August 2007

Here begins my bloggage of the 2007 Australian federal election.

We don't know yet when it will be held. As of today, it could in theory be held any time from five weeks away (ie, September 22) up till January 19, 2008. I'm predicting it will be October 27.

The pseudo-campaigning has been on for ages, of course, and with the Howard government behind in the opinion polls, seemingly terminally, things are getting nasty.

HARARE, 2 August 2007 (IRIN) - The lifestyle normally associated with an urban society is fast disappearing from Zimbabwe's once bustling capital, Harare.

The city's 2.8 million residents are adopting a way of life more akin to the country's rural areas, where drinking water is drawn from shallow pits and electricity is all but unavailable, although the metropolitan area's population density has produced its own quirks, such as untreated sewage spilling onto the streets.

The prospect of a John Howard video turning up on Youtube at 5am is about as enticing as the news of a new Osama bin Laden video turning up on Al Jazeera's doorstep. Just as chilling a prospect and, for that matter, just as irrelevant in the final washup.