Open Forum: February 23, 2013 at Catallaxy Files

Open Forum: February 23, 2013

935 comments

Written by Sinclair Davidson

February 23rd, 2013 at 12:01 am

Posted in Open Forum

935 Responses to 'Open Forum: February 23, 2013'

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I should run

On the double

I think I’m in…

Rabz

23 Feb 13 at 12:02 am
wow the old thread didn’t last long

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 12:04 am
We live in a disposable society, Splat.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 12:05 am
I didn’t have you pegged as a fan of Lindsay Buckingham Rabz! Good song though.

tbh

23 Feb 13 at 12:05 am
Sheridan: yes, it may well be Pope Pell I.

I’ve been thinking this myself lately. Pell is not regarded as an outsider in Rome. He’s one of them. With Pell, the Church gets a swag of positives and that hint of daring and change to boot.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 12:11 am
Let us begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet

Jc

23 Feb 13 at 12:12 am
Thanks, tbh.

It’s a song that transcends the Buckingham. The session musos put in a sterling effort and that remix highlights the driving bass and the awesome solo, which is doubled in duration by the remix. It’s got a touch of the flamencos about it, which is why it was such a big hit in the latin world.

Although I still think Buckingham lifted it from Gypsy.

Great version to work out to as well. Especially when you’re always in trouble, as I mysteriously seem to always be!

Rabz

23 Feb 13 at 12:14 am
Can you imagine it?

Prime Minister Abbott meets Pope Pell?

My Lord – the explosions of left-wing craniums would be visible from Pluto.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 12:14 am
Buckingham did Holiday Road for the film Vacation. It’s out there for download.

Harold

23 Feb 13 at 12:16 am
THE design of the National Broadband Network rollout can still be changed , NBN Co head Mike Quigley has declared, as he threw his support behind a study on the merits of different super-fast broadband technologies.

Speaking at an American Chamber of Commerce lunch in Sydney yesterday, Mr Quigley said that despite being four years into the rollout of the $37.4 billion network, it was not too late to discuss the future of the NBN and make decisions based on “good data and facts”.

Der Undergang now hits the NBN as they scrabble to change sides or at least try and save their jobs. Sounds like more softening the Labor rhetoric now they can see defeat.

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 12:20 am
Prime Minister Abbott meets Pope Pell?

Here’s hoping, but I’m doubtful on the Pell part.

Abbott of course, is a lay down misere…

Rabz

23 Feb 13 at 12:23 am
Will Julia Gillard personally apologise to this sexually assaulted young woman?

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 12:25 am
Der Undergang now hits the NBN as they scrabble to change sides or at least try and save their jobs. Sounds like more softening the Labor rhetoric now they can see defeat.

Yep.

I also noticed the Libs strategy of dealing with the ABC too.

Turnbull was telling Fatty Jones that the ABC is much too important to the national fabric to be even perceived as having bias.

Fatty was silent.

Jc

23 Feb 13 at 12:25 am
There is almost no chance AB Pell will take on the name Pell. They pick saints and St Pell is …. well … never heard of him

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 12:28 am
Goggled. Don’t see a person named St Pell.
There is Saint Pelligrono

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 12:30 am
Pell is $26 on centrebet in from about $66 if i recall. I think I’ll have a dabble. He’s been a tremendous evangelist for Richmond and I wish him well.

Infidel tiger

23 Feb 13 at 12:30 am
Can you imagine it?

Prime Minister Abbott meets Pope Pell?

My Lord – the explosions of left-wing craniums would be visible from Pluto.

George could take the name John as Pope and say he was inspired by former PM John Howard’s graciousness or somesuch.

The exploding craniae would be visible outside our solar system

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 12:30 am
Whale, the name was used as a facetious fill-in given that I don’t know what name he would take. Pope Patrick would be nice, though.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 12:33 am
Will Julia Gillard personally apologise to this sexually assaulted young woman?

Well we all know the answer to that question. Of course she won’t despite her policies being the number one reason for that sexual assault plus the 1100+ drowned asylum seekers. No, gillard will never apologise for her maniacal schemes and deadly policies. But grandstand and look all meek and concerned and apologise for something she had nothing to do with, something that happened many many years ago, decades even, then gillard is in like Flynn to score the points. As she gently wipes away a manufactured tear for effect.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 12:33 am
Yes, I can see it now…
Pope John Menzies IPA Secondhandsmoking I

squawkbox

23 Feb 13 at 12:34 am
Yes, I can see it now…
Pope John Menzies IPA Secondhandsmoking I

Good suggestion.

Second hand smoke is good for children.

Let’s s tell the truff

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 12:37 am
There was an interesting (and, at the same time, pathetic) moment on the Tween Network’s ‘The Project’ Thursday night. The epically irritating ‘comedian’ – “Hughesy” – pitched in with a video package showing Kevin Rudd being greeted like a, yes, rock star at some school. Then he kind of said, ‘now watch this for contrast…’ It was footage of Gillard leaving a school; the official party of students and (about 2 teachers) looked almost catatonic with boredom and indifference. The audience laughed – laughed at loser Julia. The pathetic moment was when that blonde bimbo got in a quick “oh no – that’s not fair, NOH” as Hughesy’s second clip began.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 12:40 am
New York Times Editorial: Why Taxes Have to Go Up

“Spending is the problem,” declared the House speaker, John Boehner. “Spending must be the focus.” Reflecting the views of many of her Republican colleagues, Representative Martha Roby said Wednesday that Mr. Obama “already got his tax increase” as part of the January agreement over the “fiscal cliff” and that no further increases were necessary.

Both are wrong. To reduce the deficit in a weak economy, new taxes on high-income Americans are a matter of necessity and fairness; they are also a necessary precondition to what in time will have to be tax increases on the middle class

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 12:42 am
Whale – in the name of God, man, these gravatars are really getting out of fucking hand, FFS!

Rabz

23 Feb 13 at 12:43 am
But CL, problem is that Pope Pell has a great ring to it.
Forward thing like Propel
Of the commoners or People
Pope Pat is too much like Postman Pat.
Have to run with John.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 12:43 am
Sorry Rabz. I will change to Wayne Goose

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 12:45 am
Still not changing
C..p, I hope my face aint stuck like that

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 12:49 am
I will change to Wayne Goose

BLEEP!!!!

Rabz

23 Feb 13 at 12:50 am
The refugees probably just saw Revenge Of The Nerds and/or Animal House, inspired them to partake in some madcap college fraternity shenanigans.

Harold

23 Feb 13 at 12:51 am
It’s changed, and it’s one of his more astute expressions, oozing with the solid trustworthyness of a man of his position.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 12:53 am
It was footage of Gillard leaving a school; the official party of students and (about 2 teachers) looked almost catatonic with boredom and indifference. The audience laughed – laughed at loser Julia. The pathetic moment was when that blonde bimbo got in a quick “oh no – that’s not fair, NOH” as Hughesy’s second clip began.

Recall at the beginning of her time as PM, she took off on a foreign visit around the region with Steddman in toe that turned into a national embarrassment. Recall that she said she really didn’t like foreign policy much and would rather spend her time in a school?

Fucking moron she is.

Jc

23 Feb 13 at 12:53 am
C&P.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr on Thursday, on Australian travellers:

I THINK personal responsibility comes in here. We can’t be your nanny when you come abroad. … Australians have to accept personal responsibility. The Australian taxpayer can’t assume the huge burden of looking after you when you go overseas.

Or, to put it another way … Former foreign minister Alexander Downer in The Advertiser on May 24, 2009:

AFTER about 10 minutes as foreign minister I was a little surprised to learn I was “responsible” for miscreant Australians who got into trouble in foreign countries. No, no, no, don’t get it wrong – drug traffickers, drunks, kleptomaniacs and fraudsters weren’t responsible for their own stupidity, I was. It’s about time that great nanny in Canberra, the federal government, turned around and told people they are responsible for their own decisions. I didn’t have the guts to say this as foreign minister, but don’t you think you should take responsibility for yourself when you go overseas? If you’re too dumb or idle to read the travel advisories and too mean to take out travel insurance … then you ought to take responsibility for your own behaviour.

The irony. Personal responsibility begins at home. Hey, how about the same lectures applied to Austrayans here too instead of creating generational welfare.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 12:54 am
Yes I do, JC. Apparently she brings out that little chestnut when it suits.

Julia Gillard yesterday:

I WANTED to become a teacher myself. I ended up becoming a politician.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 12:57 am
madcap college fraternity shenanigans.

And that’s what they can call the eating of their privates by dogs while they’re making like crucifixes with wires attached to nipples.

The women in Unis in Aus might just have something like Abu Grhaib in mind.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 12:58 am
Thanks, Whale – wonderful to see some sanity restored in the interim…

Rabz

23 Feb 13 at 12:59 am
Huh?

Eating chicken is now wacist. Yep, it’s the upper Westside, which is like a giant version of Fitzroy.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/NATL-NY-COPY-Whole-Foods-Removes-Chicken-Ad-Featuring-Obama-192247711.html

Jc

23 Feb 13 at 1:00 am
I’m sick of politicians going to schools and making the kids around them cheer them and act all happy, interrupting thier learning time. It’s not as if the kids can vote for them and everyone realises it’s a farcical photo op.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 1:00 am
This is what we would have looked like if we ever pulled that stunt with the ladies at the ag college.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 1:05 am
Wow. Alec Baldwin calls black New York Post photographer a “coon,” “crackhead” and “drug dealer.” The photographer is actually a retired NYPD officer.

You really, really don’t want to piss off the Post like this. They play hard ball.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 1:05 am
American negros are incredibly sensitive about chicken references.

You don’t hear the watermelon stuff much these day, though.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 1:07 am
I thought the watermelon stuff just became old. It was really peaking around when Katrina and Heinekin man were about.

Harold

23 Feb 13 at 1:10 am
Lots of the parents at local girls school kept their daughters home when the Slapper visited. Something about not wanting them to be lured to death in the swimming pool I guess, or electrocuted in the school hall ceiling by insulation that was conductive.

Only The Slapper could come up with killing poor bloody apprentices with insulation made of metal.

FFFFFF Sake

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 1:10 am
… interrupting their learning time.

What ‘learning time’, FFS?

Most of them emerge from those monstrous marxist cesspits illiterate, innumerate as well as utterly ignorant of both history and the basic principles of science.

But hey, after such a proud, spectacular record of absolute failure, let’s pour even more taxpayers’ billions into the great sucking maw…

Rabz

23 Feb 13 at 1:10 am
Black people do love chicken. It’s a fact. I’m not sure why that’s offensive.

Infidel tiger

23 Feb 13 at 1:12 am
Southern Fried Chicken apparently has negative connotations although Colonel Sanders had no problems way back when.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 1:15 am
This is not a government with a communications problem, but a government with no message to communicate.

Quite so.

mct

23 Feb 13 at 1:20 am
Black people do love chicken. It’s a fact. I’m not sure why that’s offensive.

I believe that the stereotype (yes there most likely are black people around how don’t like chicken) is considered offensive by some because of the links with chicken as slave food – as they were the only animals they were allowed to keep.

Chris

23 Feb 13 at 2:12 am
I never made a prediction JC. You did, like many others here you must think you are the genius.

Sea Wolf: Romney 329
Token: Romney 326
Tom: Romney 325
d_b: Romney 325
NoFixedAddress: Romney 322
Tim: Romney 322
mct: Romney 321
Fleeced: Romney 316
Rabz: Romney 315
Keith: Romney 315
Nanuestalker: Romney 312
John Comnenus: Romney 311
JC: Romney 310
RL: Romney 310
Derb: Romney 310
Arnost: Romney 310
Kaboom: Romney 309
Cold Hands: Romney 305
Greg J: Romney 305
Rudi: Romney 304
Megan: Romney 298
Carpe Jugulum: Romney 298
Brian of Moor: Romney 295
Lloyd: Romney 295
James in Melbourne: Romney 295
tbh: Romney 292
scotty: Romney 291
Mk50 of Brisbane: Romney 291
MofM: Romney 290
eb: Romney 287
Catfeesh?: Romney 286
johnno: Romney 285
harrys on the boat: Romney 282
dot: Romney 280
candy: Romney 272
Total Romney: 35; Average ECV: 304.1

John H.

23 Feb 13 at 2:41 am
I think it is a good idea to house the “refugees” on University campuses. After all the undergraduates keep telling us that the “refugees” need to be welcomed and to live in the community. I think the University is just racist. Aaaaah the irony.

John Comnenus

23 Feb 13 at 3:45 am
The mad eyed bogan harpy (SHY) should be accommodating numerous of these “world’s most vulnerable people”, who she’s prattled on about so often.

Blogstrop

23 Feb 13 at 7:33 am
The belated admission that the NBN can be modified looks a lot like a capitulation to common sense that should have happened years ago. Throwing the issue to a reviewing body just as Julia did with the illegals is a time honoured tactic. But it is also an admission that the adamant assertions to date that FTTH is the only answer were nothing more than politics, and recklessly profligate politics.

Blogstrop

23 Feb 13 at 7:40 am
Mitt Romney is last year’s fish wrapper. He tried and failed utterly. Let’s hope the GOP picks someone with moree smarts next time.

Popular Front

23 Feb 13 at 7:42 am
Moree? How about Narrabri?

Popular Front

23 Feb 13 at 7:43 am
According to Fatboy Oakes, the ALP machine is already planning for the 2013 disaster with a strategy to minimise the time it will spend in opposition:

“It’s time to start wheeling the choppers out of their hangars,” an ALP veteran said yesterday, in reference to an operation mounted by a handful of MPs, party officials and government staffers before the 1996 election.

There is very little doubt now that Julia Gillard’s government is going to lose on September 14, and lose badly. Labor realists predict privately that the result will be worse than Paul Keating’s 1996 defeat; worse even than the anti-Whitlam routs of 1975 and 1977.

Gillard and those around her don’t share this view, which is understandable. If they lose hope they lose the ability to fight. But someone will have to prepare for the looming electoral disaster.

…

What To Do When Labor Loses was a plan to use the time remaining in government before an inevitable election defeat to set Labor up for opposition. “You save what you have to save,” a member of the group told me later.

It involved, among other things, warehousing of valued staffers in the bureaucracy, earmarking and retention of documents likely to be useful in opposition, and ways to protect the seats of talented MPs so they would be available to help Labor rebuild.

Keating was not told about it. He would have gone off his face had he known.

Tom

23 Feb 13 at 8:01 am
A post on the racist war against Israel and the Jews, pumped by the greenslime and now endorsed by the ALP, that says it all.

Read it all.

geoffff

23 Feb 13 at 8:01 am
Moree? How about Narrabri?

Or Coonabarabran?

Septimus

23 Feb 13 at 8:01 am
The NBN is softening will the ABC, HRC, ACCC, SMH? All the Left Acronyms are looking to keep their jobs, but if they start to be less biased they will exacerbate the LNP landslide and in turn their own demise? The pain and agony for them us exquisite, but they have never been averse to a plate of cold crow. I just hope they choke on it.

Honesty

23 Feb 13 at 8:03 am
Nominations for the “Chuck Schumer Prize For Jewish Political Prostration And Quivering Chicken-Heartedness” are now in

The B’nai B’rith Anti Defamation Commission
The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies
The Jewish Community Council of Victoria
The Jewish Community Council of Western Australia Inc.
The Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies
The Jewish Community Council of South Australia
Hobart Hebrew Congregation Inc.
The ACT Jewish Community Inc.

geoffff

23 Feb 13 at 8:09 am
The NBN is softening will the ABC, HRC, ACCC, SMH?

Bo one should forget that big business loves big government.

No one should forget Australian Industry Group, scum like Marius Kloppers who has been kicked out now that the Libs are on the way in and Heather Ridout who deserves to be tried for high treason and publicly flayed in the main public square of each major city in Australia, locked up and the key thrown away.

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 8:13 am
Bo No one should forget that big business loves big government

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 8:14 am
“The Greens are worse than Labor, Liberals should preference them last”

John Howard

This is important for the sake of the country.

geoffff

23 Feb 13 at 8:18 am
What To Do When Labor Loses was a plan to use the time remaining in government before an inevitable election defeat to set Labor up for opposition. “You save what you have to save,” a member of the group told me later.

It involved, among other things, warehousing of valued staffers in the bureaucracy, earmarking and retention of documents likely to be useful in opposition, and ways to protect the seats of talented MPs so they would be available to help Labor rebuild.

The APS will be going out to tender soon looking for 10,000 paper shredders.They need to think big if they are going to destroy all the evidence of Labor’s incompetence between now and September.

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 8:24 am
O Dear, Whalehunt. Abu Grahib did remind me of Ag College. Only we called it O Week.

Pickles

23 Feb 13 at 8:27 am
I think it is a good idea to house the “refugees” on University campuses. After all the undergraduates keep telling us that the “refugees” need to be welcomed and to live in the community. I think the University is just racist. Aaaaah the irony.

When Abbott clears out the PS, he can house them (prior to shipment overseas) in the newly vacant office blocks of Canberra. Hey, he can even call them public servants as they’re already on the payroll.

Keith

23 Feb 13 at 8:28 am
Peggy Noonan, WSJ: Government by Freakout
Obama’s scare tactics aren’t much of a long-term strategy.

Mr. Obama has finally hit on his own version of national unity: Everyone get scared together….

In a way it’s all brilliant showbiz: Scare people into supporting your position. But we’ve been through it before, and you wonder, again, why a triumphant president and a battered Republican House majority can’t reach a responsible agreement.

And then you remind yourself why. Because Mr. Obama thrives in chaos. He flourishes in unsettled circumstances and grooves on his own calm. He spins an air of calamity, points fingers and garners support. His only opponent is a hapless, hydra-headed House. America has a weakness for winners, and Republicans just now do not look like winners. They have many voices but no real voice, and no one saying anything that makes you stop and think. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, is a singular character who tells you in measured tones that we must have measured answers. Half the country finds his politics to be too much to one side, but his temperament is not extreme and he often looks reasonable. With this gift he ties his foes in knots to get what he wants, which is higher taxes. He wants the rich to pay more and those he judges to be in need to receive more. End of story. Debt and deficits don’t interest him, except to the extent he must give them lip service.

And so far this seems to be working fine for him. A USA Today/Pew Research Center poll out this week reported half the respondents said it will be the Republicans’ fault if the sequester goes through. Only a third said they’d blame the president.

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 8:30 am
Too right James, Heather Ridout was a left cheer leader, screwed business and now gets on RBA board there is no shame too big for the ALP.

Honesty

23 Feb 13 at 8:31 am
Is it just me, but where has all that expected record-breaking hotness for February gone? Maybe it’s that new kind of hot that Jarrah spoke of – the kind that doesn’t register on thermometers.

Keith

23 Feb 13 at 8:39 am
American negros are incredibly sensitive about chicken references.

You don’t hear the watermelon stuff much these day, though.

Really?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek-CwbiPeZI

.

23 Feb 13 at 8:43 am
The Ten Network’s low-rating leftist talk show turkey The Project is probably headed for the high jump:

THE CEO of Channel 10, James Warburton, was last night sacked as head of the network.

His termination was effective immediately and he will be replaced by Hamish McLennan, who will also take on the role of managing director.

In a statement last night, Ten chairman Lachlan Murdoch said: “The board would like to thank James Warburton for his hard work and contribution during what has been a difficult period for the company and for the broader media sector. He steps down with Ten’s best wishes.”

Mr Murdoch said he was delighted to welcome Mr McLennan into the role, labelling him a “world class” CEO with a “strong track record”.

Mr Warburton joined Ten Network Holdings as chief executive in January last year.

Media companies that pander to minorities are doomed.

Tom

23 Feb 13 at 8:49 am
Moree? How about Narrabri?

Or Coonabarabran

Collarenabri? Gulargambone? Kickatinalong? Wheelyabarrowback?

Popular Front

23 Feb 13 at 8:54 am
Tom

23 Feb 13 at 8:49 am

Be interesting to see if they allow Bolt Report to start on March 3

Mike of Marion

23 Feb 13 at 9:03 am
What are america’s options, JamesK?
They have tremendous debt, and the day of reckoning is approaching.

The government’s levers to deal with the debt are reduce spending; promote growth; and raise revenue (raise taxes).

They have so much debt the only option is all three. Or emigrate.

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 9:06 am
Moree? How about Narrabri?
Or Coonabarabran
Collarenabri? Gulargambone? Kickatinalong? Wheelyabarrowback?

Perhaps Yobbo will enlighten us with some of those fantastic West Oz names, like Riverwading, Dustibin, Wesyarillibin, Grinanknuckleup, and all those others we used to be fascinated by when poring over the atlas as kids.

Steve at the Pub

23 Feb 13 at 9:18 am
What are america’s options, JamesK?
They have tremendous debt, and the day of reckoning is approaching.

I’m pessimistic Entropy.

Basically I think they are really truly f-cked this time.

There ain’t gonna be a Resurrection.

The currency will collapse at some point in the next few years you would think.

It should already have happened but many still believe they have too much to lose to contemplate cashing out.

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 9:29 am
Tearabaginarf. Bringaginalong.

Pickles

23 Feb 13 at 9:30 am
Young man from West Sinny gives his views on Wilders.

nilk

23 Feb 13 at 9:36 am
The Project is probably headed for the high jump

I wouldn’t be so certain. You’ve got to remember it’s cheap prime time programming which also ticks a couple of boxes, licence requirement wise. They could knock 20K off the weekly operating costs by boning The Project and running $24/ep. reruns of F-Troop, but the Rate Card wouldn’t pay for the electricity and they’d have to make up the short fall in Oz content too.

Media companies that ~~pander to minorities~~ are slow to react to their key demographics heading to the internet for their viewing choices are doomed.

FFY

lotocoti

23 Feb 13 at 9:55 am
geofff, did you also notice that all our leaders, on ascension to the thrones of power first make common cause with our enemies?
They call it politics.

Winston Smith

23 Feb 13 at 9:55 am
An insider gives the low-down:

“My colleagues advise me that five boatloads of asylum seekers were offloaded on Christmas Island today. As far as I am aware, this is a new record. Not sure what number were onboard.

Christmas Island is the biggest money pit in Australian history. Never before has so much money been squandered, wasted, misdirected and lost in such a short period of time. Asylum seekers arrive almost daily, only to be churned through the system in two months or less, and sent to the mainland. The government couldn’t burn through money any faster if it tried. Two navy boats constantly on patrol; RAAF aircraft on patrol; teams of Customs and AFP officers permanently stationed on the island; empty hospitals manned by dozens of health professionals; SERCO spending millions a week; the list goes on. The waste is appalling, and I have certainly never seen anything like it in my life. When Labor says this year’s asylum seeker expenditure will be $2.2 billion, it should be emphasised that this is just the department of immigration’s costs – I would conservatively estimate Customs, Defence, AFP and the other associated departments costing at least $1 billion more, putting this year’s outlay to service the burgeoning asylum seeker industry at more than $3 billion.

The true (economic) cost of Christmas Island may never be known. So Wayne Swan wants a post-election audit of election policies? Good. Let’s start with Labor’s decision to dismantle the Pacific Solution in 2007. Perhaps the Treasurer would like to explain, before September, how Labor’s ‘humane’ policy has led to a $10 – $20 billion black hole in just five years.

Five years Labor have had to fix this festering sore. The boats are now what I like to call a ‘United Nations’ of economic opportunists. Europeans, Africans, Asians; dozens of young men in high spirits, thrilled at the prospect of unlimited welfare. When asked why they have travelled to Christmas Island, the answer is almost universally the same: “I lost my job”; “I heard there were jobs in Australia”; “I’m looking for work”, etc, etc.

Intel in the department has it that there are 30,000+ asylum seekers in Indonesia waiting their turn to travel to Christmas Island, and hundreds of boats are in the pipeline waiting to be launched. My estimate this year is for 35,000 – 40,000 arrivals by the time of the federal election.

Oh, by the way, somebody might like to ask the new immigration minister why, in the last few years alone, thousands of ‘asylum seekers’ have returned to their supposed ‘country of persecution’. This is another big secret the department is hoping does not become public: asylum seekers are granted Protection visas, only to travel back to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan, marry their arranged brides and lodge applications for large groups of ‘family members’. And curiously, many of these asylum seekers, returning to their country of origin, do not have jobs; that is, their travel is funded by welfare payments, which they continue to collect while overseas. “

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 10:16 am
The thing about that number of boatloads currently arriving is that it is still the wet season. The risk of a cyclone causing a boat to founder does not seem sufficient deterrent on the eve of the imminent fascist Abbott dictatorship.

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 10:25 am
this year’s asylum seeker expenditure will be $2.2 billion … putting this year’s outlay to service the burgeoning asylum seeker industry at more than $3 billion

Holy hell. That’s a ridiculous amount of money. Unless the next government is brave enough to exit the refugee Convention entirely, a cheaper way of doing things needs implementing fast. Community processing rather than detention would be a good start.

dozens of young men in high spirits, thrilled at the prospect of unlimited welfare. When asked why they have travelled to Christmas Island, the answer is almost universally the same: “I lost my job”; “I heard there were jobs in Australia”; “I’m looking for work”, etc, etc.

So which is it?

Jarrah

23 Feb 13 at 10:30 am
Thank you for that link nilk at 9.36 am

It is now on the front page at the Bar and Grill

geoffff

23 Feb 13 at 10:32 am
Well it’s not as if they’d say “I’m looking for welfare”.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 10:33 am
We must have lists of those who arrived by boat. When Labor gets chucked out on their ear, pass a law making it illegal to arrive by boat without documentation, (as it used to be before Labor changed the rules, strip them of their citizenship, and send ‘em back.

Winston Smith

23 Feb 13 at 10:34 am
I just read about the assault allegations at Macquarie university. One of my close friends was raped by an illegal Pakistani immigrant about 10 years ago, in her own bed. The disgusting pig of a creature followed her home and climbed through her window. These people have been trained from birth that females are chattels for the taking, and they’re letting these lecherous brainwashed thugs onto our university campuses with young female students? This has got to fucking stop, and yesterday.

If I had a daughter at this university I would be down there with a cricket bat hounding these fuckers until they left, and ringing the university manamgent day and night until I saw them rounded up and escorted for the premises. I dont give a shit how bad their sob stories are, there is no reason, none at all, why young illegal immigrants should be out up, unsupervised with hundreds of young female students. How long before a rape occurs? What about a gang rape? Which soft beauracrat would put there own daughter into that situation?

This shit makes me furious with anger. What have the young daughters of this country done to deserve being thrown with this lot?

brc

23 Feb 13 at 10:34 am
Thanks for posting that article by Empress Trudy, geoffff.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 10:34 am
where has all that expected record-breaking hotness for February gone?

Keith, your persistant focus on real world data can only mean that you are a DENIALIST DENIALIST DENIALIST!
Forget the observation and interpretation rubbish. Flannery says its hot and he’s a professor of bones.
Bet you have measured as many bones as he has. So your DENIALIST DENIALIST DENIALIST opinoins do not matter.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 10:42 am
$10 – $20 billion black hole in just five years.

Wait, wait. The open borders libertarians said these ‘immigrants’ were money spinners – that they’d make the country a wealthier, better place with more interesting food outlets. To quote Dot’s link: “so where’s the chicken?”

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 10:43 am
whoops …have NOT measured as many bones as he has.

Southern US Black people could read the future in chicken bones so it’s no wonder smart people like Professor Flannery can read the future weather in bones. It’s al written there for you to see unless you’re a DENIALIST DENIALIST DENIALIST.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 10:44 am
Second Gab’s Comment. Empress Trudy sounds like someone who has had enough of pig (and I use the word advisedly) ignorant cretins shouting bullshit as their argument and , FFS winning the argument.
Screw Abbott – Wilders for PM.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 10:47 am
Global warming causes bushfires.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/two-men-arrested-after-20-fires-were-started-south-east-of-melbourne/story-e6frf7kx-1226583996250

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 10:49 am
I bet the direct and indirect cost of the boat problem veers closer to $5 to $7 billion when it’s all said and done.

If you account for the support industry that’s grown with it and stuff like that.

That’s .75% of GDP!

Fuck that.

The incoming lib government needs to cap direct and indirect costs at say no more than $50 million. Beyond that amount they simply go home.

Fuck that.

JC

23 Feb 13 at 10:49 am
” ‘immigrants’ were money spinners ”

Bloody are.
Have you seen the price of Kidneys and Livers on the open market?

We could be pay them $10,000 to come and still make a profit. Just make sure they get their family on the way over before Harvest Day.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 10:49 am
Black people do love chicken. It’s a fact. I’m not sure why that’s offensive.

I’m white and I love chicken. Does that make me racist?

nilk

23 Feb 13 at 10:49 am
No it makes you a black person who is lying to yourself about your true inner blackness.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 10:50 am
If you account for the support industry that’s grown with it and stuff like that.

Like court costs, all paid for by the taxpayer. Like legal aid, all paid for by the taxpayer. Like the agencies representing asylum seekers, all paid for by the taxpayer.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 10:52 am
I’m white

You’re racist. Never mind about the chicken.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 10:53 am
Global warming causes bushfires

If the Globe had not warmed from the last ice-age there would be no people and no forests so the bushfires wodul not have happened.

That proves that Global warming causes bushfires. All you DENIALISTS have not been measuring enough bones to know anything. Bet you don’t even have a house right at the edge of the water. THe professor does so he knows about sea level rise.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 10:53 am
Farmers account for vet fees for their lifestock in their business plans, so whaht is wrong with us accounting for legal fees and such forth to get our self propelled organ assmeblies into the country ready for harvesting.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 10:56 am
Christmas Island is the biggest money pit in Australian history.

Doesn’t have to be. Give me a loan and a DA and I’ll build a proper casino, and clean up the streets KP style like what he did to that rathole we call “Melbourne”.

.

23 Feb 13 at 11:00 am
where has all that expected record-breaking hotness for February gone?

Actually, I’ve not gone anywhere. I’m still here in my pyjamas.

nilk

23 Feb 13 at 11:07 am
Seriously. If money is the issue, just allow permament residency in a snap, make citizenship happen after 10 years, but no welfare for non-citizens.

The churches will do a fine job of looking after genuine refugees.

You pretty much open the borders like that, save for profiling of criminals and terrorists.

I emplore you to look at the figures for illegal entrants from 1982 to 1992.

Can anyone tell me how the policies were different? The results were starkly different.

.

23 Feb 13 at 11:09 am
I’m white and I love chicken.

Flaunting your white privilege make you racist.
Appropriating minority culinary tastes for your own makes you a neo-colonialist oppressor.

lotocoti

23 Feb 13 at 11:10 am
I also like watermelon but I dislike watermelons.

I’m an Uncle Tom for watermelons.

.

23 Feb 13 at 11:11 am
Collarenabri? Gulargambone? Kickatinalong? Wheelyabarrowback?

Are you forgetting West Bandywallop?

Tintarella di Luna

23 Feb 13 at 11:11 am
Collarenabri? Gulargambone? Kickatinalong? Wheelyabarrowback?

My favourite – Didjabringabeeralong?

Whalehunt, when I was 16 I was voted by the guys as the second most beautiful girl at an ag college dance, so my boyfriend told me afterwards. My growing daughter thinks that is hilarious.

Second, says HIA when I reminisce, ready for fisticuffs on the issue even at this late date. Only second? You wuz robbed, Lizzie.

I was still ‘developing’ I tell him gently. Bazookas still on the rise.

Well, he admits. Dese young guys do like it obvious. De’re just learners.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

23 Feb 13 at 11:11 am
Ted Baillieu has given the Commonwealth Government’s Gonski plan a big “get stuffed” by proposing his own alternate plan. Have a read:

http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6107&catid=5&Itemid=9

Andrew

23 Feb 13 at 11:12 am
where has all that expected record-breaking hotness for February gone?

Actually, I’ve not gone anywhere. I’m still here in my pyjamas.

good one nilk

Tintarella di Luna

23 Feb 13 at 11:14 am
Seriously. If money is the issue, just allow permament residency in a snap, make citizenship happen after 10 years, but no welfare for non-citizens.

Citizenship after 10 years and $250K in taxes paid.

Tim

23 Feb 13 at 11:14 am
No it makes you a black person who is lying to yourself about your true inner blackness.

Thanks for clearing that up. Considering my mum always said she was related to Laurie Daley (who is apparently part aboriginal) I may yet be black.

LOL

nilk

23 Feb 13 at 11:14 am
No disrespect Lizzie, but ….hoping there were more than two girls there?

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 11:16 am
5 weeks

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 11:16 am
Gab, the whole idea of letting the boats in is to redistribute our wealth. The smokescreen might be “compassion” but ultimately it’s redistribution that is the name of the game, and it includes the CO2 tax.

But if oil is the power behind Islam, then the West has itself to blame because it refuses to consider the possibility that petroleum might be actually stuff that comes from the earth’s mantle, and not recycled biosphere. Of course it is in the interests of the oil-powered Wahabists that the West not spend too much time thinking about the genesis of petroleum, for then once the West works out that they too are standing on effectively unlimited oil reserves under their feet, including Australia, then their power disappears, and Islam then becomes another raucous sect of religion.

(The other reason Islamic society’s are so poor is a direct result of their proscription of usury).

Louis Hissink

23 Feb 13 at 11:21 am
What? Till an election is called, or is it called now? Surely not five more weeks of the Kevin and Julia show?

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 11:22 am
Like court costs, all paid for by the taxpayer. Like legal aid, all paid for by the taxpayer. Like the agencies representing asylum seekers, all paid for by the taxpayer.

Yep,

The incoming lib government needs to do a thorough accounting of all the money going out the window for this big government boondoggle and explain it to the people.

It can’t go on.

If da UN wants to keep it going let those fuckers fund it, or otherwise they should be told to fuck off.

JC

23 Feb 13 at 11:27 am
I’m with you on this, dot.

The boaties that arrived in the 80s were looking to flee murderous commie bastards and make a new life for themselves. There was virtually no big govt support which means they were responding to the incentives we admire.

Not now though.

Some idiot afghani was made Australian of the year or some shit and he has a parasitical job in “Herman” services.

As I said, enough of this shit.

JC

23 Feb 13 at 11:33 am
The costs are amazing, I put that to incompetence more than anything else.

I am wondering what the amount of indebtedness will be when the L/NP are installed and they go through the books.

How the fuck does housing people in four or five locations cost seven billion dollars a year?

If the same cost was transliterated to gaols, the cost of gaols in NSW alone would be 48 billion AUD per year.

The NSW State budget for 2012-13 had planned expenditure of 59 billion AUD.

It actually costs, the best I can disaggregate the figures, the AG of NSW under 4 billion a year to run the prisons and keep building new ones/repair old ones.

.

23 Feb 13 at 11:40 am
No disrespect Lizzie, but ….hoping there were more than two girls there?

Oh a crowded field, Whalehunt. But these aggie colleges are out in Boganville, so 50% of the pulchritrude were ruled out due to their level of heftiness, so I was in with a chance, little ballet freak that I was (or had been).

My daughter says boys aren’t like that anymore. Poor little thing, I think, she hasn’t even begun on this adventure yet.

Of course they’re not, I say briskly. It’s your personality that counts.

That’s what my Sainted Mother always told me, anyway.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

23 Feb 13 at 11:47 am
Dot, that you compare ~~illegal immigrants~~ asylum seekers to NSW~~criminals~~ temporarily misunderstood citizens occupying NSW gaols shows that you are a right wing fascists racist bastard. And shut up!

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 11:47 am
As I’ve suspected for several years, the JSF project has become too big to stop.

Instead, the Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) aircraft has been plagued by a costly redesign, bulkhead cracks, too much weight, and delays to essential software that have helped put it seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over its initial cost estimate. At almost $400 billion, it’s the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history.

It is also the defense project too big to kill. The F-35 funnels business to a global network of contractors that includes Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) and Kongsberg Gruppen ASA of Norway. It counts 1,300 suppliers in 45 states supporting 133,000 jobs — and more in nine other countries, according to Lockheed. The F-35 is an example of how large weapons programs can plow ahead amid questions about their strategic necessity and their failure to arrive on time and on budget.

“It’s got a lot of political protection,” said Winslow Wheeler, a director at the Project on Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information in Washington. “In that environment, very, very few members of Congress are willing to say this is an unaffordable dog and we need to get rid of it.”

Jarrah

23 Feb 13 at 11:50 am
That’s funny entropy because I know I’m actually very liberal on the issue, so shut up!

Met a young lady last night who works for the Dept. of Climate Change.

She has a nutrition and dietetics degree.

No shit.

.

23 Feb 13 at 11:53 am
Instead, the Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) aircraft has been plagued by a costly redesign, bulkhead cracks, too much weight, and delays to essential software that have helped put it seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over its initial cost estimate. At almost $400 billion, it’s the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history.

“We’ll pay 40 mil per unit or fuck off”

Is the appropriate response.

.

23 Feb 13 at 11:54 am
Picking up the Weekend Oz at the newsagents, I wondered why The Curious Mail had a life sized head shot of the cherub cheeked sociopath on the front page.
Now I know.
Emers is still paying the price for snapping TLS’ garters:

Julia Gillard will lead us to the election and we will be very competitive in that election.

Mind you, that very competitive might be construed as less than fulsome.

lotocoti

23 Feb 13 at 11:55 am
Met a young lady last night who works for the Dept. of Climate Change.

She has a nutrition and dietetics degree.

Was she a babe?

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 11:59 am
Shrinking the APS Part 1
All bureaucracies, whether public or private, are difficult to keep small and controlled. They tend to increase organically. In private enterprise costs and profit margins usually force regular culling; not so often in public enterprises.
The first step in shrinking the APS is to ignore the current departments and structures and start again. Define your new departments to deliver as few functions as reasonable and tend to more organisations rather than larger ones. Bringing these together under an umbrella is easy enough to do.
Staff these by the most efficient/effective method from any appropriate source. Do not depend on existing staff performing the function. Equally don’t automatically preclude them. The focus in staffing must be the function delivery not the history. History can be sourced separately.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 12:04 pm
lol how different the male and female minds. My first thought was ‘what the heck is dot doing hanging out with those reprobates from DCC?’ Then is was ‘it’ll never work. He’s Libertarian, she’s a lefty with snout firmly placed in trough’.

But then all was explained.

Was she a babe?

Good cut-through, Entropy.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 12:07 pm
But if oil is the power behind Islam

I see it as oil being the fuel and hate being the power behind Islam.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 12:09 pm
While we are on the shallowness of the male mind, I take this opportunity to point out that the celebrated term for

Oh a crowded field, Whalehunt. But these aggie colleges are out in Boganville, so 50% of the pulchritrude were ruled out due to their level of heftiness….

is “bush pigs”.

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 12:15 pm
It’s your personality that counts.

That’s what my Sainted Mother always told me, anyway.

Yeah mommy is always right.

Shape of Knockers Determines Personality

According to the ‘study’, small-breasted women with breasts that resemble cherries are the most charming and cheerful ladies who love to entertain whilst women whose breast shape is like a lemon are flirtatious and spontaneous as well as cheerful and self-ironical.

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 12:16 pm
Shrinking the APS Part 2
Location is equally important. ASIC is based in Melbourne not Canberra because it is more appropriate. (This is not a suggestion that ASIC is in any way a good role model for the APS in general just an example of APS entities being based outside Canberra) APS entities can be placed in any reasonably large town in Australia. One with a good airport would be best. This relocation will generally shrink government.
Further, with current technology, travel and co-location of related staff is less important.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 12:20 pm
Geofff, thanks for that video link. That kid is a treat! I’ve just added him to Quadrant’s homepage, and there is a neat Zeg cartoon as well.

areff

23 Feb 13 at 12:22 pm
ain. Define your new departments to deliver as few functions as reasonable and tend to more organisations rather than larger ones. Bringing these together under an umbrella is easy enough to do.

Dismissive, the creation of “super departments” would create the opposite of your intent. Management of a board range of activities creates the opportunity for content free managers to bullshit their way via cronyism and political patronage. And a convenient place to parachute political hacks where they can’t be easily identified.

Much better to have a larger number of departments with a single focus. Preferably with their own minister.

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 12:27 pm
Shrinking the APS Part 3
The next obvious entity is the department of programme closure. Every existing department (state also) has an amazing collection of small units whose role is to complete/close/end/defund “old” programmes. These groups tend to drift endlessly through the APS never quite finishing their role.
Create an entity under a defined minister (possibly the deregulation minister) where all closed programme staff and funding are transferred on such a closure. The minister and the head of the entity must have maximum incentive to close these defunct programmes and redeploy/unemploy their staff.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 12:27 pm
And I suspect that decentralisation is one of those things that sounds good but results in much lower productivity, increased travel costs, a greater distance from the minister, and irrelevance to the cabinet process.

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 12:29 pm
I bet the direct and indirect cost of the boat problem veers closer to $5 to $7 billion when it’s all said and done.

If you account for the support industry that’s grown with it and stuff like that.

That’s .75% of GDP!

Fuck that.

I look forward to the day when we’ve finally stopped the drain by these tax eaters.

Be warned, M0nty and his fruitbat mates (e.g. ABC) will be carrying on about the injustice that these unemployable people can’t find a job.

We need to push back hard when the assault comes.

Token

23 Feb 13 at 12:30 pm
The next obvious entity is the department of programme closure. Every existing department (state also) has an amazing collection of small units whose role is to complete/close/end/defund “old” programmes. These groups tend to drift endlessly through the APS never quite finishing their role.

your solution to these units is to create a department of them? Hahahaha.

Here’s a thought. The government decides what functions it wants to do. And shuts down the rest. No piddling around by creating a department for avoiding decisions, which is what the entity would become.

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 12:33 pm
C.L. 23 Feb 13 at 1:05 am

Alec does handle the pistol well though. Or is it a stunt man?

stackja

23 Feb 13 at 12:33 pm
This explains the bandana wearing I think?

Bear Necessities

23 Feb 13 at 12:34 pm
wow the old thread didn’t last long

Like ALP policies?

stackja

23 Feb 13 at 12:36 pm
Bear Necessities 23 Feb 13 at 12:34 pm

I believe his thinking was suspect before he started rugby. Do agree on head injury as boxers found out. And now car accidents victims with head injuries face a different life.

stackja

23 Feb 13 at 12:41 pm
I believe his thinking was suspect before he started rugby. Do agree on head injury as boxers found out. And now car accidents victims with head injuries face a different life.

With a lot of trauma to the head in all contact sports (even heading in soccer), the most obvious financial impact will be on insurance premiums paid by sports organisations. Have the insurance companies adequately priced over the long term for this risk? We will see.

Bear Necessities

23 Feb 13 at 12:46 pm
Wouldn’t the first step to shrinking the APS be to reduce the number of regulations that the APS has to enforce/support?

If they arent trying to control so much shit, they wouldnt need, nor be able to justify so many people.

dianeh

23 Feb 13 at 12:54 pm
I believe his thinking was suspect before he started rugby

The nutter described himself to his 2 or 3 readers as “your humble correspondent”.

Which might be one one reason why he has only 2 or 3 readers.

He lies to them even on the unimportant asides.

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 12:58 pm
Shrinking the APS Part 4
The next in line is the transfer of “overlapping” functions to the states. This is possibly the most difficult. Done at its most effective, this will require very few staff transfers and minimal funding transfers as the overlap in some areas is horrendous. Convincing the states of this may well be a nightmare. On the other hand, a non-interference agreement may push the right buttons.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:00 pm
Shrinking the APS Part 5
Sourcing history. Paying too much for this is essential in the short term. Bring in APS subject matter experts, who you do not wish to employ permanently, on expensive contracts. DO NOT EXTEND the contracts ever!

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:01 pm
Entropy

Have you worked in large corporates or the APS or even the larger state departments?

Closing programmes is a bugger. You can rarely just pull the plug – funds must be monitored and outcomes reported. There are 20 year defunct programmes in the APS that still have 1 or 2 staff “closing them down”.

Removing them from there depts and into a dead zone is a well known and successful model. The issue is to ensure that the incentive is on the management to shrink. Fail this and you fail. But at least you can see the failure rather than have it hidden in your functional entity.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:06 pm
their not there

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:06 pm
Shrinking the APS Part 6
Standardise. By this, I don’t mean use the same paper all shipped from one supplier in Sydney to all offices. I mean slap down your special cases. The 2 people who must have 2 monitors to do word processing simply need to be sacked.

This is more a general sack the whiners and losers problem that besets the APS and with the current unfair dismissal laws, all small businesses.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:09 pm
Shrinking the APS Part 7
Treat all new programmes as projects. Hire project managers to build them end to end. All programmes must have an end date (Like their enabling legislation/regulations?) and be moved to the Closure entity on completion. Extensions/expansions should be treated as new projects. Note that projects can share/transfer resources. (Despite the opinion of existing APS project managers.)

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:09 pm
Dismissive. The way to do it is to look at what Newman did to the QPS, but apply the same methods in a clintonesque ‘I feel your pain’ way rather than the combative approach adopted by Newman.

So rather than create a department for shutting down services, employ a temporary commission to provide advice. Have a department that reports directly to only one minister. Cut out grants to NGOs. Get rid of arts councils etc etc.

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 1:10 pm
Dot:
23 Feb 13 at 11:00 am

Christmas Island is the biggest money pit in Australian history.
Doesn’t have to be. Give me a loan and a DA and I’ll build a proper casino, and clean up the streets KP style like what he did to that rathole we call “Melbourne”.

Are you saying the existing casino on Christmas Island is not a “proper” one?

Steve at the Pub

23 Feb 13 at 1:12 pm
dianeh

Yes! The establishment of a minister for deregulation should be a cabinet position. Also the immediate implementation of end dates on all legislation.

The difficulty is always willpower. Labor were never going to end up with less regulation. The libs will grab the low hanging fruit but do nothing much that makes substantive difference.

The major goals must be removing barriers to entry for new business and increasing workforce flexibility. Good luck with anything major in a first term Abbot government still whipped by workchoices.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:14 pm
A project based APS would be designed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. And be tailor made to favour the world of the Obied types.

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 1:14 pm
Are you saying the existing casino on Christmas Island is not a “proper” one?

It closed down, so I assume it was shithouse.

It is only a resort now.

.

23 Feb 13 at 1:29 pm
If you can cut the size of an APS dept by locating it in Katherine by 10% then I don’t care about travel costs. It is still cheaper than staff costs.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:40 pm
Dictation test returns…

Gillard reinstates version of Labor’s beloved White Australia Policy:

Door shuts on thousands of cheap foreign workers.

EXCLUSIVE: THOUSANDS of low-paid foreign workers will be stopped from coming into Australia and taking local jobs under a crackdown on visas.

Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor revealed to the Herald Sun that growth in the 457 visa program was “out of step” with skills shortages and said the Gillard Government had evidence “rogue employers” were abusing it to get cheap labour…

Now check it some of the new rules:

EXTRA investigation powers for inspectors to get information from bosses they suspect of being dodgy.

A NEW test to prove jobs were for “genuine” skills shortages because some employers were creating positions that were really “unskilled and possibly not even a real job“.

CLOSING loopholes that allow foreign workers to be paid less than an Australian citizen by increasing from $180,000 to $250,000 the threshold at which they must pay “market rates”.

STOPPING employers creating their own market to manipulate pay rates.

RAISING requirements for foreign workers to speak English.

RESTRICTING foreign workers being on-hired to a different employer in regions where there are not skill shortages.

CHECKING that employers offer training for locals to fill skills shortages before they seek foreigners.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 1:47 pm
The limiting factor of size in a government department is always the reporting structure.

From the top Minister’s struggle with more than 2 people reporting to them. (or perhaps their chiefs of staff struggle)

Umbrella entities can be a nightmare I agree. But the importance of this structure should be in reporting not responsibility.

The responsibility for the performance of a government functional unit should not go up the tree above the unit head. The funding must also be defined this way. The umbrella entity should be tiny and each unit be separately defined. This works best with service entities rather than policy ones and is currently the model for the dept of Human services which was initially a body of less than 50 staff over the top of the service units, Centrelink, Medicare etc.

The ongoing issue is to ensure the umbrella entity maintains its internal irrelevance and stays tiny with respect to the functional units.

Realistically no umbrella is better but small units are far better than super-departments. If ministers could cope with 8 direct reports all could work well.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:48 pm
Wow, really. Obeid was funded by specific programme based project managers not ministerial actions? I must not have read carefully enough on this stuff.

dismissive

23 Feb 13 at 1:51 pm
A NEW test to prove jobs were for “genuine” skills shortages because some employers were creating positions that were really “unskilled and possibly not even a real job“.

If a program can be abused it will be. Why get on a boat to Christmas Island when Uncle Mo can get you in on a 457 visa to work in his tea shop?

Steve of Ferny Hills

23 Feb 13 at 1:55 pm
EXCLUSIVE: THOUSANDS of low-paid foreign workers will be stopped from coming into Australia and taking local jobs under a crackdown on visas.

Ah, so gillard does the unions’ bidding again.

The picket of Melbourne’s City West Water construction site, effectively demanding the sacking of 457 visa workers, shows just how dangerous and divisive the unions’ “Aussie jobs” campaign really is.

Not only are the unions demanding that 457 migrant workers be kept out the country—they are now calling for workers already here to be sacked. This appalling campaign is scapegoating foreign workers as to blame for unemployment.

Hey, don’t blame gillard, she knew nothing about it:

HE Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was not consulted on a deal allowing Gina Rinehart to import more than 1700 foreign workers to help build a massive iron ore project in Western Australia.

The trade union movement was livid at yesterday’s announcement by the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, and the Minister for Resources, Martin Ferguson, and sources have told the Herald Ms Gillard was uneasy at the message the deal would send.

It is understood she shared her feelings during a meeting with union bosses that had been scheduled to discuss the plight of manufacturing.

The revelation will do little to ease bubbling tensions within the government, given Mr Ferguson and Mr Bowen are not as close to the union movement as Ms Gillard and both backed Kevin Rudd in the February leadership spill.
Advertisement

Through cabinet, the government agreed last year on a policy to introduce Enterprise Migration Agreements, a category of 457 visas that would allow the importation of skilled labour for specific projects.

These people better watch out then.

HE government-owned company rolling out the National Broadband Network has revealed it has hired 35 employees on the controversial 457 visa arrangement.

Despite the NBN Co having declared at the height of the debate over Enterprise Migration Agreements that its workforce development strategy was focused on growing a pool of skilled labour within Australia, the company has revealed in new answers to a Senate committee that it has got workers on the 457 visa.

Of course, the story was different in 2008…

Recently the Asian Development Bank assessed that at least one-quarter of the people in the Pacific have insufficient incomes to meet their basic needs.

Today in the East Timorese capital of Dili 58 per cent of young people are out of work; one-third of the population of the strife-torn Solomons capital Honiara live in poverty; and more than half the population of Australia’s former colony of Papua New Guinea live below the basic needs poverty line.

At the same time the regional powers of Australia and New Zealand have their economies at risk due to a crippling labour and skills shortage.

The long-term solution for our own country is to take a new and progressive approach to vocational education and training and the federal Government should be applauded for tackling the skills shortage head-on as a part of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s education revolution.

But an urgent solution is needed for the shortages that exist in many key areas of our economy, especially in agriculture, where the drought is breaking in many parts and the shortage of workers could be as large as 100,000.

This is where some visionary thinking could reconcile our domestic challenges and our regional responsibility, if only we are prepared to approach articles of faith with a fresh perspective.

The Australian Workers Union – along with most other unions – has traditionally opposed all forms of migrant labour schemes.

And for good reason.

The 457 visa regime, set up by the previous government, was fundamentally flawed due to the ease with which some unscrupulous employers could exploit migrant workers, in terms of wages and conditions as well as safety.

It was also a tool for some companies to use the scheme as a part of an aggressive approach to drive down Australian wages and conditions and pit Australian workers against foreign workers.

Thankfully Immigration Minister Chris Evans has begun a wholesale review of the flawed 457 visas, which no doubt will uncover a Pandora’s box of dodgy behaviour by some bad bosses.

The federal Government, free from the ideological grudges held by the previous administration, is now placed in a unique position to put into place a scheme which can allow Australia to provide the sorely needed economic assistance to our Pacific neighbours while at the same time providing a boost to our economy at home.

To make such a scheme workable requires the support of unions, employers and the communities where these workers will be deployed. It also requires new thinking from those same groups.

http://www.awu.net.au/opinions/unions-must-stop-opposing-work-schemes

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 2:06 pm
Beautiful in its ugliness update: One of the Sugardaddy Guardian’s new Fairfax asylum seekers stands by helpless and weeping as Big Socialism self-destructs:

And then there’s another issue: concern in some quarters that the problem isn’t so much the messenger but the message. Some ministers have watched with concern as the strategy has contracted to rallying the base. Says one: ”Class warfare isn’t modern Labor. Is it the Scot [Julia Gillard's communications director John McTernan]? Is it Swannie? Narrowing the perception of what we stand for isn’t the way to win. We need the bolder agenda. Why aren’t we talking the language of the modern economy?”

Gillard this week publicly eschewed a ”progressive” agenda, asserting Labor’s historical ties with working people. The tit-for-tat with the Greens prompted by Christine Milne’s decision to end the formal agreement this week will doubtless exacerbate a trend we’ve seen in the past few days: both parties narrowcasting to the base. Not everybody is happy with that direction, but the answer to that question may not be Rudd. Not without a decisive sequence of events rendering the status quo untenable. Not without a decisive shift that could yet happen, but hasn’t yet.

One minister says: ”Is the problem the leader or the leadership agenda? I don’t know where it ends – all I know is it can’t go on like this.”

Tom

23 Feb 13 at 2:12 pm
areff at 12.22 pm

My pleasure and thanks to nilk. There is an even better video from the same kid here.

geoffff

23 Feb 13 at 2:39 pm
McTernan is English not a Scot.
This week he sent text to Ray Hadley and Alan Jones to get to them so they can woo the Western Sydney voter. He said he wanted a beer with Ray. This is the problem when your Director of spin is on a 457 visa and doesn’t understand the locals. Ray explained laughing at McTernan he doesn’t drink, all but rarely, he doesn’t do lunches. So McTernan s frozen out of the one demographic that the ALP needs most.

McTernans middle name is “Killrust” because he is shaking loose rusted on Labor voters. He is Tony Abbotts secret weapon.

Honesty

23 Feb 13 at 2:40 pm
Gab:

Oh, by the way, somebody might like to ask the new immigration minister why, in the last few years alone, thousands of ‘asylum seekers’ have returned to their supposed ‘country of persecution’. This is another big secret the department is hoping does not become public: asylum seekers are granted Protection visas, only to travel back to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan, marry their arranged brides and lodge applications for large groups of ‘family members’. And curiously, many of these asylum seekers, returning to their country of origin, do not have jobs; that is, their travel is funded by welfare payments, which they continue to collect while overseas. “

This is a leak to Bolt from inside DIAC.

I have been talking about this to a contact who was formely at Immigration. No names, no pack drill on this one and teh contact is retired anyway now so this is off the ‘old boy network’.

The Immi guys are supposedly incandescent with rage over this. They have reported to the Minister that about SIXTY PERCENT of the male illegal immigrants return to their country of origin within a year of getting the nod to stay here.

Immi tried to strip one of these arseholes of his TPV – and they won the case. The rumour mill sez that the Immi people who pushed it were not punished, oh no, but they were somehow ‘administratively disadvantaged’.

The blood-on-their-hands scumbags of the alpgreenfilth then changed the regulations attached to TPV so that the illegals could return to their country of origin and suffer no penalty.

IF this is all actually true (amd I have no confirmation that it is) then TPV are now effectively a Permanent Residency!

No wonder someone’s leaking to Bolt.

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 2:47 pm
This is a very very long article, but well worth reading. Makes me very thankful to live under Australia’s health system than the US one.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/print/

I find it unbelievable that Medicare in the US is forbidden by legislation from negotiating drug prices with the pharmaceuticals companies and has to pay the average market price + certain percentage.

Chris

23 Feb 13 at 2:52 pm
“IF this is all actually true (amd I have no confirmation that it is)”

If it is, then there’s something radically wrong with the vetting process.

Jarrah

23 Feb 13 at 2:52 pm
So wait…

We’re stopping foreign workers from coming but people who go onto the dole…that’s cool?

.

23 Feb 13 at 2:54 pm
Also over at ShakeMyHead.com, Peter Harcher takes it on himself, using the left’s construction of the right-wing death bogan myth as his reference point, to relieve inner Sydney’s basket weavers and doctors’ wives of their lazy ignorance about AbbottAbbottAbbott.

Tom

23 Feb 13 at 2:56 pm
And curiously, many of these asylum seekers, returning to their country of origin, do not have jobs; that is, their travel is funded by welfare payments, which they continue to collect while overseas.

The centrelink systems are tied into the immigration/customs computers. Newstart payments are automatically suspended if you leave the country. You can get an exemption (such as having to travel for medical treatment), but they are then still limited to about 3 months.

And it would take quite some effort to save up enough money on Newstart for an airline ticket whilst paying for housing/food etc.

Chris

23 Feb 13 at 3:00 pm
This is a very very long article, but well worth reading. Makes me very thankful to live under Australia’s health system than the US one.

Put simply, with Obamacare we’ve changed the rules related to who pays for what, but we haven’t done much to change the prices we pay.

My guess is that it is a racket.

.

23 Feb 13 at 3:10 pm
And it would take quite some effort to save up enough money on Newstart for an airline ticket whilst paying for housing/food etc.

Not with 10/20 other people living in a house. If you’re not training to be an athlete, most people’s diets can become quite simple and cheap.

I’ve seen a murder scene in a local paper where chinese were living at the back of the restaurant they worked in and showered under a garden hose hooked up to something else.

Economic migrants and refugees are responding to incentives and have a business like attitude to the whole issue.

.

23 Feb 13 at 3:12 pm
If you’re bunking up with a dozen rellies in shared public housing, Chris, and living from the communal stew pot, it takes very little time to amass an airfare on welfare: ten weeks per thousand bucks,and you can still buy your smokes.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

23 Feb 13 at 3:16 pm
Thanks Tom. We’ll see more journo’s flicking their own switch as the grim realisation sinks in that they are going to be dealing with a coalition government again before long. They’ll have a hard time explaining the landslide unless they get to somewhere near the head of the parade.
Not that the new attitude will last long after the change of government. The vast majority of them will be doing the usual within the 100 days – attacking the conservatives whether in government or opposition.
The empty-headed vilification of Abbott by Labor and their presstitutes has been a shocker. Abbott’s respectable character is not something hidden or recently discovered. The media were complicit in this fraud. But the number of half-aware idiots and pillow-heads who bear the impression long enough to repeat it to their friends or passing pollsters is why they do it.
The media delights in cheap exposes of scams in business, like the shonky repair guy, but ignore the basic and far more serious perversion of the course of democracy in which they themselves engage.
It’s a nasty thing to pervert the course of justice or mislead parliament, but assisting in the deception of the voters is an everyday event.

blogstrop

23 Feb 13 at 3:17 pm
I find it unbelievable that Medicare in the US is forbidden by legislation from negotiating drug prices with the pharmaceuticals companies and has to pay the average market price + certain percentage.

Okay then , have it the other way round then where the state being the only significant buyer dictates the price it pays for medications and see how fucking far you get, Chris you dunderhead.

If you want to know how that works keep in mind that the major drug makers and suppliers in the world were once the Germans, Dutch and Frogs. State based socialism turned their once thriving pharma industry into a fucking graveyard.

Jc

23 Feb 13 at 3:25 pm
Cleaning out the Aegean Stables at FauxFacts will be Gina’s greatest contribution to the health of Australian Society. The first fifty Faux Staff stripped, flogged and salted will be sufficent inducement to the remainder to return to professional behaviours. The ABC simply needs to be sold and impoverished beyond any capability of funding redundancies.

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 3:28 pm
If you want to know how that works keep in mind that the major drug makers and suppliers in the world were once the Germans, Dutch and Frogs. State based socialism turned their once thriving pharma industry into a fucking graveyard.

Precisely correct.

The medical device industry will be looking for a new home after Obummer and his ‘care’.

A bright Aussie PM would see the potential.

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 3:34 pm
Gab 10:53 am

Very funny, Miss Smarty Pyjamas!

Thanks for the laugh!

kae

23 Feb 13 at 3:42 pm
Chris, I am truly touched by your naivete!

Single No kids dole $492.60 per fortnight.

4 beddie rent in Bankstown – $400 per week

10 illegals on the dole – $2460 per week

Rice-based diet supplemented by mosque food donations, power etc call it ~$500 a week.

part time/cash work income NOT counted, but the cops tell me it’ll average $2000 per week for ten of them and up to $10000 per week if they work retail for one of the drug gangs

So the worst they will do is save about $1500 a week.

I can get a ticket on Thai Sydney-Islamabad for $1247.

Tell me again how all of this is all so hard?

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 3:44 pm
Oops

Nilk 11:07 am, not Gab

Sorry! I think I need a cuppa!

kae

23 Feb 13 at 3:47 pm
Chris, I am truly touched by your naivete!

Single No kids dole $492.60 per fortnight.

4 beddie rent in Bankstown – $400 per week

10 illegals on the dole – $2460 per week

Rice-based diet supplemented by mosque food donations, power etc call it ~$500 a week.

part time/cash work income NOT counted, but the cops tell me it’ll average $2000 per week for ten of them and up to $10000 per week if they work retail for one of the drug gangs

So the worst they will do is save about $1500 a week.

I can get a ticket on Thai Sydney-Islamabad for $1247.

Tell me again how all of this is all so hard?

If these people are truly this enterprising, we don’t need to give them welfare, we need to give them development applications and remove legal barriers to lines of credit…

Housing shortage solved.

.

23 Feb 13 at 3:54 pm
SHY, Australia’s last bulwark against Tony Abbott (and a worried girl)!

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

It’s actually an unintended ad for John Howard.

areff

23 Feb 13 at 3:54 pm
MK50, CHris.
I am sure that if you could accumulate dosh by living like sardines, but I am also pretty sure that there are a raft of programs for ‘refugees’ that help to flesh out the dole by additional help with living expenses.

But the obvious is that maybe they aren’t paying for the tickets with money raised via the dole. It will be money back in the home country.

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 3:55 pm
My guess is that it is a racket.

Yes its certainly not just the Republicans who are to blame, but as he says in the article its a indication of how strong the pharmaceutical lobby is.

Okay then , have it the other way round then where the state being the only significant buyer dictates the price it pays for medications and see how fucking far you get, Chris you dunderhead.

Medicare in the US is not the only significant buyer of drugs. Private insurance companies are allowed to negotiate drug prices and then people use them as an example of being more efficient than Medicare.

Besides look at the PBS system in Australia where it pretty much is just one buyer. Do you seriously believe that the pharmaceuticals are selling at a loss here?

MK50 – for starters if they’re illegal immigrants they won’t be collecting any dole. Only if they are found to be genuine refugees will they get the dole. Secondly I think you’re seriously underestimating living costs and if you count donations towards reduced living expenses then you could just as easily claim mosque donations are helping them with their travel costs.

And you haven’t addressed why their dole payments would not immediately be stopped when they leave the country.

Chris

23 Feb 13 at 4:06 pm
MK50 – for starters if they’re illegal immigrants they won’t be collecting any dole.

Nearly every boat arrival is an illegal immigrant. The DIAC agents on the ground at Christmas have not seen a genuine refugee in years. It’s simple to tell for two reasons:
1. Refugees do NOT dispose of their documents.
2. it’s easy to tell which people smuggler sent them in as all the stories they tell ‘batch’. All they have done is memorise the trauining material given to them.

Only if they are found to be genuine refugees will they get the dole.

95% of current illegals arriving by boat get through even when allt eh men in the same boat have the same age, same birthday and same story, just slightly different names. ALl other outcomes have been closed off by plitical interference or by the way the groundrules and interpretations of regulation have been defined.

To do otherwise is to publicly reveal that the alpgreenfilth have been lying thrub their teeth this entire time.

Secondly I think you’re seriously underestimating living costs and if you count donations towards reduced living expenses then you could just as easily claim mosque donations are helping them with their travel costs.

As they are. I have also grossly underestimated INCOME. Most of the illegals get part time cash jobs, the sweatshop trade’s big, so is drug dealing, ‘cockatoo’ work and working for a pittance in muslim owned shops. I also underestimated the number per house. A 4 beddie with only 10? Please. Normally it’s 20-26.

And you haven’t addressed why their dole payments would not immediately be stopped when they leave the country.

I did not make that claim, of course. Waiting for a full reply on that issue. One received so far is that the system is crap and does not work well and that there is a serious problem with very similar names being used. Most of these illegals use generic names (apparently Achmed Mohammad, Mustafa Mohammad etc are so popular that over half of male illegals have very similar names. One interlocutor noted a particular large SIEV where a quarter of them had the same name and the birthdays were all differenet – but all of them were in one month of the same year. Every one of them got called a genuine reffo. The Sri Lankan government then identified several of them as LTTE. Of course, when they went to find them, they were gone.

I am truly surprised by how naïve you are on this matter. it’s obvious you have simply accepted the propaganda at face value – how gullible. You have never really looked at it, have you?

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 4:23 pm
hahahahahahahahahaaa

Lefty Mayor’s defence? ‘I am too stupid to understand that stealing is a crime.’

Seems legit….

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 4:26 pm
Zed Seselja has beaten Gary Humphries for ACT Senate preselection…good news.

Andrew

23 Feb 13 at 4:27 pm
So we can send McTurdman back?
Surely there’s someone can do his job and is an Australian?

Winston SMITH

23 Feb 13 at 4:29 pm
And curiously, many of these asylum seekers, returning to their country of origin, do not have jobs; that is, their travel is funded by welfare payments, which they continue to collect while overseas.

I was talking just yesterday to a bloke, who works for Centrelink, who often speaks with irate “customers” who are peeved by his informing them that they can’t go overseas for several months and still collect the dole; this week, for instance, one cove wanted to go to Viet Nam—at Government expense, of course—for three months because his mother is ill.

Deadman

23 Feb 13 at 4:32 pm
Bu t who will be willing to wear his thinking haggis, WInston?

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 4:33 pm
Are you saying the existing casino on Christmas Island is not a “proper” one?
It closed down, so I assume it was shithouse.

It is only a resort now.

Dot:
Golden Rule #1: Never Assume.

The Christmas Island Casino was (in effect) closed by the Indonesian government. They denied airspace & overflight permission for any aircraft bound for Christmas Island.

The casino closed because overnight the customer supply was choked off.

(I’m starting to feel like the only commenter in here who is from outside the “square mile”)

Steve at the Pub

23 Feb 13 at 4:35 pm
By the way, I suggest that we stop using the loaded and misleading term multiculturalism. It’s not multiculturalism which SBS and fellow-travellers promote but aliculturalism*; for it’s not that many cultures (including our own) deserve our respect, just other ones.
 Other cultures, no matter how poorly they treats the disadvantaged, are praiseworthy—except for Australian culture.
Other cultures, no matter how inexcusably or inequitably they treat the crippled and disabled, are deserving of complimentary documentaries—except for Australian culture.
Other cultures, no matter how intolerantly they treat potential immigrants and refuse to countenance a plurality of languages on official forms, are deserving of excuses and condescending shrugs—except for Australian culture.

* from the Latin, alii, meaning “others”; it has nothing to do with the SBS policy that no-one named Ali can possibly do wrong.

Deadman

23 Feb 13 at 4:39 pm
The Christmas Island Casino was (in effect) closed by the Indonesian government. They denied airspace & overflight permission for any aircraft bound for Christmas Island.

The casino closed because overnight the customer supply was choked off.

(I’m starting to feel like the only commenter in here who is from outside the “square mile”)

I thought it opened because the Indons closed down their own casinos in the 1980s and in the 2000s the Minister for Territories took a very puritan view of casinos.

Give me a loan, a DA and some money to bribe Indonesian officials…then I’ll run the best damn casino outside of Macau.

.

23 Feb 13 at 4:49 pm
Andrew Leigh does not know the difference between Right-wing and conservative.

Andrew

23 Feb 13 at 4:50 pm
James K

What about melons?

kae

23 Feb 13 at 4:54 pm
I am a great fan of melons, Kae.

In fact, most fellows I know like nothing more thna small to large, soft to firm, and well rounded melons. I think most men here at the Cat would agree strongly with that comment, too.

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 5:02 pm
Blogstrop, I think it was the good Professor B who first suggested that the Libs when assuming command ‘go for it’ and dismantle the leftist media. The reason being is whether the Libs are ‘decent’ or not won’t make a pinch of difference to their critics, so, go for it. A position I agree with.

nic

23 Feb 13 at 5:04 pm
The illegals arrive here with no papers, so what kind of travel documents do they use to visit, you know, those places they left in fear of their very lives?

Steve of Ferny Hills

23 Feb 13 at 5:14 pm
What about melons?

I was going to ask that, but felt a bit shy being a reasonably ‘newbie’.

Good reply Mk50

eam

23 Feb 13 at 5:18 pm
Yes Nic. As Bart Simpson said when asked for an example of a paradox, “Your’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”.

blogstrop

23 Feb 13 at 5:18 pm
Steve oFH:

so what kind of travel documents do they use to visit, you know, those places they left in fear of their very lives?

Australian travel permits or passports!

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 5:22 pm
The reason being is whether the Libs are ‘decent’ or not won’t make a pinch of difference to their critics, so, go for it. A position I agree with.

This is exactly the reason I am Australia’s most voacl proponent of the public execution of leftists. They tell us we are evil. It’s a about damn time we acted like it.

Infidel Tiger

23 Feb 13 at 5:26 pm
there’s something radically wrong with the vetting process.

No shit, Sherlock? It’s been going on for years.

kae

23 Feb 13 at 5:32 pm
Surely they wouldn’t be eligible for an Australian passport within 12 months of being granted a TPV?

If they’re on a TPV, any application for a travel document to visit their country of origin should trigger an automatic cancellation.

Steve of Ferny Hills

23 Feb 13 at 5:35 pm
Oh gee, Chris. Where, then, do they get the money to travel home?

Wouldn’t be things like car rebirthing, drug running, standover extortion, or other unsavoury, illegal activities?

kae

23 Feb 13 at 5:36 pm
Mamdope Haboob managed to travel overseas.

He has no job and relies on welfare for his extended family. The travel was before he won anything in his litigation for whatever it was.

How does that work?

kae

23 Feb 13 at 5:38 pm
I like the cut of your jib, IT.

AFter all, it’s just being nice to them and meeting their expectations.

Can I sell the tickets for the roaring crowds?

“And now, the highlight os our week’s entertainment”

[dramatic pause]

“You are all taxpayers, you all have bills, and we’d liek to introduce to you the star of the show tonight, the man who ran up $55,000 of debt for each and every one of you, Woine Swon!”

[The crowd goes wild]

And here to start the festivities are our three lucky door prize winners, one for the hanging, one for the drawing, and one for the quartering!

[mighty peals of cheering shake the foundations of the stadium]

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 5:39 pm
Cleaning out the Aegean Stables

Not the first time that phrase has cropped up in the past couple of weeks.

Those stables may have been in the Aegean, but they were actually Augean…

mct

23 Feb 13 at 5:43 pm
one for the hanging, one for the drawing, and one for the quartering!

Awww. No parrilla first? To loosen him up, get those muscles and vocal cords warmed up. Well, I’m available if you change the entertainment line-up.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 5:45 pm
Mk50:
Isn’t he more recently known as “Maxwell Swan”?

Steve at the Pub

23 Feb 13 at 5:45 pm
He spent a month in training with Bob Brown.

Which also explains the slightly strained look on his face.

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 5:46 pm
Aegean, Augean, pretty soon you well tell me someone made the whole thing up…….

Entropy

23 Feb 13 at 5:53 pm
Indian innings about to start.

Australia’s first innings total 380

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 5:53 pm
How does that work?

kae the anointed amongst us have a secret fund. Such questions were asked in the past and Al Grassby mates used magic and Donald Mackay disappeared.

stackja

23 Feb 13 at 5:57 pm
I think Haboob is on a disability pension since his terrible experience which scarred him for life in Gitmo.

I recall his story of the terrible concrete treadmill of electrified tormentulation.

kae

23 Feb 13 at 6:05 pm
Oops

They’d get the disability pension if they were travelling overseas. Can someone clever with the rabbit warren of Centrelink website check that?

kae

23 Feb 13 at 6:06 pm
they’d STILL get the disability pension

oops

kae

23 Feb 13 at 6:07 pm
Pistorius out on bail . . . he’s been sprung!

WhaleHunt Fun

23 Feb 13 at 6:14 pm
Choices, Mk50/IT. Choices.
We can dismantle the rotten media edifice bloodlessly now, or wait until the inevitable civil strife in five years time and execute them.
Your choice.

Winston SMITH

23 Feb 13 at 6:18 pm
India 12-2 both Patterson both dragged on

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 6:24 pm
Harcher – Abbott demonising Gillard? Abbott schitzophrenia?

kae

23 Feb 13 at 6:24 pm
Google says:
Payments paid while outside Australia [link]

Changes to your payment if you leave Australia from 1 January 2013
If you are planning on leaving Australia on or after 1 January 2013 the rules about getting your payment overseas may have changed. Refer to your payment below to see how these changes may affect your payment.
To get your payment while outside Australia you must continue to meet the qualification rules for that payment. You will also have to tell us about any changes in your circumstances while you’re away.
The information on this page provides a guide only. There are other circumstances which may also affect your payments while outside Australia.

stackja

23 Feb 13 at 7:02 pm
People on the Disability Pension may reside overseas for up to thirteen weeks at a time. A disability pensioner can, however, permanently in NZ (where the costs of living are lower, the equivalent pension is lower, but the dollar is higher).
As for “asylum-seekers”—from FaHCSIA:

Asylum seekers who are assessed as genuine refugees and who are granted permanent visas on this basis are exempt from the qualifying residence requirements for income support payments. The Social Security Act 1991 definition of a refugee includes all people who were granted permanent residence under the Humanitarian Program – that is, those granted Refugee or Special humanitarian visas. To protect their access to benefits, such people continue to be defined as refugees for social security purposes, even if they cease to hold a refugee or humanitarian visa (e.g. if they become Australian citizens).
This “qualifying residence exemption” recognises that refugees have not had the same freedom of choice as other migrants, when making the decision to come to Australia. Refugees are not, however, exempt from the basic requirement to be an Australian resident at the time of claiming a payment.
Under social security law, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has authority to make determinations to allow the holders of particular permanent visas to meet the qualifying residence requirements for certain social security payments (other than Special Benefit). […]
An Australian resident who becomes a sole parent in Australia can immediately apply for Parenting Payment Single (previously known as Sole Parent Pension).

Deadman

23 Feb 13 at 7:06 pm
For “A disability pensioner can, however, permanently”, please read “A disability pensioner can, however, reside permanently”.

Deadman

23 Feb 13 at 7:07 pm
Winston, if we want to have fun, meet the lefties expectations and have fun, then obviously the bloodshed has to start ASAP.

I do believe it says so somewhere in the VRWC manual for crushing the serpent of leftism under the iron-shod heed.

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 7:11 pm
Pistorius out on bail . . . he’s been sprung!

I reckon he’ll walk.

wreckage

23 Feb 13 at 7:12 pm
If he doesn’t jump bail and do a runner.

wreckage

23 Feb 13 at 7:12 pm
If he doesn’t jump bail and do a runner.

He has toe hold on freedom

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 7:13 pm
Age Pension:

To lodge an Age Pension claim you must be an Australian resident and in Australia on the day that you lodge your claim.
To qualify as an Australian resident you must be living in Australia as:
* an Australian citizen, or
* the holder of a permanent resident visa, or
* a New Zealand citizen who was in Australia on 26 February 2001, or for 12 months in the 2 years immediately before that date, or was assessed as “protected” before 26 February 2004.
To be paid Age Pension, you also need to meet the 10-year qualifying Australian residence requirements, unless:
* you are claiming under an international social security agreement, or
* you are a refugee or former refugee, [emphasis added] or
* you were getting Partner Allowance, Widow Allowance or Widow B Pension immediately before turning Age Pension age, or
* you are a woman whose partner died while you were both Australian residents and you had 2 years residency immediately before claiming Age Pension.

In many cases, you may reside permanently overseas once you receive the Age Pension.

Deadman

23 Feb 13 at 7:14 pm
Who stumped bail?

JamesK

23 Feb 13 at 7:15 pm
If he doesn’t jump bail and do a runner.

If he goes to prison at least he won’t need a blade in a cake.

Boom Tish!

Bear Necessities

23 Feb 13 at 7:15 pm
To get your payment while outside Australia you must continue to meet the qualification rules for that payment. You will also have to tell us about any changes in your circumstances while you’re away.
The information on this page provides a guide only. There are other circumstances which may also affect your payments while outside Australia.

Dear Centerlink,
As per your instructions I am writing to you to inform you of my change in circumstances whilst outside of Australia.

I am currently attending a family reunion with 89 other Iranians who live in a small seaside village on the tip of the Indonesian archipelago. Whilst I am currently on a disability pension due to chronic sea sickness and claustrophobia from a rather unpleasant holiday to Christmas Island I thought it best to let you know of my whereabouts and confirm my Government benefits will not be disrupted.

I do not intend staying here long and will be returning to Australia on the next high tide.

Your’s faithfully,
Captain Emad.

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 7:25 pm
The VRWC Ops Manual doesn’t cover start of hostilities, Mk50. It just says Hostilities – Rules – see Spanish Civil War, The Bolshevik Revolution, and the Fight between Ugghh and Gronk, 22034 BC.
(Which is just another way of me saying I haven’t written it yet, but do carry on.)

Winston SMITH

23 Feb 13 at 7:27 pm
Winston, I have scanned the Victorian Race Walkers Club ops manual and can find no reference to any fight between Ugghh and Gronk 22034 BC?
Should I give Wikipedia a go or do you have a link?

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 7:42 pm
They hadn’t invented paper back then Splat. It became legend and was sung for about three weeks until the respective wives got pissed on fermented dinosaur urine and forgot the words and just why they were singing them…

Winston SMITH

23 Feb 13 at 7:46 pm
It seems we still have a censor banning tasteless films, or at least not giving them a classification. Good.
Maybe Margaret Pomeranz will indulge in another bit of Balmain street theatre and cry when her illegal screening is busted by the cops, as she did back when she sponsored a screening of a similarly poor excuse for the waste of celluloid called Ken Park.

blogstrop

23 Feb 13 at 7:57 pm
A while ago there was speculation that McSporran might orchestrate a wedding between TLS and Tim. I’m now wondering if a break-up (so terribly sad for both of them, they love each other dearly but the stress of living under the microscope, the terrible abuse from us nutjobs etc. etc.) might get her more mileage from the pathetic mummy bloggers?

Poor Julia. How brave she is. First the devastating loss of her beloved father and now this…

Tracey

23 Feb 13 at 8:03 pm
Tracey

23 Feb 13 at 8:03 pm

I was also wondering if Tim was invited last weekend to the AWU Fawning Session where the Ludwigs and the Howes waxed lyrical about their prize TLS

Mike of Marion

23 Feb 13 at 8:16 pm
WInston, Winston, Winston.

You forget two things. Firstly I am still the Minionmeister to the VRWC (see Tim Blair’s old site before he went commercial) and the VRWC HQ is and always has been underground. ANd we never throw anything away.

Ugghh and Gronk? We’ve got the cave art. That stoush between Gilgamesh King of Uruk and the Bull of Heaven back at the start of the Bronze Age? When the goddess Ishtar convinced her dad Anu to send the Bull down to schwack the big G?

Epic fail. Check out Abbott’s drinking horn at the next VRWC feast.

Don’t tell Ishtar but. She’s still pissed about that. Bloody Mesopotamian goddesses, all the same. Cranky cows the lot of ‘em. Never forget a grudge and when it dies of old age they have it stuffed and mounted.

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 8:38 pm
Jain Moralee, director of Queer Screen, said she was very disappointed that she would be unable to show the work. The sex scene, she says, is a six-minute montage of friends, housemates and partygoers that is part of the narrative context of the film.

I would suggest the film classification board has done them a favour. Not because the sex scenes are explicit but that the vast majority of Gay and SSM advocates have probably not thought any deeper into the real act of gay lovemaking other than holding hands or kissing.

Group think lefties would be shocked having to consider that a six-minute montage of friends, housemates and partygoers arse jackhammering and felching is the end product of the gay lifestyle narrative.

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 8:39 pm
Is the Ishtar gag a crack at Gillard’s sexual tension towards Abbot?

.

23 Feb 13 at 8:41 pm
He’s just her type. Married.

wreckage

23 Feb 13 at 8:47 pm
until the respective wives got pissed on fermented dinosaur urine

I’m glad that doesn’t happen any more since nanny Roxon introduced the alcopops tax.

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 8:48 pm
Mk50 @ 3.44 on how much in benefits.

If I were not working, or declaring my income, next week I’d receive:
Newstart: $533.00
Rent assistance: $121.00
Pharmaceutical allowance: $6.20

So that’s $660.20 not including the Family Tax Benefit.

Sure that’s a fortnight, but if you’re sharing with someone then you can definitely live reasonably well.

Especially when you add in all the other benefits that go along with it.

nilk

23 Feb 13 at 8:59 pm
England: mother of 11, aged 37, has never worked, on dole, given £400,000 house.

This week, a storm broke over the house — which is being built for her and her 11 children at taxpayers’ expense — when she coolly informed her local newspaper that the property was being built to her own specification, and that if she wasn’t happy with any aspect of the design, it would be changed accordingly.

Wearyingly, that is almost certainly true, for the good burghers of Tewkesbury Borough Council are bending over backwards to please 37-year-old Miss Frost, who has never done a day’s work in her life, currently occupies two council houses knocked into one (which she says is too cramped) and is quite content to let the taxpayer foot the bill for her household’s day-to-day expenses.

Indeed, so well does Miss Frost do on benefits that she treated her current partner to flying lessons and has the money for her own horse, Annie, which is ridden by her 16-year-old daughter and whose upkeep apparently costs around £200 a month.

Miss Frost is the embodiment of social liberalism.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 9:02 pm
I’m glad that doesn’t happen any more since nanny Roxon introduced the alcopops tax.

Splat, do you know how long it took us to get the girls to drink FDUs? Especially since they were drinking Fermented Allosaurus Droppings, otherwise known as Alcopoops.

Winston SMITH

23 Feb 13 at 9:07 pm
And what will happen to the house to fit 11 children when they grow up?
Had friends years ago with five children and she wanted to build a house with seven bedrooms. I suggested that she find a house with four and build in the double garage which could later be converted to a garage again if they needed/wanted to sell the house. (Is there a market for a house with seven bedrooms? Their house at the time had five bedrooms, but they were tiny, barely able to fit a bunk bed in!)

kae

23 Feb 13 at 9:10 pm
I remember the old days, Mk50. Even though I wasn’t a Blairite then. But I’ve gone through a few of the archives and wish I’d been around.
When Tim went commercial and moderated the arse just fell out of the blog. And when it took three or four days to get something in print, well, I just lost the taste…
Pity.

Winston SMITH

23 Feb 13 at 9:11 pm
Miss Frost is a lazy, round-heeled slag.

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 9:13 pm
Haha Winston.

If they only took the advice of Gronks Doctor who had a great antidote for Alcopoops. He’d say TriSerapax.

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 9:13 pm
Yes, it is a pity. There was a really unusual international community on that old blog.

Cat’s the next best thing, though.

The one I really do miss is Wronwright. He was a hoot!

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 9:15 pm
England: mother of 11, aged 37, has never worked, on dole, given £400,000 house.

I’m really starting to believe if the country’s willing to do it, you’re mad if you don’t exploit it. And you’re stupid if you work your ass off to pay for it while accepting less in your own life.

John Mc

23 Feb 13 at 9:25 pm
I saw one of those “how to care for fat fucks” show a couple of weeks ago and the guy there was I think Britains fattest fuck. He lived in a Council home and the Council paid something like $20,000 pounds to instal a life so he could be moved from his upstairs bedroom which he hadn’t moved from in over 5 years.
He had a full time carer and broke down into tears when he received a letter dropping his subsidy from 600 pounds a week down to 400.

Mr Mason’s care bill costs taxpayers an estimated £100,000 a year and is believed to have topped £1million over the past 15 years.

In January he planned to launch legal action against the NHS claiming they failed to help him as his size soared.

He claims he sought help from his GP after ballooning to 30 stone but was told: ‘Ride your bike more.’

He has pledged to put any compensation he receives if successful towards helping other obese people lose weight.

Fat fuck could house Miss Frost’s whole family in the crack of his arse.

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 9:27 pm
Britains fattest fuck

Was that the name of the show?

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 9:38 pm
Recent visitors to America report the bizarre phenomenon of physiologically uninjured people motoring around on those old folks’ scooters on account of the fact that they’re too fat to walk.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 9:41 pm
Britains fattest fuck

Dunno, although Splat has the best name. Some guesses:

Pass the harpoon!

Britain’s got blubber

Thar she blows

20,000 calories a day on the taxpayer’s tick

The barge-arse diaries

I last wiped my arse in 1972

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 9:55 pm
I suppose Pistorious will have to report three times a week as an ankle bracelet would present at least two difficulties.

Pickles

23 Feb 13 at 10:00 pm
Was that the name of the show?

Sorry CL it was only on about a fortnight ago, I think on SBS or ABC. I found the youtube docco but its restricted from viewing .

A shame really as you missed the part where they performed the surgery to remove from his arse four lost TV remotes and an insurance agent who disappeared in 1986.

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 10:11 pm
UK Idle.

H B Bear

23 Feb 13 at 10:15 pm
Splat I saw that show. I couldn’t believe wha I was seeing.

brc

23 Feb 13 at 10:16 pm
How will these people fare in sharia britain?

We are seeing the death rattle of an admirable civilisation. Pity.

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 10:21 pm
I saw some of that show too. If memory serves, the surgeon carved off just one bit of one thigh that weighed a bazillion kilos.

But, like ‘Splat, my overriding memory is of him bawling like a baby over his welfare being cut.

Tracey

23 Feb 13 at 10:24 pm
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/britains-fattest-man

Un. Believe. Able.

If that bloke died, they’d have to fly in Icelandic whalers to flense him in situ, render him down in a tallow-works and spend six months pumping him into his grave.

Mk50 of Brisbane

23 Feb 13 at 10:26 pm
More fat fuck titles:
Are you being served?
Love thy neighourhood curry house
Only fools and fat fucks
I eat all creatures great and small
Mammoth about the house
Misdomer munchies

Splatacrobat

23 Feb 13 at 10:40 pm
The Anchoress steals my idea (for a name anyway):

Could we see Pope Patrick I in this Year of the Snake?

Driving out the snakes. Yes.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 11:34 pm
America in the very best of hands:

Obama Gets Economic Advice from Al Sharpton, Other ‘African American Leaders’.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 11:36 pm
A cool interactive graphic explains the papal conclave:

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/come-si-elegge-il-papa/

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 11:44 pm
Woman denied visa:

LABOR strategists have issued a “keep out” of WA edict for Julia Gillard in the lead-up to the March 9 state election.

The Sunday Times can reveal the edict was issued to federal MPs in December urging the Prime Minister and others to “stay as far away as possible” from Perth.

And, Ms Gillard has agreed to the request, declining to set foot in WA on the orders of campaign chiefs since late 2012.

The WA Labor leader Mark McGowan, who opposes the carbon tax, famously went on holidays when Ms Gillard visited Perth avoiding the threat of being photographed with her.

Warning federal politics was “poison”, the ALP said the only chance it had of winning was if Ms Gillard, who is battling renewed leadership speculation, stayed away.

“We rang everyone in December and said, ‘Please, don’t come’,” a Labor strategist said. “We’ve made it very clear and to be fair everyone has been fabulous about not coming because there are still some grown-ups.”

Gillard told ‘keep out of WA’.

C.L.

23 Feb 13 at 11:54 pm
Woman denied visa:

lol. You had me going there for a second.

Interesting interactive on the Papal Conclave, btw. Thanks.

Gab

23 Feb 13 at 11:57 pm
“UK Idle.”

Fuckin’ genius.

Jarrah

23 Feb 13 at 11:59 pm
““UK Idle.”

Particularly like the pun use of UK as an uck or ugh sound

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 12:58 am
“Woman denied visa”

If only the banks would deny one to my better four fifths

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 12:59 am
Poll catastrophe for Gillard: veteran Laurie Ferguson’s seat gone:

SECRET union polling warning of double digit swings in western Sydney that would hand the seat of Werriwa to the Liberals has sent shockwaves through the ALP.

The Labor Party has held Werriwa continuously since 1934, with two former leaders, Gough Whitlam and Mark Latham, previous representatives of the area.

But when unions conducted the poll late last year it found the previously safe ALP seat faced a 13 per cent swing.

Labor headed for disaster in west.

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 1:10 am
The election campaign in WA at the moment is as funny as fuck. The nurses union has called a general strike on Sunday as they aren’t paid quite as much as other nurses in other states. Of course this now has come to ahead during the election campaign. Talk about own goal. Not a Federal Labor pollie in sight. Good times.

Antipodean

24 Feb 13 at 1:38 am
Some more…

Gruel Brittania.

Antipodean

24 Feb 13 at 1:43 am
Woman denied visa

Sneakers McGowan has Labor party stooges stationed at Eucla with orders to shoot down any non-military RAAF aircraft crossing into WA airspace. An ex-Taliban Afghan has a greater chance of landing in WA than Gillard until March 9.

H B Bear

24 Feb 13 at 1:44 am
Gluttony in the UK

Antipodean

24 Feb 13 at 1:46 am
If the Libs win Werriwa they should invite Whitlam and Latham to the election night party. Gough wouldn’t know what was going on but that was pretty much how he ran his government anyway.

H B Bear

24 Feb 13 at 1:48 am
City University [London] Row Over ‘Closing’ Muslim Students’ Friday Prayer Room

It says there never was a prayer room but they were using one as. Skimming over the comments I couldn’t find a single one that was on the side of the Muslim students, and that’s The Huffington Post.

City added it had “repeatedly” asked the students leading the Friday prayers to work with the university’s Imam to “ensure that the process for selecting students is transparent and that the content of sermons is made known to the University in advance and is freely available afterwards for those unable to attend“.

Translation: We want to make sure you aren’t conducting hate sermons.

Harold

24 Feb 13 at 1:52 am
At last a good news story.

H B Bear

24 Feb 13 at 1:57 am
Australian scientists substandard: report

A report by Professor Ian Chubb’s office measured rates at which papers were cited by others, an indicator of research quality, and found 55 per cent of Australian papers published in the past 15 years scored below the world average rate of 9.7.

The report comes as the Australian National University and the University of Canberra released a list of PhDs completed in 2012, including a three-year study into how time travel is represented in movies, and another into why women have horses.

Time travel rules were the butt of a joke in a South Park episode…

“I’m standing at the time portal, which scientists say, follows ‘Terminator’ rules. That is, it’s one way only and you can’t go back. This is in contrast to, say, ‘Back to the Future’ rules, where back and forth is possible, and of course ‘Timerider’ rules, which are just plain silly.”
— Reporter, South Park

One man’s joke is another (Australian) man’s PhD thesis.

Professor Lewandowsky look out.

Harold

24 Feb 13 at 3:02 am
Not only is he a slimey little shit, Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury is a congenital bullshit artist:

MARIUS Benson: Was it a mistake to be so adamant promising a surplus?

Bradbury: We were determined to return the budget to surplus and we did everything within our control to achieve that.

Benson: But you said, unqualified, that you’ll do it.

Bradbury: That was a commitment that was given, and earnestly given, and we have earnestly sought to deliver that, but there comes a point at which a commitment that had been given, when weighed against the impact of what was necessary in order to make that commitment be delivered in the end and let’s be clear about what that means to make the cuts that were necessary to compensate for the huge write-downs in revenue that we experienced would have been irresponsible, it would have hurt Australians, it would have threatened their jobs and we are the party of jobs and job creation so we were never going to go down that path. That is unfortunate in many respects, but that said we are doing what we think is appropriate and responsible for the country to make sure we can build a stronger economy as we move forward.

Bradbury is one of the Labor law weavils who will be looking for a mates sinecure at the end of the year. He swanned into parliament with Rudd in ’07 and will concede Lindsay (1.1%) at about 6.30pm on election night.

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 5:45 am
How on earth are they going to work AbbottAbbottAbbott into this morning’s how-to-vote lecture from the zombie left with the Token Conservative™ …

This week Barrie Cassidy interviews Greens MP Adam Bandt. The panel includes Jacqueline Maley, Dennis Atkins & Gerard Henderson, plus Mike Bowers is Talking Pictures with Jason Chatfield.

… when Kevin The Undead is out hunting headlines?:

THE fight over the Labor leadership is shaping as a battle of attrition, with a key backer of Kevin Rudd saying there is no deadline for a change of leader and that it could happen at any time up to and including the formal election campaign.

The source cites the precedent set by Bob Hawke in 1983, when he took the Labor leadership from Bill Hayden on the same day that Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser called the general election. Mr Hawke went on to lead Labor to a 25-seat victory.

The open-ended strategy contrasts with comments made by Rudd supporters before his challenge in February last year that he would need time in the job to re-establish his authority.

It also contrasts with reports early last week, following Julia Gillard’s disastrous showing in the Nielsen poll published in Fairfax papers on Monday, quoting Rudd supporters saying that a challenge could come as early as mid-March.

But not all Rudd backers embrace the possibility of a challenge in the second half of the year, with one telling Fairfax Media that he doubted Mr Rudd would be interested in being drafted so close to a poll.

The open-ended timetable is based on a belief that leadership change will become inevitable as the election approaches if the Prime Minister’s standing in the opinion polls remains parlous. It is suggested caucus members would put aside any personal reservations about the former prime minister if they believed he could deliver a better outcome for the party.

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 6:32 am
Tom, Marius Benson is usually one of the worst anti-conservative personalities on ABC News radio. Has he too flicked the switch?
I’d say not quite, but the fake surplus had more mentions than working families and moving forward, so can’t be ignored.
Swan continues to be outrageously out there, with his bloviating about budgetary honesty in a post election scenario. He, like others in his party, must think people have no memory at all for what’s happened, and that they can rewrite history on the hop.

Blogstrop

24 Feb 13 at 6:37 am
The utterly unethical ShakeMyHead.com refuses to acknowledge its commercial interest in its mad jihad against Fauxfacts-owned 2UE’s main competitor in the Sydney talk radio market:

Radio broadcaster Ray Hadley was secretly recorded bullying a junior staff member at 2GB.

The employee verbally abused by Hadley, 29-year-old digital content manager Richard Palmer, is understood to have taken his smartphone into Hadley’s office on the morning of February 7.

Hadley was initially suspended by Macquarie Radio Network management before the majority owner of the network, John Singleton, is said to have overruled the decision.

It is believed Palmer made the recording because he was concerned about a threat to his employment.

When Hadley began verbally abusing Mr Palmer, the website manager is understood to have opened the voice recording application on his phone.

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 6:57 am
Blog,

With the help of the media Swan and the ALP often get people to forget what has happened, if not to blame it incorrectly on the Coalition.

John Comnenus

24 Feb 13 at 7:01 am
Michael Smith in his podcast last friday notes the lack of interest from the media in the appointment of Bernard Murphy to the Federal Court. He says that only the Oz covered the story, which has the interesting element of Peter Gordon’s assessment of times past at Slater & Gordon, when certain matters came to the attention of the senior partners.

Blogstrop

24 Feb 13 at 7:06 am
Off to the salt mines. See ya in a week.

remember, if Shitfer or Numbers appear again, aim to be cruel.

Mk50 of Brisbane

24 Feb 13 at 7:22 am
I got this from Hot Air. It just shows how unsustainable US spending is. And how destructive it is as well.

In FY2001, the government spent $1.8629 trillion. In FY2012, the Federal government spent $3.7956 trillion. That’s a 103.75% increase in Federal spending since FY2001!
.
.
Defence Spending By The Feds (keep in mind that the Iraq War is over)

2001: $366.2 billion
2002: $421.7 billion
2003: $482.9 billion
2004: $542.4 billion
2005: $600.0 billion
2006: $621.1 billion
2007: $652.6 billion
2008: $729.6 billion
2009: $794.0 billion
2010: $847.2 billion
2011: $878.5 billion
2012: $902.0 billion

That’s a 146.31% increase in defence spending since 2001.
.
.
Pension Spending By The Feds:

2001: $475.1 billion
2002: $497.0 billion
2003: $510.5 billion
2004: $530.8 billion
2005: $557.7 billion
2006: $586.0 billion
2007: $628.3 billion
2008: $659.8 billion
2009: $730.4 billion
2010: $749.6 billion
2011: $775.6 billion
2012: $819.7 billion

That’s a 72.53% increase in pension expenses since 2001.
.
.
Healthcare Spending By the Feds

2001: $389.6 billion
2002: $427.4 billion
2003: $469.0 billion
2004: $509.5 billion
2005: $549.2 billion
2006: $582.6 billion
2007: $641.8 billion
2008: $67.14 billion
2009: $764.4 billion
2010: $820.7 billion
2011: $858.2 billion
2012: $846.1 billion

That’s a 117.17% increase in healthcare expenditures since 2001.
.
.
Transportation Spending By The Feds

2001: $54.4 billion
2002: $61.8 billion
2003: $67.1 billion
2004: $64.6 billion
2005: $67.9 billion
2006: $70.2 billion
2007: $72.9 billion
2008: $77.6 billion
2009: $84.3 billion
2010: $92.0 billion
2011: $93.0 billion
2012: $102.6 billion

That’s a 88.6% increase in transportation spending since 2001.
.
.
Education Spending By The Feds:

2001: $63.6 billion
2002: $77.8 billion
2003: $90.5 billion
2004: $96.4 billion
2005: $106.4 billion
2006: $127.6 billion
2007: $100.8 billion
2008: $100.9 billion
2009: $89.8 billion
2010: $139.4 billion
2011: $113.7 billion
2012: $153.1 billion

The Feds have increased spending on education by 140.72% since 2001.
.
.
Welfare Spending By The Feds:

2001: $188.8 billion
2002: $229.4 billion
2003: $249.5 billion
2004: $244.4 billion
2005: $252.5 billion
2006: $254.2 billion
2007: $262.1 billion
2008: $322.3 billion
2009: $415.1 billion
2010: $502.3 billion
2011: $472.9 billion
2012: $451.9 billion

In the past 12 years, the Feds have spent $3.8454 trillion on welfare or $320.5 billion on average each year. The Feds have increased overall welfare spending by 139.15% since 2001.
.
.
General Government Spending

2001: $16.1 billion
2002: $17.8 billion
2003: $24.9 billion
2004: $23.4 billion
2005: $19.8 billion
2006: $19.5 billion
2007: $19.8 billion
2008: $20.8 billion
2009: $23.0 billion
2010: $24.7 billion
2011: $29.0 billion
2012: $33.6 billion

The Feds have increased overall general government spending by 108.7% since 2001.
.
.
Fed’s Spending on “Protection”:

2001: $30.2 billion
2002: $35.1 billion
2003: $35.3 billion
2004: $45.6 billion
2005: $40.0 billion
2006: $41.0 billion
2007: $42.4 billion
2008: $48.1 billion
2009: $52.6 billion
2010: $54.4 billion
2011: $56.1 billion
2012: $62.0 billion

The Feds have increased overall “protection” spending by 105.32% since 2001.

Bear Necessities

24 Feb 13 at 7:29 am
One for JC.

Upset a Gun Control Advocate – Just Press Print

3D Printed Guns Render Gun Control Moot

H/T SDA

Rudiau

24 Feb 13 at 8:29 am
Lord Monckton goes for Helen Caldicott’s throat over at Bolt’s place. Let’s hope he is good for the follow through.

John Comnenus

24 Feb 13 at 8:50 am
Assange factor again

Fugitive in the frame – Date: February 23, 2013
The Swiss police acted on a US request to extradite Polanski to face the sentencing he ran away from in 1978, when a media-struck Los Angeles judge threatened to put him away indefinitely for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. He had pleaded guilty on a plea bargain, but the judge appeared to be about to jail him for life, so he left.

Get famous, get support, commit crime, get off.

stackja

24 Feb 13 at 8:54 am
Potemkin’s Village

The Godfather Part 1… here

Grigory Potemkin

24 Feb 13 at 8:58 am
Stackja,

I think it’s get famous, get off, stay famous, get support, do no time, become the victim.

John Comnenus

24 Feb 13 at 8:58 am
Oh dear. Made the mistake of turning on FTA to see Geert Wilders vs. Andrew O’Keefe on Sunrise, and caught an ad for the Gonski crap.

What a waste of money.

I knew there was a reason I don’t watch television unless it’s something from my dvd collection or Q&A.

nilk

24 Feb 13 at 9:01 am
Andrew O’Keefe now bible bashing and standing up for the koran. Sharia law, Andrew, get behind that too?

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 9:09 am
“Translation: We want to make sure you aren’t conducting hate sermons.”

No, we want to be sure you aren’t conducting female circumcision, conducting practicls in bomb belt building, conducting interrogations of civilian citizens they have kidnapped for ransom, all the usual pastimes of unpleasant people.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 9:18 am
Rad

LOl… the idea that da gobinment can control what people want is hilarious.

What are they going to do, ban 3D machines? Lol

JC

24 Feb 13 at 9:20 am
Galaxy showing Barnett miles ahead in WA…and Crikey commenters denying reality to the bitter fucking end……

MDMConnell

24 Feb 13 at 9:29 am
JC

Dr William Bragg, B Ec M Ec B Sc (Hons) MBBS Ph D told us that as a top level bureaucrat, he can actually change the preferences of the public, indeed, tell us what we really want.

.

24 Feb 13 at 9:30 am
Dot

Where is the moron? He’s actually quite amusing. Even when he gets beaten to a pulp he remains steadfastly pompous.

what a fucking idiot.

JC

24 Feb 13 at 9:34 am
Insiders explaining how the new ALP enemy, the Greens are now scum and how fighting with them will save their bacon

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 9:36 am
Whale

WTF is that Fairfax woman wearing? WTF is that green vertical stripe on the dress or blouse?

JC

24 Feb 13 at 9:39 am
Whale, I’m watching the golf. All I need to know is whether Henderson wins and how manically the zombies are trying to shout him down.

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 9:40 am
What are they going to do, ban 3D machines? Lol

“But for either [Congresswoman Diane] Feinstein or Israel’s bill, the same problem arises: How to enforce that prohibition in every garage and workshop in America that houses a 3D printer?”

They will try, that’s their nature.

Rudiau

24 Feb 13 at 9:51 am
Insiders:
Kevin Rudd helps the ALP like dancing helps a blood nose

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 9:58 am
JC
No idea of the purpose of the stripe. Must be some secret sign to allow access to inner city suburbs.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 10:03 am
I thought I heard Cassidy say “Abbott is doing well and we will come to that but let’s stick with the AWU”. Amazing can someone get that piece on YouTube please?

Honesty

24 Feb 13 at 10:11 am
Whale, I’m watching the golf. All I need to know is whether Henderson wins and how manically the zombies are trying to shout him down.

The zombies were very subdued.

Beaten, they know it and the fight has left them.

Henderson did more to defend Gillard than they did.

JamesK

24 Feb 13 at 10:17 am
The zombies were very subdued.

Beaten, they know it and the fight has left them.

Yea, you get that feeling that it over for them.

JC

24 Feb 13 at 10:23 am
Bolt:

ALP website posts Gillard government ‘achievements’ link – which doesn’t work.

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 10:43 am
Tom (at 6.57 am), that fellow who is alleged to have recorded his conversation with Hadley might like to have a look at the Surveillance Devices Act 2007,Part 2, Section 7. A conviction under that Act carries a penalty of up to 5 years imprisonment.

Lew

24 Feb 13 at 10:44 am
The leather man made a comical point on insiders this morning when he passed on labor complaints about the greens contesting labor seats & not coalition ones.
Whilst I kind of agree with him in that I don’t think that the either the greens or the labor party should stand any candidates in labor electorates or even potential labor electorates. The greens only chance of winning a seat is a labor electorate with coalition preferences, or mental hospital if they could have status as electorates in their own right.

Rob

24 Feb 13 at 10:45 am
I don’t have any sympathy for former cab driver Hadley.

He’s a coward who loves abusing the weak.

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 10:48 am
Anyone who questions which bathroom children decide to go to or whether they choose men or women’s sports is in trouble. Moreover if the want to be a boy at scool and a girl at home then their wishes must be respected undedr threat of criminal punishment.

The Left’s war on gender difference continues:

Massachusetts grants proper bathroom access to transgender students

The guideline states:

A student who says she is a girl and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day and throughout every, or almost every, other area of her life, should be respected and treated like a girl.

The same principle applies if a student identifies as a boy. Moreover, the Massachusetts Department of Education also instructs faculty members and other school officials to acknowledge a student’s gender identity by using pronouns consistent with their self-perceived gender. Staff also must adopt the gender-neutral or gender-specific name a student chooses for themselves if they do not wish to use the name assigned to them at birth.

School personnel should use the student’s chosen name and pronouns appropriate to a student’s gender identity, regardless of the student’s assigned birth sex… It is important to develop a plan for initiating use of the chosen name and pronouns consistent with the student’s gender identity.

JamesK

24 Feb 13 at 11:02 am
Glenn Reynolds aka Instanpundit eviscerates Obummer’s Hollywood friends in the WSJ:

The Hollywood Tax Story They Won’t Tell at the Oscars
It’s easy to demand higher levies on the ‘rich’ when your own industry gets $1.5 billion in government handouts.

At the Democratic National Convention last year, actress Eva Longoria called for higher taxes on America’s rich. Her take: “The Eva Longoria who worked at Wendy’s flipping burgers—she needed a tax break. But the Eva Longoria who works on movie sets does not.”

Actually, nowadays an Eva Longoria who flipped burgers would probably qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit and get a check from the government rather than pay taxes. It’s the movie set where she works these days that may well be getting the tax break.

JamesK

24 Feb 13 at 11:25 am
Oh Good Lord.

Gillard/McTernan stunt watch:

High dungeon: Gillard unveils $1.1b school reading blitz.

Picture (that link): children wheeled into the Lodge to be read to by Gillard.

The book?

Emily And The Big Bad Bunyip.

Must be about the ‘misogyny’ campaign against Abbott.

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 12:22 pm
Look, she’s passionate about edjakayshun.

How could you not vote for her?

James in Melbourne

24 Feb 13 at 12:25 pm
I remember the old days, Mk50. Even though I wasn’t a Blairite then. But I’ve gone through a few of the archives and wish I’d been around.
When Tim went commercial and moderated the arse just fell out of the blog. And when it took three or four days to get something in print, well, I just lost the taste…
Pity.

Those were the days, yes.

nic

24 Feb 13 at 12:40 pm
Emily And The Big Bad Bunyip? He’s living inside her head!

Steve of Ferny Hills

24 Feb 13 at 12:44 pm
Sub text: Knife me and 1.1 million kids won’t learn to read.

Steve of Ferny Hills

24 Feb 13 at 12:47 pm
nilk 24 Feb 13 at 9:01 am

Johnny O’Keefe was the younger brother of Australian jurist Barry O’Keefe (and the uncle of comedian and TV presenter Andrew O’Keefe.

JOK’s signature tune “Wild One”, co-written by O’Keefe with Greenan, Owens and top Sydney DJ Tony Withers.

JOK made more sense.

stackja

24 Feb 13 at 12:47 pm
She’s passionate about desperate grasping at any remnant of an appearance of authority or significance.
While in fact she’s a chimera, a mirage, a vague misconstruing by the eye of a prime minister, of even a person, Australia and Australians have put her in the past. She’s the pet lamb gone to the abbatoir. She might have arrived there, she might be on the plate already, no one cares, no one gives a flying duck. Once the abbatoir truck collected her and turned the corner at the bottom of the street, she was no longer in the Children’s minds, and they turned back to the corpse of the dead puppy Kevin that had been lying forgotten at the back of the dunny for a few years. They were considering having fun playing footy with it. At least the head was the right shape.
The Gillard lamb on the truck continued to issue press releases and warnings of the need for unity to the other sheep on the truck, but in their ovine stupidity and complacency they merely pushed and shoved for a better spot nearer the front of the pen. Of course a couple announced they would jump off the truck the next time it stopped, never comprehending that the vicious dogs would be waiting. Waiting with teeth that tear. Chasing them into the railruns of the ICAC to be butchered and impoverished. Gitted and salted.
She clings to a fantasy that gets smaller and smaller, shrinking inside her head, which will end with the pellet that bursts into it’s small shriveled false reality.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 12:47 pm
I haven’t checked the facts in this, but it’s something my father-in-law emailed me:

“Can you imagine working for a company that has only 635 employees but has the following Employee Statistics.

· 29 have been accused of spouse abuse,

· 7 have been arrested for fraud,

· 9 have been accused of writing bad cheques,

· 17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses,

· 3 have done time for assault,

· 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit,

· 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges,

· 8 have been arrested for shoplifting,

· 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits,

· 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year,

And collectively, this year alone, they have cost the British tax payer £92,993,748 in expenses!

Which organisation is this? It’s the 635 members of the House of Commons.”

Ellen of Tasmania

24 Feb 13 at 12:48 pm
Whoops, shrivelled should have two L’s.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 12:49 pm
Just like GiLLard

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 12:49 pm
What an amazing initiative,school children are to be taught to read,at school,of all places. Why did no one ever think of this previously? But how will the Teachers Federation react to this onerous impost. I dare say they’re already formulating a punitive wage claim.

Lew

24 Feb 13 at 12:53 pm
Ellen, I reckon the pound per peson wastes would be exceeded by the staff at the NBN, and the drug offences per person exceeded by the Greens who support the NBN and as to businesses bankrupted, try any Labor government anywhere in the world at any time in History.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 12:53 pm
Emily And The Big Bad Bunyip? He’s living inside her head!

Its code to the troops. The ‘Emily’ is Emily’s list and associated progressive social behaviour that is under attack from a certain professor, and thus requires speech to be both controlled and moderated by the courts. Its no subtext, but a warning.

nic

24 Feb 13 at 12:56 pm
Ignorant of the law as I am, I still wonder if this section (3) (b) (i) means that the young person does Not need Hadley’s consent because it says “a principle party”, not “the principle parties”.

(3) Subsection (1) (b) does not apply to the use of a listening device by a party to a private conversation if:
(a) all of the principal parties to the conversation consent, expressly or impliedly, to the listening device being so used, or
(b) a principal party to the conversation consents to the listening device being so used and the recording of the conversation:
(i) is reasonably necessary for the protection of the lawful interests of that principal party, or

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 1:04 pm
Poor Ol’ Leathery. You could see his heart just isn’t in it any more.

Without the clueless optimism of Le Snore Taylor and the mincing asides of David Marred, he was reduced to 1 minute grabs of the AbbottAbbottAbbott obviously mis-speaking at some rural doorstop and a Turnbull radio interview from the Sunshine Coast that, if he was lucky, would have been heard by a bunch of cows chewing their cud while waiting to be milked.

It’s over. He knows it’s over. He knows we know it’s over. Just watching the clock tick over.

H B Bear

24 Feb 13 at 1:14 pm
Let’s make some real money.

He’s at 33:1 at Paddy Power, but my guess is this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Antonio_Tagle

Being 55, he could well be Pope for 25-35 years.

He’s also a theologian and conservative.

.

24 Feb 13 at 1:22 pm
Insiders was almost honest today they have given up. So the starting gun has been fired for jobs and access from a Coalition Government, let the scurrying begin.

BTW Who said this about Insiders? “Day by day and almost minute by minute the past week was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Labor Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct.”

Honesty

24 Feb 13 at 1:23 pm
Insiders was almost honest today they have given up. So the starting gun has been fired for jobs and access from a Coalition Government, let the scurrying begin.

Yep. This is the gameplan with which to decipher comments by leftist journo’s over the next few months as they scramble to find a well paying (easy) job.

nic

24 Feb 13 at 1:29 pm
Heart not in it … ?

He’s backing off in the hop of keeping at least one testicle when the libs cut everything on the left off at the ABC

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 1:30 pm
Schools to conduct reading blitz

Prime Minister Julia Gillard Schools will be asked to carry out an intensive reading blitz for 1.1 million children, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.
The program may be centred on the teaching of phonics, which involves sounding out letters to children to help students develop basic reading skills

In the late 1920s, as progressive education became an influential movement, schools began to switch from phonics to whole-word reading instruction.

stackja

24 Feb 13 at 1:34 pm
I hadn’t realised that the toofless nation’s cluelessness was celebrated so widely and so systematically: ladies and gentlemen, The Encyclopaedia of Collingwood Jokes. The legend will only grow as the AFL’s EH diffs whine their way towards the next of their once-every-20-years premierships in 2040.

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 1:35 pm
Next to no hope of them appointing a young ún dot… JP2 saw to that.

mct

24 Feb 13 at 1:36 pm
WhaleHunt Fun at 12:47 pm

Simply outstanding!

Grigory Potemkin

24 Feb 13 at 1:40 pm
Bad news for anyone planning to catch the Metronet to the footy at the new Subi Oval. Sneakers McGowan is the new Eric Ripper.

Could WA have the first chair sniffing Premier if Barnesy decides he would like a spell as the London Consul-General?

H B Bear

24 Feb 13 at 1:41 pm
This is a good effort from Jamie Briggs – Labor Waste he only has a top 50 which needs updating over the past two weeks.

Honesty

24 Feb 13 at 1:48 pm
sounding out letters to children to help students develop basic reading skills

Hy – per – bowl

Septimus

24 Feb 13 at 1:54 pm
sounding out letters to children to help students develop basic reading skills

Do they think this is something new? If the literacy rates are worse today than say 60 years ago, perhaps they need to look at how things were done then.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 2:00 pm
What an amazing initiative,school children are to be taught to read,at school,of all places. Why did no one ever think of this previously? But how will the Teachers Federation react to this onerous impost. I dare say they’re already formulating a punitive wage claim.

LOL.

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 2:04 pm
So desperate for attention it’s embarrassing:

Keep out of floodwaters, urges Gillard.

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 2:08 pm
This whole teaching kids to read caper will waste valuable teaching hours that could be focused on social justice.

Infidel Tiger

24 Feb 13 at 2:19 pm
House of Reps sits the week prior and the week following the further dismemberment of WA Labor.
Fun times ahead. I can hear Laybaah now : State Issues,State Issues,State Issues, AbbottAbbottAbbott, State Issues,State Issues,State Issues, AbbottAbbottAbbott, etc.

Keith

24 Feb 13 at 2:22 pm
Keith, the Senate sits this week, not the House of Reps.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 2:31 pm
This whole teaching kids to read caper will waste valuable teaching hours that could be focused on social justice.

LOL, we got plenty of the ‘Save the Africans’, Earth Hour type events. The teachers even made us only eat rice for the day to guilt us into believing we are greedy for having nice possessions and lots of food at our disposal.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 2:34 pm
If only Julia had the education that the future generation kids will be given from her. She would have then been able to say hyperbole rather than hyperbowl.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 2:36 pm
LOL, we got plenty of the ‘Save the Africans’, Earth Hour type events. The teachers even made us only eat rice for the day to guilt us into believing we are greedy for having nice possessions and lots of food at our disposal.

Nah, eating rice is what happens when your country’s governance is being fought over by authoritarians, communists, and Sharia law fan-boys. It’s a valuable lesson in folly: Africa as a continent has a demonstrated capacity to produce agricultural surpluses. Most of the continent is three years of rational, actually-liberal government away from doing so again.

wreckage

24 Feb 13 at 2:40 pm
My life is complete, people! Just back from a visit to this neo-brutalist monstrosity. Even bought a set of commemorative beer coasters.

Rabz

24 Feb 13 at 2:42 pm
She would have then been able to say hyperbole rather than hyperbowl

Don’t count on it, Andrew. They won’t be teaching adequate pronunciation for words of ancient Greek origin where the meaning was ‘excess’ (or any other classical thing either). Too close to Labor home.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 2:45 pm
Keith, the Senate sits this week, not the House of Reps.

Oops, wrong calendar. It says “other” whatever that is, for the week prior, “both” for the week following March 9.

Keith

24 Feb 13 at 2:45 pm
Andrew,

What’s your opinion on why kids aren’t learning the basics when they’re capable of it?

It can’t all be due to “poverty or social circumstances” surely. what’s going on?

candy

24 Feb 13 at 2:48 pm
Andrew,

What’s your opinion on why kids aren’t learning the basics when they’re capable of it?

Curriculum, culture/attitude and teacher quality. Nothing to do with funding. Schools need very few expensive resources to get good results and outcomes for students. An attitude for learning is something money can not buy.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 2:50 pm
More like a Scandinavian green fantasy harking back to the era of turf-roofed huts, Rabz.

Now this is a New Brutalism. God, Melbourne is ugly.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 2:50 pm
Nah, eating rice is what happens when your country’s governance is being fought over by authoritarians, communists, and Sharia law fan-boys. It’s a valuable lesson in folly: Africa as a continent has a demonstrated capacity to produce agricultural surpluses. Most of the continent is three years of rational, actually-liberal government away from doing so again.

I doubt a profession who loves big government would be warning me against authoritarianism and communism.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 2:52 pm
Rabz!!! FFS, don’t go there. You’ll catch something. They reckon it could be years before the develop a vaccine for TLS brainrot virus (a member of the syphillis family), which escaped from a Canberra laboratory in 2010.

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 2:57 pm
Candy, I know you asked Andrew, but allow me to butt in with my tale. A bright young girl, aged 14 now, missed almost 50% of the school year for two years running. Her mother is on welfare as is her father and oldest sister (who became pregnant at age 17, btw). Father also ex-con (break and enter and thievery. They divorced about ten years ago. Now to meet the parents, they’re really nice people. Simple, uneducated, but still cordial and civil. The mother interacts with the 14 yo as if they were BFFs. The father is the disciplinarian, of sorts, a half-hearted measure.
Anyways, no one from the school nor any welfare agency has ever followed up as to why this very bright young girl keeps missing so much school. (She’s very proficinet at maths). She doesn’t like the teachers, they suck apparently. Well, that’s justification enough for her mum. It’s all too hard to discipline, much easier to be friend than be a real parent.

How she can miss so much time from (public) school without any follow up from the school or social services or her parents is mind-boggling. How the kid manages to pass each year and advance is testimony to this current absurd policy in education that kids don’t fail.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 3:00 pm
How the kid manages to pass each year and advance is testimony to this current absurd policy in education that kids don’t fail.

The poor kid probably thinks she’s a genius as a result, or that school is irrelevant.

Keith

24 Feb 13 at 3:11 pm
Huh?

Eating chicken is now wacist. Yep, it’s the upper Westside, which is like a giant version of Fitzroy.

Honestly, anyone would think the shop had displayed something like this on the footpath!

Peter Russell-Clarke

24 Feb 13 at 3:15 pm
I once had a teacher who told me that if I did not agree with her (leftist) view of asylum seekers than I was “misinformed” and “didn’t know what I was talking about”.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 3:16 pm
It was a while ago now, Gab, but I fled at 14 and no welfare agency ever knew, or cared, from what I understood. I looked after myself, put my age up, got a job, and had a life and later an education, whereas if I had stayed I might have done much worse.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 3:17 pm
Yep, Keith. School is irrelevant and all too hard and some teachers suck! She;s a great kid, outgoing, smart and with impeccable manners (only when we go to restaurants, not at home of course ). At the start of last year we made a deal that if she missed no more than five days in the school year (without doctor’s certificate) then she’d be rewarded with a trip to Cambodia plus nearly $1000 in spending money. She was all excited. Promises were made. Lasted two weeks.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 3:17 pm
But how will the Teachers Federation react to this onerous impost. I dare say they’re already formulating a punitive wage claim.

No need. That’s all that Gonski is already. The report didn’t offer any different strategy to improve teaching and learning, just a blanket prescription of “throw more money at it”. It has been this sort of policy that has seen Australian teaching standards decline over the past few decades.

Cold-Hands

24 Feb 13 at 3:19 pm
Good Heavens Tom? Is it sexually transmitted? There won’t be a married Labor member uninfected.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 3:21 pm
Thanks Gab
I think like Andrew said culture/attitude pretty significant.

Also I’m not sure if kids are held back a year anymore. They seem to progress through until one day someone discovers they can’t read properly, let alone spell or add up.
Or the teachers turn a blind eye.

candy

24 Feb 13 at 3:22 pm
Wish she had your desire to get educated. Lizzie. I’m pretty sure if we could put her into a private school she’d do heaps better. We’re willing to pay but of course it’ll never happen. Her mother sent her to a different school (a better one) from that of another older sister (she’s 17 now) becuase the older sister simply didn’t want her little sister to attend the same school as her.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 3:22 pm
Why did the UK bother fighting WW2?

The UK’s most senior immigration judge has openly defied the Home Secretary by insisting that Parliament’s attempt to get tough on human rights abuses by foreign criminals is outweighed by the European Court.

In a key ruling, the head of the immigration courts said measures introduced by Mrs May last summer to stop criminals claiming the “right to family life” were overridden by judges’ previous decisions on such cases at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Mr Justice Blake also said that “little weight” should be given to Mrs May’s immigration rules in cases involving criminals with children because they were overruled by international agreements and a previous law passed by the Labour government.

Olufisayo Ogundimu, a former drug dealer from south London, persuaded the court that he should not be removed to Nigeria, where he was born, because he had fathered a child here and has a baby on the way with another woman.

Mr Justice Blake said in his ruling on Ogundimu’s case that the immigration rules “did not affect the circumstance” when considering the right to family life, which is guaranteed by Article Eight of the Human Rights Act.

In such cases he said that the way to interpret Article Eight was not to consider Mrs May’s rules as most important, despite them being passed with cross-party support by Parliament.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9890093/Theresa-Mays-tough-immigration-rules-defied-by-top-judge.html

Viva

24 Feb 13 at 3:24 pm
The Joint Strike Fighter thingy programme seems strangely like Gonski. The people are always talking about “strikes” and always thing vast sums of money poured in will make it all good.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 3:24 pm
oops…Her mother sent her to a different school, in that it was worse than the school the older sibling went to. Drugs, violence, hardly any discipline.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 3:25 pm
ps. we had moved from public housing to an old farmhouse on the edge of Mt. Druitt. I wrote the poem below (my Vogon poetry, sorry) to try to sort myself out about my family when I was 18, had moved to the city and was finding a very different life was possible, although perplexing. In very many ways I am actually glad there was no welfare intervention. It could have made things worse.

Coming Home
We went back to the house,
with its broken windows.
The outside drains
had bogged up even more.
It was cold dawn, a quiet light,
as we three entered by the side.
My father, it appears, had gone insane,
lying thin on the bed for days,
until a neighbour came.
He had let the chickens in,
and the dogs.
On the table were the remnants
of his weeks without us,
the palace of his dreamings,
beer bottles and sauce.
The back verandah steps
had finally collapsed.

I thought of the creek in flood,
rising fast over the spillway;
of gathering twigs with mum for the chippie,
on my last, my fourteenth, birthday;
of the rains and the knife and his eyes
when he threatened to kill us,
and of how he would soon return,
my broken-hearted dad.

I ran to my tree and climbed it,
saying goodbye,
knowing that I would never return.
My brother remained with my mother.
Her voices had told her to stay.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 3:27 pm
Be damned with the global warming damage. If one were to Burn a lefty then the social benefits outweigh the environmental damage. Sadly it will never be legalised. Not even a law to allow torture them would get past the senate. So we are stuck with execrable immigration laws and leftwing biased judges.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 3:30 pm
God, Melbourne is ugly.

Couldn’t agree more Lizzy. But I know others think differently.

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 3:33 pm
Couldn’t agree more Lizzy. But I know others think differently.

The CBD is just awful and depressing, but the burbs are okish, I think.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 3:37 pm
Drugs, violence, hardly any discipline.

She should get a job. It is the best remedy for all of this stuff.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 3:38 pm
Melbourne is a beautiful city, including the CBD. Sydney has a bridge and opera house but overall, very little else.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 3:39 pm
Melbourne is a beautiful city, including the CBD. Sydney has a bridge and opera house but overall, very little else.

What beautiful about the CBD, Andrew. It’s a rat hole.

This is beautiful and gives off a great feel.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 3:42 pm
Yes, however I don’t think she would last if she thought her employer “sucked”. She’d up and leave, Lizzie. We try and explain the facts of working life, instill some modicum of work ethic (odd jobs at the office and a retail shop, helping out for which she gets paid, she’s okay for about 20 minutes, and then it’s “I’m bored. Can I go on Facebook now? ‘No’ is the reply) but to no avail. I’m hoping that seeing another social/educational demographic (us) will ignite some desire to better herself, to see that following her mother’s path is not the only choice she has in life. We live in hope. One good thing, she is very keen to be a chef, been like that for years now, cooking dinners for us over the years. She’ll be sent to whichever culinary school she chooses should she finish school, that’s the incentive. We’ll see.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 3:50 pm
The CBD is just awful and depressing, but the burbs are okish, I think.

The well-known things are probably the best in Australia: Brunswick Street, Lygon Street, the cultural scene, the Esplanade Hotel, Melbourne Uni, maybe the boho trend of South Melbourne, some of the parks.

But I always feel that’s kind of it. One step beyond this and you’re in the ugliness.

I agree that if you head west anywhere in Sydney you’re entering the land of horrible as well. But heading north to the edge of Melbourne is usually much the same.

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 3:57 pm
maybe the boho trend of South Melbourne, some of the parks.

Boho? What’s that?

Sth Yarra is nice too. The Botanical Gardens district is the best place to live in Melbourne I think. I love the Bot.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 3:59 pm
The beaches, Andrew, the beaches. The waterways too. The harbour – Clive James’s ‘crushed diamonds’ – in the summer sunlight. A variety of suburbs – Georgian, Italianate, Victorian Lace, Federation Fretwork, interesting contemporary experiments and some formidably fake Tuscan, all of which extends into the McMansion territory which has changed the face and the nature of where I grew up (well, a bit anyway, Sainties and Mt. Druitt is still a bit of a pit in the old HC areas so familiar to me; but I hardly know the place now).

JC I haven’t much explored the Melbourne ‘burbs, so I must grant you your appreciative view. The CBD rather depresses me, although the older public buildings are quite fine ones. I like the bridge over the Yarra to the Art Gallery.

Btw – I caught the Neo-Impressionists exhibition on there and do recommend it. The curating is good, simple and explanatory, and the exampling of the whole pontilliac movement and its theoretical and political underpinnings is well displayed.

I guess with any city our lived experiences within it indelibly colour our perceptions of it. Melbourne to me is still just a place where I am staying when I am not in Sydney or elsewhere. Sydney will never be that, even if I left it forever.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 4:03 pm
Beautiful architecture, great restaurants, Yarra river is nice, lots of different areas for entertainment and lots of places to shop. Transport is rather good (contrary to what people say) and gardens are stunning.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 4:07 pm
A couple of mobsters, left wing comedian lovefests, shitty Brackstoria era brutalist and gauchely coloured “sculpture” and some coffee that is better than International Roast hardly accounts for “kulcha”.

Give me the casino and the MCG.

.

24 Feb 13 at 4:10 pm
The last time I wore a suit in Melbourne, I got called:

1. Federal Cop

2. Faggot in a suit

3. Corporate arsehole

You guys must hate Melbourne Cup day.

.

24 Feb 13 at 4:12 pm
Yarra river is nice

Is it blue like the Pioneer river.
Last time I saw it it was brown, full of rubbish and had a diesel rainbow on the surface.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 4:12 pm
Boho? What’s that?

Y’know, when a former rustic working class or shady suburb get’s richer and up-and-coming but is not fully there yet. Usually typified by lots of nice restaurants, uni students wearing scarves and every second shop being a coffee shop. Like Balmain in Sydney.

I’m pretty sure it’s a play on a cross between ‘bohemian’ and ‘SoHo’ as in New York or London.

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 4:13 pm
Last time I saw it it was brown, full of rubbish and had a diesel rainbow on the surface

At least you could make a wish upon seeing the rainbow!!

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 4:14 pm
The last time I wore a suit in Melbourne, I got called:

1. Federal Cop

2. Faggot in a suit

3. Corporate arsehole

Really? Where were you?

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:15 pm
Y’know, when a former rustic working class or shady suburb get’s richer and up-and-coming but is not fully there yet. Usually typified by lots of nice restaurants, uni students wearing scarves and every second shop being a coffee shop. Like Balmain in Sydney.

Welcome to hell.

.

24 Feb 13 at 4:15 pm
Where were you?

Heckling the Occupy mob?

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 4:16 pm
Didn’t I once predict that Birdie’s fascination with every conspiracy theory the fat bald headed idiot stumbled on around the web would eventually lead him to Jew hatred?

Umm didn’t I? Let me answer that- of course I did.

It was inevitable that he would take this fork in the road, idiot he is.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:17 pm
Best things in Melbourne are the trams and stadiums.
And food, there are a thousand ways to get eggs benedict all day and night.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 4:18 pm
Last time I saw it it was brown, full of rubbish and had a diesel rainbow on the surface

At least you could make a wish upon seeing the rainbow!!

You got to make the most of the situation!!…:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AamdKoK1LU

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 4:18 pm
The last time I wore a suit in Melbourne, I got called:

1. Federal Cop

2. Faggot in a suit

3. Corporate arsehole

Really? Where were you?

I suspect it was a reflection of dot rather than geography or the suit JC.

JamesK

24 Feb 13 at 4:19 pm
Best things in Melbourne are the trams and stadiums.
And food, there are a thousand ways to get eggs benedict all day and night.

And the worst: Leftists to the left of you, leftists to the right, leftists all round

JamesK

24 Feb 13 at 4:22 pm
JC

King St going south and then onto Lonsdale.

.

24 Feb 13 at 4:23 pm
The last time I wore a suit in Melbourne, I got called:

1. Federal Cop

2. Faggot in a suit

3. Corporate arsehole

Dot ,walking straight through ” Occupy Melbourne ” protesters as a shit stir will get that reaction.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 4:24 pm
Best things in Melbourne are the trams and stadiums.

I despise the trams. It’s a car culture and they slow down traffic to a crawl.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:25 pm
A couple of mobsters, left wing comedian lovefests, shitty Brackstoria era brutalist and gauchely coloured “sculpture” and some coffee that is better than International Roast hardly accounts for “kulcha”.
Give me the casino and the MCG.

I like the MCG and the casino as well, but it isn’t that bad :p

The last time I wore a suit in Melbourne, I got called:
1. Federal Cop
2. Faggot in a suit
3. Corporate arsehole
You guys must hate Melbourne Cup day.

Considering the number of people who wear suits in the CBD, I find that hard to believe unless you confronted the Occupy group.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 4:26 pm
Best place I ever lived in Melbourne was a little terrace off Beaconsfield Pde in Port, 50 metres from the beach, where I could wander around in bare feet and pretend I was much further away from Melbourne than I was.

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 4:28 pm
Maybe I will come to dislike Melbourne considering I will have to travel there 5 days a week for Uni?

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 4:29 pm
And the worst: Leftists to the left of you, leftists to the right, leftists all round

All I saw were asians, arabs and the odd whitey.
Nobody looks you in the eye, it’s offputting.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 4:29 pm
Considering the number of people who wear suits in the CBD, I find that hard to believe unless you confronted the Occupy group.

Suspend disbelief and realise what a leftist rathole it is you live in.

.

24 Feb 13 at 4:30 pm
Suspend disbelief and realise what a leftist rathole it is you live in.

It is most certainly that. I wonder if this has historical roots to the fact that it was Melbourne/Victoria which insisted on protectionism at Federation.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:32 pm
Isn’t every CBD a leftist hole?

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 4:34 pm
JC

I despise the trams. It’s a car culture and they slow down traffic to a crawl.

If all those tram passengers drove cars and had to park them in the CBD the traffic would not even crawl.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 4:34 pm
Andrew

The true CBD of Sydney is fairly capitalist, if you can keep away from the RBA and State Parliament.

Having the ASX there keeps it pure of heart.

.

24 Feb 13 at 4:36 pm
Have buses them Jump. FFS man it’s so inefficient. The tram stops in the middle of the road to take on and/or let off passengers and the traffic has to stop. It so fucking woeful it’s beyond belief.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:37 pm
If all those tram passengers drove cars and had to park them in the CBD the traffic would not even crawl.

And how many cars does an empty tram keep off the road? Because many of the ones I see are empty and holding up traffic.

rebel with cause

24 Feb 13 at 4:39 pm
Seriously, I mean if Melbournestanis love their fucking trams so much have buses that look like trams then, as at least it would allow people to get on or off on the side of the fucking road instead of the middle forcing everything to stop dead in its tracks.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:40 pm
many of the ones I see are empty and holding up traffic.

Fucking A. And the overhead wires a fucking disgrace. These ugly monsters are something from a bygone era. They need to get them off the road asap.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:42 pm
King St going south and then onto Lonsdale.

King Street is full of hookers, pimps and crims. One Street up (William Street) and you would have been mistaken for a crooked Labor lawyer and given the keys to the city.

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 4:43 pm
At the start of last year we made a deal that if she missed no more than five days in the school year (without doctor’s certificate) then she’d be rewarded with a trip to Cambodia plus nearly $1000 in spending money. She was all excited. Promises were made. Lasted two weeks.

Hey Gab,

Your story reminds me of a woman I worked with many years. Very bright, nice person. She told me one day that she was constantly wagging school because it was so boring. Turned she was an ultra-bright who found school too boring. Your friend’s intelligence should be formally tested, she might require a different kind of schooling. It is rare but it does happen. I hope things work out for her. She seems to be somewhat oppositional which reminds me of Sulloway’s ideas re creativity. Some parents, being what they are, instil a lack of respect for authority. Ya can hardly blame the kids for thinking like that sometimes. But they still have to get past it. I wish you the best success in helping her.

John H.

24 Feb 13 at 4:43 pm
Here. This is a bus that looks like a tram if you need to get hot over trams…. at least they would stop on the side of the freaking road.

Everyone’s a winner.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:45 pm
Tom’s right, Dot. You only hang around King street if you’re looking for a cheap hooker of a tittie bar. Seriously I wouldn’t even drive around that street, as it so ugly and depressing.

Ask the fellas here next time you’re in town and we’ll tell you where to hang out or walk around.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:48 pm
And how many cars does an empty tram keep off the road? Because many of the ones I see are empty and holding up traffic.

So what? many of the cars have only one person, also holding up traffic.
A car accident causes hours of hold ups.
Trams dont run into each other

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 4:49 pm
Gab

Sorry to sound interfering, so please don’t be cross,
but your young relative sounds spoilt.
Offering holidays and $1000 of cash just to go to school is sending the wrong message entirely (in my opinion and no offence in any way meant).

candy

24 Feb 13 at 4:50 pm
Andrew
The true CBD of Sydney is fairly capitalist, if you can keep away from the RBA and State Parliament.
Having the ASX there keeps it pure of heart.

Melbourne isn’t?
Even so, the residents of Sydney are very left wing. Generally those who think gay marriage is a big issue.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 4:51 pm
Trams dont run into each other

They’re fucking street cars from 100 years ago. They need to get them off the road ASAP so the traffic can flow better.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 4:53 pm
Remember the Tarkine Wilderness dog fight a fortnight ago between the greenfilth and the moochers party? Well, here come the bribes:

Anthony Albanese

Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister

Sid Sidebottom

Federal Member for Braddon

Joint Media Statement

FEDERAL RESCUE PACKAGE FOR ICONIC RAILWAY

The Federal Labor Government has agreed to provide up to $6 million to restore the West Coast Wilderness Railway to an appropriate and safe standard, subject to the Tasmanian Government finding an operator and underwriting its ongoing operational costs for the next four years.

Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said the national government was determined to do what it can to make sure this iconic part of Australian history had a bright and viable future.

“Following strong representations from local MP Sid Sidebottom, it was clear that without Federal intervention this vital attraction would be lost, taking with it the jobs and economic benefits it provides to the region,” said Mr Albanese.

“In fact since its re-opening in 2002, the Railway has carried over 400,000 passengers, created 33 direct jobs and injected some $10 million a year in West Coast communities.

“I look forward to working with Sid Sidebottom, the State Government and the local community to get this vital attraction and unique window into our past back onto a sustainable footing.”

“Originally built in the 1890s to transport copper from the mines at Queenstown to market, this world famous piece of railway engineering offers tourists remarkable, year round views along Tasmania’s West Coast.”

Federal Member for Braddon Sid Sidebottom welcomed the $6 million rescue package for the West Coast Wilderness Railway.

“Because of the Federal Labor Government, the West Coast Wilderness Railway is literally back on track,” said Mr Sidebottom.

“I took this to the highest level of government, and we have delivered for the people of the West Coast. We are very fortunate that we have a Prime Minister in Julia Gillard that cares about jobs and is a great friend of Tasmania.

“Time and again, the Prime Minister has shown her support for Tasmanians and Tasmanian jobs.

“Clearly, the community campaign to save the Railway demonstrated the importance of the enterprise to our region and the State. It quickly became apparent that without significant Federal Government intervention, the West Coast Wilderness Railway would have collapsed, taking hundreds of jobs with it.

“I was able to use this in discussions with the Prime Minister and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese and my federal colleagues, and I made it clear that our funding is about jobs – both now and into the future.

“It is a great disappointment to me that we ever got to this point. This should never have happened and came as a great shock to this community and to myself.

“I thank the Prime Minister and Transport Minister Albanese for their consideration, concern and ultimate support for this rescue package.”

Sunday, 24 February 2013

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 4:55 pm
Thanks, John.

Some parents, being what they are, instil a lack of respect for authority.

Oh yes, very much so. She’s young and has role models who believe the law if for other people; it’s hard for her to know here that line of rightfully standing up to authority and having no respect at all is. She’s told a teacher to ‘get fucked’. Why, we asked. Because she doesn’t like me. She made fun of me in class, was the reply. Okay, the teacher was wrong (I know that’s only one side of the story but no point arguing) but there are other ways to handle it, we explain. Of course, the hormones of a teenager impair hearing lol. We’d love to get her tested as you suggest, John but her parents would not allow. She’s a bright, happy kid mostly. As I said proficient in maths but reading and comprehension is well below par for her age.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 4:56 pm
…;where that line…

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 4:57 pm
Gab, good on you for trying. The world has changed so much in the past twenty odd years that I am not sure what would work today. And it is now a complete anathema, heresy, etc., to suggest putting juniors out to work without an ‘education’. Then the ‘education’ that they are kept within works to destroy them, unless, like Andrew, they can see through it. It’s good that many do, but far too many don’t, and have a culture of entitlement and complaint as their guide.

At times, when I got a bit self-pitying, I would read something about how hard life had been for others. I remember being very impressed with Gorky’s ‘My Childhood’ which I came across in a second-hand bookshop. I’d had it easy, I concluded.

Much later I read A.B.Facey’s ‘A Fortunate Life’.

Would this girl read anything like this perhaps?

BTW, I think the chef idea is a good one. A kitchenhand or waitressing job part-time in a ‘better’ restaurant might give some insight into this too.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 5:01 pm
She’s not a relative, Candy. It’s a foster system set through Berry Street, monthly weekend visits (sometimes more and longer than a weekend) to “give her mother a break”. I understand what you mean though. She really isn’t a spoilt brat, just left to run her life her way. The parents don’t/won’t discipline her. In fact given her siblings, parents and who she hangs out with at school, I’m amazed she hasn’t fallen pregnant or been to juvie court…yet.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 5:04 pm
Even so, the residents of Sydney are very left wing. Generally those who think gay marriage is a big issue.

Paddington was never part of the city LGA until the ALP tried to shaft Clover Moore.

Now she has a iron fist over a larger area and has implemented bikeways from the finger wharves to the south end of Crown St.

Oxford St is actually very entrepreneurial.

Redfern is distinctly anti capitalist, given the ALP has taught Aborigines to fight against their own interests.

.

24 Feb 13 at 5:05 pm
They’re fucking street cars from 100 years ago. They need to get them off the road ASAP so the traffic can flow better.

The only motorised vehicle in the CBD should be emergency services,council maintenance or produce delivery.
Everyone else take a tram.( or bike, walk, skateboard….)
Fair dinkum, those cars are are congestion nightmare.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 5:06 pm
King Street is full of hookers, pimps and crims. One Street up (William Street) and you would have been mistaken for a crooked Labor lawyer and given the keys to the city.

Maybe because I’m an out of towner, but, I honestly couldn’t tell the difference, as we went back to the hotel that way.

.

24 Feb 13 at 5:06 pm
The only motorised vehicle in the CBD should be emergency services,council maintenance or produce delivery.

Why? That’s just silly.

Everyone else take a tram.( or bike, walk, skateboard….)

Cars are fine. Everyone understands there’s congestion in the CBD.

Fair dinkum, those cars are are congestion nightmare.

That’s fine.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 5:11 pm
Dot ,walking straight through ” Occupy Melbourne ” protesters as a shit stir will get that reaction.

You want to try vising the Occupods with an “I [heart] Max Brenner” t-shirt on. LOL

Hilarity ensues. Especially when you’re with a reformed lefty who knows how to give it back to them in spades.

You know you’ve done well when the police start following you around rather than the unpolished tards.

nilk

24 Feb 13 at 5:12 pm
Would this girl read anything like this perhaps?

LOL. Only if it was on Facebook. Good idea though, I’ll give it a try. I’ve read Facey’s book too and realised that I too had it easy.

She doesn’t get away with much when she’s around our group and the poor kid does get lectures from us – explaining how things in life work. We’re all uni grads, post grads, even a couple of PhDs educated types, with good jobs, some self-employed, well-traveled, like the finer things in life but have worked hard to get there. Not one of us has ever been given a hand-out. We all started out working in places like Maccas or Woolies, put ourselves through uni by working. So we hope some of it rubs off and penetrates that teenage consciousness.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 5:14 pm
There are a lot more homeless people and hippies in Sydney than Melbourne

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 5:19 pm
You’re in a pickle with that situation, Gab.

If her parents haven’t supplied the appropritae framework of discipline/expected behaviour etc. and she’s 14 now, she may not accept it at all if they suddenly come down hard on her.

candy

24 Feb 13 at 5:19 pm
There are a lot more homeless people and hippies in Sydney than Melbourne

Dunno about hippies but I agree about homeless people.

.

24 Feb 13 at 5:21 pm
lol no chance of the parents doing that, Candy. That ship never even got out of the dock, let alone sail. It’s difficult as we are not her parents so we have little say, but kids absorb more through seeing (by example) than by words.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 5:21 pm
There are a lot more homeless people and hippies in Sydney than Melbourne

I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be the case. Depends how you define ‘hippy’ for one, but Victoria is a left-wing state. It’s got Ted Ballieu……but I repeat myself.

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 5:22 pm
Ok, John Mc is right about the hippies. We are quite a left-wing city.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 5:23 pm
I hate trams with a passion. I have little against public transport (well, lets say i dislike it every time i use it, which is twice a day minimum). But I really, really hate trams. I bet every study that looks at the efficiency of ‘light rail’ ignores the opportunity cost of the inconvenience, disruption and congestion caused to private transport due the presence of the rails, platforms in the middle of the street, and weird road rules to accommodate them. And then there is the ugly great overhead wires to carry electricity.

If you want public transport, use buses. At least then they can go places without rails. They carry just as many people, and the routes can be easily changed due to changing demand. Try that when trying to account for a couple of rails and ugly overhead electricity wires.

entropy

24 Feb 13 at 5:25 pm
For those interested, John Howard is on 60 minutes tonight.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 5:25 pm
If you want public transport, use buses. At least then they can go places without rails. They carry just as many people, and the routes can be easily changed due to changing demand. Try that when trying to account for a couple of rails and ugly overhead electricity wires.

Buses are slow and are never on time. They are also very uncomfortable.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 5:28 pm
I have little against public transport (well, lets say i dislike it every time i use it, which is twice a day minimum)

That’s my definition of failure. The future of efficient, environmentally-friendly, socially-responsible, effective transportation is private.

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 5:29 pm
That’s my definition of failure. The future of efficient, environmentally-friendly, socially-responsible, effective transportation is private.

Yep. Sure is and people have voted with their feet or in this case with their butts sitting in a car.

We’ll eventually have driverless/computerized cars that will essentially eliminate congestion anyways.

Railway lines will make half way roads too.

The car will let you off at the place you’re going then home back to house garage and pick you up later in the day.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 5:36 pm
I think you’ve got it JC.

Combine that with new technologies like electric vehicles or hybrid vehicles, perhaps even improved internal combustion engines and improved fuels.

Parking stations (for want of a better term) will also be automated. You’ll get out of your vehicle at your destination and it will drive off by itself and store itself in some automated building.

When this technology starts landing no on is going to be crapping on about light rail, let alone trams.

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 5:41 pm
Why bother with personal ownership of cars when we get to fully automated ?

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 5:45 pm
What does that look like Jump?

The attraction of the private car is it’s your own space and you can do with it what you want, leave what you want in it, expect to find it how you left it etc.

This is actually part of the marketing now, especially in the European markets. The traffic may be moving at a snail’s pace, but the time isn’t everything. Unlike a public environment, you’re enjoying some nice time in your own space that happens to be quite pleasant.

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 5:50 pm
When this technology starts landing no on is going to be crapping on about light rail, let alone trams.

Lol, yea I know. They’re just dinosaurs.

The other thing that’s going to hit the public transport obsessive idiots is that motor vehicle prices will collapse in price as new manufacturing methods begin the come on stream.

Cars are still put together like they were 100 years ago. New material tech will drop the cost of production by 90%.

You could readily own or simply hire a car for a few bucks in the not too distant future. You may not even own one. You could simply call for it and will be at the door.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 5:51 pm
she may not accept it at all if they suddenly come down hard on her.

True, Candy. But I expect there is not much liklihood of them doing that. She has to learn to come down hard on herself. Moving into a different world, like Gab’s, even if only for visits, is perhaps part of that process. I took on a lot by a sort of osmosis once I had left home, mostly through the people I worked with, but also by going interstate once I was 16. By the time I was 18 I was catapulted into a ‘lucky break’ career where everyone else but me was upper middle class and just assumed I was too – I learned a few fast tricks about dressing and acting to expectations and then considered exploring ‘education’.

Keep telling her she is bright, Gab. (If she genuinely is so). I did this with my sister, and it worked. The worst thing is thinking you might be, but having no real proof of it and no-one confirming it. I clung to the fact that at eleven I had effortlessly passed the 11 plus in England while living with my nana, and I had enjoyed the fuss that people, different people like teachers, made about that. It was all getting a bit vague though by the time I was 14 and failing/not attending school.

There must be ways too of improving her literacy, getting her to read more, getting her beyond Facebook and its trivia.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 5:54 pm
Why bother with personal ownership of cars when we get to fully automated ?

You won’t jump. I’m sure there will be segmentation in the marketplace where you will be able to hire a decent car above riff raff status and all that stuff thereby avoiding human debris like nose pickings and vomit on the floor.

You’re actually beginning to see the genesis of that with some start up rental companies hiring out cars by the hour or proximity.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 5:55 pm
I think there’s one start up firm that calls itself Flexicar or something close to that.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 5:56 pm
Sydney should install more monorails instead of pulling down the one they’ve had since 1998. Its streets are too narrow for the planned light rail extensions – they are just latter day trams which will just clog up the streets and cause even even worse gridlock than happens now.

Septimus

24 Feb 13 at 5:59 pm
The good thing about the automated car is that it will finally get Kelly Iddle off the freaking roads. The bad side is that he’ll pester us here even more.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 6:00 pm
I see you are saying much the same thing about the parents and suble influences that new role models can provide in your comment above Gab – sorry, I got called away when writing the above, I started a while before that.

Do you know, when I first went to uni and had a boyfriend from a private school, his family asked me to stay with them during the exam period. His mother was so kind, cooked us meals, praised me, and his father put up with my leftie raves. They were such nice, normal people. On the morning of my first exam I got up and found she had ironed my cotton dress. I flew through the exam on wings. No-one had ever done anything like that before for me. I sometimes wonder if my resistance to ironing has been because I have wanted to cling to the memory of someone doing that out of sheer goodwill towards me.

To my shame, I dumped her son next year for the man I was to marry, in my desperate desire for his leftie love and intellectual approval and a family of my own. Marry in haste etc …

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 6:05 pm
Jump – so you are jumpin’ outa your car?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 6:07 pm
Sydney should install more monorails instead of pulling down the one they’ve had since ~~1998~~
1988.

Septimus

24 Feb 13 at 6:08 pm
Unlike a public environment, you’re enjoying some nice time in your own space that happens to be quite pleasant.

Yep. After my last bad experience on trains, it is hire cars, a sound system and a sat nav with bells on for me in any place where I am sans a car.

And my new and nifty little AUDI anywhere else.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 6:18 pm
Lizzie, your “vogon” poetry is an archival document, and a good one. Reminds me of the “Once Were Warriors” story. Great credit to you that you made it out of there, left the tree by the normal route and said yes to life, and to self improvement.

blogstrop

24 Feb 13 at 6:18 pm
Ta Blogstrop. Was very dubious about sharing it, but it is not, after all, there as a literary piece. It does have some archival value to me though.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 6:21 pm
Fully automated cars is just an extension of rail with the tracks being GPS markers or stationary electronic markers.
A great advancement for intercity folk with next to zero baggage.
Even tradies ( that will never become redundant ) could hitch up their trailer to transport their tools too.
If government were to invest in any human advancement ( and they shouldn’t ) then this is it.
Imagine how the NBN and renewball money would help.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 6:23 pm
Great idea, JC. Some raghead will order a hundred cars to go to twenty five different destinations carrying a 1000kg lump of explosives. All set to go pop in five minute intervals.

Gab, your friends kid is a little shit. Get a cattle prod and use the bloody thing.

Winston SMITH

24 Feb 13 at 6:23 pm
Bless you, Lizzie. Yep, we reinforce positively. It’s easy to advise her honestly that she is smart becuase she is. We don’t hear her say she’s dumb anymore, no, she’s moved on to “I’m ugly” (she’s not by any means) and “I’m fat” (a negatory to that too).

Any suggestions as to how to get her interested in reading?

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 6:26 pm
Jump – so you are jumpin’ outa your car?

Love to Lizzie but Mackay and districts public transport system in virtually non-existent.
I should call myself ” JumpnmUTE ” but TMG would cry.
( I love any excuse to play THIS!! )

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 6:30 pm
Buy her a kindle Gab

Aliice

24 Feb 13 at 6:32 pm
Great idea, JC. Some raghead will order a hundred cars to go to twenty five different destinations carrying a 1000kg lump of explosives. All set to go pop in five minute intervals.

So bombs can’t go off now in the space of 5 mins apart. You need automated cars for that racket?

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 6:35 pm
your friends kid is a little shit. Get a cattle prod and use the bloody thing.

lol. They’re not our “friends”; it’s a foster situation. One male in our group has suggested this cattle prod idea, Winston however there are laws against that. Look, I’ve only given the negative aspects to the situation. She really is a good kid, very kind-hearted and mostly your typical teenage girl trying to find her way in the world coming from a base of welfare and entitlement attitude from her parents and little or no discipline and structure from the same. We’re trying to show her that there is another way, that she does have choices other than to do things the way her parents did and that to get anywhere in life, to get the nice things you want, you have to work for them. And the best way is through education. Can’t see her going to uni but that’s no matter. I’d be overjoyed at this point if she finished this year with less than 10 days wagging school.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 6:35 pm
And she knows better than to say “youse” and “them”(instead of the correct “those”) around us at least.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 6:37 pm
Good news for Ted
http://www.reachtel.com.au/blog/7-news-melbourne-victorian-state-poll-february-2013
L/NP 44.2% ALP 34.2% GRE 12.6 KAT 2.0 Oth 6.2

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 6:37 pm
Buy her a kindle Gab

Nope. She’s been given a laptop from us which “disappeared”. We believe someone in her family took it and got money for it. She’s been given two hand-me-down iPhones. One was “lost” the second one “got broken”. So no, no more gadgets from us.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 6:40 pm
It might be more of a worry if they only read books and didn’t do Facebook, Gab, wouldn’t worry about it.

If she’s got real friends she sees that’s the main thing. If she can talk to you about her friends and what they’re up to, what’s going on, you’re on the right track. Perhaps she may talk to you in the way she may not able to open up to her parents.

candy

24 Feb 13 at 6:41 pm
This will get me some shit probably but it is true.My son was a very poor reader and every year a good deal of his school-time was spent in special reading classes.I had those poxy cards with letters and so on doing work with him for a number of years.When he was about eleven I bought him a computer and a couple of games that he loved which included reading stuff to make decisions on what to do next.I kid you not within 3 months he was up his age average for reading and has never looked back.He’s 26 now and still cant get him to read a book tho.
Maybe a thought for Gab’s 14 year old..

Max49

24 Feb 13 at 6:44 pm
Candy she once posted a comment from some movie on her FB page. It was pretty tawdry, I think from that movie “Ted”. Now she really didn’t understand it, just thought it was a cool thing to do. I happened to see it. We did explain how the comment was quite derogatory to females. I think it sunk it. And don’t get me started on the music she likes and the dance moves! “Do I look sexy?” cops her another lecture.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 6:46 pm
You took an interest in your son, Max. I wish this kid had a parent capable of doing that but when you treat your kid like your best friend…

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 6:49 pm
The Kindle is a very good suggestion, Gab. You could stock it with a few favourites that might ‘improve’. Pride and Prejudice is always a winner in both style and storyline, and she could also see the TVseries/Movie.

If she thinks she is ugly, take her to a good beautician for some styling advice. Some dietary tips might also be useful, tied up with the cooking efforts as she is interested in those, and maybe a gym membership or head her to a sports team.

Give her some Vogue and Harpers Bazaar and talk about fashion and display and quality in clothing. I used to read these purloined from the doctor’s office when I was seated in rusted old car wrecks that were lying around where I first moved when I left home (I noted the contrast too), and they made an impression about flair and picking out what suits you.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 6:55 pm
Gab
For me it’s not the missing school that’s a worry, It’s what she’s doing with her time.
If she’s doing something she feels constructive not destructive then thumbs up.
If she’s ( by her own admission if asked ) wasting her time, then channeling her efforts is needed.
Failing that, buy her a set of golf clubs and a few lessons, and no redblooded, rich eligible bachelor can resist.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 6:55 pm
Knocking off work on a Friday, having a few beers with your mates and walking up to a decent night footy match at the MCG Members is a pretty good argument for living in Melbourne, even if you do walk past Federation Square.

I doubt there is a more depressing experience than driving along Parramatta Road on a hot summers day at peak hour.

H B Bear

24 Feb 13 at 6:58 pm
The point of my post was to mine their interest in such a way that it produces a result that they are not even aware of…

Max49

24 Feb 13 at 6:59 pm
I doubt there is a more depressing experience than driving along Parramatta Road on a hot summers day at peak hour.

Try the ‘lonk’ island expressway on a friday in the summer.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 7:01 pm
take her to a good beautician

Last year she decided to wear make-up. The kids got beautiful skin and she covers it with some cheap liquid foundation that was orange against her alabaster skin tone. No point in talking her out of it so for her birthday I took her to Revlon* and got the correct colour match for her skin plus a few other bits from the beauty department. The beautician taught her how to apply it and she did rather well with it all. Chatting away to her I learned she wanted to cover up her freckles becuase some boy at school was always teasing her about it. Lecture on boys and their antics ensued. Reminder of how many fashion models have freckles and are paid the big bucks followed. *sigh* all to no avail, so professional make-up it was.

*was not going to buy a teenager the expensive stuff! Plus when it ran out she had to be able to afford it herself if she wanted more (money from birthdays, Christmas)

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 7:04 pm
I reckon the relay swim team drug scandal currently causing all sorts of hand wringing by media types, wins runner up for the ‘Storm in a Teacup’ Award (won by the ACC doping and organised crime farce).

First of all the drug used was only banned by the AOC – not the Olympic Games themselves or any other sport or doping agency.

The drug is actually a sleeping pill which has been used for years by Australian Olympians to get a good night’s sleep prior to competition. The AOC banned it in a knee jerk reaction to Grant Hackett (I think) admitting he had misused it when he was swimming.

Note – all other countries can use it so in my layman’s opinion, the banning of the drug was the main reason for the swim team’s failure.

Other than taking the drug, the rest of the ‘night of shame’ was pretty uneventful really. They knocked on doors and rang some phones, then were in bed by 10:30. The alleged inappropriate behaviour was that one of the team rang up a female and asked what she was wearing. Fair dinkum, that’s not only deemed newsworthy in the 21st century but is concerning enough for the AOC to engage a freaking QC to investigate.

My advice is to sack the AOC.

jupes

24 Feb 13 at 7:06 pm
Max49
I struggle to read books, specs and plans in paper form.
15mins in and my eyes are watery and tired.
On a PC screen no problem, luckily almost all tender documents are digital now.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 7:07 pm
Jump, mostly just hang out at home with other friends who wag school, watching TV and spending even more time on Facebook.

Thanks for all your suggestions, people. They are noted, if not already tried. xx

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 7:08 pm
I doubt there is a more depressing experience than driving along Parramatta Road on a hot summers day at peak hour.

Try across the Gladesville Bridge and along Epping Road in any peak hour/s, or north out of the CBD and across the Harbour Bridge on Thursday evenings.

Septimus

24 Feb 13 at 7:08 pm
Yea Gab. I have provided various equipment and gadgets that have become ‘lost’ or ‘broken’ too. I am pretty philosophical about it, because these people live in chaos and Swapland and Pawntown and Breakdown Lane. If these items were spare, then don’t worry and try again. Two X-boxes, a couple of other game thingo’s, an ipod, an old laptop and a couple of superceded mobile phones all down the plughole from me, but the latest Christmas X-box is still alive and kicking, the 3G iphone is still there and now I have my 4G Android another is on the way, the Galaxy pad I got for free with some deal is still there, the big TV has been too good to lose, and things are moving onwards and up.

A Kindle may be different too. Not such a great demand for these in the bogansphere.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 7:09 pm
Cmon Gab you a female.She is displaying classic signs with the make up of the first little steps into womanhood.I have 13 year old granddaughter with two pimples on her chest that has started sporting a bra that makes her chest look like a pair of 38 pistols.Would never say anything to her as it is the same as boys beginning to shave with a cricket mo…eleven a side..first steps.

Max49

24 Feb 13 at 7:13 pm
in the bogansphere.

Ah yes, I haven’t mentioned the aunts and cousins, the uncles and friends.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 7:15 pm
Today marks the second anniversary of the announcement of the carbon tax.
yay – I’m underwhelmed.
Today’s carbon tax day – a black one indeed for us all

Keith

24 Feb 13 at 7:20 pm
jumpnmcar the reason he does not read books is that he has zero interest in them which is why he couldn’t learn to read.It was only when there was a benefit for him reading..playing the bloody games that he became interested.

Max49

24 Feb 13 at 7:22 pm
At this rate Pistorius will get a mistrial. Well done meeja.

Broadcasting 8.30 pm on WIN
Bladerunner: My Lover My Killer
They were the perfect couple, but on Valentine’s Day it all went wrong. Friends, Family and enemies expose the untold dark side of fallen Olympic hero Oscar Pistorius. Presented by Peter Stefanovic.

Keith

24 Feb 13 at 7:48 pm
(Via Tim Blair:) The World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/02/20/gree-f20.html

Various pseudo-left organisations in Australia, particularly Socialist Alliance, continually promote the Greens as some type of “left” or even anti-capitalist alternative for workers and youth. Milnes’s speech serves to highlight the bogus character of such claims. The Greens are a bourgeois party that speaks for and is orientated toward sections of business, large and small, and affluent layers of the upper middle class.

F*** me!! The commies are cutting pretty close to the bone with this one and, I think if most of us were honest we’d agree, they’re completely right on this assessment of the Greens.

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 8:02 pm
jumpnmcar the reason he does not read books is that he has zero interest in them which is why he couldn’t learn to read.It was only when there was a benefit for him reading..playing the bloody games that he became interested.

Maybe, if you see it that way.
My sons ( 3 of ) mathematics improved the day I hung the dart board and got competitive with them.
I would never rule out games and sport helping academic growth, that’s what lefties do.
I just explained my situation that may not be unique.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 8:02 pm
I would never rule out games and sport helping academic growth, that’s what lefties do

Especially with boys.

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 8:04 pm
JiM 12:25pm

Look, she’s passionade about edjakayshun.

TFTFY

kae

24 Feb 13 at 8:13 pm
Hey Nilk

Good cartoon. Sadly.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 8:20 pm
John Howard on 60 minutes…what a breath of fresh air.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 8:21 pm
kae
Piggy Howes would say your’e ” underminding ” James in Melb.
But I know you mean ” nuthink ” by it.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 8:25 pm
Wait, what?

A dam that flows, holds water and releases water?

But Gillard’s water minister said there was no such thing.

Am I to understand that a Gillard minister is an imbecile?

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 8:27 pm
Max49, you did make me laugh with the cricket ‘mo, as I dip in and out of here inbetween bedding kids. I have help and know when I am lucky beyond belief.

Spoke to HIA in Shanghai today and he has had a good sleep and no working till tomorrow. Enjoy, I say, five star on someone else is always good (you can’t always take da mendicant bogan out of da girl, he smiles at me – I know when he is laughing).

Gab, just keep doing whatever you are doing – just being there and being nice is all that is needed. No fourteen year old is going to appear to listen (that would be so uncool), but they do take it all in. I think what you are doing is so good for her and probably for her family too, you are a true Christian Aunty.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

24 Feb 13 at 8:27 pm
” It was only when there was a benefit for him reading..playing the bloody games that he became interested.”

that boys all over, Max49.

candy

24 Feb 13 at 8:28 pm
jumpnmcar The dartboard maths relationship is a great example..

Max49

24 Feb 13 at 8:28 pm
you are a true Christian Aunty.

LOL the whole foster care thing was started by an atheist in our group of friends. Sorry, but I had to laugh. Anyway, I just stick my nose in because I care about the kid, as we all do, and because I’m a bossy-boots. I did learn through my nieces though. when they were teenagers, that they do actually listen even if they do everything under the sun to show they’re ignoring sage advice.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 8:35 pm
ReachTel also shows Campbell Newman getting the polling mojo back, 60-40 LNP.

Poor old Gillard is going to run out of “unpopular” state governments to run against….

MDMConnell

24 Feb 13 at 8:36 pm
Shanghai today and he has had a good sleep and no working till tomorrow. Enjoy, I say, five star on someone else is always good

reminds me of the time I lost my mobile phone in a nightclub in Qīngdǎo . Long story. Got it back the next day but.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 8:37 pm
Gab, I saw that cartoon earlier. Nails our situation nicely.

But that’s okay, because I’m going to go check out the dawafest peace conference that TLS is apparently going to speak at. Might have to drag out ye olde SLR for some nice photos as well.

nilk

24 Feb 13 at 8:55 pm
Oh, do be careful, Nilk. Those Socialist Alliance people who will be attending the conference in support of Islam can be quite nasty.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 8:58 pm
as I dip in and out of here inbetween bedding kids

Lizzy, you’ve really got to lay off those toy-boys when HIA is away!!

John Mc

24 Feb 13 at 8:58 pm
lol, at first glance I read it as “Ikea” conference.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 8:59 pm
reminds me of the time I lost my mobile phone in a nightclub in Qīngdǎo .

So you’ve been to one of beer’s sacred sites? German brewing expertise meets Chinese mineral springs. Don’t tell me you didn’t understand the significance of that secret knowledge?

Tom

24 Feb 13 at 9:02 pm
Gab, an occasion like this should actually be quite safe. I am interested in learning, not stirring up trouble. Good manners tend to pay off, and since it’s a propaganda fest, people should all be on their best behaviour.

It is the socialist/anarchist/uni scum who are the real problem, but they’ll behave also. They pick on soft targets and this isn’t their ground.

And I’m always careful. Thank you.

nilk

24 Feb 13 at 9:05 pm
I recall posting a comment some time back, on the very day that “the Burke” did his Emmo-like spray on dams, taking it down. Good to see some now catching up.
Book time is nigh.

blogstrop

24 Feb 13 at 9:06 pm
So we can send McTurdman back?
Surely there’s someone can do his job and is an Australian?

Cripes, no!

He’s Tony Abbott’s secret weapon, make sure he stays here.

old bloke

24 Feb 13 at 9:07 pm
beer’s sacred sites?

Did a brewery tour too, Tom. Scoffed at the ridiculous idea of Chinese brewing a decent beer until I learned the Germans were behind it. Don’t mind Tsingtao beer at all.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 9:07 pm
Hmmm…did the Asahi brewery tour when in Japan too. What happens when you work in a male-dominated industry.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 9:10 pm
Gab, for your teen:

maybe a drama class would work : dress up/make up ++, and in order to have a part you actually have to read and memorise lines. Exposure to the classics versus a chance at improvisation, working in groups, acknowledgemnent of talent, discipline. Links to popular culture, history, and an ability to relate to people of all ages through discussion of current productions and films. Knock her socks off by taking her (all dressed up of course) to a live play, concert, opera, ballet or symphony. Beware, the feedback/impact may not show for up for many years, but the young underimpressed mind needs food for thought. I haven’t yet read or seen “Life of Pi” for example, but perhaps you could read the book first, lend it to this kid, then both of you see the movie and discuss. Or some other variation depending on her interests and yours. Good Luck, this is really important work.

hzhousewife

24 Feb 13 at 9:12 pm
Hzhousewife, I’ve gone the other way with my girl. Watched Journey to the Centre of the Earth with Brendan Fraser, then Journey to the Centre of the Earth with James Mason, and we’re now reading Jules Verne.

I don’t know that a 14yo girl would be interested in that particular storyline, though. Perhaps try 10 Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew) or Baz Lurhman’s Romeo and Juliet which can be compared with Zefirelli’s far superior movie.

Films can be a great doorway into literature.

nilk

24 Feb 13 at 9:18 pm
Thanks for your thoughts, Hzhousewife. Good ideas there. We are limited in what we can do – doesn’t stop us from trying new things – as we only get her once a month for a weekend, but some good suggestions from you which can be modified to suit.

She did once mention she was interested in the Egyptian exhibition in Melbourne so we took her to it (a few years ago). I thought to myself the exhibition was pretty poor standard and she made a similar remark backed up with reasons why, which at the time i considered was an astute observation on her part.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 9:19 pm
did the Asahi brewery tour when in Japan too

Welcome to the home of Gods personal tipple.

Carpe Jugulum

24 Feb 13 at 9:24 pm
Just watched Gillard reading to children.
She really has a gift of making fiction seam realistic to people of of low IQ.
She looked like she believed what she read.
A talented long practiced liar.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 9:35 pm
Anyone know when and where we can get the earliest Newspoll results. Is it just watching The Australian web site?

Honesty

24 Feb 13 at 9:37 pm
Translator please.
I think Japanese, but being a person that doesn’t recognise racial difference, I can’t tell.
HERE.

(H/T WOBH)

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 9:40 pm
Anyone know when and where we can get the earliest Newspoll results. Is it just watching The Australian web site?

Twitter generally has it up quite quickly after it has been posted on the Newspoll website.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 9:41 pm
Thanks #auspol?

Honesty

24 Feb 13 at 9:42 pm
Learning the rules of cricket, being able to make tea, and knowing from memory the complete works of PG Wodehouse would be my tips for a youngster to successfully cross the bar into polite society Gab.

Splatacrobat

24 Feb 13 at 9:50 pm
Yeah or check out the account @Ghostwhovotes

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 9:52 pm
lol I’ll add that under ‘learn to play golf’, Splat. I can’t teach her golf, I used to play but things got in the way.

Gab

24 Feb 13 at 9:59 pm
Newspoll 2pp for State NSW L/NP 60 ALP 40

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 10:01 pm
Newspoll 2pp for State NSW L/NP 60 ALP 40

Lol. That’s as good as it gets.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 10:02 pm
She’ll be OK if she’s a ” Hard Headed Woman ” Gab.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 10:03 pm
Konbanwa Jumpu sama,

Hai, Nihongo desu.

Yes, it’s Japanese.

Septimusu yori

Septimus

24 Feb 13 at 10:14 pm
M.S.Dhoni 200 no.
Well played sir.

jumpnmcar

24 Feb 13 at 10:19 pm
ReachTel: Sharp increase for LNP support in Queensland

LNP, up from 42.5% to 47.1% on last month

Labor, down from 34.9% to 28.9% on last month

Katter’s Australian Party,up from 10.5% to 11.5%

Greens, down from 8.4% to 7.9%

That’s a 60:40 2PP as well

JamesK

24 Feb 13 at 10:23 pm
Phonics

I learnt to read with phonics. Saying the letters helps to say an unfamiliar written word, and sounding it out can make it make sense.

Some children learn best with phonics, some with see-say, but there should be a combination of the two. I remember flash cards when I was a kid in school so that we could recognise the words, but mum, an infants’ school teacher, always made me sound out the letters to help me know what the word was.

kae

24 Feb 13 at 10:28 pm
I started school in 1963, Kindy.

kae

24 Feb 13 at 10:29 pm
Some problems are not new. Evidently people have had to deal with the left for a few thousand years.

Wisdom cries aloud in the street,
in the markets she raises her voice;
at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you;
I will make my words known to you.

Because I have called and you refused to listen,
have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,
because you have ignored all my counsel
and would have none of my reproof,
I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when terror strikes you,
when terror strikes you like a storm
and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
when distress and anguish come upon you.
Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently but will not find me.
Because they hated knowledge
and did not choose the fear of the Lord,
would have none of my counsel
and despised all my reproof,
therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way,
and have their fill of their own devices.”

Driftforge

24 Feb 13 at 10:31 pm
And how to trap and skin a rabbit Splat.

Pickles

24 Feb 13 at 10:31 pm
LOL. Newman up in the polls as well.?

For Labor, this is looking like an ELE.

Extinction Level Event.

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 10:34 pm
Jumpnmcar,

Translator please.
I think Japanese

Sorry, my 10.14pm reads:

Good evening Jump,

Yes, it’s Japanese.

Your friend Septimus

I’m afraid my Japanese is too rusty to properly translate what they say in the advert.

Septimus

24 Feb 13 at 10:35 pm
LOL. Newman up in the polls as well.?

Punish and destroy seems to be the public’s mission.

Recall all those leftwingers telling us that the firing of those QLD public servants was going to be Newman’s undoing and how the Federal Liars Party was going to use that to scare the voters.

Well, it just shows the public was pretty happy about the sackings. Newman ought to do more.

That reminds me, both fatboy and Stepford were telling us this. Way to go fellas. Good analysis.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 10:40 pm
Good Heavens Tom? Is it sexually transmitted? There won’t be a married Labor member uninfected.

Correction, there won’t be a free-bonking labor member uninfected.

kae

24 Feb 13 at 10:46 pm
Jc, where do you suggest Newman cuts into? Some climate change public servants?

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 10:50 pm
Harry quotes that lunatic Sanchez banned from here a long time ago agreeing with him suggesting he’s now banging on the door of the mental asylum to him (harry) in too.

“It’s become quite fashionable for garden-variety conservatives to label themselves “libertarian” and simply repeat the worst Tea Party memes, while seeming comically unaware of the contradiction in demanding absolute freedom from the authority of elected government while asserting the absolute authority of the monarchy and Vatican.”

Sums it up beautifully. Libertarianism is a word with the nice connotation of “liberty” but the looney right that make so much noise are better described as loonitarians – wilfully ignorant about evidence that shows the stupidity of thei views.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 10:51 pm
Andrew:

He’s basically done away with the QLD climate change dept.

Look, he originally went for a culling of around 20,000 and reduced that number to 14,000. He could cut nearly all essential services by 80% and QLDer’s wouldn’t feel a thing. Not a single thing.

Both education and health are top heavy with administrators. Those could easily be culled.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 10:54 pm
Since Obummer: Real Federal Spending Up $822.90 Per American Since 2008

(CNSNews.com) – Inflation-adjusted per capita federal spending went up $822.90 from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2012, according to official data from the U.S. Treasury and the Census Bureau.

Real federal spending also increased $2437.64 per household between 2008 and 2012.

In constant 2012 dollars, the federal government spent $3,176,376,470,000 in 2008 and $3,538,446,000,000 in 2012, according to the U.S. Treasury. (The 2008 spending number was adjusted to 2012 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.)

On April 1, 2008 (the midpoint in the federal fiscal year which ends on Sept. 30), there were 303,381,938 people in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and on April 1, 2012 there were 313,336,712.

The $3,176,376,470,000 that the federal government spent in fiscal 2008 equaled $10,469.89 for each of the 303,381,938 people who lived in the United States that year. The $3,538,446,000,000 the federal government spent in fiscal 2012 equaled $11,292.79 for each of the 313,336,712 people who lived in the United States that year.

Thus from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2012 inflation-adjusted federal spending per person increased by $822.90.

JamesK

24 Feb 13 at 10:57 pm
That reminds me, both fatboy and Stepford were telling us this. Way to go fellas. Good analysis.

Both gone quiet, eh?

wreckage

24 Feb 13 at 10:58 pm
Both gone quiet, eh?

Very very quiet. Fatboy particularly.

Jc

24 Feb 13 at 10:59 pm
“It’s become quite fashionable for garden-variety conservatives to label themselves “libertarian” and simply repeat the worst Tea Party memes, while seeming comically unaware of the contradiction in demanding absolute freedom from the authority of elected government while asserting the absolute authority of the monarchy and Vatican.”

These guys have trouble with ambiguity. When playing Scrabble I believe in the absolute authority of Webster’s Dictionary. OMG NOT A LIBERTARIAN!!! Always called myself a Classical Liberal anyway… mostly.

wreckage

24 Feb 13 at 11:01 pm
Lizzie

Crushed diamonds, Sydney Harbour – Clive James.

I love Clive James, he’s a brilliant observer and writer.

kae

24 Feb 13 at 11:11 pm
Newspoll tomorrow and Qanda with Turnbull and Bob Carr. What are we expecting. I say 55-45 and Turnbull to make the lefties squeal like little girls.

Andrew

24 Feb 13 at 11:13 pm
As a conservative I do not belief in life nor liberty, and certainly not equality for lefties. In the real universe, some ideas, some cultures, some people are better suited than others. Ones that demand female circumcision, the “marriage” of children to what are basically pedophiles, the virtual slavery of women, are not “equal”. Whilesoever the Monarchy and the vatican do not support these same enthiusiasms, I cannot worry too much about these institutions, nor worry too much about the liberties they restrict. When every leftoid institution is dust, when every lefty is in care, then perhaps? While Flannery is loose, the Vatican is unimportant.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 11:17 pm
What liberties does the Vatican restrict?

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 11:23 pm
“It’s become quite fashionable for garden-variety conservatives to label themselves “libertarian” and simply repeat the worst Tea Party memes, while seeming comically unaware of the contradiction in demanding absolute freedom from the authority of elected government while asserting the absolute authority of the monarchy and Vatican.”

So to be a libertarian I have to be a Catholic believer in the divine right of kings? The philosophy has hidden depths…

But what do I do if Papacy and Monarchy disagree?

squawkbox

24 Feb 13 at 11:25 pm
But what do I do if Papacy and Monarchy disagree?

“Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”

dismissive

24 Feb 13 at 11:28 pm
I love the fact that a piece of the Berlin Wall is now an ornament in the Vatican gardens – a kind of garden gnome or lawn jockey that mocks Stalin’s famous query, “How many divisions does the pope have?” Enough to have secured the twentieth century’s greatest – purely intellectual – libertarian victory: the destruction of the USSR. We won.

C.L.

24 Feb 13 at 11:36 pm
The Vatican won’t let priests marry or women give the sacraments. Not huge restraints but I would prefer they were not enforced. But these are trivial. Leftoids refuse to support legislation mandating shoot to kill for uninvited arrivals. They refuse to supprt legislation to mandate enquiry by torture for persons witholding information placing the public at risk, e.g. The Goose not fessing up on where our money has gone. It being illegal to torture the Treasurer is a sign of a decaying society.

WhaleHunt Fun

24 Feb 13 at 11:37 pm
GhostWhoVotes:

Galaxy Poll QLD State 2 Party Preferred: LNP 55 (-1) ALP 45

A bit different to ReachTel

JamesK

24 Feb 13 at 11:46 pm
Topless protesters lunge at Burlusconi

First Ukrainian and now Italian titty shows. I’m beginning to like this new leftist protest strategy.

Splatacrobat

25 Feb 13 at 12:02 am
Oh. My. God.

Gillard’s literacy policy – launched earlier today – is already in smoking ruins.

Fairfax reports: Gillard’s maths fails data test.

IN LAUNCHING a new school literacy program the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, appears to have committed a statistical howler.

Declaring that about 75,000 students failed to meet national minimum standards in the NAPLAN test last year she said, ”without improvement that number could climb to more than 150,000 by 2025”.

The doubling is the result of extrapolating forward the change over one year for 13 years.

Responding to Fairfax Media’s questions on Sunday, the Education Minister’s office said: ”The calculation is a Commonwealth analysis based on year 3 NAPLAN data and assumes the change seen between 2011 and 2012 continues out to 2025.”

But extending forward only the most recent change in a statistic is widely regarded as bad practice, likely to produce nonsense.

”One change does not a trend make,” the Deloitte Access director Chris Richardson, a former Treasury economist, said.

If, for example, the Commonwealth had extended forward only the most recent change in employment, between December and January, it would have looked as if employment was on track to climb 124,800 in the coming year. But if it had extended forward the previous change, between November and December, employment would have looked on track to slide 45,600.

”It’s good practice to use all of the comparable data, not just one change,” Mr Richardson said. ”The trend is your friend. To construct it, you should use all the comparable data.”

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 12:03 am
BRENDAN O’Connor has described Julia Gillard as a “tough as nails” and says she has the full support of the Labor caucus.

Tough as nails to describe gillard has had a few runs lately, maybe this is where they got the idea from.

Splatacrobat

25 Feb 13 at 12:07 am
“”One change does not a trend make,” the Deloitte Access director Chris Richardson, a former Treasury economist, said.”

Funny, that’s what climate scientists say.

Jarrah

25 Feb 13 at 12:09 am
““How many divisions does the pope have?” Enough to have secured the twentieth century’s greatest – purely intellectual – libertarian victory: the destruction of the USSR. We won.”

So it wasn’t Reagan? Well, gosh.

Jarrah

25 Feb 13 at 12:11 am
ONE in six Australians believe the ABC provides favourable coverage to the Labor Party while one in 20 believe the ABC is favourable towards the Coalition.

Research released today shows while most people do not believe political bias is widespread at the ABC, perceptions of bias are closely linked to voting history and voting intent.

The other five in six never watch or listen to the ABC.

Splatacrobat

25 Feb 13 at 12:13 am
According to Gorbachev – well, gosh – the USSR’s destruction was preponderantly brought about by Wojtyla. It was a glorious humiliation of communism by the Catholic Church. And we have the garden gnome to prove it.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 12:15 am
So that’s a PB for Gillard.

A policy worth more than a billion in ruins in less than 24 hours.

You can really see why she was sacked by Slater & Gordon.

I’m not sure it had to do with the slush fund.

I think they simply realised that she’s dumb.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 12:17 am
John Mc. The lady ‘helper’ and I have polished off a lovely bottle of Adelaide Hills Shiraz together once the kids were ‘bedded’. Bedding them consists of finding Snowbird and Blue Teddy and the latest Barbie from wherever they were last shoved and filling glasses of water and leaving the light on outside the bedroom door while chasing away miscellaneous intruding monsters, also refusing to discuss Strictly Dancing with more grown up personage, and giving a quick hug and kiss with strict instructions to go to sleep now.

Lady helper has gone to bed now (bored to bed by me raving away) and can do the morning shift because I am way beyond it, having had more of the Shiraz.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

25 Feb 13 at 12:30 am
Henry Ergas on Gillard’s ‘jobs plan’:

To call the jobs plan half-baked would do an injustice to frozen food.

ALP’s legacy: a disdain for facts.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 12:31 am
Nah Splat. That was halfway interesting.

Way beyond Labor standard.

burp ….

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

25 Feb 13 at 12:34 am
I have always thought that having a piece of the Berlin Wall in the Vatican was the best “in your face, commos!” gesture ever.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev once said the collapse of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without John Paul II. On his passing Mikhail Gorbachev said.

“Pope John Paul II’s devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all of us.””

In the fall of the Berlin Wall the Pope John Paul II played a vital background role in promoting the ideals of unity and empathy to his Polish homeland. His considerable moral authority laid an important framework for the eventual breaking down of the Iron Curtain and reuniting East and West. Of course the fall of the Berlin Wall cannot be attributed to any one person but the influence of the Pope was significant in promoting this ideal of non violent reunion.

“Warsaw, Moscow, Budapest, Berlin, Prague, Sofia and Bucharest have become stages in a long pilgrimage toward liberty. It is admirable that in these events, entire peoples spoke out – women, young people, men, overcoming fears, their irrepressible thirst for liberty speeded up developments, made walls tumble down and opened gates. “

- Pope John Paul II

Pedro the Ignorant

25 Feb 13 at 12:35 am
So it wasn’t Reagan? Well, gosh.

Have to admire you sometimes, Jarrah.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

25 Feb 13 at 12:35 am
It’s only about 6 percent who are under the standard. Those bell curves are always going to have laggers, hardly worth panicking about.

Harold

25 Feb 13 at 12:37 am
I think they simply realised that she’s dumb.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, CL.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

25 Feb 13 at 12:38 am
The last fifteen mls in the Chain of Ponds Shiraz, Adelaid Hlls, 2011, goes so easily into the glass, so why not drink it up? It won’t keep, will it?

And the usual suspect is not here to take over, is he? Just me and the miles of wooden train track and Thomas friends that has burgeoned all over the floor and even under this table. HIA is no longer here to control such random and unplanned developments. This house has turned into a large railway enterprise.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

25 Feb 13 at 12:46 am
“And we have the garden gnome to prove it.”

The German Club in Canberra also has a portion of the Berlin Wall. What is that proving?

Jarrah

25 Feb 13 at 12:55 am
You’re punch-drunk again, Jarrah.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 1:08 am
Giving up already? You’re no fun.

Jarrah

25 Feb 13 at 1:09 am
Yes, I’m giving on explaining to you why a counter lunch and pokies club in Canberra doesn’t have quite the triumphal swagger the Catholic Church of Solidarity does in relation to the collapse of the USSR.

Just as Dover and I gave up on trying to explain to you what an ad hominem was.

Just as I gave up on quoting the head of the CIA on waterboarding and bin Laden after your Christian Science Monitor self-beclowning.

Never argue with a fool, sayeth the wise man.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 1:25 am
It’s always fun to watch Communist sympathisers tie themselves in knots over the Cold War defeat. Their first position is that Ronald Reagan must never be allowed to take any credit for the fall of Communism. Fine, very well. The next step is to angrily deny that Pope John Paul II had anything to do with it. Fair enough. So the final possibility is simply that Communism was just incredibly unpopular and hated by those who had to live under its yoke, and just fell without any external pressure. But then, we were led to believe that The People really wanted their “free” healthcare and provisions, and were prepared to queue all week to that effect.

The short of it is, the Left have no theory whatsoever as to why the Soviet Union collapsed, because every explanation they might choose would derail a key narrative.

Fisky

25 Feb 13 at 2:59 am
According to Gorbachev – well, gosh – the USSR’s destruction was preponderantly brought about by Wojtyla. It was a glorious humiliation of communism by the Catholic Church. And we have the garden gnome to prove it.

Obviously that traitor to the Vatican, Ronald Reagan, had nothing to do with it at all.

Yobbo

25 Feb 13 at 6:04 am
Lap 49, Danica’s still in third.

sdog

25 Feb 13 at 6:17 am
No single explanation can serve re the USSR. Thatcher also aided the Poles by giving them moral support.
The internal tensions had a lot to do with it. Many knew for a long time that the system was broken, financially and socially. But the Poles with Walesa and company showed great determination, and Jaruszelski showed restraint.
Russians paid in advance and waited two years to get some shitbox of a car. They used to joke about ” the government is going to give us all a TV and a jet plane. When we see on the TV that eggs are available in Leningrad, we can fly there in our jet to buy some.”
But just being unhappy doesn’t bring down a regime. The Iranians need to become, dare I say, more Bolshie if they are ever to throw off the mullocracy.

Blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 6:35 am
Green flag pits, 70 laps down. Danica needs a better crew.

sdog

25 Feb 13 at 6:37 am
Danica led lap 90, now in third at lap 103.

sdog

25 Feb 13 at 7:05 am
Danica led lap 90, now in third at lap 103.

Begs the question really, what is she doing out of the kitchen?

Huckleberry Chunkwot

25 Feb 13 at 7:09 am
Ooga booga, ooga booga! Those Gina and Rupert clones are everwhere, I tells ya. ShakeMyHead.com has a panic attack:

THE growing influence of News Corp on the Ten Network is expected to come under scrutiny, following the appointment of top News executive and former advertising agency executive Hamish McLennan to take charge of the broadcaster.

James Warburton was sacked late on Friday after little more than a year in the role of Ten chief executive, after deep job cuts to the news division and weak ratings leading to a $13 million loss for the year.

The Ten chairman, Lachlan Murdoch, is understood to have flown to New York 10 days ago to meet Mr McLennan to discuss taking on the chief executive role.

Laurence Freedman, one of a group of investors who rescued Ten from receivership in the 1990s, said it appeared the network’s board ”has agreed that ex-News Corp people will have a large say in the running of Channel Ten”. ”From an appearances point of view, there is a strong apparent influence on Channel Ten,” he said.

Lachlan Murdoch owns a 9 per cent stake in Ten. He is also a director of News Corp.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 7:13 am
Maybe that’s why she’s so slow in the pits – she makes all the boys sammiches as they’re changing her tires.

sdog

25 Feb 13 at 7:14 am
So Lachlan stole one of Daddies’ key staff and its a Murdoch conspiracy. Hahahaha.

Entropy

25 Feb 13 at 7:48 am
Speaking of Rupe, the headless fruitcake rabble is still determined to do News Corp as much damage as possible on the way out the door:

Federal cabinet will consider a package of wide-ranging media reforms including new rules that would prevent Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation from expanding its influence by acquiring free-to-air television or radio businesses.

It is understood cabinet will review the much-delayed package of media reforms as soon as Monday. It includes a code of ethics for journalists, a tort of privacy and increased Australian content rules for FTA networks.

…

It is believed some sections of the Gillard government are concerned about what it regards as News Ltd’s “growing influence” at Ten. But senior cabinet figures, including Treasurer Wayne Swan and Foreign Minister Bob Carr, have questioned the wisdom of taking on News Ltd in an election year.

However, Senator Conroy is expected to argue that the Greens and independent MP Rob Oakeshott may not support the already announced changes to FTA regulation unless they are rolled into the broader package of reforms.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 8:01 am
Gab

May I suggest John Marsden’s “Tomorrow, When the War Began” series of books for young adults for your 14 year old friend?

Originally intended to be a trilogy, they were so popular the author extended the adventure to seven books plus a later trilogy of “Chronicles” about the heroine.

A movie was made in 2010 which is pretty true to the book.

At age 11, “Tomorrow…” was the first book my son ever voluntarily read. He was ‘hooked’ and after the second book, he then had to wait till each book was published through his teen age years.

eam

25 Feb 13 at 8:02 am
So Lachlan stole one of Daddies’ key staff and its a Murdoch conspiracy. Hahahaha.

What is it when the Guardian steals Fairfax staff – diversity in media?

Keith

25 Feb 13 at 8:08 am
Clover is installing tri-gen power plants in the Sydney CBD.

The trigen scheme is designed to cut the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 33 per cent. To put this into context, the City of Sydney accounts for 1 per cent of all the emissions of greater Sydney, which in turn accounts for 1 per cent of Australia’s emissions.

And Australia in turn accounts for 1.4% of global emissions. Wow what a saving.

Price tag – $5 billion, and the digging up of parts of the city centre for unspecified periods. No risk analysis or cba mentioned. I mean, what could go wrong?

I hope Sydney-siders will keep us posted on this project, if they can continue to afford to live there, and don’t fall down any holes, that is.

Keith

25 Feb 13 at 8:24 am
BRENDAN O’Connor has described Julia Gillard as a “~~tough~~ smart as nails” and says she has the full support of the Labor caucus.

Fixed.

Leigh Lowe

25 Feb 13 at 8:30 am
Price tag – $5 billion, and the digging up of parts of the city centre for unspecified periods. No risk analysis or cba mentioned. I mean, what could go wrong?

And of course, stupid bloody o’barrell will stand by by like a vegetable and let it all happen.

moore is an intolerable, inexcusable vandal and Syd-dee city council should be sacked.

Enough, FFS.

Rabz

25 Feb 13 at 8:34 am
jump 4:49 pm 24/2

Trams dont run into each other.

Saw a rather spectacular tram derailment on, I think, Brunswick Street one day. There’s a five way intersection up past the factory outlet shops (Diana Ferrari was in the street, can’t remember the name it was over 20 years ago).

kae

25 Feb 13 at 8:47 am
There’s endless jocularity in the AFR this morning about new ways to set fire to the public’s cash:

Single parents on welfare benefits would get up to $127 more a fortnight under an Australian Greens plan to be funded by plugging a “loophole” in the mining tax.

Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt has outlined a $1.44 billion proposal to boost payments to single parents on the Newstart allowance and increase the number of hours they can work before losing their benefits.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 8:57 am
I’d imagine the dinosaurs were saying similar things just before the asteroid hit:

The editor-in-chief, Sean Aylmer, said: ”The Sydney Morning Herald, since inception, has been about quality journalism. Fair and balanced coverage is why people have read us for almost two centuries. It is why we have survived and prospered. That won’t change.

The silly moaning herald switches to tabloid format next Monday.

When’s the paywall going up, you quality journalism purveyors?

Rabz

25 Feb 13 at 9:06 am
“Paddington was never part of the city LGA”( Dot at 5.05 pm) ?????? Actually up until August 1968 every last little bit of Paddo. was indeed part of the Council of the City of Sydney.It was then the Libs. carved up the City Council attaching parts of the carcase to Marrickville ,Leichhardt and Woollahra Councils whilst the residue became a much smaller City Council as well as a new Council,Northcott.

Lew

25 Feb 13 at 9:14 am
“When Scientists Behave Badly” by Joe Bast:

One of the biggest frauds committed by a scientist in the past year generated nary a peep of criticism from the scientific community. The criminal, who admitted to committing crimes that are punishable by years of imprisonment, continues to write and speak and even receive academic honors. After a brief “leave of absence” he got his old job back. His career hasn’t been adversely affected at all.
I speak, of course, about disgraced climate scientist Peter Gleick […].
A few scientists condemned the actions, but others excused and even praised Gleick for “exposing” a group that took an unpopular position on a major scientific controversy. In some circles, Gleick is a hero.
What message does that send to graduate students learning the guidelines of scientific debate? What does it tell donors and potential donors to nonprofit organizations supporting unpopular views, whether they concern climate change or social controversies such as homosexuality, racism, or abortion? And what does it tell us about the integrity of the scientific community, when it fails to criticize one of its own?

Deadman

25 Feb 13 at 9:42 am
Lil’ Johnny Meets Barack

Barack Obama was visiting a primary school and he visited one of the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked the president if he would like to lead the discussion on the word ‘tragedy’. So our illustrious president asked the class for an example of a ‘tragedy’.

One little boy stood up and offered: “If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a tragedy.”

“No,’ said Obama, ‘that would be an accident.”

A little girl raised her hand: “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy.”

“I’m afraid not,’ explained Obama.
‘That’s what we would call great loss.”

The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Obama searched the room. “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?”

Finally, at the back of the room, Little Johnny raised his hand. In a quiet voice he said: “If the plane carrying you and Mrs. Obama was struck by a ‘friendly fire’ missile and blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy.”

“Fantastic!’ exclaimed Obama. ‘That’s right. And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?”

“Well,’ says Johnny, ‘It has to be a tragedy, because it sure as hell wouldn’t be a great loss… and you can bet your ass it’s probably not an accident either.”

Rudiau

25 Feb 13 at 10:08 am
You are forgetting that great scientific axiom Deadman -
it’s alright when they do it.

Keith

25 Feb 13 at 10:10 am
Rabz,

moore is an intolerable, inexcusable vandal and Syd-dee city council should be sacked.

O’Farrell should sack Sydney Council and put an Administrator in charge before the tri-gen plant stupidity goes any further.

Septimus

25 Feb 13 at 10:18 am
Read this and weep.

We have the potential to be more unintelligent and ignorant than US citizens who recognise widespread lefty bias – and equally or more undeserving of liberty

The Australian: Most people don’t believe political bias widespread

This research of more than 1000 people shows that 15 per cent of the population believes the ABC’s coverage of the climate change debate leans in favour of climate change believers, a figure higher among Coalition voters of whom 29 per cent believe the ABC is biased on this issue.

The poll was conducted in the first half of February, in line with ABS census data and the ABC’s own Appreciation Survey conducted in 2009. It concludes that despite concerns, “most do not believe there is any bias in ABC coverage of the parties”.

The ABC Political Leaning Research shows:

About one in six (17 per cent) of the population believe the ABC coverage is favourable to the ALP.
This view is also held by 33 per cent of those who voted Liberal/National in the 2010 federal election and who also intend to vote Liberal/National this year.
Just 5 per cent of the population believe the ABC is favourable towards the Liberal/Nationals.
Of those polled who say they intend to vote Labor at the next election, 13 per cent say the ABC is favourable to the Coalition.
15 per cent say they believe ABC coverage is slanted in favour of climate change believers.

The Taverner polling concludes “that voting intent or voting history” is very closely aligned to any views regarding bias in the coverage by ABC.

“Those who voted or intend to vote Liberal were more likely to believe coverage favours the political Left, while those who voted or intend to vote Labor were likely to believe there was bias towards the political Right.

“However, most do not believe there is any bias in ABC coverage of the parties, even among committed voters for the particular parties.”

JamesK

25 Feb 13 at 10:37 am
Thank you for your suggestion, Eam.

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 10:39 am
Lil’ Johnny Meets Barack

There must be a Johnny in each class. I heard that a Little Johnny made the same comment to Julia when this classroom discussion came up in Australia.

eam

25 Feb 13 at 10:42 am
This will be intersting! According to Imre Salusinszky in today’s Oz, Greg Combet is likely to feature in the next round of ICAC hearings. Combet apparently wrote to mines minister Ian MacDonald urging approval of a coal mining licence in favour of former CFMEU boss John Maitland.

Steve of Ferny Hills

25 Feb 13 at 11:07 am
JamesK, I would like to see that survey disaggregated a little more.

How much ABC did those viewers watch? And what programs?

The ‘survey’ is probably completely useless, although perhaps indicative of the general political listlessnes of most people.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

25 Feb 13 at 11:16 am
The ‘survey’ is probably completely useless, although perhaps indicative of the general political listlessnes of most people.

Maurice Newman ABC chairman specifically addressed the ABC staff in 2010 and warned them of an ABC “group think” in certain areas – climate change was one he nominated.

Apparently an overwhelming majority of the 1000 polled don’t agree with him, Lizzie.

JamesK

25 Feb 13 at 11:29 am
Fat woman chooses surgery over diet for weightloss. Coroner blames surgeon for infection related death.

Harold

25 Feb 13 at 11:39 am
The independently minded Paul Sheehan has sorta an each-way bet on Wilders in a pretty good article:

Overkill in the name of Islam threat

”The people of Europe have not fallen for the big lie … 57 per cent of Dutch people believe mass Muslim immigration is the biggest mistake since World War II; 56 per cent of Dutch see Islam as a threat; 64 per cent of Germans hold Islam as violent; 74 per cent of French people see Islam as intolerant.

”These people are not extremists. They stand for decency, for commonsense, for liberty … we do not represent a fringe minority, as your minister [for Immigration, Chris] Bowen said. We represent a majority.”

The room gave him a standing, cheering ovation. He departed, leaving behind a question: who holds the fringe view on the issue of Muslim immigration in Australia? Is it the Dutch visitor, or the political-media class that shunned him?

JamesK

25 Feb 13 at 11:50 am
I routinely watch Q&A and Insiders, if only to make myself aware of the enemy’s intent.
Plus, whenever there is an able conservative on board it is instructive and entertaining to watch them do battle, especially when they cut through to a Left biased audience. It is heartening to see them break through but all too often the moderator either Cassidy or Jones changes subjects.
The great weakness of the Left is their unwillingness to test their ideas in the fire of public debate.

Lloyd

25 Feb 13 at 12:07 pm
Obviously that traitor to the Vatican, Ronald Reagan, had nothing to do with it at all.

If you say so.

But the Russian leader believed Wojtyla played the major role.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 12:09 pm
If “carpark” can’t be one work, and I think it cannot, then this Kew High School sign has 4 errors.

Harold

25 Feb 13 at 12:14 pm
Leftist icon Michael Bloomberg bans soft drink delivery with your pizza.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 12:15 pm
Leftist icon Michael Bloomberg bans soft drink delivery with your pizza.

What a titanic intellect.

It is a pity the people of New York couldn’t change the term limit to allow him to attack these petty issues for another 4 years.

Token

25 Feb 13 at 12:20 pm
Absence of audience detection of bias doesn’t mean it is not there, it means it is not grossly obvious.

It’s like aski audiences of sporting events to say if there is any cheating. In most cases the answer would be no, If the cheating was subtle enough. But that wouldn’t be a valid measure of whether any cheating was going on or not – to do that you’d have to have an investigation and check each game according to the rules.

So the survey is worthless, except to point out that audience don’t perceive bias – but that is not the same as saying it isn’t there.

A good way of checking the rules would be a tally of left v right panelists on q&a, and a breakdown of interruptions, cut offs and Dorothy dixers to the left panelists. That type of analysis might well tell a different story, even if th audience thinks it won’t biased.

brc

25 Feb 13 at 12:22 pm
Huh?

Benny Barba stood down by Bulldogs. Indefinitely.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 12:23 pm
Huh?

Benny Barba stood down by Bulldogs. Indefinitely.

Just more proof that Justice Minister Jason Clare and Sport Minister Kate Lundy didn’t abuse an ACC investigation for political purposes, CL

JamesK

25 Feb 13 at 12:29 pm
Well, no. They are saying the issues are gambling and booze.

mct

25 Feb 13 at 12:38 pm
Fat woman chooses surgery over diet for weightloss. Coroner blames surgeon for infection related death.

Another example of how our world is screwed up.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 12:58 pm
Lefty economist Ken Davidson (former economics editor of The Age) has been like a dog with a bone in exposing how the Labor gangsters and their crony mates in merchant banking skimmed off around $10 billion of the public’s money with the help of idiots like Tim Flannery:

It’s official. Melbourne Water users will pay $19.4 billion in contract payments to AquaSure for the desalination plant, according to an audit for the government by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The cost is equal to an interest rate of 11.5 per cent. If the Brumby government had borrowed the $5.7 billion itself and built exactly the same plant, the cost of the borrowings would have been 5 per cent, or $10.6 billion in 2009 when the contract was let (or 3 per cent, or $8 billion, at current interest rates).

Since 2009, successive governments have ramped up the average household water bill by 60 per cent to cover this huge financial burden involving repayments averaging $658 million a year over the first five years. Worse, the plant may never produce water because it is too expensive to turn the plant on. All the alternatives – including bottled water delivered to the end of the street – would be cheaper.

PwC advised that if the plant was turned on to produce 50 gigalitres of water to supplement Melbourne’s water supply, the true manufactured cost would be $13.58 a kilolitre – about 25 times the cost of water from a new dam and about nine times the cost of retail water.

The price of water is skyrocketing despite the fact that most of the major water infrastructure (pipes and dams) has been paid for twice over, out of consumers’ water and sewerage bills.

Enough of this information would have been available to the government and its advisers to know that then premier Steve Bracks should never have climbed into the specially-hired helicopter in 2007 to fly over Melbourne and announce that the government was going to drought-proof the city by building the then biggest reverse osmosis desalination plant in the world.

What he didn’t do was commission an independent cost-benefit analysis or environmental impact statement to see whether Melbourne needed the plant.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 1:01 pm
An old friend is an ABC techie who accepts most of the socio-political positions of the ABC’s groupthink, and—I take these quotes from a few of his recent Facebook rants—often condemns capitalism:

Capitalism keeps leaving people behind[.]

He supports “science” though he believes that 90% of the population should be exterminated so that the survivors make live more ecologically:

Science is the only thing keeping us ahead of the Malthusian curve.

His opinion of ordinary Australians is that they are:

tasteless, drunken bogans.

As well as being a misanthropist, he is an utter awarmist and therefore approves of the ABC’s censorship of alternative views:

[T]he only people still disagreeing [with the awarmist theory that we’re doomed by rising levels of carbon dioxide] are dilettantes from vested interests[,] some right-wing economists and conservative politic[ian]s. The ABC kept giving “balance time” to these wankers for too bloody long.
I have no problem with you believing in Monckton’s witchcraft […] because I’m comfortable believing in measurement and evidence and I’m doing what I can to reduce my carbon footprint.

Having defended the ABC’s biassed position, he then claims (in the same post) that the ABC is not biassed:

[W]e all have our opinions here, but 99% of us would die before we resort to the unprofessional practice of allowing those opinions to colour our work.

Such people will never see any bias in ABC’s broadcasts except, of course, when one of those dreadful conservatives is permitted to utter more misogynist, racist, sexist hate-speech.

Deadman

25 Feb 13 at 1:04 pm
Tom look how they headlined it…

Your water bills will continue to skyrocket unless Baillieu acts.

It reads…

Political responsibility for this situation belongs to Bracks, Brumby and the former Labor minister for water, Tim Holding.
But the Baillieu government has refused to break the contract, on the spurious grounds that it would involve sovereign risk.

How can the risk only be spurious? They’ve got a signed bloody contract with the state.

Harold

25 Feb 13 at 1:11 pm
As I said, Harold, Davo is a lefty. You can get away with anything at The Age as long as you blame Baillieu. There are sometimes three or four Baillieu-bashing pieces a day at Pravda – a preview of what Abbott will get nationally.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 1:19 pm
I was just told the Ben Barba thing has to do with an altercation – with a woman.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 1:22 pm
yeah gambing on its own is BS – if it was just gambling most teams would struggle to field a team!

pete m

25 Feb 13 at 1:40 pm
How can the risk only be spurious? They’ve got a signed bloody contract with the state.

What do you expect?

Every discussion we have moronic lefties about the Mining Tax gets bogged down over the same issue – Property Rights.

That is the Left fundementally believes that the government does not need to respect property rights and should have the right to make changes to contracts by devine government fiat.

Why do you think they would have a different approach when it comes to bullet proof contracts signed by Labor/Leftwing governments with corporate cronies at extortionary rates?

The Abbott government is going to find an endless string of such contracts designed to loot the publich purse and stop reform. At the same time, those cronies will provide a place for the Labor staffers to park themselves while they wait to get back in government.

Token

25 Feb 13 at 1:40 pm
Essential Poll L/NP: 56 (+2) ALP: 44 (-2)

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 2:03 pm
Essential Poll L/NP: 56 (+2) ALP: 44 (-2)

high time gillard launched into another Abbottisamisogynist rant. It will improve their polling. Somebody let McTernan know.

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 2:06 pm
If Newspoll comes out tonight anywhere below 54% for LNP we can safely dustbin it for too small a sample giving such wild results.

Given the pre-warning on news website it might actually run up a bigger number than even LNP could wish for – like a 57/43. Will be fun to watch Insiders if that happens.

pete m

25 Feb 13 at 2:23 pm
Good grief! First this. Now, on the same day, this.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 2:23 pm
Numpty spotting 101.

Numpties will often attempt to impress with their knowledge of trivial Captain Obvious style facts.

Examples:

Muslim isn’t a religion. Islam is a religion.

Commenter: tester. February 25, 2013, 8:08AM

Here The Age commenter ‘tester’ has replied to a post which used the terms ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’ correctly. Hence, ‘tester’ is not providing a correction he is just telling you that he knows the difference between the two terms. Well done ‘tester’, a gold Numpty star for you.

Also look out for:

“India is a part of Asia”

and

“Africa isn’t a country”

which are other common examples of Numpty boasting.

Harold

25 Feb 13 at 2:27 pm
The desal plants are shocking, shocking wastes of money.

Want ‘economic stimulus’ – use them as target practive for the RAAF and then shrug off the payments. I’m all for honoring contracts but there comes a time when you have to say ‘no way’.

Someone should be in jail for these things.

Destroy the plants, stop the payments and drop the water bills back to 2007 levels. Much more money pumped back into the economy than Rudds $900 cheques.

brc

25 Feb 13 at 2:54 pm
Abetz raises a motion of no confidence on the mining tax. Wong rants like a crazy woman and then Milne spinelessly supports the Government on the motion of no confidence. That is senate question time.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 3:15 pm
Brandis: “He (Swan) had no brains then (at university), he has no brains now”. Classic!

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 3:35 pm
I must say Sinclair, the above quote from Senator Brandis is certainly worth being put up as a Liberty Quote.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 3:46 pm
I don’t know Andrew, it’s a bit childish, I think. Sometimes I wish they would give that sort of talk a miss, it’s just too silly …

candy

25 Feb 13 at 4:03 pm
HELLO, Barnaby’s up, this’ll be good.

jumpnmcar

25 Feb 13 at 4:06 pm
I was correct, it is good, LOL.

jumpnmcar

25 Feb 13 at 4:14 pm
Barnaby is fucking hilarious. He is ripping them to pieces.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 4:14 pm
Barnaby is putting on one of the finest performances ever seen in Parliament.

Infidel Tiger

25 Feb 13 at 4:25 pm
The part where he discussed Senator Conroy and Cameron was gold.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 4:26 pm
petem,

Pre-warning?

MDMConnell

25 Feb 13 at 4:30 pm
Barnaby is putting on one of the finest performances ever seen in Parliament

I would pay good money for ” Barnabys’ Greatest Hits “.
Or download it for free, whateva, I still want it.

jumpnmcar

25 Feb 13 at 4:34 pm
Sen. Di Natale is sledging, at length, the Opposition. In short, his speech amounts to:

We don’t like this inept, corrupt Government; but we’ll support it anyway.

Deadman

25 Feb 13 at 4:39 pm
I put it on mute, Deadman. You should too.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 4:41 pm
Hope this Barnaby episode makes it onto youtube!

blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 4:41 pm
Here’s a little sampler: Barnaby!
He makes their heads explode, or at least prompts intemperate backlash in the form of demonisation from the complicit media.

blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 4:50 pm
Drumroll please………….

jumpnmcar

25 Feb 13 at 4:55 pm
Some great theatre as Barnaby asks a question of the Wong chap, who promptly puts the chamber to sleep until BJ interrupts to bring Wong back to the point.

blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 4:58 pm
Not astonishingly, though Sen. Milne sledged the Government’s mining tax last week outside of Parliament, today she meekly and hypocritically supports it in the Senate.

Deadman

25 Feb 13 at 5:00 pm
The greens have confidence in labors handling of the mining tax.
Front page tomorrow ?
Hahahaha….

jumpnmcar

25 Feb 13 at 5:05 pm
Sen. Siewert of the Greens, in her usual attempt to mke the idiots in the ALP look comparatively clever, asked for the Greens’ vote for their own amendment be recorded; yet the Greens did not call for a division—whereby votes are recorded—after there were insufficient “ayes” for their amendment.

Deadman

25 Feb 13 at 5:07 pm
Early Dinner to be served around 6:30: Greek-ish salad (cubed) on a bed of Cos lettuce, with Lemon & Oregano dressing, lamb shoulder chops – seared on the BBQ. Potatoes as a side dish, Penfolds cheap and cheerful Rawsons cabernet as a wash-it-down gargler.

blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 5:44 pm
MDM – there is a leading article in the news website saying Gillard is girding ehrself for another shocker poll result as newspoll is due tomorrow

seems a little “here it comes soften the blow” type article

I reckon news got the early word the numbers collected to date are not pretty so please give Julia a heads up / soften the blow by saying she’s prepared for it

just my cynical hat on today

pete m

25 Feb 13 at 5:49 pm
Pete, that’s how I read that article too. Given that News Ltd and Newspoll are joined at the hip, you’d reckon the journos at news.com.au would have the inside running on the results and they are shocking for Gillard and the ALP. I’ll be watching with interest tonight.

tbh

25 Feb 13 at 6:07 pm
Early dinner at 6:30? That would not be so early in Peacock’s time.
From Chapter VI of Nightmare Abbey (1818), by T.L. Peacock:

     MR FLOSKY.
[…] Tea, late dinners, and the French Revolution, have played the devil, Mr Listless, and brought the devil into play.

     MR. TOOBAD (starting up)
Having great wrath.

     MR. FLOSKY
This is no play upon words, but the sober sadness of veritable fact.

     THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS
Tea, late dinners, and the French Revolution. I cannot exactly see the connection of ideas.

     MR. FLOSKY
I should be sorry if you could; I pity the man who can see the connection of his own ideas. Still more do I pity him, the connection of whose ideas any other person can see. Sir, the great evil is, that there is too much commonplace light in our moral and political literature; and light is a great enemy to mystery, and mystery is a great friend to enthusiasm. Now the enthusiasm for abstract truth is an exceedingly fine thing, as long as the truth, which is the object of the enthusiasm, is so completely abstract as to be altogether out of the reach of the human faculties; and, in that sense, I have myself an enthusiasm for truth, but in no other, for the pleasure of metaphysical investigation lies in the means, not in the end; and if the end could be found, the pleasure of the means would cease. The mind, to be kept in health, must be kept in exercise. The proper exercise of the mind is elaborate reasoning. Analytical reasoning is a base and mechanical process, which takes to pieces and examines, bit by bit, the rude material of knowledge, and extracts therefrom a few hard and obstinate things called facts, every thing in the shape of which I cordially hate. But synthetical reasoning, setting up as its goal some unattainable abstraction, like an imaginary quantity in algebra, and commencing its course with taking for granted some two assertions which cannot be proved, from the union of these two assumed truths produces a third assumption, and so on in infinite series, to the unspeakable benefit of the human intellect. The beauty of this process is, that at every step it strikes out into two branches, in a compound ratio of ramification; so that you are perfectly sure of losing your way, and keeping your mind in perfect health, by the perpetual exercise of an interminable quest; and for these reasons I have christened my eldest son Emanuel Kant Flosky.

     THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX
Nothing can be more luminous.

     THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS
And what has all that to do with Dante, and the blue devils?

     MR. HILARY
Not much, I should think, with Dante, but a great deal with the blue devils.

     MR FLOSKY
It is very certain, and much to be rejoiced at, that our literature is hag-ridden. Tea has shattered our nerves; late dinners make us slaves of indigestion; the French Revolution has made us shrink from the name of philosophy, and has destroyed, in the more refined part of the community (of which number I am one), all enthusiasm for political liberty. That part of the reading public which shuns the solid food of reason for the light diet of fiction, requires a perpetual adhibition of sauce piquante to the palate of its depraved imagination. It lived upon ghosts, goblins, and skeletons (I and my friend Mr Sackbut served up a few of the best), till even the devil himself, though magnified to the size of Mount Athos, became too base, common, and popular, for its surfeited appetite. The ghosts have therefore been laid, and the devil has been cast into outer darkness, and now the delight of our spirits is to dwell on all the vices and blackest passions of our nature, tricked out in a masquerade dress of heroism and disappointed benevolence; the whole secret of which lies in forming combinations that contradict all our experience, and affixing the purple shred of some particular virtue to that precise character, in which we should be most certain not to find it in the living world; and making this single virtue not only redeem all the real and manifest vices of the character, but make them actually pass for necessary adjuncts, and indispensable accompaniments and characteristics of the said virtue.

Deadman

25 Feb 13 at 6:08 pm
Would love to see what happens if Newspoll has Labor’s primary vote with a “2″ in front of it.

Bill the Pieman can’t sit on the fence with those sort of numbers floating around for any length of time.

H B Bear

25 Feb 13 at 6:15 pm
When was the last time the coalitions primary poll doubled that of alp Federally ?
56/28 sounds good

jumpnmcar

25 Feb 13 at 6:29 pm
God, how sickening.

Michelle Obama announced Best Picture winner at Oscars.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 6:31 pm
Greek-ish salad (cubed) on a bed of Cos lettuce, with Lemon & Oregano dressing

Strop, there are a few simple to produce a proper yummy skippy Greek salad: 1. Greek fetta, never Danish or “low-fat”; 2. Pitted Calamata olives — saves breaking a tooth on those other buggers; 3. very ripe roma tomatoes with continental cucumber pieces and preferabbly iceberg lettuce — the sweetest of all, not that bitter rabbit food so loved by the trendy food bogans. 4. Unless you are a very talented female, of which I have/have had three in my life, just buy the cheap Italian salad dressing — bewdiful.

Can I recommend a sensational new 2010 (or maybe it was 2011?) Coonawarra cab sav by Jacobs Creek – $18 because they’ve built their reputation on cheap wines so they’re not game to charge the right money when they finally produce a beauty from the best wine-growing soil in the country? Drinks like $100 worth, IMO. Another old vineyard, Taylors up at Clare (Australia’s second-best red wine district in Oz, sez me), also has a very useful 2010 cab sav for around $16 in the shops.

You’ve just reminded me I’ve got some marinated lamb chos in the fridge. Yum.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 6:31 pm
God, how sickening.

Michelle Obama announced Best Picture winner at Oscars.

Why, because the chick on the left of the photo is perving on Wookies arse or the chick on the left is doe eyed at the chick on the left.
I’m OK with it.

jumpnmcar

25 Feb 13 at 6:46 pm
Be a good thought bubble comp pic.

jumpnmcar

25 Feb 13 at 6:48 pm
Another old vineyard, Taylors up at Clare (Australia’s second-best red wine district in Oz, sez me), also has a very useful 2010 cab sav for around $16 in the shops.

They make a great riesling too, which is presumably also from Clare.

tbh

25 Feb 13 at 6:50 pm
I should also add that I had some great Clare Valley shiraz from Thomson Estate on the weekend, so Tom your assessment may have some legs.

tbh

25 Feb 13 at 6:52 pm
I started reading the Sheehan article on Bangladesh, but shelved it for more important things.

In the meantime, I do wonder if he’s heard of Mughalistan?

Probably not, since I only learned of it yesterday, and that was only through speaking with people over in India who are more aware of what’s happening on the ground in that part of the world.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 7:03 pm
As for the First Wookie announcing Oscar winners. She truly has no class.

She’s a jumped-up affirmative action sook.

Is she proud of her country now that hubby’s fundamentally transformed it like he promised?

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 7:05 pm
The Non-Liberty Socialist Reditributionist quote from ABC TV News:
The “big banks” better start sharing their profits or we’ll do it for them?
What?

blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 7:32 pm
Yes, I also love Taylors.

blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 7:35 pm
Fuck the Slime is just cancerous. They shouldn’t be counted as human. This scum lives in sewers. Look at what they are trying to push through.

Greens urge early move on media ownership reforms

THE Gillard government is facing calls from the Greens to bring forward its long-awaited media reforms within weeks in a bid to rush the legislation through before the election.

Greens leader Christine Milne is stepping up pressure on Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to impose tough new ownership rules, including two measures to vet owners, after arguing that developments at the Ten Network could break the current laws.

There is no dealing with them. You treat them with utter contempt and never give them an even break.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 7:47 pm
Seriously, if they push through this legislation the libs ought to nominate the Crikey owner and that piece of shit, Graeme Wood as not proper and fit persons to own newspapers. Just go after them with both barrels.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 7:50 pm
Speaking of living in sewers, I enjoy Grand Designs but am finding Kevin’s Poo Corner a bit mixed, shaken and stirred.
There’s an abundance of inventiveness, but I have to say I would have preferred the Massey-Fergusson to be restored, not turned into a deck chair.
It was dismissed as “knackered”, a classification which should never be applied to such a noble piece of equipment. Rusty, maybe, and not working at this time, but not knackered!

blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 7:58 pm
nilk are you putting the big girl knickers on tonight and drunk blogging QandA……..again?

Tal

25 Feb 13 at 7:58 pm
Yup. It’s decision time, Tal. Do I crack open a UDL, do the vodka and orange, or else hit the Glayva?

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 8:13 pm
Simple, healthy fare tonight – BBQ lamb leg steaks and fresh green salad followed by vanilla ice cream dessert. A Corona (no lime or lemon) while turning the lamb, then another Corona with the meal. Now for a relaxed evening reading “House of Sand and Fog” while listening to some nice music – first up is Ellie Goulding’s “Halcyon” CD. Will keep one eye on the reports from the front by the brave Cat volunteers watching Q&A.

Septimus

25 Feb 13 at 8:18 pm
Don’t waste the Glayva, nilk

eam

25 Feb 13 at 8:18 pm
I know, eam. I’ve also got some coffee liquer I bake cakes with, but I’m not sure if even I could stoop so low.

UDL’s looking (almost) good.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 8:20 pm
JC, I’m even getting sick of giving Tubbsy Milne such a friendly nickname. She’s a deadset fascist with the instincts of a Nazi. I think the Libs should target her for constant attack as an Australian traitor and killer of jobs. And Tasmania should be isolated as the parasite state.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 8:23 pm
Couldn’t agree more Tom. I started calling her tubbsie as she’s basically a fat, useless nasty fascist piece of work.

She would be my idea of hell. ( Hope I’m not giving the big guy in the sky any thoughts if I don’t it through the pearly gates, although I’m sure he just loves). Hell would be spending eternity with Tubbsie Milne.

You couldn’t say gas yourself or jump from a bridge as you’d be sent back to her over and over.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 8:28 pm
oops he just loves me..

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 8:28 pm
Nerd alert – Dalek designer has died

squawkbox

25 Feb 13 at 8:30 pm
nilk are you putting the big girl knickers on tonight and drunk blogging QandA……..again?

I’m game, i have a bottle of The Baille Nichol Jarvie and a 30 pack of coke, i welcome all my fellow drunkbloggers wading through the cesspit of QandA and appreciate the mental trauma they will undertake for the team.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 8:31 pm
I’m with JC on this, there is no negotiating with these anti-freedom turkeys. They are against anyone or anything that doesn’t align with their world view and are prepared to use legislation to enforce it. You barely have to scratch the surface before their inner totalitarians come out. They must be wiped out electorally. I would rather deal with the ALP, as cancerous as they are right now, than the Greens.

tbh

25 Feb 13 at 8:32 pm
BTW, don’t kid yourselves about how good the Australian cricket team is. Minimum 3-4 years before we’re even in contention to be world-beaters again. 141-7 — still 50-odd behind. We’ll lose tomorrow with half a day to spare.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 8:32 pm
The Dalek designer might have died, but the Daleks, like the left, never sleep.

blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 8:33 pm
The “big banks” better start sharing their profits or we’ll do it for them?

What?

I do hope they asked the shareholders thier opinion of profit sharing with non-shareholders is?

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 8:36 pm
TW, don’t kid yourselves about how good the Australian cricket team is. Minimum 3-4 years before we’re even in contention to be world-beaters again. 141-7 — still 50-odd behind. We’ll lose tomorrow with half a day to spare.

I have serious concerns about our batting order. There aren’t enough genuine international class players in there, not at the moment at least.

tbh

25 Feb 13 at 8:37 pm
Sky News – Jim Chifley dismisses gillzillas bad polling “the polls are a big distraction in an election year”.

Sweet cheezes on a bicycle this man is a fool.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 8:49 pm
Drop Wade for starters. He’s not a keepers arsehole. Haddin is a much better keeper and batsman against spin.

Jury is out on Starc too. Too full, too short. Doesn’t seem to have a stock ball.

Cowan seems a nice chap but if he ever averages above 35 I’ll be a monkeys uncle.

Can’t wait for Cummins and Pattinson to open the bowling together.

Infidel tiger

25 Feb 13 at 8:50 pm
Just been listening to Bananaby Joyce on Price-Bolt. He’ll make a fantastic minister provided he understands that the media-political class, far from lampooning him, will eventually fear him and will devote their entire energy from 2013 to 2016 to destroying him. Bolt is also further advancing my pet theory that Rudd won’t run this year and will attempt to destroy the backbench of faceless men, which destroyed him.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 8:52 pm
Drop Wade for starters.

Yes, but go to Paine, not backwards to Haddin.

Drop Watson and Hughes. Install Khawaja and Bailey, they have the best techniques in Sheffield Shield. Does anyone remember technique? Noun: 1, The systematic procedure by which a complex or scientific task is accomplished; 2a, the way in which the fundamentals, as of an artistic work, are handled; b, skill or command in handling such fundamentals.”

With Warner, Hughes and Wade we have three cocky batsmen in the top six. Three too many.

James in Melbourne

25 Feb 13 at 8:54 pm
Don’t get mad, get even, eh Tom?
Book time, goodnight all.

blogstrop

25 Feb 13 at 8:55 pm
Rudd won’t run this year and will attempt to destroy the backbench of faceless men, which destroyed him.

I think you are correct there Tom, kevni has a mean streak a mile wide and the prissy pretentious pr!ck wants some payback on that inbred howes.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 8:55 pm
There are times when I love Barnaby Joyce who wants to see the greens “car pooling” LMAO

Aliice

25 Feb 13 at 8:55 pm
IT, I generally respect your views on sport, but you are so wrong about Haddin.
Time and again he has shown that he doesn’t have the ticker for a fight. When the going gets a bit tough, he always throws his wicket away and the scribes (read NSW) say, “Ah well, that’s the way he plays”.
In fact, they are now doing the same with Warner & Hughes.
FFS boys, harden up!

Huckleberry Chunkwot

25 Feb 13 at 9:00 pm
No Q and A for me tonite. I did more than a bottle of Shiraz last night and am still recovering. I can’t face Tony Smarm cutting people off and me without a drink and I just can’t face a drink right now or later. Anyway, half the fun for me is watching HIA leap about in forthright gesticulation making Irish-toned asides (while insisting on watching it), and he is missing in action in China. He called this afternoon and said tomorrow he is going to fly to someplace which he tried to identify for me with some fairly detailed locational plotting against other places. But geography is not what I do.

I don’t even properly know where Shanghai is, so don’t bother, I had to tell him. You are too far away, is all I know.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

25 Feb 13 at 9:09 pm
Qanda tonight. I guess the lefties will be pissed off enough tonight with Newspoll, Qanda will be more appetising as they won’t be able to tweet about how Turnbull would lead the Coalition to victory and the Coalition is in trouble with Abbott

Fyi, I will be on Qanda duty again!

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 9:14 pm
Oh dear, Eva Cox is on Qanda tonight.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 9:15 pm
Oh dear, Eva Cox is on Qanda tonight.

She’s great. She epitomizes all that’s wrong with the Left.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 9:17 pm
Don’t blame you, Elizabeth. You watching, Nilk? Good man, Andrew. You up to giving an intellectual dissertation, JC?

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 9:20 pm
Well, the fish have had their water changed, the bins are out and the can cracked.

There is a storm (not quite) raging and I’ve survived 4 Corners. A sad tale of what happens when people get totally shi’tefaced and bash other people, and how we need to restrict alcohol more or some such.

I say bring back public decorum and the shaming of those who make complete morons and tossers of themselves, and prosecute the crap out of those who do harm.

We’ve had laws on the books for yonks, why not enforce them rather than subject us to four corners?

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:20 pm
So apart from good ol’ Nilk, who else is volunteering to be a Q and A hero this evening?

Oh and Andrew – I used to go out with a bird who lived in Eva Cox’s terrace in Glebe.

Had the misfortune of encountering the feminayzee quackademic in person a few times.

Monstrous. Thank goodness the bird I was seeing was a looker. Cox is enough to put you off the beast with two backs for life…

Rabz

25 Feb 13 at 9:21 pm
Me

I’ll be watching too. I will cat twittering.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 9:22 pm
What do people think about Turnbull on Qanda?

Rabz, I don’t want to imagine what Eva Cox was like when she was young.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 9:24 pm
I want a Whyalla wipeout Newspoll style for Gillard.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 9:25 pm
Andrew, this was about eleven years ago. She was not ‘young’ even then.

Rabz

25 Feb 13 at 9:26 pm
Jonathan Holmes doesn’t realise he has become a satire of the left.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 9:27 pm
I will cat twittering.

Hopefully you’ll actually use some verbs and prepositions too. They’re on sale today so won’t cost you much.

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 9:27 pm
You up to giving an intellectual dissertation, JC?

Yep. Always do.

Here’s my bet for the subject questions this evening, Fatty Jones will allow through.

Global warming, Gay marriage and a side swipe against Abbott.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 9:28 pm
Carpe’s in, apparently.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:28 pm
Yes, but go to Paine, not backwards to Haddin.

Agreed as long as his damaged digit is up to it.

Drop Watson and Hughes. Install Khawaja and Bailey, they have the best techniques in Sheffield Shield

Shaun Marsh probably has the best technique. Unfortunately his form off the field will probably prevent him from getting a recall.

3 bright spots after this Test: Clarke once again, Pattinson and very surprisingly Henriques.

Infidel Tiger

25 Feb 13 at 9:28 pm
Global warming, Gay marriage and a side swipe against Abbott.

The panel will like that, including Turnbull.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 9:29 pm
Yay for Sven.

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 9:29 pm
Why doesn’t the Wong chap wear a tie in parliament, he seems to be wearing a suit.

Rob

25 Feb 13 at 9:29 pm
Nearly QandA time troops – Lets get ready to Rrrrruuuummmmbbbbllllee.

Scotch – check

Ice – check

Generic cola drink – check

mute button – check

Nerf balls to throw at TV – check

lets do it.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:31 pm
5 min to go. Can’t wait.

Gentlemen, start the engines.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 9:31 pm
Yay for Sven.

I live to serve

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:32 pm
I will cat twittering.

Hopefully you’ll actually use some verbs and prepositions too.

Heh. It will be so fun

Septimus

25 Feb 13 at 9:33 pm
Thanks in advance to all you dedicated Q&A bloggers. And thank God I’m 3 hours behind so nobody asks me to do it.

squawkbox

25 Feb 13 at 9:33 pm
Yay for Sven.

Very naughty, Gab.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 9:34 pm
QandA – Bob Carr is on, the gene pool just got shallower.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:35 pm
PS – don’t call me Sven.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:36 pm
So, has anyone seen the Vietnam Vet With The Gay Son this year yet?

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:36 pm
QandA – Bob Carr is on, the gene pool just got shallower.

Is the chipmunk on is he?

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 9:36 pm
Jones wears appalling specs.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 9:37 pm
Are they gillard’s?

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 9:37 pm
HTF does he see through them?

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 9:37 pm
I googled pics of Eva Cox, and she looks like she should be on the site Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians.

And we’re off with the Prisoner X.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:37 pm
First cab off the rank is Israel.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 9:38 pm
Carr needs to lose the combover. They are an offence against small rodents everywhere.

As for the question: Should we be concerned about Israel’s lack of transparency regarding Priz-X. How about we get a bit of transparency with our own government?

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:39 pm
We need to deal with the problem of someone who goes overseas – in this case the ME, takes ougt dual citizenship and gets into trouble.

Snow Cone: Is it poss that he was in prison b/c the Israelis believe that he was going to give out info?

ie. let’s blame Israel pre-emptively.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:41 pm
More Israel-bashing. They have a secret jail.

Well, so did Saddam. So do the Iranians. So what?

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:42 pm
What a clusterfuck. Australia 9-207.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 9:42 pm
First up the Ben Zygier tale – lets Israel bash to strat the night.

Bob Carwreck “he needs a history”.

Snowcone – throws out the conspiracy theory.

Ms Soulief – aimlessly rambles, “palestinian prisoners in Israeli gaols”?? divkhead

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:42 pm
And, now, let’s talk about Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. (that’s from the female who isn’t Eva Cox)

[how about we talk about Israeli prisoners in Palestinian jails? I’m thinking Gilad Shalit and the prisoner exchange. Ahlam Tamimi I’m looking at you)

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:43 pm
Turnbull – Mr Z had taken out Aussie passports under different names.

[That's an interesting point].

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:45 pm
Julian Burnside just asked about a hanging point in the cell. We were told before that he died of a heart-attack. Which is it?

Harold

25 Feb 13 at 9:46 pm
QandA – Turnbull starts well. Quelle suprise.

Dual passports – i say do what Japan does make your choice by age 22.

Eva Cox – Oh my giddy Aunt “Israel is losing a lot of its legitimacy”, “locking people up in Gaols”

farkinhell

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:47 pm
Ooh, someone supporting Israel – It’s not unusual for governments agencies to issue passports in different names.

Israel is the only democracy in the ME and surrounded by enemies, so why can’t they do the same things?

Eva Cox: Yeah, yeah, we know all that, but we need transparency from Israel. People shouldn’t be jailed or Israel loses legitimacy.

Old witch,.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:47 pm
I love Cox: I’m a Holocaust survivor, all that sort of thing.

Seriously? The Holocaust survivors I’ve met haven’t been so blase about it all.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:48 pm
QandA – Bab Carr – incoherent ramblng

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:50 pm
A holocaust survivor? For me that means having survived the death camps, as in being there but made it through.

Eva Maria Hauser was born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1938, less than three weeks before the Anschluss (12 March 1938). She and her family were declared stateless. The following year, her mother Ruth, a final-year medical student, took her to England where she spent the war, technically as an enemy alien. Her father, Richard Hauser, joined the British Army in Palestine, and her grandparents and other relatives took refuge in Sydney, Australia. After the war her father worked for the United Nations Refugee Association in Rome, where Eva continued her schooling for two years, joining her mother’s extended family in Sydney in 1948. It was only in Australia that she started becoming aware of her Jewish identity and the Jewish community. She is now an atheist and a humanist.

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 9:51 pm
Cherie ‏@Che22a
#QandA there is some truth in hypotheticals

Why would you select such an nonsense tweet for onscreen display?

Harold

25 Feb 13 at 9:51 pm
Turnbull: Did Mr. Z ask for consular assistance?
Carr: No, but the family had access to him

LOL Australia cannot allow people to abuse our passports overseas. So how about those people over in Lebanon who had been quite happily living there for years until it went to crap a few years ago and then they bleated for the Aussie gov’t to bail them out and ship them back here where it’s safe? I don’t recall any strong words about dual passports then.

But again…. the Joooooos!!

Oh, and the Egyptian novelist woman disagrees that Israel is under existential threat. Look at all the agreements and treaties they’ve broken.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:51 pm
More Israel bashing from the black haired harridan.

Next – an Assange question from a wide eyed loon (say NO to drugs kids).

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:52 pm
Carr points out that Assange is running from the Swedes. The Swedes apparently do not extradite anyone for military or intelligence reasons.

I guess Assange is toast. No intelligence there.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:54 pm
QandA – screw Assange, he’s a freak and a tool.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:54 pm
Oh dear. Illiterate reading some garbled question about wikileaks.

Did anyone get that or should I drink more?

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:55 pm
should I drink more?

Silly question.

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 9:56 pm
QandA – Matt Watt – conspiracy theory #2, extraditing assange from swededn.

Jeff Bleitch – good response, “a more robust extradition treat with the UK than Sweden” – “a ludicrous proposition”.

Next – Conspiracy theory #3 – Oh FFS are these people retarded? Who picked this audience? Krusty the clown.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:57 pm
Okay, I think I’ve got it. So basically the wingnuts think that Sweden are after Assange on behalf of the CIA and using drunk women to do so.

Moonbat also points out that he’s got bits of paper with “Grand Jury” written on it, so can the US Ambassador now confirm there is one?

shorter US Ambassador: Ohffs. Yet another puerile gotcha attempt. Assange is nothing to do with us, talk to Sweden and go back to Infowars.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:58 pm
Did anyone get that or should I drink more?

It helps

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 9:58 pm
Eva Cox now America bashing, the Swedes are over the top, Assange is paranoid and justifiably so.

How does anyone breathe in the rarified atmosphere these strange people live in?

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 9:59 pm
Eva Cox – Proof that you shouldn’t raid the minibar in the green room.

Dear god even Carr can’t shut the stupid dribbler up.

Snow cone “the grand jury” farkov dil

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:01 pm
Tony Jones showing what a lefty tool he is with Assange

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 10:01 pm
Oh, so Carr says it’s among the English, Swedes and the Ecuadorians.

Cox says that it’s not the English, they’ve just implemented an EU ruling. (well duh! They sold their sovereignty for a mess of pottage crap decades ago)

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:01 pm
Andrew Snow Cone is a lefty tool without Assange.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:01 pm
US Ambassador doing well now, “all this mail i think everyone shouls read it”

Good riposte.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:02 pm
Don’t watch Q&A.
But reading the posts above it appears we have Julian Burnside, Eva Cox, Bob Carr and Malcolm Turnbull.
Now that is something which should come with a health warning Nicola.

PS Has Julian figured out the difference between Twitter and SMS yet after libelling Abbott?

Leigh Lowe

25 Feb 13 at 10:02 pm
US Ambassador thinks that wikileaks and those who published leaked information are wrong.

Good to see someone has half a clue out there.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:03 pm
Ambassador means the government information that lead to people being harmed, btw.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:04 pm
QandA – Turnbull makes sense – there goes my worldview.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:05 pm
I will cat twittering.
Hopefully you’ll actually use some verbs and prepositions too.

Of course, “will” and “twittering” are verbs; another auxiliary verb (such as “be”), however, would help.

Deadman

25 Feb 13 at 10:05 pm
Speaking of living in sewers, I enjoy Grand Designs but am finding Kevin’s Poo Corner a bit mixed, shaken and stirred.
There’s an abundance of inventiveness, but I have to say I would have preferred the Massey-Fergusson to be restored, not turned into a deck chair.
It was dismissed as “knackered”, a classification which should never be applied to such a noble piece of equipment. Rusty, maybe, and not working at this time, but not knackered!

well, I hate to break up the Q&A flow, but I’m enjoying the poo-focused house in the woods show. It is a giant advertisement of how ridiculous the concept of living a ‘sustainable lifestyle’ is. The guy drove a 40 mile round trip in a ute, spent half an hour picking up lion shit, dug a giant hole in the ground, spent a lot of money on plumbing, and he got enough gas to boil a kettle.

Anyone with a brain would have realised he should have just siphoned off 50 ml of diesel from his car and boiled his ketle with that.

Same goes for all the other crazy schemes, from the glass making to the chair. It just shows that being a greenie-live-in-the-forest-idiot is the pursuit of a rich man, a bit like how Marie Antoinette liked to dress up as a milkmaid.

His friends didn’t look too pleased when orderd to go an have an al-fresco dump as condition of entry to his party. Oh, the women mouthed the right platitudes but you could see they would rather be on a soft sofa, central heating on and watching Eastenders.

Still, he’s a good presenter and I enjoy the show. Laughing at how ridiculous it is.

brc

25 Feb 13 at 10:05 pm
QandA – tweet of the night – ‘assange is more narcissist than journalist’

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:06 pm
Turnbull says that Assange didn’t break any Aussie laws, so no sense in getting involved (fair call), but it made us look a bit cold and unsympathetic.

Turnbull took up Assange’s case with KRudd.

Turnbull also feels we didn’t do much for him, and perhaps white boy can’t dance should have just gone to Sweden and faced the music and got it all done with.

Forgets that white boy can’t dance is a total attention whore.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:07 pm
Ladies, feast your eyes on this:White boy can’t dance.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:09 pm
this:White boy can’t dance.

Dear God – give a warning.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:11 pm
Question about US sending jets and military equipment to Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. What does the US Amb think about that?

Snow Cone throws to the Egyptian novelist and she tries to handball it. Says it’s a terrible idea, but Morsi has been buying teargas, and wants to bring them into the country on military transports. And all just in time for the election.

Nothing about the question, of course.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:11 pm
Sod that, Sven. This is QandA. Anything goes.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:12 pm
Egyptain Revolution – cane someone just be honest and say it is a quasi islamist shithole.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:12 pm
Still, he’s a good presenter and I enjoy the show. Laughing at how ridiculous it is.

Shot the deer himself for the leather which I appreciated. Accepted the necessary consequences.

Driftforge

25 Feb 13 at 10:12 pm
Sod that, Sven. This is QandA. Anything goes.

LOL

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:13 pm
brc

enjoying the poo-focused house in the woods show.

Watching ‘Classic Restos” or, better still, “Blokesworld” is much better for you.

Septimus

25 Feb 13 at 10:13 pm
Ambassador: Egypt going through a challenging time and we’re sending humanitarian assistance. Plus, there are other players and some come from outside. Can’t defang the military.

I call bullshite.

Carr jumps in and says what about the minorities, we’re all about looking after minorities in the ME (we love the Copts), but nothing about the Christians in Iraq.

Oh, wait, are there any there????

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:14 pm
The US won’t help us, it’s their fault we’re dying.

The US are interfering, it’s their fault we’re dying.

Harold

25 Feb 13 at 10:14 pm
QandA – incoherent swampy in the crowd. Carr actually made some sense re Copts.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:15 pm
First mention of “cultural diversity”.

Back to questioner, only people the Egyptian government are focussing on are their own. US made bullets are in Egyptian bodies, both christian and muslim.

Novelist: we need to be careful when talking about protecting minorites because that leads to colonialism and imperialism.

shorter egyptian: FOAD and keep out.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:17 pm
Carr backpedals: when we talk about protecting minorites we don’t mean intervention. we mean talking to the govenment, and gentle persuasion.

ie. we suck up to the strong horse.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:18 pm
Dark haired cat lady – ‘the revolution’ ‘American bullets and American arms are being used to kill indiscriminately’.

Who the fuck is pulling the trigger? Fat Cat and Friends – turd.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:18 pm
The challenge that the Copts have in Egypt is horrendous – it’s existential.

Then there are the allawi, and even the shia.

Mal, maaaate, the shia will align with the sunni if it means they get to fight infidels.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:20 pm
QandA – Turnbull scores on Carr – the wound is deep.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:21 pm
Tunbull: who would be on the minority hitlist?

Carr: you wouldn’t. You’re my fave Liberal leader.

cue audience laughter.

Eva Cox. Americans need to stop providing arms that can be used against civilians.

[hello? ever heard of China or the NorKs?]

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:22 pm
Boring Qanda tonight

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 10:22 pm
Shot the deer himself for the leather which I appreciated. Accepted the necessary consequences.

And seemed really excited to use explosives to blow up the oak tree he felled.

I see the show as more of a warning for our greenist subsistence level future.

Infidel Tiger

25 Feb 13 at 10:22 pm
Ambassador points out that every country has a right to protect itself.

Uh-Oh, Cox doesn’t like that idea. It doesn’t matter – Americans are eeevil.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:23 pm
You’ll find that stuff all of their weapons are US made. Russia and China.

Harold

25 Feb 13 at 10:23 pm
Just flicked over to Q&A after the cricket and was most surprised to see Tony Windsor sitting between Turnbull and the American Ambassador.

Huckleberry Chunkwot

25 Feb 13 at 10:25 pm
Carr asked if it’s time for TLS to retire, like a sportsman past his prime?

Carr weasels awsay – I don’t do sports analogies.

Snow Cone throws it to the panel.

Turnbull agrees with Howard that politics are determined by the iron laws of arithmetic, but Labor seemed to throw that out when they knifed Rudd.

Hatred for Rudd among the Labor party is greater than the natural instinct for survival lol

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:25 pm
Eva Cox – Proving age doesn’t beget widom.

US Ambassador – the man has the patience of Solomon to put up with the geriatraic swampy.

Next question – Sporting analagy for gillzilla, Carr deflects, Turnbull puts in the knife and twists, while smiling. (the gillard / rudd conflict)

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:25 pm
C.L. 25 Feb 13 at 6:31 pm

Stalin’s ‘Hollywood Ten’ were the beloved of the Dems.
Ms Obama could not be blacklisted could she?

stackja

25 Feb 13 at 10:25 pm
Interesting, disturbing story on public drunkenness and violence on Four Corners tonight. One thing I won’t criticise police for is taking a hard line on violent drunks in public. More power to them. I guess my libertarian confreres will be disappointed but I support the model they were talking about: abolition of 5 am closing time; 1.30 am lock-out; shots and shooters not served after 10 pm, etc. This really is a huge crisis in Australia. Laughed aloud at the Hotels Association spokesman who said there was no alcohol/violence crisis at all. None! Pull the other one, bonehead.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 10:26 pm
“Labor have moved from politics to paranoid anthropolgy.”

Turnbull points to the polls, Liberal way ahead.

Carr doesn’t like that.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:27 pm
Eva Cox. Americans need to stop providing arms that can be used against civilians.

What arms would they be? Cox is a facile old fool.

Oh, she’s just asked why Malcolm is not the leader. Never saw that one coming.

dover_beach

25 Feb 13 at 10:27 pm
Turnbull still twisting the knife.

Cox – ‘they want you to be leader of the liberal party’ No Eva we don’t you shrill shrieking harpy.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:28 pm
LOL Carr reckons the ALP is battered and bruised in the polls but it’s still the way to go. Best for the country, still tops for social justice.

Turnbull gives Maxwell Swan credit: he fought for his mining tax, and let the 3 biggest companies to write the tax and then didn’t raise any money from it.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:28 pm
QandA – another alp shill who wants MT to be leader even though she would never vote for him.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:29 pm
What’s Hockey on about Tasmania and our GST?

He should have said if they keep voting in the Stalinists to kill off their value producing industry then can suffer in their jocks!

In fact a non-pretend anti-socialist opposition treasurer would have been banging on about it at every opportunity since 2007.

Forester

25 Feb 13 at 10:29 pm
Same shill – ‘every Australian wants you to be leader of the country’.

Oh really, dickhead.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:31 pm
Yes, and idiot who wants Tunrbull to be leader doesn’t care which party it is, so long as it’s Turnbull.

Crap, that woman’s too old to be carrying on like a moonstruck calf.

Eurgh. She’s older than I am.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:31 pm
No, Carpe, every Australian she knows.

Of course, she’s usually locked up with her 23 different personalities, so she could be right.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:32 pm
What’s Hockey on about Tasmania and our GST?

Sky channel ??

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:32 pm
Interesting, disturbing story on public drunkenness and violence on Four Corners tonight. One thing I won’t criticise police for is taking a hard line on violent drunks in public. More power to them. I guess my libertarian confreres will be disappointed

I disagree with all the lock out and banning of shots type rule. The laws we already have relating to public drunkeness should be enforced to the maximum.

Ingesting alcohol is one of the finest things a man can do, but when he chooses to sully alcohol’s good name he should be jailed and whipped.

Infidel Tiger

25 Feb 13 at 10:33 pm
Eva Cox still has to bleat. Finishing up with a whine about the AL{P cutting benefits to single parents.

Nah, let them get jobs.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:34 pm
Shot the deer himself for the leather which I appreciated. Accepted the necessary consequences.

And seemed really excited to use explosives to blow up the oak tree he felled.

I see the show as more of a warning for our greenist subsistence level future.

+1 on the deer shooting. He didn’t go about it like a nancy boy either.

He’s an odd case, Kevin. In the early Grand Designs, you used to see his TVR parked in the wide shots of the houses. Now he gets around in a crappy diesel peugeot ute. But he likes guns, explosives and elaborate outdoor crappers like any normal bloke. I think his dally with greenie-ism is a bit of a mid-life crisis, the rich guys way of getting away without having to bone your secretary for thrills. He tries to float the greenie-ism of the show, but I think that was just for the producers, because all he is building is a proper man cave. What’s the bet he’ll be sitting up on that porch with a 22 taking potshots at bunnies before too long?

brc

25 Feb 13 at 10:34 pm
QandA – now it’s time for the group hug, except for the evil old swampy.

The nursing home must be glad she is out for the hight.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:34 pm
Oh, and economics is a very stale discipline.

Sinc, what say you? Apparently we all want to live better, and economics is irrelevant to that.

So sayeth Macbeth’s missing fourth witch.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:35 pm
QandA – Next week it’s tubbsy milne.

I’ll be buying popcorn shares for that one.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:35 pm
Hockey is looking at a possible four senate seats in Tasmania this time around if they play their cards right. +2 in the senate would be a big deal for them.

Driftforge

25 Feb 13 at 10:35 pm
So sayeth Macbeth’s missing fourth witch.

aaaaaahahahahaaha – classic.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:36 pm
Interesting, disturbing story on public drunkenness and violence on Four Corners tonight.

Only today in the news there was a story about 3 teenagers, incl. a woman, returning to a man’s house armed and beating him senseless and killing his Jack Russell because he happened to complain about their motorcycling on his footpath. Quite unbelievable.

dover_beach

25 Feb 13 at 10:36 pm
Kevin’s home brew and the yard glass skol was impressive too.

Infidel Tiger

25 Feb 13 at 10:37 pm
Eurgh. She’s older than I am.

She’s older than my Grandmother and she died 12 years ago when she was 90.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:39 pm
Another boring Qanda. Eva Cox is on another universe if she does not think economics does not have a very large role to play of getting what she calls, ‘social justice’ to occur.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 10:40 pm
WTF? That Tony Windsor lookalike was just potting Carr about Labor changing the eligibility and rates of the single parents ~~pension~~ WAGE.
For fuck’s sake, it is not a wage. A wage is earned for labour given, do these big government leftists have any idea?

Huckleberry Chunkwot

25 Feb 13 at 10:40 pm
Rumours about newspoll are devastating for Labor.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 10:41 pm
He’s an odd case, Kevin.

The impression with Kevin is that he is someone who works on the ‘minimise waste’ basis rather than the maximise profit. And someone who can afford to indulge his own whims.

And still challenges himself while doing so.

Driftforge

25 Feb 13 at 10:42 pm
So that was QandA tonight – remember we wade through the sludge so you don’t have to.

Trust me, i’m a 7 foot tall nordic man named Sven with mighty thews, rippling calves, a corded neck and heroic shoulders.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:43 pm
ALP primary vote is below 30…devastating.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 10:43 pm
Huh? Benny Barba stood down by Bulldogs. Indefinitely. C.L.
25 Feb 13 at 12:23 pm
Huh? Benny Barba stood down by Bulldogs. Indefinitely.
Just more proof that Justice Minister Jason Clare and Sport Minister Kate Lundy didn’t abuse an ACC investigation for political purposes, CL
JamesK 25 Feb 13 at 12:29 pm
Well, no. They are saying the issues are gambling and booze. mct 25 Feb 13 at 12:38 pm
I was just told the Ben Barba thing has to do with an altercation – with a woman. C.L. 25 Feb 13 at 1:22 pm

Could be just a colourful sporting personality engaging in a tribal ritual. Unlike the swimmers and other sporting identities who lack colour.
By the way Clare is the local federal member for the Bulldogs.

stackja

25 Feb 13 at 10:44 pm
ALP primary vote is below 30…devastating.

Link…..LInk……LINK……..quick.

Carpe Jugulum

25 Feb 13 at 10:45 pm
you’d need to be for QandA, Carpe.

Time for bed now. To sleep, perchance to dream of an Abbott landslide and lefty heads imploding all over the place.

nilk

25 Feb 13 at 10:46 pm
Andrew – where you hearing those rumours? I’ve got nothing so far.

Sinclair Davidson

25 Feb 13 at 10:46 pm
I think Andrew is suggesting that a below 30% primary would hurt them. It’s not a poll.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 10:47 pm
Turnbull would be getting more fluffing on Q&A than Ron Jeremy in the San Fernando Valley.

H B Bear

25 Feb 13 at 10:48 pm
Sinclair,, everyone is saying that Labor primary vote is 27%. That is the hot rumour.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 10:48 pm
ALP primary vote is below 30…devastating.

Why would 20 per cent support ALP? Money?

stackja

25 Feb 13 at 10:49 pm
Wow – that would be tough for the ALP

Sinclair Davidson

25 Feb 13 at 10:50 pm
I could be wrong, but that is what people are saying.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 10:51 pm
Really? 27%. Wow. That’s actually high.

You really know you’re in the shit when the Slime break the coalition agreement with you.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 10:52 pm
So that was QandA tonight – remember we wade through the sludge so you don’t have to.

Trust me, i’m a 7 foot tall nordic man named Sven with mighty thews, rippling calves, a corded neck and heroic shoulders.

Väl klar sven och alla andra. Tacka er alla

Septimus

25 Feb 13 at 10:52 pm
Well the ghost is very late – so the story must be a biggie.

Sinclair Davidson

25 Feb 13 at 10:53 pm
Nooooo! ALP *must* be at least 32%. I will have my vengeance, and in this life, I don’t want to wait for the next.

entropy

25 Feb 13 at 10:54 pm
If it really is 27% what does the Liars Party do. If they go with Rudd how do they square that most of their senior fuckheads trashed the shit out of him. How can they get away with that?

What does Andrew Leigh think?

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 10:54 pm
Well the ghost is very late – so the story must be a biggie.

What does that mean?

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 10:55 pm
What does Andrew Leigh think?

That he’ll be last man standing?

Driftforge

25 Feb 13 at 10:55 pm
Why would 20 per cent support ALP? Money?

Dementia, alcoholism, welfare.

Infidel Tiger

25 Feb 13 at 10:56 pm
Accused NT killer ‘creepy’

A man accused of taking a co-worker hostage and killing her brother was ‘narcissistic and creepy’, a Darwin court has been told.
Matej Hoi Stung Vanko, who faces a string of charges including murder, aggravated assault, depriving a person of liberty, using a firearm while unlicensed and cruelty to animals appeared in the Darwin Magistrates Court on Monday. Several of Mr Vanko’s former co-workers at the company Serco, where he worked as client services manager at a Darwin immigration detention centre, testified on Monday.
Co-worker Justin Wilson said in a statement referenced in court that Mr Vanko was ‘narcissistic and creepy’.

stackja

25 Feb 13 at 10:56 pm
If it is that low, will we see Monster and Stepford make a cameo to discuss it? That’s the most important question of the evening.

I know both morons are reading this.

(Lurch is on Lateline. I still dunno how that useless fucker could show his face in public after being responsible for burning down 200 houses and killing 4 people.

What a dickhead.)

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 10:58 pm
That he’ll be last man standing?

You’d really have to ban the APS from voting to get him out of his seat. It’s basically a soviet seat guaranteed for life.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 11:00 pm
The 27% rumour is actually an internal LABOR party poll from what I am hearing now…not 100% sure.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 11:00 pm
Shorten has got to pull the pin on this.

The only issue is they have poor form – they let female labor leaders take them down in NSW and Qld. Are these labor types too gutless to stick a knife in her back?

pete m

25 Feb 13 at 11:01 pm
Ten News is saying poll is 15 mins away.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 11:02 pm
heh – Andrew is not 100% sure about a rumour.

pete m

25 Feb 13 at 11:02 pm
Yep – 27% is internal poll. Ghostwhovotes still not out. So numbers under wraps.

Sinclair Davidson

25 Feb 13 at 11:02 pm
You’d really have to ban the APS from voting to get him out of his seat. It’s basically a soviet seat guaranteed for life.

Andrew Leigh is the ALP’s best and brightest. Kind of like being the cleanest toilet at Calcutta Train Station.

Infidel Tiger

25 Feb 13 at 11:03 pm
jees talk about death riding her – next fortnight we’ll have a live blog on Aust website and comments even

pete m

25 Feb 13 at 11:03 pm
27% add in the slime preferences of 7% and they end up with 34% two party preferred.

If it is, I’m still wondering what Andrew Leigh thinks.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 11:03 pm
Primary: ALP – 31 L/NP – 47; 2PP: ALP – 45 L/NP – 55

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 11:03 pm
Jc 25 Feb 13 at 10:58 pm

Gong!
Lurch: “YOU RANG”
Gomez: Whole word or phonics?

stackja

25 Feb 13 at 11:03 pm
phew, Julia lives and my vengeance will soon be realised

entropy

25 Feb 13 at 11:04 pm
my bet is ghostwhovotes is dennis!

it is out

pete m

25 Feb 13 at 11:04 pm
According to the latest Newspoll survey, taken exclusively for The Australian at the weekend, Labor’s primary vote is just 31 per cent and the Coalition’s is 47 per cent, virtually unchanged since parliament resumed at the beginning of this month.

31% ffs

pete m

25 Feb 13 at 11:05 pm
Fuck me.

$110,000 for a temporary cross walk on Oxford Street.

“I know it will add to the magic of Mardi Gras,”

– Clover Moore.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-city-council-costs-for-a-rainbow-pedestrian-crossing-in-support-of-mardis-gras-blow-out-to-110k/story-e6freuy9-1226585358941

Infidel Tiger

25 Feb 13 at 11:05 pm
Good poll for Coalition as Gillard will not be snaked now…it is less likely at least.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 11:05 pm
Andrew what’s your source for the poll? Newspoll?

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 11:06 pm
Laidley township evacuations urged

stackja

25 Feb 13 at 11:07 pm
What I don’t get is the same party apparently scores 53% ish 2PP if Rudd is leader according to other polls. Seriously these swinging voters cannot be serious.

pete m

25 Feb 13 at 11:07 pm
Okay, Andrew beat Ghostwhovotes to the punch. Newspoll – You heard it here first.

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 11:07 pm
ALP primary at 31%, 2PP at 45%. Gillard lives for another week.

Sinclair Davidson

25 Feb 13 at 11:07 pm
Official results Gab.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 11:08 pm
Good poll for Coalition as Gillard will not be snaked now…it is less likely at least.

It’s soul destroying for them. They’re like cornered rats, rats and they know.

It’s starting to hit home that the majority of voters hate their guts. Absolutely hate them.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 11:08 pm
Well done Andrew

Sinclair Davidson

25 Feb 13 at 11:09 pm
27% is an internal Labor poll taken in Western Sydney and parts of Queensland for Labor.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 11:09 pm
Lurch on Lateline.

He’s passionate about education. Passionate. Passionate and focused.

Lets hope the reading crap he’s peddling doesn’t kill and kids as anything is possible with him.

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 11:10 pm
heh – Andrew is not 100% sure about a rumour.

Bernard Woolley: Minister, I’ve heard something quite different.
James Hacker: What?
Bernard Woolley: That there is £1 million worth of diamonds from South Africa in a Downing Street safe, but of course it’s only a rumour.
James Hacker: Is that true?
Bernard Woolley: Oh, yes.
James Hacker: So, there are all those diamonds in Downing Street!
Bernard Woolley: Are there?
James Hacker: You just said there were.
Bernard Woolley: No, I didn’t.
James Hacker: Yes, you did! You said you’d heard this rumour, I said is it true, you said yes!
Bernard Woolley: I said yes, it was true that it was a rumour.
James Hacker: You said you heard it was true!
Bernard Woolley: No, I said it was true that I heard it!
Annie Hacker: I’m sorry to cut into this important discussion, but do you believe it?
James Hacker: I believe I heard it. Oh, about the diamonds. No.
Annie Hacker: Is it impossible?
James Hacker: No, but it’s never been officially denied. First rule in politics: never believe anything until it’s officially denied.

Deadman

25 Feb 13 at 11:10 pm
oops any..

Jc

25 Feb 13 at 11:10 pm
Gillard lives for another week.

No oxygen in those lungs. I’d be astonished if she still leads by March 31.

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 11:11 pm
Catallaxy Files catch-up TV.

If you missed Q&A, can’t blame you; if you missed drunkblogging on the Cat, here’s a few choice comments.

Sod that, Sven. This is QandA. Anything goes.

Prisoner X.

Julian Burnside just asked about a hanging point in the cell. We were told before that he died of a heart-attack. Which is it?

Ooh, someone supporting Israel – It’s not unusual for governments agencies to issue passports in different names. Israel is the only democracy in the ME and surrounded by enemies, so why can’t they do the same things?

Eva Cox: Yeah, yeah, we know all that, but we need transparency from Israel. People shouldn’t be jailed or Israel loses legitimacy.

Old witch.

Turnbull: Did Mr. Z ask for consular assistance?
Carr: No, but the family had access to him.

But again…. the Joooooos!! Oh, and the Egyptian novelist woman disagrees that Israel is under existential threat. Look at all the agreements and treaties they’ve broken.

Assange.

Eva Cox now America bashing, the Swedes are over the top, Assange is paranoid and justifiably so.

How does anyone breathe in the rarified atmosphere these strange people live in?

Turnbull says that Assange didn’t break any Aussie laws, so no sense in getting involved (fair call), but it made us look a bit cold and unsympathetic. Turnbull took up Assange’s case with KRudd. Turnbull also feels we didn’t do much for him, and perhaps white boy can’t dance should have just gone to Sweden and faced the music and got it all done with. Forgets that white boy can’t dance is a total attention whore.

INTERMISSION:

Ladies, feast your eyes on this:White boy can’t dance.

Middle East.

Question about US sending jets and military equipment to Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. What does the US Amb think about that?

Snow Cone throws to the Egyptian novelist and she tries to handball it. Says it’s a terrible idea, but Morsi has been buying teargas, and wants to bring them into the country on military transports. And all just in time for the election. Nothing about the question, of course.

Ambassador: Egypt going through a challenging time and we’re sending humanitarian assistance. Plus, there are other players and some come from outside. Can’t defang the military.

I call bullshite.

Carr jumps in and says what about the minorities, we’re all about looking after minorities in the ME (we love the Copts), but nothing about the Christians in Iraq. Oh, wait, are there any there????

The US won’t help us, it’s their fault we’re dying. The US are interfering, it’s their fault we’re dying.

Carr backpedals: when we talk about protecting minorites we don’t mean intervention. we mean talking to the govenment, and gentle persuasion. ie. we suck up to the strong horse.

ALP & the Polls

Eva Cox – Proving age doesn’t beget widom. US Ambassador – the man has the patience of Solomon to put up with the geriatric swampy.

Next question – Sporting analogy for gillzilla Carr deflects, Turnbull puts in the knife and twists, while smiling. (the gillard / rudd conflict)

Cox is a facile old fool. Oh, she’s just asked why Malcolm is not the leader. Never saw that one coming.

LOL Carr reckons the ALP is battered and bruised in the polls but it’s still the way to go. Best for the country, still tops for social justice.

Turnbull gives Maxwell Swan credit: he fought for his mining tax, and let the 3 biggest companies to write the tax and then didn’t raise any money from it.

Finale.

Oh, and economics is a very stale discipline.
So sayeth Macbeth’s missing fourth witch.

Thanks to the drunkbloggers who watch, so we don’t have to. Or as Nilk would say:

should I drink more?

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 11:12 pm
ALP primary at 31%, 2PP at 45%. Gillard lives for another week.

Pace the leftist nutter Kerrie-Ann Walsh and her Sky News breakdown, Newspoll has saved Gillard’s ass on several occasions over the past year – sometimes with simply implausible results.

Tonight’s result are as about as good/tolerable as the could have been have been for Gillard under the circumstances

JamesK

25 Feb 13 at 11:15 pm
Polls aligning and staying consistent. The cement is setting.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 11:15 pm
No oxygen in those lungs. I’d be astonished if she still leads by March 31.

Unless there are sub 40 polls – multiple – or charges are laid, she’ll be there at the election.

Driftforge

25 Feb 13 at 11:17 pm
Do you think Bill Shorten’s phone is running hot?

Personally, I think Shorten and Howes are still backing Gillard so I don’t think any move will happen unless things get diabolically worse.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 11:19 pm
Newspoll has saved Gillard’s ass on several occasions over the past year – sometimes with simply implausible results.

Is that the case with tonight’s results? Have they been massaged/manipulated to ensure her continued survival? Is the 457 Rasputin calling in favours?

Septimus

25 Feb 13 at 11:22 pm
Bit annoying that QANDA and the amazing revelation that Gillard is as popular as cancer at the Labrador puppie factory interrupted a burgeoning discussion on cricket.

Infidel tiger

25 Feb 13 at 11:24 pm
Septimus, it is Rupert Murdoch.

Andrew

25 Feb 13 at 11:24 pm
This is good news; we don’t want a change in ALP leadership. Gillard and her party must go to the election and be destroyed electorally. That is good, right, and just.

dover_beach

25 Feb 13 at 11:25 pm
Is that the case with tonight’s results? Have they been massaged/manipulated to ensure her continued survival? Is the 457 Rasputin calling in favours?

The numbers have remained stable.

It would be well beyond credibility to have seen Labor improve on 3 weeks ago

JamesK

25 Feb 13 at 11:25 pm
Great news! The Craig Ferguson Show starts on Channel 11 in three minutes!

Tom

25 Feb 13 at 11:27 pm
Did Julia Gillard really have her optical stylist flown up from Melbourne with a selection of new lucky glasses?

If so, who paid?

Come on! You can’t expect the bogan Princess to face shopping malls after the last time, surely?

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 11:44 pm
Andrew – the 457 Rasputin = McTernan

Septimus

25 Feb 13 at 11:44 pm
I only watched a snippet of Q&A – ‘feminist’ Eva Cox was defending alleged rapist Julian Assange, saying the Swedes were going “way over the top.”

Rape no biggie, then. Not when the perp is a leftist.

Almost a “legitimate rape,” perhaps.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 11:46 pm
OPPOSITION treasury spokesman Joe Hockey has acknowledged the Coalition’s planned abolition of the carbon tax could trigger business compensation claims, vowing to assess each claim individually.

No.No. No. Don’t be so dumb, Joe. This is absurd.

Gab

25 Feb 13 at 11:48 pm
It would be well beyond credibility to have seen Labor improve on 3 weeks ago

Yes James K. But entirely credible that they should have worsened, given the most recent State by State poll results.

Septimus

25 Feb 13 at 11:49 pm
Did Julia Gillard really have her optical stylist flown up from Melbourne with a selection of new lucky glasses?

Ah Julia, it’s been a long road from running the “Socialist Forum” where you called fellow members “comrade” just a few short years ago to having thousand dollar spectacles flown via private jet to your doorstep for personal showings.

That’ll do Julia, that’ll do.

twostix

25 Feb 13 at 11:53 pm
Ah Julia, it’s been a long road from running the “Socialist Forum” where you called fellow members “comrade” just a few short years ago…

A few short years?

She was singing Solidarity Forever last week.

C.L.

25 Feb 13 at 11:59 pm
Elitist scum like the lying slapper spew money about when its easy come by. When’s the last time you saw a whore with cheap spectacles. All the girls on the make have nice specs or laser and no specs.

WhaleHunt Fun

26 Feb 13 at 12:01 am
Gillard’s popularity rose after the death of her father. Her closer relatives would do well to be careful crossing the street.

Deadman

26 Feb 13 at 12:03 am
Yes Deadman, as the Goose will be out there with his bus licence looking to shift the polls by shifting gear at a crossing.

WhaleHunt Fun

26 Feb 13 at 12:11 am
(Lurch is on Lateline. I still dunno how that useless fucker could show his face in public after being responsible for burning down 200 houses and killing 4 people.

What a dickhead.)
To be fair to Lurch, he brought up concerns re the rapid implementation of the pink batts policy in Cabinet and was overruled by Kevni and the Gang-of-Four. If anyone should have resigned over the deaths and the housefires, it should have been the Dear Leader himself. He was too gutless to sack Garrett to provide a scapegoat and the whole business just shows that there is no ministerial accountability in this rabble.

Cold-Hands

26 Feb 13 at 12:32 am
Just noticed that Borat stars in Les Miserables

Sacha Baron Cohen … Thénardier

Harold

26 Feb 13 at 12:58 am
Fairfax with the news that really matters:

“I took [the findings of the report] personally,” Emma explains. “My own labia minora are on the larger size. They protrude from between my outer lips and are darker coloured tending to brown. They’re a bit lopsided in length with one side longer than the other, and with different textures from one lip to the other. Perfectly normal, but had I been one of the models in those magazines my bits would have been digitally cut off. And that appalled me.”

areff

26 Feb 13 at 7:00 am
how can we baldly accuse other cultures of butchering their women when increasing numbers of our own are voluntarily lining up for it?

Um, at a guess, because there’s a huge difference between the forced mutilation of an unwilling girl’s genitalia and the voluntary cosmetic surgery on a willing woman’s nymphae?

Deadman

26 Feb 13 at 7:23 am
Blokes world is the best show on TV Septimus. A troupe of lads are doing the Cambodian bike ride as we speak. I was refused permission by The Minister for Finance, Entertainment and WAR as “all the games are too cheap, you’ll make a pig of yourself and get into trouble”. She was speaking for the negative I think.

Pickles

26 Feb 13 at 7:32 am
Oh for goodness’ sake.

We’ve obviously got nothing better to worry about if we’ve sunk to comparing a 24yo female’s obsession with her bits with the deliberate and compulsory cutting up of girl children in the name of ‘culture’.

For one thing, a 24yo is legally (if not actually, these days) an adult and if she’s stupid and vapid enough to want to cut up a perfectly good piece of herself, more fool her.

A child between the ages of infancy up to puberty, adolescence isn’t. There is no choice, there is no freedom and ultimately there is no gain.

These sorts of discussions are about pushing sharia norms. It’s moral equivalence of the worst kind, and those that push it should spend a few weeks in Mali, or Libya, or Tunisia, or Morocco, or Lebanon, or Syria, or Iraq, or Iran, or Chechnya, or any other islamic paradise.

Of course, you could also check out the Maldives. The climate’s nice, although the islands could sink any time.

Let’s leave sharia norms wher they belong. In shariastan and not our Western world.

nilk

26 Feb 13 at 7:46 am
I think we may safely say that Emma’s future in modelling hangs in the balance.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

26 Feb 13 at 7:53 am
These sorts of discussions are about pushing sharia norms. It’s moral equivalence of the worst kind.

The left is now obsessed with destroying all the freedoms it fought for in the 1960s and 1970s. So the left barracks for islam (which is not a religion, but a political ideology) because their common enemy is Western civilisation.

Leftism is not a political ideology, but a mental illness.

Tom

26 Feb 13 at 8:12 am
you could also check out the Maldives. The climate’s nice, although the islands could sink any time.

The best of the Maldives is under water Our daughters bought me a beautiful book on it. Have wanted to go there ever since I started diving.

Septimus

26 Feb 13 at 8:14 am
Didn’t the Maldives mendicants hold a Cabinet meeting underwater in order to emphasise da (non-existant) sinking?

Perhaps the worst of them were underwater too, Septimus.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

26 Feb 13 at 8:20 am
This morning, ABCNews24 is all over the story of a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church resigning early because of allegations of abuse; meanwhile, in the US, Sen. Bob Menendez (Dem., NJ) is not resigning though he allegedly raped minors, and ABCNews24 won’t even mention that story.

Deadman

26 Feb 13 at 8:39 am
. Gillard and her party must go to the election and be ~~destroyed~~ physically, not just electorally. That is good,right and just. The corpses of four young electricians and a thousand illegals demand the humiliation of even the memories of the self seeking pigswill

WhaleHunt Fun

26 Feb 13 at 8:39 am
Public stoning???

Andrew

26 Feb 13 at 8:42 am
The left is now obsessed with destroying all the freedoms it fought for in the 1960s and 1970s.

They are insincere and only cared about advancing their position.

Fortunately the public can see this and zealots like Billy Bragg are will go into a Gillard misogyny style meltdown come election night.

It’s still sickening and amazing that Gillard gets 45% 2PP. This is a sign of mass delusion and senility.

A civics test should not only be applied to those seeking citizenship, but for citizens every election when they wish to vote.

We can’t have senile old rusted on ALP voters or entire families on welfare with no self awareness voting.

I’m serious. These people should not decide elections. They may have a right to vote but a civics exam qualifying everyone as an elector everytime would be in the public interest.

If someone doesn’t know who the PM actually is or what party they are from…everyone else who does is throwing their votes away.

Low information voters lose only their own vanity when they are periodically disenfranchised.

Voluntary voting and an on the spot civics exam are well overdue. People who shouldn’t vote wouldn’t.

.

26 Feb 13 at 8:48 am
with sharp stones. Not the flat round ones in Life Of Brian

WhaleHunt Fun

26 Feb 13 at 8:50 am
Gillard’s popularity rose after the death of her father. Her closer relatives would do well to be careful crossing the street.

After his comment about oriental digits, I think Tim should be very careful entering the rooms where the renovations at The Lodge.

Token

26 Feb 13 at 8:51 am
My mind keeps returning to the treatment of the corpse of Mussolini and how fitting it would be for so many of the pigswill

WhaleHunt Fun

26 Feb 13 at 8:52 am
After his comment about oriental digits, I think Tim should be very careful entering the rooms where the renovations at The Lodge.

Has he met Dr Cindy Pan?

.

26 Feb 13 at 8:53 am
The left is now obsessed with destroying all the freedoms it fought for in the 1960s and 1970s.

Are you talking about when they backed the Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge, Soviet Union & China over the US & Australia?

Token

26 Feb 13 at 8:53 am
Perhaps the worst of them were underwater too, Septimus.

Lizzie – undoubtedly the mendicants’ meeting would have detracted from the underwater beauty of the Maldives at the time, but fleetingly so. The wonders of nature are still there to immerse oneself in and enjoy

Septimus

26 Feb 13 at 8:53 am
Gillard’s popularity rose after the death of her father. Her closer relatives would do well to be careful crossing the street.

Perhaps Ms Gillard senior should hire a food taster.

Leigh Lowe

26 Feb 13 at 8:55 am
If you look at the Newspoll tables, you can see 11% of people nominate “other” as a protest vote compared with 6.6% who actually voted “other” at the 2010 election. The electorate is very polarised; I believe the number of people voting “other” at the election will be 6% or less because of the disgust felt towards the independents. Leftist protest voters go with the Greens (11%). The excess of “other” voters aren’t going to go with Labor when the crunch comes, IMO. Therefore, the correct 2PP is 60% Coalition 40% Greens-Labor. The Coalition 2PP may be even higher at election time because I don’t think the Greens will get more than 8% nationally. Rudd is enjoying tormenting his assassins; he has six months before he has to decide whether he wants to risk ending his career in 2013 or rebuild the party in his image over the next two terms. He doesn’t have to hold an election until November 30 if he counter-assassinates Gillard before she issues the writs in August. I think he’ll opt for the long game because he’s an egomaniac, knows he wouldn’t win this year and is obsessed with his place in the history books.

Tom

26 Feb 13 at 9:06 am
Gerard Henderson notes how the ABC seem to have got ahead of facts and reality in their anti-Jewish pogrom:

Zygier’s case started as a story on ABC 1′s Foreign Correspondent program on February 12 presented by Trevor Bormann. The program made an indirect reference to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Within a week, however, this alleged link had been scaled up. On AM last Tuesday, the presenter, Tony Eastley, said the ”ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program has revealed his [Zygier's] Mossad handlers had arrested him believing he’s been leaking information to the Australian spy agency ASIO”. Bormann subsequently said Zygier had used an Australian passport when working for Mossad. There was no evidence to support either assertion.

The AM report is an example of the media’s rush to judge an intelligence matter on which there was scant information. In time, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Australia’s Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, said Zygier had no contact with Australian security agencies. Dreyfus had been briefed by the Director-General of ASIO, David Irvine.

The suggestion in the Foreign Correspondent program that Zygier worked for Mossad soon led to the inevitable conspiracy theories. Writing on the ABC’s The Drum opinion site on February 18, leftist academic Jeff Sparrow suggested Zygier might have been murdered. In the process, Sparrow compared democratic Israel with Stalin’s Soviet Union, while pretending he was not doing just that.

Last Wednesday, Ben Saul wrote an article in The Age as a professor of international law at the University of Sydney. It was another rush to judgment, replete with such giveaways as ”may”, ”if”, ”would” and ”could”.

Yet, on the basis of virtually no known facts, Saul accused those whom he identified as ”Australian Jews” of ”divided loyalties”. He went on to make the offensive claim that ”there comes a point where a Jewish person cannot faithfully be both Australian and Israeli”. Saul said ”the same goes for Australians who are also American or Chinese”. No reference was made to any other nation.

To paraphrase a bit of termology from the US, when will Australian Jews stop living like eastern suburbs elites and voting like trade union members?

Token

26 Feb 13 at 9:08 am
I think he’ll opt for the long game because he’s an egomaniac, knows he wouldn’t win this year and is obsessed with his place in the history books.

He takes after Mao. This is the Long March, Comrade!

.

26 Feb 13 at 9:09 am
IMO. Therefore, the correct 2PP is 60% Coalition 40% Greens-Labor.

I’m happy with it where it is. Labor is just in with a sniff, and that is for the best.

At this stage every rational person in the country wants the Gaffe-machine to stay PM to the second the ALP answer to the electorate at the polls.

Her political misjudgement and bloody mindedness is worth 2-3% as she goes out of her way to find new and innovative way to p*ss the electorate off.

Token

26 Feb 13 at 9:11 am
Absolutely vomit inducing.

Rocket Reith soft soaps ineffectual leftist dinosaurs fatty o’barrell and braindead baillieu over on the dumb.

Rabz

26 Feb 13 at 9:14 am
don’t miss the Great Pretender

val majkus

26 Feb 13 at 9:14 am
Fair Work Australia is doing exactly what it was intended to do:

A UNIVERSITY professor who used research grants to pay for reflexology treatment, massages, wine, cosmetics, tourist attraction tickets and a noodle-maker is set to win compensation after the Fair Work Commission ruled his dismissal was harsh.

The University of Newcastle dismissed Jesse Sheng Jin in February last year for alleged serious misconduct following an investigation into his use of Australian Research Council grants.

Professor Jin was chair of information technology and chief investigator for nine ARC grants.

He has been involved in highly advanced research designed to achieve early diagnosis of diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Professor Jin was accused of inappropriately obtaining reimbursement from the university for expenses he charged against specific research grants.

The items purchased included air fares, wine, massage and reflexology, cosmetics, clothes, shoes, a camera, a noodle maker, speaker systems, groceries, bedding and tourist attraction tickets.

Tom

26 Feb 13 at 9:17 am
hahaha that was excellent, Val. Good visuals and lyrics.

Gab

26 Feb 13 at 9:23 am
Milne and Conroy, now divorced for the sake of publicity, get together once again to uncover a conspiracy against the government. A 30 minute TV program – well 22 minutes if you exclude the commercials – once a week is expected to bring down this government. It’s the only conservative show on TV. Oh, and Gina Rinehart or something.

Gab

26 Feb 13 at 9:46 am
It’s another Murdoch plot, I tells ya.

Fairfax’s staffing woes continue with Sun Herald columnist Jessica Wright taking some time out after her recent stoush with Liberal Cory Bernardi. Wright told Capital Circle she was taking three months off for personal reasons. There is no word yet on her replacement. Fairfax metros recently lost Phil Coorey and Michelle Grattan, while Lenore Taylor and Katherine Murphy are departing soon for The Guardian Australia. Bernardi has threatened to sue Fairfax over a Jess Wright story claiming he failed to properly declare links with “a right-wing, pro-tobacco group fighting gun controls”. Bernardi said he’d never been a member of the organisation. It’s understood the parties could be close to settling the matter.

Gab

26 Feb 13 at 9:56 am
fairfax metros recently lost Phil Coorey and Michelle Grattan, while Lenore Taylor and Katherine Murphy are departing soon for The Guardian Australia.

If the morons currently guiding fauxfacts into liquidation actually had a f*cking clue, they might replace that roster of utterly discredited, lobotomised hacks with some non-leftists.

But no, that might reanimate the corpse and we wouldn’t want that…

Rabz

26 Feb 13 at 10:09 am
The items purchased included air fares, wine, massage and reflexology, cosmetics, clothes, shoes, a camera, a noodle maker, speaker systems, groceries, bedding and tourist attraction tickets.

How is it possible that it took less than 4 years for Fair Work to Whitewash the case & clear the good professors name?

Shagger Thomson must be livid.

Token

26 Feb 13 at 10:17 am
Not-so-true believer Gary Johns brilliantly describes the Labor disaster and Abbott’s challenge:

The legacy of five years of Labor is how not to govern. The Rudd-Gillard-Swan governments have trashed not only the Labor brand, but also the idea of competent government. While Hawke-Keating was an advance on the Whitlam government, and Howard-Costello an advance on the Fraser government, Rudd-Gillard-Swan is degeneration. It degenerated on three levels: it enhanced the commonwealth tendency to arrogance in relation to the states, it entrenched blind faith in stimulus, and it furthered the notion of government as nanny, sidelining individual responsibility and crowding out charity.

Labor has conspired with a huge and growing “caring cadre” whose role is to exaggerate problems for governments, but most of all carers, to solve. In light of the “expand the need for government” strategy, an Abbott government has some serious thinking to do about the purpose of government.

In the first instance, Tony Abbott has to be the stable boy to clean up Labor’s detritus. Once the ledger is repaired, the carbon and mining taxes and the hate speech sections of the discrimination act repealed, it will be time to start work on the long term. What should the Coalition do to advance Australian interests?

In general terms, an Abbott government must appreciate that every federal government suffers from a major failing – a propensity to buy into every issue. Each minister in the incoming government must learn this phrase: “Previous governments have tried and failed (insert silly idea), we do not intend to waste your money making the same mistakes.”

…

When the economy slows, as it almost certainly will during the course of the life of the next government, do not announce a stimulus package. Keynes is dead; let him rest. Instead, announce a deregulation package – cut regulations to cut costs. In extremis provide a tax holiday. Lean towards getting out of the way, not barging in.

Tom

26 Feb 13 at 10:37 am
“safari of fail”

hehehe well done, CL. Evokes up lots of mental imagery, one of which sees gillard donned in safari gear and magical glasses trekking through the wild’s of Rooty Hill, an hitherto undiscovered territory for gillard. Some one had better warn her the natives are not friendly.

Gab

26 Feb 13 at 10:39 am
up

Gab

26 Feb 13 at 10:40 am
It is a miracle Judith did not use the name “Heather Sellout” in her article today, though she did refer to the pre-crony capitlism lobby group Sellout lead, which for some reason businesses funded..

Token

26 Feb 13 at 10:49 am
How are the people of Western Sydney supposed to do their shopping after Hamish McSporran’s fixers have cleared out all the non-believers so Gillard can do some media?

Don’t want to have this happen too often.

H B Bear

26 Feb 13 at 11:11 am
brc 23 Feb 13 at 10:34 am

Man arrested over indecent assault – Marsfield

stackja

26 Feb 13 at 11:50 am
Gunmen threaten woman in Sydney home on Strickland Crescent, Ashcroft

stackja

26 Feb 13 at 12:06 pm
Man arrested over indecent assault – Marsfield

I wonder how Ol’ Crazy Eyes and the poor mongrel who was handed the Department of (Illegal) Immigration will spin this one. You do know they are enterprising, hard working people who would be an asset to this country don’t you?

H B Bear

26 Feb 13 at 12:16 pm
Chris Kenny on Gillard’s bogan safari:

In yet another own goal, Julia Gillard is planning to spend next week based at Rooty Hill in Sydney’s western suburbs. Instead of staying in the harbour-side mansion that taxpayers provide and staff for her at Kirribilli, the Prime Minister will stay at a hotel just 45 minutes drive away.

This is perhaps the most ham-fisted and condescending of a long line of missteps by this government. The condescension is not new and neither is the resort to cheap state politics-style stunts. But most alarming for her fellow Labor MPs, Ms Gillard shows not sign of learning, or getting better advice.

C.L.

26 Feb 13 at 12:21 pm
I do love urban myths. This one is circulating by email:

A lawyer in Charlotte, NC, purchased a box of 24 very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against, among other things, fire.
Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost ‘in a series of small fires.

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason, that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion.

The lawyer sued – and won. Delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The judge stated nevertheless, the lawyer held a policy from the company, in which it had warranted the cigars insurable and guaranteed it would insure them against fire. Without defining what is considered to be unacceptable ‘fire’, so was obligated to pay the claim.

Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the cigars that perished in the ‘fires’.

After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

Tom

26 Feb 13 at 12:27 pm
Professor Jin was chair of information technology and chief investigator for nine ARC grants.

He has been involved in highly advanced research designed to achieve early diagnosis of diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

i.e. they’re creating software that tests your memory.

Basically one of these.

Harold

26 Feb 13 at 12:40 pm
If Gillard wants the Rooty Hill mission to be a success she better be at the bar every night eating a chicken parma and knocking back schooners of New until she pukes into a pokie coin tray.

Infidel Tiger

26 Feb 13 at 12:48 pm
The travels of Julia.
Memorable quotes for The Magnificent Seven

Old Man: You worry about yourself. Are you ready for him?
[refers to Calvera]
Old Man: What if he comes now, huh?
Vin: Reminds me of that fellow back home that fell off a ten story building.
Chris: What about him?
Vin: Well, as he was falling people on each floor kept hearing him say, “So far, so good.” Tch… So far, so good!

[Calvera has just captured the Seven]
Calvera: What I don’t understand is why a man like you took the job in the first place, hmm? Why, huh?
Chris: I wonder myself.
Calvera: No, come on, come on, tell me why.
Vin: It’s like a fellow I once knew in El Paso. One day, he just took all his clothes off and jumped in a mess of cactus. I asked him that same question, “Why?”
Calvera: And?
Vin: He said, “It seemed to be a good idea at the time.”

So Julia thinks

“It seemed to be a good idea at the time.”

And Julia thinks so far so go

Vin: Well, as he was falling people on each floor kept hearing him say, “So far, so good.” Tch… So far, so good!

stackja

26 Feb 13 at 12:57 pm
Rabz 25 Feb 13 at 9:06 am

SMH is going compact and not tabloid. Only Murdoch press has tabloids.

stackja

26 Feb 13 at 1:06 pm
Fairfax pot and TEN APN kettle
End comes quickly at bottom of the pile

Both are the runts of the litter in their respective mediums.

stackja

26 Feb 13 at 1:11 pm
Instead of staying in the harbour-side mansion that taxpayers provide and staff for her at Kirribilli, the Prime Minister will stay at a hotel just 45 minutes drive away.
And just whom is paying for this little jaunt? If the Parliament had been prorogued and the writs issued then TLS and the Labor party would stump up for this electioneering stunt. But because we’re in the middle of the longest campaign-that’s-not-a-campaign, there is no doubt that muggins, the long suffering tax payer will foot the bill.

Cold-Hands

26 Feb 13 at 1:28 pm
Stacks 11:07 pm

Laidley “self evacuation”. LOL
Why do they have “file photo” of that old scrubber Anna behind a levee? There’s no levee like that in the valley!

She only came out here when the flood was over anyway. About as much use as a hip pocket on jocks.

kae

26 Feb 13 at 8:33 pm
“Both are the runts of the litter in their respective mediums.”

Mediums is the plural for people who talk to the spirit world.
Media is the plural for forms of communication.

So says the annoying pedant.
Apologies for being a pain but You conjured an image of a large wicker basket filled with mewling elderly ladies with that strong lavendar scent, and an SMH journo picking one out from time to time to ask about the future of the Labor government.

WhaleHunt Fun

26 Feb 13 at 10:45 pm

Catallaxy Files

Open Forum: February 23, 2013

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Open Forum: February 23, 2013

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