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Roadmap to a brave new enlightenment
Under the Gladys Berejiklian’s lauded dispensations, “Only fully vaccinated people and those with medical exemptions will have access to the freedoms allowed under the Reopening NSW roadmap.” For example, the Monday after the 70% target is reached, retail will be opened. Drool in envy Melbournians. If only Dan was so enlightened. If you doubt that tune…
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Interaction with a pleasant cop
I was pulled up by the police this morning for not wearing a mask. Walking down a lane at the back of the apartment building in which I live, I spotted a police car. The policemen looked directly at me. Unmasked, I looked back thinking I might be operating within the NSW law. I quite…
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Lockdowns our fault, apparently
“The reality is that we can’t live in lockdown forever. We have to live with Covid and that means getting vaccinated as quickly as possible.” Reportedly, said Josh Frydenberg, taking aim on Monday at Australians who refuse to get the jab. Of course, name most every politician and their media cheerleaders from the left or…
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Rights into the Covid dustbin
What does New York Mayor Bill De Blasio have in common with most right-of-centre commentators on, say, Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News Australia. To be fair, most everything is probably not the correct answer. However, what they do have in common is an appetite to relegate our inalienable or God-given rights to the category of privileges…
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Clinging to sanity, steeled by two young women
Don’t watch Gladys’s interminable daily Covid updates. Just clinging on to sanity as it is. But Bolt said again last evening that she was the best of the premiers. He showed a clip of her revealing to the hermit people of NSW that tens of people die of heart disease each day. Death is “horrible”…
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An idle hour in the Covid era
Went to my usual café this morning to buy a coffee. While waiting on a stool outside, sans mask, not even knowing whether that’s allowed or not, I asked the owner whether he’d yet had the jab. Just making conversation. He said he’s had the first one. AstraZeneca? I asked. Yes, he said. How was…
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When inalienable rights aren’t
It’s the exception that proves the rule is one of the more profound of expressions. Often misinterpreted. Replace ‘proves’ with its synonym ‘tests’, and its meaning becomes clear. It means, as Catallaxy readers would know, that if the rule breaks down in exceptional circumstances, then it isn’t a rule at all. It has a Popperian…
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Can no longer spot muppets
Living during lockdown in Sydney meant we didn’t have to wear masks outside. That important freedom distinguishing us from Melbourne. That ended ten days or so ago. Can’t remember what date. Days merge into days these days. I live in Gladys Berejiklian’s electorate. She’s obviously part of the overwhelmingly majority in her party; the new…
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Colour blind in the trenches
I was watching Fox News earlier today. The names of six of the thirteen American soldiers killed in Kabul had been revealed. Their names and pictures of them were shown. It was clear enough that of the six, five were white. Or so it appeared to me. Ordinarily, this would be a completely irrelevant observation.…
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We must trust the government
Our Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) said this in their latest weekly report dated 26 August: “Since the beginning of the vaccine rollout to 22 August 2021, over 17.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been given. So far, the TGA has found that 7 reports of deaths were linked to immunisation from 476 reports [of…