“Now we don’t call her Crooked Hillary, we call her Beautiful Hillary. She’s a beautiful, beautiful woman” lol!

Husband just had furious debate on phone with “issues resolver” of the company which supplies electricity to the farm (& to which we supply electricity from our 10kw solar system). After the installation of a “smart meter” a couple of months ago our bill has absolutely soared for the excess electricity we buy off the grid.

Something is amiss, and we can see on the internet that others are having similar problems. The graph of electricity usage and sale to them just doesn’t make sense. Yet we can’t get any resolution of the problem. The only resolution seems to be to purchase an extremely expensive battery in order to go completly “off grid”.

Something is amiss, and we can see on the internet that others are having similar problems. The graph of electricity usage and sale to them just doesn’t make sense. Yet we can’t get any resolution of the problem. The only resolution seems to be to purchase an extremely expensive battery in order to go completly “off grid”.

I think you got the increase that we were told will be 30% up on previous bills. I got my electricity bill last week and think it may be even higher than the proposed 30% rise. I’m just thinking about poor pensioners and families on fixed incomes, how they will manage. Chris Bowen in the most evil politician of living memory, he doesn’t give a damn what his Net Zero target is doing to the country.

I think you got the increase that we were told will be 30% up on previous bills. I got my electricity bill last week and think it may be even higher than the proposed 30% rise.

I got my gas bill this week $255 for 3 months .. last year same period $140 .. (both include applied OAP credits)
admittedly I do have gas heating but on the unit figures listed almost twice the MJ cost to last year ……

Trump will tax that country’s goods the equal amount coming into the US. LOl! ?

Iirc correctly Pauline proposed similar.

Mafia don’t allow no competition…..

Sounds like Marlon Brando there.

The Mafia doesn’t allow any competition.

Would you pay more for an ‘adults only’ flight?

Another airline has announced it will soon implement child-free zones on its flights. As a parent, I have thoughts.
By elle halliwell
From Travel
September 8, 2023
2 minute read
6

I like kids. I have one of my own; an energetic six-year-old who can fortunately now be placated for long periods by the lure of unlimited YouTube viewing, should the need arise.

I think toddlers and babies are cute, too, just not when I’m seated near one in an aircraft.

I’d like to apologise (again) to the man who was seated in front of me and my son on a TigerAir flight from Sydney to Brisbane in 2019.
Read Next

I’m sure the hour-long flight felt like an eternity as he endured continual seat-kicks, ear-piercing squeals of delight and an unrequested hairstyling session from my uncontrollable toddler, who, unlike us, was thoroughly enjoying himself.

It was my first flight with a child in tow, and the last, I vowed, until my son turned 18 (or was old enough to sit still for an hour).

Last month Corendon became the first European airline to implement a cabin area reserved for passengers over 16 years. The Turkish-Dutch airline announced that from November 3 it would begin offering passengers the option to book a seat in a child-free zone for an extra €45 ($75).

It’s not a new concept. AirAsia and Singapore-based airline Scoot began offering seats in adults-only zones more than a decade ago, and in 2019 Japan Airlines introduced a “baby map” to alert fellow passengers to the locations of infants on their flights.

All it takes is a quick glance around a long-haul business class cabin as a parent wrestles their two-year-old into a nearby seat to realise this idea is a no-brainer. Passengers visually blanch as their expectations of a relaxing, quiet flight (which they probably paid a premium for) disappear.

And if you thought the parents were too busy dangling noisy toys in their baby’s face to notice the muffled groans and contemptuous side-eyes, you’d be wrong.

Child-free zones are a win-win for everyone: travellers can pay extra to avoid being seated beside wailing newborns, and stressed-out parents can call out disgruntled flyers for not forking out a bit more money for the privilege of a child-free trip.

So why aren’t more airlines adopting them?

Tour operator Evie Farrell agrees the concept should be more widely adopted by airlines.

The Mumpack Travel founder, who coordinates travel for families, says flying with a baby or toddler for the first time is one of the most common fears among her clients.

“I have a lot of parents ask questions like ‘Is my child going to cry a lot and upset other passengers?’,” she says.

“If you haven’t flown with a child before, the lead-up is so nerve-racking. For parents knowing that if there are people who are really against travelling with kids in their area of the plane, if they know if they’re elsewhere in their child-free happy place, that’s a real relief.”

At the time of publishing, requests to Qantas for comment regarding any plans to implement child-free areas on its flights went unanswered.

For passengers flying on airlines which haven’t (yet) embraced the idea of child-free cabin areas, it’s worth noting that bassinets are usually fixed to bulkhead walls behind the galley, bathroom, and other cabin areas, so book with caution. And don’t forget the ear plugs, and a bit of compassion.

Parents travelling with noisy children should be banished to the cargo hold.

Testimonial: “They Moved a Biological Man into My Dorm Room!”

I like kids. I have one of my own; an energetic six-year-old who can fortunately now be placated for long periods by the lure of unlimited YouTube viewing, should the need arise.

I think toddlers and babies are cute, too, just not when I’m seated near one in an aircraft.

The trouble with an adult – or is that ‘a dolt’ is that they forget that they were once a child. And in such a case, so is MontyPox Virus. A dolt as well as a child.

Monty at home pulling his dick in orgasmic frenzy.

DANG, BB!

she’s a full-on Marxist

Links between the Communist Party of Australia and the “Land Rights” movement go back to the late 1930’s.

johanna
Sep 8, 2023 4:18 PM
For those of us in the south east just now – Singing Winds, Crying Beasts via Carlos Santana:

People who love sailing are a strange breed.

Cool music by Santana –

And a good job that Captain Cook liked sailing – around the World that is.

Parents travelling with noisy children should be banished to the cargo hold.

What the hell are they doing treating children as people! At home they have various fences perimeters and cages they put the meeting little mucus factories in.

Put them in the hold along with the other creatures that become unruly in unfamiliar situations such as dogs, cats, and bogans. If a person says their child is an emotional support primate then give them a collapsible chair and hot water bottle and let them go to the hold also.

Why is this even being talked about?

Davey Boy
Sep 8, 2023 5:02 PM
A Parliamentary petition has been set up against the Illawarra offshore wind farm proposal. If you’re opposed to this atrocity which will stretch from Wombarra to Kiama, make sure you jump on sign up so we can tell the Federal Government where their proposal belongs.
https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN5402

The interesting thing with all these stupid Windmill plantations is that the Environment is paramount. Get Tanya Plebersuck and the UN on the case. Save the Whales. Maybe get Greenpeace to help.

Blackout Bowen is on very dodgy sandy foundations here. And serves him right. Plonker.

Generally don’t like lifting and posting entire pieces, but this deserves a shot. How science is misused.

Author, John Grisham wrote the oped in the WSJ. Just incredible how potentially many innocent people have been caught up.

Texas May Execute a Man Based on a Scrapped Medical Theory
Autistic father Robert Roberson was wrongfully convicted of murdering his 2-year-old daughter.

By

John Grisham

For a parent, nothing is worse than the death of a child. Imagine the horror, though, of being falsely accused and wrongly convicted of killing your child.

Twenty years ago, prosecutors in Anderson County, Texas, relied on a now-discredited hypothesis about “shaken baby syndrome” to convict Robert Roberson of the capital murder of his chronically sick 2-year-old daughter Nikki. Countless caregivers have been prosecuted since British pediatrician Norman Guthkelch first posited in the early 1970s that shaking a baby could cause brain bleeding and even death. Many have been convicted and sent to prison, a few even to death row. Mr. Roberson could be the first to be executed. Texas may execute an innocent man.

Mr. Roberson has autism and was a special-education student before dropping out of school in the ninth grade. He had his challenges in life, including past drug addiction that had prompted convictions for writing a hot check and burglary. But he loved being a father to Nikki.

She, too, had her challenges. Child Protective Services forced Nikki’s mother to give her up at birth. Nikki suffered from chronic and severe middle-ear infections. In late January 2002, she had a high fever and undiagnosed pneumonia. Mr. Roberson put Nikki to bed but awoke later and found her on the floor. Mr. Roberson told police that Nikki didn’t appear to have any injuries. She was awake and talking as he tried to soothe her. Father and daughter managed to get back to sleep, but the next morning Nikki was unresponsive. Mr. Roberson brought her to an emergency room in Palestine, Texas. He told hospital staff that she had fallen out of bed, but they didn’t believe him. They didn’t know he was autistic and decided he didn’t show the proper emotions given the dire situation. Doctors transferred Nikki to a children’s hospital in Dallas, but it was too late. She died on Feb. 2.

Mr. Roberson was distraught but his nightmare was only beginning. The Anderson County District Attorney’s Office accused him of killing Nikki and sought the death penalty.

The deck was stacked against Mr. Roberson from the beginning. Accepted medical wisdom at the time was that any child with a triad of symptoms like Nikki’s—brain bleeding, brain swelling and bleeding in the eyes—had been violently shaken or hit against a surface, absent evidence of some other massive trauma such as a car accident or a multistory fall. The medical consensus viewed the presence of the triad to be diagnostic and considered the caregiver the culprit.

In a rush to judgment that is the hallmark of wrongful convictions, one doctor’s hunch about Nikki’s death led to Mr. Roberson’s arrest for murder. Even Mr. Roberson’s court-appointed lawyer agreed this was a “classic” shaken-baby case because, 20 years ago, the triad was considered diagnostic.

Astonishingly, a nurse claimed to law enforcement—and later in front of the jury—that Nikki had been sexually abused, even though no doctor endorsed that belief and there was no autopsy or crime scene evidence of it. The judge allowed the nurse’s testimony and prosecutors’ argument that Mr. Roberson was the kind of person capable of violently shaking a child to death. The jury agreed.

Dr. Guthkelch eventually became distressed at the aggressive misuse of his work by prosecutors. “I am frankly quite disturbed that what I intended as a friendly suggestion for avoiding injury to children has become an excuse for imprisoning innocent people,” he said in 2012 while arguing that convictions like Mr. Roberson’s should be reviewed. “We went badly off the rails.”

Slowly, belatedly, things are changing. Courts in 17 states have exonerated people convicted decades ago of murder or child abuse based on the outdated shaken-baby hypothesis. In 2016, days before Mr. Roberson was set to die, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals returned his case to the trial court for an exhaustive 10-day hearing. Mr. Roberson’s legal team presented six experts who showed that the outdated version of shaken-baby syndrome used at his trial has been discredited and that Nikki died as a result of her undiagnosed pneumonia, medications and accidental fall.

To overturn his conviction, Mr. Roberson’s lawyers had to accomplish two things. First, they had to show that the science used to convict him was wrong (or that the understanding of that science had changed since his trial). Second, they needed to demonstrate that the original jury wouldn’t have convicted him if it knew then what we know now about the shaken-baby syndrome hypothesis. Mr. Roberson’s legal team did more than those two things: It produced unrebutted evidence that no homicide had in fact occurred.

Mr. Roberson’s lawyers presented a 302-page document to the court that comprehensively summarized the new evidence from the experts. Anderson County prosecutors submitted a 17-page brief that hardly touched on the new science—instead rehashing outdated evidence and theories from the original trial in 2003. Mr. Roberson’s lawyers were surprised at the paltry offering. They were flabbergasted when Judge Deborah Evans rubber-stamped it, following the prosecution’s lead in ignoring most of the new expert testimony and all of the scientific studies showing a change in understanding of shaken-baby syndrome. Instead, the trial court’s recommendation cited the same trial testimony that had been challenged as wholly inconsistent with contemporary scientific understanding.

We expect our courts to weigh the evidence before them carefully and thoughtfully. But in Mr. Roberson’s case, and in a shocking number of wrongful convictions, judges simply agree with prosecutors and protect bad convictions despite overwhelming evidence of innocence. We should demand more from judges than a copy-and-paste job that entirely ignores changes in the scientific understanding of a case, especially when a life is on the line.

Nikki’s death was a tragedy, not a crime. Robert Roberson may be out of options unless the U.S. Supreme Court decides to hear his case.

Mr. Grisham, a novelist, serves on the boards of the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries, organizations dedicated to exonerating defendants who were wrongfully convicted.

Insurance/TPD with the Application

Money for nothing
Chicks for free

Someone has to pay for Greg Combet’s cycle tours through France now the taxpayer is not picking up the tab.

H B Bear
Sep 8, 2023 5:41 PM
Someone has to pay for Greg Combet’s cycle tours through France now the taxpayer is not picking up the tab.

How can he go on a cycle tour with those red underpants on his head. Surely they will stop him from seeing where he is coming and going .

Mario Nawfal
@MarioNawfal

This is NOT how peace will be reached!

Like selling tickets for nonexistent flights.

Now who would ever think of doing that and thinking that they could ever get away with it?

Quaintarse indeed as Alf Garnett said in 1970………………………….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBRPx21Qn1c

Gurgler meet toilet lol!!!!

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/latest-uk-renewables-auction-fails-attract-offshore-wind-bids-2023-09-08/

Actually, when I fly I expend great effort to popping my ears. I seem more irritated by even the smallest pressure difference than other people. So I will sit there (trying to be discreet) with eyes wide open, laboriously opening my jaws to full gape before snapping shut and instantly trying again.

I would look like a goldfish that has leapt out of the bowl and lying on the carpet.

Douglas Macgregor: This Is Horrifying !!!

It’s supposed to be a memory test for those in their 80’s but any age could have a go.

Just did Lizzie. 40 for me.

Yoof crime again, Shannon Deery:

Raising the age of criminal responsibility will be a tough balancing act for the Andrews government.

The government has committed to raising the age a child can be arrested, charged or jailed from 10 to 12 by the end of next year.

By 2027, it will be raised again to 14.

And yet, every year hundreds of children aged 13 and under are charged with serious crimes.

Thursday’s arrest of a boy who had not long ago turned 14 over the abduction and stabbing of a Glen Eira College student is the latest shocking crime involving young teens.

The government has flagged the higher age of criminality may not apply for murder and terrorism style offences, meaning there would be some exemptions from the planned changes.

But what of serious assaults that leave victims fighting for life, sexual offending or serial repeat offending involving young teens?

The government has said it’s too early to determine exactly which serious crimes would be included in any carve out clauses.

Balancing the interests of community safety with the interests of young offenders will be key to striking the right chord with any legislative change.

It is internationally accepted that locking kids up is in many cases futile, and also heightens the risk of recidivism.

Victoria’s current regime is at odds with expert medical advice, and lags behind international standards.

But raising the age can’t be done responsibly without wholesale reform of the criminal justice system.

Supports need to be put into place to address problem behaviour before it occurs, but also to address otherwise criminal behaviour as it arises.

The government has committed to this.

But how it can strike the right balance doing this will be the challenge.

Maybe, just maybe a size 12 up the Khyber Pass might set them on the right track.

Maybe, just maybe a size 12 up the Khyber Pass might set them on the right track.

Country coppers in Western Australia used to round up Aboriginal juvenile offenders on a dark night, drive them a few miles out of town, and tell them to walk home. In a refinement, they would tell the offenders that Katchdika man – the tribal sorcerer – was about, and he would creep up behind them, and dash their brains out, with his stone club. Very few of them ever re- offended.

Somebody made a complaint to the Aboriginal Legal Service, who put a stop to the practice.

Here you are Rabz. Magnifique

Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain.

Substantial number of upticks!

Joe Rogan

Tulsi Gabbard on the Response to the Maui Wildfires

The word that sticks out most is “blockade”. People were blockaded from getting out and now are being blockaded from getting in, even to provide assistance, which the government itself is not doing.

Tyranny on Tap in the New Maui. Forget The U.S. Constitution! It’s an “Emergency”

No, no, no! No upticks here, you might hurt someone’s delicate feelings.
We can’t have that.

Even worse, there could be down ticks.

And that would crucify their egos Big Time. LOL

Just saw this Rockdoctor. A coloured man. Phuck him off.

I used to have beers with Lloyd McDermott back in the 1990’s, he had quite an original individualistic worldview.

Thanks, Black Ball, for all your interesting posts. Every day you put up pages of great stuff that I normally wouldn’t get to see.

Much appreciated.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Sep 8, 2023 8:47 PM
Margaret Betts obituary
Unassuming Bletchley Park machine operator who, after enlisting as a Wren at the age of 19, assisted Alan Turing’s codebreakers
Friday September 08 2023, 12.01am BST, The Times
London
Obituaries

Margaret Betts, Bletchley Park machine operator, was born on December 27, 1923. She died on August 26, 2023, aged 99.

Thank you Zulu Kilo Two Alpha – And I would never have known about a Lady that helped to save Britain. I was born in 1952 and she helped save me to be born with millions of others after the War. RIP.

Thank you Zulu Kilo Two Alpha – And I would never have known about a Lady that helped to save Britain

My pleasure, Johnny Rotten. Mme Zulu and I visited Bletchley Park, and were shown over it, by another of the wartime Wrens. Her father was a World War One veteran, and she was an only child, but she was able to tell her father before he passed that his daughter had made her contribution for King and Country.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Sep 8, 2023 9:24 PM

You are top people and I would not be alive at age 70 years now without all of those people that did what they did then.

I am always humbled by those stories that I never knew then but I now know now.

Here you are Rabz. Magnifique

Black Ball, how could you? What got into you?

Next time, please put a warning label.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Sep 8, 2023 9:24 PM

What you posted tonight puts Life into perspective.

Leonard Cohen effort is always good.

Leonard Cohen is boring. It’s like slash yer’ wrist music.

Saw a new name for Mitch McConnell. Glich McConnell

With this fcuker having a mini stroke most days of the week, how can the GOP accuse the Demons of running Demonrats with serious brain problems? I can’t believe they haven’t got rid of him yet.

ZuckerFraud.

Rachel Alexander
@Rach_IC
????????The testimony by the first witness Trump’s attorney John Eastman called to put on his side of the case in his disbarment trial has been nothing less than explosive. The trial ended for the day with more bombshells. He revealed that the Zuckbucks, $8.8 million from Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech & Civic Life (CTCL) provided to Wisconsin’s five large cities, violated the law. He said he doesn’t call them “grants,” he refers to it as “employment contracts,” since the CTCL employees actually go work with the clerks’ offices and get to see information about voters that the public can’t access as easily (the public has to pay $12,500 for voter roll info, only gets a snapshot of that instant, and usually has to wait 4-5 days for it, so there’s no way to determine whether someone was made active 2 weeks before the election then deactivated 2 weeks after the election). Also since if the clerks don’t comply with CTCL’s requirements, they have a huge penalty of giving money back. Those CTCL employees are able to determine if a voter was likely to vote for Trump or Biden. They were allowed to see voters who had requested ballots but hadn’t returned them, then go chase them down to get their ballots. The CTCL employees were “embedded” in the clerks’ offices and “running the elections.” Yet the Zuckerbergs had made statements they wanted to defeat Trump. He also said votes were “illegally cast” that were dropped off in the drop boxes, since the drop boxes violated the law by not being placed near the clerks’ offices – which the WI Supreme Court reaffimed; instead the clerks let CTCL dictate where they must be placed. The guy the Zuckerbergs hired to run this had written a book on how to defeat Trump, where he said the election would be won dueling it out block by block in these types of big cities.

Whereas there is no need to wonder about the sort of person chafing at the bit for downticks.

Que?

Drinking good single malt, and watching “Sharpe’s Waterloo” on DVD.

“Your Grace, the Prussians are here.

Well, let’s see if we can find something useful for them to do.”

The Oz is reporting that VicPlod has ruled out terrorism.

Mmmyes so I will posit on the record it is terrorism.

Mmmm … yes … VicPlod. Nothing to see here. Move along please.