Divergences

Some odds today:
PM market for the elections in the UK and Australia have the Conservatives an inevitability in the UK and a return of meepy little Kevin Rudd's Labour government looking like a sure thing at Australia's federal election.The Tories have the worst website ever. There is no leader on the front page - can't find his name or his picture. Amazingly poor. I suppose at $1.05 they don't think they have to make much of an effort.Yeah, for change? Gawdawful. Is their Leader's image and name so sacred they can never publicly describe or allude to him? Is that how venerated he is, that he can't be found. What's missing here is leadership:It's extraordinary. In this country, in Australia and the US the leadership and their brands and personalities online are handled in an obviously far more sophisticated way than in the UK if their party website is anything to go by. Talk about 'of the People' - that's the only way to find him on the Tory front page FFS! Click under "People" - and there he is, looking like a cross between Ralph Schumacher and a far smugger version of John Key, heading what looks like a committee of William Hague (the only one I recognise - apart from the woman in green who looks like most female BBC World news interviewers so it's hard to say whether I've seen her or not) and some people who look like Tony's New Labour crew. They are destined to waltz in against Gordon Brown's unreconstructed New Labour Party.

OscarsOnly 0.2% of the English-speaking world population will ever see all the Best Film Oscar winners awarded in their lifetime. An amazing fact. You feel obligated to see at least one winner - like a New Year's resolution... that has to wait until it's on Sky... a decade later. This season Avatar is the hot favourite for best film with the Direction award not so hot for James Cameron.

If we weren't jinxed enough already with the rugby world cup the markets have put the All Blacks at a near certainty.NZ is cursed in this arena - that's a great deal of value on the others.