Tuesday Forum: December 25, 2012 at Catallaxy Files

Tuesday Forum: December 25, 2012

510 comments

Written by Sinclair Davidson

December 25th, 2012 at 9:45 am

Posted in Open Forum

510 Responses to 'Tuesday Forum: December 25, 2012'

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Merry Christmas everyone.

jupes

25 Dec 12 at 9:53 am
Merry Xmas.

Mark

25 Dec 12 at 9:54 am
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

perturbed

25 Dec 12 at 10:17 am
Can I just say, I like Hammy’s posts here at the Cat. I don’t even read the other trolls anymore, they are just annoying, but Hammy is as funny as fuck.

I think he even may be an Arlene. On each thread he will take the contrary view, delivered in strait forward, deadpan style.

Love your work mate. Keep it up.

jupes

25 Dec 12 at 10:19 am
A snippet of my favourite christmas movie for you today.

Enjoy, and if you’ve never seen We’re No Angels with Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray then you’ve been gypped.

nilk

25 Dec 12 at 10:23 am
I’m with you Jupes.

Hammy is like a negative universe, he’s the anti-matter to rhyme and reason.

.. and a happy festivus to all!

duncanm

25 Dec 12 at 10:30 am
Merry Christmas to all the Cats – especially our gracious hosts Sinclair and Jacques for allowing us all to come and play here.

Myrddin Seren

25 Dec 12 at 10:34 am
mare egrets-moose

stevo

25 Dec 12 at 10:43 am
Merry Christmas to all the Cats and particularly to the Sinc who is the lynchpin of this energetic, informative and irreverant site. Where would we be without it?

Lobster tails and champagne here, followed by big family crush tomorrow.

Judith Sloan

25 Dec 12 at 10:50 am
I have made the nicest eggnog I’ve ever drunk.

dover_beach

25 Dec 12 at 10:56 am
Ha!

Judith, I will see you your crayfish and champers, and raise you sliced mango with proscuitto and normal ham school prawns and Mount Gay extra-old rum – neat, no ice. (Champagne for the ladies)

Mk50 of Brisbane

25 Dec 12 at 11:03 am
Anyone who thinks Hammygar is for real should drink hemlock now.

It is impossible for anyone to be that loopy. It is done well, & can fool you for a short while, but anyone who didn’t pick up on it after a week or so needs help.

Steve at the pub

25 Dec 12 at 11:18 am
Merry Christmas from Houston, Texas!

Scott

25 Dec 12 at 11:44 am
(I put this on the other fred but worth re-posting here)

Sorry I can’t find an English translation, but if you can read French, this is probably the best open letter I’ve ever read.

From an actor, no less, in fierce defence of individual liberty, and against effectively paying 85% of his income int ax for France’s socialist government.

When French PM Jean-Marc Ayrault called Gérard Depardieu ‘shabby’ he took exception and wrote back to him as to exactly why he’s going to live in Belgium and renouncing his French citizenship. (The French make fun of the Belgians as hicks, so this is rather deliciously ironic)

A couple of snippets:

I’m giving up my passport and social security, which I’ve never used….
I’m leaving because you consider that success, talent, creativity, in fact any difference [between people] needs to be punished..

Bravo Gérard!

There’s a steady stream of successful French people doing the same, meaning the socialist welfare state will probably collape under its own weight.

papachango

25 Dec 12 at 11:50 am
Oh and Merry Christmas to all – especially Sinc for being such a generous host. And to Hammy for the sheer entertainment value…

Back to roasting the turkey breast and eye fillet… potatoes cooked in duck fat with garlic and parsley, as well as roasted eggplant, red onion, tomato & feta. Not to mention a whole stuffed pumpkin.

papachango

25 Dec 12 at 11:53 am
Ironically, the Stones fled to France in the early 70s to escape lunatic tax rates. At the rime, they owed the British Exchequer 90 percent of their income.

C.L.

25 Dec 12 at 11:55 am
time

C.L.

25 Dec 12 at 11:56 am
On Christmas Day we have a story little reported it seems:

On gun control, Obama’s record

shows an apparent lack of political will — until now … Yet, over four years in office, he took action on guns just once — signing a 2009 law allowing …
And Julia spoke mostly of her Christmas troubles while Tony spoke of other people’s efforts instead.

stackja

25 Dec 12 at 11:57 am
Merry Christmas and Happy 2013 to all the Cats!

2013 is going to be a wonderful year for all of us!

[Hint: Federal election year]

Kaboom

25 Dec 12 at 12:04 pm
Off to lunch now.

I’ll leave you with a reassuring essay from Anne Summers at the The Drum:

The Protector: Nicola Roxon.

C.L.

25 Dec 12 at 12:05 pm
At least you warned us CL…

papachango

25 Dec 12 at 12:12 pm
C.L.

That is a truly disgusting tongue-bath.

You have ruined my Xmas, thanks kindly….

Kaboom

25 Dec 12 at 12:15 pm
Merry Christmas to the Good Professor Sinclair, his stalwart helper Jaques and the rest of the Cats!

Very much looking forward to the next election!

Forester

25 Dec 12 at 12:20 pm
English Translation of Gerard’s letter to the Socialist French President and Treasurer

See first comment:

Link

Damn it’s hard to do links on an iPod Touch!

Forester

25 Dec 12 at 12:38 pm
Forwarded on behalf of Professor Richard Parncutt, Head of the Alois Shicklgruber Department of Systematic Musicology and Climate Change, University of Graz -

Merry 25th Day of December everyone but watch your backs in 2013

Grant B

25 Dec 12 at 12:50 pm
The Protector: Nicola Roxon.

Dear God. A lesbian love letter.

Infidel Tiger

25 Dec 12 at 1:18 pm
IT, it’s the giving season. Now we know what she really wants to give Juliar.

Professionally, she pretty obviously sees herself as the Australian Otto Georg Thierack… or perhaps more-hands-on in implementing Die Grüne Reich’s diktats, as Roland Freisler?

Mk50 of Brisbane

25 Dec 12 at 1:29 pm
Summers writes

Many observers regard Roxon’s legal pedigree as nonpareil.

based on two years as an associate to Gaudron J and a university medal.

In the real world that is worth shit.

Tiny Dancer

25 Dec 12 at 1:36 pm
Yes, remember Jacques the invisible Presence!

Like the garbos who you never see while they perform their essential service.

Wouldn’t mind putting a bottle of beer out for Jacques.

Poor Old Rafe

25 Dec 12 at 2:28 pm
The Protector. Helmet cut hair awaiting actual helmet.

blogstrop

25 Dec 12 at 3:27 pm
Nonpareil are those little colourful nothings you sprinkle on bread to make it into … Fairy Bread.

blogstrop

25 Dec 12 at 3:29 pm
Quelle horreur!
I’m not on the desmog list!

Louis Hissink

25 Dec 12 at 3:38 pm
I didn’t bother diving in too deep in that Anne Summers article.. but why is she so obsessed with what the players were wearing?

Misogynist!

duncanm

25 Dec 12 at 4:37 pm
I’ll leave you with a reassuring essay from Anne Summers at the The Drum.

It’s amazing that idiots like Summers don’t know when to pull their head in.

The twit has only recently had to apologise for not being quite factual in a story – the first one for her new e-zine which has the big headed byline of sane factual relevant – and now she’s writing utter drivel about the worst AG since Lionel Murphy.

She must live in a bubble of feminists who pat her on the back and tell her what a great job she is doing, when all she is really doing is beclowning herself.

jupes

25 Dec 12 at 4:51 pm
Don’t forget that Roxy picked that steaming hydatid infested turd of a file from S & G. Nothing suss in that pile ay Nicki ?

Pickles

25 Dec 12 at 5:16 pm
Ironically, the Stones fled to France in the early 70s to escape lunatic tax rates. At the rime, they owed the British Exchequer 90 percent of their income.

Michael Caine also fled the UK, as did many other Brit celebs.

Abu Chowdah

25 Dec 12 at 5:20 pm
Potemkin’s Village

One day’s delay is… here

Grigory Potemkin

25 Dec 12 at 5:23 pm
This little piece was written in response to the 90% tax rates in Britain:

Let me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet

Taxman!
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman

Don’t ask me what I want it for (Aahh Mr. Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more (Aahh Mr. Heath)
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

And you’re working for no one but me
Taxman!

Token

25 Dec 12 at 5:36 pm
Two posts from the ded fwed which I didn’t realise was ded (thanks Grigory) – btw the new threads are almost always invisible to me – using latest Firefox – until some hours later:

Gerard Depardieu is a remarkable chap. Ugly, huge and ungainly, he is nevertheless capable of being anything on screen – lover, villain, hero, fool. His Asterix movies are magnificent – but so are others where he has played hard-bitten cops and lovestruck idiots.

A while back, he was accused of behaving badly on a plane, and it went all over the world. They wouldn’t let him go to the toilet, so he allegedly peed in the aisle. Here was his response:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIMvCA2mSag

It’s only a couple of minutes long, and well worth a look.

Losing Gerard should be a serious warning to the French government that they are on the path to self-destruction.

and

Tim Blair could have a bit of fun with this:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-25/anti-logging-activist-spends-second-christmas-up-tree/4443256

“She has been campaigning to protect high conservation-value forests from logging, and says she hopes it will be her last Christmas in the tree.

“I would really like to be coming down in 2013,” she said.”

Tim Blair could have a bit of fun with this:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-25/anti-logging-activist-spends-second-christmas-up-tree/4443256

“She has been campaigning to protect high conservation-value forests from logging, and says she hopes it will be her last Christmas in the tree.

“I would really like to be coming down in 2013,” she said.”

johanna

25 Dec 12 at 5:59 pm
Sorry about double posts – like new threads, invisible to me – j

johanna

25 Dec 12 at 6:01 pm
I think we could all have some fun with her tree “coming down” in 2013.

Hopefully the event will be recorded in HD. Will she be liveblogging it I wonder? (The connection will want to be pretty fast for that to happen!)

Steve at the pub

25 Dec 12 at 6:06 pm
I’m stuffed.

Today’s menu:

Anitpasto platter
magnificent seafood salad
home made cannelloni (vegetarian and chicken)
roast spatchcock, roast quail, marinated BBQ pork spare ribs, salad; massive dark orange prawns (juicy as).
Impressive cherry trifle, home made Italian biscuits (ameretti), home made: mango and coconut ice cream, tiramisu ice cream, rich chocolate ice cream.

Someone roll me onto the couch.

Gab

25 Dec 12 at 6:35 pm
oh and lots of French champagne.

Gab

25 Dec 12 at 6:36 pm
Started, and intend ending, the day with alcohol. And in between the best of Christmas goodies. Celebrate hard in preparation for election year ye Cats.

Megan

25 Dec 12 at 6:41 pm
Summers writes

Many observers regard Roxon’s legal pedigree as nonpareil.

Insert hundreds and thousands joke here.

Megan

25 Dec 12 at 6:42 pm
Arab Spring. Not as in rebirth, regeneration, flowers and baby bunnies.
As in trap.
Bruce Thornton explains the small print, and damns the “diplomatic” efforts that have led to the creation of a new group of states dedicated to the Grand Jihad – destroying the west from within.

blogstrop

25 Dec 12 at 6:45 pm
Nanny Roxon:

reformist tradition of Labor attorneys-general like HV ‘Doc’ Evatt, Lionel Murphy, Gareth Evans and Michael Lavarch

Doc Evatt was mad. Murphy was corrupt. Gareth Evans and Michael Lavarch are widely loathed for being careerists.

Yes, Roxon rock on.

I couldn’t read any further.

DaveF

25 Dec 12 at 6:45 pm
Insert joke … Megan, tried that at 3.29 above. Weak, I know.

blogstrop

25 Dec 12 at 6:46 pm
Ate the feast, drank the wine.

The kids were bouncing around like it was Christmas. They even hit the pool (Sydney here 24 and raining the whole time).

Good times. Really good times.

I hope the other Cats had a good day as well.

DaveF

25 Dec 12 at 6:57 pm
Merry xmas everyone. I am so stuffed, I couldn’t even fit in a wafer thin chocolate mint.

boy on a bike

25 Dec 12 at 7:03 pm
Merry xmas everyone. I am so stuffed, I couldn’t even fit in a wafer thin chocolate mint.

And to you too and others, boy. I pigged out and now peckish again.

The pudding was absolutely superb. If wifey continues this standard of cooking she may actually be lucky enough to score more sex.

JC

25 Dec 12 at 7:12 pm
Merry Xmas Catallaxians. All the best for the coming year.

Dead Soul

25 Dec 12 at 7:23 pm
Merry ex mass and it has been a pleasure lurking here. To all the best. Even the wankers steve.

Dan

25 Dec 12 at 7:40 pm
Here, Boy, have a mint chocolate

nilk

25 Dec 12 at 7:44 pm
I’ve had a nice day stuffing myself on good food, nice wine and in the company of friends and family.

Just for the record, my family rocks.

Preparing the gourmet repast of eggs on toast for dinner, because I need something plain and simple.

I trust the rest of the Cats have done nicely also.

nilk

25 Dec 12 at 7:46 pm
Losing Gerard should be a serious warning to the French government that they are on the path to self-destruction.

Gerard’s immensely popular over there, even among the younger generation who were babies when he first did Cyrano de Bergerac and Green Card. This has made them sit up and take notice big time.

papachango

25 Dec 12 at 7:55 pm
Was Gerard one of the ones endorsing Hollande before the election?

Gab

25 Dec 12 at 7:58 pm
I’ll believe the French have rejected Socialism when the Department of Corrreze, Limousin et al have turned their backs upon the ideology. Fat fucking chance.

Dan

25 Dec 12 at 8:06 pm
Gab – nope, he’s always been consistently outspoken in favour of Sarkozy.

papachango

25 Dec 12 at 8:12 pm
Preparing the gourmet repast of eggs on toast for dinner

you’re not trying if you can still fit that in. green tea and pepto-bismol for me. Maybe a cleansing ale..

Since I did all the cooking, I’ll add that it was overeating, certainly not the quality of the food

papachango

25 Dec 12 at 8:15 pm
How’s that leftist aversion to guns going?

perturbed

25 Dec 12 at 8:16 pm
Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

boy on a bike

25 Dec 12 at 8:18 pm
Ridiculous article by Kenneth Davidson in the Age yesterday starting out by mentioning Dame Elisabeth Murdoch and criticizing rich people for tax deductible charitable donations because according to him “the general taxpayer provides a subsidy of 45 cents in each dollar donated”. Hard to know where to start but just possibly we could mention that the boot is on the other foot – since the rich pay vastly more tax than the others – it is they who are doing the subsidizing.

Phillip

25 Dec 12 at 8:21 pm
Oooooooh I ate too much.

Merry Christmas to all the Cats.

We had good wine, nothing less than 10 years old, Champagne, turkey, ham and roast pork.

Finished with my seasonal favorite – the trifle, with custard and Christmas pudding.

Dinner was some cherries and more wine.

Roll on the new year.

John Comnenus

25 Dec 12 at 8:57 pm
Four hours to BOXING DAY.
Bout 1: Megan, Sacrament at Midnight Mass?
Bout 2: DaveF, All commos are mad, still a corrupt Murphy in the system, Evans screwed the Democrats, Mr&Mrs Lavarch played Kaiser Rules Round The Branches , Beat(tie) that. Not Bloody Necessarary,
Bout 3: JC, you might you think you’re Jesus Christ but odds on your missus says ‘by Christ you’re not’.
WBF are in a crises management meeting to determine whether the main bout will be about an octagenarian by appearence sucking up to a pretend 5×2 or whether it focus on the extreme right wing depths someone has SincD into by association with IPA and the 75 plus 25 points emanating to outdo Gough.FFS.
Come out snarling and fight dirty.

JimD

25 Dec 12 at 9:07 pm
Merry Christmas to all the ‘Cats’.

Just The Bride and I and the demon spawn.

Nice and cool here with some welcome rain. Light meals with a few sweets, dinner started with guava nectar spiked champagne, before crispy skined sweet and spicy glazed roast duck (kids choice), with a chilled Tarrango, I had seconds. Still plenty of room for a little pudding with cream.

Santa dropped off a car bike rack for her, a top of the range cycle computer for me, daughter 2 a Lego technics motorised model logging truck (she’s put half of it together already) and game designer daughter 1 an indescribably brutal Xbox game ‘Prototype’ (all good here during the next zombie apocalypse).

Last nights carols and service in the spectacularly over the top new school hall were nice, but the choir plays too fast and the impatient ruin it at the end stacking the chairs. I’ll insist on the midnight vigil when I eventually convert.

A very busy year gone, next year will get busier until the short ‘caretaker’ period. Looking forward to gloating over the election result!

I hope all here will be able to hold out until 2014 before we can hope to see a start to the return to prosperity!

Forester

25 Dec 12 at 9:24 pm
Finished with my seasonal favorite – the trifle, with custard and Christmas pudding.</blockquote

Really? I never thought of trifle too.

That's going on next years list

Jc　

25 Dec 12 at 9:26 pm
JC,

I don’t think I ever have trifle except for Christmas, and I always look forward to it. This year’s was really good – plenty of seasonal berries.

The cherries are very nice this year too.

John Comnenus

25 Dec 12 at 10:17 pm
A very Merry Christmas to all Catallaxians, even the trolls.

Bring on 2013, and the election!

Here’s cheers!

The Happy Lurker.

The Happy Lurker

25 Dec 12 at 10:20 pm
Merry Christmas to everyone.
I’m as full as a kleptomaniac’s handbag here. I’m wondering if the gym is open tomorrow so I can send my boy up to do a couple of hours on the treadmill for me.

Splatacrobat

25 Dec 12 at 10:22 pm
I don’t think I ever have trifle except for Christmas, and I always look forward to it. This year’s was really good – plenty of seasonal berries.

We have the pudding with the formal lunch and the trifle makes its once a year appearance for supper. We make it with lashings of berries with Chambord instead of sherry and I substitute lamingtons for the sponge as an Australian variation. Never any leftovers.

Megan

25 Dec 12 at 10:48 pm
Insert joke … Megan, tried that at 3.29 above. Weak, I know.

You did indeed, Blogstrop, and I missed it. Might have had something to do with the amount of drink I’ve worked my way through since breakfast.

Megan

25 Dec 12 at 10:50 pm
Merry Christmas everyone. Big lunch here today:

Prawns
Rolled turkey, roasted
Lamb (French cutlets)
Pumpkin and chick pea salad
Rocket, pear and prosciutto salad

Some great wine served too:
Bollinger
Rumball sparkling shiraz
Ashbrook Gold Label riesling
Leeuwin Estate Art Series riesling

Full as a goog now though. Kicked our last guests out at 7pm.

tbh

25 Dec 12 at 11:09 pm
Lunch for 18 inside and out around the pool at my family do today: traditional ham, pork and turkey with 10,000 accompaniments, lots of laughter, a little live music (one of the brothers is a muso), many somersault bombs into the Cement Pond (as it is was known by the Beverley Hillbilles) at one of the family homes on the coast. The secret of our success is spreading the Chrissy Day workload so no-one ever gets stressed. It’s always one of the happiest days of the year.

Tom

25 Dec 12 at 11:34 pm
It’s finally over.
I shovelled beer, wine and roasted animals and vegetables at the in-laws until they stopped barking.
They’ve gone now.
Peace in our time.

Leigh Lowe

26 Dec 12 at 12:49 am
Lovely comments on Christmas.

I mean that.

DaveF

26 Dec 12 at 1:03 am
Spare flab means spare dollars. If someone wants welfare on my taxes, I want them to be lean and hungry.
— Sleetmute
Next quote »

Liberty quote?
I disagree

DaveF

26 Dec 12 at 1:19 am
Merry Christmas from the frozen upper midwest, where it’s 9am and all of 0.1F (-17C). Finally got me my White Christmas, anyway.

Hope everyone’s having – or has had – a great day, and has a wonderful New Year. Cheers!

sdog

26 Dec 12 at 1:58 am
Minus 17! Love it. It’s at a toasty 2 degrees here in NYC. No snow but lots of joy and the sweet smell of roasting pork in the oven. Happy Christmas all.

dover_beach

26 Dec 12 at 2:48 am
Potemkin’s Village

In the end we will remember… here

Grigory Potemkin

26 Dec 12 at 5:21 am
thanks to everyone for their descriptions of their Christmas Day.
Brilliant! I had a great day too, lunch with friends in a wonderful old house where they have three dogs and three cats
What would we do without animals, the world would be a much more boring place
sdog introduced me to Henri (where is sdog these days)
Henri has had Christmas as well and you can see the result here ‘The Worst Noel’

val majkus

26 Dec 12 at 5:49 am
The food Nazis are just like the cigarette Nazis, only fatter:

CARTOON characters such as the Paddle Pop lion and Freddo Frog are increasingly being used across media platforms to lure children to unhealthy foods and should be banned, a health coalition says.

While falling short of calling for ”plain packaging” on sugary and fatty foods, the Obesity Policy Coalition has said the federal government should ban marketers from using cartoon characters and giveaway toys to promote junk and unhealthy foods.

Spokesman Boyd Swinburn said cartoon characters were the common factor used to draw children to fattening foods and drinks but companies were now using free online games, apps, movies and other new media to promote unhealthy food.

”Cartoon characters and toy giveaways are certainly the hook used to draw children in,” Dr Swinburn said. ”It is a huge battle akin to the battle with tobacco over plain packaging and no one would have believed that was possible even a few years ago.”

Dr Swinburn said self-regulation had failed because some companies refused to sign up to industry codes and loopholes often allowed companies to escape criticism.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 7:50 am
Red Ted is happy to be seen as a accurate reflection of his bureacracy, even this Labor-appointed zombie, who’s busy drumming up relevance:

VICTORIA will be a hotter and drier place by mid-century, with more desert and fewer temperate regions because of the impacts of global warming, new scientific analysis has found.

In a major report, Victoria’s Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability, Kate Auty, warns the changes will put infrastructure and biodiversity at risk, and leave agriculture and endangered species exposed.

New climate modelling and analysis by the CSIRO and the Bureau of the Meteorology was carried out for the report using the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scenarios on future global greenhouse gas emissions.

The report says the best CSIRO estimates project a 1.37-degree rise in temperatures by 2050 for Victoria – potentially as high as 1.93 degrees – under a scenario of rapid economic growth and an energy mix of fossil fuels and renewables.

Under the same scenario, rainfall is projected to decline by 6 per cent by 2050, with the reduction potentially as high as 14 per cent. The highest 1 per cent of rainfall events will become more intense.

When natural variability is considered along with human-induced changes, the decline in rainfall is found to be as high as 17 per cent, but could also increase by 5 per cent under some scenarios.

The story’s not important enough for a mention in Victoria’s biggest selling newspaper, but the Fairfax zombies were there with sirens blaring.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 8:15 am
We need to take a stand against this health fascism before its too late. They’re getting drunk with power lust.

Papachango

26 Dec 12 at 8:28 am
The food Nazis

What’s Nazi about wanting to ensure the good health of citizens? The opposite of Nazism I would have thought. It IS the Government’s responsibility to look after the well being of its citizens, who can certainly do with guidance in many aspects of their lives.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 8:33 am
It IS the Government’s responsibility to look after the well being of its citizens, who can certainly do with guidance in many aspects of their lives.

ahahahahahah you’re hilarous Hammy!

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 8:45 am
The troubling thing about “food Nazis” is that it enables lazy parents to give up their responsibilities. Now parents can blame packaging.
It’s really only parents that set the scene on healthy long lasting eating habits.

candy

26 Dec 12 at 8:45 am
There you go.

Merry Christmas hammy.

jupes

26 Dec 12 at 8:46 am
What’s the deal have we lowered the entry standards for ASIO or something?
If Fauxfacts is to be believed, it seems our spies are blowing their cover by putting details of their employment on LinkedIn.
How fucking dumb are they?

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 8:47 am
They’re clearly not motiviated by ‘public health’, otherwise they’d be talking about teaching nutrition in school insterad of the PC ‘Invasion day’ crap they currently teach.
That would achieve a lot more than banning Freddo the Frog.

I still can’t believe they’re serious. Anyway why freddo and why not deep fried potatoe cakes? Could it be that dimmies and potato cakes aren’t sold by Big Food?

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 8:50 am
A belated Christmas greeting to everyone (having too much merriment and good times here).

The food nazis think children are as weak-minded as they are, and if they aren’t, they’ll make sure the next generation is.

Re: ASIO – I just heard of someone getting a job interview there. If you can’t even keep that secret, then why bother. In contrast, a best mate is merging his law practice with another, but I know he won’t tell me who the other practice is until the deal is done. That might be why I trust him as both a lawyer and a friend.
In other legal news, the ACT Law Society no longer wants to start the year with its usual church service. Now they want a “commencement celebration” for no particular reason (how very PC of them).

Keith

26 Dec 12 at 9:09 am
Look at this with a view on “climate change” not medicine

Aussieute

26 Dec 12 at 9:14 am
Boo Hoo. Poor old Quadrant has had its government grant slashed.
Isn’t it amazing how these promoters of the market, capitalism and private enterprise still play the part of rent-seekers looking for succour from the gubmint.

Just amazing hypocrisy.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 9:26 am
Papachango

”The Chinese tend to get a lot of information from open sources, and that can lead to opening up contacts that provide high-level access to classified information.”

Or on the other hand you could just be grooming/bonking the Defence Minister…

kae

26 Dec 12 at 9:27 am
Boo hoo! Poor old Quadrant has had its government grant slashed.

Here’s this free enerprise-capitalism-private enterprise promoting magazine/website screaming about not being taxpayer subsidized. What sheer hypocrisy. So typical of the far right in this country.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 9:30 am
Boo hoo! Poor old Quadrant has had its government grant slashed.

Here’s this free enerprise-capitalism-private enterprise promoting magazine/website screaming about not being taxpayer subsidized. What sheer hypocrisy. So typical of the extreme right in this country.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 9:32 am
Well, looks like I’ve now been banned from this blog.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 9:33 am
No! I tried to post a comment with a link to Quadrant three times but without success. Maybe something wrong with the Quadrant URL?

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 9:35 am
This link.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 9:36 am
Well, looks like I’ve now been banned from this blog.

You wish, ya lame victimhood seeker.

jumpnmcar

26 Dec 12 at 9:36 am
Well it wasn’t the link. I was trying to point out that the bleating of this so-called free enterprise-capitalism promoting-private enterprise championing publication is the epitome of hyprocrisy. Them, of all people, bleating about losing a gubmint grant. Amazing.

Some people may lament that it’s about the poetry. Yeah yeah – like men used to buy Playboy for the short stories!

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 9:42 am
I’m eating my body weight in bacon and eggs as I sit and read this Food Nazis can get stuffed

Tracey

26 Dec 12 at 9:50 am
” ya lame victimhood seeker.”

he is, but Hammygar is very sweet.

candy

26 Dec 12 at 9:55 am
Oh I suppose the Greens and all their anti-carbon mates will move flat out to kill off this ‘evil’ carbon before it gets out of the laboratory (or Tax it to oblivion)

http://www.wimp.com/supersupercapacitor/

Can’t have Carbon!!!!!

Mike

Mike of Marion

26 Dec 12 at 9:58 am
It IS the Government’s responsibility to look after the well being of its citizens, who can certainly do with guidance in many aspects of their lives.

Oh great! Does this mean Hammy that your Government will hold a Royal commission into cartoon character induced obesity? I can’t wait to see nanny Roxon force Fat Cat and Humphrey B Bear to talk in the witness box.

Splatacrobat

26 Dec 12 at 10:00 am
There’s a link on the other thread to a beaut piece about the prats of this world:

“clueless person of arrogant stupidity”, “Basically someone who’s a major idiot, or is delusional and dumb. Acts against logic and thinks he’s self-righteous”, “Someone who is full of themselves and, almost invariably, stupid as well. With a hint of deluded.”

Hamster has clearly established himself as our pre-eminent prat. Like others here, I thought for a while it was possible he was a clever satire. But you can’t fake a manic devotion to stupid.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 10:04 am
Hammy – you think I’ve got nothing better to do than drag your sorry arse out of the spaminator?

Sinclair Davidson

26 Dec 12 at 10:13 am
Oh dear! The Christian-hating Gillard Government has also become the pre-eminent manslaughterer of muslims:

MUSLIM leaders have warned the Gillard government’s information campaigns to deter potential asylum-seekers are having little effect on numbers departing for Australia because they are underfunded.

More than 30,000 asylum-seekers have arrived by boat and almost 1000 have died since Labor came to power at the end of 2007, prompting Youssef Nabha, imam of the Masjid Arrahman Kingsgrove mosque in Sydney, to call for urgent action.

“We are gravely concerned about the number of people dying at sea and I want to send a message to the government that if we have harsh policies, they are worthless without awareness in the very countries from which people are fleeing,” Mr Nabha told The Australian through a translator.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 10:16 am
CARTOON characters such as the Paddle Pop lion and Freddo Frog are increasingly being used across media platforms to lure children to unhealthy foods and should be banned, a health coalition says.

Popeye the sailor it could be said is credited with getting a whole generation of children to eat spinach. “The popularity of Popeye helped boost spinach sales. Using Popeye as a role model for healthier eating may work; a 2010 study revealed that children increased their vegetable consumption after watching Popeye cartoons”.

But on the downside there were probably a few who also took up pipe smoking and used violence as a solution to deal with romantic rivals for the affections of their girlfriend.

Splatacrobat

26 Dec 12 at 10:18 am
Hammy. All with you on the government controlling the lives of it’s citizens. I propose that the first step on the road to utopia ( the slim svelte one etc) is that all parliamentarians are subject to random alcohol and drug tests prior to entering either house. Furthermore, those members of the house who do not conform to a healthy BMI will be banned by the speaker. Heil Hammy..For some reason, Mel Brooks just sprang to mind..hmmm

Steve of Glasshouse

26 Dec 12 at 10:19 am
We are gravely concerned about the number of people dying at sea

I’ve said it before – if Australia were sincere about avoiding these deaths, it would take over a few cruise ships and arrange with Indonesia that we’d pick up ship loads of refugees who’d made it to Indonesia, from Indonesian ports, and process them in Australia. This approach would have saved many hundreds of lives.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 10:24 am
“We are gravely concerned about the number of people dying at sea and I want to send a message to the government that if we have harsh policies, they are worthless without awareness in the very countries from which people are fleeing,” Mr Nabha told The Australian through a translator.

They need to do what Christian churches do and raise funds from their own adherents and run a marketing campaign in the countries themselves. Don’t wait for the Government to stump up money, get out there and raise the money yourself if you think that it’s important to stop people dying at sea.

ps. While your at it, learn English then the money you save on translating services can also go into your own information campaign. I’m sure these boat people would rather hear about the perils of drowning at sea from their own spiritual leaders than from a public servant infidel.

Splatacrobat

26 Dec 12 at 10:28 am
hammyracist:

What’s ~~Nazi~~ National Socialist about wanting to ensure the good health of citizens? The opposite of ~~Nazism~~ National Socialism I would have thought. It IS the Government’s responsibility to look after the well being of its citizens, who can certainly do with guidance in many aspects of their lives.

Well, you little racist swine, why don’t you look and see?

http://www.adl.org/braun/dim_14_1_nazi_med.asp

“The Nazis had a powerful anti-tobacco movement, arguably the most powerful in the world at that time. Tobacco was opposed by racial hygienists fearing the corruption of the German “germ plasm” ”

“…tobacco and alcohol abuses were “diseases of civilization” and “relics of a liberal lifestyle.”"

“The Nazi state was supposed to be a hygienic state; Nazism was supposed to be “applied biology” (Fritz Lenz coined this phrase in 1931). Hitler was celebrated as the “great doctor” of German society and as the “Robert Koch of politics” (Koch was a nineteenth century pioneer in studying the bacterial origin of diseases). The seductive power of National Socialism for many physicians lay in its promise to cleanse German society of its corrupting elements — not just communism and Jews, but also metallic lead and addictive tobacco, along with homosexuality and the “burdensome” mentally ill.”

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=10664

“Health and healthcare occupied a central position
in National Socialist ideology, and few aspects of personal and national life in Nazi Germany were more
thoroughly politicized.”

Socialists use ‘public health’ to extend the control of teh state into the private lives of individuals and to take away theri chocie. It’s a way of undermining teh family and repalcing it with the state.

The Australian left being racist, anti-semitic and (obviously) socialist, have no issues with this and uin fact applaud it.

That’s a well trodden path to re-education camps, which become slave labour camps and death camps, eugenics and mountains of corpses.

Mindless butchery of innocents is simply no issue to the left – check out the full-term abortion policies of Emily’s List, the ALP and the greenfilth.

Mk50 of Brisbane

26 Dec 12 at 10:29 am
The speakers should also conform to better dress sense and proper hair style as well as normal BMI. Ms Burke is definitely in need of a makeover.

candy

26 Dec 12 at 10:30 am
Why put them at risk of seas sickness hammy? You are a callus bastard too tight to spring for first class airfares.

Entropy

26 Dec 12 at 10:31 am
you think I’ve got nothing better to do than drag your sorry arse out of the spaminator?

I see you’ve rescued all three attempts. I’m sorry I can’t control your “spaminator” Sinc. As some of the more “worthy” commenters may fall into the same hole, maybe you can get Jacques to explain to us how it happens so we can avoid falling into its clutches in future. I realize naughties like the c… word trigger some mechanism, but I’m puzzled as to why mine attracted its ire this time (other than for ideological reasons).

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 10:31 am
NSW Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts: ‘Be wary of sneaky gooks.’

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 10:37 am
Hammy wrote “I see you’ve rescued all three attempts. I’m sorry I can’t control your “spaminator” Sinc. As some of the more “worthy” commenters may fall into the same hole, maybe you can get Jacques to explain to us how it happens so we can avoid falling into its clutches in future. I realize naughties like the c… word trigger some mechanism, but I’m puzzled as to why mine attracted its ire this time (other than for ideological reasons).

You could change your name. I recommend Flounder.
John Belushi does it quite well at a naming ceremony..

Steve of Glasshouse

26 Dec 12 at 10:40 am
No other Canberra Press Gallery has ever been so thoroughly captured by a ruling party, but collectively, they remain as shallow and self-obsessed as they have through the ages. They are also bored easily:

HE may have been declared World’s Best Treasurer but Wayne Swan has earned a fiscal raspberry as the Federal Parliament’s Worst Performer, according to the Canberra Press Gallery.

At the end of one of the most vicious and scandalous political years in memory, Julia Gillard’s “mysoginist” jibe against Tony Abbott has been ranked the Most Memorable Moment – narrowly ahead of Kevin Rudd’s ill-fated leadership challenge in February.

And Bill Shorten’s impressive Yes Minister impersonation – “I haven’t seen what she (Julia Gillard) has said, but let me say I support what it is that she said” – earns him a gong as Gaffe of the Year, according to a survey of 20 Press Gallery journalists.

Eight of the pundits nominated the smooth introduction of the carbon tax as the year’s Best Achievement – edging out Ms Gillard’s survival as Prime Minister, which secured six votes.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 10:41 am
Ms Burke is definitely in need of a makeover.

Ms Burke looks like she would be more at home if she was behind a clarvoyant’s card table at the Nimban farmer’s market.

Splatacrobat

26 Dec 12 at 10:41 am
Hammy – I have asked Jacques before. He doesn’t know or can’t say. Anyway easier to rescue all your comments than leave some there. That way they don’t get tagged as actually being spam.

Sinclair Davidson

26 Dec 12 at 10:42 am
Thanks for the Quadrant link, Hammy, and the further display of your problems with comprehension. Bitching about the partisan slashing of our funding? Well, yes, I was, but the key to geting your mind around the column is to focus on “partisan”, not “funding”.

If you are going to hand out public monies then it must be done fairly, and the recent, petty decision to halve Quadrant’s stipend reeks of score-settling.

You’ll also notice, far from bleating about cash denied, the real point of my piece was to suggest an investigation of existing funding decisions and the obligation of the incoming Abbott government to go through the Australia Council like a dose of salts and reform the place top to bottom with regard to what gets funded and who makes the decisions to fund.

Even you, Hammy, would have to admit this is not a good look: Quadrant slams a grant-nurtured play by a favourite luvvie playwright, who then turns up on the Lit Board, which then halves our funding.

areff

26 Dec 12 at 10:54 am
kae,

I have been sorting through my CDs and found this:

Celine Dion Likes Your Gravatar

Septimus

26 Dec 12 at 11:00 am
Well, looks like I’ve now been banned from this blog.

LOL Are you a blonde bimbo, Hammy? You can’t comment if banned.

Thanks for the giggles.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 11:16 am
Well, looks like I’ve now been banned from this blog.

Shorter hammster:

“Is this thing on?”

Rabz

26 Dec 12 at 11:25 am
Well, so much for the middle of summer – it’s a mighty 16 degrees here in Zombie Parrotville…

Rabz

26 Dec 12 at 11:32 am
Septimus
Sorry, don’t get it. I blame yesterday and being tired. It is a picture of me from 1985.
It’s rained all night here, almost two inches which we very much need. Delightful.
The neighbour’s horses have managed to knock down the electric fence and are munching on the grass in my ‘house paddock’ which is reserved for the eldest of the three, Banjo, who is nearly 28 and needs all the good feed he can get.

kae

26 Dec 12 at 11:33 am
Mk 50 beat me to it in telling Hammygar(bage) that the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party (AKA the Nazi Party) were Eco loons and food and health fascists. They were interested in purity at every level from forests to race. That purity gave them a superiority complex, and like supremacists everywhere it’s only a short step from deeming the Jews, or cripples or political opponents as impure to mass murder. That is why these supremacists must be stopped.

Before you say that is too far fetched, I have spoken to heart surgeons who want the right not to perform surgery on smokers and the fat. They are already classifying these people as untermensch and hence thinking of ways to let the impure die out by denying them medical treatment. These views are more widely held in the medical profession than is healthy.

John Comnenus

26 Dec 12 at 11:38 am
Septimus
Sorry, don’t get it. I blame yesterday and being tired. It is a picture of me from 1985.

OK. The album cover seems (to me anyways) to have similarities to your current gravatar, which you have previously mentioned is an earlier photo of you.

Sorry … no offence meant … comment was intended to be light-hearted.

Septimus

26 Dec 12 at 11:55 am
” They are already classifying these people as untermensch and hence thinking of ways to let the impure die out by denying them medical treatment.”

i’ve never heard of that actually. sounds bit extreme?

I understand surgeons are very reluctant to operate on the obese because the chance of the patient dying under the anaesthesia is too great. Heart surgeons are very reluctant to operate on smokers until they’ve given up, as the benefit of surgery becomes too short term if the patient still smokes.

candy

26 Dec 12 at 12:01 pm
mighty 16 degrees here in Zombie Parrotville…

Talking to a relo in Sydney she says they’re all rugged up as it’s freezing there. Was a balmy 22deg in Melb. yesterday. Thanks heavens for the carbon dioxide tax, works a treat at lowering global temps.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 12:03 pm
Wrong man drugged after psychiatric hospital mistake:

Western Australia’s Mental Health Minister has apologised to a man who was arrested and drugged after being mistaken for a patient from a psychiatric hospital.

Police arrested the man on December 16 as he fitted the description of a patient who had gone missing from Graylands Hospital in Perth.

Graylands staff wrongly confirmed the man’s identity before administering a strong antipsychotic drug for schizophrenia.

They realised their mistake when the man had an adverse reaction to the drug and was rushed to hospital.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 12:05 pm
Hey something weird going on….my owl gravatar is showing on the site after comments posted yet I changed it to my Santa girl gravatar which only shows up when typing in the comments box.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 12:05 pm
‘Global warming’ update:

Russia’s brutal winter claims 123 lives.

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 12:11 pm
Surely they can name this plant after the federal ALP:

Melbourne botanists were given a gift from nature this Christmas with a rare blossoming of an Indonesian ‘corpse flower’…

“It is probably going to stink somewhere between rotten cheese, rotting flesh, rotten fish,” he said.

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 12:14 pm
Gab, browser top right hand corner > tools > internet options > browsing history > delete > (tick “temporary internet files”; tick “cookies”; tick “history”; tick “download history”) > ok.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 12:17 pm
Thanks, Tom! All sweet.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 12:20 pm
Chicago is one of the most heavily gun controlled cities in the nation. The state of Illinois has an all-out ban on concealed weapons. All firearms in the city of Chiago are registered. The permit must to purchase must be renewed every three years at a cost of $100. Chicago has an assault weapons ban and a ban on magazines that carry 10 rounds. In November, shootings jumped 49 percent over the prior year.

Works well too, only seven people shot on Christmas Eve. Mayor talking about tighter gun control of law-abiding citizens.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 12:25 pm
New York Daily News blames NRA for the shooting of those two firemen…

First commenter destroys reporter, correctly blames lefties:

This article is another example of an idiot reporter making idiotic statements to appeal to the idiot masses. If we are looking for someone other than the perpetrator to blame, then we should direct our attention to the legal system that allowed a convicted murderer to leave prison in anything other than a coffin. This guy should have gotten life in prison for brutally murdering his grandmother with a HAMMER. Yes, he used a gun to kill two people and their deaths are horrible. But, would this story be any less tragic, saddening or horrific if this animal had used something other than a gun to kill these brave men? If you really believe that asking bad people to stop killing with guns will work, then why don’t we try asking those same bad people to stop lying, stealing, raping, robbing and drug smugging? Who knows, maybe they have only been waiting to be asked nicely.

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 12:26 pm
Armed security guards to protect kids in school? Shock. horror! Nooo, say ant-NRA law fanatics.

School Obama’s Daughters Attend Has 11 Armed Guards

Good enough to protect his kids but not other kids elsewhere. And no, the armed guards were in place well before OZero sent his kids there.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 12:30 pm
Good enough to protect his kids but not other kids elsewhere.

It’s different when they do it.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 12:33 pm
Newtown, Connecticut Police Chief Michael Kehoe says security at Sandy Hook Elementary School saved lives.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 12:34 pm
Many judges wear their contempt of the public as a badge of honour. Imagine what a judge would do to anyone in another profession that disregards expert opinion and the outcome of their decision is the death of a number of people. Everyday judges dismiss the expert opinion of people pushing for longer penalties for violent criminals. The outcome is that some of these offenders ar released early and go on to reoffend. Why do the victims not have the right to sue the judge personally for their decision? It is little wonder so many hold judges and the courts in contempt.

John Comnenus

26 Dec 12 at 12:35 pm
Saved a jar of duck fat rendered from the Christmas duck breasts for future roast potatoes.
In case I am raided by the Food Nazis (of Food Fascists if you prefer) I have labelled it “Free Range Bio-dynamic Home-Schooled Mayonnaise”.

Leigh Lowe

26 Dec 12 at 12:42 pm
Russia’s brutal winter claims 123 lives.

Climate change has caused these extremes of weather to become more frequent and lethal. Similarly the floods in the UK. We’d better get used to it, because there’ll be little action by governments to stop climate change because of the criminal pressure from denialists.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 12:55 pm
Climate change has caused these extremes of weather to become more frequent and lethal.

You have no evidence of this. Emotional statements are not reason nor evidence.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 12:57 pm
Kero Boy

Any thoughts of lighting the match over the ~~Xmas~~ Festive season (leftie version)?

You’re unusually hyper at the mom. Which drug cocktail are you on?

JC

26 Dec 12 at 1:01 pm
the key to geting your mind around the column is to focus on “partisan”, not “funding”.

No, Quadrant’s ideological position at the extreme end of free market economics and small government emphasises its hypocrisy in accepting any assistance at all from Governments. Same with its CIA funding from yesteryear.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 1:02 pm
Creampuff Gen-Y watch:

Men shopping in packs a Boxing Day trend.

YOUNG men hunting in packs for fashion items and gadgets has become a Boxing Day shopping trend, retailers say…

An emerging Boxing Day trend was the number of men out shopping, she said.

“Last year we saw a lot of men in the front of the queue to get in-store and this year they’re out in force.

“We’re seeing groups of guys coming in and they’re buying fashion and they’re buying gadgets,” Ms Osmond said.

“So clearly the boys are having a nice day out together to do some shopping, so I’m sure this is a trend we’re going to see more of.”

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 1:03 pm
Hammy, the only “extreme end” you’re qualified to talk about is the one that gets the Sorbent treatment.

areff

26 Dec 12 at 1:06 pm
Russia’s brutal winter claims 123 lives.

Climate change has caused these extremes of weather to become more frequent and lethal. Similarly the floods in the UK. We’d better get used to it, because there’ll be little action by governments to stop climate change because of the criminal pressure from denialists.

if that’s the case the only possible and sensible strategy for governments to take is to abandon all those windmill tilting mitigation policies like the carbon tax and RET and concentrate on adaptation strategies instead. If it’s going to happen anyway, we might as well learn to live with it.

entropy

26 Dec 12 at 1:14 pm
Don’t worry CL. The boys will go straight to EB games or JB HiFI, spend ten minutes there, then go home to resume COD.

entropy

26 Dec 12 at 1:15 pm
CL – I did go to Bunnings to get some more belt-sander belts. And I have just ordered a rifle from the USA. Does that count?

Hammyracist:

Climate change has caused these extremes of weather to become more frequent and lethal. Similarly the floods in the UK. We’d better get used to it, because there’ll be little action by governments to stop climate change because of the criminal pressure from denialists.

Don’t you just love it when utter cretins go all sciency on the basis of their religious beilefs? it so cute!

I mean, this moron does not even understand that winters are horrible in Russia, and that teh worst flloding in the UK, from the greatest storm ever recorded there, was in November 1703 – see martin Brayne’s book ‘The Greatest Storm: Britain’s Night of Destruction, November 1703′. The night of 26/27 November saw 8,000 killed a-land int eh UK, unknown thousands more dead at sea, at least a thousand sail lost including 300 sail of colliers from the east coast ports alone and two British Fleets destroyed. Sir Cloudesly Shovell’s famous flagship HMS Association was blown all the way to the Baltic, so badly smashed that it was six months before she could return home. Admiral Beaumont’s fleet was destroyed on teh Goodwins, and something like 2000 men died that night from his ships alone.

Now, Hammyracist you AGW cultist science-and-reality denier, tell me about extreme weather events…

Mk50 of Brisbane

26 Dec 12 at 1:22 pm
There were packs of boys at BCF this morning, both young and old, bless their outdoorsy hearts.
It was polite bedlam at the “Zerek ” lures section.

jumpnmcar

26 Dec 12 at 1:26 pm
How depraved are reporters in this country – even at News Ltd?

This depraved – click and note that it’s now memory-holed.

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 1:30 pm
Mk50

And I have just ordered a rifle from the USA.

I’m told US sales figures will be artificially high on the back of gun sales.
Seams Obama can stimulate commerce after all.

jumpnmcar

26 Dec 12 at 1:31 pm
Armed in schools?

Sikhs want ceremonial knives, or Kirpans, allowed in schools.

Australian lefties strongly in favour:

AUSTRALIA’S Sikh community wants religious knives allowed in schools.

The Sikh Council of Australia and Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commissioner objected to the former state government’s amendment preventing a ceremonial knife being worn in schools.

The Weapons Act 1990 states: “A Sikh may possess, in a public place, a knife known as a Kirpan to comply with the person’s religious faith.”

However, the amendment now states: “It is not a reasonable excuse to physically possess a knife in a school for genuine religious purposes.”

The Sikh Council and the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner have warned the amendment was discriminatory to ordained Sikhs required to wear the Kirpan…

Department of Education, Training and Employment assistant director-general Marg Pethiyagoda said the wearing of a Kirpan at school would be considered case-by-case.

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 1:35 pm
I mioght just pop out to Victoria Gardens and try to find myself a manbag for a good price.

My French siter in law advised me to get one as she said I had too much crap in my pockets and it ruins the cut of my clothing.

Than angain…. naaah….

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 1:38 pm
IMO, it would be perfectly licit, morally, to slap this bloke around the head at the next set of traffic lights.

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 1:39 pm
The Sikh Council of Australia and Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commissioner objected to the former state government’s amendment preventing a ceremonial knife being worn in schools.

Fine. But I want the right to wear my Sgian-dubh as well

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 1:40 pm
manbag

I care not how “enlightened” the times nor how “progressive”, a manbag always looks sissy on a man.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 1:40 pm
~~mioght~~ might… ~~siter~~ sister… ~~Than~~ Then ~~angain~~ again…

Sheesh.. must be in holiday mode as my typing is worse than ever…

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 1:42 pm
Gab the Frogs are amazing at fashion and my SIL made me chuck out 75% of my wardrobe and buy a few good things, with impressive results.

The manbag advice was very sensible and practical, and they’re all the rage over there, but as I explained to her, it was a bridge to far. Australia is just not ready

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 1:44 pm
Oh yeah, sure. Get a man bag. That’s how it starts.

Then it’s moisuriser, creased Armani jeans, plucked eyebrows and agreeing to throw out your favourite work boots.

Don’t do it, papa.

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 1:47 pm
The French use that “it spoils the line” schtick a lot. Have had it tossed at me as well…by a Frenchman…because in his opinion I wore the wrong type of shoes with a frock. It’s their thing but my previous statement re manbags still holds. Same for mankinis.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 1:48 pm
agreeing to throw out your favourite work boots.

Heh, some men can’t quite manage that.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 1:49 pm
It’s OK CL. I saw the hipsters in Nortcote with manbags on their fixies and that’s put me off for life…

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 1:58 pm
Northcote

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 1:58 pm
Manbags find favor with those poor sad bastards who can’t decide if they’re homo or hetero and finish up settling for being metro.

Lew

26 Dec 12 at 2:02 pm
Merry Xmas to all at the Cat.

Sounds like everyone had a great time, great food, great drink, all with family and friends. Same at my house. I’m still recovering.

Cheers to you all.

Dianeh

26 Dec 12 at 2:02 pm
Septimus
No offence taken, just didn’t get the comment…. maybe need more sleep. A lot more.

kae

26 Dec 12 at 2:02 pm
Yes I baulked at manbags. But I wouldn’t be too harsh on the metros. When I look at how badly the average Aussie dresses (even in inner city Melbourne), we’ve no right to comment on anyone’s dress sense.

Papachango

26 Dec 12 at 2:22 pm
Oh yeah, sure. Get a man bag. That’s how it starts.

Then it’s moisuriser, creased Armani jeans, plucked eyebrows and agreeing to throw out your favourite work boots.

And then you turn into JC.

m0nty

26 Dec 12 at 3:04 pm
Wifey bought me a great canvas laptop/shoulder bag. It looks like an upmarket gasmask bag like during the war but more functional. It’s also a lot lighter than those Targa leather bags.

One does not normally get excited about such mundane accoutrements but this bag is the most practical and stylish gift the Minister for War and Finance has ever given me.

Splatacrobat

26 Dec 12 at 3:11 pm
Splat..was the good wife perchance looking over your shoulder..bag..when you typed the post?
Only shoulder bag I have carries the pilchards for tailor fishing..

Steve of Glasshouse

26 Dec 12 at 3:38 pm
No chance Steve,She is out sailing….oops I mean saleing at Chermside.
Never stand in between a woman and a sale sign.

Splatacrobat

26 Dec 12 at 3:53 pm
Actually, apart from champers, just what has the french given the world?

entropy

26 Dec 12 at 3:58 pm
No, Quadrant’s ideological position at the extreme end of free market economics and small government emphasises its hypocrisy in accepting any assistance at all from Governments. Same with its CIA funding from yesteryear.

Fair point, Kero boy. However it wouldn’t stop there, you moron. That would e like a rounding error as far as I was concerned.

JC

26 Dec 12 at 4:05 pm
Fuck off Fat Boy. Go on a diet.

JC

26 Dec 12 at 4:06 pm
Splat. My happy hunters have just got back from Sunshine Coast Plaza. Look for a peak in this months’ retail figures..

Steve of Glasshouse

26 Dec 12 at 4:08 pm
Donnie Brasco says:

Men don’t any sort of carrying apparatus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODPJOQX5We4

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 4:12 pm
Oops. ‘Lefty’ says.

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 4:13 pm
Actually, apart from champers, just what has the french given the world?

In WWII they invented the art of pre-emptive surrender and, more recently, they have invented Tax Rates that Steve Hooker couldn’t vault over.

Leigh Lowe

26 Dec 12 at 4:20 pm
Fair point, Kero boy.

Phew! For a fleeting moment I thought JC was conceding a point. Not so of course.

On points of principle, rounding errors may as well be as wide as the Grand Canyon. You either have principles or you don’t. Ever since the Quadrant ranters fired Manne they’ve lacked any semblance of principle.

Their last two editors have been/are renegades from the left – “rats”.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 4:22 pm
I’m with IT.

At least the French haven’t gone quietly into the night re booze, cigs and foods they love. The Anglophones are the ones who surrendered to the Bloomberg/Roxon Axis of nazis, not the French.

C.L.

26 Dec 12 at 4:24 pm
Kero Boy:

How on earth do you arrive at the conclusion I don’t agree with you? I said I did. I think Quadrant shouldn’t be government funded. That’s agreeing with you dipshit.

But I wouldn’t stop there. In fact as I said Quad would be a rounding error after I stopped the water getting to the trough.

How is that unprincipled, Kero? Explain that to me.

JC

26 Dec 12 at 4:27 pm
CL

You can’t smoke in Frog restaurants nor bars now I believe.

JC

26 Dec 12 at 4:29 pm
@JC (& others) I’ve no idea of the law, but I’ve just returned from several months in France, & every pub & restaurant I was in had not only smoking, but dogs – who crapped on the floor if they pleased.

Steve at the Pub

26 Dec 12 at 4:33 pm
It’s on the books in both France and Italy but it isn’t enforced.

I’m fairly sure it was an EU edict.

DaveF

26 Dec 12 at 4:42 pm
It was an EU edict that came in about years ago. I was there for New Years when the law came into effect. It’s all they spoke about on the radio, there was a lot of fuss about it, unlike here where we just rolled over for Nanny Roxon.

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 5:03 pm
I’m not entirely sure, but I have suspected for a while that Hammy is not real but is instead a caricature of an unthinking, smug, insular leftist. I cannot be 100% sure though, as there are indeed some people who are that obtuse. Or he could just be a leftist who is deliberately exaggerating the moonbattery to troll and wind people up.

Either way, I find his posts funny as hell. I start laughing whenever I just see his handle on the page. He is a bit like the resident court jester around here.

Monkey's Uncle

26 Dec 12 at 5:07 pm
Hammy is satire. It is well done, but after a little while you realise he’s going a bit too far.
Going a bit too far is what defines satire.

Steve at the Pub

26 Dec 12 at 5:10 pm
I reckon Hammy is done by the same person who did ‘Barry Bones’ on Bolt’s blog. I suspected it was Bolt himself driving his hi tcount up, so maybe Hammy is just Sinc being mischievous…

papachango

26 Dec 12 at 5:12 pm
Or he could just be a leftist who is deliberately exaggerating the moonbattery to troll and wind people up.

He’s like a poor man’s Arlene Composta. Kero boy is a leftie alright, however he hams up the comments in an attempt to be the left’s composta.

We wised up to him after the first coupla comments.

You sometimes see his comments without the Composta mask and he’s just a boring old leftwing idiot.

Either way, I find his posts funny as hell. I start laughing whenever I just see his handle on the page. He is a bit like the resident court jester around here

He sure is a clown.

JC

26 Dec 12 at 5:13 pm
As for the claim that Quadrant are hypocrites for chasing government funding, this is one situation where I think there is some merit in Ayn Rand’s claim that there is nothing immoral about using services that you are forced to pay for.

So long as taxpayers are forced to fork out vast sums to effectively subsidise left-wing opinions through schools, universities, ABC, SBS, NGOs, ARC grants etc. etc., I don’t see any reason why conservatives should not try to at least get a little bit of this money back.

And speaking of hypocrisy, is it not a little hypocritical

Monkey's Uncle

26 Dec 12 at 5:16 pm
Wifey bought me a great canvas laptop/shoulder bag.

Is Splat the only one who got a pressie worth mentioning?

Ellen of Tasmania

26 Dec 12 at 5:27 pm
A photo of Hammygar and SfB on Xmas day…

http://i.imgur.com/WZ2MV.jpg

Abu Chowdah

26 Dec 12 at 5:42 pm
Sikhs can have Kirpans?

I am OK with that (and they can carry Talwar’s too) if everyone’s happy with my tribal and traditional personal weapons.

Scots can have Skean Dhu?

I am OK with that (and they can carry Claymore’s too) if everyone’s happy with my tribal and traditional personal weapons.

This is my tribal weapon.

And here’s my tribe’s traditional personal weapon.

Mk50 of Brisbane

26 Dec 12 at 5:50 pm
Abu, that’s hilarious!

I love the way both your Hammyracist and Sh*tfer,have their freckles clear of the floor… guess they are tender from the events of the night.

Mk50 of Brisbane

26 Dec 12 at 5:52 pm
Is Splat the only one who got a pressie worth mentioning?

I got a great tent so I can have a lot more room and comfort when I’m out stalking deer.

Mrs Eddystone got a nice painting to hang on the loungeroom wall.

Best of all was watching our 16 month old grandaughter playing with all her second cousins, aunts, uncles etc at the four generation family Christmas we had.

Eddystone

26 Dec 12 at 5:56 pm
“A photo of Hammygar and SfB on Xmas day…”

I’m offended by that. Putting a jacket on a cat is pretty cruel.

candy

26 Dec 12 at 6:00 pm
Was monty the puss in the middle?

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 6:01 pm
I have been designated driver for three whole days of festive mayhem.

Now it is my turn to kick back on the Bolly. Not too much though, as we are off to drinks at HIA’s ex-wife’s rellies place, plus with the ex herself in attendance, so he is thus on his best behaviour.

Guess I should be too.

Happy Boxing Day, everyone.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

26 Dec 12 at 6:05 pm
And speaking of hypocrisy, is it not a little hypocritical

No, it’s a lot hypocritical.

hammygar

26 Dec 12 at 6:16 pm
It’s easy when there is no EIS and protesters are thrown in jail, but it’s all the rage in communist China:

CHINA has started service on the world’s longest high-speed rail route, the latest milestone in the country’s rapid and – sometimes troubled – super fast rail network.

The opening of the 2298km line between Beijing and Guangzhou means passengers will be whisked from the capital to the southern commercial hub in just eight hours, compared with the 22 hours previously required.

China Central Television broadcast the departure of the first train live from Beijing West Railway Station. It also carried live reports from inside showing passengers toting cameras to apparently snap commemorative photos.

Trains will travel at an average speed of 300km per hour over the line, which includes 35 stops in major cities such as Zhengzhou, Wuhan on the Yangtze River and Changsha.

State media have reported that December 26 was chosen to start passenger service on the Beijing-Guangzhou line to commemorate the birth in 1893 of revered Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

Can’t wait for Australia’s first government-funded fast train fiasco after a 20-year EIS to ensure no possum, bird, frog or insect has had its animal rights infringed.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 7:03 pm
If the EIS process stops Australian taxpayer’s money being wasted on very fast trains, it may well provide the only justification for EIS process.

johno

26 Dec 12 at 7:15 pm
Gee

The french apparently invented “pre-emptive surrender about 70 years befiore Bush invented the pre-emtive strike.

Does that mean that Hitler invented pre-emptive mass murder to stop the jews murdering the nazis?

How about Britian and the allies – did they pre emptively mass bomb Dresden?

What is this pre-emptive word? A get out of jail card that allows you to deny the facts (I could see something imaginary coming so I acted first to stop it coming?)

In other words I pre – emtovely kill myself because I pre emptively know I am going to die evenually?

Pre-emptive BS

Alice

26 Dec 12 at 7:26 pm
Is Splat the only one who got a pressie worth mentioning?

How about a 1.2m RC yacht?

Carpe Jugulum

26 Dec 12 at 7:27 pm
Tom, the Chinese trains are death-traps. They wanted the japanese VFT tech but did not want to pay the price. SO they bought a lot, reverse-engineered the rest from comemrcial espionage – and there was one major system (half the cost) they did not buy and could not steal.

The safety system. The Jap. system tracks every train to the inch. It maintains separations, monitors wind/rain/ice/snow impacts on trains and automatically stops the system when there is a quake or a major track fault. Every metre of track is under CCTV with seriously good software to automatically identify (for example) a tree fallen across the track.

The Chinese system has NONE of these. They run it like a conventional train system, only faster.

The mad little buggers are going to have 300kph trainwrecks and will answer the ultimate question: ‘When a packed train full of Chinese comes off the rails at 300kph, do you hear noises like car-smash noises, or just an seriously loud SQUELCH!’

Mk50 of Brisbane

26 Dec 12 at 7:33 pm
MAlice:

…befiore Bush invented the pre-emtive strike.

Actually, the Japanese invented that at Port Arthur in 1904.

Education – you really should try some!

Mk50 of Brisbane

26 Dec 12 at 7:36 pm
I got an Apple TV. I plan to test it out tonight. Although I noticed that my bigpond cable is slooooow today. Everyone e at home and its raining I guess.

entropy

26 Dec 12 at 7:37 pm
Hammy is satire. It is well done, but after a little while you realise he’s going a bit too far.
Going a bit too far is what defines satire.

It’s freedom city Catallaxy that’s gone too far. And SteveATP, you need to see him when the Composta persona cracks and the real dickhead shines through.
The amount of him on this thread certainly reinforces my liking for books instead of blogs.
Goodnight.

blogstrop

26 Dec 12 at 7:37 pm
Gab..I’ve seen that look on a cat’s face before. It is cat speak for give me the purple dream ( phenobarbitol )

Steve of Glasshouse

26 Dec 12 at 7:46 pm
Nah, i think it’s a look of get this stupid jacket off me I’m a cat not a pretend baby.

candy

26 Dec 12 at 8:02 pm
I got a really really great watch.( after Mrs Jumpy forced me to agree not to get each other anything).
Women are evil.

Fortunately our anniversary is 7th January so I can get revenge.

I have the feeling I’m being played for a sucker.

jumpnmcar

26 Dec 12 at 8:02 pm
the Chinese trains are death-traps.

Mark, I’ve never taken a close technical interest, but what you say sounds right in view of the spotty safety record already.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 8:08 pm
I got discharged Christmas eve.
Best present of all.

Winston Smith

26 Dec 12 at 8:15 pm
yay Winston – good news!!

pete m

26 Dec 12 at 8:28 pm
Good to hear Winston,
Big plans for 2013 ?

jumpnmcar

26 Dec 12 at 8:31 pm
Gab love your new gravitar, from Minerva to Most Alluring

Tintarella di Luna

26 Dec 12 at 8:37 pm
Tom, got that from a round-eye contact at Mitsubishi Heavy Electric. They knew what the Chinese were up to – there’s no love lost – and so they took precautions against being ripped off. Again.

They are horrified that the Chinese have built a bodgy VFT system essentially without a safety system. There’s already been one VFT trainwreck in China and the first thing they did was order their media not to report it.

So they didn’t.

The ChiComs have been taking lessons from the Canberra presstitutes Gallery.

And for Christmas my better half gave me a Ryobi oscillating cutter kit with 2 batteries and recharger. Very cool. I gave her Chanel No.5. & some jewellery (That Chanel stuff’s pricey, when you work it out she’s $23,300 a litre… which seems a lot for a bottled smell)

Mk50 of Brisbane

26 Dec 12 at 8:51 pm
Surviving, Jump. Just surviving.
They took out all my gallstones – a nice little bag of marbles there, in fact a yellow top specimen container full. It took a while to find an Anaesthetist who was either drunk enough or brave enough to perform the Cholesystectomy.
So I’m home and sleeping in my own bed, things don’t get much better than that.

Winston Smith

26 Dec 12 at 8:53 pm
Was monty the puss in the middle?

I love the Chinese zodiac story “ The great race (6.1) ” and how the cat got rat-arsed.

Not a fan of cats, at all.
I’m a dog ( born in the year of )

jumpnmcar

26 Dec 12 at 8:56 pm
So I’m home and sleeping in my own bed, things don’t get much better than that.

Amen to that.

jumpnmcar

26 Dec 12 at 9:00 pm
I requested and received a new going out shirt. The old one was looking a bit frayed.

We do Kris Kringle/Secret Santa amongst the adults and my one was Bunnings vouchers. Blow that I thought, I’m not taking a special trip there. So I sticky taped “BUNNINGS VOUCHER” and “REDEEMABLE AT BUNNINGS” onto some banknotes lol

It went down well.

DaveF

26 Dec 12 at 9:07 pm
I’m a dog too, Jump!

Don’t much like cats, either. That’s probably ‘cos of the damage they do and i hate them shitting in my garden.

kae

26 Dec 12 at 9:07 pm
Great news, Winston.

Get well-er soon-er.

kae

26 Dec 12 at 9:09 pm
Hi Kae..hear about the Irish Cat?
Dropped a shit, the buried itself..

Steve
better get it in before the Roxon obliterates everything

Steve of Glasshouse

26 Dec 12 at 9:19 pm
Good work, Winston. My thoughts are with you.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 9:23 pm
Thanks, Mark. Fascinating. I may contact you privately about it next year. I sometimes deal with such issues in my work.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 9:26 pm
Well done Winston, glad you are on the up-and-up, and have a new jar of marbles. (better out than in)

Mk50 of Brisbane

26 Dec 12 at 9:27 pm
SoG

Should be more of it!

kae

26 Dec 12 at 9:34 pm
Awesome, pure pop…

Rabz

26 Dec 12 at 9:35 pm
Thanks, Tintarella. You’re not too bad yourself

Winston – don’t lose your marbles! Good to hear you’ve been released. Best Christmas present.

Gab

26 Dec 12 at 9:38 pm
Whereas beautiful women are always beautiful, time isn’t kind to pretty girls, Rabz. DH in ’08.

Tom

26 Dec 12 at 9:48 pm
Tom
She’s nearly 70, I reckon she’s doing fine.

kae

26 Dec 12 at 9:55 pm
Great song, great video…

Rabz

26 Dec 12 at 10:00 pm
The Japs get the big things right with maintenance as well as the little things.

For instance, when they tighten up the bolts that hold say a set of points together, they paint a yellow line across the head of the nut. That way, it’s easy to see visually whether the nut is coming undone (because the line will no longer line up). Something as simple as a loose nut can lead to a derailment.

I learnt that from a group of NSW railway engineers who went to Japan on a study tour about 20 years ago. They came back going “oooh” and “ah” at all the simple, but very smart things that the Japs did.

Of course CityRail being the clusterf*ck that it is, those ideas were rejected out of hand by the maintenance managers.

boy on a bike

26 Dec 12 at 10:07 pm
boab,

If you take a look at new buses and trucks – their wheel nuts are held in a yellow locking tab system.

Mike of Marion

26 Dec 12 at 10:11 pm
Warren “Who?” Truss is getting in early on the race by the Coalition frontbench to look as incompetent as possible for the next election.

m0nty

26 Dec 12 at 10:49 pm
oh m0nty…

It’s a non story as the freakshows in govt spent all the dough.

DaveF

26 Dec 12 at 11:04 pm
“Winston – don’t lose your marbles! Good to hear you’ve been released …”

Oh Gab girl, yer’ve made me day!

The way you put that sounds as if Winston’s done a good bit of his time, paid his debt to society, is no longer deemed a threat to the general public and the Parole Board has buggered up and set him free.

Didn’t know you were crook as in crook Winston. Pleased you’re out and I trust that soon you’ll feel able to get up and box on, bit by bit.

Mick Gold Coast QLD

26 Dec 12 at 11:28 pm
Thanks Mick, I think it finally dawned on the Child Bride just how unwell I was when she got to Townsville and her first view of me was when the defib pads were going on and the rhythm wasn’t our old friend Sinus.

That aside, one of the regular cats has knocked himself around a bit with epilepsy. I can’t remember who it was. Anyone know how he’s going?

Winston Smith

27 Dec 12 at 12:14 am
It was fleeced.

Hope you two dudes are okay.

I’m having back surgery early next year because of terrible back/leg pain. It’s supposed to be related to disk degeneration of disk L5. I actually lost feeling at the bottom of my big toe. Seriously.

JC

27 Dec 12 at 12:18 am
“I’m having back surgery early next year because of terrible back/leg pain …”

It’s over 10 years since I found myself crawling to the bathroom for eight weeks, as a consequence of years of scrums at loose head and (mainly from) being thrown and dragged a few times over the years (rogue horses, not poor riding ) – when you’re a big bloke and come off the body meets the deck with an extra thud, then tells you about it years later.

Stuffed at 50 I thought and so did experts like Matt Scott-Young. Out of nowhere acupuncture fixed it real well however, and subsequent disciplined management – always, always plan the movement or lift, no matter how innocuous; if you drop it simply watch it fall and don’t lunge to catch it type-of-thing. I have had great faith in the results from acupuncture since (same practitioner) with shoulders and swimming, leg circulation-swelling and even skin rash / dermatitis stuff.

I trust you achieve similar permanent relief JC, the impairment to all that one does is just too profound, especially as age and loss of flexibility arrives.

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 1:30 am
“Climate change has caused these extremes of weather to become more frequent and lethal.”

Too true, Hammy. It causes both heat and cold, wind and rain, or lack thereof. It also undoubtedly causes flatulence, madness, alcoholism, reality tv, carbuncles (whatever they are), the ugliness of Citroens, the reemergence of English cricket, and me to misplace my carkeys and not find the Vegemite when it’s right in front of my face.

Clearly, by simple logic, global cooling will resolve all of humanity’s problems. Considering the ineffectiveness of carbon taxes in lowering global temperatures, might I suggest cloning Gillard’s cold black heart and littering the earth with them, starting of course in your backyard, in appreciation of your devotion to Fabian domination. Of course, I might be inclined to use my cane toad wedge on it rather than have my lawn fouled by such filth.

The Beer Whisperer

27 Dec 12 at 1:48 am
So the new nickname for JC is confirmed: Spineless Old Fool.

m0nty

27 Dec 12 at 1:49 am
The spite and venom just keeps oozing out of you fat boy.

Make two resolutions for the new year.

1. Repay some of the money you lost for those poor investors fucked over during one of the biggest tech booms in history.

2. Stop overeating and lose 50 kilos.

JC

27 Dec 12 at 2:13 am
Really good piece on the ineffectiveness, rank stupidity and malicious intent of gun control.

It will send the Steves twins, fat boy and other assorted leftwing lunatics into a crazed stupor.

JC

27 Dec 12 at 2:23 am
Since China, Australia and the US currently have Red governments, it’s only logical they begin conducting joint war games – or at least flying a kite to see how the defence thinktanks react to the idea:

AUSTRALIA and China are planning joint military exercises – also likely to include the US – as part of a push to improve security and stability in the Pacific as Beijing’s power grows.

Exercises involving Australian, Chinese and US forces are “on the short-term horizon”, Australian Defence Force chief David Hurley has told The Australian.

“We’re working our way towards that,” he said.

A draft of next year’s defence white paper, obtained this month by The Australian, warned that China’s military expansion was changing the balance of power in the Pacific and posing a direct challenge to Australia’s strategic weight in the region.

General Hurley revealed that Australian and Chinese military leaders had discussed joint exercises “in principle”.

“It’s not something everyone will rush into but it’s certainly on the table and we just need to work out what that might look like and where and when would be the best places to do it,” he said.

Tom

27 Dec 12 at 4:21 am
Gillard may have one last great stuff-up in store in 2013: Swan’s botching of the mining tax is increasing pressure on Canberra to go after tax-free dollars being spent on online shopping, in spite of the fact that it will cost more to collect it than the net tax benefit:

LOWER commodities prices and the high Australian dollar have forced the main resources states to slash their royalties forecasts by $5.6 billion, adding to pressure on the Gillard government to overhaul the GST and ease cost pressures on mining projects.
Analysis by The Australian of the recent round of mid-year budget updates reveals the states have cut their anticipated royalties by $1.49bn for 2012-13, and now expect to collect $8.4bn…
…The figures have also sparked fresh calls by the state treasurers for Canberra to close “loopholes” in the GST to help find extra tax revenues to address the structural pressure on the states.
NSW Treasurer Mike Baird seized on the figures yesterday to declare “there’s no doubt that our finances are under pressure … For this reason, in addition to our saving measures, we pushed a number of tax reform proposals at the Standing Council on Federal Financial Relations meeting in Canberra last week.
“State and territory treasurers have been united in our push to expedite the lowering of the GST threshold for imports and these revenue pressures further highlight the need to address this as a matter of priority,” he said.

Tom

27 Dec 12 at 5:28 am
Since almost all of its remaining readers vote Green, Fauxfacts leads its Melbourne and Sydney websites with a desperate bid by the Greens to stave off irrelevancy and electoral annihilation, as polls show their support dropping by a third to as low as 8%:

THE Greens are dropping their demands for death duties as part of a new platform of policies aimed at presenting a smaller target to critics in a federal election year.

The platform does not resile from the party’s core beliefs and positions, but like the main parties’ manifestos it now presents them largely as ”aims” and ”principles” with fewer explicit policy measures.

After a year in which Labor figures have attacked the Greens as ”loopy” and ”extremists” who ”threaten democracy”, the new platform gives the federal elected MPs – nine senators and one lower house MP – more flexibility in negotiating legislation when holding the balance of power.

But it also makes it harder for opponents to attack or ridicule the party over specific policies.

Tom

27 Dec 12 at 5:49 am
I’m having back surgery early next year because of terrible back/leg pain. It’s supposed to be related to disk degeneration of disk L5. I actually lost feeling at the bottom of my big toe. Seriously.

I had L4/5 and L5/S1 discs out many a long moon ago. At under 40yo they said it was too soon, but (combined with getting into the gym) it has been a fantastic result.

Of course, they can stick a pin in any toe on my left foot, with me watching, and I will only feel it about 30 seconds later, if at all. Small price.

mct

27 Dec 12 at 6:05 am
Cycling fixed my lower back pain. The bent over positio of the road bike stretches all the lower back muscles and glutes. I was getting regular doses of crippling sciatica until I hopped back on the bike. It only comes back when I don’t pedal for a month or so. However, my sciatica seems to be caused by tight/spasming muscles rather than bone problems.

Boy on a bike

27 Dec 12 at 6:06 am
General Hurley revealed that Australian and Chinese military leaders had discussed joint exercises “in principle”.

“It’s not something everyone will rush into but it’s certainly on the table and we just need to work out what that might look like and where and when would be the best places to do it,” he said.

Another task of an incoming conservative government will be to choose carefully who it endorses for senior military positions.
Why did Houston torpedo the Howard government with a contrary statement on who ended up in the water (correct answer: all of them) then go on to be loved by the left? The Forces’ reward for service has been more and more messy runs picking up boaties.
Gillard probably miscalced a little, however, when making up her expert committee. It came up with a bit tougher set of rules than she had bargained for, and Houston clawed back a few points on my scale.
The feminisation of society has spread to the Defence forces, and they are then subject to the difficulties of mixed genders in situations that it would be better not to have them.
Seems like an extension of unreality that we should next be able to play nice with the expansionist Chinese if mummy says so.

Blogstrop

27 Dec 12 at 6:31 am
Good one from Albrechtsen again, on the erosion of freedom of speech. She’s a treasure, and really annoys lefties, particularly those at the craven ABC. Stand by for spittle-flecked troll plosives here.

blogstrop

27 Dec 12 at 7:16 am
In today’s Australian…

Cow torturers turn their prods to Chinese Cattle…

Not sure if we get the Chinese version of 4 Corners here…

Forester

27 Dec 12 at 7:37 am
The majority of lower back problems originate from having tight hamstrings. I’d say JC has a lumber vertebrae problem from sitting in a chair for long periods without stretching.

Bicycles are good, but i eventually got a pudendal nerve entrapment problem. This particular nerve goes into your bawl bags causing the teste to throb and ache. I went for an Ultrasound once to rule out cancer. Not seeing anything of note, the sonographer looked at me and said with plenty of attitude “well, there’s nothing wrong with you”. As if i enjoy going into a darkened room with the a/c blasting over my nads and COLD gel being applied in search of a good time from some matron while my wife sits outside a nervous wreck.

Too much information?

Dan

27 Dec 12 at 7:58 am
Dan you can get bicycle seats with a hole in the middle, so they don’t put too much pressure on that area. It’s been linked to impotence in guys as well.

Papachango

27 Dec 12 at 8:27 am
It’s been linked to impotence in guys as well.

You mean like Tony Abbott?

hammygar

27 Dec 12 at 8:35 am
You mean like Tony Abbott?

That was far below your usual trolling effort hammy. I expect better than that.

Carpe Jugulum

27 Dec 12 at 8:37 am
You expected better than that, CJ?
You do realise that was probably Hammygars peak for the festive season?

Winston Smith

27 Dec 12 at 8:46 am
Exercises involving Australian, Chinese and US forces are “on the short-term horizon”, Australian Defence Force chief David Hurley has told The Australian.

Hey hey, who gets to play the enemy?

jupes

27 Dec 12 at 8:46 am
Yea, those seats are great.

Dan

27 Dec 12 at 8:49 am
JC, I feel for you with the lower back pain. There is nothing more debilitating than chronic pain. It’s always there and ready to deny you the simple pleasures in life at the drop of a hat.

Winston Smith

27 Dec 12 at 8:52 am
After having been too busy to visit the Cat over the last few days, I have had some time this morning to read a few threads and catch up with what has been going on.
Without doubt, the biggest conclusion that I have been able to make is this: While regular Cat contributors have made flying visits with tales of good food, good times and good drink, there has been one constant, the soulless troll Hammy.
This nasty piece of work has been here almost constantly over the last few days, trolling away and trying to spread his own peculiar version of misery.
Previously, I believed that this character was simply a parody, but the fact that he has been almost constantly residing in a place where all the regulars are away with their families speaks volumes.
Hammy is a typical sad leftist. He either has no family, or has played the victim that much that he is rejected by them. How else can he explain the amount of time that he has spent here when he should have been enjoying Christmas with family and friends?
What a sad, lonely leftist life this poisonous individual leads.
Sad when everyone else is happy, and happy when everyone else is sad.

Huckleberry Chunkwot

27 Dec 12 at 8:57 am
First thing I did was ditch the saddle the bike came with and fitted one of the un-numb nuts models – it’s got a split straight down the middle. Only nut problems I had were before I changed to lycra – used to get terrible sweat rashes. Yes – there is a good reason for looking like a tub of custard in a condom.

boy on a bike

27 Dec 12 at 9:01 am
And how many good looking daughters have you got, Hammy? More than three?

boy on a bike

27 Dec 12 at 9:03 am
The amount of time devoted to the discussion of trolls here and on previous threads is simply ridiculous. Their mental ownership of certain individuals is almost complete.

Keith

27 Dec 12 at 9:06 am
One of the great advantages of online business is the use of technology to replace unionised staff. Having to pay staff double and triple time to be open around the clock is one of the reasons bricks and mortar retail is doomed:

RETAILERS are demanding a deregulation of store trading hours to counteract the rise of online shopping, citing frenzied Boxing Day sales as evidence consumers want to access physical stores as easily as virtual ones.

The nation’s retail outlets were expected to reap more than $1.8 billion from clearances yesterday, a 2.5 per cent lift on last year’s total, according to the Australian National Retailers Association.

Shoppers camped outside Adelaide’s Rundle Mall from 3am to be among the first to partake in South Australia’s first Boxing Day clearance sale, expected to attract about 120,000 people.

However, ANRA chief executive Margy Osmond said face-to-face retailing continued to suffer under restrictions on trading hours, particularly in NSW where the state government last month withdrew proposed legislation that would have opened stores on all public holidays.

“We expect the spend in NSW to be about $511 million today, but in Victoria it will be well over $580m, purely and simply because they’ll be able to open longer and in more places,” Ms Osmond said.

Tom

27 Dec 12 at 9:16 am
So we get the nation most likely to be our next big competitor – China – putting its ‘observers’ on board our vessels?
This stinking government continues to amaze.
I still haven’t heard any rational explanation either about his bizarre meeting with the Chinese Minister for Propaganda at which the Australian press were banned.

Winston Smith

27 Dec 12 at 9:16 am
Dan,

I won’t tell you what happened after I had minor testicular surgery and I had my final pre discharge examination of said testes by a specialist who looked like Lurch from the Adams family.

He was working with a registrar, or whatever junior specialists in training are called. She was a hot young thing in a tight white shirt with the top button suggestively undone.

The moment of truth came when Lurch examined me by having a feel. He then ever so politely asked if the young hot doctor in the tight white shirt with too many buttons undone could have a feel to help her with her training…..

Enough said.

John Comnenus

27 Dec 12 at 9:21 am
I saw that headline about GST changes and thought : FME, why can’t you just cut spending to match revenues, you filthy thieving sticky fingered busybodies?

It wouldn’t be fair if for me to help myself to my neighbours income if I wanted to spend a bit more on christmas present for my relatives, and it’s not fair for any douche in a parliament to do the same.

Public Service positions should fall in line with tax collection.

brc

27 Dec 12 at 9:26 am
I understand surgeons are very reluctant to operate on the obese because the chance of the patient dying under the anaesthesia is too great. Heart surgeons are very reluctant to operate on smokers until they’ve given up, as the benefit of surgery becomes too short term if the patient still smokes.

@ Candy from yesterday, there are actually doctors who will refuse to treat smokers – an uncle of mine is very ill. He’s also a Veteran of several trips to Vietnam, and a smoker. It took my aunt years to get recognition of his service, and then to get decent treatment.

One doctor did refuse to see him at all unless he gave up smoking.

FFS the man is terminal, let him have a gasper if he wants. He served his country and this is how he gets treated? Sod them.

The exorbitant taxes paid on cancer sticks should more than cover his costs.

nilk

27 Dec 12 at 9:32 am
It’s such a pity Ison won’t fall through Earth’s orbit until after the election.
McTernan must be chewing on the carpet at the lost opportunity to link a potential Abbott government with portents of evil in the sky.

lotocoti

27 Dec 12 at 9:34 am
Nilk,
Smokers pay more tax than the extra medical costs they incur. They also draw less in pensions and old age costs because they die earlier. Overall, smokers prop up the country and sow ingrate health Nazi, nasty doctor should treat the man. BTW my mother in law smokes and her ever so sensible GP told her not to bother quoting now, if the gaspers haven’t killed her yet, they are probably not going to. Health Nazis need to leave these elderly people alone, treat their conditions and stop trying to change their lives.

John Comnenus

27 Dec 12 at 9:38 am
AUSTRALIA’S Sikh community wants religious knives allowed in schools.

They pushed that through in Canada a few years back. I wonder if we’ll see a push for non-halal food in schools, because Sikhs are forbidden food that is halal.

nilk

27 Dec 12 at 9:39 am
“FFS the man is terminal, let him have a gasper if he wants.”

Nilk,
Perhaps the doctors refuse to treat in the hope a patient will be very strongly encouraged to give up smoking and therefore have a bit longer life and better quality, and their relatives have them around for a bit longer.

candy

27 Dec 12 at 9:47 am
The Oz reports today that the Qld Health payroll system bugga up has cost $1.2bn. Makes the ripoff of about $10m by the Prince look small.

Pickles

27 Dec 12 at 9:50 am
$1.2B for the botched payroll implementation. And people are pissing and moaning about Campbell Newman’s cuts in Queensland.

What is wrong with these people? If the ALP was still in Government in Queensland they’d still be borrowing to pay wages and increasing employment in Queensland by increasing the public service. You just can’t do that!

kae

27 Dec 12 at 10:05 am
The Oz reports today that the Qld Health payroll system bugga up has cost $1.2bn.

I knew it was a 5 star stuff up but that sounds a bit high. It’s usually the Federal government that wastes money on so grand a scale.

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 10:07 am
Candy in my uncle’s case we’re talking a man with asbestosis, cataracts and some deafness. If he wants to smoke I’ll hock a kidney and buy him some Cubans.

There is no excuse to treat a person that way. The cigarettes are the least of his concerns.

If doctors want to start getting all preachy they can go into private practise and set up a checklist at the door. If you’re in the public system paid by public monies, you are supposed to take all comers.

At least you would think so.

Giving up smoking is not as easy as saying, okay, I’m done with it. It takes an awful lot of willpower to beat the additction, and if you’re in hospital already stressed out due to your medical condition adding the pressure of giving up smoking would be adding more stress.

nilk

27 Dec 12 at 10:08 am
“However, ANRA chief executive Margy Osmond said face-to-face retailing continued to suffer under restrictions on trading hours, particularly in NSW where the state government last month withdrew proposed legislation that would have opened stores on all public holidays.”

Opening hours restrictions for most places are unjustified. For example, my local supermarket closes at 4pm on Sundays. This annoys customers so much the manager has put up signs apologising and pointing out that the he doesn’t close by choice, it’s a restriction imposed by council.

Jarrah

27 Dec 12 at 10:17 am
A wise man once warned about the Eco loon health freak government running his country. He said:

We must expect, therefore, that the poor defenceless patients are, sooner or later, going to be killed. Why? . . . because in the judgement of some official body, on the decision of some committee, they have become “unworthy to live”, because they are classed as “unproductive members of the national community”. The judgment is that they can no longer produce any goods: they are like an old piece of machinery which no longer works, like an old horse which has become incurably lame, like a cow which no longer gives any milk. What happens to an old piece of machinery? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What happens to a lame horse, an unproductive cow? I will not pursue the comparison to the end — so fearful is its appropriateness and its illuminating power . . . If it is once admitted that men have the right to kill “unproductive” fellow men — even though it is at present applied only to poor and defenceless mentally ill patients — then the way is open for the murder of all unproductive men and women: the incurably ill, those disabled in industry or war. The way is open, indeed, for the murder of all of us, when we become old and infirm and therefore
unproductive”

The man giving the warning was the Catholic Bishop Of Munster, Bishop Von Gale.The leader he warned of was Adolfo Hitler. This was part of a sermon in 1941. Nazis and health fascists are always dangerous tyrants.

John Comnenus

27 Dec 12 at 10:23 am
” citing frenzied Boxing Day sales as evidence consumers want to access physical stores as easily as virtual ones. ”

I tend to think it’s the much lower prices that attract customers and not the opening hours of a shop.

candy

27 Dec 12 at 10:24 am
Amazingly Von Galen survived the war, despite being a powerful and loud critic of Hitler, Nazism and the persecution and murder of the powerless. His opposition forced the Nazis to shelve their initial plans to kill off cripples and the infirm. In many respects, and contrary to the pop history of many so called historians, the Catholic Church was the only political opposition to Hitler inside Germany. A great number of Von Galen’s parish priests we arrested and murdered by the Nazis for reading out the sermons Von Galen prepared and distributed through his clergy. A truly great man of vision and compassion, he had no army, no guns, no protection and little assistance. He was guided by his faith and the support of his loyal parishioners and the priests who worked with him across his Bishopric. He was made Cardinal in 1946 for his courageous stance against the Nazis.

John Comnenus

27 Dec 12 at 10:31 am
So far 286 comments on this Open Forum but not one from the moron who uses an Army Service Number as his name.This has to be a record.

Lew

27 Dec 12 at 10:51 am
Happy Christmas, Boxing Day and the approaching New Year, Cats.
Still eating the ham, chicken a, Silverside and all the salads and finally did over the fruit salad and scoffed the delicious charries, here.Still got a mango to tackletoday
Was a very pleasant family Christmas with my sister and her family( and their two dogs–the beagle and the puppy Irish Water Spaniel)and my tree looked better than ever even if it is a recycle-my only child(daughter in her 50s) ranfg for Chrissie and one of my grandies also got on the phone–of course when I was making gravy for the dinner!As you do!
I’m now sitting at my puter on an ergonomic chair wiht a nice new thick mousepad to use! Yay!Cheers

Jazza

27 Dec 12 at 11:02 am
Says Dan of back problems:

eventually got a pudendal nerve entrapment problem. This particular nerve goes into your bawl bags causing the teste to throb and ache

For him and JC, John Comnenus, boy on a bike et al …

Jacko goes to the doctor complaining of terrible headaches. The doctor examines him and says “I can see your problem, your balls are pushing against your spine, hence the headaches”.

Jacko feels relieved the problem is so simple, until the doctor tells him that the only cure is to have his balls lopped off. Reluctantly he agrees, and a few weeks later comes out of hospital feeling very depressed. To cheer himself up he decides to buy himself some new clothes.

As he walks into the shop the assistant, who was tucking socks at the time, asks him if he would like some new shoes. “Yes” says our fella and without asking the assistant (who minces about a bit like Mr Humphries from “Are You Being Served”) brings Jacko the correct size pair of shoes. He is perplexed by this so Mr Humphries explains that he can gauge his shoe size by experience alone.

Mr Humphries then asks “Would Mr Jacko be wanting a new shirt?” and once again brings him a shirt with the right collar size, without asking. Next Mr Humphries offers Jacko new undies and brings him a pair with a waist size of 32 inches.

He laughs and says, “Ha! I knew I would catch you out, I have been a size 30 inch waist for the past 5 years.”

Mr Humphries replies “No, no! That is far too tight. Sir will find that they will push his balls against his spine and produce terrible headaches!”

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 11:09 am
“I tend to think it’s the much lower prices that attract customers and not the opening hours of a shop.”

True, but why unnecessarily hamper bricks and mortar? Let them open whenever they want.

“contrary to the pop history of many so called historians, the Catholic Church was the only political opposition to Hitler inside Germany.”

Possibly because the church, although persecuted, wasn’t banned like the other political opposition. And don’t forget the Reich Concordat.

Jarrah

27 Dec 12 at 11:09 am
Crikey, JohnC, I thought that doctor story was going to get really exciting. Wrong kind of site for that story, though.

m0nty

27 Dec 12 at 11:11 am
Cycling fixed my lower back pain. The bent over position of the road bike stretches all the lower back muscles and glutes.

That’s not all it does.

C.L.

27 Dec 12 at 11:14 am
Thanks Mick a winner of a joke.

In return: 26 Moments that Restored Your Faith in Humanity

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 11:16 am
Can’t really see any crime worthy of the name here.

C.L.

27 Dec 12 at 11:18 am
I knew it was a 5 star stuff up but that sounds a bit high. It’s usually the Federal government that wastes money on so grand a scale.

$1.25 billion is the estimated total cost of the payroll system from 2010 to 2017 from the KPMG review. $1 billion of that is operational costs. Presumably those costs are so high because the system still doesn’t work properly (and never will), and it requires a lot of human intervention.

Dangph

27 Dec 12 at 11:23 am
Wasn’t aware that thre was an addendum to the Hippocratic oath citing Peter Stuyvesant.
Also unsure who he thread turned to numb nuts, but one would think that would have been prompted by Hammy somehow.

Leigh Lowe

27 Dec 12 at 11:24 am
A preview of the soft-cock muddle-headedness and lack of principle in the government that will take power at the next election:

THE Coalition has been accused of being less trenchant in resisting Labor’s plan to make it unlawful to offend or insult another person than a former political staffer to Gough Whitlam and a federal ALP backbencher.

In a letter to Coalition MPs a right-wing think tank says it has a “very great concern at the failure” of the Coalition to oppose the laws.

The letter by Institute of Public Affairs executive director John Roskam says “frankly, that’s just not good enough” that the Coalition intends to wait until a Senate inquiry has examined the plan.

“Members from around the country have inundated me with phone calls, emails, and letters about the draft legislation,” the letter says.

“Every one of them has asked the same question: where is the Coalition on this issue? I wish I had something positive to tell them.”

It says that former Whitlam adviser, retired NSW chief justice and ABC chairman Jim Spigelman, who has criticised the proposed laws for imposing unprecedented restrictions on free speech because they make it unlawful to offend or insult people, has been outspoken on the plan, “in stark contrast” to the “silence” of the Coalition.

Tom

27 Dec 12 at 11:40 am
The Oz spends an inordinate amount of time worrying what the IPA thinks.

m0nty

27 Dec 12 at 11:46 am
m0nty spends an inordinate amount of time worrying what the IPA thinks.

Gab

27 Dec 12 at 11:48 am
“$1.2B for the botched payroll implementation. And people are pissing and moaning about Campbell Newman’s cuts in Queensland.

What is wrong with these people? If the ALP was still in Government in Queensland they’d still be borrowing to pay wages and increasing employment in Queensland by increasing the public service.”

No-one will be sacked and no-one will be sued for negligence. A raft of big 3 or 4 accountancy firms and solicitors made a fortune advising the Labor government and I’ll warrant the same snake oil salesmen even today are flogging their advice to stupid public servants who are too dim to know they are being conned.

I saw numerous similar projects whilst consulting to the rail mob years ago and wondered why the sloths are so incapable of doing their own work and their own thinking themselves.

The computer literate here know that any one of us could knock up an Excel, even a Lotus 123, spreadsheet to handle wages for a workforce of 10 or 10,000 with ease. It’s not a difficult task, despite what the “experts” bleat about too many variables (spreadsheet structure, macros etc can deal with an infinite number of variables).

Yet the useless public servants cry and cry about the party being over, rather than shuffling out the door clutching their undeservedly handsome redundancy cheque, happy that they had it so good for so long. The QLD useless public servant numbers grew at a greater rate than population growth for 10 years (up to 1% more cumulatively) – did they think it would never end?.

Bligh and the health ministers and that smart alec Treasurer ought to have been gaoled for their financial incompetence.

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 11:48 am
wanker leftie newspaper publishes names and addresses of gun owners. Are these fuckwits for real?

Tiny Dancer

27 Dec 12 at 11:53 am
Meet the literature board, promoting our culture!

Rafe

27 Dec 12 at 12:00 pm
Bligh and the health ministers and that smart alec Treasurer ought to have been gaoled for their financial incompetence.

No justice I am afraid.
Kate Lundy gave failed Treasurer and successful smartarse Andrew Fraser a gig on he Board of he Australian Sports Commission.
Finance Minister k d wong just appointed that slanderous slapper, Anna Bligh to the Board of Medibank.
The Minister for Preventing Agricultural Exports, Joe Ludwig, appointed Kate Jones (thrashed by Newman in the seat of Ashgrove) to Landcare Council.

If Jones and Fraser are such “rising stars” surely a stint with a real job would be of some benefit.
The protection racket continues.

Leigh Lowe

27 Dec 12 at 12:05 pm
The best part of the faux prince who did the champagne circuit knocking the back out of the odd newsreader and weather girl is not that he told them he was a prince and they swallowed it (as it were) but that that they told him they were “journalists”.

Pickles

27 Dec 12 at 12:09 pm
That’s appalling LL. I knew it would happen but…

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 12:11 pm
Mick o GC
I know someone who is involved in payroll systems, a consultant. He’s a blogger at Blair’s.
He said noone implements a new system without first paralleling for several payroll cycles to make sure that the bugs are ironed out, and that everyone is paid correctly while any bugs are ironed out.

kae

27 Dec 12 at 12:13 pm
Monbiot is a catastrophist but an honest one, he is mad keen on nuclear power because he bed wets over CAGW for example. And pays a heavy price in the luvvie circles for it.

He is also upfront in being a hopeless cliche. This article is gold, he lays it all out in detail. Kudos for being willing to be a butt of jokes.

Amost as soon as they arrived they began twocking stuff. A radio journalist left his equipment in his hire car. They smashed the side window. Someone saw them bundling the kit, wrapped in a stolen sleeping bag, into their lorry. There was a confrontation – handwringing appeals to reason on one side, pugnacious defiance on the other – which eventually led to the equipment being handed back.

They wound their dogs up, making them snap and snarl at the other occupiers. At night they roamed the camp, staffies straining at the leash, cans of Special Brew in their free hands, shouting “fucking hippies, we’re going to burn you in your tents!”

We had no idea how to handle them without offending our agonised liberal consciences.

There’s more at the link.

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 12:20 pm
Today (Thursday), the ABC’s Michael Millett has a letter in The Australian pointing out the fallacies and lies(+) that paper has used to criticise Robin Williams for supposedly ‘equating climate change sceptics and pedophiles’.

Millett’s rock solid response is pertinent for readers of the Cat too, given that Sinc made broadly the same charges against Williams as The Australian did. Alas, lies of this type by Sinc are a common occurrence on Catallaxy.

+ The term ‘lie’ is used in this post in the liberal Catallaxian sense, as reflected in Cat commentary on Gillard’s carbon tax and budget surplus promises, to refer to any falsehood irrespective of whether said falsehood was intentional. Of course, in The Australian’s case at least, there are good reasons for believing that its lied with intent.

William Bragg

27 Dec 12 at 12:26 pm
DaveF, Monbiot has a single, tunnel-visioned objective to which he has dedicated his whole life: to destroy capitalism. He’s thorough dishonest about his motivations, IMO.

Tom

27 Dec 12 at 12:31 pm
the Oz spends an inordinate amount of time worrying what the IPA thinks.

You spend an inordinate amount of time worrying what people at the Cat think Fats.

JC

27 Dec 12 at 12:34 pm
“the ABC’s Michael Millett has a letter in The Australian … Millett’s rock solid response is pertinent for readers of the Cat too, given that Sinc made broadly the same charges … Alas, lies of this type by Sinc are a common occurrence on Catallaxy”

The midday shift has clocked on. Does the Party pay their footsoldiers penalty rates between Christmas and New Year?

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 12:37 pm
Tom I agree with your assessment of his objectives because he’s fairly open about it.

I hate people like the Australian Greens whose objective is to drag us back to the stone age but won’t state it openly.

Bandt was spouting earlier how they were more upfront with their policies now because they’d removed the numbers (high income taxis now described a increasing rather than the previous 50%).

You can’t make this stuff up.

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 12:38 pm
“noone implements a new system without first paralleling for several payroll cycles to make sure that the bugs are ironed out”

That makes eminent good sense kae, and I ask why did the senior public servants managing the project not lose their jobs for failing to implement such simple management checks during those early days? That’s their job and they didn’t do it properly yet they continued to draw their pay of $350,000 or more throughout.

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 12:43 pm
Wow. Apparently climate change is a terrible thing in Arab countries.

The fact that they live in the desert doesn’t appear to have much to do with the climate, nor have I seen islam get a guernsey for its impact on how people there live.

nilk

27 Dec 12 at 12:44 pm
Mick, the best part of the QHealth payroll system?
NSW Health bought it too!

Winston Smith

27 Dec 12 at 12:48 pm
But seriously, if JC is serious about improving his chances of his spine not completely atrophying as he sits at his desk trading pork belly futures or whatever, he needs a genuine Herman Miller Aeron chair. The price has recently dropped to a mere thousand nicker, which is a bargain. I got mine for $1400, best money I ever spent. Living Edge will set you right.

m0nty

27 Dec 12 at 12:51 pm
You spend an inordinate amount of time worrying what people at the Cat think

And you spend an inordinate amount of time worrying what I think. It’s the circle of life, or something.

m0nty

27 Dec 12 at 12:52 pm
Potemkin’s Village

After playing hookey from school and dirtying his clothes in a fight… here

Grigory Potemkin

27 Dec 12 at 1:24 pm
[...] William Bragg in comments) Share this:TwitterFacebookGoogle [...]

Quick tell the ABC II at Catallaxy Files

27 Dec 12 at 1:24 pm
Monty..The old saying goes..” Don’t worry about what the bloke down the road is thinking ’bout you. It’s the last thing on his mind”

Steve of Glasshouse

27 Dec 12 at 1:28 pm
The midday shift has clocked on. Does the Party pay their footsoldiers penalty rates between Christmas and New Year?

Enjoying your time on the sideline, Mick, viewing the fight rather than being equipped with the facts and arguments to engage in it?

Thought not.

William Bragg

27 Dec 12 at 1:30 pm
Dick Bagg:

Enjoying your time on the sideline, Mick, viewing the fight rather than being equipped with the facts and arguments to engage in it?

Dick Bagg says this? Dick Bagg?

Chutzpa indeed.

Mk50 of Brisbane

27 Dec 12 at 1:34 pm
“… the best part of the QHealth payroll system?
NSW Health bought it too!”

Simply unbelievable.

“We’ve just installed this fabulous Sony Betamax video machine up north throughout QLD and we think your Health Department could do with one too. By the way, we’d like you to join us in our corporate box at the SCG for the Sydney Test.” Aaaaarghhhhh!

Until recently Winston some of those senior NSW fellas and departmental heads were contemporaries – we did our cadetships in the public service together, graduated together, moved through the professions together, I did business with them securing projects for Evil Oil and Coal, represented Evil Oil and Coal on their heavy transport and remediation committees, took ‘em on in the various courts and so on.

The best went into private enterprise from age 25 onwards and I can count on one hand those who remained who were any good.

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 1:47 pm
Who would you trust to tell you the truth? A newspaper committed to journalistic ethics? Or a communist zealot who hates capitalism? Fuck off, troll.

Tom

27 Dec 12 at 1:49 pm
“Enjoying your time on the sideline, Mick, viewing the fight rather than being equipped with the facts and arguments to engage in it?

Thought not.”

I’ll give ya some Percy Shelley for your corner champ …

“… there is a regality about him, the innate presence of a man born into an elite who has proved himself in his own terms, someone who does not condescend to talk to urchins …”

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 1:52 pm
I had a difficult time last night seated at a large table of people I hardly knew. HIA was at the other end being feted by his previous wife’s rellies, and I was left with the Admiring Friends of David Marr and a retired contingent of the the ABC and Fairfaxistas to fend for myself. I looked too young, and from another world.

As I could not be rude, I kept very quiet, drank not much, OD’d on the Brandy Trifle, and spoke in generalities when at all. The lesbian ‘chappie’ next to me was showing off too which became a bit cringeworthy.

All in all, a quiet night and we left early. I am bemused by them all. The ex is ‘one of them’ but nicer, and her people, who of course funded that big first wedding of his in the UK years ago, are very cultured and gracious and more arty than lefty. The general company though seemed amazingly (to me) unaware that much of the rest of the nation thinks and feels differently to them about politics and related matters.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

27 Dec 12 at 1:52 pm
Interesting article about the Germans opening nursing homes overseas where it’s cheaper, sometimes 1/3 the cost.

Eastern Europe, even Thailand and the Phillippines.

This was a nice touch:

Artur Frank, the owner of Senior Palace, which finds care homes for Germans in Slovakia, said that was why it was wrong to suggest senior citizens were being “deported” abroad, as the VdK described it.

“They are not being deported or expelled,” he said. “Many are here of their own free will, and these are the results of sensible decisions by their families who know they will be better off.”

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 2:00 pm
They can send all the old Krauts to Poland.

Most of them have probably been there once already.

boy on a bike

27 Dec 12 at 2:22 pm
LA deadbeats throw out broken guns for cash, laugh all the way to the nearest 7/11… Read this and marvel at the level of stupid:

LA residents swap guns for groceries.

Critics question the effectiveness of gun buyback events, arguing that the weapons surrendered tend to be the least likely to be used in criminal activities, such as guns which are old or malfunctioning.

Protesters brings the smarts:

“Get $$ for your gun … We buy your gun to donate it to a woman in danger. An armed woman will not be a victim,” said one poster advertising a website.

“Many countries have fallen into tyranny because people were unarmed,” George Siegel, a 35-year-old merchant mariner told AFP.

C.L.

27 Dec 12 at 2:27 pm
he needs a genuine Herman Miller Aeron chair. The price has recently dropped to a mere thousand nicker, which is a bargain. I got mine for $1400, best money I ever spent. Living Edge will set you right.

I have a herman miller chair in my office, Fat Boy, not the make believe stuff you would buy. Nice try.

It’s not the Aeron though. Frankly I don’t quite believe you own one as I can’t believe the mesh would hold the deadweight.

JC

27 Dec 12 at 2:28 pm
Elizabeth, you need to have JC in your corner at those sort of parties. He’s like the honey badger with lefties at social events: he don’t care; he don’t give a shit.

C.L.

27 Dec 12 at 2:30 pm
oohh BOAB…

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 2:31 pm
I read some of the comments on that Monbiot post. Now I feel unclean. Some comments can not be un-read.

brc

27 Dec 12 at 2:34 pm
It’s not the Aeron though

Enjoy your spine falling apart, then.

m0nty

27 Dec 12 at 2:43 pm
Last place I worked gave an Aeron to everyone staff member. Very nice chair indeed.

The mesh base must make life hard for chair sniffers though.

boy on a bike

27 Dec 12 at 2:57 pm
Elizabeth, you need to have JC in your corner at those sort of parties. He’s like the honey badger with lefties at social events: he don’t care; he don’t give a shit.

“sactly. Use a howizter and flame thrower, Lizzie.

When one of them says lets agree to disagree… tell them no, they are wrong and ought to concede. Fuck’em

JC

27 Dec 12 at 2:57 pm
It’s supposed to be related to disk degeneration of disk L5. I actually lost feeling at the bottom of my big toe. Seriously.

Good luck. I had surgery 6 weeks ago to repair a L4/5 prolapse that had completely blocked the root nerve – I’d lost feeling in the L5 innervated muscles from my toes to half way up my shin. The movement & feeling is slowly coming back & hopefully should recover almost completely.

badm0f0

27 Dec 12 at 3:05 pm
OD’d on the Brandy Trifle, and spoke in generalities when at all.

Seems sensible to me.

Ellen of Tasmania

27 Dec 12 at 3:07 pm
I kept very quiet

lol That must’ve taken a lot of determination and effort. I get on well with my outlaws and my ex (AKA the capitalist) and his partner (mostly) as she is a staunch dyed-in-the-wool gillard supporter. Needless to say, at family gatherings we NEVER discuss politics.

Gab

27 Dec 12 at 3:13 pm
Poor Grandad went a trifle deaf on Christsmas day…….Seems the Grandkids stuffed sponge in one of his ears and jelly in the other while the ol boy was sleeping off lunch.

Splatacrobat

27 Dec 12 at 3:15 pm
Ha. I had to have someone over for Christmas lunch who re-posted the misogyny rant on Facebook as an awesome thing, and is a committed lefty on everything. So no interesting topics of conversation occurred, at all.

It’s funny, though, how even the most head-tilting committed leftie still doesn’t mind tucking into a pile of bourgeois prawns caught by a gaia raping trawler, and knocking back some good wine chilled by a big-ass fridge, while commenting how nice it is to sit in an air conditioned house on a sweltering Christmas day.

Perhaps they were suffering on stuffing themselve s full of Christmas lunch, the same way I have to sit and suffer yet-another-head-tilt without saying anything. But somehow I doubt it.

Yet I shut up and smile and pour some more wine, because ultimately you do have to take a break from pointing out the idiocy in leftist arguments, and what better day to do that than Christmas. There will never be an end to the assembly line of people who feel and don’t think, so you’ve got to give yourself some time off.

brc

27 Dec 12 at 3:20 pm
wrong fred.

JC

27 Dec 12 at 3:20 pm
Found In I-banks macro research predictions for 2013.

It’s head turning.

Our commodity team expects US oil production to rise to c10mbd by 2020, up from 6.1mbd today……… The indirect benefits could potentially even be larger. Gas prices are nearly a quarter of European levels – and the German industry federation BDI estimates that by 2020 electricity prices in the US could be nearly half those in Europe, something which could clearly benefit the competitiveness of the US. According to press reports (FT, 28 November), Brussels-based trade associations, Orgalime and Ceemet, fear that European manufacturers are paying
nearly twice as much for electricity and nearly three times as much for gas as their US
competitors.

(f) Manufacturing activity could return to the US
Between 1998 and 2010, the US lost 6m manufacturing jobs, or a third of overall
manufacturing employment. Yet, with emerging market wage growth averaging 14% over
the past decade, the cost advantage of shifting manufacturing jobs to Asia has now been
diminished. Indeed, BCG highlight that by 2015, Chinese wages in high cost areas (such
as Tianjin and Shanghai) will only be c30% lower than some of the low-cost US states
and, with 20% to 30% of costs being labour related, total manufacturing costs will be 10%
to 15% cheaper. This increases the incentive for companies to return production capacity
to the US.

Our power prices could even be cheaper than that of the US, however we carbonic taxed ourselves to death.

Next time some moron suggests Australia doesn’t make anything remind them why.

JC

27 Dec 12 at 3:22 pm
because ultimately you do have to take a break from pointing out the idiocy in leftist arguments, and what better day to do that than Christmas.

No you don’t. Treat it as a sport that you’re continually training for. Never ever back down.

JC

27 Dec 12 at 3:23 pm
” “sactly. Use a howizter and flame thrower, Lizzie.

When one of them says lets agree to disagree… tell them no, they are wrong and ought to concede. Fuck’em”

The only way to go JC. It’s like shooting fish in a barrell when you’ve got your basic facts and data right. My level of ruthlessness is in inverse proportion to my interest in their company.

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 3:25 pm
I voted for Gough. Once. I was young,inexperienced and naive at the time.

face ache

27 Dec 12 at 3:44 pm
No you don’t. Treat it as a sport that you’re continually training for. Never ever back down.

Doesn’t it ruin the gemütlichkeit though? For most people, if you attack their ideas, they take it personally and they get upset. Not many people are interested in debating ideas.

Dangph

27 Dec 12 at 3:44 pm
At our family gathering the ” asylum seeker ” topic came up and a couple of the older cocky teenagers started with the ” compassion for the most most vulnerable ” rot
Reciting all the greens talking points that they had done assignments on , I was amazed how uninformed they were.
Half way through my sister and I informing them of a few facts, the shutters went up and they refused to hear any more.
One said ” If I presented that to my teacher I’d get a D , that’s not what she wants ”

Schooling today isn’t about learning.

jumpnmcar

27 Dec 12 at 3:55 pm
We are in a position now where we can make great societal gains from the judicious application of interest rate restrictions. To claim otherwise would be to suggest that we have already arrived at a point of excellence in our banking, finance, and foreign exchange system.

Nick De Cusa

27 Dec 12 at 4:11 pm
JC:

No you don’t. Treat it as a sport that you’re continually training for. Never ever back down.

Yup.

And keep it calm and rational – fact based.

Let them get screechy and preachy.

Mk50 of Brisbane

27 Dec 12 at 4:25 pm
Jump
Was explaining to my boy how earth temperatures hadn’t warmed in 16 years. He brought it up with his geography teacher who responded with Mann’s hockey stick graph. Private school mind you. And then the girl got a short lesson in how precipitation worked after telling me to turn off the kitchen tap to save water.

Rousie

27 Dec 12 at 4:47 pm
And if you really want to nail lefty’s the best way is to hone in on the deep deep shame they harbour which makes them absolutely petrified of any kind of truth based self introspection and compels every cell in their being to embrace relativism for want of facing up to a life of no consequence

Rousie

27 Dec 12 at 4:53 pm
Christmas Loot
I didn’t get a lotta loot for Christmas, but I did hit the target with all my gifts to friends and family – and that gave me so much pleasure!

kae

27 Dec 12 at 4:53 pm
Rousie

Private school mind you.

Yep, same here.

jumpnmcar

27 Dec 12 at 5:07 pm
Yet I shut up and smile and pour some more wine, because ultimately you do have to take a break from pointing out the idiocy in leftist arguments, and what better day to do that than Christmas. There will never be an end to the assembly line of people who feel and don’t think, so you’ve got to give yourself some time off.

No, you always attack, bait, mock and dismiss. For at least two generations now, lefties have bullied middle-class people into being quiet. When they hold forth, they smugly expect compliance. Don’t give it to them. Always grind them down. In pleasaent social settings this needn’t be aggressive. Sarcasm, talking over the top of them etc do nicely and they hate it.

C.L.

27 Dec 12 at 5:10 pm
“And keep it calm and rational – fact based.

Let them get screechy and preachy.”

Mk50 – Yep. An easy, calm temperament as one clearly enunciates the facts, followed by a fabulous big smile when they “get screechy and preachy”.

They are never well equipped and their assertions are always subjective.

It’s different when you are arguing the toss with your mates though. It’s hammer and tongs, stirring pronouncements, threatening gestures and worse-than-death threats such as … “You’re bloody wrong and you know you’re bloody wrong ya bastard. You’ll bloody pay too! Next week you’ll be away and I know whose back verandah I’ll be sitting on enjoying a free beer, don’t you worry about that.”

We have another fabulous line too – when it’s your shout and you’re waiting at the bar you invariably remember some killer blow you failed to lay. It’s expected that one will return with the beers and announce “… and another thing, ya mongrel …”, which usually brings the house down.

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 5:12 pm
Who knew?
A nine year old set fire to his family home. Everything was destroyed on Christmas Day.
It’s Campbell Newman’s fault.
You know that, don’t you?
He cut the education drive two months ago which taught kids not to light fires.

kae

27 Dec 12 at 6:42 pm
Heh. Gotta love it…

Mk50 of Brisbane

27 Dec 12 at 7:59 pm
Hence the blog “Ace of Spades”, Mark?

blogstrop

27 Dec 12 at 8:12 pm
Ah, no. Duffelblog is essentially The Onion for the US military.

This is one of my favourites – very funny.

Mk50 of Brisbane

27 Dec 12 at 8:18 pm
Ha! Had to delete the following para, but this is a good one:
“Colonel Wang hopes his complaint will convince the Department of Defense to institute more sensitivity training, so that future espionage missions won’t leave his men “dead to the world, eyes glazed over, with no hope for mankind.”

blogstrop

27 Dec 12 at 9:12 pm
Cartoonists delight “Which of you monkeys was driving this thing?”

Rafe

27 Dec 12 at 9:18 pm
Somebody really ought to ditch the PC and clean up these bastards for good.

blogstrop

27 Dec 12 at 9:25 pm
Rafe, did they say that “the monkeys are now helping the police with their inquiries?”

blogstrop

27 Dec 12 at 9:27 pm
” Rafe, did they say that “the monkeys are now helping the police with their inquiries?” “

I didn’t notice that but the report ends “Police believe they have recaptured the four escapee monkeys. The headcount is continuing and is expected to be finalised late this afternoon.”

Mick Gold Coast QLD

27 Dec 12 at 9:45 pm
Yeah, gem of a site MK50

CAMP PENDLETON, CA – Marines from the Lone Star State are enraged today after reports emerged indicating that one of their own does not relentlessly announce his Texas heritage to everyone within earshot.

The only downer is some of the skits are plays on military lingo, totally lost on me.

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 9:55 pm
The first news in the afternoon just reported that an unspecified number of circus monkeys escaped without harm. Then Brian Wilshire took up the story on 2GB this evening, it seems that only four monkeys were on travelling and all were in custody, presumably helping the police with their investigations. Brian was intrigued by the location of the crash, Bombo near Kiama, south of Wollongong. He eventually found in Wikipedia.

Rafe

27 Dec 12 at 9:59 pm
O! The humanity!

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN – In a tragic accident earlier today, aircraft belonging to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) inadvertently killed 51 Afghans near the city of Mazar-i-Sharif while attempting to drop candy to a group of children.

According to accounts from both Afghans and international observers, two NATO aircraft, later identified as American C-130s, made a low pass over a village of several hundred Afghans outside the city.

Approximately 1.4 million M&Ms were to be delivered via Container Delivery System in a single package with a weight of 1500 lbs. Due to a malfunction in the static line, the parachute failed to deploy and the container crashed through the roof of a local school at nearly 100 miles per hour.

Upon impact, the force of the rapidly settling candies caused the sides to explode outward, causing what physics professor Dr. Rosella Schwartz described as, “essentially a 360 degree anti-personnel mine full of chocolate flechettes.”

RTWT.

nilk

27 Dec 12 at 10:26 pm
A Daniel Barnes ad for Hell Pizzas. Daniel is an occasional commenter on the Cat, mostly stirring the economists but what can you expect from a kiwi. This is the page for his agency.

He has volunteered to help with the advertising campaign and the covers for my e books.

Rafe

27 Dec 12 at 10:29 pm
Circus monkeys escape after trailer crash…

They’ve obviously run off to join the ALP.

kae

27 Dec 12 at 10:58 pm
essentially a 360 degree anti-personnel mine full of chocolate flechettes

Yep a really good site.

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 11:00 pm
Hell Pizza is pretty ok.

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 11:01 pm
Hell Pizza is pretty ok.

Indeed, but only if is a super supreme with anchovies.

That is the gold standard.

Carpe Jugulum

27 Dec 12 at 11:19 pm
The one in Roto-Vegas on the mall we asked if they had glasses for BYO. Bemused they were, called the manager, we were given plastic with the admonishment “If there’s trouble it isn’t our fault.”

Still can’t work that out. We were both Aussies.

DaveF

27 Dec 12 at 11:35 pm
My idea of a hell pizza would be tripe strips, parson’s noses stuffed with chilli and topped with melted gorgonzola.

Splatacrobat

27 Dec 12 at 11:39 pm
A WOMAN has fought her same-sex ex-partner’s right to be added to their children’s birth certificates because they have no biological link.

Another example of the unintended consequence of same sex families?

Splatacrobat

27 Dec 12 at 11:52 pm
It’s a chain in NZ.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 12:14 am
Labor’s ‘Social Inclusion Board’ wants more money, says utopia is attainable with a Five Year Plan. Note well: the board’s chairman is being quite serious here:

THE chairwoman of Labor’s Social Inclusion Board says it will take at least five years of investment to see any significant improvement in tackling social disadvantage in Australia.

Lin Hatfield Dodds said the government’s “place-based” model of helping those most underprivileged would need another three years of federal funding, in addition to the two years already spent, before it could be determined if it was working.

She said breaking the cycle of entrenched disadvantage took “years and years” of investment and future governments should be prepared to take on the controversial portfolio over the longer term.

“I think at the five-year mark we are going to be able to say with great certainty, ‘yes, this is working’, or, ‘no, it isn’t’,” Ms Hatfield Dodds told The Australian.

What does the ‘Social Inclusion Board’ actually do, besides attempt to lock in a generation of jobs for tax-eating social workers and other useless people?

Opposition disabilities spokesman Mitch Fifield, who led the questioning in Senate estimates, told The Australian the unit was “a government agency looking for a reason to be”. “As far as I can tell, the only thing the Social Inclusion Unit has done is to produce a report called How Australia is Fairing, and it reached such stunning conclusions as most Australians enjoy catching up with family and friends, that their family sometimes irritate them and that some Australians feel unsafe after dark,” Senator Fifield said.

C.L.

28 Dec 12 at 1:49 am
UN funding rises as efficiency drive hits public service

AUSTRALIA’S financial contribution to the UN will rise by at least 14 per cent next year as the government pushes ahead with a drive to slash departmental expenses and promote public service efficiencies.

This like a bizarro world. we’re efficient if we spend an additional 14%.

Seriously, is there anyway to get rid of these fucking clowns.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 2:13 am
I don’t get it. They want to save money on the public sector in order to give the savings to the fucking United Nations?

Is that right?

C.L.

28 Dec 12 at 3:28 am
The predominant mentality will declare that we have to increase our donations to the UN for at least five years before we see if it’s making a difference.
This sort of thinking also decrees that reducing Australia’s CO2 emissions will help the planet, paying teachers more will help education results, and having women in the military will be beneficial.
One could go on almost indefinitely with such a catalogue of derangement.

Blogstrop

28 Dec 12 at 5:37 am
Gerard Henderson has catalogued the stupid statements of 2012. He’s still at the SMH. That’s the rag which employs Ben Cubby, who reportedly didn’t know the difference between a CEO and a Chairman, because all capitalists look the same to him.

Blogstrop

28 Dec 12 at 6:04 am
Murder by Numbers

Today’s murder rate is essentially at a low point of the past century. The murder rate in 2011 was lower than it was in 1911.
And the trend is downward. Whatever we’ve been doing over the last 20-30 years seems to be working, more or less. The murder rate has been cut by more than half since 1980: from 10.7 to 4.7.k

We can only speculate on what might be behind this trend, but I will point out a few interesting facts.
• From 1980 to 2000 our prison population more than quadrupled.
• From the 1980s to 2000, the number of prisoner executions more than quadrupled.
• From 1986 to 2006, the number of states adopting “shall issue” Concealed Carry permits nearly quadrupled.

In over 52% of the murders in the US in 2011 in which the race of the murderer was known, the murderer was black. Over half of the victims of murder were also black. But blacks are only 13.6% of the population. Put all that together, and the murder rate in the US for non-blacks was more like 2.6 per 100,000 in 2011

Yeah but shut-up.

But this time, gun bans will — like socialism — finally work out.

One of the most frustrating thing about the politically unaware is their unchanging belief that Something must be done! (all attempts to panic the public into agreeing that Something Must Be Done! are directed at this cohort), but they have little idea of what, specifically, should be done. Something. You know, something. Something must be done, why are you not getting this?
…

It’s the single thing they know about politics — Something must be done.

Rudiau

28 Dec 12 at 6:07 am
AUSTRALIA’S financial contribution to the UN will rise by at least 14 per cent next year as the government pushes ahead with a drive to slash departmental expenses and promote public service efficiencies.

Great. Why not give the department heads an extra 100k per annum while you’re at it?

Abu Chowdah

28 Dec 12 at 6:31 am
Re David Gregory and Alinsky’s fourth rule.

and a few comments,

David Burge ‏@iowahawkblog
You can’t be prosecuted for breaking a law you support. #TheDavidGregoryLoophole

David Burge ‏@iowahawkblog
David Gregory can have and do illegal stuff because journalism. And because free speech. Also, because shut up.

David Burge ‏@iowahawkblog
So the press has declared David Gregory not guilty by reason of celebrity.

David Burge ‏@iowahawkblog
“Good evening ociffer. As you can see *hic* am a NBC jourmalist investing the dangerlous alcohol law driving law things.”

David Burge ‏@iowahawkblog
In Bizarro World, David Gregory obeys laws he disagrees with.

Rudiau

28 Dec 12 at 6:33 am
Gavin Atkins, our friend from Tim Blair’s and Shadowlands, waits until after Christmas to impart this piece of intelligence in a column for The Australian:
Eating Less Leads To Weight Loss.
He’s quite right, as usual. Now about that novel, Gav …?

blogstrop

28 Dec 12 at 7:08 am
Gavin Atkins

It’s understandable there is no subject on earth about which more claptrap has been written.

he said it, lol

Rudiau

28 Dec 12 at 7:20 am
Update!!! Gun owners turn tables on newspaper goofs!

Another sign that this time its different, people are TAKING ACTION against Lefty retards in the media instead of politely ignoring them. This one I am posting, because its about time somebody served up some payback on these hypocritical pond slime. You want to post the name, address and etc. of every gun owner in Westchester on a Google map? Fine. Two can play that game.

Rudiau

28 Dec 12 at 7:27 am
The fiscal cliff explained for simple folk ( most of the voters ).

jumpnmcar

28 Dec 12 at 7:59 am
“Raise the ceiling, or remove the shit.”

Raise the ceiling, of course.
Who wants to get their hands dirty moving all that shit.

Seriously, It is these ” … made easy” or ” … for idiots” that the Liberal party needs to employ in their upcoming campaign, short and to the point.

Rudiau

28 Dec 12 at 8:16 am
RN Breakfast is being run by John Doyle while Fran the activist is away. This morning, Doyle asked photogenic academic David Smith onto the show to be his expert on the fiscal cliff. They ran through the USA scenario for a while then provided the basis for this comment. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of economists that read or post here who’ll be able to enlighten us.
They agreed that Australia’s debt problem had been overstated, and was really only “a couple of billion” not the trillions that other countries had run up.
I thought we were down the mine to the tune of 270 billion or more, and that this would take a while to pay back, give that the interest bill alone would require a string of surpluses out into the future of 13.5 billion a year at (for the sake of argument) 5%. Not something we can see Labor achieving. The there’s the capital repayments on top of that, if you really want to pay it down. But that’s just what conservatives do, not the “champions of working families”.

blogstrop

28 Dec 12 at 8:28 am
No-one can say what it actually does — this story doesn’t — but Labor’s social engineers have a new cause to waste money on:

THE chairwoman of Labor’s Social Inclusion Board says it will take at least five years of investment to see any significant improvement in tackling social disadvantage in Australia.

Lin Hatfield Dodds said the government’s “place-based” model of helping those most underprivileged would need another three years of federal funding, in addition to the two years already spent, before it could be determined if it was working.

She said breaking the cycle of entrenched disadvantage took “years and years” of investment and future governments should be prepared to take on the controversial portfolio over the longer term.

“I think at the five-year mark we are going to be able to say with great certainty, ‘yes, this is working’, or, ‘no, it isn’t',” Ms Hatfield Dodds told The Australian.

“All indications are that it is an approach that is currently working but, again, you don’t want to throw every resource in the country at it until you know that it is really going to work.”

The place-based model is focused on 10 key sites around the nation and works on tackling disadvantage within a community rather than by social grouping.

Ms Hatfield Dodds’s comments came as it was revealed that the Gillard government spent $2.19 million last financial year on the operations of the social inclusion portfolio.

A total of $2.09m was for the Social Inclusion Unit and $77,000 was for the operations of the Social Inclusion Board, according to questions on notice from Senate estimates hearings.

The board and unit are charged with advising the government on how to help solve the multiple educational, health and social disadvantages that lock the most disadvantaged 5 per cent of the population into poverty.

It was first established in 2008, and the portfolio was elevated to cabinet level last year.

Opposition disabilities spokesman Mitch Fifield, who led the questioning in Senate estimates, told The Australian the unit was “a government agency looking for a reason to be”.

The Coalition will abolish it.

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 8:31 am
Hatfield-Dodds was a Greens candidate in the last federal election, in the ACT, naturally. All the explanation that is necessary. She generated much controversy during the campaign because she drove a large V8 powered Landcruiser, because she liked to go bush walking. If you’ve ever seen Hatfield-Dodds, you’d estimate the longest bush walk she’s ever done was to the bottom of a townhouse back yard, and back again.

Keith

28 Dec 12 at 8:49 am
The gutless wonders in the Coalition need to be told they’re as reprehensible as the left if they don’t make a commitment NOW to repeal fascist garbage like this:

On November 20, Australia’s Attorney-General Nicola Roxon released exposure draft legislation for the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012. The laudable stated purpose of this initiative is to consolidate five existing anti-discrimination acts into one law, making them easier to understand and more consistent across jurisdictions. But the bill actually makes a number of changes to anti-discrimination legislation in Australia.

In light of Americans’ experiences, Australians should be wary of the changes this bill puts forward. One proposed change is to shift the onus of proof from the accuser to the accused, meaning that those charged with discrimination will be declared guilty unless they can prove their innocence.

Another change is to extend the definition of discrimination to include conduct that merely “offends” or “insults”, which could unreasonably dampen freedom of speech. A third change is to extend the list of protected attributes to include both religion and sexual orientation, making these factors grounds for alleging discrimination in the workplace.

America’s experience with anti-discrimination legislation is particularly relevant at this intersection of religion and sexual orientation. An excess of such laws in the US has increased litigation, weakened religious liberty, and threatened services to the less fortunate.

First, excessive US non-discrimination legislation has gone hand-in-hand with a ballooning culture of victimisation. As more individuals and groups perceive themselves as victims of injustice and receive protected status in the law, more litigation tends to flood the courts.

Second, expansive anti-discrimination laws have weakened Americans’ freedom to operate their businesses according to their deeply held convictions. Indeed, such legislation has created a legal train wreck where the right to not be offended has derailed religious liberty.

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 8:57 am
I fear Abbott and the Coalition are way to soft on anti-speech laws. They did nothing when they were in power last time, and will likely do nothing again.

Fleeced

28 Dec 12 at 8:59 am
too soft

Fleeced

28 Dec 12 at 9:00 am
Link

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 9:00 am
Sanity prevails despite the bloodlust of the left:

2DAY FM presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian are unlikely to face charges over their prank call to a London hospital treating Prince William’s pregnant wife Kate.

New South Wales Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas said Scotland Yard had not asked for any further information or to interview the two Sydney-based radio hosts.

“Nor do we expect there to be any requests,” he said.

“There was some initial contact after the death of (nurse) Jacintha Saldanha but not a lot since and because of the passage of time we believe it is unlikely any charges will be laid.”

Since her death, it has been revealed Ms Saldanha had attempted to kill herself twice in the past year and had been prescribed anti-depressants.

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 9:08 am
To a progressive journalist: “They are young, brave, mobile, hungry, willing to take risks, initiative. The country needs such people.”
To everyone else: This is not the social progress we were looking for.

lotocoti

28 Dec 12 at 9:29 am
Some time ago, here in Canberra, one could phone in a request for a local DJ to conduct a prank call on a person of your choosing. Really. Can’t recall how it ended, but I do remember a few of the targets being rather upset that some of the insinuations contained in the prank call were totally untrue. Whoops.

Keith

28 Dec 12 at 9:34 am
Leftist totalitarianism never sleeps. Just imagine where this will end up:

IS there an “evil” gene? A group of United States geneticists want to study Newtown school killer Adam Lanza’s remains to find out.

The New York Times reports that a spokesperson at the University of Connecticut has confirmed the researchers’ plans, but declined to provide any further details.

Adam Lanza, 20, shot his mother before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he slaughtered 20 children and six adults. It was one of the United States’ worst ever school shootings.

Speculation is rampant that the geneticists will look for mutations that may be linked with mental illnesses or associated with violent predispositions within Lanza’s DNA.

It would be the first detailed study of the DNA of a mass murderer.

The search for an easy means of finding potentially “evil” people has a long and dubious history, most notably the pseudoscience of phrenology which claims to detect a criminal mindset through the shape of a skull.

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 9:57 am
If one breaches Godwin’s Law, one is deemed to have lost the argument du jour.
Perhaps we need Godwin’s Second Law to deal with the likes of Robin Williams of the ABC, as follows:-

Anyone who associates their opponent with paedophilia is, by definition, deemed to be bereft of compelling argument themselves.

Leigh Lowe

28 Dec 12 at 10:01 am
Keith thats right, Lin H-D is a left wing careerist. She has joined and ridden the ‘social’ gravy train since she first left uni.

On a side note this photo of the board members shows a shortage of social inclusion of people in wheelchairs and I can’t identify any blind people.

Couldn’t they have found an amputee?

They’ve even excluded fatties.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 10:03 am
They’ve even excluded fatties.

Must be trick photography Dave.

Keith

28 Dec 12 at 10:22 am
DaveF I like the slogan at the top: “Part of the social inclusion agenda.”

As for the pic? They were the wallflowers at their high school grad, I guess. Wreaking their revenge.

nilk

28 Dec 12 at 10:24 am
I think the dweeby looking guy in the middle is the Minister.

Well, proper fatties. They have no problem with chubbers.

The sheila in the blue dress is the CEO of Maccas. The only one with genuine work experience in the whole sorry lot.

Oh wait. The Indian girl is the editor of Lip Magazine so that’s something.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 10:34 am
Cut&Paste on McTernan.

Jamie Briggs, Liberal MP, Hansard, November 29:

TODAY I rise to speak in relation to my role as a scrutiny of government spokesperson for the Coalition and a flagrant abuse of taxpayers’ money.

Earlier this year, the new SA Premier did a rare good thing and cut a program called Thinkers in Residence, a program that was simply a way for former Premier Mike Rann to abuse SA taxpayers’ money by offering patronage to left-wing mates. The worst example of this was the failed British political operative, Mr John McTernan, who was supposedly thinking during 2011. According to reports, Mr McTernan was paid some $200,000 for his time thinking. The topic of Mr McTernan’s thinking was, ironically, delivering a more effective public service. Some 12 months after the completion of this thinking, no report has been prepared and there is no sign either of the two toolkits he was supposed to produce.

Thinker in Residence John McTernan’s report, Are You Being Served, 2011-12, released yesterday:

TO sum up what I want people in public service to do is to always ask themselves the question: who is this for? And then ask: can we make it better? (This) will be the beginning of a culture of public service in which continuous and continual improvement is embedded a virtuous circle. . .

Abuser in residence? Joe Aston in The Australian Financial Review yesterday:

BUT nothing could compare with the diplomacy of Julia Gillard’s communications director John McTernan. I’m no award-winning conversationalist, but after copping one of his juvenile, confected tirades you wonder if he has any interest in selling the PM’s agenda or whether his principal motive is to be talked about. Whatever happened to the golden rule of political staffing: never make yourself the story.

Gab

28 Dec 12 at 10:45 am
I fear Abbott and the Coalition are way to soft on anti-speech laws. They did nothing when they were in power last time, and will likely do nothing again.

If elected prime minister Abbott will try desperately to create a reputation/narrative as a ‘surprise’ – that is, somebody who flatters the left and solidifies certain of its preoccupations. He’ll be hoping to be given a ‘second chance’ and ‘another look’ by the progressive commentariat that hates him. This, of course, won’t work but he won’t be able to resist. He’ll be aided and abetted on this – especially re free speech – by George Brandis, who is in fact a windbag wet and cultural luvvie.

C.L.

28 Dec 12 at 11:01 am
CL,
What happened to Bernardi provides an interesting datum to your forecast. Entirely plausible that the course has already been set.

Keith

28 Dec 12 at 11:19 am
I fear Abbott will be disappointing.

However he’s no Turnbull who should seriously be in Labor. He’d be one of the semi competent ministers to boot. I wonder if they sounded him out when they were courting the Indys? They should have.

He could almost win that seat of his on the Labor ticket.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 11:44 am
Look at Abbott’s response to Roxon’s free speech bans against cigarette companies. He made a pissant show of being ‘reluctant’ but that was all a show for the Liberal Drys. He publicly backed the proposal in the very next breath. It was a disgrace.

C.L.

28 Dec 12 at 12:07 pm
The motion by Calpers was denied without prejudice, Judge Meredith Jury said.

Judge and Jury, Heh.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 12:18 pm
Today’s murder rate is essentially at a low point of the past century. The murder rate in 2011 was lower than it was in 1911.
And the trend is downward. Whatever we’ve been doing over the last 20-30 years seems to be working, more or less. The murder rate has been cut by more than half since 1980: from 10.7 to 4.7.k

The new theory for the falling crime rate is because of the reduction of lead in the environment.

Infidel Tiger

28 Dec 12 at 12:25 pm
In an interview before the Sandy Hook murders…

Barack Obama: And they’re not very good at lying. We joke sometimes about how Malia’s getting to the age now, and boys start calling and, you know, sort of, I always talk about how one of the main incentives for running again was continuing Secret Service protection to have men with guns around at all times…

Gab

28 Dec 12 at 12:33 pm
Heartache for us all:

Matt Damon gives up on politics…

(DRUDGE)

C.L.

28 Dec 12 at 12:50 pm
Leftist totalitarianism never sleeps. Just imagine where this will end up:

It’s unlikely they will find an “evil gene”. Gene expression depends on your environment. It even depends on the environment of your parents and even your grandparents (due to epigenetics). For all we know it could have been Adam Lanza’s veganism that pushed his brain over the edge.

Dangph

28 Dec 12 at 12:53 pm
A sobering read..

http://michaelsnyder.mensnewsdaily.com/2012/12/the-number-of-people-on-welfare-exceeds-the-number-of-people-with-jobs-in-11-states/

In 11 different U.S. states today, the number of people on welfare exceeds the number of people with jobs. This list of states includes some of the biggest states in the country: California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Maine, Kentucky, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico and Hawaii. It is interesting to note that seven of those states were won by Barack Obama on election night. In California, there are 139 “takers” for every 100 workers. That is crazy! The American people have become absolutely addicted to government money, and it gets worse with each passing year. If you can believe it, entitlements accounted for 62 percent of all federal spending in fiscal year 2012. It would be one thing if we could afford all of this spending, but unfortunately we simply cannot. We are drowning in debt, and we are stealing more than a hundred million more dollars from future generations with each passing hour. No bank robber in history can match that kind of theft.

thefrollickingmole

28 Dec 12 at 2:02 pm
I was reading a report yesterday that 33 percent of all children in America nowadays live without a father. Said it before, say it eragain. There is an undeniable nexus between social progressivism and big government. Love liberty? Vote 1, Sarah Palin.

C.L.

28 Dec 12 at 2:21 pm
JC alert:

In California, there are 139 “takers” for every 100 workers.

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 2:22 pm
Never mind California.

Australia has nine governments for a population equivalent to Greater Los Angeles.

C.L.

28 Dec 12 at 2:25 pm
You forgot local government, CL

Entropy

28 Dec 12 at 2:35 pm
You might be right re 9 Governments for a population the size of greater LA, but at least we can say we are better governed than Greater LA. Not a very tough test though.

John Comnenus

28 Dec 12 at 3:20 pm
It appears that the opposite might be happening to the wishes of gun control advocates in the US

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/us-teachers-bear-arms-to-protect-students/story-e6frfkui-1226544622945

But in Utah, one of the handful of American states that currently allows people to carry licensed concealed weapons into public schools, many teachers are unwilling to wait and see which political argument wins out.

More than half of the roughly 400 education professionals that showed an interest had to be turned away because there wasn’t enough room on the course.

and

While teachers train themselves to try to stop the next Lanza, state officials like Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne are busily crafting legislation to make sure they can legally do so.

I think they are going to have a hard time taking guns away from ordinary Americans.

tbh

28 Dec 12 at 3:31 pm
C.L.

The single mothers thing is one of the most immoral experiments taken out on children ever.

I have been doing a fair bit of looking at papers/writings on it.

One I dont have the link for was done in the 60′s and basicaly used the African-American community as a huge petri dish for trying to normalise mother only households..

The data showed it was a catastrophie, so what did the lefties do?

Ignored it.

There is a good read at this link, though its numbers seem high from a lot of other papers ive been reading..

http://www.fathermag.com/news/Case_for_Father_Custody.pdf

the system of female-headed “families” which has created ghettos
and barrios by encouraging women to marry the state and breed
fatherless children who are eight times more likely to become delinquent.

thefrollickingmole

28 Dec 12 at 3:54 pm
A friends daughter,who has three children,is often asked do they all have the same father! We have huge problems in our culture

Tal

28 Dec 12 at 4:02 pm
Yep. 90 percent of inner city black children have no father (present).

C.L.

28 Dec 12 at 4:02 pm
I’m sure it will all work out for the best,the greatest thinkers are running the show

Tal

28 Dec 12 at 4:07 pm
A friends daughter,who has three children,is often asked do they all have the same father! We have huge problems in our culture

Tal! That’s outrageous.

Eddystone

28 Dec 12 at 4:42 pm
JC alert:

In California, there are 139 “takers” for every 100 workers.

Throw them out of the union and ban all cal immigration to the rest of the US.

The problem with Californians leaving the state for greener pastures is that they also take their politics with them infecting other states.

Red states have become blue because of this unfortunate exodus.

Just get rid of the fuckers.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 4:54 pm
CL

you would get most of what you want to see through rational economic policies.

Stick a date on eliminating state support for single mothers and their spawn.

make divorce fault based as it ought to be like any other contract

These are just two examples.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 4:57 pm
Matt Damon gives up on politics…

Rabz

28 Dec 12 at 4:57 pm
Having used gun bans to raise British gun crime to unprecedented heights and being unhappy that knife crime is not accelerating as quickly, British leftards…. oh, you guessed it.

Mk50 of Brisbane

28 Dec 12 at 6:24 pm
Stupid, weak, disarmed, mincing socialist cheese-eating surrender monkeys hand Mali over to Al Qaeda after Preshizzle (Paco™)Hussein leads from behind and say’s it’s the Euro-poonces problem – what can possibly go wrong?

I guess the days of furia Francaise are long, long gone…. would a member of the Old Guard even recognise the squealing effeminates the French have become?

Mk50 of Brisbane

28 Dec 12 at 6:38 pm
“In 11 different U.S. states today, the number of people on welfare exceeds the number of people with jobs.”

That sounded very odd to me, so I followed the link trail.

Turns out it’s a mistaken paraphrasing of:

11 states where private sector workers are outnumbered by people who are dependent on the government

in the Fox News Insider article, which explains:

That number would include state workers, and people who are receiving welfare or pension.

There’s still no explanation of what “receiving welfare” means exactly. Fox provides no link to the earlier Forbes article that Fox was referring to, but it seems to be this one. It gets a little more specific:

The taker count is the number of state and local government workers plus the number of people on Medicaid plus 1 for each $100,000 of unfunded pension liabilities.

“In California, there are 139 “takers” for every 100 workers.”

As the above quote shows, that statistic includes state workers in the takers column. It also includes some workers earning less than about $1000 a month (the Medicaid mention).

That means the dichotomy of “makers and takers” is false, and the statistic is false.

Jarrah

28 Dec 12 at 6:44 pm
Jarrah

Its simple, the number of taxpayers is less than the overall number of tax takers.

Do you deny that?

thefrollickingmole

28 Dec 12 at 7:04 pm
“Its simple, the number of taxpayers is less than the overall number of tax takers. Do you deny that?”

I don’t know the figures, can’t deny or affirm.

Jarrah

28 Dec 12 at 7:29 pm
Same basic criteria that should apply to upper house voting; if you’re primary source of income is the government, you don’t get to vote in the upper house.

It’s a reasonable comparison to make.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 7:36 pm
Jarrah,
Where does the money come from that pays public servants? A small proportion is recycled from income tax paid by public servants, the rest comes from the wealth producers. The public service does not create wealth. Therefore they rely on money from the private sector that does create wealth. Therefore it is right to include public servants as takers and only the private sector as makers. As most of the Wester World is showing when you have a public sector that is as large as the private sector you go broke and everyone loses.

John Comnenus

28 Dec 12 at 7:38 pm
“The public service does not create wealth.”

Depends what they’re doing. Same for the private sector, so your next two sentences are equally invalid.

Think of it this way. If government wasn’t providing the salary of government workers, many of them (definitely not all!) would be doing basically the same work in the private sector. The difference between the ‘many’ and the ‘all’ (unknowable figures) is the measure of government waste, and I have no doubt it’s substantial. However classifying all government workers as essentially useless is obviously wrong.

Jarrah

28 Dec 12 at 8:10 pm
John Com I have a slight issue with that assessment.

Whilst the ‘makers and takers’ is true there are certain government employees I’m happy to pay for which would make them not dissimilar to me spending money at the local shops.

I would choose to spend money on them.

That would be the police, army etc, essential services. Diversity Officers are not in that category obviously.

So, in that sense I don’t consider them all takers.

BTW I just noticed my examples were both gun wielders. There are others, but I’m cooking dinner so just rushed it out. lol

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 8:19 pm
Dave F

All those employment segments you mention consume wealth.

In an ideal world we would of course be better off if we simply didn’t need a police force and the military, but we do obviously. However that doesn’t mean they aren’t cost on producers. They clearly are and anyone who suggests they aren’t is a fucking moron.

There would be no cops or army without firms making surpluses.

139 moochers to 100 producers is indeed quite shocking. It basically means that state is going into the leftist sewer.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 8:26 pm
I’m waiting with popcorn for Jarrah the tax eater to explain how the public service generates wealth.

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 8:41 pm
California’s unrelenting decline over the last four decades has been both spectacular and embarrassing.

Eighth largest economy in the world, my arse.

Rabz

28 Dec 12 at 8:43 pm
There’s no reason the government can’t produce, and it does. But necessarily, government does not produce based upon either a profit motive or based upon consumer preference at market price. As such, when efficiency is measured against those criteria it will self evidently produce its goods less ‘efficiently’.

In the bigger context though, that is irrelevant. The issue is that government takes by coercive force it’s income. So those who derive their primary income from a government source are inherently ‘takers’, as compared to those who are ‘makers’ of stuff and being taken from.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 8:45 pm
To put in perspective how bad that ratio is, consider that Tasmania is ‘only’ at 120:100.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 8:48 pm
Jarah has a point that state employees are not takers in the same sense as welfare recipients. BUT on the other side of the ledger, those state employees who are engaged in the over-regulation industry are worse than welfare recipients because they impose costs on productive people in addition to the cost of their salaries and pensions.

Rafe

28 Dec 12 at 8:49 pm
But necessarily, government does not produce based upon either a profit motive or based upon consumer preference at market price.

National Dinosaur Network (NDN™), anyone?!?

Rabz

28 Dec 12 at 8:49 pm
JC you miss my point.

The private provision of the same services I would pay for. They provide a benefit to the community – along with a clean Court system – are a benefit to the ‘makers’.

But I think they are best paid for by a levy on the population. There are certain things it’s likely government does best. Its a short list.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 8:52 pm
There are certain things it’s likely government does best. Its a short list.

This is correct. Those things government does best revolve around the required application or threat of physical force.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:00 pm
they are best paid for by a levy on the population

This isn’t correct. They are best paid for by a levy on the state.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:03 pm
Police and Courts for example should be best paid for by a levy on the public.

Private provision is an option, but I think it’s a poor one – too much chance of conflict of interest. Think bribing cops in the 70s and 80s in NSW. Crims paid for a green light on knocking over banks.

Yes, a good argument against public provision BUT the incentives for private police would be far worse! Courts as well.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 9:10 pm
The principle of separation of powers is just as applicable to the market as it is to the church. The optimum for these things require a basis of minimisation of societal cost, not maximisation of profit.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:14 pm
Look. Some things are a benefit to society. Society should pay for them.

And the makers benefit from the provision of the services they rightly pay for.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 9:15 pm
“those state employees who are engaged in the over-regulation industry are worse than welfare recipients because they impose costs on productive people in addition to the cost of their salaries and pensions.”

Very true.

“There are certain things it’s likely government does best. Its a short list.”

Also true, and confirms my point. The things the government shouldn’t be doing should be done by the private sector, and in a better world would be, so the fact the work is being paid for through taxes rather than private sector wages doesn’t change the value of the work. It changes the incentive structure within which the work is done, so work done through government can easily be inferior in some respects, but it doesn’t mean the entirety of the government workforce adds no value at all, which was the underlying assumption of the original statement.

Jarrah

28 Dec 12 at 9:17 pm
State funded police and firemen we can accept as a good thing for the moment even if one day their services might be provided by private contractors.

School teachers are a borderline case. Most of us when we were young and naive would have supported the public education sytem but it is getting harder all the time. Something has to be done soon about the indoctrination in the classrooms or we may never see liberal/conservative governments again.

Here is a warning from Britain a decade ago.

Stephan Shakespeare, ‘Old Britain, New History’, The Spectator, 11 October 1997.

Shakespeare suggests that the road to New Labor and its electoral success in Britain was the New History that rules in school history texts. For example a chapter heading ‘Britain: A Trading Nation’, is illustrated by a picture of a tortured black man, a close-up of rotted teeth, a cluster of cowrie shells and an order for rum. The statement of aims for the chapter reads ‘You will see how Britain rose to be a leading trading nation… This unit concentrates in particular on the slave trade’.

With this foundation in place the depiction of the Industrial Revolution is quite predictable and the Final Summary noted that ‘the Industrial Revolution increased the gap between the rich and the poor’.

In ‘Presenting the Past: Rulers and Rebels’, the death oF Wat Tyler is illustrated with a photo of Arthur Scargill (the hardline communist leader of the miners union) somewhat the worse for wear after a confrontation between police and a picket line in 1984.

A textbook for 12-year olds presents three quotes about the French Revolution; the exercise is to match the quotes to three photographs – Goebbels, Gorbachev and Thatcher. Shakespeare concludes that the result will be to plant the idea that the three are more or less interchangeable.

According to Shakespeare, opinion polls found that the youngest voters at the last election were the most anti-Conservative. ‘No wonder. After 11 years of compulsory empathy lessons in school, only the hardest-hearted of youngsters could remain untouched by promises of a more caring society’.

Rafe

28 Dec 12 at 9:20 pm
Nothing borderline about teaching. It’s not to do with the application of force; not to do with minimisation of social cost. It’s just socially accepted. It’s not within the proper domain of government. It falls under the category of stuff we are required to do to minimise the cost of maintaining a minimum wage.

Yes Jarrah, your last paragraph is basically correct.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:27 pm
When Australia falls behind Namibia, you know we need to change what we’re doing.

In case you’re wondering why we’re merely ‘satisfactory’ rather than ‘good’, the title of RSF’s most recent story about Australia gives a clue.

Is the government trying to get more control over the media?

Jarrah

28 Dec 12 at 9:33 pm
Look. Some things are a benefit to society. Society should pay for them.

And the makers benefit from the provision of the services they rightly pay for.

Quite true. Important to remember exactly what those things are though. The provision of policing is not the benefit; the minimisation of the cost of the human tendency towards theft is.

And when I say that the charge should fall upon the state, what that means is that the charges should always fall upon the land and the other natural resources of the physical state, rather than upon capital or labour.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:33 pm
“The public service does not create wealth.”

Depends what they’re doing.

Please give examples of how public servants create wealth, as opposed to consuming it and/or actively destroying it.

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 9:35 pm
I agree with the above.

Education is a bit different. I feel society as a whole benefits from an educated bunch of kids and think that vouchers would do the job.

A VERY general compulsory curriculum. Not ‘free’ public schools and quite expensive private. Just voucherise the lot.

Rafe there was a curious story last year maybe in that a US township canned their fire brigade and residents had to buy it from the nearby town -$75 a year I think. So this blokes home is on fire and puts in a call, no good he didn’t pay his $75. His neighbour rings them and they front.

And watch his house burn down as they made sure it wouldn’t spread to the ‘insured’ home.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 9:36 pm
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that the public sector does better than the private sector. However,there are a small number of things we only entrust to the State – law and order, justice and Defence.

Everything else the public sector does, it does consuming more resources than the private sector would use, even if later sold at a profit. That inefficiency therefore reduces overall wealth and hence those engaged in such activites are wealth takers not makers. But governments sold off most of their profit making activites when it first became obvious that the public sector had outgrown it’s supporting tax base in the 80s.

across the Western World we have ever more services offered than can be afforded and fewer state enterprises to sell off. So the only solution, and I mean the only solution the Left has left, is higher taxes.

But higher taxes destroy wealth meaning more people depend on the government and hence fewer want to reduce the size of government so they elect governments that will make the problem worse (Hollande and Obama) or ignore the problem (Cameron and Abbott). This is the vicious circle affecting most of the Western World and demographic change and the continual race politics of he Western Left will make it ever more difficult to fix.

None seem to have the balls to generate the virtuous circle of less government, lower taxes, greater prosperity and a freer, more confident society. Kevin 07 was a disastrous turning point for Australia.

John Comnenus

28 Dec 12 at 9:39 pm
Tom – does a power station stop producing electricity because it is publically owned?

Does a tree cut down and milled by a state enterprise not count as wealth creation?

Can research conducted at a state owned university not produce benefit?

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:40 pm
Don’t feed the trolls, Driftforge. It only encourages them.

Jarrah

28 Dec 12 at 9:43 pm
Your first 2 are questions of efficency.

Can research conducted at a state owned university not produce benefit?

~~It may, however it is politically directed funding so it is often for ’causes’ not science.~~

OK I see that point now. Do we need state owned universities? Notre Dame and Bond Uni are private I think.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 9:46 pm
John – society simply hasn’t degraded to the point where the required impetus for reversion is there. The swing back from the left is hard, fast, and normally ugly.

As to nothing being done better by the public sector, this remains true only if parasitic influence over the government is kept to a minimum.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:47 pm
The swing back from the left is hard, fast, and normally ugly.

Very true. I recall watching with wonder the end of 1989 and all those monolithic Commie states collapsed.

I had never considered it could happen. Really never considered it.

DaveF

28 Dec 12 at 9:50 pm
Dave – the things I listed don’t have to be and nominally shouldn’t be done by government. Yet they don’t cease to have value because they are.

They may well create less value because they have other considerations, but depending on that basis to contend the government cannot create wealth is weak sauce.

Especially in a society where all costs are not counted, it is quite possible for a government to create more value that a private concern would.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:53 pm
Tom – does a power station stop producing electricity because it is publically owned?

Does a tree cut down and milled by a state enterprise not count as wealth creation?

Can research conducted at a state owned university not produce benefit?

You[re missing the point. In every case you name the state would producing something at a loss unless it had self imposed monopoly status.

It basically operates on the soviet model. So yes, the cost would in aggregate far outweigh the benefits.

There isn’t one single government employee producing above cost.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 9:54 pm
I had never considered it could happen. Really never considered it.

Now throw a ‘here’ in that sentence and roll time forward five years.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:55 pm
JC, don’t be dense for the sake of it.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 9:56 pm
Driftforge

You have have it all wrong. The State cannot create value if it’s production is sold below its true market cost or it attaches a monopoly to an activity in order to create a fictitious surplus in those examples you presented.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 9:58 pm
The Public Service is the biggest, most powerful and destructive vested interest in Australia. It arrogates to itself outrageously high wages, offensively generous leave and other entitlements, job security for life and the terrible 15% superannuation. All of this paid for from the taxes of people who earn less, work longer harder hours, have little job security and get 9% superannuation.

If Abbott and the LNP were serious about cutting the size, cost and waste of the APS it would reform conditions to be based on the average private sector conditions – including pay and leave, would immediately remove the 15% super and introduce a 50% tax on Superannuation returns on the additional returns public servants get in their super payouts than those he rest of the country gets (ie the difference between the returns from 9% and 15%).

John Comnenus

28 Dec 12 at 9:59 pm
JC, don’t be dense for the sake of it

That’s an argument is it?

Fuckwit.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 9:59 pm
You didn’t make an argument either.

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:00 pm
The state doesn’t have to, and doesn’t always, sell for below market cost or create a monopoly.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 10:00 pm
The Public Service is the biggest, most powerful and destructive vested interest in Australia.

True, which is why members of the public service should not get to vote in the upper houses.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 10:02 pm
The state doesn’t have to, and doesn’t always, sell for below market cost or create a monopoly.

Bullshit.

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 10:04 pm
JC – my comment was in relation to your

There isn’t one single government employee producing above cost.

Which is absurd on the face of it. Even if there is a efficiency penalty due to monopoly or sale below cost, the variability in individual output more than covers that.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 10:05 pm
It doesn’t have to like Their ABC for instance. however the advantages are set up for their ABC to always be in pole position, which means it greatly hampers the market place and net net it creating losses for Australians.

Monopoly status can be gained by the simple threat of intervention or the government owned entity muscling in.

Every single fucking thing the government does is a cost and therefore a deadweight to the citizens.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 10:05 pm
the variability in individual output more than covers that.

WTF is that supposed to mean? Have you measured it even what you think you mean?

JC

28 Dec 12 at 10:07 pm
Tom, it is quite possible and occurs from time to time that a government, or government owned body happens to be what would in commercial terms be called the ‘lowest cost producer’. They don’t have to take the margin. It is also quite possible that the penalty due their additional considerations as a government body is less than their commercial advantage. In doing so , they aren’t selling below cost, nor depending on a monopoly.

Happens less often today than it used to, I will admit.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 10:11 pm
There is more difference in the output of an average individual and the most productive than there is penalty to being a government body.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 10:12 pm
Night all.

Driftforge

28 Dec 12 at 10:14 pm
Tom, it is quite possible and occurs from time to time that a government, or government owned body happens to be what would in commercial terms be called the ‘lowest cost producer’.

Bullshit. Cost of capital doesn’t apply to the government. They don’t borrow or raise equity at the same rates or levels private firms do and…. and there is nearly always an implicit guarantee.

Question: taking what I said into account how can you make the preposterous suggestion that a government can produce value as it’s understood in the private sector?

JC

28 Dec 12 at 10:15 pm
There is more difference in the output of an average individual and the most productive than there is penalty to being a government body.

So fucking what when the entity in question is a bog hole?

If you’re going to apply that measurement rule then compare the added value… not output… of every single private sector vs public sector employee.

I’ll repeat, every single thing the government does is a downer on living standards net net.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 10:21 pm
Do we need state owned universities? Notre Dame and Bond Uni are private I think.

So are Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Yale. All are orders of magnitude better quality than our grab bag.

Lazlo

28 Dec 12 at 10:22 pm
Of course cost of capital applies to government.

Just because you find the lower cost of capital inconvenient doesn’t mean it should be dicarded.

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:24 pm
Of course cost of capital applies to government.

How so SDFC? Nearly all of government accounting is on a cash basis, which means anything they stick into a bog hole of an idea is basically treated as a sunk cost/sinking fund.

Government doesn’t give a shit about cost of capital because it operates on the soviet model.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 10:28 pm
Just because you find the lower cost of capital inconvenient doesn’t mean it should be dicarded.

You fucking idiot. You have no idea, do you?

JC

28 Dec 12 at 10:29 pm
Government borrows at a much cheaper rate than the private sector.

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:30 pm
You do understand how cash flow is discounted don’t you?

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:33 pm
Government borrows at a much cheaper rate than the private sector.

You’re now making Homer-like comments? How much lower can you go.

Of course they can borrow below the private sector when they have two coercive powers available – the power to tax and the ability to print money. These two things aren’t available to the private sector you dumbfeld.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 10:35 pm
Was Homer as right as me?

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:36 pm
You do understand how cash flow is discounted don’t you?

more than you, sdfc. You mention that because you want to make a point you haven’t made or think you can bamboozle people with highfalutin terms hoping they don’t understand but think you’re somehow smarter than you really are?

JC

28 Dec 12 at 10:38 pm
Incoherant JC. Sure you’re not too pissed to comment?

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:39 pm
Fuck I’m a bad speller.

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:39 pm
Was Homer as right as me?

No, he is a wronglogist like you and I’m starting to think he is smarter ( a word, which when used to describe Homer is a crime against nature itself).

JC

28 Dec 12 at 10:39 pm
Really? I’m upset.

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:42 pm
None of our tax eaters can tell us how public servants create wealth.

Tom

28 Dec 12 at 10:46 pm
You’re a bit of a dumb bum Tom.

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:51 pm
Explain to me how private sector monopolies maximise consumer surplus again.

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 10:59 pm
The left does not understand wealth creation. For them it is in infinite supply, and the only issue is how to ‘redistribute’ it.

Lazlo

28 Dec 12 at 11:02 pm
What a nothing comment.

sdfc

28 Dec 12 at 11:04 pm
What a nothing comment.

Quite so.

Lazlo

28 Dec 12 at 11:20 pm
“There isn’t one single government employee producing above cost.”

is a silly statement, as is a later one by the same person claiming that every dollar of public expenditure is a drag on the economy.

Sport, if you believe that, go and live somewhere where these things are not an issue – Somalia, or perhaps West Irian.

The question is about balance and priorities, unless you want to give up legally enforceable property and personal safety rights.

johanna

28 Dec 12 at 11:33 pm
Is a silly statement,

No it isn’t. You’re unable to come up with a coherent argument, which is why you rely on this sort of crap posing as a line of argument.

as is a later one by the same person claiming that every dollar of public expenditure is a drag on the economy.

It is.

Sport, if you believe that, go and live somewhere where these things are not an issue – Somalia, or perhaps West Irian.

Here we go, the old leftie chestnut that Libertarians/free market types hanker for Somalia. It’s a like non-stop express to Stupidville.

The question is about balance and priorities, unless you want to give up legally enforceable property and personal safety rights.

If you want “balance” get a scale or otherwise STFU Johanna as you’re not making an argument. You’re sermonizing.

JC

28 Dec 12 at 11:42 pm
Well where the heck do they think pork comes from?

The outrageously outraged:

Angry Amazon book reviews: “This is the most disgusting cover and should be taken out from any book display … The cover of this book is absolutely disgusting, revolting and insensitive … I don’t think I can hold it in my hand without cringing, and I cannot imagine the ‘book’ being displayed where young children are present.”

via Tim Blair

Gosh! Imagine if the book was about whale recipes!! Sushi anyone?

Gab

28 Dec 12 at 11:46 pm
A bright and shiny new fred!

Cold-Hands

29 Dec 12 at 12:05 am
MI6 codebreaker found naked and dead inside a sports bag.

Westminster Coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, said earlier this year she could not rule out the involvement of the security services in the death.

Detectives had believed that someone else must have locked the codebreaker in the bag and launched a search for a mysterious Mediterranean couple, who were later ruled out of inquiries.
Detectives now believe he probably died alone, The Telegraph reports.

In her ruling, Dr Wilcox said there was no evidence to suggest the spy was a transvestite “or interested in any such thing”.

Even though………….
1.He had been found in his boxer shorts and tied to his bed by his landlord and landlady in Cheltenham a few years earlier.

2.Video footage found on a mobile phone in the deceased’s flat showed Williams dressed in nothing but black leather boots as he “wiggled and gyrated” for the camera.

3.He browsed self-bondage websites and sites about claustrophilia – the love of enclosure – on his computers and phone and was looking at fetish websites days before his death.

4.He also kept pictures of drag queens on his computer and had 20,000 pounds ($31,000) worth of designer women’s clothing in his apartment as well as women’s shoes and wigs.

The coroner said it remained a “legitimate line of inquiry” that the secret services were involved in Williams’s death although there was no firm evidence.

Splatacrobat

29 Dec 12 at 12:20 am
Hitch-hiked into Vail on a mate’s bizjet – jeezum that’s a hell of an approach.

Be good, people. Have an excellent New Year.

sdog

29 Dec 12 at 3:40 am

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Tuesday Forum: December 25, 2012

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Tuesday Forum: December 25, 2012

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