If there was one salient fact to take away from yesterday's qualifying and race one at Winton, it's that no team is invulnerable to the unpredictable.

Not being a fan of general lunacy or right-wing radicalism, I'm not an avid reader of Andrew Bolt.

I find this a bizarre turn of events, especially so for Brendan Nelson.

Sooo…..Grocery Choice. Fuel Watch, maybe. Can we have a website dedicated to … new cars sales, perhaps? What about tyre retailers? Cheapest travel agencies? What next?

I heard this yesterday evening while on the way home.

Is the mainstream media deliberately spreading doom and gloom in reporting statistics such as those in this article or is it simply reporting the news of the day?

By any other definition, the four-yearly global contest in sport can only be described as adversarial battle between nation-states, some of whom would dearly love to have at each other with real weapons of destruction.

Such fantasy. A government which thinks it can command a market-driven, and currently market-restricted, finance industry. Clearly, the Rudd Labor government has been ensnared by it's own populist rhetoric, in that while no-one in government has ever said they can control fuel and grocery prices, or interest rates, enough's been said which infers these things in the minds of voters. The idiocy of Wayne Swan declaring that Bank's had better watch out or he'll exercise abilities no-one knows he has. What an absolute joke. About the only thing I agree with Piers Akerman on is the vacuous approach to the subject of interest rates Swan has taken. As for drawing parallels between Swan's stupid claim and Costello as Treasurer not making such claims, this morning's Akerman performance was right up there among the best cyclopian conservative media pundit moments. Piers Akerman. A pustule on the buttocks of his own profession.

The facts of the matter are plain and simple. Whilst the government may wish for major banks to follow the lead of the RBA, if and when it does cut interest rates, the realities are that no single major, or minor for that matter, banking institution in this country has yet declared it's exposure to the global sub-prime debacle. The nearest we came to seeing a glimpse came last week when the NAB declared a capital raising issue through dividend re-investment by shareholders, which just happened to match a bond issue it was attempting to float. Clearly, even a major like the NAB is having difficulties buying money.

It's all well and good to tell the great unwashed to seek a better deal from banks by pulling up stakes and taking their business elsewhere. Deferred establishment fees and early repayment penalties remain a brutal reality for Australian mortgage borrowers. Until the practice of penalising people for exercising their consumer rights is legislated out of existence, real competition within the finance industry in the country will continue to slumber on, heavily sedated by corporate greed and collective collusion.

It seems the Queensland Premier is punting for the Mary Whitehouse Award. No tits out on the Gold Coast! Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous, reader? Queensland’s Gold Coast, Australia’s highlight of hedonism, will become the place of puritans for a week in October because Anna Bligh doesn’t think boobie flashing from high-rise balconies is suitably representative of the Queensland lifestyle.

Time to join the rest of Queensland society, Anna, and accept that getting your knockers out during Indy is as ‘Surfers Paradise’ as the concrete canyons of the glitter strip itself. Just keep yours to yourself if naked female breasts upset you. We don’t want to see them anyhow.

How many of you out there have received the congratulatory mail from your banker, clapping you on your virtual back in relation to a brand new increase to your credit card facility, despite you never having requested one?

Greg Sheridan isn't a journalist I have a great deal of regard for.

Luxury car tax is a tax on innovation.

Take a gander at this screen shot cut from The Australian's online front page at 2100 hours.

It seems that New Zealand has a porn industry.

I'm in total agreement with Darryl Mason, and fail to understand the outpouring of anthropomorphises from Sydney-siders, and other sentimental souls across the nation over the fate of an abandoned baby humpback whale.

I have to say that was quite proud of Timmy Blair as he made his inaugural appearance on Insiders this morning.

Listening to the news over the last few nights, and Brendan Nelson on Radio National Breakfast Thursday morning, I've found myself agog at the audacity of a coalition opposition attempting to pin the Rudd government for the country’s current economic situation.

I doubt I'm the only blogger in Oz to have spotted this, especially at 5:00pm, but I notice that the Fairfax determination for business as usual during a journalists strike isn't quite holding up.

Most of the online frontpage articles are dated May 28, 2008. I guess it's business as usual if you're temporally challenged. Perhaps Fairfax are feeling the pressure of a bloody-minded approach to industrial relations after all.