Especially children:
Politicians have been out there bashing banks again with CBA’s announcement of a record $9.45 billion profit. Of course if the bank keeps up with inflation it will be a record, and because it’s a big company it will be ‘fat’.
The table in the AFR gives the profit as $9.247 billion as against $9.084 billion last year. The true measure is in net earnings per share (eps) which came in at 542.5 cents, actually down from 553.7 cents last year. That’s a drop of about 2%.
The final dividend was maintained at $2.22 per share, so shareholders breathed a sigh of relief that it didn’t go down.
Bill Shorten’s comment was ignorant, and I think disgraceful: Continue reading Fat bank profits
After the ABS Census computer was shut down on Tuesday night, one bright spark on talk-back radio said we wasn’t going to fill in the census data now. What’s the point of giving information to a government that can’t run a census, he asked. If they can’t do a simple thing like that then they can’t provide all the health, education, police, infrastructure services we need.
On radio we were told this morning that the Census needs 95% of us to supply accurate data for the data to be useful in planning future services. We are told the computer system will be up and working today. They may yet pull it off, but significant confidence has been lost and the ABS has trashed its brand. Continue reading Census crash
Pauline Hanson’s running mate, Malcolm Roberts, is a climate denialist of some fame, but in joining the Senate he is merely a noisy addition to the climate denialists already there, raising the question of how we deal with the phenomenon in the political sphere. We know that scientific information doesn’t work.
There was a similar problem in the Brexit campaign. John D has passed along to me a fascinating link from Climate Outreach about what they learnt. Continue reading Climate denialism comes to town
NOAA’s annual State of the Climate report has recently been released, showing the climate change is proceeding apace on all fronts. The 300 page report compiled by 450 scientists from 62 countries confirmed there was a “toppling of several symbolic mileposts” in heat, sea level rise and extreme weather in 2015. From The Guardian:
Kristina Keneally talks about the power of the Catholic church for good and its ability to inspire young people.
During World Youth day in Sydney in 2008, Cardinal Pell walked freely among the young people. He couldn’t do that now, as direct allegations of sexual abuse by Pell have been aired on the 7.30 Report. Continue reading Saturday salon 9/8
The vote is in, almost five weeks after we went to the polls. In simple terms, Malcolm Turnbull’s LNP scraped in with a one seat majority in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, with 30 seats and needing 39 to pass legislation, he has three options. He can link with Labor’s 26, or with the Greens 9, or look for 9 of 11 crossbenchers, where the voting blocks of 3 Xenephon (NXT) and 4 One Nation are both unavoidable.
To block legislation requires 38 votes, not 39 as Radio National has been saying. Hence Labor voting with the Greens and the ‘centrist’ Xenophon team can block legislation. Continue reading A gridlocked senate?
British anthropologist Robin Dunbar postulated in the 1990s that, given our brain size, human beings can only maintain 150 stable relationships.
A new study has taken a look at modern and traditional societies, and has concluded that the number is actually 132. But there is another limitation, and that is the small number of close links an individual can maintain. This account states that the maximum number of close links we can maintain is on average about five. Continue reading Dunbar’s number revisited
Brian and I have been saying for years that both the planet and the economy needed was for the world/Australia needed to do was to go on a WWll style war footing to save the planet and boost the economy. Now the US Democrats have endorsed a WW2-scale mobilisation on the climate challenge. Hillary is promising to mobilise a global effort on a scale not seen since the second world war to tackle climate change, if elected US president in November. Continue reading Mobilizing for WWll Push for Climate Action
Continuity of electricity supply is no trivial matter. Back in April-May 1996 at our place we had rain on 14 consecutive days. Over the period we had 833 mm or over 33 inches in the old language. A renewable energy electricity supply system needs to survive such a challenge, as do home off-gridders. Imagine not just the lights out, but rotting food in the refrigerator, no pumping of petrol at the bowser, the refrigerators and lights failing at the supermarket, no water coming out the tap. For the whole Brisbane area.
Now with interconnected grids through the National Electricity Market (NEM) established in 1998 South Australia withstood a lesser challenge recently albeit with a huge spike in electricity spot prices, arguably prompting a showdown on where we are going with renewable energy and fossil fuels in this country. Continue reading Keeping the lights on: Josh Frydenberg wants more gas
