On the day that Joe Botch-Up lays down his "crooked" budget blown out like a Picard helium ballon at 45,000 feet, we're in for a treat from the merde-och press... Pass the mustard and spread it thick.

With its usual contempt in double layers, the boffins at the Scheiße-press lay the blame of the disastrous incompetence, petty infantilism, nasty heartlessness and grand shame of the dizzy silly Abbott government onto the previous Labor government with such a large spoon, it would be funny if it was not so tragic...

Treasurer Joe Hockey believes Tuesday's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook will expose once and for all the depth of the damage done to the national balance sheet by the last Labor government.

The Treasurer will deliver the MYEFO statement at lunch time on Tuesday in a televised address to the National Press Club.

Search giant insists lawsuit concerning UK internet users' privacy should be brought in California where it is based.

Google has been called "arrogant and immoral" for arguing that a privacy claim brought by internet users in the UK should not be heard by the British legal system.

Eleven EU member states are pushing ahead with a plan to introduce a tiny tax on financial transactions. Four Europe's five largest economies are among them. Guess which one is missing?

I could but only bite at the news, coming hot on the heels of the announcement of Holden's Adelaide plant, that the 2017 Commodore would be made in China.

THE HAPPY SQUANDER

(Sung mostly to the tune of the song with the Val-de-Ri Val-de-ra chorus)

I'm True Blue as Colonel Sanders or a Chinese Commodore,

but all their stuff's so bloody cheap, should a cobber pay any more?

Selling Australian voters to the highest bidder.

It’s not SBY, or East Timor, or terrorist targets: it’s the warrantless snooping on ordinary Australians that can – and does – happen all the time, with very little oversight.

Tony Abbott's first 100 days in power have been marked by confusion and missteps that reveal a government on training wheels, writes Tony Wright.

Readers of this page are well aware of the revelations during the past six months of spying by the National Security Agency (NSA). Edward Snowden, a former employee of an NSA vendor, risked his life and liberty to inform us of a governmental conspiracy to violate our right to privacy, a right guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.