A NOTE FROM LIZ:
I have broken my foot! Which means, alas, that I’m not going to Brisbane — while I’m cleared to fly, it’s a struggle just to get around my little flat. I’m pretty devastated, but FEAR NOT, No Award fans, Stephanie will be at Contact, probably shouting about racism and climate change (I assume).
Sugar taxes and porridge gospels
Gorge on the saturated irony content of this argument: obesity disproportionately affects the poor. The poor have just been made even poorer, therefore will soon be more obese. Therefore taxing their consumption is an even more logical step.
Liz is currently reading Niki Savva’s The Road To Ruin, the infamous book on the Abbott-Credlin team that includes such media-friendly highlights as that time Credlin fed Abbott from her fork, and that other time Abbott slapped her on the bum, and also they were just really terrible to work with.
Less media-friendly, but more interesting to me, is how it demonstrates that there’s a strong culture of bullying in the Liberal Party, particularly in its right wing. So I’m not particularly surprised to find Cory Bernardi sending emails like this to a constituent who objected to his rampant homo- and transphobia.
Put Fat Girls in Your SFF YA
Books are supposed to help us dream and dream big but you’re starting to feel like you’re just too big to dream. You’ve read a couple books where fat girls get to be loved in the real world, and that’s wonderful, but fat girls don’t get whisked away into alternate worlds and told they’re a long lost princess. Fat girls don’t get to see the magical underside of New York City. Fat girls don’t save planets.
Please Stop Saying You Want to Go to Cuba Before It’s Ruined
I appreciate good art direction just as much as anyone else, and I see that Cuba looks like a beautifully destroyed photo op. But it’s not your photo op. The old cars are not kitschy; they are not a choice. It’s all they have.
ASIA PAC EUROVISION
Disgusting as anything: Police officer who dropped Ms Dhu on concrete floor thought she was “acting”
The Safe Schools Debate reminds LGBT Australians of when our childhood bullying was ignored.
Let’s consider another reading: here is a powerful group carefully but ferociously dismantling something of significance to vulnerable people. This is the behaviour of bullies.
(I like this article but I wish it didn’t include a moment of oppression olympics)
‘Making mistakes with people’s lives’: the ethics of orphanages and voluntourism
‘When you go on holidays to Australia or America or Europe, you don’t go and visit vulnerable people and vulnerable children. You don’t go to foster homes; you don’t go and visit struggling families who are supported by welfare. It’s not part of your holiday itinerary. And so we really have to question why it is here.’
Steph has taken advantage of having a blog to interview her friend Vidya, who has a show, 
no-award.net 