Man from Snowy River imitation. Not just bikes. Now it’s a white horse. Tony Abbott mounted his charger yesterday to present yet another novel photo opportunity.

I think he was talking about the evils of climate change but I was so distracted by the image that I forgot to listen.

The Murdoch way. In the 14 months that Conservative David Cameron has been the UK’s Prime Minister, 20 of his ministers have met executives of Rupert Murdoch’s News organisation 130 times. That’s an average of a meeting every three days. For an insight into the way that the UK pollies court the press, see the full list of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s meetings on the Stump blogsite. I wonder what a comparable list in Australia would show?

Inflation to worry about. It is not inflation in Australia that we should be worrying about. There was nothing frightening about the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released this morning. Take out the bananas and fuel and things are still comfortably under the 3% cap that the Reserve Bank has as its guidelines. It is what is happening in the Asian growth engines that is more troubling.

Overnight, the Indian central bank raised its official rate by half a percentage point — the 11th rise in 18 months as it tries to control real price spiral. China is engaged in a similar battle to control inflation by increasing interest rates.

The actions in both countries are bound to soon start affecting demand for raw materials.

A European rate rise. Inflation is not the reason for Spanish and Italian interest rates being on the rise again but they are perhaps even more troubling. The markets re already re-evaluating the effectiveness of the so-called European solution to the sovereign debt crisis in Greece, Ireland and Portugal. The fears are growing that Spain and Italy will be next.