Henry Payne.
Open Thread – Mon 11 Sept 2023
- Open Thread – Mon 25 Nov 2024
- The more you gets the less you eats
- Open Thread – Weekend 23 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 21 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 18 Nov 2024
Michael Ramirez #2.
Tom Stiglich.
Gary Varvel. Brilliant.
A.F. Branco.
Oh yes , Joyce made a lot of money, so why shouldn’t he get both barrels? Think of the poor instead! FMD.
Should be Fun in the Northen Hemisphere soon – Pleased to be in Southern Hemisphere
NATO to stage largest war games since Cold War – FT
Some 41,000 troops in Germany, Poland, and the Baltics will take part in the Steadfast Defender exercise, the outlet has reported
NATO is poised to hold its largest military exercises since the Cold War era in Western Europe early next year, the Financial Times reported on Monday. The drills will simulate the bloc’s response to a hypothetical Russian invasion and are intended to increase readiness for such a scenario, according to the outlet.
Bearing the name Steadfast Defender, the exercises will involve around 41,000 troops, more than 50 ships, and between 500 and 700 combat air missions, according to the report. While the exercises are designed to simulate a clash with a fictional coalition named ‘Occasus,’ NATO officials told the FT that the maneuvers are “seen as a key part of demonstrating to Moscow that the alliance is prepared to fight.”
The exercises will reportedly take place in Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states, which border Russia, in February and March 2024. NATO-applicant Sweden will also be involved, the report said. The Nordic nation applied to join the bloc last year, but its application is still in limbo due to the reluctance of Türkiye and Hungary to ratify its bid, owing to a number of grievances in bilateral relations.
The FT also reported that NATO intends to hold two major war games a year instead of one. The exercise will also reportedly focus on counterterrorism efforts outside of the bloc’s borders.
Exercises are also seen as a key part of demonstrating to Moscow that the alliance is prepared to fight, Nato officials said.
Duk
How is it possible for a UTI to affect brain function? That’s a really hard one to get my head around (pun intended).
“If you transition all of your problems will be fixed”
Three stories of ‘detransitioning’.
How an evil ideology persuaded these three lovely girls to believe they were men.
Trans is a Cult.
It’s Time………. for an Upgrade & Chairman’s Lounge
From the Comments
– And a swtch hitting 3some??
– Hmmmmm AC/DC?
– They make such a lovely couple. I just can’t unsee it.
– Is Albo a double adapter?
Quite ominous. De-escalation needed, with a powerful top negotiator not afraid to call out the vested-in-war interests.
Bring on President Trump.
Who said anything about poor? I’m talking about anyone who has to actually work for a living, pay taxes etc. The average family in this country.
Naturally as usual , to make a fkg dumb point, you have to sneer and denigrate those people. You really are a fkg nasty piece of work.
Esp. given a Russian general’s recent musings on the next steps in the war.
Not a senior commander, granted, but he was giving voice to Kremlin rhetoric.
Mao suits are a brand, but, no, the move from “Apple is being exploitive with the brand name” to “everything purchased by brand is exploitive” doesn’t follow. It’s the brand + acts that are exploitative that is required.
The shrinking middle class.
I will have to repost something I said about three weeks ago.
———————-
Let’s look at Australia’s monetary accommodation, ignoring the QE that happened in 2019 that no one seems to have noticed (no significant growth in M0 but a huge and sudden jump in M1)…
Looking at M0 (high powered money, currency) growth, the CAGR from 1 January 2020 to today is 49.54%.
Just absolutely incredible, over three years and almost eight months.
Up from 116.8 bn on Jan 1 2020 to 507.14 bn today.
That’s on top of a tax RATE of 80-85% on new dwelling construction, to which mortgages are paid from after paying income tax & without deductibles.
The solution to the housing crisis is to avoid insanity – stop doing what doesn’t work and what is demonstrably bad, wrong and existentially damaging vis a vis demographic suffocation.
—————
This is why housing is unaffordable. We have implicitly made a political choice that it ought to be unaffordable.
There’s at least two MAJOR reasons for this!
I’m just seeing the Wilcannia mob, arriving at the theatre, to claim their discounts for an evening at the ballet…
What’s land banking and constipated land policy have to do with a guy who’s been screwed over by you and the rest of the left, you freaking moron. Go cry on the Guardian website.
Indolent
The entire Global Warming Narrative is just another form of control in the same way that Lysenkoism was.
And it will deliver exactly the same thing that Lysenko did under Communism – piles of skulls.
Go on…
Indolent:
A couple of excellent articles from American Thinker:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/energy_prices_in_america_are_going_to_get_much_worse_than_weve_ever_imagined.html
If the Democrats aren’t consigned to the very deepest parts of Hell at the next election, and the same in Australia and England, then we are rooted because they will do what the Communists have always done – destroy nations and reduce their peoples to abject poverty.
What was mused?
Conroy is very hard to watch. He will never concede that the other side might have a point. Tends to rudeness.
I’m not sure if he believes what he is saying, but he has to follow the party line regardless. I hate that mentality.
CIA-financed goofball Mick Ryan: the mud will save the ‘counter-offensive.’
Bless.
But Ukraine is winning anyway:
What was mused?
When asked if Ukraine was a “stepping stone” to other wars:
“I think there‘s still plenty of time to spend. It is pointless to talk about a specified period. If we are talking about Eastern Europe, which we will have to, of course then it will be longer. It is only the beginning. The war will not stop here.”
It was taken by many as a reference to Poland, in the first instance.
Three actually.
Greens, Liars, Lieborals.
Barking Toad:
No. These people know very well what they want and they are going to get it despite how many widows children starve as they do so. And if they are confronted with the evidence of their sociopathic inhumanity, they will form a Commission to Feed Starving Orphans, and put their mates in charge of the budget.
They want more than anyone else, and the worst of them want want more than everybody else.
And we put them in that position to achieve it.
Another reason I’m suspicious of China commentary in the West. It seems entirely curated.
Mao suits are brand like Hermes? You can walk into Myers and find the Mao jumpsuit department next to Ralph Lauren?
You still have to explain how a firm , every firm in fact, attempting to maximise profits is exploitive. This ungodly capitalist system is so unjust.
It’s the brand + acts that are exploitative that is required.
A quick answer to 3 points raised yesterday
Johnny Rotten
Sep 11, 2023 1:43 PM
The system was written in IBM 360 assembly language with a few PL1 bolt ons. Nothing gets changed quickly in Assembly.
IBM Assembler language is the machine language and it is farking hard to get to grips with. You need to know your hexadecimals and what Register does what.
I did a 3 week course on it in April/May 1981. It took me 4 weeks to recover.
Turnip
Sep 11, 2023 2:37 PM
ACCC tells us it was 8,000 flights, not bookings. So, unless QANTAS was cancelling an extraordinary series of one pax flights, we appear to be talking 100’s of thousands of paid bookings.
Not to defend the indefensible, but these 8000 flights that were cancelled were only open for sale a “short” period after being cancelled so the only fliers affected would have only been those that bought during that 2 or 3 weeks period.
All bookings on the cancelled flights would have been moved or cancelled, but the majority would have purchased when the flight was still scheduled.
My guess is that the booking system is different to the “asset management’ system. The flights were cancelled in the asset system which did not then flow through to the sale/ booking platform.
Given the common complaint is that Qantas IT is run by work experience kiddies, this is no surprise.
Probably more incompetence than outright malice.
Diogenes
Sep 11, 2023 3:04 PM
I did a 3 week course on it in April/May 1981. It took me 4 weeks to recover.
I was working on the PL1 bolt ons. They had a 2 year maintenance backlog on the PL1 when I arrived, when I left I was fixing bugs as they came in.
I sat in on many structured walkthroughs of changes to Assembly code. Because I could speak “code” , but was not experienced with Assembly, we found more problems as they had to explain their code to their “mother in law” ie explain every line.
Having worked on SILLIAC Sydney Uni Physics Dept, DEC Syd Uni Electrical Eng early 60s, then IBM Plug Wire Accounting Machines & 1401
I did Commenwealth Govt Full Time PIT Course (Forerunner of Computing Science) & learnt IBM 360 Assembler as my Dept was using EE system 4 which used 360 Assembler
Qantas offered me a job at the end of the course and I was in the team that picked up IPARS Assembler Reservations System from BOAC (Now BA) in 1970 – Became expert in analysing Hex Machine Dumps & Patching online on the fly in real time problem solving
Qantas & BOAC devleoped KM Online Schedule Change in mid 70s – was also involved in selection & implemetation of 360 Assembler Departure Control Checkin/ Weight and Balance Systems – Continued involvement in Airline Res Systems through 90s including Online Web Booking Systems for BA & SQ
Qantas moved to Amadeus Res System in early 2000s
Amadeus System is located in Erding Germany
turnip,
Re My guess is that the booking system is different to the “asset management’ system. The flights were cancelled in the asset system which did not then flow through to the sale/ booking platform.
Everything is contained in the PNR – Passenger Name Record
as you can see from this online search
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=amadeus+km+online+schedule+schange&ia=web
Amadeus Schedule Change Update handles your schedule changes from start to finish – fast and according to your needs. You decide what actions to take per airline depending on the schedule change. Ie.no action, reissuance, revalidation or manual queue.
IPARS is a Real Time Fully Re-entrant Design – amazing speed and the fact that having been designed mids 6os is still in use today is outstanding
The follwoing fix list shows how it has adapted to today’s Modern IT
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/fix-list-ibm-ipars-v241
Immune messenger molecules have implications for brain function. Interleukin 1, a key inflammatory mediator, directly impacts on the brain and induces central fatigue. It even may contribute to post-prandial fatigue(after eating). Another inflammatory molecule, il-17, appears to even influence broader aspects of behavior. These types of findings have occurred in the last 20 years but were prefigured with Benjamin Hart’s concept of sickness behavior.
We need to stop thinking that all our physiological processes are separated. It is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in understanding the relationship between brain and behavior, perhaps another example of the mereological fallacy.
Sort of unbelievable anyone seriously thinks any of this is seriously being considered by the Kremlin. People need to take a cold bath and watch this Mearsheimer Q&A.
In order to save the whales, we must kill the whales
That’s how The Science™ works, boys and girls. Respect it, or be made to answer to the Department of Homeland Security, bigot.
If you live on the East Coast of the U.S., chances are you’ve seen and/or heard tell of the increasing-in-frequency local news reports on the dead-whale-washing-up-on-shore phenomenon.
“A new documentary, ‘Thrown To The Wind,’ by Director and Producer Jonah Markowitz, proves that the US government officials have been lying.
The full film, which is at the bottom of this article, documents surprisingly loud, high-decibel sonar emitted by wind industry vessels when measured with state-of-the-art hydrophones. And it shows that the wind industry’s increased boat traffic is correlated directly with specific whale deaths.
The documentary may not stop the industrial wind projects from being built. After all, the wind projects were going forward despite urgent warnings from leading conservation groups and a top scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
But ‘Thrown To The Wind’ exposes the reality that the U.S. government agencies, and the scientists who work for them, either haven’t done the basic mapping and acoustic research to back up their claims, have done the research badly, or found what we found, and are covering it up.”
Anyway, what’s a few thousand dead whales when a totalitarian social control agenda is on the line? You want to make a climate change omelet, you’re gonna have to break some marine mammal eggs.
It has been mentioned here that there are people in Russia much more hard line than Putin so the remarks are not surprising. The person making them though is surprisingly stupid.
Oh let’s look at what a nasty sneering sack of shit really looks like:
His sexual orientation has something to do with, does it? The “little queer” deserves it, right?
You’re such a piece of shit. Everything you accuse others of is your mirror image.
Their armed forces are demonstrably not up to it, to begin with.
Watch: Germany’s Baerbock Humiliated In Dressing Down By Ukraine Foreign Minister
BY TYLER DURDEN
TUESDAY, SEP 12, 2023 – 10:00 AM
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was utterly humiliated by her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in a joint press conference on Monday.
Baerbock had traveled to war-ravaged Ukraine on her fourth visit since Russia’s invasion. She engaged the Zelensky government in high level talks, at one point announcing 20 million euros more in humanitarian aid (Berlin has now provided 380 million euros this year).
But naturally the Ukrainian side pressed her on supplying more advanced weapons, in particular the Swedish-German produced long-range Taurus cruise missile.
That’s when Kubela lashed out at Germany’s top diplomat in a deeply embarrassing moment for Berlin…
Kuleba wipes his feet on Annalena Baerbock. When asked if she gave him any hope that Germany will supply Ukraine with Taurus missiles:
“No, she didn’t go beyond the official position of the German government… but you’ll do it anyway, it’s just a matter of time”
Embarrassing.
Things took a turn at the joint presser when a journalist asked about the difficulties of the counteroffensive along the southern front, and posed whether Kubela thinks Kiev’s Western backers should supply weapons like the Taurus “quicker and faster”….
Kubela then explained he had pressed the German delegation for Taurus deliveries as soon as possible, but that Baerbock left him no “hope” in these meetings.
He then in a smug and patronizing tone looked toward her and said:
“No, she didn’t go beyond the official position of the German government… but you’ll do it anyway, it’s just a matter of time.”
“You will do it anyway, its just a matter of time, and I don’t understand why we are wasting time,” Kuleba said in response to a question at a press conference.
Kubula then described that more and more Ukrainian lives have been lost due to Western delays in weapons approval and deliveries. The suggestion was that it’s Berlin’s fault (and that of other slow to play along allies).
Online commentators were quick to point out how “embarrassing” and “pathetic” the moment was for the German side.
Others pointed out the “arrogance” on display by Kubela, given also she made the lengthy, dangerous trip into Kiev to announce new humanitarian aid. Such “gifts” weren’t enough.
One regional commentator had this to say in response to the clip:
“So here we have a US protectorate (Germany) being publicly mocked by a US proxy (Ukraine). One of the pitfalls of military alignment — the interests of the alliance as defined by the alliance leader is always supreme.”
Dover, the website address should tell you everything you need to know. Like The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald is no longer a newspaper, but a headless communist workers collective, where editors can be toppled by a shopfloor vote of the collective.
Nine’s ownership has made zero difference. Both papers are still ruled by agreement with the former Fairfax management, which forbids management from setting editorial policy — now ceded to the workers.
And, when it comes to foreign affairs, the SMH doesn’t do rational analysis, just tribal recitations of generic international communist policy — i.e., what would Emperor Xi think?
Hope that helps.
No, they are a brand in the sense of being identifiable, a status marker, and the like.
No I don’t. I’m not arguing that all acts whose intent is to maximise profits are exploitative, I’m simply making the modest claim that some acts whose intent is maximisation are exploitative.
No one’s armed forces is right now. You would need about 2M soldiers to do so.
Which is one reason why it is surprisingly stupid. The statement is probably for the domestic market.
Then why is the SMH running anti-China/Xi propaganda?
“The left”. Lol. Anyone who opposes corporate fascism and regulated theft is “left”. You are so dim, you are sounding like mOron.
Because restricted supply of land has nothing whatsoever to do with property prices and the COL, rents , loan/mortgage costs , property rates, infrastructure- you fkg lard head. Get a refund on your Fin Minor, you’re hopeless. You are here as a mouthpiece for the likes of Joyce and his corp parasitic fascist thieving mates. The very same fascist grubs who took our money and supported state and Fed Govts thugs imprisoning us for 2 years while intimidating the population into the vaccines in their workplaces.
This is you showing your true colours. You should fuck off to the Upper East Side and not return. One less corporate shill is always welcome.
Not sure that the distinctions are hard and fast in modern medicine, but I take your point. Apart from anything else, the discomfort caused by pain and illness can make some people cranky and/or irrational, as most of us know.
And you are quite right to mention the effect of treatment. It can radically change people’s behaviour and impulses.
For example, when I spent five days in hospital recently, drugged to the eyeballs with Endone, I didn’t notice that I couldn’t smoke, even though I’ve been doing at least a pack a day for more than 50 years.
It’s a trivial example, except that giving up smoking is one of the hardest habits to break.
Medicine has made gigantic strides in the surgical world – outstanding.
Pharmacology has mixed results, probably weighed on the plus side, but not by very much (I’m excluding penicillin).
As for psychiatry – ai yi yi!
The writs were issued for the referendum yesterday, btw.
As predicted, Albanese is going to crash through or crash in Whitlamesque fashion.
Moderation dover?
DB I don’t trust the MSM reports on China.
The MSM approach to China is ridiculous. Xi is an asshole but the idea that China is preparing to go on some huge military rampage doesn’t make sense. China wants the South China Sea for resource and security purposes but beyond that there is little it can do. The Taiwan problem for them is in part about access to that sea. I can’t even see China invading Taiwan and many analysts not interviewed in the MSM think China can’t do it. Recent simulations in the USA showed that even in the worst case scenario, with the odds stacked in favour of China, its Navy and air force would be decimated. The USA would also suffer heavy losses, including an aircraft carriers and other ships, and hundreds of aircraft, but the decimation of China’s military machine could result in the overthrow of the CCP; in the very least Xi would have an “accident”.
He has a point. Germany has gone so woke that they are totally hopeless. For example they shut down their nuke plants and then started buying electricity from French nuke plants. Hypocrisy on steroids.
Flailing ‘sick man of Europe’ Germany blamed for dragging down Eurozone (11 Sep)
Roger
Sep 12, 2023 10:36 AM
Sort of unbelievable anyone seriously thinks any of this is seriously being considered by the Kremlin.
Their armed forces are demonstrably not up to it, to begin with.
Roger,
again I use the analogy of Russina Kamaz Trucks
It’s the KAMAZ, or Kamsky Avtomobilny Zavod, the Russian truck manufacturer which recorded sixteen wins at Dakar Rally between 1996 and 2019. KAMAZ made a debut at Dakar Rally in 1990.
Producing trucks since 1976
KAMAZ is a relatively young company founded in 1969, in Naberezhnye Chelny in the Russian republic of Tatarstan.
The first truck rolled out of the factory in 1976. Over the course of many years, KAMAZ has proven to be the maker of durable, almost omnipotent heavy duty trucks used in all terrains, from the Siberian taigas to the deserts of North Africa and the unforgiving mountain roads of South American Andes.
Built Tough to Agricultural Standrads and designed to survive
The Russian same approach to Military Equipment
Recently, Russian engineers at Kurganmashzavod—Russia’s premier IFV manufacturer—who studied a captured Bradley released this report:
But wait until you see the real piece de resistance on the Bradley which clinches this point later on in the article.
The fact is, Western weapons aren’t as good as the advertising. So to say that the crew “survived” despite the systems being continually picked off in a turkey shoot is not a great endorsement.
The RUSI report continues by stating that “The prerequisite condition for any offensive action is fires (artillery) dominance. This has been achieved through blinding the counterbattery capability of Russian guns and the availability of precise and long-range artillery systems. Ensuring the sustainability of this advantage by properly resourcing ammunition production and spares for a consolidated artillery park is critical.”
Why did 2 of the West’s most advanced artillery SPGs, the French Caesar and British AS-90 both just suffer catastrophic deaths in the past few days
Furthermore, Ukraine suffers from far greater barrel wear as they don’t have the luxury to swap barrels as Russia does, for obvious logistical reasons. That means their systems lose accuracy and range. The actual operative range of most of their remaining M777s is probably 15km give or take, as that’s the most you’ll get out of a worn barrel—and the M777 barrels are finicky to begin with.
Russia on the other hand provably swaps barrels on the front all the time, as numerous videos attest:
Agricultural beats Wetern Computeriesed – Speak to Landrover Defender Owners
WSJ – Is Land Rover’s New Defender SUV More Trouble Than It’s Worth?
With overlanding power and a three-foot wading depth, the handsome Defender can conquer the Andes. But the brand has well-documented reliability issues. Dan Neil on whether the benefits outweigh the risks
Don’t Buy: 2022 Land Rover Defender (and here’s why)
YOU NEED A SCAN TOOL
Modern vehicles bristle with electronics and diagnosis is impossible without one.
Back in the good ‘ol days of bush breakdowns you checked for liquids and ignition and you were set, but now it’s very, very different.
I can remember one morning, a few years back, in the Northern Simpson Desert, climbing to the top of Geosurveys Hill for the mandatory dawn shot over sand ridges that stretched to the horizon.
I looked back at our almost insignificant campsite and saw my then bush mount, a Land Rover Discovery 3, just catching the early sun’s rays and thought, ruefully:
“Boy, I hope you start.”
Back then, we were all adjusting to the presence of electronics in modern 4WDs, but the reality hadn’t yet sunk in: if a fault code or icon appeared that knobbled vehicle performance we had no way of diagnosing it correctly, or of repairing, or bypassing it.
As the years went by, we had more and more unfortunate experiences with electronic faults.
Another vivid memory is trying to control the downward plunge of an automatic-transmission Jeep Wrangler from the top of Mount Pinnibar to Tom Groggin in the High Country. We’d snagged an ABS wire on the rear axle and that threw up an expected ABS fault code. What we didn’t expect was a cancellation of low-range selection!
We reconnected the ABS wire, but low range still wasn’t available and, without low-range engine braking, that slippery slope was highly dangerous. We survived, with periodic cool-offs of the red-hot brakes, then canned the test and came home.
The logic that links vehicle electronic functions doesn’t correlate with what you’d expect: why would a lack of ABS also eliminate low-range, for example? If we’d had some means of accessing these electronics it’s possible we could have reset the ABS system and hopefully restored the needed gearing.
We wouldn’t undertake any remote-area trips in a modern 4WD without a scan tool. (Our trusty, 30-year-old 75 Series don’t need one!)
Anyone leading a convoy of current-model 4WDs in the scrub is nuts if they don’t have some means of diagnosing bypassing interfering, cross-linked electronic functions.
And believing the Russian general populace is up for endless wars is also stupid.
A lot of it going about lately.
Incredible testimony.
Roger
Sep 12, 2023 10:36 AM
Sort of unbelievable anyone seriously thinks any of this is seriously being considered by the Kremlin.
Their armed forces are demonstrably not up to it, to begin with.
Roger,
again I use the analogy of Russina Kamaz Trucks
It’s the KAMAZ, or Kamsky Avtomobilny Zavod, the Russian truck manufacturer which recorded sixteen wins at Dakar Rally between 1996 and 2019. KAMAZ made a debut at Dakar Rally in 1990.
Producing trucks since 1976
KAMAZ is a relatively young company founded in 1969, in Naberezhnye Chelny in the Russian republic of Tatarstan.
The first truck rolled out of the factory in 1976. Over the course of many years, KAMAZ has proven to be the maker of durable, almost omnipotent heavy duty trucks used in all terrains, from the Siberian taigas to the deserts of North Africa and the unforgiving mountain roads of South American Andes.
Built Tough to Agricultural Standrads and designed to survive
The Russian same approach to Military Equipment
Recently, Russian engineers at Kurganmashzavod—Russia’s premier IFV manufacturer—who studied a captured Bradley released this report:
But wait until you see the real piece de resistance on the Bradley which clinches this point later on in the article.
The fact is, Western weapons aren’t as good as the advertising. So to say that the crew “survived” despite the systems being continually picked off in a turkey shoot is not a great endorsement.
The RUSI report continues by stating that “The prerequisite condition for any offensive action is fires (artillery) dominance. This has been achieved through blinding the counterbattery capability of Russian guns and the availability of precise and long-range artillery systems. Ensuring the sustainability of this advantage by properly resourcing ammunition production and spares for a consolidated artillery park is critical.”
Why did 2 of the West’s most advanced artillery SPGs, the French Caesar and British AS-90 both just suffer catastrophic deaths in the past few days
Furthermore, Ukraine suffers from far greater barrel wear as they don’t have the luxury to swap barrels as Russia does, for obvious logistical reasons. That means their systems lose accuracy and range. The actual operative range of most of their remaining M777s is probably 15km give or take, as that’s the most you’ll get out of a worn barrel—and the M777 barrels are finicky to begin with.
Russia on the other hand provably swaps barrels on the front all the time, as numerous videos attest:
Agricultural beats Wetern Computeriesed – Speak to Landrover Defender Owners
WSJ – Is Land Rover’s New Defender SUV More Trouble Than It’s Worth?
With overlanding power and a three-foot wading depth, the handsome Defender can conquer the Andes. But the brand has well-documented reliability issues. Dan Neil on whether the benefits outweigh the risks
Don’t Buy: 2022 Land Rover Defender (and here’s why)
YOU NEED A SCAN TOOL
Modern vehicles bristle with electronics and diagnosis is impossible without one.
Back in the good ‘ol days of bush breakdowns you checked for liquids and ignition and you were set, but now it’s very, very different.
I can remember one morning, a few years back, in the Northern Simpson Desert, climbing to the top of Geosurveys Hill for the mandatory dawn shot over sand ridges that stretched to the horizon.
I looked back at our almost insignificant campsite and saw my then bush mount, a Land Rover Discovery 3, just catching the early sun’s rays and thought, ruefully:
“Boy, I hope you start.”
Back then, we were all adjusting to the presence of electronics in modern 4WDs, but the reality hadn’t yet sunk in: if a fault code or icon appeared that knobbled vehicle performance we had no way of diagnosing it correctly, or of repairing, or bypassing it.
As the years went by, we had more and more unfortunate experiences with electronic faults.
Another vivid memory is trying to control the downward plunge of an automatic-transmission Jeep Wrangler from the top of Mount Pinnibar to Tom Groggin in the High Country. We’d snagged an ABS wire on the rear axle and that threw up an expected ABS fault code. What we didn’t expect was a cancellation of low-range selection!
We reconnected the ABS wire, but low range still wasn’t available and, without low-range engine braking, that slippery slope was highly dangerous. We survived, with periodic cool-offs of the red-hot brakes, then canned the test and came home.
The logic that links vehicle electronic functions doesn’t correlate with what you’d expect: why would a lack of ABS also eliminate low-range, for example? If we’d had some means of accessing these electronics it’s possible we could have reset the ABS system and hopefully restored the needed gearing.
We wouldn’t undertake any remote-area trips in a modern 4WD without a scan tool. (Our trusty, 30-year-old 75 Series don’t need one!)
Anyone leading a convoy of current-model 4WDs in the scrub is nuts if they don’t have some means of diagnosing bypassing interfering, cross-linked electronic functions.
I suspect if the MSM is reporting something bad going on in China it is far far worse in reality.
Taiwan envoy sees ‘alarming’ signs in China’s economic slowdown (11 Sep)
The Chinese government lies about absolutely everything. Exactly like the Left does here and in the US.
Just curious – why are people here so fascinated by the Ukraine/Russia war?
It has nothing to do with us, the information ‘sources’ are dodgy, yet we get pages and pages of people arguing about it, like the old Griks and Italians pointlessly arguing about politics and football outside coffee shops in Carlton in the 1970s.
Is it a form of therapy, or what?
You tripped a wire.
“The left”. Lol. Anyone who opposes corporate fascism and regulated theft is “left”. You are so dim, you are sounding like mOron.
Because restricted supply of land has nothing whatsoever to do with property prices and the COL, rents , loan/mortgage costs , property rates, infrastructure- you fkg lard head. Get a refund on your Fin Minor, you’re hopeless. You are here as a mouthpiece for the likes of Joyce and his corp parasitic fascist thieving mates. The very same fascist grubs who assit with implementing ruinous ESG and green policies, took our money and supported state and Fed Govts thugs imprisoning us for 2 years while intimidating the population into the vaccines in their workplaces. You shill here daily for this bucket of executive effluent.
This is you showing your true colours. You should piss off to the Upper East Side with your cronies and not return. One less corporate shill is always welcome.
I see it, dover. All good.
Dover, you’re obviously referring to this from Peter Hartcher.
It’s actually quite good as analysis and Hartcher, in the SMH’s new animal farm, is able to write it because some animals are more equal than others.
As an elder, Hartcher has been at Fairfax/Nine for decades and knows the parents of the shopfloor hotheads now running the joint, who dare not change a word of his copy.
I find it interesting.
Johanna one heuristic to consider is that what is in the research literature can take a generation to filter down to the clinical community. There is wisdom in that filtering because it takes very long time to establish new concepts on a firm footing. In relation to this topic I had the advantage of long been interested in neuroimmunology. At the turn of the century though, the concept of brain being “immune privileged” very much held sway. You’re right, virtually no-one believes that now.
The problem for psychiatry is both cultural and conceptual. Psychiatry is peculiarly uncreative in its theoretical and clinical development. I don’t understand that. What I do understand is that because our understanding of the brain-behavior nexus is so parlous psychiatry is very much peering into the darkness.
Last night I received a few emails from an old friend who is a counsellor. He stated how often he is surprised to find that his patients sometimes tell him how even an off hand remark by him has enormously helped them. One example he gave was of a suicidal individual. For reasons unknown to him he invoked Berne’s Transactional Analysis idea and it radically transformed the patient’s disposition. There is an example of a clinician mystified why he dredged up a decades old conceptual system and even more mysteriously why it had such a profoundly beneficial effect on his patient.
Syllogistic Fallacy
Apple exploits, and Apple is a firm, therefore all firms exploit?
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Sep 12, 2023 9:38 AM
I remember when the shortened word “tranny” meant a Transistor Radio.
Ahhhhhh – Those Good Old Days…………………………..
Stop torturing language. At best, Mao suits are a product, not a brand.
It’s not modest to describe one of the greatest brands the world has known an exploitive. One of the brands which people buy and show through surveys they’re very satisfied with their purchase.
To offer some leeway to your assertion satisfied people can be paying a little over the vig. 🙂
johanna
Sep 12, 2023 11:03 AM
Just curious – why are people here so fascinated by the Ukraine/Russia war?
johanna,
The Nuland/Kagan/Biden – Burisma creation of the Ukaine/Russia War ultimately has the potential to escalate to Nuclear War & that concerns me.
The Russian general populace has historically demonstrated a remarkable tolerance for appalling leadership, subjugation, and military ambition. There are people in the Kremlin who think they will continue to be so tolerant.
As long as she doesn’t try being anything her in NSW – our roads, hospitals, and police are for NSW people.
Dammit!
Hmmm … how did that work out for The Great Man?
Yes,in all it’s ugliness.
To The Last Ukrainian
GWGB.
‘We’re Bankrupt’: Leaked Meeting Reveals Project Veritas On Verge of Collapse (11 Sep)
Purest triple-distilled schadenfreude.
JC would need a UTI, sepsis, and a brain tumour before he will criticize corporate greed and malfeasance.
Gurner says unemployment needs to rise by 50pc
The current unemployment rate needs to rise by another 40 per cent to 50 per cent to boost the Australian economy’s productivity, Tim Gurner has said.
Gurner told the Summit that the cultural shift towards a more pro-employee climate had led to tradies pulling back on productivity.
“In my view, we need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around,” he said.
“When there’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them as opposed to the other way around it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude.”
He said the growing rate of unemployment was promising as layoffs has started to translate to “less arrogance in the employment market”. He believed, however, that more layoffs were required for it to “cascade across the cost balance”.
Indolent:
The Democrats have just painted themselves into a corner – something the saner/cunning voices in the Party were warning them about.
Impeachment and cheating at the polls is a two way street and when they win an election by using these weapons, they expose themselves to retaliation by their enemies using the very same weapons.
Too late for regrets by the Left. They dug themselves into this mess and the cave in will bury them and all their works.
The term for Russian equipment is ” Ivanproof”.
Can it be operated by a poorly motivated conscript?
Does it contain anything easily removable they can be traded for alcohol?
If Ivan tries to break it to get out of work will that be more trouble than its worth?
It’s lucky they were nobbled by poor maintenance & logistics right from the start, as well as apparently a massive underestimation of troop carried AA and AT missiles
The Australian equivalent is “Soldier-proof.”
Vive la revolucion, Humphrey.
For an old revolutionary like Uncle Luigi, the warm inner glow of doctrinal purity is everything, even as the flames of Hell consume you.
As the caucus’s second choice after Bill Shorten flamed out in 2019, Elbow obviously wants it all to end in a Whitlam-esque swan dive into Hades a la Julia Gillard.
What does your tattoo say?
Two minutes on, I doubt transitioning will fix any of her problems.
Another reason I’m suspicious of China commentary in the West. It seems entirely curated.
I’ve found that apart from speaking with people with family back in China there are two key sources to see what “the message” is from China.
First is the Global Times which China uses to telegraph its message to the rest of the world.
The other is the Peoples Daily Chinese edition (which is different to what you access from outside China) which is what China telegraphs its message to the Chinese people.
Bill Bishop has weekly & monthly summaries of the Peoples Daily and now more providers are doing the same.
When it comes to anything on the economics front, the guys at UBS seem to have the best read.
Zoltan from Credit Suisse used to be great too but he’s now on gardening leave.
Johanna & Dot:
We’re not allowing this to happen – it’s being imposed on us by the scam artists who are laughing at us as they plunder the treasury.
And they’ll keep doing it until we discourage this behaviour.
“I think I hear the sounds of the tumbrils wheels on the cobblestones.”
– attributed to a shortarse Frenchman once a upon a time.
No, I’m afraid we’re well passed that. When and if the Republicans do what Democrats have done, they will be arrested for it. This is no longer about hypocrisy or what goes around, comes around. This is about hierarchy.
Recognising different senses of a word is not torturing the language.
Put down your pom poms, JC. It’s embarrassing.
It can work CL, IF Trump’s GOP cleans out then takes full and deep control of the US thug institutions: CIA, FBI, IRS, Borders, Judiciary, Defence. He is the only candidate at present who could do it.
Heh, we should ask the IRA about that.
Weapons from ‘Ukrainian Frontline’ Reportedly Seized by Police from ‘New IRA’ Terrorists in Northern Ireland (10 Sep)
Lots of the good stuff from both sides is sprouting legs and wandering off. Should keep the usual suspects in weapons and ammo for the next couple decades. The Taliban have been selling off their windfall too.
Feelthebern:
Same here! Except I’ve never looked at beer prices.
Obviously if you are male and drink beer, you must be single. So who drew up the algorithm? A frustrated dyke looking for a sperm donor?
Because, as those of us who read history know….. ‘from little things, big things grow.. ‘ …. even a world away, the conflict is affecting our politics, and our prices… should it metastasise, this effect will grow…
flyingduk Avatar
flyingduk
Sep 12, 2023 11:47 AM
Just curious – why are people here so fascinated by the Ukraine/Russia war?
Because, as those of us who read history know….. ‘from little things, big things grow.. ‘ …. even a world away, the conflict is affecting our politics, and our prices… should it metastasise, this effect will grow…
The start of World War I, the so-called “Great War” of 1914 to 1918, was triggered when a teenage Serbian revolutionary shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie on their visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.
In Alice.
This bushfire 500km north is a bit more pissweak than I thought. It’s only three times the size of the ACT at present, although a wind change or two later today will stir it up a bit.
Psychiatry has a multitude of problems, not least that it is culturally based in western Europe.
In the post war period, we got a lot of Yugoslav migrants, and a disproprotionate number of them were involved in very violent crimes, including murder. A lot of them were diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic.
Much like the Muslims today, their cultural drivers were medicalised.
I have always wondered what modern psychiatrists (especially the Freudians) would make of India.
One of my favourite books (by Murray Lawrence) about India describes a man who spends his days rolling up and down a particular street. When asked, the locals say ‘yes, he is the rolling upwards and downwards man’ with no further comment.
The book is replete with similar examples.
I don’t think that psychiatry is a dead end, but they really need to lift their game. Freudians and even Jungians pandering to rich people in New York is hardly advancing science.
Shanksville, U.S.A.
The two decades since the 9/11 attacks have revealed that the American spirit is not completely gone in the heartland.
Instead of attending the commemorative observances at any of the three sites where the 9/11 terror attacks took place, President Joe Biden will be in Alaska on September 11 this year. It is the first time an American president will not appear at the locations of the largest terrorist assault in American history.
All the American Shanksvilles
Shanksville represents the American heartland, the common people of this country. It speaks to their common values; the unapologetic way they evince a love of the traditions of their families, their regions, and their country; and their disinterest in the jet-setting, cosmopolitan life embraced in the places of political and cultural power and preference for the simple mores and beliefs that have been in place since our country’s beginning (and even earlier).
Above all, the people in Shanksville, and those in myriad other places, do not apologize for believing that this material life is not the only, or even the most important, one and that the traditional moral codes handed down for generations are the means to attain that more important spiritual life, their very lifeblood. Those people desire nothing more than to protect and propagate that faith, which is disdained and often outright despised in the cities.
Dot:
Now look at that graph over the employment span of someone who has just retired:
https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/money-supply-m0
We haven’t even begun to be fleeced.
Obviously the government hasn’t worked out that a sheep only gets shorn once a year, not each week.
Shocking/Not Shocking?
Try horrific. We haven’t even started to get used to this.
ABC Q+A host Patricia Karvelas shocked by MPs’ Qantas admission
Q+A host Patricia Karvelas was shocked by a Qantas admission from Aussie MPs on the panel and stepped in when one tried to brush it off.
Moments after laying into Qantas, a panel of Australian MPs have had to raise their hands confessing they are members of the invite-only Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.
Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, Nationals MP Kevin Hogan and Independent MP Kylea Tink appeared on ABC’s Q+A program on Monday, alongside former NSW premier and high commissioner to India Barry O’Farrell and writer and youth advocate Yasmin Poole.
Q+A host Patricia Karvelas gasped as four out of five revealed their memberships to the exclusive lounge when asked.
Ms Poole, who said she paid $4000 for a return ticket from the UK to Australia, was the only panellist who didn’t raise their hand.
Defending her membership, Ms Tink quickly said: “But I’ve got to say, a free drink and some stale peanuts is not going to stop me from calling them out when the behaviour is wrong.”
Ms Karvelas replied: “Oh Kylea, there’s good stuff there. It’s better than stale peanuts.”
My father voted for Labor led by Whitlam in 1972. “Biggest mistake of my life” he has since lamented. His one and only time voting for Labor.
I thought the Voice would get 40% yes in Qld some weeks ago. I am now revising my prediction down to 35% yes.
Lay on your back and become one with the pineapple.
Feelthebern:
What the Hell did he expect with the homosexual lifestyle?
When you spend a – short – lifetime indulging in all sorts of weird sexual practises, it takes its toll.
And they can’t say they weren’t warned.
No bloody sympathy from me.
Dot
Sep 12, 2023 12:06 PM
We haven’t even started to get used to this.
Lay on your back and become one with the pineapple.
Dot,
I thought it was “Sit on a Pineapple”
Warning Bit Crude
Shoot me if I ever sound like you. At least Fatboy knows full well he’s a leftwing troll, whereas you’re bumbling around in a daze, not realizing you share the same podium.
Of course it does. It’s how you’re associating what’s happened with “the little queer” (as you referred to him) that’s laughable. That’s what left-wing trolls do. They associate matters or events that have no identifiable similarities and pretend they’re smart because they’ve found two pieces of a puzzle that don’t really fit together. That’s exactly what you’re, you cretin.
That’s interesting because a few years ago, you were boasting to us how your kid was accepted into a high-end university and demonstrated how proud you were. Do you denigrate her degree too, or are you just selective in your acts of denigration?
Every single large firm—BHP, Rio, Coles, or business owner, large or small—would love for the government or state to create a monopoly environment for them. Some even canvass for that, such as corn and sugar farmers in the US. Every single event that reduces competition is a decision made by the state. So blame the state, not commerce, as everyone would want to increase their profit margins however they can.
But forgive me for pointing this out. You’re a protectionist, having said many times that you favor tariffs and subsidies. That’s corporate fascism, you dodo brain! What you’ve advocated in the past is exactly what you’re now critical of. At some stage, you really need to get a good look at yourself in the mirror.
I hope I’m showing my true colors, and yes, we’re heading back “to the Upper Eastside in November for Thanksgiving on Qantas.
My argument yesterday began with Old China and then several Jumping Marys who ran with the unjustified accusation that Joyce (you know, the “little queer”) and Q had committed fraud. My point was that we can’t know this by simply looking at one-sided arguments, especially by relying on that deplorable organization (ACCC). Peter Gr. subsequently put up an article by Terry McCrann, which showed the entire amount of money left un-refunded was a huge $10 million, and as McCrann says, even that is in dispute.
One more thing: as a protectionist imbecile, you haven’t even made the case against Qatar Airways, which even to a free trader like me has me pondering. Middle East airlines such as Qatar and Etihad Airways are heavily fuel-subsidized by the states where they’re domiciled. I would have thought to a hyper-protectionist hi-hi wage goon like yourself that would be problematic. I see it’s not. Now bugger off and stop wasting everyone’s time with emotive, incoherent swill.
As well as massive fuel subsidies are able to ride off the state’s back in terms of favorable credit terms.
Emirates & Qatar are both effectively state owned – Emirates are owned by a state investment fund and Qatar are officially state owned
To that extent they will receive state subsidies to a degree whether in the form of direct payments or being able to benefit from lines of credit, purchasing terms etc that are accessible on the back of having a close link to the state….
Fossil fuel subsidies in Middle East nearly doubled since 2020, says IMF
The fund said that fossil fuel companies globally benefited from $13 million in subsidies per minute last year.
Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/08/fossil-fuel-subsidies-middle-east-nearly-doubled-2020-says-imf#ixzz8D3iS1unx
Daily Mail.
Fight, you bastards, fight! I hate peace!
calli
I understood that men had lesser chances of UTI’s due to the comparative length of their urethras. However if a bloke keeps ramming his dick into a plug of shit, some will be forced into his urethra and hence his bladder.
(Apologies for the graphics, but it’s about time we detailed the truths about the homosexual lifestyle. It has risks – major ones.)
You make a very good point regarding the cultural bias of psychiatry. The same problem exists in psychology. Just yesterday I finished reading a book about the development of anthropology by Boaz and his ilk. Their emphasis was about highlighting how different cultures produce different behaviors that psychiatry would regard as pathological.
Freud and Jung were just convincing story tellers. I still haven’t fully grasped the epistemic challenge of psychology but my impression is that so much research into human behavior is at the wrong level of analysis. Another issue for me is that I believe most people completely misunderstood what Skinner was on about. He didn’t think behavior can be reduced to stimulus-response models, he didn’t think we are blank states. What he was trying to do was not create a model of behavior but a philosophy of psychology from which a model of behavior will eventually emerge. Many disagree with me. I’m too far away from it all now to debate the issue.
Words fail me, they honestly fvcking do!
Aaron Rodgers suffers an ankle injury and is carted off in the first quarter of his two year $US75mill guaranteed deal.
Oh boy.
Africans apparently invented shoes 150,000 years ago.
Ancient shoes: Tracks on a South African beach offer oldest evidence yet of human footwear (Phys.org)
Boots are made for walking, and humans certainly got their walking boots on around about that time. And conquered the world.
Cultural elites offer discounts to woo First Nations crowds
Great marketing/free advertising ploy .. offering discounts to folk you know won’t be taking them up ………!
but it’s about time we detailed the truths about the homosexual lifestyle. It has risks – major ones.)
Exactly what Latham did. Which upset the petal poof in NSW
development of anthropology by Boaz
John H, what’s the name of the book.
My kindle awaits.
Why American AirPower is the key to saving Taiwan
This in part addresses the simulations I mentioned. He makes an interesting comment: it will be a victory that doesn’t feel like a victory. The USA will win but both the USA and China will experience huge losses.
Thanks for the info re UTIs and blokes Duk and Bob. 😀
I was probably confusing the issue with enlarged prostate.
The Reinvention of Humanity, Charles King. 2019
Too rambling for my liking, too much about the personal lives.
Pet hate. There is no other kind of period.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
People vote in Socialists who only ever produce mounds of skulls, and they are surprised at… mounds of skulls?
The fact they are only little piles at the moment is no guarantee they won’t get bigger.
Another child being born at the same time is somehow inferior and not worthy?
It really is time to stomp, hard, on this racist nonsense.
Victoria ranked worst state to be a property investor as one in four Melbourne landlords sell home in past year
A quarter of Melbourne property investors sold at least one rental home in the past year as the city plunged from the nation’s second most popular state capital for landlords to second last.
The stats were revealed in the annual Property Investment Professionals of Australia survey, released Tuesday, which also estimated 217,000 investment homes have been sold off nationwide across the past year in a blow to Australian tenants.
The organisation now believes up to 38 per cent of investors are planning to sell a home in the next 12 months — double the figure predicted in 2022.
PIPA chair Nicola McDougall said with investors hit hard by interest rate hikes the number considering selling in the next year was at “scary” levels.
“A lot of investors have been selling … and it would be lovely to see more of them back into the market,” Ms McDougall said.
“But I’m not expecting that in the current regimens in the country. Investors have been selling in great numbers because they feel they have lost control of their asset, and at the moment we are not seeing that they will come back to the market in the numbers that they should.”
Nationwide, only 55 per cent of investors are considering buying in the next year, down from 62 per cent in 2021.
The survey of 1724 investors nationwide, including 538 in Victoria, found increased property taxes were the biggest motivation to sell for investors and had been a factor in 47 per cent of the sales nationwide.
This was followed by changes to tenancy legislation, 43 per cent, and rising loan repayment costs, 40.1 per cent.
In 2017 almost a third of investors felt Melbourne was the nation’s second best place to buy, behind only Brisbane. It has now declined to just 4 per cent, with only Hobart ranked lower as a state capital.
Property Investors Council of Australia director Ben Kingsley said the Victorian government should be “very worried” investors now feel the “juice isn’t worth the squeeze”.
“It’s very clear investors are ranking Victoria as the worst place to invest currently,” Mr Kingsley said.
“It will send investors to other states or to avoid property as an asset. And that’s very concerning for future rental supply.”
20 or the 25 pack? 20 is okay but 25 is far, far too many. -:) That’s really impressive. Where as I’m a puny 3 or 4 day person.
Real time energy dashboard
You’re seeing in real time the dashboard for our King Island renewable energy solution. It is based on contributions from wind and solar and the enabling technologies that improve system security and reliability, such as battery, dynamic resister, flywheel and demand side management.
Great work by Gray zone.
“Cacio e Pepe is actually just Parmesan or Pecorino tossed through the drained pasta with a splash of good olive oil, then grinding on as much Black Pepper as you enjoy. No sauce.”
A simple, quick and tasty pasta sauce can be made by lightly frying (more “heating” than “frying”) anchovies in olive oil until they “melt” or dissolve, then add thinly sliced garlic, whole olives (pitted or not as you prefer), capers and chopped chilies (if you don’t mind them) . Cook for 30 seconds or so, then add the pasta and cook for another 30 seconds while stirring to coat all the pasta and allow it to “soak up” the now flavoured oil.
Very strong flavours, but really, really good and really quick – If you use fresh or pre-cooked pasta, this can be ready in under 10 minutes.
Every September 11, someone in the NY comedy scene recounts the Louis J Gomez story.
After the second plane hit, he took the view that it was all over & he wanted off the island.
He didn’t trust driving or training out of Manhattan so he got in his roller blading gear which was fluro yellow & started roller blading to Jersey.
He remembers blading across the George Washington bridge & seeing all the the fire engines driving the other way.
He’s probably embellishing the story but he reckons he saw guys in the trucks saying WTF as they saw him roller blading by.
“Punchline” one (as he tells it) is that seeing him was one of the last things some of those guys saw before they died.
Punchline two is if you see a Puerto Rican roller blading in the opposite direction you are going, do a 180 & follow them out of there.
And yes, I tell that story every September 11.
The Intrepid Tours group filling our restaurant the other night. Whiny, entitled and demanding boomers. Not at all intrepid. Some people should stay home.
Never have taken a “group tour” and not sure they’re a good idea.
Mrs TE did Top Deck in several decades back and tells the story of selling two pairs of jeans in the USSR for a good profit.
Never have taken a “group tour” and not sure they’re a good idea.
Swingers, no doubt.
Thank John H.
I’ll read a couple of reviews to see if I want to download.
How can people have enough time to smoke a pack a day?
Nicotine & Coffee in the morning? Dude, you’re not living. You have to live!
Top Ender
Sep 12, 2023 12:40 PM
The Intrepid Tours group filling our restaurant the other night. Whiny, entitled and demanding boomers. Not at all intrepid. Some people should stay home.
Never have taken a “group tour” and not sure they’re a good idea.
Top Ender,
Wife does not like my driving, especially in Europe, so since 2012 have taken Bus Tours in Europe and all have been excellent
Trip a Deal since 2018 have been amazing value
16 Days May-June this year Milan, Venice, Switzerland Germany, Milan, Piedmont Turin – all chauffered by Son
Wife & SIL completed Trip a Deal to Japan in August – 34 Red Bus & 36 Bule Bus – all Aussies and great company according to both – Modern Hotels has seen more of Japan than my 50 trips there
JC
Sep 12, 2023 12:49 PM
How can people have enough time to smoke a pack a day?
Nicotine & Coffee in the morning? Dude, you’re not living. You have to live!
JC,
you are obviously aiming to emulate Churchill dead at 90
The Good Life
Smoking And Drinking Like Churchill – Winston Churchill had a legendary love of cigars and drinks.
I know a couple who did a Captains Choice tour in Africa a million years ago.
I can’t remember the country but one night they were woken in the middle of the night & told they were leaving in an hour.
Storm in a tea cup but there were riots & the tour operators got them to their chartered plane & out of there quick smart.
Dover.
I have a response to the Macaroni in moderation?
At your peak JC, how many cigarillos were you a day?
Ozzie, cigar smokers aren’t real smokers – just pretend. You can’t inhale cigar smoke into your lungs unless you want to feel really sick. No respect for cigar smokers who are just mouth smokers 🙂
Langton brands no voters as racist and stupid
Joe Kelly
Prominent Indigenous campaigner for the voice to parliament Professor Marcia Langton, has accused no voters of opposing the referendum because of “base racism” or “sheer stupidity” at a forum in Bunbury in South West WA.
The comments were splashed on the front page of the Bunbury Herald on Tuesday, with Professor Langton reported as telling the forum – hosted by Edith Cowan University on Sunday – that Australians needed to apply greater scrutiny to claims made by the no campaign.
“Every time the no cases raise their arguments, if you start pulling it apart you get down to base racism – I’m sorry to say that’s where it lands – or sheer stupidity,” Professor Langton said.
“If you look at any reputable fact-checker, every one of them says the no case is substantially false. They are lying to you.”
“I’ve asked the no voters, what would you propose is a better option? What are we to do? Go on as we are with no change. I’ve not heard any of them come up with a solution that would work themselves.”
The Bunbury Herald reported that the forum was attended by a crowd of about 100 people at the ECU South West campus and that Professor Langton was joined by Labor state MP and Regional Development Minister Don Punch.
Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Price – a leading campaigner for the no case – said the comments provided an “insight into the mindset and agenda of the Aboriginal activists pushing the divisive voice.”
She warned the remarks from Professor Langton would be highly offensive to about half the nation.
“Whichever way the referendum goes, the result looks like it will be extremely close and any suggestion no voters who are unpersuaded by their proposed voice are siding with racism or stupidity is highly offensive to at least half the country.”
Oz
JC
Sep 12, 2023 1:00 PM
JC,
you are obviously aiming to emulate Churchill dead at 90
Ozzie, cigar smokers aren’t real smokers – just pretend. You can’t inhale cigar smoke into your lungs unless you want to feel really sick. No respect for cigar smokers who are just mouth smokers ?
JC,
as a non-smoker I did not know that – from Cat Blog, you live & learn everyday – expands one’s horizons
Correct, JC.
Meanwhile back in real smokerland, 20 a day is your basic habit and you looked a little weirdly at people who smoked only 10 — like there must be something wrong with them.
God, I still miss it — just not the coughing.
Dude, I got to chain smoking, which was about a pack and 1/2 when I hit 30 and then I said, no this is too much of a good thing and dropped it down to about 20. Don’t forget that in those days you could smoke in the trading room. It was about when I turned 45 that I really dropped it to 5 a day.
In the 90s, they began to impose regs against smoking in NYC. Of course, they had to be the first, but I/we just continuing puffing away. Some arsehole notified city ordinance who came around and the firm was fined 10K. We then began to puff in the stairwell.
I have a lot of respect for the kickers in the NFL.
Short run up.
Monsters trying to break you in half.
Yet they still kick goals.
Smoking aint for me.
The odd cigar every blue moon.
Cigarettes if I’m on a bender, which is very rare these days.
It’s just too inconvenient.
Snouts in!
The High Court has revealed every current judge is a member of Qantas’ secretive Chairman’s Lounge, an invitation-only club that offers its members free champagne, steak dinners and cocktails on demand.
As the High Court prepares to hand down its judgment in a landmark case regarding the long-running battle between Qantas and the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) over the sacking of 1,700 ground staff at the height of the pandemic, a spokesman has confirmed the issue was raised and cleared with the parties involved.
Described as “the most exclusive club in the country” the invitation only airport club is famed as part of Qantas’ “soft power” diplomacy with political leaders, judges, current and former prime ministers and senior public servants invited to enter the door discretely marked “private” at the Qantas lounge.
It is believed some federal court judges are also members.
The Federal Court is set to separately consider the ACCC’s claim that Qantas continued selling tickets to 8,000 “ghost flights” even after they had been cancelled.
A spokesperson for the High Court said the parties involved in the current matter were all aware of the Chairman’s club membership and “no objection was raised”.
“Each of the Justices is a member of the Chairman’s Lounge,’’ the spokesperson said.
“The parties to the Qantas matter presently before the Court (and in which judgment is being delivered to tomorrow) were informed of this fact prior to the hearing and no objection was raised.
“Membership is declared on the Justices’ register of gifts (they are required to declare gifts over $200).”
Separate to the High Court controversy, one legal source described the membership of the Qantas Club by multiple members of the judiciary as “a ticking time bomb” that should be publicly declared.
Another senior lawyer speculated that it had not been raised as an issue because membership of the exclusive club by judges was “considered natural like oxygen”.
Speaking generally about the issue, former Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy KC said judges should always declare such membership and can’t just “shove it under the carpet”.
“I personally think it should be declared if you’re in a case involving Qantas and you’re the recipient of benefits such as other exclusive membership offered by Qantas,’’ he told news.com.au.
“I would think that as a matter of propriety, a judge should declare that membership and have it out in the open. I can’t imagine that the people in the litigation would ask the judges to disqualify themselves, but I think it should be out in the open.”
“If you own shares in the company it’s the same sort of thing although shares are a more substantial financial involvement. You can’t just shove it under the carpet.
“I don’t imagine a litigant would actually take that point, unless they were insane. I think practically it’s not going to make a difference. But in theory, it’s the same problem as owning shares in a company that’s before you as a litigant.”
Geoffrey Watson SC, a former counsel assisting ICAC and the Police Integrity Commission and a Lecturer in Ethics, Law and Justice at the University of Technology Sydney, said it should be declared as the High Court justices have declared it.
“It would be better if a judge who received any kind of gift from an outside source declared that so that it was transparent,’’ he said.
“If it was the case that the giver was a litigant or potential litigant, then of course it should be declared. The gift in this instance is from a known repeated litigant in the federal court system. So, of course, it should be declared.”
The food on offer in the Chairman’s Lounge for free for judges and politicians and invited CEOs include a free steak dinner and a gin and tonic and salt and pepper squid.
“Part of the wankiness, as well as the secret doors, is the fact you could ask for absolutely anything, even if it’s not on the menu, and it will be cooked pretty quickly, just for you,” one regular visitor told the Australian Financial Review.
Former Qantas Group chief executive Alan Joyce has described the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge as “probably the most exclusive club in the country”, Membership is “strictly confidential.”
Membership can sometimes confer on travellers flight upgrades, including being upgraded to business class without having to pay for frequent flyer points.
News.com.au is not aware whether or not any judges have been offered free flight upgrades or not and does not suggest they were, only that Chairman’s Club members have been offered upgrades in the past.
Membership of the Chairman’s Lounge is for a period of two years, renewed entirely at Qantas’ discretion. No fees are charged and your partner, or another guest, is allowed in with you and no correspondence will be entered into over disputes.
The Federal Court’s gifts and benefits register for public servants also lists Qantas Chairman’s Lounge membership of several public servants including CEO and Principal Registrar David Pringle.
It also declares Chairman’s Club membership for the President of the National Native Title Tribunal.
This register is published in accordance with the Australian Public Service Commission’s Guidance for Agency Heads – Gifts and Benefits.
More at the Daily Tele
You can’t smoke immediately outside of an office building now in NY. There’s also a law that you can’t smoke in Central Park with a threat of a large fine. This shit is inhuman.
Our building has a reg that apartment owners will be fined US$500 bucks if you’re caught smoking outside, but around the building perimeter. They impose the fine on the monthly maintenance and will leave it there gathering interest if you don’t cough up until you do. (No pun)
Don’t mind me. I’ve got this bad habit of hitting enter (or shift) and post the comment before I’ve made it… and on second thoughts it looks better as a no comment.
I was at Bondi last summer at dawn one day & some moron was walking along smoking.
What kind of chump goes to the beach at dawn just to have a dart.
Me! Sounds like heaven.
Black Ball:
If it were to be reworded as:
Then it would be true. If a culture is unable to advance for 40k years – even when it is exposed to another culture that offers advancement, then it is failing its people and needs to be junked so that they are not forced to abandon babies and the elderly when times get tough.
My new favourite smoking story is that of Tim Blair, who now lives in the Victorian bush even though he’s still the No.1 columnist at the Sydney Daily Telegraph (he doesn’t need to visit the office; he just needs a good internet connection).
Like many journos his age (50s), Blair was a pack-a-day man and thought he needed the nicotine to think clearly and write well.
A few months ago, he had a heart attack and had to give up the gaspers if he wanted to stay on this earth.
Thing is that giving up the smokes has made no difference to the quality of his work: he still thinks acutely and is able to turn that into high-quality writing — it’s just no longer fuelled by his nicotine addiction.
I’m grateful to the Cats who continue to liberate his writing from the News Corp paywall.
Prominent Indigenous campaigner for the voice to parliament Professor Marcia Langton, has accused no voters of opposing the referendum because of “base racism” or “sheer stupidity” at a forum in Bunbury in South West WA.
Whilst it is a bit facile to judge a person on their appearance, Langton’s perpetually sour face suggests a lot about her. Bad life experiences don’t have to disfigure your facial expressions & there are nearly always relationships that transform your life and the manner you relate to others. This woman commands a significant salary well beyond anything that could be imagined by the miserable inhabitants of many of the dysfunctional communities. She has no bl–dy right to convey some sort of blighted existence.
Also Bern, you don’t know the dude’s home circumstances. He could be smoking there so his wife doesn’t see him sucking on a fag. Two plus years now and wifey has no idea. She threatened divorce if I ever smoked again after my little surgical mishap. She wouldn’t of course, but I couldn’t imagine living with the nagging, so I smoke when I’m out and she’s not around.
Never have taken a “group tour” and not sure they’re a good idea.
Youngest daughter did Europe with “Top Deck” back in 2017, 23 dayz, 12 countries ..
she luvved it ……….!
Tom
Just recalling, didn’t Tim B have a significant bowel cancer issue about 15 odd years ago? I remember him writing about it and was stage 4. He’s a real survivor.
Watched my grandad slowly die from emphysema.
Cured for life.
Yep.
duncanm
Sep 12, 2023 9:17 AM
Don’t be bashful, Duncan. It’s Fascism – pure and simple.
Just another form of Communism – with Australian characteristics.
Nat “King” Cole smoked 3+ packs of Kool a day.
lotocoti
Sep 12, 2023 9:20 AM
Don’t you mean:
For shame.
Denying they sprung, fully formed, from the bowels of the Rainbow Serpent
is the epitome of racist, white, so-called science
Group tours,couple of our kids went on a cheap safari tour. Guards without guns,lions wandering around camp-site at night outside their tents.
Character building.
Wife does not like my driving, especially in Europe, so since 2012 have taken Bus Tours in Europe and all have been excellent
I have to admit that, although my husband has driven our rental cars all over Europe, Pacific Island countries, the UK, the USA & a good part of the Middle East for all our adult life, I am now “over” self drive holidays. The traffic in big cities is abominable & the parking is almost non existent. Even small towns in some countries are metered.
However, although I have enjoyed the few group OS tours I have taken on my own, a recent group trip by the both of us to China was a nightmare. It consisted almost entirely of Canberra public servants “with attitude”. I will concede it was cheap – & that was why we chose it – too good to pass up, although we had been to China twice before. On the other hand, a group tour along the canals from Shanghai to Huangzhou which I took some years ago consisted a very companionable fellow travellers. But then it was a lot more expensive and through an upmarket travel agent. Maybe that is the secret.
Another senior lawyer speculated that it had not been raised as an issue because membership of the exclusive club by judges was “considered natural like oxygen”.
No one, regardless of position, who is employed and paid by the taxpayer should be entitled to any sort of “freebie” .. whether it be Chairmans Lounge, frequent flyer points or even a coffee at Maccas ..!
If you crave “freebies” then work for a private entity, who can give you whatever they feel like out of their profits …..!
FMD.
Did you read about the uprising in the black community recently… this or last year. The smoke Nazis wanted to ban menthol cigs because they’re supposed to be much worse for you. Blacks called out a wacism and that was the end of that. Apparently they’re huge into the menthol.
JC
Sep 12, 2023 1:16 PM
It’s just too inconvenient.
You can’t smoke immediately outside of an office building now in NY. There’s also a law that you can’t smoke in Central Park with a threat of a large fine. This shit is inhuman
JC,
I assume by your comments you are in NYC at the Moment
What was the Problem Thursday Night at Newark Airport that they banned flights leaving their destination?
Youngsters with 3 kids on my FF Points trip once in a lifetime to America via AA to LAX – CLT – NYC (FF cheap way), sat on Ground at Charlotte from 8pm Thurs till 1230AM Friday, when I assume the Pilots ran out of time – changed CLT-PHL using AA App, as 200 people beseiging AA desk, later that day but bags went to Newark – had to book own Hotel Charlotte and own transport to Hotel & back to airport
Staying with friends in Princeton Junction and went up to NYC for Yankees game but Hail/Thunder & Lightning meant soaked to the bone and had to leave before 7 Innings entertainment – travelling back in Uber Youngest Daughter froze – kids able to borrow fresh clothes from the friends they were staying with
Good new is caught train to Manhattan & bags met them in Hotel so did not have to traispe them onto train & through streets
12th head back to LAX – Disneyland – have rented RV then RAV4 and camping Yosemite – LAs Vegas, Grand Canyon, West Coast – Home via QF 12
ozzie.. no we’re back here in Oz.
Yeah, JC – the black folk love Kool.
Strange cultural thing – possibly built on the brand name originally.
The equivalent in Australia were Alpine – which were considered totally gay.
JC
Sep 12, 2023 1:45 PM
ozzie.. no we’re back here in Oz.
OK thanks JC,
I was wondering what the problem was at Newark, as I was following kids on flightradar24 & flightaware and could not see a weather problem – checked ventusky etc re weather
Group tours,couple of our kids went on a cheap safari tour. Guards without guns,lions wandering around camp-site at night outside their tents.
Character building.
Yep – Africa is the one place where we would not drive a rental, although I recall seeing some gung-ho Israelis self driving in Game parks.
Not that a driver is bomb-proof. Ours got our vehicle bogged in a Game Park in Shaba NP in Kenya at dusk. A root was wrapped onto our diff & there was no way we could dig it out. Had to be rescued by Kenyan army! And yes – we also had elephants wandering around camp at night. Husband got up for a pee & was amazed at how these huge animals could deftly step over tent ropes!
Do the words “Stick your referendum up your Khyber” mean a great deal?
Flying is a freaking mess everywhere. We had to wait 5 hours in Lisbon for a flight back to the US a few months ago. Airlines are chronically short of staff of every description. US airlines are paying up to $1 million salary for longer haul captains these days.
Ozzie, the COVID bullshit appears to have completely screwed up the world. So many things just don’t work anymore. You phone a call centre and the idiot on the other end is home with a kid screaming or dog barking in the background. Everything’s rooted. Incompetence rules, from the US president to the current Ausssie PM down.
The problem with Newark is Newark. 🙂
CL, the Kool brand was also available in Australia in the ’60s and ’70s alongside Alpine, which my late mum smoked — and I stole plenty of.
I’ve had a mixed bag with tour groups also. Best size – 10 to 12. Enough variety and you aren’t in each other’s pockets. Nice if you can get a mixed bag of Aussies, Americans and Canadians, usually jolly and generous, there for a good time.
Worst – another couple, chronic whingers, incapable of being pleased by anything. And tight as a fish’s fundament.
Oh please… ffs
https://www.watoday.com.au/politics/federal/complicit-in-this-lie-labor-demands-dutton-denounce-no-tactics-20230912-p5e3wc.html
Wonderland
500,000 more tradies needed to meet 1.2m housing target
Australia will need 500,000 new tradies over the next five years if it is to reach the federal government’s target of 1.2 million new homes over that period.
“We will need around 500,000 entrances into the industry for an industry that currently employs 1.3 million people,” Master Builders chief executive Denita Wawn told The Australian Financial Review Property Summit.
Those 500,000 tradies, if found, would offset the 250,000 to 300,000 tradies who are expected to exit the industry over the next five years and provide additional manpower to build at a faster rate.
“The number – that’s massive. So how are we going to deal with that? We need to actually minimise those exits and keep people in the industry,” Wawn said.
“We also need to focus on skilled migration as well and all of that being wrapped up in terms of training. We also need to maintain quality standards while we’re doing all of this. That’s not an easy fix. And that’s even before we start looking at policy statements that may or may not assist or hinder the industry.”</em
Going by the number of Tradies in our area on Knock Down Rebuilds and extensive extensions – Rots O’ Ruck Charlie
Phrasing.
Salem in the 1950s.
JC, I’m guessing the distance and trip time from Manhattan is roughly the same for JFK and Newark Liberty airports. Which do you prefer?
I was going to contribute praise for a tour group we went with – moderate level trekking with Peregrine Travel, but many years ago.
The best part was that we had great conversations with interesting people on the trips.
By contrast we had a car and driver for ourselves in southern India, mostly Kerala. Hardly spoke to anyone except each other in eight days.
JC Avatar
JC
Sep 12, 2023 1:54 PM
I was wondering what the problem was at Newark,
The problem with Newark is Newark. ?
I had heard that
Why Newark Is the Worst Major U.S. Airport – WSJ
Lysander, since the amazingly amazing details about the nefarious “No” campaigner are locked away behind the paywall, I will treat the story with the caution it deserves.
Clearly the publication puts $$$ before the public interest, and its own spruiking of the Voice.
For once I agree with Bolt…
Don’t call the mistake of calling the Voice’s failure Albo’s fault… this will just encourage them to try it again under a new (more erudite) leader.
Blame the reasons for its (current) failure on racism…. which it clearly is.
He could be smoking there so his wife doesn’t see him sucking on a fag.
Good point.
Smoking at the beach might be the only moment of peace the poor guy gets.
I retract my chump statement.
Tom
Newark is a hateful. It’s disgusting in every which way. It’s a slum airport and it makes you feel bad just walking through the shithole. I get angry just thinking about it. Distance wise it would be just a little longer than JFK I imagine, but you’d be really counting the yards.
Best of all travel was mixing up self-managed with a bunch of cycling friends. Some togetherness, some socialising.
LOL.
Calli, here is the disinformation piece:
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the No campaign’s fear tactics have been exposed by revelations that have triggered a call for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to condemn the campaign’s claims about reparations.
This masthead revealed on Tuesday that a top No campaigner had instructed volunteers to instil fear in voters’ minds, not to identify themselves upfront as No campaigners and to raise reports of financial compensation to Indigenous Australians if the Voice was set up.
Speaking to Labor colleagues on Tuesday, Albanese said the new information shone on a light on the true nature of the movement to defeat the referendum, which polls show is well ahead.
“The cynicism of the No campaign has been exposed in today’s papers,” Albanese said, according to a Labor source who provided details about the private briefing.
Albanese added the No campaign was focused on “promoting fear”, before attacking Dutton for walking out of the 2008 apology to the stolen generations.
Education Minister Jason Clare called the claim about compensation a “lie” and said it was “rubbish” to suggest the Voice would lead to compensation payments, something Albanese has previously ruled out.
“This is a sign of just how low the No campaign is willing to go,” Clare said at Parliament House on Tuesday.
“And I call on Peter Dutton today to condemn this. If he doesn’t, then he’s complicit in this lie.”
Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie said it was wrong to claim the No campaign was lying because the government could not be sure the Voice would not lead to reparation payments.
“I’m a firm believer in reconciliation and recognition. But I am also a very respectful No to changing our Constitution to enshrine a Voice,” she said.
“Minister Clare, standing up here today, claiming he knows what the Voice will and won’t call for, how the Voice will and won’t behave, and insert itself into our political system, is pretty rich.”
Clare said the main falsehood was the claim being spread by No campaigners that the Voice was about compensation, an assertion he compared to Dutton’s warning in 2008 that the parliament’s apology to the stolen generations would lead to compensation payments of up to $10 billion.
Dutton made the warning about the $10 billion cost in January 2008 and apologised in February 2023 for abstaining from the apology in parliament.
“The Voice is an advisory committee, the Voice is about listening, the Voice is about making sure we make better decisions and get better results,” Clare said.
“The same thing happened during the apology – remember when Kevin Rudd made the apology to the stolen generations, Peter Dutton said then that it would cost Australians $10 billion. That was BS and so is this.”
In 2020, leading Voice campaigner and unionist Thomas Mayo suggested a Voice could help to push for compensation for Indigenous people.
‘Nothing to fear’: The country that has had a Voice to parliament for 27 years
A spokesman for Fair Australia, the name of the No campaign run by a conservative political outfit Advance, rejected Clare’s claims and said there were many examples of supporters of the Voice arguing the advisory body was a “tool to demand taxpayer funded compensation, pay reparations for historical wrongs, to force Australians to ‘pay the rent’.”
“Is Mr Clare serious? Clearly he’s the one not telling the truth here,” the spokesman said.
The Yes campaign’s Roy Ah See, a Wiradjuri man, said the No campaign’s tactics represented “one of the most un-Australian acts in political history”.
“The No campaign has admitted to a strategy of lies, lies and more lies,” he said.
“The Australian people are being taken for mugs by the No campaign in a tactic that is distinctly un-Australian: they are telling their campaign workers to be dishonest to Aussies, stay anonymous and not identify themselves as belonging to the No campaign.”
The director of the failed 1999 republic campaign, barrister Greg Barns, said the details about No outfit Advance’s tactics were “sickening and fraudulent” and “exactly what happened in 1999 with the republic referendum”.
Here are three legitimate questions to ask Yes supporters;
-What is the Voice’s budget
-How will it report on what is spent (audit etc…)?
-What happens if it fails to meet its KPIs or, better, does?
Roger
Surely the girls must be getting sick of this bullshit too?
Thanks, Lysander.
Can’t use progressive tactics on progressives. It isn’t fair!
Were any of these Qantas chairman’s lounge judges involved in trials where a minor player had to go up against Qantas?
Lol Calli – they’re not even “progressive” tactics, unless by that we mean things like: Reporting the truth, showing historical videos of Langton, Mayo, Pearson calling people racists, white c-nts, seeking reparations, treaties and truth-telling…
Hardly, a disingenuous campaign by No.
One thing: I’ve always thought truth-telling would come before reparations as the “truth” would enable bigger payouts…. or is it just me?
I’m grateful to the Cats who continue to liberate his writing from the News Corp paywall.
Via Tim Blair comes this report on Jennifer Granholm.
I see Reflexo-Dumb, the downtick chump has awoken from its afternoon nap.
*waves*
Tours, that reminds me ..
Was at the old Tsujiki Fish Market in Tokyo recently, very touristy but that’s ok as there’s lots of interesting street food and everyone has a good time of it.
Coming down one of the streets, a conga line of people, with a person at the front with an Orange Flag and a person at the other end with an Orange Flag – the flag read:
Adventures by Disney
American tourists being escorted through the market, baseball hats and US cities and brands T-shirts.
A lot of people stopped to watch them, it was so out of place. Don’t know if they were from a Disney Cruise ship or the local DisneyLand/DisneySea site.
Lizzie:
If President Trump has any sense at all, he’ll pull all US forces and equipment out of Europe – including all the pre positioned equipment/fuel/ammo – the lot. And told the Europeans they were on their own.
What is the value of the standard Qantas club membership and shouldn’t it have been obligatory to disclose the chairman’s lounge membership? No doubt it would be more expensive than the common pleb membership in value.
Adding to the smoking thread, my smoking history, smoked from ages 17-37.
First year, mostly rollies as I was out bush and thought it was cool, haha.
Marlboros to Winfield. About 10-15 a day. By the time I hit my thirties I was gasping 40 a day. Double that if out partying and clubbing.
My body actually gave up on the smokes. I used to buy enough smokes to last me the week. Prices were rising by then and I hated buying from the servo or local shop. Bludgers knew better than to ask for one. You all the know the kind, never have smokes of their own, always saying they’ll pay you back.
At the end of the week, I noticed that I still had a pack left, and that often I wouldn’t finish a smoke. That, is the ultimate sacrilege! Always hated seeing idiots take a few drags, then stub out the smoke when there was more than half left.
So I bought myself some nicotine gum and haven’t smoked since. I have nothing against smokers. No one ever came home from smoking two packs and beat the shit out of the missus and the kids.
Perhaps we could cut costs by combining it with their ‘sex assignment’ as that now comes at birth?
They’d be out of breath from the start. 🙂
This morning I worked from home so that I could go to a private physio appointment. Walking along Oxford Street, I ran into a YES spruiker, an older, very white man. He asked if he could give me a YES pamphlet and I said NO. I then said “why would I vote to insert race into the constitution?” “It’s apartheid, pure and simple”. He stood there like a gormless moron, and I ended the exchange by saying….
“you’re gonna lose, bigtime”.
I then laughed at him and walked off.
I wasn’t rude, but I wasn’t nice either. He and his fellow travellers can EFF off.
In energy projects news:
Quite a few hydrogen capitals of the world apparently, right here in Australia.
All Australian Judges should Resign/Step Down from this!
High Court reveals every current judge is a member of Qantas’ ‘most exclusive club in Australia’
The High Court has exposed secret members of Qantas’ exclusive Chairman’s Lounge amid a landmark case over the sacking of 1700 workers.
Samantha Maiden
The High Court has revealed every current judge is a member of Qantas’ secretive Chairman’s Lounge, an invitation-only club that offers its members free champagne, steak dinners and cocktails on demand.
As the High Court prepares to hand down its judgment in a landmark case regarding the long-running battle between Qantas and the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) over the sacking of 1,700 ground staff at the height of the pandemic, a spokesman has confirmed the issue was raised and cleared with the parties involved.
Described as “the most exclusive club in the country” the invitation only airport club is famed as part of Qantas’ “soft power” diplomacy with political leaders, judges, current and former prime ministers and senior public servants invited to enter the door discretely marked “private” at the Qantas lounge.
It is believed some federal court judges are also members.
The Federal Court is set to separately consider the ACCC’s claim that Qantas continued selling tickets to 8,000 “ghost flights” even after they had been cancelled.
A spokesperson for the High Court said the parties involved in the current matter were all aware of the Chairman’s club membership and “no objection was raised”.
“Each of the Justices is a member of the Chairman’s Lounge,’’ the spokesperson said.
“The parties to the Qantas matter presently before the Court (and in which judgment is being delivered to tomorrow) were informed of this fact prior to the hearing and no objection was raised.
“Membership is declared on the Justices’ register of gifts (they are required to declare gifts over $200).”
Separate to the High Court controversy, one legal source described the membership of the Qantas Club by multiple members of the judiciary as “a ticking time bomb” that should be publicly declared.
Another senior lawyer speculated that it had not been raised as an issue because membership of the exclusive club by judges was “considered natural like oxygen”.
Speaking generally about the issue, former Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy KC said judges should always declare such membership and can’t just “shove it under the carpet”.
“I personally think it should be declared if you’re in a case involving Qantas and you’re the recipient of benefits such as other exclusive membership offered by Qantas,’’ he told news.com.au.
“I would think that as a matter of propriety, a judge should declare that membership and have it out in the open. I can’t imagine that the people in the litigation would ask the judges to disqualify themselves, but I think it should be out in the open.”
“If you own shares in the company it’s the same sort of thing although shares are a more substantial financial involvement. You can’t just shove it under the carpet.
“I don’t imagine a litigant would actually take that point, unless they were insane. I think practically it’s not going to make a difference. But in theory, it’s the same problem as owning shares in a company that’s before you as a litigant.”
Geoffrey Watson SC, a former counsel assisting ICAC and the Police Integrity Commission and a Lecturer in Ethics, Law and Justice at the University of Technology Sydney, said it should be declared as the High Court justices have declared it.
“It would be better if a judge who received any kind of gift from an outside source declared that so that it was transparent,’’ he said.
“If it was the case that the giver was a litigant or potential litigant, then of course it should be declared. The gift in this instance is from a known repeated litigant in the federal court system. So, of course, it should be declared.”
The food on offer in the Chairman’s Lounge for free for judges and politicians and invited CEOs include a free steak dinner and a gin and tonic and salt and pepper squid.
“Part of the wankiness, as well as the secret doors, is the fact you could ask for absolutely anything, even if it’s not on the menu, and it will be cooked pretty quickly, just for you,” one regular visitor told the Australian Financial Review.
Former Qantas Group chief executive Alan Joyce has described the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge as “probably the most exclusive club in the country”, Membership is “strictly confidential.”
Membership can sometimes confer on travellers flight upgrades, including being upgraded to business class without having to pay for frequent flyer points.
News.com.au is not aware whether or not any judges have been offered free flight upgrades or not and does not suggest they were, only that Chairman’s Club members have been offered upgrades in the past.
Membership of the Chairman’s Lounge is for a period of two years, renewed entirely at Qantas’ discretion. No fees are charged and your partner, or another guest, is allowed in with you and no correspondence will be entered into over disputes.
The Federal Court’s gifts and benefits register for public servants also lists Qantas Chairman’s Lounge membership of several public servants including CEO and Principal Registrar David Pringle.
It also declares Chairman’s Club membership for the President of the National Native Title Tribunal.
This register is published in accordance with the Australian Public Service Commission’s Guidance for Agency Heads – Gifts and Benefits.
The Federal Court is required to maintain and publish on its website a register of any gifts and benefits accepted which are valued over $A100 (excluding GST) – but it does not appear to list any federal court judges.
Some guides to judicial conduct raise concerns about the provision of gifts.
For example, the The Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration Incorporated (“AIJA”) states it is necessary to draw a distinction between accepting gifts in a personal capacity unrelated to judicial office and gifts which in some way relate, or might appear to relate, to judicial office.
“It is only in the latter category that acceptance of gifts or other benefits needs careful consideration,’’ it states.
“Some benefits which may well be legitimate marketing or promotional activities may nevertheless cause difficulties. Refusal of such a benefit may seem churlish or even offensive if it imputes or implies improper motives, but the short answer is that there is no good reason why judges should receive free benefits that others have to pay for.”
Separately, the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration Incorporated states that a judge cannot be a member of a club or society that engages in unlawful or invidious discrimination.”
“The principle is easily stated, but not easy to apply,’’ the document states.
“In making a decision about membership a judge should be mindful of the message that sends to judicial colleagues and to the public.”
Qantas refuses to discuss who is in the Chairman’s Club and declined to detail whether High Court judges were all automatically members.
“I’m afraid we don’t comment on the Chairman’s Lounge,’’ a spokeswoman said.
I only smoke to show my affluence 😛
Ed Dowds observation that ~30% of the workforce either left, or had a vax induced disability in the last several years might be part of it.
Bern-
The lady out walkin’ with her popcorn pup
To get in a smoke before her husband wakes up
Eyes to the asphalt, plastic bag hands
Just get on outta there, just get away from that man
How long before Marcia has her dilly bag full of deplorables moment?
Mine is “Your Excellency”. Sadly the killjoys in HR declined to include it in the internal phone listings, a decision that seems as though it should be actionable.
Last Saturday walking near Kew Junction.People wanting me to sign up to”electrify Boroondara”.
I ignored them before running into some old Yes campaigners.
Go away ,I said much to their apparent surprise.
I am done being polite to these useful idiots as Lenin called them.
And no I didn’t say F.O.
Old and busted – great stashes of toilet paper