We’re Going to Have Another Great Depression.

I can’t remember if it was this video but on this channel the host made the claim that the level of money printing by governments now is unprecedented and very dangerous. Published one month ago.

there’s a lot catastropharians predicting doom and gloom. Watch the former phil fed president video I posted above. He doesn’t know how the fed is going to get out of the hole it has dug for itself. Add to that china trying to send in some heavy duty financial contagion. Who knows what is going to happen.

So the state can’t force vaxes on a huge segment of its own workforce but can on people not employed by them.

It’s completely disgusting.

Memology, police resignation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B_CYLPP_vE

Another fight. That’s this forum done for today.

JCsays:
October 9, 2021 at 7:17 pm

The real issue is that you’ve beclowned yourself by totally misreading your own Eurostat link.

Finally.

I’ve been complaining for yonks about the lack of oligarchy here. Wiki:

A business leader can be considered an oligarch if the following conditions are satisfied:

1. uses monopolistic tactics to dominate an industry;
2. possesses sufficient political power to promote their own interests;
3. controls multiple businesses, which intensively coordinate their activities.

As a boy I yearned to be an oligarch. Was voted Most Likely Oligarch and everything.

JCsays:
October 9, 2021 at 7:30 pm
The real issue is that you’ve beclowned yourself by totally misreading your own Eurostat link.

Neilson, you’re really bad at this stuff and ought to give it away.

I’m perfectly happy for anyone to read my 6.31 comment then check your link and see for themselves.

you’re choking on your own blood that you just vomited

Im going to have to correct you there.

Its general bodily fluids, largely phlegm and puss and muck, not blood you will drown in.
If you are unlucky it wont be your own.

Google –
“nurses in icu telling of covid patients begging for vaccine”
–
and see yet more reasons JC can’t be trusted as anything more than an invested Jab Pusher.

You look and the entire year of 2020 and average it out. You look at the entire year completed in 21 so far and average it out.

Seriously, it’s donkey analysis, which is why I avoided commenting as I didn’t want to hurt your feelings one more time.

Why would you do that? Why not compare like with like? That’s the usual approach for people trying to get things right.

Hmmmmm.
It seems everyone involved in the first smallpox inoculations is dead.
When will all this madness end?

Best pig shooting video you will ever see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOqkxWmOW90

Timothy Neilson says:
October 9, 2021 at 7:35 pm

JC says:
October 9, 2021 at 7:30 pm
The real issue is that you’ve beclowned yourself by totally misreading your own Eurostat link.

Neilson, you’re really bad at this stuff and ought to give it away.

I’m perfectly happy for anyone to read my 6.31 comment then check your link and see for themselves.

JC & others rely on most people not scrolling back to see what details they’ve missed, so they, JC et al, simply keep piling blustering lie on top of blustering lie, hoping to crush the simple truth under a tonne of their very sloppy cow manure.

rickw:

Seven or eight minutes into that clip. Outstanding stuff.

Left handed bloke too.

I think 3 or 4 people died of covid in Sing so far in October.

The mortality rate is trending at 0.1% it is extremely low.

Not panic stations. We have been conditioned to panic by this bioweapon and indeed that is the weapon’s primary aim.

Poland’s top court rules against primacy of EU law | DW News

Hello Cats.

I promised you all a Railway Story (and particularly Lysander, if you are out there). And I have run out of Eat-Sleep-Train-Repeat excuses for the week (phew!). So here we go…

Rex’s Rambles- Why ARE is the Western Australian Rail Network the Way It Is? Part One

Introduction
A common refrain heard in relation to any discussion of any historical or contemporary issue regarding WA’s rail network is “Why don’t more things go on rail in WA anymore?” Closely followed by “It’s all Charles Court’s / Those damned Liberals’ fault!” These two mutually-reinforcing shibboleths are very popular amongst surviving members of the old Westrail and casual enthusiasts alike, mainly out of old Party tribalism. Left- and Right-leaning folk who actually work within the industry and/or have a closer understanding of the history of the Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) / Westrail and the privatised rail and train operator quickly learn that nothing penetrates this ideological meme-armour, and so just roll their eyes, call their signals and keep moving.

The story of West Australia’s railways is much more nuanced, and its current situation is some 150 years in the making. While I lack the scholarship in a few posts to make a thesis on the subject (and there are many better writers than I), I will attempt to cover the key historical points that brought the State here.

Beginnings
The first railway line built in Western Australia was the WA Timber Company’s Lockville-Yoganup railway near Busselton in 1871. This company eventually collapsed in 1888, and its formation and assets absorbed by another Timber company. It was eventually incorporated into a WAGR branch from Busselton to Nannup from in 1903. The locomotive Ballaraat still exists 150 years later, and is on public display in Busselton.

The first common-carrier railway lines in Western Australia were built by the WA Government in 1879 (Geraldton to Northampton), 1881 (Perth to Guildford) and 1891 (Perth to Bunbury). The privately-owned Great Southern Railway and Midland Railway Company of WA would appear on the scene in 1886 and 1890, building land grant-funded private railways from Beverley to Albany and Midland to Geraldton via Gingin and Walkaway. The former would be absorbed by the WAGR in 1896, in an almost broke condition, while the Midland Railway went on to become the largest privately owned common carrier in Australia until its sale to the WAGR and absorption in 1964.

These separate efforts to develop the essential infrastructure of a fledgling colony and then State amidst the initial austerity and then Gold Rush-mediated boom of the 1880s to 1901, set the scene for the Network today.

END PART ONE

Hey Beer Whisperer.
I hope things are on the up and up.
Cheers.

Getting better, thanks, Sancho.

Its okay rabz.

21 year old Kim Wilde serenades me each night.

I’ve actually become quite optimistic for Europe’s economy

Because they’ve opened up?

One Typo in the title later…

Rex’s Rambles- Why IS the Western Australian Rail Network the Way It Is? Part Two

The WAGR Era
A keen student of the WAGR’s history between 1890 and 2003 very quickly learns that it ran on a shoestring budget for almost its entire existence. To examine each contributing factor in detail is something far beyond the scope of a Cat Post, so I will quickly look at the following:

1) Political Interference and Just Who Screwed The Railways?
2) Making Do
3) Upgrading Out of Necessity- 1945-1975
4) Deregulation and Privatisation

Political Interference and Just Who Screwed the Railways?
WA is a sparsely populated State, with very significant distances between major centres and smaller settlements alike. Rich agricultural land and mineral resources were constrained by lack of transportation. As such, anyone proposing and delivering on the extension of railway lines into WA’s rural areas was sure to get votes.

A classic WA policy of all Parties between 1901 and 1929 was to insist that all farming land be within 15 miles of a rail siding. This resulted in a large number of cross-country lines being extended between the main South-West, Great Southern and East Goldfields trunk lines to access grazing, cropping, dairying, timber, coal and produce country.

Unfortunately, at no point were these plans ever met with increased funding for the WAGR to operate them. In fact, the typical pattern went something like this:

* Politician proposes a series of rural branchlines for WAGR.
* WAGR declines, stating its budget difficulties and struggles to operate what it has.
* Construction work is given to the Public Works Department instead.
* PWD builds as much line as cheaply as it can- Minimal earthworks and engineering, half-round sleepers, the lightest possible rail that can be applied, minimal ballasting and infrastructure.
* PWD declares completion of the project, and hands over to WAGR
* WAGR immediately has to find resources to actually make the line traffickable.

Cats can visit and ride on a prominent survivor of such rail-building philosophy at Dwellingup, WA. The Hotham Valley Railway preserves a 32km portion of the line between Pinjarra and Boddington, built between 1910 and 1927. On the popular Dwellingup-Isandra section (run with steam power during May-October), tourists get to experience a continuous climb up the Darling Scarp at an uncompensated grade of 1 in 30- Some of the steepest adhesion-worked railway line in the Southern Hemisphere. At the other end, the line between Dwellingup and Etmilyn is even steeper and sharply curved, as it drops into and climbs out of Spencer’s Brook.

“This history is great and all, Rex, but what has it got to do with your claim about who screwed the Railways?” By looking at this list of WA Premiers between 1890 and 2021, the presence of Liberal Premiers is quite small, and WA has seen a long procession of Labor parliaments, more or less coinciding with the periods of greatest expansion and upheaval in the WA Railway scene between 1901 and 1939.

Liberal Sir Charles Court is the Blue Meanie chosen because his era of government saw massive changes in the WAGR, ranging from its rebranding to Westrail, the deregulation of its relatively exorbitant freight charges and the closure of the Fremantle Suburban Railway Line in 1979. Richard Court comes a close second due to his government’s closure of the Midland Railway Workshops in 1993. Most surviving activists and ex-Railwaymen of that era are still alive, and the cultural memory is still very strong.

END PART TWO

Blake Masters
@bgmasters

In America, you should be able to raise a family on one single income.
@RubinReport

I agree. This is something that worried me quite a lot as an economist.

It is simply unaffordable in the west to do this in many places.

We are simply taxed too much.

Rex I have a book on the ZigZag line up to Kalamunda somewhere in a carton. Had a property in Gooseberry Hill. Loved walking up the old line.

Two thousand medical staff to come to Australia, probably to replace the unvaxxed health service staff stood down.

Strike breaking with a difference, bet you won’t hear a murmur from the medical professional associations nor the nurse’s unions.

Thousands of overseas nurses and doctors to reinforce strained Australian health system

Two thousand medical staff to come to Australia, probably to replace the unvaxxed health service staff stood down.

In NSW due to the resignation of more than a thousand because of mandatory vaccination.

Anyone else noticed how News isn’t anymore?

It’s not just the old “conspiracy theories” that ended up being facts, but all sorts of seriously reported old news that keeps being presented as ‘breaking’ news.

It obviously isn’t bring people up to date on things they missed because it isn’t presented that way and that good will simply doesn’t exist in MSM.

One consistent feature in old news presented as new is that it’s about Seriously Big Cheats in Politics & Big Business getting Exposed and still Getting Away With It.

Now while many chose to swallow the Black Pills this constant, ‘You Can’t Beat ‘Em.’, messaging is designed to deliver, I remember that it’s only the second death that’s permanent and that’s what The Enemy is trying to seduce us into choosing.

China’s Nightmarish New Bio Weapon Targets Race and Ethnicity
China building Bio Weapon that can target people based on race. China has been amassing a disturbing amount of genetic data from the rest of the world, and it’s been doing it for something nightmarish.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha says:
October 9, 2021 at 9:54 pm

…

Charles Yelverton O’Connor – of Goldfields Pipeline fame – was supposed to have been the only person ever to make West Australian railways run at a profit…

O’Connor was an amazing person ZK2A.

Didn’t he also contribute to making Fremantle Ports???

Us Against the World – Tom MacDonald. Approximately 4 minutes in length.

Try to look past the exterior. The dude knows his market.
There are lessons to be learned here.
(But first comes the acknowledgement that we aren’t winning).

link fail
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/china-ai-surveillance/614197/

Rex’s Rambles- Why IS the Western Australian Rail Network the Way It Is? Part Four

Upgrading Out of Necessity- 1945-1975
By the end of World War Two, the WAGR was seriously run down, and its workforce restive. The 1950s and 60s saw an economic boom, crippling industrial action (including a Metal Trades strike at Midland Workshops in 1956 that did more to encourage private car use in Perth than any Liberal Premier ever did), at least 2 complete Royal Commissions into the WAGR, its Commissioners and management and some of its locomotives (the Australian Standard Garratt and X Class).

The WAGR was granted the funds to revitalise its rolling stock, infrastructure, signalling and general practice. This era saw the development of the Forrestfield and Kewdale mashalling yards, the general upgrading of its trunk lines, the absorption of the Midland Railway Company in 1964, and the coming of the Standard Gauge to Perth in 1966. While a transcontinental rail link had been desired by Australian governments since Federation, the connection only went as far as Kalgoorlie by 1917. A train journey from Sydney to Perth thus required over a week and at least 4 changes of train due to break-of-gauge.

The Standard Gauge network from Kwinana to Kalgoorlie saw the latest in rolling stock, locomotives and operating practices adopted from new. These would slowly trickle over the the majority of the WAGR’s Narrow Gauge system, but by 1990 the only visible difference on many parts of the Narrow Gauge network from this era of significant change was the colour of the locomotives.

From 1956, improvements in road transportation were finally acknowledged and the first of the pioneer lines began to close. Several were immediately reopened due to bumper harvests, and thus stayed open on a seasonal basis. Much of the passenger infrastructure began to decline, replaced by the WAGR’s own coach services and later private bus companies.

Deregulation and Privatisation
In 1975, the WAGR was rebranded as Westrail, and the fad du jour of cost accountability came to WA. Despite drives for efficiency, it remained a government organisation that was dependent on transport regulation to maintain its services and profitability.

WA’s laws on transport regulation were softened in the 1950s, but deregulation was only achieved between 1980 and 1994. A lot of bulk traffic (including timber in the South West) was quickly lost to road transport, but iron ore around Geraldton, mineral sands traffic and iron and nickel from Kalgoorlie to Kwinana and Esperance have proved steady traffic to this day.

The Narrow Gauge trunk lines were upgraded to 19 tonne axle loads in the 1970s and 80s. The last of the pioneer lines in the Wheatbelt saw upgrading to 16 tonnes, subject to the amount of grain shipped on them. Several saw only perfunctory upgrades to 11 tonne loadings.

In 2003, Westrail was split to form the Public Transit Authority (Metropolitan and Country Passenger Rail), the freight operation sold to Australian Rail Group (later to become Aurizon) and the country network leased for 49 years to Brookfield Rail (now Arc Infrastructure).

Brookfield sought to minimise its costs and liabilities by limiting its maintenance to the busiest sections of its network and charging as much for access as would be suffered. The branchlines were in the firing line for closure again. Between public outcry and government leaning-on (particularly at the insistence of grain handler CBH), Brookfield agreed to stratify the grain lines. The lowest value and lightest (11 tonne axle load) cross-country lines were listed as Tier 3, run down and eventually closed.

These actions by Brookfield/Arc have seen considerable back-and-forth between themselves, CBH, Government and operators over access charges and maintenance standards. And are a persistent election issue in the country areas.

Post-Script
In 2021, much of the WA regional rail network sees semi-regular, seasonal grain and some mineral and wood chip traffic. The surviving pioneer lines are the subject of can-kicking by those responsible for their maintenance, that would not seem out of place in the WAGR era. The main lines continue to see vast volumes of long-distance general freight, minerals, parcels and other traffic- The market and shrewd operators have determined what works well for rail over the last 20 years. The biggest challenge is presently foreign-crewed coastal shipping form West Coast to East.

And anyone who sings the praises of the Labor Party in general and Mark McGowan’s Metronet in particular as being signs of Labor’s historical and lasting interest in the Railway scene, is only looking at half the picture. There are still many more Transport Workers’ Union members and trucking industry lobbyists than Rail, Tram and Bus Union members in WA.

And lots of shiny new electric passenger trains in town does not mean all is well down the line…

ALL CHANGE PLEASE- THIS RAMBLE TERMINATES HERE…

There’s at least one company operating in Kewdale that builds and repairs rolling stock.

Had to check the map for whereabouts of Kewdale.

I suppose it makes operational sense being closer to the port, Kwinana et al.

There’s at least one company operating in Kewdale that builds and repairs rolling stock.

That’s GEMCO in Forrestfield.

Goninans (Now UGL) still has a major loco works in Bassendean, but haven’t built anything there since they did 60 out of Pacific National’s 121 NR class locos in the early 90s. They do heavy maintenance now.

Progress Rail (Caterpilar) took over the EMD brand from General Motors, and have some facilities in Malaga.