It’s his handlers.
Open Thread – New Year’s Day 2024
- Open Thread – Weekend 18 Jan 2025
- Guest Post: Mem – The Ratchet Effect of Power-Price Increases
- Will the wind warriors become social outcasts?
- Open Thread – Thurs 16 Jan 2025
- Open Thread – Mon 13 Jan 2025
snork!
The Logies are now the equivalent of the AFI awards or whatever they are called now.
Cassie of Sydney January 18, 2025 9:43 am Prestigious girls school Collegiate apparently has some girls who identify as cats.…
continuous impacts of colonisation like sit down money and a reliable food supply? Sounds like the mental vomit out of…
Happy New Year All!
aye Pogs
hopefully better than the last few
Hear that, Matrix.
2024
This thread dedicated to Tartaria and all who sail in her.
Also to CC and dry on ice, and Pulp Fiction – of which I am consuming both at present.
Happy New Year to all the Cat frequenters and may it be better than last year. I could hear a lot of fireworks in my area but none high enough to be visible. The most exciting thing in the night sky were drone lights, probably recording all the fireworks down below.
Happy New Year to all the “cats”
Melbourne fireworks not a tv spectacular
Waste of money IMO
New Year’s Day
I think that was U2’s best song. I liked them when they were fresh and new, before they became haughty, self-important and woke.
Happy New Year Dover and Crew
And remember,
“No matter how bad things might be, they can always get worse”.
All the best to all and have as good a 2024 as you possibly can.
Magic.
The song has aged well. 27 years on the books. … about to be 28.
____
Olive – You’re Not Alone (Video)
Happy New Year … from ABBA
KD – found Jackie Brown bears repeat viewing though P/F is a cool movie with great dialogue.
Classics! Opinions will vary.
Paul Hertzog – Steal the night (HQ Audio)
A Happy New Year to everyone . . . but to be honest I don’t hold much hope for 2024.
Went to bed early and woke early as leaving early to go to Sydney after a few days in Canberra.
Happy New Year to all.
I remember how impressed I was when first watched Pulp Fiction in the cinema. The unique way it was directed and the great cast and music. So many memorable characters and scenes.
Mark Knight.
Mark Knight #2.
Peter Broelman.
Brett Lethbridge.
Ben Jennings.
Michael Ramirez.
A.F. Branco.
Michael Ramirez #2.
Steve Kelley.
Al Goodwyn.
Chip Bok.
Lisa Benson.
Happy New Year Tom. Thanks for your great work.
Here’s to a Great New Year Cats.
Tassie is about to have a new Queen.
Denmark’s Queen Margrethe announces shock abdication in live New Years broadcast (31 Dec)
Besh wishes to Frederick and Mark and their family. I hope they can do better than the Windsors.
Oops. Mary, not Mark. I need coffee.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Edwsf-8F3sI
A new dawn
Bruce,
Frederick and Mary need to do something very soon about their country. Have you seen the footage of the Filth abusing local Danes and informing them, that Denmark will belong to the Filth in a few years as they are outbreeding the Danes.
Litmus for the rest of the West.
Andrew Bolt:
Happy New Year to dover_beach who provides this haven of freedom of expression and to all gatti e gattine – hope can be risky but it’s a risk I’m prepared to take — To all on here – best wishes for a year of fulfilment and contentment with regular patches of happiness and joy.
Happy New Year and continuing Merry Christmas to you all.
Bewdy…
Top 40
easily replaced elite Nukhba unit, some killed, some surrendered
Sunrise talking heads on Albo’s New Year’s resolution to reduce the cost of living. Um, wasn’t this an election promise if the bastard was voted in?
The bubble he resides in, along with the detestable ABC, is so far removed from ordinary Australia that he may well be on a planet circling Proxima Centauri.
Annnd a Happy New Year to everyone.
Dover, you must have a lot of good classic artwork in the basement.
Horrible prelude to NY for us. Somehow the fox must have jumped up on the gate of the chook pen (evading the electric wire on the side) & caused the catch to open. Fortunately husband went outside & saw him killing a chook in the outer yard where they fled. Saved the other chooks but too late for one badly hurt. That’s life in the country. Husband upset as he is “ the chook man”.
TV celebrations less celebratory. But every day a new day.
Shut up, they explained.
Facebook suspends Libs of TikTok account (31 Dec)
Ms Raichik is of course Jewish, so it’s certainly not a good look for Spacechook to do this right at the height of the current outbreak of vile antisemitism. I suspect it says a quite lot about the company.
Black Ball
Jan 1, 2024 6:59 AM
Um, wasn’t this an election promise if the bastard was voted in?
Fact Check: correct
If only the talking heads would have put a bit of thought into it to remind and/or call the Airbus frequent flyer on it.
BTW did watch Sydney Harbour celebrations on TV. Thought the Aboriginal theme must have been put in train prior to the failure of the Voice which Sydney City Council no doubt expected would succeed. We thought it was pathetic with a band imported from a community in the North. The later performances were terrific but that earlier PC stuff was puerile.
Immediate cancellation of all “green energy” projects, with zero compensation to the grifting a’hole companies involved.
Halving immigration numbers.
Nuclear power stations.
Defund ABC and SBS along with deep cuts to PS. (All departments with even the slightest whiff of woke about them to be terminated immediately)
In other words, the cost of living isn’t going to come down.
Bruce of Newcastle
Jan 1, 2024 7:08 AM
Citing unnamed violations of ‘community standards,’ Facebook suspends popular right-wing account that reposts videos of woke activists.
Farcebook just make it up against the conservative side as they go along.
I have lost interest in it.
I just get on every few weeks to have a look at some board wargames, armour and aircraft kit modeling sites.
Black Ball
Jan 1, 2024 6:34 AM
We have a loyalty problem, and the fault lies not just with politicians importing so many people from a clannish and Muslim culture that faces integration problems in so many Christian-majority countries.
Finally someone has mentioned the elephant in the room.
The retards aint gunna like that.
Cue the wailing and nashing of teeth
The Lord of the Rings is now a white supremacist textbook.
Fascists twist Tolkien into Lord of the Right Wing (Oz, 31 Dec, not paywalled)
A. A. Milne will be next, mark my words. Piglet will be accused of islamophobia, Winnie the Pooh as racist by the Chinese, and Eeyore of being a repressed slave by PETA.
For these people Australia is a redoubt, a place to retreat to when you have had your nose bloodied after sticking it where it doesn’t belong. Maybe not importing them in the first place would have been a winning strategy for Australia.
Sigh…:
nashing: gnashing
Happy new year one and all. Regrettably, I too am not optimistic that 2024 will be significantly better than any of the last four years, but I sure hope that I am very wrong.
The saboteurs at the Paywallian have finally got round to posting the brilliant cartoon by Johannes Leak.
Johannes Leak
Too good to wait for until tomorrow. Thanks Tom for the 4am efforts day in day out last year. A desperately needed light shining in the near-infinite darkness.
Snap!
I can’t remember who said that personnel is policy but “their” ABC is definitely practicing it. Nobody has been employed to report and present the majority positions but Islam is copiously represented. If I or any Christian is not represented, or a Jew, using our money then I want the ABC defunded totally. Those who want it can access it with their own money just as I subscribe to Foxtel.
Mak,
NSW Government is pushing to strip all documents of terms such as “brother” and “sister” and use the term “sibling” instead. Opposite sex to become “different” sex. Also, the ADF has stopped the use of “unmanned” drone in the push for neutering the Military.
Whichever party makes it their policy to defund the ABC gets my vote.
Wehbe should be on “TikTok Country” for symmetry of idiocy. Very ABC.
Happy New Year Cats and Kittehs.
And before I forget, thanks Dover for this blog of excellence and conversation, opinions, knockdown dragouts, cynicism, information, satire and general all-round good times. You have been a very gracious host, even when some of us have stretched the friendship.
And, as usual, the painting over the bar is a beauty. The marvellous, atmospheric Turner, working his magic with the rising sun.
Haha, Tim Blair’s latest:
New Year Noticeboard (Tele, 31 Dec, not paywalled)
Happy New Year fellow cat subscribers.
Wishing you all good and this year calms down from 2023.
At the risk of being accused of engaging in overwrought hyperbole (and I note many seem to agree with that description), I just want to say that everyday their ABC gives middle and working Australians the big middle finger. It is not hyperbolic to write that the ABC hates us.
Happy New Year.
Christmas Carols in the Domain and the televised NYE fireworks are perfect examples of why people watch certain TV programs. Channel 7, by organising the carols, gave the people something uplifting, something they wanted to watch, without any political taint and that’s why it is the highest rated TV corp.
The ABC, with their politicised fireworks, and Melbourne’s cringy comedy festival* masquerading as carols just alienated audiences. In other words, go woke, go broke though in the case of the ABC we are going broke.
*The Palestinian protesters invasion of the stage certainly didn’t help matters but by then the show was already on the downward spiral.
The Tele has sads.
Labor ends year with broken promise as EV policy faces delays (31 Dec, not paywalled)
Sparking hopes more like. I have to say the Tele isn’t attracting my money with all this woke green rubbish they keep on running.
And before I forget, thanks Dover for this blog of excellence and conversation, opinions, knockdown dragouts, cynicism, information, satire and general all-round good times. You have been a very gracious host, even when some of us have stretched the friendship.
Nicely said, calli.
Happy new year to all!
Leak, as usual, gets it.
We have imported a primitive culture, with primitive aspirations. Gain sufficient strength and take what isn’t theirs, by force if necessary. Why bother contributing to a society you wish to destroy? The unchallenged intimidation outings into the eastern suburbs are just the first feelers, testing the water.
There are laws against intimidating behaviour. Our police need to enforce them before the posturing morphs into actual attack.
Andrew Bolt in today’s Tele on the same page as the piece that Blackball posted :
OUR FEAR OF GLOBAL WARMING IS A PANIC FULL OF
HOT AIR
Andrew Bolt
1 Jan 2024
If this is global warming, we’re sure lucky. More Australians should greet this new year by sticking their head outside and counting their blessings instead of inventing reasons to panic.
I drove to Melbourne last week and couldn’t believe how green things were. Late December is usually when we see sunbaked paddocks and bush just drying for a fire.
Not this year, even though the Bureau of Meteorology predicted a scorcher: “Warmer and drier-thanaverage conditions are likely across most of southern and eastern Australia from October to December.”
The El Nino, you know.
That was on top of the global warming that professional climate catastrophist Tim Flannery warned in 2007 would reduce our rains and land, so that “even the rain that falls will not actually fill our dams and our river systems”.
Fake scare.
Melbourne’s dams today are 95 per cent full – just under last year’s record. Sydney’s are at 90 per cent. South East Queensland’s dams are more than two-thirds full.
The BOM got it wrong again, panicking farmers into selling stock dirt cheap for fear of buying feed.
But it seems a generation of young Australians, trained to also freak over the weather, have forgotten how blessed it is on this driest inhabited continent to have so much water in our dams.
It was only 14 years ago that Melbourne’s dams were just 26 per cent full, and watering gardens was banned. Since then, Australia has added four million more people, most through our reckless immigration program, yet there’s even more water for them, too.
Farmers have also won. They grow more food, and for four years have escaped mega bushfires.
Yet many journalists and activists look for excuses to spread fear of global warming, and in December pounced on Cyclone Jasper.
“Queensland’s record-breaking floods are a frightening portent of what’s to come under climate change,” shrieked Greenpeace.
True, there were floods in Queensland’s north, with Jasper dumping an incredible metre of rain.
But, wait: Jasper had faded to an ex-cyclone when it hit land. Its winds weren’t destructive. The problem was it moved so slowly that it kept raining over the same area.
Indeed, BOM statistics confirm that 50 years of global warming have actually brought Australia fewer cyclones, including fewer severe ones.
So why this fear? Start 2024 by driving through our magnificent country.
How absurdly lucky we are.
Indeed, BOM statistics confirm that 50 years of global warming have actually brought Australia fewer cyclones, including fewer severe ones.
Not ‘fitting the narrative’…how very inconvenient.
Apparently wanting and yearning for the hostages in Gaza to return home is “overwrought hyperbole”.
Fair enough, then I will wear that “overwrought hyperbole” badge with pride.
There are laws against intimidating behaviour. Our police need to enforce them before the posturing morphs into actual attack.
Indeed but careful calli, you too might be accused of ‘overwrought hyperbole’.
What is Australia: A hotel? A flag of convenience?
a doormat- that’s what canbra thinks of this country. The big challenge for any incoming half decent government is always the permanent gubmint in canbra. Parkinson’s antagonistic to Abbot is a prime example.
Get a load of this canbra ‘doctor’-
Dr Steven Kennedy commenced as Secretary to the Treasury in September 2019.
Prior to his appointment, Steven was Secretary of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development between September 2017 and August 2019.
During his 30 years in the public service, Steven has held other senior positions including Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; Deputy Secretary at the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science; Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Environment; Deputy Secretary at the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, and the Head of Secretariat of the Garnaut Climate Change Review – Update 2011.
Steven began his public service career in 1992 as a cadet at the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Prior to joining the public service, he trained and worked as a nurse.
Steven has served on a number of boards and is a member of the Reserve Bank Board, Council of Financial Regulators, Trans Tasman Council on Banking Supervision, Board of Taxation, New Zealand Treasury Board, the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation and the Centre for Market Design Advisory Board.
Steven was awarded a Public Service Medal in 2016 for outstanding public service in the area of climate change policy.
Steven holds a PhD and a master degree in Economics from the Australian National University, and a Bachelor of Economics (First Class Honours) from the University of Sydney.
Eloi.
Steven was awarded a Public Service Medal in 2016 for outstanding public service in the area of climate change policy.
Might as well be in another solar system.
Things are going to get very ugly when the US presidential election draws near. Oh and happy new year, Cats.
Pogria
And here I was, thinking that the wokesters would luuurrrrve the concept of an “unmanned” (ie, castrated) drone. Surely that terminology is a major step forward in their unrelenting war on men.
But perhaps they are worried that the trans-women (surgically enhanced) would be upset about being “unmanned”?
calli, in the Turner painting the scene has been rearranged to get the sunrise near Flint Castle. Still a great painting, what thhat artist could do with light. Even since the majority cannot come close.
We’ve got a ways to go before we reach that stage, Cassie!
I avoid obsession like the plague. Except when I’m sewing, then it’s perfection or bust.
Ranga, I thought it was rising over the border end of the estuary, Flint Castle being on the southern side.
One of the ones we didn’t get to visit in Wales. Visited the aqueduct instead on our way to Carnarvon. Can’t see it all.
Miltonf, just goes to show how high you can get in the APS without having a clue. Had he stayed being a nurse he would have been doing something useful. Before my wife left the APS she was asked to do a job as well as her own, she said it couldn’t be done as well. Over a year later a whole branch has been created to do that one job. The powers that be don’t want one person capable of doing a job as there is no reflected glory or claims of being in charge of successful outcomes when everyone knows it was one person.
Happy New Year to all.
Much as I dislike Bono. there is only one song for today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq3nhqCKVco
Turn it up!
Just to start the New Year right, and to assist any new chums who wish to contribute and wonder what’s going on…
– If you mention my name, you get a downtick.
– If you quote me in a reply, you get a downtick.
– Needless to say, every single comment of mine, regardless of content, receives a downtick.
– You are not permitted to show me any friendship, or even acknowledge my existence, without the obligatory tag.
This is the mindless rancidity of the internet drone, matched only by a sour, nasty, obsessive, malice-filled schoolgirl.
I have got that off my chest for the year. It won’t be mentioned again, well, not until 2025.
Isn’t “unmanned” drone a tautology? By definition a drone is unmanned.
Yes I know, a little bit early in the year for pedantry but I couldn’t resist it.
Ranga Canbra was Menzies’ biggest mistake. Along with his acceptance of the Murray Report.
Happy New Year!
Telling the truth is the greatest crime.
Washington State Economist Alleges Harassment for Refusal to Lie About Cap-and-trade Costs
Miltonf, just goes to show how high you can get in the APS without having a clue.
Bloody hell! .. I worked with that bloke on a Census data input early ’90s down in Darling Harbour just up from the, then, Technology Museum, he was an average PS clerk no extra talent/ability on show .. like the rest of us .. LOL!
Just shows what hanging in & brown-nosing can do for you ….. FFS!
I have my suspicions that Israel has the same deep state traitors beavering away as every other western country.
Where Was the Israeli Military?
Hunter Biden laptop repairman John Paul Mac Isaac’s home ‘swatted’
I see that the prescient BB has already posted the classic – anyway, not everyone scrolls up. 🙂
For a bit of a change, here are the very attractive young ladies of Zepparella doing a very good rendition of When the Levee Breaks. Some people in SE Queensland and other places are not having a wonderful New Year’s Day thanks to floodwaters that inexplicably appeared during the BoM’s hot, dry summer.
BTW, it’s 17C and cloudy here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH-_9cwdLug
Rant of the year.
Why Is Everything So Stupid? – Elizabeth Nickson (Substack, 30 Dec, via Lucianne)
Very long, very accurate and not conducive to optimism. But RTWT.
(Apologies if someone has already linked her Substack article, I can’t remember seeing that. Cohenite may’ve done so. It’s still well worth linking again anyway.)
Isn’t “unmanned” drone a tautology? By definition a drone is unmanned.
Oz media never uses nouns without at least one adjective added .. LOL!
Tho at the moment given the national road toll .. HORROR & derivations of seem to have taken the number one spot for media additional descriptors ..
Happy New Year to all Cats & thanks to Dover for blog
Week of balcony observations of Manly Beach
Previous years Xmas to New Year grass between North Steyne and Queenscliif occupied by Middle Eastern Families – this year none to be seen but loads of Indian Families with kids surfing
Question to be solved by Cat followers
Luxury Large 4 door current model Lexus Sedan RHD (like Mercedes S Class) – Indian Family brushing off kids from swim – Number Plate U2097 – I think green or brown (colourblind) – not close enough to see smaller writing & when he backed out was blocked by bus
As they drove off U2097 was in Large Black Numbers on top of the right fender in front of driver’s door – like NSW police cars
Any thoughts on provenance of U2097?
Apparently, it’s the opioid epidemic.
Death rates from rare heart condition surging among young Americans
Trump Warns Democrats Will Use Migrants to Win Election, Says They Have Been ‘Signing Them Up’ to Vote at a ‘Rapid Pace’
John Pilger brown bread. A great start to 2024 in my opinion. According to the news item he’s mourned by the likes of Phatty Adams, Roger Waters and George Galloway. That says more about what sort of person he was than any obituary.
Happy New Year to all on this terrific blog!
From today’s Paywallion:
Indigenous mastery of ecology is a historical delusion
Nick Cater
1 Jan 2024
Archaeologists have been struggling to identify the rightful owners of the United Arab Emirates for decades. Could prehistoric stone tools discovered 12 years ago at Jabel Faya have been brought by migrants from East Africa 125,000 years ago? Or were the true indigenous people the camel slaughterers from Mesopotamia who arrived in the glacial period 5000 years before the birth of Christ?
The question is more than academic in Chris Bowen’s mind. He appears convinced that indigenous people everywhere hold knowledge vital to the future of the human race. The Climate Change and Energy Minister began a speech at the UN climate change conference in Dubai in early December with a clumsy welcome-to-country performance that would’ve puzzled his hosts.
(Sky News host Rowan Dean has branded Energy Minister Chris Bowen an “idiot” after he acknowledged… Indigenous people at the start of a speech at COP28 in Dubai. “I begin with an acknowledgment that at the heart of action on climate change must be profound respect for those who’ve cared for our respective lands for millennia – the Indigenous people across the world,” Mr Bowen said. “I reaffirm our government’s commitment to the inclusion of our First Nations people in our climate change response and clean energy future.” Mr Dean says the idea that Indigenous peoples cared for the environment more effectively than modern societies is “anti-science”. “Memo to Chris Bowen: more people have been dragged out of poverty, misery, short life spans, horrific deaths, child malnutrition because of the Industrial Revolution.”)
He expressed his profound respect for the people “who have cared for our respective lands for millennia”, asserting that indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices were “critical” to solving the climate crisis.
First Nations people, as Bowen fashionably calls them, possess the special knowledge that will allow us to solve the complex problems created by climate change.
It is hard to doubt his conviction. Bowen doesn’t just talk the talk, he is prepared put our money where his mouth is. In April, Bowen announced the formation of a First Nations Clean Energy and Emissions Reduction Advisory Committee as part of a $75m package to bring Aboriginal voices into the debate.
“We have to learn from the people who have had stewardship of our land for over 60,000 years,” he said. “We need to do that now, for example, with the Indigenous-led savanna burning carbon credit system. And there are many more examples where we could do better.”
What are those examples? The minister did not feel compelled to elaborate. The pseudo-science is settled as far as the climate cognoscenti are concerned. Indigenous people were diligent stewards of this land, living in perfect harmony with nature until white people arrived with the poisoned fruits of Western civilisation and trashed the joint.
Australian historian William J. Lines masterfully unpacks the intertwined narratives of ecology and indigenous exceptionalism in his recent book, Romancing the Primitive: The Myth of the Ecological Aborigine (Quadrant Books). Lines traces the strands of thought from Michel de Montaigne and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 16th and 18th centuries to Australian poets Mary Gilmore and Judith Wright, whose siren call had an uncanny influence on public policy during the Whitlam era.
The Albanese government also seems entranced with works of fiction, albeit stories that some consider history. Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth asserts that Indigenous mastery of fire turned the Australian continent into an idyllic, eco-friendly landscape, or as Lines describes it “an Edenic world of abundance resembling the cover image of a Jehovah’s Witness tract”.
Bruce Pascoe’s revelation in Dark Emu that pre-settlement Australians were not hunter-gatherers but cultivators, builders, town planners and hydrologists takes the romanticisation of primitive life to a fantastic level of absurdity.
Yet Anthony Albanese is an unabashed fan. “Bruce has unearthed the knowledge that we already had in our possession but chose to bury along the way,” the Prime Minister told parliament in February 2020. “Bruce has simply reminded us where the lights switch is … a complex mosaic of ancient nations is suddenly laid out before us.” Penny Wong told the Senate in November 2020 that thanks to Pascoe and Gammage, “we are no longer trapped in the ignorance of our own assumptions and prejudice, premised on the underlying supremacy of the narrative that white people know best”. Wong’s self-demeaning lapse into a race-based argument was unfortunate. The achievements of Western civilisation have nothing to do with skin colour and everything to do with the triumph of reason over superstition.
As it evolved in the West, the scientific tools of logic, deduction and probability are available to all. “Scientific knowledge is not restricted to the initiated,” says Lines. “Curiosity is the only criterion.”
The notion that Aboriginal Australians would be happier quarantined from modernity is absurd. So, too, is the fashionable idea that Western civilisation is no better than any other civilisation and probably worse.
Against this, the romancers of the primitive invest hope in a different form of knowledge – traditional or cultural knowledge that they claim is the intellectual property of Indigenous people alone.
Lines points his finger at the naked emperor. “No one can precisely define what they mean by traditional knowledge,” he writes. The methodology upon which traditional knowledge depends is not explained. “Instead,” writes Lines, “they advanced terms such as “holistic”, “relational” and “interconnectedness”, which they contrast with “reductionist” and “linear” Western science”.
The claim Indigenous Australians “managed” the land is at the core of the primitive delusion. Lines disputes it. The expression “fire-stick farming” was invented by anthropologist Reece Jones in 1968, says Lines. The theory that Aboriginals possessed an “ecological consciousness” made them prudent ecological managers is belied by the absence of the words ecology or management in the lexicon of any known Aboriginal tongue.
Lines describes the hard reality of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that runs counter to the narrative of environmental stewardship. A small population, speaking 250 languages, on a sparsely occupied continent domesticated only the dog and did not control animals stocks. “Wildlife management consisted of exhausting local prey and moving on,” he writes. “While horticulture and agriculture increase yield through human effort, hunting and gathering do not.”
This is not to deny the ingenuity and perseverance that enabled Indigenous Australians to survive on a continent that does not easily surrender its riches. Lines point is that knowledge is not exclusive and does not emanate from the received wisdom of a particular group. “Each human group faced specific challenges to which they divide specific solutions,” he writes. “Everywhere, humans draw on the same traits of adaptability, intelligence, and for Unity to adapt a local circumstance.”
Primitivism is unhelpful to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians alike. “Romanticising does not help the romanticised,” writes Lines. “Instead, it isolates them from rational thought and gives them an unrealistic assessment of their abilities and place in the world.
“Romantics continue to impoverish the Aboriginal world with the introduction of intellectually hollow and dubious pledges.”
For 21st-century progressives, however, romanticising the primitive was never an exercise in improving the lot of Aboriginal Australians any more than hopes of ennobling the savage inspired by Rousseau.
“Aborigines were Cyphers, carriers of a fantasy about pre-contact life and calculators of lessons about the failings of Western civilisation,” writes Lines. It is an exercise in ennobling themselves and asserting their moral and intellectual authority.
Nick Cater is senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre and a director at Quadrant.
NICK CATER COLUMNIST
Nick Cater is senior fellow of the Menzies Research Centre and a columnist with The Australian. He is a former editor of The Weekend Australian and a former deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph.
Crossie, I disagree with your comments on the carols in the domain. I thought they were terrible this year. They have been getting worse every year for some time. The hosts were wooden, the sound terrible and the orchestration just awful. The worst part though is the constant plugs and commercial content. It seems like one big homage to ‘big mouse’.
The melbourne carols are always a bit hit and miss at the start. You have to wait for Denis Walter. It really starts from there. This year was even better with the absence of the dreadful Anthony Calia and his husband. Even the lefty Paul Kelly was good.
The melbourne carols were infinitely better than the big disney commercial that was the carols in the domain.
Best wishes for a prosperous and salubrious New Year to all Cats infesting this august site, a virtually unique digital oasis in the endless desert of rank sub-humanoid stupidity we have all been suffering in.
Endless thanks to Dover for corralling the smartest people on the planet in such a small space.
May it long prosper!
One or two readers may have noticed my comment about a long time ago work colleague, Lindsay May, who did his 50th Sydney to Hobart this year, as navigator on Antipodes. He’s a genuinely nice guy, as well as being very smart.
They came in 13th, not bad at all for a smallish boat.
Good to see that nice guys don’t always finish last. Well done, Lindsay!
But of course, just like every non-establishment Republican has been or will be swatted in the next few weeks. Democrats at least are not squeamish about going after their enemies while establishment Republicans wouldn’t dream of helping or protecting their own.
Funny how Republicans=LNP or Tories=LNP when it comes betraying their voters. Can’t they see that people can see it or do they even care?
Last New Year’s party I’m ever going to. My head hurts. I’m not going to subject myself again at least for another year. 🙂
lol . That’s really bad.
Maybe that is why none of our Royal Australian Navy naval ships that float on water (using the redundant qualifiers that make it MSM-worthy) were deemed suitable for deployment as the Americans requested.
Bit of a step up in hostilities:
US Navy helicopters have fired on Iran-backed Houthi rebels attempting to board a cargo ship off Yemen, with the rebels reporting 10 fighters dead or missing.
The clash in the Red Sea marked a deadly escalation since the United States set up a multinational naval task force in early December to protect the vital shipping lane against attacks by the Houthis, who control the Yemeni capital Sanaa and much of the country’s Red Sea coast.
Of course, the “multinational naval task force” doesn’t include a ship from Australia – about which I will be saying more in The Spectator.
John Pilger dead.
Good news for New Year Day.
Lies die. Dead commies are the best.
“The mask” has become a symbol of the oppressed and the oppressor. Of both woke-ism and the resistance to woke-ism.
When worn now – at the start of 2024, it is a tribal expression of solidarity with big pharma, government over-reach and even socialism. Nothing says willing compliance to authority quite like wearing a mask. For those that are back to wearing masks, as many cities and hospitals are encouraging, the Stockholm syndrome is as good as any explanation for what they are thinking.
But when used in images, the mask takes on a completely different meaning. It is an expression of freedoms lost, an America that once was and of our power to take back this country, if we work together
Taken from Robert Malone, plenty of sheeple wearing masks in Perth, I especially like the ones alone in a car wearing them.
Pilger and now 10 dead or “missing” hootie tooties . Out with the old and in with the new. 24 is starting of well.
On the 8th day of Christmas, my true love said to me:
“Get up and go mow the lawns!”
Oh, and I see that rich bitch Cassie had a swipe at me for ‘living in a motel room.’
What an insufferable snob you are.
Tell me, at what standard of living are people here allowed to have a say? Please put a dollar value on it, since it apparently is important to you.
BTW, my accommodation is far from cheap, and includes maid service seven days a week, a large balcony surrounded by greenery, and walking distance access to everything (restaurants, coffee shops, mall, banks, medical facilities). I’m not exactly doing it hard.
You keep telling politicians to try their ideas out in the western suburbs. Maybe you shoud venture out there yourself, as your stereotypes are exactly like theirs.
calli, the flats from where the painting is done is either on the other side of the estuary in which case the sunrise is south or if on the western side there is no headland to get the boats in the right position. Artistic license, just like John Constable.
Happy New Year to All
Thank you to all those who contribute regularly and make my day .
Johanna, you don’t mind throwing it but don’t like the return serve. Bitter and twisted comes to mind.
The arrogance quotient of Australian journalism reduced by 60% overnight.
State funeral?
Oh, and I see that rich bitch Cassie had a swipe at me for ‘living in a motel room.’
What an insufferable snob you are.
Now that’s what I call “overwrought hyperbole“.
Johanna, you don’t mind throwing it but don’t like the return serve. Bitter and twisted comes to mind.
Correct.
Jolly decent of the taxpayer to finance Steven’s extensive professional development.
Unless he did it all on his own time and money, in which case:
Well done that man.
John Pilger dead? Why do the words “No great loss” suggest themselves?
Our Mary is about to become Queen of Denmark. She has a hard act to follow (from Breitbart):
Sounds like Marge and Lilibet read from the same hymn sheet.
Oh, and a ‘chain smoker’ who died at 83? I’m good for at least 100 on that basis. 🙂
I’ll take your word for it Ranga. As I said, never actually been there, though it was on “the list”.
My favourite will always be this old girl. And I’ve seen her, at least the painting, in the flesh.
🙂
Today’s Tele:
WE WILL DESTROY HAMAS, SAYS PM
ZOE SMITH
1 Jan 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war against Hamas will last “many months”, as he renewed his pledge to completely eliminate the Palestinian terrorist group from strife-torn Gaza.
Vowing to bring home all Israelis still held hostage in Gaza, Mr Netanyahu said on Sunday the military was involved in a “complex fight” and needed time to achieve its goals.
“The war will continue for many months until Hamas is eliminated and the hostages are returned,” he said.
“We will guarantee that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” he said, adding that about 8000 militants had already been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian territory.
“Step by step we are depriving Hamas of their capabilities. We will also eliminate the leaders,” Mr Netanyahu said.
It came as an Israeli strike killed a Hamas armed wing commander who was a right-hand man to Hamas’s chief bombmaker decades ago, according to the Palestinian Shehab news outlet.
Abdul Fattah Amin Maali was a close associate of Yahya Ayyash, one of the founders of the terror group’s armed wing, The Times of Israel reported.
In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah said a strike on the southern Lebanon border town of Bint Jbeil killed one of its fighters, naming him as Ali Ahmed Saad.
US news outlet Axios and Israeli website Ynet, both citing unnamed Israeli officials, reported that Qatari mediators had told Israel that Hamas was prepared to resume talks on new hostage releases in exchange for a ceasefire.
When asked if a new deal for hostage releases was being negotiated, Mr Netanyahu said Hamas had been “giving all kinds of ultimatums that we didn’t accept”.
“We are seeing a certain shift (but) I don’t want to create an expectation,” he said without elaborating further.
A Hamas delegation was in Cairo on Friday to discuss an Egyptian plan for renewable ceasefires, a staggered release of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, and ultimately an end to the war, sources close to the militant group said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of demonstrators rallied in Tel Aviv, demanding that the government secure the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
“Bring them home now,” the demonstrators chanted.
“The scariest thing in Gaza was to be forgotten,” said Moran Stela Yanai, one of the hostages released during last month’s truce.
“The most humane thing that can be done … is to bring everyone back,”
she said.
The war between Israel and Hamas erupted after Hamas fighters carried out a deadly attack on Israel on October 7 that killed about 1140 people.
International mediators, who last month helped free more than 100 hostages, continue in their efforts to secure a new pause in the fighting.
Oh dear…after every time over the years that the Israelis went to the negotiation table and the Palos walked away, refused every offer or did not turn up…this time Israel says they will continue until Hamas has been belted to oblivion…and will finish it on Israel’s terms…annnd Hamas, the Palos and their supporters, to parahrase LCPL Jones, “do not like it one little bit.”
Whoops, who addicated at 83. I’ve just given myself another five years.
On another note, while people in SEQ are having a hard time thanks to floods, TheirABC zeroes in on the real suffering here:
Yep, running your own business is ‘a relaxed mountaintop lifestyle.’
Let’s hope he learns something from this, although it’s not guaranteed.
In the 1970s and 1980s, John Pilger was a bellwether of what journalism was to become in the 21st century: stuff the public interest, I’m going to campaign on the side of communist tyrants.
When journalism in the future again becomes the eyes and ears of the common man, it will be in spite of elitist arseholes like John Pigler and the zombies ravaging journalism — 99% of J-school graduates — who think the public is too stupid to vote,
Good riddance. Burn in hell.
Tele Opinion:
Tim Blair’s 2024 predictions: who will be this year’s winners and losers
1 Jan 2024
As the New Year dawns, Tim Blair gazes deep into his crystal ball and comes up with a list of top quality, 100 per cent guaranteed predictions for the coming 12 months.
As the New Year dawns, Tim Blair gazes deep into his crystal ball and comes up with a list of top quality, 100 per cent guaranteed predictions for the coming 12 months. Read on to discover who will be the big winners of 2024 and who will wish the New Year had never arrived at all.
JANUARY
Australia Day antagonists abandon their annual protest after realising that bringing disparate individuals and communities together for a shared cause is exactly what people do by celebrating Australia Day.
“We have become what we despise,” says crestfallen first-year arts enrollee Fyona Simp, who last week began spelling “black” without the “c”.
Cricket commentator Kerry O’Keeffe, who already refers to wicketkeepers as “wickies” and captains as “cappies”, adds “batties”, “bowlies” and “fieldies” to his repertoire. Asked if he’ll ever change his style, O’Keeffe replies: “I’ll leave that to the umpy.”
FEBRUARY
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese misses the opening of parliament while being treated for a combination of jet lag, altitude sickness and soft tissue injuries suffered during a fight over the centre armrest.
TAYTAY
The third month of the year now honours singer Taylor Swift, who purchased the exclusive 31-day time span for an undisclosed sum from previous owner Mars. “She’s a great kid, and I’m sure March is in capable hands,” the Roman god of war tells reporters, admitting that a signed poster of the billionaire performer “certainly sweetened the deal”.
Chris Minns dismisses rumours of a leadership challenge, but an unnamed Labor source believes the NSW premier is definitely under threat. “There’s an old saying in Australian politics,” the source says. “Beware the Ides of TayTay.”
APRIL
Lisa Wilkinson refuses to attend a 75th anniversary celebration of her appointment as editor of Dolly, claiming she wasn’t a cheap tabloid journalist, never worked at the trashy teen magazine, and it must have been a different Lisa Wilkinson.
Pfizer releases a breakthrough three-stage injectable medication that the company says will cure people from pretending they still need to wear masks.
MAY
In a last-minute revision to the federal budget, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pushes Australia deep into surplus by donating his frequent flyer points.
For the first time in its history, not a single tune in the Eurovision Song Contest is performed in a native European language. “It’s important that this event moves with the times,” spokesman Saeed Mogadishu says in translated comments.
JUNE
Attempting to regain popularity following last year’s disastrous Voice vote, the Labor government announces a referendum endorsing “love, friendship and eternal Australian happiness”. Former Voice campaigners Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton and Thomas Mayo all vote no and then take a week off for the traditional dreamtime sooking period.
Noticing a statistically significant presence of hot older women in suburban hardware stores, psychologists identify a phenomenon known as the Bunnings-Cougar effect.
JULY
The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics is thrown into disarray after the German team shoves the host nation’s athletes aside and continues marching unopposed to the North Sea.
AUGUST
Former royals Harry and Meghan strike a defiant tone as a shock poll shows that no animate creature on earth is interested in them, including bamboo and caterpillars.
“We’re just living out our own personal truths in tranquillity and dignity,” the couple declare via their separate OnlyFans accounts.
“Besides,” adds Harry, “if you want to talk about being unpopular, how about that Swedish climate bird? You know, the one who learned even less at school than I did.”
Greta Thunberg declines to respond.
The mood in Paris changes as Games attendees realise that a blazing night sky, enormous columns of smoke and a colourful parade of police vehicles, ambulances and fire engines aren’t part of the Olympics closing ceremony after all.
SEPTEMBER
An electric vehicle competes in the Bathurst 1000 for the first time. To give the EV and lead driver Chris Bowen a fighting chance, his rechargeable racer leaves the grid two weeks ahead of the endurance classic’s scheduled October starting date.
Following a barrage of “tax the rich” and “close the wealth gap” pieces from the ABC, the federal government calls the broadcaster’s bluff. From now on the ABC will be funded entirely by massive sums extracted from wealthy urban posers, a measure widely celebrated as the “Teal tax” or “luvvie levy”.
OCTOBER
A fire alarm sends politicians fleeing from Parliament House – all except for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who following more than two years of pre-flight air safety drills now responds to any audible warnings by tightening his belt and bracing in the crash position.
In a cost-cutting move worth millions, KIIS FM replaces Kyle Sandilands with a basic artificial intelligence program that talks about itself, recites obscenities, occasionally storms off air, buys horrible furniture and has boring mates. In a further cost-cutting move, Jackie O is punted for some random in the promotions department.
NOVEMBER
One year to the day since they entered the Rozelle Interchange, three motorists finally escape Sydney’s most bewildering traffic junction. The trio face months of trauma therapy as they re-adapt to life on the surface, plus a combined total of $18,650 in road tolls. Fourteen drivers remain unaccounted for.
Interrupted by an apparent electric fault during his rousing US election victory speech, the flickering image of a differently-dressed Donald Trump reappears on screen a few minutes later robotically conceding the contest to incumbent Joe Biden. The internet then shuts down for what the triumphant Biden administration says will be four years of “routine maintenance”.
DECEMBER
Still bandaged after his race-ending battery fire at Mount Panorama, Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen announces a new form of wind turbine that will be anchored neither on land or sea. “I’ll hook ’em up to the clouds, baby,” Bowens vows.
A spokeswoman says the plan is just as sensible as anything else Bowen has ever proposed.
Knee-deep in filth created by their decadent Christmas Eve partying, Bronte Beach revellers take time out to list their priorities for the coming year.
“The world needs to be cleaner and greener,” says one, kicking through a pile of waste in search of her boyfriend.
Tim Blair
Journalist
BOM finished a great year of forecasting in style.
Saturday’s forecast for Sunday:
Possible rainfall: 7 to 30mm.
Chance of any rain: 95%.
Actual rainfall: 0.0mm.
Great doco on Tina Turner now on NITV.
She’s still alive, so add a few more years Johanna. Go for at least 110.
Queen Marg has had a lot of back pain, which isn’t a good thing for all those public engagements and garden parties.
….Yemen, with the rebels reporting 10 fighters dead or missing.
Shouldnt that be ABC style reporting. …
‘….Humanitarian group reporting 200 innocent civilians killed or missing whilst on their way to an aquatic candle light vigil aboard their hospital ship.’
I wondered why she was available.
But, but….
“It’s been so stressful. The first couple of days that we didn’t have power, I probably lost a few thousand dollars just on coffee alone,” he said.
A windfarm will fix that…..hahaha
Wasn’t
Happy New Year!!!
Power’s back on just as I was dragging the genset out of the shed. Grrr.
Massive storm at 4am, trees down etc… We missed the rain unfortunately, 3″ to north and south of us by a couple of km, we got 1/2″. Great light show. Still better than the alternative, we were looking at using the sprinklers today as the ground has dried out so much.
It certainly sounds like Wodney.
Sad news, the return of trench warfare in 2023:
Trench warfare dragged out WW1 for years, at vast human cost.
Surely not again?
Noticing a statistically significant presence of hot older women in suburban hardware stores, psychologists identify a phenomenon known as the Bunnings-Cougar effect
Nooo… I bet Tim Blair waited to let that one fly.
A great way to start the year. On ya Tim.
By the way I am not ‘rich’. In fact, most Jews I know are not ‘rich’, most are comfortable, some are well off, but few are ‘rich’. Religious Jewish families are more often than not poor. However, most Jews here and in other countries work hard, they’ve set up successful businesses, they succeed. I know of some families like the Lowy and Trigguboff families who are squillionaires but they are most definitely in the minority. And for every Jewish millionaire/billionaire, there are 10 to 15 non-Jewish millionaires/billionaires.
So, why does the woman from Queanbeyan persist with this notion that I am ‘rich’. Is it because I live in the eastern suburbs of Sydney? Most people who live in the eastern suburbs of Sydney are not rich. I haven’t been overseas for years, I have a good job but I earn a middle income salary. I do have a love of beautiful clothes, shoes, furnishings and chachkas but all of these I have bought myself, no man has ever bought me anything. Or perhaps the woman from Queanbeyan thinks or assumes all Jews are rich? Hmmm, if so that’s an interesting and not very pleasant thought pattern because that thought pattern ‘that all Jews are rich’ is an ancient trope that’s been used against us for centuries, and such thought patterns have been deadly.
I note that she’s always selective about who she’s vicious towards, it’s usually and almost always directed at Lizzie but she also likes be vicious towards me, OldOzzie and one or two others. It’s sad. And whist she can dish it out, she doesn’t like it when people throw it back. Others here who write their wonderful travelogues and so on are never subjected to her unpleasant and very jealous vitriol. I actually like and appreciate a lot of what she posts but when she comes on in vicious mode, almost begging for attention, it’s nasty and I respond. Last night she accused me of engaging in overwrought hyperbole because I said I want the hostages returned. I mean, how low can you go? By the way, most of those hostages are now probably dead but I and other Jews will never stop wanting/hoping/dreaming that they are returned to Israel. The events of 7 October 2023 and the aftermath have shattered and devastated the diaspora Jewish community and Israel. We are also confronted by weekly protests where people on our streets are calling for our genocide. But what would I know!
As for the “bitch” part, yes my pejorative return serve comment last night about her living in a motel in Queanbeyan was nasty. Quite frankly I don’t care when anyone lives. But over the years she’s made plenty of cruel and nasty remarks to Lizzie about the fact that Lizzie lives in Vaucluse. It’s clear she has no self awareness. Normally I wouldn’t respond with such a low barb and I shouldn’t respond because all I’m doing is falling to her nasty level.
Maybe that should be my new year resolution, to ignore the woman from Queanbeyan.
Cargo ship carrying burning lithium ion batteries reaches Alaska but is kept offshore amid frantic battle to extinguish the blaze as crew fears explosion
Tim must go to a different Bunnings to my local.
Classic clip.
Bette Davis Eyes
Along with the very woke Crazy Karen.
Good start: Tim Blair’s predictions, that prick pilger dead, BOM not predicting sunrise and great New Year Eve fireworks at Trinity Point.
The melbourne carols were ……
… in need of an appearance from John McLean. Denis Walter, wait in the wings until you get your cue. It’s when the bad guys are thrown off the stage.
I always recall the job that Pilger did on the OZ led force protecting the Cambodian elections. Repeated over and over by the ABC.
He claimed that the diggers spent all their time in brothels, were biased against Pol Pot’s ‘nationalists’, the Aussie commander was an imperialist incompetent etc etc.
The reality was that the diggers hated the job. Shot up every night in their camp, often involved in standoffs with the corrupt cops when they intervened to protect folks in the street from gang violence, usually unaware of who they were dealing with, swamped by journalists and harassed from Canberra.
Pilger didn’t deign to actually stay in Cambodia, he flew out to Thailand on a daily basis and relied on local stringers for most of his content.
POS, but an exemplaire for contemporary journalism ‘school’.
Re the train/truck crash that killed two railway workers – someone upthread said that the area is as flat as a pancake, perfect visibility.
Well, here is the picture. Not even a tree for miles, and flat as is possible.
I’ve been watching the Paddington Station reality TV show recently, and have some thoughts about how transport works, but will save them for another time.
I have to chase the rats and fleas and cockroaches out of my room, in case Cassie comes for an inspection to determine whether it is 1* or less. 🙂
He’s got that NY humour down pat.
Following on from yesterday’s truck vs train matters (Se7en News):
And:
Great Prediction: This will be a cantankerous ‘I know boats’ obstinate old flog with countless near misses under his belt, and who had ignored an equal number of pleas from family members and colleagues to hang the drivin’ boots up over the past fifteen years.
As mentioned yesterday – I don’t care how good he either is or used to be, but there is no chance a 75 year old should be in charge of a 60 metre, 135 tonne machine moving at speed.
And yes – there is an endless line of jokes available about Quenthland truck drivers, but this one killed two people so I’ll give it a miss.
I hope that the 9,000 plus tons of fireworks was worth it in Sydney last night. I stayed at a friend’s Apartment near Town Hall in Sydney and saw some of the fireworks from their windows on the 27th floor. The purple was nice – Just like the colours of the Roman Pretorian Guard.
Had to smile watching all the people walking down George Street and trying to get home afterwards. They looked like lost ants from where I was viewing and NO Public Transport to help. The Police on horses and driving Vans were no help at all. They just kept going up Bathurst Street and probably on the way home. No help from anyone else that I could see.
And then it rained. Nice.
Happy New Year. 2024 is going to be a tough year for many around the World IMHO.
A very over rated and expensive show.
Another blow to John Howard’s legacy:
‘Australia joined the US-led invasion of Iraq, one of the most contentious decisions of John Howard’s prime ministership, without a formal cabinet submission setting out a full analysis of the risks.
Cabinet papers published by the National Archives on Monday show the full cabinet signed off on the decision on 18 March 2003 based on “oral reports by the prime minister”.’
– The Guardian
That’s not how a conservative government works.
When journalism in the future again becomes the eyes and ears of the common man, it will be in spite of elitist arseholes like John Pigler and the zombies ravaging journalism — 99% of J-school graduates — who think the public is too stupid to vote,
That is a quote worth keeping! Thanks Tom.
One astonishing thing I read the other day was this.
John Tyler , the 10th US president was born in 1790.
He still has a grandson who is alive at the age of 95.
President Tyler had a kid when he was 68 and this son had a child when he was 75.
The grandson was born in 1928. The grandson is also related to Pocahontas on his mother’s. A walking petrol dish.
Can anyone feel the gas build up? It’s coming folks.
The dashcam from the train should be very instructive.
JC
Jan 1, 2024 10:35 AM
More uneducated crap from “I never start any Argy bargy” Junior Cretin.
Wong again as usual and who still needs to get that lisp fixed. And to get along to those NDIS Anger Management classes.
Tina belting it out on NITV – what a superstar she was. One of those people born with much more energy and power than most of us.
Oh, and FOAD wifebeater Ike,
Beery, many thanks for posting Tim Blair’s 2024 predictions. He’s a master. Lots of laughing out loud.
Wodney, even for a former process worker you really are a first class moron.
Do you think people are unaware how you try to instigate most stoushes here, you lowrent clown? I guess that for someone who believes Marty, that his sentient AI predicted 911 to the day, you cannot fathom how everyone is smarter than you. Your buffoonery isn’t even funny anymore.
Didn’t know she was indigenous.
Baroness Nemat Shafik
sums up everything wrong with the west really. I see the LSE contributed to her ejucashun. The thing I note about these people is their uselessness and I suspect they have complete contempt for practical skills and achievements in the real world. Like Grant’s contempt for the provision of running potable water.
Classic clip.
Thanks Steve – indeed a classic.
Meanwhile, at fifty paces …. Johanna v Cassie v Lizzy (perhaps).
Play nice girls.
Love all of your comments. My money is on Cassie.
Labor orders review of BOM after two major warning failures in QLD.
Yet they haven’t ordered a review of the ABC after two failures (at least) on antisemitism, which Albanese assures us “will not be tolerated.”
Palaszczuk is also an alumnus of LSE.
Under her oversight infrastructure projects regularly came in at 170% over budget.
Yet she assured us we will break even on the Olympics.
It’s not hyperbolic to write other truths as you see them too, Cassie, in your own informed and perfectly ok style. You cheer a lot of us up with your enthusiastic ‘raves’. Take no notice of very unnecessary ill-wishing, starting with the usual unhappy suspect, who leads on others, on this 2024 New Year’s Day.
Onward Christian soldiers, support our Jewish friends. And I really mean that.
Marching into 2024, hoping we can do our best to stand up for the West.
It’ll find they didn’t sufficiently account for global boiling. If only they had a bigger supercomputer and all Australians forced to eat bugs then their forecasts would be a lot better.
Clover Moore on the teev yarping about something or other.
She looks like a character from Wallace and Gromit.
Queen Mary of Denmark and Tassie. I really like the sound of that.
I hope Christian’s mother is just tired, and not in receipt of bad health news.
Nugget Combes is too Roger. Contemptible institution.
Which reminds me…they’ve had a spate of vegan food producers go broke in the UK this year, at least half a dozen (including Paul McCartney’s ex), while others are streamlining their product lines to stay in business.
Market observers say veganism was a fad and consumers are returning to meat for health and budget reasons.
Oh joy!
A great day for the world.
Not only has that idiot multi-millionaire houso ranga midget cheat retiring from Test cricket after just one more match, but he’s also bowing out of all international one-day matches as well.
Oh lordy. Colours are now brighter, food tastes better, and (later) I will consume an ice-cold frosty beverage in celebration of this momentous turning of the corner.
Interesting to hear that about President John Tyler’s family, JC.
Hairy and I visited his house, in 2016 I think it was. For a Presidential home, it was seriously unguarded. We drew up to have a look, but it was closed for visitors. No-one was around, so Hairy and I sat for a while in the chairs you see on the front verandah and pretended to be Tyler and his wife enjoying some arvo tea. Sans the tea for us, of course. Hip flask of whiskey helped.
Oh my.
Terrible grammar.
*has that* and *retiring*. No no. That won’t do at all.
*is that*.
I blame increased blood flow after hearing that glorious news.
And for the taste satisfaction of it, because nothing beats a mixed grill of steak, sausages and lamb cutlets.
Tales of Gallipoli: New books keep history alive
Peter Caddick-Adams
With egg & chips and a couple of slices of black pudding!
Johnny Rotten
Jan 1, 2024 10:44 AM
A very over rated and expensive show.
From what I can gather, it actually used to make money from the international broadcast rights. This lead to the monumentally expensive show Sydney now has. But with the web that income has all but disappeared. As a perfect example of bureaucratic/political inertia , we are now just left with an expensive show and the endless giggle marketing. It seems the cost is all ‘commercial in confidence’. The model for Destination NSW. Evidently it stimulates economic activity. Which in reality, is just ‘redirected’ spending.
You don’t have a Scrooge McDuck style money-bin where you roll around in a sea of crisp fitty dollah notes?
Nick Cater on romancing the aboriginal heritage, in today’s Oz vs ‘the hard reality of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle’:
And the political hectoring:
“At 7:30pm an Indigenous smoking ceremony will “cleanse the harbor of negative spirits,” before Indigenous artists curate a fireworks display dubbed “Buried Country.”
Creative Director Nooky says the theme underscores that Australians, and visitors, are always on Indigenous land – even in big cities.”
CNN
Israel intends to keep going in Gaza, but is making plans for new strategies in order to get reservists home and back to work:
Romanticizing the environment was a Nazi thing.
Look who is doing it now.
Whether it be land or sea, humans who do not realize that the “environment” will try to kill you, are Darwin award candidates.
This is especially true of the wide brown place.
The US has made three attacks on Houthi rebels but is now slowly withdrawing.
Biden’s weakness on display again? Report from the Oz, 1 hr ago.
Nick doesn’t mention that was because she was Nugget Coomb’s lover at the time.
Coombs wrote Labor’s aboriginal affairs policy, presumably seeking Wright’s approval as he went.
You can see the glorious results in central Australia today.
I feel sorry for Vegans.
Never to experience the joy of a lamb chop on the barbie with a dollop of mint sauce and a ton of sodium chloride.
Life is worth living hippies!
And washed down with beer.
Bolts post abo e re gerbil warming – Adelaide parklands and footpaths green- one off British bowling green – went for a drive looking for a grow shop in the inner north of Adelaide – industrial area, empty housing trust lots – green really green..
I recall reading articles saying from circa 2018 the temp will be cooling due to reduces sunspot activity and heat from sun.
Yep – it’s true.
Phew survived the longest part of year – October to march – no afl – two more months left – – if your a port supporter best part of the season – as we,re going to win the flag this year – again
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Jan 1, 2024 12:04 PM
The US has made three attacks on Houthi rebels but is now slowly withdrawing.
Biden’s weakness on display again? Report from the Oz, 1 hr ago.
That senile demented prick is not of control of anything.
We watched the fireworks at home, able to see a lot of them to our left through some trees from our glassed sunroom, with plenty going high enough for us to see the various bursts of colour running up the harbour from the bridge (which was only just visible). Colours were a lot of red and orange, some blues. We also had the TV on so could check the display from there too. A lot of smoke obscured the TV picture but the real thing was quite bright and smokeless. Helicopters were hovering all around of course and the noise from Watson’s Bay pub and foreshores was worrying Attapuss. He had his anxious expression on, the one that said something’s going on and I don’t like it. Us being home made it easier for him though.
Kissed Hairy a Happy New Year, our first completely alone for more years than I can count. We enjoyed it.
Yes, I should’ve said his handlers, the Obama crew.
The Israeli military expects its war with Hamas to continue through the entirety of 2024
Left-leaning media (looking at BBC and daytime Sky as well as the usual suspects in the commercial sphere) hates Netanyahu and wants to blame him for everything bad that happens. They salivate at the prospect of him being deposed.
While doing this they completely whitewash the Gazans.
That’s because all arms of the Australian military are really down in recruitment. We just aren’t enough personnel in the system. The pursuit of Ben Roberts-Smith has taken a real toll on the recruitment efforts. Most young people don’t want to be persecuted by their own government for doing a difficult job successfully. Who can blame them?
I just had a spew in the back yard. Needed it. Thanks Lizzie.
Call all agrarians
I have a big liquid amber tree ? out the front of my house with just reaches over the the roof of our house.
Possum climb up ? the tree then leap on to my roof – usually around 10 to 100pm – big thud.
I tried rolling gutter guard around two branches which was duct taped together in the hope of hearing a splat and and screech and fast foot step – did not work – too many alternative ways to jump on to my roof – yeah the misses and the neighbour – another female were taking the Mickey out of me – but ithought – oh yeah just wait and see – has not worked.
Put in a solar light to light up the tree.
Also back yard possum runs along the capping of my 2m fence how do I stop this.
Noted two rats run along the fence then jump into the undergrowth of the neighbours yards.
All help welcomed.
oops, when I am not watching what I write I do say ‘a lot of’ a lot. lol.
Nothing well written in that. 🙂
Glad to be of assistance, Zafiro. I’m good with spewers. My second son needed to spew on Christmas Day as I drove two sons and the dog up for Christmas lunch. He let me know, I pulled over at the next turn off and he leaned out just in time.
Other son whispered to me, as that son got out and walked around a bit, drugs again mum, I think. I offered the Scottish defense: not proven. We continued on so’s I could check the turkey because I knew in the busy kiddiness of it no-one else would.
“Creative director Nooky” was the disc jockey who assured Australians, after the defeat of the “Voice” referendum that “we are home, sharpening our spears” and played “Treaty Now”, on repeat, for over an hour.
“Creative director Nooky” might need reminding that indigenous people couldn’t defend that land…
On things Scottish, good to see you at New Year’s, Macbeth.
Don’t go away, Pogria has plans yet for you next year. Stick around. 😉
Elbow’s very keen on all things indigenous.
Just ask Noel Pearson.
Best regards to all at this august body for 2024, especially DB.
I think things will get better this year, here and overseas.
First, the referendum poleaxed Luigi’s hopes for reelection. With the realisation that Labor has no answers to what ails this country, increasingly it will become an electorate-wide “had-it” moment.
Second, we’re in a count down to TROT (the return of Trump).
Mark Knight’s weekend offering -thank you, Tom – with Trump in his golf buggy in the middle of the cartoon and about to run over a decrepit Biden as well as shunt Xi out of the way, has some great symbolism for the entire world.
It will be the gift that keeps on giving ad we count down the Republican primaries with a U.S. politics-style advent calendar.
And with that rotting corpse remaining in the WH for another year, continuing to slurp on ice-cream, but no second term in the larder, the Israelis will have little if any reason to stop their clean out of the stinking Augean Stables along the western border.
The recent election wins by right-wing govts around the world, if they do make the hard decisions thst are needed, can only strengthen the West.
Off now to bring down the Christmas tree and decorations.
I’m over it for this year now. Two months now before we head off o/s again to the Caribbean for a cruise around, then up the Amazon, and the rest of South America by plane hops. Eldest son and penitent grandson coming to lunch tomorrow. We’ll take them out. I’m very much over cooking too.
For those who think we travel too much, think again. We are old and we’ve both worked hard to amass our funds, which we believe we have some right to spend on ourselves now. Hairy especially, as he’s earned more of it. He also lives for travelling, which he assiduously and meticulously plans. We lost two years of valuable travel time with lockdowns, so we’re making up for it now. As some other Cats and Kittehs do too.
Bwah ha ha ha.
This was meant to be his “shock announcement”.
That he would give up playing T20 and ODIs for Straya and play minor T20 comps around the world.
Sure.
Yuuuge shock.
The cheating midget houso ranga was going to chase the big bucks.
Truth is, I reckon he got the tap on the shoulder from CA that he might make future squads with no guarantee of selection.
No point carrying the drinks for a bunch of 20-something up and comers when you could be raking it in playing in the Dutch T20 comp, hey?
she was Nugget Coomb’s lover at the time. eerrkk almost as bad as Gareth and Cheryl
Love it. TROT. Let’s hope. Things would definitely look up then.