From the Oz.

He’s the man accused of setting the fire that has raged through the biggest of the big four accounting firms, costing PwC Australia upwards of $1bn. And now Peter Collins has finally turned up.

Hardly anyone had seen the former PwC partner for six months. Mr Collins was one of the most powerful accountants in the country, described by some colleagues as a player in the politics of PwC, while another said he was “highly intelligent” in the wake of revelations he misused confidential government information to help clients attempt to dodge tax.

Hmmmm.
Most inside traders appear “highly intelligent” and “ahead of the game” until they are discovered.

Matt Canavan in the Courier Mail:

In March this year, Finland fired up the first nuclear reactor to open in Europe for 15 years.

Two months later, electricity prices in Finland plunged by 75 per cent. Eventually, output at the new plant had to be throttled because power prices were getting TOO low.

Despite constant promises that “renewables are the cheapest form of energy”, anyone who has got their electricity bill lately knows that this is a big fat lie.

Australia has been installing solar and wind energy at a rate four times faster (in per person terms) than Europe or North America. Yet, the more renewables we get, the higher our power prices go.

Unfortunately for Australia, we cannot take the Finnish approach because we are one of the few countries in the world where nuclear energy is illegal. Nuclear was banned in Australia via a Greens amendment in the Senate in 1998. There was less than 10 minutes of debate.

The Australian people never voted to make nuclear energy illegal. But our accidental ban on nuclear energy is now an albatross around our necks. A ban on nuclear energy never made much sense, but it is now out of date, out of step and we are running out of time to keep the lights on.

So that is why I and eight other Coalition senators have introduced a Bill to end the ban on nuclear energy. Last week, we tabled a Senate report into the Bill.

The overwhelming evidence to our committee supported the removal of the ban.

Lots of young people support nuclear energy. As 16-year-old William Shackel told the committee: “For far too long, young people like me have been sold slogans and facades of plans to address these challenges, that we are told to blindly trust … we need every credible solution, including nuclear energy, on the table.”

What confuses me about the nuclear debate is that the most vocal critics of nuclear are the most alarmist about climate change. If you really believed we face doom from global warming, why wouldn’t you want to use a safe, proven, emission-free type of power?

Nuclear power is used all around the world. France has received two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear for decades, and 54 nuclear power stations are being built across 15 countries.

Despite our nuclear ban, Australia is buying nuclear submarines. Their nuclear reactors use the same technology as those used onshore. How could it be unsafe to have nuclear reactors onshore, but it is perfectly fine to have the same type of reactors sail around coastlines and dock in our ports?

Indeed, as it stands, we will become the only country that tries to have a nuclear submarine fleet without a large domestic nuclear energy industry. There are serious questions about whether we will be able to develop the necessary skills in nuclear energy without a broader range of career options than just life 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Our nuclear ban already risks our energy security, and now it risks our national security too.

Since the submarines decision, the critics have shifted their focus away from safety concerns to the cost. Even if they are right, high costs are not a reason to make something illegal. We haven’t banned the horse and buggy just because cars are more efficient.

But, in any case, the vast majority of real-world evidence shows that nuclear energy is an affordable way to make electricity. The critics like to quote the CSIRO, yet the CSIRO does not estimate the costs of any commercially available nuclear technologies. They only look at potential future technologies like small modular reactors.

In contrast, the International Energy Agency does look at the real-world performance of countries with nuclear energy. They conclude that “… electricity from the long-term operation of nuclear power plants constitutes the least cost option for low-carbon generation”.

Just look at Germany, which this year completed turning off all of its nuclear reactors. Germans now pay 60 per cent more for electricity compared to their neighbours, the French, who predominantly rely on nuclear energy.

Australia remains in the lucky position of seeing many countries manage the “energy transition” poorly. The Germans shut down nuclear and their power prices soared. The Finns installed nuclear and their power prices plummeted. We should heed these lessons.

If you want your power bill to come down, we need to go nuclear.

Bruce of Newcastle
Aug 18, 2023 12:41 PM
Well knock me down with a feather!

New research provides insight Into COVID-19 immunity (17 Aug)

Exposure to common cold-causing coronaviruses may contribute to pre-existing immunity to COVID-19, according to a new study involving a Rutgers research scientist.
…
“Of the 83% of individuals in our study who had common cold coronavirus exposure, we found that their T cells cross-reacted to SARS-CoV-2, hinting at the fact that people who have been exposed to these genetically related coronaviruses have immune responses that may be protecting them from future SARS-CoV-2 infections,”

Almost exactly the proportion the Diamond Princess fiasco implied, since about 700 of 3500 on board got sick.

Amazing how everything we’ve been saying about this since mid 2020 is turning out to be exactly true, ie all the stuff the powers and potentates have been censoring as “misinformation”.

..
Pfizer listed “misinformation” under “risks” in their 2021 annual report.
The year in which their revenues doubled.

“If you are unvaccinated, “

If they don’t say WHAT you are vaccinated for… hey, I got a tetanus vaccine a couple of years ago, no RAT required. Woot!

If a Presidential candidate was to campaign on banning and did implement such a ban it would remove 75% of their current income stream.

I think it is a great idea as it was quite clear that cable news had a vested interest to support pharma and their vaccines. The classic example was when they went for Joe Rogan when he said he had used Ivermectin as amongst other things when he caught Covid.

So Australian. Don’t like something then demand a ban.

Any we wonder how we got to be the biggest nanny state in the world and why the sheep are happy with it.

Maui disaster was 100% caused by human failure

I agree.
I’m sick of only the government can fix it!
Personally, I loved US big pharma advertising.
How else would I know there was a cure for, let alone a condition known as ‘restless leg syndrome’?

Thanks Walker.

Michael Shellenberger’s Guide to Escaping the Woke Matrix

Speedbox at 1:14.
Yes, I think over-selling of flights has always been a thing.
I can remember years ago travelling with a colleague through the US (he had lived there for a long time). I commented on the rush for the boarding gate and he explained about over-selling, even up to the point of issuing boarding passes. (I think SouthWest had an open boarding pass at one stage with no seat allocation).
I don’t mind the US system where they are somewhat open about it and are prepared to cough up with compensation.
As distinct from Quaintarse who simply overbook flights and shrug when confronted.
It seems that the old overbooking system in Australia used to work fairly seamlessly with very few excess bookings on the day of the flight.
It seems to me that Q makes no distinction between a business day-tripper from Melbourne to Sydney (who might chop and change flights) and a family of five booking a holiday to Bali (who are 98% certain to show up).
And here’s the thing.
Who cares about actual seat loading?
It is the financial seat loading which matters. If the Bali holiday-makers have paid a fully fixed non-refundable fare, who gives a rats if they don’t make the flight (apart from them of course)?

Maui disaster was 100% caused by human failure

This is quite possibly the case but our speculations should be measured. Wild speculations are likely to be planted by the people behind the failure themselves.

This article simply sets out the failures of preparation and response to the fires. What it doesn’t explain is how you can see photos of melted windscreen glass on the ground with rows of untouched trees in the near background. How hot does a fire have to be to melt glass?

Objective achieved.

Project Veritas Implodes Six Months After Firing James O’Keefe

Indolent
Aug 18, 2023 2:21 PM
The IRS seems to be training their own shock troopers.

IRS agent accidentally shot, killed by fellow agent during training at Phoenix gun range

Why does a tax department employee need to train at a gun range?

Okay Dover. Australia is a live let live paradise while the Americans supported adultery laws.

On that basis Australia is open than the US.

JC earlier

Let’s ban advertising while leaving state sponsored media alone because they do such good things and very trusted.

FMD. It’s embarrassing.

Yes.
The same people who rail about nanny-state bans on sugary drinks, fatty chips, plain paper packaging on smokes, yada, yada, are suddenly all-in for bans on pharmaceutical adverts.
Embarrassing indeed.

I wasnt sneering at it, it was a statement of fact.
Big Pharma advertising provides a valuable service.
No doubt a lot of people with the syndrome didnt know relief was available, again thanks to Big Bad Big Pharma.

rosie
Aug 18, 2023 2:42 PM
I wasnt sneering at it, it was a statement of fact.
Big Pharma advertising provides a valuable service.
No doubt a lot of people with the syndrome didnt know relief was available, again thanks to Big Bad Big Pharma.

You are f*cked in the head!

Within about a month of departure, sales may be 150% of capacity, within 15 days about 125%, within a week about 110% and on departure day, about 100%. If still too many people, arrangements would be made after a culling process determined by your FF membership/profile.

I recall being in Darwin airport back in the late 70s.

A call came over the PA for Mr Brown, a passenger to Sydney, to go to the TAA Check-in counter.

This guy in at t-shirt, shorts and thongs ambles up to the counter.

The hostess informs him that there are insufficient seats on his flight and he will be rebooked on a later flight.

Brown responds, “This is TAA the Friendly Way, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” the hostess says.

“Well, let’s keep it friendly.”

Hostess, “Mr Jones, a passenger to Sydney, please come to the Check-in counter”.

The HighWire with Del Bigtree:

Heroes of the Devastating Lahaina Fire Report from Maui; Jefferey Jaxen reports on the FDA reversing course on Ivermectin, and They Want Us to Mask Up Again Citing a New Variant; Are We On the Precipice of An Inescapable Pandemic Of The Vaccinated?; Heart Related Diseases and Death are Skyrocketing in the Young; New Bonus Series Launches Monday on TheHighWire.Com!
Guests: Mike & Andreza Cicchino, Steve Slepcevic, Sam Eaton, Geert Vanden Bossche, PhD, DVM, Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

Episode 333: INESCAPABLE

Another note on adultery laws. Even in today’s circumstances, I can make a compelling libertarian case for “adultery laws”. Agreements and contracts are some of the most significant libertarian philosophical foundational notions. If you make and /or sign an agreement/contract and do not follow through on it, such as a marriage contract, there should be a cost for “leg-overing” or being leg-overed outside of a marriage. If a party destroys someone’s life as a result of a leg-over outside of marriage, serious sanctions should be imposed be it financial or even jail time, depending on the seriousness.

I’m not sure why you’d use adultery as an example of nanny statism in the United States. You’re also overlooking the fact that marriage contracts in the United States are state-based rather than federal.

Whoops!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/16/nato-official-suggests-ukraine-could-give-up-territory-in-exchange-for-membership

You can always rely on Malcolm Roberts.

The Voice is About Money, Power and Control

Sweet cheeses I had no idea figures was here advising us on Bolson’s Curative Powders and ham-and-cheese poultices.

Watched The Man who knew Infinity

What? Biblically?

I imagine a show like that would go on for f*cking ever.

The Brisbane Times has published a set of Queensland voting intention numbers compiled over long range from four sets of Resolve Strategic’s monthly national polling, achieving a sample of 947 from a period running from mid-May through to last week. It adds to an impression from other polling this year by YouGov and Freshwater Strategy that Labor is likely to struggle at an election to be held in October next year, with the Liberal National Party opposition opening a primary vote lead of 38% to 32% after trailing by 35% to 33% in the period from January to April. The Greens are down a point to 11%, One Nation is up one to 8%, and a generic independent category is down two to 8%.

As always, Resolve Strategic does not provide a two-party preferred result, but a judicious estimate of four-fifths of Greens preference to Labor plus two-fifths of everybody else’s comes out at 51.5-48.5 in favour of the LNP

Dr. John Campbell

Life insurers confirm excess young deaths

Neil Oliver: ‘Are you afraid?’

On drug adverts in the US, I have to say that I do find them a little bit amusing.
Where an Australian company would run a campaign promising mild symptomatic relief, the same US advert will offer Fountain of Youth (with all the fine print disclaimers, of course).
And they assume the patient possesses a wealth of knowledge about alternative treatments.

“Do you have Restless Leg Syndrome? Have you already tried Jigglocan 40mg and Rattlileg Forte? Ask your doctor about new Wigglastin capsules for 24 hour relief!”

The idea is push marketing to get the patient to drive demand.

On drug adverts in the US, I have to say that I do find them a little bit amusing.

25% of the ad tells you the med may cure an itchy ballsack. 75% of the ad tells you that on application, the side effects could be immediate heart seizure, massive stroke, blindness, chronic coughing, mental incapacitation. “If you experience any of these symptoms see your doctor”.

It’s usually a couple of grey hairs smiling and walking on the beach shore.

Read it & weep .. the tuff life of being Oz PM ……. FFS!

Globe-trotting Anthony Albanese has rung up a $5 million bill for VIP flights since he was elected last year spending an average of $88,000 a week on flights.
After a long delay in publishing records of the taxpayer-funded flights, the Defence Department quietly posted the RAAF squadron VIP flight records on Friday afternoon.
The total spend from April 2022 to July 2023 was over $5 million or an average of $88,000 a week.

John H at 11:56 – actually the various clans and language groups had delineated territories established via periodic warfare, all of which would been unknown and unknowable to the British at the time. Lots of historical revisionism taking place here.

Dr F at 3:29.

So, if the fiendish Chinese have developed a way of deploying a fire-starting DEW from space, the most intriguing technological development is how they have managed to get a 50kW++ power source into orbit.

How very convenient!
We are just getting to the bottom of it and the shill for Big Facts arrives!

In a life or death situation you do whatever it takes to survive but it seems those young people did not think to include the crew in their tight little group to help them survive too

Paddling off on a surfboard in that situation is analogous to leaving your vehicle when bogged. Just luck really it worked out the way it did this time. Fishing from small boats is the same. It’s not if, it’s when. I remember reading about one guy who kept flippers loose on the deck for that purpose and who had swum to shore 2 or 3 times. Can’t remember where it was but another crew member died.

Just got a text from the No Campaign asking me to come in for training prior to me making calls to voters from my own mobile. I know you can block your number and all but I’m not sure this is a great strategy from the No side?

Firstly, not everyone is a logophile like me. Secondly, you know there are going to be “embeds” from the Yes side up to nasty things inside the No side..

There was no question back in the days of Ansett, that the pecking order was non-FF, then FF x hierarchy thereafter. Qantas did it too and I’m sure you know that concept still survives (with some modification) in Qantas and Virgin to this day.

Possibly. I got bumped into Business from Heathrow to Singapore once when I hit Silver FF after bouncing between Perth and Melbourne for work for a few months. No complaints from me.

“Funny” how CNN are interested in vote hacking all of a sudden???

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/brazil-s-jair-bolsonaro-sought-to-hack-into-voter-machines-hacker-testifies/ar-AA1fq1U7

Lol!!!

Something like “I got drunk on Ansett’s dime and it aint no crime”

Friday afternoon in the Mascot QANTAS club makes you want to neck yourself. A free VB doesn’t really help.

It was considered serious enough to be a crime without any suicide. That is an illustration of the poverty of the libertarian view you presented. It fails to capture that.

How on earth does it fail to “capture that?” You came up with a very odd argument to support or align yourself with those advocating a ban on pharma ads.

The suicide example was to demonstrate how serious a case of adultery can become. It was an example so I apologize for the countless reasons a marriage can fail.

Frankly, I’m surprised you’d take up the adultery example as I thought you support sanctions.

Don’t know what you mean here.

Well you came up with the analogy of adultery laws, which we find out were way back in time, to suggest that the US was is as much a nanny state as Australia. I judged that you would support the case against no fault.

There is no ‘contract violation’ if both consent, or amend their marriage contract, in the libertarian view, whereas the argument for adultery as a crime rests upon the injury to society, not merely to the spouses/ children. It wouldn’t be a criminal matter otherwise.

First of all, how could one amend a marriage contract? Secondly, you brought up the case of adultery laws and I therefore assumed that we focus on that aspect of marriage failure. If two parties consent to liquidating a marriage then that’s that. Oh please, let’s stop it with this society thing. If I encountered a marriage failure it has zip all to do with you or strangers as it doesn’t impact them.

Let’s get back to the pharma discussion.

Ansett.
The original Too Big To Fail.

Be interesting to see if the private equity guys can get rid of Virgin when the time comes. Somebody will have earned their fee if they can.

Ansett nostalgia anecdote.
Dad flew out of Sydney most Monday mornings and back Friday arvo, along with several other sales reps.
They were all so well known by the hostess that the Monday morning trolley service was accompanied with “Coffee, tea, or me?” and a smile.

No probs RD.

All this talk of swill is making me thir

Bourne1879
Aug 18, 2023 5:30 PM

JC,
The issue of 75% advertising becomes significant when a Government is basically mandating you take the pharma product.

Bourne, the products they advertise , from what I’ve seen were not pushing covid vaxes. Most of them are for various treatments such as ballsack itch or vaginal thrush.

Now just imagine for a moment the product was not properly tested and was found to harm some of the people it was supposed to help.

No, I can’t imagine that, because outside of Covid, nearly all medications have to go through the laborious process of trials and studies. There are certain exceptions , which thankfully Trump eased up on, which is cancer treatment that hasn’t been tested properly. Others are repurposed drugs where the risks are better known.

Or there were preexisting safe long used medicines that could help but would affect pharmas profits.

Imagine that, a private corp concerned about profitability.

It becomes an issue when the media picks a side.

The “media” with respect to Covid picked political sides with the Left siding with the leftwing administration. If it were Trump, the left would have been against the vax.

Now if it was 75% funded by fast food might be different as the Government was not mandating certain brands of fast food.

Okay, but what does that have to do with the price of snapper?

The US cable news media was bought and paid for and did its job accordingly.

Nonsense. The Right took a political position that the vax shouldn’t be mandated and it was risky. Good.

The left took a position the vax should be mandated and it wasn’t risky.

This had zero to do with with your suggestion. The leftwing media is always attacking big pharma about its profits taken from poor sick people. The right has been very critical of the riskiness of the vax and also that it was mandated.

Nothing was hidden nor held back. It certainly didn’t hold Fox from opinion.

Don’t Kill Cash – ‘An extraordinary victory!’ | Roger Gewolb congratulates GB News on cash campaign

Speedbox

Sorry, I haven’t forgotten. My time was taken up with disputes over testicle itch medication ads and adultery, which I guess can have some rough association.

I’m heading out for dins and will reply later this evening.

Alan Dershowitz. It doesn’t take him long.

I’ve read the indictment and here is my legal analysis

Andrew Bolt says Lidia Thorpe should apologise for claiming her ancestors lived in peace before colonists arrived: ‘Are massacres of Aborigines only bad if they were done by whites?’

Andrew Bolt reveals alleged massacre committed by Thorpe’s clan

By Max Aitchison For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 17:07 AEST, 18 August 2023 | Updated: 17:08 AEST, 18 August 2023

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Lidia Thorpe’s Indigenous clan were allegedly responsible for a massacre that claimed the lives of dozens of Aboriginal people, according to Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

The Sky News pundit branded Senator Thorpe’s National Press Club address on Wednesday ‘dangerous and deceitful’ and claimed she was ‘pushing her inflammatory history of Australia’.

The former Greens Senator, who identified herself as a member of the Gunnai Gunditjmara Djab Wurrung clan, said her ancestors lived in peace until European settlers landed on Australia’s shores.

‘My grandmother’s country had 70 clans living in peace and harmony pre-colonisation,’ Senator Thorpe told journalists.

But Bolt poured cold water on the claims, alleging that ‘Thorpe’s old tribe was itself guilty of massacres’.

‘The Gunnai were guilty of one of the worst massacres of Aborigines known to early colonialists,’ claimed the Sky News host.

Bolt claimed that the Gunnai were responsible for what has become known as the Warrowen massacre which allegedly took place in the 1830s and saw around 70 members of the Bunurong clan killed.

The alleged Warrowen massacre was recorded by William Thomas, an early settler who represented the Aboriginal people in various roles in Port Phillip (pictured)

Warrowen translates as ‘place of sorrow’ or ‘incessant weeping’.

William Thomas, an early settler who represented the Aboriginal people in various roles in Port Phillip, later recorded the massacre based on testimony from Indigenous sources.

In an 1840 letter, Mr Thomas wrote that ‘about four years ago 77 people were killed at Little Brighton not nine miles from Melbourne’.

The events were also allegedly recorded by George Henry Haydon, a writer and artist who emigrated to Melbourne in 1840, in his book ‘Five Years’ Experience in Australia Felix’ which claimed the alleged massacre ‘nearly annihilated a whole tribe’.

‘One of the old warriors of this tribe, who had escaped the massacre, said that his people were laying about the country like dead kangaroos,’ wrote Haydon.

Historian Marie Hansen Fels, who wrote ‘I Succeeded Once’ – The Aboriginal Protectorate on the Mornington Peninsula, 1839-1840, claims the atrocity was ‘commonplace information in early Melbourne history’.

Ms Fels idenitifes the locations of the massacre with Landcox Park and Hurlingham Park in present-day Brighton East in south-east Melbourne.

In her National Press Club address, Senator Thorpe called for reparations for Indigenous people.

‘There is a lot of money owed to first peoples. I mean, look at the resources that have been extracted over 200 years,’ Ms Thorpe said.

‘You know, we don’t want to send the country broke. I’ll put that out there now. Otherwise, we could with what is owed.’

‘You look at the Victorian Parliament … That is stolen sandstone that built the Victorian Parliament.

‘I could send Daniel Andrews a bill as a traditional owner. But I’ll save him from that.’

But Bolt pointedly asked whether Senator Thorpe would apologise for the Warrowen massacre, allegedly committed by her clan.

‘Will Lidia Thorpe apologise for that massacre of Aborigines by her old tribe?’, he said.

‘Will she pay reparations? Or are massacres of Aborigines only bad if they were done by whites?’

Daily Mail Australia approached Senator Thorpe for comment.