Extreme Unction, Nicolas Poussin, 1646
We need to be doin’ one thang and one thang onlyKillin’ nayzee pallyweirdospallyweirdos ain’t got no humaniteethey are the foot…
Open Thread – Tue 14 March 2023
- Guest Post: Wally Dali- Archibald Prize predictions
- TULIP versus ruinous Labor
- Open Thread – Weekend 18 May 2024
- Bumtree #15
- Bumtree #14
With you on that one.
Jo, I really like a lot of your posts, but please scroll by or ignore stuff you might not like.…
In this weird new toggle system of likes and dislikes one never knows how many think what. However, if four…
JC, what is the point of denying that you referred to any indices in particular only to then admit they…
I did wonder about that.
The greens are strangely quiet on the subs after years focusing on everything anti-nuke.
What did they get in exchange?
This is good, from a few days ago in London. The dishy Laurence Fox.
We went to a DRAG QUEEN STORY PROTEST and THIS is what happened!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6q7sk49z1A
Note that those who are protesting drag queen story telling are diverse, black, Muslim, and so on, whereas the far-left scum are uniformly white. The highlight of the above video is when the leftist scum scream at the always measured Calvin Robinson* that “he’s not a “real vicar”, he shouts back, “that’s not a real woman”.
Quite so. And that’s how you handle such scum. Oh and I witnessed similar behaviour from the far-left scum here in Sydney last Saturday, our crowd was diverse, whereas the far-left protesters were uniformly white, and all they could do was scream, shout and screech….”far-right” and “Nazi”. They all use the same handbook.
* As for the leftist scum smearing Calvin Robinson that he’s not a “real vicar”, two years ago he was rejected for ordination by the very woke and soon to disappear mainstream CoE because he’s an unapologetic conservative. Instead Robinson joined an offshoot African Anglican Anglican church that’s split from the mainstream CoE communion, an offshoot that’s believes in the authority of the bible, and which is very unwoke. Robinson, despite what the woke perverts say, is a real vicar.
My God we live in strange and terrible times.
How far has the governing class strayed from the quaint and simple wording of the Original 1924 Declaration on the Rights of the Child which comprised about 200 words and what we have today which runs in the thousands of words and yet have children mutilated, trafficked, enslaved and abandoned. It bears considering how far the ‘authorities’ have strayed from the original intent
The original:
Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924
Preamble
By the present Declaration of the Rights of the Child, commonly known as ‘Declaration of Geneva,’ men and women of all nations, recognizing that mankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give, declare and accept it as their duty that, beyond and above all considerations of race, nationality or creed:
Article 1
The child must be given the means requisite for its normal development, both materially and spiritually.
Article 2
The child that is hungry must be fed; the child that is sick must be nursed; the child that is backward must be helped; the delinquent child must be reclaimed; and the orphan and the waif must be sheltered and succoured.
Article 3
The child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress.
Article 4
The child must be put in a position to earn a livelihood, and must be protected against
every form of exploitation.
Article 5
The child must be brought up in the consciousness that its talents must be devoted to the service of fellow men.
“‘This is on a day when we’re spending $300 billion plus to combat Chinese government influence in our region. And then right under our noses the Perrottet government has sold the operation of parts of our water network to a company owned by the Chinese Communist Party.””
Yep, which is why I hope Parrothead loses. There’s talk that Perrottet will sell Sydney Water. NO F*CKING WAY. I know some here will come down hard on me about what I’m going to say but here I go, I believe that it was a mistake to privatise utilities such as gas and electricity. There are some things governments should run, even if they do it inefficiently and utilities are an example.
duncanm the greens get everything they want. There’s only 10 or so pollies in Australia that aren’t. Such is the rush for the trough its the only way in.
Their barbecued chickens are amazing.
I walked from Belem to Restelo this afternoon, bit of a slog in the sun.
Along the way I walked past a Catholic primary school that has been build over a shopping strip, I wonder if that was done to keep the school in funds.
Restelo, I discovered is sort of a lisbonish area like South Yarra/Toorak, lots of beautiful large single family homes, some now embassies, the biggest, most palatial on the main drag, the Polish with the Ukrainian flag drapped over the balcony is next door to the Russian, the Russian had a police car parked out front, the further up the street is the Russian ambassador’s residence with police tape drapped along the edge of the footpath, not sure who that was intended to stop, next door to the Ukrainian embassy.
Got to the top of the hill and the bus I wanted only stopped at the stop at night but there was another that would work, if it ever came.
After half an hour I though that bus definitely also runs during the day so I rechecked maps and realised during the day my preferred bus stopped at a different stop 120 metres away so I scampered over and made the next one with seconds to spare.
I keep seeing places in Lisbon I’d like to visit, little specialist musuems like the tram one and I still haven’t even crossed the river by ferry once or gone to Sebutal.
And there is another place in Belém that claims to have the best pasteis.
I might have to come back one day after all.
The missus is out fighting a local grass fire. Fortunately for me, I have to work instead.
Tinta I made Osso Bucco that way by accident when I discovered no tomatoes in the cupboard. Can’t seem to get any veal these days. I used to get it from Nowra Fresh but the local farm’s are all into breeding for stock replacement in drought stricken areas. Each year I’ve seen 50% increase. Neighbours have farming parents that are making a killing so to speak.
Completely tone deaf. If they were trying to lose an election what would they be doing differently?
One for the ages… “the outcome was very different from what was intended.” ScoMo, but sums up our political and administrative class to a tee.
Right thinking people should be leveraging the RoboDebt outrage RC into good reason why Govt shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near digital ID nor currency…
Indeed, it is very hard to get — I grew up eating veal, fish, pork and chicken — all white meat. Never ever had lamb which I absolutely love — There was a butcher in Haberfield who had the most amazing veal I bought a couple of kilos of veal escallopes, froze them in kilo lots because my sister lives on the central coast and couldn’t get veal, that was her birthday present. Since then the butcher who was quite old has retired and sold it to a Lebanese family but the meat is not as good and there’s no veal, yearling is not veal I tell them – anyway I hope veal becomes available again I do miss having veal al limone
Posting letters. Mum broke her hip around twelve months ago, being the cantankerous old woman that she is, she refused to do the rehab required after the op. She had to use a walking frame prior to the breaking of the hip and now can’t walk at all. So instead of going back home to dad she is now in a nursing home. She hates it and is very depressed but refuses to leave her room and won’t have anything to do with the other residents. Life isn’t good for her but she has created the conditions she lives in.
Anyway, I don’t like calling her on the phone, she’s deaf, refuses to wear a hearing aid and there’s not much to say after the first minute or so. So I began writing to her every week, two foolscap pages. I try not to repeat items from earlier letters and make them as interesting as I can. Generally it’s what the grandchildren, great grandchildren and my wife and I are doing. She loves the letters, she has them piled up next to her bed and often rereads them. Postage is $1.10, quite reasonable except that it usually takes about five business days to travel the 340km to Melbourne. So if you have any elderly relatives, send them a letter, hand written, they love it.
Yes, that’s why the manky parmesan ends could go in.
On umami, it is a thing. It’s the meaty, satisfying taste that’s neither salty, bitter, sweet or sour. It’s savoury. For me it’s Vegemite spread over lashings of butter on a rice cracker.
Heston did an interesting experiment once when making chicken stock. He got the wings for roasting, divided in two lots. One lot he roasted in the usual way, the second lot he coated in powdered milk and then roasted. The action of the rendering fat on the powdered milk delivered the goods – a rich, meaty, fragrant stock fit for a king. Try it and find out.
I felt uncomfortable about it at the time and my instincts were proven right. Semi–criminals running a private company couldn’t give a toss how their decisions will impact the whole country as long as they come out on top.
The same is happening with selling water rights in the Riverina. How is that working out for all of us?
Leasing the port of Darwin to the CCP was a master stroke for Turnbull and ScoMo. We don’t need traitors when the federal politicians will sell us out to the first dictator who offers them money.
GreyRanga
Have you tried Lindbeck’s in Queanbeyan?
Black Ballsays:
March 14, 2023 at 10:05 pm
$368 billion for the subs over 30 years. Budget outlays for indigenous next 30 years, 900 billion or so, may come down when the Voice kicks in.
If Teh Voice gets up, expect the annual figure of expenditure on Aboriginal affairs to rise. Steeply.
And expect the level of disfunction in remote communities to rise. Steeply.
I’d like a nuclear Rolls Royce. The ultimate low emissions vehicle!
Rolls-Royce boost as firm will create nuclear reactors for Aukus submarines (14 Mar)
Maybe the first one could be called the HMAS Silver Ghost.
Black Ballsays:
March 14, 2023 at 10:21 pm
As long as it’s spent on McWilliams Sweet Sherry
and Royal Reserve Port, I’m cool with a coupla % Aborigine Tax.
Low Alcohol Beer?
I’m not paying them to drink that shit.
FMD if any further proof of the complete arseholery of Ed is required, look no further.
Additional proof has not been needed for quite some time, but, to borrow from Tevye (Topol), “After all these years, it’s nice to know”.
Mum’s as deaf as a post and the hearing aid doesn’t help much, so when we go to the aged care home we take in a note pad and write the news on the spot as well as phone photos of the family events.
My ninety two year old uncle gets a letter written in my wife’s excellent hand every month along with the local newspapers since he’s far away from his beloved home town.
Governor Ron DeSantis has pulled the liquor license from the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Miami, Florida for hosting a sexually explicit drag queen show with children in the audience.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/desantis-strips-luxurious-florida-hotels-liquor-license-hosting-lewd-drag-show-children-present
That’s what I call leadership.
cucina povera
Or in Anglaise, frugal food.
My favourite type of food, the food most of us would have been brought up on.
I agree Cassie about the utilities ownership. The biggest problem is union control, filled with the useless, at least 2-3x the number required. The management being a reward for mates and family. If the utilities are to be in private hands they should only be able to owned by citizen shareholders.
Thanks Hugh I’ll try them this morning.
COHEN’S HALLELUJAH
by Katya Sedgwick
3 . 13 . 23
Yes
Meanwhile Trump continues to make an absolute clown of himself with his personal attacks on him (DeSantis).
I think I know that butcher Tinta. Old fashioned with very little on display. Ask for the cut you want and he’d go out and buzzz-buzzzz and back it would come from the cold room freshly cut.
Would stop off there on the way home from picking up son from school cadets. His first meal back from the rat packs was always leg of lamb. It was always a full one too, not one with some chops removed. Good times. 😀
In the Oz:
Said 24% figure matches well my just received annual ‘Shannons’ car insurance quote. Up 23% with *no* change to no claim bonus and *no* increase in sum insured.
So theres your real inflation rate, 24%.
2 years of that *halves* the value of every dollar you own, every dollar denominated asset, your wages (and government debt – thats the point).
We had lamb just about every day Tinta. Overcooked to burnt. I never knew what food tasted like till I started cooking myself.
Dylan Mulvaney now has talented idiot Drew Barrymore bowing down and worshipping him.
Ahhhh…those Hollywood carnie folk. What won’t they do for attention?
See Paul Joseph Watson for the full performance.
Person recovers from cold within days, call the papers!!
That was some expensive placebo.
If it was expensive Monty it wouldn’t be “horse paste”.
German intelligence is infested with Russian moles, unsurprising that Ukraine doesn’t trust them.
The estimate of 120k is probably accurate though. Russia have lost a lot more, albeit mostly poor quality Wagner convict recruits.
Ask any Ukrainian and they will say it was a necessary sacrifice. The alternative is ethnic cleansing with an even higher death toll.
The trolling by m0nty=fa and Richard Cranium has been very weak of late. Are they having an affair? Distracted?
Well said, Cassie.
Thanks to those who offered advice re the Quadrant subscription. I do have a combined paper & electronic sub and I think I managed to renew it online. The website says I have renewed but it didn’t ask for payment so we’ll see what happens in a couple of weeks when the old sub expires.
A return to the economic 17th century?
All this talk of Itie slop is destroying my appetite.
Youse lot ought to be eating more good Aussie tucker like schnitties, pavlova and porridge.
TrAiTOrs!
Thanks, Cassie. That made my day!
The First Annual Babylon Bee Awards
Cassie, maybe the poles and wires and main pipelines should be government owned and run by engineers. Then let private companies supply to the grid to their customers. Electricity grid requires built in strict quality control, water and gas have standards too.
Interesting there’s more and more stuff being said about the nasty new religion.
Welcome, Christians, to the ‘Negative World’ (14 Mar)
Wokeness, not Christianity, is the reigning mainstream religion.
Another week, another spate of demonizing accusations against Christians for their heinous crimes against humanity such as the adoption of non-white children, the refusal to lie to children’s parents about their school’s anti-family agenda, and perhaps most egregiously, the thought crime of being “biblically-minded.”
First up: Minnesota state Rep. Heather Keeler, a Democrat and member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, blasted “white Christians” in a recent Facebook post for perpetuating the “genocide” of Native Americans. Of what were these white Christians guilty? Infecting Native Americans with smallpox-laced blankets? Getting them addicted to tobacco and firewater and gambling? No, it’s much more insidious than those antiquated conspiracies.
“I’m sick of white Christians adopting our babies and rejoicing,” Keeler complained. “It’s a really sad day when that happens. It means the genocide continues.” That’s right – the unhinged Keeler believes that white Christian parents are taking in Native American orphans not to give them a good home and a loving family prompted by Christian love and charity, but in order to exterminate the race. Those fiends!
“If you care about our babies, advocate against the genocide,” she went on. “Help the actual issues impacting indigenous parents, stop stealing our babies and changing their names under the impression you are helping. White saviors are the worst!”
Sounds rather like the screechies here in Australia. I suppose that is to be expected since the green-progressive religion is on a worldwide jihad at the moment.
Ukes worried about ethnic cleansing? I can see why after murdering Russian speaking civilians in Donbass and other places for years. Ethnic cleansing is what the Ukes were trying to do to the Russian speakers.
Towards the end as mum was fading I would bring my iPad with me and show her family photos as well as pictures from her you. It cheered her enormously. iPad was needed so she could see the photos clearly, phone screen is too small.
More from PJW on how we dress.
Sartorial Cats will appreciate it. As I watch, I’m reminded of mum exclaiming – you can’t go out looking like that!
He makes some excellent points.
Cassie
I know some here will come down hard on me about what I’m going to say but here I go, I believe that it was a mistake to privatise utilities such as gas and electricity. There are some things governments should run, even if they do it inefficiently and utilities are an example.
We are still getting the inefficiencies, to which are added government interference with no accountability. Put them back in government hands, and they will be less enthusiastic about green virtue signaling.
If there is a minister fronting up to the media to explain why prices are soaring, said minister would seek much better advice than is currently received from idiots like Forrest, whose interests are signaling their virtue and subsidy harvesting, not providing an essential service. Yes, there will be problems with idiot union leaders, but even they might balk at extended blackouts that can be blamed on them.
That’s not much different from what we have now. Labor mates and former union bosses are littering the boards of everything that makes a profit, particularly superannuation funds.
I know some here will come down hard on me about what I’m going to say but here I go, I believe that it was a mistake to privatise utilities such as gas and electricity. There are some things governments should run, even if they do it inefficiently and utilities are an example.
Well I’m not so sure about this. My memory of the service we had from the old State Electricity Commission of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Victoriastan in our older inner city suburb was of frequent brownouts & blackouts. A phone call to them on one or two occasions revealed that they had no idea there was a problem until they were told about it.
All that improved enormously once the system was privatised. Black and brownouts are very rare now and yes, I’m a nerd who keeps an eye on the system voltage.
The reason the private companies are on the nose has to do with the politics of it. Once the power stations were sold the Vic govt taxed brown coal so heavily that our thermal power stations became uneconomical and were closed in favour of renewables. And then you have clueless morons like Bowen and Cannon-Brooks stuffing up the system even more. This will inevitably lead to a worse and expensive service which the liars can use as a justification for demonising the privatised companies and resurrecting the SEC. The media here are right on side with them. Rafe Champion has written extensively here about this and I would refer anyone interested in this to his posts. And no, I don’t have shares in any energy companies!
And on the subject of resurrecting the SEC, we were treated to headlines today to say that it would be paid for by Super funds and Canberra (of course!). All this with a pic of our smarmy loathsome premier who has appointed a board for the new SEC consisting of dreadful people who are all for renewables and don’t appear to have much knowledge of power engineering. Again Rafe has written about this.
We are in for a very unpleasant time. My occasional meetings and booze-ups with knowledgeable engineering mates are becoming quite morose affairs.
Were you the one complaining about CASA the other day?
Crossie
That’s not much different from what we have now. Labor mates and former union bosses are littering the boards of everything that makes a profit, particularly superannuation funds.
And those Labor Maaaaaates are busy lining their pockets at the expense of those they purport to be looking after, with much less restriction on them than would be applied even in a unionised workplace.
Oli London
@OliLondonTV
This is Dylan Mulvaney a few years ago living as a MAN.
Dylan is now claiming he came out as TRANS age 4
Dylan is a Grifter and makes money by mocking women!
Miranda Devine
@mirandadevine
McConnell sent to rehab facility to recover from concussion, fractured rib after he fell over at the Waldorf-Astoria.
I agree Cassie about the utilities ownership. The biggest problem is union control, filled with the useless, at least 2-3x the number required. The management being a reward for mates and family. If the utilities are to be in private hands they should only be able to owned by citizen shareholders.
If the NSW gummint (or us ) still own NSW Water then what part do the Obeid family own? .. it’s not that many years ago that Eddy’s boy, Arfur (Sinodinos) fronted an enquiry into some rip-off or other (another enquiry that went nowhere .. as they all do!) and stated that when he ran Sydney Water for the Obeids he couldn’t remember what he got paid the $A500K a year to do! ..
in fact, he was sooo convincing that BRADBURY packed him off to the US of A for a repeat performance as Oz ambassador ..
Catturd ™
@catturd2
The “rob Peter to pay Paul” Biden regime …
– Gas prices explode after shutting down US production … just drain the oil reserves.
– Inflation … don’t include gas and food in inflation numbers.
– Crime … FBI leaves off LA and New York City in the crime stats.
– 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth – just change the definition of a recession.
– Bank Collapse … close trading for banks at opening bell.
– Meanwhile … send billions to Ukraine and spend billions on millions of illegals crossing our wide open southern border.
All mirror tricks, lies, and passing the buck which is going to result in a total economic collapse.
Ryan Gerritsen
@ryangerritsen
Does anyone ever remember voting for this organization? Their tentacles are reaching deeper and deeper into our Health Care & Government.
What The Lockdown Files do and don’t say; Calls grow for an investigation and Midazolam Matt seeks immunity from prosecution
the glorification of sub-mediocrity
why woke, ESG, and DEI are so seductive to weak leaders
What woke actually boils down to is “let’s pretend”.
Tucker Carlson Obtains 40,000 Unseen Hours Of Biden Falling Down Air Force One Stairs.
Imbecile.
Cassie of Sydneysays:
March 15, 2023 at 7:07 am
This is good, from a few days ago in London. The dishy Laurence Fox.
We went to a DRAG QUEEN STORY PROTEST and THIS is what happened!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6q7sk49z1A
Note that those who are protesting drag queen story telling are diverse, black, Muslim, and so on, whereas the far-left scum are uniformly white. The highlight of the above video is when the leftist scum scream at the always measured Calvin Robinson* that “he’s not a “real vicar”, he shouts back, “that’s not a real woman”.
Outstanding video. Trannies are pathological; but the real problem are the white activists and gutless politicians.
The greens are strangely quiet on the subs after years focusing on everything anti-nuke.
Articles and letters to the editor in publications I have seen – even leftie ones – are running strongly in favour of nuclear boats.Maybe they’ve given up on the topic.
WHO pushes for a One World Government by issuing guidance to national parliamentarians
The Real Inflation Figure in the UK is now over 35%
Shoebridge and Steele-John have been vocal in their opposition.
Not getting wide coverage though.
Good news! The finger pointing phase has begun
Once again for the extremely slow children.
Recently, Caly et al. reported on the antiviral activity of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19 [9]. These authors demonstrated that a single dose of ivermectin was able to reduce the replication of an Australian isolate of SARS-CoV-2 in Vero/hSLAM cells by 5000-fold.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/
And in more ‘its probably nothing’ news…
btw, the ‘2nd’ case in the report was the Virgin Aust pilot who had a heart attack enroute Adelaide to Perth, necessitating a PAN PAN and return of the aircraft.
Linking to some crank who died, most likely from an already existing heart condition but after taking animal dosage rates of ivermectin is no doubt considered a gotcha by Monty and his sanctimonious marxist drinking comrades.
Shoebridge has intimated that they’ll scuttle the program should they ever have the power to do so.
1) its not a placebo if it contains *active* meds … are you now saying the ‘dangerous horse paste’ which caused so many overdoses is in fact inert?
2) regardless, an ‘expensive placebo’ is better than an expensive poison (Remdesivir, mRNA vax, I’m looking at you)
sounds like you’re saying it’s no better than wanking
…you’d know cos of all the research you’ve done in that area
Maryland governor unveils plan to phase out new gas-powered cars
WATCH: Trump Vows To Defund Any School Mandating Vaccines Or Masks: ‘Not One Penny’
Why do you keep on repeating this Russian propaganda?
Putin has wanted to steal Ukraine for his own glory and self esteem, Russian special forces infiltrated the East since 2008 to the point where it became lawless. If Russians are using human shields and free shooters, the culpability lays with the Russian regime.
Is this a legitimate criticism?
A LARPing TLM Orthobro sends me this.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pachamama-idol-reappears-at-mass-with-latin-american-bishops-for-synod-on-synodality/
when I want to down an American drone into the Black Sea
the first thing I always do is drive my Sukhoi 27 into it’s propeller
1) So you want to replace engineering and market forces with politics and corruption as the guiding hand for the provision of essential services?
2) *ALL* the so called problems of ‘free market capitalism’ can be laid at the feet of our current iteration of captalism – which has morphed from ‘crony capitalism’ to full blown fascism.
MP and American cardiologist call on the UK Parliament to hold the US government accountable for violation of the Biological Weapons Treaty
Erm…does anyone here speak Dot?
Your signal is DUMP CHARLIE.
Every day, US Naval Aviators dump fuel.
Recovering at a set weight is an important part of the finest display of competence, safety and professionalism in aviation.
Pachamama cries out as you strike her.
kanekoa.substack.com
@KanekoaTheGreat
.
@RobertKennedyJr and @jimmy_dore talk about how Bill Gates made a profit from spreading lies about the effectiveness of the COVID mRNA vaccines and later confessed that the vaccines were not effective after he sold his stocks:
“Every one of those three things he said would get you de-platformed, and we were saying that from day one. I said in May 2020, these vaccines are dead on arrival because, in the monkey trials, the vaccinated monkeys had the same amount of COVID in their nasal pharynx, so there’s no benefit for transmission.
And yet Gates and Fauci were saying at that time, if you get it, you can’t pass it to your grandma; you can’t pass it to anybody else. If he was looking at any data from the companies that he had invested hundreds of millions in, like Astra Zeneca, he would be saying that the monkeys, which is the critical animal study, it didn’t work.
He had to know that. Everybody knew that it meant that this vaccine would never prevent transmission, which means it is a criminal act to provide a leaky vaccine that does not provide sterilizing immunity during a pandemic because what you are doing is everybody who gets that vaccine now becomes a factory for mutant variants or escape variants.
It’s the same thing if you give somebody subtherapeutic antibiotics. That person is now a factory for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It’s going to selectively breed escape variants that can escape that vaccine. A leaky vaccine is not what you want to do in the middle of a pandemic.”
Similar in NSW. An ossified creaking sclerotic bureaucracy with no interest in improvements because it meant change and change means some people move about, petty fiefdoms may tampered with, and the old and senior guard have their authority undermined by more nimble minds.
The problem with the electricity sector is that government, even though they sold the assets, could not resist using policy to control the market. We would not be in this mess if government had not so fully immersed themselves in this AGW nonsense? They have created such perverse incentives that there is a lot of money to be made from shutting down power stations and investing in the intermittent sources.
Most important is that if they had held the electricity assets they would still be blindly careening down the road to energy poverty because they still think there are votes in it.
AGW would have been long forgotten by now were it not for the gullibility, stupidity, venality, timidity, and fatuity of myopic politicians and unchecked government.
It would be just a few loonies on university campuses giving kids a scare story within which they could indulge their impulse to messianism and see themselves as the hero in their own movie doing something important, and aging cranks in thongs and knitted clothing drinking almond milk lattes obsessing over ever more trivial (and irrational) expressions of virtue such as avoiding long words and sentences because you release more CO2 when you say them.
New World Odor™
@hugh_mankind
CHINA: Facial recognition at this Hampton – Hilton Hotel.
It’s required for everything, including check-in, the elevator, opening your room, access to restaurant and gym.
IS THIS THE DIGITAL SLAVERY FILLED FUTURE YOU WANT?
State Greenfilth pollies opposing the boats know they’ll never have the power to cancel them because it’s a defence issue.
The federal Greenfilth won’t dare oppose the defence of Australia (against their ideological allies in the Chinese Communist Party) as even the dumb one know that would seriously damage their primary vote at the next election.
New World Odor™
@hugh_mankind
Toxic Metal Shots
Dr Mark Trozzi: Extensive Lab Analysis Finds Numerous Undeclared Substances in C19 Vaccines That Don’t Belong in Human Bodies:
• cesium
• barium
• cobalt
• iron
• chromium
• titanium
• aluminum
• silicone
• sulfur
Some of the best twatter sites are:
Libs of TikTok
Antiwhite watch
BIPOC Doing Racism
Anyone who says there is not a concerted war against whites and western democracy is a liar or a fool. And as I say the leaders of this war are whites living in the West.
Maybe the first one could be called the HMAS Silver Ghost.
The HMAS Miserable Ghost sounds better.
And I don’t usually bother with this shit but WTF is going on:
Shocking Study Out of Australia Shows up to a 26 Fold Increase in Excess Mortality in 2021 and 2022. Consistent With American Insurance Companies Findings.
I love how Union owned and run ME Bank couldn’t make money. Sold to BQ I think.
Cassie of Sydney says:
March 15, 2023 at 7:14 am
I know some here will come down hard on me about what I’m going to say but here I go, I believe that it was a mistake to privatise utilities such as gas and electricity. There are some things governments should run, even if they do it inefficiently and utilities are an example.
Labor ElbowOverseasy, Bowen & Chalmers say “Bend Over & Enjoy”
Power bills to rise by more than 20 per cent from July 1
Mark Ludlow and Angela Macdonald-Smith
Households will face power price rises of up to 23.7 per cent and businesses up to 25.4 per cent from July 1 under the Australian Energy Regulator’s draft electricity “safety net” prices for next financial year.
Despite an easing of wholesale power prices since the Albanese government announced its gas and price coal caps, the AER has approved double-digit electricity price increase for more than 600,000 customers on default market offers, or standing offers, in south-east Queensland, NSW and South Australia.
Meanwhile, in Victoria, which has separate default offer prices, average annual power bills are set to climb much higher, with an average bill to jump 31.1 per cent.
Big electricity retailers such as AGL Energy, Origin Energy and EnergyAustralia will use the AER’s final decision on the default tariffs as a reference from which to set their discounted offers for customers on market contracts.
AER chairwoman Clare Savage said she believed the regulator had achieved the appropriate balance between protecting consumers from unjustifiably high prices and allowing retailers to recoup their costs.
“It’s a tricky thing to do, particularly in an environment where we have such pressure on cost of living,” Ms Savage said in an interview with The Australian Financial Review.
“We’ve obviously had to balance both things and make sure customers aren’t paying any more than necessary, but also making sure there is enough room there for retailers to recover their costs as well.”
Wholesale prices ease
Under the draft default market offer prices released on Wednesday, households will pay increases of between 19.5 per cent and 23.7 per cent next financial year.
This included 19.8 per cent in south-east Queensland, 22 per cent in NSW and 21.8 per cent in South Australia.
For small business customers, prices will increase between 14.7 per cent and 25.4 per cent (7.9 per cent to 18.6 per cent above forecast inflation) depending on their region.
Ms Savage said wholesale power prices and forward contracts had eased since late last year when the Albanese government announced its coal and gas price caps.
At one stage, the AER had predicted a default market offer for next financial year of between 35 and 50 per cent.
“But since October, the price of those forward contracts has fallen significantly from those very high highs – a fall of 50 per cent in some regions – and that has definitely put quite a significant reduction in the amount of price increase we would have been expecting to make right now,” she said.
‘Shop around’
Despite retailers margins being squeezed in the past year, Ms Savage said she believed there were still some good deals for customers who shopped around.
“There are still a number of offers below the DMO, even now, so we are still encouraging customers to shop around,” she said.
“With the resetting of the DMO in July, we would expect to see a growth in the number of market offers below the DMO.”
The AER said according to the latest data, residential customers switching from a standing offer to the lowest market offer could save 7 per cent to 17 per cent and small business customers could save 9 per cent to 26 per cent, depending on their region.
In Victoria, under the Essential Services Commission’s draft ruling, also announced Wednesday, the average annual bill for small business customers on the default price would surge 33.2 per cent.
“We acknowledge these expected increases in prices will be tough on Victorian energy consumers and we do not propose an increase in the Victorian Default Offer prices lightly,” the ESC said, adding that setting the prices at levels that represent retailers’ efficient costs would lead to lower prices down the track.
The ESC said that allowing retailers to recover costs would help avoid costly failures of retailers such as those that went to the wall in the UK in 2021-22, requiring other retailers to take on the customers.
Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the draft DMO showed that urgent government action had helped to shield Australians from the worst of electricity price rises.He said it was almost 30 per cent lower than what the AER forecast late last year.
“This means hundreds of dollars [between $268 and $530] of additional increase avoided for households, and up to $1,243 additional increase avoided for small business customers,” he said.
“But we know that every increase will still be tough for consumers and small businesses – and that’s why we will continue to work with the States and Territories to deliver energy bill relief in the May Budget.”
Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said Australians were set for a grim winter with power prices to increase by up to $463 for families and $1151 per year for small businesses.
“Energy bills have skyrocketed despite Labor’s promise of a $275 reduction and now they are set to soar even higher. It’s further proof that Labor’s energy plan is failing,” he said.
“A record high of more than 82,000 households are now on hardship programs, proving that those who can afford it least will be the ones paying the most.
“Winter is on the way and I have grave fears that senior citizens and families doing it tough won’t turn on the heater for fear of their energy bill.”
Retailers – who will have an opportunity to challenge the draft ruling before a final determination in May – have argued for a default price that fully reflects the rising cost of sourcing wholesale electricity over the past two years, with AGL noting last month that the two-year rolling average for wholesale costs was still heading higher despite the government’s price caps.
Major political headache
Origin Energy chief executive Frank Calabria suggested last week that default prices would increase “in excess of 20 per cent” on July 1, on top of the increases of as much as 18 per cent that were waved through last year.
Rising power prices have become a major political headache for the Albanese government after both major parties vowed in last year’s election campaign they would reduce power prices.
This was blown out of the water after the AER released its default market offer days after the May election which showed power prices increases of up to 18 per cent in NSW and 12 per cent in Queensland this financial year.
The anxiety over power prices was exacerbated when the federal budget in October forecast electricity increases of 36 per cent in 2023-24.
But the Albanese government said its energy market intervention had contributed to a 50 per cent fall in wholesale power prices which would flow through to lower retail prices, estimated to be about 23 per cent.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers had conceded the coal and gas price caps – which would be in place for 12 months – would “take the edge off” price increases, rather than lower prices.
Earnings recovery bet
The steep increases reflect the crisis that hit the National Electricity Market early last winter, when a spate of coal power plant outages and weak renewable energy output drove wholesale prices sky-high and led to the temporary suspension of the market.
Big suppliers are relying on tariff hikes to underpin an expected recovery in their earnings next financial year, but at the same time are worried about the impact of rising bills on financially stretched households and businesses and are ramping up efforts to assist those customers.
Some analysts have suggested that retailers may not be able to fully recover the increase in wholesale costs amid pressure from government to limit tariff hikes.
The proposed hike in power tariffs comes as the “big three” retailers have all pushed through big increases in gas tariffs in the last few months, the full impact of which are only expected to be felt during the higher-demand winter months.
Speaking before the draft decision was announced, St Vincent de Paul manager of policy and research Gavin Dufty said for the majority of customers who are on market offers, the likely price increases would probably be steeper as discounting is further reined in by squeezed retailers.
“The Default Market Offer doesn’t apply to many households, but it signals a broader trend in the electricity market of increased costs which will continue to roll through to market offers,” he said.
“It foreshadows future increases in market offers which are likely to be higher because they are coming off a lower rate.”
He suggested the final DMO – which is expected by the end of May -could be higher than the draft depending on feedback from energy retailers.
Last year, the energy retailers argued for an increase in the DMO after it was released in February. The final DMO was delayed and not released until after the May election.
“but the real problem are the white activists and gutless politicians.”
Correct….except for Governor Ron DeSantis.
Re Cats’ problems with Quaddie subscriptions:
1/ First, know that we’ve been under constant attack for the past two months — bot-filed purchase orders for books, thousands of them, clogging the servers and attempting to bring the site down. Our techs have instituted all sorts of fixes, none working for more than a week or so.
As I understand it — and the commerce side isn’t my bailiwick — all the defence measures and rebuildings may (stress ‘may’) have screwed up the subscriber data base. Other problems listed above, I’ll address this morning with those responsible.
Incidentally, the attacks started as the Voice debate heated up. This is how the Left rolls: free speech for me but not for thee.
Sorry, but Government owning utilities is not the answer.
Vetting of shareholders and broad supervision of delivery and pricing, OK.
But do not make them an arm of the public service.
Mother Lode
The problem with the electricity sector is that government, even though they sold the assets, could not resist using policy to control the market. We would not be in this mess if government had not so fully immersed themselves in this AGW nonsense? They have created such perverse incentives that there is a lot of money to be made from shutting down power stations and investing in the intermittent sources.
Indeed, so now we have greedy subsidy harvesters like Forrest and Cannon-Brookes ddliberately destroying working generators so that they might profit personally, all enabled by politicians who are virtue signaling nonentities, but are ensuring that their future will be in a sinecure somewhere in the AGW “industry”.
Sorry.
Bolding fail.
I blame Itie food.
Cassie,
In a more lighted hearted mood – There’s a Growing ‘Trad-Wife’ Trend That’s Making Feminists Furious
It started with young women half-joking about being angry with the feminist movement for “liberating” women so they now have to get up to go to work to pay their own bills.
The BBC made a skit off the back of this complaint that, while meant as a joke, ended up being a perfect way that described how many women felt about their “liberation.” They say the left can’t meme, but this skit proves they can do so ironically.
1 Min 52 Secs of Pure Enjoyment (From a Male’s Perspective)
That’s the nub of it.
I wonder what Teh Voice’s take would be?
GreyRangasays:
March 15, 2023 at 9:44 am
I love how Union owned and run ME Bank couldn’t make money. Sold to BQ I think.
Much like the ACTU run store in Melbournibad decades ago. Gone but not missed!
The subs to be built in Adelaide.
They should be named the “Hyphen Class” submarine.
Bastards.
If it’s any consolation a visiting professor at ANU has predicted that compulsory voting means the doubters will sink the referendum.
You mean sub-marine.
Yes don’t expect nuclear energy on the back of the submarine deal.
Here’s Pat Conroy telling you why, an excerpt from his interview with Tom Elliott yesterday which I heard and was somewhat bemused:
Well, it’s definitely not the position of the Albanese Labor government. We’re opposed to nuclear power for electricity production for the domestic industry. And, in fact, one of the pre-conditions that we made when we supported AUKUS and one the government of the day accepted was that this would not rely – this decision would not then rely on the development of a domestic nuclear power industry.
That’s really important, and that’s why the reactors are being provided to us welded and sealed shut by the United States and the United Kingdom. And they won’t need refuelling for the 30-year life on the submarine. The reactor will be fuelled for the life; we won’t need to touch it. And that’s really important because we’re opposed to a domestic nuclear industry for electricity production. It’s much more expensive than renewable energy firmed up with batteries and pumped hydro. We just don’t need it in this country. It’s very expensive and it will put up power prices.
Cool story bro.
Sanchez, CASA is not run by engineers. The few left are those who couldn’t make it in private industry, like the rest of the parasites there.
CASA has actually “privatised” more than half of Australian private aviation by handing control over to several private non profits who charge their “members” “membership” fees. CASA made it compulsory to join these organisations because CASA imagines this somehow removes them from responsibility and also allows CASA to avoid funding most of the regulation of those activities (ultralights, gliders, hang gliders, paragliders etc). CASA is mainly funded from fuel levies and doesn’t actually charge annual aircraft registration fees. These private organisations do. In turn these organisations can prevent any of their members from flying at any time for no reason. If accused of breaking the rules, you can be summoned before a kangaroo court with no right to silence nor the right to legal representation. Believe me the CASA PPL/VH registration system is preferable and should be extended to ALL aviation participants. After all we all fly in the same airspace.
I remember SOLO Petrol.
It only exists in memory.
Full transcript here
The Vigilant Fox
@VigilantFox
No Organ Is Safe: Vaccine-Induced Autoimmune Attack in the Brain, the Heart, the Lungs, etc.
Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi: “German pathologists … have shown now that these people who died after vaccination, 90% [of them] all had signs of autoimmune attack in the organs, with the heart as the major organ.”
No mention of gas.
The ALP seems to be split on whether gas has a future as a “firming” measure.
Peak strategic planning.
While the country is being over-run by the PLA Inc hordes,
Adelaide, protected by distance, will be able to punch out
a leaky boat every fifteen years.
Distribution grids are natural monopolies. Removing suppliers of electricity/gas/water from ownership seems like good idea. The allow private companies to supply to the grids. They can compete for customers. Depending on the number of customers and their likely demand the private companies then know how much of the commodity they need to supply.
Unfortunately in Australia government meddling aka fascist control distorts what should be fairly simple.
CHEERING SILICON VALLEY BANK BAILOUT, GAVIN NEWSOM DOESN’T MENTION HE’S A CLIENT
At least three of the California governor’s wine companies are held by SVB, and a bank president sits on the board of his wife’s charity.
ON MONDAY, California Gov. Gavin Newsom praised the Biden administration’s decision to intervene on behalf of Silicon Valley Bank’s clients after the bank was taken over by the FDIC on Friday amid a bank run. The White House “acted swiftly and decisively to protect the American economy and strengthen public confidence in our banking system,” Newsom said in a statement. What Newsom didn’t mention is that it also protected his own companies if they held over $250,000 in deposits.
CADE, Odette, and PlumpJack, three wineries owned by Newsom, are listed as clients of SVB on the bank’s website. Newsom also maintained personal accounts at SVB for years, according to a longtime former employee of Newsom’s who handled his finances, and who requested anonymity to avoid professional reprisal.
“Governor Newsom’s business and financial holdings are held and managed by a blind trust, as they have been since he was first elected governor in 2018,” Nathan Click, a spokesperson for Newsom, told The Intercept in an email.
Newsom also didn’t mention his wife Jennifer Siebel’s professional ties to the bank. In 2021, Silicon Valley Bank gave $100,000 to the charity founded by Siebel, the California Partners Project, at the request of Newsom. John China, president of SVB Capital and responsible for SVB’s funds management, is himself a founding member of the California Partners Project’s board of directors.
Newsom added on Monday that he had been in close contact with the administration about SVB. “Over the last 48 hours, I have been in touch with the highest levels of leadership at the White House and Treasury,” Newsom said of SVB’s collapse in a statement released on Saturday. Asked about the nature of the interactions, the governor’s deputy communications director Brandon Richards did not respond.
Talk about a disconnect (pardon the pun) from reality. What utter f*cking morons.
Meanwhile electrickery prices are about to go up by at least 23% (31% in Disasterstan) from 1 July.
The scary thing is, Newsom is a moderate in California.
Hang on just one second. If the debts weren’t real debts, then how is writing them off a cost? Compensation, sure, but that inflated figure is just flat out dishonest. Not that I’d expect anything else from any media outlet.
The charity pushes “gender equity.”
I’m sure the SVB board was appointed equitably.
Apparently only one member had any in depth experience in banking.
Not utility monopoly’s but road monopoly. Jeff Kennett gave what was then known as citylink a monopoly over the Melbourne toll roads, and gave the police the job of enforcing outstanding bills for a private company. Funny how a lot of connected people managed to get shares in citylink when they weren’t for sale to the general public. How anyone can justify using the police to enforce the bills of a private company is something I don’t understand.
Now Kennett’s company is an Australia wide monopoly, making millions with no competition. Is this a good thing?
STUNNING Video Woke Signature Bank Made Before They Went Broke – 1 Min 45 Secs
Before Signature Bank went broke they were releasing woke videos about they were so open-minded.
This is stunning.
Signature banned President Trump’s accounts after the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill protests.
Via Ace Of Spades comes this item. It’s like they er, don’t care for your health.
You will ease your heartburn though.
US regulators are setting a dangerous precedent on Silicon Valley Bank
The FDIC seems to think the banking system is more fragile than it really is
The writer is a former chair of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and a senior fellow at the Center for Financial Stability
Preventing “systemic risk” was repeatedly used as a rationale for bailing out Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act was supposed to have fixed all of that by strengthening regulation and banning government bailouts. Yet, banking regulators have now decided that the failure of two midsized banks, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature, pose systemic risk, requiring the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to pay off their uninsured depositors.
At combined assets of $300bn, these two banks represent a minuscule part of the US’s $23tn banking system. Is that system really so fragile that it can’t absorb some small haircut on these banks’ uninsured deposits? If it is as safe and resilient as we’ve been constantly assured by the government, then the regulators’ move sets dangerous expectations for future bailouts.
The uninsured depositors of SVB are not a needy group. They are a “who’s who” of leading venture capitalists and their portfolio companies. Financially sophisticated, they apparently missed those prominent disclosures on the bank’s websites and teller windows that FDIC insurance is capped at $250,000.
Some start-ups that banked at SVB argued they needed their uninsured deposits to make payroll. But under the FDIC’s normal procedures, they should have received a sizeable dividend this week to help with their cash flow needs.
Signature Bank’s uninsured depositors similarly would have probably achieved significant recoveries.
Both banks have good assets for the FDIC to sell. They were victims of rapid deposit withdrawals, not dodgy loans or speculative investments.
A systemic risk determination involves supermajority approvals by the FDIC board, Federal Reserve board and the secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the president. It is meant to be used only in extraordinary circumstances.
If regulators had evidence that uninsured bank runs would be widespread absent these bailouts, then a “systemic” determination might be justified. But if that is the case, it would make more sense to temporarily backstop all uninsured accounts and charge banks a fee to cover losses.
When I chaired the FDIC during the financial crisis, we instituted such a programme for uninsured transaction accounts used by institutions for payroll and other operating expenses. We did this to protect community banks who were losing uninsured business customers to banking giants such as JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.
The programme was successful in ending runs on community banks. But despite its success, Congress decided to ban this kind of even-handed help to all banks (even while preserving regulators’ ability to do one-off bailouts through systemic risk exceptions). But Congress did provide for a streamlined procedure to approve such a programme, which regulators should now pursue if they truly have reason to fear widespread runs.
Otherwise, regulators will have to pick and choose who they want to help. If there are more failures, who are they going to bail out next? Anyone over $100bn? What about community banks? If they create a perception that $100bn is the new “systemic” cut-off, uninsured deposits will surely flee community banks for those in the $100bn club. And to add insult to injury for the smaller banks, by statute they will have to pay special assessments for costs associated with covering uninsured depositors at their larger brethren.
The bigger problem is the Fed’s too rapid unwinding of 14 years of lax monetary policy. When rates rise, the market value of financial assets fall, and banks hold a lot of financial assets.
The Fed needs to hit pause on further rate rises to provide time to assess their impact on the financial system.
Regulators need to review all banks’ capital capacity to withstand market losses on their securities portfolios if forced to sell them before maturity. Regulators also need to rethink treating government securities as basically risk-free under capital and liquidity rules. When rates rise, they are anything but.
The mere fact that regulators designated two midsized banks as systemic implies they think the system is fragile. My instinct tells me that most regional and community banks are basically sound. The main thing we have to fear is fear itself cascading into bank runs that will force otherwise healthy banks to collapse.
The government needs to be very careful in its communication, lest its own overreaction causes the very deposit runs it wants to avoid.
Barking Toad:
I brought back three pineapples from the big smoke, still with the leaves on them.
Planted them in pots yesterday. I’ve marked 2025 as the harvesting date, and will put them on a pizza.
mUnty should be busy on his AFL wank. Groogs just the wank bit.
LOL. Have they managed to extract that tunneling machine yet?
As to the claim, just look where France is compared to Germany and Denmark:
Electricity price statistics (EU, Oct 2022)
France has been creeping up lately due to reduction in nuclear power generation through mechanical failures and government policy changes, but is still far below the renewable-heavy nations.
The idea that utilities might be privately owned might be barely true technically, but is very far from true in practice. There are many, many issues, but here are two of them:
1) Most of the companies that own them are themselves owned by governments. You’re still getting the same waste and inefficiencies and pollution of purpose.
2) “Regulated Asset Base”. That’s an entire book on its own, but I’ve given you the key words to get started.
SVB board member Elizabeth Burr* in 2021:
“It’s not enough to just report the numbers, instead, we need to demand a deep look at company culture — what are the informal networks and behaviors that support the status quo. Discuss this at the board level and hold management teams accountable for real change.”
Mmm…so nobody was paying much attention to those pesky numbers until it was too late.
Some numbers did matter though; according to a 2022 statement by SVB, 45% of its 12 member board were women in addition to one black person and one LGQBT person. One area where the SVB board lacked “diversity” was political affiliation – seems you had to be a Democrat to be nominated.
* Occupation given as “improvisational actor”; she maintained “improv” was where she “learned about leadership.” Uh huh.
Malicious or stupid? Take your pick.
mUnty says:
March 15, 2023 at 8:28 am
Oh dear. Asset ownership is irrelevant when the product market has been stuffed by regulation. Opex will always be lower under private ownership.
D- (again in the case of mUnty)
You are quite correct.
After years of working with generators on the fuel side, I can confidently say there is sweet tweet difference between government and the private sector in terms of operational efficiency (with a glaring exception). Fuel is acquired on essentially the same terms, the plant is operated according to its design limitations (with a glaring exception), maintenance is conducted according to OEM and licence schedules in the same way and by the same contractors – and the plants are unionised/staffed in the same way.
[The glaring exception: operating coal-fired units ‘mid-merit’ – ie turning them up, down, on and off to balance the intermittent load caused by ‘must run’ renewables. The net result is the wear and tear leading to run-time failures and excessive major boiler maintenance leading to premature closures.]
The main differences between government and private ownership come down to two things:
Commercial operating decisions; and
Cost of capital.
Individually and combined, these factors have huge distortionary influences on the market – and jack the price of wholesale electricity by nearly a factor.
Private companies operating in the electricity generation space are doing what their shareholders demand and expect. Gaming the market rules to maximise marginal pricing and withholding capital investment until a 18%-20%+ hurdle rate is achieved is perfectly rational profit-maximising behaviour.
However, this leads to much higher power prices than government ownership would (and used to) achieve with a different set of commercial/political drivers. This observation is generation technology agnostic and applies to windfarms and batteries as much as coal, or gas fired generation.
Apparently, that’s what we want because people keep voting for more of it.
Australia finally had cheap and reliable power after the Hilmer reforms but before we signed up to the Kyoto Treaty, etc. It didn’t last long but it was good.
Say we go down the hydroelectricity route.
How are we going to build more dams? Governments have even banned themselves from building more dams, let alone nuclear power plants.
No need; the rain that falls won’t fill them.
Energy prices began going up in NSW when plants were not refurbished and mining licenses were harder to get (2006) and elsewhere when Rudd got elected (late 2007) and after Gillard got “re-elected” (2011).
The cost of generating and sending out electricity is fuel, interest, and opex – with opex typically making up a modest proportion of total cost.
So, if 23.7% to 25.4% is the case, the Albanese Government’s exciting fuel price cap initiative has failed.
Alternatively, Ms Savage has conflated ‘costs’ with required ROI on invested capital.
Faustus – it certainly wasn’t in the West when the (then) generator Western Power was signed up to years of take-or-pay contracts in excess of requirements to get the North West Shelf and DBNGP off the ground, including the now lauded domestic gas reservation policy. This may well have been a good thing and worthy of government support – but not through years of hidden subsidy via WA electricity consumers.
I don’t doubt that East Coast coal arrangements are different.
lotocotisays:
March 15, 2023 at 10:11 am
The subs to be built in Adelaide.
Peak strategic planning.
While the country is being over-run by the PLA Inc hordes,
Adelaide, protected by distance, will be able to punch out
a leaky boat every fifteen years.
Reading the full transcript of the Conroy interview, I suspect that the “building submarines in Adelaide” claim is going to ed up as “building simple components in Adelaide, and assembling them with more complex components built in the US and UK”.
On the Laurence Fox Drag Queen Story Time video.
Firstly – what was wrong with that woman? He was unable to charm her. Or…perhaps he did and normally she would be a shrieking harpy. One of life’s great mysteries.
Secondly – she was impervious to argument. Because she hadn’t seen it in the flesh it didn’t happen. Not interested at all is seeing evidence on his phone for instance.
Thirdly – it was obvious she had no idea of the school curriculum and what was being taught to her own children. Parental neglect while championing groomers.
Fourthly – the expression on the faces of the presiding coppers said it all. It must have been very difficult for the sub-continental guy particularly to listen to that gibberish.
Just so long as it doesn’t impact the Writers Festival.
Crossie:
Confiscate the bloody lot on the basis of national security. Everything the Chinese or their surrogates have bought. Then establish a Royal Commission to look into the sales. Find out what was paid, and who paid whom.
Use the proceeds to pay for the subs.
We can sell most of our iron ore, coal and gas on the open market.
I’m fed up with this predatory behaviour of the Chinese.
Dotsays:
“Malicious or stupid? Take your pick.”
Embrace the power of “and” (h/t Instapundit).
Something for statistical/actuarial Cats…I’ve tried to find the answer but it’s difficult.
Are the Aussie “excess deaths” inclusive of cohort distortions or are they raw figures? For instance, you have the boomer population bubble, plus family reunion via migration of ready-made elderly.
I expected to see the deaths rise on account of my generation starting to die off in serious numbers, and also the neglect of treatment during the idiotic Covid years (which, incidentally is still occurring because of doctor shortages) but nothing prepared me for those figures.
Mr Panzer at 8.31:
I will refer the reader to the immortal words of Hando in Romper Stomper:
A true patriot. Amiright?
Apparently (and *no-one* could have predicted this) … teaching one part of your body to make a toxic foreign protein, and another part to attack said protein, turned out to be a bad idea.
Curious isn’t it? Building massive civil works is something that Australia does reasonably well. We can tunnel, shift material, place concrete and pipe with the best of them. It’s one of our strengths, born out of pressing agricultural and civil need.
But….
Let’s build submarines instead!
China and India are building huge numbers of coal-fired power stations. But green-woke Western countries won’t let miners mine coal to sell to them. So the export coal price is very yummy….for those companies who can actually mine it.
Supply and demand as usual. The West has enormous deposits of coal, like under the North Sea. But the druids won’t let us mine it.
Victoria can of course generate electricity very cheaply since brown coal isn’t an exportable commodity. So the price is much much lower.
Brown coal is so cheap AEMO forgets to mention it (Jonova, 10 Mar)
Let’s just pull the plug on Snowy 2.0 and move on to Snowy 3.0.
Does anything good come out of the Labor Left?
Something of a WA special situation there.
As you note yourself, that was a government support/subsidy of a separate industry – which was exactly what Western Power was used for to prop up coal mining profitability at Collie. Up until 2007, WA had (by far) the most expensive mine mouth power station coal prices in Australia – so a bit of additional waste at Pinjar and Kwinana went largely unnoticed.
IIRC, the Western Power eventually made money on the banked gas – but that probably went unnoticed on your power bill.
Elbow channelling Curtin & Chifley.
Nation building!
In reality I think we’ll end up building the hulls and installing componentry made elsewhere (hopefully not in China!).
Yep, I think so. The economics of gas and the DBNGP generally went over my head. You had to be living and breathing that stuff day to day really. Western Powers GM of generation was pretty impressive at the time we were about, getting on for 25 years ago now.
Roger
More likely we will build some parts of the hulls (certainly not the module with the reactor in it) and some internal domestic components, and assemble on site with major components coming from the established US and UK submarine builders.
It’s Official! Free Drive Chainless System Lets E-Bikes Break Away From the Grid for Good
A couple of years ago, the world got news of the Schaeffler Group unveiling new technology. This is nothing out of the ordinary for the timeless automotive and mobility conglomerate, but this time around, they’re bringing their know-how to e-bikes.
Hanlon’s Razor cuts both ways
Had an enjoyable evening of trivia last night.
One team called themselves “$368 billion is not a good deal”.
Highlight for me was
not knowing the names of any Harry Styles songs. Unfortunately the question was asking for 4!
Redeemed myself with ” in which year did Reagan say tear down these walls. Same year Lionel Messi was born”.
Answer was 1987.
WA coal has always been a special case too. No longer the licence to print money it once was. I think Laurie Connell once owned one of the mines, which should have set alarm bells ringing.
HMAS Barrel-Beaumont.
HMAS Dunstan-Hotpants.
HMAS Pie-Floater.
https://citkar.com/en/advantages/
Suitable for cycle paths
As a pedelec with an electric motor, the Citkar is approved for use both on the road and on bike paths. This way you stay flexible and can easily ride past traffic jams.
High payload
With a payload of up to 235 kg, the Citkar is a real load master. You can transport your goods either on the loading area or in one of the transport boxes.
Weatherproof
In the weatherproof cabin you arrive dry at your destination. It also offers enough space for bags and utensils.
HMAS Tab A-Slot B.
Westinghouse eVinci: The Pint-Sized Mini Reactor Designed to Kick Diesel to the Curb
At its core, the eVInci heat pipe microreactor almost resembles a large gas canister more so than it does a mobile power generating station. Inside this large metal cylinder, nuclear fuel rods of particularly high quality are arranged into a compact but powerful fissile core with large metal heat transfer pipes running through the core’s center. The fuel in question is known as Tri-structural isotropic particle fuel, or TRISCO for short. It consists of a proprietary blend of Uranium isotopes mixed with carbon and oxygen to form a fuel kernel the size of a poppy seed.
These highly enriched and energy-potent fissile fuel pellets can theoretically remain critical without the need for refueling for up to eight years. At this point, the whole device can be packed into a shipping container and sent back to Westinghouse’s facility in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, for proper disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods. On top of that, Westinghouse reckons it’s possible to install an eVinci power station in as little as 30 days.
The eVinci system, with a bare minimum of moving parts to contend with and the latest in computer-controlled autonomous operation software, can theoretically operate unattended for days or even weeks. All the while, the reactor can be remotely monitored via top-notch sensor arrays that give real-time updates to the reactor’s condition at the click of a mouse.
Add it all up, and you have a pint-sized fission reactor capable of delivering up to five megawatts of electrical power and up to 13 megawatts of thermal energy out of a system that could fit comfortably inside an average-sized warehouse.
Its diminutive size allows for the number of applications the eVinci system can accommodate to far exceed that of far larger and more complicated fission reactors.
From the private civilian sector to the military-industrial complex, there’s no shortage of places that could make use of a reactor that small.
At the moment, Westinghouse anticipates the first full-scale commercial eVinci system should be ready for deployment sometime in 2025. Under this plan, eVInci has the potential to be installed one at a time in various locations or in pairs of multiple reactors running in parallel.
Ok – its getting obvious now.
Even my middle son (~20) suspects the recent Sydney train (and metro yesterday) problems are just a little too conveniently timed for the upcoming election.
“Secondly – she was impervious to argument. “
The essence of progressivism. They have no desire to discuss, debate, and dispute.
IKEA with South Australian characteristics.
Leftist Groups Tapping $1 Billion to Vastly Expand the Private Financing of Public Elections
By Steve Miller, RealClearInvestigations – March 14, 2023
Democrats and their progressive allies are vastly expanding their unprecedented efforts, begun in 2020, to use private money to influence and run public elections.
Supported by groups with more than $1 billion at their disposal, according to public records, these partisan groups are working with state and local boards to influence functions that have long been the domain of government or political parties.
Registering and turning out voters – once handled primarily by political parties – and design of election office websites and mail-in ballots are being handed over to those same nonprofits, which are staffed by progressive activists that include former Democratic Party advocates, organized labor adherents and community organizers.
Republicans have opposed such efforts, passing legislation in 24 states since 2020 curbing the private financing of elections. But the GOP does not have a comparable, boots-on-the-ground effort to influence election boards and workers, and the private-funding bans haven’t proved absolute in some states.
“There is a cottage industry of 501c3s in public policy and in the political arena, trying to shape the future of immigration or education or any other topic,” said Kimberly Fiorello, a former Republican state representative in Connecticut. “Increasingly they are about elections, election administration, election technology, ballot design, and all with big funding. These groups seem innocuous, but they aren’t innocuous because they are funded by one political side.”
Many of the progressive groups seeking to influence elections are connected to Arabella Advisors, a Washington-based, for-profit consulting company founded and led by Eric Kessler, a White House appointee during the Clinton administration.
Arabella’s projects, which include the New Venture Fund, the Hopewell Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and Secure Democracy USA, had combined revenues of $1.3 billion between 2020 and 2021, tax filings show. Nonprofits supported by Arabella in 2020 gave out $529 million to “defend democracy.”
That coincided with the rise of private-public election partnerships as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated an estimated $350 million to the progressive Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL) to support local efforts in the pandemic-challenged 2020 election.
The voting was marked by social-distancing rule changes encouraging early and mail balloting, imposing policies that Republicans seek to roll back to pre-pandemic rules.
The grants of “Zuckerbucks”or “Zuckbucks,” as they are referred to by conservative critics, were supposed to be nonpartisan, but research indicated they were disproportionately allocated to areas to boost Democratic voter turnout.
Mac Warner, West Virginia’s Republican Secretary of State, told RCI that his party needs to become more aggressive in elections, using some of the same tactics as their opponents.
“When you’ve lost so many elections, you finally have to decide to fight fire with fire,” said Warner, who is a gubernatorial candidate for 2024. “You don’t win elections by not getting ballots out there. You can start playing by their rules and win an election. It’s time to go in another direction.”
Did he find a slug?
HMAS Fraser-pants
HMAS Holt-swim
HMAS Alban-tug
HMAS Wallet-Wizard
THE DEVELOPMENT OF F1 INSIGHTS, POWERED BY AWS
Car Analysis/Team Development
F1 Chief Technical Engineer Rob Smedley helps break down each of the new F1 Insights powered by AWS in a series of blogs during the 2021 FORMULA 1 season
To put the above into perspective
Towards high-fidelity CFD on the cloud for the automotive and motorsport sectors
This paper presents the results from an investigation into the performance of OpenFOAM v1806 on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service for a realistic racing vehicle using a high-fidelity hybrid RANS-LES CFD approach.
It is shown that AWS can provide the HPC environment to enable greater use of high-fidelity CFD methods by allowing higher core counts to reduce turn-around time. With the correct instance type – which potentially differs between meshing and solving –
AWS was competitive against a high-performance Cray XC30 supercomputer, up to 1920 cores and meshes up to 280 million cells. However it is recognised that this Cray XC30 displayed superior scaling whilst containing older generation processors (Intel Ivybridge) compared to the AWS Instances (Intel Skylake). It was found that the influence of instance type was more pronounced during the meshing process within OpenFOAM (snappyHexMesh) where only the C5n.18xlarge instance was able to match the performance of the Cray XC30.
This work establishes a set of best-practices and baseline configuration that will be used to look at larger models, larger core counts and to focus on other areas of the CFD workflow including post-processing.
Exceptional.
There’s a career for you in marketing, young lady.
and in more ‘But they would never do that’ news:
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3936269-gsk-kept-quiet-about-cancer-risks-heartburn-drug-zantac-40-years
I long harboured concerns about the *chronic* intake of a medication designed to shut down stomach acid production – which your gut makes for a reason.
I also saw, years ago, the ‘lumpy stomach lining’ changes which could follow longterm use. There have been questions over H2 blockers like Zantac and Ranitidine for decades.
Of course, in many cases, reverting to an ‘ancestral diet’ cures GORD – it certainly did mine.
Crossie:
I gave up hoping the system would change or repair itself two years ago. It cannot.
The citizenry have no input into the way the system is run – our elections give us the option of the criminal and the incompetent, and bugger all else.
The point is that our ‘leaders’ represent themselves and their interests and not ours.
So until their interests are threatened, they will do nothing about the multiple crises approaching. Until then they will plunder the treasury, which is what we are seeing at the moment.
This isn’t catastrophising, nor is it some kind of enthusiasm for seeing peoples lives turned upside down. It is simply a cold hard look at our current society, the challenges it is facing and the lack of response to them by the people who are paid very well to deal with these issues.
Wish I had better news but there it is.
Aaaaaaaagh! .. the joys of bike riding .. flat tyre just past Merrylands HS (NSW) .. 25C and a 17kms push-it home .. Thankfully, even at 75 I can still do it ..!
Now, if they really wanted to have some fun…HMAS Steele-John.
HMAS Stunning
HMAS Brave
HMAS Trying-Hard
No excuse for not carrying a spare tube. Not that I ever did.
SpaceX To Begin Testing the Starlink Satellite-to-Cell Service With T-Mobile This Year
Last year, SpaceX partnered with T-Mobile to offer sat-to-cell services to the cell phone company’s customers and Tesla owners. The new service would connect areas without cell coverage, leveraging Starlink V2 satellites’ capabilities. According to a SpaceX executive, the two companies will start testing the service this year.
SpaceX is the go-to satellite internet provider for more than one million people in remote areas, thanks to a blend of high-speed, low latency (for a satellite service), and affordable prices. Starlink has already entered the mainstream, and Elon Musk wants to push the boundaries even more with the second-generation Starlink satellites.
The Starlink V2 can communicate directly with most cell phones, acting like a “cell tower in the sky.” This can potentially eliminate dead zones for millions of cell phone users.
SpaceX partnered with T-Mobile to develop the Starlink sat-to-cell service, and the telco said that the service would be free to most of its customers. Tesla owners enrolled in the Premium connectivity plan would also benefit.
At 2-4 Mbps per cell zone, the direct connection is not fast enough for streaming. Still, it could prove a lifeline for people in difficulty, enabling text messages and even phone calls in areas without cell coverage.
According to Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX vice president of Starlink enterprise sales, SpaceX plans to begin testing the sat-to-cell service with T-Mobile this year. Speaking on a panel at the Satellite 2023 conference in Washington, D.C., Hofeller thinks there’s a lot to learn by launching the new service in a market with immense potential. Direct satellite connectivity is attractive for devices beyond cell phones, like computers, vehicles, and others.
SpaceX has around 4,000 satellites in orbit and has recently started launching the Starlink V2 Mini satellites, which have four times the capacity of the previous generation. They also offer the sat-to-cell capability.
Currently, SpaceX is manufacturing around six Starlink V2 satellites per day alongside thousands of user terminals daily. The company has accelerated satellite deployment, going from one launch a month to twice per week, which is unprecedented.
SpaceX plans to build even larger V2 satellites, but launching them is closely tied to the Starship becoming operational. We guess they are big enough that the Falcon 9 could not carry them into space. Elon Musk hinted that Starship could begin its first orbital flight this month, although many variables could delay the launch.
Even with 4,000 satellites in orbit, Starlink satellite service is crowded, with quality deteriorating in some areas. This has encouraged SpaceX to raise the tariffs and also charge more for the same service when it is offered in areas with limited capacity.
The new pricing based on availability will enter into effect from April 24, 2023, although new customers will be billed according to the updated fees immediately.
Silicon Valley Bank had no head of risk management in the year before it collapsed. The Democratic Party donors who packed the SVB board couldn’t have cared less because there was very little banking going on. Tucker Carlson Tonight.
PS: before its collapse last week, SVB donated $US74 million in reparations to Black Lives Matter.
A year ago you could be arrested, and your career destroyed, for saying something like this.
Common cold may give children immunity against COVID-19, reveals study (MedXpress, 14 Mar)
ChatGPT-4 just passed the bar exam, scoring in the 90th percentile. It crushed a bunch of other advanced tests too. Check out these numbers.
You’ve been reading a lot about ChatGPT lately and that lingering feeling you can’t seem to shake is your correct assumption that the world as we know it will never be the same.
OpenAI rolled out GPT-4 today, its latest iteration of the AI tech behind ChatGPT – the artificial intelligence chatbot that’s taken the world by storm. The company showcased some of the next-level capabilities of the new version on its website, including human tests it had taken, and how it scored.
The freaking thing passed the bar exam. It scored in the 90th percentile, meaning its score would rank in the top 10% of all humans. It scored in the 93rd percentile in the Evidence-Based Reading & Writing section of the SAT, and 99th percentile in the verbal section of the Graduate Record Examination.
Check out how it scored on a bunch of other tests as well:
These are all advanced tests and it crushed almost every single one. Without prior training on them.
Bar exam, Law School Admission Test, SATs, Graduate Record Examinations (except writing – “just” average there), USA Biology Olympiad, U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad, AP Art History, AP Biology … it destroys most humans in all of them.
There are even more test results on OpenAI’s website.
Let me remind you, we are still in the very, very early stages of this technology. Like, the infant stage.
What a time to be alive.
So Carter trash wants the old thief to deliver his eulogy. Says a lot about Carter.
It’s being sued by lawyers for not being a certified lawyer.
‘Robot lawyer’ DoNotPay is being sued by a law firm because it ‘does not have a law degree’ (12 Mar)
From a link in the story:
Given the hourly rates of lawyers, this court case could become a lot of fun! Learn to code unemployed lawyer people.
HMAS Higgins – knickers.
And Up go Electricity prices again. Another Feral LayBore Guv’ment broken promise. Laybore OUT.
At their ABC, a touch of environmental bedwetting pushes to the front:
The AUKUS submarine deal requires Australia to dispose of the nuclear waste. Where will it be dumped and will it break any treaties?
The US’ complex reactor disposal strategy revealed.
Australia has some of the most stable surface geology on the planet – rocks that have been there for billions of years, in locations, with almost no rainfall. Non-clown Australia would already have a full-cycle nuclear industry – complete with complex reactor disposal facilities.
But here we are.
HMAS Higgins – knickers.
Goes down on any signal, or not on station?
Black Ball:
And this is why I think the country is stuffed.
Lies, wrapped in stupidity, encased in political and economic armour that would stop a ten ton projectile travelling at 99% of the speed of light.
Were you the one complaining about CASA the other day?
The answer isn’t to have government running everything. The answer is the have private enterprise run, with spare capacity and reliability targets.
Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There’s nothing like having a midget for a butler.
– W. C. Fields
Electric Boat had been building submarines in the US since 1901, having stiffed John Philip Holland of his patents. They built plenty more during WWII, which certainly indicates they knew what they were doing.
So along comes Hyman Rickover in 1952 with plans for the nuke Nautilus and Sea Wolf, and Electric Boat, for all its decades of expertise, had a bugger of a job getting them built.
What chance a bunch of Adelaide’s strangely accented half-Pom unionists?
John just graduated Clinical Psychology and opens a small office. After some successful advertising he is astounded to have nearly 300 people wanting to be in group therapy. John decides to rent a big hall and invite the entire group.
To break the ice, and to get the therapy started, John decides to ask a show of hands how often the attendees had sex. He first asks for a show of hands of all the people who had sex almost every night. A modest number of hands were raised.
He then asks, how many had sex once a week? This time a larger number of hands were raised.
John then asks how many had sex once or twice a month? Again a few hands were raised.
After John polled his group several more times he noticed one guy sitting off to the side with this huge beaming grin on his face. John noticed that the guy never raised his hand, so he asked him how often he had sex. The guy said “Once a year!” To John’s dismay, he responds “Why are you so happy getting sex only once a year?” The grinning guy responds “Tonight’s the night!!”
Specialist and Enthusiast Vehicles Register
Please be advised, a vehicle being entered on the SEVs Register is not an approval to import the vehicle into Australia. To import a vehicle which is on the SEVs Register please follow the guidance Importing a road vehicle to Australia.
Top 10 hybrid cars you can now import from Japan after rule change
Motorists in Australia now have a broader choice of vehicles that can be privately imported. Here are our Top 10 fuel-miser picks.
Sweeping changes to Australia’s road vehicle legislation – rolled out in various stages since July 2021 – means motorists can privately import a broader choice of new, near-new and used cars.
It’s not open slather – and there are restrictions on the type of cars that are eligible – but if you’re in the market for a fuel-miser, you could be in luck.
While private vehicle importing was previously restricted to niche models, new regulations have opened the doors to more than 400 hybrid, electric, performance or special mobility vehicles. And the number of cars on the eligibility list keeps growing.
One notable restriction: vehicles on the eligibility list cannot be the same make and model as examples sold as new in Australia at the time of the vehicle’s manufacture.
Nevertheless, there is a vast range of fuel-miser cars that could help some buyers in Australia skip the queue.
Here are our Top 10 picks.
Robert S
So until their interests are threatened, they will do nothing about the multiple crises approaching. Until then they will plunder the treasury, which is what we are seeing at the moment.
Maybe the proposed changes to super offer an opportunity to “threaten their interests”?
I know of a building in Ultimo which is a veritable black hole. Might be a good place to put it.
Paul Keating has lashed Anthony Albanese’s AUKUS deal with the US and UK as “the worst international decision” by an Australian Labor government in more than 100 years, accusing the Prime Minister of tying the nation’s security in Asia to the US and the “gormless Brits”.
In a speech prepared ahead of a National Press Club appearance on Thursday, the former Labor prime minister said ALP members would “wince” at the agreement conceived by Scott Morrison but taken up by Mr Albanese with “unprecedented gusto”.
He blamed the outcome on the advice of Richard Marles and Penny Wong, who he branded as “seriously unwise ministers”.
“Signing the country up to the foreign proclivities of another country – the United States, with the gormless Brits, in their desperate search for relevance, lunging along behind is not a pretty sight,” Mr Keating said.
He said the agreement represented “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War One”.
“History will be the judge of this project in the end. But I want my name clearly recorded among those who say it is a mistake; Who believe that, despite its enormous cost, it does not offer a solution to the challenge of great power competition in the region or to the security of the Australian people and its continent,” Mr Keating said.
The Mahler and Empire-clock loving failed PM doesn’t say what he would do instead though.
Oz
The ALPBC hive certainly does have kittens when it comes to matters nuclear. Possibly listening to too much Midnight Oil in the 80s.
OldOzziesays:
March 15, 2023 at 12:25 pm
ChatGPT-4 just passed the bar exam, scoring in the 90th percentile. It crushed a bunch of other advanced tests too. Check out these numbers.
You’ve been reading a lot about ChatGPT lately and that lingering feeling you can’t seem to shake is your correct assumption that the world as we know it will never be the same.
I suspect that a lot of administrative legal questions (and questions related to the written law – ROBODEBT anyone) are quite mechanical. Feed in the relevant laws and regulations, fill in your personal details, and the answer, according to the written law, comes out.
The only possibility of the answer differing from the law is if the questioner enters inaccurate answers (in the case of ROBODEBT, commits fraud).
No.
Working out the crew rosters to accommodate gender equity and diversity quotas and paid parental leave for adopting trans couples will be the real head-scratcher.
And marching before dawn.
snort!
The Libs are wot did it, says Bowen.
If Liberals had their way, energy prices would increase 50 per cent: Chris Bowen (15 Mar)
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen says energy prices would be twice as high if not for the government’s price cap.
“If the Liberal Party had their way, these increases would have been 50 per cent, not 20 per cent,” Mr Bowen said on Wednesday.
“They walked into the parliament and voted against these interventions.
“They walked into the parliament and voted for even higher price rises.
“That’s what the Liberal Party wanted.”
Yah, Mr Turtle-san, I believe everything you say {eyeroll}. He really is getting worse by the day.
HMAS Working Families
HMAS Knitted Kangaroo
HMAS Moving Forward
HMAS Town Mode
HMAS Clean Prosecutions Victoria
HMAS Cathedral Gate Repair Fund
HMAS Young
HMAS Naive
HMAS One Simple Trick
HMAS There Will Be No
Bruce of Newcastlesays:
March 15, 2023 at 12:33 pm
ChatGPT-4 just passed the bar exam
It’s being sued by lawyers for not being a certified lawyer.
‘Robot lawyer’ DoNotPay is being sued by a law firm because it ‘does not have a law degree’ (12 Mar)
But it knows every word of the relevant laws, regulations and case law. Do the sueing lawyers?
It’s not open slather – and there are restrictions on the type of cars that are eligible – but if you’re in the market for a fuel-miser, you could be in luck.
Of course not, it f’cking Australia!