Needed edit so read the second version. Apologies.
Open Thread – Mon 13 Nov 2023
- The more you gets the less you eats
- Open Thread – Weekend 23 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 21 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 18 Nov 2024
- From darkness to the promise of light
I would also offer that for those of a political socialist/Marxist persuasion the climate change/ renewable energy boondoggle offered the…
It was never about saving the planet, it was always about destruction of the West. For those of a socialist…
Last time I went through Thangool both pubs looked dead. Top bit of Burnett Hwy coming off the higher country…
Someone tell us again this is about Israel. https://news.sky.com/story/body-of-missing-rabbi-zvi-kogan-found-in-uae-as-israeli-pm-says-he-was-murdered-in-antisemitic-terror-incident-13259720
Can’t say Nietsche didn’t have some humour and sark in addition to his heavier stuff.
Something I just can’t get my head around here…
Salmon farming is huge. As in gigantically, mind bogglingly huge. Double plus good.
Oil production is also huge and produces amazing benefits for the economy. Also double plus good.
Tasmanian salmon farming – double minus bad.
Coal mining for domestic and export – double minus bad.
What the hell did Aussies do to deserve this sh*t?
What heavier stuff? He was a moron.
Man’s prime motivation is not domination. It’s the motivation to survive.
A continent with 25 million people. Generally good weather and when something goes wrong something else turns up to get us out of trouble.
One of the Fauda crew has been killed in action. I’d be only pretending to say that when the IDF reported the casualties a day or so ago, that I remembered the name from seeing it in the credits.
And a prime example of why I sometimes detest the home country. Something good, something really great turns up like salmon farming in a small state that really needs a decent tailwind. Some of us then do our best to destroy it. It’s not for lack of ability. It’s the ability or desire to wreck other people’s success.
Those are our circumstances. I’m wondering about specifics.
All I see around me is unbelievable, barefaced environmental hypocrisy. Last night I had to listen to someone telling me that soon there would be more plastic in the oceans than fish. Seriously. And yes, it was a GenX chick.
Sancho Panzer
Nov 15, 2023 1:09 AM
Stfu! Dickhead.
—–
Dutch:
Earthquake Live Stream – Past 48hrs up to current</a?
And then what impulse follows survival? See above for Big N’s view on what gets us out of bed.
Iceland gubment has done a full family tree on the place, to avoid inbreeding. Eventually it must become in inbred.
It’s very calm and quiet here on the late shift. I like it.
I’m hoping Cassie read my attempt at encouragement earlier today. Don’t want to use the blog when email or sms would suffice but don’t have that option. Also, this is Dover’s blog, not WeChat.
I find it interesting how events in Israel have completely obliterated the Ukraine story. The media has passed from poor little Ukraine to poor little Palestine in a deft sweep of a dismissive hand. It is illustrative of how shallow and opportunistic they are.
Happiness and satisfaction, I think. Humans aren’t a pack of dogs battling for pecking order 24/7.
The fact that you ask what follows the instinct of survival suggests that you also disagree with his dominance theory.
If dominance was the important factor, the top UFC fighter would be running things instead of geeks like Musk.
Gen X blokes into that tripe are few and far between.
Nah, I’m agreeing with both of youse. Physical survival is the 1st test of power for an individual.Then follows struggle for resources, relationships, recognition against others.
And since we are a bit more advanced than dueling animals in a cage, we can compete based on more than just strength or speed.
It’s a really interesting question.
Once “survival” is reached – the elements, other aggressive humans, finding a mate and reproducing…
Philosophy and physics (problem solving)? Agriculture, husbandry, building?
Without getting into the weeds vis a vis social chess theory and human encephalization since habilis as both Petersen and Sapolsky have observed in primate groups it isn’t the physically superior chimps that maintain power but the co-operators. Petersen states that when a chimp does achieve leadership by violence their reign is short lived and comes to a violent end. There are mountain ranges of fascinating material on these aspects of primate behavior. We have, perhaps, transcended the evolutionary imperatives that dominate other species, a point Edelman makes in yet another failed attempt to explain consciousness.
Don’t rely on evolutionary psychology to understand human behavior. EP is a steaming pile of shite.
“I’m not signing Australian lawyers’ open letter concerning Gaza”
A 9-page letter – including 89 footnotes – requesting Australia use its influence to secure a ceasefire in Gaza is missing basic facts.
Indeed it is, Calli.
A song for end of day and I’m off.
I’m not saying the need to compete isn’t a
motivator, but not the prime one as he suggested.
I don’t think Musk’s motivation isn’t to compete as much as it is to accomplish. The Twitter purchase was something he wanted to give back to the world by making speech freer. It was a sense of altruism in its purest form.
Look, I see that in my trading. A winning trade doesn’t give me any sense that I beat others to the punch. It offers a sense of accomplishing something and nothing to do with others.
Man doesn’t rearrange his environment to simply to dominate it. He does it to survive and to accomplish something. This is something the Nietzsche dude didn’t understand.
I don’t. humans are bit more complex than EP suggests.
Lawyers! Gotta love ‘em!
Just don’t let them anywhere near heavy machinery. Including, but not limited to, things that fire bullets and are in any way useful to actually keeping people alive.
And just when you need him most, John H shows up to clear the air.
Ah yes.
I watched a really good movie on the plane.
Blackberry, about the meteoric rise and fall of the BlackBerry. The interaction between the alpha-male CEO they brought in and the founders was a great story. At the end of the day the alpha male did some good but it eventually went pear shaped. It was the geeks who really created everything.
And if you’re wondering about my use of “people”, that is in terms of those rough men who guard us as we sleep.
On Oct 7, the perpetrators of that indescribable crime forfeited their claim to humanity. Unrepentant, they are targets.
And here lies the big problem. They say the population is 3 million with half being kids. They’ve weaponised the kids and turning them into killers. That’s a hell of a lot of future adults with mass murdering tendencies.
JC
Nov 15, 2023 2:17 AM
I think it was Golda Meir who got it right, about the moslems and children.
John Spooner (Haha — “Genocide for peace”).
Mark Knight.
Mark Knight #2.
Peter Broelman.
David Pope.
Christian Adams.
Michael Ramirez. Brilliant.
A.F. Branco.
Matt Margolis.
Tom Stiglich.
Chip Bok.
Al Goodwyn.
Henry Payne.
Ben Garrison.
Thanks Tom.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
– Plato
OKAY TONY, SO WHAT’S YOUR NEXT BRIGHT IDEA?
“He’s managed to divide the country in a manner never seen before in Australia’s history but you can guarantee that our illustrious leader, PM Tony Albanese, has many more bright ideas in store for us.
The mess he is making of industrial relations and the economy in general will be ongoing, as you’d expect from a socialist government. But then there’s climate change that he and his little mate Chris ‘Blackouts’ Bowen still have much to work on.
Their obsessive rush to turn Australia into an energy-starved third world nation will undoubtedly continue. And if you want to see how that might well turn out, study the result of socialism in the once rich nation of Venezuela.
A recent article in Time Magazine summed it up well when it stated the following:
“Venezuela was once Latin America’s exemplar: home to Simón Bolívar, who freed much of the continent from Spanish rule. Now, after years of political mismanagement and months in economic free fall, it is the region’s cautionary tale.
“The bolivar, the currency named for the Liberator himself, is now carried in backpacks instead of wallets; one unit is worth less than a penny. While production plummets, crime soars. Fights frequently break out in food lines.
“The number of murders last year ranged between 17,000 and 28,000. No one knows the exact tally, but regardless it would put the nation’s murder rate among the world’s highest, driven by a lethal mix of street gangs, drug cartels, leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries jostling for power.
“Even animals are dying: some 50 zoo animals have starved to death over the past six months because there’s not enough food.”
Keep in mind that Venezuela was once a rich country like Australia with massive oil reserves and a successful, thriving population. And then along came socialism with all the centralised decision-making and consequent incompetence that comes with it.
We’re obviously a long way from that situation – but we’re certainly on the same path as a result of this government’s unbelievably expensive and totally unnecessary climate change policies that are already causing a huge increase in energy costs.
Australia produces just over 1% of global CO2 emissions, so nothing we do as a nation could have any measurable effect on global warming. Climate experts from both ends of the political spectrum agree on this but nothing penetrates the thick skulls of morons like Albanese, Bowen and the Teals.
They just continue with their insane march towards energy shortages, blackouts and consequent social and economic disruption – just as Venezuela and other countries have experienced with left-wing governments”.
https://saltbushclub.com/2023/10/16/tony-whats-your-next-bright-idea/#more-2596
Governments should look after defense, basic universal health, very basic welfare, water and electricity.
Sorry, leaving the electricity supply in private hands will not guarantee it. No amount of legislation will prevent them from going broke or to overcharge if they have a monopoly.
Sure unions can cause havoc, but they are easier to deal with if there is a will.
Something I just can’t get my head around here…
Salmon farming is huge. As in gigantically, mind bogglingly huge. Double plus good.
Oil production is also huge and produces amazing benefits for the economy. Also double plus good.
Tasmanian salmon farming – double minus bad.
Coal mining for domestic and export – double minus bad.
What the hell did Aussies do to deserve this sh*t?
good question- marxist wreckers infiltrating key positions in government plus too many lawyers
Sorry, leaving the electricity supply in private hands will not guarantee it.
yes that’s pretty much why they formed the Electricity Commission in NSW in the 50s.
Anal’s certainly excelled in proving it’s possible to even worse than RGR and Trumble.
cnn journalist gets a look at rantisi hospital hamas nest
The Beeb continues to say “unverified” about Israeli statements, but use Hamas statements with no qualifications, e.g. 11,000 deaths of Gaza civilians to date.
The interaction between the alpha-male CEO they brought in and the founders was a great story. At the end of the day the alpha male did some good but it eventually went pear shaped.
Fascinating how history is written about so-called corporate titans.
You need a nut job to get some of these landscape changing ideas going but then you need to hand it over to a non-nut job. And the sooner the better.
The best example is Steve Jobs.
Contrary to the movies & books (hagiographies), he wasn’t the creative genius for their real success, iPods, iPhones, iPads & most importantly the app store.
There was a team of engineers who would come up with ideas that Jobs would shit can initially.
Then a day, a week later Jobs would present the exact same idea, AS HIS OWN, then move forward on it.
Over the last few years these guys are talking more about, mainly on industry podcasts.
They don’t seem bitter, maybe because they are all minted via their stock.
Most go out of their way to say Tim Cook is 10x the ceo that Steve Jobs was.
“The World Bank estimates that the mining of the critical minerals necessary for implementation of the transition will need to increase by more than 1000 per cent, because so-called “green” technologies are significantly more material-intensive, and require a very different mix of critical minerals, than technologies in the current energy mix. It is not that the materials required do not exist, it is just that the exploration for, and development of, these critical minerals is just not happening—ironically largely because of the anti-mining sentiments of the very proponents of the Energy Transition! As one example, it is estimated that to achieve the targeted transition will require 450 megatonnes of copper over the next twenty-two years—equal to the total historical production of copper by humankind. And there are no signs of any substantial increase in copper exploration and production.”
Economic Euthanasia by David King, at Quadrant Online.
We live in an age of epic illusions.
Glögg. Beware. It is high octane ruination, heated up and served innocently in large (very large) paper cups. In cold weather it’s addictive.
I don’t want to imagine the hangover.
I’m beginning to warm to Norway.
Glögg
Sounds like a lesser known Warhammer warp god.
Also sounds like it causes a similar amount of havoc.
Days like today make the Oz worth the subscription.
Pity there are so few days like this.
Dover
What’s your opinion on Nietzsche and your thoughts and why the Nazis used his work?
TikTok operator ByteDance saw revenue surge more than 40% to $29 billion in the second quarter
Another example of Trump was right.
Now TikTok is too big to ban.
That sound you can hear is the CCP laughing.
The question the US media should be asking today is where were the San Fran homeless all stuffed?
BHP is devoting capital expenditure in Canada now. Even though Olympic dam is a bonanza, the economic costs and political risk is just too high. Think about it, even with Castro’s son running Canada, the relative risks and costs make it more attractive than oz.
Crazy isn’t it JC?
Energy security is an issue.
In Australia.
Bern
It’s hard to live with. We’re the largest exporter of coal in the world, in the top five gas exporters and we’re short of energy as well as having some of the costliest electricity prices in the world. You could have nightmares over this level of stupid.
They spent 12 months, 12 fcuking months just focused on a virtue signaling the invoice.
From the Oz reporting on Helena Carr’s funeral.
Former ALP politician turned broadcaster and party heavyweight Graham Richardson was there too. Richo and late stockbroker Rene Rivkin took Helena’s place alongside Eddie Obeid as an investor in the 1990s takeover of listed company Offset Alpine Printing, after Carr pulled out of the deal. The company had been owned by Kerry Packer.
I did not know Helena Carr was going to be part off the Offset Alpine scam.
I wonder where she got her funding?
Miltonf @ 5.06. The answer is in the the first 3 letters of his name. A towering intellectual? Luigi the Unbelievable aka ANT hony Albanese.
Look, I reckon they’re finished at the next election and so are some of these greenslime posing as independents (teals) in the richer electorates with Jewish voters. I wanna see them gone faster than light speed.
John Anderson has a new interview with Douglas Murray.
Italian hospital ships, Israeli incubators to Gazan hospitals.
Sure is some genocide the west is carrying out on the Pali’s.
https://twitter.com/Schizointel/status/1724453448958021672
https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1724238138288001241
It might not be a recent interview. Just a reposting of an old one.
And we thought the putrid hunchback was bad.
Oz
Douglas Murray on watching the footage of 7th of October.
I did not know Helena Carr was going to be part off the Offset Alpine scam.
I wonder where she got her funding?”
Curious isn’t it? NSW Labor under Bob Carr was a mine of dodginess.
Remember how Gladys lost her job because of a dodgy boyfriend? There were no such ICAC investigations under Cockroach Carr.
By the way, further to my statement yesterday morning about the UK being finished, I think Brendan O’Neill has described it well…
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/12/the-march-for-palestine-was-a-far-right-march/
PoliticsNow: Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan defends Melbourne students’ right to skip school for Palestine rally”
She’s worse than Dan….much worse.
The hamas apologists on the cnn report.
Conveniently forgetting the rantisi hamas nest is not accessible from the hospital proper.
Like aj jiz claiming the tunnel next to al qds hospital was access to a water cistern.
Suella Braverman MP
@SuellaBraverman
My letter to the Prime Minister
https://x.com/SuellaBraverman/status/1724465401982070914?s=20
the footage of Noa Marciano was of her dead body, may her memory be a blessing and hamas are scum.
Rita Panahi:
A bitch indeed Ms Panahi.
I suspect the golf courses along the Murray River, like Murray Downs, Tocumwal, Barooga, Albury and Yarrawonga would be reticent in having this bloke pollute their fairways.
To think he thought he could just transition to normal life after 10 years of turning Victoria into a world class laughing stock.
The left are weaponising children here and turning them into far-left progressive Jew hating zombies, supported by the far-left Labor premier of Victoria.
But don’t worry folks, I’ve got a grip.
What the hell have Aussies done to deserve this sh*t? I’ll type slowly so you understand as I’ve said it before, Australian voters are some of the dumbest in the world, just like every other country. Voting for some tossers like we have on both sides of the political spectrum though that now seems like a one sided coin. Telling us what they’re going to do after having failed to do it at every other opportunity and the voters fall for it. I came here nearly 45 years ago. This was country that you could have a go at just about anything you wanted, very few impediments and people supporting you simply for having a go. Today every man and his dog are clipping your ticket before you get a buck. The bastards have their hand in your back pocket helping themselves to a lifestyle that you won’t have coz the productive are supporting the non-productive. Why do we have politicians when they have to have advisers. Can we have politicians that have ideas not advisers running their own program.
It was always there bubbling below the surface.
Now the witches’ cauldron of islamic supremacism is being openly stirred by them and their suicidal fellow travellers.
They can all rot in hell.
Remember when the world was boiling, and all the snow disappearing?
https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/snow-extent-northern-hemisphere-highest-56-years-winter-cold-rrc/
Australian voters are some of the dumbest in the world
Spooner today.
Outstanding.
I have shared far & wide.
civilian gaza has the numbers, I wonder if the worm might turn, hamas will be running for idf protection if that happens.
On the greenie recently resigned, radio mentioning 15yo again. Hasn’t come forward. So it’s only hearsay unless the greenie party knows something that they are not saying except by innuendo. Innuendo? Isn’t that an Italian homo?
Let’s see. There’s a by-election here in Dan’s seat. I think it’s not a bad bell weather for Vic stupidity , at least.
AEMO forecasting a high chance of energy shortage in SA & VIC this summer.
They’re already organising industry to shut down for cash payments and readying generators to make up the shortfall.
Nothing to do with their own energy transition plan of course and the media is too incurious to ask WHY?
Years ago, BHP seriously contemplated making OD an open pit mine. That fell through, citing the economics of it. OD has an on site smelter that sources power from the absurdly expensive SA grid. I’m glad BHP is showing good sense and going where the economics of copper fall best.
Regardless of da Transition, there will be a yuuuge copper demand in coming years.
The circle of life can be summed up like this: you’re born, you work, pay taxes and then die.
Who grows the food?
Rosie that is once in how long? They got it right with Abbott and he squibbed it. Abbott was too stupid to not call his own party to heel. He buckled to all the people who wouldn’t vote for him in his own party and the public.
Leo Kearse is a UK comedian. He lives in the UK, and here’s his take on the state of the UK, just uploaded a few minutes ago….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUNiIjkUihA
Yes, a broken clock …. etc.
Australia might think Albo is on the nose but I don’t detect any real warming to Dutton or the LNP just yet.
The best example is Steve Jobs.
Contrary to the movies & books (hagiographies), he wasn’t the creative genius for their real success, iPods, iPhones, iPads & most importantly the app store.
Years ago, way back in the early 2000s, I read, ACCIDENTAL MILLIONAIRE, no idea if it’s still around, it was a bio on Steve Jobs written when Apple was competing with Microsoft for no.1 spot in the home computing world ..
This account was very specific on the reality that Jobs invented “nuttin” he was the Apple super-salesman and Steve Wozniak was the hands-on brains of their computing business ……
There is a story on townhall/ redstate which I can’t find in a hurry as I am getting ready to go to work says a lot of Gazans are providing Israel with intelligence about tunnel entrances .
Article has a clickbaity heading like Israel’s surprising source of intelligence.
Australia might think Albo is on the nose but I don’t detect any real warming to Dutton or the LNP just yet.”
I’m not sure that matters anymore. There was no warming to Sleazy and Labor before the 2022 election.
Another business to boycott. Daily Telegraph:
Well Ms Issa as owner you do indeed have the right to refuse service to whomever you desire.
But I don’t think it’s wise due to the blowback you shall receive. I note you have removed your Instagram page.
We have the ability to pick and choose where we spend our hard earned Ms Issa, and I would certainly never waste mine on your service.
Water supply is a big issue for OD. In these days of greenery I doubt they’d get approval for a desal operation from Spencer’s Gulf. Or anywhere else for that matter due to the saline reject issue. Plus they’re electricity hogs.
Over the last few days this has been rumbling through the remnants of my cognition:
Albanese, Chalmers, and Gallagher are hopelessly out of their depth. Bowen is deluded, Rushworth is spits out cliches, Dreyfus and Marles haven’t had an original idea since preschool.
Morrison appointed himself to 6 portfolios. Some of his ministers were rather liberal with their allowance claims, so much so that if a welfare recipient had been caught cheating to the same extent they would have a criminal conviction or worse.
Turnbull bequeathed upon the nation the biggest, dumbest white elephant renewable scheme of all time.
Abbott refused to abolish 18c. The key phrase was about being offended as sufficient to bring a charge of discrimination. That is ironic given left wing wokery is all about offence.
The Rudd-Gillard fiasco was bad enough but the coalition managed to top it with their leadership games.
For over 15 years federal governance has been a disaster. Why are people surprised that so many independents won in the last election?
I don’t know what to do about this but I do know that supporting the major parties is not a solution.
Helpful screenshots of Ms Issa’s responses.
Why do we have politicians when they have to have advisers. Can we have politicians that have ideas not advisers running their own program.
Advisors came to the fore when pollies realised they had a backdoor, no questions asked, entry into “jerbs” fer the boyz, daughters, wives, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and assorted maaates families that needed some extra pocket money or a CV entry ….
What other “industry” offers six figure salaries for no experience required jerbs apart from personal connections ..? .. FFS!
civilian gaza has the numbers, I wonder if the worm might turn, hamas will be running for idf protection if that happens.
You just know it’s not gonna be one of your better”journalistic” dayz when you interview one of the 23 out of 2.5 million folk in Gaza who doesn’t support HAMAS .. LOL
In my best Al Pacino (Lt Col Frank Slade) voice:
“What, an asshole!”
Thanks Diogenes.
Reading that Gazans are looting hamas supplies suggests hamas are losing their grip on the civilian population.
Israeli soldiers sitting in the Gazan parliament building and the military police headquarters probably also sent a message.
We will always have tunnel.
It’s a manifestation of Mal’al. Is spawned when Nurgle gets drunk and uses a home insemination kit at Slaa’nesh’s house, “The Chaos Waste Pleasure Chest”.
It’s so convenient that Slaanesh has so many Target of America Corporation stores in his small empire.
As usual, the adults (Nagash, Tzeench [yeah I know right], Khorne, Asuryan and Sigmar) have to pick up the pieces.
Excellent.
Israeli soldiers sitting in the Gazan parliament building and the military police headquarters probably also sent a message.
The thing I found amazing about that pix/story was the reality that Gaza, actually, has a Parliamentary system … LOL!
Wsj paywalled
Working in Israel Let Gazans Spy
This debunks the idea that trade can improve ties with bad actors
Two items from the Daily Telegraph may well have your blood pressure rise further. James Morrow reporting on a possible reason for Albo’s continued absence from the country:
I would like to see the syllabus used by that agency.
Another justified the massacre as “restoring rights” and “redressing” Palestinian “grievances.”
The biggest Pali grievance is that there are Jews alive anywhere.
Haha, when you’ve lost PvO…
Q+A needs to be put out of its misery (Paywallian)
by PETER VAN ONSELEN
Peter, Peter, Q+A is just a symptom of the underlying disease. It’s the whole ABC that needs to be put out of its misery son.
@rosie
“Australian voters are some of the dumbest in the world
60% voted no.”
In a SANE country, that figure would have bee over 95%
It wouldn’t have been an issue to start with.
It has to get a lot worse before the sheeple awake from their slumber – lights out, no food worse…. be patient
And the second by Angira Bharadwaj reporting on an agency and it’s boss not doing their job. If it was over covid they would be on it in a flash:
Inman Grant one would think does indeed have the powers to get social media companies into line. A few million dollar fines may focus the minds of the executives in charge.
Two possible reasons she is not:
a) She really couldn’t give a fat rat’s clacker about her job or,
b) She is actually on board with whatever is posted.
I imagine the AFP would be knocking on my door if I were to say something bad about those Allen’s Snackbar adherents.
Carefulll what you wish for.
Truth bombing Pali pals.
Black Ball at 8.43am beat me to it.
Where are Australia’s teeming state and federal anti-discrimination bureaucracies? Why aren’t they enforcing laws they spent decades boasting about having established?
It turns out anti-discrimination laws are enforced only if they offend government bureacrats.
If it was an Arab camel jockey’s business being treated unfairly, we’d be in court with a lavishly-funded star-chamber prosecution.
One law for them and another for everyone else.
PS: if voting could change anything, it would be illegal.
Cassie of Sydney
Nov 15, 2023 7:52 AM
nice little summation.
Bidens mob being useful??
White House says it has intelligence that Hamas was using Gaza hospital to run military operations
The White House has said it had its own intelligence supporting Israel claims that Hamas was using al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City to run its military operations, and probably to store weapons.
“We have information that confirms that Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command and control node”, the White House’s national security spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters aboard Air Force One:
They have stored weapons there and they’re prepared to respond to an Israeli military operation against that facility.
He added:
That is a war crime.
Marcia working hard to redeem herself after the Yes debacle and her suggestions before the vote of a following ‘intifada’ should the Yes vote fail ..
Good to see her changing her words and tune.
Maybe so, Tom. But consider that voting can at least stop things.
The No vote in the Referendum drew a line of ‘this far and no more’. Stop.
I think it was very heartening, and a wake-up call to the wokeraty.
Pull Marcia well into line too, and now shes hitting up the Sovereignty crowd.
In other really bad news, Indi Gregory – 8 months old, was executed in the UK yesterday.
Magistrate Robert Peel, said that Indi had to die, because she was in discomfort from her treatment and condition, so she was taken off of life support.
This, despite her parents wishing to take her out of the clutches of the NHS AS WELL AS the Italian Govt, granting her temporary citizenship, so that she could be operated on, immediately, by specialists in Italy.
No!
The magistrate spoke, and his dictate MUST be followed, Indi must die and she was executed.
So according to Peel, Indi was in distress.
Are babies that get hacked to pieces in the womb, in distress?
This will be coming here, no risk.
In Canada, people ringing helplines about housing problems are already being told:
“Well, we cannot get you housing, but if you ring this number, they can organise assisted suicide.”
The PRC, (People’s Republic of Canada), plans to drastically up the ante in that sphere next year.
Solves the “housing problem” don’t you know.
The inner authoritarian emerges.
Farewell, Catturd? Nikki Haley Proposes Ban On Anonymous Social Media Accounts
By the way, Catturd isn’t really anonymous anymore. He co-organised a music festival called Turdstock with John Rich and appeared in person.
Just look at China’s theft of intellectual property on an industrial scale.
We WILL Get Fooled Again! Purchasing Power Of US Dollar DOWN -15% Under China Joe Biden (Top 1% Doing Great Under Bidenomics, Not The Middle Class)
Well done you idiotic throbbing bellends.
Social cohesion lowest on record as Australia reels from cost of living, inequality concerns and voice debate
The social cohesion index – which draws on a survey of more than 7,000 Australians – plummets to lowest since it began 16 years ago
Better import 500,000+ more people in the middle of a housing crisis then, bitches love importing 500,000+ more people in the middle of a housing crisis.
The social cohesion index provides a barometer of social wellbeing, measuring belonging, worth, participation, acceptance and rejection, social inclusion and justice. The measure declined by four points over the past 12 months, hitting the lowest result on record. Since November 2020 – the peak of social cohesion recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic – the index has plummeted 13 points.
“were all in this tooooogetherrrrr” was just a shitty advertising slogan then? Imagine the surprise when 2 years of Colesworth making out like bandits while smaller businesspeople were bankrupted that there might be some effects on society…
The report maps the context informing some of the results. It says the voice to parliament referendum has been an accelerant to polarisation, and notes that current geopolitical conflict and tension is also a “risk to Australia’s harmony” because we are “connected to all sides of current conflicts through our migrant and ancestral diversity, as well as the diversity of our values and ideas”.
A nation of tribes is not as nation. And if your “diversity of ideas” includes deliberately massacring 1700 civilians and kidnapping grannies then you can go get F&cked.
But it says sustained financial pressure is the factor weighing heavily on social cohesion. The research shows Australians are preoccupied principally with their stretched household budgets, housing affordability and the state of the economy. Almost nine-in-10 (87%) survey respondents are also worried about the risks of a severe downturn in the global economy.
After umpteen interest rate rises, and the deliberate strangling of whole industries (forestry/live sheep/ Abbo cargo cult) people feel a little set upon? You dont say.
Rising economic pressure has coincided with declining trust in government. Trust in government rebounded during the pandemic, with 56% of survey participants saying in November 2020 the government in Canberra could be trusted to do the right thing for people all or most of the time. Only 36% say that in 2023.
That 36% are why we have solvents locked up and instructions not to eat the yellow snow.
Only 33% of Coalition voters trust the current government to do the right thing in 2023 – down from 73% when Scott Morrison was in power. The proportion of Coalition voters who believe Australian elections are free and fair all the time has declined from 77% in 2021 to 64% now.
Delusional thinking, Morriswine was an authoritarian prick.
The research indicates support for multiculturalism is holding up despite the challenging economic outlook. Significant majorities say multiculturalism has been good for Australia (89%) and a similar percentage (86%) say immigrants are generally good for the economy.
The multi-cult and big migration has been taught as holy writ in our institutions for decades, who says propaganda doesnt work.
UN has long ago outgrown its usefulness, they are now actually causing or contributing to international tensions. When Iran or Cuba are appointed as chair of human rights committees you have forfeited any sort of legitimacy. Defund it and give it to China and everyone who stays with the agency can move to China.
UN Report Attacks US, Constitution & God-Given Rights
Of course.
FBI targeted agents over conservative political views: whistleblowers
I think that Dutton will have a similar impact on people as he’s had on me.
I thought of him as too robotic and unable to convey emotional intelligence to suggest he’s one of us- human.
And then I heard him speak after the ref result. He came across as a really nice, decent person and I thought he showed generosity too by offering the mic to Jacinta and thanking her for the marvellous work she’d done.
Another example of Trump was right.
Now TikTok is too big to ban.
That sound you can hear is the CCP laughing.
Chillax… it’s just an app.
Unless your whole population has a problem with credulity or impulse control, there’s nothing to worry about.
oh wait, hang on
This grocery chain is doing away with self-checkout — the reason why might surprise you
It was when actuall Labor was needed. What will happen when AI take over the autocrats jobs?
the real dangers of the virtual life
Oh dear,
it seems the ABC’s pet Pali lover Nasser Mashni has a bit of history.
https://www.israellycool.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/mashni-case2.pdf
Netanyahu warns world if Hamas wins, you are the ‘next target’
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Embraces Christianity
You’re too optimistic JC. We are a Socialist nation now. So whatever the Govt , it’s just going to be a shade of pink/green.
Hamas’ Grip in Northern Gaza Has Been Smashed
US lawmakers horrified by video of Hamas atrocities: It’s like visiting Auschwitz
btw – that UN Rapporteur which kicked up such a fuss locally is a pali. activist from way back. Hardly impartial and objective.
No surprises there.
https://unwatch.org/un-nominates-israel-apartheid-activist-to-be-palestine-rapporteur/
If we look at the areas and electorates, 95% of the electorate is sane, it’s the elites in the green and teal areas that voted Yes. Funnily enough, these are the same areas that are on board with Palestinians protestors and even join them.
Chrissie Pyne and Fiona Scott*, whom Abbott helped elect in Lindsay and then she stabbed him, advise Dutton that since Albo won on centre-right campaigning then Liberals must as well if they want to win back the teal electorates. What those two idiots miss is that the teals were way left of Labor and those electorates are gone for good.
*As seen on Chris Kenny’s Liberals in Power special on Sky last night.
For over 15 years federal governance has been a disaster.
You left out defence!
Cocked up monumentally by federal governments since Hawke canned the aircraft carrier concept. I can’t think of much they’ve got right – without vast cost overruns and delays – except the purchase of the F/A-18 Hornet aircraft.
Then again much of the disaster is driven by the way Defence is structured, and the politicians – most of whom would not know a battleship from a corvette – just go along with what they say.
Top story below at Courier Mail Online
Definitely an increase in scare campaign articles in past few days.
The comments that are getting through are very negative towards the story. No mention of any people in ICU or deaths. Obviously not enough to back up the jab promotion.
“Covid Qld: Doctors call for masks at public gatherings in hospitals, GP surgeries and on planes
Doctors want masks to return at public gatherings, in hospitals and on planes amid an eighth Covid-19 wave”
Saw on Fox’s The Five this morning a huge pro-Israel demonstration in Washington DC with forests of US and Israeli flags raised high. Good people have finally realised that they must come out and show their support for what is right. Good on them. Now let’s see if our news services report this event.
I’m pretty sure it was Lenore Taylor. In the Melbourne Q lounge waiting for a flight. A short distance next to me was a sheila on a computer while clawing her way through small munchies in the most disgusting way I’ve ever seen. It was a combination of quickly clawing into a bag, stuffing the crap into her gob and then repeating the same at light speed. The the chewing was also at warp speed. Just sickening.
The next Republican president, whether Trump or someone else, should evict the UN from New York. Nobody should be expected to harbour and financially support openly avowed enemies.
The powers of the Federal Government should be limited to foreign policy, defence, trade and immigration. All else – including the right to levy taxes – to the States. The mendicant States can go broke as they please.
feelthebern at 5:29 – the biography on Steve Jobs is well worth reading. A lot on the early history of Silicon Valley. Why it was unlikely to occur anywhere else outside the US. Pixar and Disney. Lots of good stuff.
In This Won’t Hurt a Bit news:
Albanese Government working with heavy industry to keep Australia competitive in a decarbonising global economy
Translation: “Help Australian companies remain competitive in a global net zero economy“: A border tax to increase the cost of imports to end users so that globally uneconomic technological concepts like ‘green steel‘ and ‘zero emissions cement‘ have a chance to flourish in the tiny Australian economy.
Sealed Section For Wonks Only: Slightly dated (2019) “insight” from the lunatics at RMI:
Bathwater for Bowen, at A$65/MWh on the back of low winter/spring demand – before the nightmare of battery storage costs kicks into the “world’s most volatile electricity market“.
feelthebern at 6:43 – mraaate
Wonder if the BBC pointed out that Australia had been claimed for the British Crown?
Well I never knew that Gaza has a parliament. I wouldn’t fancy being the Speaker.
Re the just released figures showing significant decline in social cohesion:
Exactly the point of a letter I recently had in The Oz., The obsession of the previous Lib governments encouraging massive immigration & now continued by the Labor govt has destroyed social cohesion in this country.
The clarity of this had been shown when “the old man” (John Howard) declares that multiculturalism had been a failure.
Bloody hell! .. the reality of the cost of living comes home to roost when you flip your wallet open and realise your gonna have to use the credit card to pay for the “lawnmower” 5lt can’s worth …….! FFS!
It also shows 27 per cent of people expressed a negative view towards Muslims, and 16 per cent towards Christians.
CathNews
A very good article pinched from instapundit.
From a speech
https://ilyashapiro.substack.com/p/bari-weisss-speech-for-the-ages?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=939125&post_id=138858891&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=9bg2k&utm_medium=email
When antisemitism moves from the shameful fringe into the public square, it is not about Jews. It is never about Jews. It is about everyone else. It is about the surrounding society or the culture or the country. It is an early warning system—a sign that the society itself is breaking down. That it is dying.
It is a symptom of a much deeper crisis—one that explains how, in the span of a little over 20 years since Sept 11, educated people now respond to an act of savagery not with a defense of civilization, but with a defense of barbarism.
An interesting idea, that once the norms of life are broken then jew hate becomes acceptable again.
He boosted imagination and still got called a racist for it.
If he spent more time overseeing how various departments mostly education was implementing it things would have been different. All to late but eny criticisms of how it turned out should be welcomed.
The Beeb is only marginally less worse than the ALPBC. Though possibly with more pedophiles.
The excruciating dilemma of Gaza’s hospitals
Melanie Phillips – Nov 15, 2023
While Israel is trying to spare civilian lives, US and UK pressure strengthens Hamas
Excerpts:
In the fog of war, the truth is often obscured by claim and counter-claim. What western media outlets never acknowledge, however, is that Gaza is entirely under Hamas control; nothing happens there without its approval or direction. As staff at al Shifa have testified in the past, they will be in fear of their lives unless they do and say precisely what Hamas orders them to do or say.
Israel doesn’t want to harm a single patient, doctor or nurse. At the same time, it cannot allow Hamas to use this infernal blackmail to enable it to continue its genocidal activities. Israel is clearly doing everything it can to avoid harming innocent patients and hospital staff. It is getting zero credit for doing so, and instead is being held to a totally different standard than its critics in the Biden administration, UK government and the rest of the west would ever apply to themselves in any wars.
I knew Zellyha sno scruples but …… dear God!
Pregnant women on the front line .. FFS!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1723052613124448681
I knew Zelly has no scruples but …… dear God!
Pregnant women on the front line .. FFS!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1723052613124448681
Would you be able to ban honorable members carrying assault rifles into the house?
Qantas never learn .. true woke is going from YES to “full monty” Green ..!
https://ibb.co/T8JJH7c
Immigration has shifted predominantly from Europe (including Eastern Europe, Italy and Greece) to India/China. I went to school in the 70s with a lot of 1st generation children and apart from Easter do not really remember any “ethnic” about them. Often English would not be spoken in the home and they translated for their parents. I’m not sure that is the case today.
When the AEMO is paying industry to turn off their machines you know we’re screwed. Not only us of course.
Green Bloodbath: Major Industries Closing Down As German Energy Prices Soar (14 Nov)
The German electricity price is now 40.07 euro cents, which would be 67c/kWh Aussie. Insane. The industries that aren’t going bankrupt are bailing out to other countries. Germany will be a shell filled with unemployable migrants and not much else. As will Australia be.
Dot
My grandfather ended up as a HM Land Forces motor pool Sgt
Sgt Bilko?
QANTAS is basically the ALPBC with aeroplanes.
The shrieking from the Left is going to be earsplitting.
Israel tells Gaza officials it plans to raid Shifa hospital – Gaza health ministry spokesperson (15 Nov)
It will be interesting to see what they find in the basement.
Glögg
Chunk grog.
Someone please point me to the section of the Geneva Convention that deals with an army in a war using hospital patients as human shields.
Isn’t that an Italian homo?
Can also be an Italian suppository
Luckily, we have stern constable Bowen at the gate, with his border adjustment scheme, making sure that these carbon-denying Schweinehunde pay their fair share if they try to sell their filthy products to clean Green Australians.
Tomorrow belongs to me…
The ice hockey player in England who kicked an opponent in the neck, killing him, has been charged. But the deceased player was white and Matt Petgrave is black. Which means these Pavlovian English folk instinctively gave him a raucous standing ovation.
It has been that way in Danisbad for the last decade.
Tom.
Here you go.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-19
Article 19 – Wounded and sick IV. Discontinuance of protection of hospitals
The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.
The fact that sick or wounded members of the armed forces are nursed in these hospitals, or the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants and not yet handed to the proper service, shall not be considered to be acts harmful to the enemy.
There are other related rules as well.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gci-1949/article-23
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule28
67c/kWh
3c/kWh was last sale of Hazelwood generated power.
Correction , that was production cost.
Suella takes to Squishy with a Gray-Nic:
https://twitter.com/SuellaBraverman/status/1724465401982070914
Interesting Article on Capital Gains Tax in AFR – Hmmm!
Big tax hit for property renovators could be on its way
Duncan Hughes Reporter
Property renovators and “flippers” who buy and sell for a quick profit could be taxed at their highest marginal rate of up to 47 per cent when selling houses after an Administrative Appeals Tribunal decision, lawyers say.
This would also mean losing their capital gains tax discount of 50 per cent even if they hold the property for 12 months or more, lawyers add. The CGT discount results in tax being payable on only half the net capital gain.
The decision – which is being reviewed by the Australian Taxation Office – could have big implications for the nation’s multi-billion-dollar renovation industry, which has been turbocharged by the prospect of big profits from quick property turnarounds.
The popular CGT discount is under challenge after an AAT ruling allowed an 86-year-old self-funded retiree to offset losses on the sale of her downsizer apartment against other income because it was considered to be a commercial transaction.
The broader implication for property investors is that anything regarded as a commercial transaction would lose the CGT discount, and tax would be payable at the investor’s marginal rate.
Lawyers claim the AAT decision could affect the tax treatment of a wide range of property investment activities involving the family home – such as subdividing properties for development or “flipping” (where an investor purchases a property with the primary intention of selling it for a profit rather than viewing it as a long-term home).
Circumstances like these could lead to someone losing the family home CGT exemption, and paying tax on any profit at their marginal rate.
Mark Molesworth, a partner with consultancy BDO, says: “The bar has been set quite low for what is a commercial transaction. A number of taxpayers may find that if they make a gain in those circumstances, it will be taxed as income rather than capital gains.”
Edward Hennebry, a senior associate with law firm Sladen Legal, adds: “This decision puts taxpayers on notice that CGT exemption of the family home is under closer scrutiny.
The difference between someone paying income and capital gains on a property sale is potentially very substantial.”
He adds: “The approach of the AAT heralds a warning for taxpayers who make gains from isolated transactions. This may include people who buy, renovate and sell with an intention to profit.”
Lawyers also claim the ATO is challenging tax exemptions where long-term property owners, such as farmers, decide to sell their land for commercial or residential development.
Treasury estimates the CGT exemption for owner-occupied homes is worth about $60 billion a year – comparable to what the nation spends on school education. Generous tax breaks on the family home have also helped create a multi-billion-dollar renovation industry, including popular TV shows on how to overhaul dowdy suburban houses for profit.
Generally, a taxpayer’s main residence is CGT-free for tax residents if the property is the main residence throughout the ownership period.
The AAT case involved Sydney-based Jenifer Bowerman’s successful application to have losses on her downsizer apartment offset against other income because it was purchased with the intention of selling it for a profit.
Bowerman was described in the ruling as a “savvy and entrepreneurial” businesswoman who managed her own investment portfolio of shares, managed investment trusts and rental property investments.
In 2015, she bought an off-the-plan apartment in a complex at Foreshore Boulevard, Woolooware Bay, about 20 kilometres from Sydney’s central business district, for about $1.5 million. Two years later she purchased another in Dune Walk at the same complex for $1.2 million where she intended to live until the first apartment was completed.
The tribunal was told Bowerman expected to sell Dune Walk and move into Foreshore Boulevard after the sale of her main residence, and that she had sold her family home to fund the deals.
She sold Dune Walk in early April 2020 at a loss of $185,000 because property prices had dropped during COVID-19.
AAT senior member Gina Lazanas found the sale of Dune Walk was tax-deductible under 8-1(1) of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, which allows an individual to deduct a loss or outgoing “if it incurred in gaining or producing assessable income”.
Bowerman relied on a Federal Court decision that the profit from an isolated transaction involving the sale of a property would be assessable if the taxpayer bought the property to make a profit and its acquisition and sale “took place in the context of a business operation or commercial transaction”. A loss incurred in such a scenario would therefore be deductible.
Lazanas told the tribunal that she “placed considerable weight on the incontrovertible fact” that Bowerman intended to re-sell the Dune Walk apartment for a profit instead of holding on to it for a long-term investment.
“The result in this case is unusual,” she ruled. “It is especially unusual because a loss was made on a recent re-sale of Australian property when property has mostly appreciated in value. However, there is no rule in Australian income tax law that a profit or gain made on the sale of one’s residence, in circumstances where there is a profit-making intention, cannot give rise to a profit that is taxable as ordinary income,” she ruled.
“It follows, that a taxpayer whose intention was to make a profit in a commercial dealing but who ultimately incurred a loss is allowed to claim a deduction for that loss.”
Tax authorities do not have to follow the Bowerman ruling as the decision was made by a tribunal, despite likely pressure from tax professionals to establish its legal position on the issue.
An ATO spokesman says the tax office “is considering the implications of the decision of the Tribunal including whether any appeal may be appropriate”.
Article 19 – Wounded and sick IV. Discontinuance of protection of hospitals
These provisions were in the original 1949 version of the Geneva Convention. They were put in place expressly to discourage arseholes from using hospitals as shields.
The Hamas-adjacent, now denouncing Israel on the grounds of hospital war crimes, are selectively repudiating the terms of the Geneva Convention.
Some Good news from Qantas
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
Hamas, who wouldn’t know the Geneva convention, if it bit them on the arze…
Banks mystified by where all the offset money is coming from
Home loan customers are tipping billions of dollars into mortgage offset accounts. Nobody knows how.
Karen Maley Columnist
One of the more baffling features of the bank profit reporting season is the surprising multi-billion dollar jump in the amount of money customers of the big banks are holding in their mortgage offset accounts.
At a time when many Australians are struggling with a higher cost of living, many bank customers are using the surplus savings they accumulated during the pandemic to blunt the impact of higher home loan rates
These savings are proving especially useful as their low-cost fixed-rate home loans mature (which don’t offer mortgage offsets), and bank customers find themselves paying a much higher interest rate on their variable loans.
The sums involved are significant. In its 2023 results presentation, Westpac said Australian home loan borrowers added $3 billion to mortgage offset accounts in the six months to September 30.
It was the same story at National Australia Bank where offset account balances jumped to $43 billion at the end of September, up from $41 billion in March, and from $39 billion a year ago. ANZ also reported that offset account balances jumped to $42 billion up from $39 billion a year ago.
As NAB’s chief financial officer Nathan Goonan told analysts, “the fixed rate expiry is a big driver of that [increase in mortgage offset balances]. As people have rolled off fixed rate, what we’ve seen is that they’ve been bringing their offset balances in… to then offset the impact”.
But where is the money coming from? Are people moving their money from smaller banks or non-banks back into the major banks?
“In terms of where that’s coming from, I think that’s probably been broad-based,” NAB’s Goonan said. “It could be coming from anywhere. It could be a little bit of mix inside our deposit base, although in an overall total level we haven’t really seen that mix shifting too much.
“It could be coming from other banks, it could be coming from more broadly in the market. But that has been a feature.”
Of course, this surge in mortgage offset balances is a mixed blessing for the big banks. They’re a more expensive type deposit, given that the offset accounts in effect pay a rate of interest equivalent to the bank’s home loan rate.
At the same time, home loans that have mortgage offset balances are far less risky.
Especially since it’s likely that the bulk of the increase in mortgage offset accounts is coming from the banks’ more affluent customers.
As ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott noted on Monday: “Getting credit is slowly becoming the preserve of the rich… The average income today of a person getting a home loan is materially higher than the average citizen and that gap [is] continuing to grow.
“If you want a loan you have to be better off, or essentially be rich.”
That’s why, he said, “from a bank perspective”, borrowers are not falling into trouble despite the steep rise in monthly home loan repayments.
ANZ’s Australian home loan book reinforced Elliott’s comments. The average loan size of the portfolio is $317,000, but in the year to September 30, the average size of new home loans written was $486,000.
NAB showed a similar pattern. The average home loan size in its Australian mortgage portfolio is $358,000, but in the September half, the average new home loan was $536,000.
Of course, some bank customers are drawing down the balances held in mortgage offset accounts as they struggle with sharply higher mortgage payments and intensifying cost of living strains.
As Reserve Bank economists note in the latest Statement on Monetary Policy, issued earlier this month, “extra payments into borrowers’ mortgage offset and redraw accounts have declined as interest rates have increased to be below the pre-pandemic average (of around 2 per cent of household disposable income).
“While borrowers in aggregate are still adding to this stock of savings, some borrowers have been drawing down funds in these accounts. This is consistent with pressures on disposable incomes due to interest rate rises and increases in the cost of living.”
Meanwhile, it’s clear that some of the big banks’ customers – especially businesses and more sophisticated retail investors – are putting their money into term deposits to lock in higher interest rates on their savings.
But the banks continue to take advantage of customers who keep their money in at-call accounts.
As the RBA points out, “the average rate on outstanding at-call deposits – comprising around three quarters of total deposits – has risen by around 250 basis points since May 2022, which is 150 basis points less than the increase in the cash rate to September 2023.”
This, it says, “is partly because around 10 per cent of at-call balances pay no interest.”
In contrast, “average rates on new term deposits have increased by more than the cash rate since the start of 2022,” which is in line with moves in market interest rates.
“Higher term deposit rates also reflects banks’ interest in increasing the term deposit share of their funding to address TFF” – term funding facility, the low-cost funding that the RBA offered to banks in the pandemic – “maturities given the favourable treatment of term deposits in liquidity ratios compared with at-call deposits”.
The RBA estimates that scheduled mortgage payments – interest plus principal – rose to around 10 per cent of household disposable income in the September quarter.
And this ratio will continue to push higher, as more low-cost fixed rate home loans mature, and borrowers face higher variable interest rates.
“Based on cash rate increases to date, scheduled mortgage payments are projected to increase to around 10.5 per cent of household disposable income by the end of 2024.”
That Bari Weiss speech somebody above linked to is superb. Should be stapled to the forehead of every politician in the country.
Canadian group highlights the trouble with Australia’s energy ambitions
Jenny Wiggins Infrastructure reporter
Canadian group OMERS Infrastructure is steering clear of Australia’s planned renewable energy zones, and says the delays in planning and development are pushing up costs and making investments too risky,
The $C34 billion ($38.6 billion) infrastructure fund, which owns stakes in NSW’s electricity network Transgrid and renewable energy developer FRV Australia, previously had “grand ambitions” for investments in Australia, managing director Kevork Sahagian told The Australian Financial Review Infrastructure Summit in Sydney.
But OMERS was struggling to close investments in renewable energy projects through FRV because of rising interest rates, higher inflation, supply chain disruptions as well as scarce and expensive labour, he said.
It was finding it hard to find engineering contractors with connections to transmission networks, and the prices for power purchase agreements (contracts to buy and sell energy at an agreed price) had risen about 30-40 per cent over the past three years, making it challenging to find customers.
Although FRV has reached financial closure on one large solar project in NSW and is approaching that stage for a handful of others, OMERS is “well short” of where it had hoped to be when it invested in FRV in late 2001, Mr Sahagian said.
There are issues with the “bid-ask spread” of what people are willing to pay for energy and what can be delivered in the current market, he said.
OMERS wants governments to provide investors with “a really deliberate and methodical plan that actually gets delivered on,” he said.
“We’ve intentionally stayed away from the [renewable energy zones] … we see a lot of risk in some of the delays. We’d prefer to focus on opportunities where we can control our own destiny.”
NSW’s first renewable energy zone, the Central West-Orana zone, is not expected to be connected until 2027 or 2028 compared with the originally intended 2025, and will be about five times the originally estimated cost, at more than $3 billion.
The cost of materials such as batteries or solar panels is between 20 per cent and 30 per cent higher in Australia compared with the US, underscoring why the country needs to be more efficient, Mr Sahagian said.
In addition, the cost of insurance had risen between two and four times since OMERS made its initial investment decisions, because of less competition among insurers and more volatile weather, he said.
Jacqui Bridge, executive general manager of Powerlink Queensland’s energy futures business, said the state was taking a different approach to other states when making plans for its 12 renewable energy zones, including asking the project operators that connect to them to pay a proportion of the costs.
It is also reviewing purchasing arrangements with suppliers. “We know that equipment is not only getting more expensive, but lead times are getting significantly longer.”
Queensland is also changing how it pays landholders for hosting infrastructure required to build renewable energy zones, Ms Bridge told the Summit. “The payments that landholders in Queensland will receive as we acquire new easements will be higher than they would have been under the previous scheme but they’re not a flat rate per kilometre.
“The rates are related to the value of the land and the impact that the infrastructure will have.”
No, but he did drug racehorses later on in Australia as a pharmacist!
San Francisco cleans up its streets and disappears its tens of thousands of fentanyl addicted homeless so they won’t offend the eyes of the Chinese leadership who peddled them the fentanyl in the first place.
Pure evil.
..
Any resident of Tasmania.
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Nov 15, 2023 9:55 AM
nick cater nick cater
No voice of reason in BBC’s bungled hit job on referendum
The same BBC that covered up Jimmy Saville’s activities.
Spending a night in a Thornlie motel is a 50:50 proposition at the best of times. Unless you are there for business.
Labor faces state revolt over infrastructure funding changes
Ronald Mizen and Mark Ludlow
Federal Labor faces a backlash from the states over plans to reduce the share of major road and rail projects it intends to fund, with NSW, Western Australia and Queensland raising concerns that they are already out of pocket.
Infrastructure Minister Catherine King, as first reported by The Australian Financial Review, said the federal government would move to “a preference of 50/50” funding of major projects with states and away from picking up all or most of the cost.
On Tuesday, NSW Premier Chris Minns said he was “very concerned” to hear Ms King’s proposal. “I’m not going to gild the lily here – that’s a major concern for the NSW government,” Mr Minns said, adding that he thought agreements in health and the split of GST revenues had already disadvantaged the state.
In WA, Treasurer Rita Saffioti said she was deeply disappointed by the federal government’s new approach to national significant infrastructure funding. The longstanding 80-20 funding split had been used on scores of projects that were not deemed critical infrastructure in other states.
“We have almost 30 per cent of the national highway network and almost all our major regional road projects are on this network,” she told the Financial Review. “We are deeply disappointed with the approach being put forward by the federal government.”
The changes come as the government is preparing to release a review into a $120 billion infrastructure pipeline that has already found the cost of $80 billion of road and rail projects had blown out by $33 billion.
The government wants to stick to the $120 billion budget for the infrastructure pipeline, requiring some projects to be cut.
“Many of the projects currently in the [pipeline] will never be built and can never be built,” Ms King told The Australian Financial Review Infrastructure Summit on Tuesday. “All they are doing is sucking valuable money, time and energy from somewhere else, denying investment in projects that are genuinely important.”
Along with the review, Ms King will reveal billions of dollars worth of projects to be axed or delayed to help alleviate inflation pressures. Led by former Infrastructure Department secretary Mike Mrdak, the review split existing projects into four categories: those to be cut, those to be delayed or consolidated and those that should proceed.
It also recommended future projects be split into two distinct stages.
The government should commit money only for the planning stage of projects and then further funds once the final cost and timeline of the project were known, it found.
Along with the 50:50 Commonwealth contribution, Ms King has flagged the federal government is likely to only consider projects where its share will be $250 million or more. However, there will be exemptions to both rules, especially where projects are of national importance, relate to housing or critical resource developments.
It would also be unlikely to be applied to smaller states and the territories, such as South Australia and the Northern Territory, where there are large road networks but comparatively small populations.
SA’s Infrastructure Minister Tom Koutsantonis said he wanted to see the full details of the infrastructure review so he could “properly assess the impact to South Australian taxpayers of any change to the existing funding split”.
Global supply chains
The proposed changes to the federal government’s infrastructure funding policy was also met with a lukewarm reception in Queensland and Victoria.
Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick said while project costs had grown since the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not a reason for the federal government to scrap road and rail infrastructure.
“The reality is that infrastructure is costing more than ever, because of global supply chains and labour shortages,” Mr Dick said. “That means, in many cases, it costs more money to deliver the same amount of infrastructure. But that’s not a reason to cut projects. It’s the reason why we need more funding, not less.”
Mr Dick said the Palaszczuk government said it supported “sensible approaches” to infrastructure funding and the need to curb inflation.
“Queensland has already endured cuts to infrastructure, with the federal government cutting $5.7 billion to Queensland water projects in its first budget, and making major reductions in inland rail in Queensland. No other state has suffered that level of reduction,” he said.
One project that has come under intense scrutiny is Melbourne’s controversial suburban rail loop, which has been criticised by the Victorian Auditor-General for having a poor business case.
The Victorian government has committed $11 billion for the first stage of the project, while the federal government will fund $2.2 billion of work.
On Tuesday, Ms King told the Summit that some projects could proceed even if the cost-benefit analysis did not stack up.
“We will certainly take [Infrastructure Australia] advice into consideration,” she said of the suburban rail loop, adding the $125 billion project was part of the government’s plan to build more than 1 million new houses.
“We don’t want to see our cities just continue to sprawl out as they have done, where there is poor infrastructure on greenfield sites,” she said. “Whilst it’s a public transport project, it’s actually also about housing.”
The suburban rail loop is a 90-kilometre rail line circling the Melbourne metropolitan area, which will connect all the existing lines that run into the central city.
Chechens beat Russian soldiers for not standing fast.
Pretty grim.
..
https://funker530.com/video/russians-punish-drugged-out-soldiers-with-beatings/
Human shield (law) – Wikipedia
Historically the law of armed conflict only applied to sovereign states. Non-international conflicts were governed by the domestic law of the State concerned. Under the current terms of the Rome Statute the use of human shields is defined as a war crime only in the context of an international armed conflict.
After the end of World War II, non-international armed conflicts have become more commonplace. The Customary International Humanitarian Law guide suggests that rules prohibiting use of civilians as human shields are “arguably” customary in non-international armed conflict.[6] The development and application of humanitarian law to modern asymmetric warfare is currently being debated by legal scholars.
How depressingly 19th century.
Extraordinary that they missed: a lifepartner, no really, met last weekend and now sharing custody of a Bichon Frisé and a Kylie CD collection.
Decoding Suella Braverman’s poison-soaked resignation letter to Rishi Sunak – Paywalled
Much of the text needs no interpretation but other parts could be read as coded messages to Tory voters that only a coup can save the party
By Gordon Rayner, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Suella Braverman is becoming something of a specialist in noxious exit letters, having written two of them in the space of 13 months.
Her latest, to Rishi Sunak, accuses him of having “manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one” of a series of key policies she says that they discussed before she was given the job.
Potentially worse for the Prime Minister is the fact that she makes reference to a document containing a series of promises that he supposedly made, which she could presumably make public at a time of her choosing.
Almost every line of the three-page letter drips with poison, accusing him of “magical thinking” on immigration, having “no appetite for doing what is necessary” and lacking courage.
Much of her letter needs no interpretation: telling the Prime Minister that he is uncertain and weak is as plain-speaking as politics gets.
Other parts of her letter, though, could be read as coded messages to the Tory party and to voters that only a coup can save the Conservatives from abject defeat at the polls next year.
Mrs Braverman goes straight for Mr Sunak’s Achilles’ heel: the fact that he lost to Liz Truss in the leadership election last summer, because the Tory members preferred a Right-wing, tax cutting candidate to Mr Sunak’s more centrist offer.
Why is Mrs Braverman bringing it up now?
Because, as she makes clear, she believes that the Tories might stand a better chance of winning the next election if it was led by a Right-winger promoting what she later describes as “an authentic conservative agenda”. Might she be thinking of herself by any chance?
Any politician with a grievance who makes reference to an unpublished document can only be bad news for the subject of their ire. Mr Sunak will read it as an implicit threat that Mrs Braverman might leak the document at a moment timed to cause him maximum embarrassment.
She reveals some, but not all of its contents, saying that “among other things” it contained promises to reform student visas; legislating to ignore the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights if they stood in the way of stopping small boats; and ordering schools to protect single sex spaces (rather than giving in to the trans lobby).
All of these issues could be hot topics in an election campaign.
Mrs Braverman will also have copies of these letters, and by making reference to them in a public way she is revealing the existence of a cache of potentially troublesome documents that she says show that “you never had any intention of keeping your promises”.
Something of a backstop for Mrs Braverman if her plans to become the next Tory leader come to nought: she is laying down a marker to any other candidates that if she is not the chosen one, they had better secure her support (presumably by offering her a plum role) if they want to stand a chance of winning.
Whether her support was “pivotal” to Mr Sunak’s success is highly debatable.
A sentence intended for the eyes and ears of voters at large: Mr Sunak will betray what you voted for, but I would not do that.
Mrs Braverman will be hoping that such direct messages to the electorate will help to swing opinion polls in favour of her as next Tory leader.
Is Mr Sunak running out of time to “change course” or is Mrs Braverman signalling to the Tory Right that they are running out of time to change leader before the next election?
A fourth prime minister since the last general election is dismissed as a farcical idea by many Tory MPs, but not all.
Mrs Braverman came sixth in the Tory leadership election won by Liz Truss last year, with only 32 MPs backing her.
She would have to come at least second in the Tory MPs’ vote in a future leadership contest (much like Ms Truss) to go forward to a membership ballot, where she clearly believes she could emerge the winner.
The same BBC that covered up Jimmy Saville’s activities.
Anyone watched The Reckoning, the four-part TV serial on Saville?
He was such a disgusting human being it is rather a deterrent to watching it.
They already get the staff discount.
Napoleon, review: blunt-force charisma from Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s dark, epic biopic – 4/5
The director’s 28th feature is a magnificent slab of dad cinema, with Phoenix a startling emperor and Vanessa Kirby brilliant as his wife
By Robbie Collin, CHIEF FILM CRITIC
If, at 85, Ridley Scott has reached the final season of his filmmaking career, Napoleon is the ideal work of wintry grandeur to mark it.
Scott’s 28th feature is a magnificently hewn slab of dad cinema with a chill wind whistling over its battlefields and round its bones: its palette is so cold, even the red in the tricolore is often the shade of dried blood.
Spanning 32 years, from the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 to its title character’s death on St Helena in 1821, it casts Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise, reign and downfall as both a prickly psychodrama and a sweeping military epic, in which the intimate lives of its central players and the fate of France itself become instantly and anxiously entwined.
Napoleon himself is played with startling blunt-force charisma by Joaquin Phoenix, who is working again with Scott for the first time since 2000’s Gladiator. Phoenix’s undisguised soft Californian accent is one of a number of details that might irk historical sticklers – television’s Dan Snow has already chimed in with a list of inaccuracies, to which Scott’s not unreasonable response was “get a life”. But on screen it’s oddly ideal, reinforcing the idea that this Corsican roughneck can never fully settle into the role for which history has him picked out.
We get the measure of the man almost instantly at the Siege of Toulon, as the French Republican forces lay siege to the British-occupied harbour fort. In the dead of night, as Napoleon leads the advance, a cannonball tears through the shoulder of his horse – the film earns its 15 certificate fast – though almost before he hits the ground he hurriedly barks “I’m OK,” and strides on, shaken but resolute, and smeared with the blood of his steed.
The whole sequence is astonishing – mounted on a scale and pegged out with a clarity that makes the filmmaking itself feel like the work of a supreme military tactician. But extraordinarily, Scott keeps on bettering it.
Waterloo, which serves as a climax (with Rupert Everett a treat as Wellington) stops your breath with pure spectacle. Yet the extraordinary toll of the battle in terms of both lives and basic humanity lost, is at the forefront of every shot choice. (Whatever CG is here – and given its sheer magnitude, there must be quite a bit – has scarcely felt less like ones and zeroes.) And during Austerlitz, as the Russian troops are forced by France on to the thin ice then bombarded with cannon fire, you can almost sense a godlike pair of compasses spinning overhead, strategising every move.
David Scarpa’s screenplay paints Napoleon as a master tactician, but it also ties his thirst for conquest to his frustrated desire, once he’s been crowned Emperor, to father an heir. The womb of his first wife Joséphine (a brilliantly sultry and shrewd Vanessa Kirby) is where the line of succession should spring, yet it remains the one piece of terrain resistant to his claims.
“It’s yours,” Joséphine purrs, while pulling what we’ll tactfully call a “Basic Instinct” early in their courtship. Yet biology has other ideas, and this emasculation only stokes up his thirst for conquest elsewhere. Unexpectedly, it also furnishes the film with some of its more comic moments: during a squabble at a society dinner over his apparent infertility, Napoleon splutters that providence is on his side, raging: “Destiny has brought me to this pork chop!”
You wouldn’t describe the film as funny – and in its (admittedly rare) quieter moments, it can perhaps feel a little cool and staid.
But Phoenix’s sore-thumb manner makes his loopier lines land well, while the supporting cast is packed with the sort of characterful faces from which a squint or a frown can be all a scene needs to lighten the mood. Paul Rhys’s venom-laced smile as Talleyrand proves a low-key secret weapon, and I hooted at Ian McNeice’s Louis XVIII, whose hairstyle and lapdog look separated at birth.
An ironic coda on Saint Helena takes Phoenix to where this role was perhaps always going to lead him: the crazy guy in the asylum who thinks he’s Napoleon. But only a true master general could corral a piece of cinema this rolling and rich.
In cinemas from Wednesday November 22
Opinion Monetary policy
The case for loosening is getting stronger
As inflation eases, central banks now find themselves at the most difficult point in the policymaking cycle
MARTIN WOLF
Have central bank interest rates peaked in the US and the eurozone? If so, how quickly might they fall?
From around mid-2021, central banks clearly had to tighten significantly. But what they have to do next is uncertain.
Whatever central bankers might say about what they plan to do, events always have the last word. If, as many now expect, core inflation falls quickly towards their target, they will have to loosen policy.
While loss of credibility is damaging when inflation gets too high, it is also so when it gets too low. A return to sub-target inflation and “pushing on a string” monetary policy would be highly undesirable.
The time to respond to such risks looks close — closer than central banks admit, especially given the lags in transmission of the past tightening.
Jay Powell, chair of the US Federal Reserve, and Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, have stated their plan not to ease soon. Intervention rates have remained stable for some time: the fed funds rate at 5.5 per cent since July and the ECB’s deposit rate at 4 per cent since September. Yet Powell warned this month that the mission to return inflation to its 2 per cent target had a “long way to go”.
Similarly, Lagarde told the FT last week that eurozone inflation would come down to its 2 per cent target if interest rates were kept at their current levels for “long enough”. But “it is not something that [means] in the next couple of quarters we will be seeing a change. ‘Long enough’ has to be long enough.”
A reasonable conclusion from this behaviour is that, barring surprises, rates have now peaked.
But central banks simultaneously stress their plan to keep them up. One justification for publicising that intention is that it is itself a policy tool. If markets believe lower rates will come soon, they are likely to bid up bond prices, so lowering rates and easing monetary conditions.
Given the uncertainty on the outlook, central banks do not wish today’s tight financial conditions to be undermined in that way. They would prefer to preserve them until certain that their economies do not need them any more.
So far, so understandable. The question is how uncertain the outlook really is.
The answers optimists give for the US and eurozone are different. But they come to much the same conclusion: the inflation threat is passing rather more quickly than central banks suggest. In recent analyses, Goldman Sachs economists present this case clearly.
On the US, they argue that “core inflation has fallen sharply from its pandemic peak and should begin its final descent in 2024”.
They see further disinflation coming from rebalancing in the auto, housing rental and labour markets. They add that “wage growth has fallen most of the way to its 3.5 per cent sustainable pace”.
In all, core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation should fall to around 2.4 per cent by December of next year. On the eurozone, Goldman expects “underlying in?ation to normalise in 2024. Core in?ation has cooled more than expected in recent months?.?.?.?and wage growth is showing clear signs of deceleration.”
While inflation is cooling in both places, both shocks and economic performance have been very different. The most striking divergence is in growth this year.
Consensus forecasts for US and eurozone growth in 2023 tracked each other closely downwards in 2022, with forecasts for 2023 tumbling from around 2.5 per cent in January 2022 to close to zero at the end of last year.
But forecasts for the US are now at 2.4 per cent, while the eurozone’s are for only 0.5 per cent. The US combination of strong growth, low unemployment and falling inflation looks rather like the “immaculate disinflation” in which I, for one, disbelieved.
Why that has happened is a topic for another time.
In terms of output, however, disinflation looks less immaculate in the eurozone. That is not surprising, since its inflation and weak growth were powered by the energy shock caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine. (See charts.)
Now, look ahead. As John Llewellyn has argued, the US economy might be substantially weaker next year.
As for eurozone growth, even the relatively optimistic Goldman forecasts are for growth of just 0.9 per cent in 2024.
Moreover, even that assumes loosening of ECB monetary policy in response to better news on inflation. Central banks must look ahead and remember the lags between their actions and economic activity. In doing so, they might also cast one eye on monetary data.
Annual growth of broad money (M3) is firmly negative. Monetary data cannot be targeted. But it must also not be ignored.
In brief, it looks increasingly plausible that this tightening cycle has come to an end. It also looks quite likely that the beginning of the subsequent loosening is closer than central banks are suggesting.
If that turns out not to be the case, there is some risk that it will come too late to avoid a costly slowdown and even a return to too low inflation. Yet none of this is certain: policymaking is now at a truly difficult point in the cycle.
We also need to note some lessons.
First, the very resilience of economies confirms that tightening was justified: how high might US inflation be now without it?
Second, inflation expectations have stayed well anchored, despite the huge overshoot.
Thus, the inflation targeting regime has worked well.
Third, labour markets have also behaved better than expected.
Fourth, forward guidance is risky: policymakers should think carefully before making commitments they might soon have to break.
Finally, they should not fight a war for too long, just because they started it too late.
Yes, the last mile may indeed be the hardest. But one must notice when crossing the finishing line.
Meta has deep pockets.