Central Ward of the Marrickville LGA comprises the suburbs of Petersham and Lewisham plus parts of Stanmore, Dulwich Hill and Marrickville. There are five groups on the ballot, plus two ungrouped candidates.

Tomorrow is Local Government election time across New South Wales. I'm voting in the Central Ward of the Marrickville LGA. As in past federal and state elections since I commenced this blog in 2004, I am laying my voting intentions out quite clearly on these pages.

I will be casting my first preference vote for the Greens ticket led by Max Phillips. My second preference will go to the "independent" ticket led by Joseph Capogreco.

Matt Brown's tenure at NSW Minister for Police lasted less than 72 hours. The reasons why can be found on news websites all over the world, for example, the San Francisco Chronicle.

Compare this, by the way, to an incident eight years ago involving the recently-promoted Finance Minister, Joseph Guerino Tripodi.

Almost seven years to the day since a wacky science-fiction plot unfolded in the skies of New York, comes the event that will suck Switzerland into the centre of the Earth (or so we can hope), or it will be The End Of Civilisation As We Know It And Global Warming Had Nothing To Do With It.

Nathan's cabinet is in place. Reba Meagher jumped before she was pushed. Frank Sartor was pushed, and then gave a press conference to tell the world why Premier Rees was wrong. And Joe Tripodi? Well, he got promoted.

Not merely Minister for Ports and Waterways anymore, Joseph Guerino Tripodi, BEc(Hons) is now Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Regulatory Reform, and Minister for Finance.

Joining Tripodi in the state Economic Dream Team is Eric Roozendaal, BA LLB. Two Labor right-wing heavies in charge of the nation's biggest basket case.

Roozendaal arrived in State Parliament by the time-honoured career path from Sussex Street to a Legislative Council casual vacancy. Labor NSW general secretary Roozendaal was parachuted into the Legislative Council in June 2004 after Tony Burke won a Federal by-election. As Burke was elected to the Legislative Council in the 2003 state election, his replacement does not face the polls until 2011.

Let's just recap that: Eric Roozendaal has become State Treasurer without ever being elected to parliament.

Following is a list of the ministers in the new Rees government, annotated in this press release from Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon with the amounts they have received in donations for their election campaigns in 2003 and 2007. Those with zero against their name are members of the upper house who don't have individual campaigns, and Mr Roozendaal, who doesn't need campaign funding for another three years:

Let's hope today's Western Australian state election isn't decided by 29 votes or less. The people of Eucla, near the South Australian border and more than 1400 kilometres from Perth, have been disenfranchised from today's poll. The state electoral commission forgot to organise a polling booth and then couldn't get the postal votes to them in time.

Friday was arguably the most tumultuous day in New South Wales politics since Jack Lang was sacked on May 13, 1932. Firstly Michael Costa was axed as State Treasurer by Premier Morris Iemma, then Iemma himself resigned after his attempt to reshuffle cabinet was nixed by his caucus.

And all this happened two days after deputy premier John Watkins resigned from parliament to become CEO of Alzheimers Australia.

August 27, 2008 - a day of celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Donald George Bradman. And they celebrated at his birthplace, Cootamundra, the hometown of his youth, Bowral, and in a black tie dinner at the business end of Sydney. Has any other sportsperson, in any sport, anywhere in the world, been celebrated quite so much as The Don?

So many observations, so little enthusiasm. I haven't ignored the Olympics these past nine days, far from it, but I haven't felt the urge to write anything that could be construed as original. Or, more to the point, I just couldn't be bothered.

It's my favourite team sport at the Olympics and it's being tossed out for 2012. The baseball (or as they call it in the Netherlands, honkbal) competition began on Wednesday. Australia failed to qualify for the tournament, as therefore there is next to zero chance of any coverage on Channel Seven. Even SBS gives us some vague promises of no more than an hour's coverage on each of Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd, semis and finals days respectively.