It is clear that Tony Abbott has no idea why Aboriginal people make the ‘lifestyle choice’ to live in remote communities, or God forbid, their traditional lands. (Many though, are one and the same).

He has been slammed from Indigenous and non-Indigenous community leaders for the tactless, insensitive and ignorant comment.

But why was it so wrong? Nobody has been able to tell us.

I’m not the Minister for Aborigines – Tony Abbott has that distinction – but I am qualified* to tell him where he was wrong.

It comes down to the attitudes towards the land (which I have written about previously in Land ownership: it’s not all black and white). Though written a number of years ago it is brought into relevance following the Prime Minister’s comment.

Let’s have a look at land.

In most western societies land ownership is considered a form of security or an expression of status. Most non- Aboriginal Australians aspire to own a piece of real estate, and to meet that dream they work, save, borrow and mortgage their lives away. Land ownership is confirmed with a Title Deed which is identified with a Volume, and Folio and sub-section number on which the land dimensions and boundaries are clearly marked. On this land the owner may build a dwelling, grow or raise produce for income, or rent out the land for profit.

In rural Australia most land is used for growling cereal crops or raising live-stock. This is done within the boundaries of the owner’s land. These ventures are filled with risk: Dramatic seasonal changes; fluctuating market prices for the produce; diseases; cash flow problems; farming on unsuitable land (poor land management) and a host of other variables could force ownership to be relinquished.

Traditionally, Aboriginal people do not own land. Instead they are a part of the land and this link was formed during the Dreaming. In the Dreaming, people were created from the land and this is the land they still inhabit. It is on this basis that Aboriginal people are claiming legal title to land, supported by the belief that the spiritual ancestors who shaped the land still inhabit it; the land still embodies the sacredness of the Dreaming events. Traditional ownership was validated if your Dreaming Ancestors inhabited a particular area of land. Traditional ownership certainly does not shield Aborigines from some of the dangers that face western land owners. However their land management techniques and their attitudes to the environment make the land more sustainable.

As Aborigines are not land owners they feel that they have a responsibility to the environment. The environment, the land, and even the sky were created in one – as were the people – and all are related. With this attitude (belief) is it any surprise that the Aboriginal people never took anything from nature? Aborigines are the original conservationists and their use of land management promoted ecological health.

An example of this is fire stick farming: The burning of undergrowth in wooded areas that would promote the germination of new plants, and thus attract the animals that were an important part of an Aborigine’s diet. This burning was carried out before the dry season and was done carefully and systematically. No more was burned than necessary. Burning was also more than just sound land management; it was evidence that the land was healthy and being fully utilised. There was also a religious significance to burning: As the Ancestral spirits of the Dreaming still inhabit the land, the burnings provided these spiritual inhabitants with lands on which they could hunt.

Conservation was also extended to all practices of hunting and gathering. No more food was taken than required and no food source was over exploited. In some societies prohibitions were placed on the taking of immature plants or animals. In times of crisis, such as drought or flood, land ownership need never be relinquished. The resources have been preserved.

The western attitude to the land did not encourage sound management or preservation techniques. Whereas the Aborigines were careful in their exploitation of resources, the westerners unwittingly created vast tracts of land devastation. For instance, the over grazing of stock has rendered many areas infertile. The senseless chopping down of forests has destroyed delicate eco-systems. The salinity of the waterways is largely due to pollution. It is evident that no consideration had been given to the protection of natural resources. How little are the changes of attitudes since 1788? Land exploitation was used to advance British colonisation and became the rationale for European land ownership. It is ironic that most European-Australians view Aboriginal lands as inhospitable, barren or unforsaken, when it could be argued that the reverse could apply.

But the crux of the issue is this: Living on traditional land is not a lifestyle choice – it is an obligation. Not only to the ancestors, but the land itself.

Anyone who has been on Twitter today would have no doubt seen this tweet from any number of Twitter users:

Electronic graffiti? “@TeddyMercer: The Internet has a long memory RT @marcfennell Well this isn't awkward #libspill http://t.co/p2KaKNPSYC”

— 💧 Vonnie V (@visivoz) February 9, 2015

Did you notice the results: 71-31 in favour of Gillard? (It was actually 31, not 13 as quoted above). Looks fairly safe compared to the 61-39 in today’s vote. And Tony’s decree that he will now get on with the job of governing is certainly in stark contrast to his suggestion to the former Labor Governments as noted in the above tweet. Before, during or following leadership turmoil in the former Labor Governments Tony Abbott was set to pounce with his mandatory call for a new election. Here’s a few of them:

Speaking at the opening of the Grove fruit juice factory in Warwick this morning, Mr Abbott took aim at the “faceless men” he said were responsible for the ongoing instability within the Labor party.

“What I think the Australian people yearn for right now is a Prime Minister they chose, not a Prime Minister who the faceless men choose,” he said.

“Whatever happens on Monday or next week it will be the faceless men pulling the strings and the only way we can get away from a government based on dodgy back door deals… is to have an election.

“Let the people decide.”

. . .

Ms Gillard today won the ballot against Kevin Rudd, 71 votes to 31.

Mr Abbott said there were still 31 members of caucus who did not have confidence in Ms Gillard.

“What I think today is likely to be is not so much a new start for this prime minister but merely a stay of execution,” he told reporters in Canberra.

Mr Abbott renewed his call for an early federal election.

“The clear answer from today is that the only way we can get real change is with an election,” he said.

“The prime minister should be chosen by the people – not the faceless men.”

Asked if he would move a no confidence motion against the government, Mr Abbott remained uncommitted.

“I have no confidence in this prime minister,” he replied.

. . .

The independents and Greens have welcomed the end of the Labor’s leadership melee saying the focus can now return to policy, while Tony Abbott renewed calls for an early election.The independents and Greens have welcomed the end of the Labor’s leadership melee saying the focus can now return to policy, while Tony Abbott renewed calls for an early election.

Mr Abbott said: ”We need an election not because I particularly like elections or I particularly want the Australian people to go through the inconvenience … but because I think that the Prime Minister of this country should be chosen by the people and not by the faceless men.

. . .

But wait! There’s more! Even Joe Hockey even got in on the act:

The Labor Party is, yet again, going through another messy leadership round. Australia needs strong, decisive leadership from a government that is united and has a common cause. Julia Gillard should just pull on a leadership battle with Kevin Rudd and have the matter resolved; otherwise it is quite clear that she is going to remain a lame duck leader. Australia deserves better than a lame duck Prime Minister. We deserve strong leadership. We deserve strong direction. Anything Julia Gillard says today is immediately discounted by the electorate.

We need strong and decisive leadership at the moment and we are not going to get that until we have a general election.

If Julia Gillard can’t resolve her problems within the Labor Party, she can either call on a leadership battle with Kevin Rudd or call an election – frankly Australians just want to have a general election, wherever they are.

. . .

I’m reluctant to be a commentator here, but I would think that Kevin Rudd has to do something. It’s kind of ridiculous that he and his supporters are out there backgrounding. It means the Labor Party is focusing on their own jobs rather than the jobs of workers and Australians. I suspect that Kevin Rudd will move sometime in the not too distant future, probably before Queensland and quite frankly if he becomes the leader they’ll dump their pledge to have a surplus and he’ll spend some money and call an election.

Well there you have it. Whenever there was leadership unrest in the former Governments Tony Abbott (and his side-kick) demanded an election. Ironic, isn’t it? And in light of today’s events and subsequent promises one could also say hypocritical.

Let their words come back to haunt them.

Some politicians – Tony Abbott an expert among them – realise the importance of dictating the terms of public discourse. That is, to get us talking on issues they want us to talk about, which are usually to avoid the public engaging on issues that might actually be important to them. A recent and telling example; the aforementioned had large numbers of the voting public satisfied their family would be $550 a year better off under a Coalition Government after the dastardly ‘carbon tax’ was repealed. You may recall it was never mentioned that many of those same families would annually lose $1,400 with the Coalition’s scrapping of the Schoolkids Bonus. The $550 saving was mentioned by Tony Abbott how many times?

Tony Abbott had succeeded in getting people to focus on the unimportant, and he was successful for doing so.

He has now done it again, though not with any intent.

Every important issue his government needs to address; be it social, economic or environmental has slipped off the public lip since Prince Philip’s bizarre knighthood was announced. The widening gap of equality in this country, and one for which the government was damned for, seems to only be an issue of importance pre January 26.

Three days later we are not only still talking about Prince Philip’s knighthood, but also the immediate fate of the man who bestowed the knighthood upon him. These, naturally, make delicious talking points but they are a deflection from what might appeal to us on voting day. Namely, the messes this government has made (which I’m sure they’d be happy not to have us mumble about them).

AIMN reader Colin thinks the same way. A friend commented to him:

“I’m amazed at how quickly we as Australians jump on something so trivial, yet we sit by silently on some of society’s biggest challenges with nothing more than a whimper for fear of upsetting the perceived public majority or being branded alternative, or even worse, a bigot! I guess I’m just disillusioned with people and I think what we really rate as important in life these days are those which cater to our selfishness”.

Which leads me to the point of this article, Colin’s response, which he sent to The AIMN and has approved its publication:

I agree that you have every right to feel disillusioned and I think many Australians have been feeling the same way for a very long time. However; for this issue not to be a political debate is a tall order, because it is our Prime Minister who has opened this ridiculous can of worms.

On the surface it may appear to be “trivial”, and let’s be honest, how many of us really care about knights and dames (an award discontinued by the Hawke Labor Government) – I think that this is the very reason that everyone is so pissed off – ‘knights and dames’ are simply not an important or relevant national issue that should be high on the Prime Minister’s to do list!

It was a brazen Abbott that declared during the pre-election campaign that he wanted “to be known as the Prime Minister who keeps commitments” and who went on to pleadge “we will be a no-surprises, no-excuses government, because you are sick of nasty surprises and lame excuses from people that you have trusted with your future”. Yet since coming into power the Coalition have surprised us by, for eample:

• doubling the deficit by changes to government spending and changes to government assumptions. Blown the deficit out to $40.4 Billion by 15 December 2014.
• providing us with the highest official jobless rate in more than a decade.
• defunding peak organisations that advocate for the poor and oppressed, including Homelessness Australia, Financial Counselling Australia and National Shelter.
• abolishing ‘Medicare locals’, despite a promise to not cut the health budget.
• breaking the election promise of no cuts to education by cutting funding for trade training centres in schools.

The list of cuts and broken promises goes on, and on, and on (and despite the regression of government services – the deficit just goes up, and up, and up). Everybody should acquaint themselves with the list Sally McManus keeps of the wreckage and broken promises. It is worth a look.

As far as the list of broken promises and wreckage goes, you simply can’t make this stuff up. It contains documented, undeniable FACTS (just like the evidence of Climate Change).

But ‘credit’ where ‘credit’ is due – they have ‘stopped the boats’ of course, however, at an enormous cost. The deaths of two young men (Reza Berati 23yo and Hamid Kehazaei 24yo) plus scores more being physically injured, the ongoing mental anguish suffered by men, women and children at the hands of our ‘successful’ government. And how much are they spending on all this?

Furthermore; the serious and internationally damaging claims that laws have been broken by the government while jeopardising the lives and safety of asylum seekers. It is beyond human decency to treat people this way. From separating a mother from her 4 day old baby; leaving a baby with a defective pacemaker on Christmas Island for 2 months; refugees being forced to queue up to 4 hours for toilets and food on Manus Island; and claims of a cover-up of violent PNG police-army clash with refugees on Manus Island. The shameful list is extensive. You can see a list of these ‘shame files’ here.

Despite the evidence that this appalling government is rotten to the core, and has not even remotely delivered what it has promised; we have a Prime Minister preoccupied with dragging the country back 30 years with trivial matters such as knights and dames!

So yes, the Australia Day announcement of a non-Aussie as our newest knight may seem ‘trivial’ compared with the real issues we face, however, when considered in full context with the current state of affairs rolled out by the Liberals (and the ongoing bizarre and patronising priorities of Abbott), then we all have every right to be angry and concerned about this latest gaffe.

The alarm bells should be ringing loud and clear!

Before January 26 the alarm bells were ringing loud and clear. Tony Abbott made them stop. It’s time to ring them again.

Tony Abbott “continues to make the most astounding, cringe-worthy gaffes that stretch all credulity” writes Jennifer Wilson.

This, today from a Prime Minister who spends 4.3 million of taxpayer dollars monitoring social media, and employing spin doctors to “offer strategic communications advice” from the information gleaned:

I’ll leave social media to its own devices [said Abbott today]. Social media is kind of like electronic graffiti and I think that in the media, you make a big mistake to pay too much attention to social media,” Mr Abbott said. You wouldn’t report what’s sprayed up on the walls of buildings…

In spite of that 4.3 million taxpayer dollars’ worth of strategic communication advice, in spite of the iron control reportedly exerted over the PM by Chief of Staff Peta Credlin, Abbott continues to make the most astounding, cringe-worthy gaffes that stretch all credulity, and nobody wants him anywhere near them.

So it would seem the spin doctors and Ms Credlin are catastrophically useless at their jobs, because just when you think Abbott can’t get anymore bizarre, he goes and smashes all his previous records of stupid.

If Credlin and the strategic communications advisors were employed by anyone other than the LNP government they’d be sacked. I wonder how any of them will ever find alternative employment, given their unbroken record of spectacular failure with the Prime Minister.

Please do leave social media to its own devices, Mr Abbott, and stop wasting our money on monitoring it to see what it’s saying about you. It’s never anything good, you can be sure of that. How many millions of our dollars do you need to spend to find out what an absolute fool we think you are?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. No matter how many dollars and spin doctors you throw at it, you just can’t. A pig’s ear is a pig’s ear and right now, on Australia Day 2015, we have a pig’s ear in charge.

(I suppose I should say sorry to pigs, who are really pretty smart animals.)

(Which Tony Abbott is not. A smart animal, that is.)

Image from noplaceforsheep

This article was first publish on No Place For Sheep.

In opposition and in government, the Coalition has moaned with frenetic monotony that Medicare is unsustainable. The fact is, it isn’t. But while they can maintain the rage and attempt to convince everybody that the country can’t afford to keep it in its present form, they’ll find one way or another to use it as an economic scapegoat.

The news that they had scrapped their planned cuts to the Medicare rebate was only a temporary reprieve as we’ve been warned that they are still committed to introducing price signals into the national icon. Why? This was summed up by Tony Abbott:

Mr Abbott has called on the opposition and the crossbenchers to come up with alternative savings measures to pay off the debt and deficit instead of obstructing the government’s attempts to repair the budget.

It’s the same-old same-old from Tony Abbott. Blame Labor, hit the poor. The budget must be in one hell of a mess if the country’s prosperity is at stake because of Medicare.

With the government’s back-down on the planned cuts to the rebate we can expect a ramp-up in their rhetoric. The attempts to convince us that Medicare is unsustainable will go into overdrive.

I agree with the government that the budget is in a shambles, but I disagree at where the fault lies. One good thing – for them – is that while they keep Medicare in the news the real culprits behind our budget woes remain out of sight. Or as Richard Denniss points out, the much talked about budget deficit gives the Treasurer the chance to keep his agenda in the public domain. Which is, of course, that the budget can’t be fixed because Medicare is the hole in the economic bucket.

With the help of the Murdoch media not only will the Medicare bashing be kept front and centre, but the ‘real’ culprits for the deficit will be kept hidden from public view. The average punter has been deluded into believing that Medicare is unsustainable and that the only way the budget can be fixed is if services to the less well-off (aka the ‘bludgers’) are trimmed. The government and the Murdoch media have managed to sustain both the delusions rather effectively.

I wonder if the mug punter is aware of how much the Abbott Government is actually helping the wealthy. At not only the poor’s expense, but at their’s too. The facts might shock them.

How can we accept that Medicare is the boil on the budget’s backside when being slipped into the hands of the wealthy is enough money that, if ceased, would go close to balancing social inequality? And the budget, of course.

Stop pandering to the wealthy, and Medicare becomes sustainable. It is the luxuries afforded to the well-off that are unsustainable. How much is it costing us? Too much. Here are some examples.

George Lekakis writes in The New Daily that:

Former Liberal Party leader John Hewson last year called on the Abbott government to slash the superannuation tax concessions available to high-income earners.

One of the effects of the changes introduced by Peter Costello in 2006 is that most multi-millionaires can structure their assets so that they pay no tax in retirement even though they might be reaping more than $150,000 a year.

In an opinion column for the Australian Financial Review last April, Mr Hewson made three salient observations about the existing superannuation tax arrangements:

• The tax breaks on super are costing the government in foregone revenue about $45 billion a year and this is roughly the same amount that is spent each year on the age pension.

• The dollar value of the tax breaks is growing faster than expenditure on the aged pension, making concessions on super contributions a much bigger threat to balancing government finances in the near-term.

• The super tax concessions are skewed to high-income earners: the top 10 per cent of income earners reap more than 36 per cent of the tax concession dollars, while the bottom 10 per cent are actually penalised for making super contributions.

Did you read that? $45 billion a year just on superannuation tax breaks. And who gets the bulk of that? Yes, the wealthy. (And it certainly makes the $7.5 billion spent on Newstart look paltry in comparison).

This year Medicare will cost us $20 billion. I’m happy to contribute towards the cost, but I sure do hate losing out because of the $45 billion tax breaks (alone) to the country’s well-off.

But it’s only the start.

Of the $18 billion in lost revenue over the next four years from the abolition of the ‘mining tax’, $1.6 billion of that was “purely a gift from Mr Abbott to the miners”.

Scrapping the mining tax will cost us $5.3 billion and who gets that? It will go mainly to the biggest mining companies:

The mining industry is clearly at the top of the government’s priority list. They sit far above concerns about the cost of living for working families.

Then there’s the $2.4 billion a year the government gives back to property investors because of negative gearing. How many welfare recipients have investment properties? How many of the well-off do?

And while the price of fuel costs you a couple of dollars extra week due to Hockey’s new surcharge you might like to know that:

A new report finds exploration by coal and energy companies is subsidised by Australian taxpayers by as much as $US3.5 billion ($4 billion) every year in the form of direct spending and tax breaks.

Heard enough? There’s no doubt more, but this small handful of examples alone should be enough for the average person to realise how much the Abbott Government is helping the wealthy.

Medicare – I repeat – isn’t the problem. The government is. They’re giving too much money to the rich.

Hundreds of quality articles were published on The AIMN in 2014. Which ones were the most popular with our readers?

Unsurprisingly, each of the Top 5 have something to do with Tony Abbott, his government or their policies.

The Top Five is based on the number of views only. It does not take into account the number of comments, the post’s popularity with other online media sites such as Facebook, or whether they are actually the best posts written all year. What they did tell us is that people like reading alternative (from the mainstream media) articles about Tony Abbott.

Here are the Top 5 (based on number of readers):

Number One: An Open Letter to Frances Abbott by Victoria Rollison.

Excerpt:

At the end of the day, this hasn’t really been about you, but it has affected you. You’ve been caught in your father’s web of perceived hypocrisy and you’re a victim of your father’s terrible decisions just as the rest of Australia is. When your father leads a government who asks that everyone does the heavy lifting, you must understand that it’s really important that the members of that government do the heavy lifting too. And when this quite clearly hasn’t happened in the case of your education expense, it’s only fair that we all get a chance to know whether our Prime Minister is willing to do what he’s asking all of us to do too.

Number Two: The facts about ‘boat people’ – The government and media are lying by Glenn Murray.

Excerpt:

The fact that most people don’t know this stuff is testament to the dishonesty of our politicians and the brainwashing by or media.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s all fact on public record. Look it up. It’s another instance of the government and media distracting voters from real issues by pointing the finger and finding a common enemy.

That’s why the Coalition built its 2013 election campaign on the ‘Stop the Boats’ line. And why they changed the name of the immigration department from “The Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship” to “The Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection”. And why they even changed the processing label applied to asylum seeker boat arrivals from “Irregular Maritime Arrivals” to “Illegal Maritime Arrivals”.

None of this is accidental.

Number Three: The less they know the better by Kaye Lee.

Excerpt:

The Age of Entitlement may be over for pensioners, students, sick people and the unemployed, but it is alive and well for our fearless leader.

Aside from his salary of $507,338 a year, Tony Abbott has claimed $628,736.33 in expenses for the first 6 months of this year.

Number Four: Seminary similarity by Kaye Lee.

Excerpt:

Recently I came across an extraordinary article published in the Bulletin magazine (reproduced at nofibs) written by Tony Abbott in 1987, six months after he left St Patrick’s seminary.

Before I go any further, I realise that is 27 years ago and that people change or “grow” as Tony likes to put it. The disturbing aspect of this story is how much it reflects the Tony we see today. All quotes come from the article Tony wrote, and an article published in response a week later written by Bill Wright, a priest and church historian, who was vice-rector at St Patrick’s whilst Tony was there.

From the start, Tony was a controversial figure at the seminary. Whilst some seemed to admire him, others found him “just too formidable to talk to unless to agree; overbearing and opiniated”. After the heady days of university, “Tony was not, on the whole, impressed by his companions”.

In his article, Abbott blames the church for not living up to his ideals.

Number Five: So let me get this straight by Kaye Lee.

Excerpt:

If we keep the carbon tax and the mining tax and cut all the above wasteful expenditures then we will be a long way towards cutting the deficit without ME having to foot the bill for your decisions which, might I say, show you have absolutely NO idea about spending priorities. I doubt any of you have ever had to work to a budget before because you are making a god almighty mess of it and if I am going to pay to get us out of trouble then I want a say on how it is spent.

All great articles, but I can add another 200 to the list from all of our authors.

2015 has started with a bigger bang than 2014 and our articles have maintained the great standard from last year.

Tony Abbott – while he remains in the job – certainly remains newsworthy.

We are soon to close the doors on 2014. Am I right in presuming that we’ll all be glad to see the back of it?

It hasn’t been too memorable, on the political front at least.

It has been a year where ordinary Australians have been kicked from pillar to post by an ideology-driven government whose vision clearly focuses on feathering the nests of the not-so-ordinary Australians.

It has been a year where all social, economic, technological and ecological issues have been ignored by a government too inept to confront them. And perhaps too blind to notice.

Sitting at the head of the table of this atrocious government is possibly the most inept national leader in the Western world. You have to wonder how such an incompetent, out of depth, out of touch individual manages to keep his job. He has been lucky, in my opinion, to last as long as he has.

Yes, it has been some year.

My friends at The Political Sword have summed it up much better than I could, so it is my pleasure to borrow their summary:

It was a year in which we saw Abbott and his cronies trying to destroy the country and make us a paradise for the neo-liberals, the neo-cons and the economists that support them — and, of course, big business. We saw the worst budget in living memory and have, so far, only been saved from its full ramifications by the senate. We saw Clive Palmer appear with Al Gore to talk about the importance of climate change but, at the same time, cave in to support the repeal of the carbon price. We have seen Abbott, more through luck than design, deflect the budget issue and ‘bask’ in the glory of the world stage, taking on the Russian bear and alienating our closest Asian neighbour. He has ‘stopped the boats’ but also stopped government transparency in the process. He is undertaking more privatisation of government services and encouraging the states to do the same. Without openly saying so, he is pursuing a neo-liberal and economic rationalist agenda backed to the hilt by the IPA (and, as others have noted, he is, to a significant extent, following its ‘hit list’).

That says it all!

As does this photo, which tells us a lot about our prime minister even though he’s missing from it.

He had just delivered a speech at the United Nations. I don’t remember what it was about – it wasn’t important enough to bother remembering. If it had have been important then I’m sure he would have delivered his speech to a larger audience than the six people who actually sat through it.

Image from twitter.com

After delivering his talk that nobody wanted to listen to, jumping to her feet from the sidelines was a deliriously excited Peta Credlin giving Tony the thumbs up.

This reminded me of my mother after I sang two lines in a school concert when I was eight. Nobody, surely, heard me except my mother. But her rapturous encouragement filled me with the feeling that my performance was outstanding – that I had a voice like Elvis Presley (my mother liked Elvis Presley).

Truth is, nobody else in the audience cared whether I was performing or not. The other truth is – I can’t sing.

Our prime minister can’t ‘prime minister’. But he gets the thumbs up. He needs all the encouragement he can get, even childish encouragement.

* * *

Independent and social media sites who have been prepared to question and challenge the Abbott Government have, ironically, benefited from its ineptitude. That there is a growing number of Australians expressing disgust at the direction the government is taking us, and a growing discontent in the government and its leader (as reflected in the opinion polls) has seen numbers turning to independent media as a credible alternative.

The AIMN certainly has been rewarded. Last year – our first year – saw us welcome 1.96 million readers. This year (at the time of writing), 4.15 million people have read The AIMN. That’s over double what we achieved last year. What can we achieve in 2015?

We can only achieve the stellar readership of 4.15 million in a year if we have the subject matter our readers are after and a group of outstanding writers with the skills to deliver it. We demonstrably have both. And of course, without thousands of loyal readers helping to spread our message we could not have grown as we have.

So all the ingredients are there for us to have a bumper 2015. Bring it on!

I hope every one of you – the writers, the admin team, those who comment on our articles and to those who simply visit us to read them – have a fabulous 2015. And I thank you for your efforts in 2014.