Rundle gets a ride:

David Long writes: Re. “Rundle’s UK: The last budget of the first (and perhaps only) Brown government” (yesterday, item 3) I’m not Peter Craven but Crikey’s editors truly have to do something about the never-knowingly-underwritten Guy Rundle’s recidivist error-making.

I don’t mean errors of interpretation but basic errors of fact.

So keen is Rundle to appear to be The Oracle, he just screws things up, and pollutes and builds arguments with nonsense around bogus facts.

The latest outrage;

Rundle writes: “Darling did not deliver a bribe-a-thon (feels weird to use darling as a surname, feels like saying “Sweetie was very prudent”), but nor did he bring down a ‘Roy Jenkins’ named for the late 70s budget of the Lib-Lab coalition, which instituted a range of cuts (as mandated by the IMF), thus possibly losing the last opportunity to forestall the creaking advance of the Iron Lady.”

There are several problems with this, and they tumble into each other.

Roy Jenkins wasn’t Chancellor in the late ’70s. He was Chancellor from 1967-1970.

Duly, the current Chancellor Alistair Darling couldn’t have handed down a “Roy Jenkins” Budget (the quoted accentuation was Rundle’s and, historically, Rundle’s alone), nor could that “Roy Jenkins” Budget present, as Rundle posits, “a last opportunity to forestall the creaking advance of the Iron Lady”.

That’s because Jenkins’ Budget pre-dated Thatcher’s premiership by a good 10 years, and there were two other governments to come, one Heath’s Tories and then Callaghan’s Labour.

Britain’s IMF crisis that Rundle alludes to was in 1976, six years and two governments after Jenkins’ chancellorship.

There has never been a “Lib-Lab coalition” as Rundle claims, and certainly not while Jenkins was in Number 11. There was a shaky and dysfunctional pact between the two in 1977, in which the Liberals occasionally agreed to vote for Labour in the Commons, but it ended near as soon as it was agreed.

Less than 50 ain’t a fail:

Glen Coulton writes: Re. “The spin continues in SA Labor’s new term” (yesterday, item 12) Hendrik Gout asserts that “Premier Mike Rann’s personal approval rating is now below 50%, and everyone who’s sat an exam knows bitterly that less than half marks is a fail.”

And anyone who’s ever managed a high-profile public examination knows that that’s superstitious nonsense. If pass marks have to be declared, there are several ways of working out where they should fall. With gatekeeper exams, one way is to work out how many you want to allow through the gate and you set the pass mark accordingly.

Another — the one now used almost universally across Australia in what are wrongly categorised as government standardised tests — is to define an acceptable standard and then “pass” those who reach it and “fail” those who don’t.

Hendrik can be sure that in many, many exams in which he might have been told he just passed with 50%, the real pass mark might have been more like 35% of the available marks, or even, in some cases, 80% of the available mark; or higher. But perhaps he’s right. In the examination room of public approval, if half don’t like you, you’re done.

Minchin Nicks off:

Nigel Brunel writes: Re. “Tips and Rumours” (yesterday, item 8) Mmmmm, give Minchin the benefit of the doubt. He might be a right-wing climate denying oxygen bandit but when I heard he was leaving to help his critically injured son, as a father I believed him. Perhaps the person who wrote that rumour should try having a kid before spouting off.

Balanced and impartial?

Matthew Lee writes: Re. Brett Gaskin (yesterday, comments) who wrote: “There’s no doubt the likes of Bolt, Ackerman, Albrechtsen, Devine, Sheridan, Henderson, et al always provide balanced and impartial reporting.”

While I do think News Ltd papers are biased in their reporting of the news, all those listed by Brett are commentators, not reporters. Also Gerard Henderson writes for Fairfax’s (SMH) not News Ltd. Seriously, if you’re going to complain about bias in News Ltd’s reporting it would help to get your facts right.

Nothing to joke about:

Andrew Brooke writes: Re. John Goldbaum’s “joke” (yesterday, comments) about the recycling $100 bill is not just unfunny — it actually backfires on him by showing how debt is a good and normal part of a productive economy.

Contrary to John’s statement that “No one produced anything. No one earned anything” — actually, all people mentioned in the joke conducted business as a result of their borrowing. The pig farmer, the feed supplier, the publican, the motel owner, etc. The borrowing fuelled the local economy.

Furthermore, the joke also proves that paper money is not the key to business — you can do a lot of business on borrowing and equity without having a $100 note in your pocket.

Moral of the story? Debt isn’t bad if you use it for productive things. It’s good. (And moral #2 — if you write a joke, try to make it either funny or clever).

Earth Hour:

Jackie French writes: Re. Yesterday’s editorial. Who says Earth Hour and technological achievement aren’t compatible? We’ll sit out earth hour under photovoltaic powered lights, eating* feral goat stew cooked in a solar oven (powered by focused sunlight) watching a solar-powered DVD surrounded a garden that provides not just dinner’s tomatoes and avocados but has captured more CO2 that would have been created producing the solar panels, DVD and oven.

No, we won’t be feeling smug because neither of us knows when Earth Hour is to feel smug in. This is “life”, not an hour, and a pretty good one.

PS. A request from my husband, a man who counts the lights in office buildings while on a supposedly romantic Sydney Harbour by night stroll, then tots up the combined wattage: do Crikey turn off their office lights at night? [Ed: Yes we do!] Have you considered motion sensing lights? Good not just for energy conservation, but to embarrass employees who nod off after lunch and provide innocent entertainment for onlookers.

* I could call it “goat a la Maison avec herbs de Provence, served with garlic mash and a light red wine reduction” but it’s basically stew.