Most, if not all regular net surfers would be familiar with the “LOLKatz” meme, whereby pictures of cats are accompanied by a funny caption, first invented on 4Chan, and popularised on the I Can Has Cheezburger site.

Now that we’re about to hear about the decision of the three independents and the eventual formation of the Federal Government, Bob Katter is now the star of his own LOLKatz meme, LOLKat.

Be afraid people!

Apple has just launched an updated version of the Safari web browser. One of the key features is an in-built “reader”, that identifies an article (of any type) and displays it in a floating screen, free from clutter, advertisements and other content.

Content looks lovely in the reader – almost as it does on a printed page. Clean, simple, scrollable.

Check out these comparisons below:

This will pose a big problem for advertisers, as people have now been given a simple way of avoiding ads. It’s a big issue for publishers, who have created an overwhelming, many might say ludicrous amount of advertising inventory on their sites, with digital advertisements such as “Over The Pages” and “Page Takeovers”, many of which are site initiated – disturbing and annoying us in a vain attempt to “disrupt” our reading and make us pay attention to the product.

Simply, now as much as ever, compelling, permission based content and engagement is crucial. Marketeers and organisations have to earn their permission to speak, to engage and to encourage reaction. So many marketeers have avoided the elephant in the digital room – that so few people even look at their ads, let alone interact with them. Their default options of raising awareness via mass digital media broadcast are simply running out.

I’m a big fan of data visualisation, as I’ve said many times before.

I’m also a passionate observer and participant in politics.

I’ve made a career out of communications and marketing.

This is a wonderful example of all of the above – visualising the information structure within Winston Churchill’s famous “Churchill’s ‘We Shall Fight…” speech.

It’s a wonderful lesson for anyone writing a speech:

• Stick to two or three key points
• Reaffirm statements / key propositions at least twice
• Use alliteration
• Use normal words and simple language

Australia’s Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy, also known as the Global Village Idiot, has launched a scathing attack on Facebook.

Conroy, the man who with his boss Kevin Rudd, decided to censor and slow Australia’s internet access, and spend $42 billion dollars building an NBN, asks the question:

What would you prefer, a corporate giant who is answerable to no one and motivated solely by profit making the rules on the internet, or a democratically elected government with all the checks and balances in place?

Well, Minister, let’s put the Australian Government vs Facebook to the test:

Rudd / Conroy: Other people (voters – regretful voters I might suggest) decided to have them control me vs Facebook: I alone chose to be on Facebook

= Facebook win

Rudd / Conroy = Motivated by power vs Facebook: Motivated by profit

= Facebook win

Rudd / Conroy: The only Federal Government in Australia (Monopoly) vs Facebook: One of many providers in the highly competitive social networking space

= Facebook win

Rudd / Conroy: Average of 32% of everything every Australian earns + 10% GST on everything we spend + assortment of hundreds of taxes, fees and charges vs Facebook: Free

= Facebook win

Rudd / Conroy: Answerable to the public once every three years vs Facebook: Answerable to customers every single day

= Facebook win

Rudd / Conroy: Owns every single piece of information about every single Australian, including all banking, tax, employment, marriage records, family history, etc. vs Facebook: Only what you choose to put into it

= Facebook win

Rudd / Conroy: Makes rules enforceable by the police and legal system covering almost every single element of life, death and everything in between vs Facebook: Makes rules covering Facebook

= Facebook win

OVERALL WINNER = FACEBOOK.  Your thoughts?

This email is doing the rounds at the moment – I’ve received it from a number of people (Liberals and non-Liberals alike). It speaks of a greater groundswell of negativity around Kevin Rudd and his useless Government.

SORRY KEV’S SORRY RECORD

1 Said Sorry several times.

2 Ratified Kyoto as it is about to expire without successor.

3 Organised “best and brightest summit” – if anything useful came out
of that, I missed it.

4 Set up “fuel watch”, a costly fiasco since abandoned.

5 Set up “grocery watch” another costly fiasco since abandoned.

6 Established the Australian Social Inclusion Board. This rarely heard
of bureaucracy was set up because “Every Australian should have an
opportunity to be a full participant in the life of the nation.
Unfortunately, too many Australians remain locked out of the benefits of
work, education, community engagement and access to basic services. This
social exclusion is a significant barrier to sustained prosperity and
restricts Australia’s future growth”. If there is any evidence to
support this argument it wasn’t included in the announcement. The Board
has been described as a “complete wank, …. the biggest waste of tax
dollars imaginable, towards some more Rudd-style feel-goodism”. That was
in May 2008. It probably did seem a big waste of tax dollars then, but
it’s been turned into a drop in the ocean by what’s happened since.

7 Set up the home insulation program – what a disaster! It was a
disaster because Rudd so wanted the Feds to be able to claim the credit
he gave it to his Dept of Environment. This feel-good department, whose
Minister’s previous experience was lead singer with a rock band, is full
of environmental scientists and climate change disciples with zero
experience in dealing with the real world or delivering real programs.
Four deaths, a minister demoted, (not sacked or had his salary reduced)
and $50 million to former union heavy Greg Combet to fix it, and Combet
says that may not be enough. And the claimed environmental benefits were
grossly exaggerated. Rudd said he took full responsibility but I don’t
what that means – he’s still PM, he’s still drawing his salary and
privileged superannuation benefits.

8 Set up SIHIP (Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure
Program). This program was initiated by a Memorandum of Understanding in
September 2007. In July 2009 the ABC (hardly a hot-bed of opposition to
the ALP) reported on its Lateline program that it was yet to build a
single house. That was despite $45.54 million of its $672 million budget
having been spent. A government report dated August 2009 said the
program was being criticised as: too slow to deliver; its governance was
overly bureaucratic; the program is too costly in terms of unit cost of
housing and administration. The revised program budget is still $672m
with each new house expected to cost $450,000 or $529,000 after
factoring in a proportion of administration costs and “contingencies”.
As at 1st February 2010, 2 of target 750 houses and 70 of 2,500
refurbishments had been completed.

9 Sent money direct to taxpayers and non-taxpayers to spend on large
screen imported TV’s to stimulate the economy and avoid the effects of
what Rudd and Swan called the worst depression since the 1930s. In fact
unemployment was 11% in 1991 and in 2009 didn’t get to 6%, which not too
many years ago would have been regarded as virtually full employment.
Remember Beattie’s target 5%? But if you can’t maintain your popularity
rating by sending money to voters what can you do?

10 Promised that every child in every school in Australia would get a
computer. This program is moving so slowly that most of the people who
were high school students at the time of the promise will have left
school before they see a new computer.

11 Set up the $70m green loans mess – people gave up their jobs, paid
$3,000 for qualifications and insurance to be trained as assessors, only
to find the demand for green loans had been grossly exaggerated, many
more assessors were trained than the program envisaged, and there was no
work for most of them. The Courier-Mail reported on 2 Feb 2010 that:
“The Federal Government predicted up to 200,000 homeowners would take up
the loans and only 1,000 have done so ….instead of training 1,500 to
2,000 well-qualified assessors the Government permitted a blow-out and
it is now estimated there will be up to 11,500 well-qualified
assessors”. The program has now been transferred to Penny Wong’s
department – that should fix it.

12 Turned a good budget surplus into such a huge debt that our
grandchildren will have so much trouble servicing it that our population
will have to increase rapidly. Blamed the GFC while steadfastly refusing
to give any credit to Howard or Costello for leaving them an excellent
budget position to work with.

13 Didn’t include any major infrastructure in the stimulus package
because the effects would be felt too slowly (except for duplicating
school halls and gyms).

14 Set up the home solar hot water initiative which was abruptly ended
three weeks early with eight hours notice. This caused chaos in the
industry, and many people intending to lodge applications missed out.
Peter Garrett blamed a cost blow-out from the original estimate of $150
million to $750 million a year for the cut-back.

15 Disbanded “Work Choices”. He had to do this because it was the
unions’ self-funded campaign against it that got him elected. Replaced
it by giving back powers to the unions and re-instating the Industrial
Relations Club. Set up Fair Work Australia with what seems to many as an
over-representation of people with union backgrounds.
16 Changed the previous government’s immigration laws so successfully
that the exponential blow-out in illegal boat arrivals created a need
for a lot more accommodation on Christmas Island.

17 Said “the science is in on climate change” and claimed the ETS would
fix it. Labelled sceptics as deniers.

18 Attempted to railroad the ETS through the Senate before Copenhagen
for no other reason than it would have allowed Rudd to strut the world
stage.

19 Went to Copenhagen taking 114 government free-loaders with him (one
of the largest of the 190 delegations), at huge cost to the Australian
taxpayer and the world’s environment. I haven’t seen any announcement of
the cost of the junket (and I doubt I ever will), but I’m sure that
whatever was going to be achieved, at least 100 of the free-loaders were
superfluous to requirements. And it was fairly predictable that nothing
would be achieved.

20 Refuses to debate the use of nuclear power generation to reduce
pollution because it’s against ALP and union policy.

21 Has opened 1 of 2,650 promised “trades training centres”, 1 of
260 promised child care centres in schools and TAFEs, and 2 of 31
promised GP Super Clinics.

22 Attracted 752 retired nurses back into the profession using a
return-to-work bonus. When they announced this scheme Labor hoped 7,750
would take up the offer.

23 Removed Labor’s original election 2007 promises from the ALP website.

24 Promised to take Japan to court on whaling, but now says that will
not be until November, probably after the election. As time goes on, I
find I’m becoming less convinced about who is really at fault here,
Japan for fishing in international waters, or the protestors for
disrupting a legitimate commercial operation.

25 Has so far kept the Henry tax review secret for political reasons.
Last week Rudd was saying it wouldn’t be released until after the
election. Wiser heads have since made him realise people won’t vote for
a new tax system when they don’t know what’s in it. And there must be
something nasty in it, either unpalatable to the voters or inconsistent
with ALP policy, or it would be heralded as another triumph for the Rudd
government.

[UPDATE]: It has since been released, and Rudd has ignored the
recommendations or simply invented new recommendations that are the
opposite of Henry’s.  For example, the Resources Super Tax, which has,
in the period of days, led to a massive decline in the Australian stock
markets, devaluation of the Australian dollar, and made Australia a far
less safe for people to do business. Most importantly, the Resources
Super Tax has meant that many hundreds of mining projects worth billions
of dollars have been shelved or stopped, costing Australian jobs and
export income.

26 Announced he will keep 30% of the state’s GST to fund 60% of their
hospital costs. The 60% funding will have strings attached. The states
have not been given any of the details, just the executive summary, and
he expects them to agree to the proposals without knowing what the
strings are, or what he might take back with the other hand under the
Henry tax review. The announcement doesn’t explain how it will improve
delivery of hospital services, but it will probably add another layer of
bureaucrats to the health system. Australia already has 450,000
bureaucrats looking after 290,000 health professionals. The announcement
was hurriedly made in March 2010 after it had been pointed out that he
had imposed a June 2009 deadline on himself for reform of the hospitals
system. Perhaps this explains the lack of details. Refer back to the
criticisms of SIHIP above. I think it’ll be deja vue all over again.
Rudd said if the states block his plan he will take it to a referendum,
which of course is just grandstanding.

27. Turned Gillard loose with $16.7 billion to give building
contractors, states and bureaucrats a feast in return for COLA.s and
unwanted libraries and gyms – the insulation racket all over again in
spades.

28 Last week he trotted out five senior ministers to criticise the
Senate for being “obstructionist”. The 5 were Jenny (SIHIP) Macklin,
Penny (ETS) Wong, Lindsay (clean nose) Tanner, Nicola (new hospital
system) Roxon, and Greg (Mr Fixit) Combet. I think Rudd is lucky the
Senate has been obstructionist because if it wasn’t he’d have more
failures to add to his already impressive list. I noticed Julia was too
smart to join the line-up of losers, and has managed not to be
associated with too many of the above “achievements” – actually lying
low while the schools building fiasco and criminal activities are
unfolding. But watch your back, Kevvy.

Kevin Rudd has a new priority every week.  His priorities are defined by a heady mix of political opportunism and media tactics.  Rarely (never) are they a product of “what’s best for Australia”.  The Daily Reckoning has set a priority so simple and amazing, that like most brilliant ideas, it’s bloody obvious: Financial Independence for Every Australian.

The best defence of liberty begins with financial independence. And taking care of your own money and your own life is something you dont need to go to the ballot box to do. And you dont have to take anyone elses money either. It also puts you in the position of helping people you really can help – your friends, family, and neighbours.

the only thing is – there’s no way that KRudd would go for it.  Why?  He’s totally against independence of any type.  He is obsessed with controlling the lives of every Australian.  From what we see on the internet, to what bank we use, to what buildings schools are allowed to build, to how we invest our super – he wants to rob us with taxes and debt and spent it on his own “China-esque” plans.  Financial Independence is not something that he’d like.  Read More at The Daily Reckoning – Cost of Debt Tipping Point.

There’s a lot to be said about simplicity. It’s the sign that someone “gets it”. The simpler, the better. As Albert Einstein said: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”.

Alan Siegel gave this speech about simplicity at a recent TED conference. I love it, it really struck a chord. We spend too much time talking massive reams of rubbish. Companies spend billions of dollars bombarding people with words – when only a few will do. A bank gives us millions of reasons to join, and when we do, it suffocates us in millions of words of terms and condition.

Siegel argues:

“There is no way that we should allow government to communicate the way they communicate. There is no way we should do business with companies that have agreements with stealth provisions and that are unintelligible. So, how are we going to change the world? Make clarity, transparency and simplicity a national priority.”

In another piece, he describes why there is so much complexity in Goverment:

…many Americans are watching their credit card fees rise without understanding why. We get health care bills and benefit statements that read like gibberish. And we struggle with incomprehensible government documents.

Yes, there are reasons why government and complexity go together like dogs and hydrants. First, many public officials think that everything they say must sound “official.” Second, new laws keep getting passed, old laws keep getting amended, and all laws generate reams of regulations. Third, there’s individual and institutional self-protection — covering your posterior, rather than communicating with the public.

Still, in a democracy, government must communicate clearly. When Americans can’t figure out how to answer census questions, complete tax forms or qualify for small-business assistance, the economy suffers, federal revenues decline and confidence in government sinks to new lows. But, when our leaders communicate clearly, Americans answer appeals for action, from President Franklin Roosevelt’s declaration, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” to President Kennedy’s call, “Ask what you can do for your country.” In fact, President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address took only two minutes and 246 words.

Too many words, too much complexity. Why not cut it right down to the core and have faith that people will understand, that we don’t have to spell everything out in complex jargon?

Here’s what, I’ll start right now.

I shan’t say too much about what will in the future be regarded as a famous interview, I think it’s better that you see the interview written up in graphic form and form your own judgements…

A wonderful piece from The Daily Reckoning, about former U.S. President Warren G. Harding.  Our current leaders could learn a thing or two from him.  My favourite passage:

Warren Harding may never have been the brightest bulb on the White House porch, but intuitively he understood that proper macro-economic policies were more the product of virtue than of genius. Debt led to trouble; thats all he needed to know.

Keynes came along a few years later. Keynes was a genius; everybody said so. And he had an answer for everything. Nature? Government could do better. Debt? Dont worry about it, he said. Why not just let capitalism sort itself out? Without government intervention, it will only get worse, said Keynes.

…does that not sound exactly like our own Kevin Rudd – who, being a complete control freak, thinks he can solve every problem through his own over inflated sense of genius? ¬†RuddBank, RuddTel, $300 billion dollar pink batt and portable classroom spending spree, now he thinks he can improve the architecture and planning of our own homes! ¬†Read on…

But Harding had already proved him wrong. Harding did the very opposite of what Keynes recommended. Instead of increasing government spending, he reduced it. He cut the budget almost in half. He slashed taxes too…and cut the national debt by a third.

Japan at the time struggled with the same downturn. But it had no Harding at the helm. Instead, its masters prefigured Keynes, trying to stay the correction using price controls and other interventions. The result was a long-drawn-out affair that lasted until 1927 and ended in a bank crisis. In America, meanwhile, by 1922 unemployment was back down to 6.7%. By 1923 it was down further – to 2.4%.

This lesson was entirely lost on the worlds economists. When the next crisis hit a decade later, they turned to Keynes. Of course, it turned out to be a moral world after all. They got what they deserved.

Read more here: Harding the Last American President to Deal Honestly With a Major Financial Crisis.

Just when we thought the ridiculous and draconian internet censorship laws created by the Rudd Government were enough, now there’s a suggestion that¬†iPhone and gaming apps will require Federal Government classification.

This shows a complete lack of understanding and a ridiculous over-stretch of Government power – Rudd’s Nanny State seemingly knows no bounds. ¬†Such a move would cost jobs, curb freedom, limit access to iPhone apps from around the world, curb innovation, curb competition and make creators and developers lives a living misery.