Open Thread – Australia Day Weekend 2025


The Founding of Australia by Capt. Arthur Phillip R.N. Sydney Cove Jan 26th 1788,
Algernon Talmage, 1937

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Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 25, 2025 8:40 pm

 Nigel Farage READY to be PM as BOMBSHELL Poll Sees Reform UK Climb Past Labour AND Tories

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KhyE1EI_rM

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage says he is ready to become the next Prime Minister of Great Britain after a new poll put his party ahead of Labour and the Conservatives.

Speaking on GB News, Nigel said the country is engulfed by a ‘miserable’ atmosphere, a stark contrast to what we are seeing across the pond in the United States. Farage also lifts the lid on a possible Elon Musk donation, his views on Axel Rudakubana’s Southport murders and the end of DEI.

Last edited 19 days ago by Winston Smith
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
January 26, 2025 3:51 pm
Reply to  Winston Smith

I hope Musk makes that donation and gets over whatever his beef was with Nigel’s style of leadership.

Rabz
January 25, 2025 8:51 pm

Johnny and June – headin’ on down to Jackson … 🙂

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
January 25, 2025 9:49 pm
Reply to  Rabz

My compliments, Squire, and thank you.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
January 26, 2025 3:57 pm

I’m whiling away Straya Day by re-reading JD’s Hillbilly Elegy.

Jackson, his Appalachian hometown. Down in ‘the holler’.

Lawgi Dawes-Hall
Lawgi Dawes-Hall
January 25, 2025 9:00 pm

Siouxsie covers

Little Johnny Jewel

Rabz
January 25, 2025 9:06 pm

Mark Steyn is a good read again.

As always – interesting to see he’s referring to everyone’s favourite chief plenipotentiary of Airstrip One as:

Sir Keir Stürmer

JC
JC
January 25, 2025 9:13 pm

Trump needs to bring countries under the U.S. protection umbrella if they wish to leave the Paris Accord. The threats of tariff impositions against smaller countries by the EU are real.

cohenite
January 25, 2025 9:13 pm

That’s disappointing: Betelgeuse’s supernova is imminent; but even if it goes today it’ll still take 642.5 years for the light, about as bright as a full moon, to reach us. I don’t think I’ll last another 642.5 years.

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
January 25, 2025 9:19 pm
Reply to  cohenite

It might have happened 640 years ago. In which case, you only have to hang on for two and a half years.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 25, 2025 9:15 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsOztvvTIac
A call for the reinstatement of whole of life sentencing and the death penalty.
Jeff Taylor.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 25, 2025 9:18 pm

Arabica coffee futures surged to record highs on Friday, fueled by the ongoing global supply crunch. The most-active contract climbed nearly 2% in late morning trading, reaching the highest price levels on record dating back to 1972. The multi-year parabolic move in coffee prices only suggests higher Starbucks and/or supermarket market prices in the months ahead if hedges fail to offset bean inflation. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/nervousness-ripples-across-coffee-market-prices-hit-fresh-record-highs

“Nervousness” Ripples Across Coffee Market As Prices Hit Fresh Record Highs

Chris
Chris
January 27, 2025 9:00 pm
Reply to  Winston Smith

Disaster. I may have to delay retirement.

Rabz
January 25, 2025 9:21 pm
Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
January 25, 2025 9:25 pm
Rabz
January 25, 2025 9:31 pm

The magnifique Keely Hawes in her greatest role … 🙂

Helen
Helen
January 25, 2025 10:45 pm
Reply to  Rabz

Nah, she was better in the Durrells

JC
JC
January 25, 2025 9:35 pm

Booted

Trump administration gives green light to start firing federal workers in DEI roles

An earlier memo from the Office of Personnel Management had asked agency heads to submit written plans by Jan. 31 for dismissing employees.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
January 25, 2025 9:47 pm
Reply to  JC

They are one step ahead.
The directive also asks for any job spec or title changes since 5th November designed to mask DEI jobs and keep them on.
Asking agencies to self report all this (with “serious consequences for non-compliance or incomplete reporting”) is also smart.
A very short amnesty period to spill the beans or lose your job.
Nice.

Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
January 25, 2025 9:37 pm

What does it take to earn the Australian Of The Year award?
Well, number one, Piss Down The Pyramid-
“I stand here as a neurodivergent black woman, a golden trifecta that by all accounts, wasn’t supposed to succeed. Early in my journey, I worked tirelessly to prove others wrong,” she said upon accepting the award.
Two, say it ain’t about money of fame, you’re doing it “for Mob”-
“But along the way, I realised I wasn’t doing it for them, I was doing it for myself, for my family and for the community they represent.
Three, remind everyone that the silly little darkies with perhaps the most condescending and instantly disprovable bit of verbal pap ever passed by our culturally manipulative betters- “you cannot be what you cannot see”-
“When kids, especially Indigenous kids, see someone like me in this position, it tells them that they belong, that their dreams are valid and their voices are powerful.”
Pissing Down The Pyramid, in spades.
And, I’ll say this only because the Lizard People demand that we first and foremost examine someone’s apparent ethnicity in evaluating their worth, she doesn’t look that Aboriginal to me. “Mabuigilaig and Goemulgal” might be half of her genetic heritage, so what else, Dr Scientist?
She said the award was not just for herself but the Indigenous communities she represented and worked with.
“It is for the young people daring to dream big and the communities fighting for justice and the elders who continue to keep the fire burning,” she said.
This is where you’d think a bit of humble counting of blessings might occur, but no, it’s tribalism, entitlement and spite.
Grace Tame, 2025 edition.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
January 25, 2025 9:59 pm
Reply to  Wally Dalí

And the elders who continue to keep the fire burning

When the elders aren’t abusing the young girls…

Chris
Chris
January 27, 2025 9:03 pm

I am an accountant.
But I’m thinking of becoming a gorilla.

Two Ronnies

Aaron
Aaron
January 25, 2025 10:56 pm
Reply to  Wally Dalí

These people have a funny idea of black.

Still, that’s the bit that counts when the awards night comes.

Not so much in Cherbourg at closing time.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
January 25, 2025 9:42 pm

JC
 January 25, 2025 9:13 pm

Trump needs to bring countries under the U.S. protection umbrella if they wish to leave the Paris Accord. The threats of tariff impositions against smaller countries by the EU are real.

I did wonder if that might be something he rolls into US tariff negotiations.
And there will be horse-trading.
Because Donald.

Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
January 25, 2025 9:48 pm

Saw these fellas Thursday night.
Greeeeeeat show.
Might not be a new mousetrap, but style in buckets.

Arky
January 25, 2025 9:52 pm

Just came back from our walk around the municipality.
Out side the station saw the following.
You know those claw machines with the toys as prizes?
They make them bigger now.

Arky
January 25, 2025 9:52 pm

Such:

IMG_1537
Arky
January 25, 2025 9:54 pm

The child is the machine claw.
I didn’t stop long enough to see if the parent was controlling the “claw”, or the operator.

Last edited 19 days ago by Arky
Rabz
January 25, 2025 10:02 pm

Cats, no matter how utterly absurd modern life might become, we’ll always have Prez Fatty Trump.

When too much #winning is barely enough! 🙂

Rabz
January 25, 2025 10:07 pm

LA and Hollyweird, before it was deliberately incinerated … 🙁

Arky
January 25, 2025 10:07 pm

The temperature here is 18 degrees centigrade and everyone is wearing a minimum of three layers, looking at me like I’m an alien in shorts and a tee shirt.
I was in a shop earlier and frankly sweating unattractively, and looking at people wearing basically ski gear like it was the Himalayas.
I think these people’s personal thermostats are broken.

Entropy
Entropy
January 26, 2025 6:50 am
Reply to  Arky

Melbourne people deserve Melbourne weather. Just don’t flee to places with a warmer climate. Please.

Phil
Phil
January 26, 2025 7:27 am
Reply to  Entropy

Perfect weather for around 9 months in coastal Vic
Not too hot not too cold .

Miltonf
Miltonf
January 25, 2025 10:10 pm

Graceless Tame – attention seeking garbage. – Michael Smith News

Where do they find this filth? Certainly a good fit in canbra.

Barking Toad
Barking Toad
January 25, 2025 11:00 pm
Reply to  Miltonf

Had a reputation at Collegiate in Hobart as the college bike.

Last edited 19 days ago by Barking Toad
Rabz
January 25, 2025 10:13 pm
Cassie of Sydney
January 25, 2025 10:16 pm

I am over the moon seeing the four women hostages released by the Nazi scum.

But…..but……where are the men?

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
January 25, 2025 10:24 pm

“Right oh, Mohammed, playtime is over. You release all those hostages in forty eight hours, or two cities in the Gaza Strip, chosen at random, and given no warning, join Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a very select list…

Damon
Damon
January 26, 2025 9:01 am

They might not like Trump much now, and they’ll like him less then, but a lot of hostages will be free.

Rabz
January 25, 2025 10:26 pm
Rabz
January 25, 2025 10:34 pm
Louis Litt
Louis Litt
January 26, 2025 5:03 pm
Reply to  Rabz

Grey skies , wet roads green spaces, a warm home

Rabz
January 25, 2025 10:42 pm

Airstrip One’s favourite brunette siren belting out a classic with a bit of help from a punk floyd dinobore …

Barking Toad
Barking Toad
January 25, 2025 10:55 pm

For the second year in a row, somehow, the Australia Council has awarded the Australian Of The Year award to a thoroughly worthy recipient.

This year, Neale Daniher. Diagnosed with the debilitating motor neuron disease in 2014 (life expectancy 27 months on average) he, with his family and supporters, refused to give in and started a movement that has raised $115m for research to find a cure.over the last 10 years

Over the last couple of years he has lost mobility and the power of speech but hasn’t given up. .

I dips me lid..

Last edited 19 days ago by Barking Toad
Barry
Barry
January 26, 2025 8:20 am
Reply to  Barking Toad

And yet MND is still incurable, despite interminable AFL MND games, beanies, and awards.

Just as pointless as welcomes to country, pride days, net zero plans and women’s clubs.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Damon
Damon
January 26, 2025 9:04 am
Reply to  Barry

I was in the US when the war on cancer started. Apparently it hasn’t yet been won.

flyingduk
flyingduk
January 26, 2025 10:38 am
Reply to  Barry

And, without denigrating his efforts, Daniher has not actually ‘raised’ any money for MND, in reality he has only *transferred* it from some other use – walking your dog or wearing a beanie or diving into iced water doesn’t create wealth. If you really want to ‘raise’ money for a worthy cause you need to do something productive, not just a publicity stunt.

flyingduk
flyingduk
January 26, 2025 10:35 am
Reply to  Barking Toad

Im just writing a piece about the ‘Aboriginal’ recipients … including proud Cobble cobble woman Prof Megan Davis (aboriginal activist), who upon examination, is of 1/2 British, 3/8 Pacific Islander and 1/8th Australian Aboriginal origin.

If these people lie about their own history, why would they believe what they tell us about our country’s?

Louis Litt
Louis Litt
January 26, 2025 5:05 pm
Reply to  Barking Toad

A great example as opposed to I have mind solethally inject me with my dignity.

Rabz
January 25, 2025 11:08 pm
johanna
johanna
January 25, 2025 11:08 pm

The Greens never fail to disappoint:

The Victorian Greens are proposing a new tax on owners of vacant shops with the goal of revitalising empty shopping strips, but the Liberals say such a move would unfairly hamper small businesses amid cost-of-living pressures.

The Greens announcement on Saturday comes ahead of a by-election in the seat of Prahran in Melbourne’s inner-south where the once bustling Chapel Street is struggling.

Yup, the way to revitalise business is to increase taxation.

They are incapable of learning.

Entropy
Entropy
January 26, 2025 6:52 am
Reply to  johanna

That is batshit crazy on so many levels. The owners would be better off torching the joint.

flyingduk
flyingduk
January 26, 2025 10:39 am
Reply to  johanna

They are incapable of learning.

Oh they know what they are doing … you just don’t know what ‘victory looks like’ to them.

Lee
Lee
January 26, 2025 11:57 am
Reply to  johanna

The most likely reason a shop is vacant is because the owner can’t afford to open it.

Slugging the owner with extra taxes will not help.

The Greens are intellectually, morally, and ethically bankrupt.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
January 25, 2025 11:15 pm

I’m still quite sick. Having a quiet Australia Day for a change, after a pleasant Cat meet up yesterday, that will do for me. Today was an emotional trial with my eldest son and I trying to do an intervention with his brother, my second son and also a child of my first marriage. I drove into town for a meet up, the first time driving in over seven weeks. Heroin has this second son of mine in its monkey grip and I don’t think we are winning yet. I’ve crawled back into bed and Hairy announces that he refuses to take me to the Third World ever again. Suits me, I say, because basically in the cities the air quality is not good for infants or the elderly. The Weekend Oz had a list of cities that have closed their schools recently due to poor air quality. Delhi, no surprise there, is amongst them. I truly thought I would die if we stayed there another day. Probably just needed some O2 but Hairy not game to take me to hospital, he wanted me on a plane back home asap. Cabin air in aircraft is pretty good so I started to improve during flight and after a big flat-bed sleep. Business class worth every penny.

Glad I went to India though. Will write up a report on that termorra if I’m feeling up to it. Meantime, happy straya day to all.

johanna
johanna
January 26, 2025 12:06 am

Once again, you are mistaking this place for Facechook.

Everybody here has their personal travails, but very few (thankfully) regard this site as their personal diary writ large in search of sympathy and affirmation.

Compared to the circumstances of some valued contributors, you should be thanking your lucky stars. Reading between the lines of some who are just scraping by, at least you don’t have to worry about paying your bills or for medical necessities.

It’s always me!me!me! with you.

My opinion of you has never changed from your early boasting and lying, through to mid-term boasting and lying and your filthy insult to me, to your latter period having to admit that you boasted and lied.

As I predicted a while back, you are using this site as a record of your medical appointments, and the trajectory of your physical and mental decline. With the odd reference to the beta.

How’s the book going, Lizzie? It was a scam to make you look interlecshural.

Contributors who are not living in waterfront homes on the harbour, and who have serious medical problems and no money, might politely rate your attention seeking whining as … disgusting.

Pogria
Pogria
January 26, 2025 9:08 am
Reply to  johanna

Sigh…
Happy Australia Day Johanna.
It’s a day to celebrate.
I don’t live on the waterfront, but I have other things to enjoy.
Today is our local Rodeo and I will be helping out. I will be in the Kid’s area. Several of us will be organising games for the kids and keeping them occupied for a short time to give their parents a breather.

Go out, enjoy the day.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
January 26, 2025 3:40 pm
Reply to  johanna

Anyone wanting to read my latest piece on the Arthurian corpus and its origins that I discern in the work of Gildas can find it on Academia.com, along with my original Quadrant article, where both are receiving considerable traffic. I am informed daily of many new and interested readers.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 26, 2025 10:38 am

Suits me, I say, because basically in the cities the air quality is not good for infants or the elderly. 

The air in places like India is full of dessicated shit particles. I refuse to go to places where public defecation is acceptable.
I will never go to Hay.

Rabz
January 25, 2025 11:24 pm

Eight Miles High

Just listen to those 12 strings ringing out … 🙂

Boambee John
Boambee John
January 26, 2025 7:30 am
Reply to  dover0beach

US taking over the Northern Territory? Or the ACT?

What have they done to deserve that?

Damon
Damon
January 26, 2025 9:12 am
Reply to  dover0beach

Make more sense to take over Tasmania. They can bomb Victoria pretty easily from there.

Rabz
January 25, 2025 11:37 pm

Cats – we could all be heroes like Arks – but in the interim, here’s some of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll hero in human history, the Bowie, leavened live with the Belew (and a supporting spot from Carlos Alomar) in 1978 …

A superstar who did not need to bothered by the advent of punk.

Zafiro
Zafiro
January 25, 2025 11:37 pm

Jerry Seinfeld looking sheila (Madison Keys) won the tennis. Top effort. Would have been decent odds against Sabalenka, who was gracious and humorous in defeat. Good to see.

Keys was a real up and comer some years back then fell off the radar, She’s back in business now and badass.

Louis Litt
Louis Litt
January 26, 2025 5:37 pm
Reply to  Zafiro

Gracious and no grunting.
grunting has got to go. Unfeminine and poor sportsmanship.

Rabz
January 25, 2025 11:43 pm

A song for Oz day

1987 – a different, mythical country.

Megan
Megan
January 25, 2025 11:57 pm

Hapoy Oz Day, all you lot! Flag up, sausages ready for the barbie, pav and lamingtons for afters.

And absolutely no WTC. Maybe a smoking ceremony if the Prince sets fire to the barbie once again.

JC
JC
January 26, 2025 12:22 am

Keeping Germany down means, effectively, keeping Europe down. The problem here is that the security interests of America and

You quite literally shifted from “keeping a watchful eye on Germany” to actively “keeping Germany down” Trying your hand at creative writing now?
.

Europe are not the same, the intent of NATO is to keep Europe subservient to America, and that in any situation were the two are at odds, the former will prevail over the latter.

No one has said European and American interests are identical. They’re aligned.

Given that I raised this two weeks earlier and said that it is understandably in America’s interests to control Greenland as a counter to Russian moves, also understandable why the Danes would oppose this, and why Europe would look on aghast, I’m not sure what your talking about here. Moreover, since the US through NATO could have access to Greenland without gaining ownership of it, these latest moves may indicate the likelihood of a future retreat from NATO and therefore as preparation for some future rearrangement where access isn’t conditioned by the NATO alliance.

Whatever you raised a few weeks ago has no bearing to what you said earlier.

You’re adding caveats that were never a part of “Denmark[‘s]claim to Greenland is ridiculous considering its size”.

Of course there’s a caveat. Your analogy was silly. No one made any claim against the UK colonizing Australia and they did it would’ve been settled in way these things were settled at the time.

I haven’t argued I’m opposed to US claims on Greenland.

Could’ve fooled me.

If I were American I’d very likely support it as a part of any consolidation of the Western hemisphere. If I were a European, and especially a Dane, I’d oppose it.

Two bob each way now.

As an Australian, I oppose it because if it can do this to the Danes it could do this to our own territories if it judged it in its security interests to do so.

I can see it now. The US makes a claim for Kangaroo Island.
Allow me some latitude to mind read. The US claim for Greenland weakens your guys’ strategic position in the arctic. Consequently, anything that strengthens the US against your guys is to be opposed.

Last edited 19 days ago by JC
Entropy
Entropy
January 26, 2025 6:55 am
Reply to  JC

I would think it more likely Greenland is on the radar because of Chinese moves. Ditto Panama.

John H.
John H.
January 26, 2025 1:03 am
Reply to  Rabz

That’s a great song. I never got into The Smiths but I found that track some months ago and regularly play it.

Tom
Tom
January 26, 2025 4:00 am
Top Ender
Top Ender
January 26, 2025 4:16 am
Reply to  Tom

Having seen one of the toons, I ran a Google search “nasa diversity and inclusion”

and got this:

Pursuant to Executive Order 13985 and follow-on orders, NASA has removed this document.

Pure Trumpening!

Beertruk
January 26, 2025 6:47 am
Reply to  Tom

Some good ones there.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 26, 2025 11:13 am
Reply to  Beertruk

Favorite:

Gh8ATffXMAA6zDd
mem
mem
January 26, 2025 5:47 am

Just read the latest hostage prisoner exchange deal. (4 Israeli female hostages traded for 200 Hamas prisoners.) One way of looking at it is that one Israeli woman is worth fifty Hamas males!

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
January 26, 2025 6:57 am
Reply to  mem

One Israeli is worth more than 1.92 billion muzzies. They are a stain on humanity.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
January 26, 2025 5:59 am
Louis Litt
Louis Litt
January 27, 2025 9:38 pm
Reply to  Steve trickler

Hey Steve
keep listing but superwoman is getting less and less funny.

Bungonia bee
Bungonia bee
January 26, 2025 7:00 am

The thin majority in the House made me wonder if there was still some fiddling going on. This article at American Thinker gets right into it, and other machinations only possible with electronic voting machines. It’s a very sordid story.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/why_didn_t_the_democrats_steal_the_2024_presidential_election.html

Rosie
Rosie
January 26, 2025 7:02 am
Bespoke
Bespoke
January 26, 2025 9:02 am
Reply to  Rosie

Cheers

Beertruk
January 26, 2025 7:08 am

Eye surgery went well on last Monday.
I was told that by the nurse and the specialist when I saw them the next day for the post op check.
At one point Monday night / Tuesday morning I was wondering whether I had done the right thing. A leftover endone from last years knee replacement surgery helped. A lot.
It was a matter of ‘weathering the storm.’
The left eye is now getting it’s turn in the middle of next month.
I would like to thank everyone for their kind words and advice on last Monday’ s Open Thread.

Eyrie, the lenses are optimised for long distance.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
January 26, 2025 7:16 am
Reply to  Beertruk

Great news Beery. I can tell you now about my friend who had eye surgery a year ago. Had a stroke which has affected the now good eye and can’t drive.

Eyrie
Eyrie
January 26, 2025 8:27 am
Reply to  Beertruk

Excellent, Beertruk.

Louis Litt
Louis Litt
January 26, 2025 11:01 pm
Reply to  Beertruk

Hey Beertruk
well done – query how is the knee and would you recommend it.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
January 26, 2025 7:10 am

Muslims being muslims.

Exposed: ‘Untouchable’ Muslim prison ‘Brotherhood’ and their ‘black book hit-list’ (Express, 25 Jan)

A “brotherhood” of Muslim gangs has established a stranglehold of Britain’s highest security prisons, the Sunday Express can today reveal.

Extremist preachers Anjem Chowdary and Abu Qatada, whose hateful sermons encouraged attacks like the 7/7 London bombings, were allegedly among the first jailhouse leaders, known as “emirs”.

It is claimed they used incarceration as an opportunity to recruit vulnerable young men and groom them for violence.

With the number of Muslim inmates having risen from about 8% of the total population in 2002 to 18% last year, new prisoners in some jails have been told to “convert or get hurt”, according to a 2023 government report.

By using contraband phones, Muslim gangs have shared the names of enemies to attack, with targets said to include anti-Islam campaigner Tommy Robinson and the leaders of white prison gangs like Liverpudlian gangsters Richard Caswell or Chris Ashton.

As usual the authorities are pussyfooting around this issue. We probably don’t have quite the same problem, yet, since there are fewer muslims in our country, although it has taken root at the Goulburn Supermax.

Zippster
Zippster
January 26, 2025 10:19 am

the only appropriate response to islam is an absolute iron fist

Kel
Kel
January 26, 2025 7:14 am

Filed under i kid you not…

?PING… PING… PONG Navy bosses feared ‘suspicious pings’ were Russian drones targeting UK nuclear subs – but it was really a farting whale

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/32995393/navy-fears-russian-drones-farting-whale/

Eyrie
Eyrie
January 26, 2025 8:32 am
Reply to  Kel

Possibly Russian trained whales.

Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 7:27 am
Nelson_Kidd-Players
Nelson_Kidd-Players
January 26, 2025 1:10 pm
Reply to  Indolent

As featured in TWiP. Perhaps the Orange One is a fan. 🙂

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
January 26, 2025 7:31 am

Triggs gets an AO.
There you were thinking you’d seen the last of the old parasite.

flyingduk
flyingduk
January 26, 2025 10:42 am
Reply to  Farmer Gez

Triggs gets an AO.

I am surprised there were any left after the epidemiologists and other ‘experts’ got theirs….

And yes, before you say it, I am still smarting after missing out *again* this year…..

Last edited 18 days ago by flyingduk
Old Lefty
Old Lefty
January 26, 2025 2:12 pm
Reply to  Farmer Gez

Pass the sick bags please!

Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 7:34 am
Beertruk
January 26, 2025 7:38 am

Enjoying the moment:

Australia-Day_Lads_1
Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 26, 2025 11:16 am
Reply to  Beertruk

Get that flag off the ground, mate!

KevinM
KevinM
January 26, 2025 7:42 am

Is it hot enough in your neck of the woods?
Jolliffe.

jol
Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 7:42 am
Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 7:43 am
Miltonf
Miltonf
January 26, 2025 7:44 am

Triggs gets an AO.

more proof that AOs are just gewgaws for the marxist, tax leaching canbra establishment. No decent man or woman would want one. One of fouler of the foul too.

Rockdoctor
Rockdoctor
January 26, 2025 8:00 am
Reply to  Miltonf

Zactly. The whole honours & awards system discredited unfortunately.

Foxbody
Foxbody
January 26, 2025 9:59 am
Reply to  Rockdoctor

When I see a grifter labelled Aunty Dr Professor AO, I think of those North Korean army officers with medals down to their pants.

flyingduk
flyingduk
January 26, 2025 10:45 am
Reply to  Rockdoctor

FACTCHECK – TRUE.

Sadly there are few truly worthy recipients anymore – think the secretary of the country footy club who washed the gurnseys, baked the scones and kept score for 47 years.

KevinM
KevinM
January 26, 2025 7:49 am

I have been accused of posting pictures of scantily clad women.
To my recollection, I never did but to put up an opposing view to the ‘cute owls’ here is my contribution.

——————

Christiane Martel, born Christiane Magnani on January 18, 1932, in Paris, is a French actress and former beauty queen who won the title of Miss Universe in 1953.

She made history by winning the second edition of the pageant, held in Long Beach, California, becoming the first representative from France to achieve this victory.

Her triumph in the United States was celebrated enthusiastically in her home country, propelling her to fame. Martel quickly became a sought-after face for magazine covers, advertising campaigns, and interviews, not only in

France but also across Europe and the U.S. This recognition opened doors to a film career, leading her to work in Hollywood, Italy, and Mexico.

According to the French magazine Gala, she appeared in 26 films between 1954 and 1962, including This Is Paris (1955) alongside Tony Curtis. Martel also shared the screen with notable figures like Cantinflas, Silvia Pinal, and Maria Félix, concluding her cinematic journey in 1962.

chris
Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 7:52 am
KevinM
KevinM
January 26, 2025 7:53 am

Happens to all of us.
Sometimes we get it wrong, sadly.

Not me, she is still putting up with me.
I often question her sanity.

474673577_122198168972217444_6305184345659727927_n
Makka
Makka
January 26, 2025 7:57 am

NYT:

C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins

Another win for the conspiracy theorists.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/politics/cia-covid-lab-leak.html

Last edited 18 days ago by Makka
Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 8:01 am
KevinM
KevinM
January 26, 2025 8:01 am

Why do i see Putin there?
Time traveler.
——-

Amazing artist! Surely beats the banana stuck to the wall with sticky tape

1434 – and you have to think, “Someone cut hairs off an animal and hand-made his brushes…and used a mortar and pestle to grind the right color minerals to make his paints…and he was able to paint detail like THIS!”

The Arnolfini Portrait is an oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, dated 1434 and now in the National Gallery, London.

The man is grasping the woman’s right hand with his left, which is the basis for the controversy.

Some scholars like Jan Baptist Bedaux and Peter Schabacker argue that if this painting does show a marriage ceremony, then the use of the left hand points to the marriage being morganatic and not clandestine.
————
More here.
Look at the arnolfini portrait mirror close up

amal2
Eyrie
Eyrie
January 26, 2025 8:44 am
Reply to  Indolent

No he isn’t. He’s just getting Iran to do his wetwork on these traitors, if indeed there is anything to the Iran threat.

calli
calli
January 26, 2025 8:05 am

Happy Australia Day!

The kids and grandees are off to the beach this morning while I cook a leg of lamb for lunch. Doing it greek style with lemon and garlic and herbs. Pav for dessert, natch. Flags on the table, but forgot to get the little flag toothpicks from the Dollar shop. Next year.

Not sure if the golfers have organised the Australia Day cart parade. One of the Beloved’s mates has so many flags on his cart it looks like a man-o-war in full sail!

I love Australia Day. Celebrate a place where a dreadful punishment transformed into a great opportunity, regardless of deadbeats and pseuds.

Have fun guys!

Pogria
Pogria
January 26, 2025 9:13 am
Reply to  calli

God Bless, Calli.

KevinM
KevinM
January 26, 2025 8:06 am

All Our Yesterdays: restored images of early South Australia.
Les Peters. 

“Eudunda Railway Station and wood yard in about 1904- loading wood from horse drawn wagon into railway carriages – note photographer with his camera and tripod on the left in front of the wood pile.”
——————

More here.

KevinM
KevinM
January 26, 2025 8:07 am

Oops missed the pic again, twitchy fingers.

wood
Louis Litt
Louis Litt
January 26, 2025 8:08 am

Happy Australia Day everyone.
Lovethe day – the sunshine, the warmth, the beach , the bbq and a get together.Oh yes – beer ? -bought this balter styled beer – it’s a bit too lite with min taste.
I sticking to Pure Blonde – I drink it with my longboard which I have not stood on in 30 yrs in the back yard.

Tom
Tom
January 26, 2025 8:08 am

I’m listening to Albo being given a soft interview on Sky News by Andrew Clennell so you don’t have to. Precis: Dutton Dutton Dutton. He’s got nothing.

calli
calli
January 26, 2025 8:11 am
Reply to  Tom

Elbow’s got nuttin’ but Duttin, Duttin, Duttin!

😀

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
January 26, 2025 8:15 am
Reply to  Tom

He’s learned nothing either.

Close parallel with the US where the Dems were Trump, Trump, Trump and the voters were ouch my wallet is burning.

Zippster
Zippster
January 26, 2025 10:40 am

dumber than a box of rox

Lee
Lee
January 26, 2025 12:26 pm
Reply to  Tom

Always been very unimpressed with Clennell after he bagged Trump when he’d only been in office five minutes in 2017.

Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 8:08 am

How sad is it that Trump had to be elected to free people praying in the street. That pretty much says it all about the previous administration.

Trump’s Pardon Of Pro-Life Prisoners Alone Makes The Movement’s Votes For Him Worth It

Louis Litt
Louis Litt
January 26, 2025 8:12 am

Blackball
Bournemouth – what a result.
Wolves just fell short and who can pick Bwighton.
Moyes doing his stuff at the club he feels at home at.
Championship – hull thumped Sheffield utd who bough in players, sunderland drew with Pompey, middelborogh crash while west broom and Norwich thump their opposition.
Nots County and Carlisle are steady

Black Ball
Black Ball
January 26, 2025 9:24 am
Reply to  Louis Litt

Aye Louis. Just caught up on them now.

KevinM
KevinM
January 26, 2025 8:14 am

Happy Australia day, from a farmer.

Pogria
Pogria
January 26, 2025 9:14 am
Reply to  KevinM

That is awesome Kevin. Thanks for posting it.

Last edited 18 days ago by Pogria
Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 8:15 am
lotocoti
lotocoti
January 26, 2025 8:17 am

FFS.
Anyone with the slightest sense of honour would’ve declined.

Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 8:24 am
Miltonf
Miltonf
January 26, 2025 8:25 am

Canbra parasites peeing in each other’s pockets. The pubic serpent medal sounds like a sick joke.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
January 26, 2025 8:25 am

Karen gets to speak to the manager…

Watch: Trump Destroys LA Mayor To Her Face During Wild Press Conference Spat (26 Jan)

President Donald Trump slammed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) and other Democrat public officials during a Friday press conference in Pacific Palisades to discuss the damage from the recent fires.

It’s a fun read, and the photo is sweet dessert – the body language and Trump’s MAGA hat are delicious!

Rockdoctor
Rockdoctor
January 26, 2025 8:29 am

Morn all.

Woken at 4am to claps of thunder. Unfortunately stayed off shore . Humid morning.

Flags about to go out. BBQ at the ready.

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
January 26, 2025 8:35 am

Still giving out gongs for the Covid shit show.
A little statue of Fauci should accompany the award – with a little red flag lapel pin.

Tom
Tom
January 26, 2025 8:40 am

By my calculation, Andrew Clennell’s Sky News interview with Albo ran 36 minutes with not a single interruption. It was like something you’d see on the ABC: Clennell donated half an hour-plus of Sky News’s airtime to the ALP re-election campaign.

Last edited 18 days ago by Tom
Rockdoctor
Rockdoctor
January 26, 2025 9:21 am
Reply to  Tom

Saw it then zappped it. Couldn’t care less what Albo has to say and over last few days over Sky news plugs for him.

cohenite
January 26, 2025 10:16 am
Reply to  Tom

Clennell is a fat faced bastard. He’s near the top of media shits I’d like 5 minutes alone with.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
January 26, 2025 10:41 am
Reply to  cohenite

What are you doing with the other 4:50 minutes. You could show him some cute owls.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
January 26, 2025 8:41 am

Switzerland seems to have remarkable success in getting agreements to deport country shoppers to their home countries.

Switzerland Achieves Highest Deportation Rate In Europe In 2024 (25 Jan)

Switzerland is excelling at removing immigrants slated for deportation, achieving the highest rate in Europe in 2024 with a 60 percent deportation rate and boosting its own progress by 18 percent over 2023.

Couldn’t possibly be because all those various despots have nice juicy numbered Swiss bank accounts that they really don’t want to lose, now could it?

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
January 26, 2025 9:49 am

Nuffink to do wif bank accounts.
Switzerland has the most rigid, clear and easily enforced immigration laws of almost any country in the world, and certainly in Europe.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
January 26, 2025 10:49 am
Reply to  Sancho Panzer

Thancho all it takes is some enthusiasm to enforce any laws. The Swiss government like any government is trying to move left while not being victims of referenda, designed to keep them in line.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
January 26, 2025 10:42 am

You’ve said it all.

Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 8:44 am

Trump found time to for a rally in Vegas.

Trump holds a rally in Las Vegas after inauguration

Cassie of Sydney
January 26, 2025 8:55 am

In Islamist UK, young ‘migrant’ males, mainly illegals from the Middle East, are increasingly found loitering outside primary schools taking pictures of young indigenous boys and girls.

Ya see, they like em young! But that’s okay folks, coz diversity is our strength!

Boambee John
Boambee John
January 26, 2025 9:04 am

Good usage of “indigenous”.

Lee
Lee
January 26, 2025 12:31 pm

And if Herr Stürmer has his way, you’ll spend time in the pokey for noticing it if you’re a Brit.

Crossie
Crossie
January 26, 2025 1:30 pm
Reply to  Lee

You mean if you are indigenous?

Aaron
Aaron
January 26, 2025 1:56 pm

Trying stir up trouble, then scream “Racist”.

Old Lefty
Old Lefty
January 26, 2025 2:18 pm

Taking up where the ABC’s pet pervert Richard Neville left off!

Boambee John
Boambee John
January 26, 2025 9:03 am

A poem for Oz Day.

Two arms, two hands, two steely bands,

Beneath the Southern Cross I stands,

A sprig of wattle in me hand,

Symbol of me native land,

Orstrailia, you bloody beauty,

So up the old red rooster,

And more beer!

JC
JC
January 26, 2025 9:08 am

There’s no longer anonymity holding a Swiss bank account. The US and EU destroyed the practice.
Generally, you get as much privacy holding a Swiss bank account as you do in other western countries. The Bank of Newcastle offers more anonymity.

Some Swiss banks still offer numbered accounts, but their prevalence and the level of anonymity they provide have significantly diminished in recent years. Numbered accounts are identified by a unique number rather than the account holder’s name, adding an extra layer of privacy. However, the bank retains records of the client’s identity to comply with international banking regulations. 

In the past, numbered accounts were synonymous with Swiss banking secrecy. Today, due to global initiatives promoting financial transparency and combating tax evasion, many Swiss banks have ceased offering new numbered accounts. Some institutions continue to service existing numbered accounts but refrain from establishing new ones. 

For those banks that still provide numbered accounts, clients must undergo rigorous verification processes and demonstrate the lawful origin of their assets. It’s important to note that while these accounts offer enhanced privacy, they are not entirely anonymous. The bank maintains detailed records of the account holder’s identity, which can be disclosed under specific legal circumstances. 

In summary, while numbered accounts are still available in Switzerland, their usage and the degree of confidentiality they offer have been significantly curtailed due to evolving international financial regulations.

Last edited 18 days ago by JC
johnjjj
johnjjj
January 26, 2025 11:16 am
Reply to  JC

This was a big benefit to Dubai as their accounts are secret. I was told this by the locals.

Nelson_Kidd-Players
Nelson_Kidd-Players
January 26, 2025 9:19 am

Happy ‘French missed the boat’ day!

😉

hzhousewife
hzhousewife
January 26, 2025 9:26 am

bugga – we could have been drinking better wine !

flyingduk
flyingduk
January 26, 2025 10:49 am
Reply to  hzhousewife

Reminds me of the Dutch faux pas – turned up in WA, looked around, said ‘nah, nothing here’ and sailed off to Indonesia.

Roger
Roger
January 26, 2025 9:30 am

Why Joe Biden Had to Pardon Anthony Fauci

Mises Wire, Connor O’Keeffe, 22 January 2025

On Monday, in their final hours in office, former President Biden’s team chose to issue a blanket pardon to a number of close political allies and family members. Among that group was former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci.

Fauci was pardoned “for any offense against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through the date of [the] pardon” relating in any way to his time as NIAID Director, on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, the White House covid-19 response team, or as Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor.

In the letter explaining the pardons, Biden defended the choice, saying, “baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.” Even when those individuals have done nothing wrong, Biden’s ghostwriters reason, “the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.”

Setting aside the fact that this was the exact tactic the political establishment used to try and tarnish Trump’s reputation, it’s revealing that the primary public reason presented for the pardons was to avoid investigations.

There are, of course, plenty of unseemly details about Fauci’s career that the political establishment would not like to see resurface in either the court of law or the court of public opinion. Many were detailed in RFK Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci, such as the secretive and deadly drug experiments on hundreds of HIV-positive foster children at New York City’s Incarnation Children’s Center between 1988 and 2002 and the experiment that locked the heads of Beagle puppies into cages full of flesh-eating insects.

If Fauci had come under the federal government’s microscope, episodes like those could have done much to stain the name of the man Biden recently dubbed “a true hero.”

The same goes for Fauci’s completely inaccurate projection of the danger posed by a strain of swine flu in the 1970s, along with the millions of dollars of damages the government had to pay out due to injuries sustained in the related swine flu vaccine experiments.

Fauci also made similar failed projections relating to the 2005 bird flu, the 2009 swine flu, and the 2016 Zika virus. In all these cases, the virus was nowhere near as dangerous as Fauci had claimed it would be. But his warnings did result in his department and other parts of Washington’s public health bureaucracy getting billions of dollars in new funding.

Of course, these episodes pale in comparison to what Fauci is now most famous for: overseeing the covid pandemic.

Early on, Fauci famously explained on TV that cloth masks cannot stop people infected with covid from filling the air around them with virus particles. He then completely reversed his stance and advocated for universal masking and government mask mandates.

He later claimed his earlier comments on television had been lies meant to trick the public into not buying masks to protect the supply of masks for healthcare workers who, in fact, used a different kind of mask. He then acted confused when much of the public stopped trusting him.

Fauci also went on record in early April 2020 calling for nationwide lockdowns—something he would later deny doing. When some states like Florida started to reopen months later, Fauci warned the governors they were taking “a really significant risk.”

It quickly became obvious to anyone who was actually looking that Fauci was completely wrong about the effectiveness of masking and lockdowns. But Fauci ignored the data and kept pushing for these measures into 2021, after the vaccines had become available.

Another fact that had become obvious early in the pandemic was that children posed little risk of contracting and spreading covid. Yet, Fauci pushed for school closures and later school masking long after both were clearly shown to be unnecessary.

Finally, Fauci made several high-profile claims about the covid vaccines that would quickly prove false.

But making bad projections and giving bad advice isn’t a crime. So why was the political class worried about Fauci being investigated by the Department of Justice? Because a federal investigation would likely have related to the speculation that Fauci played a role in bringing the pandemic about in the first place.

One controversial method for studying viruses involves artificially making the virus more transmissible or virulent. This so-called “gain-of-function” research allows for virus mutation or possible treatments to be analyzed much more quickly, but it brings the risk of a much more dangerous genetically-engineered virus infecting people if a sample leaks out.

We know that an NGO that gets funding from Fauci’s department bankrolled gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the laboratory in Wuhan, China, in 2017 and 2018. And that the same NGO had received federal funding while conducting gain-of-function research going back to 2014, when a three-year ban on using federal funds for such experiments had been implemented and when Fauci’s pardon happens to come into effect.

While there is no evidence that these experiments are related to the coronavirus that would eventually spread out of Wuhan in late 2019 and early 2020, there is still much we do not know about the extent of US involvement in similar experiments at the Wuhan lab around the time covid started to spread.

That fact, paired with the panicked and secretive behavior of Fauci and his colleagues after the first reports of covid started to emerge, has raised suspicion about the possibility of US government involvement in covid’s origin. Biden’s DOJ refused to investigate these matters. But after Senator Rand Paul got Fauci to explicitly deny, under oath, that his department had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, an investigation into the truth of the claim to determine if Fauci had committed perjury remained a possibility.

That was until Biden pardoned him Monday morning.

A federal investigation would have all but forced the media to revisit many of Fauci’s unseemly actions, failures, and possible crimes. That would have been uncomfortable for a political establishment that has embraced and celebrated Fauci for decades.

But the real danger of a high-profile Fauci investigation, from the political class’s perspective, would come if the public started to ask themselves why a bureaucrat with such a long track record of failure was embraced and celebrated by those in power. And why he enjoyed so much professional success before retiring with a net worth of more than $11 million.

Such questions could lead people to consider that maybe the decades of mistakes that transferred hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to public health agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and the crony healthcare system as a whole were not mistakes after all. That, perhaps, the federal public health apparatus is nothing more than a racket and that officials are professionally rewarded, not for keeping us safe, but for protecting and expanding that racket.

Those are the questions that could well have arisen had a federal investigation prompted a retrospective and examination of the career and conduct of Anthony Fauci. And that is why Biden had no choice but to pardon him.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
January 26, 2025 9:34 am

Like the Voice referendum the hysterical howling about Australia Day is having the exact opposite effect the activists were hoping for.

‘National pride’: Interest in Aus Day celebrations up ‘tenfold’ (Tele mainpage headline, paywalled)

The hospitality industry reports a huge Australia Day resurgence with pubs, clubs, boats and restaurants to pack out this long weekend as people are “voting with their stomachs” on whether to celebrate the day.

Fringe benefit of this is all those foreign-owned pubs who said they wouldn’t celebrate Australia Day are going be sadly rather empty. GWGB.

Black Ball
Black Ball
January 26, 2025 9:35 am

Piers Akerman in the Daily Telegraph:

US President Donald Trump has rendered the Albanese government’s policies dangerously irrelevant.

In less than a week, Trump’s unleashed a tsunami of change that will leave nations which don’t ride on this wave stranded – and broke.

Slashing red tape across all US government departments will save Americans billions but our Green-Left government is still pouring kerosene on the inflationary fire it lit.

The cost of Australia’s absolutely senseless emissions reduction scheme and intermittent solar and wind power jumped by $4bn in the past three days even as Trump pulled the US out of the Paris agreement which has all but killed manufacturing here.

In the past week, Australians forked out $2bn to keep our aluminium industry afloat and another $2bn to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Albanese and his climate change clown, Chris Bowen, promised Australians cheaper electricity but these subsidies will only add to power prices.

Australians are losing their jobs and paying more to make a handful of Teal supporters and Green-Left activists feel virtuous.

Australia contributes just over 1 per cent of the global CO2 emissions; China, the US and India are the whales (Russia is in fourth place), but we are meant to suffer so Albo and his mates can strut the global stage.

What a joke.

The $1bn-plus-a-year ABC is running a protection racket for Labor and the Greens with its frequent claims that last year was the hottest on record without mentioning that the record doesn’t (a) go far back and (b) that, internationally, meteorological bureaus have changed their methodology, tilting the numbers from new recording stations in favour of the direst forecasts.

The ABC is so busily trying to pump up the government’s rapidly deflating tyres that its international affairs correspondent John Lyons even called commercial broadcaster 2GB to promote a meeting between senior US officials with Foreign Minister Penny Wong and our hapless Ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd.

According to top-rating and respected radio host Ben Fordham, Lyons called to tell him that Wong and Rudd had visited the White House and met with Trump National Security Adviser Mike Waltz before meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

This, Lyons told Fordham, “flies in the face of those who said Australia and Rudd would be frozen out”.

What Lyons omitted to mention was that the meeting was scheduled and that US officials also met with the Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and the Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar because Japan, India and Australia are all part of the Quad security group.

Further, the US State Department dealt with the meeting in a brief general two paragraph release which broke no new ground.

The ABC (and, predictably, SBS) are preoccupied with other Trump initiatives as they pander to their dwindling audiences.

Trump’s declaration that there are only two sexes, as is biologically true, and his excision of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and every federal employee responsible for such humbug, has the cross-dressers in a tizz.

Adding nuclear to our energy mix would also be a prudent move. Nuclear power supplied 24 per cent of Europe’s energy last year, safely and reliably.

Fortunately, one of the truly great and uniting signs is the growing support for Australia Day.

We are the luckiest people on earth but we must protect and build on the freedoms we have been gifted.

With an election due before the end of May, let’s Make Australia Great Again.

Didn’t Albo say there were great discussions that the Wong Chap was engaged in? In depth? Wouldn’t have thought a two paragraph release would fit an in depth discussion.
And $2b for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation? What the actual phuck is their existence based on?

Boambee John
Boambee John
January 26, 2025 11:45 am
Reply to  Black Ball

Money laundering to maaates.

Black Ball
Black Ball
January 26, 2025 9:39 am

Have a great day everyone. Alas my day has been ruined by having to play bowls rather than go fishing.
My son caught a cod on Thursday, 72 cms which had him rather excited.
First beer about to be cracked before the commencement of proceedings.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
January 26, 2025 10:57 am
Reply to  Black Ball

You’ve got a fisherman for life there BB.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
January 26, 2025 10:58 am
Reply to  GreyRanga

If they’re fishing they’re not getting into trouble by being idle.

Rockdoctor
Rockdoctor
January 26, 2025 11:38 am
Reply to  Black Ball

Noice fish. Will tip my glass to you from NQ..

Stormy day here, perfect wet season beer weather. Just need a storm to hit.

Indolent
Indolent
January 26, 2025 9:47 am
Bespoke
Bespoke
January 26, 2025 9:52 am

Happy Australia

Thank you for opportunities iv been given.
Thanks to all the Australians who made this possible though personal sacrifice and determination.
From the local volunteers to those that made the ultimate sacrifice.
Thank you.

To the individual Australians that have lifted me up when I was down, stood next to me in the darkest of times.

My deepest gratitude

Yours truly
Bespoke.

Last edited 18 days ago by Bespoke
Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 26, 2025 12:05 pm
Reply to  Bespoke

It’s your shout, Bespoke – and hurry up about it. 🙂

Castlemaine-XXXX-Bitter-Ale-Empty-Steel-Beer-Can
Bespoke
Bespoke
January 26, 2025 12:51 pm
Reply to  Winston Smith

Cheers

1000004089
Delta A
Delta A
January 26, 2025 1:58 pm
Reply to  Bespoke

Nice post, Bespoke.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
January 26, 2025 9:53 am

Early morning coffee on the verandah, and Alan Dershowitz’s book “The Case Against Israel’s Enemies.

Dershowitz makes the claim that the Palestinian people probably have the most ineffective national liberation front of the twentieth century. He devotes space to the one time official leader of the Palestinians Haj – Amin al – Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin, with Hitler, serving as a “consultant on the Jewish question.” He was taken on a tour of Auschwitz by Himmler and expressed support for the mass murder of European Jews. He also sought ‘to solve the problems of the Jewish element in Palestine, and “other Arab “countries” by employing the “same methods” being used “in the Axis countries.(Page 197.)

alwaysright
alwaysright
January 26, 2025 9:53 am

Trump Grills LA Mayor In Fiery Clash On Wildfire

Throw another one on the barbie!

Tom
Tom
January 26, 2025 10:00 am

According to top-rating and respected radio host Ben Fordham, (the ABC’s John) Lyons called to tell him that Wong and Rudd had visited the White House and met with Trump National Security Adviser Mike Waltz before meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

This, Lyons told Fordham, “flies in the face of those who said Australia and Rudd would be frozen out”.

What Lyons omitted to mention was that the meeting was scheduled and that US officials also met with the Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and the Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar because Japan, India and Australia are all part of the Quad security group.

So John Lyons, an ABC political reporter, has appointed himself chief propagandist for the Albanese government, phoning other media commentators to tell them what to write and broadcast about the regime.

You’ll recall that Lyons, when he was associate editor of The Australian a decade ago, accused Tony Abbott of secretly planning to invade Iraq.

Such was his ideological hatred of Abbott, Lyons simply made up the story to damage him. The Australian was severely embarrassed had to retract the “story”.

Shortly afterwards, Lyons left The Australian for the ABC which better reflected his bias.

Entropy
Entropy
January 26, 2025 10:17 am
Reply to  Tom

He was also a major promoter of the Israelis target Lebanese Red Cross ambulance with missile bullshit

Last edited 18 days ago by Entropy
Perplexed of Brisbane
Perplexed of Brisbane
January 26, 2025 12:25 pm
Reply to  Entropy

I read that said ambulance was transporting a hezbollah (?) official (much like UNWRA facilities and hospitals hiding terrorists in Gaza).

An Apache Longbow hovered in a valley and as the ambulance came closer, dispatched it with a hellfire missile.

What’s not to like?

Black Ball
Black Ball
January 26, 2025 10:03 am

What a contrast. Grace Tame and Neale Daniher.

Miltonf
Miltonf
January 26, 2025 11:42 am
Reply to  Black Ball

Tame makes me feel unclean

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
January 26, 2025 10:04 am

In which Australia and Britain invade Japan…

Major Aussie move sparks confusion in Japan (25 Jan)

On a recent business trip to Japan, this news.com.au reporter was given a recommendation on where to eat by an American public relations worker after a meeting.

I was told there was a “really good” Mexican place where you could get burritos, tacos and wash it down with an ice cold beer, and was given some instructions on where to find it.

We walked down the street and went to the first floor of a nearby food court — when familiar yellow branding and an image of two Mexican blokes confronted us.

We laughed, looked at each other and said “oh my God”.

The “authentic” Mexican place we had been recommended was Guzman y Gomez, an Aussie brand that is evidently making waves overseas.

Not put off by the revelation and too hungry to change course at this late juncture, we ordered burritos and cold beers. It was a little early so there wasn’t a major lunchtime rush, but there were a few local office workers tucking in around us.

Then came an influx of tourists, many of whom appeared to be American or Canadian, who like the locals, had no idea they were at an Aussie fast food chain.

Well done those Aussies. It may be fairly fake Mexican food but conquering Japan with it is awesome! Doesn’t stop there though:

While Aussie culture is making an impact in Japan through its cleverly-marketed Mexican fast food restaurants, British culture is also cementing its place in Tokyo.

The bustling Shibuya district is now home to dozens of British-style pubs that are often underground and serve up UK classics like bangers and mash alongside pints of Guiness.

The atmosphere inside can be pretty boisterous as locals get on the beers and practise their English with tourists and expats from around the world.

This news.com.au reporter was confronted by five Donald Trump supporters from the US (where else?).

They started chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump” and telling us about trans people in bathrooms as we sat at a table relaxing with gin and tonics.

Expecting some sort of outrage, we sat there unperturbed and they asked us where we were from.

They were pleasantly surprised when we told them we were from Australia.

“We like Australians,” one, a 40-year-old balloon artist from Los Angeles, told us. “They’re like British people, only they don’t act like they have a stick up their a** the whole time.”

I’m not sure which is better, that the Poms have somehow successfully introduced bangers and mash to Japan, or that there’re lots of MAGA supporters there chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump”.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
January 26, 2025 10:33 am

I would suggest that “this news.com.au reporter” knows f-ck all about Japan and fabricated 93.1% of that piece.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
January 26, 2025 10:58 am
Reply to  Sancho Panzer

Who cares? It was a fun read!

(I get a bit of Japanese culture from my brother, who is a Japanophile and fluent. And I like sushi! Ok, yes, bangers and mash too, although I’ve never tried GyG.)

Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
January 26, 2025 12:59 pm

although I’ve never tried GyG

Never do.
Tasteless slop.

Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, it stood out slightly from the fast food circus as ‘not awful’. Now a 100% product of food technologists and accountants.

Black Ball
Black Ball
January 26, 2025 10:08 am

Jacinta Price had a piece on Friday. Not sure it was posted but anyhoo:

This great sunburnt south land – sweeping and ragged with droughts and floods, has a lot to do with who we are.

Whether due to our vast size, climate, terrain or some of our more dangerous fauna, the Australian landscape presents challenges at almost every turn.

But in looking these squarely in the eye, we became a people of resilience, of courage and loyalty – to each other and this place to which we all belong.

While survival here was not a given, not only did we survive, but we thrived.

All throughout our history we learned courage, looking beyond the challenges presented by our country, to the opportunities it offered in equal measure. We grasped them with our hands, feet and every other part of ourselves, never shying away from gruelling and backbreaking work, we dug in.

And what emerged? A thriving country, successful both in material riches and the character of our people.

Survival in this land meant that no man could be an island. Acutely aware and respectful of what our land was capable of, we committed to sticking up and around for each other.

It’s often been out of painful moments that the depths of our mateship and loyalty emerged triumphant and became part of our identity.

Moments like that are all too familiar for my home of the Territory. We have seen no shortage of trial and tribulation, knowing what it is to be confronted by powerful opposition – both natural and man-made. The merciless destruction of Cyclone Tracy imprinted on our hearts and minds for half a century now. And though some 82 years in the past, the encounter of foreign attack in the bombing of Darwin lingers long in our consciousness.

Yet those events demonstrated and strengthened the kind of people we had and were becoming.

Rising to the seismic task of rebuilding our communities and dedicated to walking alongside each other, holding each other up, never leaving each other behind.

And these values continue with us – we don’t back down from hard yakka; we’re loyal to our mates and we help each other out. We keep a level playing field, and value each person equally in the eyes of the law. We hold each other to the same standard and afford preferential treatment to no one.

As my Indigenous heritage taught me, we all belong to this place equally. Regardless of race or heritage, your conception on this land means you belong to it. Everyone gets the opportunity to pitch in to this place we call home, and gets the loyalty of mateship in faithful return.

What our people endured and who they became has flowed down through the generations. Who they are has been imprinted in us. Like the red dust of the desert that has settled in me, what made our forebears succeed has settled in us.

Whether born here or voluntarily having bought in for better or worse, we should be proud of our inclusion in the magnificent tapestry that is our landscape and identity.

We know how important these values are to our thriving and success, and we must not take them for granted. In truth, while they have travelled down our lines of history, they are not guaranteed – they can be lost. So we must cling to our values and identity as we approach the coming challenges. And, if we ever forget, we need just to look up and look around, because this great sunburnt south land – sweeping and ragged with droughts and floods, has a lot to do with who we are.

cohenite
January 26, 2025 10:10 am
Reply to  Black Ball

I love Jacinta.

Beertruk
January 26, 2025 10:32 am
Reply to  cohenite

Same same.

bons
bons
January 26, 2025 11:13 am
Reply to  Black Ball

C’mon Dutton get her upfront as your campaign partner.

Foxbody
Foxbody
January 26, 2025 2:23 pm
Reply to  bons

… but don’t you dare expect her to carry you.
Take the hard decisions, Pete – you will be rewarded.

cohenite
January 26, 2025 10:08 am

Great WIP.

If we thought krudd was the worst ambassador to Trump then the UK has gone one better with the execrable pig faced starmer sending an absolute monster to represent the brits:

Here’s Why Trump MUST Reject Britain’s Epstein And China-Linked Ambassador, ‘Prince of Darkness’ Peter Mandelson. – The National Pulse

In other news sections of the msm are maintaining their TDS; Brent bultitude,a hack on 2SM just delivered a tirade about Trump’s unpredictability and bull in a china shop, and his madness in leaving the paris fuking accord. Bultitude is also an alarmist. Photo of the supercilious prick:

Brent Bultitude – Sydney’s 2SM 1269

Miltonf
Miltonf
January 26, 2025 10:32 am
Reply to  cohenite

Who listens to 2SM anyway? Rock of the80s is a long time ago. Geez, I looked at your link- what a pusti mulaka.

cohenite
January 26, 2025 10:41 am
Reply to  Miltonf

They have a large audience in the over 50 bracket who typically decide elections. They’re an important msm outlet for that reason. On the bright side they have Chris Smith from 9am to midday during the week. Smith is anti-woke, anti global boiling and treats the liars and the filth as the scum they are. On bultitude’s plus side he has Mark Latham on every Sunday morning. Latham is the best retail pollie currently in Australia.

Miltonf
Miltonf
January 26, 2025 11:49 am
Reply to  cohenite

Fair enough- honestly I thought they’d gone the way of 2CH.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 26, 2025 12:16 pm
Reply to  cohenite

What a smug looking prick.
I took one look and wanted to give him a damn good push.

Lee
Lee
January 26, 2025 12:37 pm
Reply to  cohenite

Brent who?

Seriously, never heard of him.

Dunny Brush
Dunny Brush
January 26, 2025 12:46 pm
Reply to  cohenite

Starmer does bear a striking resemblance to John Pork. Well done.

caveman
caveman
January 26, 2025 10:14 am
Reply to  Indolent

Like churches.

calli
calli
January 26, 2025 10:19 am
Reply to  Indolent

The commenters appear to be…unhappy.

Such a cultured and erudite lot too. 😀

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 26, 2025 12:20 pm
Reply to  calli

It were my thought too.
They’re losing their ability to foist ugly as shit New Age buildings on us.
Up their collective arses – they don’t have a monopoly on public design.
I bet they have a DEI Office and are cranky that it has to be closed down.

Vicki
Vicki
January 26, 2025 10:19 am

We are in Sydney for this year’s Australia Day. We were appalled to note this morning that, in our drive through our suburb to the beach, our house was only one of two that we noted with an Australian flag.

When we reached the beach we did note a number of apartments with strings go flags attached. One of the two cafes where we have coffee decided to start to put up flags.

What is going on? I raised the matter with “coffee friends” and the belief was that people were scared of having their property damaged!!!! Good grief! Where is the brave, ocker Aussie anymore???? And what does this tell us about the quality of life in this country today? Or is it our particular area?

What I can recall – is that in years past there were numerous flags in our local suburban streets around here. Something has changed.

Incidentally, husband had an Aussie cap on – and immediately a bloke came up and approved of it – and he was a South African immigrant!!!

Beertruk
January 26, 2025 10:20 am

Apologies if someone has already been posted this:

Tuesday’s Daily Tele :

Happy Inauguration Day to all the haters and losers
 
The loser/hater community now faces an enemy who has become massively emboldened by that community’s own ruinous tactics. Trump’s foes are the authors of their own destruction, writes Tim Blair.

21 Jan 2025

It’s been the happiest week since the US election. And it may turn out to be the happiest week until the Australian election.

But even during this time of gleeful wonderment, please spare a thought for those less fortunate. Please think of the sad, desperate and broken who are unable to celebrate as we celebrate.

Please consider those who for years have been repeatedly, memorably and accurately described by President Donald Trump as “haters and losers”.

Even the man himself advises that we extend kindness to his enemies, so let’s follow the newly inaugurated US leader’s example.

“Every time I speak of the haters and losers I do so with great love and affection,” Trump announced online in 2014. “They cannot help the fact that they were born f–ked up!”

Exactly true. Medical science has all the evidence.

“Don’t feel so stupid or insecure,” Trump counselled in another message to his adversaries. “It’s not your fault.”

Besides a general empathy for our fellow humans, as hatey and loserish as they may be, there’s another reason for gentleness in the wake of Trump’s White House revival.

This is because the loser/hater community now faces an enemy who has become massively emboldened by that community’s own ruinous tactics. Trump’s foes are the authors of their own destruction.

At this point, it would be needlessly cruel to rub it in. But I will.

By pausing Trump’s presidency, they’ve increased his power. Even the jokers at CNN know it.

“Trump returns to the White House after four years away and has the chance to restock an entire governing team, set a new course and learn lessons from the past,” the Clown News Network reported last week.

“It’s more like another first term than a second one.”

It sure is. Second presidential terms are usually lame-duck affairs.

This, however, may be more of a wild eagle.

“What will he do with his do-over?” CNN’s pre-inauguration Trump analysis asked.

“Will it be more ‘American Carnage?’ Or will he try to broaden his appeal …?”

Sadly for the almost universally anti-Trump US media, the President’s appeal was obviously broadened in last year’s election result and broadens further still.

“A majority of Americans are optimistic about the next four years with Donald Trump, even more so than they were in 2017 before his first term,” a CBS News poll found on Monday. “And most are hopeful about the coming year.”

The most hopeful of them all, impressively, were in the youngest voting cohort. Americans aged between 18 and 29 came in at a hefty 67 per cent when asked if they were optimistic about the next four years under Trump.

The numbers tail off as voters get older, with enthusiasm among the 65-plus crowd still positive at 51 per cent. But don’t dismiss that earlier figure. Trump has got the kids on board, which is a gigantic turnaround.

Meanwhile, some among Trump’s relatively youthful political opposition now sound battle-soured and ancient. “We are on the eve of an authoritarian administration,” far-left Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whined online.

“This is what 21st century fascism is starting to look like.”

That’s precisely the sort of crazy commie talk that got Trump
re-elected in the first place.

Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow Democrats spent practically the entire 2024 presidential campaign demonising Trump as a Hitlerian demon creature, got completely smashed, yet are running with the same strategy in 2025.

Well, not all of them.

A few who were front and centre during 2017’s big anti-Trump rage festivals are now backing off.

“The time to express outrage in that way has passed,” Vanessa Wruble, an anti-Trump protest leader eight years ago who seems to have grown up.

Leftist outlet Politico recently reported: “When asked why she’s forgoing protesting this time around, Wruble said she’s ‘not that type of progressive anymore’ frustrated at what she views as a political left that is ‘completely cannibalising itself’.”

Chomp, chomp, chomp. Told you this was a week to be happy.

“Washington on the eve of Trump’s second inauguration feels very different than on the eve of his first,” wrote a wistful Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times.

“The bristling tension and angry defiance have given way to accommodation and submission. The Resistance of 2017 has faded into the Resignation of 2025.”

And with it may fade the wokeness that thrived in Trump’s absence.

In unrelated news, a convicted Virginia sex criminal who identifies as transgender has been charged with exposing himself in a girls’ high school locker room.

His name is Richard Cox.

Please do not laugh.

We’re not quite liberated from wokeness yet.

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
January 26, 2025 11:03 am
Reply to  Beertruk

Not quite liberated yet. But we’ve got the lefty loser loonies on the run.

Last edited 18 days ago by DrBeauGan
Miltonf
Miltonf
January 26, 2025 10:23 am

Home – Clean Energy Finance Corporation

Goes back to the Krudd/TLS era iirc. Usual gaggle of lawyers and pubic serpent mediocrities. The number of lawyers inflicted on this country, every year, at our expenses is scandalous (to put it politely).

Black Ball
Black Ball
January 26, 2025 10:43 am
Reply to  Miltonf

I see. Thank you sir.
Now only if we had a DOGE..

Miltonf
Miltonf
January 26, 2025 11:57 am
Reply to  Black Ball

Anytime BB. As well as pissing up our money against the wall, they also attack productive industries that actually give money its value.

Zippster
Zippster
January 26, 2025 10:46 am

The war was sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that killed around 1,200 people. The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 47,000 people in Gaza, according to local health authorities, which don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

only 47k?? need do better IDF!

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
January 26, 2025 11:09 am
Reply to  Zippster

Another zero would help the situation. Even then not enough.

Makka
Makka
January 26, 2025 12:41 pm
Reply to  Zippster

which don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Because they are one and the same.

Eyrie
Eyrie
January 26, 2025 10:53 am
Reply to  dover0beach

I don’t care if Trump claims Australia.

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
January 26, 2025 11:12 am
Reply to  Eyrie

If we get the US constitution I’d go for it.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 26, 2025 12:42 pm
Reply to  DrBeauGan

Me too.
I’d celebrate by buying a brace of AR15s and tearing up my Shooters Licence and Permit to Acquire.

JC
JC
January 26, 2025 1:14 pm
Reply to  Eyrie

What you care about is of no import because you’re cheap limy import. It’s scumbag imports like you why immigration should be curtailed. You have no love for the soil, so fck off back to where you came from.

calli
calli
January 26, 2025 11:01 am

The Loser/Hater Community

The LHC.

I like it!

Cassie of Sydney
January 26, 2025 11:10 am

From the Daily Telegraph…………

Hundreds of protesters have flocked to the Sydney CBD for an Invasion Day march to “stand up and be strong for our country”.

Dozens of police officers have surrounded the crowd in Belmore Park, the official starting point for the annual march.

Palestinian and Aboriginal flags are being flown in equal measure, with many attendees wearing keffiyehs.

I bet we’ll see more Pallie Nazi flags in the crowd than Abo flags.

Last edited 18 days ago by Cassie of Sydney
Lee
Lee
January 26, 2025 12:42 pm

Take the Palestinian Australia-haters at their words and actions and deport every last one of them.

I am dead serious.

You don’t see immigrants from any other region or country protesting against Australia.

Last edited 18 days ago by Lee
calli
calli
January 26, 2025 3:42 pm

Hundreds of protesters 

Hundreds.

*Burp*

Roger
Roger
January 26, 2025 11:15 am

Dozens of police officers have surrounded the crowd in Belmore Park, the official starting point for the annual march.

I trust the organisers will be billed for the police presence.

Cassie of Sydney
January 26, 2025 11:25 am

I trust the organisers will be billed for the police presence.

Oh gosh no, the NSW Plod only bill conservative conference organisers for requiring NSW police presence after the conservative conference is threatened with disruption and violence by Nazi leftists.

Nup, today’s policing bill will be passed onto the longsuffering NSW taxpayer, just like the NSW taxpayer has been forced to pay for the last 15 months of weekly Jew hating protests by Nazi Muslim and leftist scum.

Two tier policing. Two tier billing.

johanna
johanna
January 26, 2025 11:28 am

It is difficult to comprehend the attitude of people who think that Australia is a terrible place. Have none of them ever travelled (outside the five star hotel route) and seen how the majority of the world’s population lives?

Not only that, many of the wealthiest countries have lousy weather compared to ours, live in cramped conditions compared to ours, and are under the thumb of an intrusive State compared to ours. In other words, Europe and the UK may have the GDP, but not the lifestyle.

BTW, I have seen numerous cars, tradie vehicles and Harleys on the street in Queanbeyan today sporting Australian flags and related regalia. Despite the best efforts of the MSM, pride in our country is far from dead.

Happy Australia Day, everyone!

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
January 26, 2025 11:43 am
Reply to  johanna

That’s exactly why when I moved for work I chose to live in Queanbeyan not Canberra!

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
January 26, 2025 11:40 am

https://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d02c8d3ca3346200c-pi

All the usual wank about the oldest living culture on Earth.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
January 26, 2025 12:44 pm

Piss off Rabbitohs.