Scroll on warning for those who prefer not to read a travellers ramblings. Given we had decided to opt for…
Open Thread – Thurs 20 July 2023
- TULIP versus ruinous Labor
- Open Thread – Weekend 18 May 2024
- Bumtree #15
- Bumtree #14
- Open Thread – Thurs 16 May 2024
There is no negotiating with sub human, low IQ barbarians. Continue the offensive until there is no movement… no other…
I am not happy that you should post this at this time when I’m in the process of sorting out…
Jeez Louise.
Caught staten island ferry during first trip to NY. 2 hours after my ride a guy took out several people…
Ahaha! Dover read my French markets story.
That’s me in the white. The thin one. 😀
Now that the heat has subsided, I’m off to the kitchenware shop. Same place I bought the clasp knife. Some great cooking stuff, common here but dear as poison back home. I have my eye on some special cake and tart tins, and maybe a terrine mould. They were still selling the same cloches for keeping the flies off that I bought here years ago.
Calli, I was also thinking Thursday is a traditional shopping day.
To important to leave on the fag end of the OOT.
Seems like the Telegraph UK is prepping their readers for defeat in Ukraine. They even describe it as ‘devastating’.
Same place I bought the clasp knife
Just make sure it’s in the main luggage when traveling by air.
Yes, Gabor, along with my hijacking embroidery scissors. Safety first!
Combat veteran reacts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnWkwruSpW0
Arky
Jul 20, 2023 1:03 AM
I see, any day now then.
Top 10.
Good morning all.
Top 10 here as well. Just watching the Ashes.
Cultural appropriation is crap.
John Spooner.
Mark Knight.
Peter Broelman.
Michael Ramirez.
Al Goodwyn.
Gary Varvel.
Chip Bok.
Bob Gorrell.
Thanks again Tom. ‘Nice’ Chairman Dan Toons.
Climate Change Lies –
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/18/youtube-suppressed-this-pushback-video-on-heat-wave-alarmism-lets-give-it-a-second-life/
Only just under 3 minutes long –
There is a silver lining to everything.
Renewables Versus the Grid at PJM
Originally posted at CFACT
By David Wojick
The grid was not built to run on “renewables”, and this simple fact is becoming clear at PJM, which is America’s biggest Regional Transmission Operator. To mix metaphors, the renewables stampede is swamping PJM, so the stampede is bogging down. This is good news.
By way of background, PJM once stood for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. It was a voluntary utility group formed after the huge blackout in the late 1960s. Today it manages the grid as far south as Virginia and west to Illinois, serving about 65 million people in 13 states, including me. Central megalopolis if you like.
PJM’s key role in this story is called “interconnection”. Any utility or independent power producer can build a wind or solar generating facility, but PJM has to approve its connection to the grid, without which it is useless.
Before approving a new connection PJM rightly conducts a grid impact analysis. This means modeling the operation of the grid with the new generation active, to see what problems it might cause. They also determine what transmission upgrades will be needed and bill the owner of the generator accordingly. This is basic grid management.
The renewables stampede has swamped PJM to the point where they have stopped approving new connections. The numbers are indeed staggering.
As of March PJM reportedly had an overwhelming 2,649 active projects in its generation interconnection queue. Almost all of these are wind and solar, and many are small.
Even more ridiculous is the amount of generation involved. PJM’s total installed electric generation capacity is approximately 192,000 MW. A lot of this is seldom used minor stuff as they only peak around 150,000 MW, which is just a few times a year.
In contrast, the stampede queue totals around 259,000 MW or nearly double the present peak need. Adding this monstrosity to their present capability gives an incredible 451,000 MW.
There is simply no way to assess the potential impact of this much intermittent nonsense. PJM is used to assessing the incremental addition of small numbers of reliable power plants. Most of these are relatively large, built to serve specific loads, and located near suitable transmissions.
In contrast, this glut of renewables is mostly located where the developer can find the land to build on. Neither need nor transmission is considered. In fact, since the land required is large, they tend to be located very far from urban load centers.
The first thing PJM did was to throw up their hands. They declared a two-year moratorium on approving new connections while they considered how to deal with this impossible stampede. Several steps are now being tried over a four-year go-slow trial period.
First, they are restructuring the connection application queue from first come, first served, to taking those projects that look ready-to-build first. Second, they are trying to bundle groups of these projects into clusters for purposes of assessment.
Whether these steps work remains to be seen, but in the interim, connection approvals are likely to be slow, as they should be. The grid does not need a stampede.
The transmission upgrade issue also looms large. According to one study, average interconnection costs for active projects rose from $29,000/MW to $240,000/MW between 2017 and 2022, an eightfold increase.
This huge jump is due to the remoteness of renewables. While the transmission upgrade costs for gas-fired power plants run around $24,000/MW the cost for renewables ranged from $136,000 to a whopping $335,000, or fourteen times gas.
Not surprisingly, these huge upgrade costs have rendered many wind and solar projects financially unworkable, which is how it should be. Those promoting the so-called energy transition have ignored the need to rebuild the grid along the way.
I am sure that PJM’s problems are universal. The renewables stampede is both costly and unmanageable since it requires rebuilding much of the power grid. The actual engineering is going to slow it way down, and that is a good thing.
Author:
David Wojick
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/ Available for confidential research and consulting.
This is one of life’s Deep Truths.
For instance, the Beloved has just tried to eat a hideous Coq au Vin (yes, I know…he panicked and selected something familiar).
Silver lining – when we get home into the depths of winter, I will cook him a rich, glossy and HOT dish that poops all over what he manfully endured tonight.
What’s the mood in Victoria regarding the Commonwealth Games cancellation? Are the majority not furious? Is this another example of Melbourne Syndrome, previously known as Stockholm Syndrome?
Quite so. They’re painting this malignant turd as some sort of cute Mr Bean.
He isn’t.
Well seeing as no-one else has, I claim this thread for the Duke of Wellington, in honour of his victory at Spain’s Battle of Salamanca, which is where I am today.
Huzzah!
And good night!
The fantasy world of that “Combat Veteran” is really quite cute.
Are the “Ukrainians” out of the grey zone yet? No. The grey zone, (disputed territory, or no mans land for vehicles), is 15-25 km wide. So an advance of 6 km = 0 gains.
There are three lines of defence set up by the Muscovites. The “Ukrainians” are yet to reach the first line.
They are no longer using the much vaunted Leopard 2’s, (too many losses) and have never used the Challengers, because the Poms think it is bad Press to watch them go up in smoke.
Instead, the “Ukraine” infantry conduct frontal attacks with no tanks, no air support and limited arty support, because they have no 155mm shells. Ivan has plenty of everything.
Sound like a winning strategy to you?
Much better to throw your troops at strong defences with no support, (didn’t they accuse Ivan of doing that, 8 months ago?????), suffering massive casualties, than negotiate. This is obvious, ….., right?
The Russians have eliminated so many real Ukrainians, that the current “Ukraine” Army speaks with very different accents. Stoltenberg insists though, that NATO is not involved, ……, when he actually gets out from under his desk!
Even if this was a movie, this would be a tragedy, but this isn’t a movie.
Nuland, Sullivan, Biden’s “puppet master”, (O’bummer?), plus the EU crazies, von der Leyen, Borrell, Michel et al, who continue to push us toward nuclear armageddon, have no strategy left except, “this time, sanctions/offensives/escalations will work.”
Hug those dear to you, there may not be much time left.
Kathryn Campbell has been suspended without pay from her new, $900,000 advisory role in Defence working on the AUKUS submarine taskforce.
Excellent.
Rufus T Firefly
Jul 20, 2023 6:33 AM
Rufus, I was a bit scathing about that link, no reflection on Arky.
Had to have a look as I never heard of the “Combat Veteran”.
Typical partisan armchair general.
Nothing wrong with being partisan to your cause, but reality and facts should still be your priority.
Top 40….yay…
Paywallion:
Robodebt boss Kathryn Campbell parachuted into $900K AUKUS job
By JENNA CLARKE
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
New documents show senior bureaucrats worked to move former DFAT secretary Kathryn Campbell into a new job with a $900,000 pay packet weeks before it was announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese she was being dumped and moved into another advisory role.
Senior staff including Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Glyn Davis and former Public Service commissioner Peter Woolcott exchanged correspondence about Ms Campbell’s salary expectations six days before her termination was made public.
Mr Woolcott wrote to Professor Davis on June 16, 2022 outlining that Ms Campbell’s new job “could be expected to match (the) current salary”, which was more than $892,000.
She was then appointed as a special advisor on the AUKUS submarine taskforce.
Ms Campbell’s new role with the Defence department has come under scrutiny after she was adversely mentioned in the recent report into the flawed Robodebt scheme.
Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes found Ms Campbell – who was the Human Services secretary from 2011 to 2017 – sought not to go ahead with legal advice into the scheme.
The Commissioner also ruled that Ms Campbell repeatedly failed to act when the program’s flaws and illegality became apparent.
The ecoferals are really getting on the nose with Poms.
Eco-warrior dragged from Lord’s by Jonny Bairstow is punched by pregnant woman’s boyfriend (19 Jul)
Keep up the good work greenies, your are winning converts to the side of sanity with every stupid action you do.
Chairman Dan
My “tie him to a post and beat him with a stick” is starting to catch on in Victoria.
There was a fascinating cameo on stand in Credelin last night when two credible commentators expressed utter bewilderment over Andrew’s capacity to not just survive, but thrive.
They are looking at the issue from the wrong perspective.
The answer lies in the Victotian people. They are both collectivists and exceptionalists.
They actually believe themselves to be different and take great pride in Victorian idiocy.
Heartland of union thuggery, heartland of socialism, originator of the communist universities, original heartland of militant anti-British Catholicism, original source of the Greens, and as proof positive, affording a religious status to history’s most idiotic form of football, and then permitting that sport to assume governmental levels of authority.
Our Vic expat neighbours still all listen to Trioli every day and loudly discuss her vitriol every morning when walking their cavoodles.
They are just different. They need to just go away for the good of the nation.
Welllllll, blow me down, who’d have thunk it?
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/07/19/nigel-farage-debanked-over-ties-to-donald-trump-and-for-expressing-conservative-views-bank-docs-show/
Chairman Dan
My “tie him to a post and beat him with a stick” is starting to catch on in Victoria.
Should be ‘tarred and feathered’ along with a few others.
Victoria.
The heartland of Irish Catholic leaders inspiring miners to rebel against draconian taxation imposed by the Protestant British establishment government leading to democratic reform.
Not all bad Bons.
Those in denial are starting to see the light that the state is bankrupt. Those that were apathetic and indifferent are now dismayed and bewildered. I think the lipstick has finally lost it’s gloss on this turd.
It’s interesting that the Diktator used the exact same tactic that he used with the timber industry. No consultation or prior notification then wham, right between the eyes.
I expect there to be a major announcement in the next day or two as a diversionary tactic.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/19/woke-capitalism-and-its-useful-idiots/
Much like “Samurai” Ty, Armchair Copelord and the Russian “Lt Col Milblogger sitrep extraordinaires”.
Remember the Devuskhka who was a US reservist LARPing?
Backing Putin won’t make Biden go away.
Hahaha!
Anyone with a half a brain could see that this bank deplatforming of Nigel Farage was a political act, and that it nothing to do with his bank account balance dropping to “below a financial threshold“.
It was all so predictable. I’ve argued this on these pages for years now, first they go after the low hanging fruit and then, emboldened by the fact that few protested about the cancelling and silencing of the low hanging fruit, they go after the high hanging fruit to cancel and to silence. It isn’t rocket science and I said above, it was entirely predictable.
Like an old crusty adage, the moral here is that perhaps it’s important to speak up and protest when they first went after for the unpalatable low hanging fruit. We know their names, I don’t need to repeat them here. But you see, Nigel didn’t speak up, and now he’s paying a hefty price.
Of course, all of this is coming to you and me.
…and what was that threshold?
That was the tell for me.
Part of Luigi’s cunning plan to have more 251s in uni than in gaol .. LOL!
https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/albanese-government-handing-universities-taxpayers-cash-for-indigenous-enrolment/video/24dbe331b321493f812c79ebabc12127
Catholics are responsible for Andrews getting back in again.
I don’t think so.
Melbourne is a city of immigrants, Chinese, Indians, Turks, Lebanese. Vietnamese and many more post war, all of whom vote Labor, no matter what, add to them upper middle pseudo egalitarians who have moved hard left to Labor greens or teals.
Add in all the hystericals who thought Dan saved them in lockdowns.
And its not as if Victoria is on it’s own as turkeys voting for Christmas.
My closest family have been anti Dan for the longest ime.
Nothing can be more despicable than his abortion laws.
One Labor brother turned against him during lockdown.
The regional Commonwealth Games was always farcical.
I think the attitude of much of the population in Victoria is much like the attitude of the Russian population at the height of communism. ” Its terrible but what can you do .You cant change it so just get on with life as well as you can”.
I suspect he will be re-elected unopposed as usual.
It’s a business opportunity, but has to be done carefully.
First get a banking licence. Say all the right things to APRA.
Then announce you are a bank for the unrepresented Right.
There would be a flood of depositors and borrowers overnight!
But you can’t advertise it before the fact or APRA will find reasons for not granting the licence.
How can any public servant be paid $900K?
Bons, it’s not Victorians, it’s Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo (maybe Shepparton), they’re chockers full of Andrews lovers.
I like Tim Quiltys proposal for a new state where essentially everything south of the Murrumbidgee becomes a new state and Melbourne becomes a separate city state. It’s unlikely to happen but it would be great for many of us.
My thinking Danny Boy will announce he is about to resign to take overseas job. He has 6 ? Class actions in Civil Court as his owned DPP stopped legal proceedings. .Coming up includes I cook.
Dot
Jul 20, 2023 8:00 AM
Typical partisan armchair general.
Never heard of them and am quite content about it.
————————————————-
Not backing him, as a matter of fact never did back either side, but as the conflict goes on and seeing who is backing Zelensky, I have second thoughts about it.
Take note! I said Zelensky and his fascist mates not UKR
As to Biden, only a hearse will take him away.
He knows too much, too many people are either beholden to him or relying on him as a convenient figure head.
How can any public servant be paid $900K?
Just wait until you see her pension plan…
True story: A mate of mine had some dugong agisted on a property off of Sweers Island in the Gulf. An Aboriginal stockman turns up in a tinnie, cuts the Evinrude and lets it glide in so as not to frighten the herd and says to me mate: What do you call someone who camps right beside a mangrove creek?
A Victorian
The event horizon where the Future Fund is unencumbered keeps getting pushed out.
7 figure packages to long standing public servants is one of the reasons.
Seriously looking at buying this, but I think it will go for more than my budget.
I can’t fit on my Yamaha TA125, I said to my wife that I’m struggling to fit on it, I think it’s cause of my stomach, she told me “It’s not your stomach, it’s your big bum”, She is the rock of my life, always cheers me up, she does.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/225677988326
your big bum
Sound like she’s had that return volley cocked in the breech for a few years…
The public servant in question has certainly put paid to the notion that such high salaries attract the best talent.
On John Laws, I thought he was long dead.
Fun factlet: He appeared in an episode of Skippy, playing a dodgy land developer who gets around in a red Plymouth convertible and is prone to bursting into renditions of “the Wild Colonial Boy”.
So that Campbell woman was already on close to $900k?
You can imagine the justifications for awarding salaries like that – comparable to similar roles in the private sector, or amount required to prevent her being head hunted, etc.
Its a cosy little Clique in Canberra, playing it could be you.
No wonder those imaginary unterzee coffins are slated to cost multiple trillions and not be delivered for decades.
What possible reason is there for paying such a useless incompetent ignoramus $900,000pa for “an advisory role” on the the AUKUS unterzee coffin taskforce? What could she possibly know about the bloody things?
This country is an increasingly unfunny joke.
Russia warns all ships are ‘military’ threats as grain deal ends
Max Hunder and Olena Harmash
Kyiv | Russia warned that from Thursday it will treat all vessels heading to Ukraine’s ports as military threats, signalling its intent to reimpose a naval blockade on Ukraine, as Kyiv accused Moscow of carrying out “hellish” overnight strikes that damaged grain export infrastructure.
Russia attacked the Odessa region for the second consecutive night after quitting on Monday a year-old deal allowing the safe passage of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, a decision that prompted the United Nations to warn it risked creating hunger around the world.
Ukraine, which wants to try to continue Black Sea grain shipments vital to global food supplies, said on Wednesday it was setting up a temporary shipping route via Romania.
“Russian terrorists absolutely deliberately targeted the infrastructure of the grain deal,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app. “Every Russian missile – is a strike not only on Ukraine but on everyone in the world who wants normal and safe life.”
Wheat futures soared as much as 9 per cent in Chicago after Russia issued the warning. Wheat, maize and rapeseed futures on Paris-based Euronext all hit multi-month highs.
“We saw it as unlikely that the grain deal would continue, but this is escalatory – after a number of escalations we’ve already seen,” said Michael Magdovitz, a senior analyst at Rabobank in London. Ukrainian farmers’ crops are “coming to harvest at the very time when their export capacity is being shut off,” he said.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office said 10 civilians, including a 9-year-old boy, were wounded in the attacks on Odessa. Grains terminals were damaged as well as an industrial facility, warehouses, shopping malls, residential and administrative buildings and cars.
Flames and smoke rose from shattered warehouses in video released by the emergencies ministry, which also showed a residential block with shattered windows.
Russia on Wednesday said it would consider all ships travelling to Ukraine’s Black Sea ports as “potentially carrying military cargo” from midnight Moscow time, following the end of the grain deal.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said flag states of ships travelling to Ukrainian ports would be considered parties to the “Ukrainian conflict” on the Ukrainian side.
The Defence Ministry did not say what actions it might take. It said Russia was also declaring southeastern and northwestern parts of the Black Sea’s international waters to be temporarily unsafe for navigation.
The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said Russia’s exit from the deal threatens to increase global food insecurity and could raise food prices, especially in poor countries.
President Vladimir Putin said Western nations had “completely distorted” the expired deal, but said Russia would immediately return to it if all its conditions for doing so were met.
‘Mass revenge strike’
On Tuesday, Russia said it had hit military targets in two Ukrainian port cities overnight as “a mass revenge strike” for a blast that damaged its bridge to Crimea, the peninsula it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukraine’s air force said on Wednesday 63 missiles and drones had been launched across the country by Russia, mainly focused on infrastructure and military facilities in the Odessa region.
Air defences had shot down 37 of them, it said, a lower proportion than it has usually reported over months of attacks.
A considerable part of the grain export infrastructure at Chornomorsk port southwest of Odessa was damaged, Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky said, adding that 60,000 tons of grain had been destroyed.
The attack was “very powerful, truly massive,” Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Odessa military administration, said in a voice message on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.
“It was a hellish night,” he said.
The Odessa region’s three ports were the only ones operating in Ukraine during the war under the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative that allowed Ukrainian grain exports through a Russian blockade of Ukraine’s ports.
Ukrainian forces launched a counteroffensive last month to try to drive Russian forces out of its south and east, where they have dug in along a heavily fortified front line after failing to capture Kyiv in the early days of the invasion.
In Washington, the Pentagon announced additional security assistance for Ukraine, totalling about $US1.3 billion ($1.9 billion), with the package including air defence capabilities and munitions.
The United Nations has said there were a “number of ideas being floated” to help get Ukrainian grain and Russian grain and fertiliser to global markets.
The Black Sea deal was brokered by the UN and Turkey in July last year to combat a global food crisis worsened by Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The two countries are among the world’s top grain exporters.
Russia says it could return to the grain deal, but only if its demands are met for rules to be eased for its own exports of food and fertiliser. Western countries call that an attempt to use leverage over food supplies to force a weakening in financial sanctions, which already allow Russia to sell food.
BIDEN CRIME FAMILY CAUGHT! – IRS Whistleblower – Gay, Democrat, Joseph Ziegler – Confirms that Biden Family Received Approximately $17 Million in Payments from China, Romania and Other Countries
Catturd ™
@catturd2
The same liberals who were so offended by this today want to show pictures more raunchy than this to your 2nd grader.
Catturd ™
@catturd2
That’s okay – the tornado is safe and effective.
And I couldn’t resist
Usual suspects doing the usual lying.
Europe’s “48°C Horror That Never Was”…ESA, Media Sharply Criticized For Manipulative Reporting (19 Jul)
Oh that’s a good one, lay a thermometer on a convenient place like a nice hot asphalt road surface, then report it as terrible death-causing heat. Whereupon the whole lefty MSM takes up the story like a flock of yodeling parrots. And they accuse righties of disinformation? Sheesh, these people are evil.
Yes, it’s been quite the wake up call for Farage.
It should always be about principle, not personalities.
As for Coutts, I presume Prince Andrew is still a client?
The Bleeding Obvious, But NOT to Blackout Bowen, Alboslezy, Labor & The Greens
Chanticleer
Power prices up 30pc since Liddell closure
For all the planning around the shutdown of AGL’s NSW power station – and there was a lot – power prices are up by double digits in the 85 days since.
As debate rages about the shutdown or phased shutdown of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station Eraring, recent history shows closing big generators leads to a material rise in power prices.
About 12 weeks ago, AGL called time on its Liddell power station in the NSW Hunter Valley, in a carefully planned exit. It had been on the cards since 2015 when the company’s then chief executive Andy Vesey set a new climate policy for the electricity producer, which included a commitment not to extend the life of the coal power stations.
What ensued was years of planning – by AGL, governments, energy regulators – delays and eventually a staged shutdown, in a bid to minimise the impact and ensure the lights didn’t go out and prices did not skyrocket.
But for all the planning, wholesale electricity prices have increased materially since Liddell was shut.
By how much? UBS utilities and energy analyst Tom Allen did the numbers this week, comparing the average realised wholesale electricity price in the 85 days since Liddell’s closure to the preceding 85 days, across the four main states in the national electricity market.
In NSW, home of Liddell and Eraring, the average realised wholesale price was 32 per cent higher in the period after Liddell’s closure, while in Victoria, the price was up 27 per cent. It doubled in South Australia and was 14 per cent higher in Queensland.
They are all big increases.
While it is open to debate how much seasonality is in the numbers given the timing of the closure and the onset of winter – and it is a debate, no one can know for sure – Allen reckons it cannot be disputed what happens when a big coal-fired power generator is removed from the electricity market.
“Despite five years of planning, there has been a significant step change in wholesale electricity prices post Liddell’s shutdown,” he says.
“There is still not enough of the equivalent firming dispatch from renewables or other sources to offset that plant coming out of the market.”
Interestingly, the Australian Energy Regulator called out Liddell’s closure in its review of June quarter electricity prices released on Thursday.
It said the closure contributed to higher electricity prices in the June quarter compared to the March quarter, although the closure was partially offset by 1100 megawatts of new solar, wind and batteries capacity. It also said seasonality (colder weather in the southern states, a decline in solar generation) was a factor.
Ironically, despite Liddell’s closure in late April, AER said there was more black coal capacity offered into the market this year compared to the same time last year, when multiple baseload outages, high international coal and gas prices and fuel constraints hit supply and saw prices skyrocket.
The obvious question is, what does it all mean for Origin Energy’s Eraring, which is slated for closure in 2025? That timetable is under review, while Origin’s energy markets business is under a takeover offer from Canada’s Brookfield and is subject to review by the competition regulator.
An independent report for the NSW government on the ability for the state power system to weather Eraring’s closure is due to be completed in early August, while federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said this week that any extension of Eraring units would be a matter of “months, not years”.
There are plenty of moving parts, with other generators coming into and out of the grid. The new owner of the Vales Point generator nearby to Eraring on NSW’s Central Coast, for example, delayed its potential closure by four years to 2033.
The whole thing is a steaming situation wrapped up in politics, and business is also highly interested given the potential for rising power prices to drive up their costs.
General Mike Flynn
@GenFlynn
.
@catturd2 Just when you feel you’ve reached you’re “threshold of pain,” the humor and the stories you tell allow those of us who follow you to hold on for one more moment.
Thanks for all you do for others and please keep the faith.
America needs you more than you can imagine!
Not any more, it seems. In the case of non existent gerbil worming, reality and facts were never relevant nor a priority – and haven’t been for 35 years and counting.
So much for their protests about terrorism.
Real Mac Report
@RealMacReport
Rep. Jason Smith: “IRS recommended multiple felony charges against Hunter Biden…relating to at least $8.3 million in income from foreign companies based in China, Romania, and Ukraine. The DOJ engaged in a campaign to Delay, Divulge, and Deny that investigation.”
Daily Mail. Play the race card…
More Pain for Australians from Blackout Bowen, Alboslezy, Labor & The Greens
Labor’s battery dream to cost taxpayers more than it earns
Jacob Greber and Michael Read
Anthony Albanese’s plans to establish a taxpayer-funded battery-making industry won’t boost national welfare and entrenches rent-seeking, a damning Productivity Commission report warns.
The independent advisory body predicts that the prime minister’s dream of turning the country into a battery powerhouse could backfire by costing taxpayers more than any economic benefits that might emerge.
Throwing cold water over one of the government’s primary post fossil fuel economy transition ambitions, the commission also urged Labor against forgetting “the lessons of our protectionist past”.
It urges the government to focus on servicing US buyers of Australian commodities in response to the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, even if Washington’s subsidies “come at significant cost to US taxpayers, whose incomes will be lower as a result”.
Mr Albanese, Industry Minister Ed Husic and Resources Minister Madeleine King are spearheading government efforts to kickstart domestic battery manufacturing, which Labor has ranked as one of its top industry policy priorities.
The government launched public consultations in February on a national battery strategy and issued a report in March indicating “an openness to imposing local content requirements”, according to the commission, as well as establishing a battery manufacturing precinct alongside up to $6 billion in potential National Reconstruction Fund support.
However, the plans have been met with scepticism among industry CEOs and triggered alarm from some foreign allies, including among South Korean investors that accused Labor of trying to engineer a lopsided or “greedy” trade relationship.
The report coincided with an announcement by Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen on Wednesday that Labor will grant $1.12 million to the Australian Photovoltaic Institute for a study into “opportunities for production of solar panels and components here at home”.
In its annual Trade and Assistance Review, released on Thursday, the Productivity Commission challenges calls from prominent voices including former Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle for an assertive response to Mr Biden’s IRA, which by some estimates is expected to unleash about $US3 trillion ($4.4 trillion) in renewable energy technology investment across the US.
“Some commentators have called for Australia to respond in kind,” Productivity Commission deputy chair Alex Robson writes in Thursday’s The Australian Financial Review.
“But we should never forget the lessons of our protectionist past. Each dollar spent on subsiding the domestic production of goods in firms or sectors where Australia does not have a comparative advantage comes from firms and sectors in which we do.
“This is particularly true in a near full-employment economy.
“Worse, such moves will only further encourage a global return to isolationist trade policy – a system under which a small economy such as Australia is unlikely to prosper.”
Comparative advantage in processing
According to the commission, Australia stands to benefit from the US package because of its status as a trade partner and a recent deal between Mr Biden and Mr Albanese to ensure Australian suppliers are categorised as US “domestic” players.
“Importantly, the Inflation Reduction Act does not materially alter Australia’s existing comparative advantage in supplying natural resources and production of high-skilled services,” the commission states. Furthermore, the IRA “will likely boost demand for Australia’s critical minerals”.
The commission notes that Australia is the world’s largest producer of lithium and bauxite, and ranks third in cobalt and manganese, and fourth in rare earths.
However, it cautions against assuming that the presence of critical minerals justifies heavy domestic upstream processing and manufacture of end-products such as electric vehicle batteries.
“To the extent that these critical minerals are low-volume once processed and refined, and thereby low-cost to transport, a domestic processing capacity is unlikely to create an appreciable cost advantage for a domestic battery industry,” the commission states.
“That is, the comparative advantage in resource extraction presented by Australia’s resource endowments is more suggestive of a comparative advantage in the processing of low concentration minerals than in final battery production.”
It warns that the scale of US and European industry subsidies for battery making “would reduce the likelihood that Australia develops an economically efficient battery industry and raises the likelihood that its resources earn better returns in other industries (such as services)” .
“And if the Australian government were to support such an industry,” it adds, “the cost of that support may outweigh the benefits for GDP and economic growth.
“It may also entrench an inefficient industry that relies on lobbying for more support to sustain itself over time, rather than on relying on its inherent economic advantages.”
High-cost carbon abatement
The annual review finds government spending on industry assistance increased by $460 million to $13.8 billion in 2021-22, led by supports for climate change measures, including costly state and federal government EV subsidies.
Once again lamenting the lack of an economy-wide carbon price, the commission is sharply critical of high-cost policies such as renewable energy targets, government grants for abatement projects, tax concessions for EVs, and cheap loans for abatement projects.
“Many of Australia’s sectoral abatement measures do not currently approximate an efficient form of carbon pricing, and selectively confer significant advantages on some activities, at high cost to taxpayers,” it says.
“If nothing else, the pursuit of significantly high-cost abatement policies – when lower cost credible abatement options are available – suggests the activity might be given industry assistance for reasons other than their potential contribution to national emissions reduction goals.”
Labor’s policy to exempt EVs from fringe benefits tax abates carbon dioxide at a cost of anywhere from $987 to $20,084 per tonne, while state government stamp duty exemptions for EVs have effective costs as high as $4900 per tonne, the commission says.
The commission also pointed to the growth in cheap government loans to businesses, which it says may increase as a result of Labor’s $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund.
Organisations including Export Finance Australia, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund were among government entities doling out billions of dollars in taxpayer-subsidised loans.
“Concessional finance can act as a form of industry assistance when it reduces the costs of domestic firms, relative to their international competitors, or is available to some domestic firms and sectors, and not others, increasing the share of the economy these firms and sectors would otherwise occupy,” the report says.
Dr Robson said the world’s largest economies were increasingly assisting selected industries with subsidies, local content rules and trade barriers, which he likened to “old-fashioned protectionism”.
“As a small open economy, our future prosperity depends on global economic integration and low trade barriers,” Dr Robson said.
“It is unlikely to be in Australia’s interests to try and compete in a protectionist contest via large-scale industry assistance.”
The report’s long-term analysis suggests that while overall budgetary assistance to the economy has declined since peaking in GDP terms in the late 2000s, the outlays have been heading higher since the pandemic.
It also confirms that agriculture is the biggest net beneficiary, relative to its economic weight, followed by manufacturing. Despite claims from some industry critics that it receives outsized treatment, mining’s assistance is tiny compared to the value it generates.
Climategate: BBC’s propaganda falls apart under scrutiny
Rewarded for Robodebt evidence against ScoMo?
I hope her suspension letter informed her that she had been overpaid by $850,000 and to return the funds within 14 days or face prosecution.
Push race based politics, get blowback.
I don’t condone it, but par for the course, I’m afraid.
Paul Kikos
@PKikos
Disturbing video reveals shocking fact that Australia’s top 8 major banks are actually owned by US companies Blackrock, State Street & Vanguard.
New Zealand Police: At Least 2 Dead, Multiple Injured After Gunman Attacks Construction Site
Turkiye Rejects Ukraine’s Appeal to Escort Ships in Black Sea After Grain Deal Ends – Report
DeSantis Megadonor: ‘No One Believes He Believes the Vaccine Stuff… It’s Politics.’
But, but, Saint Horseface banned all da guns!
From the Hun. Anybody able to post the full article?
Get Race Quotas Out Of The Cockpit Before We Literally Crash And Burn
Marcia Langton’s contribution.
See also Gen Buck Keane (Retd) Visiting Fellow at the Henry Kissinger Peace Academy, who appears regularly on Blot proclaiming the imminently imminent collapse of Wussia and the triumph of the olive drab clad Z-Man and his plucky li’l peoples.
Jane Birkin, actor, singer and fashion icon, dies at 76
I only really knew her through my favourite Agatha Christie film, the Peter Ustinov version of Evil Under the Sun. I had no idea her talents were so wide ranging.
Happy birthday Lizzie!!!
Did the telegram from King Charles arrive?
Proto-fascists?
Sounds cool.
Where do I join?
Stanford president resigns amid scrutiny of his scientific research
JIM CAVIEZEL LOST AGENTS, LAWYERS OVER SOUND OF FREEDOM
Green on green goodness!
‘Violent invader’: Thorpe blasts King Charles (Daily Tele, 20 Jul, paywalled)
Maybe Charles should give her a call to explain how he’s saving the planet.
WTF?
dot wtf is now a domain name!
Zelensky is the Russian dude from Chicago Fire, he just had a shave.
I still have contacts within defence, and they all report increasing ‘message traffic’ about something nasty going down before the end of the year. Apparently a lot of war planning afoot.
This gels nicely with my own experience a few weeks back where I had a call from a senior ADF Officer who said ‘we are going to war shortly, and you seem to be off the radar… just checking your availability’. When informed that I was not available, and the reasons why (I resigned 18m ago rather than follow their orders keep quiet about the COVID shots), said caller said ‘well, you’re still on the books’.
And in more ‘war is coming get ready news’: I went into KMart yesterday to buy a bread knife (first visit so such a store in a long time). When I went up to the DIY checkout, a minion spied my contraband and hustled over, saying she had to approve the purchase on the screen or it would not allow it to go through.
We apparently have ‘knife control’ laws now.
This slightly NSFW photo of Jane Merkin with egregiously tanned and over-bespectacled leg opener drink drivers is the funniest.
And media reports that ’40 police arrived almost immediately’ – 40! Sure doesnt sound like any preplanning was involved.
Isn’t she lovely?
Noted racist proto-fascist Michael Mansell has called for Bruce Pascoe to stop calling himself indigenous.
Bons you have no idea what you are talking about. If any state is to blame for handing the senate to labs greens it’s WA. Just one example.
MiL and entourage have gone home. It was a delight to have them visit. The looney tune greenies from Byron Bay flew in to save the planet. They live in a double garage paying 500 a week for the privilege. Our living footprint is minimal dontcha know. Developing another business failure that mummy and daddy will bail out again. Probably financed in the first place as well. One of the greenies doing a building apprenticeship packed it in coz it wasn’t sustainable. Both the greenies come from extremely well off families, never wanted for anything. Typical greenies. I’ve only met a few that live the life they espouse. I found out that a nephew has written some legislation that affects every family, this from someone who can’t have a conversation and life experience doesn’t extend far past his bedroom door. How he got the job he has is beyond me. Straight from uni. Works from home. Bright but useless. My nearly 3 grandson can’t work out why his mother calls MiL Nana. When SiL said she is now a Nana that really confused him. He is starting to recognise written words. Takes after my wife. Reading books by the time she was 4 and ended up making a career out of it.
You don’t get treated like cattle online, just an anonymous non entity.
Oh dear. And he may not even be wrong in terms of outcome.
“Britain will be fully Islamic soon” – Andrew Tate shocks fans by openly calling for the Islamisation of Britain
Duk
I’ll bet you there’s no war.
No exemption for religious organisations in Government censorship bill
20 July 2023
The Albanese Government has released an exposure draft of a bill proposing new legislation to censor “misinformation” and “disinformation” on digital platforms. Source: Hobart Archdiocese.
Rabz
Jul 20, 2023 9:12 AM
Typical partisan armchair general
See also Gen Buck Keane (Retd) Visiting Fellow at the Henry Kissinger Peace Academy, who appears regularly on Blot proclaiming the imminently imminent collapse of Wussia and the triumph of the olive drab clad Z-Man and his plucky li’l peoples.
Add
Putin Has Been Humiliated, Put Under Pressure, U.K. Spy Chief Says
MI6 head says Russia is now unlikely to regain momentum in Ukraine
I don’t know, but I’ve been told,
He’s got a [REDACTED] of gold.
One two three four.
One two.
Three four.
I think all the tizz in defence is probably about Pride month.
Besides, it’s their job to keep beating up war prospects to keep the flow of new toys coming.
What did they expect?
Only governments are exempt.
Charles mother took over as monarch when Britain still had a large empire. Over her years, bit by bit, nations were granted independence. She was the great liberator! The opposite of an imperialist or invader.
And over the billions of years that Aborigines have inhabited this continent I would say it is pretty certain that the different tribes and bands encroached on each others territory and violently wrested it from each other – especially as climate and vegetation patterns changed and once fertile areas became less so.
So I don’t think anyone can pretend that violence to take over land was alien to Aboriginal culture. And why would anyone ever expect it to be – every other land and people did the same thing. Hell, it is pretty much the way evolution works: Displace the original species and take their environmental niche for yourself.
The idea that Aborigines had lived in divinely anointed areas in perfect harmony since the Hadean is absurd.
Racist Lidia must think white people are not allowed to do what black people can.
They don’t learn quick do they?
Fox Execs Are ‘Panicked’ Over the Post-Tucker Primetime Lineup Ratings (18 Jul)
Ha! I suspect Trump voters took careful note of Fox vindictively firing people who worked with Tucker on his show before he was fired, and decided to take their eyeballs to Newsmax, which is rating its socks off.
From their ABC. The lies and disinformation continue about their inVoice……….
For Simon Flagg, the Indigenous Voice to Parliament is his generation’s chance to continue the work done by their predecessors in 1967.
Back then, more than 90 per cent of Australians voted for Indigenous people to be counted in the census of the country built on lands they had inhabited for more than 65,000 years. In Victoria, the Yes vote was the highest in the nation, at 94.7 per cent.
It was one of Australia’s most successful national campaigns, and Simon hopes the referendum taking place this year will have a similar result, particularly in his home state.
“In ’67 our ancestors, our aunties and uncles, all advocated and marched and protested that Aboriginal people wanted to be included in this, as residents of this country,” he said.
“We were counted in ’67… but what wasn’t counted was our voice, and voice on policies and legislation that directly affects us.”
Mr Flagg is the CEO of the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative, which is the major provider of support and services for Indigenous people in the wider Geelong, Bellarine and Colac regions.
They have no shame.
Announcing what appears to be a blockade isn’t terrorism. It’s not like the Western powers have never blockaded a country. Had they not announced anything and simply destroyed a vessel approaching a Ukrainian port would arguably be terrorism.
Turf war! Michael Mansell must feel that Pascoe is stealing some of his celebrity (if you can all it that).
Simon Flogg is Edjob-grade stupid.
Duk
I will bet you 10k (current value) of Australian pre-1943 Ram head shillings of middling quality that Australia will not further deploy forces above brigade level by 1 February 2026.
How Dubai became ‘the new Geneva’ for Russian oil trade
When Switzerland joined sanctions against Moscow, a chunk of the world’s oil trade relocated to the Middle East. Some predict it will stay there
For decades, the lakeside city of Geneva was home to many of the traders who sold Russia’s oil to consumers around the world. But since Switzerland joined the embargo imposed on Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine much of that trade has shifted to Dubai and other cities in the United Arab Emirates.
Companies registered in the small Gulf state bought at least 39mn tonnes of Russian oil worth more than $17bn between January and April — around a third of the country’s exports declared to customs during that period — according to Russian customs documentation analysed by the Financial Times.
Some of that oil ended up in the UAE, ship-tracking data shows, landing at storage terminals in places such as Fujairah. The rest — about 90 per cent — never touched Emirati soil, instead flowing from Russian ports directly to new buyers in Asia, Africa and South America as part of one of the biggest redirections of global energy flows in history.
The energy trading industry in the UAE was already growing before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But the conflict, and the western sanctions that followed it, have supercharged that growth.
Out of the top 20 traders of Russian crude in the first four months of the year, eight were registered in the UAE, the customs data shows. In refined petroleum products, such as diesel and fuel oil, UAE dominance was even higher, with 10 of the 20 largest traders registered in the country.
The trading boom has further enriched the nation, moving billions of dollars of additional oil revenue through its banks and attracting dozens of new companies to its free-trade zones. It has also tested relations with allies such as the US, which wants Russian oil to flow but is wary of creating new trade routes that undermine sanctions.
Executives at trading houses say Dubai, the UAE’s main commercial centre, is a heady mix of excitement, competition and suspicion as new trading teams battle for talent and trade flow in a market suddenly rife with buyers and sellers.
“If you are an oil trader, this is where you want to be,” says Matt Stanley, a former trader and 20-year industry veteran who now manages client relationships in the region for data provider Kpler. “Dubai is the new Geneva.”
Political neutrality
The UAE, which juts from the Arabian peninsula into the Gulf of Oman, has been an important commercial hub for centuries, attracting merchants who shuttled goods between Europe and Asia. In recent years it has become a major trading location for gold, diamonds and agricultural commodities, such as tea and coffee, helped by its modern business infrastructure, banking services and light-touch regulation.
The UAE is the world’s eighth-largest oil producer, but historically has not been a major oil trading location. Volumes were modest and Adnoc, Abu Dhabi’s state oil company, only set up its own trading arm three years ago.
However, the country’s proximity to growing oil markets in Africa and Asia and the absence of personal income taxes had started to attract more profit-hungry traders even before the war in Ukraine.
“This is one of the last locations in the world to live and not pay tax,” says the chief financial officer of one trading house. Traders in his group’s other offices around the world are now regularly requesting moves to Dubai, he adds. “This will become the global commodity trading hub.”
Another attraction is the UAE’s perceived political neutrality in a world where rivalries between global powers mean Russia is unlikely to be the last country to face European or US sanctions on its exports.
“The UAE gives you that platform to transact, trade and travel freely,” says the chief executive of an energy trading company set up in Dubai in the past five years.
But for all the UAE’s success in building modern business infrastructure and capitalising on its geographical location, it is the war in Ukraine and the UAE’s willingness to welcome Russian businesses that are driving the current boom. “The Ukraine crisis put it on steroids,” the chief executive says.
Russian boom
The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, in the city’s gleaming Jumeirah Lake Towers district, is one of the UAE’s biggest and most successful free zones. A three-dimensional model in the lobby of the headquarters displays the district’s 87 gleaming residential and commercial towers across its two-square-km site, home to 22,000 registered companies.
It is also, arguably, the new centre of the Russian oil trading universe. Out of the 104 buyers of Russian oil listed on Russian customs declarations between January and April, at least 25 were companies registered in the DMCC.
Litasco Middle East DMCC accounted for most of the near-16mn tonnes of Russian crude and refined fuels traded by the Lukoil-owned group between January and April, making it the biggest single buyer of Russian oil during the period, according to the customs data.
The company previously had only a representative office in the UAE, but some of its trading operations moved from Geneva to Dubai last year. One former Litasco trader says the group had taken over an entire floor in a high-rise tower at the heart of the free zone.
Switzerland-headquartered Litasco SA said that following a reorganisation last year, Litasco Middle East was “no longer a subsidiary” of Litasco in Geneva. The Swiss entity “has very limited volumes of crude oil and refined products from Russia, according to the exemptions from the embargo on Russian production given by the EU,” it added.
DMCC-registered Demex Trading and Qamah Logistics are also among the larger traders of Russian crude. Both were incorporated during the past three years; neither could be reached for comment.
Trading Russian oil from Dubai is not illegal. Western sanctions only prohibit imports into the EU, UK and other countries enforcing the G7’s rules, such as Switzerland.
Under the restrictions western companies can also continue selling Russian oil to other parts of the world if that oil is sold under a certain price.
The measures have been designed to keep Russian oil flowing to new non-western buyers, while reducing the revenue flowing to the Kremlin. Washington has even encouraged traders to keep moving Russian oil to avoid supply disruptions, provided they trade below the relevant price cap.
While Dubai-registered traders are not obliged to comply with the price cap, some have chosen to do so in order to maintain access to western services such as shipping, banking and insurance.
Geneva-based Gunvor, for example, has said it incorporated a second entity in Dubai in October to segregate “the handling and financing of any potential Russia-related deals” from the rest of its trading activities.
Gunvor had ceased trading Russian crude but bought about $330mn of Russian refined fuels between January and April, all in compliance with the west’s sanctions and price cap policy, it told the FT in June. It disputed some of the customs data, which showed exports by Gunvor worth over $500mn during the period.
Helima Croft, a former CIA analyst and global head of commodities research at RBC Capital Markets, says Washington does not mind where Russian oil is traded from provided it is done transparently. “As long as these Russian barrels are below the cap, these trading houses are doing nothing wrong,” she says. “It’s Washington’s price cap plan in action.”
Other traders, however, appear to be using Dubai-based subsidiaries to buy and sell oil above the cap by employing non-European shipping and financial service providers.
Paramount Energy and Commodities, for example, transferred its Russian trading activity last year from Geneva to a DMCC-registered subsidiary, which has continued to market a crude blend from eastern Russia that has consistently traded above the G7’s $60-a-barrel cap, according to pricing data. Swiss authorities questioned the trader in April about its switch to Dubai, the FT reported in July.
Paramount said at the time that it had responded to the questions in full, informing the regulator that the Swiss entity had ceased all transactions involving Russian oil before the price cap took effect and that its UAE affiliate was a separate legal entity with different directors.
Rosneft’s traders?
The biggest contributors to Dubai’s Russian oil boom, however, are not established players but a network of previously unknown companies with opaque ownership structures that are collectively moving billions of dollars of oil a month.
Among the largest traders of both crude oil and refined fuels from Russia is a company called Tejarinaft FZCO, registered in another free zone called Dubai Silicon Oasis.
Tejarinaft — “oil trade” in Arabic — was incorporated two months after the Russian invasion. Corporate records list Hicham Fizazi, a Moroccan national, as the sole director and the general manager. He is the only named shareholder, although the records do not disclose whether he owns all or part of the company.
Corporate records reviewed by the FT also list Fizazi as the sole director and only named shareholder of at least two other UAE-registered companies trading Russian oil: Amur Trading FZCO, registered in Dubai Silicon Oasis in August, and Amur Investments Ltd, registered in Abu Dhabi in September.
Rival traders say they had never heard of Fizazi before last year. They believe the three companies are part of a network set up by, or on behalf of, Rosneft to help the Kremlin-controlled producer to move its oil after European former partners such as Trafigura and Vitol stepped away from trading Russian crude last year.
Customs declarations suggest that Tejarinaft, Amur Trading and Amur Investments have only ever exported oil from Rosneft or Rosneft projects, trading almost $8bn of Russian crude and refined fuels from the producer between September and April.
Tejarinaft alone exported $6.71bn of Russian oil between September and March, exclusively for Rosneft, according to the 394 customs declarations during the period.
Rosneft did not respond to a request for comment. Emails to the address provided on Tejarinaft’s website bounced back as undeliverable, the telephone number listed there connected to a general inquiries line for the free zone while the online “contact us” form did not work. Amur Trading and Amur Investments could not be reached.
Ben Higgins, a Dubai-based investigations specialist at risk consultancy Wallbrook, part of Anthesis, says he has seen a big increase in requests from banks and other corporate clients for further diligence on Dubai-registered trading companies over the past year.
“Incorporated across various Dubai free zones, the target entities are often very low profile and their owners — on paper — aren’t Russian nationals,” he says. “Deeper research and analysis, however, often find multiple leads back to Russia.”
Some of the individuals Wallbrook has investigated also appear to have played similar roles in businesses dealing with oil from Iran or Venezuela, Higgins says, “always a hop ahead of the authorities, shuffling between hotspots such as Cyprus, Hong Kong, Latvia and Dubai”.
‘Faith in the system’
While the Russian oil trading business is scattered across Dubai’s sparkling high-rise offices, the heart of the physical trade is 100km east at the dusty port city of Fujairah.
The Fujairah Oil Industry Zone (FOIZ) is the largest commercial storage facility in the region for refined oil products. The site’s 262 towering white storage tanks stretch for several kilometres along either side of the road from the port. Right now many of them are filled to the brim with oil, much of it from Russia.
Monthly imports of Russian fuels into Fujairah increased from nothing in April 2022 to a peak of 141,000 barrels a day during December. According to Pamela Munger, an oil analyst at data provider Vortexa, that represented 40 per cent of all fuel flowing into the terminal that month. Last month, Fujairah received an average of 105,000 barrels a day from Russia, the data shows.
The influx has driven up the prices operators can charge for storage but also created a “two tier market, where those tanks willing to take Russian product can charge a premium,” one Dubai-based oil trader said. FOIZ did not respond to a request for comment.
VTTI, which is partly owned by Vitol, is one of a handful of western companies operating storage tanks at Fujairah. VTTI said it did accept Russian fuels into its tanks and stressed that “there are no sanctions in UAE with regards to Russian products, nor are western sanctions applicable to the UAE”.
“Hence, product owners are allowed to move and trade Russian products into and through UAE?.?.?.?and storage companies are allowed to store Russian product in the UAE,” it said. Even if a cargo was required to comply with the G7’s price cap — for example, because it had been bought or sold by a western company or had used western shipping or insurance services — those restrictions did not apply to the storage provider, it added.
A further sign of the boom in activity at Fujairah was the purchase in May by Dubai-based newcomer Montfort of an oil refinery in the FOIZ previously owned by German utility Uniper. Montfort, set up by former Trafigura trader Rashad Kussad in 2021, outbid several companies including Vitol, which owns a neighbouring facility, according to three people familiar with the deal.
People put the cause as the Russian situation, but that was just the start of it
Montfort declined to comment further on the deal, adding that its commodity trading activities at Fujairah, and elsewhere in the world, comply with “all applicable laws, regulations, and sanctions, including those of the EU, Switzerland, UK and US”.
Such investments in physical infrastructure may have been precipitated by the war in Ukraine, but they also reflect a growing belief in the UAE that even if the Russian-fuelled boom eventually wanes, the global oil trading landscape has been changed forever.
“People put the cause as the Russian situation, but that was just the start of it,” says one UAE-based trading executive, who now expects European commodity bankers to follow the traders to Dubai as Emirati banks seek to expand their service offering for the sector.
For Russian oil, as for many Russian nationals, Dubai has proved to be a welcoming, but potentially temporary, home while the war in Ukraine continues. For the scores of expatriate oil traders manning trading desks across the city, the move looks more permanent.
“It is no longer a transitory environment, where you say: ‘I’ll try my luck and if I lose money I’ll hand back the keys and fly back to Europe’,” says Kpler’s Stanley. “People are now setting up roots here. People have got faith in the system.”
Edjob-grade stupid.
Stealing that to describe stupid posters!
Announcing that they will treat civilian ships as legitimate military targets is morally appalling and illegal.
If Australia was anything like parts of Africa, the honky kept the warring factions separated and the result was a decrease in pre-existing inter tribal violence.
A little gratitude Lydia, just a smidgeon, for saving aboriginal lives.
Our Vic expat neighbours still all listen to Trioli every day and loudly discuss her vitriol every morning when walking their cavoodles.
Show them this photo of the skank; at 19 seconds:
https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/virginia-triolis-onair-gaffe/video/886ed58749ab08edac79f51f4a54d8ac
Announcing that they will treat civilian ships as legitimate military targets is morally appalling and illegal.
The underwater drones that damaged bthe Kerch Bridge and killede 2 people were launched from a Black Sea grain ship.
So, yeah, they’re all legit targets now.
The wheels really are falling off the bandwagon?
If Australia was anything like parts of Africa, the honky kept the warring factions separated and the result was a decrease in pre-existing inter tribal violence.
You’re getting your African History from old Phantom comics, right?
The OFFER is open Dr Duk until the day the wager closes. It will close at the latest possible hour globally – so effectively 2 February 2026 minus a few hours.
It is a terrifying thought that the government (pollies and bureaucrats) will decide what is misinformation and what is disinformation – which is to say they will decide what is information.
I take it Albo and his mob did not see what happened in the US when they tried that.
If people had not been able to show that the masks word during Coof were useless their guaranteed efficacy would still be ‘information’.
I do hope Dutton picks up on this. Make the point that it is not up to government to decide what is true or not. The people need to make their own decisions so they can hold the government to account. Governments get things wrong. Politicians get things wrong. Bureaucrats get things wrong.
And when not wrong they may simply be lying. Often lying to cover up what they got wrong.
Dutton (who has had flashes insight such as picking up on the nuke debate) could once again echo the voice of the people: You cannot just blindly trust the government. You have to watch them.
New Zealand Police: At Least 2 Dead, Multiple Injured After Gunman Attacks Construction Site… But, but, Saint Horseface banned all da guns!
And the colour of the shooter hasn’t been mentioned so he must not be white.
Dot at 9:52.
I think you need to specify “deployed in a declared conflict with a foreign power”.
They might still be deployed to run the gas chambers at the quarantine facility in Queensssland.
I don’t suppose Marles has taken on The Bolt Challenge to find 10 Aboriginal people taken from their families simply because they were Aboriginal.
Hmmm…pointing that out might be construed as disinformation. Not false, just disinformation.
And there is a difference. I can give you information about the contents of a novel, but being information does not make it true.
Speaking of which, I believe Meghan Markle is planning on writing a feminist prequel to Great Expectations. Presumably making Miss Havisham a girl boss.
So, Richard, it seems to me that what you’re saying is that if Minister Burney spent more time in the bush listening to indigenous folk and less time at the fashion shows, indigenous people would have a voice in parliament.
If it’s Auckland, Union Sites have been entirely Mouli for at least 20 years.
Of the cases brought, alleging removal on racial grounds, the Courts have found only one child was removed on racial grounds, the removal was illegal, and he was awarded damages for false imprisonment. My memory fails me as to the name of the plaintiff. Trenorrow?
Stopped clock time – she wasn’t wrong. The beetrooter is a lunatic.
grate – format fail …
Serves me right for posting something remotely supportive of Vitrioli.
Dutton (who has had flashes insight such as picking up on the nuke debate) could once again echo the voice of the people: You cannot just blindly trust the government. You have to watch them.
There’s no Nuke Debate.
Dutton (who has had flashes insight such as picking up on the nuke debate) could once again echo the voice of the people: You cannot just blindly trust the government. You have to watch them.
There’s no Nuke Debate.
Where’s the No case?
They’re not being puyblished in The Australia, that’s for sure.
GWGB.
Nolte: Desperate Disney Prepares to Sell Off Third of Company (18 Jul)
I’m amused by the hype being pushed in the Daily Telegraph today about the live-action Barbie movie, which premieres this week. From what I am seeing it is ragingly woke and anti male. It’s Warner Bros not Disney though, so they can go broke too as far as I’m concerned.
Groogs woke up constipated again, for a change. Really though, do stop dragging your arse across the carpet like that.
Perhaps Megan was projecting sonewhat when she picked up the case of Ms, or perhaps Mz, Havisham. Stuck in a backroom and ignored, the end state for her once she drops Harry.
Not at all biased.
Nets Spend 527 Minutes on Trump Indictment, 0 Seconds on Biden Burisma Bribery (18 Jul)
Ham sandwiches are more likely to receive justice.
flyingduk
Jul 20, 2023 9:22 AM
…….. ‘we are going to war shortly,………
Duk, did he happen to mention who it is that we’re going to war against?
Perhaps, if he confined himself to the Japanese surrender terms of 1943, or how many full blood Aborigines can dance on the head of a pin?
Nope.
Not announcing would be.
Not so much purchased as merely hired.*
Bud Light’s social media accounts are being slammed with abuse after resuming regular posting since Dylan Mulvaney backlash: ‘I’d rather drink urine’ (18 Jul)
Budweiser should lay off social media, until the dust settles in about a century or so.
(* h/t Terry Pratchett)
Ed > Labor are way too drum to debate anything and they know it.
Evidence – Albo’s pathetic show taking to Ben Fordham and Labor refusal to debate with LNP on tv.
What happens when the scum of the middle class go into politics for the money and the power.
Nice one, if only it were true in her case.
Using taxpayers’ money and no doubt subtracting 80% in commission, for their costs you know.
Soy sauce and ketchup are killing the planet.
New York will now fine restaurants for including a common takeout add-on in their to-go meals: ‘Years in the making’ (18 Jul)
I wonder how many sea turtles have died after eating a plastic sachet of soy sauce?
That’s too dim, though too drum amounts to the same thing tv-wise.
I though Albo looked scared and way out of his depth. He knows he has lost. The voice referendum. The country. His precious job with all that travel and looking statesmanlike …
Duk
Pre-planned by who?
And to what end?
That was interesting about the oil trade OldOzzie. It pretty much reflects what I have thought for a long time. The old seats of power can’t be trusted. This will happen with other industries too. I discussed this with my Indian Specialist. I said too many Indian suppliers are difficult to deal with. They need a Indian platform like Ebay to keep them in line. Being a low trust country this could only be a benefit. Pay better than doctoring. His eyes lit up. I told him about Etsy and buying stuff from the Baltic States. Easy doesn’t have guarantees like Ebay, or at least didn’t when I bought from Lithuania, without a problem I might add. There is so much stuff out there to buy without the Australian markup of 5x and that’s if you can even get it Aus. Years ago cousin was in Asia with a trade delegation trying to flog lamb. I suggested they don’t like lamb as it stinks and I concur. Why don’t farmers raise goats instead.
Take a wild guess.
China is currently uprooting vast tracts of forest planted in the noughties for environmental reasons and planting crops on the land.
They grow enough rice to feed their population but feed for animals is imported.
Seems Chairman Xi is anticipating interruptions in world trade.
“This is one of the last locations in the world to live and not pay tax,”
Indeed! 🙂
Years ago cousin was in Asia with a trade delegation trying to flog lamb. I suggested they don’t like lamb as it stinks and I concur. Why don’t farmers raise goats instead.
You’re your own cousin?
Tell us how that works?
GreyRanga
Jul 20, 2023 11:01 AM
That was interesting about the oil trade OldOzzie. It pretty much reflects what I have thought for a long time. The old seats of power can’t be trusted. This will happen with other industries too.
Years ago cousin was in Asia with a trade delegation trying to flog lamb. I suggested they don’t like lamb as it stinks and I concur. Why don’t farmers raise goats instead.
GreyRanga,
no need to raise goats – just drive Bourke to Cunamulla and see the number of Feral Goats – Thriving
As shown on 2009 NSW Feral Goat Density Map
https://www.feralscan.org.au/feralgoatscan/
ABC Landline – Feral Goat
“Feral goats are an introduced pest to Australia, but worth as much as lamb meat. They are also money making saviours to many outback stations in tough times.”
Click HERE to access the video link.
A lot of goats raised west of the Great Divide in QLD, mainly for export.
Goat curry is delicious.
Apropos of nothing. I just happen to be reading a book on (roughly) the progenitors of the modern mind by Owen Barfield. It was written in the 1950’s and when ruminating on the two-edged sword the scientific method becomes when indiscriminately applied outside its lane, comes up with this pearler: “The impressive vocabulary of technological investigation was actually being used to denote its breakdown; as though, because it is something we can do with ourselves in the water, drowning should be included as one of the different ways of swimming.” Ain’t that the woke truth?
See ed that’s why your a top rate moron. No understanding. For your benefit I was talking to him. I’m sure Cats understood that.
We would need to be clear on the definitions – By some measures, we already are:
1) AUSGOV deployed the military, militarised police, censorship, border guards and checkpoints against the people already in recent times
2) Modern war is of an increasingly hybrid nature – the next big war may well involve viruses (cyber and biological) and IT much more than the oldstyle kinetic weapons – think how the Stuxnet was used to attack Iran recently. If the Corona virus *did* come from WUHAN, it was either Chernobyl or Pearl Harbour already.
No. Launching weapons from civilian ships is morally appalling. By doing so, those that launched the weapon are making all civilian ships legitimate targets. This is pretty simple stuff.
Munitions put into focus as stockpiles dwindle
War in Ukraine, a fragile industrial base and slow procurement hamper supply
Just as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has awoken western defence officials to the reality of hot war, so has it also exposed the need to recalibrate weapons procurement priorities — to ensure that their militaries are prepared for combat.
War games have identified munitions — everything from bombs to bullets — as an area of risk that needs urgent attention. They found, for example, that the US could use some munitions, such as anti-ship missiles, faster than they are produced. And there could be scenarios where it does not have enough of some missiles to sustain a war — for instance, in the Indo-Pacific region.
Experts have also identified a disconnect between the US and European defence industrial bases, when instead they could be complementing and bolstering each other in times of need.
This partly stems from the western defence apparatus spending decades prioritising efficiency and lower costs, adopting the same sort of just-in-time supply chain used by the auto industry. That suited a period of relative peace but, say observers, has cut the slack in the system necessary to expand weapons production quickly.
Tensions between Ukraine and its western backers, which have spent a combined $170bn on defence and financial aid for Kyiv since Russia’s invasion last year, have now begun to emerge as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to ask for more and more weaponry.
The war in Ukraine “reminds us about the risks of being slow” to produce weaponry, says Cynthia Cook, director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at US think-tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. CSIS calculated in its Taiwan war games this year that the US would use its entire stock of long-range anti-ship missiles — approximately 450 — within a week of conflict. LRASMs would be valuable for striking “Chinese naval forces and directly [reducing] Chinese invasion capabilities”, it says.
Western nations supplying weapons to Ukraine have recently had to replenish their armament stockpiles and recommit to military spending. But the defence industrial base has struggled to increase production, leaving experts concerned about the west’s preparedness for a potential conflict — for instance, with China over Taiwan.
“The defence industry is so consolidated that it can’t very quickly expand to support a greater demand,” warns Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defence programme at the Center for a New American Security, a think-tank. “So we’re slow and behind and don’t have enough of anything” in munitions.
The US defence industrial base has consolidated significantly since the 1990s — the number of prime contractors at the Pentagon has fallen from 51 to five. As some parts are made by only one or two suppliers, there is typically no way to replicate production elsewhere.
Plagued by cost overruns and delivery delays, the notion of reforming the US acquisition process is perpetual, but the challenges in doing so are “hard baked into the system”, says Cook, with the Pentagon, White House, and Congress all having input on procurement.
The Pentagon tends to prioritise big, expensive items such as ships, aircraft and vehicles, “leaving missiles and munitions with inadequate funding”, according to a recent CNAS report.
Michael O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution think-tank, says Washington is facing the “conundrum” of how to be “best prepared for a war that comes out of nowhere, that you need to fight — and fight well — on day one”.
The CNAS report says existing inventory is “too small to blunt an initial invasion, let alone prevail in a protracted conflict against China”, adding: “To deter and — if deterrence fails — defeat China, the [Pentagon] needs large stockpiles of stand-off missiles, maritime strike weapons, and layered air and missile defences.” Buying more long- and medium-range missiles is essential.
“We can’t keep chasing shiny things,” says Richard Spencer, a former secretary of the navy under Donald Trump.
The US defence department has signalled its intention to refocus on munitions after years of under-investment. In its 2024 budget, it asked for $1.1bn to fund 118 LRASMs, up from $550mn for the 83 it requested the year before. It is also seeking more than $30bn for munitions, up 23 per cent from the previous year, and $315bn overall to fund new weapons.
Unlike fighter jets and ships, which are purchased through multiyear commitments, munitions are bought via annual contracts and requirements vary. But this volatility in Pentagon munitions purchases means US defence companies are reluctant to expand production capacity — because capital investments for new factory lines can be hard to justify to shareholders without multiyear contracts.
However, the Pentagon has recently sought multiyear contracts for five precision-guided missiles — key munitions that include the LRASM and the SM-6 anti-ship missile. Congress appropriators appear less convinced, though, threatening the viability of the revised approach as they hesitate on approval.
US production capacity is under strain from parts and labour shortages, too. And Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia programme at CSIS, dismisses the notion that European defence groups can fill the gap.
With 27 member countries, the EU has a “really fractured defence industrial base where the big European countries like Germany, France [and] Italy are usually focused on selling to themselves”, he says.
Despite close US intelligence ties with about 10 countries including the UK, Australia and Canada, such co-operation is absent in the defence industrial complex, says Jerry McGinn, executive director of the government contracting centre at George Mason University’s business school.
The Pentagon has historically focused on buying American for its own defence capabilities, but McGinn argues that increasing international industrial collaboration, as part of a “build allied” approach, should be at the centre of its weapons acquisition strategy in order to boost production.
Existing inventory is ‘too small to blunt an initial invasion, let alone prevail in a protracted conflict’
The US has also sought to maintain its dominance in weapons production by frequently telling its Nato partners that their Article 5, which stipulates a collective defence, is strengthened when other countries buy American-made weapons, says Bergmann.
“It’s good for our companies” when Europe buys US weapons, he says, “but what does that mean for our larger interests” if the European defence landscape is weaker?
Bergmann suggests that the US must make clear to its allies “that a strong European defence industrial base is important”, and take the “foot off the gas a little bit when it comes to our aggressive advocacy of some of our sales abroad, particularly if there’s strong European competitors”.
Seconded, especially Jamaican curry goat.
I also love lamb stew with swedes, potatoes, carrots, onions, celery and bay leaves. Yes it is aromatic: whenever I make a pot of it my front door flyscreen gets crawled all over by many very interested green bottle flies. Which is amusing. Where’s the dead sheep?
Dutton did say at the IPA function just over a week ago now that he wouldn’t like the left to be in charge of what he wanted to say, but he was also reluctant to commit to having no controls over content. It was my question he was supposed to be answering, but I had no opportunity to ask him why existing laws were not enough.
They will never sink any of these ships because no ship destined for Odessa will get insurance. Much as no neutral ship that I can recall was ever sunk by the Brits in WW1 during their blockade of Germany because none was silly enough to proceed directly to a German port uninspected by the Royal Navy.
A Major-General who served overseas & was decorated for actions commanding troops in the middle east, has been suspended without pay?
What has this country come to?
Yes, rather as a piece Dover put up recent declared that these days pumping ‘pregnant men’ full of testosterone is regarded by the transgender lobby as just a part of the gestation process, and the resultant hormone-injured child is to be regarded as included in the full range of gender fluidity and human variety. Nothing to see there, move along.
Nope, not taking that bet, we struggled to lodge a much smaller force in Timor previously, and same same in the ‘Gan. I doubt we have the capability to deploy and sustain a force above battalion level (around 1000 men) for the fore-seeble future – certainly not in a peer conflict, which would consume manpower, munitions and fuel at prodigious rates – the latter 2 of which we have little capacity to procure locally now.
And before too many strawmen are built, whilst I do believe war is coming, and probably with China, I did not say that *I* believed we would be at war *by christmas*, I said (for the benefit of others here), that my contacts and my own experience suggests the drums are beating louder.
I long ago learned that predicting the direction of history is an easier task than predicting the timing.
Something descendants do. Even if they are Huguenots and further back in the past.
Huguenot sufferings are a part of history, and the 50K who came to Britain throughout the C17th still memorialise their ancestor’s struggles with museums and genealogies.
Brittany Higgins’ fiancé’s WhatsApp texts leak: David Sharaz’s messages revealed about Lisa Wilkinson meeting and ‘stress-grabbing’ Bollinger champagne
. Leaked texts between David Sharaz and Network 10 producer
. Brittany Higgins ‘panicked’ and grabbed $90 champagne
. The bottle was paid for by Mr Sharaz
Leaked WhatsApp texts between David Sharaz and a producer for The Project reveal his fiancée Brittany Higgins ‘stress-grabbed’ a $90 bottle of Bollinger champagne from a hotel room after her explosive five-hour chat with Lisa Wilkinson.
The texts between Mr Sharaz and Ten producer Angus Llewellyn – obtained exclusively by Daily Mail Australia – occurred between January 26 and January 28, 2021.
In the message, they discussed the finer details of a secret meeting in a luxurious, $350-a-night room at The Star in Sydney.
The purpose of the meeting was to decide on the best way to approach Ms Higgins’ forthcoming interview with Wilkinson on The Project, during which she publicly alleged she was raped by Bruce Lehrmann in Parliament House in 2019.
Mr Lehrmann strongly denies the allegations.
During the meeting, Ms Higgins, Mr Sharaz, Mr Lewellyn and Wilkinson discussed an array of topics over gin, mimosas and corn chips, including ex-ministers, extramarital affairs between parliamentary staffers, and Wilkinson’s career highlights.
The entire meeting was recorded and has since leaked, with Channel Ten forced to apologise for the content which included Wilkinson struggling to pronounce the name of Indigenous senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who she called a diversity pick rather than having secured her position on merit.
The new WhatsApp messages shine a light on what was going on behind the scenes. They include a candid statement by Mr Sharaz who said while the upcoming Project interview was the ‘right thing to do’, it would ‘destroy’ his career as a government lobbyist.
The conversation began at 6.19pm on January 26, 2021 – the day before the lengthy hotel room chat, and about two weeks before Ms Higgins’ TV interview went to air – with a message from Mr Llewellyn.
‘Hi David, I’m the producer working with Lisa. It’s me and Lisa meeting with you tomorrow. I’ve got the room at The Darling (The Star) booked under my name. I’ll meet you in the foyer when you get there – you two can head upstairs,’ he said.
‘Lisa and I can come and meet you there around 10am. How does that sound?’
About ten minutes later, Mr Sharaz appeared to thank the producer for ensuring he and Ms Higgins weren’t spotted meeting with Wilkinson, who regularly appeared on prime time television in 2021.
He replied: ‘Hey Angus, thanks so much for the message, and the sensitivity around this. Obviously quite stressful for Britt, so these precautions are really appreciated. 10am sounds good. We’ll see you then.’
Mr Llewellyn said: ‘Any probs, any time just call or message me. I can only imagine how difficult this is so whatever I can do to make it easier just let me know.’
At about 9.11am the next day, on January 27, Mr Llewellyn sent another text to say the couple were checked as his ‘dependents’ for Covid purposes to ensure the hotel would only have a record of his phone number
‘If there’s an outbreak, they’ll notify me and I’ll let you know. Only my number is recorded,’ he said.
Cuz, if it wasn’t for Maoris, Irishmen and a few Chinese nothing would be getting built in Australia. True story, one guy had Dave Dobbins blasting from the Hilux as he drove off to lunch. The only white guys on a construction site these days would be from CFMEU HQ.
You can add mandatory vaxxes for pilots to your list of concerns:
https://www.realcleardefense.com/2023/01/21/ekgs_of_pilots_are_no_longer_normal_we_should_be_concerned_877063.html
Dr John Campbell digging into adverse reactions in WA. Looks like a government built health disaster. What’s a suitable punishment for shoving experimental medication into people?
Identity of Auckland shooting gunman revealed after rampage at construction site that killed two: His troubling past revealed
The identity of the gunman responsible for a horrifying shooting rampage that killed two and injured six at an Auckland construction site has been revealed.
Matu Tangi Matua Reid, aged 24, shot at several civilians and at least one police officer before he died in a lift shaft early on Thursday morning.
At the time of the shooting, Reid had been serving a five-month home detention sentence for domestic violence charges and was tracked via an ankle bracelet monitor.
Sounds like any number of suburban book clubs.
Get Race Quotas Out Of The Cockpit Before We Literally Crash And Burn
Maybe also gender quotas. I’ve been looking at Insta lately and 99% of pilot selfies are women. I don’t think it bodes well for actually flying aircraft safely.
Special Ed looks to open another rich seam of wrongology.
Matu Tangi Matua Reid – PS – Police confirmed the man did not have a gun licence.
I think the jury is still out on how the bridge was hit. Still, I don’t think using a civilian ship to launch an attack means that all civilian ships are legitimate targets. But if that were the case the country/ies involved have committed a war crime.
Scroll down to photos. Could she hit the side of a barn?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12317725/Identity-Auckland-shooting-gunman-revealed-rampage-construction-site-killed-two-troubling-past-revealed.html
“Yes dear.”
Study finds regular ‘phubbing’ could be damaging marriages (Phys.org, 19 Jul)
No longer can you escape to the pub for some peace, your tattle-tale phone will always be with you. And if you don’t receive her call you are committing the heinous crime of phubbing.
When my husband emigrated to NZ he said the worst thing was the smell of mutton hanging in the air outside every restaurant he went past.
Eighty-one years ago today I was born in a Glasgow slum, delivered by my grandmother, a Welsh village wise-woman who birthed people, healed them, and laid them out when they were dead with a penny on their eyes for the ferryman. It’s another little split-arse, she announced, to the sorrow of them both, because after a first girl they really wanted this one to be the boy my father had his heart set upon. This pater familias of that day wasn’t there, he was in the factories of the Clyde, what was left of them after what is known as the 1941 Clydeside Blitz, using his acquired knowledges working on aircraft for the war effort.
And the dark clouds of war rolled on over Britain as I took my first breath and in the next year made my first memories, of nappies flapping over the fuel stove to dry, and later of a green baize door I could focus on from my pram as I was left outside. That’s all I have for my real infancy, but apparently by the age of two I was talking on in a rare old Glaswegian accent about the ‘wee beasties’ – flies – that were crawling up the wall in the July summer heat. My grandmother took us to Evesham, her home in the midlands then to be safe, from bombs and likely my father, leaving my father in Scotland. It was in Evesham, within sound of the peals of the great bell tower, all that remains of the abbey destroyed by Cromwell’s men on orders from Henry VIII, that I vaguely recall a magnificent street party, with unavailable ‘sweeties’, celebrating VE Day. I have the photo of it, a genuine historical piece, showing three maternal generations, my mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother, all around the tables in the crowd in a slum street abounding with children.
Happy birthday Lizzie!!!! 🙂
Nuremberg 2 and Heads on pikes, not necessarily in that order….
Cuz, if it wasn’t for Maoris, Irishmen and a few Chinese nothing would be getting built in Australia.
Moulis are mostly in Scaffolding & Rigging, bludger jobs where the only qualification is no fu.king brains, Irishmen don’t stand out, apart from being dumb and hard to understand, and contractors who use Chinese gyprockers use Aussie Setters to fix up all their fuc.ups.
Happy Birthday as well Lizzie – 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀
If properly trained on that weapon (appears to be M4 platform 5.56 hence limited kick) then yes.
One of the great ironies of the lefts desire to disarm citizens is that those who arguably benefit most from the ‘equalising’ effect of firearms are lightly built women.
Gorbals Lizzie, eh?
Happy birthday anyway.
What possible reason is there for paying such a useless incompetent ignoramus $900,000pa for “an advisory role” on the the AUKUS unterzee coffin taskforce?
….. ……..
Oh you big silly goose. The “ manage widgets”101 she did at uni 40 years ago plus all the boot on certifications make her one of the most valuable people in the pubic serpent nest.
That, plus assorted dick pics texted to her by more senior people.
If properly trained on that weapon
That was really the question! I’ve been somewhat dubious ever since I saw one of them idly flicking the safety on and off while talking shit with her friend! ?
Happy Birthday Lizzie and many, many happy returns of the day!
Special triggered.
. But if that were the case the country/ies involved have committed a war crime.
British made drones is what I read.
There’ll be retaliation, this is the Phoney War prelude WW3, it just hasn’t been declared.
Albonomics:
Albanese’s publicly funded battery making industry will likely cost taxpayers more than ti earns and encourage rent-seeking, a Productivity Commission report warns.
So, I can take up the bet offer anytime until then? … wow, I might just wait and see if it happens, then accept……
We are currently enjoying the second series of “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem”. It’s a complex familial saga where you need to watch series one first, or you’ll never catch up. It is hitting its straps well in this second series, and even Hairy, who had only half an eye on the first is now an avid watcher. It has some soapie elements, as sagas tend to have, but they are kept under control. The depiction of life in Jerusalem and surrounds during the period from the Turkish control up to 1948 under the British, is well explored in both its social and political dimensions. The subtitles fade, they are easy to follow and bring us both to remark on how polyglot all languages are, feeding off each other, as words we recognise appear in the spoken Hebrew with no need of much translation in some scenes.
The Brits are ‘the enemy’ then, depicted in the officers’ wives’ full cut-glass accented awfulness and in their husbands’ murderous brutality; they are shown as oafish tommies as ordinary soldiers. In counterpoint, ‘the Arabs’ are seen as even less civilized from the perspective of this Sephardic (Spainish origin) Jewish family. I studied ‘Honor and Shame, the values of Mediterranean Society’ in anthropology during my first degree, and here it is in full blossom still in this 1940’s family, where war-damaged son-in-law hits is new wife and her loving father puffs with a desire to kill him. What do you think we are, Arabs? sniffs his redoubtable mother-in-law, we don’t hit women in this family. And on it goes. Economic trials, murder, bloodshed, rapes, revenges, terrorism, the stain of ‘illegitimacy’. Worth a look, following this spoiled and tempestuous young woman who lives within familial constraints (such wonderful depictions of the mother and mother-in-law, who ever said women were powerless) but who dreams of another life as a dress designer while the honor and shame values play out in this context.
Hairy went to his ipad after last nite’s two episodes (they are short) and got up the dance episode from Zorba the Greek, in memory of the murdered widow in that story, and we danced around till I called halt. It was time to make the bed with new sheets, warm and cosy ones, and get into it. I still didn’t sleep well though, for old memories have a rising whirl on the edge of consciousness, invading normal drifts into quietude.