Memo to that NSW Ladee Police Kommissar. Your lot … have a Water Cannon TruckNot anymore they don’t. They gave…
Open Thread – Wed 15 Nov 2023
- Guest Post: Wally Dali- Archibald Prize predictions
- TULIP versus ruinous Labor
- Open Thread – Weekend 18 May 2024
- Bumtree #15
- Bumtree #14
Mole Here’s the thing to consider when these discussions take place. The US runs a large trade deficit, which means…
@EndWokeness “$15 BILLION IS NOT ENOUGH” A slavery reparations meeting was held today in Boston & residents demanded cash from…
Author please. Thanks muchly.
There was a interesting gold smuggling case recently https://www.businessinsider.com/10-million-gold-disguised-as-machinery-smuggled-plane-hong-kong-2024-4 Machine parts made of gold and sent out to avoid taxes.
Nice.
.
China promises to strictly control coal then started 182 coal power plants instead
By Jo Nova
Two and a half years ago President Xi promised to “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects” in China. Before this solemn pledge the CCP had approved a blockbuster 54 gigawatts of coal fired power plants in just two years.
Afterwards, to show how committed they were to Net Zero principles and international agreements, they *only* approved 131 GW. As President Xi promised — he’s “strictly in control” (of a massive increase). He’s also strictly in control of the world’s manufacturing.
The UN, Greenpeace, and Joe Biden promptly did nothing at all — it’s not like the future of life on Earth is at stake. And John Kerry found “agreement” and “hope”.
The BBC told the world about China’s green power surge instead, and mentioned the coal in passing. China had spawned a world record in coal plant construction, but apparently these coal plants are not so bad because many are built on renewable parks, “partly as backup for all the new wind and solar farms”.
Meanwhile the International Energy Agency (IEA) — a kind of mini UN energy bureaucracy — predicts China’s peak coal will happen next year. Apologists, all of them for planet destroying polluters.
Labor Blackout Bowen eat your heart (if you have one ) Out
Just for comparison: Australia has one 1,000 MW plant in the “pre-permit” stage. (Collinsville). It’s so “pre” that even though it was suggested four years ago, and awarded $4m to for a feasibility study, no feasibleness has been announced.
In the same years, China built about 300 coal plants.
Interesting Comment – Point I had never thought about
– China wants to switch from cars powered by imported oil to cars powered by locally produced coal.
That is why EV production in China has been promoted
Keep it succinct.
Fair point, Bespoke.
A: when every Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighter is burning in Hell and every building in Gaza is rendered into rubble. Next question.
‘Where do you draw the line?’: Senior Israeli advisor pressed on intense fighting around Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City (Sky News, 15 Nov)
Nice to see Mark Regev back in the saddle. As well as being an Aussie he’s a righty and an extremely talented communicator.
Woorabinda, Queensland: Toddlers’ mothers were five hours away when they died in an unused car
Small town has suffered through ten deaths in two months
How was the Voice going to solve this? – When will they Audit The Australian Taxpayer Money spent on Aboriginal Organisations?
Nat Barr tells the Albanese Government to deal with the issue of foreign murderers and paedophiles being released after a High Court decision – as Peter Dutton says should cancel his trip and deal with the crisis
. Eighty already freed by landmark High Court ruling
. Criminals and threats to national security released
. Government officials vow to keep community safe
AFTER OCTOBER 7
by Tania Hammer
11 . 14 . 23
Tania writes from Jerusalem:
I wish a Shabbat shalom, a sabbath of peace, to all of Jerusalem. I light the usual candles and an an extra one for the precious kidnapped souls in Gaza. We are at war, but these past few days of witnessing the love and gratitude of all who volunteered fill me with a bit of peace.
“Be strong and resolute; do not be terrified or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Josh. 1:9).
Some of the Great Malcolm Fraser Imports – Palestine Supporters Perhaps?
Massive police raids across Sydney bust $1billion drugs, guns and money laundering Lebanese syndicate with 28 people arrested
. Lebanese crime syndicate crippled by police blitz
. 24 people linked to the gang arrested across Sydney
Morning all.
They busted the Lebanese criminal gang. When will the polimuppets have their comeuppance?
My eyes are bleeding.
First QantasLink Airbus A220 leaves the ‘paintshop’, ramping up national carrier’s domestic fleet renewal program (Sky News, 15 Nov)
Don’t view the photo if you are epileptic. Looks like some sort of terrible fungus has been eating the plane from the arse forwards.
Albanese government ‘doesn’t want to act’ after indefinite detention ruled unlawful – Peta Credlin
Shadow Immigration and Citizenship Minister Dan Tehan says the Albanese government doesn’t seem to want to act following the release of 80 detainees after a High Court ruling.
“We asked Minister Giles in Question Time when the government started preparing for the decision and his immediate answer was straight after the decision itself,” Mr Tehan told Sky News host Peta Credlin.
“The government has just been completely asleep at the wheel.
“We’re still not getting the detail on what conditions they’re being held under, what happens if they breach those conditions, we don’t know whether the government can actually act if they breach their visa conditions.
“We did learn in Question Time today though that they’re all getting taxpayer subsidies accommodation and welfare payments.”
Shadow Immigration and Citizenship Minister Dan Tehan says the Albanese government doesn’t seem to want to act following the release of 80 detainees after a High Court ruling.
Why would they, the courts have “solved” an issue for them.
No more whining from their own supporters about “teh refugees” in detention, now all can be released regardless of if they are a threat to Aussies or not.
Im sure there will be no crims facing severe penalties in shithole countries considering a flight/boat to Oz and a quick application for protection on arrival.
In theory a American murderer, facing charges in a death penalty state should be released if hes in migration detention.
Like i said, it was a case the government “defended” to lose…
Brilliant aphorist. Could put into a few sentences or less what others still fail to say in an essay. People that speak German will often say he was their greatest prose stylist. I loved Nietzsche in my 20s; ironically, his aphorism on the revolution in poetry led me towards the classical/ traditional. The Nazis more or less abused his writings. Not saying he was democratic, but his initial friendship with Wagner and then parting of the ways, probably established a connection they later exploited, abetted by his sister.
-ABC
..
..
-News.com
Overnite report from Calli, on the job in Norway. This is what is wrong with the West. We tolerate this takeover of our places and institutions.
Calli notes too:
Yes. Reminds of the shoe memorial on the banks Danube to Jews murdered in Budapest. Heartbreaking.
How long before we get Muslims, when a majority, requiring the removal of such memorials? Can’t see this installation being left in peace, and the left have proven to be willing accomplices to the destruction of all the West holds significant in our history.
“We did learn in Question Time today though that they’re all getting taxpayer subsidies accommodation and welfare payments.”
And what about the rest of the Country and those taxpayers and voters doing it tough?
What a load of rollocks. A one term Feral Guv’ment we hope.
Historic All-Female Space Walk Crew Accidentally Drops Tool Bag Into Orbit
Space.com revealed the reason for the time loss that resulted in an incomplete mission:
Unfortunately, the trundle bearing did not come free as easily as expected. O’Hara, assisted by Moghbeli, ran into delays loosening the bolts holding the degraded trundle bearing in place. Though it finally came loose, it left Moghbeli and O’Hara about an hour behind in the schedule.
Now, I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for certain what went wrong.
But I do know that when I can’t get a bolt loose, I call over the nearest man and he gets it done in a jiffy. Just sayin’.
At any rate, the Historic! spacegals got the replacement trundle bearing bolted into place, at which point Mission Control sexistly radioed them to say, “Nicely done ladies, we’re going to call that a good bolt.”
No doubt, someone got ordered to sensitivity training for the grave transgression.
At one point, an errant bag of equipment broke free from its captors and headed out into open space.
UK space-ocrat Dr. Meganne Christian posted video of the moment the renegade tool bag made its bold escape from Historic! astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, whose fingers can be seen in shadow, grasping after it:
Thanks to the enterprising actions of the Historic! female astronaut, stargazers now have a new light in the sky to admire. EarthSky reports:
The tool bag is now orbiting Earth just ahead of the International Space Station. It’s surprisingly bright (for a tool bag), shining just below the limit of visibility to the unaided eye at around magnitude +6.
That means some sky observers should be able to pick it up with binoculars.
Now voyager.
Want to be more persuasive online? Use the present tense, study suggests (Phys.org, 14 Nov)
Studies say, Cats, that if someone writes a comment about what they’re feeling at right at this moment that will persuade us all! Also I love wearing this shirt too.
What are the odds of Mark Regev getting the AOTY? Might trot down to the TAB and put on a tenner. Long shot, but I’d wind up owning every harborside abode. Bayside ones too.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Nov 15, 2023 12:42 PM
In 1943, the swastika flew over the Norwegian Parliament.
Today, that little forecourt is pasted with Palestinian flags.
Overnite report from Calli, on the job in Norway. This is what is wrong with the West. We tolerate this takeover of our places and institutions.
Calli notes too:
Beside the fortress there is an odd little memorial. It comprises a scattered grouping of empty chairs. During the occupation, hundreds of Norwegian Jews were rounded up and transported to Germany from the nearby dock. The chairs represent the few who returned. It’s one of the most poignant memorials I have ever seen.
I watched a film called “The Crossing” on SBS World Movies this morning about two Norwegian Jewish Children who escaped across the border to Sweden in WW2. They were helped by two Norwegian Children. A lovely film and they were all reunited after the war. Not sure if the film was based on a true event or not
From the Woorabinda article
…four young community members allegedly overpowered a 60-year-old teacher on Saturday and stole his white Kia.
Apparently it’s a “tight-knit community”. Another one from the journo-speak lexicon of “aspiring rapper” and “proud kadakadukakdu man”…
No, but he did drug racehorses in Australia after he settled here (working as a pharmacist).
Community notes addressed the term “died”.
CTV News
@CTVNews
Canadian peace activist Vivian Silver, who went missing after Hamas attack, has died.
https://x.com/CTVNews/status/1724207517234860529?s=20
Israel is losing 1.15 soldiers per day in the Gazan/Hamas War.
“Israel will regret…”
Nothing.
Atlas Shrugs, Bruce’s eyes bleed and Gaia vomited.
Yes, genuine Aboriginal art.
Do you mind, bern?
I was trying for 12 in a row to beat HB Bear.
This blog is off the pace!
QUAY: Why The Hell Do You Need A 4-Year Degree To Drive The Wienermobile?OPINION – (Because in America you need a 4 year degree to clean a Toilet!)
The best job posting of all time is explorer Ernest Shackleton’s call for crew members to join him on an Antarctic expedition:
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”
Today, I think I found the worst job posting of all time:
“Oscar Mayer seeks a Wienermobile Spokesperson. If you relish in the chance to hitch a ride in a 27-foot Hot Dog this is the job for you! $35,600 base salary. Bachelors degree required.”
Sadly, our hero will never get that opportunity. A bachelor’s degree is the membership card for the elite class of knowledge workers. If you want to be the guy ordering DoorDash instead of the guy delivering it, you’d better get yourself one.
It shouldn’t be that way. In my back-of-the-envelope opinion, maybe 10 percent of people should go to college (over 60 percent currently do). The only majors for which a traditional classroom environment is really beneficial are the humanities (literature, history, philosophy) and the hard sciences (biology, math, physics).
Almost everything else would be better learned in some kind of apprenticeship program. You don’t need 67 credits worth of business classes to send emails and update spreadsheets.
Arky, just want to thank you for your recognition last night that Jewish people all over the world are suffering deeply from grief right now. You are right about that. It is visceral, a stab in the guts.
Communal grief like this needs to be lived through, expressed, understood, and then it can be dealt with and overcome. Strength can return and grief’s close relations, fear and a sense of hopelessness, can be realistically faced. The worst thing is to tell a grieving person to shut the eff up and deal with it. Grief takes its time. It needs its community. Like anger, grief has its place following pogroms.
Good man, Arky.
Thanks DB. I’m currently watching a youtube channel that goes in depth about Nietzsche. The Nazi association is a shame because Nietzsche’s ubermensch concept was about the individual being free from cultural imperatives. I enjoyed Thus Spake Zarathustra mainly because even after translation he had such a facility with language. BTW the idea he had syphilis is problematic because his father died from a serious neurologic condition and Nietzsche possibly inherited that.
This is the channel.
https://www.youtube.com/@WeltgeistYT
Dildos are killing the planet.
Microplastics come from everywhere—yes, that includes sex toys (Phys.org, 14 Nov)
One wonders how those two lady researchers acquired their dataset.
So its lucky we fund the education of the kids in Gaza, or they wouldnt know all this stuff.
https://twitter.com/erbmjha/status/1712537721066107161?lang=en
Washington Pro-Israel Rally.
That’s big.
https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1724560764160081959
Pro Hart? – No, Heysen? – No, McCubbin? – no ……. 1st cab off the rank is an aboriginal artist Ive never heard of – colour me surprised!
. Eighty already freed by landmark High Court ruling
. Criminals and threats to national security released
. Government officials vow to keep community safe
And if those vows are not kept? Then off with yer’ eads’ with those eads’ being on the end of pitch forks.
Microplastics come from everywhere—yes, that includes sex toys
See boys, size doesnt matter after all!
Yes. Israel is staying staunch. Israel is well aware of how many soliders it will lose if Hamas continues to survive. And not just soldiers, but Israel’s fathers, mothers, elderly and worst of all, its children. Israel hopes still to save the hostages but even that does not deflect from this existential struggle and what it takes to ensure security.
Interesting. I’ve been slumming it for a while.
I think chilli is the only truly toxic person on the freedom furniture forums.
Take NFA and struth. They have beefs, but they don’t have problems with a whole host of people. Chili has beefs with entire swathes of people who butt heads. The stuff she has written about the women here is vile (yet she vilifies men for admiring beautiful women).
I wonder if she’s Aliiiice? There were some female nutters like coz/amcoz too that went away, it’s a long time ago.
She hates young beautiful women and likes it when Bird causes trouble, despite posting some pro-Israel stuff since 7/10.
Enough said. Nothing but a troublemaker.
Dot
Nov 15, 2023 12:56 PM
About 100 painters in Canada replicated the Indigenous design, involving more than 20,000 dots. Picture: Qantas
Yes, genuine Aboriginal art.
Qantas makes a major change to its iconic aircraft appearance: Here’s your first look at the unique makeover
. Qantas’ ditches red kangaroo design
. First A220 aircraft has in Indigenous design
Dot,
As mentioned in the Comments
Whitefella Geoffrey Bardon gave ‘Dot’ painting to ‘Aboriginal Race’ in 1971
Geoffrey Bardon was born of a pure whitefella genealogy in Randwick, Sydney in 1940.
He studied law at a Sydney university and before graduating he changed career direction and obtained an art education degree from Sydney National Art School in 1965. After graduating as an art teacher he worked in country New South Wales and Darwin. He had a desire to make a difference, to make films and produce high quality still photographs. He stated that he was not a businessman, teaching and art were his specialty.
In February 1971, Geoffrey Bardon a 30 year old blue eyed, tall man with unruly blond hair and an open mind, travelled along a 250 kilometre highway and crude red dirt road northwest from Alice Springs to the troubled government settlement at Papunya to take up the position of art teacher. With his rabbit trap and tool kit he was confident he could make the world his own. In his mind he was being paid like a millionaire to teach children in rags art.
Geoffrey Bardon was a sensitive, respectful, and kind man who took his 16 mm film camera and other expensive photographic equipment to Papunya with him. He was an artist and described Papunya as a hidden place unknown on maps and considered by officials as a problem place, a community in distress, struggling for survival with disruption, confusion, and despair.
Oppressed Papunya was a place of emotional loss and waste. Geoffrey Bardon observed that the settlement staff consisted of many men displaying little compassion and clearly not interested in helping the settlement residents.
Sometimes odd things would happen which he could see confused the residents. Like he watched ‘aboriginal’ men watering plants without an understanding of why and others chopping firewood then stacking it on the veranda of the settlement manager’s abode to provide wood for European fires of the winter time.
The chronic problem in the settlement Geoffrey Bardon saw was there was nothing much to do and people were bored.
While teaching he observed children sitting in the sand drawing shapes and making tracks of dogs, and kangaroo with their knuckles and fingers. He noticed whilst the local native men were telling stories they would draw symbols and animal tracks in the sand. An art style realized before his eyes.
Within 18 months of his arrival Geoffrey Bardon’s influence triggered the Western Desert art movement, said to be one of the greatest innovations in twentieth century art.
With his whole class in tow they would go out for bush walks or drive, often travelling over 100 miles around the local countryside in his powder blue Volkswagen combi van. Learning, having fun, and playing in and around the dams near iconic outback windmills with sound of metal creaking as the blades, ever so slowly, rotated around and around.
Geoffrey Bardon felt that it was a waste of time for the local native children to draw the whitefella cowboys and Indians when they had a drawing culture all of their own. He recognised a spiritual relationship drawn from the native children’s imagination to their dreaming. He would get the children to draw something like a kangaroo then he would measure it like he did on a test. If he didn’t like the art he he would throw it in the bin and ask for a second attempt. If he didn’t like the second attempt he would throw it in the bin and ask his student for more. When the child drew a double kangaroo he liked it and the child was rewarded. Drawing on the blackboard he taught the children art patterns to incorporate in their drawings and as a result was called Mr Patterns.
Geoffrey Bardon encouraged his students to paint their traditional designs using whitefella materials. Six outdoor murals were painted on the school walls at Papunya in 1971. The first realist style mural was of a family group sitting in the foreground of Haasts Bluff. This mural was painted over. The teacher inspired the children to create a mural based on traditional dreaming. The murals sparked astonishing interest in the community.
The elder men said the children did not know the full meaning of the motifs they were drawing. They said secret/sacred elements had to be suppressed, omitted or disguised within the painting. Soon many of the ‘elder’ men were involved in planning and painting the other five murals. The honey ant mural was a legitimate blackfella cultural icon. A masterpiece in Western Desert art. The local native men would sit on the ground near the mural and sing the honey ant song. The Honey Ant mural was completed with terrific enthusiasm with no prompting or persuading required.
Today only pictures of the murals remain as the originals were painted over in 1974 during routine clean-up maintenance of the government school buildings.
About 100 painters in Canada replicated the Indigenous design, involving more than 20,000 dots. Picture: Qantas
Yes, genuine Aboriginal art.
It was replicated, as stated above.
Hmm … I’ve never seen a micro sex toy.
Unimaginable.
Erk. That dot-painted Qantas-link plane looks like a flying goanna.
Reptilian.
Israel knows it needs to commit.. what is the alternative?
It is fighting for its survival.
…and…here…we…GO!
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Geoffrey+Bardon+intoduced+dot+painting+to+aboriginals+in+1971&ia=web
News is coming out now that Israel has developed special drones that manoeuvre well in small spaces such as tunnels. Soldiers can also carry tunnel-blocking foam bombs. And specially trained Alsatian-type Belgian attack dogs can quickly get through the narrow on-your-knees tunnels that link the larger ones. Israel have been thinking about tunnel warfare for a while now, obviously. Training for it. The IDF have just trucked in some very sophisticated underground sonar and radar detection equipment too.
I think they may be readying to rescue the hostages. Let’s hope.
Just catching up on the liberals in power doco.
Wow, just wow. Giving Prince Phillip a knighthood and not being all in on gay marriage is was so outrageous that they just had to knife a prime minister.
It must have been so idealic back then that these issues were that important.
Stock the fork in…..we’re done.
This is sad and predictable.
F***en LOL!
We’re damned fools for believing this nonsense.
We need to reopen our primary industries back up, repeal the petroleum resource rent tax and so on. There’s coal and oil in so many places in Australia it is absolutely incredible.
Not content with raping superman (yes thats a thing), now green lantern is a choad choker being clackermailed* by J Edgar hoover..
https://boundingintocomics.com/2023/10/12/new-alan-scott-the-green-lantern-series-sees-the-golden-age-hero-being-blackmailed-into-sexual-relationship-with-j-edgar-hoover/
* Like blackmail, but involving 100% more poop chute
An American Amish Kids Party in Louisiana
A Kids party in Louisiana has Gone Viral. Would you ever let your kids do this?
Top three stories at Courier Mail Online are Covid mask and vaccine related. Was front page story .
Not enough aged care vaccinations also a front page story in the Australian.
They don’t want to stop the jabbing.
Mole – It’s an epic faceplant.
Rebooted Queer ‘Green Lantern’ Comic Flops Hard as Writer Calls Comics Fans ‘Haters and Queerphobes’ (14 Nov)
Funny how whenever they try to market something to 1% of the population it fails to sell many copies. Weird.
Anybody know why the oz has launched Project Rehabilitate Marcia “intifada” Langton? Seems a tad soon.
There are, of course, micro little gadgets for use by ladies who prefer to concentrate on up front stimulations. They do seem to me to be only half of the deal though.
What is interesting is that lesbians seem to prefer well-sized similacra of what they see in the gay videos they apparently prefer to watch on dull wet afternoons.
Bringing back Knighthoods at all was fairly unpopular. At best it was a distraction from real work that wasn’t done.
Unipardee.
Hamas Says All The AK-47s Found In Gaza Hospital Were Strictly For Medicinal Use
“These were clearly medical machine guns,” said Ali Mohammed Al Mohammed.
“By confiscating these weapons, they are depriving sick children of the life-saving medical care that these rifles, rockets, and bombs provide.
Only people who are truly heartless would take these weapons away from children who are ill.
Death to Israel, thank you.”
As Israel continues to receive a mixture of support and criticism for its ongoing offensive against Hamas in Gaza, the discovery of a cache of weapons in a children’s hospital was a sobering reminder of what the IDF is up against.
When pressed on the matter, the Hamas spokesman refused to admit the weapons stockpile was for use in the war. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mohammed said. “The weapons were clearly labeled ‘Surgical AK-47s and Explosives.’”
…
Candace Owens blows herself up over Palestine.
Allah’u akbar!
Rome is in trouble as The Equalizer is coming. Fuqua has done some good action pics so hopefully will be good.
From a movie site below.
Reporting that Netflix has attached Denzel Washington to play the ancient Carthaginian general Hannibal in an untitled epic drama directed by Antoine Fuqua.
Forget about Fuqua for just a second, at least there’s a strong screenwriter attached to this project, John Logan (“Gladiator,” “The Aviator,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Skyfall”).
It doesn’t hurt that Washington is one of the greatest living actors. However, I hate to be the bearer of such news, but Hannibal wasn’t black — Carthaginian is closest to being Tunisian. So, we have some revisionist casting here, but if there’s any actor who can pull it off it’s Denzel.
Fuqua’s film, set to be his sixth project with Washington, will follow the pivotal battles Hannibal led against the Roman Empire during the Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.). I do wonder how Tunisians will react to this news — Hannibal is the stuff of legend in that country, widely revered as a national hero in the Arab nation.
Denzel won an Oscar for his role in Fuqua’s 2001 action film “Training Day.” However, since then, forget about it. There’s the three ‘Equalizer’ movies they’ve teamed-up for. Not to mention their misbegotten 2015 remake of “The Magnificent Seven.”
Fuqua’s other non-Denzel films include “Tears of the Sun,” “King Arthur,” “Brooklyn’s Finest,” “Olympus Has Fallen,” “South Paw,” “Emancipation,” and “The Guilty.” Is there even a good film in the bunch?
No details were given as to when production would begin on this film.
One of the things that has struck me in watching Netflix Korean Series is the number devoted to Publishing, Magazines, Ad Agencies and Book Stores & Libraries etc
The South Korean publishing industry made around 21.7 trillion South Korean won’s worth in sales in 2020.
Despite the minor growth in sales, the annual reading rate among adults in South Korea has been declining over the past decade, with two exceptions: e-books and audiobooks.
The other major exception included educational material, which is a major sector in the domestic publishing industry.
While printed books are still ahead of other mediums, with a roughly 41 percent annual readership rate in 2021, this nevertheless represents a significant decline from over 71 percent in 2013.
Educational publishing in South Korea
In a country where a large emphasis is placed on attaining good grades and higher education, publishing educational materials will naturally become a significant market. An average of 75.5 percent of all students in South Korea attended private education (hagwon) after school in order to receive tutoring or get ahead of the material.
Such institutions are attended by children of all ages, ranging from elementary to high school students.
On average, students spend an additional 6.7 hours in private education per week on top of their regular schooling.
As a result, with one exception, every major Korean publisher specializes in textbooks and other educational materials.
Shift from print to digital reading
E-books, a relative newcomer to the market, have seen annual reading rates increase to 19 percent by 2021. The convenience and accessibility of e-books compared to carrying around printed books were considered the main advantages in a 2021 survey.
Several more established sectors have seen their industry shift from print to digital; Korean comics (manhwa), which have been popular publications for decades, have long since made the move from print to digital comics.
Around 72 percent of comic readers exclusively read digital comics or webtoons in 2022, while about 26 percent read a mixture of digital and print comics.
The news industry has also experienced this shift, with 79 percent of Koreans getting their news online in 2022, while only 16 percent accessed print news.
The peaceful US march for Israel. Compare and Contrast to team-head-hackers.
E-scooter news.
Fire that killed 3 generations of NYC family sparked by lithium-ion battery (14 Nov)
If these things weren’t holy to Gaia they’d be banned so fast that Green heads would be spinning like tops.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Nov 15, 2023 1:23 PM
Your knowledge of all this is slightly disturbing.
What does Hairy think?
Denzel Washington as Hannibal and Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon would be a great double feature.
Napoleon review: Ridley Scott’s biopic is ‘an awe-inspiring achievement’ (BBC, 15 Nov)
‘Napoleon’ review: Another Joaquin Phoenix looney tunes performance as Ridley Scott offers ho-hum biopic (New York Post, 14 Nov)
Heh, I suppose we’ll just have to watch it to see which of NYP and BBC are right.
Barcelona recently?
My biggest gripe about Washington being Hannibal is his age.
Hannibal was a young chap, not 60 years old.
Sharp drop in Australia’s economic competitiveness
Tom McIlroy – Political correspondent
Deteriorating energy infrastructure, lacklustre entrepreneurship and poor competition rules are holding back the Australian economy, with a new report suggesting a drop in competitiveness is putting at risk future prosperity.
In a ranking of the most resilient economies, Australia fell to 20th place from first place in 2004, analysis by Institute of Public Affairs senior fellow Kevin You found.
Australia dropped further than comparable countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand in the same period.
It plummeted 15 places on economic competitiveness, and from 21st to 52nd place on quality of energy infrastructure.
In 2004, Australia ranked third on legal and regulatory frameworks designed to encourage competition.
By 2023, the country has fallen to 19th place on the same measure.
The analysis is based on data from the respected International Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness index, which measures four main factors: economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.
Dr You said the sharp decline in economic competitiveness rankings was alarming and added to risks to the economy from persistent inflation and public debt.
“Australia’s decline in economic competitiveness is directly correlated to the abandonment of a genuine economic reform agenda, as well as higher spending and debt levels of all levels of government, which has cruelled productivity growth and increased inflation,” he said.
“Yes, economic reform is hard won. However, if our leaders refuse to put the national interest first and undertake corrective policy action, Australia risks another decade of low productivity growth and declining per capita income.”
This year’s report placed Australia 19th out of 64 countries overall, boosted by strong commodity prices and a healthy jobs market.
Denmark, Ireland and Switzerland led the overall rankings in 2023.
Entrepreneurship rates lowest
Australia slipped to 62nd on entrepreneurship, the country’s worst result for the year. Improvement is also needed in economic complexity, where Australia ranked just 58th, on high levels of personal income tax (57th) and company tax (56th).
Dr You said Australia had fallen in key economic policy areas, including regulation, tax, and industrial relations.
“If it were not for the wealth-generating exports from Australia’s resource sector, Australians would be considerably worse off, and government budgets would be further in the red, with debt levels much higher.” – (Blackout Bowen Take Note!)
Last week, the OECD said Australian households had suffered the largest fall in living standards of any advanced economy over the past year, pointing to high inflation, a rapid increase in mortgage repayments and rising income taxes ravaging household budgets.
Inflation-adjusted disposable incomes have hit their lowest level since June 2019 after falling for seven consecutive quarters.
While headline inflation in Australia is lower than the OECD average, nominal wages are also growing at a much slower pace than many other advanced economies, including the UK, Canada, the Euro Area and the US.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has directed the new head of the Productivity Commission to prioritise climate change and technology in a new statement of expectations for the independent body.
Dr Chalmers has told incoming chairwoman Danielle Wood that the government wanted more “practical” policy advice and shorter reports to help translate its recommendations into practice.
Productivity growth, a key determinant of real wages and living standards, over the past decade has fallen to its slowest pace in 60 years – robbing Australians of a potential real income boost of $25,000 a year, according to the commission.
satire?
Funny because it’s true, rosie.
I think we can answer the question “Was the attacker of nancy Pelosis husband nuttier than squirrel poop” in the affirmative.
Pelosi attacker planned to wear unicorn costume and post interrogation online
David DePape, accused of attacking Nancy Pelosi’s husband in a home invasion last year, testified for an hour on Tuesday
..
He wanted to speak to Pelosi about Russian involvement in the 2016 election, he said, and planned to wear an inflatable unicorn costume and upload his interrogation of her online. Instead, in the early hours of 28 October 2022, he found 82-year-old Paul Pelosi and bludgeoned him, prosecutors say.
Only one of the above is a Babylon Bee piece.
Labor moves to lock Victoria into public electricity commission
Gus McCubbing Reporter
Labor will move to enshrine the State Electricity Commission in Victoria’s constitution to head off what it says is the threat of a future Coalition government abolishing it.
SEC Minister Lily D’Ambrosio on Wednesday said legislation would be put to the Victorian lower house within days to enshrine the body, which was revived by former premier Daniel Andrews last year to be a centrepiece of Labor’s ambitious clean energy plans for the state.
It marked a reversal of electricity sector privatisation started by the Kennett government in the 1990s.
But the move requires a 60 per cent majority of both houses and could hit a snag in the upper house, which is made up of 15 Labor MPs, 13 Coalition MPs and 12 crossbenchers, including four Greens.
Labor would need nine votes from the crossbench – which in August voted unanimously with the Coalition to hold an inquiry into the cancellation of the Commonwealth Games – to pass the SEC legislation.
Opposition Leader John Pesutto has previously said he would consider scrapping the SEC if the Coalition won the next election.
“This will be a test and a demonstration of whose interests the Liberal Party serve, and whether they’ve actually learnt anything over these decades of privatisation,” Ms D’Ambrosio said.
“The only fear Victorians should have is of a future Liberal government ever getting their hands on the SEC and destroying it again.
“Public ownership is good because it’s about Victorians having some ownership of the electricity system. The profits that it makes will go back into creating more renewable energy, more supply, making it cheaper, and creating 59,000 jobs.”
Last week, Premier Jacinta Allan announced a 10-year strategic plan for the SEC that makes it responsible for marketing electricity from contracted solar, wind and battery projects to service all state government energy needs with 100 per cent clean energy by 2025.
Critics said it appeared the plan would duplicate what is already available in a commercial market.
Grattan Institute head of energy Tony Wood last week said the SEC was increasingly looking like a “complete waste of time”.
“You have to ask: what’s the point of it?” he said. “It’s not doing anything the private sector couldn’t do with good policy.”
Mr Wood also warned that the principle of competitive neutrality detailed in the plan – that the government-owned SEC would not get any advantage over the private sector – made it pointless.
Ms D’Ambrosio was adamant on Wednesday the SEC would bring down power prices, but could not say when this would be achieved.
She said Victorians would not care about arguments about competitive neutrality.
“I’m telling you what brings down power prices: it’s an active government that has existed here in Victoria since the end of 2014 that has got a robust policy and ambition to grow more electricity supply, renewable energy supply,” she said.
The revived SEC is yet to announce any projects, or to appoint a formal board or permanent management.
The government committed $1 billion to the SEC in the May budget, but energy experts warn that was woefully inadequate to meet the state’s energy transition ambitions.
The Australian Energy Market Operator estimates the move from fossil fuels will cost about $320 billion nationally.
Dot
China is the UFC champ in terms of building nuclear reactors.
According to Oliver Stone’s doco, Britain is next.
I watched the Oliver Stone doco on nuclear energy on the plane. It’s worth watching, as it’s really very good. There’s an American firm working on a small cylinder-type battery for homes and businesses that would last for decades. I don’t think it will go anywhere, though, for obvious reasons.
GM used to have a showroom on 5th Ave. on the ground floor of the old Iconic GM building. I recall bumbling in one time as they had a show on concept cars from the 50s. There was a model of a concept car of the future that had a miniature nuclear reactor as the engine. The blurb said that the GM scientists thought the car would go for decades without a charge.
Canberra airport has afp at security counter.
First time I’ve seen in 6 trips this year.
Something has changed?
rosie
Excellent, they deserve all the mockery they get and more.
Wild Day as the Ukrainian Game of Thrones Revs Up!
SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER
14 NOV 2023
The Ukrainian project is starting to come undone at the seams. What began as hints of brewing conflict has now turned into a full-scale rift between the Ukrainian leadership and military staff.
A storm of new reports paint a dismal picture of a final desperate scramble for power.
Minister of Defense of Ukraine Rustem Umerov is preparing submissions for dismissal :
– Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Sergei Naev (may become one of the main defendants in the case that concerns the defense of the Kherson region in 2022);
– Commander of the Operational-Strategic Group of Troops “Tavria” Alexander Tarnavsky;
— Commander of the Medical Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Tatyana Ostashchenko;
Keep in mind, in such a flood of reports it’s nigh impossible to corroborate or verify them all, but taken as a whole they represent a general sense of the urgent escalation happening behind the scenes.
LOL, Simplemindedness is excelling himself. Nothing much is happening. The Ukies potted a couple of BSF landing ships and have a bridgehead in the south the Russians haven’t been able to dislodge. Yet at least. A bit of stuff around Avdiivka and that’s about it. Interestingly the Russians are using more air support there from Su-35s, which suggests the Ukies are running short of battlefield AA missiles.
Biden the Brainless has been trying to edge Ukraine into a deal with Russia, but got told to insert part of himself into another part of himself. And the Germans announced they’re doubling support for Ukraine.
American Amish at Work – HORRIFIC ATTACK
Brutes pummel NYPD cop who asked them to stop smoking at NYC subway station: video
Erk. That dot-painted Qantas-link plane looks like a flying goanna.
It looks like something regurgitated after a night on the piss that finished with a bottle of Creme de Menthe.
ScoMo was a w*nker during the scamdemic.
—–
Avi:
ScoMo DISTANCES himself from Vic Libs over definition of a woman
I wish
LOL
Chad Max…
Bumble is a scam.
https://medium.com/@christopher_57067/the-untold-story-of-bumbles-engineered-success-5e7947858527
An interesting thing about the Z War is that the Russians, with their bottomless and endless supply of manpower (sarc), haven’t been able to rotate their front line troops. They’re stuck in line for month on end, with no relief.
Meanwhile the Dags have been causing a degree of consternation in Moscow, and after the kill-the-jews riot at Dagestan’s airport there’s been a bit of cautious effort from the security services going on quietly-like.
Moscow Purges Security Officials And Takes Preventative Steps In North Caucasus (14 Nov)
I suspect the top table place of the Russian Orthodox Church is also causing resentment in the Daggy republics. It’ll be interesting to see if Vlad can avoid a Third Chechen War.
Small town has suffered through ten deaths in two months
Ten souls have died. Died violently, horrifically, with extended suffering.
The abstract “small town” is not a victim.
Maybe- just maybe- if the collectivists dropped the “poor blackfella mob” infantilisation, cared more about individual rights, and were as prosecutory on apportioning blame to responsible adults as they have been to framing pale stale males, then we could get a bit of reconcilliation.
From the article “Chad Max” wrote:
When is the Las Vegas Grand Prix?
Round 22 of the FIA Formula 1® 2023 season occurs on Saturday, 18 November.
Practice begins locally on Thursday, 16 November, with Practice 1, followed by Practice 2 and Practice 3 on Saturday, 17 November, and Qualifying on Saturday, 18 November.
What time does the Las Vegas Grand Prix start?
The Formula 1® Las Vegas Grand Prix 2023 starts at 10:00 pm local time on Saturday, 18 November.
The Eastern Australian time for each session is as follows:
MY TIME – Fox Sports & Kayo
Fri 17 NOV Practice 1 – 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Fri 17 NOV Practice 2 – 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Sat 18 NOV Practice 3 – 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Sat 18 NOV Qualifying – 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Sun 19 NOV Race. – 5:00 PM
Winston Smith
We kept on voting for Socialism. And getting it.
Simple really, Calli.
Something has changed?
Get a fresh pack of facemasks ready, Rosie. Life is about to get very uncomfortable for the unvaccinated- er, I mean non-compliant.
Winston Smith
Nov 15, 2023 1:25 PM
We’ve got easy times and weak leaders.
Why is everybody so surprised it’s all turning to shit?
Dot
Nov 15, 2023 2:28 PM
Out of curiosity I tried to look at the site, the demand for cookie acceptance deterred me.
Winston Smith
Nov 15, 2023 2:32 PM
Winston Smith
Nov 15, 2023 1:25 PM
We’ve got easy times and weak leaders.
They are not leaders. They are just piss weak.
Wally Dalí
Nov 15, 2023 2:32 PM
Something has changed?
Get a fresh pack of facemasks ready, Rosie. Life is about to get very uncomfortable for the unvaccinated- er, I mean non-compliant.
I never got jabbed and the only booster we had was a seat thingy in the back seat of the Roller. The bub loved it sitting up nice and high.
Something I just can’t get my head around here…
Salmon farming is huge. As in gigantically, mind bogglingly huge. Double plus good.
Crab in the bucket.
Because someone else has the skill, capital and opportunity to start a business and appears to be doing well out of it they make losers feel bitter.
Fortunately for the losers because there is a tiny element of “public interest” (the farms are in the ocean, a public place) they can feel free to whine seethe and dilate about the environment in order to cover up their bitterness and appear virtuous.
See: mining, fishing, forestry & farming for many, many more examples.
Stolen #1 …….
TO WHOM DOES THE LAND OF ISRAEL BELONG??
An Israeli Sense of Humour at United Nations set the record straight.
An ingenious example of speech and politics occurred recently in the United Nations Assembly and made the world community smile.
A representative from Israel began: ‘Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Moses: When he struck the rock and it brought forth water, he thought, “What a good opportunity to have a bath!”
Moses removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water. When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished.
A Palestinian had stolen them!
The Palestinian representative at the UN jumped up furiously and shouted, “What are you talking about? The Palestinians weren’t there then.”
The Israeli representative smiled and said, “And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech.” ……………..
Dot
Nov 15, 2023 12:54 PM
Israel is losing 1.15 soldiers per day in the Gazan/Hamas War.
So that leaves 0.85 of a soldier per day to soldier on to the next 0.15 or stay as an 0.85.
Don’t numbers just get silly sometimes. And war is brutal.
I wonder how Ham-Arse is going? Down the plug hole I hope.
Stolen #2
The Iranian Ambassador to the UN had just finished giving a speech, and walked out into the lobby of the convention center where he was introduced to a United States Marine Corps General.
As they talked, the Iranian said, “I have just one question about what I have seen in America .”
The General said, “Well, is there anything I can do to help?”
The Iranian whispered, “My son watches this show called ‘Star Trek’ and in it there is Kirk who is Canadian, Chekhov who is Russian, Scotty who is Scottish, Uhura who is black, and Sulu who is Japanese, but there are NO Muslims. My son is very upset and doesn’t understand why there aren’t any Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, Egyptians, Palestinians, Saudis, Syrians, or Pakistanis on ‘Star Trek’.
“The General leaned toward the Iranian Ambassador, and whispered in his ear, “That’s because it takes place in the future…”
I found some old footage of Dot…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGag8Qllgnw
Someone here, last week sometime, had the gall, the gall, to suggest businesses require a social license to operate. This know nothing clown comes on here posing as coming from the Right and posts leftwing platitudes. A business doesn’t need anyone’s consent to operate.
Most people here would have the mental capacity to figure out it would take 7 days to accumulate the .15 death rate. Wodney, if in doubt, go ask Marty’s sentient AI for help with this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCTP6LJd620
Fatwah in ….3, 2, 1………
Arse fungus? Must be a QANTAS special order.
If he’s referring to the infighting between Zelensky and Zahluzny he’s on point.
How Israel is dealing with the tunnel system .. interesting …….!
It’s no wonder the pro-Pali mobs are squealing for “ceasefire” …… the tunnel system is supposed to be a deadly trap for the IDF not HAMAS ….!
https://youtu.be/ElrJsyWRZbs
Brilliant.
After getting a bloody nose by inserting itself into Da Voice debate, the toxic leprechaun limping away leaving Qantas mumbling regret for what they did – the next thing they do is…more indigenous fetishisation.
It looks grotesque. Dot painting may be interesting at a certain level, but for most people it is a mildly eye-catching thing to hang on one wall in the house, or a coffee table book. But the back half of an aeroplane?
Moreover it makes the plane look less like Qantas than ever. They, as a business, have long comported themselves as “Australia’s airline” and the general public, in turn, (sometimes grudgingly) think of it the same way. No one would have been as upset if it had been Virgin that had put the ‘Yes23’ logo on their planes. They just would have been suprised to see such a cack-handed move by such a savvy airline. The goodwill that Qantas trades on is, I think, a diminishing intangible asset and they seem oblivious to it.
You can see why they are only doing it domestically – landing like that overseas will have people thinking something had gone dreadfully wrong with the human waste containment during the flight.
At least they’re not still up there looking for things amongst mints and paper handkerchiefs.
“Israel is losing 1.15 soldiers per day in the Gazan/Hamas War.”
Hmmmm. Eight every seven days. Around 1200 were murdered on 7 October, few of them soldiers. At this rate, it will take almost three years to match the deaths on that single day. I doubt that Hamarse will last that long.
JC
Nov 15, 2023 3:04 PM
LOL. I knew that this would hook you in while you were lurking around for posts that you don’t like. Maybe the Fat Pizza Bar and Grill has closed or maybe you are still there fiddling on your small device.
Junior Cretin, the self appointed Blog Milk Monitor. Pompous Windbag to boot.
Those Anger Management Classes await. Some Armstrong on the way as well. TC.
Looks like Dotty Dot of Dottiness may have had a hand in with all those dots on the new QuaintArse aircraft.
Mrs Stencho Pantyhose is probably trying to get the Muzzies who have moved in next door to speak English. A Great language invented by the English BTW.
And who let them all in?
“See boys, size doesnt matter after all!”
Oh – I thought it was more “Where’s the dildo?”, “Yes, it does”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImimMIRrQMw&pp=ygUYc2hlIGNhbid0IGZpbmQgaGVyIGtleXMg
Of course you know, Wodney. Just as you were aware Marty had run a sentient AI since 1985. As for monitoring, unlike you, I’m not asking the blog owner to ban people. Go change your diaper, you limey pos. You’re worthless.
“Canberra airport has afp at security counter.”
Yes, life’s dangerous. I had a pair of nail scissors confiscated on my last trip there.
Zelensky is a glove puppet. He’s an actual actor, by profession, who made TV commercials. That’s why he spends all his time on the stump for donations. It’s what he’s good at. You don’t see this from any other actual leaders of nations, not even Albo.
1984 or 2024 …….. GEORGE ORWELL MIGHT HAVE GOT IT RIGHT !
George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 is nearing reality in Australia with the Albanese government’s Misinformation Bill being the first step.
For those of you who haven’t read it, Orwell painted a grim picture of how life on our planet might become if totalitarian rulers were allowed to deprive their citizens of all freedoms in order to maintain control.
We are, of course, witnessing this already in many countries including North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and China.
Interestingly, the novel has recently become a bestseller in Russia presumably because Russians can see the direction in which their country is heading under Putin.
Orwell’s book was first published in 1949, so he was looking well into the future. He had witnessed how evil regimes like Nazism and Communism impacted on people’s lives and from that he predicted how it might become even worse and more widespread under totalitarian regimes.
Albanese’s proposed Misinformation Bill is the first step in this Orwellian direction. It is aimed at restricting freedom of speech so that only the government’s views are heard.
It would do this – in the first instance – by issuing huge fines to tech companies if the Government thinks they are not doing enough to reduce misinformation online.
To avoid these fines, tech companies would quite understandably remove anything they think might contravene this edict.
And there’s going to be a lot of deleting because the Bill, if enacted, would capture thousands of statements made by ordinary Australians every day.
Under the Government’s Bill, something can be ‘misinformation’ even if the person concerned holds that view and believes it is true.
To be ‘misinformation’, all that’s required is that the statement be considered “misleading” and capable of contributing to “serious harm”.
Who decides what is misinformation?
As you’d expect – it’s the government via its regulator ACMA. While the tech companies decide what content needs to be taken down, the Government ultimately decides whether the tech companies are deleting enough.
Incredibly, the Albanese Government has excluded itself from the proposed law. Under the Bill, anything the Government authorises will be not be considered misinformation.
But if you criticise the Government, that would be misinformation.
Can you believe this nonsense?
https://saltbushclub.com/2023/10/28/1984-or-2024-george-orwell/
STOP PRESS –
ACMA Censorship Legislation stopped-for now. But will it come back in a form that is even more restrictive?
The Government says it’s going back to the drawing board with its proposed mis and disinformation legislation to include ‘religious speech’. Could that make bad laws even worse?
“satire?”
Thanks Rosie, wonderful satire, and like good satire should, it punches home with the truth. Good to laugh
That wasn’t satire Rosie, its the way the left and muzzies really think. The left would take it as reality, but only to them. 1.9 billion muzzies all wanting to be martyrs, I say let them, form an orderly queue at my place. They’d be pushing and shoving to get to the front. I’ve got a paddock full of goats ready to go.
“There are two genders.”
That would be misinformation and a gaolable offence.
Optus out again, though it appears to be only in our regional area. Could be due to 3G/4G upgrades, as we are getting signal at our front gate 1km away.
Otherwise, we seem plagued by modern communication problems. Last week husband googled Red Energy to see comparative electricity rate compared to AGL. Unbelievably, Red Energy not only supplied comparative price, but cancelled out AGL & connected us to Red Energy! Numerous calls to both companies still hasn’t restored our old AGL plan. AGL says is has contacted Red Energy, Red Energy denies it. We have now contacted the Energy Ombudsman. The whole situation is outrageous.
I am showing my age, but attendance at the offices of providers to actually conduct business in person, rather than through the Internet would surely prevent these situations.
Lost a Leatherman mini to them. I’m still pissed.
Looks like Marty’s grifter posts are taking a back seat these days.
Had a fork confiscated by the District Court but I can live with that.
BTW – there is much handwringing about the remaining civilian population in Gaza. Has everyone forgotten that the IDF guaranteed safe passage for them into South Gaza?
They have chosen to remain, in spite of the immediate danger to themselves and their children. Could it be that many of these civilians are actually family members of Hamas? Recall, that estimates of those affiliated to Hamas, if not actual fighters, is said to be between 30,000 & 40,000.
I repeat – my guess is that the remaining civilians are family members of Hamas.
Damon
Nov 15, 2023 3:31 PM
“Canberra airport has afp at security counter.”
Yes, life’s dangerous. I had a pair of nail scissors confiscated on my last trip there.
Meanwhile, anyone who has a sharpened lead pencil could use this to jab a person in the neck and rupture an artery. Blood spurting everywhere and the person is dead in no time at all. Does that lead pencil ever get picked up by any Security system/equipment?
From the Oz…
Anthony Albanese has accused Peter Dutton of “weaponising anti-semitism” after the Opposition leader moved a motion “linking the issues” of rising anti-Semitic vilification and the release of “more than 80 hard core criminals”.”
Sleazy Albanese, fumbling, clumsy, desperate, lazy, completely out of his depth, he’s simply pointing the finger at himself. It’s Sleazy who’s weaponised Jew hatred, it’s Sleazy who’s nurtured Jew hatred, it’s Sleazy who’s stoked Jew hatred, and it’s Sleazy who’s fomented Jew hatred.
An appalling man.
“Meticulous research into military uniforms and techniques…”
Yes.
The historicity of a redeemed Malekith is totally not retconned politically correct lore.
“Model soldiers society”
Well. It sounds better than Neckbeards and Jolly Unemployable Autists, Inc.
It does allow more direct feedback. Such as when a native woman was declined a Custom Credit facility and upended the entire desk on a hapless staff member (not me luckily. Graduates were a protected species.)
I was forced to watch a video about being stabbed with various implements years ago when I got a secco licence.
Forks are dastardly and brutal.
I still bring my own cutlery to work but in an old role I’d be called away for flights without much notice.
On one occasion I flew a private jet to Feraldton with said cutlery in my duffle. On the way back home (on the Qaintarse milk run) I’d forgotten I had a fork and butter knife in my bag and ended up being treated like a terror suspect at Gerro airport. The security lady (who looked like she smoked about 150 ciggies a day) told me to “raise my arms and step away from the bag.”
I laughed… which didn’t help the situation…
This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.
– Charlie Chaplin
Try developing land if you’re not connected to your local council let alone start drilling for oil onshore in Australia.
Good luck – despite being theoretically absolutely legal activities.
Social licence exists if we like it or not. Of course it is BS but the sad fact is it is basically a real thing now.
How Central Park Was Created Entirely By Design and Not By Nature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AVymQ-SU3A
A great walk through of Central Park.
The only thing that could have made this better is if Keanu Reeves or Ian McShane did it.
Sorry Gabor, it’s the way of the world now.
I just say yes to everything then flush everything periodically. I should have a VPN too of course. Sometimes I search for or talk about totally random crap around my phone. It disrupts the spying to an extent, they get bogus information.
Speaking of John Wick, imagine how Chad Stahelski introduces himself.
Yeah, I’m a stunt man but I’ve directed four movies now.
How Central Park Was Created Entirely By Design and Not By Nature
One of the most beautiful and amenable city parks in the world. Adore it.
I still can’t get over how rude Perf airport security was. It really tested my patience not to get arrested. Then I got punted straight out of the terminal for my bag and only had one cafe to grab a lunch from before going to the city.
It really must be an amazing place because it is like they are trying to deter tourism.
I know it exists, Dot. However, would you put a positive spin on the putrid idea? Rather than being critical, the clown was using it as somehow having a positive attribute. It doesn’t it has negative attributes.
It’s one of the reasons the earlier piece posted by someone suggests we’re now in 60th place for entrepreneurship and appalling in productivity growth.
Australia certainly needs the Joh Bjelke-Petersen approach to encouraging business.
I clicked on this link from the last thread and suffered severe spasms when the smiling gargoylish face of turtle bowen came up:
Dr Faustus
Nov 15, 2023 9:51 AM
In This Won’t Hurt a Bit news:
Albanese Government working with heavy industry to keep Australia competitive in a decarbonising global economy
Perth Airport is the worst airport in all Australia, Dot.
Being Keanu Reeves’ stunt double gets you laid.
Directing four John Wick movies gets you rich.
Some guys really do overachieve.
Some one on the last thread proffered the view that most people are retards; these polling results from the US which consistently put joe biden ahead of Trump confirm that:
Favorability Ratings: U.S. Political Leaders
Favorable Unfavorable Spread
Joe Biden 40.6 54.6 -14.0
Donald Trump 39.6 56.2 -16.6
Ron DeSantis 35.1 48.9 -13.8
Nikki Haley 30.6 33.8 -3.2
Kamala Harris 36.8 54.4 -17.6
Mike Johnson 26.0 31.5 -5.5
Hakeem Jeffries 28.3 30.7 -2.4
Chuck Schumer 29.3 44.7 -15.4
Mitch McConnell 21.0 60.0 -39.0
Favorability Ratings: 2024 Candidates
Favorable Unfavorable Spread
Joe Biden (D) 40.6 54.6 -14.0
Donald Trump (R) 39.6 56.2 -16.6
Ron DeSantis (R) 35.1 48.9 -13.8
Nikki Haley (R) 30.6 33.8 -3.2
Robert Kennedy (I) 40.2 36.0 +4.2
Vivek Ramaswamy (R) 26.6 33.6 -7.0
Mike Pence (R) 29.4 58.9 -29.5
Chris Christie (R) 22.4 52.6 -30.2
Tim Scott (R) 27.1 27.6 -0.5
Marianne Williamson (D) 12.8 23.5 -10.7
Doug Burgum (R) 9.8 17.3 -7.5
Asa Hutchinson (R) 13.0 27
Blame the Paddys for that one too.
Yeah.
Try to nit-pick the spelling mistake in that one.
Great article by Malcolm Roberts in the Australian Spectator on the precarious state we are now in when communications and power disruptions can paralyse everyday life.
Optus offers a taste of the digital Dark Ages
Malcolm Roberts
15 November 2023
Last week, Australia was given a reminder about the importance of cash. Waking up to the Dark Ages, around 10 million Optus customers found themselves cut off from civilisation. Among these were emergency workers, hospitals, and those desperately trying to open their shops.
For them, the lesson is redundancy.
In the hurry to centralise Australia’s communication systems by placing the government at the centre of everything, too many people – including those drafting public policy and running telecommunications empires – have forgotten the importance of having a backup.
It’s a strange revelation for a nation obsessed with safetyism.
Remember the days when a summer storm would roll through and take out the power? We’d plug in the landline and ring up energy providers via the trusty old copper network to complain. Was it pretty? No. Was it ‘modern’? Not in the slightest. But as with most archaic technology, it’s bloody tough to kill.
Gas is another example of a backup system in decline. Most of us can strike a match and boil a kettle or cook a meal when the lights go out. Not for much longer. Labor, the Greens, and the Teals are keen to kill gas forever in the name of Net Zero. The free market prefers gas, yet they won’t be allowed to install it. This transition is being done with an iron-fist mandate ‘for the Greater Good™’.
The prize for reaching our 2030 Net Zero targets will be Australia’s most precarious civilisation operating on the whim of the weather, complete with an ‘off’ switch that foreign nations own.
This brings us to cash. Since the invention of money – those with the treasure make the rules. Governments have always feared citizens amassing wealth to rival the State. The old families of Rome held sway over the Senate because their money could buy armies and allies – until Caesar killed most of them and migrated their gold to the treasury.
The role of dangerous monetary influence used to belong to Australia’s Big Four banks, but now the Union Super Funds have become a lumbering giant, pushing policy around with its engorged stomach of roughly $3.5 trillion. What the Super Barons want, the government delivers.
There is $101.3 billion in cash in circulation at last count. That’s money citizens are free to spend and gift as they wish. The government cannot stop these transactions. It cannot exclude disobedient social groups from buying a beer after making a mean social media post against Net Zero. They cannot limit how many steaks you purchase in a week after exceeding your carbon credit allowance.
All businesses must report their sales, so the government ultimately knows what is purchased with this hard money – what they don’t know – what they want to know – is who is doing the buying. Citizen privacy is important. It’s none of the government’s business what you buy. Once they know, they’ll find a way to exploit it. That’s just what bureaucracies do. The predatory billionaires, who ultimately drive this agenda, are particularly keen to do-away with notion of privacy.
Another consideration is the need for a robust civilisation. The further we travel down the path of modernity, the more precarious our position as a civilisation becomes.
Our nation survived two world wars because our fundamental systems were tricky to destroy without getting on the ground and digging up the infrastructure. Today, our entire world could be erased with the destruction of a data centre, the cutting of undersea cables, or a simple update error.
Last week made it clear that we are at the mercy of a ‘whoops!’ from hundreds of tech departments – any number of which could be damaging.
Yes, there are valid fears that cyber warfare from North Korea, China, or other interested parties could cause chaos, but such a dramatic measure is not necessary to cripple us.
Australia’s communication systems are reliant on a handful of providers sharing networks. Economic and social damage can ravage society with even the smallest of failures.
Digital darkness is the nightmare of technical experts around the world, and yet few political interests take their concerns seriously. They are the astronomers pointing at a patch of light in the night sky shouting, ‘Look out!!!’
It has been easier to convince corporate Australia to spend hundreds of billions on the promised ‘global boiling’ promoted by UN Secretary-General António Guterres than the very real and present danger of communication fragility.
Existential threats have deep coffers, yet it is much harder to find money for a real threat. Securing the nation against genuine problems costs money and rarely impresses the electorate. The polar bears are easier to sell on a campaign banner than a photograph of a sad-looking silicon chip.
Part of any serious backup plan must be the preservation of cash.
Keeping cash in circulation is a pain for companies that can’t ‘be bothered’ handling cash.
Keeping cash annoys the Big Banks who are eyeing off the possibility of immense power when it comes to programmable currency, negative interest rates, and the ability to manipulate spending to suit their favourite social projects and largest corporate depositors.
The political class, having learned the wrong lessons from Covid tyranny, quite like the idea of shutting down a person’s ability to participate in the economy. Debanking scandals, such as those we saw with NatWest and Nigel Farage, are only the beginning. Without cash, and in conjunction with a pervasive Digital ID system, citizens could lose their ability to participate in a functioning democracy.
How easy will it be to punish sections of the community – identity groups – for ‘voting the wrong way’?
Without cash, politics becomes ransomware.
Cash is the safety net.
Businesses stayed open during the Optus outage because of cash. People were able to pay their rent and power bills because of cash. Families bought food yesterday because of cash.
Cash is king. Does everyone love this king? No. But every single Australian needs this paper monarch to survive.
To me, growing old is great. It’s the very best thing – considering the alternative.
– Michael Caine
Speaking of spasms I reported last night about the old bastard who had wittily written a climate change medical certificate for the kiddies to wag school and protest. He was interviewed on bolta who cut him off mid sentence. Just look at the old shit.
Maybe the site can have an arsehole of the week segment. This guy would have to be in the running for the initial award.
“Canberra airport has afp at security counter.”
Yes, life’s dangerous. I had a pair of nail scissors confiscated on my last trip there.
Had one of those credit card sized little multi-tools confiscated ‘cos I had forgotten it was in my wallet.
Suspect they toss coins after work to see who gets what.
I had a similar experience at Newcastle.
My laugh was followed by a fork off.
That didn’t help either.
“Canberra airport has afp at security counter.”
Yes, life’s dangerous. I had a pair of nail scissors confiscated on my last trip there.
Yeah, I got a mate who refuses to travel by plane; every time he does they confiscate his semi-autos.
BTW – however, Malcolm was wrong about Caesar killing “most” of the old families of Rome. And these families did not hold political sway in the senate solely because of their money. The age-old relationship of “clientela” ( with origins in the rural agricultural past) was central – money being but one aspect of the force of “fides” between individuals.
CHO Qld cracked and let the truth cat out of the bag.
Plenty of pressure in media, radio and Courier Mail, today regarding calls by Qld Australian Medical Association to bring back mask wearing. The public not interested.
So the Courier Mail article has been updated and CHO Qld says no Covid deaths for a month and only 2 in ICU. Also says current wave less severe.
I repeat no Covid deaths for a month. Yet people are still pushing vaccines as huge majority not had one for a long time and would have worn off. So even though population considered very unvaccinated nobody is dying anyway. Even the 2 in ICU could be in for other reasons.
It is all BS.
Cronkite
There are two big issues for the GOP.
Whatever way you want to cut it, abortion is now problematic for the GOP because, and it’s mostly sheilas, want abortion not to be made illegal or highly restrictive.
Trump creates a lot of drama and kicks around a lot of dust. While you and I love it, the average punter doesn’t. The average punter also mostly watches the corrupt MSM.
Trump needs to neutralize the abortion issue in some way and sound very much like a problem solver. Doing so would mean a landslide.
A sharp pencil does not help you on your way to virgin-padded Martyrdom. You need something that you can use on yourself, as well as taking out the keffirs, so explodey, or driveable.
Pencil patrols would disarm the literate… I had a blank journal and a pencil- had made a few short cheat notes to help me fly around the place sans mask, 2021- I think jotting down proceedings and names was what really made the AFP and their male stewardess crony lose their sh*t.
Oh, and laughing, Lysander, that was a big mistake for me too. Sgt Name Redacted really couldn’t hack the fact that I thought he was a dill, in front of the whole transfer crowd and all.
…would have worn off.
LOL! Bourney, you’re a brick…
You don’t need a masters degree in Phrenology to have him pegged as a nutter.
China: China promised to strictly control coal then started 182 coal power plants instead
India: New Delhi: The Union coal ministry on Monday announced plans to increase India’s coal production to 1.404 billion tonne by 2027, with an eye to further boost it to 1.577 billion tonne by 2030.
Current domestic production hovers around one billion tonne annually. This increase in output aims to ensure ample supply of domestic coal to India’s thermal power plants, which are essential for the country’s growing energy needs.
The ministry also said that coal stocks at thermal power plants have been rising since 16 October, and stand at approximately 20 million tonne. Stocks at mines have hit 41.59 million tonne. Overall, including transit and captive mines, the stockpile has grown to 73.56 million tonne, up 12% from the previous year’s 65.56 million tonne.
Australia: rub and tug and turtle.
So who is the infighting between? Zaluzhny and who’s hand? Who killed Zaluzhny’s advisor with a grenade delivered as a present in the same week in which Zaluzhny said that Ukraine was kaput?
There are two big issues for the GOP.
Abortion did cruel he latest mid terms for GOP; although you can place a lot of blame on Ronna McDaniel’s padded shoulders and empty head.
The main issues for voters are these. It’s strange that crime rates so low, as does the border. I don’t think you’re right about Trump. He is not divisive, the MSM is. The problem is, as I’ve stated, most punters are either lazy, preoccupied or too retarded to do their due diligence.
On the Norwegian salmon farms and oil production, my question about what Australia had deserved to deserve energy security issues and curtailment of the fish farming was mostly rhetorical.
I know we have voted in a succession of socialist-lite and socialist pure governments. But so has Norway. I think the answer may be a bit more nuanced than “it’s our own fault”. I just couldn’t come up with anything and was asking what others thought.
had done
Early morning here.
Perth Airport is the worst airport in all Australia, Dot.
Yes.
2 examples…
Back into Austfailure after flight from Singapore, 3:00 in the morning, try to fill in the retarded “ARE YOU A TERRORRIST DOING TERRORISTY THINGSA TERRORISTICLY”? cards.
No pens.
At all.
50 people milling round trying to comply with spastic direction. See AFP drone and point out problem.
Nup, I wont do anything to assist!
….
2nd- have employee slip and bugger his knee at one of the “you can have a beer, in exchange for your first born child” cafes. Seen by other people coming to site, so in order to simplify the workers comp I asked if there was any footage of the incident we could request.
“We dont film in that area” comes reply.
I get one of the chaps whos flying out to take a picture of the 2 cameras pointed in that area next time hes back in, send it to the airport with a nice note explaining they are a lying pack of turds, and if this employee chose to sue Id be more than happy to tender this as proof of the airports deliberate lying to protect itself.
They are shitbags.
thefrollickingmole
Nov 15, 2023 2:56 PM
I found some old footage of Dot…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGag8Qllgnw
I Liked the Comment – A game for boys…and for that more intelligent sort of girl”! Classic!
You’re obviously a troublemaker, Humphrey. You’re lucky WA plod didn’t lock you up for committing menaces with an implement — and encouraging thought crimes.
The internet is a wonderful resource, Gabor. But I’ve also had lesbian friends, just as friends I hasten to add, as I simply can’t get off on girls, I missed out on that interest when sexy interests were being handed out; but women do tend to talk.
Hairy is like any man about this. Tell me more. Nope, I say. Secret women’s stuff.
Looks like blackouts are inevitable…
But you wont guess the cause..
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-15/summer-heatwave-drives-extreme-electricity-demand/103108580
Its called “summer you lying slimebags.
But there’s still a risk of “load shedding” — or rolling blackouts — where high demand coincides with scheduled maintenance at power plants, or low solar and wind days.
Even their own figures seem to indicate they are full of crap.
https://www.energy.gov.au/data/energy-consumption
Australia’s energy consumption fell 0.1% in 2021-22 to 5,762 PJ, the third successive year of decline and down 7% from the all-time peak of 6,188 PJ in 2018-19. The drop in consumption in 2021-22 was 7 PJ.
Calli, in Tasmania they go on about the offshore salmon farms being sinks of viral infection and that any chemicals used are as bad as draino. Don’t know if any of that is true, or if it’s just greenies wanting to keep things pristine. Probably the latter.
Bourne1879
Nov 15, 2023 4:20 PM
CHO Qld cracked and let the truth cat out of the bag.
Of course it is all BS. It was BS when it started but they got away with stuffing up the Country.
No Guv’ment will ever admit that they got anything wrong.
Great race!
Sprintcars | Maddington Toyota Series – Perth – 4th Nov 2023 | Clay-Per-View
I’ve asked Hairy to buy some candles on his next suprermarket run. We have matches. We also have battery LED lights and torches, but batteries often run down during the waiting-to-use period. Ten minutes into a blackout and they’re done. Good old candles are the go, I reckon. They’ve served humanity well so far.
When living in Sri Lanka I purchased a pretty brass oil lamp, like an Aladdin lamp, in a sauce dish shape, with a handle and little tank for oil. You drape a wick inside the tank and put the start of the wick into the spout of the lamp. In pre-historic times these were made of pottery. I think my ex benefitted from the lamp in the allocation of stuff during the break-up. A shame, as it would come in useful today.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Not an expert, but sea lice and i assume other parasites are a constant problem with farmed fish.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-problem-of-sea-lice-in-salmon-farms.html#:~:text=A%20chemical%20cleanse,several%20weeks%20after%20a%20treatment.
Australia: rub and tug and turtle.
And there is a Feral Erection in 2025. Thank goodness. On yer’ way Marxists and please close the door on the way out.
Haven’t been to Perth Airport for over 30 years Lysander. Reminded me then of country towns and Hobart Airport.
At present, Sydney airport is the worst in Australia and possibility the world.
Had to have a good laugh at Melissa Kate’s latest Real Life column in this week’s Speccie. She and her hairy, called The Builder Boyfriend, have spent ages seeking out a property where they can have horses, a decent farmhouse with land, and a country lifestyle away from very woke Surrey in the UK. They were priced out of all markets but Ireland, and recently moved to their new and apparently heavenly home with all that they desired. The week though, she laments that just down the road lives a middle-class whinger from Surrey who is now dobbing her into Council for having a burn off in the backyard.
I was thinking we should leave Vaucluse to get away from these woke Teals, but the truth is that we would likely purchase somewhere far away and less convenient and still find outselves living next door to some.
this week
The problem with “Social Licence” is that the term has been bstrdised by the usual suspects.
Originally it was a legitimate marketing term used to describe the situation when no one went to a baker anymore because he was shagging the butcher’s wife.
As with everything, though, there’s a certain group who believe that no one could possibly believe something they didn’t without being evil.
Sounds like a good website.
Social licence was an emergent quality of a business as defined by the market, not a pre-requisite set by the State (directly or indirectly).
Labor Transport Minister King is the ‘minister for higher airfares’: Flight Centre boss
Liam Walsh Reporter
Federal Labor Transport minister Catherine King is dubbed within the travel industry as the “minister for higher airfares”, Flight Centre chief executive Graham Turner has told investors.
In a sign of the travel industry’s lingering anger about the federal government’s blocking of additional flights from Qantas rival Qatar Airways, Mr Turner went off-script at Wednesday’s annual general meeting.
“The government is deliberately trying to keep airfares high. We don’t know why,” he said.
“But I know in the travel industry, Transport Minister King is now known as ‘minister for higher airfares’,” he said, prompting laughs from investors.
The federal government in July blocked Qatar Airways from adding 28 flights a week into Australia, a move which disappointed proponents of greater competition but should help Qantas.
“It was a disgrace,” Mr Turner, speaking to The Australian Financial Review after the meeting, said of the decision.
Government ministers have since given various reasons about why the decision was made. But Mr Turner, co-founder of Brisbane-based Flight Centre, which operates travel agencies globally and handled almost $22 billion in transactions last year, maintained the rationale remained unclear.
Flight Centre, which sustained heavy losses during the coronavirus pandemic, also predicted on Wednesday that underlying pre-tax profits should be between $270 million and $310 million for this financial year. Those numbers will exclude costs of a staff retention plan it enabled during the pandemic.
The $290 million midpoint of that result compares to $106 million a year earlier, and was within analyst expectations. Flight Centre shares were down 53¢ to $18.92 during trading on Wednesday.
Mr Turner maintained that consumers regarded travel as a non-discretionary spending item, sustaining demand even in tougher economic conditions. He also thought the impact of higher home loan interest rates would be muted.
“Our market generally … is middle- to higher-income, so they’re generally – particularly the older ones – not so affected by mortgages and that,” he said.
He maintained a larger hurdle for customers was a lack of seat capacity and high airfares for markets such as Europe.
That especially restricted families from travelling, he said. “We still haven’t really seen them come back in a big way yet. You can imagine, it’s so bloody expensive. Even if you’re a middle-income earner,” he said.
The meeting progressed fairly smoothly, although questions were raised about any regrets for the way heavily dilutive capital raisings were run during the pandemic’s scariest days in early 2020.
One investor also criticised what they perceived as a lack of service in Flight Centre shops. Flight Centre chairman Gary Smith argued an explosion in travel demand after the pandemic had been challenging, but staff had done an “amazing” job.
“Have we got it right 100 per cent of the time? No, clearly not. But to say that we have no service, I thoroughly dispute,” he said.
All resolutions passed with minimal protests.
Flight Centre director and former Wallaby John Eales, though, was carrying baggage from fund manager Magellan, an under-fire company where he is also a director. Proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services, which provides recommendations to large shareholders, backed Mr Eales’ re-election but said its support was “qualified on the basis of problematic pay practices identified … at Magellan”.
ISS also supported Flight Centre’s remuneration report, saying there was no disconnection between pay and performance, albeit concerns were raised that long-term incentive as this was “a retention plan with no financial performance hurdles”.
Fellow proxy advisory service Glass Lewis also questioned the long-term incentive, but noted it believed Flight Centre “has provided a strong case for its unique approach to executive remuneration”.
Turner is talking his own book but he’s right.
Wally,
Well spotted. Mistake on my part as I don’t believe they work. However the experts like to pretend to us that they do. Some because there is significant money involved in the vaccine scare continuing.
would have worn off.
LOL! Bourney, you’re a brick…
Zaluzhny’s hand. It’s obvious.
I expect he has enemies, yes, but Zelensky is a puppet. He’s a comedy actor for heaven’s sake. At least Putin learned his craft in the KGB. If you think Z is some sort of Blofeld you are wonderfully naive.
Dot at 1:06
A pretty fair assessment.
The proprietor is a bumbling old fool.
The troubadour is on the cusp of going down the rabbit-hole we spoke about last night.
Looks like the last remaining member of the local chapter of the Lyndon LaRouche Party is persona non grata.
And of course there is the tireless writer of letters to editors of low circulation rags in FNQ.
Which leaves us with the toxic one, as you say. Amazing how we are claiming PTSD over the Israeli war one minute, and backing in avowed anti-Semites the next, seemingly because they attack the right people.
One we are mercifully free of.
Abbott could’ve made his knighthoods a success, all he had to do was give the first few to Shane Warne and some other sportsmen, it would’ve been a hit with most of the people and after that he would have no trouble. Giving the first one to Prince Phillip was a warning sign, it showed how far removed he was from a lot of Australia, it was all downhill after that.
It’s time to scrap the Qantas cap
Capping the foreign ownership of Qantas makes the airline a supplicant of Canberra, and many of its problems flow from that.
John Wylie Investor
As the old saying goes, never let a crisis go to waste.
The reputational crisis that has engulfed Qantas in recent times provides a great opportunity to change a key policy by which the airline is regulated. It also raises an interesting question about the standard approach to executive compensation in Australian public companies.
I had the privilege of a ringside seat when Qantas was privatised in 1992, as lead financial adviser to the Commonwealth. Bob Hawke set the ball in motion in 1991 with a plan to sell off 49 per cent of Qantas – at the time a purely international carrier – and 100 per cent of Australian Airlines, which was purely domestic.
Both companies needed fresh capital for fleet modernisation, and Qantas wanted a partnership with a global carrier with whose network it could co-ordinate.
Before those plans could come to fruition, Paul Keating successfully challenged Hawke for the prime ministership. Keating had a different plan: to merge the two airlines and sell a minority interest in the enlarged company.
The merger gave Qantas a domestic network, which it sorely needed, including the golden Sydney-Melbourne route, one of the most profitable in the world.
The process resulted in a 25 per cent sale to British Airways with a commitment to a subsequent IPO. Qantas being a national icon, it was decided to impose a 49 per cent foreign ownership limitation on the company. That limit remains.
Therein lies a subtle contributing factor to the company’s present circumstances.
Qantas’ business is highly volatile, and at times of financial stress the foreign ownership cap means the company does not have the same access to global institutional equity markets enjoyed by almost every other Australian public company.
This gives the company reason to seek special assistance from Canberra, as happened during the pandemic and even during competitive industry price wars.
It contributes to a public perception of Qantas being a protected species in our national capital, with the unsurprising consequence for the company of public resentment and brand damage when the public feels poorly served by it.
Therein lies a subtle contributing factor to the company’s present circumstances.
Thirty years after Qantas entered the private sector, it’s time for the 49 per cent foreign ownership limit to go.
There’s nothing to fear from its abolition. Any substantial foreign investor would still need to go through Foreign Investment Review Board processes that apply to all companies.
It would remove a key argument – excuse even – for the company to seek special treatment in Canberra.
An interesting example in CEO remuneration, specifically stock incentive plans, of broader relevance to Australian public companies also arises from this situation.
Alan Joyce’s stock awards under the company’s long-term incentive (LTI) plan were indisputably large, even with the potential clawback that’s been mooted.
Lost in the controversy has been the fact that these were the product of good returns delivered for shareholders over meaningful periods while he was CEO. In an era when ASX 300 companies have all manner of board committees except one for shareholder value, and the ASX’s 35 principles of good corporate governance quite remarkably don’t even mention investor returns as an important corporate objective, it’s perhaps unsurprising for a CEO to be accused of too great a focus on shareholder returns.
While it’s easy to take potshots at big stock awards for public company CEOs in this era of discredited capitalism, investors doing so should be careful what they wish for.
It causes quality public company executives to look enviously at their private company counterparts, where the rewards for performance are generally larger, less transparent and less exposed to abuse.
Sure enough, a clear trend is under way for public companies – often our best ones – to be taken private, reducing both the choice and quality of companies in which individuals can invest in the sharemarket.
There is a key difference, however, in the philosophy applied to CEO compensation in public and private markets, and that’s the concept of financial skin in the game.
An article of faith for private equity investors is that a CEO must make a personally significant investment in a company in order to be hired and qualify for attractive additional equity incentives.
That means there’s downside as well as upside.
Not so in Australian public companies. LTI plan rules almost never oblige CEOs to buy shares with their own money in the companies they lead.
The idea of alignment of interests with shareholders rests on a notional “opportunity cost” the CEO is incurring by running a company compared with what their “market value” could be worth elsewhere. It’s entirely theoretical.
If the LTI plan doesn’t vest, the CEO doesn’t get shares but doesn’t actually lose any money; it’s just a lost opportunity to get wealthier.
I wouldn’t bet on a remuneration consultant winning a debate at the pub about that with people who have to pay cold hard cash for things.
According to public records, Joyce at Qantas over the last decade of his leadership received well over $20 million of LTI stock grants (worth much more at vesting) while investing only $40,000 of his own money in Qantas shares.
That’s not to criticise him or the board, and it’s not to say it influenced a single decision he made as CEO. It’s just the way the game of CEO compensation works in Australia.
But across corporate Australia, the ratio between financial upside and downside for public company CEOs isn’t right, and there’s not enough genuine risk for the rewards on offer. It’s time for that to change.
Hospital pass handover. CEO designate Vanessa Hudson has landed in the hot seat after Alan Joyce’s abrupt departure
“The government is deliberately trying to keep airfares high. We don’t know why,” he said.
I do. The Feral Guv’ment does not want you to fly anywhere outside of Australia.
And with the ‘Cost of Living’ crisis that may well work.
Bedouin Sheikhs vow and encourage trust in IDF in war with Hamas
The Bedouin population was massacred violently on October 7th, as many farmers went to milk cows in the early morning hours and were murdered and kidnapped instead.
Sheikhs and community leaders from Israel’s Bedouin community have condemned the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and called for trust in the IDF in a press conference last week. Sheikh Kaid Alaesam of Tel Sheva vowed “There will be no Guardians of the Wall 2,” referring to the 2021 military operation in Gaza.
“The Bedouins are busy with the war. We have had missiles hit our homes, we have paid with our lives. With the lives of our children. To come and agitate? You should always keep in mind that there are exceptions, but this does not reflect on the whole society,” Alaesam said.
At least 21 Bedouins were killed by Hamas terrorists in the October 7 massacre, with some kidnapped and held hostage.
He also added that the Bedouin population of Israel has made a serious effort to help with war efforts.
Alaesam’s statement emphasized the surprise attack and compared Hamas perpetrators to hunting animals. He also emphasized that those kidnapped and brought into Gaza need to be returned safely. This includes both children and the elderly.
“I trust the security forces. The Bedouin population paid a very heavy price,” he said. “I saw the horrors, massive chaos in the country. I am glad that the situation is now under control. I trust the IDF to know how to separate the terrorists from the civilian population.”
The Bedouin makeup in Israel
Bedouin citizens, who are ethnically Arab and Muslim, make up about 4% of Israel’s total population. They mostly live in the Negev desert and northern Israel.
Bedouin Head of Regional Council Al-Batuf Ahed Rhall said last month that there are at least 7 other Bedouin civilians thought to be missing but, as some bodies are still being identified, the fate of some remains unclear.
Another community leader, Sheikh Gideon Abu Savit, also commented. “After the shocking incident that happened on October 7th, we had to raise our voices to the citizens of Israel and the whole world. We condemn the event, there is no word to describe the horrors.”
Abu Savit added that in these times, the Jewish and Bedouin communities are united.
“This is a result of the weeds that have deteriorated as a result of the incitement of the leaders of the Islamic movement,” he said.
The family member of Osama Abu Essa, murdered by Hamas on October 7th, reflected on the suffering of the Bedouin community, an Arab minority group known historically as nomadic and living in Israel’s Negev region, since the start of the war.
“The Bedouin society paid a heavy price. A member of my family was murdered after being abused by the terrorists.
The Bedouin proved even in a war situation, they contributed a lot, many saved lives while risking their lives. We hope that after we get through the war, the decision-makers will treat us as loyal people whose destiny is here in the State of Israel,” Osama’s relative Moslah Abu Essa said.
Ali Ziadna, from the Israeli Bedouin city of Rahat, has given insulin to the Red Cross, hoping they will give it to his brother who is one of more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 and dragged into captivity in Gaza.
“He’s diabetic,” Ziadna told Reuters in a phone interview after a meeting with President Herzog in Jerusalem. “Without it, his sugar could drop and he could collapse.”
Ali’s 53-year-old brother Yosef Hamis Ziadna, his sons Hamza and Belal, and his daughter Aisha were working on the Holit farm on Israel’s border with Gaza.
Anybody know why the oz has launched Project Rehabilitate Marcia “intifada” Langton? Seems a tad soon.
She’s making a pre-emptive strike against Lidia Thorpe and the “blak” mob. Whatever Lidia is for, she’s against.
Eichmann 2.0: Israel must try Hamas terrorists for their crimes against humanity
Justice is required. Truth-telling is essential. The world must understand what happened. Like in Nuremnberg.
Prof. Phyllis Chesler
Although Israel has no death penalty, although it does allow the death penatly for terrorists, the court found Eichmann guilty and hanged him.
How might Israel put Hamas on trial? Like the U.S., Israel is not a state member of the International Criminal Court. It would therefore not be suitable for Israel to ask the United Nations, a body that created this Court, to adjudicate the Islamist genocide of the Jewish people.
However, the definition of what constitutes “crimes against humanity” under International law is both clear and relevant to the Oct. 7 massacre and other Hamas atrocities.
Under international law, crimes against humanity comprise a certain set of criminal actions whenever they are “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.”
The actions in this category include murder; “extermination;” rape; “enforced disappearance of persons;” false imprisonment; torture; ethnic persecution; “deportation or forcible transfer of population;” enforced disappearances; apartheid; and “other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”
The Iranian-backed Hamas, which has misgoverned Gaza since taking power in a 2006 election, has committed all of these crimes against Jewish Israelis, and many more, including on Oct. 7.
It has also committed crimes against Palestinian Arabs themselves, such as recruiting and indoctrinating Gazan children into martyrdom operations; building its military command posts and locating its weaponry under hospitals, schools and mosques in Gaza; forcing Gazan civilians to remain in place as human shields; and apparently even shooting them down when they attempt to flee.
(Remember, however, to take this “victimization” with a dose of reality: many if not most Gazans lauded the Hamas atrocities, many joined in the killing and looting, none ever protested the locating of weapons in their schools and homes – and they elected Hamas, ed.)
There are many wild assertions in the West about Israel’s conduct, as if to draw a moral equivalency.
But Israelis did not pre-emptively go into Gaza to murder Arabs. They do not reciprocate Hamas’s desire, stated in its founding charter, to genocidally exterminate all Jews.
In fact, 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Arabs.
Israel has also never “enslaved,” “deported” or “transferred” Gazan Arabs.
In fact, Israel left Gaza entirely in 2005.
Israel has not “falsely imprisoned” any Gazan without a trial. Israeli forces have never entered Gaza to “torture,” “rape” or “kidnap” Gazan civilians, nor have they filmed themselves committing such atrocities.
Pentagon: 56 attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria since mid-October
Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary says 59 US personnel have been injured in attacks on troops in Iraq and Syria.
It’s not a bad policy but I’m not sure I’m ready to go over the top for Marcia just yet.
How might Israel put Hamas on trial? Like the U.S., Israel is not a state member of the International Criminal Court. It would therefore not be suitable for Israel to ask the United Nations, a body that created this Court, to adjudicate the Islamist genocide of the Jewish people.
Israel and the US are quite right not to belong to the ICC. It’s a malignant spawn of the UN and the epitome of a kangaroo court. It would never in a million years give Israel a fair go just like the joke of the UN Human Rights Council and all its other offshoots.
The only thing they could do would be to try captured terrorists themselves and even then the usual suspects wouldn’t accept the findings.
It would be much better not to have captured any of them in the first place.
Why Is the West Moving To Replace Zelensky? – Real Clear World
Stephen Bryen Asia Times November 13, 2023
There is a growing consensus that the West (meaning the United States with the help of the UK) wants to replace Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
The US has a history of trying to choose Ukraine’s leaders
There is a growing consensus that the West (meaning the United States with the help of the UK) wants to replace Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
My friend and colleague Larry Johnson thinks the CIA and MI6 in the UK are already setting the stage. Either Zelensky will be forced to call a Presidential election, scheduled for next March, and then be replaced, or, if he resists, he will be replaced anyway in a Maidan-style upheaval.
The US has pushed changes in Ukraine’s leadership before, and the current State Department undersecretary, Victoria Nuland, was behind the earlier operation. A 2014 phone call between Nuland and the then-US ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, was intercepted and the content of the call was leaked to the press.
The call is interesting because Nuland and Pyatt were selecting an “acceptable” presidential candidate for Ukraine, and they enlisted then-Vice President Joe Biden to help. Note that along with Biden, Jake Sullivan, then and now Biden’s national security advisor, was also enlisted in selecting Ukraine’s next President.
Transcript of intercepted call
Not an independent country
It is reasonable to say that Ukraine is hardly an independent country. Today the US not only provides military support, but it also pays the salaries of government officials and for Ukraine’s military, including even money for pensions.
The same three American players – Biden, Sullivan and Nuland – are again deciding about Ukraine. Why would these three be willing to jettison Zelensky?
Washington has let it be known through controlled leaks that its carefully orchestrated plan for Ukraine’s counter-offensive was not followed by Zelensky.
Working in opposition to his own generals – both Zaluzhny and the more-silent Syrskyi – Zelensky decided to renew military operations trying to take back Bakhmut, which had been lost after the Russian Army and Prigozhin’s Wagner forces had driven the Ukrainians out of the city.
The effect of trying to fight Russia on a much wider front meant that the impact of the battle in the south, centered primarily around the so-called Bradley Square area of Zaphorize, was diluted by committing some of Ukraine’s best forces to Bakhmut and other fronts in Donetsk.
But there is even more. Washington’s goal in the offensive was to set the stage for forcing Russia into a deal on Ukraine.
By breaking through the so-called Surovikin defense-in-depth, Ukraine’s army would threaten Crimea. (Take note: There are many articles in the US and European press claiming Ukraine was successful in breaking the Surovikin defense line. These stories are pure propaganda.)
Quite so. Look how the Serbian leader got shafted. For what? Trying to stop a muslim take over of one of his provinces, Kosovo.
86% of Americans Admit They’re Worse Off Under Biden
“It took a few years for people to admit the truth – life in America has drastically downgraded under Biden. Inflation has surged to 40-year highs under Biden. The US trade deficit has increased by 24.6%. Public debt has increased 22.5% as most Americans rely on credit for basic necessities. Home prices have increased well over 30%, gas prices have doubled, and the CPI in general spiked 17.1% in Biden’s first 32 months in office. I do not believe the inflation statistics produced by government agencies for a moment. Simply look around and you can see that we pay more for absolutely everything.
A recent poll published by the Financial Times found that only 14% of Americans believe they are better off financially under Biden. Those people are likely on welfare. The poll also found that 70% of American voters feel Bidenomics have hurt the economy or had no impact, with 33% saying they “hurt the economy a lot.” These numbers are staggering, as no president in recent history has managed to catapult the country into such a dire situation.
Over half (52%) of respondents to the poll said they had no idea what the president even had planned to revive the economy. Now Biden, who is not campaigning, is touting he needs to “Finish the job!” All Americans are begging him not to finish the job, as that would include completely destroying America and passing it over to the globalists to Build Back Better”.
https://youtu.be/XD0f9h2pYg4
https://youtu.be/DfzXhndVUlU
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/86-of-americans-admit-theyre-worse-off-under-biden/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS
AirBus Albosleezy LOSES it: PM’s voice quivers with rage as he erupts at Peter Dutton in unprecedented spray over Israel, Palestine and the High Court ruling that freed criminals… before taking off overseas again
From the Comments
– 25 overseas trips, Albo clearly dosen’t care about Australia.
– I used to carry on just like Albo. When I was about 3 years old ….
– Poor dear he really thinks everyone loves him. He is such a narcissistic fool. DUTTON PULL YOUR FINGER OUT GET BACK TO THE RIGHT AND SAVE US FROM THIS EGOTISTICAL IDIOT.
– GO DUTTON, GO!!!!! AT LEAST HE HAD THE GUTS TO TELL ALBO TO STOP GOING ON YET ANOTHER OVSEAS TRIP AND DEALS WITH THE ISSUES AT HOME!!!! BUT LIKE A PETULANT CHILD, AND AN IRRESPONSIBLE PERSON, ALBO WILL GO!!!!! HE AINT GOING TO MISS OUT ON BEING WINED AND DINED ON TAXPAYERS MONEY!!!!!
– Take Albo’s purse off him before he departs the country. He has well and truly spent his allowance.
– Now we see the true Albo – the hysterical uncontrolled maniacal socialist who’s been exposed as a shameful bludger who sponges off the taxpayers of Australia. The worst PM in living memory.
– Yes, until the next labor PM.
Egypt will take the 36 premature babies in the Al-Shifa hospital into custody using IDF-provided incubators. They will be provided with medical care on Egyptian territory. This deal was reached in talks between the head of the Shin Beit and Egyptian officials yesterday.
That Albo speech to parliament on Israel was utterly pathetic, insipid. Even he looked embarrassed. What an utter weasel. Surprised he can stand up. He is utterly cooked. He’s not just low energy. Negative energy.
Just waiting for da bruvvas to give him the tap.