Open Thread – Christmas Weekend 2022


Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, Caravaggio, 1609


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Pogria
Pogria
December 26, 2022 9:18 am

OldOzziesays:
December 26, 2022 at 8:30 am
The Glass to give Guests (who you may dislike) to drink from

The Original BenShot Bullet Rocks Glass with Real .308 Bullet – 11oz | Made in the USA

Old Ossie,
I looked at the glasses and thought they were quite interesting until the part where it said “lead free and no Gunpowder”,
If I have a bullet in my glass, I want the taste of black powder through my Whisky. And the only lead from bullets that killed anyone had entered their body from the working end of a gun. 😉

Indolent
Indolent
December 26, 2022 9:18 am
Crossie
Crossie
December 26, 2022 9:22 am

With its $1.2 bn budget, they have given 99% of the staff a few days off – or is it a ‘well-earned break.’

I was under the impression that the ABC staff and management are against Christianity yet have no qualms in taking advantage of the benefits it provides. Hypocrisy is their most defining characteristic.

Black Ball
Black Ball
December 26, 2022 9:24 am

Well I’m off to get a Berocca and head to the horse races here. Two meetings per year which of course is Boxing Day and Easter Saturday. Going to be close to 40 degrees so continual fluid uptake is key. Have a great day Cats and Kittehs

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
December 26, 2022 9:25 am

The recycling of glass has always been a scam for years. In the 80’s I knew an operator that only existed because of subsidies for handicapped people working there. The cost of water was bordering on prohibitive. As for the recycling of plastics, tell me about it. It was never an option. The cost of washing out a container at home was more than the plastic was worth without the processing costs. In the 90’s and early 2000’s I worked in manufacturing energy efficiency field. I wrote a submission to government to show relatively small changes result in large bottom line savings. While the submission was accepted as having merit, it was rejected for not being grandiose for politicians to make announcements. The multinational I worked for had 10 plants all producing the same things. My plant made 10% more net profit on operating costs. Nobody was interested, they made their money to easily plus internal fiefdoms not willing to give up control. I was pretty fortunate having a Director that understood the benefits. The biggest problem is the want for one size fits all and quantum advances instead of incremental.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
December 26, 2022 9:41 am

Rosie the rampant theft from shops is not limited to supermarkets. Talking to guy in tool section of bunnings. I opened the box to see if what was on the packaging was actually anygood. It was the only one left. Half the tool was missing. He said they lose $1800 a week from the tool shop each week.

Louis Litt
December 26, 2022 9:42 am

Dabs
Re your comment. schwab is a nazi – impossible he believes in mm climate change and genial mutilation.
Probs gay as unable to relate to others esp chicks.

Vicki
Vicki
December 26, 2022 9:45 am

Australian cardiologist Dr. Ross Walker calls for cessation of boosters after seeing 70 cases of heart damage.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/australian-cardiologist-calls-to-halt-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-citing-heart-damage_4924166.html

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 9:49 am

Matersays:
December 26, 2022 at 7:55 am

Great comment Mater.

As for…

Slow learners, or just evil fucks.

It’s the latter.

Black Ball
Black Ball
December 26, 2022 9:50 am

Mmmyes Malcolm, tell me more. Via Tim Blair

Vicki
Vicki
December 26, 2022 9:51 am

Boxing Day morning fun.
Handle fell off the roll tarp on the mother bin at 7.30. The shaft for the handle was never seated deep enough into the alloy pipe that wraps the tarp and the bolt ripped through the end of the tube.

Gez, we woke up on Christmas Day to find the living room and kitchen covered in swarms of those tiny black flying bugs that turn up early summer for one day only. Valiant son-in-law grabbed the vacuum cleaner and over the next 2 hours was about to suck up pretty much most of the swarms. I was able to then to prepare Turkey and trimmings for oven at 9am.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
December 26, 2022 9:53 am

KD at 7:31.

Which is fortunate, because although in many respects Boxing Day is my Christmas I will be spared the 15 minutes of pre-Test palaver that will be yet another tribute – or series of tributes – to Shane Warne.

Puke inducing.
You can bet someone is making a motza selling cheap Chinese “commemorative floppy hats”.
On matters crickit, you mentioned the cheating, houso, ranga’s golden duck yesterday.
Any club cricketer would know that, when the opposition captain puts a bloke at short square leg 7-8 metres from the bat (not close in at bat-pad), you are going to get one straight at the noggin.
And yet he was taken by surprise.

Indolent
Indolent
December 26, 2022 9:55 am
Vicki
Vicki
December 26, 2022 9:56 am

Actually, this year Christmas Day one of the records. In addition to the plague of bugs, our satellite internet connection (Activ 8) went down overnight (it is still down & we are blue toothing to the mobiles), got a call from neighbour in Sydney to say our burglar alarm had been activated, and had massive family blue between grandchildren with 20 year old grandson wandering over the farm most of the night with a bottle of Bourbon or some such.

Diogenes
Diogenes
December 26, 2022 9:57 am

Half the tool was missing. He said they lose $1800 a week from the tool shop each week.

I’ve had the opposite. Picked up a supposedly 15kg box and nearly broke my back. Opened it, and not only was there NOT the product, but it was full of other much more expensive stuff. When I showed the guy in the tool shop, he said they knew about it and were keeping an eye on it. When I went to pick it up, security were already on the way.

Vicki
Vicki
December 26, 2022 9:57 am

Thanks Indolent, for providing article of Dr. Ross Walker without the paywall!

Dot
Dot
December 26, 2022 9:59 am

Schwab married his assistant/secretary and had two kids with her and stayed married to her.

Very straight and trad. Almost a trad NPC!

I’m going to need photos of him blowing Boy George to accept the notion that he’s a homosexual.

Not. Like. This.

https://youtu.be/oe1ffkRG0Ao

LOL

“Bruce and me”

Bruce and I you ill read street urchin!

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 10:00 am

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m housesitting for my sister. She has two Australian terriers (a breed I highly recommend), a male and a female. One of the little angels has diabetes and I have to give her an insulin jab morning and night with food. They are waking me up at 4.30 a.m. for breakfast, they know I’m a soft touch, anyway this morning, after yet again being harassed by them at an ungodly hour, I get up and give them their morning food and I try and give her the jab, well she wriggled and writhed and point blank refused to allow me to jab her. I almost jabbed myself. I was furious, she knew I was cross with her. After gobbling up their food in the way only dogs can do (it’s like every meal is their last meal), they scuttled outside with a smile on their faces, they thought it was hilarious, they’d gotten the better of me. I went back to bed and closed the door, and they duly followed and then they were angry because they couldn’t come in and it was their turn to be furious. Confession, I come from a family where dogs sleep on beds! But I can’t stay angry with either of them, I just look at their faces and I forgive them for being naughty. Why can’t I stay angry with them for too long?

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 10:03 am

If you say he’s a Homosexual, then that’s proof enough for me, Dot.

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 10:04 am

Cummins wins the toss and elects to bowl first. I guess he’s counting on a Gabba pitch at the MCG. Go Scotty Boland!

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
December 26, 2022 10:07 am

I wouldn’t be on a racing committee that held a meeting on Boxing Day.
I hope the crowd appreciate the organisers. No Christmas for them.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 10:08 am

Another gloriously hot summer’s day here in Sydney. I’ll be hitting the pool later.

calli
calli
December 26, 2022 10:13 am

Yes, Cassie. We’ve got a cracker here too – the pool will be full of kiddies this afternoon.

Their woossie parents insisted we put the heater on before they’ll hop in. Softies. The children will dive in regardless.

Real Deal
Real Deal
December 26, 2022 10:21 am

Do Australia ever lose the toss?

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 10:21 am

Mmmyes Malcolm, tell me more.

He really is a master of wrongology.
The fun thing is that Fox is run by people like him.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 10:22 am

“Their woossie parents insisted we put the heater on before they’ll hop in. Softies. The children will dive in regardless.”

Modern parenting Calli. I still have a clear recollection, aged four years old at swimming lessons at South Bondi baths, my heavily pregnant mother pushing me in because I was crying and refusing to get in to the pool (the swim teacher was in the pool waiting for me). My mother was not and is still not a “softy”.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 10:23 am

“The fun thing is that Fox is run by people like him.”

No. And if it was, Tucker Carlson would be long gone.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 10:28 am

They’re elitist RINOs Cassie. I stopped looking at Fox some years ago, it had become wetly inedible.

They aren’t dumb though, they realize firing Carlson would kill the brand and cost them a LOT of money.
Instead they try to indoctrinate around people like Tucker with sludge like the oped about renewables in the Oz today. I looked up the bird who wrote it, a complete Turnbull clone.

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 10:31 am

the pool will be full of kiddies this afternoon.

My new nephews and nieces ruled the pool yesterday — three-year-old Archie (who’ll be as bald as a badger by the time he’s 30 like his dad and poppy) and two-year old Pippa, who’s so photogenic she has already appeared on the front page of the local country newspaper.

The Christmas Day tucker was astounding, as was the boutique French champagne from a vineyard that otherwise supplies the local Veuve Clicquot plant (we drank both, but the boutique plonk won by the length of the straight — those Frogs are very talented).

I love Christmas Day!

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 10:32 am

“I stopped looking at Fox some years ago”

Well you’re not an expert. I still watch Fox, both Tucker and Gutfield. And as I’ve said before, Lachlan Murdoch is no dripping wet and bears zero resemblance to Malcolm Turnbull.

Pogria
Pogria
December 26, 2022 10:32 am

Vicki,
re Christmas family arguments. At almost all of my family get togethers when I was growing up, it wasn’t a “real” family celebration of(insert here), until the Police were called. 🙂

custard
custard
December 26, 2022 10:35 am
Pogria
Pogria
December 26, 2022 10:38 am

Custard,
I like one of the comments below that clip;


Toaster
@klinger66
·
7h
Replying to
@clashreport
Oh please, the French are made of sterner stuff when it comes to the odd riot.
In Paris that’s called Tuesday.

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 10:44 am

One of the other comments is:
These are infiltrators.
You can see the Organisers trying to stop them.

Noticing a bit of Male Pattern baldness among those “protesters”.

P
P
December 26, 2022 10:45 am

“On the feast of Stephen”

On this first day after Christmas, Monday, December 26, 2022,
we celebrate the feast of the first Christian martyr.

RuthM
RuthM
December 26, 2022 10:45 am

Slightly late Christmas wishes to all here, including the mad, bad, deluded and sad. May they respectively get back on the medication, find redemption, find clarity and find something in the Christmas story to work through the sadness. Thanks to Doverbeach for running this excellent blog!

Yesterday here was a lovely not overly warm day. Menu was a few oysters (last minute additon, I don’t usually bother with them), crab lasagne, mango/prawn/avocado salad, with some turkey, ham and trimmings, followed by pav. Wouldn’t be dead for quids. Reading the posts earlier about the use of corn syrup puts into perspective how fortunate we are here in the variety and quality of available food. Were it entirely up to me, I would ditch the turkey for a cold baked snapper, but it isn’t and hot turkey and roast vegetables on the table at Christmas has been well imprinted in my family’s mind.

Yes, there will be a Berocca today, which I take every couple of days as being an older being, it gives me a kick along. It makes sense, I remember the 70’s learning experience of raising angora goats, if a kid was a bit lethargic after birth a tiny volume of Vitamin B injected subcutaneously would have it up and feeding in no time.

Today, back to the washing and ironing and the cricket. I think I will leave it a day or two before christening my Christmas present of a Bailey platform ladder – one in my family at least is of a practical nature and it will be very handy for me with pruning etc.

I suppose it’s too much to hope that that miserable Wally Dali’s abandoned dog found his way to Dr BeaGan’s to help with the leftovers and relieve his water and kibble diet? I think he was described once as part kelpie part whippet so he would be able to hold up his end of the conversation!

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 10:48 am

Lachlan Murdoch is no dripping wet and bears zero resemblance to Malcolm Turnbull.

Paul Ryan sure does, and James Murdoch is a full-on Green. As I said they propagandize around their righty stars. That is the modus operandi to boil the little righty frogs slowly into RINOs. It doesn’t work but they are Believers. Lachlan is also or he would not have done what he did in the link.

And the editorial policy change is totally obvious at Sky News, the Oz (as I mentioned) and the Tele.

Zipster
December 26, 2022 10:50 am
rickw
rickw
December 26, 2022 10:51 am

Australia is devolving into a low trust society.

Australia is already there. Took me getting fucked by subcontinentals several times to make the necessary adjustments.

rickw
rickw
December 26, 2022 11:01 am

The devolution of Australia:

Mum’s on the Christmas decoration committee in the local town. Shire couldn’t/wouldn’t organise the necessary public liability insurance. Fortunately the local servo owner has an adjacent block that he does trailer hire out of which he made available. Thus all the town’s Christmas decorations were concentrated in the lot adjacent the servo.

Parks Victoria has locked down most of the camping sites along the river “public safety following flooding”. The real reason is that they do zero access road maintenance and they would go from appalling to impassable. I’m no fan of the campers (chainsawing bridge Timbers for firewood), but Parks Victoria fucked a lot of peoples summer with their incompetence and safety above all else. The campers aren’t all bad either, one of the kids didn’t tie up a kayak properly and it floated off, 5 minutes of asking around the camping ground located it, slab provided in exchange.

H B Bear
H B Bear
December 26, 2022 11:01 am

Australia is devolving into a low trust society.

The multiculti certainly doesn’t help. Every intrusion of government weakens civil society.

miltonf
miltonf
December 26, 2022 11:04 am

Seem very unhappy with the place- I rather like living and working here. Best country in the world.

miltonf
miltonf
December 26, 2022 11:04 am

Do you just come here to bellyache?

Dot
Dot
December 26, 2022 11:08 am

Seem very unhappy with the place- I rather like living and working here. Best country in the world.

Did the last three years teach you anything at all?

Luzu
December 26, 2022 11:13 am

I enjoyed one of the most magical Xmas Days ever yesterday with my sister, her beloved man, my niece and two of my sister’s friends. Early morning swim with a beautiful sky overhead and the heartwarming sight of lots of little ones enjoying the water. No gift exchange, just lamb chops and pork ribs done on the barbie, a beautiful array of salads and a low sugar ginger and dark chocolate cheesecake for dessert. Then an afternoon in the spa with a few low carb cocktails (future BIL even strung up a set of lights in a nearby tree to provide a little glamour to the setting) and a walk along the waterfront to watch the sunset. Pure love and happiness.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 11:13 am

“Paul Ryan sure does, and James Murdoch is a full-on Green. As I said they propagandize around their righty stars. That is the modus operandi to boil the little righty frogs slowly into RINOs. It doesn’t work but they are Believers. Lachlan is also or he would not have done what he did in the link.

And the editorial policy change is totally obvious at Sky News, the Oz (as I mentioned) and the Tele.”

Nope, it isn’t obvious at Sky Oz or the Tele, they’re not perfect but what is? And as for James Murdoch being a full on green, so what. My brother is a leftist, it doesn’t make me one. But you seem to be happy to smear people based on what others in their family think or say. How very collectivist.

I’ll say it again, Lachlan Murdoch is NO progressive.

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 11:15 am

Maybe a Christmas song –

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

miltonf
miltonf
December 26, 2022 11:18 am

Did the last three years teach you anything at all?

so I’m not allowed to say I like living and working here?

rickw
rickw
December 26, 2022 11:23 am

Christmas Wrap Up:

Present opening at a civilised hour with Nana and Grandpa and The Little Bloke. Very enjoyable. No big sisters, they both decided they wanted the triple time for working Christmas Day.

A bit of mid-morning BB gun target shooting and then feeding the dogs their Christmas bonus. Which they didn’t really need having successfully broken into a drum of dog food the day before. Little Bloke adoring his favourite “Jet” who is now a “champion” jumper having topped out at 2m at the local show. Attributed to her self training regime on the kids trampoline.

Off to Cousins for Christmas Lunch, on rotation. Dad’s the last of his generation still alive so he was giving us snippets of what he could remember of the early days. Remembers one ride on a wagon loaded with bagged grain. Remembers his older brother welding up the first hay elevator they made, my cousin recently found the original plans for it, the hay elevator is still working today, the maker is no longer with us. Remembers the arrival of the first kerosene Fordson, which is still on the farm. All he can remember is the big red wheels and the smell of the paint on the engine cooking off as it did its first hard work. He can also remember the arrival of the PTO kit for the 8ft Sunshine Harvester, previously ground powered, seems to have arrived mid harvest and he remembers them conversion being done in the paddock. (The modern enviro lunatics would do well to contemplate just how recent all of this is.)

Afternoon nap for everyone, followed by me and The Little Bloke going for a swim on my sisters place at the swimming hole. Blazing hot. He’s very competent swimming in a pool, but as soon as he hits the brown water he forgets everything, ingested quite a bit of water!

Almost had an accident with him, the floating jetty is wedged firmly up on the bank due to flooding. Him and I were pulling on one of the guy ropes to see if we could walk it down the bank. Sister reports that it’s not moving, without thinking I let go of the rope which results in The Little Bloke being launched down the river bank like an arrow. Evidently we had managed to put a bit of stretch in the rope! Snacks and beers by the river, Little Bloke on one can of secret solo, mummy concerned about sugar intake!

Back to look at the Christmas Lights on the house, with a bit of Christmas light maintenance, then off to bed!

A great and memorable day!

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 11:24 am

Psays:
December 26, 2022 at 10:45 am
“On the feast of Stephen”

On this first day after Christmas, Monday, December 26, 2022,
we celebrate the feast of the first Christian martyr.

Yes and I found out today that Boxing Day for the Northern Irish Protestants it is St Stephen’s Day. Apparently to jam it up those Roman Cafflicks……………………….

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 11:27 am

Miltonf at 6.47am:

The lying’s becoming absurd.

In the past six years, The West has become a contest between governors and the governed.

The idea that the governed vote for who they’d like to govern them is being replaced by: a) governors using advanced propaganda techniques to conceal from the governed what they’re actually doing; c) installation of new regimes via election cheating; c) the determination of those already occupying power to do whatever it takes to ensure they can’t be removed, including election cheating.

It was a tell-tale sign when the ruling class’s daily talking points started including “defending democracy”. The objective of the talking points is always to convince the governed of the opposite of what’s actually occurring.

Thus, when a ruler talks about “defending democracy”, s/he is actually defending the subversion of democracy.

An essential first step to subverting democracy was the neutering of its watchdog, the free press. That process began half a century when on-the-job training was removed as the central pillar of workforce creation for the news media and replaced by theoretical indoctrination at university.

In university journalism courses, tests are set and marked by teachers who either have never worked in the news media or haven’t done so for years or decades.

The West was designed with a free press checking the power of governments and working as the public’s eyes and ears to sniff out government corruption and incompetence.

An obvious strategy for the corrupt and incompetent is to neuter and therefore effectively remove the media watchdog.

Half a century ago, idealistic youngsters became journalists to keep the bastards honest. In 2022, most young people join the news media to operate journalism’s power to argue for their favourite political causes.

Defending the public interest has been removed from the list of attractions of journalism in the 21st century. As a result, the journalism business is now mostly operated by activists, not people skilled at finding out what’s going on – more often than not often obstructed by government bureaucrats trying to conceal what they’re doing.

And so corrupt, incompetent sometimes unelected governments have a green light in 2023.

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 11:29 am

so I’m not allowed to say I like living and working here?

Yes you are and we still have freedom of speech here. But don’t say it out loud………………………….

Black Ball
Black Ball
December 26, 2022 11:29 am

Boland!
Rather poor shot by Elgar

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 11:30 am

I’ll say it again, Lachlan Murdoch is NO progressive.

Cassie – He believes in global warming, as I just showed, and hangs around with the sorts of people Turnbull hangs around with. He certainly does not act like Elon or Trump. He’s an insider not an outsider.

The problem with these people is they want to socially engineer us to believe what is self-evident to them. But that isn’t feasible if all their customers head for the exit, which is what happens every single time they try to alter the editorial line to what they Believe. All you have to do is look at the war that gets fought in the comments sections every day. The readers are Cats, but the editorial level is Turnbullesque. Blair is an example – with every day he looks more and more like a shag on a rock at the Tele. He’s like Tucker – they need him to keep the subscribers but they feed wet sludge around him. Even my old mum has noticed this – she’s unhappy with how the Tele has gone, but she has nothing else. The Oz is too wet for her, the Silly is cat tray liner. She hates computers, so can’t get the stuff we get. And she no longer can stand the TV news on any channel.

dopey
dopey
December 26, 2022 11:30 am

‘Cummins wins the toss and elects to bowl first.’ No Tom, he elects to bowl.

Boambee John
Boambee John
December 26, 2022 11:31 am

Mater

Slow learners, or just evil fucks. The very same socialists/communists who insist “we can do it better!” and “we can make it work this time”. History to such people is something to censor and distort, not learn from.

Not all the young are lost. Elder grand daughter read Animal Farm recently, expressed interest. Her maternal grandmother gave her a boxed set of Orwell for Christmas. She nodded when I referred to 1984 being used as user manual, not a warning.

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 11:32 am

Defending the public interest

The Guv’ment is not interested in the public interest until Erection Time when they all get their rocks off……………..

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 11:32 am

Rising Power Prices in Europe Are Making EV Ownership More Expensive

Updated Dec. 25, 2022 1:43 pm ET

In some cases, filling a tank with gas has become cheaper than charging an electric vehicle

BERLIN—Rocketing electricity prices are increasing the cost of driving electric vehicles in Europe, in some cases making them more expensive to run than gas-powered models—a change that could threaten the continent’s electric transition.

Electricity prices have soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in some cases eliminating the cost advantage at the pump that EVs have enjoyed. In some cases, the cost difference between driving both types of cars 100 miles has become negligible. In others, EVs have become more expensive to fuel than equivalent gasoline-powered cars.

The price rises for power, which economists expect to last for years, remove a powerful incentive for consumers who were contemplating a switch to EVs, which used to be much cheaper to run than combustion engines.

Coming just as some governments are removing subsidies for EV buyers, this change could slow down EV sales, threaten the region’s greenhouse-gas emission targets, and make it hard for European car makers to recoup the high costs of their electric transition.

In Germany, Tesla has raised supercharger prices several times this year, most recently to 0.71 euros in September before falling somewhat, according to reports from Tesla owners on industry forums. There is no public source to track prices on Tesla superchargers.

At that price, drivers of Tesla’s Model 3, the most efficient all-electric vehicle in the Environment Protection Agency’s fuel guide in the midsize vehicle category, would pay €18.46 at a Tesla supercharger station in Europe for a charge sufficient to drive 100 miles.

By comparison, drivers in Germany would pay €18.31 for gasoline to drive the same distance in a Honda Civic 4-door, the equivalent combustion-engine model in the EPA’s ranking.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The change has been particularly notable in Germany, Europe’s largest car market, where household electricity cost €0.43 per kWh on average in December. This puts it well ahead of France, where consumers paid €0.21 per kWh in the first half of the year, but behind Denmark, where a kWh cost €0.46, according to the German statistics office.

The cost of electricity isn’t the only factor that can make an EV cheaper or more expensive to run than a gas-powered car. The price of the car, including potential subsidies, the cost of insurance and the price of maintenance all play a role in the cost equation over a car’s lifetime.

Maria Bengtsson, a partner at Ernst & Young responsible for the company’s EV business in the U.K., said studies of the total cost of owning an EV now show that with much higher electricity prices, it will take longer for EVs to become more affordable than conventional vehicles.

“When we looked at this before the energy crisis, we were looking at a tipping point of around 2023 to 2024. But if you assume you have a tariff going forward of $0.55, the tipping point then moves to 2026.”

If costs for operating EVs rise again, the tipping point would be pushed even further into the future, she said.

So far, there is no sign that the higher costs to charge electric cars has affected EV sales. Sales of all-electric cars totaled 259,449 vehicles in the three months to the end of September, up 11% from the previous quarter and 22% from the year earlier, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. In the third quarter, all-electric cars accounted for 11.9% of total new vehicle sales in the EU.

There is no relief in sight for EV users. In Germany, power prices have risen by a third from €0.33 per kWh in the first half of this year, according to Germany’s federal statistics office, and some power companies have announced prices will increase to more than €0.50 per kWh in January.

The German government’s independent panel of economic experts forecast that in the medium term these prices are likely to decline but won’t return to precrisis levels, meaning that higher costs for EV owners are here to stay.

Rheinenergie, a municipal utility in Cologne, said in November that it would raise its prices to €0.55 per kWh in January. In October, EnBW, a Stuttgart-based regional power company, raised its prices for a kWh of electricity to €0.37, up 37% from the previous month.

The most expensive way to charge an EV in Europe is on one of the fast-charging networks. Operators such as Tesla, Allego and Ionity have built roadside charging stations along major highways, where EV owners can drive up, plug in, and charge their batteries in as little as 15 minutes.

Fuel-economy estimates calculated by the EPA and current charging and gas prices in Europe show that some conventional vehicles are now cheaper to fuel with gasoline than equivalent electric models using fast-charging stations.

In the subcompact segment of the EPA’s 2023 Fuel Economy Guide, the Mini Cooper Hardtop was the most efficient model among EVs and gasoline-powered cars.

A 100-mile ride cost the Mini EV owner €26.35 at the Allego fast-charging network, which charges €0.85 per kWh. The conventional Mini cost €20.35 to pump enough fuel to accomplish the same journey.

Mini and its owner, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the small two-door SUV category, the gasoline-powered Nissan Rogue handily beats the Hyundai Kona Electric, at a cost difference of €19.97 to €22.95. The Subaru Ascent standard SUV with four-wheel drive costs less to drive 100 miles than the Tesla Model X.

If an EV owner only charges their vehicle at home, they are generally still paying less for driving than conventional car users, although this gap has narrowed considerably.

Analysts say about 80% of EV charging takes place at home or at work, so if an electric vehicle is only used close to home it generally remains the least expensive option. But once the vehicle is used for longer road trips, drivers are more likely to use fast-charging stations because other options would take too long to charge the battery.

Charging a Tesla on 120V AC power—the power that comes from a standard U.S. wall socket—would take days. In Europe, 230V is the AC standard, according to Germany’s ZVEI electronics-industry association. European chargers installed on street corners, at supermarkets, places of work and in home garages can charge a powered down Tesla battery overnight.

The supercharger networks run on DC power, requiring at least 480 volts of power, and can charge up to around 200 miles of range within 15 minutes.

P
P
December 26, 2022 11:33 am

“Both Sides, Now”

the official audio for Judy Collins – ‘Both Sides Now’ – recently featured in the Toy Story 4 trailer. Written by Joni Mitchell, ‘Both Sides Now’ was first recorded by Judy Collins’ for her 1967 album ‘Wildflowers’ and went on to become a Top 10 hit.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
December 26, 2022 11:33 am

Diving into a cold pool brings back memories of childhood waiting for the council pool to open. 10 to 20 kids ready for action only to find out from a council worker it wasn’t due to open fo another 2 weeks. Over the gate helping little ones that couldn’t climb. Running through the girls change room hoping for a glimpse of ….. shrieks of laughter. Diving into a freezing pool, we didn’t care. No adult in attendance, can you imagine today H&S nightmare, Karens demanding we were put on sex offenders register. The pool was open the next day. The old guy taking the money having a drag on a smoke couldn’t swim anyway and no life rings. We all looked out for each other, nobody drowned. Simpler times. We’d go swimming in the river or beach nearby, travelling on our bikes. Simpler times.

Black Ball
Black Ball
December 26, 2022 11:34 am

Not Elgar I apologise

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 11:35 am

“Elon”

Elon Musk also believes in global warming. Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomberg also believe in global warming, however they believe in practical steps to combat it. I like them and I listen to them.

Maybe one day you could admit you’re not right about everything.

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 11:36 am

Slow learners, or just evil fucks. The very same socialists/communists who insist “we can do it better!” and “we can make it work this time”. History to such people is something to censor and distort, not learn from.

Yes, ‘we can make it work this time’ and kill even more people……………………………

Communism and Socialism just doesn’t work for the regular people. Next.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 11:36 am

“Tomsays:
December 26, 2022 at 11:27 am”

Great comment Tom.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 11:37 am
OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 11:47 am

High utility charges could derail MTA’s $1.1B electric bus transition

December 25, 2022

The MTA’s $1.1 billion plans to buy 500 new electric buses could be derailed unless New York state’s utility regulator cuts the authority slack on its electric bill, transit officials warned.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and her appointed MTA leadership have touted ambitious plans to convert the entire fleet of 5,800 to electric power, beginning with the new purchase. But powering just the existing 15 electric buses currently costs two to three times diesel or natural gas, officials wrote in Dec. 6. comments submitted to the state Public Service Commission (PSC).

State law signed by Hochul last year required the PSC to reduce the impact of peak “demand charges” on large-scale electric vehicle (EV) charging operators like the MTA. The commission has until Dec. 31 to come to a decision on how big of a discount to give.

But the leading “solution” on the table “would result in far higher cost to operate an electrified fleet when compared to the MTA’s current predominantly diesel and gas vehicles,” the authority warned.

“Such a major cost escalation will undoubtedly harm the MTA’s ability to provide services… possibly resulting in cutbacks, increased customer fares, and deferrals of other customer service-oriented initiatives,” the comment said.

Other states give massive short-term rate discounts to EV chargers to help build demand. California, for instance, gave commercial EV chargers a 100% discount on demand charges for five years, the MTA wrote.

New York’s proposal, in contrast, would only provide a discount 12% of the time and at significantly lower rates, transit officials said. To achieve those discounts, the MTA would be forced to pay a hefty price to develop “sophisticated energy management capability,” it said.

“This adjustment would do very little to defray the sharp escalation in operating costs it would face [of] running an electric bus fleet in New York City,” officials wrote.

“The incentives the proposed solution offers are wholly inadequate in reducing these existing cost barrier that constrain the MTA’s ability to convert its fleet, and do not even partially meet the MTA’s needs.”

Jorge
Jorge
December 26, 2022 11:50 am

In 2022, most young people join the news media to operate journalism’s power to argue for their favourite political causes

How many journos/ media advisors are in Dan’s media unit now ? Is it 300?

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 11:53 am

Elon Musk also believes in global warming. Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomberg also believe in global warming, however they believe in practical steps to combat it.

Cassie – Lomborg may still (although I suspect not – like I suspect the same with Judy Curry), but Shellenberger seems quite red-pilled lately. And Elon is plummeting rightwards like someone lit a fire under his tail.

Elon has always had the aim of colonizing Mars. Tesla, Solar Cities, The Boring Company, StarLink, SpaceX all are about developing that capability. Sure he used Tesla and Solar Cities to extract the capital from the Left to build the tech, but I’m not sure he really believes in CAGW. He does seem to read a lot of the blogs and sites we Cats do.

Lomborg for a long time, and Shellenberger more recently have been trying to get the ship of state to turn around to a sane course. They’ve failed utterly because the Davos elites Believe. It’s a self-reinforcing echo chamber. Only when you escape that clique, like Elon, do you suddenly realize that what the Davos/Bilderbergers Believe is tosh.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
December 26, 2022 11:56 am

Wealthy Sydneysiders among biggest Victorian teal backers
Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court and wife Katrina donated $48,000 to teal independents ahead of Victoria’s November election. Picture: Josie Hayden

By RACHEL BAXENDALE
Victorian Political Reporter
@rachelbaxendale
9:00PM December 25, 2022
30 Comments

Wealthy tech entrepreneurs – including many with waterfront Sydney addresses – dominate the list of donors who unsuccessfully backed teal independents ahead of Victoria’s November election.

Four high-net-worth couples top the list, including Melbourne-based Culture Amp tech platform co-founder Doug English and his partner, Christy Dowling, who contributed a combined $51,840 to various teal independents.

Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court and wife Katrina were next on the list, donating $48,000 – $2000 of which went to Reason Party founder Fiona Patten with the rest distributed among lower house independents and associated entities – while Bondi photographer Tobi Wilkinson and husband Felix gave a combined total of $43,200, as did Sydney-based financial adviser Mathew Whittington and his wife, Monica.

Despite much hype in the lead-up to the November 26 poll – after teals Monique Ryan and Zoe Daniel toppled then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg and assistant minister Tim Wilson at the May federal election – teal candidates did not win a single seat.

The Australian’s analysis of disclosures to the Victorian Electoral Commission follows reforms that have capped donations at $4320 per candidate for every four-year period between elections, and require all donations over $1080 to be declared.

Because teal candidates qualify as independents rather than a party – despite sharing a support base – donors are able to contribute the maximum amount to multiple candidates.

While a Liberal or Labor supporter could not similarly donate to their parties candidates in more than one seat, a loophole established by the Andrews government and legislated in 2018 with the support of the Coalition permits parties and candidates to have one nominated entity that is exempt from the cap.

In the case of Labor, this entity is Labor Services & Holdings Pty Ltd – to which unions pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in affiliation fees – while the Liberal Party has the Cormack Foundation, worth more than $100m.

Other major teal donors included Gippsland-based businessman-turned-environmental philanthropist Jim Phillipson, who gave $25,920; Bondi-based share trader Robert Keldoulis, Lisa Barlow, of South Yarra, and Richard Davies, of Mount Martha, who gave $21,600 each; and Torquay-based Computershare co-founder Penelope Maclagan, Mosman-based tech entrepreneur Marcus Catsaras, and Simon Taylor, of Kalinga, Queensland, who each gave $17,280.

Bondi tech entrepreneur James Taylor, and Francesca Blundell and Francinus Capetti, both of South Yarra, each gave $12,960, while Melbourne businessman Peter Capp gave $10,300 and Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler donated $10,000.

Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Point Piper-based son, Alex, gave $4320.

The teal independents’ tally of almost $680,000 from 212 donations compares with 734 donations totalling almost $1.7m which went to the Labor Party, and 394 donations totalling almost $1.3m for the Coalition.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 11:56 am
Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 11:59 am

I just watched the British Variety Show on the ABC. Nice. Anyway, the winner of Britain’s Got Talent was a Comedian and he got a top billing.

He went onto say (and he was a rotund Man), that his Doctor was only going to let him have 1,250 calories a day. So, he said, what about at night?………….Bawwwwwwwwwahhhhhhhhhhhh. LOL

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 12:01 pm

Tesla Owner Stranded At Supercharger Station On Christmas Eve After Cold Weather Paralyzes Battery

Besides freezing door handles, Tesla owners who braved the cold this Christmas weekend were met with ‘winter range anxiety.’

As we explained last week, cold weather will degrade battery performance. At least one video went viral on Christmas Eve of a person whose Model S wouldn’t charge in the cold at a Supercharger station.

Domenick Nati, 44, a resident of Lynchburg, Virginia, rolled into a Supercharger station Saturday afternoon with 19 miles left of charge. The Tesla’s dashboard showed outside temperatures were 19 degrees Fahrenheit. He made a video about his awful experience over the last 24 hours.

In a video posted on TikTok, Nati said battery issues began on Friday when his Tesla wouldn’t warm up so it could charge. He tried charging at his house and a Supercharger station, but nothing seemed to work. In a last-ditch effort, he went to Supercharger station on Christmas Eve, where he experienced the same issues.

Nati shows in the video that a Tesla alert pops up when he plugs the car into a Supercharger stall. It reads, “Battering is heating — Keep charge cable inserted.”

He timestamped the moment he plugged in the vehicle at 1:11 pm. One hour later, he showed the same message with 19 miles range, which meant the car didn’t charge. Then two hours later, he showed the same alert and no charge again.

“Two hours went by and not much changed.

“It was very slow and the numbers got lower as the temperature dropped. Eventually, it stopped charging altogether,” he told Bussiness Insider.

Nati abandoned the Tesla at the Supercharger station, fearing it would run out of juice. He canceled his Christmas plans because it was the only car he had, and adding Tesla customer support and or roadside assistance wasn’t to help him troubleshoot the problem.

The short video had more than 5,000 comments and went viral on TikTok with thousands of likes.

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 12:03 pm

A traveling salesman employs a man with a stutter to sell toothbrushes.

His expectations are low for this guy, so he gives him a couple dozen toothbrushes to sell, expecting him to flop out.

To his surprise, the man returns in an hour with all the money.

“S-s-sold then a-all!” he says.

The salesman chalks it up to beginners’ luck, and hands the stuttering man a hundred toothbrushes, and sends him out.

By the end of the day, he returns with all the cash from selling them.

“F-f-finished. I c-c-can sell a lot m-more” he says.

Bewildered, the salesman hands the man box upon box, a thousand toothbrushes, convinced that this will keep him busy for a while. But in 3 days, the stuttering man returns, having sold all the toothbrushes.

“That’s it” the salesman exclaims. “How can you sell better than me? You have an obvious stutter, it must be impossible to complete a sale. Show me how you manage to sell so many of my toothbrushes”.

So the man with the stutter takes his boss to the airport, where he sets up a table in a busy terminal. He displays the toothbrushes and some chips n’ dip on the table. The salesman stared at him, stunned.

“This is it? That’s all you do?” “T-t-taste the ch-chips, man”.

The salesman walks up and takes a chip, dips it, and eats it. He instantly spits it out and starts gagging.

“This, —spfftt—, this tastes like *shit*!” “Y-y-yup. Want a t-t-toothbrush?”

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 12:04 pm

I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.

– W. C. Fields

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 12:04 pm

“Wealthy Sydneysiders among biggest Victorian teal backers
Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court and wife Katrina donated $48,000 to teal independents ahead of Victoria’s November election. Picture: Josie Hayden”

Thanks for posting that Zulu. And you see, contrary to what BoN writes, the Oz still does some quality investigatory journalism. It ain’t perfect but what is? The only torchlight that was and is being shone on the Teals and where their dosh comes from has emanated from News Corp.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 12:07 pm

Ukrainian Narrative Continues To Morph Ugly

If the “Ukrainian narrative” was not ugly enough, it continues to work its way farther to the dark-side. It is debatable how long the American people will buy the line that funding the war in Ukraine will result in a good outcome.

Someday, what is happening in Ukraine may be looked back upon as a horrible blunder, lie, and misstep largely orchestrated by America and the “Obama/Biden political machine.”

It is important to remember that under Biden’s tutelage this “conflict” has become not so much about defending Ukraine but ending Putin and Russia. It is not about the people of Ukraine but much more. The Ukrainian people and much of Europe have become mere pawns in a game. Unfortunately for the Biden camp, for all the money being poured into this “theater” it would be naive to think Putin will not achieve his goals or come out of this conflict the victor.

The only thing growing as fast as the cost of Biden’s proxy war is the ego of Ukraine’s President Zelensky.

This has become more apparent by the day as the attention-seeking comedian media star turned politician pushes his way onto the center of the world stage. Zelensky is constantly appearing at major public events to make appeals for aid. These include the Grammys and Cannes Film Festival. This is when he’s not busy addressing the G7, the European Parliament, or an UN-sponsored event.

There are, however, signs global audiences are tired of hearing Ukraine’s President Zelensky ask for more money. His message is steeped in propaganda. This could be the chief reason the formal request for Zelensky to talk about “world peace” before the kickoff to the World Cup final, was recently denied.

Some of us take the position that this was all set in motion by the U.S. choreographed coup in Kiev eight years ago under the Obama Administration. It would be hard to overstate the significance those events played in creating the situation currently before us.

A huge factor in keeping truthful information about what is happening is held hostage by propaganda. The situation on the ground in Ukraine may be far different than we in America are being led to believe.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
December 26, 2022 12:08 pm

I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.

You know what fish do in water?

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 12:09 pm

I just don’t get these people. They have known for over a month or so that a shit load of water was coming down the River Murray. And now they are so surprised. FMD. SA must be in some kind of time warp. Don’t they follow the BOM? Is SA really in ‘Stralia?

rosie
rosie
December 26, 2022 12:13 pm

Just got told didn’t know there was a climate change denier in the family, didn’t bother to tell them I was one of several.
Apparently the only way living standards in India can improve is if ours get worserer and much other even more esoteric nonsense. Shame on my for not caring about my grandchildren future.
Time to go home, so I did.
This from the idiocy of the plastics recycler not being able to afford energy.
Btw Where are Australia’s rubbish to electricity suppliers?

H B Bear
H B Bear
December 26, 2022 12:14 pm

I’ll say it again, Lachlan Murdoch is NO progressive.

If he’s anything like the old man he’ll back whoever is most likely to be in power to help him. Rupe was a big Blair and KRudd booster (for a time). The US may vary. The demonisation of Murdoch is largely another Leftist trope to rally the tribe.

rosie
rosie
December 26, 2022 12:19 pm

Good to see Teal packers blow their dough.

H B Bear
H B Bear
December 26, 2022 12:19 pm

Maybe one day you could admit you’re not right about everything.

Steady on. Will you see yourself out?

mc
mc
December 26, 2022 12:25 pm

Apparently the only way living standards in India can improve is if ours get worserer and much other even more esoteric nonsense. Shame on my for not caring about my grandchildren future.
Time to go home, so I did.

Sorry to hear that. Sometimes leaving is the best thing. As the saying goes:

“You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.”

Arky
December 26, 2022 12:27 pm

Anyone who “believes” in catastrophic climate change is a rolled gold moron.
Anyone who makes excuses for the morons because “tribe” is a dick.

H B Bear
H B Bear
December 26, 2022 12:27 pm

Saffies in real trouble. Another summer of pretty ordinary cricket. The rule rather than the exception nowadays.

Black Ball
Black Ball
December 26, 2022 12:28 pm

Andrew Rule from July. It’s an excellent read from the Hun.

They say if you remember the seventies, you weren’t there.

But older football followers were there — and remember it vividly. The VFL, aggro stepfather of the modern AFL, bristled with violence that’s no longer tolerated in the game.

Even so, not all the rough stuff was caught by the primitive TV coverage of a game in which rank amateurism and brutal professionalism were exactly that: rank and brutal, especially behind play.

On-field assaults put players in hospital with broken jaws, broken noses, broken ribs and broken dreams — and would have put others in jail if they’d swung the same king hits in the street.

As the song went, the 6.30 news was a horror movie, and that included sports bulletins.

Try this. In round 14 of 1972, the sublimely talented ballplayer John Greening ran onto the Moorabbin ground for his 98th League game. At 21, he realistically thought he might play more than 300 games — something his coach Bob Rose thought fair enough.

Greening was a footballing freak. He’d been signed by the Magpies at 15 and played his first senior game at 17. Tim Watson meets James Hird with various Riolis and Abletts thrown in.

His meteoric rise ended viciously. He woke in hospital from a coma, doctors telling him he’d nearly died and would be lucky to recover from being paralysed down one side.

He’d been felled behind the play by St Kilda’s Jim O’Dea, who was lucky not to be charged with grievous bodily harm.

An eight-year-old watching that day prayed for Greening’s recovery all week. His name was Eddie McGuire.

Greening did play again — sort of. Two years later he made a comeback but could handle only a few games before retiring to try to forget the terrible wrong against him.

His devastated wife was dissuaded from taking legal action when St Kilda and Collingwood raised $50,000 in blood money, playing a fundraising game in which, bizarrely, O’Dea played.

That says more about 1970s football than any other single incident. But there were plenty of them.

Football was war. Nearly every team had “enforcers” to intimidate opposition talent — and to protect their own ball players from opposition thugs. An arms race.

Most of those old-school hard men have slipped from legend into semi-anonymity, like retired heavyweight champs. Carl Ditterich and Ron Andrews come to mind but there are others. They know who they are.

Every club had them, except maybe the “handbaggers”, as the tough city clubs called Geelong for recruiting ball players to play open, skilful football as if they were playing sport rather than spilling blood at the Colloseum.

As gladiators go, “Big Carl” Ditterich had everything but the sword and spear to go with God-given talent and Nordic warrior looks. Caligula would have loved Carl. He had the size and colouring of a polar bear but wasn’t nearly as kindly.

Once the bear has killed and eaten a walrus, it will ease up until it gets hungry again. But Carl wasn’t so easily satisfied, especially in the later stages of his 17-season career. He terrorised lesser beasts on principle.

Even in his last game, when the sinful Saint had joined the Demons, he wounded half a dozen Collingwood players from sheer habit.

“Rotten Ronnie” Andrews seemed more amiable off the field than Killer Carl but was just as dangerous to the young, old, talented or those brave enough not to dodge him. Andrews drives a school bus these days, a long way from Windy Hill, Victoria Park and the MCG, and it’s a fair bet the kids don’t give him much lip.

Another hard man of the era, Stewie Gull, could now afford to buy the old South Melbourne ground just to park his cars, boats and horse floats. But the tycoon is not as proud of his property empire as he is of the fact he once poleaxed Ronnie Andrews at Windy Hill.

Make that twice. When Andrews gamely challenged him to “try it again”, Gull hit him again.

It was Gull that Carlton’s sneak puncher Wes Lofts ran away from after blindsiding some smaller Swans player the same way he’d once belted the only League footballer who wore glasses on the ground, Essendon’s gentlemanly forward Geoff Blethyn.

Even Lofts’ teammates never forgot his self-preservation instinct. He cut a dash in business and at parties but never quite lived down running from Gull.

The old South Melbourne followers called their team “the Bloods” and the fighting forward from Ballarat never let them down. They came to watch him fight at Festival Hall. Running away wasn’t for him.

Tears flowed when “Mr Football”, Ted Whitten, succumbed to cancer in 1995. The sight of his wasted body in an open car at the MCG, punching the air and croaking his war cry one last time — “Stick it up ’em”— was one of sport’s most moving moments.

But, of course, this same hero had smashed 17-year-old Peter Hogan’s jaw in the boy’s first game for Richmond, the way that young Whitten’s own debut had been ruined by “Mopsy” Fraser in 1951.

That year, Victoria hanged a woman, Jean Lee. It was a very different time.

Most of the big-name hard men are long lost to elite football. Only a handful stayed around.

“Lethal” Leigh Matthews reinvented himself as a thinker in the game that has outlawed the unthinking mayhem he routinely committed in the Barney Rubble era with its single field umpire and stone age cameras.

Kevin Sheedy was a heavy thinker, too, even when he was just a heavy back pocket player. He and “Lethal” became super coaches who made a permanent mark on their sport.

But, as the bruisers of the 1970s enter their own 70s, perhaps only one of them is still exerting influence on a game barely recognisable as the one he played in that dark and deadly decade.

His name is Neil Balme. And, as a new biography by Anson Cameron makes clear, he’s not so much a reformed character as one who found his true vocation after hanging up his boots with the Tigers.

Balme quit playing when he was just 27, his knees a mess. But he never quit thinking about how to play football a better way — a tendency he’d shown from teenage days, exasperating old-time coaches like Ray “Slug” Jordon and Tommy Hafey, who preached the virtues of fitness and fierceness rather than tactical finesse.

The perception is that Balme is a changed man. The man himself argues — gently and persuasively, with humour — he never really was the pitiless thug he seemed, the Tiger who spooked a generation of opposition players during his decade of living dangerously.

Balme was, or still is, hated by two generations of Carlton supporters because he concussed Geoff Southby, broke David McKay’s jaw and flattened Carlton’s own heavy, Vin Waite.

Mouthy Carlton players openly taunted Richmond’s gentle ruckman Michael Green, a law student. But when Balme took his turn in the ruck, an eerie silence fell over the centre square.

Not that Balme’s blues were limited to Carlton.

He was an equal opportunity enforcer, happy to dish the dirt without fear or favour, even to Ditterich and the crazy brave Don Scott.

As Carlton’s premiership ruckman Mike Fitzpatrick said years later, “Balmie was top of the food chain, don’t worry about that.”

But underneath the rugged exterior was the thoughtful student of the game who has turned into a football Buddha, dispensing wisdom, comfort and calmness to two generations of coaches, players and administrators.

It’s this apparent contradiction, between the havoc he once imposed on the field and the bottomless calm he instils off it, that gives the biography its title, Neil Balme: A Tale of Two Men.

The difference between the raging bull (the one the astonished Balme kids later saw in old TV footage of his most notorious “hits”) and the gentle husband and father they knew was always a thing of wonder in his own family. Likewise, in the football families he has fostered at five clubs, four in the AFL and at Norwood in South Australia.

Balme has spent longer than anyone else in the whiteboard jungle roamed by hundreds of coaching, medical, psychological and athletic staff across the AFL. He’s apparently top of that food chain as well, with little obvious effort.

He was a revered and successful playing coach at Norwood in the SANFL, and a loved though statistically unsuccessful coach of the Gutnick-era Melbourne side. But the man old enough to have rucked with and against the 1960s icon “Polly” Farmer came into his own in a role he made all his own.

He has had several titles at three powerhouse clubs but it’s hard to define exactly what he does, only what happens when he’s around. Balme’s stints at Collingwood, Geelong and, now, back with his first love, Richmond, have coincided with premierships at each.

In all, he has played a part in 11 premierships. Insiders call him a different four-letter word from the 1970s ones. It’s “guru.”

He certainly is original. It was Balme who asked the darkly humorous writer Cameron to get his story on paper before it’s too late. An oddball team selection, but it works.

Cameron is used to imagining characters and dialogue but has found Balme’s life a rich vein of the real thing.

Such as the day in 1969 when the teenage Balme, fresh from Perth, was standing outside his new school, University High.

A hot Torana pulls up. At the wheel is Robbie McGhie, unemployed apart from playing for Footscray. Told that the kid in front of him is Balme, just signed by Richmond, McGhie lights a smoke, bangs a tattooed arm on the car door and bellows: “We’ll meet one day, Balme. We’ll meet on the footy field. I’m gunna bash ya!”

Then he drops the clutch and fishtails up the street. Welcome to the big time, kid.

McGhie bashed half the competition, but he never did bash Balme.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 12:29 pm

And you see, contrary to what BoN writes, the Oz still does some quality investigatory journalism.

Cassie – I said a couple times upthread that the editorial level keeps the Blairs and the Tuckers and slides the ooze around and past them. We all know that Bolt has been fighting endlessly against the climate scam and his own editors. Sky News is classic in that too – almost every day they do wet global warming stories but also have Rita Panahi.

The Teal phenomenon is exactly the problem we are seeing. The Doctors’ Wives elites who all think alike and believe the same rubbish. The rich have gone collectively bonkers, except for a very few escapees like Trump and Musk and Gina.

We all agree that the Liberal Party have become unelectably wet. That’s because they have absorbed the same rubbish. Matt Kean is a classic example.

But the ordinary people don’t believe this rubbish, and are getting increasingly red-pilled despite the propaganda.

Despite ostracism, namecalling, and billions of dollars, globally nearly 4 in 10 are climate skeptics (14 Dec)

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 12:29 pm

An 8 pointer, 4 pointer and a button buck are standing by a field browsing on acorns.

The 8 pointer says “I’m happy with my 10 does, we’re really getting along”.

The 4 pointer says “I’m happy as heck with my 5, they really take care of me!”

The Button buck says “My two are all right, better than nothing I guess”.

Then all of a sudden a GIANT 14 pointer walks out into the field. The three bucks had never seen anything like him before, they were in awe.

The big buck made a huge scrape and pissed in it, rubbed a tree the size of a telephone pole and snapped it off at the ground!

The three bucks looked on in amazement.

The 8 pointer says “I could probably get by with 4 does… who really needs 10 anyway?”

The 4 pointer says “You know… come to think of it, I only really use one or two of mine!”

The button buck was silent, as the other two bucks look over to him in confusion.

Suddenly the Button buck runs out into the middle of the field! He rips and tears up some grass, pisses all over the place, snorts and wheezes, rubs his head raw on a tree, and chews a licking branch clean off!

Then he runs back over to his buddies. His friends immediately ask him “What the hell are you doing!?”

I’m just making sure that big sonofabitch knows I’m a buck!”

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 12:31 pm

There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.

– W. C. Fields

Holy Shit……………………………..

rosie
rosie
December 26, 2022 12:36 pm

What incensed* me what the apparently logical next step that I believed the world was ruled by the illuminati.
*not really thinking the worst of people with whom you disagree is par for the course for fanatics on either end of the political spectrum.

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 12:36 pm

The only torchlight that was and is being shone on the Teals and where their dosh comes from has emanated from News Corp.

Unlike those taking potshots at him from the outside, those of us who have worked for Ruperdink Mudrock know him as the most hands-off owner in global media, whereas the dumb activists imagine he is meddling in every editorial decision.

It doesn’t work like that.

On the other hand, at the left-hand media, like Nein newspapers, the ABC and the Guardian, managers can’t manage at all because they’re hostage to the whims of their activist workforces, who can sack any editor they don’t like simply by calling a staff vote.

That’s why they call them “workers collectives”.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 12:37 pm

“almost every day they do wet global warming stories but also have Rita Panahi.”

They also have Chris Kenny who doesn’t believe the catastrophising, they have Blot and they have Credlin and others.

BoN, do you subscribe to Sky?

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 12:39 pm

“Unlike those taking potshots at him from the outside, those of us who have worked for Ruperdink Mudrock know him as the most hands-off owner in global media, whereas the dumb activists imagine he is meddling in every editorial decision.”

yep. My stepfather worked for Ruperdink from the early 1950s. He says the same as you Tom.

MatrixTransform
December 26, 2022 12:39 pm

Also, if currency goes digital, how to people conduct transactions during a sustained power outage?

your social credits will automatically be assigned to your choice of Registered Escrow Agency Provider (REAPer), during a sustained power outage or Load ‘Sharing’ event you will still be able to transact with confidence.

— extract from the FARM agreement

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 12:41 pm

Tom – Lachlan imposed the net-zero editorial policy from on high. As an edict. Maybe Rupert had a hand in that I don’t know, but Lachlan has executive control.

custard
custard
December 26, 2022 12:43 pm

Starlink speed test just now

192mbps down
24 mbps up
77 msec ping

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 12:44 pm

BoN, do you subscribe to Sky?

Cassie – I read the website twice or three times a day. Did so just now while eating a sandwich.
I do not watch television as the signal to noise ratio is too low, even at 2x speed.
I have a look at the Oz and the Tele from time to time but not regularly as they’re so wet these days.

Plasmamortar
Plasmamortar
December 26, 2022 12:46 pm

your social credits will automatically be assigned to your choice of Registered Escrow Agency Provider (REAPer), during a sustained power outage or Load ‘Sharing’ event you will still be able to transact with confidence.

— extract from the FARM agreement

Nice, I don’t see that being a problem at all….

It seems more and more likely that war will be the ultimate solution to this problem, be that domestic or international…

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 12:46 pm

The ‘science’ behind the UK recommended alcohol limit of 14 units a week is predictably awful

Before you go and make Christmas more miserable than it need be, it is worth taking the following into consideration.

A committee that was set up to determine safe drinking levels published a report that stated the safe drinking level for men was 28 units of alcohol per week (roughly three bottles of wine) and for women it was 21 units (roughly two).

A member of the committee, Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journal, later said that they couldn’t actually find any scientific evidence to justify these limits but thought they ought to publish something as that was what they had been tasked with so they just “plucked the figure out of the air”.

Some time later, the safe drinking levels per week were reduced to 21 units for men and 14 units for women. Now the safe limits are 14 units per week regardless of whether someone is male or female.

Perhaps this has been done in the name of equality or to make it easier for men to switch genders and become women without worrying about the reduced alcohol limit.

The most charitable explanation for this absurdly low level is that the nanny state knows we are all going to exceed the recommended level regardless of where it’s set so they set it low to keep alcohol consumption down.

Their intention was to make us feel so guilty we become abstemious instead of rampant alcoholics.

The trouble is, they may be doing more harm than good and over the last two years our health experts haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory.

Professor Sir Richard Doll was the epidemiologist that first found a causal link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. He was so convinced that he immediately stopped smoking. He was meticulous and through his integrity and lifelong insistence on the highest standards, Doll won the respect of colleagues and scientists throughout the world.

In 1994, a study of 12,321 middle-aged, male doctors led by Sir Richard Doll and a team at the Radcliffe Infirmary –

“Mortality in relation to the consumption of alcohol” – found that: “The consumption of alcohol appeared to reduce the risk of ischaemic heart disease, largely irrespective of amount.”

Other studies have since been published which showed that moderate amounts of alcohol gave some degree of protection against heart disease.

“But what about cancer, liver disease and all those other ailments alcohol consumption causes?” I hear you cry.

Earlier this year the BBC broadcast a program showing the post mortem of an overweight American woman who had died in her sixties. As her organs were removed it was shown how each was affected by certain factors and how, if she had still been alive, this would have gone on to cause her demise.

Lastly they removed her heart and saw she had heart disease which was what had killed her.

She was teetotal. Perhaps if she had been more inclined to have one or two glasses of wine a day she may have lived longer.

So if you do have a particularly indulgent Christmas and New Year perhaps a few alcohol free days wouldn’t go a miss, but whatever you do don’t ruin the whole of January.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 12:49 pm

As to Sky I do recall a lot of Cats saying that daylight viewing is wet as an ocean but evening is not bad – like Outsiders. I take that to be the management keeping the Newscorp wets off their back by being able to point to their adherence to the Party line whilst actually providing the programming they know their hairy-palmed neanderthal subscribers want.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 12:50 pm

“Lachlan imposed the net-zero editorial policy from on high. “

Oh, you know this for sure? That it came from Lachlan personally?

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 12:51 pm

“Cassie – I read the website twice or three times a day. Did so just now while eating a sandwich.
I do not watch television as the signal to noise ratio is too low, even at 2x speed.
I have a look at the Oz and the Tele from time to time but not regularly as they’re so wet these days.”

Nope…the Oz and the Tele aren’t so wet these days.

Old Lefty
Old Lefty
December 26, 2022 12:51 pm

Just in time to put you off the cricket and the Sydney to Hobart start, the GayBC guide to coming out at work:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-26/isaac-humphries-coming-out-at-work-lgbtiq-diversity/101808462

… complete with guide to complaining to the Huperoffspring Rights Commission if you aren’t happy.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 12:54 pm

I should also add that in regards to the Brittaneee case, Janet A’s pieces in the Oz on the malfeasance at the core of the allegations against Lehmann have been worth every single cent. There’s no way that Nine or The Guardian would undertake such journalism. Why? Because those media outlets and their far-left activist journalists have believed Lehmann to be guilty from day one.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 12:54 pm

A more detailed article than I remember when it came out

Dr Kerryn Phelps reveals ‘devastating’ Covid vaccine injury, says doctors have been ‘censored’

Frank Chung
news.com.au
Tue, 20 Dec 2022

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 12:55 pm

Oh, you know this for sure? That it came from Lachlan personally?

I linked the report Cassie, upthread.
Nothing I can do if you don’t look at the evidence.

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 12:56 pm

Tom – Lachlan imposed the net-zero editorial policy from on high. As an edict. Maybe Rupert had a hand in that I don’t know, but Lachlan has executive control.

BoN, News Corp’s net-zero policy is a virtue-signalling marketing exercises. It doesn’t affect News Corp reporting on the ground, nor impose prohibitions or impose vetoes on what stories may be covered or how. It just signals that News Corp management doesn’t wish to oppose the quasi-religious beliefs of the dumb political ruling class.

The Mudrock kiddies know that if they ever directed News Corp journalists to lie to punters on their behalf, the circulation of their tabloids around the world would plummet. They know where their bread is buttered because three generations of Mudrocks have made their fortunes our of the media business.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 12:59 pm

Nope…the Oz and the Tele aren’t so wet these days.

I looked at them this morning about 7am. Hopeless except for opeds from people like Vikki Campion. And Tim Blair of course. I mentioned the renewables story in the Oz that got me to search the name of the author, who I said looked like a female Turnbull.

I bought and read the Oz for many years, and only stopped when I couldn’t take it anymore.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 1:04 pm

BoN, News Corp’s net-zero policy is a virtue-signalling marketing exercises. It doesn’t affect News Corp reporting on the ground, nor impose prohibitions or impose vetoes on what stories may be covered or how. It just signals that News Corp management doesn’t wish to oppose the quasi-religious beliefs of the dumb political ruling class.

That’s a nice illusion you have going there Tom. From what I see they mean it, and get quite frustrated with their readers who recalcitrantly fail to believe like they do. But they know exactly what will happen if they fire Tucker or Tim. You can’t properly educate people if they aren’t reading your product.

rosie
rosie
December 26, 2022 1:07 pm

Just about every large corporation has a net zero by blah blah policy, even Melbourne Airport.
It doesn’t mean Newscorp are one eyed in what gets reported, in fact it’s obvious that they are not.
I remember jerking the chain of a uberprogressive about Murdoch’s alleged editorial superpowers years ago.
Clearly he’s the arch-enemy of both progressives and conservatives.

local oaf
December 26, 2022 1:11 pm

BON

The rich have gone collectively bonkers, except for a very few escapees like Trump and Musk and Gina

This has puzzled me for some time. Why have today’s rich gone loony fascist?
Is it because they are a younger, less or even non educated generation?

The rich in the 70s didn’t swallow global cooling when the loonies tried it. What happened since then?

Could the end of the USSR have something to do with it perhaps. Going totally nutso in the 70s with global cooling and collapsing Western societies could have been a danger to their fortunes.

These days they don’t fear a revolution from us.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 1:12 pm

There’s a saying I like..

“People who know little or nothing about anything are always the ones who have something to say about everything”

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 1:13 pm

That’s a nice illusion you have going there Tom.

BoN, I haven’t worked for the Mudrocks for nearly 40 years.

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 1:18 pm

Correction: I worked briefly for Ruperdink’s London Sunday Times in the early 1990s.

JC
JC
December 26, 2022 1:22 pm

Tom

From vague memory, the Sunday Times was virtually a different newspaper from the regular one, I think. It even had different editors. Is that correct?

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 1:23 pm

Then he drops the clutch and fishtails up the street. Welcome to the big time, kid.

McGhie bashed half the competition, but he never did bash Balme.

When I came to ‘Sralia in 1976 and my brothers (they were already here sent here as convicts) they made me watch this oblong ball from Victoria on the ABC. I said, why do you have those Ice Cream Men wearing white clobber between those posts? No real answer to that one. LOL So much high scoring. it was like no other sport I had ever experienced. And ever since.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 1:26 pm

Tom – I’m just taking them to mean what they say, and you are taking them to not mean what they say. 😀

That’s a reasonable argument but is negated by other behaviour. News.com.au for example is very progressive as has often been noted on the Cat. Because it is free it can reflect the upper management in a way that a subscription site dares not. Even Fox persisted with people like Wallace and Scarborough and Brazille in complete rejection of their own watchers. It was always fun to see just how unpopular they were with Fox subscribers.

Add in the family dynamics. James has been banging away at Rupert and Lachlan about thermageddon for ages. Rupert is now so old that I doubt he wants a knock-down-drag-out fight in his own family. And as I have been saying Lachlan seems plugged into the Paul Ryan style stratum. Which is wet GOP.

Arky
December 26, 2022 1:28 pm

The rich have gone collectively bonkers, except for a very few escapees like Trump and Musk and Gina
This has puzzled me for some time. Why have today’s rich gone loony fascist?
Is it because they are a younger, less or even non educated generation?

..
They send their kids to very, very expensive progressive schools.
The kids come home and lecture Mum and Dad on all the issues at the dinner table. The parents won’t take their kids out of those schools for social and status reasons and eventually get brow beaten by their own kids into accepting half the guff in order to have some peace.
Seen it in person with friends.

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 1:29 pm

These days they don’t fear a revolution from us.

Yes but when it happens, they will be somewhat surprised………………And it won’t be too long now.

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 1:30 pm

Yep, JC at 1.22pm — the daily Times and the Sunday Times still are different papers with different staffs and different cultures.

The Sunday Times does lots of investigative work. The daily paper has distinguished itself since 2015 by being rabidly anti-Trump.

calli
calli
December 26, 2022 1:34 pm

Just had an interesting discussion with the New Broom and son in law about energy. NB drove up via the coal loader – no illusions for him about where it’s going. As he observed, if we don’t burn it someone else will. Can’t “partition” the atmosphere!

But the most interesting bit was when we got onto nuclear – mini local reactors are the go. No objections. Wind – meh. Solar – meh.

They’re both businessmen so understand that efficiency and cost effectiveness is vital. Emotive claptrap…not so much.

JC
JC
December 26, 2022 1:37 pm

I think we saw during the 2020 election, and the management understood, the threat posed to NewsCorp if they swing left or even look like they moving an atom’s space to the left.

There were two incidences that I recall.

1. Chris Wallace trying to give Trump a hard time and going easy on the corrupt Hiden during one debate. Wallace was at first applauded by the management for doing a good job. This is quickly “reviewed” and Wallace left Foxnews joining CNN where the little clown failed spectacularly.

2. Calling the election result early and in the opinion of Fox News watchers impacting the final result in one of the western states (forget which state).

The combination of these two factors saw Foxnews ratings temporarily collapse. The listing ship was “righted” very quickly.

It doesn’t matter what Da Murdoch family believes. What matters is their audience the folks they hire to satisfy what is demanded by the viewers.

Mind reading gets you nowhere.

areff
areff
December 26, 2022 1:37 pm

Great Andrew Rule piece, BlackBall, but he should have mentioned Cowboy Neale taking out Stephen Boyle’s eye, thus ending promising careers in both footy and cricket.

As to the alleged thuggishness of Robbie McGhie, that needs to be backgrounded and put in perspective.

Yes, he was a very physical player, but he was also a Bulldog — and Footscray physicality was and remains always of the highest moral order.

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 1:47 pm

An unemployed man goes to apply for a job with Microsoft as a janitor. The manager there arranges for him to take an aptitude test.

After the test, the manager says “You will be employed at minimum wage, $8.15 an hour. Let me have your email address, so that I can send you a form to complete and tell you where to report for work on your first day. Taken aback, the man protests that he has neither a computer nor an email address. To this the manager replies “Well, then, that means that you virtually don’t exist and can therefore hardly expect to be employed”.

Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having only $10 in his wallet, he decides to buy a 25kg bag of tomatoes at the supermarket. Within less than 2 hours, he sells all the tomatoes individually at 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 before going to sleep that night. And thus it dawns on him that he could quite easily make a living selling tomatoes. Getting up early every day and going to bed late, he multiplies his profits quickly.

After a short time he acquires a cart to transport several dozen boxes of tomatoes, only to have to trade it in again so that he can buy a pick-up truck to support his expanding business. By the end of the second year, he is the owner of a fleet of pick-up trucks and manages a staff of a hundred former unemployed people, all selling tomatoes.

Planning for the future of his wife and children, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. At the end of the telephone conversation, the adviser asks him for his email address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he has no email, the adviser is stunned “What, you don’t have e-mail? How on earth have you managed to amass such wealth without the Internet, email and e-commerce? Just imagine where you would be now, if you had been connected to the Internet from the very start!”

After a moment of thought, the tomato millionaire replied “Why, of course! I would be a floor cleaner at Microsoft!”

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 1:49 pm

Never try to impress a woman, because if you do she’ll expect you to keep up the standard for the rest of your life.

– W. C. Fields

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
December 26, 2022 1:52 pm

‘It’s hot out there today Mr Walker’
38 in the paddock.

Roger
Roger
December 26, 2022 2:04 pm

Seen it in person with friends.

You don’t seem the type to have feeble minded snobs as friends, Arky.

Arky
December 26, 2022 2:09 pm

You don’t seem the type to have feeble minded snobs as friends, Arky.

..
I don’t discriminate Roger.

cohenite
December 26, 2022 2:09 pm

Matersays:
December 26, 2022 at 7:55 am
Predictable
Diversity + Proximity = Conflict

Correct.

Roger
Roger
December 26, 2022 2:12 pm

I don’t discriminate Roger.

😀

132andBush
132andBush
December 26, 2022 2:26 pm

‘It’s hot out there today Mr Walker’
38 in the paddock.

Remembering back to my first real harvest 86/87.

International C1600 with single axle trailer, vacuum brakes and bottom dump bins.
Roaring into St Arnaud AWB (or whatever it was back then), drop grain and roar back out to the paddock with all the flow through air conditioning that two windows could offer. Adequately dispersing the combined heat from the sun and the 345 V8 engine was never achieved for the driver.

Last truck for the day always stopped at the bottle shop for “the cans”.

I’m so glad I got to do it then and so grateful we don’t do it with that sort of gear now.

Vicki
Vicki
December 26, 2022 2:36 pm

They send their kids to very, very expensive progressive schools.
The kids come home and lecture Mum and Dad on all the issues at the dinner table.

Arky, I don’t think this is the only reason for the wokification of the Rich. Certainly, the kids of expensive private schools are taught the woke garbage – but so are kids in public schools.

Personally, I think immunity from the woke religion is only acquired through a naturally good “crap detector”. The latter used to be the default position of most Australians. Today, it seems to have been bred out of our people. It remains, paradoxically, in the domain of the “working class” viz tradies and many folk in rural Australia. In the elite suburbs it is still found, but in smaller and quieter groups. The latter have been cowered into believing they are relics of the past.

Personally, I look at my two grandchildren as emblematic of the problem. Both are products of expensive private schools. The girl is very bright, but very woke. She is perplexed when I challenge her views on global warming, the sacred religion of “diversity” & other woke convictions. Her brother, on the other hand, has always had a sharp “crap detector”, even though he struggles academically as a result of difficulty in mental focus (commonly called “ADHD”). It is a joy to behold. I think it is a hoot that he managed to get into university and is studying for a degree in environmental studies. As he has always disputed “global warming”, I wondered why this was his choice. He replied, with a grin, that he would have a wide, and easy, choice of employment opportunities!

I am hoping that the world will belong to kids like him, who may eventually take back the reins from the woke by using the means that they have created to reforge the future.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 2:36 pm

Live Tracker Rolex Sydney Hobart 2022

https://rolexsydneyhobart.com/tracker/

JC
JC
December 26, 2022 2:41 pm

Funny comment about the nut’s -freezing temps in Nth America.

Is it not obvious to everyone that it would be a helluva lot warmer right now if it were not for Global Warming?

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
December 26, 2022 2:42 pm

I’m so glad I got to do it then and so grateful we don’t do it with that sort of gear now.

I don’t miss a 1975 Acco 1830, where you sat directly over the engine………

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 2:53 pm

What cheese me off: cricket commentators who call the summer game’s scoring practitioners “batters”.

They’re batmen and batswomen.

Desexing the English language succeeds only in endumbening the public, encouraging subservience to the government, discouraging independent thought and degrading our beautiful mother tongue for which nuance and sublety are essential yet romantic features.

Arky
December 26, 2022 2:54 pm

don’t miss a 1975 Acco 1830

..
We had one of those on the farm I worked as a kid.
I asked Brian “Is it diesel”? He said “No, it would be even more gutless if it was”.

Cassie of Sydney
December 26, 2022 2:58 pm

“Personally, I think immunity from the woke religion is only acquired through a naturally good “crap detector”. The latter used to be the default position of most Australians. Today, it seems to have been bred out of our people. It remains, paradoxically, in the domain of the “working class” viz tradies and many folk in rural Australia. In the elite suburbs it is still found, but in smaller and quieter groups. The latter have been cowered into believing they are relics of the past.”

Agree Vicki.

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
December 26, 2022 3:07 pm

Now it’s raining!

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 3:12 pm

And what is so funny is that they are all wearing face masks…………………TWATS.

Anchor What
Anchor What
December 26, 2022 3:12 pm

Leftwing media haters gotta hate – via News:
“Billionaire Elon Musk’s shambolic Twitter takeover has caused months of chaos – and it could end up being his undoing.”

local oaf
December 26, 2022 3:13 pm

Desexing the English language succeeds only in endumbening the public, encouraging subservience to the government, discouraging independent thought and degrading our beautiful mother tongue for which nuance and sublety are essential yet romantic features.

Irrefragable!

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 3:24 pm

Wot’ is all this Bollocks to do wiv’ doxxing? I mean, wot’ is it all abbat’. Sounds like a load of bollocks to me. COYS and that means fuck off Arsenal………………………………

H B Bear
H B Bear
December 26, 2022 3:27 pm

… are being lectured on these issues, by their colleagues, by their managers, and so on, not merely by their children at the dinner table. And … the ubiquitous lecturing of the media.

Water off a ducks back now. It’s incessant.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
December 26, 2022 3:29 pm

2m ago
Wong condemns Taliban for banning women from NGOs
Georgina Noack

Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong has condemned Afghanistan’s Taliban-run administration after it ordered non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to stop female employees from coming to work.

The ban comes days after the administration ordered universities in Afghanistan to close to women indefinitely – a shock decision landing less than three months after thousands of girls and women sat university entrance exams across Afghanistan.

In a statement on Monday afternoon, Senator Wong condemned the Taliban’s most recent decision to ban women from local and foreign NGOs, describing it as “appalling”.

“This decision seriously impacts the country’s ability to deal with a major humanitarian crisis,” Senator Wong tweeted.

“We support the UN which is leading discussions with the Taliban to annul this decision.”

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 3:33 pm

So let me know. Fuck Off Arsenal sounds good to me,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Zipster
December 26, 2022 3:33 pm
Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 3:37 pm

Why do these elite schools propagate these opinions? For social and status reasons. They are acknowledging to the political elite they are buying-in to what the elite has signaled as ‘acceptable’ opinion and that they will now dutifully produce students that will reflect these opinions. That they recognize that holding these opinions is now mandatory for successful participation in institutions central to elite power, whether academic, corporate, political, and the like.

Yet all but the dumbest running our elite schools acknowledge that adherence to current woke opinion makes it impossible for their students to build or maintain essential infrastructure like a power grid or anything for which electrical or mechanical engineering are mandatory.

Woke culture means that our elite schools know they are graduating students who are unemployable in all but the study of woke culture.

Woke culture aims to send us back to the Middle Ages, where there are no iPhones or computers.

rickw
rickw
December 26, 2022 3:58 pm

I don’t miss a 1975 Acco 1830, where you sat directly over the engine………

We’ve still got the model before, petrol. She was an ex-fox coke delivery truck with a drop chassis. Dad brought new chassis rails and welded them in to convert her back to a straight chassis with a tipper, very reliable and completely gutless!

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
December 26, 2022 4:02 pm

I don’t miss a 1975 Acco 1830 …

Beautiful sleek lines though.
A design classic.

rickw
rickw
December 26, 2022 4:03 pm

Drag along header just broken down, overload clutch on the riddle just rounded off, not driving at all, just pulled it apart and retrieved the clutch. Now a thunderstorm and torrential rain has just descended!

Boambee John
Boambee John
December 26, 2022 4:11 pm

I haven’t noticed m0nty-fa here recently, attacking the Twatter Files as “a nothing burger, all about Hunter Bunter’s nine- inch hog”. Could it be that even he is finding defending the indefensible impossible? Or is he worried that Musk might do unto the fascist leftards what they have been doing unto others for years?

rosie
rosie
December 26, 2022 4:20 pm

For social and status reasons. They are acknowledging to the political elite they are buying-in to what the elite has signaled as ‘acceptable’ opinion

Exactly Dover.
Fashionable opinions.
It’s almost like going out and buying a hoolahoop.
Then they talk about records, what records, the last hundred years?
Apparently three years of la niñas in a row is unprecedented, because the climateers don’t like explanations other than ‘it’s a climate emergency’ .
No, they are known to last up to three years and we cycle through one of three la niña el niña neutral all the time.
Worried about plastics clogging up the planet?
Invest in plastic to energy technology, its been around forty years now.
El Niño and La Niña

132andBush
132andBush
December 26, 2022 4:27 pm

Just had a look at the BOM app.

“Heatwave warning” is up, which is something I haven’t seen before.

Three maps showing the regions affected with a colour legend of yellow/orange/red. Then a brief description of temps expected.
Check of current and three day forecast temps and there’s nothing over 38 back down to 32 Thursday.

A condensed version would read, “It’s summer in Australia”.

Laughable

Hugh
December 26, 2022 4:28 pm

where there are no iPhones or computers

That does not sound entirely bad to me, but then I confess to being something of a Luddite. 😉

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 4:37 pm

Do you ever stop thinking about Hunter’s 9 inch Hog?

Tom
Tom
December 26, 2022 4:46 pm

These schools will still produce technically competent people, it’s just that they will also hold a whole host of woke opinions that will enable them to navigate successfully in the institutional culture that perpetuates woke culture (globalist, believe in Science, LGBTQ uber alles, and so on).

I disagree, Dover. The essential ingredients of wokeism now include quasi-religious animism, an offshoot of Nimbin hippieism that wants to return us to 19th century agrarian subsistence farming, enabled by primitive “technologies” like windmills, which are useful only for pumping water for livestock provided that it doesn’t matter when the water arrives.

In other words, wokeism is simply the continuation of liberalism by other means.

On the contrary, in the third decade of the 21st century, liberalism has degenerated into Marxism’s latest tool to destroy the capitalist free market.

There is nothing liberal about fascism.

calli
calli
December 26, 2022 4:47 pm

nothing over 38 back down to 32 Thursday.

Cozy.

One of the problems is that we are now living with the Aircon Generation. They don’t like discomfort.

For the ones preaching climageddon and imagining that grid collapse will avert it…they don’t know what discomfort means. Yet.

I envisage wet sheets draped over drying frames for electricity free aircon, once the supply of unicorn farts dries up.

Boambee John
Boambee John
December 26, 2022 4:48 pm

Frankly, Dick Head, I couldn’t give a damn, but m0nty-fa, reinforced by you, keeps it in the headlines. Generally as a cover for some leftard crookery.

You seem very interested in it, are you a Flamer? You certainly aren’t a Spook.

rosie
rosie
December 26, 2022 4:49 pm

And the dumbest thing about claiming la niña is evidence of global warming is that they are the product of cooler sea surface temperatures.

rosie
rosie
December 26, 2022 4:53 pm

I’ve yet to see true believers turn off the air-conditioning* for the sake of the planet.
*I don’t have it, an abundance of ceiling fans, a couple of external blinds, opening up the house at night and shade trees close to the house make most days quite tolerable.

rickw
rickw
December 26, 2022 4:54 pm

Harvester fixed and ready to go. But now things need to dry out!

rosie
rosie
December 26, 2022 4:55 pm

Monty might be enjoying Christmas with his young family.
Indeed I hope he is.

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 4:56 pm

… are you a Flamer?
You cut to the chase quickly there, SpongeBob.
I’ll take that as a come on, but I’m not interested.

It is pretty clear, though, that you depend on Monty’s commenting to give you cover to Troll.
And to talk about 9 inch Hogs.

sfw
sfw
December 26, 2022 5:06 pm

Talking of ACCOs, I joined the MFB in 82, at Brunswick we had an ACCO 1510, petrol V8, four speed manual it had a huge gap between 1st and 2nd, they were meant to have a split diff but the MFB bought the cheapest they could get. As you came west along Blythe St to turn right into Sydney Rd for a call you had to hope that you could get through the traffic lights without stopping, if you had to drop back to 1st at the intersection you had to stay in 1st gear all the way to the top of the hill, just before Albion St. It would be screaming its guts out at around 8kmh, there was no way to change into 2nd on the uphill. A truly horrible beast, noisy, stinking hot in summer, cold in winter, no demisters, they had an aftermarket demister that had suction caps and stuck to the bottom of the windscreen and had to be plugged into the cigarette lighter to work.

The good old days.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/46046969@N03/7928990736

Colonel Crispin Berka
Colonel Crispin Berka
December 26, 2022 5:07 pm

Found this great analogy of many futilities being like flogging a dead horse.
comment image

Easy to apply to Intermittent Generators in the electricity grid.
Many of the numbered tactics are being used:
4. More research needed.
6. Lowering generator standards so wind doesn’t need to meet them.
7. Referring to Intermittent Generators as “renewables”.
8. Allowing private sector to run the government’s Lysenkoist-level experiment.
9. More wind turbines.
10. Sending subsidies to wind power.
12. Focussing on the free input and ignore the lack of output.
14. Basically happened with a Hillary-picked Green-biased New York lawyer being appointed head of AEMO.

Note that point 1 is never used, the renewables are never punished for not generating.

H B Bear
H B Bear
December 26, 2022 5:12 pm

I’ll take that as a come on, but I’m not interested.

Very Dahmer of you Groogs. No wonder people find you creepy.

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 5:16 pm

Just on the Term Cookers:

It’s short for Meth Cookers, a slander against White people.

calli
calli
December 26, 2022 5:17 pm

Heh. At present we have the pool heated and the air con running.

Go figure.

Boambee John
Boambee John
December 26, 2022 5:17 pm

Richard Cranium

Au contraire, you provide more than adequate trolling opportunities with your perpetualbabbling about Spooks and Flamers. m0nty-fa is just a bonus.

Boambee John
Boambee John
December 26, 2022 5:22 pm

Ed Casesays:
December 26, 2022 at 5:16 pm
Just on the Term Cookers:

It’s short for Meth Cookers, a slander against White people.

Are you saying that m0nty-fa is a racist? Sure sounds like it.

DaFisk
DaFisk
December 26, 2022 5:23 pm

What a great day in history!

Ukraine / ???????
@Ukraine

Ukraine government organization
Happy USSR Collapse Day!
1:34 AM · Dec 26, 2022

JC
JC
December 26, 2022 5:24 pm

Wokeism as a mass phenomenon is just the intensification of the liberalism of the past;

You keep mentioning the word liberalism as a descriptor of what’s all wrong with the world. Perhaps you can define what you mean.

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 5:26 pm

Au contraire, you provide more than adequate trolling opportunities with your perpetualbabbling about Spooks and Flamers.

You admit to being a Troll, I notice.

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 5:28 pm

Are you saying that m0nty-fa is a racist? Sure sounds like it.

Huh?
I’m saying he’s a Cuck and a Troll, similar to yourself.

Boambee John
Boambee John
December 26, 2022 5:29 pm

JC

The US “Progressives” of the Woodrow Wilson era decided that Wilson had poisoned the name, so they started calling themselves “Liberals”, thus poisoning that word to the extent that Dick Head thinks that Menzies and Creepy Joe Hiden were in the same position on the political spectrum.

I suspect that is the context.

Boambee John
Boambee John
December 26, 2022 5:31 pm

Richard Cranium

Keep babbling.

Dot
Dot
December 26, 2022 5:31 pm

Ukraine government organization
Happy USSR Collapse Day!
1:34 AM · Dec 26, 2022

God bless and thank you St Stephen.

Dot
Dot
December 26, 2022 5:32 pm

Wokeism as a mass phenomenon is just the intensification of the liberalism of the past; the rejection of all norms, whether customary or moral.

Totally wrong.

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
December 26, 2022 5:41 pm

An Acco 1510 V8 petrol you say sfw.
Typical shiny arsed MFB.
Try a 58 Austin that that had a cabin like a thermomix and the petrol vaporised regularly on a hot day on the way to a fire.
I’m not sure there were any gears.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
December 26, 2022 5:42 pm

Harvester fixed and ready to go. But now things need to dry out!

All the best for a good finish to the harvest!

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 5:42 pm

This isn’t a serious comment:
The US “Progressives” of the Woodrow Wilson era decided that Wilson had poisoned the name, so they started calling themselves “Liberals”, …
So I’ll just point out a few basic howlers:
The Progressive Movement emerged from the Republican Party around 1905, it had petered out nationally by 1915.
Wilson was a Democrat [as well as a noted racist] he never claimed to be a Progressive and only won in ’12 because TR split the Republican vote.

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 5:45 pm

Khawaja out for 1 off 11, batting on a road.
Didn’t some know it all pick him in a World XI the other day?

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
December 26, 2022 5:46 pm
miltonf
miltonf
December 26, 2022 5:46 pm

Yes ‘liberal’ seems to mean many things. I thought it was from the Latin word for book. Is that correct?

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
December 26, 2022 5:51 pm

Got to love their chutzpah.

Hot cross buns hit supermarket shelves one day after Christmas (Sky News, 26 Dec)

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
December 26, 2022 6:00 pm

Article over on the Oz website, by Anthony Dillon, about how the “Voice” shouldn’t mention treaties.

Sheena
50 minutes ago
The whole idea of ” Treaty” is nonsense.
For starters the UN Declaration on Treaties does not accord any CONQUERED race Treaty status.
Next. You have to have had a war.
Finally, a Country Cannot have a Treaty with its own Citizens.
This is the infantile rubbish the Voice will legislate into the Australian Constitution.

Arky
December 26, 2022 6:03 pm

The bird at the end is pretty good. “The homeless industrial complex”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vc6CHRrtH8
..
She says how LA wanted to clear Venice Beach boardwalk of 200 homeless so paid 5 million to do so.
That’s $25,000 per bum.
They’re building affordable housing to “solve” the problem. At 1.2 mil per unit.

Boambee John
Boambee John
December 26, 2022 6:07 pm

Richard Cranium

So I’ll just point out a few basic howlers:
The Progressive Movement emerged from the Republican Party around 1905, it had petered out nationally by 1915.
Wilson was a Democrat [as well as a noted racist] he never claimed to be a Progressive and only won in ’12 because TR split the Republican vote.

Grotesquely inaccurate, even by your woeful standards. Try again.

JMH
JMH
December 26, 2022 6:07 pm

132andBushsays:
December 26, 2022 at 4:27 pm

Just had a look at the BOM app.

“Heatwave warning” is up, which is something I haven’t seen before.

Three maps showing the regions affected with a colour legend of yellow/orange/red. Then a brief description of temps expected.
Check of current and three day forecast temps and there’s nothing over 38 back down to 32 Thursday.

A condensed version would read, “It’s summer in Australia”.

Laughable

Noted the same “Heatwave Warning” for my region yesterday. Translation – ‘we must keep panicking the ignorant and gullible twats’ – for the cause! You are absolutely correct. once upon a time a few years ago – it was, indeed, called ‘summer in Australia”.

Ed Case
Ed Case
December 26, 2022 6:07 pm

Liberal has only one meaning.
Australians were tired of the My way or the Highway style of the Curtin and Chifley Governments and welcomed the inclusive approach of the Liberal Party.
Poor branding and poor candidates have caused the Liberal Party to be viewed by many as a Right Wing Party, but a coupla Terms of Labor often opens voters eyes.

Rabz
December 26, 2022 6:08 pm

Dabs
Re your comment. schwab is a nazi

Gee thanks, Louis. By the way, are you illiterate, a personage whose third language is English or severely brain damaged?

P.S. This is not a trick question.

Johnny Rotten
December 26, 2022 6:12 pm

ASSERTIVE WOMEN’S CONFERENCE

The first speaker, a lady from England, stood and said “During last year’s conference, we spoke about being more assertive with our husbands. Well, after the conference, I went home and told my husband, Barrington, that I would no longer cook for him and that he would have to do it himself”.

“After the first day, I saw nothing. The second day, I saw nothing, but on the third day, I saw that he had cooked a wonderful roast lamb”.

The crowd applauded.

The second lady from Russia, stood up and said “After last year’s conference, I went home and told my husband, Ivan, that I would no longer do his laundry and that he would have to do it himself. The first day, I saw nothing. After the second day, I saw nothing, but on the third day, I saw that he had done not only his own washing, but mine as well”.

The crowd again applauded.

The third speaker, an Aboriginal lady from Australia, stood up and said “Afta lass year’s conference, I wen ‘ome and tole dat lazy husband of mines, Dingo Jack, dat I was froo pickin up his beer cans, cookin’ his tucker and washin’ his undaweah and dat he was goin to haf to do dem himself.

The crowd went wild with applause.

She continued “Afta da first day, I nevah see nuffin. Afta da second day, I nevah see nuffin, but afta da fird day, I could see a little bit outa my leff eye”.

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