Open Thread – Tues 3 May 2022


The Raising of Lazarus, Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet, 1701

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bespoke
bespoke
May 5, 2022 5:20 pm

โ€œRoe has been the law of the land for almost fifty years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned.โ€

60% agree.
35% disagree.

Ask a similar question about the 1st and 2nd amendments.

Zipster
Zipster
May 5, 2022 5:22 pm

Is one supposed to take such conjecture seriously?

the gp120 like sequences turn out to be right on the upper corners of the spike protein, which is where you would put them as they act as keys to immune cells. again what an amazing coincidence.

the fact that the “fact checkers” have jumped on this as conspiracy without actually looking at the sequences doesn’t exactly add detract from the claims.

the first paper that noticed this sequence was “redacted” in bizarre circumstances.

there is a fairly obvious push to discredit anything that points to the true origin and intent, which we know with almost certainty was gain of function funded by the US in wuhan. it’s all an absolutely fucking disgrace.

John H.
John H.
May 5, 2022 5:28 pm

Zipstersays:
May 5, 2022 at 5:22 pm
Is one supposed to take such conjecture seriously?

the gp120 like sequences turn out to be right on the upper corners of the spike protein, which is where you would put them as they act as keys to immune cells. again what an amazing coincidence.

the fact that the โ€œfact checkersโ€ have jumped on this as conspiracy without actually looking at the sequences doesnโ€™t exactly add detract from the claims.

They have looked at the sequences. The sequences are not uncommon and found in many species. It is just another idiotic conspiracy theory.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-hiv-covid-explained-idUSKBN29C26E

rosie
rosie
May 5, 2022 5:29 pm

Put it this way.
My concerns are in negative territory.

Mak Siccar
Mak Siccar
May 5, 2022 5:32 pm

Frank says:
May 5, 2022 at 5:19 pm
Men with a background in structural engineering.

You rang?

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
May 5, 2022 5:32 pm

Michael Smith News has an infestation with the handle Michelle Two.

Struth
May 5, 2022 5:33 pm

All the healthy young’ns that died of the jab before 14 days after having it, (which is when many did) were not recorded as death from the vaccine………..because in our post truth world, the vaccine that doesn’t work anyway, can’t kill you until it protects you from covid, (which takes 14 days to not work anyway)… Being inside you, giving you myocarditis and blood clots and making you ladies do the Jab Jive, doesn’t count, because although it’s inside you when it kills you, it hasn’t because it’s not protecting you yet….capiche’

The insanity is something to behold.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 5:33 pm

Pot pourri.

Na, sorry, I invented Pot Pourri.

Struth
May 5, 2022 5:36 pm

You can go to the back of the class quoting Black rock fact checkers, John H.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 5:38 pm

Without any doubt the hottest , best looking , most beautiful , most feminine cabin crew in the whole wide universe are Thai Airways

What about SQ? Of course Iโ€™m completely unqualified to comment, flying anywhere is a dim memory.

Zipster
Zipster
May 5, 2022 5:40 pm
Struth
May 5, 2022 5:40 pm

And the ugliest old hag crews in the world are Qantas.
Australian Ladies……….said together it’s almost an oxymoron these days.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 5:44 pm
johanna
johanna
May 5, 2022 5:48 pm

Wally Dalรญ says:
May 5, 2022 at 1:15 pm

H B Bearsays:

May 5, 2022 at 10:26 am

When you consider the amount of quackery medicine has attracted over history you can excuse them for clinging overly tightly to the โ€œscientific methodโ€ or what remains of it.

Nope. The modern doc is fortified by the modern facades of sandstone universities and glass tower business, protected by the advocacy of ministers and union heads, and cushioned by the blow-in delivery of mountains of Medicare caaaaaash.

They only fear the tribunal and deregistration, because that would cut off the cashflow. (They probably fear the rozzers coming through the door and demanding records, and I can name only one- Dr Mark Hobart- has stood up to the pigs, and heโ€™s being put through the wringer for it.)

They care not for the โ€œscientific methodโ€, as shown by so many of them who actively dismiss the evidence which is coming through their โ€œpracticeโ€.

Our medical system has been corrupted.

Bit of an over-simplification, IMO.

If you look at the history of modern medicine in the West, it’s always been patchy. There was no Golden Era of wise and caring doctors who gave excellent advice and treatment to everyone.

Our current set of problems are different from those in 1922 or 1822, but let’s not exaggerate. On the whole, we are still much better off in terms of medical care.

I do think that only the top academic students getting into medicine is unsustainable. These days, the money is not that good for the vast majority, they incur huge debts while studying, and many of them are temperamentally unsuited to the job. Something’s got to give. Plus, the bullying about what they can say and do is appalling.

As for the stomach ulcers example, it was indeed a heroic achievement, one of the greatest of last century. Full marks, kudos, etc.

But as even we who read this blog know, the world is full of people who claim that conventional medicine is all wrong and they have found the True Path. For every discovery about h. pylori, there were tens of thousands of true believers, cranks and charlatans insisting that they were being shut down by The Establishment.

I am not for a moment condoning the financial and professional blackmail currently being directed at doctors by funding and professional bodies. Not at all.

My point is that pressures on doctors to conform are not new. And, in earlier times, the lack of pressure on them to conform led to some truly awful outcomes.

Claiming that the medical profession has somehow fallen from a pedestal is neither correct or helpful.

Frank
Frank
May 5, 2022 5:50 pm

Mak Siccar,
I was once told that engineers are fascinated by Morten By Fig trees since they shouldn’t be able to support the weight of the branches due to how big and how far sideways they extend. Bit like the Kardashians really.

Frank
Frank
May 5, 2022 5:51 pm

Sheโ€™s lying.

She looks a lot like Trigglypuff.

Winston Smith
May 5, 2022 5:52 pm

Calli:
How would you police the โ€œno veggiesโ€ stuff? Choko Squad?
If there’s one thing we’ve been shown in the last 2 years, it’s the presence of a coterie of 5th communists in our midst.
Either that or drones.

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
May 5, 2022 5:54 pm

I do think that only the top academic students getting into medicine is unsustainable.

They don’t. The best sign up for maths and physics. I’ve taught them all. The medics were hard working and idealistic but not very bright.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 5, 2022 5:58 pm

A couple of century old Moreton Bay Figs have succumbed to gravity at UWA over the years. Takes a bit though.

Frank
Frank
May 5, 2022 6:00 pm

The medics were hard working and idealistic but not very bright.

Mรฉdecine rewards memory and algorithms apparently.

Zipster
Zipster
May 5, 2022 6:01 pm

They have looked at the sequences. The sequences are not uncommon and found in many species. It is just another idiotic conspiracy theory.

going to the source this is what they base the”debunking” on:

Third, insertions 1 and 2 in 2019-nCoV have 6-AA motifs identical to those in V4 and V5 of certain HIV-1 gp120 isolates, which are structurally close to each other but separated by a LE loop (Figure 1C) [9]. However, insertion 3 located between insertions 1 and 2 in 2019-nCoV has sequences similar (with deletions) to those in the V1 region of HIV-1 gp120. V1 is far away from V4 and V5 on the opposite side of gp120, which should not interact with V4/V5 in gp120 (Figure 1C) but is now inserted between V4 and V5 in the modelled the 2019-nCoV spike protein structure [10]. Insertion 4 was found in Gag protein of HIV-1 that is not associated with viral entry. This insertion is located too far to be considered to form the same structural unit with the other three insertions in the 2019-nCoV spike protein (Figure 1C). We do not see any selection benefit or rationale for 2019-nCoV to obtain and mix structurally unrelated parts of HIV-1 to generate a unique structure for its enhanced receptor binding as indicated by the authors [8].

no obvious benefit indeed, unless of course you are experimenting with gain of function

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 5, 2022 6:03 pm

โ€œRoe has been the law of the land for almost fifty years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned.โ€

Slavery was the law of the land even longer.

Winston Smith
May 5, 2022 6:07 pm

Rosie:

What โ€˜theyโ€™ want is women who work shorter hours because of family commitments/maternity leave to get paid extra to smooth away the so called โ€˜gapโ€™.

As usual, what ‘they’ are demanding is something for nothing.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 6:07 pm

Slavery was the law of the land even longer.

No it wasn’t, Fester. Law of the land describes federal laws. The states allowed slavery and was argued on a states rights basis.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 5, 2022 6:08 pm

The discovery of settled law being found โ€œwrongโ€ is one of the primary criticisms of the common law but does allow it to change with the society it serves.

Zipster
Zipster
May 5, 2022 6:10 pm

er …

We greatly appreciate Youyu He (Shanghai Center for Bioinformation Technology) in helping us to blast the insertion sequences against the viral sequence database.

totally trustworthy

Zipster
Zipster
May 5, 2022 6:12 pm

How the three bat CoV viruses obtain those inserts remains unknown. For any virus to obtain additional insert sequences from other organisms, it requires that it has direct interactions with other organisms, most likely through homologous or non-homologous recombination

why doesn’t fauci and his band of cretins come clean and show us what exactly wuhan was paid to work on?

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 6:12 pm

There’s an excellent piece in the WSJ, which Dover suggested a couple of days, prints “rot”.

Justice Alitoโ€™s Originalist Triumph
Chief Justice Rehnquist planted the seeds for the abortion opinion in a 1997 case involving assisted suicide.

Justice Samuel Alitoโ€™s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Womenโ€™s Health Organization represents the auspicious culmination of the conservative legal movement, which has fundamentally transformed U.S. constitutional interpretation over the past quarter-century.

Justice Alitoโ€™s opinion is also a posthumous triumph for William H. Rehnquist, who dissented from Roe v. Wade as an associate justice in 1973 and who as chief justice in 1997 successfully undermined the constitutional foundation of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In that splintered 1992 ruling, three Republican-appointed justicesโ€”Sandra Day Oโ€™Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy and David H. Souterโ€”had surprisingly reaffirmed Roeโ€™s protection of a right to abortion.

The trioโ€™s controlling Casey opinion asserted that the abortion right was encompassed by the 14th Amendmentโ€™s Due Process Clause, which guarantees โ€œliberty.โ€ Yet five years after Casey, Justices Oโ€™Connor and Kennedy both signed on to Chief Justice Rehnquistโ€™s five-vote majority opinion in Washington v. Glucksberg, a pioneering โ€œright to dieโ€ case in which proponents unsuccessfully sought similar 14th Amendment protection for physician-assisted suicide.

Rejecting that claim, Rehnquist wrote that unenumerated rights are protected by the Due Process Clause only if they are โ€œdeeply rooted in this Nationโ€™s history and traditionโ€ and โ€œimplicit in the concept of ordered liberty.โ€ The opinion concluded that a right to hastened death wasnโ€™t โ€œdeeply rooted.โ€ Justices Oโ€™Connor and Kennedy likely believed abortion was, yet in joining Rehnquistโ€™s due-process analysis they helped place a land mine under the Casey holding that Justice Alitoโ€™s prospective majority is on the verge of detonating.

Following from Rehnquistโ€™s Glucksberg formulation, Justice Alitoโ€™s lengthy Dobbs draft opinion devotes extensive attention to detailing how almost all abortions were unlawful at the time of the 14th Amendmentโ€™s ratification in 1868. It also explicates how Roeโ€™s account of abortionโ€™s 19th-century legal status was largely based on two law review articles by the late Cyril Means Jr. , which even pro-choice scholars acknowledge were deeply flawed and Justice Alito calls โ€œdiscredited.โ€

Justice Harry A. Blackmunโ€™s majority opinion, Justice Alito writes, was also โ€œremarkably loose in its treatment of the constitutional textโ€ of the amendments (in addition to the 14th) that it referenced in passing. Justice Alito takes clear pleasure in citing by name the many liberal legal scholars who have dismissively criticized Roeโ€™s reasoning, and he twice calls Roeโ€™s constitutional discussion โ€œexceptionally weak.โ€

Thatโ€™s a conclusion with which even historians who fervently back abortion rights canโ€™t cavil. More important, Justice Alitoโ€™s opinion highlights the fundamental revolution in constitutional analysis that has taken place since the 1970s thanks to the intellectual ascendancy of the โ€œoriginalistโ€ and โ€œtextualistโ€ modes of interpretation. You donโ€™t have to be a Federalist Society member to see that the analytical prowess todayโ€™s justices demonstrate in opinion after opinion far eclipses the quality of the Warren and Burger Courtsโ€™ work product.

Justice Alitoโ€™s key conclusionโ€”that โ€œa right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nationโ€™s history and traditionsโ€โ€”allows him to assert that โ€œRoe was egregiously wrong from the start.โ€ Then his opinion takes particular aim at Roeโ€™s core holding, that fetal viabilityโ€”the ability to survive outside the womb, currently at about the 23rd week of pregnancyโ€”is the decisive boundary, only after which states can proscribe abortions. Justice Alito fails to acknowledge how Roeโ€™s embrace of viabilityโ€”championed more by moderate Justices Potter Stewart and Lewis F. Powell Jr. than by Blackmun himselfโ€”was directly derived from a highly influential lower-court decision written by Judge Jon O. Newman.

Far more difficult than highlighting Roeโ€™s multiple shortcomings is Justice Alitoโ€™s similar effort to disparage and overrule the Casey trioโ€™s opinion. He correctly notes that โ€œtheir opinion did not endorse Roeโ€™s reasoningโ€ and focused entirely on due-process โ€œlibertyโ€ without ever citing Roeโ€™s well-known invocation of a โ€œright to privacy.โ€ Justice Alito also asserts that โ€œCasey did not attempt to bolster Roeโ€™s reasoningโ€ and โ€œmade no real effort to remedyโ€ one of Roeโ€™s โ€œgreatest weaknessesโ€โ€”to wit, the trio โ€œprovided no principled defense of the viability lineโ€ and even โ€œconspicuously failed to say that they agreed with the viability rule.โ€

But Justice Alitoโ€™s draft opinion fails to engage fairly or meaningfully with the Casey trioโ€™s fervent assertions that any narrow overruling of constitutional protection for a womanโ€™s right to choose would do profound reputational damage to the Supreme Court itself. And if the final opinion commands a majority and retains Justice Alitoโ€™s first-draft language expressly mocking some of Justice Kennedyโ€™s statements in Casey, many observers will be surprised that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both Kennedy law clerks, joined it.

The draft opinion grounds its overruling of both Roe and Casey in one clear and simple belief: that there is a โ€œcritical distinction between the abortion right and other rights.โ€ The former involves a โ€œprofound moral questionโ€ that makes it โ€œfundamentally differentโ€ and thus โ€œsharply distinguishesโ€ Roe and Casey from landmark rulings on same-sex marriage, consensual sodomy and birth control. โ€œNothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,โ€ Justice Alito insists. Dobbs โ€œdoes not undermine them in any way.โ€

Going forward, โ€œstates may regulate abortion,โ€ and laws that do so โ€œmust be sustained if there is a rational basis on which the legislature could have thought that it would serve legitimate state interests,โ€ including โ€œrespect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development.โ€ Thus states that so choose will be able to outlaw all abortions.

Near its close, the Alito opinion strikingly asserts that โ€œwe cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the publicโ€™s reaction to our work.โ€ This will be perhaps the most momentous Supreme Court ruling since the unanimous Brown v. Board of Education (1954), yet it will likely be propounded by the slimmest possible five-justice majority.

Mr. Garrowโ€™s books include โ€œLiberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wadeโ€ and โ€œBearing the Cross.โ€

Cassie of Sydney
May 5, 2022 6:14 pm

“Kneelsays:
May 5, 2022 at 4:27 pm”

Great comment Kneel.

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
May 5, 2022 6:16 pm

Albo not reciting his six point NDS policy is exciting the press but I doubt itโ€™ll sway voters.
The blokeโ€™s fifty nine and the old grey cells are hardening off a bit. You could get an autistic kid to do a word perfect recall of War and Peace but they couldnโ€™t tie their shoelaces.
The LNP think Albo blanks are a winner. Iโ€™m thinking it will backfire as ordinary folk donโ€™t put much stock in a perfect performance.
Bidenese and the Laborcrats are still polling well.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 6:16 pm

I was once told that engineers are fascinated by Morten By Fig trees since they shouldnโ€™t be able to support the weight of the branches due to how big and how far sideways they extend.

The house I grew up in had two huge morten bay figs. Sadly not very good for climbing. The branches are egg cross section with point up, when you look at them casually you think you will be able to just walk along the branches with ease.

Very pruneable with a shotgun. But be ready to step aside, you can bring down massive branches with a couple of shots.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 6:17 pm

Mongistan Public Transport Mask Compliance?

Todayโ€™s Mask Compliance Rating:

High to moderately high.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 6:19 pm

The house I grew up in had two huge morten bay figs.

Have you seen those in the Botanical Gardens? They aren’t trees, they’re freaking mountains. The trunks are a city block wide!

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 6:20 pm

why doesnโ€™t fauci and his band of cretins come clean and show us what exactly wuhan was paid to work on?

The psychopathic little turd would get to Ride The Lightning?

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 6:22 pm

The trunks are a city block wide!

Yep, massive! We had more fun playing tag on the roots than anything else. Pretty fast growing to, there was a photo of the house circa 1908 that showed them as saplings.

Winston Smith
May 5, 2022 6:23 pm

sfw:

Two intelligent men with utterly closed minds. The idea that what the authorities say could be wrong, was beyond their thinking.

Scary as shit, isn’t it?

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 6:24 pm

I was wrong speculating the SCOTUS leak was possibly a hoax, however I also speculated that if it was a real leak it could very likely have been Roberts. He could very well have leaked because he’s fearful negating Roe could wreck the republic and wanted the judges to be aware their decision/vote has very big ramifications.

I’m not looking at this as an ruling on abortion but more so to right a terrible decision that was made decades ago. Abortion is not going away as the decision will head back to the states.

Ed Case
Ed Case
May 5, 2022 6:25 pm

The LNP think Albo blanks are a winner. Iโ€™m thinking it will backfire as ordinary folk donโ€™t put much stock in a perfect performance.
The LNP is a Queensland Party, only Labor shills use that term for the Liberal Party.
Your assertion is tripe.
What the Press is pointing out to readers and viewers is that Albanese doesn’t have a clue now, so he won’t have a clue as Prime Minister either.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 6:26 pm

Albo not reciting his six point NDS policy is exciting the press but I doubt itโ€™ll sway voters.

Some journo should take the piss and ask him about his seven point NDIS plan. Just to see that look of terror and confusion flash across his pudgy rat like clock.

Winston Smith
May 5, 2022 6:27 pm

Is Harris the VP still alive?
I’d hate for news of her unwellness passing me by.

Roger
Roger
May 5, 2022 6:27 pm

I was wrong speculating the SCOTUS leak was possibly a hoax, however I also speculated that if it was a real leak it could very likely have been Roberts.

The leak most likely constitutes an obstruction of justice; I very much doubt Roberts could be so stupid.

Delta A
Delta A
May 5, 2022 6:28 pm

H B Bearsays:
May 5, 2022 at 8:10 am
It is more noble to starve than to eat chokos.

A child of the 50’s (late 40’s, tbh) I gladly ate everything that was put on my plate… except chokos.

If you’ve never tried them, take my advice. Don’t. The name says it all.

A chronic battler, Father grew all of our veges. None flourished more than the choko vine grown over the shed. I cried every time they appeared on my plate. Tasteless, gelatinous gobs of snot.

Mother, a wanting chop-and-three-veg chef, boiled the worthless life out of them, managing to make them even more disgusting than God intended them to be.

I shudder to think of them.

Ed Case
Ed Case
May 5, 2022 6:28 pm

Bidenese and the Laborcrats are still polling well.

If Labor are doing so well, why are they trying to sneak in the BackDoor via the Teal Independents?

rosie
rosie
May 5, 2022 6:31 pm

Isn’t teal a shade of green?

Zipster
Zipster
May 5, 2022 6:32 pm

I was wrong speculating the SCOTUS leak was possibly a hoax, however I also speculated that if it was a real leak it could very likely have been Roberts.

they needed something to fire up the base after the relentless dumpster fire of the last 14 months, it was probably commissioned, just like the dossier

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 6:32 pm

A chronic battler, Father grew all of our veges. None flourished more than the choko vine grown over the shed. I cried every time they appeared on my plate. Tasteless, gelatinous gobs of snot.

As kids we loved staying at my grandparents, the only down side was having to eat chokoโ€™s! Lots of them!

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
May 5, 2022 6:33 pm

Your assertion is tripe.

Eat up youโ€™re tripe Ed.
Our interest in politics and world events is the minority.
Most people donโ€™t take any notice of the election campaign until the Saturday dawns and they make a choice.
Then itโ€™s about money in the pocket and who gives them the least shits.

bespoke
bespoke
May 5, 2022 6:33 pm

Chokos are first cousins of brusil sprouts.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 6:34 pm

Roger

Roberts is a RINO through and through. It wouldn’t surprise me because he’s shown before that in a dog fight the fucker veers left without a shadow of concern. As I said, I think it was Roberts because he’s concerned that a majority against Roe could destroy the country. It’s not what you, I or others think. Personally, I think it wouldn’t happen as abortion is not going to be outlawed in the country. He may have well leaked for the reason I suggested.

Roger
Roger
May 5, 2022 6:34 pm

The LNP think Albo blanks are a winner.

No doubt, and not without some justification; but the TV people also think they’re entertaining, which is the business they’re in.

rosie
rosie
May 5, 2022 6:34 pm

I’m grateful never having to have chocked over choko.
Over-boiled cabbage and cauliflower was more than enough.

Frank
Frank
May 5, 2022 6:35 pm

Chokos a wax and water that comes in a green bag. Horrible. Someone told me that MacDonald’s apple pies are just chokos with apple sauce. Too good not to be true.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 6:35 pm

Zip

The leak first and foremost an attempt to change the vote.

Frank
Frank
May 5, 2022 6:36 pm

It says a lot about the worth of boiled cabbage that the Brits consider it a staple.

Roger
Roger
May 5, 2022 6:38 pm

As I said, I think it was Roberts because heโ€™s concerned that a majority against Roe could destroy the country.

It’s a legal underling, JC, and the investigation will hopefully bring them to light.

Top Ender
Top Ender
May 5, 2022 6:38 pm

Why can’t a bloke buy a reversing camera which is powered off your ciggie lighter, and Bluetooths its camera signal to the dinky little screen?

For about $100.

Some things in life are just not fair.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 5, 2022 6:41 pm

In all likelihood, chokos and boiled cabbage are responsible for shit life expectancy in the Middle Ages.

Perth Trader
Perth Trader
May 5, 2022 6:41 pm

Some journo should ask Albo to find the Solomon islands on a map….that would be funny.

Cassie of Sydney
May 5, 2022 6:41 pm

“Iโ€™m not looking at this as an ruling on abortion but more so to right a terrible decision that was made decades ago. Abortion is not going away as the decision will head back to the states.”

Yep. Earlier Kneel wrote a good comment about it too. Abortion is not going away. It will hand the matter back to the states.

I’d like to wake up tomorrow to a world with no abortion, no war, no prostitution, no rape, no violence, no murder and none of the other horrors caused by man but sadly I wake up to the real world…..which is not pretty.

Frank
Frank
May 5, 2022 6:42 pm

Is there any meaningful sanction that would apply if they ever do find out one of the justices leaked though. Nobody ever seems to suffer any consequences in the political realm.

Roger
Roger
May 5, 2022 6:42 pm

If it’s Roberts or any of the other justices – besides Sotomayor – I’ll eat my hat.

Dot
Dot
May 5, 2022 6:43 pm

It’s awful out there…

No one is civil anymore…

Well Arthur, it’s only going to get worse.

If Australian public debt to GDP hits 150% and the sovereign bond rate goes to 7%, the debt servicing cost will be 10.5% of GDP.

That is possibly debt we can never repay and living standards would need to take a hit each year for decades to pay it off, nominally; take into account per capita living standards.

We will have generations of workers working to become poorer and poorer and poorer.

People don’t want spending or *services* cuts, where does the money come from?

Out of the 11.5 mn or so workers, how many of them are in the private sector? It’s not as if we have low tax rates.

I have a great fear that retirement savings will be expropriated. The case law is already there, your superannuation is not your money, it is a fund of tax the government lets you partially control and benefit from.

It is taxes held in trust and you are not the supervisory trustee.

We are heading towards literal Banana Republic stuff here. No joke, this is worth worrying about.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 6:43 pm

Roger says:
May 5, 2022 at 6:42 pm

If itโ€™s Roberts or any of the other justices โ€“ besides Sotomayor โ€“ Iโ€™ll eat my hat.

Is it expensive?

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 6:43 pm

Too good not to be true.

Those random tasteless cubes explained!

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
May 5, 2022 6:44 pm

Just watched on Fetch – Edge Sport Goodwood Festival of Speed Future Lab Show 2021

Worth Watching 45 Min 50 Secs – Amazing Concepts

https://www.edgesport.com/goodwood-festival-of-speed-2021/goodwood-future-lab-show-2021/

Top Ender
Top Ender
May 5, 2022 6:45 pm

When idiots get to make laws:

The ACT Legislative Assembly has passed new reforms of sexual consent laws in the ACT this afternoon, as amendments are made to define what is and is not accepted as a form of consent.

The Crimes (Consent) Amendment Bill 2022 recognises that consent is not to be presumed and that people have a right to choose to participate in sexual activity.

Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury said by reinforcing what consent looks and sounds like, it changes the “status quo” when people engage in sexual activity.

“No longer are we presuming that a person is consenting unless they indicate they are not,” Mr Rattenbury said.

โ€œThe Bill delivers on recommendation 22 of the SAPRP Steering Committeeโ€™s Final Report by introducing an affirmative and communicative model of consent in the ACT.”

โ€œLaw reform, like the changes in this Private Memberโ€™s Bill, are critical. However, they are just one part of the work that is needed to prevent and better respond to sexual violence.โ€

John H.
John H.
May 5, 2022 6:45 pm

How the three bat CoV viruses obtain those inserts remains unknown. For any virus to obtain additional insert sequences from other organisms, it requires that it has direct interactions with other organisms, most likely through homologous or non-homologous recombination

Human hsp 60 is 50%+ homologous with bacterial hsp60 proteins. The above analysis ignores evolution. In my view they did that deliberately because no person familiar with genetics could be that ignorant. They are more interested in politics than science.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 6:45 pm

We are heading towards literal Banana Republic stuff here. No joke, this is worth worrying about.

Gold, Guns and Offshore!

Roger
Roger
May 5, 2022 6:46 pm

Is it expensive?

Oh yes; it’s not a snap back, to be sure.

Diogenes
Diogenes
May 5, 2022 6:46 pm

Too good not to be true.

Mrs D’s stepmum did a great apple pie that was 50% choko, bit of cinnamon you would never know.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 6:47 pm

โ€œNo longer are we presuming that a person is consenting unless they indicate they are not,โ€

JPโ€™s at nightclub and bar exits?

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 5, 2022 6:49 pm

Chokos are first cousins of brusil sprouts

From Tasmania.

Like zucchini,they should be grown and fed to something more tasty or composted and used to grow something more tasty.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 6:49 pm

โ€˜Betrayedโ€™: SAS Godfather denies colluding with Ben Roberts-Smith on crucial evidence

Perry Duffin
Senior Court Reporter
@perryduffin1
NCA NewsWire
An hour ago May 5, 2022

The godfather of Ben Roberts-Smithโ€™s child said the SAS felt โ€œbetrayedโ€ by comrades who went to the media and has denied he colluded with the Victoria Cross recipient on key evidence.

Person 29 has become the latest soldier to testify for Mr Roberts-Smith in his defamation trial against Nine newspapers.

Nine has alleged Mr Roberts-Smith killed detained Afghans – claims the celebrated soldier denies.

Person 29, on Thursday, faced cross examination by Nineโ€™s barrister, Nicholas Owens SC, about emails with Mr Roberts-Smith in 2019.

The emails focused on a 2009 mission on a Taliban base known as Whiskey 108.

Nine claims the SAS pulled two men from a hidden tunnel at the north west of Whiskey 108 before Mr Roberts-Smith executed one and watched another soldier execute the second detainee.

A soldier known as Person 14 told the court he witnessed an Australian soldier throw an Afghan to the ground before machine gunning him to death.

Mr Roberts-Smith vehemently denies the claims he was the gunman.

Person 29, in testimony, backed up the Victoria Cross recipientโ€™s story that there were no men found in the Whiskey 108 tunnel.

Crucially he also told the court he believed Person 14โ€™s patrol were at the opposite end of Whiskey 108 – so Person 14 could not have witnessed any killing near the tunnel.

Nineโ€™s barrister suggested emails between Person 29 and Mr Roberts-Smith showed they โ€œcolludedโ€ on their version of events.

โ€œItโ€™s right, isnโ€™t it, that you and Mr Roberts-Smith decided together you had to say something that would mean Person 14 couldnโ€™t have seen (the alleged execution)?โ€ Mr Owens asked.

โ€˜Thatโ€™s not correct,โ€ Person 29 said.

Person 29 said he could not confirm or deny Person 14โ€™s location after being shown evidence that Person 14 had shot dead a suspected insurgent at Whiskey 108.

Later, in questioning, Person 29 agreed he had met up with Mr Roberts-Smith and other SAS soldiers loyal to the VC winner.

They dined together in Sydney on multiple occasions, the court heard, and spoke on the phone.

Person 29 denied they were colluding on evidence about Whiskey 108 to tell the court or the Australian Defence Forceโ€™s war crime inquiry in 2018.

Person 29 said he and many in the SAS felt dismayed and betrayed when the allegations of war crimes emerged in the press.

He said he didnโ€™t believe the SAS soldiers should have stayed silent – but disagreed with what they said.

โ€œIf thatโ€™s their recollection I canโ€˜t stop that,โ€ he told Justice Anthony Besanko.

โ€œBut, Your Honour, even though this is a defamation case – this is the form to arbitrate and air those concerns – not by speaking to the media. Not in the court of public opinion.โ€

The trial continues.

Roger
Roger
May 5, 2022 6:50 pm

We are heading towards literal Banana Republic stuff here. No joke, this is worth worrying about.

The really worrying thing is this: so is the rest of the world.

Germany’s public debt is about twice ours as a percentage of their GDP.

Perth Trader
Perth Trader
May 5, 2022 6:55 pm

Dot….Total debt held by Australian governments will more than double from pre-pandemic levels to a record $2 trillion, and peak above 80 per cent of gross domestic product by 2024-25, according to global investment bank UBS.

Federal, state and local government deficits will be $193 billion, or 9 per cent of GDP in 2021-22, moving into the post-COVID-19 economic recovery phase, down from $263 billion or 12.8 per cent of GDP in 2020-21.
From the Fin Review

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 6:55 pm

Dot

They don’t need to “expropriate”. All they need to not to “expropriate” expropriate is to raise the tax on Super with higher scales the more there’s in there.

Ed Case
Ed Case
May 5, 2022 6:56 pm

Is there any meaningful sanction that would apply if they ever do find out one of the justices leaked though
Sure, begin Impeachment Proceedings, the leaky Jurist will resign.
Repubs did that to Abe Fortas, a Mafia connected lawyer appointed by LBJ.

Carpe Jugulum
Carpe Jugulum
May 5, 2022 6:56 pm

except chokos.

If youโ€™ve never tried them, take my advice. Donโ€™t. The name says it all.

BBQ them sliced thin they are nice or add them to apple pie or rhubarb, quite good

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 5, 2022 6:56 pm

We are heading towards literal Banana Republic stuff here

Si. Argentina, only you canโ€™t afford the steaks.

sfw
sfw
May 5, 2022 6:57 pm

Born in 56, grew up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, had country farmers as cousins and I had never heard of a choko until a few years back. Is it a NSW thing? We did have chokawogs but that was another time.

Dot
Dot
May 5, 2022 6:57 pm

Ideas for kids names in a Biden golden age:

Person of Interest
Amazon Tinder
Khaeilee Genna
Rebel Comanchero
Big Guy

The probability of each of these existing is > 0, sadly.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 7:03 pm

If nominal GDP grows at 5.5% over the next 30 years, we go from A$1.4 trillion dollars (present day) to A$6 trillion in nominal dollars. The federal debt, which is currently around A$1 trillion will be 16% of GDP. It’s doable.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 7:04 pm

It’s doable without a dollar in repayment.

Salvatore, Understaffed & Overworked Martyr to Govt Covid Stupidity

Bolt on fire, ripping the SFL party a new one. He made a monkey of Josh Recessionberg.

Credlin before that had an excellent segment on banks not lending & insurance companies refusing to insure.

If they keep this up, I may shake the piggy bank & spring for a subscription.

Frank
Frank
May 5, 2022 7:08 pm

Only place I ever saw chokos was QLD, growing wild in the suburbs like pestilent interlopers. They do not appear in the shops.

johanna
johanna
May 5, 2022 7:09 pm

DrBeauGan says:
May 5, 2022 at 5:54 pm

I do think that only the top academic students getting into medicine is unsustainable.

They donโ€™t. The best sign up for maths and physics. Iโ€™ve taught them all. The medics were hard working and idealistic but not very bright.

Get your hand off it. How many of the ‘best’ students sign up for maths and physics against medicine? Indeed, the brightest ones often prefer philosophy.

The fact is, it’s a bit like De Beers promoting diamonds. For some reason, it has become Holy Writ that your GP should be in the top 2% or whatever it is of examinees. Since complicated cases get handed to specialists, this is nonsense.

Roger
Roger
May 5, 2022 7:10 pm

Is it a NSW thing?

NSW & QLD. Prefer a sub-tropical climate and not so much farmed as grown in backyards and Chinese market gardens in days of yore.

Salvatore, Understaffed & Overworked Martyr to Govt Covid Stupidity

Tanya Plibersek reckons that, after nine years of a Liberal Government, ITโ€™S TIME for a Labor Governmentโ€ฆ.

Doncha know it is her turn!
Government is not about improving the lot of Australians, it is about her turn at a trough.

Rabz
May 5, 2022 7:16 pm

Bluddee hell – I’ve just watched the footage of Albansleazey blundering around like a rabbit in the headlights trying to remember his six point point plan for the NDIS while a pack of j’ismists are baying for his blood. After being made to look like a complete dunce earlier that day by a breakfast TV host.

If that isn’t his GST cake moment of this campaign, then it’s very close. Unless there are even more disasters in store, which wouldn’t surprise at all.

If he wasn’t such an evil stupid loathsome hypocrite, you’d almost feel sorry for him.

johanna
johanna
May 5, 2022 7:16 pm

sfw says:
May 5, 2022 at 6:57 pm

Born in 56, grew up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, had country farmers as cousins and I had never heard of a choko until a few years back. Is it a NSW thing? We did have chokawogs but that was another time.

Grew up in working class parts of Sydney, some semi-rural. The choko vine was common, although rarely eaten. I gather it is like tofu, not much flavour.

Much preferred were the also common passionfruit vines. Mmm.

Top Ender
Top Ender
May 5, 2022 7:16 pm

Kumanjayi Walkerโ€™s family calls for Zach Rolfe โ€˜retrialโ€™, defunding of NT Police

THE community of slain Yuendumu teenager, Kumanjayi Walker, is calling for NT Police to be โ€œdefunded at largeโ€, following Zach Rolfeโ€™s acquittal over the 19-year-oldโ€™s death.

In a lengthy โ€œlist of demandsโ€ issued on Thursday, the Warlpiri Nation also called for a ban on police carrying guns and โ€œonly Warlpiri governance and authority in our communityโ€.

In the statement, the group condemned a recent $10m cash injection for NT Police, saying funding should instead be directed to โ€œcommunity-controlled alternatives, like night patrols and community mediationโ€.

โ€œWe will not tolerate any further ex-military postings or external police units from elsewhere in the NT or Australia,โ€ it reads.

โ€œOnly First Nations police liaison officers, elders and our community should have decision making powers over policing.

โ€œThis includes being able to evict police who do not co-operate with local community or respect our decision making authority.โ€

Other demands include for customary law to be โ€œconsidered in all court processes and in the application of colonial lawโ€, as well as an independent investigation into Rolfeโ€™s trial.

โ€œWe saw a jury with no Aboriginal person on it,โ€ it reads.

โ€œThere was no consideration of our cultural needs or our customary law. The trial should have taken place in Mparntwe Alice Springs, not 1500km away. We were unheard and disrespected.โ€

The group has demanded a โ€œretrialโ€ to allow Rolfe โ€œto face our customary law at Yuendumuโ€.

Senior Warlpiri elder, Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves, said โ€œmore funding for police means more police violence against our peopleโ€.

โ€œThe NT government has no shame increasing the police budget after the fatal police shooting of our loved one, Kumanjayi Walker,โ€ he said.

โ€œThis funding increase is a direct threat to our lives in our community. Yapakurlangu Warnkaru Matters, Black Lives Matter!โ€

The group is also calling for โ€œan end to youth detentionโ€ that sees children as young as 10 years old locked up for โ€œminor thingsโ€ and โ€œabused by the systemโ€.

The group is planning a โ€œnational day of actionโ€ for June 18 โ€œto demand justice for Walker, justice for the many deaths of First Nations people in custody, an end to the discriminatory Intervention powers and reassertion of community controlโ€.

โ€œWe want other First Nations families, communities and supporters to join us in protest again, amplify our voices and put forward your own demands for justice,โ€ the statement reads.

โ€œLetโ€™s come out in big numbers and build collective power together to force change.โ€

The group issued a further public demand for the NT government to hold an urgent community cabinet meeting at Yuendumu after claiming to have received no response to a letter sent late last month.

NT News

Ed Case
Ed Case
May 5, 2022 7:18 pm

Pro Ukraine vandals desecrate War Graves at the Nijmegen Cemetery in Netherlands.

Roger
Roger
May 5, 2022 7:18 pm

Government is not about improving the lot of Australians, it is about her turn at a trough.

There’s nothing like the scent of ministerial leather to get the nostrils of a career politician flaring so they can suck it all in.

Winston Smith
May 5, 2022 7:18 pm

Doc Faustus:

Abortion is a routine and safe health-care procedure accessed by approximately one in four American women.

Not for the poor bloody foetus, it isn’t.

cohenite
May 5, 2022 7:29 pm

Rejecting that claim, Rehnquist wrote that unenumerated rights are protected by the Due Process Clause only if they are โ€œdeeply rooted in this Nationโ€™s history and traditionโ€ and โ€œimplicit in the concept of ordered liberty.โ€

Ordered liberty is my approach to life. You can’t have liberty without and ordered structure under-pining it. Without that structure you have anarchy.

One other thing about abortion is it is a slippery slope now culminating in such things as post live delivery death and assisted suicide. The left are fucking monsters.

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
May 5, 2022 7:31 pm

Get your hand off it. How many of the โ€˜bestโ€™ students sign up for maths and physics against medicine?

I had a bright maths student drop out after second year to transfer to medicine because his mum wanted it. He came back a year later, saying it was boring. “Like memorising the phone book”.

I’m not saying medics are dim. They’re much brighter than pubic serpents. But not as bright as mathematicians or physicists.

Zipster
Zipster
May 5, 2022 7:32 pm

โ€œNo longer are we presuming that a person is consenting unless they indicate they are not,โ€ Mr Rattenbury said.

Bill Cosby was unavailable for comment at the time of publication

Ed Case
Ed Case
May 5, 2022 7:32 pm

Chokos are pretty good, the downside is that it’s gotta be peeled and cored before boiling, since the skin is bitter.
In the Australia that began disappearing 2 generations ago [1962]
plenty of inner city backyards had chooks, most had at least a lemon tree
and Bauple Nut trees were grown in the front yard for privacy.
Mulberry trees weren’t uncommon, many houses in Qld had a mango tree in the backyard.
In Colonial times, Tamarind trees were planted along streets, Dornoch Terrace Highgate Hill and George St Rockhampton still have them.

Frank
Frank
May 5, 2022 7:34 pm

This is good.

Finally, President Joe Biden has put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of the response to this decision.

The decision being the leaked Supreme Court ruling.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
May 5, 2022 7:34 pm

sfwsays:
May 5, 2022 at 6:57 pm
Born in 56, grew up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, had country farmers as cousins and I had never heard of a choko until a few years back. Is it a NSW thing? We did have chokawogs but that was another time.

Grew up in Cremorne Sydney in 50s, and Choko vines in backyard – hated the things

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
May 5, 2022 7:34 pm

Medics are in the top 2%. Mathematicians in the top one tenth of a percent.

Ed Case
Ed Case
May 5, 2022 7:35 pm

Yeah, Putin was a protege of Boris Yeltsin.
The MainScreamMedia aren’t right about much, but they’re right about Putin being no good.

Rabz
May 5, 2022 7:35 pm

Victorian Liberal MP โ€˜prayingโ€™ for abortion to be banned in wake of concern about US law change

To the sound of much self righteous outrage from his alleged parliamentary colleagues.

In the meantime Groundhog Guy has decided the Victorian gliberals are now in favour of a treaty with fauxborigines.

Could that pack of useless unprincipled jellyfish sink any lower?

Dot
Dot
May 5, 2022 7:38 pm

JCsays:
May 5, 2022 at 7:03 pm
If nominal GDP grows at 5.5% over the next 30 years, we go from A$1.4 trillion dollars (present day) to A$6 trillion in nominal dollars. The federal debt, which is currently around A$1 trillion will be 16% of GDP. Itโ€™s doable.

IF you get to managing the problem early enough.

Morsie
Morsie
May 5, 2022 7:45 pm

Sci fi movie I saw a few years ago had a couple who hooked up in a disco engaging lawyers on the spot to draw a contract listing the agreed sexual acts to be engaged in when they went home.
We seem to be heading along that path.Thank christ I am still married and ancient.

Dot
Dot
May 5, 2022 7:46 pm

Sorry this is late.

https://medium.com/the-no%C3%B6sphere/why-men-still-see-the-world-as-their-realm-and-are-reluctant-to-allow-women-in-b74e9f442e1e

Why Men Still See the World As Their Realm and Are Reluctant to Allow Women In?

To the privileged, equality feels like oppression

————————

She wrote that unironically.

How many more advantages in life must women be given before their preferential treatment finally makes them “equal”?

Feminists will tell you they aren’t equal yet, despite being awesome in a can.

The reality is, women have more rights then men, and have for quite some time. Who was put in National Service? Who gets preference going to ADFA? Who can dodge deployment via pregnancy? Who benefits from BFAs being toothless in family law?

Anyway, some SIMPs think she will suck them off by agreeing with her, also, some loopy cat lady quoted Margaret Atwood for something other than hilarious mockery.

Seriously, every possible iota of paranoia must be quantified by these lunatic feminists.

They are useful idiots who will bring on Marxism to usher in their alien, insane idea to make everything equal, even if most women aren’t interested in winning awards for abstract underwater welding sculptures.

Dot
Dot
May 5, 2022 7:47 pm

Sci fi movie I saw a few years ago had a couple who hooked up in a disco engaging lawyers on the spot to draw a contract listing the agreed sexual acts to be engaged in when they went home.

Cherry 2000. Great, great movie.

“Just get a doll”

(H/T TFM)

Cassie of Sydney
May 5, 2022 7:47 pm

“Could that pack of useless unprincipled jellyfish sink any lower?”

Nope.

Cassie of Sydney
May 5, 2022 7:51 pm

“In the meantime Groundhog Guy has decided the Victorian gliberals are now in favour of a treaty with fauxborigines.”

Remind me again, what is the point of voting Liberal in Victoria?

Winston Smith
May 5, 2022 7:52 pm

Big Nambas:
Perhaps if India started charging for their power, they’d have a bit of money to upgrade their transmission system.
They get to Australia and think the same system applies here.

Dot
Dot
May 5, 2022 7:54 pm

https://medium.com/hello-love/now-that-roe-v-wade-is-going-away-heres-what-women-can-do-9212b2cec2a4

Ossiana Tepfenhart
7.7K Followers

Iโ€™m a weirdo who loves to write. Deal with it. Available for hire. Instagram @ossiana.makes.content

YES. YOU CERTAINLY ARE, LADY WITH PENIS AND WHO DEMANDS ABORTION RIGHTS.

It took 12 doctors before I found someone willing to listen to my own reproductive preferences.

I wonder why that is.

Donโ€™t date or associate with pro-lifers, misogynists, and conservatives.

Okay. I want a wife who doesn’t want to abort my children. This is an amicable separation.

Winston Smith
May 5, 2022 7:56 pm

J.C.

The leak first and foremost an attempt to change the vote.

The final result will show us who among the USSC can be bullied.

Bluey
Bluey
May 5, 2022 7:58 pm

dover0beachsays:
May 5, 2022 at 7:22 pm
Very interesting thread on Putin:

Dimitri Alexander Simes
@DimitriASimes
Russian President Vladimir Putin didnโ€™t always have such an estranged relationship with the West. In fact, Putin got his start in politics by working for Russiaโ€™s pro-Western liberals during the 1990s.

A ?on an often overlooked chapter in Putinโ€™s biography.

I keep asking people what if Putin is the moderate? That thread make it sound like he is.

cohenite
May 5, 2022 7:58 pm

Cannon-Brookes shows climate investors need to buy coal to kill it
Too many ESG investors have done the Wall Street walk, and so all theyโ€™re left to do is talk the talk, as AGLโ€™s fate is decided. Mike Cannon-Brookes took the opposite approach.

Jonathan ShapiroSenior reporter
Updated May 5, 2022 โ€“ 2.02pm,
first published at 1.54pm

Here is something almost no one would have predicted: Mike Cannon-Brookes, the software billionaire and climate activist reviving his play for AGL Energy, this time on his own.

He controls the equivalent of 11.3 per cent of AGL, the lumbering carbon-emitting underperformer of Australiaโ€™s sharemarket.

Perhaps itโ€™s just the latest example of a billionaire rotating out of growth stocks into value (as Elon Musk is doing by funding his buy into Twitter by reducing his Tesla holding).

As Cannon-Brookes hits the phones to muster support for his activism, as he has relentlessly done since his investment was revealed, he is inadvertently highlighting one of the biggest dilemmas of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement: to divest or to engage? Cannon-Brookes chose to engage, but he is arguably in the minority.

Itโ€™s a fierce debate that has levelled some awkward truths at the pioneers in this space, such as the goliath of sovereign wealth funds, Norges Bank.

Is it better for an investor to divest (sell out) of a company that doesnโ€™t meet its values or vision for the future, or, to remain invested and exercise their views as shareholders by voting down resolutions, and pushing for change in the boardroom, management and strategy?

If all goes to plan, Cannon-Brookes will own more than 10 percent of AGL within a few weeks. Thatโ€™s not a very carbon neutral position. But with that stake he will wage some influence over the direction of the company, including the timeline in which it shuts down coal-fired generation.

Wall Street has walked
The other reality is that no super funds or sovereign wealth funds are direct investors in AGL.

They have all chosen to divest direct investments in AGL equity and with that ceded any say on the direction of the company. That leaves a register dominated by index funds and retail shareholders, who, judging by the share trading volumes, appear largely apathetic to the cause.

The index funds are now able to exert influence. Since theyโ€™ve accepted they canโ€™t do the Wall Street walk (selling something they donโ€™t like) they have scaled up their governance functions to make informed calls on precisely these types of events.

In Cannon-Brookesโ€™ favour is that the planned demerger may mean divestment for some index funds (although both split entities should squeeze in to the top 200 index.)

So at the margin, theyโ€™ll be more open to the prospect of voting down the proposed split.

In theory, mass divestment of companies such as AGL means those that remain, or buy in, have different motivations to those that have sold out.

Others, like fast-growing ESG focused Future Super, are left rather feebly to cheer on Cannon-Brookes from the sidelines, assuming they stick to their divestment policies.

Confronting realities
The trade-off between divesting and engagement is not new. In November 2015 on a visit to Australia, Norges Bankโ€™s Martin Skancke explained that the decarbonisation of one investment portfolio simply led to the recarbonisation of another.

โ€œA more direct approach is to look at the investment capacity of fossil fuel companies; their capital structure and dividend policy,โ€ he said.

โ€œInvestors have started asking fossil fuel companies to stress test their investment opportunities against climate scenarios. A next step is to get their money in dividends, so they can reinvest in something else.โ€

At the same event, then-head of NZ Super, Adrian Orr, made a similar point that โ€œchopping off coal at the end of our portfolioโ€ would not change the industry.

โ€œYou will make a bigger difference transforming the energy industry within the current MSCI [global index].โ€

But it seems divestment is an easier sell to constituents, and so most big funds eventually opt for divestment.

As ESG becomes mainstream, these sorts of unintended realities are going to have to be confronted. Another is that not every investor buys into the movement.

โ€œWe have many clients who would think ESG is a flawed relative concept and would not consider that an appropriate lens from which to view their portfolio,โ€ Scott Haslem, the chief investment officer of Crestone, which manages money for wealthy Australians, said.

โ€œThey would have different views around transition or different views around fossils. There would be people who are less interested in climate and more interested in impact or sustainability,โ€ he said at the Macquarie Australia Conference this week.

That leaves the agnostic investors to invest and, absent of policy changes, reap the dividends.

Another reality is that ESG does not come without costs: it may not always be a win-win trade in what will be a difficult and expensive transition.

TCorpโ€™s head of portfolio construction, Tanya Branwhite, agreed that investors are going to sacrifice returns, turn down good trades or lag benchmarks.

โ€œThere are going to be some interesting conversations over the coming years about what trade-offs youโ€™re having to make in order to be as ESG focused and delivering what may be expected without having to compromise return.โ€

Which brings us back to Cannon-Brookes and the ultimate trade-off: divest or engage. By opting for the latter, his crusade may galvanise the ESG movement, but like-minded investors may find it easier to keep their capital to themselves.

Attlasian has never made a profit, loses up to $300 million Pa on pathetic turnovers of less than $3 billion yet is worth over $100 billion. The bearded fucktard and his rich brat partner are both worth over $25 billion. How the fuck is this possible.

Cassie of Sydney
May 5, 2022 7:59 pm

So the Victorian Liberals under Matthew Guy will go to a state election supporting the following progressive Labor policies, drug injecting rooms, “transgender” conversion laws, late term abortion laws, indigenous treaty…..oh, with who exactly….Lidia Thorpe?

I’m not mocking Victorians, we here in NSW also have a Labor lite, spineless, jellyfish Liberal government, a government that will be given the boot next March.

Indolent
Indolent
May 5, 2022 8:00 pm

2000 mules comes out and itโ€™s buried in a media blackout, and nothing will happen to remove the criminals who have taken capital hill in a coup dโ€™etat, without violence.
Thatโ€™s just the reality of it.
When they canโ€™t spin a bullshit narrative they just ignore it.
Same old same old.

There has been a criminal takeover of the west and these people are going nowhere. They wonโ€™t be removed unless physically and violently ousted.

This is just self-evident. None of these people ever face any consequences. Whenever wrong doing is exposed, it is just ignored and they carry on as before. When the it’s reported that the FBI has doubled or tripled it’s millions of illegal digital surveillance of U.S. citizens, when even one such event is illegal, and people just shrug their shoulders what hope is there that any remedy will be forthcoming? And look at what’s happened here in the past two years. I don’t consider Australia to be a democracy any more. The election is pure theatre when the whole country is still under “emergency” rule. What rights do we actually still have, beyond ticking a box for Tweedledee or Tweedledum?

Dot
Dot
May 5, 2022 8:00 pm

Mike Cannon Brookes.

Australia’s King Coal.

If he buys more, the price of coal goes up and exploration goes into overdrive before the price plummets.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 8:00 pm

Labor’s partner The Greens vow to scrap negative gearing

Michael Smith News. How many Labor front benchers will that catch?

Bluey
Bluey
May 5, 2022 8:03 pm

Victorian Liberal party, with one or maybe two exceptions, are worthless. For all practical purposes the opposition have been the two LDP MPs.

Eyrie
Eyrie
May 5, 2022 8:03 pm

I had a bright maths student drop out after second year to transfer to medicine because his mum wanted it. He came back a year later, saying it was boring. โ€œLike memorising the phone bookโ€.

Young bloke I know who has done some programming for me is very, very bright. He started this at age 13. I thought it was a great joke when at 15 the school started them on work experience when he could fairly claim to be a professional software developer already. Unfortunately subtle family pressure means he wants to go into medicine when he finishes high school at the end of the year. I don’t think it is the place for IQ 160 +. I’m sure he’ll get bored.

Dot
Dot
May 5, 2022 8:04 pm

The median voter theory implies that negative gearing for investments might go but we will see tax deductibility for mortgage repayments on places of residence.

GRN + PUP = consumer surplus at the expense of producers.

Dot
Dot
May 5, 2022 8:05 pm

So much chum.

No sign of the KD fish, Cap’n Quint.

flyingduk
flyingduk
May 5, 2022 8:06 pm

JCsays: May 5, 2022 at 7:03 pm If nominal GDP grows at 5.5% over the next 30 years, we go from A$1.4 trillion dollars (present day) to A$6 trillion in nominal dollars. The federal debt, which is currently around A$1 trillion will be 16% of GDP. Itโ€™s doable.

Why not just use Wayne Swans ‘4 years of surplusses I announce tonight’ to get the ball rolling?

Keith Forwheels
Keith Forwheels
May 5, 2022 8:08 pm

Attlasian has never made a profit, loses up to $300 million Pa on pathetic turnovers of less than $3 billion yet is worth over $100 billion. The bearded fucktard and his rich brat partner are both worth over $25 billion. How the fuck is this possible.

The Fed.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 8:12 pm

โ€œIn the meantime Groundhog Guy has decided the Victorian gliberals are now in favour of a treaty with fauxborigines.โ€

Any “treaty”with “Aborigines” is going to result in a legal dogfight of monumental proportions. Who is an “Aborigine”, and bound by the “Treaty?” to begin with.

lotocoti
lotocoti
May 5, 2022 8:15 pm

A wild take?
That’s being polite.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 5, 2022 8:20 pm

Thereโ€™s nothing like the scent of ministerial leather to get the nostrils of a career politician flaring so they can suck it all in.

Fattening the super more like it. God knows what departing on a Ministerial final salary would be worth if you were on the old Defined Benefits scheme.

Rex Anger
Rex Anger
May 5, 2022 8:22 pm

Unfortunately subtle family pressure means he wants to go into medicine when he finishes high school at the end of the year. I donโ€™t think it is the place for IQ 160 +. Iโ€™m sure heโ€™ll get bored.

Eyrie, it isn’t just the lack of stimulation that might be a problem. The workplace culture in medicine is often vicious and exploitative towards the trainee.

It’s a dirty secret within Medicine that mental health issues amongst the young and those new to profession can be quite bad. And nobody amongst all the Type A personalities who populate Medicine seems to quite know how to fix it…

Winston Smith
May 5, 2022 8:22 pm

sfw:

Born in 56, grew up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, had country farmers as cousins and I had never heard of a choko until a few years back. Is it a NSW thing? We did have chokawogs but that was another time.

Never heard of the old saying “Such a crook coach, he couldn’t train a choko vine over an outback dunny”?

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
May 5, 2022 8:22 pm

Medics are in the top 2%. Mathematicians in the top one tenth of a percent.

And they’re almost all men.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 8:25 pm

Truth-telling should take up to a decade, says Indigenous leader
Jack Latimore
By Jack Latimore
May 5, 2022 โ€” 6.03pm

Achieving a statewide treaty between First Nations people and Victoriaโ€™s government could take up to a decade, one of the stateโ€™s Indigenous leaders believes, but he says the process is necessary to shake off the grip of colonialism.

Appearing before the Yoorrook Justice Commission in Melbourne on Thursday, Marcus Stewart, co-chair of the First Peoplesโ€™ Assembly of Victoria, said that โ€œwithout treaty, what is now called Victoria will remain โ€“ in our peopleโ€™s hearts, minds and reality โ€“ the colony of Victoriaโ€.
Geraldine Atkinson and Marcus Stewart, co-chairs of the First Peoplesโ€™ Assembly of Victoria, outside the Yoorrook Justice Commission in Fitzroy on Thursday.

Geraldine Atkinson and Marcus Stewart, co-chairs of the First Peoplesโ€™ Assembly of Victoria, outside the Yoorrook Justice Commission in Fitzroy on Thursday.Credit:Jason South

โ€œFirst Peoples in Victoria live in the shadow of colonisation,โ€ Stewart said, a situation that could only change with โ€œprofound structural changeโ€.

The inquiry is scheduled to conclude with a final report delivered by June 2024, a timeframe Stewart described as โ€œtoo shortโ€.

Stewart agreed with a suggestion put to him by counsel assisting Tony McAvoy, SC, that the Yoorrook inquiry was constrained by a three-year timeframe under its letters patent.

โ€œHow in a three-year period do you unpack 200-plus years of the impacts of colonisation?โ€ Stewart said. โ€œAlthough we held the pen … at no point in time did we have any decision-making over how long this should run.โ€

Stewart said seven to 10 years would be a more appropriate timeframe for the truth-telling process.

Under questioning over his witness statement โ€“ or balert keetyarra โ€“ Stewart told McAvoy that โ€œthere will be an evolution of negotiationsโ€ once the assembly had delivered a treaty negotiation framework that could result in a comprehensive treaty process continuing โ€œfor another 10 yearsโ€.

The inquiry heard that some potential reforms delivered by a statewide treaty could involve the provision of dedicated seats for First Peoples representatives within the Victorian parliament, while treaties with traditional owners could provide economic empowerment.

On Wednesday, the oppositionโ€™s Aboriginal affairs spokesperson, Peter Walsh, said a state Coalition government would support advancing the treaty โ€œin a way that supports self-determination and reconciliation while strengthening community and connection to countryโ€.

The Mathew Guy-led opposition had previously argued that the treaty must occur at a federal level. The change in policy from the opposition was significant and came as a surprise, Stewart told the inquiry.

โ€œI never thought I would live to see the day … we would have bipartisan support for treaty, but the productive working relationship that weโ€™ve had from both sides so far is critical to success,โ€ he said.

The commission has so far heard submissions from First Peoples elders Uncle Jack Charles, Uncle Johnny Lovett and Aunty Fay Carter, who each shared their personal and family experiences of the impacts of colonisation and racially discriminatory government policies, and the trans-generational trauma that stemmed from the processes of colonisation.

“Trans-generational trauma”……..

Frank
Frank
May 5, 2022 8:26 pm

Who is an โ€œAborigineโ€, and bound by the โ€œTreaty?โ€ to begin with.

Depends doesn’t it, on what’s in it for me. Just a little tick mark in a box and all this could be yours.

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
May 5, 2022 8:38 pm

I donโ€™t think it is the place for IQ 160 +. Iโ€™m sure heโ€™ll get bored.

Theyll find a way to kick him out if he doesn’t eject himself. Ppl that bright ask lots of questions, and they won’t know the answers. Never having thought to ask the questions themselves.

Timothy Neilson
Timothy Neilson
May 5, 2022 8:42 pm

The trade-off between divesting and engagement is not new. In November 2015 on a visit to Australia, Norges Bankโ€™s Martin Skancke explained that the decarbonisation of one investment portfolio simply led to the recarbonisation of another.

In the case of Australian coal, the CCP’s.

flyingduk
flyingduk
May 5, 2022 8:44 pm

And theyโ€™re almost all men.

what are you, a biologist?

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 8:47 pm

Attlasian has never made a profit, loses up to $300 million Pa on pathetic turnovers of less than $3 billion yet is worth over $100 billion. The bearded fucktard and his rich brat partner are both worth over $25 billion. How the fuck is this possible.

The Fed.

How is the fed responsible for investors making this specific investment decision?

Boambee John
Boambee John
May 5, 2022 8:48 pm

Delta Asays:
May 5, 2022 at 6:28 pm
H B Bearsays:
May 5, 2022 at 8:10 am
It is more noble to starve than to eat chokos.

A child of the 50โ€™s (late 40โ€™s, tbh) I gladly ate everything that was put on my plateโ€ฆ except chokos.

If youโ€™ve never tried them, take my advice. Donโ€™t. The name says it all.

Back in my long past days at the Uni of Qld, some wit put a parody article in the student paper, about a Queenslander who had found a way to invert chokos into petrol. Much amusement among those who had ever had to eat the horrible things – I went to a boarding school, and had choked down far too many!

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 5, 2022 8:54 pm

No sign of the KD fish, Capโ€™n Quint.

Dun dun dun dun dundundundundunrrrrraaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

It never ceases to amaze me that the people most likely to scream like buggery* and claim to speak for all other women on the planet on abortion are paradoxically the very least likely to be impregnated.

*Deliberate.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 5, 2022 8:55 pm

I am always meticulous about my few medications when I travel. I get scripts filled for a few month’s worth, just in case I am stuck anywhere and always keep them safely in my hand luggage. And that’s why I don’t know where on earth my blood pressure tablets have gone. Can’t find them, must have mislaid them somewhere en route from home to here.

Hence I now have to grapple with the NHS to get a script here. Started the process this morning. Walked with my friend to her local doctor’s as the telephone was constantly busy. It’s always like this, she says, so we head off down the street to present in person. Maybe they can call me for a telephone consult tomorrow, as it is urgent, they tell me. Maybe they can’t though.

Last time this happened and I needed antibiotics I went private and was seen immediately. Now my antibiotic stash is still in my carry on, sans the BP stash. May have to do go private flashing the CC if nothing comes good tomorrow. The perils of travel.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 5, 2022 8:55 pm

You just knew Ed October would have a very robust view on chokos.

You just knew it.

Boambee John
Boambee John
May 5, 2022 8:59 pm

In a lengthy โ€œlist of demandsโ€ issued on Thursday, the Warlpiri Nation also called for a ban on police carrying guns and โ€œonly Warlpiri governance and authority in our communityโ€

“Governance” broadly defined includes services like education and health care. Agree quickly, cut off the OPM funded services, and sit back for a couple of months. The survivors will welcome the police back, and also the nurses and teachers.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 5, 2022 9:02 pm

A bit more from Ossiana, reproduced* from Dot’s link:

Learn the laws in your state. Some states, like California, will allow abortion as part of their state code. Other states, like Texas, are anti-woman shitholes. Knowledge is power here.

Learn about private adoption as well as Safe Haven Laws. If you have an unwanted child due to reproductive coercion, you might be able to use a Safe Haven to drop off the baby and sign away your rights. Each state has different laws, so find out what your options are.

What a delightful young woman. On a completely different note – does anyone know why ladeees who read this muck are fucked in the head?

*Deliberate.

Boambee John
Boambee John
May 5, 2022 9:02 pm

Dickless

I suspect that bauple (macadamia) trees were grown for more than privacy.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 5, 2022 9:05 pm

โ€œThis funding increase is a direct threat to our lives in our community. Yapakurlangu Warnkaru Matters, Black Lives Matter!โ€

In the traditional manner, that boat sailed long ago.

Try again, dickheads. Nobody cares.

Zipster
Zipster
May 5, 2022 9:08 pm

Another reality is that ESG does not come without costs: it may not always be a win-win trade in what will be a difficult and expensive transition.

fascism always is

Indolent
Indolent
May 5, 2022 9:11 pm

Another thing that puzzles me (yes there are many such) about the 18 to 48 month thing.
Is there some sort of clock in the vaccine set to detonate a kill switch beginning in, as of now, eleven months?
And why 18 to 48 months? Is it to lull people into some sort of sense of security?

acquired immune deficiency syndrome

I posted this earlier but it seems highly relevant relevant to this exchange

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 9:11 pm

In a lengthy โ€œlist of demandsโ€ issued on Thursday, the Warlpiri Nation also called for a ban on police carrying guns and โ€œonly Warlpiri governance and authority in our communityโ€

1 – Warlpiri nation? What Warlpiri Nation?

2 – Warlpiri governance and authority – so, when the tribal elders sentence an offender to any one of the barbaric tribal punishments that have no place in the 21st Century, that’s all good?

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
May 5, 2022 9:12 pm

Reproductive coercion.
Thatโ€™s when the wealthy socialist elite pay poor women for the use their bodies.
Your body our money.

Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
May 5, 2022 9:12 pm

Doc Faustus:

Abortion is a routine and safe health-care procedure accessed by approximately one in four American women.

Not for the poor bloody foetus, it isnโ€™t.

I might point out that I was quoting freaks quoting a freak.

Zipster
Zipster
May 5, 2022 9:16 pm

If you have an unwanted child due to reproductive coercion, you might be able to use a Safe Haven to drop off the baby and sign away your right

the infinity selfishness of the modern woke wyminsis

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 9:16 pm

the Warlpiri Nation

Can’t the Commonwealth of Australia just invade the “Warlpuri Nation” and make sure that they sign the surrender, this time?

Cassie of Sydney
May 5, 2022 9:18 pm

“JD Vance is pretty impressive.”

Yes

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 5, 2022 9:23 pm

The Persian Princess, Rita Panahi, absolutely nails VicJack Inc to the wall, and apropos of Greens indig wench Lidia Thorpe protesting about 12 punters being shipped to Christmas Island:

In the video shared on Thorpeโ€™s Twitter account she can also be heard abusing the officers. Here are some highlights: โ€œYou (the police) are the criminals โ€ฆ how dare you, how dare you, you are an absolute disgrace,โ€ Thorpe screamed.โ€

โ€œHave you even done your research as officers of the law โ€ฆ because they are all innocent!โ€

โ€œIs it not enough that youโ€™re locking up innocent people? No one in there has a criminal record. We are talking about innocent people in there โ€ฆ how dare you treat people like that.โ€

And:

It turns out that far from being innocent the people being transferred to the Christmas Island detention centre were made up of detainees โ€œwhose visas have been cancelled due to being a risk to the community, and includes those convicted of serious crimes relating to assault, illicit drugs, robbery, domestic violence and other offences,โ€ according to a Department of Home Affairs spokesman. But what is a little thing like facts and context when youโ€™re indulging in a performative outrage for the camera.

And:

And what has been just as pitiful as Thorpeโ€™s loopy activism for violent detainees is the weak response from police command.

And:

If youโ€™re a pregnant mum posting about an anti-lockdown protest on Facebook you can expect to be arrested in your kitchen in front of your kids and then have Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius allege that youโ€™ve โ€œengaged in serious criminal behaviourโ€ but if youโ€™re a Leftist senator then youโ€™re far less likely to face arrest, charges or even condemnation from the upper echelons of the force.

AND:

Itโ€™s just another example of selective policing in this state where some protesters are considered more equal than others.

Protest against a lockdown and you can expect mounted police and officers in riot gear advancing towards you with batons raised. Even if youโ€™re posing zero threat you are a chance of being hit with capsicum spray and nonlethal rounds but if youโ€™re a senator gesticulating aggressively in the faces of multiple officers then police take a softly softly approach.

Boambee John
Boambee John
May 5, 2022 9:26 pm

Knuckle Draggersays:
May 5, 2022 at 8:55 pm
You just knew Ed October would have a very robust view on chokos.

You just knew it.

Had to laugh at his pompous “bauple nut” statement. Only idiots and botanists (possibly not even the latter) referred to them as anything other than Queensland nuts.

Boambee John
Boambee John
May 5, 2022 9:29 pm

Farmer Gezsays:
May 5, 2022 at 9:12 pm
Reproductive coercion.
Thatโ€™s when the wealthy socialist elite pay poor women for the use their bodies.
Your body our money.

But enough about Secretary of Transportation Buttygig and xer “husband”.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 9:30 pm

Musk supposedly has a net worth of 254 bill. If he divested and stuck it all in investments returning 5% pa, he would be making 38 million a day.

Salvatore, Understaffed & Overworked Martyr to Govt Covid Stupidity

Knuckle Dragger says: May 5, 2022 at 9:23 pm

The Persian Princess, Rita Panahi, absolutely nails VicJack Inc to the wall.

I’d add one improvement to Rita Panahi’s article,

If youโ€™re a pregnant mum posting about an anti-lockdown protest on Facebook you can expect to be arrested in your kitchen in front of your kids and

If youโ€™re a pregnant mum posting 100km distant from a locked-down area, about an anti-lockdown protest that will not be held within 100km of a lockdown area, on Facebook you can expect to be arrested in your kitchen in front of your kids and…

How’s that?

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 9:33 pm

Dover

How do you feel about mainland Chinese buying property here?

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
May 5, 2022 9:50 pm

says:
May 5, 2022 at 9:42 pm

Chinese embassy criticizes the U.S. for spreading disinformation about China

The US is pretty good at disinformation. They’ve even got a department in the DoJ for it.

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 9:57 pm

Mollie Hemingway

Keep thinking about an abortion supporter I encountered the other night at the Supreme Court who screamed — almost as if possessed — “KILL THOSE F-CKING BABIES!” Such hate-filled extremism — particularly compared to previous mantra of “safe, legal, RARE”

These animals are satanic.

Tintarella di Luna
Tintarella di Luna
May 5, 2022 9:58 pm

Both the Sunbather and I have been polled by a number of different organisations, I have only been polled this evening. We have both said we voted Liberal last time and that we will be voting Labor this time. One question we were asked was about gambling and whether we thought there were more pressing priorities to which we said there were more pressing priorities. Interesting that the Sunbather has been polled about 6 times and he has said he’ll be voting Labor to all of them.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
May 5, 2022 10:13 pm

Went to see my Surgeon today, saw the Registrar first. Hello Grey I’m blah blah, yes we’ve met before. I couldn’t forget your lovely eyes. Mr Ranga, I do believe you’re flirting with me. The beauty of youth, sigh. Great to know I no longer pose a threat to young women.

duncanm
duncanm
May 5, 2022 10:20 pm

Cherry 2000. Great, great movie.

โ€œJust get a dollโ€

funniest sex-bot themed plot was Rick and Morty.

Morty buys a pawn-shop sex bot, humps it endlessly at home, then it gives birth to a hybrid human/alien.

They take the alien back to its planet – which is run by women, with the men cast out in the wilderness at birth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWRYXZe4HxM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7LjLz2CRSY

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 10:22 pm

apropos of Greens indig wench Lidia Thorpe protesting about 12 punters being shipped to Christmas Island:

Wouldn’t Senator Thorpe have sworn an oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Queen?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 5, 2022 10:23 pm

Shall we take a turn about the garden? invitesl my friend on this fine spring mid-day, where I am wearing a summer frock sans cardigan. I agree to venture out of the conservatory, and we do the English thing, looking at the Spring emerging in all of her forty odd pot plants in unusual pots such as chimney crowns and old wooden tubs, which sit on a terrace of medieval stone slabs rescued from a monastery and on damp grass around the sides of the house. We then move on to the summer house (new and wooden) and the greenhouse and peer in various sheds as she bewails her husband’s proclivity for collecting old bikes (he’s a cyclist) and other sporting gear stored there and in the garage, also full,. where his Range Rover is parked outside.

The nicest part is when we arrive at the orchard against the garden’s far wall, where the gnarled old apple and pear trees are still bearing fruit, and I casually help her removed the eager Spring sprouts from the trunk, feeling like some vandal for doing this but assured it is necessary for the trees’ health. The cherry tree is setting small cherries already, to mostly go to the many birds that come to the three birdbaths and feeder trays she has in various strategic places for them.

This is English regional town life as we think of it in books and movies. A far cry from the cities.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
May 5, 2022 10:25 pm

JC life seems to be an inconvenience for these people, not just the unborn. Where does all this come from? What do they ever think about? Do they appreciate anything? They are so lost.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 10:30 pm

Mongistan late night mask compliance rating:

High.

FMD.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 10:33 pm

These animals are satanic.

The only logical explanation.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 5, 2022 10:34 pm

Mongistan late night mask compliance rating:

High.

If you don’t mind rickw – where is this? I was in Flemington, Ascot Vale and the City last weekend and didn’t see one, except the odd one at the airport.

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 10:37 pm

This is English regional town life as we think of it in books and movies. A far cry from the cities.

I used to stay at the Chalk Lane Hotel in Epsom. They typically had weddings and birthday parties on the weekend. I used to grab a coffee and my laptop and sit in the lobby doing work, but secretly just watching and absorbing the Englishness of it all!

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 10:38 pm

This is English regional town life as we think of it in books and movies. A far cry from the cities.

We stayed in a village outside York. It took me some time to realize that the alien smell was coalsmoke..

rickw
rickw
May 5, 2022 10:39 pm

If you donโ€™t mind rickw โ€“ where is this?

Essendon to Flinders street, women generally not wearing masks, betaโ€™s, near 100%.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 5, 2022 10:42 pm

Essendon to Flinders street, women generally not wearing masks, betaโ€™s, near 100%.

Well, it was Essendon after all.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
May 5, 2022 10:42 pm

Yes Kneel your reply to my question/statement is thought provoking. Each case is different which makes it so difficult with any legislation. I would not presume to offer answers. I used to think abortion was okay because it never affected me and then after having children myself wondered how I could have thought that.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 10:50 pm

I used to stay at the Chalk Lane Hotel in Epsom.

We’ve stayed at the same hotel in London, half a dozen times now. The last time we were there, a group of American tourists were checking out, just as we arrived. They were being veeeery painful….the desk clerk sings out “Oh, the Australians back again. Nice to see you here AGAIN!”

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 5, 2022 10:59 pm

and absorbing the Englishness of it all

English taxi drivers call you “Governor.”

duncanm
duncanm
May 5, 2022 11:25 pm

speaking of mask compliancing.. it slipped my mind when I transited Melbourne airport the other day.

Didn’t get pulled up all through security etc.. then plonked my arse down at the bar and had a pint before hopping on the plane (masked).

I reckon the compliance rate in the airport was about 8/10 or less… so there’s hope.

Got a bit lippy at the security screen – the mongs took a couple of tools I had in my bag (that I’d flown down with to Melb earlier that same day). Who knew a 4mm hex was a deadly weapon?

Colonel Crispin Berka
Colonel Crispin Berka
May 5, 2022 11:37 pm

Who knew a 4mm hex was a deadly weapon?

Airport security believe in voodoo.
They don’t want you putting a hex on the plane

JC
JC
May 5, 2022 11:40 pm

Is there a functional brain in this White House and I don’t just mean the demented crook?

Just last month the US committed to selling 1m barrels of crude PER DAY in order to fend of Putin. Today the WH said theyโ€™ll need to buy back 60m barrels of crude.

Crude is up over 110 bucks a barrel.

Gabor
Gabor
May 6, 2022 3:46 am

Indolent says:
May 5, 2022 at 11:11 pm

FOI reveals Pfizer and Medicine Regulators hid the dangers of Covid-19 Vaccination during Pregnancy because Study found it increases risk of Birth Defects & Infertility

You are wasting your time Indolent.
As the state of affairs stands at the moment, this Covid had scrambled the minds of a few people, both vaxed and unvaxed. remarkable power this virus has.

On the one side there is Struth, who used to be quite a pleasant fellow, wealth of experience with good stories to tell, but something happened to him, and now he is almost unhinged, claiming actions of others harming him in some way.

I’m not a libertarian but can’t see why someone protecting his family and income reluctantly complying with rules to protect his job is harming him in any way, besides, him not complying can do the same, ie. harming others. (both argument are rubbish BTW)

I don’t condone the compulsory nature of the vax and I didn’t take it, neither is anyone in my family.

On the other side are those sworn supporters of authority both civil and religious, equally rigid in their views.

What I miss is the criticism of them as well by the few vocal forumites who never miss a beat to beat up on Struth, even when he is not present, they goad and bait him.

Luckily there quite few learned or at least interested chaps who take the time to look at both side, and provide good links and arguments.

Tom
Tom
May 6, 2022 4:00 am
Tom
Tom
May 6, 2022 4:01 am
Tom
Tom
May 6, 2022 4:02 am
Tom
Tom
May 6, 2022 4:03 am
Tom
Tom
May 6, 2022 4:04 am
Tom
Tom
May 6, 2022 4:05 am
Tom
Tom
May 6, 2022 4:06 am
Tom
Tom
May 6, 2022 4:08 am
Tom
Tom
May 6, 2022 4:09 am
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