The Surrender of Granada, Francisco Pradilla Ortiz, 1882
Apologies if this has been posted previously but I can’t resist — been dancing in the kitchen to it on…
Open Thread – Tue 31 Jan 2023
- Open Thread – Weekend 12 April 2025
- Open Thread – Thurs 10 April 2025
- WolfmanOz at the Movies #99
- Open Thread – Mon 7 April 2025
- Don’t want to be a doomsayer, but?!?
@MikeBenzCyber Stunning. The FBI paid British intelligence agent Christopher Steele $75K for dirt on Donald Trump, while Steele openly told…
David Janetzki, Queensland’s treasurer, for scrapping Labor’s intermittent power targets… Alas, that’s not what he did. He pushed the target…
Republicans Probe Secret Biden-Era Settlement With Green Groups To Shut Down Family Ranches
Did I say the U.K. was full communist – German Journalist Given Seven Month Sentence for Meme Mocking Government’s ‘Hatred’…
Nobody?
OK then first.
Apparently ‘Tourism is Colonialism-Go Home’.
Don’t think of asking for thoughts on motor boating to Lampedusa with the intention of living here permanently.
And in today’s fourth strike, wanted to see Spasima but locked and looks like some building work being done.
I did find Judge Giovanni Falcone’s natal home which google maps told me was ‘temporarily closed’.
Closed alright.
It’s bare foundations only, bombed in world war two, family moved down to piano nobile with great aunt? then got booted altogether in 1959 when when the building was declared unsafe and bulldozed for some grandiose public works project that never eventuated.
John Spooner.
Warren Brown.
Peter Broelman.
David Rowe.
Christian Adams.
Steve Bright.
Patrick Blower.
A.F. Branco.
Matt Margolis.
Al Goodwyn.
Tom Stiglich.
Gary Varvel.
Ben Garrison.
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
– Milton Friedman
In a second grade class, a little girl asks “Teacher, can my mummy get pregnant?” “How old is your mother, dear?” asks the teacher. “Forty” she replies. “Yes, dear, your mother could get pregnant”.
The little girl then asks “Can my big sister get pregnant?” “Well, dear, how old is your sister?” The little girl answers “Nineteen”. “Oh yes, dear, your sister certainly could get pregnant”.
The little girl then asks “Can I get pregnant?” “How old are you, dear?” The little girl answers “I’m seven years old”. “No, dear, you can’t get pregnant..”.
Then, the little boy behind the little girl gives her a poke and says “See, I told you we had nothing to worry about”.
Over the weekend Big Brother Watch released a report that shows critics of the UK governments response to COVID were put under surveillance.
Whistleblowers, documentation, the whole shebang.
https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Ministry-of-Truth-Big-Brother-Watch-290123.pdf
The extent the blob went to should shock, but similar to when the Snowden news broke it’s all a bit ho-hum.
“The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.”
Verbal said it the best.
America’s Main Cultural Exports Are Now Suffering and Depravitywho needs enemies with ‘friends’ like that
From a superb discussion between Freddie Sayers and Peter Hitchens, uploaded overnight from online magazine Unherd, worth listening to….
“Some slightly shadowy organisations within the UK government, and also within the British army, in a unit called the 77th Brigade, weren’t spending the last three years worried about Covid infection rates, Covid mortality rates or what the truth was behind the Covid “pandemic”, no, they were observing social media feeds on social media, looking for dissenting opinions that might be troublesome and potentially reporting those opinions up a chain of authority to someone or something that might censor them.
Now, I don’t know what others think, but I call this very totalitarian and very, very sick.
Cassie, the Big Brother watch organisation were the ones who broke this story.
Keir Starmer was put under surveillance because he publicly questioned the policy of lock downs.
This is why the coverage (lack thereof) is surprising.
Imagine if the security state put Albo under surveillance (read, hack his data) while he was opposition leader.
Hitchens is never one to mince his words..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HrqDi-a0J0
It’s only half an hour, worth listening to.
The Comm Bank chatbot is so good at answering questions without searching through their website or calling their call centre.
That’s how they get you.
Convenience, then enslavement.
Thanks Tom!
Finally, some Reconquista-themed art.
It’s come to this.
New feminist chemistry class teaches that science is racist (30 Jan)
I fondly remember the old days when chemistry was about chemistry. Now its all about climate change and racism. It’s sad to see the decline happening so fast now.
Just spent 10 minutes on the phone to Linkt about tolls. Person on their end obviously had english as a second language, she tried hard but I could barely understand her. HTF does a major company think it’s ok to use people like that as their first point of contact?
Today, according to some, will herald the Second Coming of Trump.
Momentous times.
And on the subject of Great Predictions, tomorrow will mark 2 to 32 months until all the vaxxed are dead.
That was the prediction. Not some, or most. All.
Simple…they don’t care about customer service and in this instance there’s no competition.
Looking at the background of the heading painting you will see Alhambra Palace. One of the most amazing pieces of architecture in the world. Considering when it was built even more so. Walk up to it when you go, its even more impressive. Book well ahead as it is booked out often. You have to go at the time on the ticket otherwise miss out like some obnoxious Yankees did when we went. Security got called.
40 000 – 100 000 Chinese students (depending on who you listen to, the ABC or the universities) booking urgent flights to Australia after the CCP banned on-line learning at foreign universities without notice.
The Ministers of Education and Home Affairs have reportedly swung into action to facilitate their return (so helpful of them!).
One wonders where they’ll be housed?
Knuckles are people going to be falling down in the street or basement screaming? Munties missus could sell tickets. I’d pay good money to see that. Are you going to spend up large having a good time or wallow in self pity, thinking ‘why didn’t I listen to the Great Oracle, Ken, knower of everything’.
I presume, just like that, Covid has disappeared from China. You know, that super deadly new strain that we were all to be worried about because it was killing so many Chinese.
It’s as if it never really existed. Fancy that.
New OT, hiding in plain sight.
Very cunning!
It’s quite bright and sparkly too. Must be the fresh cushions and polished cutlery.
Alice Springs will get a National Aboriginal Art Gallery as part of a revamp of the Australia Council, which will receive a $286m injection of funds. The centrepiece of the make over, which will see the establishment of four new arts bodies under the old Australia Council umbrella, will be a First Nations group doing something or other.
The new policy addresses criticisms that the AC was elitist.
Me thinks they’re going to need a bigger bucket of money.
Perhaps they could sell Blue Poles to fund all this?
If the lovely Evonne Goolagong won the Australian Open today, would they insist her “First Nation” be etched on the trophy along with, or even replacing, AUS?
Down with colonialism!
Oh, and another G&T please…
World’s top-selling carmaker revealed
Toyota beat rival Volkswagen, selling over 10 million vehicles in 2022, according to company data
Japan’s Toyota Motor Corporation was the world’s best-selling automaker for the third consecutive year in 2022 despite supply-chain constraints, which plagued the industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.
According to the company, it sold roughly 10.5 million vehicles throughout the year. The sales included those of its subsidiaries Daihatsu and Hino Motors. While overall sales dipped 0.1% against 2021 due to a 9.6% drop in domestic sales, overseas deliveries jumped to record highs at 8.6 million vehicles.
Toyota has now held the title of best-selling automaker for three years in a row.
Germany’s Volkswagen, which ranks second, said earlier this month that overall sales plunged 7% last year to 8.3 million cars, the lowest level of deliveries in over a decade.
Toyota said that despite lingering constraints regarding semiconductor inventories, its overall global output rose 5% last year on strong Asian demand and optimization measures at its plants. Its production target for the next fiscal year, which starts in April, is 10.6 million vehicles, which exceeds its pre-pandemic output.
Analysts from S&P Global Mobility predict Toyota’s 2023 sales to surpass last year’s, while Volkswagen is likely to recover from its 2022 slump but will still be unable to outpace its Japanese rival.
Interesting that Toyita has enough brains to realise that Africa, Middle East and Asia will develop slower than the West with respect to Emissions Control and EVs and builds Models for those Markets as against American & Eurpean Maunfacturers whose vehicles become to Computer Controlled and Complex
Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda to Hand Control to Next Generation
Koji Sato, 53-year-old engineer, to come up with the answer for Toyota’s future after a slow start in EVs
The management switch comes as Toyota navigates the transition toward electric, autonomous and internet-connected cars. While several of Toyota’s competitors have announced plans for a fully electric lineup, Mr. Toyoda has staked out an unusual position in the industry by questioning whether EVs should be pursued exclusively.
He has at times spotlighted what he sees as the downsides of EVs—such as the lack of charging infrastructure in some regions, their reliance on electric-power sources that may be carbon-emitting, and the high cost of EV materials such as lithium for batteries. He has said consumers should continue to be offered a variety of options including hybrid gas-electric vehicles—a Toyota innovation—and hydrogen-powered cars.
EVs made up less than 1% of Toyota and Lexus retail sales in 2022 through November.
Case in Point – All Those Toyota Land Cruisers You See In The News From War Zones To Disaster Areas Come From This Dealer
The company is the only official seller of modified Toyota vehicles for humanitarian agencies
Toyota Gibraltar Stockholdings is the dealer that receives white Toyotas from Japan and modifies them to serve in some of the harshest conditions on earth. The company is Toyota’s officially appointed seller of 4×4 vehicles and spare parts for humanitarian agencies.
Established in 1996, it claims to have supplied more than 80,000 vehicles to over 100 countries worldwide. It holds a stock of more than 2,000 general specification vehicles in both left and right-hand-drive. According to Top Gear, it modifies 650 vehicles per month for use by the U.N. and other non-governmental agencies.
As to why so many 70 series Land Cruisers pass through the workshop, it’s because they’re such simple machines. Whereas comfort is of utmost importance to usual customers, reliability and repairability are important for the kinds of missions that these vehicles are going on.
GR:
Yes. Falling in the street, like those in the Chinese video clips which are obviously 100% legit.
Also falling from buildings, in cars, on e-scooters, in pubs, at the footy, during card games, at work, on the dunny and on the nest.
If there are survivors – and we were promised there wouldn’t be any – they will be cattle-carred to the Woomba DeaTh Camp, where the gas lines are already piped in (according to Mr Bosi) and guarded by the alive unvaxxed, who in a giant paradox will be working for the Global Takeover rather than the resistance.
There’s no embellishment in this. That was the scenario set out, repeatedly, in one of the greatest crying wolf episodes in history.
For clarity, and yet again, I believe the covid restrictions and any form of lockdown or anything like was unnecessary horseshit ultimately driven by personal gain for a select few who used the idiocy and unbridled ambition of stupid, mediocre unelected public servants to achieve their aims.
Their policies killed people, and are still killing people through lack of appropriate medical care able to be sourced during that time. The responsible people should have an opposite arm and leg removed and then jailed for the rest of their days with AFLW on a shatter-proof big screen on continuous loop. Its effects will linger with society for years.
But I’ll tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t the ‘rough beast, its hour come round at last, shambling towards Bethlehem to be born’, and that’s exactly what panic-merchants, innumerable failed political candidates and aspiring Leaders of the People would have had to believe.
And that’s why I took the piss out of it. Then, and now.
Let them burn like the many businesses that have suffered over the last 3 years. Daily Telegraph:
GetUp has stumbled to the biggest loss in the left-wing pressure group’s 15-year history, forcing it to chew through more than a third of its cash reserves.
The activist organisation’s 2021-22 financial report, which appeared in the corporate regulator’s records earlier this month, shows an annual deficit of $2.1 million – three times larger than anything in its past.
Its biggest prior loss was in 2019-20, when it amassed a deficit of $670,000.
The 2021-22 result was a stark turnaround from the previous financial year, when GetUp delivered a surplus of $1.2m.
In 2021-22, revenue was down by more than $600,000 to $10.1 million. Most of GetUp’s revenue is donations.
The group usually gets a bump in donations ahead of a federal election.
GetUp’s donations surged by a quarter in the lead-up to the 2019 poll and more than doubled in an unsuccessful quest to keep Tony Abbott out of the Lodge in 2013.
But there was no big jump ahead of last year’s showdown at the ballot box, with donations up by less than four per cent.
Expenses however went through the roof, from $10.1m to $12.5m.
Most of that increase was in employee costs, which rose by $1.9m.
Still, campaign bills were up by less than $50,000 to a little more than $1.6m.
To help cover the jump in total expenses, cash reserves sank by 35 per cent or $1.5m to $2.7m.
The Daily Telegraph asked GetUp if its revenue was affected by the emergence of rival left-wing activists Climate200, but the question was not answered directly.
Both GetUp and Climate200 have used donor money to aggressively campaign against Coalition MPs.
GetUp has historically targeted what it describes as “hard right” Liberal-National MPs, with little to show for its efforts.
By contrast, last year Climate200 mainly concentrated on “moderates” through its teal movement, snaring electorates in well-to-do areas of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, along with a Senate spot representing the ACT.
In a statement to The Telegraph, GetUp CEO Larissa Baldwin-Roberts said it “is an active participant in Australian elections, like any other political organisation we scale up to run our own campaigns and spend a lot of money during the electoral cycle in order to achieve huge impact – which is what our members expect.
“There are natural cycles of us being lean but our members continue to hold us strong,” Ms Baldwin-Roberts said.
“In the last six months we’ve seen an increase in monthly supporters who are more committed than ever and we’ll continue to campaign on the issues they care about and push for tangible, positive change in our policies.”
‘It’s as if it never really existed.’
Monkeypox.
That one failed to generate the necessary hysteria as soon as people realised that nobody really cared about rampant poofer orgies resulting in lesions on flamers’ cocks, so it was discarded.
The other one, however, hit it out of the park.
I like Spooner’s cartoon.
It takes its inspiration from that famous photo of Lenin making a speech. Only question is – who has been scrubbed out?
(If it was Rowe he would have to add in his ‘apologies to…’ whomever it was that turned the photo into a lie.)
I have decided to give Rotten a run for his money. 😉
Behold,
“The Saturday Night Joke
After I retired, my wife insisted that I accompany her on her trips to the local grocery store. Unfortunately, like most men; I found shopping boring and preferred to get in and get out. Equally unfortunate, my wife is like most women – she loves to browse. Yesterday my dear wife received the following letter, from the local store manager:
Dear Mrs. Harris:
Over the past six months, your husband has caused quite a commotion, in our store. We cannot tolerate this behavior and have been forced to ban both of you from the store.
Our complaints against your husband, Mr. Harris, are listed below and are documented by our video surveillance cameras:
1. June 15: He took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in other people’s carts when they weren’t looking.
2. July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.
3. July 7: He made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the women’s restroom.
4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official voice, ‘Code 3 in Housewares. Get on it right away’. This caused the employee to leave her assigned station and receive a reprimand from her Supervisor that in turn resulted with a union grievance, causing management to lose time and costing the company money. We don’t have a Code 3.
5. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and tried to put a bag of M&Ms on layaway.
6. August 14: Moved a, ‘CAUTION – WET FLOOR’ sign to a carpeted area.
7. August 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told the children shoppers he’d invite them in if they would bring pillows and blankets from the bedding department to which twenty children obliged.
8. August 23: When a clerk asked if they could help him he began crying and screamed, ‘Why can’t you people just leave me alone?’ EMTs were called.
9. September 4: Looked right into the security camera and used it as a mirror while he picked his nose.
10. September 10: While handling guns in the hunting department, he asked the clerk where the antidepressants were.
11. October 3: Darted around the store suspiciously while, loudly humming the, ‘Mission Impossible’ theme.
12. October 6: In the auto department, he practiced his, ‘Madonna Look’ using different sizes of funnels.
13. October 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed through, yelled ‘PICK ME! PICK ME!’
14. October 22: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he assumed a fetal position and screamed;
‘OH NO! IT’S THOSE VOICES AGAIN!’
15. Took a box of condoms to the checkout clerk and asked where is the fitting room?
And last, but not least:
16. October 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited awhile; then yelled very loudly, ‘Hey! There’s no toilet paper in here.’ One of the clerks passed out. (H/T Blake)
***
“
As I say to my kids: it doesn’t matter who started it. At least they listen when I say that.
Why power bills are still headed higher
The government is pressing ahead with market intervention to force down domestic energy prices, but costs will still rise sharply this year. The future is less clear.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Australian consumers alarmed by rising gas and electricity bills shouldn’t feel alone in their bewilderment about how such an energy-rich country has got itself into this position. Just what will happen in the domestic energy market is almost as confusing for all those expert analysts and energy companies and government regulators and ministers.
Barrenjoey’s energy and utility analyst, Dale Koenders, argues the uncertainty for Australian energy stocks is the worst he has seen in his 15 years of following the market.
“Investors really have to look for stocks that can create value in the shorter term rather than being happy to sit in a stock for the next three years,” he told The Australian Financial Review’s resources writer, Angela Macdonald-Smith.
Much of this is due to an extraordinary confluence of international factors, including the invasion of Ukraine a year ago, leading to an unprecedented shortage of gas and surging prices in Europe. That peak has since receded, helped by a mild European winter and relative success in sourcing alternatives to Russian gas supplies, although prices remain well above earlier levels.
Yet despite the Albanese government repeatedly blaming the Ukraine invasion and a decade of Coalition failure on energy policy to explain Australia’s steadily rising power bills, the impact of current and proposed policy is also key to the uncertain future of domestic energy prices and investment.
This obviously includes the long-term willingness of state governments in NSW and Victoria to stymie any new gas development in their states.
But the advent of a federal Labor government committed to greatly expanding renewable energy also coincided with an unanticipated crisis in the supply and price of coal and gas in the national electricity market on the east coast.
While the shift to renewable energy is unstoppable and accelerating, the transition years require a continuing though rapidly diminishing role for gas and coal to supplement this until renewable technology is further advanced and ready supply more assured.
But at what price? Last October, Jim Chalmers’ budget forecast an additional 56 per cent jump in retail electricity prices over two years, with gas prices rising by over 40 per cent.
A government elected promising cheaper energy prices had to be seen to act – which it did in December via a temporary $12 gigajoule wholesale price cap on gas plus a code of conduct to ensure “reasonable prices” for gas indefinitely. At the same time, Canberra persuaded state governments to impose price caps on domestic coal by promising federal compensation to make up for their reduced royalty payments.
Just how this will apply in practice is still playing out – now evident in BHP’s view it may have to close its Mount Arthur coal mine in NSW earlier than its planned 2030 date given production costs are higher than the cap.
It is still the vagueness of the duration and details of the federal government’s reasonable pricing regime for gas that is most unsettling for the gas industry.
This seems to be complicating any imminent resolution to last year’s fully priced bid for Origin Energy by Brookfield and US Energy Investor EIG Partners, for example, despite Origin’s announcement of a profit upgrade last Friday.
Even though the time allotted for due diligence was extended twice, the exclusivity period for Brookfield and EIG has now ended with no deal agreed. It could still happen following months of tightly held negotiations. But the unpredictability reflects an industry in flux despite current high profits.
Shell and Woodside announced last month they would suspend talks with customers for new contracts for gas, while Senex Energy is freezing its proposed Atlas gas project in Queensland and Cooper Energy has put another planned project in the Otway Basin under review.
ExxonMobil and Woodside, which jointly own the biggest source of gas for the domestic market in Bass Strait, reduced their forward investment commitment to a six months’ timetable, citing the government’s “reckless” intervention.
None of this has deterred the federal government or the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission from pressing ahead with the industry code of conduct to be released in February. They reject industry pressure to change course and complaints about lack of clarity about how the policy will apply, complete with the prospect of a $50 million penalty and reputation damage in case of a breach.
Dollar figures
The government remains confident it has the public on side when it argues big resources companies shouldn’t be allowed to make excessive profits from Vladimir Putin’s war at the expense of Australian consumers.
After all, the energy market is so complex very few people can understand the trade-offs, long-term investment bets and supply questions required for a well-functioning market in the midst of massive change.
They do gulp at the dollar figures on their bills.
Ministers were still heartened by Shell’s announcement last week it will lift its suspension on contracting new gas sales and offer another 8 petajoules for delivery this year despite its unhappiness with the government’s approach. It allows them to claim they have successfully called the industry’s bluff.
This doesn’t necessarily translate into new, cheaper contracts for smaller commercial and industrial customers suddenly becoming available. Shell’s customers are bigger manufacturers and power stations. Nor can most households and businesses rely on any relief from sharply rising retail prices this year.
The government will announce some targeted handouts for low-income households in the May budget but concedes its policies will take time to take effect more generally.
According to Chalmers, they will only “take the edge off” big price increases already set for 2023 although insisting they will have a greater impact on ameliorating further price increases next year.
Still confused? Little wonder. No one really knows.
Trump becomes President again today, doesn’t he? Adding a few hours because of the time difference.
Hahaha!!! The hyphenated-surname doctor’s wives club — grey-rinse feminazi activists with hen-pecked husbands and multi-million-dollar property portfolios in the inner suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.
Simple common sense.
Catturd ™
@catturd2
When they told you the vaccine worked – then claimed in the same breath that the unvaccinated were a danger to the vaccinated … common sense should’ve immediately told you this made zero sense and it was time to start questioning everything.
Finally, finally. I heard the George Orwell estate has agreed to publish 1984 from a female point of view. The world has been waiting for this since 1984.
musings on the militarization of covid
when (and why) did respiratory viruses become national security?
“Hahaha!!! The hyphenated-surname doctor’s wives club — grey-rinse feminazi activists with hen-pecked husbands and multi-million-dollar property portfolios in the inner suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.”
Tom, don’t forget the grey-rinse feminazi activist’s beach houses, and their ski trips to Perisher, Aspen and Whistler (all carbon offset, of course).
Speaking of hypocritical environmental activists, Ms Allegra Da Big Spenda has upgraded her “weekender” and bought a million dollar plus cottage on Sydney’s Pittwater.
Goodness me, soaring electricity bills and grocery prices are the concerns of little people. They must know their place, after all.
US skeptical of UK military – Sky News
The report, citing defense sources, claims that a top US general privately shared the assessment with Britain’s defence secretary
A senior US military official confidentially told British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace that the UK’s armed forces are no longer on par with those of the leading world powers, Sky News claims. The broadcaster, citing anonymous defense sources, said that years of cost-cutting measures by successive governments have made the country’s military a “hollow force.”
The report, which came out on Monday, alleges that the unnamed American general had a frank conversation with Wallace and several other British officials last fall.
The conclusion of the US general regarding the UK’s fighting capabilities was unsettling for London: “You haven’t got a tier one. It’s barely tier two.”
According to Sky News, the general classed the armed forces of the US, China, Russia, and France as tier-one powers, with Germany and Italy representing tier-two armies.
Several unnamed British defense sources confirmed to the broadcaster that the nation’s military is currently in a sorry state.
One official was quoted as saying: “It’s an entire service unable to protect the UK and our allies for a decade.”
The UK military would reportedly run out of ammunition “in a few days” if a conflict broke out.
Moreover, the armed forces would likely be unable to defend the skies against the level of missile and drone strikes currently seen in Ukraine, the broadcaster claimed.
The report said that 10 Downing Street has repeatedly cut the defense budget following the end of the Cold War, leaving the British army with hardware that is at least 30 years old and in dire need of replacement.
London’s active role in supplying Ukraine with weapons over the past 11 months has further diluted its own fighting capabilities, the news outlet said.
Another major issue highlighted by anonymous defense sources is chronic staffing shortages. With only 76,000 personnel, the British armed forces are less than half the size they were in 1990, Sky News claims.
However, according to the government’s plans, the military will shed 3,000 more troops down the road, while new weaponry is not expected to be procured for a few years, the report notes.
We had a booking and paid tickets but a few days before our tour got an email that there were double bookings and therefore our tickets were cancelled and money refunded. So instead we toured the old centre of Granada and Ferdinand and Isabella’s tomb in the cathedral. Saw the Alhambra only from the town.
Catturd ™
@catturd2
Good grief.
I get the feeling that they count on people being word down by futility of it all especially since, because there is only the one avenue of contact, complaining about it just sends you back to the same people.
Assistance by attrition.
I would not be surprised if it was procedure for amounts above a certain threshold to be advanced for actual action while amounts beneath are left to fritter away like a drop of oil on a hotplate to skip, bounce, and dance until it fizzles out of existence.
In The Way of the Market news:
Streaming giants push back on federal government’s new Australian content rules
Not responding to Government requests for Big Spending, eh? It looks like some sort of Commissioned is necessary to sort out this glaring market failure.
Luckily a Top Man, with years of media production experience, has his hands on the puzzle: Tony Burke.
Huzzah.
Was he a resident of Arden’s surveillance state?
Because that’s what happened there.
It didn’t. The danger was a restless populace who had just about enough of their slave masters. They had to be locked down as punishment.
Our masters are also that way inclined and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t try it again next winter.
What the Q tards won’t consider is if Trump “was really President all along” then he’s bit of a prick for letting Joe “Rub my Inner Thigh” Biden be President for two years.
Hahaha!!! The hyphenated-surname doctor’s wives club — grey-rinse feminazi activists with hen-pecked husbands and multi-million-dollar property portfolios in the inner suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.
Tom in the name of fairness and equality, the CEO is an Aboriginal woman going by the accompanying pic. So if that’s the case, you can see what they will be targeting next.
See – this is the sanity you get when you put someone in charge who can see the real situation, analyse it, and draw pragmatic conclusions.
Mr Sato is an old school engineer; cf. Ms. Abdel-Magied.
Silly me Knuckles, being a left handed ranga with other disdainful qualities, I though you were serious. Does this mean when I think you’re mocking I should take you seriously? In other observations Mrs Munster’s kids ask why does the fat freak in the basement tell us what to do? Just ignore him dear.
It’s almost 5 PM in Washington, “1/30/23” as they say.
31 hours remain of this delusional, destructive cult.
The true believers will believe it until they pop their clogs though.
Arts Minister Tony Burke has made clear that the definition should ensure not just that content is made in Australia, but that it is also distinctly Australian in its nature too.
1st up a doco on politicians who flit around the world on tax payer dollars whilst legging the hired help
I saw that on the news last night and thought anything that nonentity comes up with will be complete rubbish.
Tony Burke has a dismissive smirk on his face, much like Peter Costello, that says I know better but you are all too dumb to realise it. It puts me off just as much as Costello’s.
Pfizer admits ‘engineering’ Covid in lab studies to ensure its antiviral drug works on new variants — but pharma giant insists tests were not ‘gain of function’ and did not pose risk to public
Now the Left Is Coming for Your Pickup Trucks, America — and Their ‘Logic’ Couldn’t Be More Ridiculous
Like spoiled children, liberals never give up when they want something, and they can never get enough.
Whether it’s more redistribution of taxpayer money, more acceptance of unacceptable behavior, or another cookie, left-wingers always want more. Perfect example: Rather than “only” coming after our evil, planet-destroying passenger cars, the left is targeting our pickup trucks as well, my fellow Americans.
Moreover, the idiocy is neither new nor driven only by the left’s hatred of internal combustion engines.
As I first reported in January 2021 — and this is laugh-out-loud hysterical — pickup trucks not only brazenly project “petromasculinity”; they’re also the personification (or would that be “truckification”?) of “glorification of violence and domination.”
Incidentally, one of the many benefits enjoyed by conservative political pundits is never having to make crap up; the left’s got you covered on a regular basis.
Fast-forward to today. Nothing has changed.
Make that, the left has grown even nuttier about the evils of pickup trucks and their owners. The Federalist contributor Chuck DeVore, chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, dropped a thought-provoking op-ed on Monday about the left’s ongoing war on “big and scary” pickup trucks, first drawing a contrast between the right to bear arms vs. truck ownership.
Get the message? Of course, you do. I can see it now: “assault trucks,” “trucks of war,” the whole bit. Sarcasm, of course, but the message is the same — as are the assumptions and flawed “logic.”
And there it is: a “weight-based tax.” To discourage people from driving the personal vehicles of their choice, no less, vs. the “choice” of the climate lunatics.
The Ministry of Truth is real, led by the BBC & helped cause 20m Excess Deaths due to C-19 Vaccination
I presume, just like that, Covid has disappeared from China. You know, that super deadly new strain that we were all to be worried about because it was killing so many Chinese.
the reality behind the banning of online studying is China youth unemployment figures are going thru the roof! .. by forcing 1 000s of ‘students” to go OS they can fudge the unemployment statistics ..
Greedy western unis along with media & gummint compliance luv this sort of $-bottom-line policy ……!
Perhaps Allegra could use her wealth here:
Small businesses across the state have united in an urgent plea for help ahead of the state election, as new research shows a whopping 30 per cent will have to close their doors if nothing is done to improve trading conditions, as costs including insurance and energy soar.
“That’s a terribly frightening statistic,” said David Harding, executive director of Business NSW, which conducted the research among 900 owners.
Losing anything like that number of businesses would be economically devastating — the state’s small enterprises contribute about one-tenth of the nation’s GDP.
“It’s time to start pulling on the reform levers,” Mr Harding said.
Business NSW is imploring the Perrottet Coalition government and Minns Labor opposition to show they are serious about easing pressure by promising to deliver more natural gas, lower payroll tax, strengthen the state’s critical goods manufacturing capacity and increase government purchasing done through smaller providers.
“There are a whole load of things that a smart government could do just to make it easier for businesses in NSW,” Mr Harding said.
Power prices are the single-biggest pain point.
“We have bundled up gas and coal in the bad bucket,” Mr Harding said.
“We need to ensure that we have a stable energy supply underpinned by secure and realistically priced domestic gas.”
Insurance is the close behind energy.
Business NSW argues a “root and branch” review of the local market is needed, as premium hikes outpace general inflation year after year.
“The really worrying thing is that business will start operating without insurance,” Mr Harding said.
Rising expenses are undermining the viability of many operators, said Council of Small Business Organisations Australia chairman Matthew Addison, because the cannot be passed on in full without losing customers.
“The margins being derived by businesses are shrinking at the moment,” Mr Addison told The Telegraph.
He said some traders were facing wage hikes of 20 per cent.
“It’s putting more pressure on the bottom line,” COSBOA’s Mr Addison said.
Business Western Sydney executive director David Borger joined with Business NSW in calling for a cut to payroll tax.
“That’s one of the ways that government can reduce the cost of business,” Mr Borger told The Telegraph.
“Having a tax on jobs makes no sense.”
He also supported the push for increased state support for start-ups and extra medium-density, affordable housing in Sydney, as New Zealand’s politicians agreed to do in 2021 in a rate bipartisan decision.
Childcare centre owner Nicky Upfold said she was finding it harder and harder to attract staff to sites at Artarmon and Lane Cove.
“None of them can afford to live round here,” Ms Upfold said.
“All the local schools are starting to suffer from it as well, as well as police and fire stations.”
She also said that the prospect of having to payroll tax was an obstacle to expanding the business.
“I just feel there are just so many barriers,” Ms Upfold said.
Another was the English language testing that stood in the way of employing childcare workers from overseas. Three-quarters of Australian-born and educated people couldn’t achieve the required score, she said.
“They want to work with our children* (be careful what you wish for) but we can’t employ them because we have this level of red tape and we can’t get government to listen,” Ms Upfold said.
Business NSW’s Mr Harding said: “In that case government needs to get out of the way. The best judge of who can make a great employee is the employer.”
Catering business owner Russell Radcliffe said he would close down, if he felt he could.
Rising costs for rent, meat, transport, staff and power have decimated his business.
And his customers aren’t prepared to accept higher prices.
After paying his employees — and ever-increasing home-loan instalments — there isn’t enough to keep the tax man happy. He has run up a $100,000 debt.
“I would close my doors if I could and go get a job,” he said.
That would mean having to declare bankruptcy, “which is pretty ugly”.
“I feel alone,” Mr Radcliffe said. “I feel that the only way through it is to work.”
One could have added closing down over a glorified flu.
‘when I think you’re mocking’
Oh I’m serious. Deadly serious.
To help explain, let me grab my gee-tar and play you a song.
How disappointing Crossie. The Alcazar in Seville is well worth it too.
He has said consumers should continue to be offered a variety of options including hybrid gas-electric vehicles—a Toyota innovation—and hydrogen-powered cars.
Batteries are crap. Hydrogen makes batteries look really good.
The irony of Cranky chipping doctors wives.
Without Black Lives Matter, Tyre Nichols Might Not Have Died In Memphis Last Week
Two of the five police officers charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols were hired by the Memphis Police Department after it relaxed its hiring requirements, a new report by The New York Post shows.
Tadarrius Bean and Demetrius Haley both joined the MPD in August 2020 after education qualifications to become an officer were dramatically lowered two years prior. The department nixed the required associate’s degree or 54 college credit hours for recruits in 2018 due to a lack of applicants.
“They’re desperate. They want police officers,” retired NYPD detective Mike Alcazar told the Post. “They’re going through it, they check off some boxes, saying, ‘Ok, they’re good enough, get them on.”
In fact, the department was so desperate for recruits it offered $15,000 signing bonuses in both 2021 and 2022, and waivers for applicants who had been convicted of felonies. Even this did not prevent the force from being down 500 officers in January 2022.
Simply put: police officers were quitting at unprecedented rates across the country to escape such a hostile environment, and departments were struggling to meet minimum staffing requirements. This coincided with a massive crime wave across America’s major cities.
While a shortage of recruits is no excuse for relaxing hiring standards for cops, it is a product of disastrous dynamics the Black Lives Matter movement and leftist elites have cultivated. There is a lot of power and money in stoking fears of racism and hatred. And it is all done at the cost of the safety of the American public, most especially black Americans like Nichols.
For sure, let the cops implicated in Nichols’ death be charged to the fullest extent of the law, but it is important to remember why officers of that quality were hired to those positions in the first place.
Where is the Great Predictinator?
Virtually every country in the world charges a tax on GVM as a road user charge. The US levies it Federally on heavy transport and road user charges can vary by state or county for PMVs. In theory it is proportional to depreciation as is a per litre excise.
I want absolutely minimal taxation and balanced budgets but freaking out over GVM taxes & excise tax that is not overly onerous doesn’t seem worth it.
A smart government you say…
Childcare centre owner Nicky Upfold said she was finding it harder and harder to attract staff to sites at Artarmon and Lane Cove.
“None of them can afford to live round here,” Ms Upfold said.
another was the English language testing that stood in the way of employing childcare workers from overseas. Three-quarters of Australian-born and educated people couldn’t achieve the required score, she said.
So if Oz residents can’t afford to live “round here” where do the OS childcare workers plan to live?
Why Toyota – the world’s largest automaker – isn’t all-in on electric vehicles
Key Points
. Toyota, the king of hybrid vehicles, has come under scrutiny by some environmentalist groups for its cautiousness on investing in fully electric vehicles.
. The company doesn’t believe battery-electric vehicles are the only solution to producing more sustainable vehicles and achieving carbon neutrality.
. Toyota has a goal to produce 3.5 million electric vehicles by 2030, which would be more than a third of its current sales, while rival automakers promise to exclusively offer such vehicles.
Toyota executives, while increasing investments in all-electric vehicles, argue the company’s strategy is justified — not all areas of the world will adopt EVs at the same pace due to the high cost of the vehicles as well as a lack of infrastructure, they say.
“For as much as people want to talk about EVs, the marketplace isn’t mature enough and ready enough … at the level we would need to have mass movement,” said Jack Hollis, executive vice president of sales at Toyota Motor North America, last month during a virtual Automotive Press Association meeting.
Paul Waatti, manager of industry analysis at AutoPacific, believes Toyota is “definitely on the conservative” side when it comes to electric vehicles, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for such a large automaker.
“I think they’re hedging their bets,” he said. “From a global perspective, a lot of markets are moving at different paces. U.S. is slower than Europe and China in EV adoption but there are other markets where there’s no infrastructure at all. To take a varied approach in powertrains makes sense for a global automaker.”
In 2021, Toyota sold 10.5 million vehicles in approximately 200 countries and regions, more than any other global automaker, including those by affiliates Daihatsu Motors and Hino Motors. Volkswagen – the world’s second-largest automaker – sold 8.9 million vehicles in 153 countries, and GM and its joint ventures sold 6.3 million vehicles, primarily in North America and Asia.
Just one solution
Toyota believes all-electric vehicles are one solution, not the solution, for the company’s goal to become carbon neutral.
“In the distant future, I’m not investing assuming that battery electrics are 100% of the market. I just don’t see it,” said Jim Adler, founding managing director Toyota Ventures, the automaker’s venture capital unit. “It really will be a mixed market.”
Toyota executives expect different areas of the world to adopt electric vehicles at varying rates, largely based on available energy, infrastructure and raw materials needed for the batteries to power the vehicles.
Beyond hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles, Toyota has invested heavily in hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, including a second generation of its Mirai.
Hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles operate much like battery-electric ones but are powered by electricity generated from hydrogen and oxygen, with water vapor as the only byproduct. They’re filled up with a nozzle almost as quickly as traditional gas and diesel vehicles.
“BEV, fuel cell, plug-in hybrids, all those reduction tools are going to happen, and they’re all important,” Hollis said.
Still, fuel cell vehicles face the same challenges as all-electric vehicles: costs, lack of infrastructure and consumer understanding.
Toyota said it is also looking into e-fuels, which officials say is a climate neutral fuel to replace gasoline in nonelectric vehicles.
The batteries in electric vehicles are extremely costly, and the prices continue to increase due to inflation and demand for materials such as lithium, cobalt and nickel that are needed to produce the battery cells.
Raw material costs for electric vehicles more than doubled during the coronavirus pandemic, according to consulting firm AlixPartners.
That makes Toyota’s hybrid strategy somewhat economical — relatively speaking. Toyota also contends that there just aren’t enough of such minerals to go around.
“Over the next 10 years or so, there’s going to be tremendous bottlenecks in lithium supply around the world,” Pratt said. “Just look at the number of mines that need to be made. There’s also going to be a bottleneck in battery-grade nickel because the number of refineries that need to be paid when the demand is going up so fast.”
Toyota says large parts of world not ready for zero-emission cars
Large parts of the world are not ready for zero-emission vehicles, which is why Toyota did not sign a pledge this week to phase out fossil-fuel cars by 2040, the world’s largest car maker has said.
Six major carmakers, including General Motors, Ford, Sweden’s Volvo Cars and Daimler Mercedes-Benz, signed the Glasgow Declaration on Zero Emission Cars and Vans.
A number of countries, including India, also signed the pledge.
But Toyota and the world’s second biggest car maker Volkswagen, as well as crucial car markets the United States, China and Germany did not.
A spokesperson for Toyota told Reuters that where the energy and charging infrastructure, economics and customer readiness exist, “we are ready to accelerate and help support with appropriate zero-emission vehicles.”
“However, in many areas of the world such as Asia, Africa, Middle East an environment suitable for promoting full zero emission transport has not yet been established,” the spokesperson said.
“We think it will take more time to make progress – thus, it is difficult for us to commit to the joint statement at this stage,” the spokesperson added.
According to a study published by the Munich Mobility Show in April, there are huge global disparities in electric vehicle ownership.
Sales are soaring in the European Union, China and the US, but cumulative electric car registrations during 2020 in South America, with a population of more than 420 million, were below 18,000.
And registrations in Africa, home to 1.2 billion people, were exclusively in South Africa and totaled just 1,509 cars in 2020.
Volkswagen also said the tempo of electric vehicle adoption would “vary from region to region” and chief executive Herbert Diess dismissed the zero-emission pledge at the COP conference earlier this week.
“It could still make sense to use synthetic fuel cars in Latin America in 2035,” Diess said.
I walked up to the Alhambra ticket office on spec in the pre-dawn hour to pick up any spare tickets for the day. Attached myself to a French couple also walking up in the scarey dark. I got lucky and scored an arvo ticket for me and Hairy. That was more than 10 years ago now so maybe they don’t do that anymore. Most people booked well ahead even then.
Toyota’s CEO Still Not Sold on EVs
Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda is still pushing his company’s interest in hybrids and hydrogen. And he says many in the industry agree with him.
While the 20th century was the age of the gas engine, the 21st will be the age of the electric vehicle. Just about every automaker on the planet is pivoting to EVs. Billions are being thrown at vehicle and battery development. Billions more on the infrastructure needed to charge these vehicles. But not everyone in the industry is sold on EVs. Specifically, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda who the Wall Street Journal reports is still on the fence about going all-in on EVs.
While most automakers have been laying out their future EV plans, Toyota has seemed to remain committed to hybrids and hydrogen. Toyoda says that EVs shouldn’t be the only path forward. Hybrids and hydrogen, he believes, are great alternatives, especially as EV prices remain high — something Toyota pointed out. Toyoda says that he has tried to convince both industry and government officials of this and described the efforts as tiring.
Some in the industry agree with him as the Journal pointed out. Executives at both Nissan and Mazda have voiced skepticism on whether or not jumping all-in on EVs was too rushed or the right answer.
Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida admitted the company may have been too aggressive with the first gen of the Leaf; Mazda has taken a more blatant and skeptical stance regarding EVs:
Mazda Motor Corp. executives once cautioned that whether EVs were cleaner depends largely on where the electricity is produced. They also worried that EV batteries were too big and expensive to replace gas-powered models and better suited to the types of smaller vehicles that Americans didn’t want.
“The irony of Cranky chipping doctors wives.”
No irony, I am not a doctor’s wife.
What’s the latest bible prophesy?
Dot, I don’t think anyone is “freaking out”
..put this prediction on record though: EVs will fall into a gross mass tax exemption because Saving The Planet. After all, with them big batteries and motors full of Cu and Cd, they have a much higher weight:utility than oil burners. There is some irony that states will plough huge amounts of ICE sin taxes into building the infrastructure and supplying the electrons needed to get the white elephants out and about.
One for Tom – Monday Cartoon – Three Dem Snakes: Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar
Wouldn’t a sobering up shelter be more use to the inhabitants?
Funny how no-one talks about ethanol any more.
WATCH: Hilarious Video of Vegans Vowing to Stop Livestock Truck, Learning a Hard Lesson 1 Min 32 Secs
They will also see electricity as another excise tax base.
I’m reliably informed that some of those nail joints where ladies go to make themselves look beautiful bus their workers in from a considerable distance away. Heaven knows where they’re living or what they’re being paid…much of which, I suspect, is sent back home.
I would like it is we talked about ethanol today.
If you own a Cyber Truck, you’re going to be a factory farmed tax slave.
I’ve never been, and probably never will, but I’ll confidently guess that Alice Springs had a thicker carpet of commercial art galleries that anywhere else on Earth. After all, what else does the place sell?
Ripe for MiniArt to seize, then. They’ve already tried with the fully franked First Nationses residual resale income scheme.
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha says:
January 31, 2023 at 9:26 am
Alice Springs will get a National Aboriginal Art Gallery as part of a revamp of the Australia Council, which will receive a $286m injection of funds
Wouldn’t a sobering up shelter be more use to the inhabitants?\
No problems, the Local Indigenous Population will destroy the Alice Springs National Abotiginal Art Gallery within a year – Wadeye springs to mind as an previous example
Up to 300 people clash in wild melee in remote Aboriginal community being torn apart by violence with 100 homes destroyed in the past few months
. About 300 people involved in a brawl in Wadeye, 400km southwest of Darwin
. Many were armed while one man suffered non-life threatening injuries
. The massive brawl took place at the community’s oval late on Sunday police say
. A quarter of all homes in the area, which is about 100, have been destroyed
. Wadeye is one of the largest Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory
What did you used to do for a crust?
If overseas workers are so skilled and capable how come they can’t master the English language?
If most Australian applicants can’t achieve the required score why not improve the education system?
I suspect the overseas workers are not here primarily to fill skills gaps but to drive the residential building industry. Building unions want it and the developers want it, what we want doesn’t seem to be on the radar.
There is simply no macro epidemiological evidence that the COVID jabs saved any lives from the virus. To the contrary, there are numerous data points showing negative efficacy. Moreover, over 70% of the 6.75 million recorded COVID deaths occurred precisely after the shots were unleashed. In fact, many parts of the world that barely experienced COVID deaths during the first year, such as Scandinavia, Australia, and far East Asia, incurred almost all of their deaths after the shots were in the arms of every senior. So now that we established there was no mortality benefit, what was the cost? What if I told you it was 7.5 million – even more than the recorded number of COVID deaths?
A new peer-reviewed study from Michigan State University estimated that as of Dec. 18, 2021, the time of the survey, 278,000 Americans died of reactions to the jabs. The study, published last week in BMC Infectious Diseases, used Dynata, the world’s largest first-party data platform, to create a random sample of 2,840 Americans to report their experience with the shots: 15% of those surveyed indicated they had experienced a health issue after vaccination, and 13% of those indicated that a severe adverse event had occurred, in line with many other surveys.
https://www.conservativereview.com/horowitz-did-7-5-million-people-die-from-covid-shots-2659328869.html?utm_source=cr-weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CR%20Weekly%202023-01-30&utm_term=ACTIVE%20-%20Weekly%20Daily%20Combined
‘What did you used to do for a crust?’
Said the journalism student.
“What did you used to do for a crust?
Unlike you, I still work for a crust.
So that’s what the Big Unmarked Jets were bringing into Tullamarine in the middle of the night.
Nail technicians.
Where is the Great Predictinator? Practicing his limp for ANZAC DAY. I worked with a guy like that. Was told about six weeks before he starts to limp getting better at it nearer ANZAC DAY.
Glenn Greenwald warns Tucker about an ‘extremely alarming development’
Huge payment slated for nothing more than sitting on your arse. FMD the headline sez it all.
‘Practicing his limp for ANZAC DAY’
‘How did you get that?’
‘Can’t say too much.’
How quaint. North Shore business owner imagines her low paid workers should live nearby.
Perhaps she long for a return to the Victorian era, where shop-girls were lodged in barracks nearby and fed hearty gruel for breakfast.
Reminds me of Lady Violet, “what is this thing called a ‘weekend’?”.
We need a Voice.
We’ve recently sourced a new range of Ultra Efficient LED lights from Philips.
The 4W model replicates the brightness of an old-fashioned 60-watt light bulb. And the 40-watt equivalent version consumes a tiny 2.3W of power.
Thanks to a complete re-engineering of the light bulb, they use 60% less power than other LED lights and last 3.5 times longer. At up to 210 lumens per watt, they’re the world’s most energy-efficient commercially available light bulbs.
Philips’ Ultra Efficient range is currently available in standard Bayonet Cap (B22) and Edison Screw (E27) bases. There are two wattages to choose from, and each option comes in two colour temperatures.
I am on their Mailing List as I have purchased a number of External Philips Bright 70-Watt Flood Lights- 13 to be precise – mine is the older version, but they are excellent, and I was pleased to see them being used on the outside deck of the breakfast restaurant of the private Yanuca Island, Shangri-La Yanuca Island, Fiji Resort, exposed to salt spray straight off the ocean
Philips Bright 70-Watt Flood Light
This Philips SmartBright 70W LED flood light is bright enough to replace an old 500W halogen flood light. It delivers 7,000 lumens of light output and has the following benefits over conventional flood lights:
Energy Saving – Over 80% less power than halogen flood lights.
Quality Guaranteed – 3-year warranty and 50,000 hour rated lifetime.
Outdoor Rated – IP65 waterproof rating.
Robust – die-cast Aluminium housing and IK07 impact rating.
Flexible Mounting Options – includes an adjustable bracket for wall, ground, ceiling, or pole mounting.
LOL I haven’t made enough to retire yet.
Do you work two days a week in your husband’s charitable organisation?
Got our annual strata budget last week. Almost no common property, one of us mows the verge lawn and insurance on 4 detached single floor villas now $6k pa. Never really looked into insurance much but might have to. Think we go through a broker as even our small strata gets caught up with larger schemes. What do people pay on a standalone freehold?
And it is almost hive-like. Low paid workers bussed in to raise the children of the queen bees.
Subsidised by the workers.
I don’t understand the whole nail salons industry. They are certainly doing a roaring trade but to what end? When I was a teen we all did our own nails and even toenails but then again we weren’t fat and could bend over to do the toenails. The customers in my local shopping centre salon are almost all rather well padded though this may not be the case in other areas.
M0nty, you have not been paying attention. I have never met Cassie, yet I know more than enough about her life to find your questions amusing.
“Hey, you’re a doctor’s wife, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Really?”
“Huh?”
?
a few rainbow serpents will surely fix the problems
Montypox doesn’t understand what work is
Ha, ha. And end up with Photios-picked voices? Been there, done that, didn’t even get the t-shirt.
Black Ball says:
January 31, 2023 at 9:44 am
Huge payment slated for nothing more than sitting on your arse. FMD the headline sez it all.
Exactly what Australia does – FactCheck Q&A: is $30 billion spent every year on 500,000 Indigenous people in Australia?
Excerpt from Q&A, August 29, 2016. Watch from 2:35.
We sat down with the Productivity Commission. We looked at the Indigenous space. $30 billion is spent in this space annually. $30 billion on 500,000 people and you still see the problems you get to see. What that tells me straightaway as a businessman, because I run my own business, is there’s a lot of fun and games going in there and we need to sort that out and we need to find out where the wastage of our funding is. – Chair of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, speaking on Q&A, August 29, 2016.
Chair of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, told Q&A that $30 billion is spent every year on 500,000 Indigenous people in Australia.
Is that right?
When asked for sources to support his statement, Warren Mundine told The Conversation that:
The figure covers Commonwealth, state and territory expenditure and includes direct Indigenous funding and indirect funding (eg welfare payments). The figures come from a direct presentation by the Productivity Commission to the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council meeting, which used their data from their reports.
The Productivity Commission reports
The Productivity Commission creates two major reports of relevance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. The first is the Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report, which focuses on socioeconomic and well-being outcomes.
The second report, titled the Indigenous Expenditure Report, attempts to identify the level of expenditure that relates to the Indigenous population. A key point in this 2014 report supports Mundine’s claim:
Total direct expenditure on services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in 2012-13 was estimated to be $30.3 billion, accounting for 6.1% of total direct general government expenditure.
The same report also found that:
Estimated expenditure per person in 2012-13 was $43,449 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, compared with $20,900 for other Australians (a ratio of 2.08 to 1 — an increase from a ratio of 1.93 to 1 in 2008-09).
Likewise. Perhaps it’s like the pale complexion and unscathed hands in some cultures proving that one does no manual labour.
I treated myself to a manicure once after returning from the wilds of the Highlands. It was quite lovely and pampering, and my hands looked like they belonged to someone else. Soon after getting home, I spied some weeds in the garden and forgetting everything, got stuck in. Well, that was good money down the gurgler. 😀
She certainly acts like she owns the place.
That can’t be right. I own all the soft furnishings, at least. And the shed out the back.
What was that about paying the rent?
Thai king’s daughter remains unconscious weeks after collapsing
She certainly acts like she owns the place.
Stick to defending perverts and blokes running down teenagers.
Massive Fire Destroys Commercial Egg Farm Belonging To Top US Supplier
Dozens of food processing plants were destroyed and/or damaged last year by “accidental fires.” After several months of a lull in mysterious fires rippling through the food industry, the first major one of the new year was reported by NBC Connecticut on Saturday.
Careful Monty, not far from stalking there.
Chuckle. Just spied an odd thing out the window – at first I thought it was a golfer playing in chaps. Not Mardi Gras yet, guys.
Now I see more – it is a half-off wetsuit. He’s going diving in the lake for balls. I trust he knows how to evade the enormous eels in there. They are brutal.
Sorry for not using a coaster in the shed calli 🙂
Add hairdressers (beyond the standard haircut types) and the fashion industry. At a push, I would throw most of the travel industry in there as well. I guess I’m not the market.
This 77th Brigade stuff is wild, but look, over there, WEF!/ Opus Dei!/ Putin!
Coffee tables are for footrests and ciggie stubbing.
Just make sure you return the thrashing sticks to the correct rack, BB. Should you require one, the flensers are kept handy inside and over the bar. Brass knuckles, under.
No point in going outside for weaponry IMHO.
The Aboriginal Industry certainly doesn’t want the Time and Motion men poking around. Those aggregate numbers soon mount up with not much to show for it on the ground.
Daniela Cambone is one of the best interviewers on the web.
She is able to push back on this guy when he starts raving about the Ukraine and then reengage in a positive way on other topics.
..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2i8Dsmi4fY
Erm…this is getting a bit too T.E. Lawrencey.
H B Bear says:
January 31, 2023 at 9:48 am
Small businesses across the state have united in an urgent plea for help ahead of the state election, … , as costs including insurance and energy soar.
Got our annual strata budget last week. Almost no common property, one of us mows the verge lawn and insurance on 4 detached single floor villas now $6k pa. Never really looked into insurance much but might have to. Think we go through a broker as even our small strata gets caught up with larger schemes. What do people pay on a standalone freehold?
H B Bear,
Strata Property GIO – Premium $2,850.00 – Interesting Point Originally as 1 Group Property which was much dearer, GIO consultant suggested going to Strata Insurance as much cheaper
Your Building $2,675,500
Your Common Contents $15,800
Building standard excess $1,000
Common contents standard excess $100
GIO own home $2,990 premium
House $1,953,500
General contents sum insured $450,000 for 3 Units
Portable valuables(unspecified)$6,000
Legal liability up to $20 million
Home Standard excess $2,000
Contents Standard excess $1,000
Portable valuables excess $100
Wife’s Strata in QLD use Suncorp (GIO & Shannons part of Group)
Cover Details – Landlord $225.00
Landlord Contents
Landlord Contents $8,000
Legal Liability $20 million
Strata Body Corporate is with Suncorp
Then you have Hamilton 68:
What a surprise such figures were involved.
H B Bear for 3 Units should be after Strata Insurance
There’s still a chance Trump can make it to the presidency. I know there’s only a few hours to go, but as they said in Dumb and Dumber, “there’s still a chance” with a trillion to one shot.
So why would he wait for Teh Voice referendum? Of course Minns needs to be elected and by all reports will be in a landslide.
Not sure it’s been posted here and apologies if it has. Article
Is this what Albo meant in removing state parliaments?
Since their traditional art was painted on the walls of caves and rock overhangs, I would guess that a large part of the budget will be moving the ‘canvases’.
Unless they mean contemporary Aboriginal art which has an awful lot of the colonialists about it.
Cheers OldOzzie. I’m a bit tight when it comes to insurance and small risks generally. Didn’t do so well on the blood pressure front. I guess the market is the market but it does seem expensive.
Probably running at greater than 100% output with zero maintenance and inexperienced process engineers with over promising managers.
“Trust me, that doesn’t need cleaning and lubricating, I know better because of my salary and title”
Also:
“No bonuses this year due to production shutdown”
Also:
“Best year ever, some promotions and bonuses to operations management.”
Black Ball:
Small businesses are socialisms enemy – the Kulak Class. That’s obvious from the actions of that Trotskyist in power in Canberra.
When will small business wake up to the fact they need to all close down for a week, or get out of the game? They’re like Boxer from Animal Farm – they’re going to be worked to death then sold to the glue factory.
It’s happening!
https://simplywall.st/stocks/us/consumer-retailing/otc-crmb.q/crumbs-bake-shop
Women Can Do Anything Men Can news:
Some footage marketed by the jism webs as ‘shocking’ but more accurately described as ‘hilarious’ depicts two ladeeees actively involved in some road rage chickery-slappery in the Mongyang burbs.
It ended with the standard hair-pulling before a bloke and another couple of chicks turned up and told both combatants to piss off. An outstanding example that chicks can publicly punch on equally as poorly as blokes.
Good to see Labor mending the French relationship after it was destroyed by Morrison.
Alice Springs will get a National Aboriginal Art Gallery as part of a revamp of the Australia Council, which will receive a $286m injection of funds
Will be super ironic when it gets broken into by the local criminal yoof.
That comment could apply to pretty much ANY Western military these days – decades of cost cutting and useless foreign wars have left no fat on the bones. Add to that the damage done by failing economies, demonisation of national pride and history, fragmentation of the population by ‘diversity’ migration programs, wokeism, attacks on masculinity and the COVID war and its almost like the perfect plan for degrading the wests military power in preparation for invasion.
Brett Grantworthy is back!
Old Ozzie:
The policy of forcing out good cops and replacing them with criminals – yes criminals – was deliberate. And BLM knew exactly what they were doing – repressing their own people and supporters.
You are watching the continuing terrorising of the US by fascists.
Progressive teaching fads fuel youth crime, says Noel Pearson
Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has railed against “progressive’’ teaching fads that are “wasting lives and futures’’ of vulnerable children left illiterate.
In an impassioned plea to target children falling behind at school, Mr Pearson called on universities and schools to embrace “explicit instruction” – a more traditional show-and-tell approach to teaching instead of the modern “student-led inquiry’’.
Pinning juvenile crime on “failed learning’’, Mr Pearson said the need for top-quality teaching was “nose-on-the-face’’ obvious. “Yes it’s the pastoral care, yes it’s the love, yes it’s the dedication but without effective instruction, it’s nothing,’’ he said. “We are wasting lives, wasting futures.’’
Mr Pearson, who chairs Good to Great Schools Australia and set up the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy, which runs schools in Coen and Hope Vale, said in some remote schools “30 per cent of children have been tested at the lowest level of IQ”.
“The Royal Flying Doctor Service found that another 40 per cent are not much above that,’’ he told a Catholic education conference in Canberra on Monday.
“We deal with children who are the children of children of severe trauma, alcoholism and communities that are in tragic ruin.
“The difficulty of learning (for) children like that is vast.’’
Mr Pearson said many Indigenous children, like migrant kids, needed to be taught to read and write using the phonetic method of sounding out the letters of words rather than memorising and guessing words.
“The phonemes (sounds) of Aboriginal languages and other ESL (English as a second language) students often are at odds with English,’’ he said. “If you don’t give kids explicit instruction in these phonemes, they’re going to be behind everybody else.
“If you want to make sure that the most disadvantaged kids in the class will have a chance, too, then we have to address the fact that they need explicit instruction.
“It’s about learning from the teacher, and we learn a lot from reading and imitating someone who knows what we don’t.’’
Mr Pearson praised the Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn for its Catalyst program to train its teachers to use explicit instruction and phonics.
“Catalyst is the most important development in Australian schooling,’’ he said.
“You’re going to be a beacon for the rest of the country.’’
Mr Pearson called for teacher-led instruction, memorisation, the streaming of students based on ability and regular testing to keep kids on track. He said a “placement test’’ of students’ knowledge and streamed classes would put students in the “right zone of learning’’.
“They experience the joy and pride of having learned something at the very next lesson because they’ve been placed correctly on the staircase,’’ he said.
Mr Pearson said explicit instruction had been wrongly characterised as “traditional, conservative and punitive … Do you think this is just an accident, that poor and disadvantaged children are denied?”
“We have a juvenile justice crisis in this country, and you know where it starts,” he said. “It starts with the failure to read, occasioned by the failure to teach, and a steadfast refusal for systems and educators to … see the evidence.
“Every year we spend stuffing around … we fail children and we destroy lives.’’
Mr Pearson said universities were failing to train new teachers to use explicit instruction and phonics, so it was an “uphill battle’’ to retrain them on the job.
Oz
The French were taking the piss with that one, they’re the ones mending fences.
‘zero maintenance and inexperienced process engineers’
No, no no no. No.
‘They’re destroying all world production to create a food shortage crisis so we will be force fed bugs because there won’t be anything else and it’s part of the UN agenda and IT’S HAPPENING IN PLAIN SIGHT and I WAAAARNED YOU ALL but nobody rose up’
Another Daily Expose-style nanowriggler-esque arrangement, promulgated by people whose first instinct is to attribute everything, no matter the subject or degree, as the first step in an alien invasion.
See also: the Royal Family are in fact lizard people.
You have to begin with dysfunctional family situations, unless you plan to take the kids out of them.
‘Gunpowder’ eh? … so we are reduced to that are we? (Gun powder = blackpowder, last used for cannons and muskets in the 1800s.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder
77th Brigade in the pandemic
Dr. John Campbell
Their ABC explains reconciliation and Treaty expectations:
Historical issues for Indigenous Australians were laid out on Q+A on Monday night by audience member and Wiradjuri man Paul Towney, before Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe said Indigenous Australians were sick of asking the government for handouts.
Aiming high is a good thing. But, just quietly, having your tickets and “a million dollars in your account” doesn’t necessarily qualify you for ‘projects in the billions of dollars’. Not even if you are non-Indigenous.
So, crystal clear.
Technical note: Lydia Thorpe comes from a mission and reserve called Carlton.
How can you blame whitey for that?
Iran Summons Ukraine’s Envoy Demanding Clarification Over Drone Attack
For once, I believe Nanny Mitchell hit on a good idea. He interviewed an Alice Springs nurse, who, in pretty graphic detail, outlined what those rampaging kids are exposed to that commentators here are familiar with. Mitchell stressed the kids need to be removed and placed in a safe place. To remove the blood-curdling screams of RACIST, he suggested that an Aboriginal body be formed to remove the kids. Would this suggestion be a non-event because of problems that would probably arise due to the different clans?
Black Ball, if you are around, what would be your opinion on this as possibly one way of relieving these kids from the ongoing domestic violence?
Mr Towney has been watching too much Twiggy Forrest. He needs to do what most people do buy a dog and a ute.
Buried at the very bottom of a 9News article Businesses turn screw on NSW government with mass closure warning:
Electricity costs were a massive burden.
In the arts of giving, Uncle Anthony Albanese wins
CAROLINE OVERINGTON
Do you know what they call the Prime Minister in arts circles? Uncle Anthony.
Good old Uncle Anthony, who loves the arts and can therefore be depended upon to support the arts, by funding the arts.
You could feel the affection, even over the livestream, as he launched the federal government’s $300m national cultural policy at The Esplanade Hotel in Melbourne’s St Kilda on Monday.
Yes, they held the launch at the Espie, and yes there were jokes about how they could all remember getting stuck to the carpet, so grungy was the joint back when they were young.
There was hooting and hollering when Albo took the stage, and a big cheer for “Burkey” – that’s Arts Minister Tony Burke – and there were more jokes about both of them being Oils fans.
Only then, having established beyond doubt that the ALP was the cool party when it came to the arts, especially compared to the barbarians in the Coalition, was it on with the show.
First, they’re renaming the Australia Council as Creative Australia. It will have five “pillars” – the first of which is First Nations, meaning huge amounts of money are about to be directed towards Indigenous artists, writers, storytellers and filmmakers.
Some will say: magnificent, because that is the story we want to tell. Others will worry about what that means for the 97 per cent of artists who are not Indigenous but won’t say anything because it’s not a good look to complain.
Australia is getting a poet laureate – the first since a fraudster was paid in cattle by Lachlan Macquarie to write verse for state ceremonies.
It is so overdue. Poetry runs like a mighty river through the heart of Australia – “There was movement at the station” – but hardly anyone reads the gorgeous new verse being written by modern poets, among them Ali Cobby Eckermann, Charmaine Papertalk Green, Sarah Holland-Batt, Andy Jackson and Caitlin Maling, who can make a clown fish sing.
Besides that, there was good news on streamers – Netflix, etc – which will be held to local content requirements, meaning they will have to make local shows, using Australian writers, storytellers and performers if they want to keep operating here. They fought it pretty hard, so let’s hope the government holds its nerve.
There was a promise of more money for literature, through the creation of Writers Australia, which will “support writers and illustrators to create new works”. That could mean Keating-style grants for writers, which prompts the question: who will get that money? On what grounds?
Will merit be the criteria, or is it mainly now all about identity? Because the last thing anyone wants is a congratulatory body of like-minded luvvies, all of them singing from the same songsheet, and stifling the arts at its fountainhead, which has always been … dissent.
Oz
You can teach jack shit to kids who aren’t there.
And therein lies the problem: In computing terms, IQ equates to memory size and processor speed, education equates to programs loaded: You cannot run a high end computer program on a low powered computer, end of story.
No amount of ‘education’ can make up for this. Low IQ is a ubiquitous characteristic of indigenous populations world wide* (a consequence, I suspect, of constant marginal caloric supply – the brain is VERY expensive to run – consuming 20% of your energy needs – hunter gatherer populations couldn’t afford a big expensive brain). Until we recognise this as the root cause of dysfunction amongst indigenous populations transplanted into the technological world, nothing will change.
* https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf
ZK2A:
They’ve got one, ZK2A.
And I think there are several in the surrounding camps.
Doesn’t seem to be of any bloody use.
You have to deal with a mindset that won’t send their children to school, for fear of “losing their culture.”
Interesting article over at the Grayzone on Yugoslav war:
Beating the sh1t out of someone is a crime. [end of sentence]
People who commit this crime should face the justice system. Domestic, racial or neighbourly violence shouldn’t matter. Commit the crime, you pay the penalty.
I acknowledge that it might take a while to solve the violence problem when everyone is committing the crime.
I think I have identified Seven-Nilligan’s next target.
Cheese-eating surrender monkeys should stick together.
So the albino monk is off the hook?
Top Ender, it’s a shame I can only give one uptick to your presentation of Noel Pearson’s ideas about education.
He is succinct and 100% correct.
You have to deal with a mindset that won’t send their children to school, for fear of “losing their culture.
Also, though, an environment where the adults – in the main – lead by example, receiving sit-down money and often mining royalties.
If kids see this, then why would they want to do the hard yards of attendance and learning?
Black Ball, if you are around, what would be your opinion on this as possibly one way of relieving these kids from the ongoing domestic violence?
I see no problem with your suggestion.
This is why Aboriginal kids were removed decades ago. From alcoholism and family dysfunction.
Calli:
I find them insulting and none of his Goddamned business.
It appears likely now that the attack on the weekend was very limited, that its extent was exaggerated by local and foreign actors for their own political reasons, and that the Israelis, if they were behind the drone attack, did so for their own particular security reasons, and that this had nothing to do with what was going on elsewhere. Could be wrong though but the longer this goes without new footage appearing is telling.
Who watched last nights 4 Corners? Interested in a report.
It’s tough, but it’s a no brainer.
Unless you live in a society that would rather emote over the issue than think through it.
alwaysright – in many cases it is a waste of time. For many aboriginals it represents an improvement in their living conditions and a decent meal. The cycle of dependence and despair has gone on so long.
Farage reacts to lockdown spy SCANDAL.
Nigel Farage
Some people do not make nice drunks. e.g. Oyrish and whisky.
You would ban it, if you could.
It is time we recognize that some genetic makeups just can’t handle alcohol.
Is it a natural selection thing at work? Others have been exposed to alcohol for millennia.
Dr Duk – since chemistry apparently is now all about climate change, misogyny and racism, I doubt we could use nitric acid without blowing ourselves up.
Frank:
I get the uneasy feeling that he’s blogging under instruction.
Good to see Labor mending the French relationship after it was destroyed by Morrison.
Who gives a rat’s arse about the frog relationship. Apart from some good champers, they’re back stabbing losers; still some of them still have dicks.
Apparently there are people who want to live in Wakanda.
I did not know (well, why would I) that the ‘founder of Chicago’ was a certain Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who was black (as you would expect from someone named Sable). Then of course the Democrats have had a stranglehold on the city since the 19th century and its most recent, most precipitous, decline has been under the jackboot of Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
A few days ago Lara Tingle on 7.30 report had a Covid and vaccine discussion featuring Dr Brendan Crabb of the Burnett Institute, some obscure so called frontline Dr (chosen for her diversity credentials rather than knowledge) and an economist.
Club Grubbery put together a panel of : Dr Ted Steele, Dr Phillip Altman, Lawyer Tony Nicolic and long time anti vax researcher Elizabeth Hart. They discussed the 7:30 clip and rebutted it over a period of three hours in two episodes.
Although long it does mention the obvious conflicts of interest that Crabb / Burnett Institute have as they benefit massively from continued vaccines. That pretty much applies to almost all experts pushing for more jabs. Hart very good on the bias of the Murdock empire media empire.
Worth a look or listen as they cover many areas such as media only allowing one side of the debate.
Thanks Black Ball but was it evil whitey who removed those kids then? If an Aboriginal group was tasked to undertake the removals, would ‘skin’ problems be insurmountable even though it should remove the screams of ‘stolen generations’?
Roger:
Spending millions on a useless art gallery is sure to provide the cure!
Understanding the effects of credit constraints on housing prices is important for analysing the economy, as well as for setting monetary policy and mortgage lending rules. But, credit conditions can change for a variety of reasons, and tend to change at the same time as other factors that affect the housing market. To get around this challenge, some researchers conduct controlled survey experiments that ask people how much they would be willing to pay for a home under different conditions.
Our researcher Tom Cusbert analyses the results of a US survey, which found that lowering the required deposit on a mortgage from 20 per cent to 5 per cent led people to raise their willingness to pay for a particular home by around 16 per cent on average. However, there were large differences in the effects across different demographics. In any market, the price is not determined by the average change in willingness to pay, but by the change in the willingness to pay of the ‘marginal buyer’. Tom finds the response of the marginal buyer (and thus the price) to a reduction in the required down payment is much smaller than the average response, so the overall message is that housing prices respond a little to lower down-payment requirements, but probably not enough to drive housing price booms.
https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2023/2023-01.html?utm_source=rbanews&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2023_01&utm_campaign=rdp_2023
Interesting paper, I would have tried to use applied choice modelling more explicitly.
Soooooo.
What’s the Aussie equivalent of 77th brigade and what have THEY been up to over the last three years?
Any of our dumbarse politicians or journos likely to ask the obvious?
Not on your life,
Colonialist!
Economist article in the replies.
Clearly we are talking about the smokeless products made at Mulwala.
Those of us that actually use consumer quantities of actual gunpowder, the smoky stuff, know that its all imported. We have to arrange special dangerous goods shippers to bring it from port to each group of consumers because the regulations are so onerous that shops and ordinary distributors have given up stocking it.
Uncle George rang up on the hotline, I mean what can I do, I just love goooooooold.
They are on task, not sending coppers to arrest young mums for online comments.
We all know that for most its the smug feeling of smug smugness for leftists; insiders at the top get the big cheques.
While Nexter will carry out the manufacturing, Australia will supply gunpowder, Mr Lecornu said.
That would be Thales in Mulwala supplying propellant. From Country Australia to the Slavic bar fight. Disgusting.