All that is missing from Pope's cartoon is Craig Thomson, a star performer. It was Thomson against the world. Under the cover of parliamentary privilege he raised the spectre of someone stealing his identity and cloning his phone to make it appear that he was engaging the services of prostitutes on his union credit card.

He was right in his claim that the matter should run its course through the courts if charges are laid. In the court of public opinion and the media Thomson has already been tried and found guilty.

The Greek economy has problems over and above a high level of indebtedness resulting from the Greek government being spectacularly spendthrift.

Nikos Chrysoloras lists them for us.There are the problems of public finance mismanagement, over-reliance on public and private consumption, lack of medium and large export-oriented enterprises, low competitiveness, tax evasion, and weak administrative capacity. In the absence of any export capacity (eg., raw materials) restoring the competitiveness of the Greek economy and changing its structure is the only way for the country to survive in the absence of cheap credit.

It's a hard road ahead for Greece as the hard landing cannot be avoided, even if there is a relaxing of the timetable of Greece's deficit reduction and budget cuts.

Greeks go to the polls on 17 June after the previous vote on 6 May proved inclusive and no political party was able to form a coalition government. A temporary cabinet is in place.

The new election is probably a referendum on the euro and it appears that while Greeks do not want the harsh austerity imposed by the troika (the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) to secure a €130bn lifeline in March and avoid default--- most of them want to stay in the euro.

Greece is being pushed out of the eurozone by the politics of austerity and it desperately needs measures for stimulating growth if it is to stay in the eurozone. Austerity alone will not solve the eurozone debt crisis.

The News International hacking scandal deepens. Rebecca Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, is now facing three charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice over allegations that she concealed "material, documents and computers" from detectives investigating phone hacking at the News of the World and alleged bribes to public officials by journalists at the Sun. They charges have been bought by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Brooks was at the heart of Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper business for more than a decade. She was close to the company's ruling family, particularly during her time editing the Sun from 2003, and after she stepped up to become chief executive of the tabloid's publisher, News International, in 2009.

The anti-austerity coalition (Syriza), which emerged from inconclusive elections as the most popular force in Greece, refuses to participate in a national unity government to implement the unpopular austerity policies. They want a moratorium on debt payments and aggressive debt write-offs.

The mainstream New Democracy and Pasok parties were hammered at the ballot box for supporting the harsh terms of a debt relief deal (cutbacks and reforms) drawn up by the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank to keep the heavily indebted economy afloat and repay the debt.

The current round of domestic political negotiations is unlikely to lead to a government being formed, especially one that could continue to implement the terms of the bailout. There will probably be new elections.

Richard Gingras, head of News Products at Google, recently spoke at the spoke at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard on the future of news in a digital world.

This is a media world where accusations are taken as fact. Rumours are news. Opinion is preferred to news gathering and accurate reporting. News and analysis is instant. Answers are demanded, now.

We have live blogging of the event from Matt Stempeck. He reports Gingras as saying that we look back at the 40 golden years of newspaper profitability and distribution as if things had been structured that way forever. But these four decades was triggered by an earlier media disruption: television. The rise of television advertising caused a contraction in the newspaper business, where major metropolitan markets went from supporting 4-5 newspapers to 1-2 papers, and these remaining papers usually had a business agreement of some sort. The limited number of remaining companies allowed monopolistic pricing.

It is now five years since the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09 began and there is still no substantive sign of a full recovery of the world economy---especially in the US and in Europe. Consequently, concern is increasingly shifting from financial crisis and recession to slow growth or stagnation. Stagnation and financial crisis are now seen as inter-connected judging from what is happening in Spain and Greece.

China is seen to be an exception to this narrative:--the rare ray of sunshine for a global economy in recession. China's massive stimulus package ($585 billion ) enabled it to come out of the Great Financial Crisis period largely unaffected with a double-digit rate of growth and this growth machine is seen to be a counterbalance to the tendency toward stagnation at the global economy level. In Adelaide the local boosters say that everything hinges on BHP going ahead with the expansion of Olympic Dam in South Australia's north. That expansion depends on China continue to boom.

The Chinese exception narrative holds that China's can drive the world economy back into growth, and so keep the developed nations from what appears to be a generation of stagnation and intense political struggles over austerity politics. The complex system of global supply chains that has made China the world’s factory--(think Apple and Foxconn) has also made China increasingly dependent on foreign capital and foreign markets, whilst in turn making these markets vulnerable to any disruption in the Chinese economy.

I watched some of Rebeca Brook's appearance at the Leveson Inquiry. The ex-tabloid editor didn't give much away about her career moves and political fixes. She is at the nexus of the nexus of the tabloid press and political power the Leveson inquiry is trying to uncover.

We gained an insight into the close connection/networks in the UK that had developed between the political class and Murdoch's media company in the UK. We are looking back into the decades-long process that made Murdoch so powerful and unaccountable.

The showbiz routine is the old stuff of hard work, small business and reward, insisting the government live within its means just as households have to, reducing the “massive” debt and attacking public servants for wasting all our hard earned money. The pose that is struck is one of big business being the victims of nasty state repression--Soviet style.

The golden future that is so promised will come through getting of all that nasty debt, and reducing government spending, removing taxes on the miners and the polluters, and greater workplace flexibility”. Hey presto, Australia's economic growth machine will go into overdrive on wealth creation and we will all be relaxed, prosperous and comfortable for evermore.

The Gillard Government's 2012 budget has been and gone. Most of it was strategically leaked in advance in an attempt to help transform the government’s bad public image and to fend off another Opposition attack about another "broken promise". It probably change the bad image.

There was no attempt to invest in Australia’s future productivity and growth through genuine funding increases to higher education, scientific and medical research, in nation-building infrastructure, in innovation in small firms throughout the economy, and greater steps to decarbonise the economy---eg., axing the diesel fuel excise rebate.

The budget was designed to give some credence to its claims for economic competence and to put a floor under the downward spiral of unpopularity with new family payments (the long shadow of John Howard's deserving poor) from the new mining resources tax, and the now scrapped 1 per cent cut to company tax. It's wealth redistribution not wealth creation says Big Business through hissed breath. It doesn't build business confidence. Class warfare say others.

All the headlines in the media are about the Craig Thomson affair not the decline in tax revenue (GST), or the real decline in expenditure as it is the former that is the lever for sustained period of conservative political dominance.

I caught the last bit of Question Time in the House of Representatives. It was the end of a motion to suspend standing orders to move that MP Craig Thomson be suspended for 14 days. The background is the Fair Work Australia's long awaited report into the dysfunctional Health Services Union.

This stated that Thompson to repeatedly provided false and misleading information to investigators over his denial that he used his union credit card to pay for prostitutes. The report recommends civil court action against Craig Thomson Fair Work Australia Australia has referred Thomson’s breaches to the Federal Court of Australia for civil action.

The Gillard Government survived the vote (70-72) ---Andrew Wilkie is now voting with the Coalition---and it continues to survive by a thread. Why didn't Thomson stand aside from the ALP much earlier? Why didn't Gillard argue for a more open relationship between the unions and the ALP much earlier on?

So the Reserve Bank reduces interest rates last week, while a week later, fiscal policy is set to be tightened in an attempt to bring in a budget surplus. That are two policy arms working at cross purposes. The implication of the former is that because the economy is sluggish, the RBA has cut rates to provide a stimulus.

The budget surplus, on the other hand, is contractory in that the fiscal austerity weakens the economy slows economic growth and increases the potential rising unemployment. That would mean the RBA would have to reduce interest rates even further to compensate for a slowing economy.

If the economics doesn't make sense the politics does. The Gillard Government is in such a weakened position that it is forced to prove its credentials as good economic managers. The underlying current is that the Gillard Government can’t be trusted to use our money appropriately and so we should be giving them less of it. The best way to do this is to end the waste and curtail government spending.The rhetoric here is one of 'bloated' or 'inefficient' public services.

The conservatives in Britain appear to be locked into defending and supporting Murdoch and News International. Apparently Tory MPs are still fighting to stop Labour and the Liberal Democrats saying that Rupert Murdoch is "unfit to run a public company".

All the evidence points to the senior Conservatives being complicit in promising sweetheart deals to News Corporation to the point of fawning over Murdoch.They appeared to be like the courtiers of the Sun King. Do they fear that Murdoch will destroy them, even though his power is broken?

An editorial in The Australian ways into the debate identifying Murdoch's critics as the Left-liberal clique.

Much of Europe has returned to recession. The eurozone crisis is out of control again. Unemployment is rising almost everywhere. People across all segments of the societies in the Eurozone are anxious about their status, living conditions, income or job prospects – often all at once.

France's massive challenges are a debt to GDP of about 90 per cent, a worsening trade deficit and an unsustainable public spending ratio. France's public debt is so high that interest repayments alone account for the second highest state expenditure after education. The neo-liberal agenda is the contradictory constellation of restoring competitiveness, job creation and fiscal retrenchment.

Behind this is the conflict between the dynamics of the global economy and the struggle of national politicians to control and temper it. François Hollande's central message is that the global financial markets must be determinedly reined in for the primacy of politics to return. Can a nation-state achieve this? Is it possible? Or can it only be done from within the eurozone?

I heard a report this morning on Radio National's top line Breakfast programme about the effect of rising electricity prices on low income households. This was in the context of the rising cost of living burden.

The neo-liberal program is one of rising fuel prices, deregulation, privatisation, and the rapid escalation of electricity prices paid by households. The substantial increases are far in excess of general price and wage movements during the last few years.The increases are 60% in four states and territories with forecasts increases in residential electricity prices of 37% up to 2014. In NSW the increase is even more. Disconnection rates are on the rise amongst the working poor and those on a pension.

Though it was acknowledged that the price increases were for infrastructure investment--network upgrades for fossil fuel power stations-- the carbon tax (commentators do not use "a price on carbon" language) was seen as an extra burden that was too much to bear. Though compensation for the increased price on carbon was mentioned (those on lower incomes would receive more compensation than the increased cost of electricity) it was dismissed. No one believed it.

The economic crisis in Spain continues to deepen, whilst the future of the Eurozone banking system hangs in balance. It increasingly looks as if the eurozone crisis is to a large extent an economic growth crisis.

Spain ad an enormous housing bubble and when the bubble burst, the Spanish economy was left high and dry. Spain’s fiscal problems are a consequence of its recession , not its cause. Even though the cities the bars and restaurants in Madrid and Barcelona are full, there is rising unemployment, increasing homeless, increasing numbers of people getting evicted from their homes as banks foreclose on properties bought during the boom; derelict buildings, closed down businesses, banks with lots of bad debts from the housing bubble; business investment is collapsing. The social effects are quite evident in the poorer regions --eg., Galicia.

The politics of austerity continues to rule in Spain even though tightening fiscal policy in the teeth of a recession is very dangerous. This is to pursue self-defeating economic policies. Fiscal austerity of the order required by the EU will simply push the Spanish economy into a slump, which in turn will worsen the debt position of the private sector, amplifying the required amount of deleveraging, and ultimately how much private bank debt ends up on the state's books.

I cannot see much happening with respect to reform of the media emerging out of the Convergence Review and the Finkelston Inquiry. The Gillard Government is on its knees on the ropes and punch drunk from all the body blows to be be in any position to rock the very powerful media corporations that float on copy from the public relations world. This government is in no fit state to undertake a major overhaul of media regulation for a digital world.

The Convergence Review's diagnosis was convincing for a dynamic media world. In a converged digital world it is no longer viable to argue that news and commentary in print media should be treated differently from news and commentary in television, radio and online. Secondly, the new industry-led body should cover all platforms—print and online, television and radio--but not the internet.

Hence the idea of the one stop shop---a converged Press Council and Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to keep news organisations honest through news standards, adjudicating on complaints and providing timely sanctions for the wrongs. A digital economy regulator that is technology neutral is a good idea.

Can federal Labor claw back the scale of the disaster at the next election? If so, what is the best means of saving them from a wipeout? They face a future where few of them will be left.

The Labor backbench must now be thinking along these lines surely. They must realize that there will be no lift in the polls from a May budget that is in surplus. Nor will the introduction of carbon tax compensation will help the government recover its standing all that much.

The way things stand now an Abbott led Coalition could take control of both houses of Parliament at the next election, and Labor's reform legacy would be gone. Carbon pricing gone. Mining tax gone. NBN gone. Water reform gone. Media reform gone. The road to the future would lead back to the past.

I appreciate that the Gillard Government has been under a barrage of assaults aimed at destablization from the word go by all those vested interests who have opposed reform. News Ltd's aggression and manufactured rage cannot be explained by the performance of the government or the behaviour of the current prime minister.

As we know the digital revolution is disrupting the music industry, photography, newspapers, television and book publishing. With respect to the latter the e-book looks to become the publishing market's primary engine. Authors will go digital-first and the most successful will land a traditional book deal with legacy publishers.

Jason Epstein, in an interesting post on the US government's Justice Department’s suit against Apple and several major book publishers for conspiring to fix retail prices of e-books on the New York Book Review blog, highlights how digital technology is a disruptive technology for book publishers. His succinct observation is that:

The revolutionary process by which all books, old and new, in all languages, will soon be available digitally, at practically no cost for storage and delivery, to a radically decentralized world-wide market at the click of a mouse is irreversible. The technologically obsolete system, in which physical inventory is stored in publishers’ warehouses and trucked to fixed retail locations, will sooner or later be replaced by the more efficient digital alternative.

This cartoon is pretty much how the sleaze looks to many with respect to corporate power media power and politicians. They are seen to be shamelessly courting" the media mogul and doing his biding-- the Minister for Murdoch-- as they duck the need for increased media regulation, more competition, and less concentrated media ownership.

In doing so they tacitly agree with Murdoch's reduction of democracy to different media in the deregulated market, and that the good life is one of the exercise of power for profit making in a commodified world.

The relationship between media and politicians was described by Murdoch at the Leveson Inquiry in terms of "you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” Bite Murdoch and he'll put you down. He will also betray you when you are no longer useful to his commercial interests--as the News of the World journalists can attest.

What stood out during Rupert and James Murdoch's performance at the Leveson Inquiry was their willingness to blame former executives for all the bad stuff. They--the News of the World's former legal manager Tom Crone and the then editor Colin Myler -- were engaged in a coverup of the phone-hacking saga. Rupert Murdoch even included his colleague of 50 years, Les Hinton - for (allegedly) keeping him in the dark about the phone-hacking saga.

Over at The Conversation Stephen King interviews Graeme Samuel. The issues are wide ranging but they do centre around the quality of public debate in Australia. Samuel central argument is that that we are really looking at a very, very bad political debate. By bad he means:

bad as being highly populist, and therefore less principled. Less focused on fundamental principles, fundamental philosophy and fundamental attitudes about what’s in the public interest, rather than looking much more at what is popular in the short term. We’re seeing debates occurring now which are recidivist, in economic terms, in a way that I thought would never, ever occur...we are talking about issues such as subsidies for different areas in the manufacturing industry. We are seeing a potential re-examination of whether or not the value of the dollar ought to be manipulated. It’s called manipulation now, rather than “fixing” the exchange rate..We’re seeing issues about putting in place other forms of protection for different industries. Raising the spectre now of the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) having lower thresholds at which it might examine acquisitions.

Harry Evans, the clerk of the Senate from 1988 to 2009, has an excellent interpretation of the importance of the Slipper affair in our political life. He puts it into the context of both major political parties being guilty of using the speakership as a place to park people to get them out of the way of the ministry, or to reward or buy them off – simply another job within the patronage of the party heavies, or worse, of the prime minister.

The result has been notoriously incompetent and biased speakers, who have seen their task as helping the government rather than the upholding of proper democratic processes of parliament. Anyone who watches question time in the House of Representatives would be aware of the problems caused by incompetent and biased speakers.

He connects this problem in the House of Representatives to the larger one of the decline of representative or liberal democracy. What Evans has in mind is not the way the democratic processes have been captured by the corporations; or the way that Murdoch's media empire can threaten to shape public opinion in order to persuade politicians so in awe of Murdoch that they leaped to accommodate him without him needing to ask out loud. They allowed him to circumvent the regulatory media law so that his empire could continue to expand.

The Leveson Inquiry appears to confirm what the critics of the Murdochs have often suspected: that they have exploited their position as newspaper owners to win secret favours from governments. Emails released by News Corp --- they were written by James Murdoch's chief lobbyist, Frédéric Michel--- appear to show that Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, and his office passed confidential and market-sensitive information to the Murdoch empire to support its takeover of BSkyB.

The emails show that News Corp expected Hunt to push for the BSkyB deal to be approved; that Hunt providing advice guidance and privileged access to News Corporation, thereby acting as a back channel for the Murdochs; and that Hunt saw his job to help the Murdochs to get their bid for BSkyB successfully past the official regulators.

In The Guardian Nick Davies says that what is emerging is evidence suggesting a deal between the Conservative leadership and News Corp.

In its crudest form, the suggestion is that the Murdochs used the Sun to make sure that Gordon Brown was driven out of Downing Street so that the incoming Conservative government could deliver them a sequence of favours – a fair wind for them to take over BSkyB; the emasculation of the much resented Ofcom; and a severe funding cut to their primary broadcasting rival, the BBC.

The big news from the first round of French presidential vote is not François Hollande moving a step closer to becoming the first Socialist president of France in a generation by beating the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy. It is the Front National's Marine Le Pen's strong showing --18% of the vote.

This is a party that is openly xenophobic, and campaigned on an anti-immigrant, anti-Islam platform. It attracted the support of those opposed to immigrants who takes jobs and social benefits, Islam, globalisation, open borders, and the euro that drive jobs to faraway countries, with no apparent benefits for ordinary people. This is a rightwing cultural conservatism that is suffused with nostalgia for an always better and often imaginary national past – the era before mass immigration, globalisation, Europe, and international finance destroyed, they believe, the old, white, illiberal, homogeneous nation states of Europe.

More broadly there is a democratic reaction to the German-scripted programme of austerity and legally enshrined fiscal rigour that curbs the budgetary sovereignty of elected governments. This socialist François Hollande's central campaign pledge was to reopen Chancellor Angela Merkel's eurozone fiscal pact, an international treaty signed by 25 EU leaders and currently being ratified. The budget cuts are required by EU fiscal rules that mandate that eurozone countries run annual deficits no more than 3% of GDP, Hollande calls for a refocusing of the crisis-fighting strategy away from austerity alone to include measures to boost growth.

I'd always thought that it couldn't get any worse for the Gillard Government. They remained deeply unpopular in the electorate---it is wipeout on current polls-- but they were pushing on with aged care reform, returning the budget to surplus and laying the ground work for a national disability insurance scheme.

But things do get worse. Federal Labor's determined desire to stay in power has just been undercut by the Slipper affair. The government is again forced to survive on the narrowest possible margin. The government's world of perpetual crisis.

The judgement is in: the Gillard Government is a lame duck administration. Whether this is a reasonable judgement is beside the point. People have switched off. They are no longer listening. They want a return to majority government. Or so it appears.