1. Older Coalition voters turning to One Nation
Newspoll finds that the demographic most supportive of One Nation is the 50-plus group and it appears that the LNP is the main loser in that sector.
Meanwhile, Pauline is calling for a boycott of easter eggs that are halal-certified, ie Cadbury, Matthias Cormann has stared down a demand that the ABC’s budget be cut by $600 million and the Young Nationals have supported carbon trading, having supported same-sex marriage in 2015.
It must be noted that Cormann did not rule cuts to the ABC in or out in the budget soon to be revealed.
2. Doctor suicides
The ABC has recently broadcast two programs on doctor suicide – one on the 7.30 Report and an extensive investigative report in Radio National’s excellent Background Briefing series. They’ve also made an ABC online story of the 7.30 segment.
Doctors are four times more likely than the general public to have suicide ideation. Interns are told that help is only a phone call away, but when they ask for help it is commonly seen as weakness or incompetence. Mandatory reporting by doctors when other doctors seek assistance for mental health problems mitigates against doctors in trouble seeking help.
There is a theory that the path into the profession makes doctors more vulnerable. The level of academic achievement required for entry into medicine tends to select people who work obsessively hard and don’t have a balanced life. Then from this pool medical school interviews tend to select the more empathetic candidates, who are likely to have more vulnerable personalities.
I’m not sure there is a good answer but the WA regulations on mandatory reporting seem to be more appropriate and there needs to be an attitude change on the part of supervising medicos.
3. Trump watch
Putin’s mob saw Trump’s victory as a divine gift, but now they are starting to worry about what they got. They wanted desperately to not have Hillary Clinton elected, thinking she might start a war, but now Trump has arguably committed an act of war against Syria and is acting like a revolutionary at home. They seriously detest revolutions, and are not going to celebrate their own.
Meanwhile everyone is worrying about North Korea. Trump has said he would fix North Korea with or without the Chinese, and has sent a warship heading their way. To do what, exactly? I heard Joe Siracusa from RMIT on Radio National. His worry is that North Korea may feel it has to make a pre-emptive strike. It has 20 or 30 nukes which it can deliver by boat or on a truck to South Korea. He said it also has enough conventional weapons pointed at Seoul to wipe out 400,000 people at the drop of a hat.
At the very least it looks as though they are about to test an A-bomb or a new missile. What will trump do then?
4. Happy Easter!
Pope Francis kicked off Easter on Thursday by washing and kissing the feet of 12 prison inmates, then on Friday prostrated himself in prayer during a solemn Good Friday service in St. Peter’s Basilica to recall the crucifixion of Jesus, wearing crimson-colored vestments, commemorating the suffering of Jesus as he lay for several minutes before the central altar.
Then presiding at a traditional candlelight Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) service at Rome’s Colosseum, he:
- asked God for forgiveness for scandals in the Catholic Church and for the “shame” of humanity becoming inured to daily scenes of bombed cities and drowning migrants.
As we enjoy beach and/or barbecue we might spare a thought for those less fortunate, including people in our own country monstered by cyclone Debbie, where for many life will never be the same.
I’m on the mailing list for a newsletter put out by the Jesuit Refugee Service. The latest has just arrived, with a Director’s Letter that quotes John Oliver, who just did a stint here to make a program. He said:
- “Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I’ve ever been in. They’ve really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper.”
I think he was not impressed with our bipartisan boat turn-back policy, and our ‘Pacific solution’.
The Greens have the answer, but only because they’ll never have to implement it. I regard it as a ‘wicked’ problem, with no good solutions.
Any way, I’m about to go out and tackle a hedge that needs dealing with. It’s actually our anniversary, but for a variety of reasons there will be no big celebration. A man did appear at the door with flowers, for some reason. Tomorrow there is a family picnic in a park.
Hope y’all are enjoying a restful and peaceful Easter.
New SS is here, sorry for the delay. Watching rugby league on Friday nights, as I sometimes do, interferes with my internet schedule.
Technology.
For anyone who feels the summer humidity is interested in solutions for some time I have projecting that personal air conditioners will become a viable solution. For some time there have been tiny compressors used to cool high performance Gaming PC computer cores. This has now grown into a demand high enough to interest Chinese manufacturers. This is the size of them now…
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/24V-500W-Miniature-Refrigeration-Compressor_1981282449.html?spm=a2700.8239084.0.0.gkFe8x
So stay tuned it will not be much longer before some keen entrepreneur provides a jacket to wear in summer that cools your body while you work powered by rechargeable batteries.
Down the same path are products such as
https://bedjet.com/
which will keep you cool, or hot, while you sleep without temperature conditioning the whole room or house.
Something to consider is the use of sleep temperature for weight loss. By keep bed temperature a little bit cooler than you body heats it to, the body pumps out more heat that it would otherwise, I believe. The bed jet is a way of experimenting with that notion.
Happy anniversary, Brian and Mrs Brian.
BilB you are a bl**dy marvel. You did know that, didn’t you?
Congratulations Brian and Mrs Bahnisch. 🙂
((By coincidence, ours too))
Just a small request, could we refer to Saturday Salon as “SatSal” or something else, rather than SS?
Just to avoid attracting unsavoury readers……
cheerio
cabin boy in training for the Good Ship Sol, a.k.a.
BilB yacht.
Bilb: A 500w refrig compressor could pump and awful lot of heating or cooling. Assuming that you would be wearing insulated I suspect that you would need much less than that the system might actually be practical.
Thanks muchly, Ambigulous and Graham, and congrats to Graham and Mrs Graham. My Mrs is from the west country and I think has some Irish, took one look at my German heritage and decided to keep her own surname. But we are quite relaxed about it, so both names get a workout.
Ambigulous, noted about SS. I’ll probably stop being lazy. You are right about BilB!
Some of the press are saying that Trump’s bombing of Syria has been a thunderous success domestically and has caused his approval ratings to rise.
In fact while people generally approve of his bombing his approval rating has only ticked up marginally, within the margin of error.
JohnD, that’s 500 watts of cooling effect (190 watts power max power consumption), but yes it is still perhaps double what is required. My observation is that they are getting small enough to be serviceably portable.
It’s not just older Coalition voters who are turning to One Nation: some younger voters as well as dyed-in-the-wool Labor and Greens voters are turning to One Nation too.
The cause is easy to see: the traditional parties have failed them and betrayed them; One Nation seems to offer them the only credible alternative to a certain future of poverty and humiliation.
The reality is that One Nation is not the only alternative: there are, for example, the alternatives of the Nick Xenephon Team; Bob Katter jnr. (despite vicious propaganda against him from the mainstream media); Sen. Jacqui Lambie (who is Pauline Hanson’s rival) and Cory Barnadi. And then there are all the minor parties that were on the Senate ballot paper: many of them had policies and candidates far superior to the duds the Big Four inflicted on us; they lacked only money and the interference from the dodgy Ministry Of Truth with its two-party preferred swindle.
Tony Abbot was on radio yesterday admitting that there was indeed a lot of dissatisfaction with the political system and its operators.
What does worry me is that all this dissatisfaction, loathing and despair will become a base for a highly-organized and ruthless group to put an end to the what is left of democracy in Australia (with One Nation members taken in for “protective custody”, of course). If you don’t believe the ballot box can’t be used to implement a dictatorship, then look at the Turkish referendum.
On Trump and North Korea, Trump said he would do something with or without the Chinese, but it’s becoming obvious that he can’t. And the Chinese:
Someone will need to explain to Donald that the present unsatisfactory situation is as good as it’s going to get until something happens internally to change North Korea.