Very good article by Lord Ashcroft in the Daily Mail. For those who don’t know Ashcroft is a bit of an authority on bravery as he has the worlds largest collection of Victoria Cross medals and written books on the subject. Now that is a hobby. Now all on display in an Annex at Imperial War Museum.

The daring British Major butchered by the Nazis – and why a tiny French village will never forget the ultimate sacrifice he made for their freedom, writes LORD ASHCROFT
Major Colin Ogden-Smith volunteered for a group known as the Jedburghs
Small Breton community in France still holds a special service every other year
The service will commemorate the gallantry of the British Special Forces officer

Where have all the crack pot ideas regarding ejucashun come from?

Universities. That means that we got it from the US but they probably got it from the French. Like Pol Pot did.

Well, I’ll say this about Labor, they don’t and won’t waste any time.

Remember the stack of executive orders Biden signed on his first day? (& withdrawing/reversing previous executive orders).
Just google the stack of the things he got through.
Horrifying.

The internet is quick.
Memes abound already in response to the WHO monkey pox declaration.
Admiral Ackbar “It’s a trap” getting a work out.

It’s hard to know who to despise the most, the academic bullshitter or the AAP reporter who didn’t check a single damn claim she made. Part of a wire story that moved about an hour ago:

At the time, Dr Hanna was in rural Victoria and observed the less obvious unfolding of human suffering in communities around Lake Eildon, a dammed reservoir on one of the major tributaries of the Murray.

As the water vanished from the lake, the tourists vanished along with their cash.

The real reason Eildon was so low in 2008-09: The dam wall was judged inadequate under newly introduced standards to survive a middling earthquake, which would have seen Shep and a bunch of other towns swept away. So it was decided to take advantage of the drought, open the spillgate to further lower levels and then bring in John Holland to raise and reinforce the dam wall.

When the work was finished, water levels were back to near-normal in no time even before the drought’s end in 2013.

Modern journos, incurious handmaidens of careerist catastropharians.

If anyone is looking for a bit of “taking the piss” I would recommend the Pitch Meeting videos on YouTube where the host pitches a new movie or TV show to himself and takes apart the implausibilities and contradictions in the plot.
The video on the last Game of Thrones series is IMHO very very funny.

We usually watch Outsiders over Sunday lunch.

Daisy, who is young (now merely youngish) and learning, has been improving lately in some of the fill-in spots she has been on, but she was never any sort of match for being on Outsiders. Her problem is that her initial youtube persona with the full floral and lace image wears thin as she moves into more serious older-persons’ territory; and she needs to drop that arch theatricality which might have been ok for grabbing attention on youtube (she is nicer lately as she is trying to be more normal). Caleb Bond, yes he’s said he’s from South Australia, has loosened up a bit after some earlier stolidity but is still rather unexciting, but I will reserve judgement until I see how he shapes up with Rita and James, who are both exceptionally quick and bright. We really like James new Friday show on matters US, we record it with others we catch up on later.

How long before we get gay quarantine/internment camps I the outback.

Priscilla queen of The Desert was predictive programming!

I disagree, but let it be.
Europe is one step behind any fetish happening in the US, and we are one step behind Europe

I would say that Canada is one step behind Europe, New Zealand one step behind Canada and Australia one step behind New Zealand.

Elbow will fix this!

There is nothing tragic about it. It is in fact more accurate.

It is an appalling travesty.

Bigger than Ben Hur.

I used LE13 for Melton Mowbray (not the Tas one). Said it was invalid

I prefer going after ‘progsives’ as they are predominantly cranks. Going after liberalism will only alienate potential allies.

The Frankfurt School of Critical Marxism/Critical Theory. Read about it here as the mish-mash of philosophical ideas that it actually was, dominated by a marxist view of the poor and oppressed. Combine it with the subjectivisit European linguistic and social-structural analyses of philosophers like Derrida and Foucault and you get the wishy-washy relativist post-modernism that permeates US universities today, and which constantly refertilises itself with the British brands of it.

It all stems from Marxist theory about ‘the capitalist stage of production’ not working out as planned (strange that, eh?). Therefore the intellectuals searched for reasons why not, from false consciousness (Sartre) and psychoanalytic disasters (Freud, and then the anti-psychiatry Death of the Family) right through to outraged concern with hyped up racial and sexual ‘exploitation’, a free-floating exploration of ‘gender’ as feelz, and sheeting the blame for all perceived societal and economic deficits to capitalist profits and industrial capitalist environmental degradation. We all know where that led. What a handy, albeit unproven, theory Climate Change has turned out to be.

Getting inside the heads of the people (via their institutions as per Gramsci) seemed like the way to go to create the sorts of changes these social manipulators wanted to make to fulfill their own twisted ideologies. And unshackled from any rational realities, they are teaching your children to hate.

subjectivist, not subjectivisit

I referred Leicestershire to the book Green Murder by Ian Plimer also.

BBS: Thought I was going to have a heart attack in those last few minutes.

Interesting thing: This was the ‘retro round’ — and retro indeed when Ugle-Hagen kicked that astonishing last goal to seal the deal.

In Bontompelli’s first year, also against Melbourne, he kicked a similarly impossible goal to cement victory in the final seconds from almost the same position.

Re lack of workers, our town has around 3000 people, only a small Foodworks supermarket, two pubs and a few cafes. Yesterday the supermarket couldn’t man the deli and closed it in the afternoon, there were only two student part timers to man the checkouts and do the other work, one permanent in the bottle shop and the shift manager. Told that they just can’t get anyone to work, it’s not the pay, both schoolkids and adults just aren’t applying. There’s a high school here that until the last year or so had more kids looking for work than available jobs, all gone.

The same for the pubs and cafes, they are all operating on restricted hours for staff. This is peak season here with the skiers, tourists are complaining that they can’t get a meal, the pubs have restricted the number of meals served over an evening and so limit the diners. Up at the ski area much the same, all screaming for staff. I suppose a couple of years sit down money is a factor but this seems worse than that.

I’m getting the feeling criticising liberalism is verboten.

By who?

I’m getting the feeling criticising liberalism is verboten.

Liberalism, like conservatism, is a memeplex, a constellation of ideas. Nor is it the same constellation as it was two hundred years ago. In those days, conservatism was clinging to traditions and liberalism was giving traditions rational thought and discarding those which didn’t survive. Liberals had more faith in their ability to think than was justified by the consequences, conservatives had more faith in the opinions of their grandfathers than was warranted. It was the liberals who abolished slavery, promoted freedoms and gave women the vote. OK, the last was a blunder. Meanwhile, conservatives favoured the divine right of kings.

Nowadays, liberals, at least in the US, are not the least bit liberal, they are statist, authoritarian shits.

I see plenty to criticise on all sides of politics, I see no reason to pick only one side. But then, I’ve long outgrown the need for an ideology.

arking Toadsays:
July 24, 2022 at 11:00 am
Old Ozzie @ 09:39am

Having fun doing the survey – can’t find a postcode to use. Any help?

Take your choice – https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU862AU862&nfpr=1&q=postcodes+leicester&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjoppn9tpD5AhUyxoUKHVzYBjAQBSgAegQIAhAz&biw=1595&bih=701&dpr=2

sfwsays:
July 24, 2022 at 11:42 am
Re lack of workers, our town has around 3000 people, only a small Foodworks supermarket, two pubs and a few cafes. Yesterday the supermarket couldn’t man the deli and closed it in the afternoon, there were only two student part timers to man the checkouts and do the other work, one permanent in the bottle shop and the shift manager. Told that they just can’t get anyone to work, it’s not the pay, both schoolkids and adults just aren’t applying. There’s a high school here that until the last year or so had more kids looking for work than available jobs, all gone.

The same for the pubs and cafes, they are all operating on restricted hours for staff. This is peak season here with the skiers, tourists are complaining that they can’t get a meal, the pubs have restricted the number of meals served over an evening and so limit the diners. Up at the ski area much the same, all screaming for staff. I suppose a couple of years sit down money is a factor but this seems worse than that.

I have a family member that’s the classic NEET, nearly 30 now and never worked a day in their life. Dropped out of every course they got into, had plenty of opportunities, including walking straight into a job no questions asked, and turned their nose up at every one of them. The suggestion they see a shrink got a similar reaction. There’s always some excuse, the latest has been they need transport. Never mind there’s stupid amounts of work in easy walking distance.

This person has pretty much burned every bridge they had. Not simply because they won’t show up, but because they’ve knocked back every chance they had and are of the “everyone owes me simply for existing” bent. At this point they’re unemployed and I would say they’re unemployable. Never going to be anything other than a leach of society.

Nope!

Always room for improvement, DrBG.

And I also gave you extra for making an effort for a change.

If ‘conservatism’ isn’t an ideology then what is it ,woger?

Thanks Old Ozzie @12:01

Sorted it – see further up fred. Thanks again for the link. Sunday fun.

Major Colin Ogden-Smith volunteered for a group known as the Jedburghs

Bourne – That fits perfectly with Troy Kennedy Martin in Edge of Darkness calling his antihero “Darius Jedburgh”. Not surprising give TKM’s attention to detail. I didn’t know about the Jedburghs until your comment.

I’d like to report that yesterday we dug up a human. No further information will be released.

Speciesist!

Anyone who hasn’t got a job now doesn’t want one. That’s plain wrong, a denial of all the political talk about providing equal opportunities and a better life for Aboriginal Australians.
Mark Latham MLC

He should have quoted Ben Chifley: “A hand up, not a hand out.”

sfwsays:
July 24, 2022 at 11:42 am

I blame horrid tree changes pushing the price of accommodation up.

Someone wrote a piece recently suggesting the US is going through the early stages of something resembling the beginnings of the French Revolution.

I’ll have to learn to knit so I can transition to a tricoteuse.

I’d like to report that yesterday we dug up a human.

Top Ender – please refrain from using the word “human” please because it contains the word “man” and we can’t tolerate that type of language abuse any longer. May I suggest huperson or huthing! The field is wide open for more appropriate descriptors, of course.

Cheers woger, yet isn’t that how most approach ideology?

“an attitude”

To be fair to the early liberals and conservatives, none of them would have entertained for a moment the idea that the primary function of government is to look after the people. Protect them from invaders and croooks, yes. Protect them from themselves, no.

I’m still trying to get my head around government (of any colour) mandating a vaccine to hold a job, go to a cafe or the pub.

Institutionalization happens over time.

A lot of Hayek’s thinking was clearly influenced by WWII and the response to it. Both major wars were such profound events you could hardly expect otherwise.

The TV series 1 of Peaky Blinders captures the awful dislocation caused by WWI where people tried to carry on but the undercurrent was constantly that nothing would ever be quite the same again. The human damage was immense as well as the economic ruin.

Of course Hayek couldn’t ignore all of that. It is foundational to understanding in a contemporary society the role of money, pricing, knowledge, and the individual’s social world – all of which Hayek put into his theorising: see here for a quick study guide to his oeuvre. I met him once, at a seminar in 1976 in Australia (where he was largely ostracised by the New Left of those days; and still is, of course).

JMH says:
July 24, 2022 at 12:40 pm
I’d like to report that yesterday we dug up a human.
Top Ender – please refrain from using the word “human” please because it contains the word “man” and we can’t tolerate that type of language abuse any longer. May I suggest huperson or huthing! The field is wide open for more appropriate descriptors, of course.

You can’t use huperson either because it contains the word “son”, so we should use “huperthing” or, instead of person, use “perthing”.

And both these regimes are popular. How’s that!

Many women and she-men like to be told what to do.
There I’ve said it.

DrBeauGan says:
July 24, 2022 at 1:12 pm
DrB – The response of government to plebs crying “give me liberty or give me death” is to enslave them, thereby saving them from death.
Freedom entails responsibility. That is why most men, and almost all women, hate it.

It’s interesting though.

Here we have two comments, one with the word “liberty” and the other with the word “freedom”. Look up each of the words and check out the meaning. And then the usage over time. You’ll note the word “freedom” is on the rise, while “liberty” is on the wane.

The ability to do as one pleases vs. the absence of restrictions to do as one pleases. If it feels good, I’ll do it…or don’t you dare enslave me.

I wonder if it is a product of cultural infantilisation.

(Lizzie) Conservatism in the Burkian sense of holding on to things in social organisation that are tried and seemingly true and not rushing immediately into newness for its own sake is an approach to the world rather than a theory of it.

(Roger) I tend not to use the term ‘conservatism’ because “isms” are generally ideologies.

I think the term can be useful in a broad sense, a descriptor of a set of views and observations held by a range of different authors, which produce a particular ‘bent’ to discourse. Not a ‘theory’ in the sense that Marx’s theoretical writings underpin Socialism and Mill’s underpin Liberalism. I definitely made it pretty clear, by calling it an approach myself as detailed above, that I am in the ‘sentiment’ school about it rather than a blind adherent to any theory (-ism) of it. As you do too, Roger, when you say above in line with a prominent writer within that discourse, one Roger Scruton:

I’d describe it as an attitude, a sentiment or an approach to life.

Farmer Gezsays:
July 24, 2022 at 1:30 pm
And both these regimes are popular. How’s that!

Many women and she-men like to be told what to do.
There I’ve said it.

I blame MAFS.

I am being called to lunch and Outsiders.

DrBeauGansays:
July 24, 2022 at 1:46 pm

1/10

Trying to hard to be profound.

Trying to hard to be profound.

Not something you’ll ever be guilty of.

Then there are also the calls for the state to interfere in all aspects of life and more and more central planning.

The UK’s response to the Great Depression was generally to cut red tape and reduce taxes, they subsequently recovered more rapidly.

I blame horrid tree changes pushing the price of accommodation up.

Universities flooding the zone with foreign(Chinese) students have a case to answer too. Women, children and indigenes hardest hit. Also men. It would be fun to see the whiny vice chancellors explaining why they haven’t violated their social licenses to operate in the way they do.

Not something you’ll ever be guilty of.

9/10

Excellent!

You could describe us as matter and someone would still accuse you of being phonic to antimatter.

Came across a couple of lyrebirds in the Dandenongs on Friday. They displayed their ability to identify as other birds and non-bird things in quick succession.

Italics on the Tullamore.

Perthing, still guilty of being anthropomorphic. It was a thing to avoid back when SNAGS were around in the nineties, but they would be guilty of being gendered and non inclusive these days. All that grovelling for nothing.

(Lizzie) Conservatism in the Burkian sense of holding on to things in social organisation that are tried and seemingly true and not rushing immediately into newness for its own sake is an approach to the world rather than a theory of it.

(Roger) I tend not to use the term ‘conservatism’ because “isms” are generally ideologies.

Apart from his normal corruptions of the English language, the fact that m0nty-fa occasionally describes himself as a “conservative” is sufficient reason to look for another tag.

Franksays:
July 24, 2022 at 2:56 pm
Perthing, still guilty of being anthropomorphic. It was a thing to avoid back when SNAGS were around in the nineties, but they would be guilty of being gendered and non inclusive these days. All that grovelling for nothing.

Same with metrosexuals.

shatterzzz, what’s your community newspaper?

Here’s what happens when a spineless opposition (who needs a backbone when there’s no brain with which to connect?) is led by a an idiot.

First, Groundhog boots Bernie Finn for opposing legal abortion, as do many (former) Liberal supporters, and thereby confirms Liberals are simpatico with Labor’s view that anyone opposed to killing babies is a nasty, ultra-far-right, jackbooted monster.

So the SFLs need a new candidate and yesterday they tapped Melton councillor Moira Deeming, who opposes drag queen story time, wants Australia Day left as is, and doesn’t want genetic males in ladies’ change rooms.

DanFilth must have celebrated when he heard the news because today he’s out there slamming the Libs as ‘transphobes’ and gay-bashers.

What did Guy, Crown Prince of Morons, gain by turfing Finn? Nothing. He no doubt wished to be seen as down with progressive causes, yet today the ham-fisted, politically club-footed testament to the long-term consequences of dropping a baby on its head is presented as the reigning czar of bigotry, homophobia and all the rest.

Are there no Liberals who understand that going into November’s election with an amoeba for a leader isn’t going to do them, and poor Victoria, anything but harm?

Prediction: after losing blue-ribbon Hawthorn the last time around, the adjoining seat of Kew — now held by Tim ‘Mind if I Park My Jag in Your Bedroom’ Smith — will go south in November.

You just watch and see.

DanFilth must have celebrated when he heard the news because today he’s out there slamming the Libs as ‘transphobes’ and gay-bashers.

That may get the libs a few votes.

Shatterzz whenever I see the name Meagher it reminds me of an industrial designer I worked with. He spend 18 months working on a new machine along with some other blokes and came up with nothing. Another Director got five of us to look at it, in 3 days we had a machine going with very few new parts required. The designer got the nickname Meagre.

Apart from his normal corruptions of the English language, the fact that m0nty-fa occasionally describes himself as a “conservative” is sufficient reason to look for another tag.

Roger’s issue with my sentence was that I used the term ‘conservatism’ as a concept, not about the word ‘conservative’ itself. I pointed out that I saw conservatism as a viable rubric for ‘an approach’ to thinking conservatively about social and political life. There is no ‘theory’ of conservatism.

As with all political rubrics, the content of them is up to the user. M0nty is a laughable conservative.
He is a statist neo-socialist who believes he is a liberal. Sorry, M0nts, but them’s the breaks for youse.

never been worth reading, usually wall to wall council/adverts .. Fairfield Champion & Fairfield Advance ……

The Advance was worth reading once, from 1976 until 1978.

I was the editor (and sole reporter, chief and only sub, ad-supplement copy writer, pseudononymous staple on the letters page and real estate specialist: “This stately brick veneer boasts a kitchen so magnificent it would persuade a feminist to pull her bra out of the bonfire” — you could get away with lines like that back then. Sigh.)

Scoops included the miniature french poodle which broke its legs and continued wallking on its back legs after it heeled (“…makes John Wayne look like a hunchback”).

How easy to score dope in Fairfield (easy if the dealer is a mate)

Should German shepherds be banned, which prompted a demo outside council chambers.

Learnt more doing that sweatshop gig than anywhere else until the Web came along.