From CNN – it’s an unbelievable travesty of a column. That high percentage of Republicans who thought Biden’s win was…
Open Thread – Weekend 27 May 2023
- Open Thread – Mon 25 Nov 2024
- The more you gets the less you eats
- Open Thread – Weekend 23 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 21 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 18 Nov 2024
Have you tried beer goggles? Apparently they make everyone look attractive. Allegedly, as Knuckles would say.
The inconvenient truth that Coalition voters need to face is that Australia has been poorly served by both major political…
Damn our leaders for letting these monsters into our societies. Damn them to Hell.
Thank you Arky, the biggest smile I’ve had today. …..Ugly Winston.
I’d happily walk on the dance floor at the time. Race relations were good.
Great remix.
Al Stewart – Year Of The Cat (Extended Rework Deep ClubMix Edit) [1977 HQ]
yeah
I wish … for.a funky late night track
Hoist the Colours (Gingertail)
ranger russian hottie
Waiting for Tom.
Johannes Leak.
In case you missed it (because the J-school kiddies at the Paywallian “forgot” to post it until hours after it was due), yesterday’s Leak.
Mark Knight.
Mark Knight #2.
Mark Knight #3.
David Rowe.
Dave Brown.
Andy Davey.
Michael Ramirez.
Gary Varvel.
Tina Norton.
Phillip Adams must have suffered a brain injury.
#prayforPhillip
Environmentalism has always been class warfare by other means. Net Zero – the deranged dream of greens and our political class – is essentially austerity on steroids. Spiked
He wants to get elected like this?
“No one has bought me a coffee to keep my podcast fuelled, it’s the mother of all conspiracies, I tells yas!”
New Catallaxy’s musical directorship is looking more ripe than a rotting pack of ham that has fallen behind a bar fridge.
We’re going to see Foster and Allen posted here soon. No, don’t stop. It can’t be as bad as being Gillard-rolled by the usual suspects. Why not some awful lollipop music lie “Sipping Soda”? Now that’s acculturation!
What’s the programming like on 6PR?
Non stop Exodus and one hit wonder lollipop bands interspersed with S Club Seven and Van Dyk Parks? With a touch of Foster and Allen, hosted by Alan Partridge? For those great hits and memories?
By gum I hope they have a lot of in house produced ads and programme introductions recorded in the 1970s along with those Frank Walker ads!
How about some Coldplay and Train too along with Meryl Bainbridge?
Just wonderful to listen to at work or during a hectic drive home. Three blabbering non entities instead of Muzak too, that would be great. I sincerely hope they also have bottom of the league football games instead of music and Rat Hadley and Basil too!
Are the wheels falling off the Covid wagon?
The EU has been told it was a bio-weapon, and here we now have a report that our Health Authorities, who spread the panic and caused governments to go full fascist, engaged in some very dodgy data retailing that now has no paper trail at all.
An “anti-terrorism” program run by the Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been ousted as using its federal funding to target conservative organizations and publications, including Breitbart News.
As Breitbart reports, the Media Research Center (MRC) uncovered documents detailing the political motivations of the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant program (TVTP), which was founded by DHS in 2011 for the initial purpose of fighting the Islamic terror group Al-Qaeda.
Under Biden, the grant program has expanded significantly in its scope, and has awarded 80 different grants, amounting to $39,611,999. Of the 80 grants, 52 percent went to public institutions while the remaining 48 percent were given to private organizations. The grant program now includes several “media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives,” one of which is a training program at the University of Dayton which explicitly accused Fox News, the NRA, Turning Point USA, the Heritage Foundation, and the Republican Party itself of radicalizing Americans into neo-Nazis.
The university’s program created a graphic of a pyramid split into four different levels, which the university claims is a display of increasing “radicalization” into conservative values and traditional beliefs. The bottom tier features Fox, the NRA, Heritage, and the GOP, while the next tier up includes TPUSA, PragerU, Breitbart, and the Make America Great Again movement. The top two tiers then feature a variety of neo-Nazi imagery, including the white supremacist website Daily Stormer and the think tank National Policy Institute, run by the neo-Nazi Richard Spencer.
A seminar on the subject at the University of Dayton even compared President Donald Trump to Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, and also accused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis of wanting to start a “second Holocaust.” One of the speakers featured by the DHS-funded seminar series is Michael Loedenthal, a self-proclaimed leader of the far-left anarcho-communist terrorist group Antifa.
“A lot of things we’re doing are illegal” Loedenthal admitted in a speech as he was discussing his own group’s violent activities. “A lot of it involves breaking the law.”
In response to the revelations, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) vowed in an interview with Breitbart to cut funding to such government grants and other organizations that have targeted conservatives in such a manner.
“I think America is going to be shocked by how much government was doing…using these government agencies with these private companies to… censor what people can see,” said McCarthy. “You’re going to find not only are we going to hold them accountable, we’re going to be able to use that basis to know legislatively what can we do that they can never do this again.”
Good morning Dot.
We had three inches of rain in a couple of hours here yesterday. It doesn’t always rain here but when it does, it rains. In Newcastle it hailed. And now it’s sunny.
I’m going to listen to the Doobie Brothers and maybe a bit of Clannad while sewing this morning, and then it’s out to weed the garden. The weeds are huge and lush because of all the fertiliser and warm soil. No music just the ducks squawking.
It’s a riveting life, but someone has to do it and that person is me.
Yours truly, Calli Olthwaite
America has been totally white-anted Tom. Nothing short of armed rebellion can save it now, and even that becomes harder given the forces arrayed against the people.
Paywallian:
When Daniel Andrews and his colleagues were raking through the coals of defeat in 2010 after 11 years in power, he made clear his thinking on business.
Labor under Steve Bracks and John Brumby had courted the business community with tax cuts, workers’ compensation premium reductions, responsible budgets and a drive to reconnect the ALP with the job-creating top end of town. But not Andrews.
“The problem is,” one MP ¬recalls Andrews saying, “they don’t f..king vote for us.
“It is all about the political calculation. His eyes are always on the suburbs and the votes.”
So when Andrews, in an act of Whitlamesque desperation amid the worst Victorian budget in decades, targeted big business and property investors with $8.6bn of tax rises under a $31.5bn debt reduction strategy this week it was not so much a great surprise but part of a long-running political strategy to ¬protect at all costs the Labor base and try to reward the people who keep voting for him.
Victoria’s bottom line is now ¬arguably worse than in the post-Cain-Kirner period in 1992 for the simple reason there are no large-scale assets that can be sold to deal with any deterioration in the budget in future years. If there were they would have gone under the hammer on Tuesday.
Former premier Jeff Kennett fears worse is to come because of the scale of the government’s unwieldy infrastructure program, which has suffered blowouts worth many billions of dollars and extended delays.
“He (Andrews) has no sense of what he is leaving the state and the condition it’s in,” Kennett ¬laments.
Kennett likes Treasurer Tim Pallas, but warns he and other members of cabinet have failed to confront the notoriously focused and demanding Andrews.
“They have allowed him (Andrews) to run the show totally without -objections,’’ he says.
Pallas’s failure to arrest the spending in what is now a $102bn Victorian budget has been debated among cabinet colleagues for many years; one Labor figure -describes Pallas as having operated effectively as a political chief-of-staff rather than the state’s numbers man.
“Tim is Dr Yes,” says another.
Everything about the Andrews government is achingly complex.
Despite his strategic political views on the private sector, ¬Andrews has a strong relationship with some business leaders, exercising and wielding covert power through what can loosely be called barbecue political diplomacy, with friendships (many transactional) stretching beyond the normal, but largely kept hidden from view.
His private sector contact book is extensive and includes billionaire Lindsay Fox and the broader family, former PwC chief Luke Sayers, property magnate Max Beck, Seek co-founder Andrew Bassat and serial director James MacKenzie.
You can only imagine what they are thinking.
Andrews is personally close to Anthony Albanese, was close to Scott Morrison mainly via text and national cabinet during the pandemic, and has had a warm but workmanlike connection with outgoing AFL boss Gillon McLachlan. He may not like the way some vote, but he is at one with the big end of town.
Few expect Andrews, an ¬enthusiastic golfer and wine drinker, to buckle under pressure from a friend or acquaintance who tries to knock his political strategy off balance.
As he inevitably mulls his next career after 12½ years as Labor leader (including four years in ¬opposition), both Andrews and Pallas will not be wanting to leave a legacy of financial disarray for the likely next premier, Jacinta Allan. But they will.
As one colleague says of Allan: “She is the next Joan Kirner.”
Andrews, if the budget numbers are put to one side, is an ¬acutely good political strategist, having protected Allan from the worst of the Covid-19 tasks during the pandemic, focusing her on the so-called Big Build, which has entailed a relentless number of often pointless press conferences at level crossings and train tunnels spruiking Labor’s biggest political asset.
Like NSW, Victoria has been on a years-long infrastructure drive that has led to unprecedented investment in rail and road projects, including the $13bn metro underground rail system, the $15bn-plus level crossing ¬removal strategy (probably closer to $20bn) and the rubbery agenda to build the $125bn Suburban Rail Loop.
Allan now has carriage of most of the financial time bombs including the rail loop, transport and ¬infrastructure and the delivery in 2026 of the $2.6bn Commonwealth Games, which hasn’t even been funded. At 49, she is an -experienced minister but her post-pandemic pathway has been ¬cratered by this budget.
Paul Guerra, chief executive of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, makes the perceptive ¬observation that the Andrews government has largely been built around construction and social ¬reform.
The construction agenda, worth well north of $100bn when factoring in the private sector, has had a huge trickle-down effect on the economy but he laments the higher taxes aimed at medium and large business, which also includes the $3.7bn mental health levy from 2021.
“Certainly around building things, the government largely has been focused,’’ he says, stressing that the future will be in innovation rather than taxpayer-funded monuments.
The budget may not have meaningful asset sales inked into the forward estimates but it has some significant potential savings on infrastructure, on top of the decision to shelve the $10bn airport rail link.
A prime example is the $15bn level crossing removals project, which has been a vote-winning strategy to remove 110 “dangerous” train crossings to improve rail capacity and cut congestion. The projects have become horrifically expensive as Labor has included at times grand new stations with the build. Who knows if they are ¬needed?
There are $6.5bn worth of new removals in the forward estimates and one project in eastern Melbourne has cost an eye-watering $630m for a rail project that points to a city fewer people are travelling to.
These level crossings are a historical anomaly in Melbourne, leading to congestion, injury and loss of lives. University of Melbourne associate professor of urban planning Crystal Legacy says the so-called Big Build has some productive projects but is generally “very expensive”.
She says the level crossing ¬removals are a good idea – “up to a point” – but more needed to be done on integrated planning to ¬ensure connectivity between trains, buses and trams.
The emphasis on the rail loop in Melbourne’s southeast should not come at the cost of the booming western suburbs. “There’s a really different kind of need in the west,” she says.
Everything Andrews does has a reason, but sometimes the electorate doesn’t even listen.
Victoria’s financial train wreck has been clear from the end of 2020 when the state became the only place in Australia to endure a long-term lockdown.
By 2022, when two budgets had shown the looming debt crisis and then followed the near collapse of the Victorian workers’ compensation scheme, reasonable, informed voters would have been asking themselves when it will all end. Just as everyone on Spring Street is asking when Andrews will quit politics; as a leader since 2010 and having survived a recent serious back injury. No one questions his determination.
One belief is that he will go soon amid signs the notoriously protective Premier’s Private Office is starting to wind back its controlling influence.
The contrary view is that Andrews is, like a young Mornington Peninsula red, just starting to peak.
Likening Andrews to former Labor PM Gough Whitlam, ¬another onlooker who knows ¬Andrews says his height and ¬commanding presence help him execute his ruthless internal ¬agenda.
It will be Andrews who decides when he goes.
Andrews, like Whitlam, is prone to scandal, mostly loved by Labor but loathed by the ¬political right.
He’s somewhat of a loner and, like Gough, economically reckless, as he rails against establishment media and the conservative establishment in general.
With the budget in such a bad state, the only certainty is that his and Tim Pallas’s fiscal reputation is, at best, poor.
But will anyone under the age of 50 care?
Link.
Thanks Anchor. Interesting report, and I notice that NSW Health is hiding behind the figleaf of “privacy”, or refusing to comment. As I recall, some cluey commenters here wondered at the time as well.
As the Beloved just opined, how can “privacy” come into it when you’re dealing with raw data collection and methodology? And he added…I just don’t trust governments any more.
High trust to low trust in three years.
I will never diss the creators of China Grove nor those who have sung Take Me In Your Arms.
I would expect Vic Health to delete COVID data.
I actually thought NSW Health would keep it and allow ongoing analysis of it.
I am such a rube.
and I notice that NSW Health is hiding behind the figleaf of “privacy”, or refusing to comment.
They are talking show bags with reference to this as the data has been scrubbed to de-indentify anyone.
Vicki Campion:
My distrust of NSW Health goes back to the Ruby Princess. Everything they did in that matter was counter-intuitive, until the excrement hit the blades.
Incompetence or intent…take your pick. The result was the spread of the virus far and wide and the scene set for the first of the lockdowns. I have no doubt they were instructed from higher up the food chain, but how high is anyone’s guess.
Those Leaks are AWESOME, Tom. That bloke is developing a really deft touch.
And the Knight really bites. Not sending that to my sister, she was in Sri Lanka at the beach on a certain Boxing Day.
“Arena” and “stadium” next?
Smith College Drops Use Of Word “Field” As Racially Insensitive (27 May)
Maybe ban the entire imperial colonial racist English language and be done with it. We’ll all have to learn Chinese soon enough anyway, may as well start now.
feelthebernsays:
May 27, 2023 at 6:18 am
Phillip Adams must have suffered a brain injury.
#prayforPhillip
I think that happened a couple of decades ago.
Kenny in the Oz today:
“Might!!!”
@steve T:
Clowns with sequencer software and cloth ears keep butchering actual music.
The ORIGINAL of that Al Stewart song has plenty of “beat”: Tasty, minimal drums and further driven by the piano and Bass figures.
Back in those days, people did NOT need every beat to be rammed home by a synthetic “drum”..
Furthermore, in this “re-imagining, a lot of the instrumental subtlety and high-spots have been ruthlessly ground off this masterpiece; the slick, pitch-perfect section where the Tim Renwick guitar solo dissolves into Phil Kenzie’s memorable saxophone burnout, for starters.
The whole album was engineered by some bloke called Alan Parsons…..
Don’t worry, Beatrix Potter is cultural appropriation, it came from the slaves.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12125807/LIBBY-PURVES-Academic-accusing-Beatrix-Potter-stealing-Peter-Rabbit-needs-lie-down.html
Which is amusing because the trickster archetype is found in Indo European cultures.
feel the same about all those who condemn ‘cultural appropriation’: that modern sin of inappropriately borrowing a story, dress, custom or design from another society. It has been applied to everything from fancy dress to poetry to yoga, and those who fret tend only to be angry when the culture that picks it up is typically more ‘dominant’ than the other.
To them, it is wrong for a Western woman to wear a sari or a Chinese jacket, but perfectly all right for an Indian lawyer or an African businessman to wear a pinstriped suit — a weird outfit created by the 19th-century British and European commercial classes.
Or take music. For the cultural police, it is praiseworthy for Chi-chi Nwanoku CBE to lead the ethnically diverse Chineke! orchestra playing Mozart, but questionable for white rockers or jazzmen to pick up rhythms developed by black people.
Likewise, they look down with distaste at the British atrocity of chicken tikka masala, but would never call down fury on an Indian chef’s shepherd’s pie. It is a peculiarly contemporary and patronising way of separating us all from one another. The literary world is currently terrified of letting authors create black, Asian or Latino characters unless they themselves enjoy the ‘lived experience’ of those races. Publishers’ anxieties around these issues are only getting worse.
Shoot. Epic blockquote fail.
As a proud Wojila man, I claim this thread for my personal aggrandisement and associated Government and private grant funding.
By Government regulation I dedicate 3% to the arts, which will be by open tender closing in several minutes, for a sculpture on indigenous suffering right at the top to replace the painting presently offending social justice.
Just received an email from John Pesutto, the week in review. I can’t even bring myself to open it. Until that man’s name is removed from Libs leadership I won’t have a bar of the Libs. Such is my anger over the treatment of Moira Deeming and the Libs stupid adherence to supporting renewables rollouts. I used to donate to the Libs although never a member. They’ve lost me.
Anyone in Australia who isn’t of 100% English stock should cease and desist from speaking English as it is cultural appropriation.
I dicklessed my own uptick, as well. YESS!
Meme; Sorry I just couldn’t stop myself!
https://substack.com/redirect/1c68e7d2-2921-457d-9ad2-e3b09d995685?j=eyJ1IjoiaG85YmoifQ.bMnuNm5GLk5MFSCvcs0G5r0y-jYhpNwjaZVrL0QBwGM
Dear Vanessa Hudson, this is how you can rebuild Qantas
Dear Ms Hudson,
May I call you Vanessa? I write to congratulate you on taking over what’s left of Qantas from the Lethal Leprechaun (my not-very-pet-name for Alan Joyce), along with a few suggestions that might be of interest.
Firstly, renationalise the airline. This patriotic proposition is already gaining momentum from those who remember Qantas in its halcyon days. I’m one of them and have, as they say, skin in the game, having presented my marketing credentials to the board 40-odd years ago, when Qantas’ mercy fights from a cyclone-ravaged Darwin were still fresh in the memory. It was a time when, around the world, returning Aussies would be greeted by cabin crew with a friendly grin – and “G’day, welcome ‘n’ board”. No matter where you were, you already felt halfway home when you heard that.
It wasn’t just the perfect safely record that made us proud of the world’s second-oldest airline (only the Dutch KLM was older). It was the Qantas ethos – the “vibe”, if you like.
Hence my suggestion to the board of a new motto. I can still see the smiles as I unveiled it. THE SPIRIT OF AUSTRALIA. It soon appeared on everything from aircraft fuselages to boarding passes to the serviettes provided with the peanuts. I subsequently suggested Qantas acquire Peter Allen’s anthem I Still Call Australia Home. Two perfect fits.
The downward spiral began, as with so many Australian institutions, with privatisation. And it accelerated during the reign of Alan Joyce. Alan found many pots of gold for himself at the end if the airline’s rainbow, but others weren’t so lucky. Not the pilots, not the cabin crews, not the ground crews, not the engineers – and certainly not the passengers.
Using Covid as camouflage, savage staffing cuts were made and the fleet became old to the point of arthritic. As I publicly complained countless times, the airline did NOT call Australia home – and did NOT deserve my motto. Qantas was NOT the Spirit of Australia.
In recent times a dispirited mockery of the Spirit of Australia has wreaked such havoc on the company’s reputation that all the “loyalty programs” on Earth will no longer restore the loyalty of passengers. And the final departure of Alan Joyce will not be of national mourning.
Much is expected of you Vanessa, or at least hoped. But the task!!
Soon, like Elvis, Alan will have left the building. With his usual inability to read the room, his final decision seems to have been an apologetic phone call to Alan Jones. Mr Jones had just learnt of his eviction from that most inner of sanctums, the Chairman’s Lounge.
Vanessa, your Mission Near Impossible, should you agree to accept it, is not to placate a shocked jock about the Chairman’s Lounge but to rebuild the lost trust of your staff and your passengers – so that once again Qantas can call Australia home, and be deserving of my motto. I’ll check back with you in a few months.
This message will self-destruct in ten seconds.
Yours most sincerely,
Phillip.
The Phillip Adams column from today’s Oz.
I’m Danish so now I have an excuse not to talk to the natives. Thanks.
Knight finds himself at Ground Zero for political cartooning thanks to his fellow Victoriastanis.
For a lot of words, Phillip Adams doesn’t say all that much.
“Just received an email from John Pesutto, the week in review. I can’t even bring myself to open it. Until that man’s name is removed from Libs leadership I won’t have a bar of the Libs. Such is my anger over the treatment of Moira Deeming and the Libs stupid adherence to supporting renewables rollouts. I used to donate to the Libs although never a member. They’ve lost me.”
Have you told them, Mem? They need to know why, otherwise they won’t do anything. Just say you won’t hand over another cent until…
1. Moira is allowed back into the parliamentary party.
2. Prosciutto is gonski.
Simple.
Now Sookie’s dead I only listen to Basil.
He spends a lot of space on big noting himself though.
Phil’s column, accurately edited:
Give me my free business and first class flights back.
“Anyone in Australia who isn’t of 100% English stock should cease and desist from speaking English as it is cultural appropriation.”
Does this dictate apply to Razey’s wife? After all, she’s Japanese.
There is no way there will ever be a Royal Commission into the COVID-19 handling as there are no records to inspect. Every time Gladys fronted the media, backed up by the gormless Chant, she was lying. And she needed to do it every day at 11 am, she had a lot of designer outfits to showcase.
Second, there are no minutes of the so-called national cabinet so we will never know what ScoMo and the premiers discussed and on what they based their decisions.
Never forgive, never forget.
Fatty Adams is a must skip every Saturday. Doesn’t even provide the LOLs unlike Gemmel.
A few years back, I flew Qantas first class to London.
On the way back, I flew Emirates business class.
The Emirates business class experience was better.
I am planning a trip to Europe next year.
Planning on flying the Singapore to Europe leg with Air France.
Their on board dining experience has been getting 10/10 ratings recently.
Razey says:
May 27, 2023 at 8:28 am
Anyone in Australia who isn’t of 100% English stock should cease and desist from speaking English as it is cultural appropriation.
That won’t worry me too much. The epithets applied to our betters would be much more colorful and imaginative in my native Yiddish.
WHO do you think you are? Outrage over ‘unprecedented land grab’ that ‘could see World Health Organization force Britain, the US and Australia into lockdowns in future pandemics’
I’ve long called him Farty Adams.
The kids already speak American.
ABC headline:
‘Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Sun Cable plan unprecedented and frought’
Frought [sic] with what?
Yes. Have sent them two emails. Just the stock electronic reply. Doubt if anyone read it.
Horrifying.
Vote NO for The Voice
@PeterRampling9
Do they know that they are voting for this @LindaBurneyMP ?
There must be minutes somewhere.
Probably the least of his atrocities.
Bill Gates Bombshell: Billionaire’s Alleged Russian Mistress Connected to Infamous Kremlin Spy Anna Chapman
The old armchair commo wants to renationalise Qantas because he doesn’t ;ile Alan Joyce, even though Joyce is a pouve and therefore ranks far above media commoners like Phatty Adams in the lefty firmament.
Joyce is about to leave Qantas after remaking it into one of the world’s most profitable airlines. He is the world’s best airline CEO and there will be a list of suitors stretching around the globe seeking his services.
He’s a maths nerd, which is why he understands hard-to-master airline balance sheets like a wizard. Good on him — even though I can’t stand his lefty politics.
Someone had to flush the old government mindset out of Qantas and Joyce’s predecessors like Geoff Dixon weren’t up to the task, so it was left to the upstart from the Irish republic.
Not profits.
… like …
Whoa…listen to the music!
Covert?
Bombshell report claims Biden admin using taxpayer money to wage covert war on conservative, Christian groups
FDA Bans Farmers from Caring for Their Own Animals Without Costly Vet Approval
Quite some years ago I was in a Qantas flight from Christchurch to Sydney. The cabin crew were hopeless, in a tizz the whole time and poorly groomed. One stewardess* looked like she just got up and threw on her uniform, her hair was tied back into a ponytail with a rubber band. It’s a three hour flight, give the people their meal and drinks and leave them alone. How hard could it be?
*She doesn’t deserve that title as she was nowhere near the grace and style of a Singapore Girl.
Wealth Taxes Result in Rich People Fleeing, Turns Out
QANTAS is a bit like the old SECV and equivalents. Basically you have to wait for the entire workforce to retire before reform is even possible. You are talking decades.
Ron DeSantis administration officials solicit campaign cash from lobbyists
Not that “traditional norms” means much anymore.
British Cycling has banned men from competing in women’s competitions.
Whoever is managing RFK Jr’s twitter has had a great week.
Avoids saying anything about non-COVID vaccines.
Most things right over target.
Derrick Evans
@DerrickEvans_WV
Stewart Rhodes never entered the Capitol, was never accused of violence or destruction on J6.
He was just sentenced to 18 years in prison.
This is insanity.
The weaponization of the government should concern everyone.
Qatar airways business class is the best I have experienced.
From what I understand nothing was recorded. Individual premiers may have kept private notes and we may find out long way down the road when one of them writes a memoir.
Brucesays:
May 27, 2023 at 8:21 am
Well aware of the songs history, Bruce. I can also appreciate a good remix.
Each to their own.
Didn’t the Brits discover that in the 1960’s, when they tried “Taxing the rich until their eyes bled?”
Here’s a scenario for 2024.
RFK Jr runs as a non-DNC candidate.
Dem vote split.
Trump runs as a non-GOP candidate.
Republican vote split.
Throw in a Greens, Libertarian (Dave Smith) and another billionaire independent candidate.
What a laugh it would be.
With taxpayer subsidies?
Ita Buttrose “didn’t know what Stan Grant was going through.”
She certainly has her finger on the pulse of the organisation.
(Whatever you make of Grant’s claims.)
Tsk, tsk, feelthebern. You should know better. Dems fortify the election and Biden wins.
Agree, Zulu. Best business class tucker, too.
Australia PROMOTING PEDOPHILIA: Australian Government Hosts DRAG QUEEN Story Hour Inside PARLIAMENT
Yes. He’s cross with Qantas.
Get in the queue, Adams. The Beloved is about a million FFP’s in front of you.
We’re all Nazis now.
DHS: First You Watch FOX News, Then PragerU, Then You Become a Nazi (Daniel Greenfield, 26 May)
Unlikely Sun Cable will ever go to Singapore.
Twiggy plan was to have it end in Darwin with others along the way using it.
But it was dependent on the Darwin off take agreement.
Another brilliant ScoMo appointment.
At 81 doesn’t she have enough super to retire that she must still work?
OK…not only did they spell the word incorrectly, they also left it dangling without the preposition or noun required to complete a meaningful sentence. I realise this is a trend but it is grammatically incorrect. The word fraught, which derives from the Dutch word for freight, is either used with a preposition and a noun or as an adjective. People who write headlines for a living – even at the ABC – ought to know this.
Best BC so far – Emirates then JAL. Worst – BA. Trying Air China next year and will report, provided Taiwan hasn’t been invaded.
If you want to channel Mr Creosote, go JAL FC. Tiny, immaculate cabin crew forcing a “leetle weffer more” on you as you sit, immobile from gluttony, in your well upholstered seat.
Now Sookie’s dead I only listen to Basil.
I remember when he said ( to paraphrase ) a man can never be a woman. His groveling apology made his nose grow an extra inch. I also remember him chastising the parents of a sick child in hospital, refused visitation because they wouldn’t to get the c-19 jab. He ridiculed and mocked them.
He’s a classic media whore and first class wanker.
Haven’t tried Qatar yet. The Beloved is chary of flying Air Hijab. We only went Emirates because there were no other options at the time.
Anyone know if Gérard Depardieu has come back to France after he fled high taxes last time?
The Red-Green Agenda: French Government Told to Implement Wealth Tax to Fight Climate Change (25 May)
In a report submitted to the French government on Monday, it was recommended that authorities implement a once-off wealth tax on the country’s top 10 per cent for the sake of the country’s green agenda.
The topic of wealth taxes has been gaining more prominence across the West over the last number of years, with a number of left-wing politicians and activists now advocating for such a one-off toll for the purpose of funding climate change initiatives.
According to a report by Le Monde, the 150-page report penned by Professor Jean Pisani-Ferry makes a similar argument, arguing that a five per cent tax on the country’s wealthiest could generate up to €5 billion every year on average which could be spent on net zero efforts.
The only net zero it would achieve is net zero rich people, but then I suppose that’s the idea. The answer to everything is always communism.
I think The Beatles were paying over 90% tax at one point.
The joke was they got their MBEs for their contributions to the Exchequer account.
If she learnt Engrish from Razey-san she probably isn’t in breach of that particular form of cultural appropriation.
The remix was interesting, Steve. I’m with Bruce though on that pervasive beat – it was really annoying. Don’t know why they have to do it.
My son was really into Techno when it first came out…drove me crazy. At least it wasn’t rap.
Now the grandsons are into music, one very proficient on the drums and the other on his newly acquired (with muchos birthday money and chores) Gretsch which is almost as big as he is. Sadly, no one wants the piano which sits forgotten in the corner of my dining room. Until Mister Four comes to stay – then I wish I had a lock for the lid.
Basil knows how to find reverse gear. The tranny Panzer division mobilised quickly over that one.
Probably had help from these guys
If you ever wanted to get the old man wound up you started talking tax when the top marginal rate was 60c in the dollar.
Somalis exercising their free speech rights at a Minneapolis council election.
Import the 3rd world en masse, get 3rd world problems.
Latest primary polls in Iowa and South Carolina have Trump up +33 and +25, with DeSantis at 17 and 20, respectively. DeSantis is being used here.
We flew Royal Brunei on one occasion. The plebs whinged because Economy was dry, but Business and First class had non – Mooslims to serve the grog to unbelievers.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12122597/Fairfield-Aged-Care-Home-boss-sends-blistering-text-staff-mother-doesnt-work-here.html?ico=related-replace
If the Health Department saw the kitchen, they’d close it down (if it is as described) And as usual, the race card is played. The hygiene standard card is not.
Germs don’t give a damn about where you were born. I had this very same argument with an RN in Blackstone.
callisays:
May 27, 2023 at 9:33 am
The remix was interesting, Steve. I’m with Bruce though on that pervasive beat – it was really annoying. Don’t know why they have to do it.
It’s called getting into a disco groove, Calli. ( : I reckon a lot of young people upon hearing that would probably go on and discover the original and be introduced into another world of yet undiscovered music.
Heck, they might even find out about Alan Parson’s and go ” that’s the Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls intro … damn bro!”
The Alan Parsons Symphonic Project “Sirius” – “Eye In The Sky” (Live in Colombia)
Roger, one of the comments
Only when the assassinations and fire bombings start.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of community use of oral nutritional supplements on clinical outcomes
Good results in this analysis. You may need to be registered to read the full study.
It is good to see that the medical profession writ large is now recognizing the benefits of supplementation for the elderly. Many have been advocating for the same and too often dismissed as cranks, despite that there have long been studies showing benefits. The trick is to know which nutrients and supplements are optimal. That’s difficult.
I read yesterday, that Finland’s wholesale electricity prices went to zero and stayed there for an extended period of time. No biggie right. as wholesale prices can often get to zero when there’s production overload.
But only last year, Finland was carousing to serious problems as a result of gas cut-off from Russia, obviously due to the war.
Prices went to zero with almost all being green production. The thing that has made this possible is that a decent sized nuclear plant came on stream producing masses of electricity to add to their grid. Sure, Finland suffers from the same bullshit with renew balls and it also has lot’s of hydro. However the thing that made electricity plentiful was the nuke plant coming on-board.
Forget the hydro , solar and wind. The thing that tipped it to zero was nuclear.
So much for that moronic energy minister telling us nuclear is too expensive.
I think it would be interesting to calculate the indigenous population using the proportion of Aboriginal blood as a weighting of sorts. So eight people with 1/16 blood would count as one half, while two half bloods count as a whole.
It is a bit like Full Time Equivalents in the workforce where, for example, two people working 4 hrs is equivalent to one person working full time (8 hrs).
But here we would have not FTE’s, but FBE’s (Full Blood Equivalents).
We would likely find the proportion of Indigenous in Australia to be rather less than 3.5%, and the geographic distribution very different, with far fewer FBE’s in the urban areas than the current headcounts.
But it would a great way to show just how starkly policies, programs, and funding are skewed to the cities and away from the Brueghelian hellscapes remote towns and camps.
In one freaking year.
Now they want to limit production. How about dismantling solar and wind while adding another plant.
RTWT.
The prayers from the pilot on the runway as you are taking off will do that for you.
A bit hard on the lowland Scots, their language is English, because they really were English all along, until some celts decided to steal their land, call themselves something else and give them a shyte accent.
Joyce is about to leave Qantas after remaking it into one of the world’s most profitable airlines. He is the world’s best airline CEO and there will be a list of suitors stretching around the globe seeking his services.
I got half way through that dross from Comrade Phil then scrolled on. Agree with the above. I have known 2 Qantas employees who were head office workers at different times under both Dixon and Joyce. From what I was told Dixon was a brilliant businessman but had some morally repugnant traits that I will leave at that. Joyce apparently even more gifted, apparently has a passion for aviation but prone to outbursts of rage and general hissy fits. The other and ultimately loser in all this was John Borghetti, from what I was told also very astute but passed over for Joyce and ended up at VA.
I am a long time frequent flyer of the airline. I was cynical at all the supposed improvements they announced at the start of Joyce’s reign, I had ceased using their international arm at that stage. Whilst I would say service is better on other airlines still the red roo has come a long way from the start in that regard. Have flown their international arm a few times since and gone are the bunny boilers and the service is adequate.
All the usual suspects are fulminating about the profits at the moment. They are about to modernise the B738’s to A320 Neos $110mil a pop with 134 aircraft over 10 years, that’s $14bil without modernising other aging aircraft like the A330’s that have been around nearly as long and purchase/lease of E190’s to replace the B717’s that I love to hate.
Personally I don’t like the pride barrow Joyce pushes but as a CEO he has done a pretty good job. I particularly liked the shutdown to counter the union wildcat strikes, I was in Singapore’s Changi when I learned about it having just got off a flight from Bangkok and transferring to a flight to Darwin.
How would anyone be able to tell?
As for quaintarse, I permanently banned them about five years ago. Their treatement of their customers is appalling. I’d been a quaintarse club member for two decades and the decline in standards once the toxic leprechaun took over was rapid.
Another item for Eddles to chase down while he’s in Beijing.
Another good Albrechtsen column in Teh Weekend Paywallian about you know who. A succinct summary about how she made life difficult for everyone around her – including herself.
JC, I was reading an article this week on Finland regarding how renewables had saved the day.
They omitted the nuclear aspect.
I see someone was dutifully beating the Gummint drum on petrol stations last night.
“Petrol bill too high? No, no. Not taxes. Not our policies. You’re being ripped off by greedy servo owners.”
Then we read that the tolerance they are working to is 0.3%.
That is, less than a cupful in a 70 litre tank.
And, as Gez points out, the pumps are tamper proof, so any out-of-tolerance pump is a result of infrequent maintenance and could just as easily be over-delivering.
But thanks for spouting the Albo line.
Roger:
I’m waiting for the usual suspects to start screaming ‘Racist!!!!11!’ while they fail to recognise it’s about the culture not the race.
But then if they could see the difference, it wouldn’t let them play the race card – which is what much of the squealing was about last night.
Dover Beach:
Yep. He’s being used to split the Republican vote, and I believe he’s quite aware of what he’s doing.
I smell another Pence style debacle in the making.
Alas, I fear destined to remain just an empty spot on the bookshelf like mUnty’s travel report from Malmo.
DeSantis is smart enough to know that and is still going along with it which makes him unprincipled. I thought he had an animosity to Trump during the Maralago document raid, he did not say a word until prompted by journalists.
I thought the best option for him would have been to stay out of the primaries and then be picked as the VP candidate. He may find that antagonising Trump voters is not a winner.
On the other hand, DeSantis may know well that due to Dem cheating there is no way a Republican can win the presidency in the foreseeable future so he is just cashing in with NeverTrumpers.
And so much for the L/NP who for ten years in government paid lip service to nuclear energy and left office bequeathing us the world’s most expensive pumped hydro “battery” which may never be completed.
I’ve posted the whole article.
Unreal, isn’t it. The hide it instead of celebrating a marvelous achievement mixed in with luck. Luck, because the nuke plant was years in the making. Apparently, it’s possibly the largest nuke plant in Europe.
I wonder if there are any Indians in Finland operating service stations.
Less emphasis on the T-freaks in this weeks edition.
—-
Fleccas Talks:
THIS WEEK IN CULTURE 150
I’m reasonably certain Andy Ngo is not a racist.
Importing any people from a dysfunctional culture and concentrate them in one city while imagining they’ll embrace American values is as naive as imagining Iraq could be turned into a western style democracy by force of arms.
On the face of it, a much curated version of what was actually said.
No normal person talks like that.
As Waffles Turnbuckle famously noted at the time, “the gliberal party is not bound by the laws of physics”. Hence water miraculously flowing uphill.
Perhaps he could go and tell it to poor ol’ Flo, the boring machine stuck in a hole and unable to keep digging.
A follow up to AEMO releasing a new map showing a different path for VNI West two days ago.
Their brief response to media simply said it was a technical error.
A technical error that had the map titled 5A instead of the previous option 5.
The highly professional and super expert AEMO would have us believe that they’re this incompetent when it comes to information and consultation?
The rural media are having none of it, and instead call it an accidental release of an updated plan.
The clown show continues.
on biz class:
Emirates better overall, Singapore close. BA is a joke. Qantas … forget it. Other airlines economy is better than biz on the last two.
Philip Adams can find someone to pay if he wants to fly at the pointy end. Just another grifting fellow traveller.
A prayer doesn’t go astray at any time. I always ask for God’s help as we are taxiing down the runway.
Is that before or after the landing gear comes down? 🙂
Fly Olympic. They always applaud on landing.
It suited a lot of people that the media coverage never got any further than “Oh, poor Brittany.” Unfortunately that doesn’t cut it when you get to court. As we are seeing.
The most economical approach would be to stop it now but of course that would require politicians with a brain and a spine, ours only have bowels and reproductive organs.
It’s obviously a rash of mental illness.
Another ‘Islamophobia’ Fizzle (26 May)
No one dares to say what it really is: sectarian muzzo infighting, so when they can’t find some whitey to blame they have to go back to the old mental illness defense.
That boring machine stuck in the hole for Snowy Hydro 2. How about we just fill in the dirt behind it and forget the whole thing?
That’s a rather loose usage of the term, “work”. Simply turning up at the Ultimo taxpayer funded sheltered workshop Kolkhoz is about 91.3% of her jerb.
Clearly she’s been inspired by the mighty work ethic of geriatric Joe. Although at least Ita does have some clue as to what planet she’s on, even if only occassionally.
Fly Olympic. They always applaud on landing.
Knew a Qantas Flight Engineer on 747s. He did a year or two seconded to Olympic. After that reckoned aviation was White Man’s Magic.
Fleeing as he did to the ample bosom of Mother Russia. Remember Cats, this is a personage who drinks thirteen bottles of wine a day.
As has been said” when you taxi out and line up on the runway, if you aren’t at least a little bit nervous, you don’t understand the problem”.
Mmm…AEMO lying to the public?
If that could be proven someone might lose their job.
One saving grace is that truck stop deposits tend to be less squishy under the thongs in the Finnish climate.
And I doubt they wear thongs anyway.
I always enjoy the middle bit. The airborne part.
Except the middle bit between Cairo and Tel Aviv. And the other middle bit between Moresby and Goroka.
You can keep those.
Oh. And crossing the Andes. Although the view out of the window was distracting.
“Anyone in Australia who isn’t of 100% English stock should cease and desist from speaking English as it is cultural appropriation.”
Does this dictate apply to Razey’s wife? After all, she’s Japanese.
Especially ones wives – ahh, the serenity
Sancho:
Way to go to totally miss my point which was – as Farmer Gez pointed out – the pumps can be inaccurate.
See that bit Sancho?
“But if the majority of them are under-pouring, then it seems unusual.”
And you think it’s inconsequential, because you want to justify having a shot at me.
Janet Yellen has extended the debt ceiling deadline until 5 June, give Joe Biden time to do what he does best…he’s taking the Memorial Day long weekend off.
they aren’t lying
the truth is coming out like toothpaste comes out of a tube
‘Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Sun Cable plan unprecedented and frought’
Frought [sic] with what?
Frought with woke and stupid. Maybe we’ll see this vandal get his comeuppance sooner than later.
That would be the legendary footage showing Hoggins being so sloshed she could barely stand, let alone put her shoes back on.
But hey, just let the pair of useless paralytic imbeciles in, who cares what happens afterwards, right taxpayers?
Groogs put on Jatz, Coon cubes, salami and those funny coloured onions. Mother says it was a wonderful night and she was lovely.
Roger:
I’m sure he isn’t either. The relevance of this to the shouting match last night between us is…?
Frought, yes, and maybe all for naught given the SG government has given no approvals to connect to their grid let alone any sign Sun Solar has even been in contact.
Spending $20 bn on a pinky or no promise seems quite ‘hopeful’ when there are other solar facilities being built much closer and SG has 2X capacity based on Gas already.
Look on the bright side, JC. At least Sanna now has a lot more time to party.
LOL. My comment about English language and cultural appropriation was merely to point out the absurdity of the leftard use of the term. I think some of you got that….
Crossie:
The Australian Political Class is the only form of life with a thousand bellies and no brain.
Sancho/JC:
Will you pair get a room for Gods sake?
And wash your hands before you touch that keyboard again.
Tom Hanks comes out for truth. “As the US grapples with a disinformation crisis, Tom Hanks told graduates of Harvard on Thursday to be superheroes in their defense of truth and American ideals, and to resist those who twist the truth for their own gain.
“For the truth to some is no longer empirical. It’s no longer based on data, nor common sense, nor even common decency,” the two-time Academy Award winner said during his keynote address. He invoked the Latin word for truth, “veritas”, Harvard’s motto.”
Qué?
You’ve lost me.
Not Zero is the new abortion.
I love schadenfreude served ice cold on a sunny Saturday morning.
Beer industry “in shock” from Bud Light boycott (26 May, via Lucianne)
Not only the beer industry. Target in the US is doubling down on woke as their shareprice doubles down on going down. And North Face got the treatment in Tom’s toons this morning. It’ll be fun to see what happens to them. The cost of going woke is getting higher, but the executives are so intent on staying in the Davos elites stratum they dare not back away. Always fun to see companies play chicken with their customers and lose, abjectly.
Sydney Morning Herald: ‘On the day of King Charles 111’s coronation, the ABC airs a two hour special examining how relevant the monarchy is to Australians and the Commonwealth in 2023.”
Bullshit. The TV guide said 5pm…Coronation of King Charles 111.
More and more it becomes clear that the problem for centre-right politics is liberalism itself. The tendency of liberal influence in centre-right politics is to draw it leftward. Also, Burn-Murdoch writes for the FT. The finance press is not a friend of right politics. They may now and then align with right politics but they are ideologically at odds with right politics.
Before takeoff one prayer and a different one on touchdown.
Nurse Betty, the petrol pump sleuth, on the matter of the stolen cup full of petrol.
Very suspicious that the pumps will err on the side of unders rather than overs, apparently.
Is it?
If you are allowed a tolerance of 0.3%, you might target an under-pour, say, of 0.1%.
Statistically, that would result in more underpouring than over.
No biggie.
If you want keep pushing the Albo press release on this one, go right ahead.
But there are more serious weights and measures issues facing the nation. Like, for example, “medical perfessionals” fiddling the drugs register in hospitals.
I just went through three days of training at my favourite employer. Very educational, including discussion of new WHS Act and its interaction with the mines. There are no employers and employees anymore you are now either a HBCDPOCUXYZ or a Wukka.
Sexual harassment, respect and sense of psychological safety: No trans bullsh1t. Mostly appears good sense – but be bloody careful and keep notes. The opportunities for innocent stuff to be twisted by a person capitalising are awful.
New training: Mental Health First Aid – surprisingly good training, included role play of ‘difficult conversation’.
New Training: Arc Flash. Turns out Zimbabwe isn’t the best place to get hit by lightning; its our local substation. Pictures of burn injuries were graphic. Takeaway: anything going near high voltage might trigger arc flash, and it doesn’t have to touch anything just be near it.
Takeaway 1: Forget starting a small business. You now need $5M in compliance people costs to be in business at all.
Takeaway 2: We need a powerful, professional systems approach to anything at all these days. That includes even working out what the well-meaning are doing to take your freedom from you. To be effective in either stopping Vogon-like regulatory abuse or improving over-regulation needs really hardworking, talented, knowledgeable and effective people.
Has anyone seen Dylan Mulvaney lately, the cause of all this destruction? Is he still memorialising each new day of his girlhood?
To be honest I found Qantas ok to pretty good before the woke/pc crap was turned up. I refuse to use them now because of that. I should also say that ex employees I’ve spoken to have told me they were horrible to work for.
Ripped off.
Bought a “litre” of iodine.
997 mls.
I just counted the matches in my box of 50 matches.
49.
You’re funny Low Low
Spending $20 bn on a pinky or no promise seems quite ‘hopeful’ when there are other solar facilities being built much closer and SG has 2X capacity based on Gas already.
I think your talking $20billion of OUR money not Mikey’s .. no way him & Twiggy would have duked it out wiv their own loot as the stake ……..
Who cares?
LOL!
Revealed: Rupert Murdoch Hosted Ron DeSantis at His California Ranch and Told Him FOX News Will Support Him (26 May)
Ron DeSantis gives America the chance to move on from its punch-drunk stupor (26 May)
New York Post, by Editorial
I wonder who owns the New York Post? Weird huh? Unfortunately Newscorp management haven’t worked out that every time they pull one of these editorial stunts DeSantis’s numbers fall another few points.
I think its corporate ESG score for the major super funds as shareholders that chains their feet to the fire.
So…not the Liberal Party then.
I just don’t get why commercial outfits are pissing off their customers/fans. All I can think of is marxist trashing of things people hold dear.
Just dropping this here:
From Chris’s post above:
Bin tryin’ to say this for freakin’ ages.
But, Nah! She’ll be right. Snot THAT bad yet, isit?
Yeah but nah but yeah but nah but zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……………
WAKE THE FECK UP!
(Breathe, Muddy. Just breeeeeeathe…).
I have 2 family members who until recently worked for Qantas, one a pilot the other ground staff. Basically, Qantas are at war with their workforce and vv. The relationship is toxic. The Q senior executive strata are viewed as a bunch of c****.
And on the subject of carriers, I refuse to put a penny into Sharia Airlines. Plenty others to choose from, rather than fund the sheiks’ vanity projects while the multi faced rag heads dabble with funding AQ et al. The ME is a vipers nest. No thanks.
Corporate management types – including (especially?) in Big Sport – are useful idiots.
Sorry. Forgot to mention that the bolding in that quote was mine.
As you were.
(Back to La-Firetrucking-La Land).
Rupe jumping horses? Hmmm … that’s new.
News.com.au has an article on Anna Kournikova.
Liberty quote: “When I got pregnant, I reduced the workload, and realised I want to devote all my time to children. Being with them is happiness, I am not going to miss a second.”
Increasing for Big Sport and FTA TV their just paying the government piper.
Not sure i can blame that their on autocorrect. But I will try.
Chris – That’s rapidly becoming being torn in two directions:
Target, Bud Light investors lose billions on marketing misses (26 May)
There’re signs that companies are starting to edge away from ESG stuff, which is good. Unfortunately in our country super funds are solidly controlled by the unions and the unions are controlled by green progressive uni graduates. So I can’t see ASX companies escaping the dilemma as easily as US ones can.
Couldn’t be more pleased with my part in this.
A bit tough on the Irish and Welsh given the National Education Act 1831 (UK).
Speaking of petrol pumps, I’ve been trying to verify my car’s trip computing which says 6.4L/100km average. Tried about 4 times and got 7.2L/100km. Ok but not spectacular and I am a lead foot.
The Dialectic at work. Action, provoke and control the reaction, implement the solution you had in mind when you created the problem
The problem with their cunning plan is the reaction is NOT the one they were hoping to provoke/control.
According to a James Lindsay podcast I listened to,the big reason corporations are embracing this bullshit is to get their ESG scores up so that Blackrock etc will infest in them and that banks will lian to them. There is an audit mafia that says do this and we will bump up the E part of your scores, ignore us and you will get a big fat 0.