Just keep it going. Full stop. Get out of the way D’Ambrosio and Bowen, you complete imbeciles. This is what…
Open Thread – Mon 13 Nov 2023
- Hydrocarbons are not dispensable
- Open Thread – Weekend 7 Sept 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 5 Sept 2024
- Report on Russia and Ukraine
- Open Thread – Mon 2 Sept 2024
How the “mighty” fall .. way, way back in 1968 I toured the USS America, anchored off Garden Island cos…
I suspect the Houthis are seriously pissing off the Arabs. Very unlikely that any Israel-linked ship would be traversing the…
johanna September 6, 2024 2:34 pm Coles may be partly responsible, but the imported cheeses I used to buy there…
Yeah Dover. The hootie tooties are now a major world power.
That’s odd. Why shut up shop when the playground was still there?
This thread needs a disco beat.
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk
I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk
Interesting new episode of the ABC’s obsession with the Catholic Church:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-13/victim-of-paedophile-priest-vincent-kiss-vindicated-by-payout/103099854
No quarrel with the result: Kiss was a criminal and a thoroughgoing creep by all accounts.
But what’s a Victorian court doing hearing matters from Wagga? Have Chairman Dan and Ms Symes annexed southern NSW?
One of my mob had a wife who turned off the naughty valve. He was reasonably well off, so he took a mistress.
On the day of his funeral, the ladies stood on either side of the grave, and glared daggers at each other all the way through the service…
I wasn’t too bothered. She was. Apparently it removes all desire etc.
It took him a year of back and forth with some mathematician to get his head around tensors which makes mere mortals like me feel less dim. Mind you, he was doing via snail mail.
I listen to the opinions expressed here. Some of them I find abrasive, objectionable even .. but unless I have a better formulated , better informed opinion , Hey I take it under advisement “File under Who Knows?” Think on it. Hells Bells maybe I might be wrong for once in my life.
I skate over all sorts of different mindsets . There is no point in my lieing about who I am and why I am curious as to how others see this world. Since I have never sought debate with any of you why should I establish any perspective. If I ever feel the need to then I will but until then … count Me as Mr Peace Fanatic. In all its ineffable glory!!
But I really like those of you who are kind , intelligent and communicative and not spoiling for a pissing contest. Sometimes people who’s opinions you find difficult to swallow ..it helps to tune into the wavelength when we discuss Real Issues .. like Bird Watching …
@Frank
Nov 13, 2023 11:04 PM
Emmy Noether . gave Old Mate a bit of a nudge along ..
Have you seen Bird, Mark? Where?
Indolent
Nov 13, 2023 9:06 PM
BREAKING: UK’S HOME/DHS SECRETARY FIRED AFTER POLICE BIAS COMMENTS
Obviously, telling the truth is the greatest crime. The weasel David Cameron has been appointed foreign secretary in her place.
Tells you everything you need to know about ‘conservatives’ in the West today. With the exception of Trump and a few more they are venal pus-buckets without spines or a shred of loyalty to their constituents. Braverman’s name is immensely ironic and mirrors what has happened in this shit hole with truly conservative women getting kicked out of the libs especially in victoristan.
At the next election I’d rather vote for diarrhea than the LNP. Except for Jacinta of course.
A bunch of M?ori from Logan rocked up to the pali protest in Brisbane on the weekend and likewise did the haka at the protesters until moved on by the wallopers.
No. Marcel Grossman.
Lyndsay Fox needs to do a Kerry Packer and just build 18 holes somewhere.
The story about why Kerry Packer joined the Australian golf course (he was a member of Royal Sydney at the time) says a lot about the man.
Pervasive Government Surveillance To Achieve Human Perfection: Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs
Zafiro Avatar
Zafiro
Nov 13, 2023 11:11 PM
Have you seen Bird, Mark? Where?
Yeah Miss !!! two of the buggers !! and they both voided their bowels on my Letter Box …
“Now Little Johnny !!! “
Sliante to all you horrible mob.
The song that Scottish soldiers sing, after a few drinks, and certain unit’s sang, dug in on the road to Dunkirk, in 1940, and waiting for the German attack that overran them all…
DrBeauGan Avatar
DrBeauGan
Nov 13, 2023 11:18 PM
Emmy Noether . gave Old Mate a bit of a nudge along ..
I am WAY out of my depth in such a discussion ..I am just delighted to have sufficent understanding to have had at least a glimpse.
But Hey Emmy? Some kinda Gal? No?
How long do you think before it can become a Minority Report type of society?
Forget about psychics floating in a fish tank, there will be computers than will perform that task.
Entropy
Nov 13, 2023 11:18 PM
So it’s true. Diversity is our strength. 😍😍😍
that
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Nov 13, 2023 11:22 PM
and am I mistaken they said “If not this” ? Right or wrong, at least we had a common language back then?
On the very odd occasion, Colonel.
No kaboom? I was told there would be a kaboom. [/marvin]
That clinches it, we are the arse-end of the world.
Colonel Crispin Berka
Nov 13, 2023 11:34 PM
Yup but in my case it was a “Wooof ” a Planet that doesn’t occasionally, try to kill you is a cold lifeless block of rock incapable of sustaining life. Just means we have to be ready on our toes.
If it did go kaboom we would have a volcano induced global winter just as we are coming out of the Pacific winter conferred on us by the Tongan volcano eruption.
I should have been more specific, South Pacific winter.
See if that gets through!
@Bruce in WA
Nov 13, 2023 11:44 PM
As with everything emerging from this conflict “Big if True” both side of this conflict have made huge about how they are “Winning the Communication Battlespace” ……
@Bruce in WA
Nov 13, 2023 11:44 PM
Just like in Ukraine ….
Yes. German algebraist, mainly group theory. Noether’s theorem is important in theoretical physics, linking symmetries with conservation laws. A bright lass.
I’ve posted this one before, but if I was an Israeli infantryman, in the Gaza Strip I wouldn’t be too interested in taking prisoners, or accepting surrenders.
“Zulu Kilo, you horrible creature, that Pali had his hands up, and was clearly trying to surrender.
Sorry, sergeant, smoke got in my eyes, and I thought he was trying to throw a grenade…”
@DrBeauGan
Nov 13, 2023 11:52 PM
Yeah … I don’t have the marbles to really play on that sandpit. I Have tried my best … I could have chosen to remain ignorant but I wanted a slice of the warm sun. I don’t pretend to know Proper Physics but Hey !! I can wire up an Off Grid Solar System !!
At least I know what I don’t know and admire those that do.
Let’s hope the victims of Dick Neville, Bob Ellis and Andy Muirhead can all sue the ABC for 3.3 million a piece.
Let’s be clear. The ABC doesn’t care about victims. Like the VIC ALP, they want to see the church destroyed.
In some ways, I wish the church would just agree and close its doors. No more hospitals for rich hypocrites, no more burying smart alecs who think Pell being falsely imprisoned was funny and no more white weddings for strong and independent women.
You can have the Uniting Church or the Mosque down the road do it for you.
These people are using the sims of one person to smash the whole damned thing to pieces. They deserve to find their own way. If they want to pretend that abuse doesn’t happen in State institutions, they can pick up the pieces and get counselling from a government call centre, your local Imam or the social justice warrior princess holding a presbytership at the local Uniting atheist temple.
I respect Noether for her chosen field alone. I struggled with the harder aspects of undergraduate linear algebra.
The over promotion of her now based off gender is just galling. The popularised promotion of her ideas make them seem trivial or even redundant.
@DrBeauGan
Nov 13, 2023 11:52 PM
I just loved the way Emmy slid from one realm of Maths to the next… may be intuitively I “got it” maybe I didnt… .. Despite I wont pretend to have understood her argument I am sure she had great tits.
Sick rant man. Yeah I forgot about that Andy Muirhead prick.
Grossman. Einstein was smart enough to know that if you’re the smartest person in the room you’re in the wrong room(Confucius).
That nothing Noether ever did was remotely related to “Linear Algebra” …. well perhaps? Perhaps by way of being nice I might agree with the general contention of popular posters here , that here tits were just “So So .
@john H.
Nov 14, 2023 12:13 AM
Exactly !! If you are in a card game and wondering “who is the sucker here ‘? You already answered your own question ,,,
@john H.
Nov 14, 2023 12:13 AM
Much and all as i was a little bit good (not very) at Mathematics and Physics … my reading of that spectacular time in the History of Science , was that it was collaborative effort …. Ouch! that sounds a but collectivist and a bit Leftie ….much to the horror of some …
Wasn’t it always ?
BTW Linear Algebra is a closed book to me and so many more … so is Arithmetic …
D(og returns to it’s own Vomi)T …. gosh we get (())) these thingies on our keyboards !!b Oh Joy !!V
Yeah … Why bother ?
Copenhagen. QM. So many great minds working together.
Today it is even more vital that researchers of all types work collaboratively.
Leftie stuff? Last night channel flipping I heard on Bernardi Dellingpole say that there is a paper thin difference between left and right wing parties. I wouldn’t go that far but unlike many here who make a serious effort to demonise lefties I’m more in the “the whole political structure needs to redesigned camp” which is far too libertarian for this formerly libertarian forum.
@john H.
Nov 14, 2023 12:53 AM
Yeah my bad… I have generally be treated very well here. But some posters have really had a major go at me.
I let it piss me off and I should be better than this…
as to Left and Right ? there is truly no such thing… It is just an invention to achieve idiotic distraction …
Ants banished from my pants…
I was on the phone to my daughter and told her to You Tube the exploding whale.
She thought it was funny as. Which it is. Gonna show her mates at school.
Thanks Winston.
This Bolton guy is now my most scrolled.
If you don’t toe the line they kick you in the ass. Don’t sweat it.
Feel free to comment, Cats.
No man “needs” sex. Wants, sure- wants to get his rocks off, wants to have his ego fed, wants to think his woman is not looking for it elsewhere. But this talk of Men Need Sex is all of a piece with the bullsh*t hobgoblins of “incels” and “rape culture”. At best it’s Footy Trip windbaggery, at worst it’s playing into the hands of Feminazis and Imams.
..and it’s Infra Dig. Cmon Cats, spare the Kittehs this wank.
Is forever food restriction the key to longer life? [10 Studies]
Detailed, somewhat technical. I like his approach because unlike so many health advocates he gets into the weeds to highlight the problems and contradictions with the evidence. Also, he’s not selling anything. His argument about protein restriction possibly being more important than caloric restrictions seems odd in light of some advice that older people should boost their protein intake.
There are studies making the same claim about protein intake. I can perceive possible mechanisms but too vague.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/protein-consumption-linked-longevity
cohenite
Nov 13, 2023 11:12 PM
Cameron is not an MP so he will need to be parachuted into the House of Lords at light speed to be able to take on the job.
Johannes Leak.
Mark Knight.
Mark Knight #2.
Peter Broelman.
A.F. Branco.
Matt Margolis.
Tom Stiglich.
Al Goodwyn.
Thanks Tom. Leak is Brillo once again.
Monty, thoughts?
What could these Hamas terrorists possibly be doing with an RPG at the Quds Hospital?
which is far too libertarian for this formerly libertarian forum”
Perhaps you’re confused. This site has never, since it’s inception, been a “libertarian forum”. Do you mean Sinclair’s Catallaxy, a site he closed down in 2021?
If you’re after a “libertarian forum” you can always set up one up yourself.
If you don’t toe the line they kick you in the ass. Don’t sweat it.
Bird droppings, such as extolling Leni Riefenstahl, saying nice things about what Hamas did on 7 October 2023 and other numerous unsavoury comments, should be rebutted and the composer of such base comments rightly deserves to be kicked ‘in the ass’. By the way, perhaps you’ve forgotten, but Sinclair was a great smiter. Don’t know what others think, but I suspect that the author of the Leni Riefenstahl comment would have already been smited.
hamas still firing rockets at Israel, some terror apologist puts up a picture of the poor little babies, I don’t care who’s winning the propaganda war, as long as hamas is defeated, maybe many have dug their own graves.
Andrew Lawrence is superb…
POLICE- Update regarding far-Right thugs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCDwJ5TVGcc
“Violently wearing Poppies”
Should be the name of a Freedom Rock Band. Love it.
Andrew Lawrence is a great find Cassie.
Must be something in the name Lawrence that makes the man wearing it stay sane. I hope. 😀
Today in “No Evidence of Election Fraud” we have another report of machines tampering with voting totals in 2022 and 2023.
This is serious.
Hasn’t erupted yet, but the evacuation of Grindavik has been a lot of fun to read about on the RUV website:
LIVEBLOG: Reykjanes Peninsula and Grindavík (started 11 Nov)
Some interesting photos and footage of the cracks running right through the town – which were caused by the magma squeezing up and forcing the sides of the town apart. Volcanic tremors are slowly declining, which may mean they’ll get lucky and the magma will freeze in place, but the IMO still thinks she’ll blow.
There are always photos that become iconic over time because tell the story of seminal moments in history. We are witnessing the Islamisation and collapse of the UK in real time, and one such seminal photo was taken just a few days ago, the day before “Remembrance Day” at Charing Cross station. Three elderly Brits, one man and two women, were sitting at the train station doing what they do every year which is to sell poppies. It is already an iconic photo because it shows the three elderly patriotic Brits sitting at their stall, and suddenly they are surrounded by a frothing, baying frenzied mob of genocidal Jews haters.
The faces of these three elderly poppy sellers emanate dismay and perturbation, you can see their stiff upper lips trembling at the people around them because one suspects, in fact one knows, that they too understand that the UK is finished.
A reminder of those scenes in 2020 where election workers in Georgia stuffed piles of ballots through the machines several times after sending all the observers home! Some mob of election workers are now suing Gateway Pundit for reporting that fact!
Flash Nick from Grindavik?
I see Mark Strapon is still hanging around.
Black Ball 12/11 @2.09pm
Piers Ackerman article re migrants in Oz with Greeks and Italians copping slurs and contributing to Australian Society.
The Greeks, Italians and Lebenese threw it back harder and I know of groups who would go out on a night to bash skips.
Their reaction is similar to the British Bulldogs in Northern Ireland. The IRA winged they were too rough.
But the Greeks, Italians and Lebenese were just as racial or even worse when dealing with migrants from other European countries.
If you were north of Greece or the Floentina Anacona line you were heavily discriminated against and were openly violent to others.
I recall a successful owner of a national financial planning business giving a talk about attracting business, the laugh went around the room about do not bother about Greeks.
I recall an interview with a female teacher in the 90s who was saying the problem at the school she was teaching had racial problems – Greeks v Italians.
Everyone throws it at the English, but from my experience they are the most tolerant.
Every race has their biases.you can’t get out of it.
I now appreciate those migrants from WW 2 who relinquished their nationality and tried to start fresh here. It would have been hard and they would have copped it but they rose about everything to embrace differences and understand the world.
Finally a court case is getting a go ahead:
Federal Judge Orders Trial for Ga.’s Dominion Voting Machines (12 Nov)
Even if it is a whitewash of 2020 election steal it would be a win if the court mandates paper ballots and hand counting. Better still if purple finger voting gets up, but I don’t think that will happen.
Not sure about this. The Anglo Irish had a distinct identity by then before the Protestant plantations.
“by then before”
Genius level prose.
The thot plickens, hence, therefore..
Buried alive to die in the dark is too good an end for this evil.
IDF: Hamas command center found under Gaza children’s hospital; hostages were likely held there
Nothing wrong with underlining or highlighting events during a presidency seeing the buck stops with them.
I mentioned Trump because it was during his time ISIS was smashed. I’m not triangulating or even “bi-angulating” anything. My intention was to demonstrate that all your negativity towards the US appears very selective.
You seem to have developed very anti-American attitude. Everything the US does is wrong, while everything Russia does you’re fine with. Recently, you mentioned that the US has been involved in far too many wars and interventions over the past 20 years. Russia has been involved in 9 against its neighbors. Also, the US doesn’t install stool pigeons next door like Putin. See Canada, Mexico, Cuba.
It was during Trump’s time that ISIS was knocked off its perch.
You’re also inaccurate in the way you describe the US was supporting ISIS in Syria. It wasn’t. There are numerous opposition groups to Assad’s regime in Syria. The US was NOT directly supporting ISIS. It was supporting other opposition groups. It’s wrong to be be saying that if these non-ISIS groups were fighting against Assad, that makes them ISIS because ISIS is also fighting Assad.
Monty, Monty, where art thou Monty?
Some years ago we were chatting to a British couple at the SCG. They were visiting relatives & remarked how wonderful it would be to live here. We naively asked why they didn’t because they had relos already here & could sponsor. To our astonishment they said they had applied & were rejected as too old.
I recalled this because I thought of all the traditional Poms who might want to emigrate. I suspect there is an order of preference in the offices of Immigration. And Anglos are at the bottom of the list.
Still JC the US must have some inkling that a lot of the support ended up with ISIS.
Too old and likely to be a burden on welfare seems a reasonable reason to refuse.
How old were they?
Makka – just another image to sear into the depths of my brain.
The non Muslim Aussie scum that are supporting Hamas in the streets just cannot have processed 7/10. Or else they are as monstrous as those they support.
“Knuckle Dragger
Nov 13, 2023 10:37 PM
Just saw a clip on the picture wireless.
It was from NZ. A pro-Pally demonstration was met by 100 or so largish Kiwis, waving Israeli and NZ flags.
The Kiwis then proceeded to perform a decent haka, directly in front of the faux-Pallys.
No more Pally demo. Excellent.”
I’m uncertain that a Welcome to Country would have the same effect. More like an invitation to be pushed aside?
Rosie – they were beyond retirement age, for sure. But so are many of the various nationalities that seem to join relatives. Or am I wrong?
Assad inadvertently started an antecedent organisation to ISIS. He was being clever and letting them attack Jordanians. They went off the reservation with Iraqi Ba’athist die hards and other assorted Jannah can’t wait types.
Interesting couple of tidbits in article in Fairfax today from the WaPo (paywalled).
Another er, ‘election promise’ gone down the shitter. Unless of course it’s been diverted to combat ‘Islamophobia’. Herald Sun:
VicPlod can also get off their arse and do what they are employed to do.
Where is this right wing extremism anyway? And in what detail is this Islamophobia and where? Because you just get the feeling that it’s never happened.
I did a quick DYO job for a neighbour yesterday & last night she gave me a cooked roast chicken from COSTCO as a thanx .. Still had all the stickers on and noticed it was slightly heavier and $2 cheaper than a frozen chicken I bought from Woolies last week ….!
Democracy is not a natural default position in the Middle East. You can agitate to remove a dictator but once you allow the will of the people to rule you only get the mosque.
Monty, Monty, where art thou Monty?
Do not summon the devil.
Vicki
Nov 14, 2023 7:49 AM
Rosie – they were beyond retirement age, for sure. But so are many of the various nationalities that seem to join relatives. Or am I wrong?
Vicki,
no, you are not wrong – based on my observations of Outpatients at RNSH over the last 7 years – Off to there today for Usual Bloods after Head MRI – With Fine Red for Tuesday Old Farts Lunch after- back on Thursday for Oncologist Report on MRI & collect Bloods report
These are the same simpletons who want to cancel our Brit heritage, sign us into a treaty, remove the icons of our colonial history, cancel the exploits of our early explorers, rallied for the Voice, insist on men dressed as women to be allowed to groom kids and be allowed into girls change rooms, wreck the nation for the sake of the climate hoax..
Useful idiots.
But they are numerous. Products of our wonderful Socialist education system
The other day somebody posted a video of 2 protesters in the US , where they were asked what the issue they were protesting against with reference to 7/10. They had no real idea of what happened or why Israel went into Gaza.
Some Cat recently remarked on the new movie “The Killer“, starring Michael Fassbender.
Watched it last night..
To say it is an outstanding movie is an obscene understatement.
The plot is not original or unique but, as it is based on a French graphic novel (whatever that is..), it doesn’t follow the formulaic Whollyweird predictable, woke, clicheed, sentimental BS. This is what makes it so special.
If anything, it is a minimalist lesson in the achieving of excellence in one’s chosen career.
A spartan script, limited dialogue, almost no redundancy.
The only criticism I have is the single fight scene which, if anything, detracts from the austere, essential elements of the brilliantly executed plot.
Why this masterpiece has only had limited theatrical release remains a mystery.
It is, however, available on Netflix, as well as other.. (cough, cough..).. internet platforms..
Democracy is not a natural default position in the Middle East.
Fact check : TRUE .. reference source .. IRAQ post Sadaam
The AFR View
Infrastructure policy lost touch with economic reality
It was hard to find shovel-ready projects during the GFC, and it won’t be easy to dial down an infrastructure boom that has not been put through sufficient scrutiny.
That Australia now needs to wind back an overflowing pipeline of infrastructure projects that is keeping inflation and interest rates higher for longer again underlines how the nation’s political culture lost touch with economic reality since the political defeat of the Abbott government’s 2014 budget.
During the cheap money era before the pandemic, federal and state governments became convinced that they should exploit ultra-low interest rates to borrow heavily for bigger infrastructure projects.
Then came the pandemic and lockdowns of 2020 and even more borrowing in a zero-interest-rate world to pump up household income and support the economy through the health crisis, including to top up brimming programs of planned infrastructure works.
At the same time, government spending has continued to grow through out-of-control programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme that new research suggests financially incentivises higher diagnoses of childhood autism.
The idea that investing for tomorrow and borrowing from the future might require forgoing something in the present by choosing between competing priorities for scarce resources was distorted by the belief money would stay cheap forever.
But then the pandemic stimulus spilled over disrupted supply chains, adding to the global inflation outbreak and colliding with the sudden end of the cheap money era.
Now the expansionary infrastructure splurge has become a crunch after hitting the economy’s real-world physical constraints.
As both the International Monetary Fund and the Reserve Bank warn, that is now generating excess demand, adding to inflation and keeping interest rates higher for longer amid labour.
And the investment required for Australia’s massive net zero energy transition is only just building up.
That means that governments are now being forced to cut back on infrastructure that is supposed to help reverse the slump in the economy’s supply-side productivity.
Yet, just as it was hard to find shovel-ready projects during the global financial crisis, it won’t be easy to dial down an infrastructure boom that has not been put through sufficient scrutiny in the first place, including by previous federal Coalition governments.
Before the era of privatisation and financial deregulation, the federal government sought to discipline state government capital works borrowings through the Loan Council.
In the modern era, governments were supposed to be disciplined by credit rating agencies and by rigorous scrutiny of projects to ensure they stacked up on cost-benefit grounds.
Anthony Albanese’s innovation of Infrastructure Australia under the Rudd Labor government was a genuine advance in principle.
Election promises
In practice, Infrastructure Australia was largely sidelined under successive Coalition governments and ignored by federal and state governments by a simple expedient.
Federal and state governments, both Labor and Coalition, simply announced projects before elections that then had to be implemented, regardless of merit, as an election promise.
The result, as Infrastructure Australia’s chief executive Adam Copp told day one of The Australian Financial Infrastructure Summit on Monday, is that there isn’t enough money or workers to deliver the announced pipeline of works over the next decade.
Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King will on Tuesday release an infrastructure policy statement that is designed to guide the government’s response to its review of 700 infrastructure projects estimated to have blown out in cost by $33 billion.
The task of winding back this pipeline to merely the original 10-year budget of $120 billion will include a focus on “nationally significant” projects.
Such projects would require no less than a $250 million federal contribution, and would require the states to fund at least half of each one.
But this on its own is unlikely to prevent the winding back of the national infrastructure blowout from degenerating into a political squabble between the Albanese government and the Labor states.
The question is whether Labor will choose just to target Coalition pet projects such as former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce’s Brisbane to Melbourne inland rail project, while ignoring the Victorian Labor government’s Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop project.
The lame justification that Federal Labor is contributing $2 billion towards the Suburban Rail Loop – which has never had a proper cost-benefit test – because it fulfils a 2022 election promise is the same shoddy defence the Coalition proffered for its 2019 election car park rorts boondoggle.
High Speed Rail boss pushes case, says ‘doing nothing’ no option
Aaron Patrick – Senior correspondent
A high-speed rail line between Melbourne and Brisbane would cost more than the federal government’s last official estimate of $114 billion, High Speed Rail Authority interim chief executive Andrew Hyles says.
“We haven’t sat down and calculated what it would cost now,” he told The Australian Financial Review Infrastructure Summit. “Realistically, today it would be higher” than the 2013 estimate, Mr Hyles added.
Similar projects overseas have cost $100 million to $200 million a kilometre, he said. Given the distance between Melbourne and Brisbane is around 1800 kilometres, the figures imply a cost of $180 billion to $360 billion.
Mr Hyles used his comments on Monday to make a pitch for the much-criticised, decades-old idea, which has received $500 million from Labor to begin preliminary work.
Although the rail line is meant to offer an alternative to interstate air travel, Mr Hyles mostly spoke about the importance of improving the connection between Sydney and Newcastle. A budget for the project is due by 2026.
Going straight
The existing Sydney to Newcastle rail line, which was designed in the 1800s, is operating at maximum capacity, and travel takes two-and-a-half hours between the cities.
A new, high-speed line would take trains 45 to 50 minutes to travel between NSW’s two largest cities, he said, freeing up space on the existing line and attracting commuters who don’t travel by train now.
“Doing nothing on that corridor is not an option,” he said. “The largest passenger train volume in Australia is on this route.”
Because the route is lined by nature reserves, hills and houses, it would require tunnels, which can cost more than $1 billion a kilometre.
The track has to be straighter than the existing line to allow the trains to travel very fast.
A national high-speed line has been criticised on cost grounds. In 2020 the Grattan Institute, a Melbourne-headquartered think tank, called it a “fast track to nowhere”.
Mr Hyles compared the project to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which was finished in 1932, and said it could change transport for the next 100 years.
He said it was “pleasing to hear Infrastructure Australia is looking beyond BCR”, a reference to cost-to-benefit ratios that compare benefits from projects to their cost.
In February, Infrastructure Australia, a government advisory body, said that “it may be worth considering” if what are called transformational projects are assessed differently to regular projects.
Deary me. The Trot at work:
He’s having a good larf. Just don’t get caught with no pants in San Francisco.
Unless they are up against defenseless grannies or pregnant mums, Vikplod won’t be seen. These are the same grubs who took a knee to support the frauds of BLM. (spit!)
Vicki
“I recalled this because I thought of all the traditional Poms who might want to emigrate. I suspect there is an order of preference in the offices of Immigration. And Anglos are at the bottom of the list.”
An ethnic breakdown of the executive and senior executive level staff of the Department might be enlightening.
High-speed rail collides with reality
Governments have been talking about high-speed rail for decades but are yet to create one kilometre of it to make the dream real. The Albanese government promises to be different, but who will pay?
Jennifer HewettColumnist
Anyone who’s caught a high-speed train in Europe or Japan or China can’t help but experience a bout of train envy. So it’s hardly surprising that generations of Australian governments from the 1980s on have funded inquiries, reports and agencies into the potential of high-speed rail between major cities. Without result.
Anthony Albanese has been a particular enthusiast of high-speed rail since his time as transport minister in the previous Labor government. Even during the long years of opposition, he promoted it as an “economic game changer” for Australia that would “revolutionise” interstate travel with trains running at over 250 kilometres an hour
Those countries that do have them still need large government subsidies to manage operating costs, despite far more concentrated populations – in addition to the massive public cost of building the rail lines suitable for high-speed trains. The British government has just cancelled construction of its long-touted high-speed rail linking London with Manchester via Birmingham due to its cost.
Most infrastructure experts spoken to by The Australian Financial Review consider high-speed rail in Australia far more unaffordable and unworkable. The $500 million commitment allows the Albanese government to claim it is delivering on a popular dream – but with no feasible timetable or budget.
None of this deters the government, nor the acting head of the High Speed Rail Authority, Andrew Hyles.
“These sorts of transformative projects, they will cost a lot of money,” Hyles told The Australian Financial Review Infrastructure Summit on Monday. “But it’s incumbent on governments to carefully consider and plan how they’re actually going to be built and how they’re going to serve the populations both now and into the significant distant future.”
The money to build the proposed 1700 kilometres of high-speed rail linking Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne would still be extraordinary.
Hyles argues the cost of building high speed offshore has averaged somewhere between $100 million to $200 million per kilometre. It would be considerably more in an extremely high-cost country like Australia. The $114 billion estimate in a feasibility study done a decade ago is obviously even less convincing than it was at the time.
Prices for all construction are rapidly escalating, meaning estimates done just a year or two ago are already out of date.
Construction costs for the initial section of the controversial Suburban Rail Loop supposedly starting in Victoria, for example, are estimated at around $1 billion per kilometre.
That includes the cost of tunnelling, but any high-speed rail network would also require extensive and expensive tunnelling under suburbs, sensitive environmental areas and difficult, hilly topography.
According to Hyles, the government’s priority project for a new high-speed line between Newcastle and Sydney would also involve the most complicated engineering challenge of the entire proposed network.
At the moment, the trip takes about 2½ hours because it follows a scenic winding route along waterways and through hilly country. High-speed rail would require a new line to be straight, meaning a different route would have to be found, supposedly cutting the time to more like 45 minutes.
Cost blowouts
According to Hyles, detailed effective planning is the “insurance policy against cost blowouts and delays”. The strategic business case for the whole network will be done by mid-2025 and a detailed business case for the Sydney-Newcastle line by mid-2026.
“That’ll get to the point where we can start doing corridor protection and any kind of land acquisition that might be associated with that,” he said. The travails of renewable energy transmission projects obtaining local approvals indicate how tricky acquisitions of private properties might be.
But underpinning the even larger question of cost and who pays, the other big question is the number of passengers choosing high-speed rail. The original notion of high-speed trains replacing interstate travel by air or road now accommodates the potential of commuters living in Newcastle and working in Sydney, for example.
Yet most of the 25,000 or so commuters who do this now don’t work in the CBD, instead driving to places of work in the suburbs. Would they switch if they needed to take additional modes of public transport from where high-speed rail finishes? Many others are tradies. Would they take tools and equipment on a train, no matter how fast? Regional cities will certainly grow in size and appeal, particularly given the cost of housing and the feasibility of working from home a few days a week. But will this reduce or increase the demand for daily train travel? At what cost per journey?
Hyles doesn’t watch the ABC satirical series, Utopia, based on government infrastructure because, he says, he doesn’t find it particularly funny.
“We have far more serious conversations around the table than they do in Utopia,” he said. No doubt for more decades to come. No laughing allowed.
Cassie:
What do you mean by that? Is it finished as in a failed State like Somalia? Or as in a country whose politics you dislike, like Cuba? What?
Look, I completely get that the last few weeks have been absolutely harrowing for Jews all over the world, and that it affects even those who have no immediate connection to hostages or casualties.
And, I am 100% pro Israel, no ifs or buts. Whatever they have to do to get rid of this evil, yep, I’m good with it.
But I agree with Dr BG that you need to try to get a grip. On one hand, you claim to be this strong, independent woman, and on the other, you dissolve into tears and panic.
I have often been mistaken for a Jew throughout my life, partly because of my surname (has a common Jewish ending) and also because of my liking for robust discussion and bridge. Have had plenty of Jewish friends over the years who enjoyed robust discussion, bridge, and of course generous hospitality in the food line.
In fact, my family were Dutch, and we differ in one very significant way. We don’t do emotions overcoming everything else. Hanging on to your self control in the face of drama is a prized quality, and IMO a valuable one. It means that you don’t allow external events to rule your state of mind and your judgement.
You are not ‘young and naive’ and you are far from stupid. Allowing yourself to be ricocheted around like a pinball by your emotions is not doing you or anyone else any good. Do you think that IDF soldiers allow themselves to be manipulated like this? They’d be useless if they did.
You are tough enough, time to take control! 🙂
Only 14% of US voters say Joe Biden has made them better off
FT-Michigan Ross poll underlines president’s struggle to overcome impact of inflation on voters’ economic outlook
Only 14 per cent of American voters believe they are better off financially now than when Joe Biden took office, in the latest sign that the president’s economic record could undermine his re-election prospects.
A poll found that almost 70 per cent of voters thought Biden’s economic policies had either hurt the US economy or had no impact, including 33 per cent who said they believed the president’s policies had “hurt the economy a lot”. Only 26 per cent said his policies had helped.
The new monthly poll conducted for the Financial Times and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business will seek to track how economic sentiment affects the race for the White House. In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan famously asked voters whether they were better off than they were four years earlier, setting the stage for his landslide victory over incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter.
A similar poll conducted for the FT four years ago showed that most Americans felt they had not improved their financial position under then-president Donald Trump, but their pessimism was far less pronounced.
In November 2019, only 35 per cent of voters believed they were better off under Trump, while 31 per cent said they were worse off.
The new poll results showed that inflation continues to cloud the Biden campaign’s efforts to convince voters of “Bidenomics”, the president’s strategy to rejuvenate the country’s industrial sector and reverse years of middle-class wage stagnation.
Asked what was the source of their biggest financial stress, 82 per cent of respondents said price increases. Three-quarters of respondents said rising prices posed the most significant threat to the US economy in the next six months.
“Every group — Democrats, Republicans and independents — list rising prices as by far the biggest economic threat?.?.?.?and the biggest source of financial stress,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at Michigan’s Ross School. “That is bad news for Biden, and the more so considering how little he can do to reverse the perception of prices before election day.”
Rising prices have been a persistent problem during Biden’s three years in office, and while inflation is down from last year’s annual peak of 9.1 per cent, the latest official figures show that the consumer price index rose 3.7 per cent in September compared with the same time last year, well above the Federal Reserve’s 2 per cent target.
In response to inflationary pressures, 65 per cent of voters said they had cut back on non-essential spending such as holidays or eating out, while 52 per cent said they had reduced spending on food or other everyday necessities.
The negative view of the White House’s economic record comes despite record jobs growth and almost three years of economic expansion under Biden. The president’s political allies believe that voters can still be won over as the campaign heats up and more Americans scrutinise his achievements.
More than half of the poll’s respondents — 52 per cent — said they had heard “a little” or “nothing” about what the president was doing to try and improve the economy.
The FT-Michigan Ross poll comes on the heels of several other national surveys showing that Biden would lose to Trump in a hypothetical general election match-up.
That has prompted some Democrats to question whether Biden should be their presidential nominee, even though the party received a boost in last week’s off-year elections, with victories in high-profile contests in Kentucky, Virginia and Ohio.
The FT-Michigan Ross poll found that just 40 per cent of registered voters said they approved of Biden’s job performance, while 59 per cent disapproved. An even smaller share — 36 per cent — said they approved of his handling of the economy, while 61 per cent disapproved.
The poll was conducted online by Democratic strategists Global Strategy Group and Republican polling firm North Star Opinion Research between November 2 and 7. It reflects the opinions of 1,004 registered voters nationwide, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
tunnels lol
/mUnter
Yesterday’s discussion on ASD, Asperger’s etc.. was quite remarkable.
It is in the personal explorations of such difficult topics that the Cat truly excels.
The challenge of living with such beautiful, yet imperfect humans has to be one of the greatest tragedies we can face.
Truly heartbreaking and, unfortunately, all too common.
A heartfelt thanks to Lizzie, John H, Zafiro et al for their contributions and insights.
Monty, Monty, where art thou Monty?
Do not summon the devil.
If you really must summon him then you need to do the following..
Go to the bathroom
Make a circle of icing sugar on the floor
Look into the mirror
Chant “doughnutjuice, doughnutjuice, doughnutjuice” 3 times.
Zoe, the chick who was arrested & handcuffed in her kitchen, in front of her kids (while in her pyjamas) and had her house searched & all electronic devices seized, for posting on Facebook that she was intending to protest against the Andrews govt, in a rural Victoria park.
Then a year or so later the cops withdrew all charges on the courthouse steps.
Is it fair dinkum that a day or so back Vicplod arrested her, & Child Services took away all her kids, including a 6-week old newborn, because Child Services had “received a report” that Zoe was “harming the baby”
She either leaves Victoria, or braces for a lifetime of this.
Opinion US foreign policy
China, Russia, Iran and the prospect of American retreat
The US faces simultaneous challenges to its dominant security role in Asia, Europe and the Middle East
GIDEON RACHMAN
Joe Biden is not just an old guy. He is also a representative of an old idea — one that dates back to the 1940s.
The US president believes that his nation and the wider world are safer if the US plays the role of world policeman. He argued recently that: “American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe?.?.?.?To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it.”
The world view that Biden articulated stretches back to the end of the second world war — when the American elite concluded that the isolationism of the 1930s had aided the rise of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The Washington security establishment decided that it would not make that mistake again.
From Harry Truman to Barack Obama, every US president based their foreign policy on a network of global alliances — in particular Nato and the US-Japan security treaty. When he became president, Donald Trump partly broke with this consensus — by treating key allies like Germany and Japan as ungrateful freeloaders.
As president, Biden returned to the traditional alliance-based American approach. But it is possible that he will be the last US leader who wholeheartedly embraces the idea of America as “liberal hegemon” — the academic term for world policeman.
The prospect of the return of Trump to the White House next year raises a huge question mark over the future of America’s global leadership. In his first term, he flirted with pulling the US out of Nato. In a second term, he might actually go through with it.
Indeed, if he pursued the most radical version of his “America First” ideology, a second Trump administration could see a complete break with the idea that it is in America’s interests to underpin the security arrangements in three of the most strategic regions in the world — Europe, Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf.
In each of these regions, America now faces an active challenger — eager to see it depart. In Europe, that challenger is Russia; in Asia it is China; in the Middle East it is Iran. Russia has invaded Ukraine. China has built military bases across the South China Sea and threatens Taiwan. Iran uses proxies such as Hizbollah, Hamas and the Houthi rebels in Yemen to challenge America’s friends across the region.
If the US seriously scaled back its military commitments around the world, China, Russia and Iran would all try to take advantage of the resulting power vacuum. In the meantime, the three countries are working together more closely. They all eagerly promote the idea of a “multipolar world” — code for an end to American hegemony.
In the US itself, the bipartisan consensus in favour of activist global leadership is visibly fraying. In 2016, the year that Trump was elected, an opinion poll showed 57 per cent of Americans agreeing that the US should “deal with its own problems and let others deal with their own problems the best they can.”
Trump began the process of withdrawing America from Afghanistan and Biden completed it. But Biden then sought to reassert US global leadership, through support for Ukraine and Taiwan — and in his response to the Israel-Gaza war.
By contrast Trump and other leading Republicans, such as Ron DeSantis, have turned against aid to Ukraine. The Republicans remain solid in their support for Israel. But the left of the Democratic Party is increasingly hostile. Opinion surveys show that the American public is increasingly suspicious of China. But whether that would translate into a willingness to fight for Taiwan is open to question.
There are also practical constraints. As security tensions rise around the world, the US is finding it increasingly difficult to play the role of policeman in three major regions simultaneously.
One of the reasons that the Biden administration has been relatively stingy in supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles may be that the Pentagon wants to hold back some of its stock — in case they are needed for Taiwan.
Ramping up defence spending is also not straightforward, when the US is running a budget deficit of 5.7 per cent of GDP and the national debt stands at 123 per cent of GDP.
There has long been a school of thought in academia that the US should seriously cut back its military commitments overseas.
Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have argued that when it comes to maintaining the balance of power in Europe, the Middle East and Asia — “Washington should pass the buck to regional powers.”
The difficulty is that the regional powers to whom America would pass the buck are ill-equipped to check the regional ambitions of Russia, China and Iran on their own.
A Nato alliance without the US would look ineffective at best — and might collapse at worst.
Israel and Saudi Arabia would struggle to contain Iran, without US power in the background.
Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia would face similar problems with China in Asia.
The consequences of an American retreat from the world would probably be felt last in the US itself. But, as the post-1945 generation understood, even America would eventually be threatened by the rise of undemocratic and expansionist powers in Europe, Asia or the Middle East.
You’re dreaming son. Try at least a billion per km and 10 billion for hilly bits.
The Californian VFT to nowhere and the Pommy magically shrinking VFT are examples. And even worse when unions and holy Voice owners get started.
The Suburban Rail Loop in Melbourne has already blown out to at least $200 billion, and that’s for 60 km. Even the lefty MSM is saying the wretched white elephant should be cancelled.
The Suburban Rail Loop is a money sink. Time to bite the bullet and cancel it (Phage, 5 Nov, paywalled)
Perhaps you should have a look at the family reunion rules and how long it takes to get a visa for aged parents.
My grandparents waited six years for a parent visa. Today, they’d wait up to 50
He said it was “pleasing to hear Infrastructure Australia is looking beyond BCR”, a reference to cost-to-benefit ratios that compare benefits from projects to their cost.
If that was an old map, hes pointing to the bit marked “here there be dragons” approvingly.
The only real threat to the US comes from within, and the lunatics in power that strive to destroy all the good that the US has stood for since it’s founding.
Victims of a dead-end religion — Too anxious about climate to have children
By Jo Nova
Written just in time for the UN Climate junket, Anna Lee, 21, declares she’s too worried about climate change to have children.
In the past these declarations have been a part of a Doomer fashion show where people who probably wouldn’t have had children anyway brag about how saintly they are for not having them. They wear their childlessness as a badge of glory.
But Anna Lee’s declaration sounds more like a cry for help from someone raised on a climate fantasy. She doesn’t feel she can offer her children a future, perhaps because she doesn’t have one herself. She has, after all, been raised by the village on a dead-end religion.
The world will only be saved if impossible things happen. Storms, fires and floods can be stopped with whirly-gigs and magical silicon carpets, don’t you know? The solution is so obvious, and it’s cheap and free too, but people in our tribe are too stupid and greedy to do it. Imagine what a depressing message that would be — born into a craven mob of colonizing lemmings who didn’t do anything good like ending slavery, inventing antibiotics or walking on the moon. Losers…
Some subset of Gen Z have been turned into perpetual climate alarm machine.
On the other hand, there’s also an activist element here. News editors are milking youthful angst to help the UN agenda. And Greenpeace are holding the next generation hostage unless they get their way on climate change.
The Greenpeace plan, called “No Future, No Children” aimed to get teenagers to pledge not to have children unless the government fixed the weather, or helped oligarchs get very rich, or something like that.
Thankfully I don’t think their 2019 plan caught on. The webpage CNN links to is now a shipping container company. But what could go wrong with coercing adolescents into making pledges they may later regret?
Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
– Edmund Burke
More than you’d expect.
I’ve dealt more or less weekly with that Dept for about 15 years. In that time I’ve never* dealt with an Australian accent, or an Anglo-Saxon name, in fact, never even with anybody whose ancestry would be north of the Alps or from where blue-eyed people may be found.
* With one exception: Two presumably anglo-saxons** were sent to audit me when the department “received a report” that I was underpaying, psychologically & physically abusing, and restricting the freedoms (locking them in the building & prohibiting any socialising) of sponsored visa workers.
**Presumably anglo-saxon, as the departmental staff never provide a name. All departmental literature, name tags, business cards, etc, contain only a first name.
The good news about the terror hospital is that it appears hostages have been moved.
Still some hope.
Dot, people with ASD can learn to use their deficits to economic and even sometimes social advantage. It’s not all bad, and it is now believed by investigators (I hesitate to say ‘experts’) that many clever and creative people were/are ‘on the Spectrum’. Evolutionary theorists are now investigating whether autism forms part of our evolutionary apparatus of mind, only going awry in some people.
A stable background and family counts for a lot in how ASD people cope and can thrive. One of my two granddaughters has elements of ASD (in my viewing anyway) but my daughter is an excellent firm but compassionate mother, in a solid marriage, financially secure, and holding the reins on each of her children according to their personalities and needs (far better at this than I was, I think looking back, but times have changed too and I certainly don’t want to get into retailing the mother as prime cause or cure in ASD as happened in the past with schizophrenia – the schizophrenogenic mother).
This granddaughter is aceing school and while she has a few oddities she is on a big upward trajectory in life. My fear is that the gender benders might get at her (she’s still only eight and a total tomboy in contrast to her gracefully feminine sister), but Hairy thinks my daughter’s mothering would be well able to fend off that.
Humans are complex beings, and if you’ve met one autist, as the saying goes, then you’ve met one autist. Autism has a multipolar expression. Thus recognising it early as a syndrome of symptoms and providing a structure for adjustment and coping is very important. It doesn’t all have to be done through the NDIS, especially for the milder levels. At the less mild levels, it is a serious disability. For milder cases, ASD certainly defines aspects of personality and can explain types of achievement as well as inexplicable failures.
Comprehending autism is just another block in the tower of understanding the human mind, characters, inclinations and personalities. The loss of stable families is just about the worst thing that can happen to ASD people. They become prey to ideologies of complaint and opposition, where they are very unlikely to find happiness.
Gallant: Tonight – the world got to see what we have known for years
Defense Minister on revelation that Hamas held hostages underneath a Gaza hospital: We will continue operating against Hamas – the ISIS of Gaza.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday evening commented on the IDF’s revelation that Hamas held hostages under a hospital in the Gaza Strip.
“Tonight – the world got to see what we have known for years. The Hamas terrorist organization has cynically built a terror base underneath the ‘Rantisi’ hospital in Gaza, just as it does in additional hospitals and civilian institutions,” Gallant said.
“IDF troops revealed a Hamas command center underneath the hospital. Instead of finding medical equipment, they found ammunition, explosives, and clear signs that Israeli hostages had been held there – including babies,” he added.
“We will continue operating against Hamas – the ISIS of Gaza, and we will ensure that no terror base will be left untouched across Gaza. Any civilians located near such terror hotspots may be in danger and we call on them to evacuate to the safe zone in the southern region of Gaza,” the Defense Minister stressed.
Voice owners?
Maaaate, need a new Prado. I have a feeling a songline runs through this ultramafic rock.
I will own nothing and the trustee corporation will be happy!
I am OK with the Pom ban.
They haven’t sent us their best in the past.
Hi Wodney!
If these people can live normal lives and be extraordinarily productive they should be left alone.
There’s nothing to cure. They’re just different.
I am sorry but this as a social issue is split along gender lines. Men as a whole can accept differences. Women as a group demand conformity.
Sending young boys to female psychologists when they have no real problem at all is incredibly damaging.
Controlling debt is just a means — it is not a government’s end
An excessively narrow focus on deficits can lead to bad decisions
MARTIN WOLF
What should fiscal policy target? A debate has recently emerged over the merits of focusing on debt and deficits, as now, or a broader measure of public sector net worth, which includes assets and liabilities. So, which is superior? It depends on the question.
In its latest Green Budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies examines these alternatives and concludes that “the benefits of moving to balance sheet targeting would likely be insufficient to justify the potential costs involved”. Making this the sole target of fiscal policy might be foolish. But so is focusing solely on debt sustainability. Government is a complex activity. Simple targets are dangerous.
A necessary condition for successful government is to avoid a fiscal crisis. For this reason, it makes sense to assess sustainability. Yet even here it is essential to look beyond debt and deficits. Assets matter, too. It is vital to know what they are, not least because better management could improve government income, either directly or via higher tax revenues. This is one of the points made in a forthcoming book, Public Net Worth — Accounting, Government and Democracy, by Ian Ball and several co-authors.
As the IFS itself admits, a focus on deficits and debt can lead to bad decisions. In the UK it led, for example, to selling off the student loan book, merely to lower reported debt, even though the value of the loan book to the government was higher than to private buyers.
It led to the mistaken decision to slash public investment after the financial crisis, despite exceptionally low long-term interest rates. It justified the private finance initiative, which replaced visible debt service obligations with invisible (and costlier) future spending.
Some argue that the focus on net debt and deficits forces the government to concentrate on something vital. But too often it has just found costlier ways around its own rules.
When it cannot do that, it changes them: according to the Institute for Government, the UK has had nine sets of fiscal rules and 26 specific rules since 1997. This is a joke.
Yet there is a far bigger point, which the IFS ignores. Yes, the government needs to survive financially. I agree.
But that is just a means. It is not a government’s end.
That is to govern well and so help create a more prosperous society. In order to do this, it has to pay close attention to its own balance sheet as well as that of the country.
Government is a steward.
As Oxford’s Sir Dieter Helm argues in his new book Legacy, it should protect and develop a country’s natural capital, alongside its physical and human capital.
Underinvesting, as both the state and the UK as a whole have been doing for far too long, is terrible stewardship.
To do its job properly, the government — the country’s most complex, largest and most enduring organisation — needs at the very least the information a private company would possess and publish about its own financial position. In 2021, for example (according to the IMF), the UK public sector’s net worth was minus 96 per cent of gross domestic product.
In the G7, only Italy’s was worse. Surprisingly, Japan’s latest figure (for 2020) was far better, at only minus 16 per cent. The IFS suggests, rightly, that such figures can mislead. But so can a narrow focus on debt and deficits alone.
We should be discussing public sector net worth and the national balance sheet, along with debt sustainability. If we did this, we would necessarily discuss many, though not all, of the important political choices. Moreover, we would be doing so quite naturally, as we would be trying to measure reality.
The invention of modern accounting is among the most important advances in human history. Without it, today’s complex economies would be impossible. Its application to national income has immeasurably improved our understanding of economies, too.
But we persistently refuse to focus on what such accounts tell us about our governments.
We concentrate instead only on the question of whether it is on a path to default. Our ambitions must surely be greater than that. Moreover, even if one focuses only on sustainability, non-debt liabilities — such as public sector pensions — cannot be ignored. These, too, must be included.
In the foreword to Public Net Worth, I argue that “if something is to count, it must first be counted”. Moreover, “it is always far better to be roughly right than to be precisely wrong. Ignoring reality because it is hard to take everything into account, is a big mistake.”
Instead of trusting simple rules that embarrassed governments then change, we must confront reality.
Governments do need to survive. But they must also do their job.
Without using fuller accounts, they will fail.
Yea. I’m gonna withdraw my super to buy blow and hookers and tell the ATO I am “looking beyond arms length and personal benefit rules”. I’m sure they’ll give me a fair go!
The more good people leave the state the worse it becomes as the remaining good people are fewer and fewer. This empowers the rogue state even further to reach new lows. I see no improvement in their future mainly due to the silent Libs and Pesutto who has no situational awareness or common sense. There is nobody who can lead or take up the citizens’ side.
guardian has linked the walk through of rantisi hospital but of course unlike hamas propaganda it ‘cannot be independently verified’.
Britain, if not quite there yet, certainly does show signs of being finished. A woke monarchy. Apologies and embarrassment about statues and the empire. The sense of national shame. The flood tide of illegals. Politicised policing. The Royal Shakespeare Theatre with every production featuring black actors who just cannot do the words justice. And, yesterday, a white politician fired for attacking Palestinian protestors.
If you Johanna can find any evidence for optimism about Britain I would love to read it.
I’m all for treating them with dignity untill they became violent. Tokenistic gestures are selfish they don’t consider others who do not want to give into extortion or are having a bad time themselves with harassment adding to it.
Sue Braverman is not white, she’s been replaced by a pale stale male though.
Why do media people keep saying Ramaswamy “attacked” Haley’s daughter for being on Tik Tok?
Haley had a go at him for being on Tik Tok, and he replied that it was his way of reaching young people “like your daughter” who has a Tik Tok account.
Hardly an attack on the daughter, more of a revelation of Haley’s poor choice of item with which to try and attack Ramaswamy.
nope not white because it’s not David Cameron but James Cleverly
I hope Nikki Haley finds what she’s looking for.
If they still exist which I doubt.
Othello must have gotten a run longer than Cats or Phantom.
I think they would have been killed under Rantisi if that were the case. Hamas leadership still need bargaining chips.
Decisions have consequences…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/14/sonya-was-told-her-rapist-would-never-be-free-then-a-high-court-decision-saw-him-released-into-the-brisbane-community
When the man who raped Sonya at her work was released on parole, she was told he would “never be free in Australia” as he would be held indefinitely in immigration detention.
But on Saturday Queensland police called Sonya, telling her that her rapist, Mohammad Rafiq, would be released after the high court’s landmark decision last week that it is unlawful to hold those with no realistic prospect of deportation.
“They have been released into Brisbane city … I don’t think I’m fully safe, knowing that he is somewhere, I don’t know where,” said Sonya, who asked not to use her real name.
The immigration minister, Andrew Giles, revealed on Monday that 80 people have so far been released from immigration detention since the high court’s ruling on Wednesday. The plaintiff in that case, a stateless Rohingya man who raped a 10-year old boy, was released immediately.
…
“Free teh refugees” is all fun and games till someone cops it up the pooper.
On the subject of TikTok:
I am still waiting for the clips of Palestinian frontline hero nurses encouraging people to stay home through the medium of poorly-choreographed dance.
Cameron doesn’t exactly have a history of achievements, Brexit doesn’t count as he really tried to make it fail.
How the woke agenda prepared the ground for the public to accept dystopian covid restrictions
The Palestinian-Australian owner of a popular Melbourne burger chain says he has moved his wife and young child into a safe house after receiving a threat on his life over social media. #ABC730
…why is a grown-up, a man, on “social media” anyway? And what the farouk is a “Palestinian-Australian”?
Arse goblin emerges and surveys the consequences of its own parties decades long deliberate actions…
Shorten: ‘We shouldn’t be importing a conflict somewhere else into our own streets’
Asked about the Australian protests on the Israel-Hamas war, Bill Shorten says:
I respect that people have a point of view and a deeply held point of view. And I recognise I too share the distress of all the scenes from October 7 on and Gaza. But I think as community leaders in Australia, we’ve got to dial it down a bit.
I actually think that we shouldn’t be importing a conflict somewhere else into our own streets.
I think the bullying in the Caulfield neighbourhood by those youths of the other point of view, I just thought that was just the wrong message.
What we want in this country is cohesion.
I think Australians look at these scenes, these are Australians who might not know much about the Middle East, and they’re bewildered and we certainly don’t want to import those arguments here.
I really don’t see what Cameron is expected to do that Braverman couldn’t. If he wants to do the right thing by his country and his people he will have to follow her example. Boris didn’t do enough damage that it requires another failed politician to finish the job?
I’m not sure being PM for six years counts as a “failed politician”.
Maybe they need Theresa May!
Then stop importing the shitholers, you fkg fraud.
Cameron is not replacing Braverman.
We got cohesion by the bucketload during Da Coof.
I’m not sold on it.
I will settle for the King’s Peace not being breached.
The sacking of Suella Braverman for being too conservative is another indication that the UK is too far gone to be fixed up by a conga line of PMs like Sushi Rinak.
Big change to let Qantas Frequent Flyer points be transferred after death
Qantas has announced a big change to Frequent Flyer points after an old policy copped heavy criticism.
Qantas will allow Frequent Flyer points to be inherited, scrapping a longstanding policy that meant members’ points were cancelled after their death.
The airline copped criticism for its hard-line policy in which members’ accounts were terminated and all points forfeited unless they were transferred before a person’s death.
The policy was particularly troublesome for couples and families who accrued points together with a single Frequent Flyer account, meaning grieving loved ones lost access to points they had helped to earn.
But now, new CEO Vanessa Hudson, who is on an apology tour after the disastrous final months of Alan Joyce’s leadership, has announced that policy has changed.
A family member can now make an application to have a deceased Frequent Flyer’s unexpired points transferred into their own account, the airline announced.
The application must be made in writing within 12 months of the person’s death by an executor or administrator of their estate. Proof of death must be supplied.
The points will take on the same expiry date as the other points in the recipient family member’s account. The deceased member’s account will then be closed.
Status credits — which count towards reaching and keeping your Qantas Frequent Flyer status and the privileges that come with it — still cannot be transferred. That means they will be lost when a member is confirmed dead.
The move brings Qantas in line with its rival Virgin Australia, which allows Velocity points to be inherited by a loved one but only if the transfer is stipulated in a person’s will.
Who can inherit Qantas points?
Qantas defines an “eligible family member” as someone who “can demonstrate to reasonable satisfaction” that they are any of the following:
Husband or wife
Parent or step-parent
Domestic or de facto partner
Child, including foster or stepchild
Brother or sister
Half brother or half sister
Grandparent
Grandchild
Daughter-in-law or son-in-law
Brother-in-law or sister-in-law
Father-in-law or mother-in-law
Aunt or uncle
Nephew or niece
First cousin
What else is Qantas changing?
Ms Hudson has promised a review of all of Qantas’ customer policies to “make sure they’re fair”.
The changes she’s promised to make include better contact centre resourcing and training, an increase in the number of seats that can be purchased with Frequent Flyer points, more generous recovery support during operational issues and improvements to in-flight catering.
Cassie I cannot imagine what it would be like to have grown up under the shadow of the Holocaust, where about everyone you know is a survivor, or the child of a survivor living with such extraordinary loss in such appalling circumstances and now to witness what happened on 7 October and the subsequent celebration quickly followed by outright denial that it even happened and demands by a group that number 1.9 billion to be the real victims.
Despite Hamas’s best efforts and Yemen, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah Israel is defending herself and taking Gaza street by street. Getting access to rantisi is a prime example.
Shorten can’t even bring himself to identify the bullies and their targets. That is tantamount to denying the existence of the victims of the bullying, namely the Jews.
The bullies make sure they are identified by the myriad flags being waved in everyone’s faces. Is Shorten’s reluctance due to so many of non-Muslim middle class children and their parents, Labor voters, who are joining in the bullying?
Propaganda works.
Pro-Terror Teenagers Admit They Learned to Hate Israel on China’s TikTok, Zuckerberg’s Instagram (12 Nov)
Betcha there aren’t many pro-Uighur videos on TikTok and Instagram.
Here’s the thing regarding that court decision.
Parole should be a judicial matter to make it justiciable.
The character test should be a prerogative power vested in the Immigration Minister or PM or their delegate and non justiciable.
All of the bad things from that High Court decision go away.
Oh no, said Laura Norder politicians. Parole should be about muh communidee standards.
Oh no said immigration populists. If we make the Minister responsible we can’t go to successive elections over the same issue.
Of course the High Court is going to do backflips on justiciable matters, but making them eat their own words is a good thing.
If the issues are forced the penny will drop regarding recall elections in the least (and hopefully CIR and in the distant future, sortition).
Gilas, just saw your comment upthread. Thank you for your understanding. It can sometimes seem to outsiders who haven’t experienced an ASD child personally or in their family that people ‘go on’ too much about ASD. To some extent, that may be so, but every family affected has to find out about it, and sharing the info can help. Of course, the Cat can’t become just a site for moaning, but I don’t think it’s come to that yet.
The Patriarchy wins again.
Against claims Penny Wong was running out of fuel, PM Netanyahu stated that Israel had offered Penny Wong more fuel and she refused it on principle.
IDF – DO NOT STOP. Rid yourselves of the Hamas beast now while you can.
Outrageous outrage, the Western left’s specialty, is soon forgotten. Palestine is the cri du jour but the IDF job is to make Israel prevail. Stick to that target.
cassie,
as has been mentioned by some commenters on the blog
Why not does the Israel Embassy here in Australia take Full Page Ads in the Sunday papers here in OZ, using the horrific scenes of Hamas Barbarity?
I sent an email with the images from the UN Ambassador QR Code of the 1 page left on UN Ireland desk, to Israel Embassy in Canberra and suggested the above.
I would be happy to conribute to the cost, to show the Babarity of Muslim Gazan Palestinian Hamas to the Australian People especially the Labor Party, Greens & TEALS.
Fast rail idea.
Simply not a big enough population to make it viable.
Comparisons to UK, Japan, Europe etc are a joke when thinking about low population and long distances in Australia..
I expect Zuckerberg is Jewish yet he doesn’t seem to be concerned at what is happening to other Jews in his country. Granted it has not been proven yet that he is a human and not just an AI program.
Of course there is nothing to ‘cure’, but there is something to assist. Leaving ADS people to flounder is unkind and poor policy when small adjustments can improve lives and functioning.
I take your point re feminization of the ADD component, trying to change the natural testosterone-driven nature of young boys by over-defining ADD. That should cease, and boys allowed to be boys. The issue is societal and not just re ADD or ASD.
I sent my older son to a male neuro-psychologist. There should be more of them, and more men in primary and secondary school teaching, in medicine, in counselling and in the management of male sports. Men relate better to other men, and differently to women; that’s in their genes.
I suspect that the ads may be refused.
Zuck will be one of the 70% of Jews in the US who identify as Demorat.
Interesting.
Yesterday a Pally-loon rang Nanny Neil Mitchell blathering on about the “terror attack” on the Burgertory shop.
Mitchell asked him if he had heard what Plod had said on the matter. He then went on to say that Plod were sure it had nothing to do with politics and … “arrests are expected soon”.
I think the self-immolation theory might be on the money.
Dot
Nov 14, 2023 8:39 AM
Dot
Nov 14, 2023 8:39 AM
Dot, sometimes you are clear as sunlight, bright as a button and to the point of the matter.
This is one of those times, WD
A threat? One?
Not to make light of the gravity of threatening people you would think that one threat would be something easily dealt with by police – the VikPlod cybermen get the IP address, identify the culprit, then bundle a dozen black-clad Special Tactical Secret Commando Goon Squad members armed to the teeth in the Special Tactical Secret Commando Goon Vehicle and you’re off to the races.
Mind you, over the last decade or so the word ‘threat’ has become a catch all for a whole gamut of communications from expressions of disapproval to actual threats. (I recall a few years ago some climate wonks at a university who had publicly embarrassed themselves complained about the threats they had received to cloak themselves with victimhood. Turned out the threats were not threats, but expressions of disgust and even some of what ought to happen to them – but none stating that anyone was going to do anything.)
I wonder if the ‘threat’ was not really a threat and the police said it was not sufficient to warrant a police response.
Drama Queening. It’s in their Pallie DNA.
The US now needs this, like all 3rd world countries.
Imagine a Korean soap opera written by a pallie without intolerance to death gluten, directed by a flamboyantly homosexual Indian bloke.
Gibrail Khan it won’t be.
Democracy is not the natural default position anywhere – it is a rare and fragile state that arises only among intelligent, hard working, decent (dare I say ‘god fearing’) people.
It cannot be transplanted to countries with average national IQs much below a hundred, and if you try, you fail. It always requires massive outside effort to maintain it, and it goes away when you stop that. This simple fact could have told us that invading Iraq and Afghanistan was all very well, but the nation building afterpiece (aka bringing them democracy) would fail and should not be attempted.
Mass immigration from low IQ countries, and the dysgenic effects of welfare on the domestic population, has now weakened most Western countries, Australia included, to the point where we also are losing our ability to sustain democracy.
Don’t let this dose of salts hurt you, Cassie.
If I was Dutch, btw, I’d be keeping quiet about being ‘known for one thing’, because it wasn’t a stiff upper lip, it was turning Jews in to the Gestapo.
My worst memory of the Dutch was a Schiphol Airport on the nite that Bush unleashed Desert Storm on Iraq in the First Gulf War. Our plane had been turned around. Thus, with our planeload of passengers chucked off to get a KLM provided buses to the airport hotel at 2am, we struggled with our luggage and two sleepy little children, also assisting two old ladies with their luggage. Able bodied people sped by us to catch the first buses. There was no organisation and no pity. No-one helped us, while KLM staff stood around looking. I gestured to the old ladies and asked one of them to assist, and the KLM bitch responded ‘don’t you know there’s a war on’. Well yes, we did know. So did they, and they were true to past form, as Hairy noted.
Sigh!
You mean controlled by big business and bad for you?
Let alone their sanity, laden as it no doubt would have been with pallyweird hamburger shop incinerating peoples of the Hebrew persuasion. Enough to make you reminisce about one the great moments in Ozzie televisual history, that legendary contretemps between Jackie Jacqui Lambie and the beturbaned diversity engineer on the subject of that most feminist of all religions …
Slow food at mass scale is impossible without mass deurbanisation. People can support food production methods they like if they are aware of the issues. We have an agricultural surplus. The problem is forcing producers to do X. We know that never works without significant pain.
Raised the Israel situation in Sydney at coffee this morning. The woman friend is intelligent, fair minded person. I told her 7/10 had broken my heart. She confessed she had not seen the corroborative photographs. Deep breath. I said I had & mustering the greatest eloquence I could, I explained my distress. The one good thing is that she could not deny what I said. If nothing else, it made her think.
By far the best contribution on the subject of autism was Delta A.
In that case, meet you with your Israeli flags at Lakemba Mosque next Friday, Cats?
And suddenly, all the birds disappeared and were quiet – their chatter replaced by ominous intonations of deep, concussive thunder in the middle distance.
This is going to be a ‘remember where you were and what you were doing when X happened?’ moment.
Corrie Ten Boom is one of many Dutch who assisted Jews to escape from the Nazis, it was Dutch who hid and fed Anne Frank and family too.
I had a similar experience at dance class yesterday morning, Vicki. Woman was bemoaning the terrible state of the world, mentioning babies in humidicribs being a ‘crying shame’. Yes, like babies roasting in ovens while raping their mothers, I countered, that upsets me too, more so in fact, because Israel is doing whatever it can to keep those Palestianian babies and their mums from harm’s way while Hamas uses them as human shields. I then suggested that this lady view some of the 7/10 attack videos. She knew nothing of those. My husband seems to support Israel, she says thoughtfully.
Pure media-led doctor’s wife there, says Hairy when I tell him.
Yes. Delta has made a study of autism (rather as I have been forced to do, though not for any publication or scientific journal).
It’s not a competition, Rosie.
LOL!
From Anne Frank website
Three quarters of the Dutch Jews were murdered during the Second World War. In other Western European countries such as Belgium and France, these percentages were much lower. Read here what caused the differences.
Dot – Pitch the project to Disney, they’ll give you $300 million.
I’m enjoying the sheer disaster which is the latest Disney movie.
Marvel-ous Bomb: Disney’s Latest Social Engineering Attempt Is Box Office Flop (14 Nov)
Nolte: Disney’s ‘The Marvels’ Bombed All over Planet Earth (12 Nov)
Women Failed to Show Up for Grrrl Power Flick (12 Nov, Breitbart mainpage headline)
The fun thing about the ‘were are all the muslims’ question is that the first muslim superhero is female, doesn’t wear a hijab let alone a burqa, and goes out and about saving the world without a male chaperone. Of course no muslim would go see it. The movie will probably be banned in Islam majority countries because Miss Muslim is all too racy and independent-minded for their political comfort.
Old Ozzie – the idea of front page photographs of the atrocities is the way to go – but for reasons you mention, I can’t see it occurring. Even so – horrific descriptions have been written up in newspapers. But many people will simply not digest them. I encounter this all the time. I think – blast them – I am going to describe it till they walk away.
Did previous generations do this with Holocaust footage? No – so why now? I have been to Auschwitz & Dachau – & there were many internationals sombrely seeing the evidence.
My view is that current westerners are blighted by this “support the weaker cause” syndrome. They just can’t, or won’t, distinguish between the efficacy of different claims.
Gave you an uptick there, KD. For creative hyperbole.
lol.
the Netherlands also has a relatively high number of ‘righteous amongst nations’
It isn’t always about you Lizzie, I was just surprised that Delta didn’t make Gilas’s honour role.
Yes. They are ahistorical and have no idea of the history behind the creation of Israel and the search for a two-state solution that was thwarted from the start by the wider context of Islamic ideas of dar-al-Islam, the ‘abode of war’, compared to lands in Islamic hands which are ‘the abode of peace’. That claim says it all really.
and be ready to “chant some anti-racism chants”, Lizzie
There might be some ‘road raging ragheads ready to throw some anti-violence punches, and some coppers there standimg on the far side of the action, armed and ready to file some anti-escalation incident reports
They have no idea about History at all, unless it pertains to woke versions of the brown skin colonization evils that must be righted because we fell soooo guilty.
I’ve never said it was, Rosie. I leave that to others to say. They are wrong. As you know yourself, there is a lot of resentment here of forthright females.
Gilas and I have met personally, so perhaps I was more front of mind to him due to that.
As a scholarly sort of chap himself, I am sure he would appreciate Delta’s scholarly knowledge and contribution. As a scholarly chick myself, I do too.
And you think the stoush between the Pallies and Israel is deep seated and long standing.
Bullshit.
It is only when “forthright” is riding in tandem with “ignorant”.
I’ve commented on this before; the only version of History taught in our curriculum is that which is designed to impress guilt upon our kids. breeding activists by the time they leave school. Ditto for the climate hoax, indigenies etc.
The purpose of our Marxism infested ed system is to breed leftist activists.
Israel’s New Weapon for the Ham-Arse Tunnels – The SPONGE BOMB –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6UufPc87wY
There. That should do it.
How convenient, she hasn’t seen the evidence therefore it didn’t happen. So much for claiming to be well informed, people like your friend are simply hand-fed by the media, no effort required on their part.
Jason Soon started Catallaxy and during his time it was libertarian oriented. And like Jason, I am “sick of politics”. Modern politics is bankrupt but people continue believing that the existing structures can be redeemed. Politics is not my thing and I’m not going to educate myself in that field. I’ve done enough learning and I’m sick of that too. At this point in my life I’d rather be a pair or ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas or a Taoist monk traversing the mountains and avoiding the entrapments of civilization. I’ve long stopped reading in my usual way, at best a few hours a day now which is too much. I don’t think anymore, just spitting out what I have accumulated. Short term memory is failing but the creatine helps.
The kick in the ass comment had nothing to do with the current mess over there and was the simple observation that time and again I have deliberately crossed the line just to watch some people go ballistic on me. Sure there is no groupthink here … .