard technically and even harder politically.
Martin Wolf Columnist
Oct 20, 2021 – 11.06am
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that human activities are having a profound effect on the climate. But, more happily, the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2021 shows that we know what to do about it, in substantial detail and at an affordable cost.
Yet we are not doing what we should do and so emissions continue to rise. Will that change at COP26 in Glasgow? I doubt it.
It is no longer necessary to debate the science of anthropogenic climate change. What is essential, instead, is to focus on what needs to be done now. On this, the WEO 2021 is perfectly clear.
It distinguishes four scenarios: “stated policies” (STEPS), which consists of the actual policies of governments; “announced pledges” (APS), which assumes all of their pledges will be met in full and on time; “sustainable development” (SDS), which are the UN’s sustainable development targets; and, lastly, “net zero emissions by 2050″ (NZE), which is just what it says it is.
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Morrison could have done the deal of the century on climate, but opted for tribalism
Columnist
October 23, 2021 — 5.00am
Joe Biden and Scott Morrison will never really agree on climate change. It is an urgent passion project for the US President, while the Australian Prime Minister has always seen it as a political issue to exploit, or avoid, depending on the electoral balance between the cities and the regions at any given point in time.
The irony for the two leaders is they finally found common ground this week in the gridlock of their respective parliaments.
Biden, like Morrison, has left his policy run to Glasgow until the last possible moment. Both men are negotiating with the conservative fringe of their governing parties on terms that risk undermining their position at the United Nations climate conference which kicks off on October 31.
Biden’s unfinished business is his plan to expand the US social safety net. Among the proposals is a $US150 billion ($200 billion) fund for clean energy projects. Democract senator Joe Manchin, from the coal mining state of West Virginia, declared last week that the spending was not needed, and he didn’t want his constituents to foot the bill. Manchin, along with Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, want to reduce the total cost of the $US3.5 trillion package by as much as half. Biden has suggested he would be happy with a deal worth up to $US1.9 trillion, which preserves his reform agenda for education and health and gives him something on climate change to take to Glasgow.
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Deloitte Access Economics study finds Australia can save half a trillion dollars by moving to electric cars
News Corp Australia Network
October 23, 2021
Exclusive: Australia could save almost half a trillion dollars in costs associated with pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and noise if it moved to 100 per cent electric vehicles over the next 15 years, a new report has found.
The study by accounting giant Deloitte Access Economics has attempted to quantify the costs associated with regular patrol and diesel powered vehicles — such as increased respiratory disease from pollution or the economic cost of carbon emissions — and measure it against the uptake of electric cars, buses and trucks.
The research, commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation, projected a total cost of $864.9 billion from 2022 to 2050, comprising $488 billion in costs from air pollution, $205 billion from greenhouse emissions, $95 billion from noise and $76 billion from water pollution.
Under the most bullish scenario, of 100 per cent electric vehicles by 2035, it predicted savings of $492 billion.
Under the second most aggressive scenario, in which all states adopt NSW’s target of all government cars and buses to be electric by 2030 and with an overall net zero target of 2045, the savings would be $335 billion.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/how-to-find-the-best-aged-care-home-20211015-p590gq
How to find the best aged care home
Don’t leave it to chance but check how the provider rates on quality and safety. Price alone is not the best indicator.
Louise Biti Contributor
Oct 18, 2021 – 5.00am
When selecting a residential aged care service, one of the first considerations for most people is cost. Financial affordability is important, but evaluating whether it is the right place for you or for your loved one involves a more complex set of decisions.
The royal commission and stories in the media identified cases where residents had bad experiences and care did not meet expectations. In some serious cases, abuse occurred. While most residents don’t experience such dramatically bad situations, families worry about whether they have made a good decision when choosing an aged care place.
A higher room price does not guarantee better care; it is just the price for that room. There is no direct correlation between the two. So how can you research and check the performance of a particular provider?
Ratings and compliance reviews
The government has set eight quality standards that care providers need to meet. Compliance is monitored by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.
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National Budget Issues.
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Scott Morrison’s budget report card: could do a hell of a lot better
Economics Editor
October 22, 2021 — 11.35am
When it comes to the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two main parties, polling shows voters’ views are highly stereotyped. For instance, the Liberals, being the party of business, are always better than Labor at handling money, including the budget. But this hardly seems to fit the performance of Scott Morrison and his Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg.
Dr Mike Keating, former top econocrat and a former secretary of the Department of Finance, has delivered a two-part report card in John Menadue’s online public policy journal.
His overall assessment is that the Morrison government is guilty of underfunding essential government services on the one hand, and, on the other, wasting billions on politically high-profile projects.
Keating traces these failures to two sources. First, the government’s undying commitment to Smaller Government, but unwillingness to bring this about by making big cuts in major spending programs, such as defence, age pensions or Medicare.
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Health Issues.
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NSW to set up $96m mRNA pilot plant
11:00PM October 20, 2021
The NSW government has moved to establish the nation’s first mRNA pilot manufacturing facility, partnering with universities on research and development of new vaccines and drugs.
The $96m facility will be designed to create and trial new mRNA vaccines and therapies and conduct early manufacture.
“We are the first state in Australia to deliver a pilot manufacturing facility to spearhead the establishment of a local RNA industry,” NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said.
“The Covid pandemic has demonstrated to the world that it is critically important that we have the capability to develop vaccines quickly and for our country to have sovereign capability.
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International Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/evergrande-dilemma-has-repercussions-far-beyond-china-20211017-p590o1
Evergrande dilemma has repercussions far beyond China
Beijing could let the property behemoth go bankrupt, but that risks shockwaves at home and abroad.
Kevin Rudd Former Australian prime minister
Oct 17, 2021 – 1.20pm
Since coming to power, Chinese President Xi Jinping has had to deal with three overriding priorities. First, a domestic economy that is slowing and increasingly unequal. Second, an adversarial geopolitical environment, resulting largely from Xi’s own quest to change the regional and global status quo. And, most importantly, making sure he secures a third term at the Chinese Communist Party’s key 20th Party Congress next year.
Enter Evergrande and its growing list of missed bond payments. This behemoth, with $US300 billion ($404 billion) in leverage, lies at the centre of a property sector that represents 29 per cent of Chinese gross domestic product and is more than $US5 trillion in debt. Forty-one per cent of the Chinese banking system’s assets are associated with the property sector, and 78 per cent of the invested wealth of urban Chinese is in housing. Given the millions of creditors, shareholders, bondholders and (unbuilt) apartment owners, Evergrande has become a problem for Xi politically, economically and globally.
On the domestic front, an increasingly redistributionist approach to economic policy means neither billionaires nor housing market speculation are tolerated as they used to be. Moves to prop up Evergrande fit uneasily within Xi’s “common prosperity” campaign.
Internationally, Xi wishes to avoid any perception of economic weakness or political distraction, let alone the idea that China could be heading towards a situation similar to that which crippled the US housing market during the 2008 financial crisis. The Communist Party has sought to enhance its domestic credibility by claiming China has a more sophisticated system for dealing with crises, pandemic or economic, than the West.
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China struggles to balance green goals with keeping lights on
The world’s second-largest economy is consuming far more electricity than expected to keep its factories running as businesses rebound from the pandemic.
Bai Yujie, Luo Guoping, Chen Xuewan and Han Wei
Oct 17, 2021 – 1.07pm
The massive power crunch darkening businesses and homes in many parts of China throws into sharp relief the struggle of the world’s largest coal burner to balance its ambitious goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions with its appetite for energy to power the economy.
The world’s second-largest economy is consuming far more electricity than expected to keep its factories running as businesses rebound from the pandemic.
But production of coal – the main fuel for generating electricity in China – is slowing under the government’s green transition policy to fight climate change by achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.
Nearly 70 per cent of China’s electricity comes from burning coal, which spews into the atmosphere tonnes and tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas causing global warming. Power generation accounts for 53 per cent of the country’s coal consumption.
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China’s energy crisis threatens long disruption to global supply chain
Primrose Riordan, Edward White and Harry Dempsey
Oct 17, 2021 – 2.32pm
Hong Kong/Seoul/London | Factory owners in China and their customers worldwide have been told to prepare for power supply disruptions becoming part of life as President Xi Jinping doggedly weans the world’s second-biggest economy off its dependence on coal.
Months of shortages have cut power to households in China’s north-east and caused outages at factories across the country. But energy demand is still surging amid record demand for Chinese exports, and the problems will be compounded by the prospect of freezing temperatures in winter.
Despite a flurry of central government interventions, spearheaded by premier Li Keqiang, Chinese manufacturers and multinationals alike have been urged to boost energy efficiency in their factories and speed up investment in renewable energy.
Trueanalog Strictly OEM, a factory producing loudspeakers near Guangzhou, is emblematic of the crunch already hitting exporters from frequent outages. Owner Philip Richardson said his company was stuck “playing catch-up”.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/supply-chain-lessons-from-long-beach-20211018-p590u8
Supply chain lessons from Long Beach
One of the best things that we could do to avoid port pile-ups in the future is to ensure that no more than 25 per cent of any crucial supply be sourced from one place, or come into one port.
Rana Foroohar Contributor
Oct 18, 2021 – 10.28am
I know you’re hearing a lot about something called ‘supply chains’,” said US President Joe Biden last week, in a speech explaining to Americans why their sneakers, toasters, bicycles and bedroom furniture were taking so much longer to get to them these days.
It is highly unusual for the leader of the free world to spend so much time talking about logistics and value chains to the general public. But this is an unusual moment, in which supply-chain snags and labour squeezes have resulted in port backups for weeks or even months not only in the US, but the UK, Europe and many other places around the world.
Much of it is down to the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, and the asynchronous national recovery cycles that have led to a mismatch between supply and demand for various products. Those cycles should eventually smooth out as the virus abates. But port disruptions have shed light on bigger problems in the global economy, from incompatibilities of skills and jobs, to an over-reliance on China as the provider of any number of crucial goods.
The Los Angeles and Long Beach port backups have quickly become a major political issue in the US, given that they represent 40 per cent of the country’s entire cargo shipping imports. But many people are taking the wrong lessons — that dock workers cannot be found because of government stimulus cheques providing a disincentive to work, or that we are headed back to a decade of stagflation, or that the trade landscape will end up looking either like the laissez-faire 1990s or the beggar-thy-neighbour 1930s. I doubt any of that will turn out to be true, but there are several different, better lessons to be learnt from the current troubles.
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China puts US on back foot with ‘game-changing’ hypersonic missile test
By Louise Watt and Marcus Parekh
October 18, 2021 — 8.00am
Taipei: China’s test of a hypersonic missile in space is a “game-changer” that should fundamentally alter the US’s calculations about Beijing’s military leverage, experts have warned.
Over the weekend, it emerged that the Chinese military in August secretly launched a rocket carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle into space, which flew around the globe in a low-Earth orbit before returning to China.
While the missile reportedly missed its target by about 40 kilometres, the test shows China has made rapid progress on the lightning-fast weapons and is far more advanced than US intelligence had realised, according to the Financial Times, which broke the story.
“We have no idea how they did this,” the FT quoted one official as saying.
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The murder of Sir David Amess will change the nature of British democracy
The Economist
6:04PM October 17, 2021
Sir David Amess was the quintessential British local MP. When party whips whispered that he might become a minister if he voted the right way, he laughed.
When his invitation to the Leigh Duck Race, where the local scout group ceremonially released hundreds of rubber ducks, went missing, his staff turned his office upside down.
His relentless campaign to have Southend-on-Sea, the town in his constituency, recognised as a city is the stuff of parliamentary legend.
It was while attending a constituency surgery, where MPs meet locals to hear their problems, that he was stabbed to death on October 15, in an apparent Islamist terrorist attack.
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Economists must weigh the risk of raising interest rates too early
Whether the looming inflation problem is temporary or long term, making hasty monetary policy decisions will only increase the pain.
Paul Krugman
Oct 18, 2021 – 3.48pm
What’s happening to inflation in the United States?
We know, of course, what the numbers say: inflation is high right now, although not 1970s high. But is this a blip or the beginning of a longer-term problem? Economists are deeply divided.
I’m basically for the former, on what has come to be known as Team Transitory, but I might be wrong - and the data are sufficiently ambiguous that both sides can claim that the evidence supports their take.
Yet policymakers can’t just shrug their shoulders; they have to make policy. So what should they do in the face of uncertainty? The answer, I would argue, is to make decisions that won’t do too much damage if their preferred take on inflation is wrong.
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Purges, a plot and the real reason why Xi Jinping might be afraid to leave China
Political and international editor
October 19, 2021 — 5.30am
It’s hard to see into the Chinese Communist Party’s politics. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any. Only that they’re well concealed. But every now and then, the careful stage management slips and the red curtain twitches aside unexpectedly. We’ve been treated to a few revealing moments in the past few weeks.
President Xi Jinping projects an air of serene imperial command. He has the most comprehensive grip on power of any Chinese president since Mao, many sinologists tell us, as he prepares to enter a third five-year term.
But it seems that not all of the courtiers are as submissive as they appear to be, and Xi not quite as calm. Or, as the Lowy Institute’s Richard McGregor puts it: “We have election season; China has selection season, and we are moving into that now.
“Xi has a ton of enemies to handle. He can’t just coast into a third term on the basis of his personality cult.” Foreign media sometimes describe him as president for life. But while he removed the two-term limit on the presidency, he still needs party approval to win a third term when the Party Congress meets next October.
Sensationally, Xi has moved decisively against two of the topmost officials responsible for China’s internal security, a serving and a former vice-minister of public security, in less than a week.
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Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell dies of Covid-19 complications, aged 84
By Jessica Donati
The Wall Street Journal
October 19, 2021
Colin Powell, who as a retired four-star general and former White House national security adviser went on to serve as the first Black secretary of state, has died at 84.
His family cited Covid-19 complications in a statement on Facebook.
The statement said Mr Powell died Monday, and that he had been fully vaccinated. The statement thanked physicians and staff members at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for the treatment he received there.
Mr Powell had been undergoing treatment for a type of blood cancer, said his longtime aide, Peggy Cifrino. “He was being treated successfully for multiple myeloma for the past few years,” she said. That type of cancer is known to weaken the immune system.
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N Korea test fires submarine-launched ballistic missile
Josh Smith and Hyonhee Shin
Oct 19, 2021 – 6.35pm
Seoul | North Korea fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from off its east coast on Tuesday, South Korea’s military says, pulling Japan’s new prime minister off the campaign trail and overshadowing the opening of a major arms fair in Seoul.
The launch, reported by officials in South Korea and Japan, came after US and South Korean envoys met in Washington to discuss the nuclear stand-off with North Korea on Monday. Spy chiefs from the United States, South Korea and Japan were reported to be meeting in Seoul on Tuesday as well.
The North Korean launch would be the latest weapons test by the country, which has pressed ahead with military development in the face of international sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
The missile was launched from the sea around Sinpo, where North Korea keeps submarines as well as equipment for test-firing SLBMs, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
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Is Brexit hurting the UK? Trade data flashes a warning
The global upswing in trade is leaving Britain behind, drowning in reams of paperwork and ballooning costs, in an early sign of the challenge Brexit is presenting its economy.
By Jason Douglas
From Dow Jones
October 20, 2021
The global upswing in trade is leaving the UK behind, an early sign of the challenge Brexit is presenting its economy.
Britain formally began its new relationship with the EU on January 1. Before then, and before the Covid-19 pandemic upended world trade, Jason Wouhra’s food wholesale business in England’s West Midlands, Lioncroft Wholesale, generated up to a quarter of its annual revenue from customers in Spain, Portugal and other markets in the EU.
Lioncroft has now stopped exporting to the EU altogether. Sending 300 products to the EU before Brexit was as easy as moving goods within the UK. Now, Mr Wouhra said, he would have to pay thousands of dollars to hire a customs agent to assemble the correct information for products to clear customs, and more to actually ship them. “Your profitability is knocked out the window straight away,” he said.
Leaving the EU has put the UK outside the EU’s vast internal market of 445 million consumers and a customs territory that is bigger still, stretching from the Atlantic to Turkey. It is hobbling trade just as its economy needs all its engines firing to power out of its worst downturn in a century.
For British businesses, the shift means reams of paperwork and ballooning costs. Trade with the EU accounts for about half of all British exports.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/the-dying-days-of-china-s-economic-miracle-20211020-p591la
The dying days of China’s economic miracle
After decades of unbridled growth, China is heading into a new era of moderate expansion as a property debt crisis and crippling energy shortages converge at a time of enormous policy uncertainty.
Michael Smith China correspondent
Oct 22, 2021 – 12.33pm
Fifteen skyscrapers explode simultaneously in a destructive cloud of smoke.
The video footage of a mass demolition project in a city in China’s Yunnan province released by state media last month is oddly compelling. The scale of the choreographed destruction as thousands of tonnes of concrete and steel collapse slowly into the ground is impressive, but it also symbolises the emerging fault lines in the world’s second-largest economy.
The tens of thousands of half-completed apartments reportedly stood empty for seven years and were destroyed before anyone moved in. They formed one of the country’s many so-called “ghost cities”, representing bloated infrastructure investment in a period when growth and wealth creation were encouraged at the expense of almost anything else.
Unlike those unused high-rises, China’s economy is unlikely to blow up as some bears continue to suggest. Instead, it is shifting into a new phase defined by more moderate growth, greater regulatory intervention and more policy uncertainty than ever before. This week’s disappointing third-quarter GDP data was the latest sign that Xi Jinping and his policymakers must now focus on addressing financial risk and massive social inequality rather than growth.
This shift would be easier to manage if it were not for a number of challenges converging at the same time. Property company Evergrande’s debt crisis, a crippling power shortage, supply-chain issues caused by the global pandemic and repeated breakouts of the delta COVID-19 virus variant which continue to shut down ports, airports and sometimes entire cities, are challenging China’s post-pandemic recovery.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/the-fatal-chip-on-xi-jinping-s-shoulder-20211021-p591ys
The fatal chip on Xi Jinping’s shoulder
China’s bullying just endangers itself. The failure to gain the secret sauce that makes Taiwan a world-beating maker of advanced microchips tells you how.
Thomas Friedman Contributor
Oct 22, 2021 – 3.31pm
Ever since Deng Xiaoping opened China to the world in the late 1970s, many in the West wanted to see the country succeed because we thought China – despite its brutal authoritarian political structure – was on a path to a more open economy and society.
Alas, President Xi Jinping has reversed steps in that direction in ways that could pose a real danger to China’s future development and a real danger to the rest of the world.
Everything Xi is doing today is eroding trust among Chinese and foreign entrepreneurs about what the rules of business are now inside China, while at the same time eroding trust abroad that China – having swallowed Hong Kong – won’t soon move on Taiwan, which could trigger a direct conflict with the US.
While I don’t want Xi’s hard-line strategy to succeed – that would pose a danger to every free country and economy in the Pacific – I also don’t want China to fail or fracture. We’re talking about a country of 1.4 billion people whose destabilisation would affect everything from the air you breathe to global interest rates. It’s a real dilemma. But I don’t think Xi realises just how much uncertainty his recent behaviour has injected – inside and outside China.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
6 comments:
And here we go ……..
The Australian Digital Health Agency is offering healthcare software developers financial assistance to design new or enhanced My Health Record–related functionality in clinical information systems and electronic medications management systems used by residential aged care facilities.
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety released their Final Report on 1 March 2021 containing 148 recommendations. Recommendation 68 specifically refers to the Agency’s support for universal adoption by the aged care sector of digital technology and My Health Record.
At least they (NEHTA/ADHA) are consistent. Get a bunch of technologists to design a solution to some poorly understood problem and hope that that healthcare professionals will use it.
Would it not be better to find out what healthcare professionals actually want?
Preferably not just an automated version of what they already do, but something that would really make a difference to the delivery of healthcare.
The consistency is that they fail to do things in the right order and wonder why their magic bullets don't get used.
Not sure I would so easily bolster ADHA by branding them a technologist entity, long bereft of the skill
new or enhanced My Health Record–related functionality in clinical information systems
I am struggling to grasp or visualise what that even means - is the my health record used with clinical workflows that result in process automation in a clinical information system? Anyone able to shed light on that?
@3:23 PM "Get a bunch of technologists to design a solution to some poorly understood problem and hope that that healthcare professionals will use it."
does not mean they have the technologists.
Typically they have to go to market - e.g. Accenture etc. Their current strategy is to ask software developers to dream up solutions to healthcare provider problems.
There's little to no evidence that ADHA understands healthcare problems or innovative solutions. They do appear to know how to manage contracts though.
@5:39 that is fair enough, I mistook the intent of you statement. Not sure I fully agree with it but appreciate the viewpoint
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