What is this letter that looks a cross between a b and a p?

An olde letter called ‘thorn’ which represents the sound ‘th’.

I kept it from the original verse I butchered ‘Sumer is icumen in’.

I will confess I was not being so diligent about vowel patters, such as the I-U-E.

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu

Etc.

U-E-I pattern.

Now I have damned the Middle Ages!

I am feeling Brittnah-like stress levels.

Will someone fetch my smelling salts?

Smelling salts for the faire sex.

My bad. I thought ‘Smelling’ was a brand name for a salt you pour onto a fresh roasted side of ox to be washed down with a mighty bumper or two of Claret while you watch the champions of two villages of sworn eternal enmity set about each other with claymore (swords) and bad language.

I ain’t no puss…shit! Broken nail!

All Perth cads and bounders are found in West Perth and only represent a threat to innocent shareholders with excess (read any) cash.

Police will allege Football superstar Samantha Kerr called an officer “a stupid white bastard,”

Mouthy coloured.

Megan Krakouer said four children, including a six and seven-year-old seen in a video that has made headlines worldwide, sneaked in because their mum’s car had broken down and they could not go to the beach.

This does not explain why they were not in school.

Levine is not in the navy but coastguard or some such.US has lots of armed services.

United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps they use Navy ranks.

Won many trivia jackpots by knowing there were 7 (now 8) US Uniformed services (Space Force is the 8th)
Army
Marine Corps
Navy
Air Force
Space Force
Coast Guard
Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps

The last have only commissioned officers and are regarded as ‘non armed services’ – NOAA is an interesting throwback to WW1, so ocean surveyors would not be shot as spies, they were commissioned & therefore accorded protections under teh various Prisoner conventions.

Never go to West Perth with more cash than required for 2 flat whites. One of my graduate rotations was through NAB Hay St. Luckily I was naive enough to the depravity I was exposed too. I think the branch was kept on a pretty short leash by those higher up the food chain.

Palestinians ‘not worth a toothpick’: Major Saudi newspaper attacks Hamas leaders

By anne barrowclough
Senior Digital Journalist
1:39PM March 7, 2024
3 Comments

An influential Saudi newspaper has launched an excoriating attack on the leaders of Hamas, accusing them of sacrificing the lives of ordinary Gazans for their militant cause and living in luxury while Palestinians die.

“The dismembered bodies on the roads of Gaza are a bridge to the cause,” writes Saudi journalist Muhammed al-Saed in the article in the Okaz newspaper, one of the most influential outlets in the region.

In the eyes of Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, “all of Palestine, with its men, women and children, living and dead, is not worth a toothpick,” he adds.

Saudi Arabia is optimistic about normalising ties with Israel and has been in talks on normalisation, mediated by the US, since 2023.

The talks were put on ice after the October 7 massacre by the militant group but Reuters reported shortly after the attack that the idea of normalisation had not been abandoned.

However Saudi refrains from public criticism of Hamas and a poll by the Washington Institute at the end of 2023 found the overwhelming majority – 91 per cent – of Saudis supported Palestinians over Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and even more (96 per cent) agreed with the proposal that “Arab countries should immediately break all diplomatic, political, economic, and any other contacts with Israel, in protest against its military action in Gaza.”

While Hamas as an organisation remains unpopular in Saudi Arabia, the poll found 96 per cent of Saudis did not believe that Hamas militants targeted civilians on October 7.

Regardless of that support, al-Saed is trenchant in his criticism of the organisation and of Palestinian “cafe activists,” who he says will “return to playing backgammon, drinking shisha, and exchanging advice on ways to immigrate to America and Britain, which they have been cursing during the past weeks,” if and when a truce between Israel and Hamas begins.

His article could be dismissed as the opinion of one person but little in Saudi gets published without the rulers’ agreement and Saudi watchers believe his commentary has been approved by the Saudi royal family.

Negotiators are still optimistic that a ceasefire will begin before the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, but al-Saed claims it will only help Hamas leaders, some of whom will use the rebuilding of the destroyed enclave to enrich themselves.

He reserves his harshest criticism for Hamas leaders Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 massacre and Haniyeh, the organisation’s political leader.

Sinwar, who has hidden in the tunnels under Gaza since October 7 with a human shield of Israeli hostages to escape Israeli Defence Forces, would “return to the orange farm that he loves in the middle of Gaza, among his children and grandchildren, and he will sit at the end of the week in his seaside chalet,” he writes.

He adds that Sinwar would claim to Gazan residents that the Hamas cause “was victorious because he was not killed or captured”.

He claims Sinwar would be protected by his relatives from the anger of Gazans who had lost their loved ones over the “whim” of the October 7 massacre.

“His supporters will carry him on their stocky shoulders, after the people of Gaza carried 30,000 bodies on their emaciated shoulders,” he writes.

Al-Saed goes on to say Hamas leaders Khaled Mashal, Ismail Haniyeh, and Musa Abu Marzouk, all of whom live in luxurious exile, would declare “Divine victory” as they raced to counter Sinwar, “who they fear will steal their historical moment”.

“After that, Ismail Haniyeh will take his private plane heading to Tehran, kissing the hand of the Supreme Leader, and visiting the grave of Qassem Soleimani, praising them and offering the duties of loyalty and obedience,” he writes.

The journalist claims that other Hamas leaders would take advantage of the rebuilding of Gaza to enrich themselves via their “contracting companies”.

“As for the rest of the broken and bereaved Gazans, they will return, and each of them has a story of loss,” he writes.

This is not the first time Al-Saed has criticised Hamas and the Palestinians. In an article in Okaz in 2022 he reminded readers that Palestinians had been opponents of Saudi Arabia for 30 years and had supported Saddam Hussein against them, as he urged Saudi leaders to break with the Palestinians.

At the time it was published, Saudi watchers pointed out the article was widely seen as a message that Saudi Arabia would move toward normalisation.

This most recent article might be preparing Saudi citizens for a return to those negotiations.

This is so lame. The parents of these children are being defended with the logic of the children.

Nope they are being defended by a biased media who fully support 251s regardless of the reality of the situation …. If they’ were “white” the squeals would have been .. trespassing, where were the parents, why aren’t they at school..?

Megan Krakouer is a Menang Woman of the Noongar Nation.

She’s got a law degree and regularly chairs national suicide prevention conferences, and national forums on the historical and contemporary sins of this nation that have drenched so many to this day. Megan does this to change narratives, to leave no one out of sight, and to not allow the nation absolution until they atone. Atonement will come with equality, defined by the elimination of disparities and the long overdue providence of parities.

Megan sounds like a compete pain in the arse and is up to her vagina in the scandal of some poor bastard who caught 3 3rd nation nippies swimming in a private pool after damaging the fence to get in. He’s been now charged with assault for tying the little frivers up with cable ties while their parents came back from the pub.

This country is fuked.

Atonement will come with equality, defined by the elimination of disparities and the long overdue providence of parities.

A back yard swimming pool for everyone!

Promising NABkickers.

Yes it does mean Putin “wins”…

Not by the measure of his invasion goals.

But he might be able to sell it to the Russian people as such.

…any sort of resolution is probably better than letting the grinder rumble on though.

Yep. And they still have a country.

When so few of our young men want to enlist in our ADF, it is particularly tragic to lose one of our young defence personnel.

Seconded, Vicki.

I thought of losing those four ADF personnel during Talisman Sabre last tear.

Oldest son knew the junior officer.

Faulty alert

VicPlod might not want to hold the Victoriastan justice system as superior to anything much. Even a bunch of j’ismists.

One of Paul Monk’s conclusions re the Chinese espionage threat to Oz:

The chief battle, then and now, is economic, and it’s a battle the West is losing. In 2010, Nobel laureate in economics Robert Fogel estimated that, by 2040, China’s GDP will have soared to $US123 trillion, or about eight times the current US GDP; and that China’s gross domestic product will be 40 per cent of world output, or twice the combined output of the USA and the EU. That, he concluded, is what Chinese economic hegemony will look like. At the same time, the US Congressional Budget Office was estimating that US national debt would climb to as much as 700 per cent of GDP by 2080. We live, of course, in a time of such extravagant and alarming projections, including the more alarming climate change scenarios. They should be used to concentrate the mind; they should not be permitted to take it over. I am sceptical of such long-range linear extrapolations. China, as its own premier pointed out publicly on March 14, faces enormous hurdles in the years immediately ahead, and 2080 is a very long way off.

Marjorie Greene tells smart-arse trannie like reporter to fuk off.

Megan Krakouer is a Menang Woman of the Noongar Nation.

Who also was a firm believer in the NO voice till Parliament, until she realized the extent of the disadvantage in the Aboriginal community, and became an ardent “YES” campaigner.

Greg Ip has always had a decent following in financial circles.

Why You Shouldn’t Trust China’s Growth Data
Anomalies in China’s official statistics suggest GDP grew less last year than Beijing claims
Greg Ip

By Greg Ip

On Tuesday, China’s ruling Communist Party announced this year’s growth target would be around 5%. Achieving that would not be easy, Premier Li Qiang acknowledged. Still, he boasted the country had faced “??an array of interwoven difficulties” last year and still posted growth of 5.2%, “ranking China among the fastest-growing major economies in the world.”

How does China grow 5% despite so many headwinds, from collapsing property investment to declining population? Very likely, it doesn’t. Actual growth is probably slower, perhaps a lot slower.

Western analysts and even some Chinese officials have long taken Chinese gross domestic product with a grain of salt. But as discrepancies, inconsistencies and gaps in the data have grown, so has skepticism of its integrity.

Whereas past discrepancies were on balance a wash with some overstating activity and some understating it, lately they mostly flatter growth. They thus serve President Xi Jinping’s broader goal of asserting the superiority of China’s political and economic model to his own people and the world.

New York-based Rhodium Group has studied China’s data for years and concludes it vastly overstates recent growth. Rhodium estimates China’s output shrank in 2022, when Covid lockdowns were most widespread, instead of growing 3% as official data claim. It puts growth last year at around 1.5% instead of the official 5.2%. It sees growth picking up this year, but called the latest target “unrealistic,” especially without new fiscal stimulus.

Other analysts also think true growth is lower than the official data, though not by as much. Alternative estimates by Finland’s central bank put growth at 1.3% in 2022 and 4.3% last year.

China’s economy is teetering on the brink of widespread deflation—a scenario that could cause even more problems than high inflation. We look at Japan’s “lost decade” to explain why China’s economy is struggling and what it means for the global economy. Photo illustration: Ryan Trefes

Historically, China’s nominal GDP (i.e. before inflation adjustment) is more volatile than real GDP, suggesting inflation is engineered so as to smooth growth. Last year China forecast nominal growth of about 7% in 2023 and real growth of about 5%. Instead, nominal growth was about 4% while real growth still hit 5.2%. Those can only be reconciled if prices were supposed to rise 2% and instead fell 1%. More likely, prices were higher, and growth lower, than China claims, Wright said.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington defended last year’s growth data, saying it was corroborated by physical indicators, including a 6.9% increase in electricity generation, a 5.7% increase in energy consumption and an 8.1% increase in cargo transport. Consumers are driving China’s recovery, with retail sales of services up 20%, while the rate of decline in real estate has slowed, the spokesperson added.

Doubts about Chinese data go back decades. For a time, GDP reported by the provinces didn’t add up to national GDP. That has largely receded.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What does the growing credibility gap mean for Chinese economic data? Join the conversation below.

Yet China’s data quality is still subpar. Relative to other countries, GDP comes out uncommonly fast yet is hardly ever revised and lacks basic information such as quarterly consumer, business and government expenditure, said Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, who oversaw the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook and is now at the Brookings Institution. “The statistical standards are not up to the level they ought to be,” he said.

China’s regulations guarantee the independence of staff statisticians and prohibit fabricating or falsifying data. Still, where other statistical agencies strive for political neutrality, China’s routinely praises the Communist Party “with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core.”

Wright said all countries have arguments over data quality, but “no one views it as an attack on legitimacy of the government, the way it is in China. Any criticism or discussion of China’s growth rate is escalated into a larger political conflict.”

Not all analysts attribute China’s data anomalies to politics, in part because historically they cut in both directions. But increasingly, these anomalies may be key to how Beijing plugs the gap between the growth it needs politically and what can realistically be achieved.

“The growth target they set in the past several years have been too high to achieve organically,” said Riikka Nuutilainen, an economist at the Bank of Finland. “The officials may be too afraid to lower the growth target as much as is required to have more balanced growth.”

This year’s target, she added, “is quite ambitious, and may require some smoothing of the data as we’ve seen in the past couple of years.”

WSJ

And if Vlad is being childish, Trump could yank the US$300 billion and hand it to Ukraine in some way as further punishment.

Just cope Dover. It’s been a stalemate since the early part of the invasion other than the back and forth. You keep believing that the great Soviet union has the running dogs scared and in retreat, but it’s basically a stalemate since the first couple of months of this ‘special military operation”

sneaked in because their mum’s car had broken down and they could not go to the beach.

When I were a kid, people snuck in. Maybe we could not afford as many letters, but we were happy.

Chinese growth is happening whether we like it or not.

Iron Ore was $139.50 on 3rd Jan 2024. It’s now in the $116s. Coal price is also down since the begging of the year.

The domestic economy is much, much bigger than the export side. That’s basically rooted.

What does Sergie the Warhero say though? 🙂

GreyRanga
Mar 7, 2024 5:37 PM

Sorry JC I still can’t get over someone willingly have lunch with the fat freak.

Outside of politics, the fat idiot is a nice person.

Look, I have a close friend who I called the other day. He turned off the car radio to chat saying he had it on Radio National. Sometimes, you have to ignore politics and be gracious like Jesus. 🙂

begging = beginning.