1,317 thoughts on “Open Thread – Weekend 20 Aug 2022”

  1. “short fat Greek Women cannot”

    She’s of Greek extraction, she’s not Greek, she’s Australian. And don’t be so touchy. The fact is that she was the recipient of a coordinated campaign to get rid of her and that template has been used since. She might have been a lacklustre or poor member, so what, it doesn’t make the smear campaign against her right. The ABC, Nine Newspapers and others went all out to assist McGowan in her campaign against Mirabella. And the fawning over McGowan and later Haines has made it very hard for the Nats or the Liberals to reclaim Indi. And this will be the same with the Teals in electorates like mine, Wentworth. Oh and are you telling me that McGowan and Haines have been better than Mirabella?

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  2. I think we are looking at this wrong.

    Instead of focusing on the evil of white supremacy, perhaps we should look at relative worth of white supremacy versus all the others.

    You know, because we are being constantly bombarded with black supremacy, gay supremacy, trans supremacy, vagina supremacy etc etc.

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  3. Sophie Mirabella

    nee Panapolous
    FIFY.

    Yep, ladies of Greek heritage haven’t done themselves proud at all in the past few years in Oz politics.

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  4. Bar Beach Swimmersays:
    August 22, 2022 at 8:17 pm
    Lysandersays:
    August 22, 2022 at 5:34 pm

    In any of that process does anyone in any of those meetings and discussions actually read what is being proposed?

    Of course not. The public service would never give bad advice.

    I have mentioned before being tasked to draft a response to a local member, complaining about the effect of FBT on a subset of his constituents. My boss deleted all reference to said MP’s role in the Labor government that introduced the tax.

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  5. From Wikipedia re McGowan:
    In 2004 she was made an Officer of the Order of Australia “for service to the community through raising awareness of and stimulating debate about issues affecting women in regional, rural and remote areas.”

    AO for grievance mongering and identity politics.

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  6. Keep it up and you can join JC and others in the box labelled ‘Do not read’.

    Stop lying sfw. Of course you do.

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  7. All very well sfw but I have several family members who live in Indi, a couple who got actively involved in campaigning for McGowan (absolutely no surprise as they lean heavily left) and others who stuck with Mirabella, I heard plenty.
    I also thought she was a decent shadow minister who given the opportunity might have gone places. She served 12 years but it was only in 2013 as a shadow minister the whispering campaign started.
    McGowan even had Van Badham writing for her iirc.

    As for being on your scroll list, tell someone who cares.
    (And there was the Voices twitter account that suddenly got deleted when questions regarding electoral fraud started being asked.)
    ‘nofibs’ tells the Indi story “The 12 of us would go to as many sessions as we could to explain ourselves; the more of us who turned up the more legitimate the project seemed”

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  8. I can keep people employed at the self-service checkout with little effort. I always mess the thing up and require assistance.

    Self service hold ups are guaranteed when others are:
    trying to navigate the vegetable screen;
    putting an extra store bag across the reader – must all be done at the beginning;
    inability to find the barcode;
    barcodes unrecognisable because of creasing/ice/hand written markdowns.
    I could go on but you get the drift.

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  9. ML, sorry, if I confused you – or maybe it’s that lovely bottle of plonk that did it – but that was a joke about the very confusing English language.

  10. Recently I’ve started using the Coles click & collect.
    It’s far better than booking a slot for delivery & having them miss it by 2 hours.
    Click & collect means they pop in in the boot & away you go.

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  11. cohenitesays:
    August 22, 2022 at 8:22 pm

    cohenite, you sure that’s not a Tatiana McGrath-style taking the mickey of the Law Society readership?

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  12. My boss deleted all reference to said MP’s role in the Labor government that introduced the tax.

    BJ, that’s what I think of Barnaby Joyce.

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  13. “I also thought she was a decent shadow minister who given the opportunity might have gone places. “

    Yep, I also note that she was a close ally of Tony Abbott…sorry sfw, I know the mention of Abbott’s name triggers you, apologies. However, since Abbott’s assassination back in September 2015, there has been a systematic purge of conservatives from the Liberal party, orchestrated by Turdbull and finished by Scumbag. So, by last year there wasn’t a flank of strong conservatives to counter the wets, particularly the suicidal decision last year to commit to net zero emissions. Stoker’s gone, Abetz is gone, Clare Chandler remains in the senate but for how long (Chandler’s a great asset).

    Anyway, you reckon Mirabella was a shoddy local member, fair enough, you’re entitled to your opinion and I respect that but what do you think of McGowan and Haines? For all Mirabella’s faults, I daresay she’s was a lot better than either Green McGowan and Green Haines and being part of government or a strong opposition meant that she had more of a say than some independent. So we now have a situation where once strong Liberal electorates are now in the hands of mint Greens and they’re going to be near impossible to budge.

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  14. Sorry BBS.

    I was having a go at the generic fallback of ‘white supremacy’.

    Not your playful take on Calli’s post.

    I am a big fan of playful.

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  15. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing pressure to address the dire skills shortage in Australia – which is currently ranked second last in the developed world.

    Secretary General of Elbownia will centrally plan the economy and, where all others have failed, Elbow will be victorious.

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  16. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing pressure to address the dire skills shortage in Australia

    As I see it, Elbow has no choice in light of this issue other than to accuse Morrison of wearing a merkin as a toupee.

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  17. Whether Sophie Mirabella was good or bad, one thing’s for sure – since she got married she’s never had to buy another lightbulb.

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  18. So in a sense you do get paid for self-checkout, by cheaper prices.

    To speed things up, and minimise revenue leakage, Wesfarmers shareholders would prefer you were already micro-chipped

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  19. I used to think Sophie Mirrabella was pretty good and I’d take her in preference to vinegar tits filth any day.

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  20. SovCit News, from the NT News:

    A WOMAN who was allegedly involved in the abduction of Darwin five-year-old Grace Hughes has been granted bail despite fears her release could compromise the ongoing police investigation.

    Juliet Marie Oldroyd faced the Darwin Local Court on Monday where she stands charged with abducting Grace from an address in Berrimah on August 7.

    During the rowdy hearing, repeatedly interrupted by Oldroyd’s supporters, Flinders University law student, John Quaremba, an associate of her husband’s, sought leave to speak on Oldroyd’s behalf.

    This is the bloke who, during this woman’s initial court appearance last week fronted the bar table and said he didn’t need qualifications to represent his client. Which is a bit like Liability Bob doing his pro bono work. Anyway:

    But judge Dick Wallace refused his application after she [Oldroyd] told Mr Quaremba “I don’t know who you are” and threatened to hold him in contempt if he did not leave the bar table.

    “Stop talking and get back out of the bar table or I will have you locked up.”

    She got bail, despite coming out with this:

    Oldroyd insisted her name was not “not Ms Oldroyd, it’s Juliet Maree” and had been denied an opportunity to speak to a lawyer, had not had access to pain medication and had had little sleep.

    “I am an internationally recognised human rights advocate, and according to universal principles of international law, while I’m acting in the office as a human rights advocate I’m immune to prosecution,” she said.

    But Oldroyd conceded that “obviously I would like to get out on bail, yes”.

    Oh, my wordy lordy. No mention of birth certificates as currency or 1619 or Maritime Law. Yet.

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  21. Photographic treasures tell rare story of one man’s war

    exclusive
    Jacquelin Magnay
    Europe Correspondent
    @jacquelinmagnay
    6:28PM August 22, 2022
    1 Comment

    Two rare photographs of the only surviving World War I German tank, the Mephisto, which was “recovered’’ by Australians and sent to Brisbane, have been uncovered in France.

    Raoul Berthele, a French chemical engineer attached to the medical unit of the French 16th Army Corp stationed in the war as a supply administrator for the ambulance unit, took 3000 images during the time of the Great War as he moved about the French countryside with the medical unit.

    When French history teacher Louis Teyssedou, 40, was researching an Amiens 19th-century linen and textile factory that was used as a war hospital he uncovered the photo collection that had been donated by Berthele’s sister Beatrix to the town hall ­archives in Toulouse.

    The Mephisto survived the war without being turned into scrap metal, pilfered by Australians under the noses of the Germans and is the prized war trophy on display in the Anzac Legacy Gallery at the Queensland ­Museum in Brisbane.

    Over a century ago, Queenslanders had to fend off attempts by the British and Melburnians to claim the war prize for themselves.

    “Raoul was attracted by mechanics and innovations,’’ Teyssedou said of Berthele, born in 1886, who had been using his chemistry skills in a Swiss perfume company when war broke out.

    “These photographs, which are technically perfect, are a ­vision of his war. It is a treasure, a personal collection which gives a sense of the man and he had a deep instinct for photography.’’

    Teyssedou, wrote a book, ­Lautre Guerre, about Berthele’s photographs and believes the picture of the Mephisto tank was taken in September 1918 on a road between Poulainville and Vaux-en-Amienois, north of Amiens.

    Also of interest to Australians are photos Berthele took of Corbie, a town on the Western Front where many Australians convalesced from their injuries.

    Mr Berthele often used a stereoscopic camera and produced his own images on verascope plates, photographing his many female friends, as well as fascinating images of planes, factories and the work of his medical unit.

    The first German tanks were Sturmpanzerwagen A7 tanks, of which only 20 were built. Made with Daimler motors, and with Krupp and Roechling metalwork, they were named after various evil characters. Number 506 was Mephisto, a devil in German folklore.

    With its white skull-and-crossbones on the front armour plating underneath a fearsome gun, the Mephisto terrorised the allies at St Quentin on March 21, 1918, and then at Monument Wood near Villers-Bretonneux on April 24, 1918. But on that April day the Mephisto was one of three tanks abandoned by the Germans. It had got stuck in a shell hole.

    Several months later Lieutenant Colonel James Alexander Robinson who commanded the 26th Australian Infantry Battalion wanted to souvenir the 60 tonne tank, then situated in no-man’s land. On the night of July 23, under the cover of low-flying planes, two tank crews of Australians and British soldiers attached steel cables and towed the Mephisto 4km behind the frontlines.

    Robinson told the Brisbane Telegraph 20 years after the war that the Germans were so displeased they had launched a gas attack against his raiders. He said the 26th Battalion, veterans of Gallipoli, Egypt, and some of the Western Front’s most vicious battles in Pozieres, Bullecourt as well as Menin Road during the Third Battle of Ypres, had come into the Villers-Bretonneux area only days earlier to straighten out the offensive line in preparation for a big attack that was launched on August 8, 1918.

    The 26th chalked their name on the Mephisto alongside the 5th Tank Brigade and the 1st Gun Carrier Company, and a rising sun. A British lion was also painted, with a paw resting on a tank.

    It appears that just before Berthele took the pictures, the regiment transporting the Mephisto, the 1/13th London Regiment, 56th Infantry Division, added its motto to the side, and various names of soldiers from the 46th Battalion were also graffitied.

    After the war the Mephisto was taken to England and there was a verbal battle about its final destination.

    Queensland agent-general in London, Sir Thomas Robinson, successfully argued that Australian units be allowed to keep their own captures and they were to be returned to the state from where the units originated.

    The 26th, having been raised in Enoggera, Queensland, ensured their prize went to Brisbane, where the tank was moved into position off a steamship using steamrollers in 1919.

    Berthele survived the war, but died of the Spanish Flu days ­before Christmas 1918.

    Teyssedou said Berthele’s little sister kept the photographs all her life before donating them to the Toulouse authorities.

    “She always talked about her big brother, whom she never saw again after he went off to the war,’’ he said.

    Teyssedou has held an exhibition of Berthele’s photos in Amiens and is planning further exhibitions in Paris and Belgium.

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  22. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing pressure to address the dire skills shortage in Australia – which is currently ranked second last in the developed world.

    To prevent hoarding, Elbow will declare that across all supermarkets there will be a maximum of 2 construction site safety supervisors per customer.

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  23. To speed things up, and minimise revenue leakage, Wesfarmers shareholders would prefer you were already micro-chipped

    Excellent idea – speaking as a Wesfarmers shareholder.

    2
  24. sfw says:
    August 22, 2022 at 8:23 pm

    It seems to some here that a seat that was Country Party and Liberal for almost all it’s time in a rural area can be turned green by some green activists. Being a crap MP had not hing to do with it.

    Those who live in the electorate have better insight into the outcome than those viewing from afar.

    In my own electorate many were influenced to vote for their local member, because of their outstanding work and performance in the area, even though they did not favour the party that person represented.

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  25. Those who live in the electorate have better insight into the outcome than those viewing from afar.

    Indeed.

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  26. Has Cathi McGowan solved global warming, misogyny, magic pudding economics or racism yet with her plucky independence?

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  27. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing pressure to address the dire skills shortage in Australia – which is currently ranked second last in the developed world.

    Let’s see how this plays out. Europeans? Nah, Australia’s now just as bad as Europe at being monstered by the state. Americans, no way, we confirmed their suspicions that we were totally shit. Asians? Not with marauding Africans roaming the street! That leaves us with more Africans! We attract the most skilled goat herders!

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  28. A skills shortage eh?

    Solved by cutting course fees for lollipop men to $50 instead of $1k, for example.

    It’s not a skills shortage it is a problem of legalised racketeering manifesting as economic sabotage.

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  29. Cohenite @ 9:22pm

    From the link:

    Interestingly, as the article highlights, the attributes that can come with autism; thinking outside the box, intense focus, dogged persistence and attention to detail, are highly sought-after skills in the legal profession

    But may not.

    What’s the risk-benefit of scoring one of these “top” people as your mouthpiece?

  30. This is why once a week a bureaucrat should be taken out and put in stocks:

    This is why once a week a bureaucrat should be taken out and tarred and feathered.

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  31. Simple and honest question: which skills are we short of?
    Remember: more ‘training’ was Labor’s answer to the GFC in 2008.

    4
  32. Sarah, the immigration officer who refused to give her last name, informed Yemini that she came to the decision on her own after reading the story in The New Zealand Herald.

    All you can say is “fucken LOL”.

    The New Zealand government has a list of undesirable dissidents. In Australia. Who are journos. Who are ignored by the mainstream press.

    Arden must be totally convinced by the correctness of her policies and her ability to defend her ideas and mock her critics.

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  33. Sarah, the immigration officer who refused to give her last name, informed Yemini that she came to the decision on her own after reading the story in The New Zealand Herald.

    Mong Force

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  34. Arden must be totally convinced by the correctness of her policies and her ability to defend her ideas and mock her critics.

    Arden is trying to walk away from this one…

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  35. Sarah, the immigration officer who refused to give her last name, informed Yemini that she came to the decision on her own after reading the story in The New Zealand Herald.

    Ve haf lists.

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  36. I ordered two starters on Saturday evening, Bear.

    I mentioned last night that restaurants are unable function because of staff shortages. No matter, I was told, go cook your own food. Interesting comment.

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  37. Re self-serve checkouts.

    Have a friend whose 30-ish daughter is very much a “bring down da Man” type.

    Her favourite trick is to go into Coles or Woolies when they’re very busy, and buy a kilo of smoked salmon or prawns or both from the deli. At the self-serve checkout, instead of scanning the barcode, she drops them on the scales and enters them as “carrots” or “potatoes”. She point blank refuses to concede she’s doing anything wrong.

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  38. re Indi;
    the 2019 results were fairly close but not 2022.
    The area from Baranduda to Beechworth including Yackandandah & the Indigo Valley area are heavily into Green philosophy and becoming more so with growth of that demographic.
    It is highly probable that Bill Tilley will lose his seat of Benambra to another “Independent” who did well in 2018 and is standing again.

  39. She point blank refuses to concede she’s doing anything wrong.

    Bet she screams her tits off if she thinks she’s been “exploited.”

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  40. Dot says: August 22, 2022 at 9:56 pm

    It’s not a skills shortage it is a problem of legalised racketeering manifesting as economic sabotage.

    Mercurio says: August 22, 2022 at 10:34 pm

    Remember: more ‘training’ was Labor’s answer to the GFC in 2008.

    https://youtu.be/_l6trtH0kdk?t=89
    “The first priority needs to be to get our skills sector training people for the jobs that are there.” – Labor MP Mulino, 22 August 2022.

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  41. Bruce in WA – I think that was fairly common with avocados until changes in price moved the risk/reward ratio.

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  42. It is highly probable that Bill Tilley will lose his seat of Benambra to another “Independent” who did well in 2018 and is standing again.

    You almost feel sorry for the Lieborals.

    1
  43. JCsays:

    August 22, 2022 at 8:39 pm

    Keep it up and you can join JC and others in the box labelled ‘Do not read’.

    Stop lying sfw. Of course you do.

    I think I have been put on the “Do Not Read” list five times.
    Maybe six.

    1
  44. Sarah, the immigration officer who refused to give her last name, informed Yemini that she came to the decision on her own after reading the story in The New Zealand Herald.

    NZ immigration is stupider than Australian immigration.
    Something I did not think was possible.

    2
  45. Frank says: August 22, 2022 at 10:27 pm

    Isn’t skills shortage code for importing a bunch of Tamil programmers to suppress wages.

    Skills shortage is code for….. skills shortage.

  46. A solar powered NDIS childcare training technology company.

    It would be a perpetual motion machine of OPM, the corporate logo could be a “reverse ouroboros”, spinning forever like a wobbly 20 c piece … 🙂 .

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  47. The ABC is having a gloat about the judge’s ruling in Victoria that the father of the deceased choirboy can sue the Catholic Church – over an offence that, according to the High Court, could not have happened.

    No surprise that the judge in question turns out to have a union background:

    https://www.whiteandmason.com.au/leave-no-stone-unturned/

    And of course the timing of the case has nothing to do with the approach of Victorian election!

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