Mentioned it previously, busing again on Friday. To forestall infirmity and decrepitude I go to my club’s gym on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at about four in the afternoon. This means I can feel good about drinking when I come home. How do I manage on the other evenings? Good question. Just don’t feel as good about it.
I’ve taken to walking up a stop to avoid having to stand or, worse, enduring the indignity of some youngish persons offering me their seat. Isn’t working. Going into town, yet the buses are crowded. I can’t vouch for it, but most passengers look like what used to be called “new Australians.” No problem with new Australians per se. I was one once. Just think we need more buses; and schools, and hospitals, and houses, if we are going to invite so many people to our shores. Maybe a new city or two.
The Department of Home Affairs put net overseas migration (including temporary workers and students) at 400,000 in 2022-23 and another 315,000 in 2023-2024. I had to reread the numbers. Seems like a lot.
That’s what we get for saying ‘yes’ to that plebiscite on migration last year. Of course, I’m kidding. We, the citizens of Australia, were not asked; and won’t be by either side of politics. Nor were we asked by Scott Morrison about adopting the destructive chimera of net zero.
On the other hand, we were asked by Albo to vote for him and be rewarded with a $275 reduction in electricity bills. A false promise? Only technically; because no one of any sense believed Albo and his obsessive climate side-kick Chris Bowen in the first place. They say whatever they think will get them elected. It’s not even a questioning of lying. They simply have little regard for facts and even less regard for the interests of the Australian people when those interests don’t coincide with their agenda.
Bowen was at it again the other day, making up the cost of going nuclear via SMRs. Westinghouse have recently said its 300 MW SMRs would likely cost US1 billion each. According to Bowen we would need 71 of them to replace our existing fleet of coal-power stations. Well, 71 times US$1 billion doesn’t come anywhere near to $387 billion dollars, does it. But, in any event, didn’t Net Zero Australia tell us earlier this year that $1.5 trillion would need to be spent by 2030 to achieve the government’s unbelievable climate-related targets, including of having 82 percent of electricity supplied by renewables by 2030. Ergo, the cost of SMRs, even at $387 billion, seems like a snip.
I see now that we are to have an inquiry into the Covid response that will neither ask nor answer the most important questions. It’s a joke which, by omission, effectively whitewashes the policies and actions of state governments, their health bureaucrats and their police forces, which did so much harm. It’s an insult. It typifies the disdain which politicians have for the people that elect them. Democracy is not now the worst system except for all the rest; it has become part of the rest.
“Democracy is not now the worst system except for all the rest; it has become part of the rest.”
IMO, we’d all be better off, governed directly by a hereditary monarchy.
As for the Kung Flu “Inquiry, consider the following documentary excerpts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FRVvjGL2C0:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBN9QTgjos8
It is lamentable journalist kiddies can’t question simple arithmetic but lap up ALP press releases like mana from heaven.
We could replace all of our energy demand for around 213 bn USD, given electricity is 1/3 of energy demand overall.
213 bn USD is a lot less than 1500 bn AUD.
Dot, journalism appears to have morphed into an ability to copy a bit of a PR response into a word document and publish it. Voila! A news story!
No wonder that trust in jounalism is right down the borrom of the ladder along with trust in politicians of any flavour.
One of several blights on our democracies is the inability of politicians elected to represent the views of the people to enforce even relatively minor policy changes on the uneletced public service.
Case in point, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who has talked a tough game on immigration, has stated that illegal “migrants” should not be housed in hotels paid for by the British tax payer.
Her department, however, has been doing just that, to the tune of £8 million a day.
What’s more, the mandarins have specified that the hotel accommodation must rate at least 3 stars.
“…….we’d all be better off, governed by a hereditary monarchy”.
If the inVoice gets up, Bootstrapper, we will find ourselves fact-checking that proposition, or at least something close to it.
Chris Kenny’s nasty little piece has garnered 2678 comments 97.3% of which are NOT supportive of his view.
Kim Beazley Jr
Jim Cairn III
Sir Charles Court
Geoff Fairfax Court
Sir Laurence Street
Sir Kenneth Street
Frank Crean
Simon Crean
I don’t like this idea already!
Whoops
John Cain III
Working from the values here, I make total maximum generating capacity of coal-fired stations to be 22.46Gw. Replacing all of that would require 75 0.3Gw SMRs. Bargain!
The problem with all of this talk, of course, is that it implies that there is some substance to the demonisation of CO2 from fossil fuels. That reinforces the mythology. Using lies to support SMRs, because the destruction of the grid would be averted, seems to me to be supping with the devil.
John Cain III, Dot, who as Solicitor for Public Prosecutions was up to the eyeballs in the corrupt and contemptible Stalinist political prosecution of Cardinal Pell: revenge for the 1955 Split.
When Pell moved to Sydney, by the way, be got on perfectly well with those salt-of-the-earth old-school NSW Labor types like Johnno Johnson, John McCarthy and Michael Egan.
Speaking of old-school NSW Labor, I can’t help wondering what Cahill or Renshaw would make of the modern some left.
Let’s not forget that in our so-called workers’ party there is a venerable tradition of inheriting the family seat.
Thomas Keneally’s redeeming feature is that (unlike his ghastly niece by marriage) he can’t stand the junk-grade bubblegum pop ‘music’ that infests what passed for Catholic liturgy these days.
You can view it as a lie to promote nuclear power or you can view it as the (short-term) second-best solution to avoiding future grid failure and economic suicide.
It’s also a “shit test” for the left. If they don’t support nukes, they’re just shilling for grifters & failures like Acciona, Babcock & Brown or Solyndra.
We’ve got only a scant idea of what a free market for energy would look like.
I would suggest location-dependent coal, SMRs in isolated areas, gas for peaking (more location flexibility than coal) and small-scale renewables otherwise hydro hand in hand with irrigation.
I saw Bowen’s negative Nuclear numbers and broke up laughing as I realised immediately he didn’t know what he was talking about and that he’d just shot himself in the foot.
How is it, none of the media had the same moment of clarity when he made his press release?
Are they just stupid or so stuck in the pockets of Labor they don’t even turn over the words in their own heads and test the validity of them. The media completely lacks objective thinking.
da jurnilists off tuday arr unnedjumakated skool chiltern hoo kunt fink four theyselfs an kunt efen spel or rite da truff . Da wurst arr da wuns inn da aBsee. IMHO.
“213 bn USD is a lot less than 1500 bn AUD.”
Of course.
I know we (the citizenry) pay anyway, but if they replaced coal with nuclear, then the cost would come directly from the GovCo budget – gasp!
If we use the ruinables, then it comes from your electricity bill.
So it’s much simpler for them to go the ruinables path – it’s “the market” (which they have distorted with ruinable certificates, preferred suppliers and so on). Even better (from their PoV), when sufficient capacity is not forthcoming, they can ramp up the subsidies for their maaates to build it. Everyone gets rich, and no-one really gets poor – well, no-one worth speaking about anyway.