Open Thread – Tues 16 May 2023


The Peasant Dance, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1568

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rosie
rosie
May 19, 2023 5:26 pm

Big Deal

Exactly.

JC
JC
May 19, 2023 5:26 pm

feelthebern says:
May 19, 2023 at 5:21 pm

JC, the royals reckon they were chased around Manhattan at speeds up to 80 miles per hour.
Where in Manhattan do you think that could have possibly happened?

There are only a couple of roads I can think of, Bern. The Westside HWY or the FDR Drive, which is on the east side. It would have to be at three in the morning though otherwise they’re just being bullshit drama queens. Also, if they were in fact doing 80 MPH, they were breaking the law and endangering others. Running away from paparazzi is no excuse for going at that sort of speed.

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 5:26 pm

Last night I tried out the Clam Bar in town.
They had a prawn cocktail on the menu so of course I partook.
Instead of the classic glass etc set-up it just came out like a platter of prawns.
I was most disappointed.

calli
calli
May 19, 2023 5:28 pm
Mother Lode
Mother Lode
May 19, 2023 5:28 pm

Why do the words “spit the dummy” spring to mind?

A smallpox dummy?

Dot
Dot
May 19, 2023 5:28 pm

Fifth in line to be Head of State of 15 countries. The very best of hands.

Gilas
Gilas
May 19, 2023 5:29 pm

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare says:
May 19, 2023 at 4:56 pm

the way that outfit is cruising it may be that your next post turns out to be your last.

Thank you for your concern Lizzie. I am thinking of formally notifying the “Team” before posting something “interesting”, and take it from there. There are a few of us who buck the general wokeness and, pounds to peanuts, we are already marked.
If worse comes to worst, they have a 3-strike policy before banning posters, and I’m still at zero.
As in my case, their T&C policies are liberally interpreted to be biased against non-leftards, but there has been some softening over the last 6-10 months. Prior to this, they would disappear comments without explanation, not giving the original poster an opportunity for “re-phrasing”.
The typical behaviour we all see on the online socials.

The issue that really riles is the emotionally damaged, professional victim’s unfettered freedom to make general racist or sexist (white+male = evil) accusations with zero evidence, this from some of the most arrogant and privileged people out there. Without any cautioning by the Team.

Work in progress..

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 5:29 pm

I don’t know whether to laugh at Grant’s farewell column or be concerned for his welfare.

I hope his WEB is good for his soul. Stan is just a guy who has chosen the wrong side. He should hook up with Bess and Jacinta Price, they’ll set him on a better course.

His time with SBS was ok, with CNN in Pakistan was actually heroic, with the ABC it’s been an increasingly lurid “racist” fantasy. No one cares about the colour of your integument son, it’s what’s inside your head and your character, as someone said once. Unfortunately that has been getting worse not better from what I can detect. Which is sad.

Come over to the right side Stan, and put lefty racial insanity behind you. You’ll feel much better.

(And don’t accuse me of racism or I’ll tell you about my particular heritage. Everyone has one.)

Dot
Dot
May 19, 2023 5:30 pm

Instead of the classic glass etc set-up it just came out like a platter of prawns.
I was most disappointed.

Ramsay hated that too.

“It’s a f^%$en prawn cocktail you donut, not a steak dinner!”

Tintarella di Luna
Tintarella di Luna
May 19, 2023 5:30 pm

…It was the same in Rose Bay, Dover Heights and even Vaucluse. Now many of those old homes are being bulldozed and in their place hideous mcmansions that all look the same are being erected, flaunting and reeking…”look at moi, look at moi, I’ve got lotsa dosh”

The Sunbather and I lived in Dover Heights for 8 years. My Mum and Dad came to stay with us from time to time. Ours was a very modest (and still is – our older son and his family now live in that house) and as Cassie says there are homes being torn down (three in a small section of street of which I speak) — Because of all the high walls and very few people to be seen my dear Italian mamma used to call it: Il cimitero dei vivi – the cemetery of the living

calli
calli
May 19, 2023 5:30 pm

Hi Ed!

Dot
Dot
May 19, 2023 5:33 pm

Because of all the high walls and very few people to be seen my dear Italian mamma used to call it: Il cimitero dei vivi – the cemetery of the living

Sounds like a Rodney Dangerfield appreciator.

“I tell ya, golf courses and cemeteries are the biggest wastes of prime real estate.”

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 5:37 pm

Navy looks to include culturally diverse hairstyles after upset with Perth Miss Universe contestant
Jessie Stoelwinder
The West Australian
Fri, 19 May 2023 2:00AM
Comments
Jessie Stoelwinder

The Department of Defence is looking to update its uniform policy to include culturally diverse hairstyles after a row involving a Miss Universe contestant from Perth and her braids.

Beauty pageant hopeful Vimbayi Hakutangwi joined the navy gap year program and was posted to HMAS Stirling to work with clearance divers following a tour around Australia.

But the 19-year-old said her dream job was marred by comments she allegedly received about her braids at work.

Hakutangwi explained her hairstyle is an important cultural connection to her Zimbabwean heritage.

“Someone pulled me up for my hair, saying I am only allowed one braid,” Hakutangwi told The West Australian.

“I said it was significant to my culture and I would write an essay to prove that — but why should I have to prove its significance to my African culture?”

Following her remarks, the Department of Defence has now revealed the armed forces are reviewing their hairstyle policy to be more inclusive for personnel.

In a statement to The West Australian, the department said: “The Royal Australian Navy does not currently have a specific policy for variation of hairstyles for cultural reasons, however, work to develop this policy is underway.”

“Rum, sodomy and the lash” was just the beginning…

thefrollickingmole
thefrollickingmole
May 19, 2023 5:39 pm

Last night I tried out the Clam Bar in town.

Im not one to cast aspersions on peoples life choices.
But there are limits…

Dont go fishing in waters Dot has marked as his own…
There would be men, of course, but they would be a by-product of the real storyline of my life

Gilas
Gilas
May 19, 2023 5:39 pm

Muddy says:
May 19, 2023 at 5:04 pm

My comment in response to yours was not intended to be adversarial.

No problem whatsoever, it was a good comment.
I was just providing some background.. and still extremely grateful I don’t share a life with that harridan, or others like her.

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 5:43 pm

Also had a nice fillet of John Dory in burnt butter.

Lysander
Lysander
May 19, 2023 5:45 pm
Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 5:46 pm

It’s unfortunate that Grant was given a bit of hurry-up by ABC viewers, but he did use his exaulted position as a commentator to spruik his pet hobbyhorse during a broadcast of the Coronation.

‘My Pet Hobbyhorse’…is that the title of the book he was promoting?

JC
JC
May 19, 2023 5:46 pm

Dory is a great fish. On burned butter it would be sublime.

Lysander
Lysander
May 19, 2023 5:48 pm

The fact that anyone reads Victoria’s Errors Done newspaper or site is worrying Rosie.

(Sorry I’m not deliberately picking fights with you today).

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
May 19, 2023 5:49 pm

Grilled of course JC.

Black Ball
Black Ball
May 19, 2023 5:50 pm

James Morrow:

So much for the story of the century.

Remember that whole conspiracy that obsessed so much of the media – including the ABC (and our very own fat lesbian)– and claimed that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin?

Lies, all lies, revealed by US special counsel John Durham in a bombshell revelation.

The basic outlines of Durham’s 305 page report go like this.

The Clinton campaign, worried about a surging Trump, comes up with the line that somehow the Republican candidate is colluding with Moscow.

To back it up, they channelled funds through their lawyer (much as Trump is alleged to have done to pay off Stormy Daniels) to pay for what became known as the Steele Dossier, an already debunked pile of rumours and innuendo.

Many of the claims in the dossier, including that the Russians had a tape of Trump being peed on by prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room (an unlikely scenario given the man is so paranoid about germs he doesn’t like shaking hands), were fed into the document by Clinton operatives.

And to make it all more weird, while intelligence officials knew that the Clinton camp had a scheme to launch phony claims about Trump and Russia to destabilise the campaign, they still launched a full-scale investigation, lending credibility to the claims.

This was all too good to be true for a left-leaning media in the US, where papers like the New York Times and Washington Post monetised their readers’ hatred of Trump into a profitable business model.

Naturally, “our” ABC was keen to get in on the act. At ABC HQ, Russia collusion was taken as an article of faith. News reports trumpeted the theory.

The ABC launched a podcast (still running today) called Russia, If You’re Listening, whose first episode asked: “What if Trump was caught in a Russian web, long before he even considered a career in politics?”

But the high (or low) watermark came via a three-part Four Corners special presented by Sarah Ferguson that travelled around the world looking into the “extraordinary allegations” (the ABC’s words) “that members of the Trump team, including possibly the President himself, actively colluded with Russia to subvert American democracy.”

In fairness, Ferguson talked to quite a number of people who thought the Russian collusion angle was complete nonsense.

But they were never presented sympathetically, with no more chance of getting a fair shake than the designated cad in a season of Married At First Sight. The whole point was to suggest they were stooges in a sinister plot to see Donald Trump installed in the Oval Office with Vladimir Putin in the role of puppet master, pulling the strings.

Instead, the three-parter went back again and again to the true believers like anti-Trump journalist Michael Isikoff to hammer home the message: well, we can’t prove it but this whole thing stinks pretty bad.

Well, it did stink. Just not in the way probably nine out of 10 journalists thought at the time.

For all the hyperventilating about Trump being a threat to democracy, this was a real effort to first swing an election and, then when that failed, delegitimise a president.

And they say it’s the Republicans who are “election deniers”.

Durham’s report makes this clear, forensically documenting the way in which FBI agents did everything they could to protect the Clinton campaign and the, ahem, “charitable” Clinton Foundation while unfairly and improperly targeting the Trump campaign on the basis of unsupported rumour.

To anyone not entirely emotionally invested in seeing Trump disgraced and Hillary Clinton made America’s first female president, the idea was insane, like the old anti-Catholic canard that JFK had a special hotline to the Vatican to take orders from the Pope.

And now we have conclusive proof that the whole thing was indeed made up, advanced by armed bureaucrats at the FBI and other so-called “alphabet agencies” who, along with an all too credulous and biased media, decided it was up to them to protect America from Trump.

Indeed, if Four Corners or anyone else wanted to do some real journalism about the broken state of American politics, they might look at the way federal law and intelligence agencies have become the Democrats’ de facto secret police, protecting the left while hounding conservatives.

We know the feds had a slow-walking investigation into Hunter Biden and that the Biden campaign colluded with the CIA to put out the lie that Hunter’s laptop was a sophisticated piece of Russian “disinformation”.

We also know that in the US, Catholic churches that say the Latin mass and school board meetings where parents object to biological males in their daughters’ change rooms have come under federal scrutiny as forums for dangerous alt-right ideas.

Less credulous or biased journos might look at all this and ask, “how come?”, rather than take gross rumours about Trump and kinky hotel room antics at face value.

Kudos to the ABC for at least allowing a newswire report conceding that Durham’s review found that “US and law enforcement did not possess any actual evidence of collusion between Mr Trump’s campaign and Russia prior to launching” their investigation into the Trump campaign onto their website.

But it is now over to ABC management to decide whether it is worth risking the wrath of the staff-run collective that is its Ultimo headquarters to append a correction or even retract the Four Corners report.

The question of whether taxpayers ever get a refund for this nonsense is, of course, a foregone conclusion.

rosie
rosie
May 19, 2023 5:50 pm

I’ve noticed that the large commuter carpark one station along, is still only a quarter full.
Pre covid if you weren’t there by seven forget about it.
Elon doesn’t like people working from home

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 5:52 pm

The highlight – in a crowded field – of quotes in the latest Please Explain posted by areff at 4.36:

I’m Alboriginal!

Gold. Pure, solid rolled gold.

Oh my Lord that was good.

rosie
rosie
May 19, 2023 5:53 pm

What’s wrong with the less than progressive Herald Sun Lysander.
I don’t really read it, but sometimes the stories that pop up in my feed pique a little interest.
And Susie O’Brien has her name on the Shepparton story which is probably deeply racist.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 5:54 pm

I’m selling my Ford. This is even too gay for me.

I was wondering if it was the electric version, which’d be perfect.
But I think it’s probably the petrol one.
Still, what self-respecting tradie would drive around in a qwerty-themed ute?

rosie
rosie
May 19, 2023 5:55 pm

Actually I don’t read the HS on line because I can’t get past the paywall.
I also link to the Guardian, the Daily Mail etc.

Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 5:55 pm

I’ve noticed that the large commuter carpark one station along, is still only a quarter full.
Pre covid if you weren’t there by seven forget about it.

How many are still working from home…and how many have decamped to QLD?

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 5:57 pm

mole at 3.45, and apropos of sTan:

When you ask the makeup ladies to apply the “hint of mahogany” foundation before you go on screen isnt there some tiny, withered, long ignored part of your mind screaming “fraud’ as you see the skin tones darken in the mirror?

That screaming would be drowned out by the frontal lobe hollering ‘Cash!’.

If Elbow had competent advisors they’d have told him to tell Grant to walk away, and that Gummint would tip him in for the remainder of his contract – such is the damage he’s doing to the Yes vote.

However, don’t overestimate the little noodlers.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 5:58 pm

Encore:

I’m Alboriginal!

Aaaaahahahhahaaaa.

rosie
rosie
May 19, 2023 5:59 pm

You know I suspect Pauline’s suggestion that people meet the high bar of successful native title claims would crimp a lot of people. Thorpe is Yorta Yorta (failed native claim) and Gunakurnai (successful native title claim)

rosie
rosie
May 19, 2023 6:01 pm

Pretty sure it’s working from home.
Everyone I know in office work is still doing work from home, up to three days a week.

Lysander
Lysander
May 19, 2023 6:03 pm

What’s wrong with the less than progressive Herald Sun Lysander.

Hmmm…

The Pell pile-on
Trump666
Pro Higgins
Anti Ben Roberts
Pro fluid genderism
Pro AGW BS
Pro Voice

Shall I go on?

I’ll admit they have the occasional conservative writer on which is better than what the Always Bashing Christians outlet’s modus operandi but it’s still a heap of shit.

Lysander
Lysander
May 19, 2023 6:03 pm

Blockquote fail above. face/palm

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 6:04 pm

Three million dollars would be a reasonable start. Just saying.

ABC offered to ‘make amends’ to Bruce Lehrmann over National Press Club address before he launched legal proceedings against the broadcaster (19 May)

The ABC offered to “make amends” to Bruce Lehrmann over its broadcast of a National Press Club address by Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame.

The offer was cited in a defence filed by the national broadcaster on Thursday in defamation proceedings launched by Mr Lehrmann in the Federal Court.

Lawyers for the ABC claim they made the offer in a letter to Mr Lehrmann’s lawyer Mark O’Brien on April 4 – in response to a letter from his lawyers almost two weeks earlier – but his legal team did not respond to the offer, instead commencing legal proceedings the next day.

Do I detect a disturbance in the farce? That perhaps they think they’re on shaky ground? Gooood.
Some contempt of court and perverting the course of justice charges might focus a few minds.

Lysander
Lysander
May 19, 2023 6:05 pm
Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 6:09 pm

Bye bye Stan.

Lysander
Lysander
May 19, 2023 6:10 pm

I see Elon is allowing twitter users with da blue tick to now upload videos that are up to two hours’ long.

Is this a “shot” at YouTube?

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
May 19, 2023 6:11 pm

Watching Nein News.
Young Asian kid stabbed to death at Sunshine station.
Even on the grainy CCTV and with the alleged perpetrators wearing covid masks, I could give a pretty good description of them.
Plod Spokeslady stumbles over her words … “was accosted by the team … err … group … of other young children … ”
Obviously promoted during the Nixon-Overland era.
Can’t say the g-word … “gang”.
And certainly can’t say it coupled with “African”.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 6:11 pm

oops, sorry, forgot. Not allowed to be a trained epidemiologist on this blog.
Even though I am.

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 6:12 pm

“I don’t know whether to laugh at Grant’s farewell column or be concerned for his welfare.”

I suspect it’s all that tanning lotion he’s lathered on his body, can’t be good for him.

Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 6:13 pm

Pretty sure it’s working from home. Everyone I know in office work is still doing work from home, up to three days a week.

Too lazy check ABS stats atm, but Victorian number plates spotted in these parts suggest the exodus continues. If only they left their socialism behind.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 6:14 pm

I travel quite a way to my dance classes and have to go along New South Head road and the bridge.
I tend to go now on Mondays and Fridays, eschewing Wednesdays, because the traffic is lighter around both ends of the weekend during the peak hours; people are ‘working from home’. Midweek is the really busy time now.

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
May 19, 2023 6:14 pm

Stan leaving Q&A is good.
I reckon he’s kicking off the manacles so he can go full Kurdaitcha Man on the racists who won’t accept Voice juju.
Stan’s ego and bile should be an effective turn off for the average punter.

Lysander
Lysander
May 19, 2023 6:16 pm

A good one to start the weekend with, Hey You! Get Off of My Cloud!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYgJZ79FmBo

Have a great weekend!!!

Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 6:18 pm

Also had a nice fillet of John Dory in burnt butter.

I always burn butter…is this a special talent I’m naturally gifted with?

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 6:18 pm

“We can have respect for different views without engaging in vilification and that’s important.”

I agree Mr Albanese but I noted your silence when it came to the rights of Kellie-Jay Keen, Moira Deeming, Pauline Hanson, Mark Latham and others to speak their “different views”?

Ahhhhhhh I know, those rights are selective, aren’t they? You sleazy hypocrite.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 6:19 pm

Bye bye Stan.

He’ll have plenty of time to promote his new book.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 6:20 pm

Stan’s ego and bile should be an effective turn off for the average punter.

As effective as Adam Goodes raising a spear on the footie field at the crowd.

thefrollickingmole
thefrollickingmole
May 19, 2023 6:21 pm

Without commenting on the veracity of the claims against the chap, this is a prime example of why making “getting older” the only qualification for respect/office is a crap idea.

Robert ‘Locky’ Eccles fronts Warrnambool Magistrates Court accused of historic child sex offences

Full details of the child sexual abuse charges issued to a south-west Victorian Koori Court elder have been released for the first time.

I know plenty of pisswrecks who are very undeserving of any respect, despite advancing age.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
May 19, 2023 6:23 pm

I prefer the Scottish version “Hey McLeod get off my ewe”.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 6:25 pm

Lysander, who got that double mastectomy and why? Your link is paywalled.

Muddy
Muddy
May 19, 2023 6:25 pm

If irony were human, would it be female or male?

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 6:27 pm

I will bowl now*.

Imran Khan Is In A Standoff With Police Who Have Surrounded His House (19 May)

Meanwhile, here’s where things stand Thursday regarding the showdown outside Khan’s residence, according to regional media:

Pakistani police kept up their siege around the home of Imran Khan as a 24-hour deadline given to the former PM to hand over suspects ‘sheltered inside’ expired on Thursday afternoon. The siege and the authorities’ demand for the suspects, wanted in violent protests over Khan’s recent detention, has angered the former prime minister’s supporters and is raising concerns about more clashes between them and the security forces.

Imran Khan was freed from custody over the weekend and returned to his home in an upscale district of Lahore. Dozens of his supporters have been staying there with him, along with private guards. Police, who on Wednesday surrounded the residence, say they want 40 suspects handed over. The ultimatum for Khan ends at 2 p.m. local time.

Interesting clash between the University of Sydney’s strike bowler and the Paki military, who hate his guts. A spell of devastating reverse swing is needed.

(*From Kerry O’Keefe’s memorable account of Imran playing for my old uni against North Sydney:

Imran Khan and the Sydney University maiden (2017) )

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
May 19, 2023 6:29 pm

Also, if they were in fact doing 80 MPH, they were breaking the law and endangering others. Running away from paparazzi is no excuse for going at that sort of speed.

Not 100 pussent sure if this is true, but I did hear of a woman being killed in Paris a few years ago when her driver did just that.

Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 6:29 pm

oops, sorry, forgot. Not allowed to be a trained epidemiologist on this blog.
Even though I am.

Just stay in your lane and you’ll be right.

If your thesis was on hand washing in emerging world hospitals (with data drawn from personal observation in Indonesia), don’t pretend to be an authority on the efficacy of the vaccines.

For a fee.

On the ABC.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 6:35 pm

Thorpe is Yorta Yorta (failed native claim) and Gunakurnai (successful native title claim)

I’m sure her single great grandparent on one side will still stand her in good stead.

Her dad won’t be of much help though. lol.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 19, 2023 6:36 pm

Picture our koalas and quokkas struggling in hostile habitats

It doesn’t get much more hostile than Rotto in February unless you are on the back of someone else’s boat with something cold in your hand.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
May 19, 2023 6:36 pm

Full details of the child sexual abuse charges issued to a south-west Victorian Koori Court elder have been released for the first time.

I heard something about this, in that there was a suggestion the case might have to be moved because his “fellow magistrates” couldn’t hear a case against one of their “colleagues”.
I do hope this isn’t an attempt to put it in the “too hard basket”.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 19, 2023 6:42 pm

Grant described as a “long-standing ABC host.”

Six years would barely qualify you for a Quentin Dumpster long goodbye. Long standing ALPBC hosts die in the job. And there’s been a few.

Indolent
Indolent
May 19, 2023 6:44 pm
Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 6:44 pm

Last night I watched Michael Malice’s Youtube talk with Andy Ngo. It’s a great conversation, high recommended. Andy Ngo is a very thoughtful, considered, and polite man. Like Malice, Andy is right of centre politically and is gay, so it was interesting hearing Ngo’s take on homosexuality, transgenderism, political violence and Antifa. Ngo, though born in the USA, is the child of Vietnamese refugees who fled South Vietnam after the Communists took over and Malice is the child of Jewish refuseniks who left the Soviet Union in the 1980s (I think Malice was born in the Soviet Union, in Ukraine). Anyway, whilst both are “right of centre”, they differ in how they identify politically and philosophically on the right, as Malice is a radical anarcho-libertarian whereas Ngo is a classical liberal. Ngo is the victim of political violence in Portland at the hands of Antifa, however despite that, he’s very against any kind of violence being used by the right. He spoke at length about Antifa and how the movement attracts a lot of violent and mentally ill transgender people and he spoke about the grooming of children that is happening. Ngo, a gay man, said that the transgender movement and the explosion of such sinister predatory activities as “drag queen story hour” perhaps confirms that heterosexuals have always been right to worry about the slippery slope and that toleration of homosexuality and transgenderism has opened a very sinister can of predatory worms. Andy Ngo is a brave man who speaks truth.

calli
calli
May 19, 2023 6:45 pm

If irony were human, would it be female or male?

How DARE you assume irony’s gender!

Black Ball
Black Ball
May 19, 2023 6:45 pm

Ask and ye shall receive Lizzie:

El Chaston is at peace. With life. With their gender identity. And after years of internal struggle, their body.

It’s taken 21 years to get here. But just weeks before their 21st birthday, Chaston became their truest self, undergoing a removal of their breast tissue – essentially a double mastectomy, or “top surgery” – to reflect their non-binary identity.

After years of pain – physical and mental – it “all just washed away”.

“Growing up, I never felt comfortable with my chest,” Chaston said. “I always felt like it was something I wasn’t super associated with.

“Growing up, it was very much that you were a girl or a boy. But for me, I did not align with my assigned gender (of female).

“I just had to live with it, even though I was super uncomfortable.

“I really hated getting changed in front of the mirror and stuff. I just didn’t feel comfortable looking at my chest or associating with my chest. At all.

“I was uncomfortable in the clothes I was wearing and every day it was a battle to try and find comfort in my own body.”

The Melbourne local always battled to find their place – where they “fit”.

“I couldn’t put a name to what I felt that I was,” they said.

It wasn’t until the likes of former Gold Coast AFL Women’s player Tori Groves-Little – more on them later – and Carlton goalkicker Darcy Vescio revealed they identified as non-binary that Chaston felt the light bulb start to flicker.

Earlier this month Hawthorn captain Tilly Lucas-Rodd also revealed they now identified as non-binary.

Black Ball
Black Ball
May 19, 2023 6:47 pm

There’s more, but I am trying to eat dinner. Article came with a picture of the woman with scars where her breasts once were. FMD.
I will post the rest later

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 19, 2023 6:49 pm

Last night I tried out the Clam Bar in town.

Phrasing please.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 6:49 pm

How DARE you assume irony’s gender!

Irony is female.
Ships are built of iron.
Ships are female (she/her).

Ed Case
Ed Case
May 19, 2023 6:50 pm

… they differ in how they identify politically and philosophically on the right, as Malice is a radical anarcho-libertarian whereas Ngo is a classical liberal.
Get real.
Libertarianism was started by Trotskyites, you can’t get more loony Left than them and Classical Liberal means firmly on the Left [though not amongst the ranks of the insane].

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 6:52 pm

If your thesis was on hand washing in emerging world hospitals (with data drawn from personal observation in Indonesia), don’t pretend to be an authority on the efficacy of the vaccines.

Roger, mine was on HIV and Acquired Immune Deficiency and got me invited to visit the School of Public Health at Stanford. A very new area of epidemiological research at the time in the late 80’s and early 90’s. My work was from the Faculty of Medicine at Sydney University not some tin-pot outfit. There was a cross-faculty lunch for me as well, hosted by the School. It was all a lot of fun, some great people with good minds, years before woke emerged to spoil genuine enquiry.

I do get sick of the frost if I occasionally mention my scholarship and academic experiences here in the natural course of some comment. There is something very unpleasant about it, far more than anyone else receives. I turns me off being here. I am not big noting myself, as some claim. I am simply old and have had a varied life.

calli
calli
May 19, 2023 6:54 pm

Of course iron is Fe male.

Or does that make it Bi? Or Bivalent?

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 6:56 pm

“Libertarianism was started by Trotskyites, you can’t get more loony Left than them and Classical Liberal means firmly on the Left [though not amongst the ranks of the insane].

Ed, put the pipe down.

Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 6:58 pm

I’ve no problem with that, Lizzie.

Provided the aforementioned caveat stands.

As I’m sure it does with you.

I mean, if we’re going to hold nurses legally accountable for acting outside their scope of practice, to the point of losing their registration, shouldn’t the same standard apply to epidemiologists?

Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
May 19, 2023 6:58 pm

I’ve always known that hooning through the bush in yer dual cab ute is totes gay- I didn’t really need that vision of twin thrusting chassis covered in each other’s sh*t to bring it home.

bespoke
bespoke
May 19, 2023 6:58 pm
feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 7:00 pm

(I think Malice was born in the Soviet Union, in Ukraine)

He was.
Then grew up in Brooklyn.
Now lives in Austin.
Like many New Yorkers, he never learned to drive.
So he’s currently getting driving lessons from a Nascar driver.
He’s promised to post videos.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 7:01 pm

“I really hated getting changed in front of the mirror and stuff. I just didn’t feel comfortable looking at my chest or associating with my chest. At all.

Breasts are for feeding your baby. Did you ever look further down? You are well-equipped there too.

There is no such thing as non-binary in nature. You are female. A woman. Get used to it and stop mutilating yourself to pretend otherwise.

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 7:02 pm

“feelthebernsays:
May 19, 2023 at 7:00 pm”

Thanks Bern, I really like Malice.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 7:03 pm

I mean, if we’re going to hold nurses legally accountable for acting outside their scope of practice, to the point of losing their registration, shouldn’t the same standard apply to epidemiologists?

I’ve no argument with that. I doubt if Jay Battacharia from Stanford would have on either.

Vicki
Vicki
May 19, 2023 7:08 pm

Vicki your friend should set up a trust for her grandchildren to bypass the parents. Will come as a nice surprise at will reading time. They will still be able to make a claim but a very nice FU.

GreyRanga – I doubt if my friend would want to go down that track. She loves her family – which, of course, is now pretending the past didn’t happen. And re the trust option. Still fraught with dangers by courts that insist on giving everyone a crack at what you accumulated in your lifetime.

We have been quite involved just pre Covid in determining our own options. It’s never perfect, and relationships change with the weather in some families! Mine is going through the perfect storm at the moment, as a result of a troubled youngster who, like most young men, is making some classic whoppers of mistakes. Grandparents to the (emotional) rescue. Daughter not handling it – threw us out of her house (again!) on Mothers Day when our commentary didn’t suit. C’est la Vie. But every action has its cost.

Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 7:08 pm

I’ve no argument with that. I doubt if Jay Battacharia from Stanford would have on either.

Alas, several local “covid stars” didn’t see it that way.

They were more than happy to front up to the cameras and the microphones and disseminate misinformation and they’ve never been held to account.

As a retired professional, albeit in another field, I find this extraordinary.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 7:10 pm

Joe Biden won’t apologise for Hiroshima bombing on G7 visit
US president puts focus on the future as he pays respects to 140,000 killed by atomic bomb
Richard Lloyd Parry, Hiroshima
Thursday May 18 2023, 6.30pm, The Times
GETTY IMAGES
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President Biden will pay “respects” to the 140,000 killed by America’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima but will not offer an apology as he visits the city for the G7 summit.

Biden will join other G7 leaders, including Rishi Sunak, on a visit to the famous Peace Park and museum which commemorate the world’s first atomic bombing. They will be led by the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, MP for a Hiroshima constituency and whose family originally came from the city.

But according to the president’s aides, he will offer no apology, or comment on the morality of the bombing. “The president won’t be making a statement at the peace memorial park,” the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said. “This is him as one of the G7 leaders coming to pay respects.”

The US national security council spokesman, John Kirby, said: “The president plans to visit the memorial and to pay his respects to the lives of the innocents who were killed in the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. The focus of the trip [is] the future.”

Biden, who arrived in Hiroshima on Thursday, will become the second sitting US president to visit the city after Barack Obama in 2016. Like him, he will do everything he can to avoid the question: was it morally right to drop the bomb or not?

G7 leaders are united in their condemnation of Russia’s deadly bombing of civilians in Ukraine. But the death toll there is tiny compared with the 140,000 who died in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by 70,000 more in Nagasaki three days later.

Most Americans believe that the bomb ended the Second World War and saved the lives of countless American soldiers who were preparing for a land invasion of the Japanese mainland. But many Japanese, and some western historians, believe that the bomb was dropped on an exhausted nation which was already on the verge of surrender.

Kishida was born and grew up in Tokyo but he makes much of his family’s origins in Hiroshima, where relatives died in the bombing. He is expected to escort the G7 leaders around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which contains relics of the calamity, such as the bloodstained clothes of children killed by the bomb and watches stopped at 8.15am, the moment it fell.

“I would like to demonstrate our commitment to peace in Hiroshima,” Kishida said this week. “I hope this summit will be etched in history.

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 7:11 pm

Malice recently published a book called The White Pill.
Google is your friend if you are interested.
I rarely have to put a book down (I didn’t find American Psycho hard going apart from when Bateman killed the dog).
But I found I really struggled reading what Malice wrote about Beria.
Really dark stuff.

C.L.
C.L.
May 19, 2023 7:12 pm

was it morally right to drop the bomb..?

No.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 7:15 pm

Vicki, sorry to hear about the recent family dramas with a grandson . We’ve had some too, but of a medical nature. It can all become very wrenching, so my sympathies.

Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 7:15 pm

QLD’s Minister for Women (among other things; it’s a shallow talent pool) and Palaszckuk’s heir apparent, Shannon Fentiman, has decisively answered the dreaded “What is a woman?’ question:

A women is anyone who identifies as such, including a male with testicles.

Standing by for the LNP response…once the focus group reports come in.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 19, 2023 7:15 pm

Good to see Lord Waffleworth giving himself a pat on the back in this weeks Media Watchdog. Those deal making skills seem to have been lost by the time he fulfilled his destiny and became PM. Potential Greatness torn down before its prime.

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 7:16 pm

What gets me about Beria was that not only was he calling the shots on how to terrorise citizens, he also participated personally with gusto.

bespoke
bespoke
May 19, 2023 7:16 pm

was it morally right to drop the bomb..?

No.

Yes.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 7:17 pm

They were more than happy to front up to the cameras and the microphones and disseminate misinformation and they’ve never been held to account.

Yes. The female from UNSW was particularly egregious.

WolfmanOz
May 19, 2023 7:18 pm

Farmer Gez says:
May 19, 2023 at 6:14 pm
Stan leaving Q&A is good.
I reckon he’s kicking off the manacles so he can go full Kurdaitcha Man on the racists who won’t accept Voice juju.
Stan’s ego and bile should be an effective turn off for the average punter.

Ditto.

Personally I find him a racist narcissist and the less I hear of him the better.

calli
calli
May 19, 2023 7:19 pm

It had to end, C.L.

It ended badly. Some conflicts just do.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 7:19 pm

Or does that make it Bi?

Bi is Bi, Fe is Fe, Calli. I once worked at a copper-gold-bismuth mine. We roasted the concentrate and then quenched it in water. That dissolved out the copper as a bright blue copper sulfate solution. My job was to run the thickener and belt filter. After the copper sulfate was dissolved the remaining solid stuff was bismuth, gold and iron oxide. A nice brick red colour. Once it was washed on my belt filter it went over to the gold plant where it was mixed with cyanide to dissolve out the gold. The bismuth and iron residue was then sent to a storage dam because there wasn’t a market for the bismuth in those days. Thousands of tonnes of bismuth stored in the dam, I have no idea if they eventually recovered it all. That was in 1980. Archaic Aussie mining and metallurgy history. The roasting process was nearly unique and rather innovative.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 19, 2023 7:20 pm

A women is anyone who identifies as such, including a male with testicles.

Don’t need a Venn diagram for that one.

C.L.
C.L.
May 19, 2023 7:20 pm

OK, time for the biggest question of the week to be answered…

Why TF does Jeff Kennett continue to shave his head like that?

bespoke
bespoke
May 19, 2023 7:20 pm

Yes it was C.L.

They wouldn’t have hesitated doing the same nor agonised about it years later.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
May 19, 2023 7:21 pm

Rogersays:

May 19, 2023 at 6:58 pm

I’ve no problem with that, Lizzie.

Provided the aforementioned caveat stands.

As I’m sure it does with you.

I mean, if we’re going to hold nurses legally accountable for acting outside their scope of practice …

Hold that thought.

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 7:23 pm

“But I found I really struggled reading what Malice wrote about Beria.
Really dark stuff.”

Beria was an utterly evil, evil man, Stalin’s personal strangler.

Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 7:23 pm

Yes. The female from UNSW was particularly egregious.

The very one.

But not the only one.

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 7:24 pm

From Wiki.

Beria was executed separately; he allegedly pleaded on his knees before collapsing to the floor wailing.[62] He was shot through the forehead by General Pavel Batitsky.[63] His final moments bore great similarity to those of his own predecessor, Nikolai Yezhov, who begged for his life before his execution in 1940.[64] Beria’s body was cremated and the remains buried in Communal Grave No. 3 at Donskoi Monastery Cemetery in Moscow.[65]

They all turn to jelly when the tables are turned.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 19, 2023 7:25 pm

With sTan and Noel going off reservation (can we even say this?) Albo’s job of selling the vibe isn’t getting any easier.

WesternDecliner
May 19, 2023 7:26 pm

Feelthebern – is Ricky Bobby going driving lessons now. That would definitely be a Shake & Bake experience

calli
calli
May 19, 2023 7:27 pm

It has to be Friday night at the Cat.

Dumb chemistry jokes and anecdotes…philosophical ruminating on the Bomb…

and King Jeff’s haircut.

Time for some music.

Black Ball
Black Ball
May 19, 2023 7:27 pm

Completion of article about lady lopping off her boobs:

Chaston – a believer that there are “no insignificant moments in life” – travelled to Sydney ahead of the last AFLW season last August, and found themselves grounded in a gate lounge after three consecutive flight delays. There was time to think. And to take the next step.

A WhatsApp message to the playing group was formulated, drafted and edited. They consulted with ex-teammate and best friend Chloe Molloy – who Chaston credits with being a vital part of their journey – and then it was sent.

“I’m still trying to work out who I really am,” the message read in part, indicating a preference to trial gender-neutral pronouns within the club.

“I’m not 100 per cent sure on this but I’d really like to try in a space where I feel comfortable and safe and, for me, that’s the footy club.”

The phone was immediately switched to airplane mode and turned over on the floor. Chaston’s reaction was visceral.

“I just completely broke down,” they recalled. “The weight was lifted.”

The enormous support that followed was just as overwhelming.

“It was just incredible … (my teammates said) ‘We want to do this for you. We want to help you feel like the best version of you,’” Chaston said.

“To this day, out of all my sporting achievements – getting drafted, playing a debut game, captain of my NAB League (Under 18s) side, back to basketball days, nothing beats that sporting memory of having a team come to me and being like, ‘We’ve got you.’

“I think that speaks volumes of AFLW.”

Then there was telling their family – parents Paul and Trish, and three brothers.

“I wanted to make sure that by Pride Round (of last AFLW season) I was really open and proud with my identity,” they said. “I’d become very affirmed and confident that this is the best way for me to identify. I felt like it really affirmed the way I felt about myself.

“I started the conversations with my parents and my family, saying that being like this is the best way for me to feel like the truest version of El.

“Nothing actually changes about me. It’s just the way that you refer to me is slightly different.

“My parents processed what I had just explained and took further time to get further education around gender identity. For them, they hadn’t really known anyone else that had identified like that.

“It is now a really natural thing around my family.”

If “Why?” is the first question normally put to Chaston, the second is generally along the lines of, “Does this mean you’re transitioning (to male)?”

That’s not the case, they affirmed.

Chaston – who was also an elite junior basketballer – had been binding their chest for two years leading up to their non-binary revelation, for almost every minute of the day, except when playing football, in a bid to give the appearance of a flat chest.

Binders – high compression garments that aim to flatten the appearance of breasts – were hard to come by and expensive, prompting Chaston to explore Facebook Marketplace for second-hand options.

“Prior to that, I would wear two sports bras – all the time,” they said.

“Whether I was at sport, home, school, sleeping, everything. It was always very compressed on my chest.

“I was already doing major damage. Then I went to binding. When people ask me about binders, I say they’re great for affirming the way you want to feel about your body, but they’re terrible for your chest. And you’ve got to have really good binding practices, which I had none of.”

Medical professionals advise binders be removed at night, and warn that wearing binders that are too tight can cause underlying damage.

“It was a case of, if I don’t wear the binder, yes my chest doesn’t hurt as much, but mentally I really struggle because I feel uncomfortable, I don’t like the way shirts sit on me, I don’t like looking at myself in the mirror. I’m not seeing a reflection of how I view myself,” Chaston said.

“Then I’d put the binder on – alleviate all the mental side, but have to deal with really sore ribs, back, chest hurting, can’t really breathe – all those types of things.”

Baggy shirts and binders couldn’t be worn on the football field. “A footy jersey – they’re not very forgiving on the best of days,” Chaston laughs.

“I remember my first season, photo day. I wore my two sports bras as tight as I could. I remember getting the photos back and I was like, ‘Oh, great photos but … you can tell I’ve got boobs.’

“It didn’t really sit well with me. The next year, I wore a binder. When we got them back … I was like, ‘That’s how I want to look all the time.’ That is the most affirming photo of me.

“All of a sudden I was like, for my mental health and physical health, I can’t keep binding.”

Chaston believes there are no insignificant moments.

Actually there is more but I won’t continue with this. You get the drift.

Megan
Megan
May 19, 2023 7:32 pm

Actually there is more but I won’t continue with this. You get the drift

Yes, the mentally disordered ramblings someone with deep personal angst who needs everyone, everywhere to know and admire her for it.

Fail from me, dearie.

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 7:33 pm

Turns out the US didn’t kill a high ranking Al Qaeda chap via drone strike in Syria earlier this month.
They killed a poor farmer.
When is there going to be some form of accountability?

Roger
Roger
May 19, 2023 7:34 pm

It has to be Friday night at the Cat.

Dumb chemistry jokes and anecdotes…philosophical ruminating on the Bomb…

and King Jeff’s haircut.

As is my wont, I’m retiring early.

But have at it.

Good night!

Ed Case
Ed Case
May 19, 2023 7:35 pm

Beria was executed separately; he allegedly pleaded on his knees before collapsing to the floor wailing.[62] He was shot through the forehead by General Pavel Batitsky.[63]
You can safely say this is bullshit.
There was a Coup in the Soviet Union in 1953.
Stalin was poisoned, there was a tank attack on Beria’s house and no one’s seen him from that day to this.
Following the Coup, Kruschchev transferred The Crimea to a newly formed Ukraine SSR,
That’s the root cause of the present problems.

shatterzzz
May 19, 2023 7:39 pm

If he’s taking time off temporarily, as is likely the case because none of those Their ABC worms seem to ever resign, is he still drawing down a salary because the taxpayer would be paying for this bullshit, and as we’re running a big debt, it would be nice of him to at the very least take leave without pay.

I thought he’d , actually, quit but “taking-time-off” sounds more the style .. After all, a 251 foregoing money voluntarily isn’t part of the ‘culture’ .. whereas whingeing in the background, on full pay, is full-on Brucie approval …….

Robert Sewell
May 19, 2023 7:39 pm

Calli:

What, exactly, did he think would happen? Does he really think he has some magical powers that shield him from criticism?

Like a lot of the people who are pushing themselves into positions of power and influence on the Invoice, yes, they do think they are protected – merely by the colour of their skin.

It’s Remarkable
It’s Remarkable
May 19, 2023 7:40 pm

So it seems it is ‘indigenous round’ in the various rugby codes. Watching the version being acted out in Brisbane atm.
The crowd are bored out of their minds.
The teams are wondering what it is all about.
A few obese partly indigenous people with paint on them perform some kind of dance while the most obese makes some inane comments that is supposed to be a welcome to country.
Seems to me that if this Voice madness gets up we will have this rubbish on stilts.
It is embarrassing, kitsch, and subversive.
Yet most people seem perfectly OK with it all.
Maybe once it impacts on their personal circumstances it will be different, but too late then.

calli
calli
May 19, 2023 7:40 pm

For engineering enthusiasts, Hoover dam is on SBS.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 7:42 pm

was it morally right to drop the bomb..?

I don’t know about the morality, but the Japanese surrendered soon afterwards.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 7:46 pm

It has to be Friday night at the Cat.

Our icon Roger Moore in action:

Nobody Does It Better • Carly Simon (1977)

I’ve always liked Jaws. Being kicked off a train was unkind.

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 7:46 pm

Looking in the cupboard for a snack and I find a tin of gourmet Turkish delight I was given months ago.
I purposely hid it so I wouldn’t scoff the lot.
But now I’m feeling like going the full Edmund on it.

Robert Sewell
May 19, 2023 7:49 pm

Luigi:

We can have respect for different views without engaging in vilification and that’s important.

Calli:

Sez Luigi the Unbelievable. Someone put this in the Remembery.
It needs to come back to haunt the little creep.

From the Vilificator Primus, he’s like the bloke who murdered his parents and demands leniency because he’s an orphan.
Bloody hypocritical Trotskyist – he’s the source of more vilification, bad blood, and ill feeling than any ten people.

Ed Case
Ed Case
May 19, 2023 7:50 pm

The Japanese had been trying to surrender for 2 years, but their Terms weren’t acceptable.
4 days after the bomb was dropped, those same Terms suddenly became acceptable.
How about that?
Meanwhile, the US had lost 120,000 dead soldiers for no reason.

calli
calli
May 19, 2023 7:53 pm

But now I’m feeling like going the full Edmund on it.

It’s cold, but not snowing yet. You might be safe.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 19, 2023 7:53 pm

I’ve never had the urge to lop my bits off over a delayed fight. The QANTAS Club was good for something.

H B Bear
H B Bear
May 19, 2023 7:56 pm

Nothing like a complimentary VB to take your mind off things.

shatterzzz
May 19, 2023 7:56 pm

Why TF does Jeff Kennett continue to shave his head like that?

Maybe he’s got my problem .. lost all mine during chemo and although the bloody stuff still grows it is comes up as a patchy stick-up half inch fuzz, if left, so I shave it off everyday …
One thing I’ve really hated since the Cancer/chemo is having to stay bald ….. I luvved my hair ..!

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 8:00 pm

The Latrell show about to start.

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 8:02 pm

Longest welcome to country ever.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 8:02 pm

Daughter not handling it – threw us out of her house (again!) on Mothers Day

I have had this happen too, Vicki. Some years ago now, but it is very distressing. My daughter yelled at me to get out of her house one time we were staying there and I would have gone straight to a motel except that Hairy intervened. We still have a fairly fractured relationship. I never get a Mother’s Day present from her, but I do get a call from the grandies, with her in the background saying a terse Happy Mother’s Day. She’s very loving with Hairy. Mothers and daughters. They say it isn’t easy, but sometimes you don’t think you’ve asked for what you get.

feelthebern
feelthebern
May 19, 2023 8:02 pm

Still going.

Old Lefty
Old Lefty
May 19, 2023 8:06 pm

The Stalinist pervert perjure -pimps from Arseholes Broadcasting Communism indulging in yet more Stalinist pervert perjure-pimpery over the Lehmann case:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-19/abc-defence-bruce-lehrmann-defamation-case-national-press-club/102367618

shatterzzz
May 19, 2023 8:06 pm

Yet most people seem perfectly OK with it all.

If you follow the game(s) you aren’t given a choice .. no one bothers to ask the folk who pay the entrance money what they would like ..
personally, these dayz I don’t go to games anymore .. I watch on TV and never switch on until at least 5 minutes after the scheduled start to avoid the dross .. and ALWAYS mute the sound …….

Robert Sewell
May 19, 2023 8:07 pm

Feelthebern:

Also had a nice fillet of John Dory in burnt butter.

They burnt you meal and had the nerve to serve it anyway?
I hope you sent it back!

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 8:07 pm

Ed – Mate, that was the silliest comment about the Japanese capitulation that I’ve ever read. The Japanese weren’t trying to surrender for two years, that was totally not bushido. It was the bomb which created the shock factor that allowed Hirohito to leverage his own imperial prestige to get the players to accept surrender, especially the war party. Who where pretty out there nuts.

Robert Frezza has a fine military SF trilogy based on Japanese military culture in conflict with Finnish infantry doctrine. Sadly not on ebook, the first I see is $948.61 for a used paperback on Amazon, and the second slightly cheaper at only $945.97. Excellent reads though, and a very perceptive analysis of Japanese sociomilitary culture. Please someone digitize these novels!

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 8:08 pm

“Daughter not handling it – threw us out of her house (again!) on Mothers Day when our commentary didn’t suit. C’est la Vie. But every action has its cost.”

Vicki, that’s just terrible.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
May 19, 2023 8:10 pm

I’m selling my Ford. This is even too gay for me.

I was wondering if it was the electric version, which’d be perfect.

I think there are two gay versions. One is male, which has no locks to prevent easy access and can be started by anyone if they just buy it two drinks, and a female version that locks you in as soon as you sit inside and which seatbelt cannot be undone. And if you do get out it follows you everywhere and smashes your furniture.

But with the latest versions the shortening of ‘transmission’ to ‘trannie’ corresponds to a diesel version that demands time at a recharging station or it calls you a hater, or it pulls up in front of children and flashes it crankshaft.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
May 19, 2023 8:12 pm

feelthebernsays:

May 19, 2023 at 8:02 pm

Still going.

Pro tip.
Check the actual match schedule.
Add two minutes.
Turn on telly.
You might miss a bit of play, but it is worth it.

Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
May 19, 2023 8:13 pm

Remarkable- kitsch– good observation.

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
May 19, 2023 8:15 pm

Japan was still bombing the Australian mainland in September 1943.
It was a cry for help.

Razey
Razey
May 19, 2023 8:15 pm

Horrifying Details About Woody Allen Abusing His Kids

McBain had a view on this:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wgGbiKlV7YY

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 8:16 pm

“Mothers and daughters.”

Yep, nothing quite like it. No other person can enrage me like my mother. I think mother daughter relationships are very, very complex. Despite being middle aged, my mother will still treats me like I’m fifteen, she will complain if I’m wearing something she doesn’t like, if I’m not wearing lipstick, she always wants me looking picture perfect, even if I’m going to Pilates. However, we don’t disagree politically, my political differences are with my brother.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 8:27 pm

was it morally right to drop the bomb or not?

Every year this pops its head up, although usually it’s not till the anniversary in August

Tactically, it was a no brainer.

Millions upon millions of both Allied troops, including ours, and Sons of Nippon would have been in the ground if they hadn’t. The costliest war in human history extended by eighteen months or more.

That’s even aside from the horrific path they left across Manchuria, Chai-nerr and SE Asia, and PNG from 1933 to 1945.

Japan got off extremely lightly. If the UN hadn’t needed it as a base for Korea they’d still be on par with Tanzania in terms of GDP.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 8:29 pm

One is male, which has no locks to prevent easy access and can be started by anyone if they just buy it two drinks, and a female version that locks you in as soon as you sit inside and which seatbelt cannot be undone.

Haha, got my battery changed today. Guy asks does your side window work? Yes, says I, but it’s sticky because it’s tinted. I make it go down. Thanks, says he, we have a rule that we have to lower your driver’s side window before we change out your battery.

Sounds weird, but turns out to be totally sensible, since if during the battery swap power is lost your car can brick…locked and unable to be opened. So if the window is down the guy can get in to bypass the lock.

He did the swap in 5 minutes, it was like watching ballet. I’ve done this thousands of times he said. I says it was a pleasure to watch expertise in action, and thanks…since my expertise isn’t cars.

Robert Sewell
May 19, 2023 8:29 pm

C.L:

was it morally right to drop the bomb..?

Yes.
Read Top Enders Atomic Salvation.

areff
areff
May 19, 2023 8:36 pm

The A-bomb sorry business every year is a mystery. The firebombing of Tokyo and other cities killed many, many more.

132andBush
132andBush
May 19, 2023 8:45 pm

calli says:
May 19, 2023 at 7:27 pm
It has to be Friday night at the Cat.

Dumb chemistry jokes and anecdotes…philosophical ruminating on the Bomb…

and King Jeff’s haircut.

Also some discussion on the gender of those who do the ironing.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 8:46 pm

Daughter not handling it – threw us out of her house (again!) on Mothers Day when our commentary didn’t suit. C’est la Vie. But every action has its cost

Yes. Well.

If your child is an adult, and has made his/her own decisions about what to believe, then it’s simple. Have nothing further to do with said child if it ‘throws you out of her house’, because you as a person are no longer wanted and if there are grandchildren involved then make some form of arrangement if you can. Disinherit if you feel the need to.

It’s a massive form of disrespect. On Mother’s Day, no less.

But don’t blame the schools. Don’t blame the MSM. Blame the decision making process by the adult child.

Or – and I am NOT saying this has happened – wonder whether your own commentary was designed to inflame, and to prompt a response. I say this because I have seen this happen with extended family of my own.

C.L.
C.L.
May 19, 2023 8:46 pm

The three indigenous ladies who ‘sang’ at the start of tonight’s NRL match look like they’ve been in a pretty good paddock. White Australia really sucks at genocide.

Robert Sewell
May 19, 2023 8:50 pm

Lizzie:

My daughter yelled at me to get out of her house one time we were staying there and I would have gone straight to a motel except that Hairy intervened. We still have a fairly fractured relationship.

She’s still pissed off at you because of that day when she was eight and you wouldn’t let her wear he Fairy Dress to the shops.
She’s doing this shit because there’s no cost to her. Cut her off. Let her know her tantrums have a price, because at the moment she’s using you as a punching bag with no comeback.
Is that what you want? Or is that what you want.

Robert Sewell
May 19, 2023 8:59 pm

Areff:

The A-bomb sorry business every year is a mystery. The firebombing of Tokyo and other cities killed many, many more.

Not a mystery, RF.
The Left want us to get rid of the bomb because that would leave China and Russia the sole significant nuclear powers. And who would never dream of using their arsenals to apply pressure on us.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 9:02 pm

The Japanese had been trying to surrender for 2 years, but their Terms weren’t acceptable.
4 days after the bomb was dropped, those same Terms suddenly became acceptable.

Bullshit.

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 9:04 pm

Timmy Wilson, James Paterson and Evan Mulholland (new Victorian Liberal) are all IPA alumni. Here’s some bios for you all…

Alumni 1 – Timmy Wilson, flop, sole achievement, SSM. Said little to nothing about free speech once elected. Oh, actually he does have another achievement up his sleeve, he’ll be remembered for decades for being one of the Teal scalps. But during his tenure as MP, Timmy was all quiet on the Goldstein front when it came to free speech.

Alumni 2 -Senator James Paterson, flop, notable achievement, yet to be determined. Nothing much so far. However I do remember something he did say and do, when the Liberals and Nationals back in 2020 elected to support that utterly disgraceful censure motion against Bettina Arndt, James Paterson said that he agreed with Senator Skank Keneally that “Arndt’s comments are reprehensible, that they are abhorrent and they deserve to be condemned and criticised and I’m quite comfortable for politicians to do that.” So much for free speech.

Alumni 3 – Evan Mulholland, elected to the Victorian Legislative Council last November. What did Evan Mulholland do last Friday, he was one who voted to expel Moira Deeming from the party. So much for free speech.

A trifecta of IPA flops, a trifecta of IPA fakes.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 9:05 pm

It has to be Friday night at the Cat.

Inhaling a heavily peated Islay single malt, reading Simon Heffer’s classic biography of Enoch Powell, while monitoring the Cat are good and worthy Friday night pastimes for a gentleman.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 9:12 pm

Tell you what:

I have disagreed with my old man over the journey. I will occasionally have a dissenting view with my dear old Mum, still in my ancestral seat, although not often.

But never – not one single time – have I ‘thrown them out of my house’, whether in Quenthland, Vicco or here in the NT for any reason.

If I had done that, I would have had to have considered myself done with them – because, and knowing them as people, I know they would have well and truly reciprocated. My respect for them as people who raised me would have prevented that.

Maybe girls are different. I don’t know. Maybe there’s an inherent requirement for drama.

But I will say this – if my son, who is (nominally, at 18) an adult, ever ‘throws me out’ of his home, then regardless of how much I love him, or how fond the memories are of raising him – for significant periods on my own – and both providing instruction and watching him grow through those precious years:

Then he is done. But I know that won’t happen, because I raised him to have the requisite degree of respect.

Sometimes, and using the ex-extended family as examples, this sort of stuff is either straight-out reality-TV drama, or overly emotive behaviour from both parties, or they just want something, or – they’re just dickheads.

rosie
rosie
May 19, 2023 9:13 pm

AWFL must be like moving from the only gay in the village village to San Fran.
Now what am I going to do to be the special one?
I know!
‘Top’ surgery.

Miltonf
Miltonf
May 19, 2023 9:13 pm

Yes Patterson was the only lieboral I voted for (was it 2016?)- a big fat flop

Robert Sewell
May 19, 2023 9:13 pm

There you go – it’s all our fault they are too obese to fit in even the aisles of aircraft.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/tiktok-personality-accuses-united-airlines-discrimination-because-she/

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 9:14 pm

“Bullshit.”

Yep.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
May 19, 2023 9:15 pm

Thinking about the idiots who tasered a tiny 95 year old woman on a walking frame.
What put them into the mindset where they thought that would be OK?
Well, we’ve had three years of politicians and media prostrating themselves before the Altar of The Sacred Frontline Wukka.
So, we’ve got the combination of “frontline” nurses and “frontline” coppers confronted by a 5’2″ woman on a walking frame with a steak knife. The chances of her nicking one of them was approximately 0.063%.
But that is too great a risk. Perish the thought that a frontline wukka might sustain a scratch.

mongs

if she took out a male nurse, no biggy

just squaring the ledger a bit

Boambee John
Boambee John
May 19, 2023 9:16 pm

Ed Casesays:
May 19, 2023 at 7:50 pm
The Japanese had been trying to surrender for 2 years, but their Terms weren’t acceptable.

Yeeeessss, they were so keen to surrender that a military coup was attempted to prevent the surrender announcement, which was notable for the absence of the words “defeat” and “surrender”.

Go dream about Mizzz Knickerless Grandpa Ed Simpson/

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 9:17 pm

Inhaling a heavily peated Islay single malt, reading Simon Heffer’s classic biography of Enoch Powell

A Spanish tempranillo rioja and James Bond clips.
Pretty good combo.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 9:19 pm

it’s all our fault they are too obese to fit in even the aisles of aircraft.

That has to be the most unflattering angle to photograph anyone from.

Miltonf
Miltonf
May 19, 2023 9:20 pm
Robert Sewell
May 19, 2023 9:23 pm

Actually, one of the comments to my post above, was “How can she get out of her seat in the event of an emergency – she’ll trap anyone behind her. That makes her a risk factor for everyone else.”
No. On those grounds alone, she needs to be banned from flights where that risk factor is present.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 9:23 pm

Well, we’ve had three years of politicians and media prostrating themselves before the Altar of The Sacred Frontline Wukka.

Yep.

Also noticeably absent was the accompanying TikTok dance, with multiple large cardboard sheets repeating ‘We Go to Work So You Don’t Have To.’

95 years old. Unless this lady’s last name was Wick (which it wasn’t), and she was holding a pencil (which she also wasn’t), it is – once again- unforgiveable.

I would like to say the ‘police’ who turned up were two 5 foot 1 chicks with forearm sleeve tatts and gigantic arses who’d never been in any sort of physical confrontation in their lives, but – although it’s likely – I don’t know.

Miltonf
Miltonf
May 19, 2023 9:28 pm

iirc Patterson was also fully onboard with the removal of anonymity from the census. An absolute dead loss- is he still wasting space in the senate?

Robert Sewell
May 19, 2023 9:29 pm

Knuckle Dragger:

I would like to say the ‘police’ who turned up were two 5 foot 1 chicks with forearm sleeve tatts and gigantic arses who’d never been in any sort of physical confrontation in their lives, but – although it’s likely – I don’t know.

Has there been any photos of the police concerned?
That alone makes me suspicious you may be right KD.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
May 19, 2023 9:30 pm

ZK2A don’t waste your money with Kilchoman malt. It may come right in another 100 years of production.

calli
calli
May 19, 2023 9:31 pm

The ABC report on the police stated “he” and with 12 years experience. But that could mean anything these days.

Boambee John
Boambee John
May 19, 2023 9:32 pm

KD

Bloke I know said today that when he worked in a hospital, the technique was to get a sheet, roll it up, then two people carefully walked around the patient in opposite directions, drawing the sheet closer until the arms were immobilised.

My description might have missed some of the finer points, but that was the general gist.

Rabz
May 19, 2023 9:32 pm

Cats! 🙂

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 9:34 pm

A Spanish tempranillo rioja and James Bond clips.
Pretty good combo.

Your very good health, B.O.N!

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
May 19, 2023 9:40 pm

The rioja is kicking in.

Goldfinger Opening Title Sequence (Shirley Bassey, 1964)

Hat tip to Odd Job.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 9:40 pm

get a sheet, roll it up, then two people carefully walked around the patient in opposite directions, drawing the sheet closer until the arms were immobilised

I think any technique other than Tasering would have worked on a 95 year old woman, demented or not.

Whenever the jacks shoot someone there are always the howler monkeys that turn up and say they should have shot him the ankle, shot the gun out of the crook’s hand and so on. However, i would respectfully submit that this is not one of those situations. By any means.

Unbelievable and enraging in equal parts.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
May 19, 2023 9:42 pm

I love how she is described as a personality instead of morbidly obese sheila with no personality. I guess someone made her eat 10 small children a day all her life. Oh, I’m sorry, its your glands fatso. I’m surprised she’s not complaining about not being able to get a root. Wonder why.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 9:43 pm

i would respectfully

Oh dear.

My Capital I was stolen by the TraItors.

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
May 19, 2023 9:44 pm

Cop is male.
On the radio today.

Bushkid
Bushkid
May 19, 2023 9:44 pm

Bruce of Newcastle says:
May 19, 2023 at 6:49 pm
How DARE you assume irony’s gender!
Irony is female.
Ships are built of iron.
Ships are female (she/her).

1,000 upticks, Bruce.
Thanks for the giggle.

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 9:45 pm

“Maybe girls are different. I don’t know. Maybe there’s an inherent requirement for drama.”

KD, girls are, and yes we do have a predisposition to drama. And also, there’s nothing quite like a mother daughter relationship.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 9:47 pm

Whenever the jacks shoot someone there are always the howler monkeys that turn up and say they should have shot him the ankle, shot the gun out of the crook’s hand and so on.

The weapons instructor was ex SASR, and currently Police. “Forget any bullshit about shooting in the leg. Centre of seen mass, and go on firing until there is no threat.”

C.L.
C.L.
May 19, 2023 9:58 pm

Regarding the bombs – both atomic and incendiary – it is never permissible to do evil that good may come of it (Romans, 3:8). Incinerating tens of thousands of women and children in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo qualifies as evil. And cowardly.

The atomic bombing of Japan was opposed or judged unnecessary by Nimitz, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Halsey, Forrestal, Stimson – among others.

The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s declared that military actions carried out with nuclear weapons exceed “the limits of legitimate defense.” Gaudium et spes:

Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.

And no, the alleged number of saved lives to ensure victory by conventional means does not meet the standard of proportionality as required in just war moral theology.

The conventional rejoinder (in addition to unfalsifiable and dodgy casualty projections for Operations Olympic and Coronet) can be reduced to, “but they started it and it’s not fair.”

Yes, they did. No, it isn’t.

Muddy
Muddy
May 19, 2023 10:00 pm

From one of Black Ball’s news posts above:

For them, they hadn’t really known anyone else that had identified like that.

Grammar fail.
Dead to me.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
May 19, 2023 10:02 pm

And also, there’s nothing quite like a mother daughter relationship.

Yep. Something I have not missed unintentionally being dragged into for the past 13 years.

The mother of the venomous Medusa I married would give advance notice that she was ‘coming to visit’ anywhere from three to six weeks out. Those weeks were an absolute misery, chockers with the abovementioned drama and where my ears got burned off with ‘I bet she’ll’ and ‘This is just like the time when’ and ‘She better not bring up the time when’ that related to her childhood. Her childhood.

Nothing like holding a grudge.

Then, when she turned up, unconditional backup was expected – and received, being the dutiful hubby – but it was hot/cold hot/cold/hot cold all the way through, followed by four months of analysis which preceded an epilogue of ‘when she visits next time I’ll say X and Y’.

Life is just too short, and I just do not care.

The only positive was that I learned calling her by her mother’s name – i.e., ‘Thanks Marion’ or ‘No worries, Marion’ would enrage that nest of vipers to the point where I could get an hour or two of peace.

Bar Beach Swimmer
May 19, 2023 10:03 pm

Vicki, if you’re about, great to read that your friend has found a better bolt hole.

There still are good people, as your friend has discovered, but if I don’t find any – apart from the friends here (Hi, BJ!) – what I’ve learnt is that I’m strong enough to survive without them.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 10:12 pm

She’s doing this shit because there’s no cost to her. Cut her off. Let her know her tantrums have a price

Bob, I can’t do that because of my grandchildren, whom I want to stay close to, and especially not now, because of the severe medical problems emerging with the third one, the little boy. She doesn’t need any more upset right now or indeed into this uncertain future. I think I’m fairly used to not knowing her much at this stage in my life and hers (although in some ways I know her so well as she is much like me when I was younger). When she rings she rings Hairy’s phone and all arrangements are made through him. We are not close. I make some efforts to chat, but she often ignores me when I speak when we stay at her house; but there are no tantrums now. I’m used to it these days. It’s a superficial relationship and I doubt if it will change. I haven’t had a real hug with her for years. The emotion to do so is not there in either of us. Yet both of us find it so easy to give love elsewhere. Go figure.

I have other friends who have similar sorts of issues with a daughter. Not alone in this at all.

Jorge
Jorge
May 19, 2023 10:12 pm

A trifecta of IPA flops, a trifecta of IPA fakes

John Roskam would have been another. Hope his book on Orwell is coming along. Academics just don’t belong in Parliament (including Enoch).

reading Simon Heffer’s classic biography of Enoch Powell,

Sketchy memory of the story he tells of Enoch driving an army transport across Libya. He and co-driver agreed to pass the time with alternate lectures on respective topics of expertise. Two days later Enoch was still going.

Bar Beach Swimmer
May 19, 2023 10:15 pm

The atomic bombing of Japan was opposed or judged unnecessary by Nimitz, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Halsey, Forrestal, Stimson – among others.

C.L. was that assessment before or after the allies discovered what the POWs had endured?

I had a great uncle who I knew personally and who had been imprisoned at Changi after the fall of Singapore. My grandmother said he was so frail when he finally came home that a moment longer in there and he – as well as his comrades – probably wouldn’t have lasted.

War is hell and all killing is a sin, but I can never regret the dropping of the bomb.

As to the idea of a “sliding doors moment” with the Emperor wanting to surrender, that we will never know. But one thing is clear, it took a second bomb to be dropped before the surrender came.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 10:18 pm

Sketchy memory of the story he tells of Enoch driving an army transport across Libya.

Enoch Powell taught Gough Whitlam at the University of Sydney before World War Two. Whitlam complained that Powell’s lectures were dull, whereupon Powell condemned Whitlam as having a “second rate mind.”

Razey
Razey
May 19, 2023 10:22 pm

Tan Grant cracking out the race card? Who knew?

Bar Beach Swimmer
May 19, 2023 10:28 pm

KD @ 9:12 & SP @ 9:15

Both spot on.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 10:30 pm

Nothing like holding a grudge.

Yes. I don’t meet my daughter’s high standards. She wants me to have come from a background I simply don’t come from. Something more stable, more traditional, more middle class. Like Hairy’s people, whom she calls ‘the nice relatives’, in contrast to mine. Perhaps I overcompensated for being sterner than I needed to be at times (re the fairy dress etc). Add to that, from childhood, she resented her two older half-brothers taking any of my attention at all, even though she got plenty of love and care. She really didn’t want them to exist, and to be honest, they were pretty dreadful in their adolescent and then teenage years. I am to blame for the fact that divorced and academic, I am not like her husband’s mother, an easy going baking type of middle class woman who isn’t much of a thinker or reader, the mother she thinks she really should have had. This beautiful super-bright high-flying dynamo of a daughter of mine whom everyone in her ambit loves.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
May 19, 2023 10:33 pm

Well, Vicki, you did put a cat among the pigeons there. Sorry to all for that struggle session of mine.
Sometimes it’s all gotta come out with the Friday vino. Trust your daughter will come round to a better frame of mind soon and that you can pick up sticks together and muddle along once more. Or maybe even clear the air. I wonder sometimes if that’s what I should do, but the time is not good for it now.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
May 19, 2023 10:38 pm

C.L. was that assessment before or after the allies discovered what the POWs had endured?

After the surrender, when the questioning began.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
May 19, 2023 10:39 pm

I note the NSW Ladee Commish released a “statement of condolence” but pushed a lackey out to front the press.
He had his talking points including the pathetic “but she had a knife” which you delivered with zero conviction.
And our reticent and camera-shy Commish? Yeah, she’ll be front and centre next week calling out transphobia, islamophobia, someotherpohobia or appearing at some coloured ribbon day breakfast or Naidoc Week or whatever.
Stunning and brave.

Cassie of Sydney
May 19, 2023 10:40 pm

Uploaded in the Oz, from Janet A.

‘Verdict first, trial later’: rule of law under threat, says Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer Steven Whybrow SC
By JANET ALBRECHTSEN

The presumption of innocence and the right to due process have been dangerously warped by the #MeToo movement, Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer Steven Whybrow SC has claimed, in his first interview since Mr Lehrmann went on trial over Brittany Higgins’ rape ­allegations.

“This was ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Sentence first or verdict first, trial later,” Mr Whybrow says of the pre-trial publicity around the case.

“There was so much material out there that was just simply ‘he’s guilty’ and we’ve just got to go through this process of a trial. I saw that as a significant undermining of the rule of law and the ­presumption of innocence and due process.

“We all know this happens all the time: this guy’s been accused of this, so therefore it happened. And along the way, anybody who tried to argue the contrary narrative was treated as somehow morally deficient.”

Mr Whybrow said that if there was to be a debate about the presumption of innocence or whether an accused person should not have a right to silence, “those things should actually happen in an ­informed way publicly, rather than this insidious suggestion that ‘that’s what the system is’”.

“But it’s not good. It’s not right,” he added.

Mr Whybrow’s comments came as Mr Lehrmann revealed for the first time that when he tried to get legal assistance for his ­defence, Legal Aid ACT insisted it would not allow Ms Higgins to be challenged in court as a liar, but simply “perhaps mistaken about versions of events”.

Mr Lehrmann told The Weekend Australian he sacked Legal Aid ACT after the agency demanded he adopt a conciliatory defence strategy that was ­completely at odds with his account of the events that occurred in senator Linda Reynolds’ ministerial office in the early hours of March 23, 2019.

Mr Lehrmann said a solicitor at the agency told him “it was up to the CEO of Legal Aid in terms of the broader tactics of the case and he was going to say that she’s not a liar but was mistaken about aspects of the version of events”.

Mr Lehrmann said the agency also rejected Mr Whybrow as “too aggressive” to take on the case.

The solicitor told him the agency would not fund Mr Whybrow as his counsel in the trial because “Legal Aid didn’t like the way Mr Whybrow practices or the way he operates”.

Mr Whybrow ultimately took on the case pro bono after Mr Lehrmann refused to accept the Legal Aid conditions.

A spokesperson for Legal Aid ACT declined to comment.

“Bruce was just horrified that they’re not even going to run his defence, which was: she’s lying, she made it up, this did not happen – and to just say, ‘oh no, you misunderstood, you were mistaken’,” Mr Whybrow said. “So he became very distressed.”

The former Crown prosecutor pursued a forceful approach at the trial, describing Ms Higgins as “unreliable” and someone “who says things to suit her”.

Mr Whybrow told jurors she had lied about seeing a doctor to “make it more believable” she had allegedly been sexually assaulted.

He outlined a number of instances when Ms Higgins was forced to concede she had given wrong evidence, including the length of time a white dress was kept in a plastic bag under her bed and a three-hour panic attack on a day she later conceded she had been having a valedictory lunch for former politician Steven Ciobo.

“The person bringing the allegation is prepared to just say anything,” Mr Whybrow told jurors.

The jury had been deliberating for five days, unable to agree on a verdict, when the trial was abruptly aborted after one of the jurors brought research material into the room.

Mr Whybrow told The Weekend Australian he had been concerned that, because of the pre-trial publicity, the defence would struggle to get 12 unbiased, unaffected jurors.

“In some respects, that was borne out by the number of people in the jury pool who quite properly, when the chief justice asked that anyone who thought they might have some pre-existing bias, either for or against the complainant or the accused, or had attended the March4Justice, or subscribed to particular views about sexual assault, or even had had own experiences, that meant that they could not bring a fair mind to the role of a juror to come forward.

“And a lot of people did, but we were never able to be sure that some of the people who didn’t come forward may have had strongly held views and were going to not come forward because they wanted to ensure justice – as they perceived it – would be done.”

Mr Whybrow expressed strong concerns over the role of ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates, who often accompanied Ms Higgins to court.

“The problem in this case, and it’s not just my perception, it’s one that I know a lot of people have shared, is that by walking next to Ms Higgins into court every day as the statutory office holder of the position of the Victims of Crime Commissioner, and that would be videoed every morning, it would be in the papers and the news that night, it carried with it a less-than-subtle and a less-than-subconscious inference that Ms Higgins was in fact a victim.

“It was about as subtle as if Ms Yates had walked in wearing a T-shirt, saying ‘Bruce is guilty’, Mr Whybrow said.

“This case has demonstrated, in my view, an insidious and underappreciated issue, which is this conflict and this tension and this slow bracket creep between the presumption of innocence on the one hand, and ‘believe all women’, or in a sexual assault case, ‘people don’t make anything up’ that is undermining a presumption of innocence.”

Ms Yates declined to comment on Friday, and a spokeswoman for the ACT Human Rights Commission pointed to a previous statement in which it welcomed the set-up of the Sofronoff inquiry.

Mr Whybrow said he took on the case pro bono after Legal Aid ACT refused to hire him because “I wanted to be part of an attempt to at least give this man a fair trial in the face of what I and many other people had considered was such adverse publicity that he could never actually get a fair trial”.

Mr Lehrmann originally approached Legal Aid for help after his first lawyer, John Korn, was forced to withdraw for medical reasons.

Legal Aid also refused to fund the solicitor Mr Korn had recommended, Kamy Saeedi, saying it would assign an in-house lawyer.

Mr Lehrmann said he was stunned that the agency was demanding he accept a defence strategy that contradicted his account of what occurred in Parliament House after a night out drinking with colleagues in Canberra. Mr Lehrmann has consistently maintained, including in his statement to police, that there was no sexual contact of any kind with Ms Higgins and that after they got to Senator Reynolds’ suite, he went left and Ms Higgins turned right, and he didn’t see her again.

“It was basically Kamy who said to me, right, just fire them, he helped me write a letter firing them,” Mr Lehrmann told The Weekend Australian.

Mr Saeedi agreed to take on the case pro bono.

“This is a winnable case if we just do it how we need to, not how the Legal Aid wants to do it,” Mr Lehrmann recalls his new lawyer saying.

“He was concerned that I’m being led up the garden path and that they’ve got no idea, because they’re all so woke in Canberra,” Mr Lehrmann said.

“So he just said, I’m just going to do it pro bono now, let’s not worry about the money.”

Mr Whybrow also then agreed to act for Mr Lehrmann pro bono.

“It was, you know, we’ll keep an account going and you will likely never pay. We know that if you’re in jail we’re never going to get paid,” Mr Whybrow said. “And even if you’re acquitted, unless you win Lotto, we’re never going to get paid. But we will act for you.””

A complete trashing of the presumption of innocence.

Thank you to Janet A and the Oz for this.

Bar Beach Swimmer
May 19, 2023 10:41 pm

With all these young women playing footy and opting for going the non-binary route, I can see a time when the AFLW will be up for buckets of compensation. No doubt plaintiffs will assert the pressure of the peer group to go under the knife. Duty of care should be dinging the alarm bells all over the place.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
May 19, 2023 10:45 pm

Incinerating tens of thousands of women and children in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo qualifies as evil. And cowardly.

You seem to have omitted London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Coventry.

MatrixTransform
May 19, 2023 10:45 pm

The Lord knows those who are his

Dragnet
Dragnet
May 19, 2023 10:47 pm

My Dad spent his 19th birthday hunting down Japs in the Borneo jungle in May ’45.
He was quite glad the bombs were delivered on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Armchair 20/20 retrospection is an indulgent luxury.

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