Re the Rasmussen poll – thanks Men – I was relaying an article on the questionable nature of the polls…
Open Thread – Australia Day 2024
- Hydrocarbons are not dispensable
- Open Thread – Weekend 7 Sept 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 5 Sept 2024
- Report on Russia and Ukraine
- Open Thread – Mon 2 Sept 2024
That’s my point. But at least the Saudi’s don’t let DEI intervene in their abilities. Their money does the talking.
Brilliant! Thanks, Tom.
many detailed the complex planning and math involved in budgeting and buying the right amount and types of food, and…
You never used ‘time machine’ earlier when I raised Iraq and WMDs? Sure I have, but what I said was…
The greater number of convicts and officials of the First Fleet were at least nominally Anglicans. Yet neither Government or Church had shown much interest in the provision of an Anglican Chaplain. Finally a small but vigorous London Mission Society had sponsored one of its own members, the Reverend Richard Johnson, as Anglican Chaplain. He was snubbed by the Governor, slighted by the Military and jeered at by the convicts.
A letter from a Catholic priest requesting permission to sail with the First Fleet stated that there were some 300 Catholics in the Fleet. There is no proof of this number, but we do know that there were Catholics of some considerable number. Fr Walshe’s request was simply ignored by Lord Sydney in London, who believed that their means of grace could only be ministered to them at the risk of weakening the Protestant ascendancy.
I suspect one who’s been in the news lately has narcissistic personality disorder.
Not that that would excuse her.
TBH Black Ball, I don’t know how you could even have the ABC on in your house without throwing a brick at the teev. Thanks for the report anyway.
You have got to give it to the Guardian. they try so hard.
“Hundreds of wild animals killed in a wildfire because of Texas border fence”.
No comment.
Probably Roger. I have a friend-colleague from China and he said he was shocked at how anti Australian and negative the meja was here.
Not forgetting his silence on curfews and 5-10 km limits which, when they were taken to court, they quietly folded because their science file was empty.
In Federation Square Melbourne.
Not. One. Australia flag.
Yet watch these b@sta@rds fly 100s for Abo week and Gay month. FFS. Poison is too good for them.
Sue for ownership? I’ll never speak to her again. LOL
I think it’s closer to 5 years as she dropped in, in 19. She even gets pissed off when we go there and has to move to the second bedroom as it’s inconvenient.
If you’re in a doorman building, and ours has two dudes on the door, you can leave you apartment door open and go overseas. We used to do that. Houses are different though.
Johnson was a Yorkshireman, a graduate (BA) of Magdalen College, Cambridge, and a protege of anti-slavery spearheads William Wilberforce and John Newton (of Amazing Grace fame and formerly a sailor in the Royal Navy).
Bruce.
IMHO on this cyclone, the BOM started scaremongering 2 weeks out and were screaming severe early on so it had to have made cat 3 to save face. Hence the bs upgrade yesterday arvo.
My house didn’t even get a scratch. Worst damage i’ve heard is a downed old tree that wasn’t wanted anyway.
(it did reach cat 1 and for a time over open ocean likely made Cat 2 but cat 3 yeah na.)
So you do have a squatter, then?
I love your hopeful tone with the “moved in temporarily”.
Standby by for “Dad, can’t you and Mum just stay in a hotel when you visit?”.
Bruce of Newcastle
Jan 26, 2024 10:35 AM
Some protesters have brought the Aboriginal and Palestinian flags, with some signs at the event appearing to co-opt both causes.
It’s very revealing that the aboriginal industry has not as far as I know condemned the use of their flag by the Nazis.
That alone says “Invasion Day” is to be utterly rejected. The hypocrisy is also into orbit: aboriginals claim land rights for themselves yet oppose land rights for the original inhabitants of Israel.
BON,
and this is what those Aboriginal Supporters agree with
The October 7 ‘genocide’ video evidence in full: Civilians are slaughtered and mutilated, terrified families rounded up like cattle and Hamas terrorists ring proud parents to boast of atrocities in footage presented by Israel to ICJ
Comments 1717
– Why do we allow these butchers to enter our country? We all know their eventual goals.
– And this is what is arriving in the UK daily. Our government(s) have utterly betrayed all of us ACTUAL British people.
– Sickening and as Scots we then have to deal with an apologist as our supposed First Minister. The world I knew is evaporating before my eyes.
– All pallestinians are dogs and need to be driven from the river and into the sea
– But still the deniers deny. Too weak and influenced by social media and screaming harridans who just take take take –
– This is what the democrats support.
That’s Andy Crapp for you. PLC girl too. Another snorty nosed school ejucated leftist.
It’s happening!
Shouldn’t that be “Aunty Rhoda Roberts?”
That doesn’t really help to narrow it down.
Bloody funny but I shall have to ask for you to see yourself out.
“OldOzzie
Jan 26, 2024 9:58 AM
Happy Australia Day to All Australians & Cats – special thanks to dover for blog & great painting today
Ventusky showing southerly htting Sydney around 1330, so in pool for swim at 1200, and a Glass of Chandon under eaves in shade
Ribeye 200g, Lamb Chop & Beef Sausage on BBQ for Dinner & Some Glasses of Serrat Shiraz Voigner”
I can be there in three hours! 😀
Alby Mangels eat you heart out.
No.
As the currently unfashionable C P Snow said in one of his novels:
”Gratitude is not an emotion.
But the expectation of it is a very lively one.”
One of his best, and truest, lines.
Farewell to Scott Morrison, a disastrous Prime Minister who betrayed the Liberal voter base with politics ‘a little to the right of a very left Labor Party’
For demonstrating an authoritarian bent during the COVID pandemic and jumping on the net zero 2050 bandwagon, Scott Morrison will go down in history as one of Australia’s worst prime ministers, writes Rocco Loiacono.
One of Ronald Reagan’s most famous political maxims was “Dance with the one that brung ya” – that is, don’t abandon the party base.
The Liberal Party’s base would have once united around shared values of social conservatives and economic dries: lower taxes, smaller government, reward for individual effort, defence of the family and the importance of national sovereignty, the rule of law and, above all, individual liberty.
However, the Liberals, led by Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, no longer appeared to stand for these values in favour of what one might politely call political expediency, but what really was a deliberate strategy of aping the policies of its opponents in order to “keep them out”.
The problem is that when the Liberal Party moves closer to the ALP, it dismays its own best supporters without gaining any new ones.
The failure of such a strategy was borne out on 21 May 2022, when Morrison led the Liberals to holding only 57 out of 151 seats, which is, proportionately, the lowest number of seats it has held in the House of Representatives since the party was founded in 1944.
Under Morrison, the Liberals jumped on the “net zero 2050” bandwagon, seemingly ignoring the fact that Australians have voted against the party promising the most drastic “climate action” at every electoral opportunity.
As IPA research before the last election showed, 17 of the top 20 electorates with the highest proportion of jobs at risk from a net zero emissions target are held by the Coalition, including six Nationals seats.
Indeed, during the 2019 election, Morrison said of the ALP’s climate change policy that it was “a reckless target … (that) will come at a tremendous cost to Australians”.
How can something be so wrong then but in November 2021 at COP 26 be absolutely right?
Such a move was a slap in the face to the Coalition’s base that voted against “drastic climate action” at that election.
November 2021 was interestingly the 40th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s speech at the Menzies Lecture in Melbourne where she declared:
By seeking “climate consensus” on net zero by 2050, Morrison blurred the lines between Liberal and Labor, leading the voters to rightly question what was the difference between the two parties.
This same attitude was part of his decision to secretly swear himself into five ministries, namely: Treasury, Finance, Health, Home Affairs and Industry, Science and Resources, all bar one without the knowledge of his cabinet colleagues.
Industry, Energy and Resources was the only portfolio out of the five in which he involved himself directly, cancelling the PEP11 gas project off the NSW coast, overriding then resources minister Keith Pitt.
The cancellation of this project was vintage Morrison, playing politics to save the Liberal bed-wetters in once-safe north shore Sydney seats under threat from the so-called “Teal independents”.
As we saw on May 21, 2022, it did Morrison, his fellow bed-wetters and the Liberals no good, since the Teals made a clean sweep of all those seats, which is what happens when you play politics without conviction.
Voters will choose the real thing every time, not a poor imitation.
Morrison’s cavalier attitude to the rule of law saw him, on several occasions, as Prime Minister, eviscerate the presumption of innocence, the cornerstone of Australia’s criminal justice system.
He commented, under parliamentary privilege, no less, on the case of Brittany Higgins, who alleges she was raped in Parliament House while intoxicated.
“I count myself among those politicians who operate from conviction. Consensus is the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects. The process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?”
Indeed, Higgins received an apology from Morrison, who uncritically assumed the veracity of her narrative.
However, more importantly, he jeopardised the trial of the accused, Bruce Lehrmann, who has always vehemently denied the allegation and pleaded not guilty to the charge.
I have not been any great fan of Morrison ever since he sneeringly dismissed the value of free speech, wrongly claiming that fighting for it “doesn’t create one job, doesn’t open one business, doesn’t give anyone one extra hour. It doesn’t make housing more affordable or energy more affordable.”
That is laughably wrong as even a moment’s thought would show.
Open western democracies with their vibrant economies depend completely on the free exchange of views.
If Morrison’s “what has free speech and freedom ever done for us” Monty Python-esque idiocy were true, how come Peter Ridd lost his job for pointing out deficiencies in research on the supposed “bleaching” of the Great Barrier Reef?
Let’s not forget it was Scott Morrison who remained egregiously silent when a pregnant woman was arrested in her own home for posting an opinion on social media, and peaceful protesters were shot at with rubber bullets.
Again, it was the idea of consensus, or “national unity” as Morrison put it, that he handed over control of the country to state premiers during the COVID years, allowing Australia to descend into near police state territory, all the while places like Sweden and Florida achieved decidedly better outcomes – because there are many other matrices of concern other than coronavirus deaths.
These are just some indicia of Morrison not being a politician of any obvious principles or values, with an authoritarian bent.
His prime ministership was like ‘Seinfeld’, a show about nothing (but without the laughs).
Lacking any depth, Morrison’s modus operandi was to be a little to the right of a very left Labor party which effectively delivered Australia two left-wing parties.
The results of this have been disastrous for Australia, at so many levels.
In the view of this correspondent, Morrison will go down in history as one of Australia’s worst prime ministers.
I didn’t live-watch the whole thing, but the highest wind speed I could see was 93kph at Willis Island as Cyclone Pissweak was coming in, well before it crossed the coast.
There will come a time when an actual, proper Cat 5 makes landfall near a population centre and there will be massive loss of life. The reason will be that people will have become so desensitised to RAIN BOMB LIFE THREATENING SHARKNADO IMMINENT RIGHT NOW statements from the BoM flogs that they’ll ignore them completely, and it’ll be the one time they shouldn’t.
Rockdoctor,
The ECMWF model in windy had the cyclone thing right 3 days ago. Don’t where B0M got their prognostications from. They do tend on the pessimistic side with all their forecasts and warnings.
To all the wonderful Cats and Kittehs, have the greatest Australia Day since the last one.
I give thanks everyday that my parents came here before I was born. To be born in Australia is to be truly blessed. To have come here by choice is better than winning the lottery.
I have hung my flag on my front fence. The wind happens to be blowing straight at the flag keeping it flat against the fence for all to see. I have friends stopping by in an hour, last night I had locals call and check how I was travelling as they hadn’t heard from me for awhile. Last week, a neighbour, who lives three ks up the road! called and said he had blackberry spray left over and would I like him to come and spray mine. YES PLEASE!
Have sent and received lots of good will texts and calls.
I love Australia and I especially love Country Australia.
Aussie bands at the pub tonight!
johanna, earlier:
This type of arrangement is known as a ‘skullet’.
Ruh roh.
I see Buddy and Jacinta now moaning about the invasion.
Yet to see them give up the digs for a humpy and lunch is a toasted goanna.
Not sure the “First Nations” had much call for footballers and models.
Another great day here in the wild wild west..we’re celebrating Aust. Day by going out to a Chinese dinner thats being paid for from iron ore dividends.
OldOzzie, what is not appropriate is putting up with bullshit from your own daughter, grow a pair. This is serious advice whether you want it or not. Lying to children is hurting them as another form of abuse. Apologising for telling the truth? How can the kid grow up to know what respect means.
Mmmyes brothers in arms so to speak. Onus-Browne getting moist. Herald Sun:
A collection of khuntery that you would be hard pressed to find a worse example of.
One could say that the apology didn’t create one job (apart from a part-time housekeeper in a French village).
Why are you spraying blackberries, Pogria? Blackberry jam, Blackberry cheesecake, Blackberry pie to name a few. I must have had half an acre of blackberries once. Cut into rows for easy access.
He doesn’t do the concept of emotion (gratitude in this instance) justice and would seem to be confusing it with affect (a common mistake).
Emotion is primarily a mental construction, which is why it can be formed and directed to its proper end through moral training.
Formatting error…sorry; first partial sentence is johanna’s.
Trans vets sue government to pay for sex change ops – opening door to $100,000 taxpayer-funded surgeries for 163,000 non-conforming ex-service members
Being sent to NSW in 1788 would be like being exiled to Mars today. The voyage takes about as long.
Catturd ™
@catturd2
The treasonous traitorous scum in the Biden regime are actively fighting for illegals to invade our country against the citizens of the USA. They all belong in GITMO.
Is NASA’s ‘Temperatures Are Rising’ graph evidence of global warming or evidence of widespread fraud?
Gitmo full! Mass arrests!
Unsealed indictments! Army tanks!
Courts of Teh PeoPle!!1!
I would like more context for the Snow quote, please.
Pogria
Jan 26, 2024 11:25 AM
To all the wonderful Cats and Kittehs, have the greatest Australia Day since the last one.
I give thanks everyday that my parents came here before I was born. To be born in Australia is to be truly blessed. To have come here by choice is better than winning the lottery.
I have hung my flag on my front fence. The wind happens to be blowing straight at the flag keeping it flat against the fence for all to see. I have friends stopping by in an hour, last night I had locals call and check how I was travelling as they hadn’t heard from me for awhile.
Last week, a neighbour, who lives three ks up the road! called and said he had blackberry spray left over and would I like him to come and spray mine. YES PLEASE!
Have sent and received lots of good will texts and calls.
I love Australia and I especially love Country Australia.
Aussie bands at the pub tonight!
Pogria,
at a mates place near Old Tarana Quarry on Tarana via Locksley Road to Bathurst, we built a vineyard from scratch over a number of years – there was a big blackberry area near the Fish river and we brought in some goats with electric fence and they cleared it out
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-28/victor-harbor-trials-goats-to-tackle-blackberry-bushes/102010964
https://vicblackberrytaskforce.com.au/goats-offer-an-effective-tool-in-weed-control/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/293109784_Using_goats_for_the_control_of_blackberries_in_northeastern_Victoria
Move Australia Day to April 1.
SloMo’s hose now spraying cash. He’s got a tight hold.
Tim Anderson still around I see. Evil.
Neil Oliver: They want us to fight & die…for what?!?
Happy Oz day to everybody!
Breakfast was roast leg of lamb and forester yelverton. That’s what comes of planning ahead.
Anyone living in Australia who isn’t bloody glad they do is either an insane loser or hasn’t looked at the alternatives.
They did have a couple of ports of call though.
Have put out Australian flag on balcony. Am contemplating composing letter to each Woolworths board member describing the boycott situation. That is, Woolies decide to boycott Australia day and show contempt for it, and in return our (extended) family are boycotting Woolies and are mightily pleased with the alternative suppliers we now use. Plus, Mr/Mrs Board member, keep the company out of politics and compensate the company the millions of my shareholder money that you gave to the divisive “Yes” campaign. These thoughts make me cranky so I will probably just enjoy Australia Day and express and deliver my contempt for Woolworthhs tomorrow.
GreyRanga
Jan 26, 2024 11:28 AM
OldOzzie, what is not appropriate is putting up with bullshit from your own daughter, grow a pair.
This is serious advice whether you want it or not. Lying to children is hurting them as another form of abuse.
Apologising for telling the truth?
How can the kid grow up to know what respect means.
GreyRanga,
the apology was to the 10 year old, as an adult, I should not have blown my stack at him (though I get really cheesed at what is happening) and was what I should do.
as for my own daughter – we agree to disagree and yes, I now speak in a squeeky voice. – I can lend her to you if you like constant earfuls
““The Aboriginal struggle and the Palestinian struggle share a lot of features,” he said.”
Yes they do. They both excell at Bashing, Torturing and killing. Particularly women.
Andrew Laurence
Globalist parasites destroying Britain.
The AFR View
Labor makes bracket creep worse for middle Australia
Labor’s tax rejig may be politically popular in the short term. But it makes a major structural problem in the economy worse.
Anthony Albanese’s “Middle Australia” speech provides the political case for confiscating more money from the top one in 10 taxpayers who already shoulder most of the tax burden and redistributing it to everyone else.
He figures that the applause from the winners will outweigh the costs of being outed for breaking the 2022 election commitment not to mess with the Coalition’s delayed tax cuts legislated to begin from July 1.
How did the prime minister suddenly get to this point after having made this promise a mark of his integrity?
It goes back to the global pandemic from early 2020, which forced repeated shutdowns of the economy that were bound to hit household income.
The Coalition government and the Reserve Bank responded with a massive budget and monetary stimulus – egged on by the Labor opposition – that drove the jobless rate to the lowest rate in close to half a century.
But this benefit came at the cost of saddling taxpayers with a sharp rise in public debt. And, amid the disruption to global and domestic supply chains, the boost to aggregate demand spilled over into the sharpest inflation outbreak in a generation, fuelled further by the energy price shock from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The signs of this already were evident when Labor went to the May 2022 election promising to boost real wages and cut household electricity bills. And in turn that led to the 13 increases in Reserve Bank interest rates that deliberately sought to squeeze household disposable incomes.
To their credit, Mr Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers realised they could not splurge the surge in tax receipts from iron ore, coal and gas exports and from higher personal income tax receipts without fuelling inflation and making the problem worse.
But the thumping defeat of the October 13 referendum on the Indigenous Voice crystallised voter sentiment that Labor was out of touch with middle Australia, leading to a slide in the government’s polling numbers.
The political dynamic shifted
Mr Albanese figured he needed to act very early in the year to short-circuit this political dynamic before the March 2 Dunkley byelection.
After the Coalition took from the future to support household incomes during the pandemic, Labor is piling a bigger tax burden onto upper income earners to shore up its political numbers in the aftermath of the post-pandemic inflation shock.
It is difficult not to sympathise with the mass of ordinary Australians struggling with the household income squeeze. And, to its credit, Labor’s rejig of the stage three tax cuts will not break the budget nor significantly add to inflation pressure.
But it will hardly “deliver for business” as Mr Albanese claimed on Thursday by boosting workforce participation as a result of cutting the marginal tax rate for incomes between $18,200 and $45,000 from 19 per cent to 16 per cent.
Any labour supply dividend from this would be very small compared with the opposite approach taken in New Zealand at the lower end of the tax scales.
While Australia applies a zero tax rate up to $18,000, New Zealand applies a 10 per cent rate on incomes up to $NZ14,000.
That allows the Kiwis to run lower marginal tax rates across the rest of the tax scales, which underpins an employment rate nearly 5 percentage points higher than in Australia.
A political cycle fix
That’s how genuine tax reform can deliver for workers, business and the economy. The contrast underscores the opportunity cost of using a significant tax scale change for political purposes.
Such opportunities rarely occur more than once every few terms of government. They ought to be applied to bedding down structural improvements in the tax system rather than on fixing short-term political or even business cycle concerns.
Thus, Labor’s tax rejig may be politically popular in the short term and overall is calculated to cut overall personal income tax by $1.3 billion over four years.
But it is projected to actually increase tax collections by $28 billion over the next decade because, by restoring the 37 per cent tax bracket, it will make the structural problem of bracket creep worse for middle Australia.
Old Ozzie,
I appreciate the links, thank you. I do plan on using goats in a year or two.
Grey Ranga,
I used to pick tons of blackberries. I would wear strong jeans and gum boots and carry two broad palings so I could walk carefully into the middle of the patch where all the best berries were. I made prize winning jams and cordials.
Sadly, my berry foraging days are over. My balance is so shot I daren’t push my luck going for the best berries anymore. Still I am preparing a berry bed where I will be growing blueberries, red, black and white currants, red gooseberries and jostaberries just for a start. Also, a couple of commercial blackberry vines as they do not have thorns. 😀
The most obvious feature to me is that they are both supported by a bunch of hopeless losers. Permanent victims. People who don’t stand up for themselves and fix what’s wrong but whinge and moan. It’s impossible not to despise them. Useless buggers.
You could call the day she moved in “invasion day”.
I still wouldn’t tolerate rudeness from a child, Ozzie, no matter how old she is. And fearing her mouthy responses makes them even worse. It doesn’t hurt to remind them that you are the parent, not them.
A ten year old is different – you present an alternative view and back it up. And tell them how much you love them. Their propagandist tachers won’t ever do that.
And thanks for the flag info guys. There was a lot of scuttlebutt flying around about flags in 2020-21 and I may have got them mixed up.
This had to be a joke.
At the opening of our local Australia Day concert, the organiser was thanking the sponsors.
Gold Sponsor: Woolworths.
Time to start posting music videos for Australia Day. Let’s kick off with Great Southern Land by Icehouse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db-3u-Wv-54
Magnificent. Turn it up.
I saw one of those ‘reaction’ videos by a British bloke who said that he noticed that in the 80s Australia produced anthems, patriotic songs. The Bicentennial, perhaps?
Evidence!? Evidence?! Show me the evidence!! Try just looking at some decent news aggregators on X re shipping like Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) ???????? @mercoglianos but there’s also this from a week earlier:
About who owned it, etc.
You raised it, JC.
Your delusional here, JC. If this is ‘good’ for the US wtf are they even doing in the Red Sea then? Rather than admit the obvious you’re giving us this alternate reality.
Tim Anderson, 70, said he had travelled all the way from Sydney to support the rally on Friday, holding Aboriginal and Palestinian flags.
Mr Anderson equated the Aboriginal struggle to that of the Palestinian people.
“The Aboriginal struggle and the Palestinian struggle share a lot of features,” he said.
“Some at different stages of their history, but basically they share a lot of features and also a lot of problems.”
He said the success of the integration of the two rallies is what encouraged him to venture down to Melbourne.
Now where do I know the name ‘Tim Anderson’ from? Hmm, could this be the same Tim Anderson who is a pal of Syria’s Bashar Assad? Could this be the same Tim Anderson who was once convicted of the Ananda Marga terrorist bombing? Could this be the same Tim Anderson who once lectured at Sydney University and is a notorious and unapologetic Jew hater?
I suspect the answer to all my questions is….YES.
Memo to Aboriginal radicals, having a cockroach like Tim Anderson on your side, along with Palestinian scum, is not going to win you any friends.
Stolen land! Never ceded!
There was a rather heavily be tattooed, young lady, with a similar arrangement, in my local last night…
OldOzzie, my own daughter, bit of a greenie. I said to her after she quoted some crap, “I thought your were brighter than that”. Went home in a huff. A year later she has realised she was being fed a line and is now pointing it out. Try telling your grandson to prove you wrong. Feelz doesn’t get a look in.
I have hung my flag on my front fence. The wind happens to be blowing straight at the flag keeping it flat against the fence for all to see. I have friends stopping by in an hour, last night I had locals call and check how I was travelling as they hadn’t heard from me for awhile.
We also hung our Aussie flag out this morning (in Sydney)- from our top balcony where no one can tamper with it. I took a wonderful photo this morning from outside the gate – one of our many water dragons was sitting (as they do) on one stone pillar of our front gate. Very Aussie.
But, sadly, Ozzie, I did note on my morning walk down to Balmoral, that only one other house (on my route) had a flag flying. I reckon most people are scared to show (literally) their colours!
One wonders what h@m@s would think of the proud aboriginal warriors and their theoretical ‘resistance’?
Somehow I don’t think that mutual training assistance will be taking place.
JC.
How much is the annual payment to your building Super?
I’m interested to see the extent of change since I lived there in the dark ages.
A succinct overview of a dreadful political creature, whose moral and leadership deficiencies have inflicted a generation worth of damage on Australia.
The swine built an entire political strategy on the back of his having no personal convictions:
And left behind a gift to Labor that will keep on giving.
Odious man.
Four houses, on the main street of my local town flying the Australian flag, the fifth flying the “Boxing kangaroo.”
That Anderson had a teaching position at Sydney Uni says it all about the state of the modern academy. Time to find another way to train doctors, engineers, accountants and lawyers.
Your blackberry stories reminds me of my youth, when my brother and I and all the local kids would go to the vast (it seemed to us) vacant paddocks behind the house and pick and eat the berries. Red lips, red fingers, red clothes. Our mums didn’t seem to mind.
The brambles, intertwined with lantana, formed a canopy over the creek bed. Tadpoles, frogs, dragonflies. It was another world, the mystical world of childhood.
There must have been snakes in there, but we never saw any. Not even a rabbit.
There’s now an enormous medium density, human warehousing complex on the site. It was once slated for the extension of the Warringah freeway, which never eventuated. Can’t leave any open space…that would be sacrilege.
Geoffrey Blainey, in the Oz.
Geoffrey Blainey…”powerful reasons why Australia Day is worth celebrating”
Australia Day a time to reflect on the country we all call home
JANUARY 26, 2024
When you read the daily news, you often gain the distinct impression that Australia Day is approaching extinction. Many critics say that its death should be hastened.
And yet the latest opinion polls indicate that most voters do not wish to alter the date of Australia Day. A mere one third of voters wish to call it “Invasion Day”. Indeed, most people value the day and silently shun the Melbourne vandals who, this week, cut off the ankles from the statue of Captain Cook. These wreckers maybe are products of an education profession which, more than ever before, is inclined to denigrate its own nation.
Is our history a standing disgrace? The more indignant critics of Australia Day say that it glorifies what was really a prolonged catastrophe. It is true that for decades the Indigenous people mostly died from diseases to which they had no immunity. It is true that in frontier conflicts they were killed in large numbers, more dying after 1860 than before. Some of the killings were notably brutal.
The whole truth, however, can be elusive. We are easily mistaken, each one of us.
We still hear the allegation that the Indigenous were not deemed worthy of being counted until 1967, or if they were counted they were classified under the fauna and flora laws. This is a deliberate slur against the Australian people and yet it circulates freely in Aboriginal and sporting circles.
It is regrettable that many Aboriginal Australians were long deprived of voting rights, but this is only a fraction of the total truth. Most Aboriginal men in Victoria, NSW and much of South Australia had an early right to vote – if they so desired. They could exercise the right as early as 1860, a year when huge numbers of British and European men did not yet have a vote. Incidentally, an Aboriginal man, a well-off master builder by trade, sat in parliament in Sydney as early as 1889 – some eight decades before the first Aboriginal person sat in federal parliament. He was entitled to feel proud, for he had convict as well as Aboriginal ancestry.
In Adelaide at the 1896 election, many Aboriginal women were seen to be voting at a time when – according to my reckoning – white women in the 10 major cities of the Western world had no vote. In wartime, few full-blood Indigenous people fought for Australia, but in World War II the Torres Strait Islanders on Thursday Island – according to one distinguished war historian – provided more servicemen, in proportion to population, than any other town in the nation.
It was a common lament of Indigenous people that they were totally dispossessed by the “invaders”, but this has been more than remedied. They now own a very high percentage of the nation’s lands, indeed more than is owned by the Maori in New Zealand.
Aboriginal Australians, few in number, control at least 55 per cent of Australian soil. It is the wish of Anthony Albanese that by the year 2030 they should own or control 70 per cent. And yet the present system of land rights seems to show serious flaws. Alas, the Indigenous people living on these collectively owned lands do not have a right prized by most other Australians – the right to own their own house. Do they even gain a fair share of the income generated by these lands? We do not know.
The latest census reveals that a surprisingly large group of large-town and city Aboriginal families are prospering. To their credit, they are, for example, buying their own home, they have two cars in each household, and their children are staying on at school or gaining tertiary certificates or degrees.
Good news does not always reach the television news. These prospering Aboriginal families probably outnumber their kinsfolk who live in the small and remote bush towns, have no or only intermittent jobs, and rely on very heavy welfare subsidies.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart, though successful in uniting Indigenous peoples, should be re-examined. The key document in the voice referendum held last year, it insisted in poetic language that all Indigenous peoples were bonded spiritually to the specific homeland where they were born. Their souls or spirits “must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors”.
A shock to these affirmations of spirituality was delivered by the census held nationwide in 2021. It revealed that the Uluru Statement was preaching a myth. In fact, most Aboriginal Australians today are not worshippers of an Indigenous religion. In the Northern Territory, still viewed as a stronghold of the ancestral religion, 94,000 of its Indigenous peoples are Christian but only 3400 worship an Aboriginal religion. Across the nation as a whole, fewer than 2 per cent of the Indigenous people declare that they worship an “Australian Aboriginal traditional religion”.
Actually, they are more Christian than the mainstream Australians who live in the capital cities.
Most of these Aboriginal Christians probably would not conceive of themselves as primarily victims of the so-called Invasion Day. After all, it was this so-called invasion which, year after year, spread the very religion they worship. Indeed, the Torres Strait Islanders were so grateful for the arrival of the London Missionary Society in 1871 that they still designate it not as Invasion Day but the Coming of the Light.
Australia Day should commemorate not only the significant landing in 1788 at Sydney Harbour, as seen by both sides, but also themes in Aboriginal history. One vital insight came from the geologist Jim Bowler who, half a century ago while on several journeys, discovered the revealing remains of an Aboriginal woman and man at Lake Mungo in NSW.
With the aid of radiocarbon dating, his discoveries proved beyond doubt that the Aboriginal peoples explored and ingeniously utilised this continent long before other human beings even reached North and South America. Now living quietly in his homeland, South Gippsland, Bowler is rightly honoured for his contribution to world history.
Why is January 26 often denounced as the start of a shameful invasion? Governor Arthur Phillip never saw himself as ready to invade Australia. He was not even certain that Sydney would succeed as a settlement: it did not grow enough to feed itself. At first he did not want his marines and convicts to occupy land more than a day’s walk from Sydney Harbour. His instructions from London, which he tried to honour, were to live in peace. How can he be called the blameworthy head of an invasion?
When, three weeks after reaching Sydney, Phillip set up another British settlement he did not choose fertile Aboriginal land nearby. Instead, he shipped an expedition of 23 men to a remote and uninhabited place unknown to Aboriginals. Out in the Pacific Ocean, far east of Brisbane, Norfolk Island is still the second-oldest British settlement in Australia. Its inhabitants certainly have no reason to talk of Invasion Day.
Many historians and Aboriginal activists will probably continue to deplore January 26. Annual ceremonies are already conducted to bring humiliation to Australia Day. Thus the next National Sorry Day is to be staged on Sunday, May 26.
Spurred by a determination to remember the so-called stolen generation, Sorry Day demands that the nation acknowledge “the wrongfulness of the past dispossession, oppression and degradation of the Aboriginal peoples”. It forgets that some form of oppression and degradation and dispossession – including wars with very high casualty rates – must have been familiar throughout the long and often-successful reign of Indigenous peoples.
Sorry Day posters are specially printed for schools. One poster for children enrolled in years three to six will give them information so that they can “defend the assertion that Australia was invaded”. Another poster provides an unfavourable perspective on Captain Cook’s landings in eastern Australia in 1770. In fact, Cook normally respected or even admired the Aboriginal people whom he saw or met: “In reality they are far more happier than we Europeans.”
In any case, today’s Aboriginal Australians have every right to argue that Cook did not discover Australia. Their own ancestors made the original discovery of global importance; and Cook, arriving eons later, actually rediscovered eastern Australia. He achieved something else; when he sailed away he had inspected and charted more stretches of Australia’s coastline than any single Aboriginal person could ever have visited.
At schools on Sorry Day this year, young children will be encouraged to hear a poem composed specifically “to promote thoughtful discussion”. It also, intentionally or not, invites them to dislike their country. Called I am Sorry, the poem’s first verse closes with a confession:
“For the failings of my ancestors, I feel compelled to say,
That I am sorry for all they did, and all they took away.”
In the school room, will small migrant children fresh from China or the Ukraine, or will Aboriginal children, have to recite the same confession?
A longer national event called NAIDOC usually enlivens a week mid-year. The Albanese government has just announced special grants to reward participants. This year’s slogan is Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud. The word Blak is not a spelling error.
That week will honour “the enduring strength and vitality of First Nations” in the face of long “mistreatment”. It also offers an opportunity to “celebrate the oldest living culture in the world”. Unfortunately, that was the misleading slogan favoured by the Prime Minister during the voice referendum.
So far, evidence has not been amassed to prove that Indigenous Australians actually possess the world’s oldest living culture. It is worthwhile to search for the evidence but any search has to be worldwide and cover tens of thousands of years.
Likewise, the importance of Aboriginal Australians’ spiritual connection to the land is still over-emphasised by the law. In 2020, this attitude shone out in the court cases of Love and Thomas versus the Commonwealth of Australia. The men were born in Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, were not Australian citizens and, after being each convicted in Australia of a serious crime, were liable to be deported.
They appealed against deportation, especially pointing out that they were partly of Aboriginal descent. After the case reached the High Court, each of the seven justices wrote in fluent prose a different set of arguments The final judgment, a victory by four to three, enabled the convicted men to live permanently here.
Pivotal to the court’s thinking was the faith that a segment of one’s being – the part that was of Aboriginal descent – was so powerful and penetrating that a person thus endowed was superior to other Australians in certain rights. In the words of one judge, the “identity of Aboriginal people, whether citizens or non-citizens, is shaped by a fundamental spiritual and cultural sense of belonging to Australia”.
To observe the decline of the Aboriginal sentiment of spirituality is not to belittle its merit. For a long span of time it suffused the lives and deaths, and fears and longings, of these people. They believed that they were the reincarnation of their ancestors, those same ancestors who had created trees, rocks, hills, creeks and every other aspect of the existing landscape as well as the nightly stars in their millions.
The Aboriginal peoples’ immortal ancestors empowered or inspired them whenever they chanted for rain to fall, an ill woman to be healed, or their fellow tribesmen to make a surprise attack on enemies and kill them. One of the nation’s most scholarly books describes in detail this sacred world. Songs of Central Australia was written by TGH Strehlow after the childhood he spent with Aranda-speaking children and the years he spent travelling with camels in their homeland.
Is this a day to deride? No, it is a day for reflection. Australia has enjoyed far more successes than failures, though the failures are undeniable and numerous. Today, measured by several indicators of wellbeing and achievement, Australia stands near the top of the ladder of nations. It is one of the world’s oldest, continuous democracies. In a year of rich harvests it feeds – through its inventiveness in farming – perhaps 100 million people in other lands.
Its standard of living makes it a paradise for most of today’s immigrants – compared with the lands they left behind.
These are some of the powerful reasons why Australia Day is worth celebrating.
Geoffrey Blainey has written 40 books, mostly on Australian history.
The Australian:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/australia-day-a-time-to-reflect-on-the-country-we-all-call-home/news-story/24bf24a2461915757c11c1a3e2a316f7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqtttbbYfSM
Slim Dusty -Waltzing Matilda
“For the failings of my ancestors, I feel compelled to say,
That I am sorry for all they did, and all they took away.”
The educrat establishment is evil and marxist. Teacha leave those kids alone. Those who can do, those who can’t teach.
Albo knows what middle Australia is for. Soaking.
Pogria, you reminded me of my maternal grandmother who died when I was 3. She had all kinds of berries growing in her backyard. We’ve lost a lot by using store brought produce. While writing this I can smell the jam on the coal range. My neice is the spitting image of my grandmother, at any age a photo of them is exactly the same. I see my wife looking at our grandchildren the same as nana did to me.
The poor and the rich are never worried about taxation.
Our local school has a huge mulberry tree. There is no way you can plead not guilty to scrumping mulberries unless you wear latex gloves.
Last night saying Good Night to 10 year old Grandson – My Wife said tomorrow Australia Day we celebarte the landing of Connvicts & Marines in Sydney Cove – he responded it’s a bad day for Aboriginals as they destroyed Australia – I exploded (which I should not have done) and said he should read real history of Aboriginals – “they did not even know how to boil water”
Commiserations Ozzie! I had to scroll back (have been at Balmoral & then shopping most of morning) to see what had happened in your household.
Welcome to the club! I have posted many comments over time of my problems with my woke granddaughter. She just goes crying to her room! I will never recant, as my family knows. They actually think “its a hoot” – as they say “she is so like you!” In fact, that is very true in respect to her passion relating to her convictions.
She is now 18 & in the last year has come to me for advice on study & exam techniques. She is now conceding that “I know a few things”. She even went out & bought “Lonely Planet” which I suggested she get before her trip to Bali – in spite of refusing to do that when her mother suggested it!
You did a noble thing, Ozzie – in apologising. But truly – I wouldn’t do it again. They must recognise the courage of convictions. These are your convictions, which you hold passionately. That is a great thing in life. They must concede that others have convictions, too.
But, of course, we love them madly. Grandchildren are the gift of God when our life moves into the twilight.
Where did you meet Numbers Bob?
The local paper had a great story about a $10,000+ rates assessment issued in error, some multiple of the actual assessment due. It was just returned paid.
A very Happy Oz day to all Cats and Kittehs (with one or two exceptions).
With a large Oz flag proudly displayed in the front of the house, I started this wonderful day with an early morning swim at our nearby beach, left a small Oz flag by the beach-conditions sign erected by the lifesavers, enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at favourite beach-side cafe and left two small Oz flags at the table there, home and then gave our very elderly neighbours a flag, a can of beer and bottle of wine. Lamb chops in the bbq tonight, along with a bevvie or three.
Happy to drive any and all Oz-day haters to the airport.
These acts of contrition and confession are religious in nature.
They’re filling a vacuum created for that purpose by the Marxists.
New York City officially declares social media a ‘public health hazard’ that is on par with tobacco and GUNS
TheirABC recently reported that they have set up a new unit dedicated to helping farmers and graziers – apparently it finally got through to someone that farmers and graziers regard them as below Mystic Meg for reliability.
I can just imagine these fresh-faced climate change ideologues ‘reaching out’ to people who actually live and work there, with dribble about Net Zero and ‘sustainability’ and all the rest.
This is one of the reasons why the double barrelled shotgun was invented.
Lucky the place was claimed by the British rather the Frogs or Krauts.
Give your kid a birthday present of a trip overseas. While they are away, rent the room out to a student. Kid arrives back and nowhere to sleep. I’ve seen it done and it works.
ouvrir le feu
They are both based on fabricated history.
Or rather, both are based mere hatred and have been furnished with false histories to explain away that hate’s expression.
“He doesn’t want to smash your face into the pavement because he hates you, but because of generational trauma!”
In common, both know anything about their own history, even as short as a century ago, only from published research by others, where most of that history is inventions.
Reported on the ALPBC News –
Australia Day thong throwing competition in the NT today. No Ladies, not those sort of thongs.
And those who can’t reach troll blogs populated by ‘doers’, whinge about how Da System is rigged against such as them and re-re-tellling of their experiences half a century before and their conspicuous action and marksmanship in Operation Canvas Enemy.
Oh, and heroically not tipping bellhops in the US explaining it as an act of solidarity – although they are counting on the tips instead.
miltonf
“Time to find another way to train doctors, engineers, accountants and lawyers.”
On the job apprenticeships, with night school to handle the academic aspects.
Same for nurses and journos.
Where else but Canbra?
Just to check on a few names:
Andy sang Andy watched …
Wes the jolly jumbuck
Same for nurses and journos.
As it used to be
It’s a bloody hot day here in Sydney, kind of reminds me of those long hot summer days we all endured back when we were younger, in those far off days when nobody had air-conditioning! Anyway this heat is nothing new, I don’t mind it but it is tiring, especially when you walk. I walked to my Pilates class this morning and walking along I caught sight of an old man walking his equally old cattle dog, both were struggling in the heat, the elderly man was ahead and he kept on turning around to coach the poor cattle dog to walk faster however the cattle dog had other ideas, and it was slowly putting one paw ahead about once a minute! I mumbled to myself, ‘you take as long as you like my canine friend’.
Along the way I walked past another older man who said…”it’s hot”. I said “yes and then I said to him “Happy Australia Day”. He responded with a smile and said “Happy Australia Day” back to me. I felt good after that, we gotta put it out there, let’s not be cowered, intimidated or ridiculed by anyone. However, given the heat, by the time I got to my Pilates studio I think I felt exactly like that old cattle dog did!
One of the guys I now work with is ex BoM. He said 2.5-3 years ago a lot of the very senior and experienced forecasters were either shown the door or left. The youngsters who were promoted to fill their positions don’t have the range of experience, hence the chicken little act. I still remember schools being closed in the middle of the day, this time 2 years ago because DOOM SHARKNADO RAINAGEDDON, which turned out to be little more than a sunshower.
At yesterday’s staff meeting we were told to check our emails over the weekend in case we are closed Monday ( this is a northern Brisbane school) because of wild storms.
“That I am sorry for all they did”
Sorry they provided hospitals, schools, roads, other forms of transport, electoral and land rights, reliable food and water supplies, (now less) reliable electricity?
OK, give all those things up.
Do these idiots even read what they scribble?
Registering a second hand prime mover cost me $3,800 in stamp duty yesterday.
Basically theft.
Just the way it used to be
Along the way I walked past another older man who said…”it’s hot”. I said “yes and then I said to him “Happy Australia Day”. He responded with a smile and said “Happy Australia Day” back to me. I felt good after that, we gotta put it out there, let’s not be cowered, intimidated or ridiculed by anyone.
Cassie, on my walk to Balmoral this morning I did likewise. Some people seemed mildly alarmed, but then smiled broadly.
Doing my bit.
The demand that individuals acknowledge and make reparations for (alleged) actions in which they had no responsibility, is what maintains the status of the wreckonciliation business* as unsolvable. This has not occurred by accident, but been engineered to provide infinite access to taxpayer (and some corporate) resources for a self-selected elite, whose only skills are manipulation and illusion.
*To paraphrase a line from the film Romper Stomper: ‘We’re here to wreck everything. The past sent us.’
Australia’s sons and ostriches for we are young and free.
No really, please, let’s not.
So Diogenes you’re back for another year at the chalkface?
Hopefully you got some massive cash incentive to sign on.
You mean we don’t all have to ring Joyce?
Basically theft.
With a side serve of barrier to productive industry.
They can do that because the Biden admin lets them. We will see how things look after the election. I remember Iran playing the same games with Jimmy Carter and then folded when Reagan won the election in 1980. Iran is opportunistic particularly when they get the signal that there will be no consequences. It has nothing to do with military might and everything to do with political will.
Cripes!
Diogenes
Jan 26, 2024 12:57 PM
engineers…”
On the job apprenticeships, with night school to handle the academic aspects.
Just the way it used to be
Diogenes,
at 14 was not doing an apprencticeship, but having bought a crappy Vespa Motor Scooter was looking at using the engine from it or a Victa 2 Stroke mower engine for a Go Kart I was building from plans using steel turbing
I was going after school 3 nights a week to Balgowlah Boys High, which was a Trade School, to learn welding & machine lathe turning
Did that for 2 years – Vespa Motor usless – used Victa Motor and was proud of my finished Go Kart – went well around the neighbourhood roads
I was amused to see the words sprayed on the sawn off Cook statue plinth.
“the colony will fall”
Couldn’t be further from the truth. Covid taught us that the colonies are alive and in power, it’s the Australian commonwealth federation that has fallen.
Hundreds? It’s good to know that at the same time millions throughout Australia are celebrating the Settlement Day.
Why are you spraying blackberries, Pogria? Blackberry jam, Blackberry cheesecake, Blackberry pie to name a few. I must have had half an acre of blackberries once. Cut into rows for easy access.
As a kid growing up in 1950s/60s County Durham we had an, official, one week holiday from school designated as “blackberry picking” week (September-ish) .. also doubled as potato picking week which was much more lucrative for cash starved coalfields kiddies .. LOL ..
at 14 was not doing an apprencticeship, but having bought a crappy Vespa Motor Scooter was looking at using the engine from it or a Victa 2 Stroke mower engine for a Go Kart I was building from plans using steel turbing
You sound like my husband, Diogenes. When in late high school re bought an old car for $10 (or was it 10 pounds?) and rebuilt it. He learned heaps about cars and engines in the process. Eventually he drove it to school & got chipped by the headmaster for being a spoiled brat.
It started him on his lifelong fascination with engines and cars. Hasn’t changed one bit. When not farming (& when he gets spare time) he restores cars with a mate. Includes a genuine WWII US Jeep, an MGTF, an Alfa Spider (small restoration) and a 1938 Bentley (belonging to a mate).
Australia worth celebrating, leading Catholics say
.
From The Oz…
‘Not a day to celebrate’: thousands protest ‘Invasion Day’
Parliament House has been placed into lockdown after Invasion Day protesters swarmed the front of the building to protest Australia Day and Israel’s war in Gaza.
A group of Indigenous rights protesters amassed on the lawn outside Parliament brandishing the Aboriginal flag, amid chants of “always was, always will be.”
Others waved Palestinian flags and beat drums.
One woman yelled “F–k Israel, f–k Australia”, in response to parliamentary security shutting the doors.
The protest wrapped up at the tent embassy near Old Parliament House, where cries for Indigenous land rights mixed with pleas for the Palestinian cause. Some activists brandished signs calling for a boycott of Israeli goods and declaring the Jewish state was not “above the law”.
In Melbourne, hundreds of people gathered outside the Victorian Parliament House for the Invasion Day rally.
Some protesters have brought the Aboriginal and Palestinian flags, with some signs at the event appearing to co-opt both causes.
Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, the event’s organisers, say January 26 “is not a day to celebrate”.
“It is an annual reminder of invasion, occupation, genocide and the ongoing impacts of colonisation that continues to destroy our lives, our land and our waters,” the group wrote on social media.
Free Palestine Melbourne, the organisation that plan the weekly pro-Palestine rallies, have told their followers they will not hold a march this Sunday.
Instead, they have instructed their followers to attend Friday’s Invasion Day protest.
“We urge you to show up as you do weekly in your thousands and build up consciousness within your networks of the demands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people this invasion day,” they said on Instagram.
The first speaker at the march said sprinklers were turned on at Melbourne’s day of mourning dawn service.
She also paid tribute to the Palestinian cause.
“Standing up for Palestinians does not mean that we don’t like Jewish people,” she said.
“And today we are standing in solidarity with our brothers and sisters of Palestine. And we’re so sorry for what you’re going through.”
Another man said that entertainers and sporting figures who played in Australia were “supporting genocide”.
“All these tennis players why don’t they go and play in South Africa? There’s no apartheid there any more, but there is here and there is genocide,” he said.
“Taylor Swift, don’t come here, don’t support genocide.”
After two-and-a-half hours of speeches, songs and moments of reflection, the Melbourne Invasion Day rally began to march.
The enormous crowd, which had grown to at least 10,000 people, slowly started to proceed along Bourke St shortly after 12:30pm.
Along with the Aboriginal flag, protestors held the national symbols of Palestine, Cuba and many other countries.
Protestors chanted “land rights now” and “always was, always will be Aboriginal land” as they departed from the steps of Parliament.
The link between Aboriginal and Palestinian activists, a strong theme throughout many of the speeches, was clear in many of the banners held aloft by rally attendees.
I suppose scum attracts scum, kind of homeopathic.
As for the cockroach who said, ““Standing up for Palestinians does not mean that we don’t like Jewish people,”, yes it does cockroach, because you’re supporting genocide against Jews. Oh and by the way, Jews ARE the indigenous people of “Palestine”.
Old news, I know, but the stated reasoning for the attempted murder of Derek Chauvin: As a symbolic gesture towards BLM, and representative of the Mexican Mafia, makes no sense at all.
As an informant, John Turscak is lucky to still be alive, let alone retain contact with his former gang. He’s also not African-American. Apparently it’s not unusual for lifers (which was not – he was serving a 30-year sentence) to make a name for themselves inside, but as an informant, why would you put your name in lights nation-wide by targeting such a well-known individual?
What am I missing?
Sadly no, just a regular paycheck. Can’t afford to retire yet 🙁 2 years, 5 months and 9 days until I am eligible for the pension, but who is counting ?
So far I am really liking where I am and hope I am asked back next term. This will depend on the Principal at neighbouring high finally resigning so that the teacher who is filling in for a HT who is filling in for a deputy who is filling in for that Principal all move up permanently. It’s supposedly a hard school, but the management support us, unlike just about every other schoolI have been in.
This means that we now have two sets of hereditary aristocracy. Funny how the republicans don’t have a problem with the new royalty.
“The Aboriginal struggle and the Palestinian struggle share a lot of features,” he said.
Bludging is what they share …The 251s .. CentreLink & the Palis .. UN ..
We were assured on last night’s Nein Noos that “a crowd of 100,000 was expected”.
More BoM style forecasting.
Watch this space.
Tonight’s noos will over-estimate the crowd by an order of magnitude, with tight crowd shots and the old stunt of the ground level shot looking up at a row of two dozen angries, conveniently holding a long, metre high banner to hide any awkward glimpses of daylight behind them.
Could this be … gasp … an insurrection?
This means that we now have two sets of hereditary aristocracy. Funny how the republicans don’t have a problem with the new royalty.
If we go with “heriditary ancestry” I reckon my eldest grandee is in with a chance ..
Dad is descended from a 1st Fleet convict and Mum is 2nd Fleet free ..
Their marriage is the 1st (& only one) between both families making my Grandson the only descendant thru both pioneer families ……..!
An unexpected protest in Gaza
Oops! .. meant to add, for anyone interested, http://www.myheritage.com has thrown open access to all it’s Oz records for free today to celebrate OZ Day so if your interested in your family tree good day to enjoy a “freebie” at it …..
Personally I feel compelled to say that, as far as I know, my ancestors had nothing to do with Australia, either directly or indirectly. So, I’m in pretty much the same position as ~30% of the Australian population.
Neither I, nor my kids have taken anything away from indigenous Australians. To the contrary, we all help fund the stream of munni passing that way.
So, I wonder what my grandkids (and those of 8 million other ancestors) will think when they are forced to repeat those empty words. And when they come home and ask ‘Mummy, why have you done horrid things to First Nations people?’
Because it won’t necessarily be guilt.
It might be WTF.
The problem with this argument is that Iran and the US are not the same nations they were in the early 80s, militarily or politically. Iran isn’t being opportunistic because it sees there will be no consequences, it’s formed the judgement now that it, and not the US, enjoys escalatory dominance regionally. Recently, Iran’s FM admitted a change in Washington will not change the situation.
Homer feelin’ the Oz Day “vibe”..!
https://ibb.co/6vygCGM
Happy ‘Straya Day!
My “Happy Australia Day” Tshirt and decent sized flag arrived (from One Nation) on Wednesday, in time for me to wear the T for my U3A Zoom class an then do a bit of Aldi/Coles shopping yesterday.
No one noticed in the Zoom class. No one stoned me in the street when I went shopping. I wished people a happy Aust Day and had the wishes returned.
Wore the T again this morning to walk the whippet. The park we went to has a small area signposted as a “Sorry Space” so I was prepared to avoid that. It was empty; there was a lot of noise from the area of the cricket pitches so I thought that the Sorry Space might have proven too small and the larger venue taken over for whatever Sorry business might be underway. Then I heard the sound of bat on ball; there was an enthusiastic cricket match underway with very noisy supporters. No invasion day carry on at all.
Wanting a flagpole, the flag is attached to the front verandah railings with cable ties at one end and a bull dog clip at the other.
On the trip to the park and back, only about 3k, I did notice a dearth of Australia Day signage. I saw only two flags at houses.
A year ago I would have thought displaying lots of Australia Day flags/Tshirts/car signage etc, to be unnecessarily nationalistic, now I think of it as a mild display of patriotism.
Lamb is on the menu, with a lamb shank for the whippet.
My One Nation purchases came with a couple of One Nation coasters. I’ve kept one and presented the second to my friends who came for drinks Wednesday evening so that they can terrify their children with their dreadful right wing attitude.
Surely that James O’Keefe story is a made-up joke? Who could love Joe Biden politically? Voting leftish dem, sure, but “loving” that pres?
I guess it takes all sorts.
It is a very strange thing.
The descendants of First Nations people are held in great reverence.
As are recent arrivals to these shores, particularly if they are from Africa or the Middle East.
It’s just those who arrived between 1788 and 1950 who seem to be the problem.
Glanced at the thermometer on the kitchen wall whilst getting a glass of water ..
………….. 43C ……. Fairfield, NSW …….
Nio wonder I’ve been buggered since getting back from my 40kms biking this morning ..
Absolute classic from Danger Dan.
I’m still pissing myself laughing ( :
How to fix Australia. Anthony Albanese
It’s just those who arrived between 1788 and 1950 who seem to be the problem.
The workers and wealth creators. The left hates hard work, skill and achievement. That’s why so many of them are pubic serpents, pollimuppets and lawyers.
Recently went to a do with a coven of 50-something private school girls who’ve had to return to primary teaching because of failed marriages. They cackled with delight mocking parents who ring up and complain about their kids being forced to endure sorry day.
and journalists
Australia’s sons and ostriches for we are young and free.
Australians let us recall when we were young and free.
We put one in last year. The berry yield is unbelievable. Bramble jam coming up.
Where do you get your energy from shatterzzz?
I’m buggered just getting out of bed and going to the
toilet!
They cackled with delight mocking parents who ring up and complain about their kids being forced to endure sorry day.
teachas are evil trash, the dregs
Well apart from a dislike of Israel and Australia at least the Aboriginals and Palestinians have something else in common.
Mistreatment of women.
First thing we need to do is get all Reconciliation and First Nations advisory panels disbanded. They are clearly advising business, cultural and sporting organisations in a manner contrary to the referendum outcome. That Adam Goodes is on the Woolworths panel is significant to their wrong think relative to their customer base.
Meanwhile the Sydney Opera House commemorated today with Aboriginal artwork.
I just think about some of the horrible teachas I had and even when I was at skool (both primary and secondary) they were trying to ram left wing politics down your throat.
TEXAS DEFIES LAWLESS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND SUPREME COURT DICTATES TO PROTECT ITS PEOPLE
The U.S. Constitution authorises States to defend their borders if the the federal government refuses to do so—and that is an understatement to what Joe Biden and his hapless border hacks have done to the southern states.
Bad news first—an estimated 10 million terrorists, mentally ill, cartel members and fighting age men from 160 nations—many of them enemies—continue to flood my home nation due to the Democrat Marxists replacement agenda.
Good news is that the president who shut the border—Donald J. Trump—is gaining support of blacks, hispanics and even suburban moms who are now suffering the consequences of Biden’s braindead policies to destroy the nation.
As recently as last year, Democrats and their captive media shills bowed up like angry cats when asked about their ‘replacement policy’—to flood the country with folks to add to the dole (and their control).
Now Congressional Democrats and RINOs are open about it.
They’re even pushing legislation as I write that would grant amnesty and the right to vote to the millions of criminals who have already flooded the nation.
I refer to them as criminals because they broke the law by coming in illegally, so they’ve already committed provable felonies.
Governor Abbott tells Biden junta, don’t mess with Texas
In a shocking 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Biden and his unlawful policies against Texas, ordering that federal agents be allowed to cut the razor wire that is currently keeping out the illegals.
Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, said in an interview yesterday with Steve Bannon, “While we disagree with the decision, obviously, the decision does not require Texas to help them break the law—so we’re not. We’re not helping them.”
That’s created the standoff leading to a potential civil war between Texas National Guard and Rangers with federal border agents, now acting as concierge service for Biden’s invaders.
Governor Abbott put them on notice—in writing.
Within hours, the governors of South Dakota, Oklahoma and Florida jumped behind Governor Abbott, declaring their constitutional right to defend their borders when the federal government refuses to do so.
It’s explicit, in the Constitution, as Abbott’s letter explains.
TEXAS WAS ALREADY A NATION WHEN IT JOINED THE UNITED STATES IN 1846
That’s right, The Republic of Texas was a sovereign nation in North America that existed from March 2, 1836, to February 19, 1846, before joining as a state.
And this hare-brained court decision combined with Biden’s open borders have poured gas on the already existing fire to declare independence once more.
TEXIT—The Texas Independence Movement—is for real.
Resource rich Texas is a world-class business center in addition to being one of the nation’s biggest producers of revenue, so Washington would miss it far more than Texas would miss the bureaucratic nightmare of D.C.
Even Newsweek Magazine acknowledges this reality.
“National Guard soldiers stand guard on the banks of the Rio Grande river at Shelby Park on January 12, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. Calls for Texas to seek independence from the union have grown following the Supreme Court’s decision against the state on Monday.”
How will this all turn out?
I don’t know for sure, but if the U.S. Government uses force on Texans just so they can continue breaking the law themselves—it won’t be pretty.
While ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ started as a slogan regarding littering, it may soon become the rallying cry for the State’s defense against federal tyranny.
As we’ve covered in the past, Texans are willing to die for their right to live free, which sparked another saying, “Remember the Alamo,” where 200 volunteers held off thousands of General Santa Anna’s Mexican army for 13 days, preferring death to surrender.
And almost to the man—they did.
The descendants of these brave men—but far better armed this time—will be Texas defenders against both the invaders from the border and those from Washington, D.C.
The Marxist Democrats have been wanting a civil war to further divide the nation, and this might just be the spark that lights that fire.
This marxist rabble that regularly descends on the Melbourne CBD now is just another reason not to go there anymore. The city council seems quite cool with it too.
Painted with the traditional Dulux paint.
johanna
Jan 26, 2024 10:10 AM
I don’t see why Aboriginal Australians should be ‘grateful’ for something that happened before they were born, any more than they should be aggrieved about it.
We should start calling these people what they are – scab-pickers, who do everything they can to prevent healing for their own purposes.
Sheesh! And here was me just trying to be inclusive and diverse! 😉
Naturally, I completely agree with Johanna.
There’s a special place in Hell for inferior culturists who decry and complain about the best thing that happened to them in 65 million+ years, and counting.
Had any number of other colonialists settled here 200+ years ago, the natives would most likely have been massacred en-mass, with the survivors enslaved..
Just like any other conquered population in human history.
Whoever was left would have no opportunity but to felt grateful just to be alive.. or else..
This is the problem with giving people un-earned benefits.
Instead of gratitude, all you get is endless resentment and truly offensive demands for more.
But Cats already know that.
Note email address at the end…
The Lord Mayor of Sydney has slammed Australians who voted “no” to The Voice, describing their actions as “shameful”.
Clover Moore made the scathing comments during a speech on stage at the Yabun Festival at Victoria Park in Sydney as part of Invasion Day demonstrations.
“Despite the failure — the shameful failure of Australians to vote YES … I am proud that 70 per cent of the people in the city of Sydney voted yes,” Ms Moore said.
The Lord Mayor criticised “colonial statues” in Sydney, claiming “it has been our policy since I’ve been Mayor to invest in First Nations public art and facilities.”
The Lord Mayor also took a swipe at Anthony Albanese for refusing her request to move Australia Day away from January 26.
“I previously asked the Prime Minister to consult with all the Premiers so they could agree on a date for Australia Day that would enable all Australians to celebrate.
“I got a weak no action response. And so we moved the City of Sydney’s Australia Day ceremony to the 29th of January.”
Last year Ms Moore handed the YES-23 campaign a $25,000 rental in the Sydney CBD.
She also promised to install a Voice to Council should the referendum fail.
Do you know more: Email [email protected]
Somebody above mentioned teachers being paid more to keep them.
A few months ago my son’s girlfriend, a teacher, mentioned she had agreed to work in a remote area of Qld for 3 months. The bonus is $5,000. I did not say anything but was concerned at where she might be sent.
Turns out she got a small town on Qld coast a half hours drive from a decent sized much bigger town. Good accommodation provided plus others doing the same gig to hang out with.
Meanwhile Qld still not allowing unvaccinated teachers to go back to work and shortages everywhere.
Had any number of other colonialists settled here 200+ years ago, the natives would most likely have been massacred en-mass, with the survivors enslaved..
Yep.
Yep +1
And in better news:
For the second year in a row, hikers have defied a climbing ban at Mount Warning/Wollumbin to scale the summit for an Australia Day sunrise.
The popular hiking trail in the Tweed Valley just south of the Queensland border was “temporarily” closed in early 2020, officially because of social distancing concerns during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
Almost four years later the trail remains closed, with a succession of different reasons and excuses given for the continued closures, with a report last year recognising the mountain’s sacred and spiritual role in local Indigenous culture.
The NSW department of National Parks released an extensive report recommending stewardship of the mountain be handed over to a mysterious outfit known as the Wollumbin Consultative Group.
That recommendation has outraged climbing enthusiasts and other Indigenous groups alike, who see the mountain as “the next Ulu?u” in a movement to declare special places off limits to the public.
In the early hours of Australia Day morning, climbing advocate Marc Hendrickx and local Indigenous elder Sturt Boyd climbed the peak with a group of supporters calling for the trail to be reopened to the public.
Mr Hendrickx said the group made their climb with the blessing of Mr Boyd, whose mother Marlene has been referred to as the custodian of the mountain.
A rally is planned at the Tweed Valley village of Uki later in the day.
Courier-Mail
The southerly has hit the North Shore – it is beautiful!
On the phone so can’t link.
Looks like NSW plod actually nabbed some wannabe terrorists.
Note to self, don’t wear woollen head ware when it’s 50 degrees.
Via twitter.
Happy Australia Day, Cats.
Can’t stay; cricket is about to adjourn for lunch. Will resume in an hour or so… or maybe not at all, depending on how piggy the players are.
That is Victorian air coming through.
You’re welcome.
Just spent an hour and half driving around D-Town for various things.
To be clear, I do not want go all ‘Last Holdout’ here, but:
Flags were everywhere, and I mean everywhere. On cars (not just utes), across shopfronts, on fences, in kids’ hands on the foreshores, the lot.
On the beach in front of one of the boat clubs, a series of A-Day events is occurring – of which one is said to be a 50m sprint by people holding a full schooner. The winner is the one with the most beer left in the schooner when they hit the finish tape.
Outstanding.
Oh. Okay. A medical miracle! A living, breathing brain donor!
Well, I’m happy with the little cyclone that couldn’t.
If you stared carefully at the radar picture a tiny blue and white patch appeared fleetingly over our place. The manager reports that it dampened the ground. Good one Gaia.
Menopause.
And further, most sensible men will pause before going anywhere near them. But cats won’t. Many, many cats for them.
Geoffrey Blainey…”powerful reasons why Australia Day is worth celebrating”
Australia Day a time to reflect on the country we all call home
Is this the most soft-cocked recounting of Aboriginal-White history, or what?
Until now, I though Blainey stood for a dispassionate, realistic description of Australian history.
WTH has got into him?
Does any Cat really believe that appeasing the most radical elements of the Aboriginal activist-grifter industry, like Blainey is doing, will be rewarded by these lying f@ckers?
For one NEVER plays in a field prepared by malevolent, destructive enemies. Arguing at their level just empowers them to escalate the lying and their demands.
Pigs in sh!t and all that.
That is the true history of the miriad, naive, misguided attempts to pacify this Beast. And until we change this attitude by a full 180°, nothing will improve, either for us or for the indigenes.
Shame on you, Geoffrey!
Was just pedalling around Hawthorn. Saw one house with Australian flags, a few families having bbqs in the rocket park, and about four chunky ladies in “always was always will be” shirts. Nice day though.
“Always was. Always will be.” tee-shirts don’t come in a size 8.
Or 10.
Or even 12.
Steve trickler
Jan 26, 2024 2:03 PM
Absolute classic from Danger Dan.
I’m still pissing myself laughing ( :
How to fix Australia. Anthony Albanese
Apparently, video now unavailable when I clicked on the weblink. I’ll try “You Choob” directly.
This works –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITpFaOKK4Qk
Johnny Rotten
Jan 26, 2024 3:00 PM
It’s still up.
Part 1 Not true. Part 2 True
Part 1 – 18 months ago it was “Come back all is forgiven” , but we will dock you one term’s pay that you didn’t earn. Problem is that a lot went “f…. you” and didn’t return. I didn’t have my contract renewed at a school as I was replacing a vaccine refuser who decided to return, if they had been given a choice they would not have taken him back.
Part 2 – Absolutely true
I was approached by 4 schools before the end of last year to start with them this year.
At the end of last year I was rung by the NSW DoE to see if I would come back to them. Relocation was offered, as was payment of my registration & a shortened re-registration process, they also mention getting my Cert IV in Training & Assessment upgraded as well as Cert 3 in IT and Cert IV in Business. I would have come back at the level at which I resigned , which is about 9k more than I am earning here. The boss at my current school is prepared to sign the paperwork support my application to bump 2 levels (Senior Teacher then Experienced Senior Teacher) which would be be about 9k higher than the NSW offer.
Where do you get your energy from shatterzzz?
It’s starting to catch up with me .. had to cut back the swimming cos finding freestyle takes it out of me after several 50mt laps .. can still swim 1500mts breast stroke but not a stroke I enjoy so becoming more of a chore than enjoyment ..
but on the bike no probs .. 40/45kms my usual round trip tho sometimes get out to 80/90kms when I include op shopping ..
Lotza bike tracks around Fairfield/Liverpool/Blacktown and my 2 regular rides are 95% on cycleways .. most traffic road usage is just crossing at lights .. longest on-road use is betweenCabramatta/Fairfield railway stations (about 2kms) ……
Pakistan Deports Half A Million Illegal Immigrants In Just 3 Months
…so it can be done?
Delusional? US is attempting to keep the world’s sea lanes open and has been doing so since WW2. It has been explained to you before, very little direct US trade trickles through the Red Sea while the big positive for the US is the ratcheting up of oil&gas trade with Europe, and this is why it’s not as easy as you think to figure if this is a plus or minus for the US. Perhaps Capricorn, the aggrieved War Nerd on Twitter has a better idea, in which case you should share the scoop. US interests are mostly altruistic.
By the way, it’s not the ship numbers going through the passage, but the type and size of these ships. From what’ve read recently, both the Chinese and Russian ships making their way through are basically rusted out floating scrap metal.
Also it’s much easier for the tootsies to recognise these rusted out jalopies on water because when they see those floating horrors, they would automatically know they’re Chinese or Russian vessels.
Keep this in mind when you’re reading Aquarius the shipping container expert on Twitter. It’s the cargo throughput and not ship numbers that really matters. The big guys are now going around the Cape. They’re bankers would demand it.
Also it’s much easier for the tootsies to recognise these rusted out jalopies on water because when they see those floating horrors, they would automatically know they’re Chinese or Russian vessels.
Keep this in mind when you’re reading Aquarius the shipping container expert on Twitter. It’s the cargo throughput and not ship numbers that really matters. The big guys are now going around the Cape. Their bankers would demand it.
Dover
“Recently, Iran’s FM admitted a change in Washington will not change the situation.”
I think that should be “claimed”.
“Intergenerational trauma’ …..keep picking at the scabs, the wounds will never heal.
Then they will get a bloody nose to change the situation.
The next admin, hopefully Trump’s, will have to effect a regime change in Iran and rather quickly to ensure they cannot do that again. No need for a long engagement or invasion, just decapitate the regime and let the Iranian people fight it out among themselves.
Windies 8/286.
This morning a couple of the Strayan bowlers were on the sook about the pitch being too hard, which in turn caused the pink ball to soften much earlier than it should have.
While this is (in part) a legitimate thing, insofar as the pink ball (and the white) does deteriorate quicker than the red Kooka, this type of snivel underscores the easy run our vaunted quicks have had in the last 18 months.
Not once have they failed to bowl an opposing team out inside a day’s play in that period. Until yesterday.
Pull your heads in, get the poles and stop your bitching.
Trudeau’s mass migration cult is destroying Canada
Quality of life, per capita income and social cohesion are being sacrificed to a third world ‘population trap’
ERIC KAUFMANN
When wokeness, the making sacred of historically-disadvantaged minorities, takes control of a society like Canada, the effects go far beyond plans to stock tampons in men’s bathrooms.
There, taboo-driven mass immigration is not only resulting in cultural tensions but in economic paralysis and soaring housing costs.
You know things have gone crazy when even economists at the National Bank of Canada are sounding the alarm.
They say the country has entered a “population trap” in which savings are sucked into providing infrastructure and capital for new arrivals, impairing economic growth.
More than that, the immense pressure of the 1.2 million new residents the country added in 2023 is driving the cost of housing through the roof.
To put this number into scale, it’s larger than the population of most Canadian cities and 8 of the country’s 13 provinces and territories.
Yet these policies are endorsed not only by the Left-wing coalition government of Justin Trudeau but by the so-called “populist” conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who only speaks about building homes, not reducing immigration.
This is partly because he is a neoliberal who cares about little beyond economics.
But he is also alive to the sword of “racism” that the progressive media holds over the neck of any Canadian politician who dares to question mass migration.
He should worry less.
After Trudeau announced record-breaking immigration targets, surveys showed 67 percent of Canadians opposed.
With just one housing start for every four people entering the workforce and rents and house prices soaring, especially in metropolitan areas, even liberal Canadians have had enough.
Canada’s elite suffers from a syndrome known as “Canada’s pro-immigration consensus”.
This has its origins in Canada losing its identity with the death of the British Empire in the 1950s and 60s.
British loyalism had been the country’s dominant ideology and raison d’etre since the American Revolution, but lay in ruins.
The vacuum was filled with 1960s vintage left-liberalism, with Canada reinvented as a kinder, gentler United States.
Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s father, ushered in more liberal immigration and the country’s disastrous 1971 Multiculturalism Act. (Shades of Australian Labor Party Al GrassBy)
Its 1988 successor, created an official duty to “promote the understanding that multiculturalism is a fundamental characteristic of the Canadian heritage and identity”, and the new 1982 constitution allowed for naked racial discrimination in hiring and criminal sentencing.
Any questioning of immigration is viewed as offensive to minorities, hence out of bounds.
Père Pierre has passed his worldview down to his son Justin, who gushed to a New York Times reporter upon attaining office in 2015 that Canada has “no core identity, no mainstream.”
This boast, that the country is post-national and therefore more modern and morally superior to others, is rooted in the same cultural left set of beliefs (“majorities bad, minorities good”) that has given rise to speech policing and reverse discrimination, the hallmarks of woke.
Wokeness in turn helps shut down debate over immigration.
Canada is a sterling example of how cultural leftism meshes with the expansionist ethos of global capitalism.
Nothing symbolizes this progressive neoliberal synthesis better than Toronto’s 18-lane, perpetually snarled, Highway 401, accompanying the unchecked urban sprawl that is a feature of the country’s major metropolitan areas.
In Vancouver, when locals resist expansion, developers cry “racist” and “xenophobe” to relax zoning and planning restrictions.
EThere is constant pressure on established neighbourhoods, lowering the quality of life for existing residents.
The lie that immigration is a solution to the ageing problem (apparently immigrants don’t age) is routinely trotted out, with no opposition, to justify higher numbers.
The apotheosis of this thinking is the Century Initiative, an elite lobby group straddling the corporate world, academia and non-profit sector which is pushing for a supersize Canada of 100 million people, up from 40 million today.
This will produce a nation of sprawling mega-Dubais bloated out of all proportion to the traditional landscape of small cities and towns.
Quality of life, per capita income and social cohesion must be sacrified to reach this maximum migration utopia.
It may be too late for Canada to step back from the brink.
Britain still has a choice. Let’s hope it makes the right one.
Johanna:
Doesn’t everyone have an emergency bucket/box/tin/cupboard?
Candles, torches, matches, batteries, battery powered radio, water, tins of baked beans, camping stove, rifles, ammo, cattle prods, Gatling gun, Semtex, grenades, mortar, backpack nuke, iodine, refurbished T34/85, etc?
And Green just put down a soda in the gully.
Adversity, gentlemen. Get hold of it.
3 possible interpretations of camelkunt’s opinion:
Kamala Harris Says We Could “Lose This Democracy” if We Elect a President Who Would Weaponize the DOJ and “Go After Their Political Enemies” (VIDEO)
1 She is so stupid and unaware that what she is describing is her and the corpse’s administration
2 She know it is BS but thinks the sheeple will accept it
3 Both she and the sheeple are equally dumb.
Airlines call for accountability over Boeing’s quality problems
US carriers spell out hit to profits from ‘unacceptable’ Max 9 groundings and delivery delays
US airline chief executives expressed frustration over Boeing’s quality issues on Tuesday, as they revealed the extent of the cost impact and delivery delays from the fuselage blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this month.
“We’re going to hold them accountable. Boeing needs to get their act together,” American Airlines chief executive Robert Isom told analysts on Thursday.
Boeing’s issues over the past number of years were “unacceptable”, he added. No matter who was leading the plane maker, he said, “all of Boeing needs to come together and to get back on the right track”.
His comments follow strong words from bosses at rivals United Airlines and Alaska Airlines.
“We’re going to hold Boeing’s feet to the fire to make sure that we get good aeroplanes out of that factory,” Alaska CEO Ben Minicucci told analysts on Thursday.
Alaska executives were having “tough, candid conversations” with Boeing’s leadership, he added, saying that what happened on the Max 9 “should never have happened at all” and was “not acceptable”.
Shares in Boeing closed down 5.7 per cent on Thursday after the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday barred it from expanding output of its Max series, citing quality-control concerns. Its market value has fallen by about a fifth since the start of the year.
On Thursday the company paused production at its plant in Renton, Washington, for 15 hours to discuss quality issues with more than 10,000 workers.
Alaska on Thursday said it expected to take a $150mn hit to profits this year from the grounding of its Boeing 737 Max 9 fleet after the mid-air loss of a door plug on one of its flight from Oregon to California on January 5.
Together with potential future delivery delays, the Seattle-based airline said its previous flying capacity growth forecast of between 3 per cent and 5 per cent might not be met.
Rivals Southwest and American, meanwhile, expect fewer Boeing aircraft to be delivered than planned this year as a result of the accident and the FAA ban on the aircraft maker expanding production.
The 737 Max family of single-aisle jets are Boeing’s most popular planes and are flown by airlines around the globe.
The plane maker had been aiming to increase output of the Max to meet delivery and financial targets, but Michael Whitaker, head of the FAA, said on Wednesday the regulator would not approve such an expansion until it was “satisfied that the quality-control issues uncovered during this process are resolved”.
Southwest was now planning for about 79 Max aircraft to be delivered in 2024, down from the 85 agreed with Boeing, including 27 Max 7s and 58 Max 8s, it said on Thursday. The Max 7 aircraft is still awaiting certification and the airline added its capacity plans were “subject to Boeing’s production capability”.
Southwest CEO Robert Jordan voiced some support for Boeing, saying: “I have absolute confidence they will work their way through this and address the issues.”
American chief financial officer Devon May on Thursday told analysts the carrier expected 20 Max 8 deliveries this year. In October, the airline had pencilled in 25 Max family deliveries for 2024.
The 171 Max 9 jets grounded after the Alaska incident are expected to return to service soon. United, which operates the largest Max 9 fleet, on Wednesday said it expected to begin flying the aircraft again on Sunday, while Alaska’s fleet will gradually return to the skies by early February.
Pressure is mounting on Boeing after the blowout, which is viewed as the latest in a line of quality issues since two fatal crashes of the smaller Max 8 in 2018 and 2019 that killed a combined 346 people.
United chief executive Scott Kirby earlier this week said he was reconsidering a large order for the Max 10, the largest Max variant that is also awaiting FAA certification. As with other US rivals, the airline does not expect Boeing to meet its aircraft delivery commitments this year, and said delivery delays from the plane maker could be expected into 2025.
With the knock to profits, Alaska said it anticipated 2024 adjusted earnings per share of $3-$5. Analysts had projected adjusted EPS of $4.93.
In Europe, low-cost carrier Ryanair, one of Boeing’s largest customers, on Thursday welcomed the FAA’s decision to block the expansion of the Max production line, which it said would “allow Boeing the time and space to improve quality control of the aircraft it manufactures”.
The Irish airline added it had been reassured there would be no additional delays to deliveries of its Max 8 aircraft.
Shares in American and Alaska closed up 10.3 per cent and 4.5 per cent, respectively in New York trading, while Southwest dipped 2.3 per cent.
Saw some of Paul Murray repeat just now. Had Micheal Kroger on. No wonder the SFL are so useless. He was supposed to be one of the brains of the libs. What a soft cock. He seemed to think the Teal electorates would go with Dutton because they are conservative. I’ve got news for you sunshine. Those Teal seats are dripping wet greenie coz they can afford to be. I hardly ever see PM thank goodness. He’s only recently discovered water is wet. Most of it seems to be behind his ears.
A most reluctant admission?
johanna at 12:28 – ditto trying to pull another Covid stunt under the public health Regs.
Went to our local township Australia Day parade and joined the flag carriers.
We hung an Australian flag and bunting on our front gate too.
Neighbours coming shortly for a quick celebratory noggin.
The Wall Street Journal
Well Into Adulthood and Still Getting Money From Their Parents
Parents have always supported their children into adulthood, from funding weddings to buying a home. Now the financial umbilical cord extends much later into adulthood.
About 59% of parents said they helped their young adult children financially in the past year, according to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center that focused on adults under age 35. (This question hadn’t been asked in prior surveys.) More young adults are also living with their parents.
Among adults under age 25, 57% live with their parents, up from 53% in 1993.
Parental support is continuing later in life because younger people now take longer to reach many adult milestones—and getting there is more expensive than it has been for past generations, economists and researchers said.
There is also a larger wealth gap between older Americans and younger ones, giving some parents more means and reason to help.
In short, adulthood no longer means moving off the parental payroll.
“That transition has gotten later and later, for a lot of different reasons. Now it’s age 25, 30, 35, 40,” said Sarah Behr, founder of Simplify Financial Planning in San Francisco.
Kami Loukipoudis, a 39-year-old director of design, and husband Adam Stojanik, a 39-year-old high-school teacher, knew they’d need parental assistance to buy in New York’s expensive home market.
“We could pay a mortgage, but that down payment was the absolute crusher,” Stojanik said. “The idea of trying to save up on our own—as long as we were paying rents in NY, would’ve taken 300 years.”
Loukipoudis’s mother gave them the money for a 10% down payment on a two-bedroom apartment in Queens.
The young adult allowance
Adult children aren’t necessarily getting larger checks from their parents, but they are staying on the parental payroll for longer than previous generations, according to Marla Ripoll, professor of economics at The University of Pittsburgh who studied the trend by analyzing payments from parents to adult children over a 20-year span.
Ripoll found that 14% of adult children receive a transfer of money from their parents at least once in any given year, and roughly half get financial help at some point within that period.
Those rates have been stable for years.
What has changed is that the transfers now continue for much longer, she found.
This longer-term help may be a drag on social mobility, as it becomes even harder for young people from lower-income families to catch up, researchers said.
Of the young adult children who said they received financial help from a parent in the past year, most said they put it toward day-to-day household expenses, such as phone bills and subscriptions to streaming services like Netflix, according to the Pew survey.
The amount of money and the frequency of help varies by age; those on the older end of the 18-to-34 cohort are far likelier to say they are completely financially independent from their parents compared with younger adult children, as many in the latter group are completing their education.
Nearly a third of young adult children between the ages of 30 and 34 say they still get parental help.
Heather McAfee, a 33-year-old physical therapist in Austin, Texas, said she lived at home between 2019 and 2021; otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to make progress paying down her student loans while rent prices in her area remained so high.
The plan worked—she has since reduced her student debt balance from $83,000 to $15,000.
“It helped tremendously,” she said. “I didn’t have to take out more loans to pay for apartment living or anything like that. That stress was gone.”
Setting limits on financial help
A little more than half of parents surveyed said that having their adult children home brought them closer together or improved their relationship, but nearly 20% said it dented their personal finances.
Financial advisers often find themselves in the tricky position of speaking to both ends of the equation: adult children who need assistance, and the parents determined to help children well into middle age, within limits.
Whereas previous generations would step into a greater sense of financial independence in their early 20s, young adult children today are often unable to reach similar markers of such independence—living on their own or buying their first home, for example—without greater financial resources.
Families typically don’t set concrete rules around when financial help will happen and what the money is used for, which can result in surprises down the road, Behr said.
In one case, Behr’s clients received the down payment they needed to purchase a condo from a generous mother-in-law. Years later, that same mother-in-law told them she expected a payout once the couple sold the home.
The hand-me-down payment
Down payment help from parents—a given for many first-time home buyers—is growing thanks to higher home prices and elevated mortgage rates.
About a fifth of first-time home buyers said they got help from a relative or friend when pulling together the money needed for a down payment, according to a 2023 survey of home buyers and sellers from the National Association of Realtors.
And 38% of home buyers under age 30 received help with the down payment from their parents, according to a survey this spring by Redfin.
Wealthy families often go further than helping with the down payment. They become a true bank of mom and dad and write a mortgage.
The Internal Revenue Service sets minimum levels of interest for such loans, which remain significantly cheaper than current mortgage rates.
Timothy Burke, chief executive at National Family Mortgage, which facilitates such loans, says parents are often frustrated on behalf of their house-hunting children.
High interest rates and the cutthroat housing market are holding their children back from reaching a milestone the parents themselves were more easily able to access.
Mei Chao, a 41-year-old stay-at-home mom, and her husband, William Chao, a 44-year-old information technology specialist, bought their first house as a couple in 2017.
They relied on financial help from her husband’s two sisters and his mother to help them bridge a gap in their house-buying timeline.
While they waited to sell William’s Manhattan condo, they used the money from the family to purchase the new house in Queens.
The structure of the agreements got tricky. After selling the condo in Manhattan, Mei and her husband were able to repay his sisters in full.
But they didn’t have enough money left over from the sale to do the same for Mei’s mother-in-law.
So they kept the mother-in-law’s name on the deed to the house—a concession Mei said they were both more than happy to make.
“Ultimately, it all worked out. I’m glad his mother pushed us,” Mei said. “Without her help I could not say we would have this home.”
RS I’ve got most of those things except the iodine. I’ve been led to believe perusing this fine blog, you are responsible for a worldwide shortage of the stuff.
If you squint a bit.
D-Town weather report – pissing down.
Straya!
KD from this morning on the boy who cried wolf by the BOM.
+1000000. Already start to manifest IMO.
Eyrie
ECMWF is pretty good. Usually the pick of the bunch. JTWC was pretty good till yesterday arvo where it swallowed the severe cyclone line while it’s own reasoning text was highlighting marginal shear environment andl exposed LLCC on southern quadrants which was a red flag to me the system would struggle the more it interacted with the coast.
Mates sent me footage last night. Monsoon troughs generate the conditions I saw. Also my mate with the Thai mrs sent me pics of his paw paws sitting proud this morning, unscathed.
From what I’ve been told Ergon are screwing around too atm. Whether understaffed (most likely) or sheer incompetence (also very likely) or led by the nose by their ETU handlers, my area has been told a week to get power back when after Yasi most areas were back online within 24hrs. Kirally didn’t even get to 100kmh gusts, has Qld labour been short cutting maintinence to plunder Ergons revenue? Beattie did for years so they have form and the same Beattie crooks are in the senior bureaucracy now.
Australian bowlers are unhappy with soft pink balls…?
Just don’t use sandpaper on them guys, you’ll regret it.
Yikes! Sympathies.
Interesting (the Tele):
There’s a pic accompanying this very brief piece (‘more to come’, apparently) but these dudes are wearing the same balas and black bucket hats in the ‘Australia for the White Man’ marches subject to wide ridicule in Vicco during recent times.
So it smells like farts and BO
North shore nazis.
Who would have thunk it.
In teal land.
I think they may be envious of those who posses the mentioned balls.