1. Juice media celebrates
Sorry, that’s a screenshot, not a link. Here the real Honest Government Ads: 5 Year Birthday Special!
Zoë and Ellen present the videos; they actually lip-synch with the voice supplied by Lucy.
A bit of investigation took me to Juice Media home, where we are told about Giordano Nanni, historian, writer and satirist who completed a PhD in history, writing about settler-colonialism. He:
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published two academic books (The Colonisation of Time and Coranderrk: We Will Show the Country) – after which he realised he could be more useful as a human by communicating beyond the world of academia. Which led him to embark on a number of other projects…
Eventually:
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In 2016 Giordano launched the Honest Government Advert series – which he writes, directs and edits – collaborating with his partner and voice-actor Lucy, and actors Ellen Burbidge and Zoë Amanda Wilson.
Giordano banging out a script:
Here’s Adam Bandt in a 2018 speech warning that the government was trying to enact powers which could silence just about anything they didn’t like, and they definitely didn’t like Juice Media:
Here’s the JuiceMedia YouTube Home with all the videos.
Recent episodes include electric vehicles:
Climate Breakdown from March 2019 is excellent:
- Authorised by the department of adults requiring supervision by children.
I have to finish with Honest Government Ad | We’re F**ked:
authorised by the department of going gentle into that good night.
2. The Speaker speaks
Adam Bandt raised the question as to what is satire, and who decides? Satirist Jonathon Swift was very serious when in 1729 he anonymously published A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick:
- The essay suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole mocked heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as British policy toward the Irish in general.
Question Time in our House of Representative is, according to Katharine Murphy in The Guardian, simply an abomination and a disgrace. That link has a video showing the Speaker, Tony Smith, pulling into line the PM Scott Morrison, the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Health Minister Greg Hunt. Here’s what he said to the PM:
- “I’m asking you to return to the question,” Smith said to Morrison.
“Happy to do that, Mr Speaker,” Morrison soothed.
Smith promptly called Morrison’s bluff. “I don’t care whether you’re happy or not,” the Speaker said. “You need to return to the question.”
Murphy points out that a few weeks ago there was a report on Question Time from a parliamentary committee covered by Amy Remeikis in A sludge of grandstanding: does question time finally need some answers? Seems they did a survey:
- Of the 3,465 survey responses the committee received back, more than 95% of people wanted question time to change. “Waste of time” and “farce” were among the popular comments.
Mostly, people are disillusioned with the whole process. They expect questions to be answered, or for the answers to at least be relevant to the question. Anyone who has watched QT knows that’s almost impossible. After all, it’s never been known as answer time.
A lot of what we get is scripted theatre with questions like:
- “Minister, could you update the House on the importance of strong and consistent border protection policies, and, Minister, are you aware of any risks associated with alternative approaches?”
A chance to brag and then dump on the opposition, while staying within standing orders.
The speaker said that if ministers want to talk about “alternative approaches” they need to name them, and this to Josh Frydenberg:
- “if he wants to give a general character assessment of those opposite he’ll need to find another time to do it during the parliamentary day, no matter how much it has been scripted beforehand.”
At least, as we are reminded by Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell (Series 13, Episode 2, from 18:55+), our pollies don’t engage in fisticuffs or throw chairs.
Micallef did also highlight Greg Hunt not respecting the Speaker.
There is often more substance in the satire than the material that is being satirized.
3. America remembers the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
On 31 May President Biden issued A Proclamation on Day Of Remembrance: 100 Years After The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, beginning with:
- One hundred years ago, a violent white supremacist mob raided, firebombed, and destroyed approximately 35 square blocks of the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Families and children were murdered in cold blood. Homes, businesses, and churches were burned. In all, as many as 300 Black Americans were killed, and nearly 10,000 were left destitute and homeless. Today, on this solemn centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I call on the American people to reflect on the deep roots of racial terror in our Nation and recommit to the work of rooting out systemic racism across our country.
Before the Tulsa Race Massacre, Greenwood was a thriving Black community that had grown into a proud economic and cultural hub. At its center was Greenwood Avenue, commonly known as Black Wall Street. Many of Greenwood’s 10,000 residents were Black sharecroppers who fled racial violence after the Civil War.
In the subsequent decades governments took deliberate action to prevent the community from rebuilding.
Biden’s proclamation ends with:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 31, 2021, a Day of Remembrance: 100 Years After The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. I call upon the people of the United States to commemorate the tremendous loss of life and security that occurred over those 2 days in 1921, to celebrate the bravery and resilience of those who survived and sought to rebuild their lives again, and commit together to eradicate systemic racism and help to rebuild communities and lives that have been destroyed by it.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
A brief video from the BBC tells the story.
Here are Exhibits from the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum.
A 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Centennial Commission has been set up.
Now Tom Hanks urges US educators to teach students about Tulsa race massacre.
Hanks says he studied American History for four years when he was young, but not a page about Tulsa.
Also:
- “Tulsa was never more than a city on the prairie.
“The Oklahoma Land Rush got some paragraphs … but the 1921 burning out of the Black population that lived there was never mentioned. Nor … was anti-Black violence on large and small scales, especially between the end of Reconstruction and the victories of the civil rights movement.
“… Many students like me were told that the lynching of Black Americans was tragic but not that these public murders were commonplace and often lauded by local papers and law enforcement.”
Meanwhile State GOP Lawmakers Try to Limit Teaching About Race, Racism
Republican-controlled legislatures across the country are advancing measures to limit how students can be taught about race and racism.
- At least 16 states are considering or have signed into law bills that would limit the teaching of certain ideas linked to “critical race theory,” which seeks to reframe the narrative of American history. Its proponents argue that federal law has preserved the unequal treatment of people on the basis of race and that the country was founded on the theft of land and labor.
Those states include Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.
The latest state to implement a law is Tennessee, where the governor this past week signed a bill to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools.
Only in America(!?)
See also List of Indian massacres in North America.
4. Warrigal Creek where the water turned red in 1843
Here in Oz we have ‘The water turned red’: Remembering the Indigenous victims of the c:
- When dozens of Indigenous people were shot dead at Warrigal Creek in 1843, the water turned red with their blood, says Stephen Thorpe, a member of the same Gunnai tribe.
A gang of white settlers on horseback pinned Indigenous men, women and children against the bank of the creek, in South Gippsland, and opened fire.
Those who escaped into the water were shot as they came up for air. A boy who was shot in the eye was forced to lead the murderers to other camps, where more Gunnai people were killed.
Gunnai and Gunditjmara man Stephen Thorpe is passionate about encouraging non-Aboriginal Victorians to be courageous in confronting uncomfortable truths about our state’s history.
Today, few Victorians know about this slaughter of as many as 150 people – a crime for which no one was arrested. There are no plaques at the now peaceful spot on a farm 40 kilometres south of Sale and 200 kilometres east of Melbourne.
But there are more than a dozen monuments in Gippsland to pastoralist Angus McMillan, who is widely believed to have led this and other massacres. Until 2018, a federal electorate was named after him.
Wikipedia has a List of massacres of Indigenous Australians.
We have much to think about having just come through National Reconciliation Week.
Phew! Now I go to bed!
Interesting question:
What was the deadliest day in US history?
In 1790 the population was only 4 million, and in 1918 a third of what it is now.
There are plenty of contenders, but adjusting for population, the author thinks it would be one day in October 1918 when the Spanish flu was raging.
Good one, Brian. Adam Bandte’s speech is a work of art. It’s sad he had to make it.
Australia was not the only place where the English were responsible for massacre’s. Ireland and Scotland were among many were on the English hit list. One of my ancestors was supposed to have been the only survivor of an English massacre at her village.
Most Australian’s would have ancestors who survived war, massacre’s and violence not all that far in the past.
Seems to me that there are so few acts of racism in Australia and the US that they need to be fabricated or dragged forward from the past.
I do realise that some folk crave racist incidents to spout virtue signals to the point that demand has vastly outstripped supply.
Jumpy: “Seems to me that there are so few acts of racism in Australia and the US that they need to be fabricated or dragged forward from the past.”
Right now in the US there is some pretty awful stuff going on in areas such as making it very hard for Afro-Americans to vote. In particular there seems to be a rush at the moment of this sort of activity in some Republican controlled states such as Texas. (The party that freed the slaves seems to have slipped a bit.) That is just one clear example of current racism in the US.
If you aren’t convinced try reading: “26 simple charts to show friends and family who aren’t convinced racism is still a problem in America.” https://www.businessinsider.com.au/us-systemic-racism-in-charts-graphs-data-2020-6?r=US&IR=T
My strong guess is that a similar set of charts for Australia would look somewhat similar.
I have certainly come across racist attitudes and behavior when I lived in places where there was a significant Aboriginal population.
Jumpy, I’ll ignore that, except to point out that there is a difference between “acts of racism” and “massacres” plus 150 massacres in Australia post European settlement is not a small number.
John, I think all most European colonists had a bad record in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I’d thought of including Germany, which was in the news last week as in Germany officially recognises colonial-era Namibia genocide.
Reparations were agreed to after five years of negotiations in the form of aid over 30 years. In general the reaction is that €1.1bn is not enough and some regard it as an insult – Viewpoint: Why Germany’s Namibia genocide apology is not enough
German colonisers killed tens of thousands of Ovaherero and Nama people in Namibia between 1904 and 1908. This amounted to some 80% of the Ovaherero and over 40% of the Nama. Their land and livestock were also confiscated.
Looks like Germany was trying to avoid proper reparations. The affected communities were not even consulted. In the circumstances this was a bit much:
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said his country was asking Namibia and victims’ descendants for forgiveness.
Saw a comment somewhere to the effect that if Belgium ever paid fair reparations they’d have to sign the whole country over to the Congolese.
“Western Civilisation” has a lot to answer for.
As for contemporary racism in Australia, it has been said that if you want to observe it in action just watch Ernie Dingo try to catch a cab in Sydney on a Saturday night.
zoot, in the past week we have had Adam Goodes reject an AFL hall of fame nomination.
He was booed by thousands at 17 matches in a row, apparently because of his race, and the AFL did SFA.
When he retired, he didn’t say why, just ‘it was time’ and this time he didn’t want his refusal publicised before the awards, but it appeared on the front page of one of Rupert’s rags.
See Brian, there’s no racism in Australia, just these uppity blackfellas making trouble.
/snark
I’m not saying there is no racist sentiment in Australia.
To the contrary, there are those that think Aborigines are so dumb and weak that only vastly superior whites can lift them up closer to the lofty heights they themselves dwell.
To them, having removed all institutional obstacles to success and wealth are not enough, Aborigines are infantile and only with their nurturing can Aboriginal folk grow up.
As for Ernie Dingo, aren’t almost all cab drivers in Sydney Indians.
And Goodes was booed, in a sport that rates toughness a virtue, because he had a cry when a 13 year old girl supporter of the opposing team called him an ape. There are no connections between apes and Aboriginal folk unless one craves ridiculous, convoluted false parallels in order to see racism where it doesn’t exist. Manufactured racism is what that is.
And I thought I was being snarky. Turns out I was speaking truth.
Zoot, I’m sure there are plenty of things that you and I can agree on.
One being that trannies should compete in any sport they want against anyone they want on any day they feel they can win.
One step closer to the end of gender apartheid in sport and closer to one United platform of meritocracy!!
Are you with me Brother ?
Opps, Comrade!!
Jumpy: “To the contrary, there are those that think Aborigines are so dumb and weak that only vastly superior whites can lift them up closer to the lofty heights they themselves dwell.
To them, having removed all institutional obstacles to success and wealth are not enough,”
You seem to have a very sneering, limited idea of what it takes to make large steps. Also a very limited idea about what people want to do and the doubts they might have.
Not everyone wants to leave their culture to become a stranger in a very different culture that speaks a very foreign language. A culture they don’t really understand and their family has doubts about.
My take is that, in general, Aborigines are the only ones who have the power to decide what they as individuals and communities want to do. Also quite often the only ones who do have the power to make real change.
Also that too many Aborigines have been conned into believing that only someone else has the power to solve their problems.
Agreed. “ Infantilised “ is the term.
Who do you think is doing the most infantilising of Aboriginal folk do you think and how do we, as a Nation, stop them ?
Jumpy: For some interesting stats on Aboriginal education: https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/education/aboriginal-students-in-higher-studies-at-university
Lots of stuff including:
“complete a PhD. [3]
30,000
Number of Aboriginal people with a university degree in Australia in 2014 [4]. Same figure in 2010: 25,000 [5]; in 2006: 20,000; in 1991: 3,600. [6]
Source: Aboriginal students in higher studies at university – Creative Spirits, retrieved from https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/education/aboriginal-students-in-higher-studies-at-university
The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons aged 15-64 attending university or another tertiary institution more than doubled from 7,000 in 2006 (2.6 per cent of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population) to 15,400 in 2016 (3.9 per cent).23 Oct 2017
Progress is being made.
No names, no pack drill, but it’s usually people who make comments like this
Not sure how we stop them – any ideas?
Jumpy: “Who do you think is doing the most infantilizing of Aboriginal folk do you think and how do we, as a Nation, stop them ?”
To me someone like Jumpy who says “To them, having removed all institutional obstacles to success and wealth are not enough.” is a best ignorant re what it takes to recover from prolonged discrimination or learn how to deal with a very foreign culture. Getting the balance right is not always easy.
Jumpy: “Aboriginal heroes from early years of colonization the focus of research project” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-09/aboriginal-heroes-history-research-federation-university/100197642
“A new research project at Ballarat’s Federation University is collating stories of Aboriginal heroism during the early years of British occupation.
Led by historian Fred Cahir, the project is uncovering hundreds of stories of Aboriginal people saving the lives of settler colonists.
Dr Cahir said it was important to recognise these instances of “Aboriginal heroic acts”.
“Generally speaking, most Australians feel that Aboriginal people had no role in the development of Australia as a nation,” he said.
“Clearly the research indicates they had an integral role in saving us from bushfire, from floods, tracking our lost children, our lost stock — indeed, we relied on Aboriginal expertise and skill.”
At that time it was the Europeans being helped to adjust to a new environment and Aborigines helping the ignorant.
I spent the first part of the night watching some of the best rugby league I’ve ever seen. Happens it was the men in blue doing it. See
Roam if you want to: Turbo’s effort leaves Origin greats in awe.
Turbo Tom Trbojevic scored three tries, to make it 8 in 5 matches. Thing is, they all played well. A team of champions playing as a team. If you picked an Australian side tomorrow it could have zero Queenslanders.
On another matter, Melbourne woman tests positive for COVID-19 on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
A woman who travelled from Melbourne to the Sunshine Coast while the Victorian capital was in lockdown has tested positive for COVID-19, Queensland’s Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has confirmed.
Key points:
Victoria’s lockdown had already started when the woman left the state on June 1
Police are investigating how and why the woman and her husband entered Queensland
Authorities say there are multiple exposure sites across Queensland and NSW
Ms D’Ath said a 44-year-old woman left Victoria on June 1, travelled through New South Wales and crossed the Queensland border on June 5
The woman’s husband has now tested positive.
The state is not locking down, even aged care facilities etc. The emphasis is on contact tracing, and on vaccinating in the Sunshine Coast area.
The couple have been staying with parents who have tested negative.
Police are investigating, and the prospect is that they will be charged for breaking the current health orders in relation to people coming from Victoria. In case people are wondering, police are only carrying out spot border checks.
The chief health officer has said that the evidence indicates the woman has been a weak spreader, so we are hoping for the best.
The Courier Mail says today probably pay-walled) that the Victorians were moving to the Sunshine Coast for the husband to start a new job.
It’s understood the woman and her partner only came forward for testing because the partner needed a negative Covid test result for work purposes.
Authorities have deemed it sheer luck that the case was caught.
It’s understood the woman lost her sense of smell on June 3, which is a symptom of the virus.
They entered Qld on June 5.
The claim is that they used the Goondiwindi route to avoid detection. It will all come out in the wash.
It’s believed the couple may have chosen to travel via Goondiwindi because of a strong police presence, including mobile patrols and automated number plate recognition, on the Gold Coast border.
Gold Coast police Superintendent Rhys Wildman said officers were performing up to 100 random intercepts of suspect vehicles daily at the border, and turning around several people each day.
We keep seeing Gladys B on the box saying that we have to keep our borders open and live with the virus. There are 13 exposure sites where people now have to quarantine, many without pay.
On the fall of Us democracy the Republicans have been busy: “14 GOP-Controlled States Have Passed Laws to Impede Free Elections.” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/14-gop-controlled-states-have-passed-laws-to-impede-free-elections/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter-06-10-2021
While GOP-controlled legislatures rush to make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote, they are also intensifying their control over how elections are run and how votes are counted, after Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Twenty-four new laws have been passed in 14 states this year that will allow state legislatures to “politicize, criminalize, and interfere in election administration,” according to a report released Thursday by three voting rights groups, States United Democracy Center, Law Forward, and Protect Democracy. Overall, 216 bills have been introduced in 41 states to achieve these ends. ” Scary reading. Reminds me of how a number of Australian states bent the rules used to keep governments in power despite losing the 2PP vote.
John, that is beyond sad in the land of the free.
I’ll put up a few links tomorrow.
Jumpy @5.22,
My comment to your otherwise positive contribution is in “ on any day they feel they can win.” Participating isn’t primarily about winning, its about participating to exercise body mind and spirit (feelings). Else every event would have only one participant, the one most certain to win.
On another thought path I’m curious what your reaction to this piece of history https://youtu.be/2Sim0oAZL98 is.
John, you’re falling for disinformation again.
There is nothing in these democratic voting protections that disenfranchise black folk or Dems.
Unless of course those groups are too stupid to get ID or carry a water bottle.
No, they are to reduce vote harvesting, ensure only American Citizens votes count, trace back illegitimate votes and restore faith in their electoral system.
But there is not a scintilla of evidence that any of this happened.
The ex-president lost because the ghost of Hugo Chavez changed the votes in the machines before feeding the paper ballots (which came from China) to chickens which were then incinerated while the Italian satellites continued the digital attack and truckloads of false ballots were imported from somewhere. His representatives have told us this.
How is such an overwhelming attack foiled by forbidding people giving water to people waiting to vote?
Zoot, you’re a joke of a commenter, negative value waste.
Go look at Project Veritas audiovisual evidence of ballot harvesting of noncitizens and citizens alike.Actual video evidence of perpetrators bragging about breaking electoral laws on camera.
Just because you bury your head, ostrich like, into leftist lala land doesn’t stop reality being so.
Jumpy: “Unless of course those groups are too stupid to get ID or carry a water bottle.” And the state government provides so little voting capacity in areas where people support their opponents that people have to que for hours to vote.
Explain to me why providing food and water is a problem?
How many? I believe it falls well short of the number required to invalidate the result, which has been certified as correct.
Anybody eligible for a ballot has to be registered (like our electoral roll). Apparently non-citizens are eligible in your world.
That surprises me. But as a member of the cult you obviously are closer to the action than I am. How about those Jewish space lasers hey?
And now that I’ve had my Covid shots I’m really pleased they included Google Maps in the microchips, makes life so convenient even though I’m magnetic and the keys sticking to my chin are a bit of a turn off
And for anyone who thinks Jumpy may have a point Wikipedia is quite scathing about Project Veritas.
Citations (E…Vid…Ence) are included on the Wikipedia page.
Maybe Jumpy can try looking outside his comfort zone instead of burying his head, ostrich like, into fascist lala land.
It’s a bit of a distraction TBH, but I’ve never studied political science or American history, so I went looking for the US foundational values, which I thought were based universal rights, specifically the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
What I found was that these soaring aspirations were specifically rejected in formulating the constitution. They didn’t make the cut.
So I think I’ll need to expand that in a post.
Returning to the issue of people carrying COVID into our fair state, I think a couple of things need to be said.
Firstly, the action of the couple caused over 300 people, mostly on the Sunny Coast, to have to undergo quarantine having been identified as close contacts or contacts of contacts. Many of these are workers who will miss two weeks pay with no recompense, and for some that will be difficult.
Over 900 people have been identified as having been in the exposure sites within the operative time band and have had to get tested.
There is quite a lot of anger in the community over this. Thankfully, the names and faces of this couple have not been splattered on the front page of the Courier Mail, unlike what happened last year when three young women intentionally flouted the rules by going to Melbourne when they said they were going to Sydney.
The police are declining to interview them until they are declared free of infection. I think they want to do the interviews face to face without masks.
Oh here we go again. Jumpy’s project veritas. Typical Conservative con job. The last time Jumpy said “look at all the evidence”, I actually did. What is it all about? The US holds thousands of elections each year for school boards, police chiefs, fire chiefs, judges,,,,,,,, and in each election there are anomalies, and the occasional scammer (usually always Republican chasing their greed). So when you compile that into a list it is a large number election irregularities but as a percentage of all elections it is a tiny part of one percent.
What Jumpy and his veritas buddies are claiming by inference and omission is that these thousands of anomalies are actually from federal and state elections, and is demonstrably false.
The people most fooled by this are Republican voters which Republican officials know are massively stupid as demonstrated by Trump’s, though now depleting, popularity.
There is no way to be nice about this.
There are quite a few auto in corrections there. I typed it properly, but it seems that the iPad auto editor is Republican.
bilb, I’ve tidied it up a bit. Hope I got it right.
The people most fooled by this are Republican voters which Republican officials know are massively stupid…
Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables”. Not a smart thing to do, but was she wrong?
Yes Brian, very wrong.
I’m sure Emperor Biden’s cloths look fantastic despite his nakedness.
Ever wonder why Biden got zero primary votes in his first 2 attempts ?
Or most pathetic Presidential candidate, first to drop out, got to be VP ?
Worth a little bit of thinking about if one is serious.
Or resort to Wikipedia, hahaha.
Of course! How stupid of me. It was the Italian satellites wasn’t it.
I don’t think you’re stupid zoot, you’re just sure of things that just ain’t so.
Don’t blame me for fooling you.
jumpy, I haven’t got time for your ‘argument by pronouncement’ MO right now.
Brian, ok, take your time figuring out if half the folk that didn’t vote for a criminal like Hillary are ” racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” deplorables or not.
Happy to wait.
Given the Harris/ Biden mess so far I’m sure they feel vindicated.
Jumpy: “Given the Harris/ Biden mess so far I’m sure they feel vindicated.” Yes. If you believe the US is badly overpopulated I guess what Biden has done to reduce COVID deaths is disastrous.
What else has he done wrong apart from beating Trump?
What is this “Harris/Biden mess” you speak of?
Given your inability to supply any proof of your pronouncements it appears you’re just sure of things that just ain’t so.
Brian,
You just analysed that perfectly, framing Trumps main method in three words.
Argument by Pronouncement
… and the second phase
Facts by Pronouncement
It’s a whole system when you think about it.
Trump makes a lie (a pronouncement) and phrases it as “people are telling me … “ “I hear it everywhere”, then he looks for a sycophant to nod in agreement (there was the famous Birx squirming bleach injection down gaze fail), then he tries to cement his lie into place with “everyone knows its true”. Then he tries to distance himself from creating the lie with “I don’t know if its true, but if everyone is saying it then it, ……. (Looking around again for nods of agreement) … must be true”. Then comes the bullying.
Trump is in that special class of most despicable people alive, and the consequences of their being are …. grave, though unfortunately never, or at least so far, theirs.
Right now Jumpy is trying to distance himself from his Ayn Rand connection with bluster. It’s the deflection tactic.
“Want to know how much a job pays? Here’s the income for hundreds of Australian occupations.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-13/income-averages-for-different-occupations-jobs/100209972
Women do noticeably worse than men in the same profession but, it is conceivable some of it is due to age differences.
While you are at it look at: “Millionaires who paid no tax and the richest and poorest postcodes revealed.”https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-08/tax-stats-ato-millionaires-richest-poorest-postcodes/100197694
Some of the millionaires pay no tax because they have good tax lawyers but others may simply be retirees who no longer make much taxable income.
So Jumpy?
Care to elaborate on your passion for Ayn Rand and everything Libertarian?
Here is a Ayn Rand’s great inspiration, a young man fearlessly expressing his individuality and passion for freedom, while also demanding social assistance to cover for his failings, ….. as Libertarians routinely do (I need the state to bail out my failing bank, we need for there to be no taxes so we can actually make some money).
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/william-e-hickman-the-killer-who-inspired-ayn-rand-c8a9b874bd40
You should read everything Libertarian in this context, then it makes sense.
Great article JohnD.
Very telling. I’m going to have to study it in detail.
As an aside did you notice this article in the page below your article https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-13/coral-bay-shark-attack-five-finger-reef-wa-10yo-victim-speaks/100211934
…. about a shark attack (not the commercial kind) at Five Finger Reef, to be known here forward as Five Toe Reef.
I’m seeing a new business opportunity in steel capped flippers.
John
There are thousands more kids in cages at the border that Biden put Harris in charge of and she won’t even go there.
Biden restored millions in “ aid “ to Palestinians and all of a sudden they’ve got thousands of rockets to fire at Israel.
Biden’s son keeps gallivanting around the world picking up bags of cash while on crack and saying the n word with impunity.
Inflation is skyrocketing.
They’re demanding masks still while cuddling unmasked at the G7 and Jill ( not a doctor) is creating policy unelected.
Crime is skyrocketing across the board.
Please, other than having the media and Silicon Valley cover up for him, what has he made not worse?
Nice line of BS there Jumpy.
None of it supported with any E…Vid…Ence.
And all of it false.
This is what happens when you depend on sites like Project Veritas, the original fake news factory, and the other trash pages which are lying to you day in and day out. But I guess you’re hanging out for Marjorie Taylor Greene to be President like most of your sources.
Project Veritas has never lost a defamation case against the “ news “ sources you trust.
A lot of the citation links on Wikipedia have been retracted or corrected. But they succeeded in duping the gullible hate filled leftists, as was there purpose.
So what? Biden’s son is not part of the Administration. You might as well blame Mar-a-largo man for his son’s cocaine habit.
Bullshit. (In Jumpyworld we still call bullshit bullshit don’t we?) It’s not. “Consumer prices increased 0.6% in May after increasing 0.8% in April. The increase was primarily driven by a 7.3% increase in used car and truck prices.”
Demanding? Legislation has been passed? Bullshit. They’re suggesting and a very wise suggestion too.
Dr Jill Biden (yes, she is a doctor) is creating what policy? Is it anything like the policy created by those unelected members of the Cabinet? More bullshit.
Bullshit.
Well, the Covid situation for a start. Infections and deaths are dropping as a result of his competent administration.
And the economical situation. People are quite pleased they’re finally able to afford food thanks to the Covid relief package. This leads into increased economic activity and a healthier economy (no matter what Sowell says).
The US is no longer a laughing stock around the world and the allies are welcoming a President who puts them ahead of our enemies. I’m sure there’s more but that’s enough to go on with.
A quick search reveals that they don’t appear to have won any yet either. The NY Times and Twitter cases are ongoing.
Jumpy, aka JumpnmCar (from his Ayn Rand days), aka deflecto, aka Gaslighter, aka TrumpNought, perhaps soon Veritastless
Is firing well today. So much deflection and projection.
I see you’ve got this zoot. I’m transferring my energy to your energy shield banks ………….. NOW.
May the Force be with you!
Nearly missed this
More bullshit. You could go into business as a fertilizer supplier.
Your link,
“That means consumer prices increased by more than 5% over the course of a year—the sharpest such increase since August 2008. “
Mask mandates are still in force in several Democrat cities fool.
But not the G7 junket. Biden is a hypocrite, but he honeymooned with communists like Sanders did so I suppose that’s a plus for you.
The China virus is being dealt with by vaccines created under trump. Biden has done fuck all but sat by whilst the trump rollout continued. Trump had 1 million shots per day when he left office from a starting point of zero with no vaccines.
G’nite troll bot.
More bullshit.
Like the seven Republicans (Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), Steve Daines (Mont.), John Thune (S.D.), John Kennedy (La.), Jerry Moran (Kan.) and John Hoeven (N.D.), and Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas)) who spent July 4 2018 in Moscow posing for propaganda pictures?
Oh BS Jumpy,
The Astra Zeneker Vaccine was developed in the UK, the best one the Pfizer was develop in Germany under Angela Merkel by Turkish immigrants who Trump would have had deported had they been in the US, or exterminated in a second term, the Johnston and Johnston was developed in the Netherlands, but the Moderna vaccine is the only vaccine developed in the US.
https://www.dw.com/en/the-covid-19-vaccines-where-do-they-come-from-where-will-they-go/a-56134178
Trump threw a bit of money around, as little as possible, then virtually implied he had done the development work himself ……. with his big brain. Then Trump tried to make all vaccines pledged to the US and only available through the US so he could claim it all came from home and take a profit. Con artist monopolist.
How gullible are you Jumpy? Making massive misinformation takes like that throws doubt on your credibility as a builder. Is there anything that you have built that is more organised than a bon fire waiting to be lit?
Jumpy: Having a nice day are we?
In the mood you are in if I said Trump was marvelous you would think I was running a complex devious left wing plot to poke fun at you and the Tea Party. (Someone should tell the Tea Party that the tea that started the US revolution was the real stuff, not pot.)
Sweet innocent me would never do such a thing.
I’ve been told Peta Credlin is going to get a gong on Queen’s Birthday for work she did with Tony Abbott.
The credibility of the awards system takes another hit!
I think “Sir Peta” has a certain charm to it 🙂
Addendum:
That would be the rollout that promised 20 million doses by the end of 2020 and actually delivered fewer than three million.
Face it Jumpy, Mar-a-Lago man couldn’t organise a pissup in a brewery. Everything he touches dies, including hopefully the Republican Party.
Brian,
Sir Peta probably did more than many men who were given awards.
Just had a long talk with my sister (she doesn’t do short ones) who is in aged care in Miles. Everyone is double jabbed, the staff are jabbed, and visitors are not let in unless they are jabbed.
Other than that things are getting back to ‘normal’ with activities games etc. except now they are having team competitions with teams from other centres.
The centre has its own bus to take people for a drive. Western Downs local government has done well by its older citizens.
Tonight Four Corners will be compulsory watching for me. From promos Louise Milligan is going to take a look at QAnon in Australia, and how close PM Scotty M is to it.
Crikey looks into Dangerous liaisons: a short history of the PM, Tim Stewart and QAnon in Australia. It begins:
Tim Stewart and Scott Morrison go back a long way — 30 years to be exact. The two met at their local Baptist church in Sydney’s Maroubra, with the men’s wives (Jenny and Lynelle) becoming best mates.
The two couples remained close. Morrison’s ascension to the prime ministership in August 2018, however, marked a transformative moment in the lives of the two men. Stewart’s embrace of the fringe QAnon conspiracy theory became more and more pronounced as the movement gained in numbers and political influence under US president Donald Trump.
Stewart’s standing in the Australian and international QAnon community grew exponentially. Unrestricted on Twitter, the Morrison family friend became a leading figure, with his spiritual pronouncements on the “Great Awakening” and the “coming of the storm” — end of days concepts that would mean the end of the all-powerful secret group of satanic paedophiles that runs the world, as QAnon has it. (Q is said to be an anonymous senior figure in the former Trump administration providing clues to followers via the dark web’s 8chan (since rebranded as 8kun) message board.)
By late last year, Stewart had disappeared far down the rabbit hole of the fast-spreading conspiracy movement that a year earlier had been classified by the FBI as a domestic terror threat in the US. The FBI cited instances of planned and actual QAnon-linked violence, most of it driven by baseless accusations of satanic paedophile activity.
In the run-up to the US elections last year, Stewart’s growing status in the QAnon movement was confirmed when he and his son appeared as special guests on Patriot Transition Voice, a leading QAnon site in the US.
The article ends with:
Stewart’s move to the extremes has become increasingly uncomfortable for the prime minister.
Crikey understands the Morrison and Stewart families were originally intending to holiday together in Hawaii at the end of 2019, before Stewart’s QAnon links became known via The Guardian, Crikey and Twitter.
It is not, after all, a good look to have Australia’s leading QAnon figure just one step away from The Lodge — especially when newly installed US President Joe Biden has ordered more action on QAnon and other conspiracy movements.
I understand Stewart claims he has influence with the PM. Without doubt, the PM will say tonight that he does not.
There is a real question for me as to how well Scott Morrison knows himself. In my opinion, not very well, but on this one I’d be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
My opinion may change after seeing the show.
Somebody is selling the Qnuts tickets to the ex-president’s second inauguration on August 15. Literally a steal at $1200 each.
In tonight’s Four Corners The Great Awakening: a family divided by QAnon I’d hoped for more about QAnon in Australia, and could have done with less about the family.
Sad for the family, but if we elected a religious fundamentalist God-botherer, I’m afraid what we saw goes with the territory. A shame the PM’s mate turned out to be a nutter, and his son’s mate a nasty nutter.
However, Morrison seems to have made a break at the end of 2019, when the Hawaii trip was done and Lynelle Stewart stopped working for Jenny.
I think the use of the term “ritual” or “ritualised” in the PM’s speech saying sorry for child abuse was fortuitous. If anyone associated with the writing knew its coded status with QAnon then it would not have been used.
Unless someone was playing silly buggers and slipped it in, but it’s usually a stuff-up rather than a conspiracy.
There was a revealing segment on ABC RN Drive where Patricia Karvelas talked to Louise Milligan about the making of the show.
There was certainly plenty fact and legal-checking, but the disappointing bit was about how Milligan’s reputation was trashed by her former bosses at The Australian. Apparently Karvelas and Milligan both worked at the OZ, Milligan was highly regarded, they gave her a great send-off, did not want to lose her etc etc.
Karvelas verifies this, but now they have turned on her, trying to bring her down with stuff she says is simply not true.
I didn’t read the Oz, but I’m inclined to believe her.
Here it is again.It keeps coming up but ever more often, …..
https://apple.news/AMOWEp0F-TN-FpBSHmtgXcg
Young people have no hope of owning their own dwelling. Labor in totally ignoring the advantages of CGRPT’s are spitting in the face of millennials.
Bilb, I’ll look at this at more length tonight.
Thing is, nationally the ALP is in election mode in the undeclared election. Not a time for rational consideration of policies.
The ALP has promised to set up a National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC).
This is a way of funding public housing off-budget.
I honestly think the best bet would be to lobby that body, rather than get a policy such as you are proposing mixed up in the election campaign, where it would almost certainly be subject to a scare campaign.
Meanwhile there is something happening in NSW which might be worth trying to influence. I haven’t had time to investigate.
Brian: Re housing price rises a key part of the real problem is that the RB’s low interest rates are driving hyper inflation in the housing market. Not helped at all by loosening in bank lending rules.
Among other things the federal government has the power to tighten up lending rules.
Problem is that the reserve is currently stuck with a very simplistic tool for dealing with slow economic growth. We need systems that can be more targeted and/or limit the sectional damage caused by interest cuts.
What Rudd did to boost the economy was far smarter than crude interest rate cuts. Key parts of what he did included:
1. Putting money into the hands of low income earners who would spend it.
2. Doing it in lump sums rather than long term changes.
There is going to be a GFC style crash as soon as the reserve raises interest rates because of all the low interest lending for housing.
Brian: The other thing that has happened is that the average house size has doubled to a massive 240m2 since the 1950’s. At the same time, m2 per resident has tripled to a massive 87m2 per resident. (The highest figure in the world.)
The rich get more decadent and the poor are struggling to find affordable accomodation.
Then there is the higher energy/CO2 footprint of larger houses.
The Boston Globe is publishing a series on how to prevent a repeat of the last presidency. I haven’t checked it out yet but Rachel Maddow has a preview.
Unfortunately with the Republican death cult sure to oppose any presidential accountability, I fear nothing will change.
Good point, JohnD, on the house sizes. The only extra thing to note with that is the amount of material houses are built from has reduced …. In some areas. Roofs these days are far stronger that the one on our 1965 house in the Blue Mountains.
Brian I would have thought that an election would be the best time to show a bold plan, but such a plan would have had to have been well thought through an election. The fact is that Labor will never come up with a solution. They are incapable of creativity. I wash my hands of it, and will not bring it up again.
Zoot, I did see that Maddow/Boston Globe piece and saved it in my history file of important moments in history. It’s pretty extreme, isn’t it. That is how bad things have to get before there is any recognition of failings.
Look for McConnells boating on how he will take every future opportunity to purge the Supreme Court of all Liberals. Psychopaths, what can i say.
Tiny houses are one way young people can afford real estate, but experts say scrapping stamp duty would help more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-15/experts-say-govt-housing-schemes-limited-some-turn-to-tiny-homes/100213142
For Lucy and Jonty, the cost of their tiny house was around $120,000, including solar panels.
That compares to the median Hobart dwelling value of $574,543, according to CoreLogic figures from May.
I think we could do a lot better if we were to put some effort. Some of the tiny house costs would go into the requirement to have wheels.
Like to tap Jumpy’s knowledge.
John, there is much to say and I won’t cover it all.
Firstly, stamp duty is not a federal tax on home ownership but there are literally hundreds of others.
Secondly, the price comparison is misleading, one has land price included.
Thirdly, they got a very expensive caravan that may be aesthetically pleasing to them but is far less practical.
Also , one complaint from some Karen to the Council Gubermint about “ permanent dwelling regulations “ would see them threatened with fines and or imprisonment.
And then there are GFC causing Gubermint gawantees that promote “ too small to fail and too big to fail “ Clinton legislation.
( bonus, who was Clinton’s HUD guru at the time ? None other than Andrew Cuomo, the New York dud. )
Look, I’ve investigated a project possibility for 32 , 5 1/2 acre, off grid, unserviced homes on old sugar cane land within 20 mins ish from the CBD. Everyone in Gubermint, law and in the game said I’d be in for a decade long legal battle with little chance of approval.
How about you get a green taskforce together to growl loudly at council ( subsidiaries of State Gubermints ) to piss off out of the way and stop telling folk how they MUST live dependently and expensively.
What relevance does this have to Australia? Or have we become a colony of the USA while I wasn’t looking?
Were you aiming at first home buyers? Sounds like the average block would have been a bit pricey.
bilb, the cycle for policy formation within the ALP seems to be a three-year period climaxing in a party conference. Nationally the conference was at the end of March, and in Qld it was last weekend. However, the cutoff time for getting new policies in was about the time you brought it up.
I don’t have the contacts or leverage to get a creative idea like that up at the last gasp.
There may be some possibility of lobbing an idea into the Qld pool, but everyone will be distracted until the national election is over. I was going to first try the idea out on my brother, who was a minor property tycoon for a while (very minor), and a bloke I encountered in our local branch who has been involved in town planning and public housing.
However, I have also the impression that nationally and in Qld they play things pretty safe. I was actually going to suggest you might try the NSW Liberal government. Something floated across my conciousness about NSW housing and a name which I have now identified as Dominic Perrottet, the Treasurer.
I did a bit of a search, and came up with this this media release from Rob Stokes, minister for planning and public spaces, which is broadly about tax concessions to encourage rental housing development.
In it he says “it’s critical our planning system is responsive and flexible to new development models”.
Might be worth a go.
John, in your link they quote the gigantic ABC Australia Talks survey.
I know they were careful about their sample weighting to reflect all of us, but it strikes me that every responder shares one characteristic – they were prepared to answer 600 questions.
I’m not sure I know too many people who would be prepared to do that.
Some of you may remember Paul Burns from the LP days. He was a historian and avid researcher, while afflicted by several serious health issues. The year when LP folded he was researching the American independence war, feeding us snippets of his research. Shortly before he was about to go to the US to do research he fell seriously ill and disappeared from LP for a while, only to contact us from hospital just a few days before Mark B finally closed LP.
Last year I reconnected with Paul B on Facebook, where he told me that he was not able to finish that book because he can’t travel to do his research. Instead he was well into his research for an other book about the state of Roman Empire around 2nd-3rd century. A fascinating period where the Roman society underwent major changes, which has some significant relevance to the state of society and politics today. Paul was one of those historians who did not had to spell it out, he may provided context but let primary sources do the talking. In his almost daily FB post he took us through ancient Alexandria to Rome itself all the while providing fascinating insights from his research.
Paul was an inspiration to me how he handled his chronic health issues and major challenges in life, as I myself have long term issues with health. He was always in good spirit and kind what ever went down in his life. A couple of weeks ago or so a carer of his informed us of Paul’s emergency admittance to the hospital. While there he still thanked us for our kind well wishes via his carer and he sounded very positive. Yesterday we were informed:
“”Hello everyone, It is with great sadness that I am letting you know that our friend Paul has passed away.
He died peacefully this morning in Tamworth Hospital.
I was speaking to Paul last night and he sounded so well.
Paul asked me to thank you all so much for the messages you have sent to him. He appreciated it very much.
I will let you know the details of his funeral when they are confirmed.
To all of us who have shared time with this wonderful man may we remember him and smile often and know that he was so grateful for our friendship.
With kind regards
Tracy””
Vale Paul Burns, an outstanding human, researcher and historian, we will miss your zest for life, your friend- and scholarship.
And while I am here, I was just reminded again why I don’t frequent C+ threads much anymore. Brian above speaks for all of us who can’t be bothered anymore.
“” JUNE 13, 2021 AT 3:04 PM
jumpy, I haven’t got time for your ‘argument by pronouncement’ MO right now.””
This bloated thread here again demonstrates this jumped up character’s ability to hijack any discussion and make it all about himself and his cut and paste propaganda. As for his pronouncement about his motivation on being here “to learn”, it is as hollow as his arguments. So it beats me why people still engage with and encourage these inanities only to drive others away from here.
Jumpy: “Look, I’ve investigated a project possibility for 32 , 5 1/2 acre, off grid, unserviced homes on old sugar cane land within 20 mins ish from the CBD. Everyone in Gubermint, law and in the game said I’d be in for a decade long legal battle with little chance of approval.”
Quite right. There is a whole lot of regulation out there that is blocking reasonable changes that would increase the supply of affordable housing.
The price quoted for the tiny house is very high compared with other prices I have seen. One of the problems with tiny houses is that some governments insist they have wheels and are only temporary accommodation.
I lived happily most of primary school in a garage that was divided into 2 rooms. Have also got lots and lots of experience living in mining camp dongas. It is what makes me think that small is practical and can be quite livable if done properly.
Quite right John. I’ve lived a fair chunk of my time in dongas and on boats.
A 30 foot boat/ yacht model tiny home is a perfect for land based living if one removes the need to float and move.
A 40 foot shipping container sized dwelling for 1 to 5 folk would be comfortable on an 2 acres for me. Don’t spend much time, other than sleeping, inside the house I’ve got now.
In fact, I’m most happy motorcycle camping up a coastal creek track when I get the chance.
Disclaimer: the above is not an argument but is a pronouncement, as usual. Do with it what you will, I don’t care.
Jumpy: I was going to agree. Before I was married I used to think a 2 person tent was decadence and sleeping on gravel heaps was pretty luxurious. I was surprised when my new wife was not impressed by the gravel heap I used for overnighting on the way to camping.
Thankyou Ootz. You are right, we have lost a splendid human being. I remember him well.
Having clarity of mind and spirit to the end, and dying peacefully is a great gift.
Vale Paul Burns, and Ootz please do let us know about the funeral if you can.
Greg Jericho documents the boom in housing prices.
Unfortunately he doesn’t offer any solutions for people wanting to get on the escalator.
Ootz, that’s sad news re Paul. I can only echo what a fine person he was. Thank you for keeping in touch with him.
Last night I identified a labor person passionate and knowledgeable about housing who appears to have some input on formal policy forums.
I’d never heard of him before.
I need to do some more research in this area, which means finding time and headspace.
For a variety of reasons I have had a number of challenges really over the last 18 months related to health, family and quite frankly technology, where I’m convinced there are evil forces devoted to messing me around.
Today I have to spend time trying to get a paper delivered competently. Recently it was left in the rain and wind on the footpath with no plastic cover. We never did recover every sheet. Nearly half the time it doesn’t arrive at all, and sometimes we get the wrong paper.
On housing, I do have personal reasons. I have three kids. None of them have a stake in the roof over their heads, and one has been sheltering with us for nearly two years now.
Some of you may have read “Dark Emu”, a book that claims that some Aborigines indulged in agriculture and aquaculture to a significant extent. There has been significant pushback from various quarters including from people who say that the claims are a put down of hunter gathering.
The Conservation’s Friday essay: “How our new archaeological research investigates Dark Emu’s idea of Aboriginal ‘agriculture’ and villages.” looks at investigation in the channel country area with some interesting result: https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-our-new-archaeological-research-investigates-dark-emus-idea-of-aboriginal-agriculture-and-villages-146754
Worth a read.
John, also worth a read:
What is Indigenous knowledge and who has it? Tim Rowse reviews Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe’s critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu
What is Indigenous knowledge and who has it? Tim Rowse reviews Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe’s critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu
Sutton and Walsh, one an anthropologist and the other an archeologist, critique Pascoe’s work in the context of studies in that area over the last century and a half. Rowse himself is no mug.
The research undertaken as per the link you cite should through new light. We just need to be a bit patient.
Thank you Brian and Zoot for your kind words about Paul. This message was left on his FB page:
““ Hello again everyone, thank you for all the kind comments sent for Paul.
In accordance with Paul’s wishes his funeral will be held at:
Saint Mary and Joseph Catholic Cathedral
136 danger street Armidale N.S.W 2350
Date: Monday 21st June 2021
Time: 10am.
If you are able to contact people within your friendship circles who may know Paul, please pass on this information.
It would also be very much appreciated if you felt able to post some of your memories of your time with Paul to share.
Kind regards
Tracy ““
Brian: “The back cover of the second edition of Dark Emu carries Pascoe’s invitation to buy, read and admire. “If we look at the evidence presented to us by the explorers,” he writes, “and explain to our children that Aboriginal people did build houses, did build dams, did sow, irrigate and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, did sew their clothes, and did construct a system of pan-continental government and generated peace and prosperity, then it is likely we will admire and love our land all the more.””
It comes across as an ambit claim and is weakened by it.
I accept that there were places where some Aborigines did some of these things. Which things would depend on which groups we are talking about. Also accept that ideas and beliefs were exchanged over long distances between neighbours and along song lines and trading routes and could have crossed the continent. But “construct a system of pan-continental government and generated peace and prosperity” seems to be stretching things a bit.
Some of it comes across as trying to make Aborigines look good in terms of European values.
My take is that if 500 people were isolated on some island with poor mineral resources the culture that they would need
to survive would look something like what the warndilyagwa had. Problems this culture would need to deal with include things like:
Avoiding incest
Sharing variable resources.
Dispute resolution
Dealing with harm to one of your group.
And….
JohnD @6.55
What you described there recently sold in Sydney for $1.6 million. It is the opportunity value, not the technical value that is the affordability problem.
If you don’t detach the property from the open market structure property transactions are the vehicle to make one person rich and the other person poor depending on the location and situation.
If you don’t believe in a solution to the housing affordability problem based on open market detachment, then you should also disavow Australia’s PBS (pharmaceutical benefits scheme).
Without the PBS many diabetics would die as they do in the US due to opportunistic pricing of insulin and other life saving drugs.
Bilb: “If you don’t believe in a solution to the housing affordability problem based on open market detachment, then you should also disavow Australia’s PBS (pharmaceutical benefits scheme).” “What is open market detachment?”
John D, bilb will no doubt speak for himself, but his phrasing is a bit of a mouthful, and you’ve not made it easier. I think he means that we need to detach social housing property from the open market structure of property transactions.
With your @ 4.11, about Aborigines, that pretty much accords with my limited knowledge and experience.
Linking with the housing theme, the difference in the relationship to land and the environment is fundamental. The Aborigines see themselves as part of the land, ‘owned’ by it if you want to use that terminology, and part of nature where they have a custodian role.
Europeans see themselves as owning the land, intervening, disrupting and ‘improving’.
To my mind, personal property ownership is fundamental to the development of capitalism with the early structures being set up with animal herding and the use of the horse, the wheel and the wagon on the Steppes above the Black Sea as I attempted to outline in Deep origins:patriarchy. From that we got the stratification, class, castes etc which come with hierarchical social structures.
It’s interesting that in many religious societies usury, strictly speaking, charging interest on a loan, was deemed a sin and illegal.
It makes you realise that how interest is paid is by human-created rules which can be varied for defined situations and purposes.
Our society under current management has no compunction about capitalists making money out of other people’s misfortune and misery. It seems to be the preferred way of delivering services.
Be that as it may, I’ve happened upon a comprehensive report on housing by the UNSW City Futures Research Centre. The report:
Housing: Taming the Elephant in the Economy presented to the Housing and Productivity Research Consortium, highlights informed opinions of 87 leading Australian economists and other housing market experts on the impacts of housing system outcomes on Australia’s economy. The report advocates far-reaching changes to re-shape Australia’s housing system and remedy damage to economic productivity, reduce exposure to financial instability and stem rising inequality.
They say:
The recent explosion in house prices, in particular, brings a fresh and troubling dynamic for younger Australians who are being locked out of the market in growing numbers, Prof. Maclennan said.
“Surging property prices have left some wealthier and older Australians better off, but younger and poorer Australians, who are the future buyers, are much worse off,” said Everybody’s Home national spokesperson Kate Colvin.
They want significant Commonwealth involvement starting with Royal Commission on Housing Future Australia, the expansion of RBA formal accountabilities to include housing market stability, and the establishment of a permanent Housing Committee as part of the National Cabinet.
However:
In the immediate term, Australian governments should give consideration to switching housing stimulus efforts from market housing to the social rental sector with potentially lesser inflationary consequences.
Private enterprise can still be involved. The profit is in the initial price. In principle bilb’s idea of CGRPT’s is no different from the electricity transmission corporates having a regulator determine what they can charge.
I’m meeting my younger brother on Monday. Will discuss it with him, but I’m inclined to do something here on the back of such a report. It may be just another stone in the pond, but you never know.
Ootz, thankyou for the information about Paul’s funeral. I’ll see whether I can mine the files to send around a missive tomorrow, which I’ll do via bcc (undisclosed recipients).
Our thoughts and sympathies will be with him and his nearest and dearest.
Thanks for your support, Brian.
Paul Burns was a good mind to throw ideas at. Paul’s debilitating skin condition (I think it was Paul with this) would have been very difficult to live with and I felt deeply for him, and admired his bravery.
While you are mining the archive, Brian, it would be fascinating to see an honor roll of LP’s regular contributors. There were so many, and good minds who one could consider as friends. I do miss Robert Merkel, for instance.
Something for another time, though. It’s easy to dream up things for others to do. Bad Bill.
Sorry, JohnD, I got the comment time stamp wrong, it was your @6.36 comment talking about 2 room living. Back in the 70’s i lived in a 2 room house with an outside toilet in Newtown. 75 Bedford St. I just looked up its value, mid at $1.14 million to high at $1.29 million. It’s been improved since then but virtually no land, on a main bus route, beside at least 7 track wide railway, no parking, and directly under the flight path to Kingsport Smith. It’s only real asset is proximity.
Bilb: “Close to public transport” used to be a real selling point.
There were quite a few articles on that UNSW site, including
Tiny houses: not the big answer to housing you might think
One problem is that the land is still expensive and location can be an issue.
Hal Pawson on Albanese’s $10b pledge pushes housing needs back into the limelight
In terms of need it’s like putting their toe into the water. However, the main value is that the issue is seen as one that merits Federal involvement, and it puts the issue back on the agenda. The article has quite a lot of information.
States housed 40,000 people for the COVID emergency. Now rough sleeper numbers are back on the up
We deemed it important then. Why not the rest of the time?
Also there is another census coming up, which by nature will miss a lot of the homeless.
Would, perhaps, government continually rooting around in the housing market ( often to ameliorate problems in totally seperate parts of the economy), creating bubbles and inflationary feedback loops have anything to do with overpriced houses that buyers can’t get enough of ?
Back in the good olde days, how much less of this market interference by Governments caused prices to escalate?
Could it be that governmental bastardisations of the market could have suboptimal effects, just a tiny bit ?
* asking for a friend.
Jumpy, you have to get over the notion the government is per se bad. It depends on what governments do.
It seems evident that Australian government intervention in housing has not been consistent and effective over the years. Compare Singapore, where 80% of citizens live in public housing.
There was an article in the AFR the other day (can’t find it now) which said that housing development in Australia required too many approvals which take so long that the industry can never respond effectively to demand.
Then I saw another article that said that was not the main problem. I’m inclined to go along with the UNSW crew which says we need to escalate the issue in our policy agenda, starting with a Royal Commission. I haven’t read their report yet, so I’m not going to diss it out of hand. Even when I do, chances are they have a better idea than I have.
For the record, and just so we know what we are talking about I’d like to link to bilb’s April 2 comment, where he set out the concept in a very readable and accessible way (albeit on a clean energy thread) and link to the Capital Growth Restrained Property Titles (CGRPT’s) for Affordable Accommodation site.
Brian
And you have to get over the idea that Government intervention that fucks up a market can be fixed with even more Government intervention.
The housing market is overdosing, stop giving it more of the same drugs.
Libraries on the other hand are your field of expertise.
Oh Jumpy! I’ve found the smoking gun on 2020 election fraud. You will love this.
https://apple.news/AJw6TAukcTfepSeD7WuRSEw
And you have to get over the idea that removing Government intervention entirely will correct the situation, particularly given the high percentage of cowboys who infest your chosen field of employment.
Jumpy @1.33
I can understand that you (*) know so little about the construction industry as you (*) are younger than some here, however you (*) are completely deluded.
In the “good old days” which would include the 60’s to buy a property on had to have at least a full 25% deposit to achieve bank finance.
My father as an Architect had the Australian Building Code book at home and as a teenager I read the whole thing through. It was very specific and very defined, which is why the houses of the time all look very much alike (triple fronted brick veneer being the standard descriptor).
I suggest that you feel persecuted by government, not because it is real, but because that is your (*) personality percolating through. Life long victimhood.
* Please pass that advice through to your friend
* the last building my father did was the Reserve Bank Building in Martin Place in Sydney.
JohnD, 75 Bedford St was definitely close to public transport. It is actually a great location. At the time there was a brilliant baker over the station and on the big intersection at the end of the road. On Saturdays only he would bake the world’s best raisin bread for which there was always a que down the street on a scale you would expect in Communist Russia (at the time still a reality).
Bilb: “Under the free market housing model it is impossible for houses to be built for sale at their construction cost, as, at the first re-sale, property prices are drawn up to the market price. Any benefits in the form of lower land cost, first home buyer grants, or foregone speculator’s margins are “cashed up” at the time of a re-sale and benevolence is not passed on to future buyers. ” Interesting one Bilb. I can see a number of problems with a system that will have essentially equivalent houses sold at very different prices because the price of one is controlled:
1. People get around it by under the table payments.
2. Difficult for people who have to move and own price controlled houses and can’t get a controlled house in the place where they move to.
Thanks, again Brian.
The key method to achieve low cost housing comes with the subdivision of a previous property and in one transaction build several of the multilevel buildings I suggest on the CGRPT site. There are a lot of features designed into such dwellings using techniques I see here in the Netherlands. One of the most important features is that while these buildings appear to be semidetached they not. There are no common walls. There is a metre between buildings, a feature which long term advantages. With no common wall there is no requirement for a body corporate to manage common property issues so there is no permanent cash flow drain. The second is that this feature solves the 60:40 land use issue which turned out to be about storm water runoff, so in the space between the buildings is a 15 to 20 thousand litre water tank to take the storm water runoff, water which can be drained off slowly or stored depending on what the climate/weather situation is offering.
In the design we talk about the prospect of a collapsible “lap spa pool” (two long flat sides with folding ends which collapse back against the terrace wall when not needed) which can be filled from the storm water tank in Summer. The terrace in these designs becomes the back yard for the property and the open air space for private relaxation, or for kids to play safely.
Because of the one metre space between properties each dwelling has a deep soil garden down one side of the terrace for various planting ideas. In the illustrated building which is a 9 by 10 metre (90 square metres ground footprint) the property has a full 10 square metres of deep soil garden on one side and 16 square metres of wall space on the other side for vertical garde planting if the owner so desires. There is also a bicycle garage under the garden space.
The terrace studio roof has space for 2 kilowatts of PV electrical capacity and including well over 4 kilowatts of solar thermal energy collection capacity (for free hot water) with a product that I will make an announcement on soon as I have begun to talk to a European company that can make this feature as a retrofit for existing solar panels. Really cool/hot depending on your preferred terminology.
The design includes provision for a unique elevator designed in Europe to be compact, affordable, fast efficient, and safe including battery power backup. Designed in and retrofitable, but not essential depending on the owners need.
This design development is the iPod of affordable accommodation. Once you had to have a piece of furniture to have music in your life, now it fits in your pocket. This is that degree of difference, possible complete with the lower cost and the improvement in peoples lives.
All it takes is a bit of clear thinking from government to enable it to happen.
Business leaders should be all over government to demand the CGRPT development goes forward, as it is the best way to keep wage pressure low. Not that I promote that view but it is the reality. By the way I did spend over $3000 attending NSW Liberal Events in the attempt to give the idea a hearing. Mark Speakman was the most positive, but in the end said we would have “do a trial, consider the outcome “ ie all to hard. Labor? Well they were all enjoying their own self importance to much to actually stop and think for 10 minutes, ….. not a single intelligent probing question.
Please Labor, just take the time to think about it.
Thanks JohnD for your input.
1. Where “under the table deals” might be true in some situations you cannot declare it to be a given human essential.
The fact is that many CGRPT properties will be built for Retiree Property Downsizers. The CGRPT concept gives such people an opportunity to have full unencumbered title to their property.
At the moment the only chance such people have is to buy into a “retirement” village where they pay inflated prices and are contracted to sell their property back to the corporation at their buy in price ie not even the CPI value increase. Ultimately such corporations sell off the properties at the open market value taking all the profit and eliminating the “social housing” aspect to such villages. In the US such villages have become the new corporate greed target.
2 If a family needs to move and can’t find a suitable existing CGRPT property available, they can contract to have one built in the area they want to move to. It just takes a little more planning. Else they stay put.
You have to recognize that having a lower purchase price property gives people the advantage to actually save at a higher rate, and while that saving rate does not exceed the market appreciation rate of an open market property, the other overriding advantage is that they were able to obtain a property in the first place where their only other option would be to perpetually rent from the profit obsessed speculative property market.
Have I adequately addressed your concerns?
I sent an email to some of the Larvatus Prodeo collective. I had about 60 email addresses in my address book, but only about 6 worked.
Spent a bit of time reminiscing. LP is archived here in the National Library. Unfortunately the links in the text don’t work.
If you read my Goodbye again post, you’ll see how much I carried the joint in the last months.
The comments reminded me of the wide range of characters we had commenting. Paul Burns was there, alive but not altogether well.
You’ll also see how much encouragement I had to start my own blog. I’ve always been disappointed that most of those people never showed up.
Thanks for the Archive link, Brian. My first look …
https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20081119005008/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/56373/20081119-0000/larvatusprodeo.net/2008/11/17/the-tiring-effort-of-debunking-idiots/index.html
Your @12.25 is really interesting. Thanks for that.
I’ll think about how to the extend the comment range. The essential, I think will be to have a YouTube function , which I realise I need to push CGRPT to a wider discussion. I am not, however, going to the extent of building a sample House (I call them Ausarini’s [Santarini in Aus] ) to video a college frat party on the terrace to attract a wider audience. There has got to be a more subtle way.
Boobs aside what seems to create explosive interest is a kitten doing something bizar or amazing. What is going on in the human mind there. You see a kitten rescued from a tree and go ahhhh, how cute, then go inside and rip the drumsticks off what was a living bird 48 hours previous. Weird!
For the record ….
Brian
Nov 18th, 2008 at 9:54 am
According to Richard Hunwick of Hunwick Consultants in 10 years time plug-in electrics will be everywhere, with batteries big enough to be a source of peak power for electricity providers.
Tick √ for accuracy.
I’m looking for a JumpnmCar to see if crazy is a crazy does.
How many people should eat their words 15 years later.
For my part I said we would run out of oil. Hasn’t happened yet.
bilb, the archive isn’t complete. I’m not sure how they do it, but I think they take a representative sample of the blog, and upload once a year in the case of current blogs. In the case of this blog it’s 8 August every year.
Other member of the LP collective decided in the later years that our Mackay representative’s contribution was surplus to requirements. Not sure anyone ever told him that, as would have been blog etiquette, but he knew.
I suffer from the disability of having freedom of speech principles, although freedom needs to be balanced by responsibility, plus a genuine concern to avoid groupthink.
The breaking news is that Barnaby is back, and has saves us and the Nats from the embarrassment of having Michael McCormack as acting PM.
The good news is that this has flushed out the climate deniers, who are now quite overt. It was always the case that Morrison could never adopt net zero by 2050 as policy. He knew that, unless he was completely stupid.
The media were suckers in thinking that he might.
It’s not just the Nats. He’d have to sack Angus Taylor, and I can’t see him doing that.
I wonder if Barnaby will go full Mormon and add another pregnant aid to his home grown campaign work force.
I finished a full post on Barnaby this morning, but for some reason five paragraphs simply won’t show up in the preview.
There is a gremlin in the system, and I have to go to work today, so I can’t wrangle with it until tonight.
Good question, bilb. Certainly many women don’t like what has just happened.
“Barnaby Joyce’s return to Nationals leadership angers regional women fearing ‘backward step” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-22/barnaby-joyce-nationals-leader-return-angers-women/100232576
Why should the hard women in the CWA and the National party vote for a male chauvinist pig who supports climate policies that will make it harder to run a farm?
Could be good news for the Greens.
Brian
I didn’t actually know that but I’m not surprised.
I mean, it’s not a novel concept for Marxists to expunge and airbrush from history a few views that are in conflict with their own.
But to do it in the National Library, that I help pay for, is definitely a validation of what I’ve been on about.
Thanks LP Marxists for the illustrative proof.
I’m not that sad that the National Party chose an accountant with real life experience with farmers over a wannabe journalist come political leach.
On field performance is what we all pay them for.
Any low down knowledge on which of her mansions electorates Kristina Keneally will run for the HoRs ?
She needs that to roll Albo.
* or who ever else gets the ALP “ leader “ nod in the interim.
Hate to spoil your fun but the National Library was not involved. They merely archive what is already on the Web site.
Your kind donation was not made in vain.
How could a National Government Archive accept a censored version of reality zoot.
Who else and what else was cut from history.
Rewriting history ( or deleting it ) is par for the course amongst the far left, condoned and encouraged.
I’d be happy to not fund that, what you choose to fund is fine by me.
Reality (i.e. what was on the page at the time it was archived) was what they preserved.
But please, don’t let me distract you from your paranoia. After all, you belong to a movement which believes Italian satellites can change reality at will.
While the far right merely cancels the 1619 project, refuses to accept the result of the most secure election in US history (how do they feel now that Mar-a Lago man has admitted he didn’t win?), rewrites the violent insurrection of Jan 6 as “a visit by tourists just wanting to hug the police” etc etc
Gotta admit, you’ve got me there.
I agree with zoot.
Jumpy, when you wonder what people think of you, the rule of thumb is, mostly they are not.
They weren’t doing anything. It was more analogous to flicking off a horse fly.
However, I read just about every one of your comments, and I did think about you.
It’s ancient history. You’ve had your reaction, which is understandable. I brought it up because bilb was looking for stuff that wasn’t there.
This is what voter fraud looks like, Jumpy.
https://youtu.be/TtsSygMOf0A
bilb, unbelievable, but sadly, seems it’s happening.
Is this the ‘democracy’ the G7 is defending?
Jumpy, on the matter of LP, you have to remember that the blog was promoted as a lefty blog. It’s not surprising that a libertarian constantly yapping at them was irritating.
If you want to put a contrary position in that context it has to be well-reasoned from the ground up.
Also, whatever you walk by you are assumed to agree with, and they had other ways the would rather spend their time.
Even thinking of opening this high CO2 gas field is a scandal!!
Santos’ $4.7 billion Barossa gas field could produce more CO2 than LNG, report says. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-06-24/santos-barossa-gas-carbon-emssions-twiggy-forrest/100224254
Why is Barossa so carbon-intensive?
All gas extracted for LNG production includes a certain amount of CO2 that needs to be removed before it can be liquefied.
But Barossa’s gas has a very high level (18 per cent) of carbon dioxide and that’s a much higher CO2 percentage than any other gas project in Australia, according to Mr Robert.
And it is much more than the 6 per cent CO2 volume that Santos’ Darwin LNG-processing plant can handle.
So, before the gas can be piped to Darwin, a portion of the CO2 will need to be separated and vented on its floating offshore petroleum vessel in the Timor Sea, releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
More venting and combustion must take place at Darwin as the gas is liquefied before it can be shipped overseas.
Brian to add insult to injury on voter “fraud” a Republican committee debunk all of the election fraud claims and conspiracy theories, then can you guess what they did next?
https://youtu.be/KzyCrCNhYsw
They used the “concern” entirely manufactured by Trump to ?????? …….
That is pretty awful, JohnD. I would expect to find, if you looked in the internal thinking in the company that there was a decision to extract from this field ahead of other lower CO2 options in this period of Climate Action disarray.
Eventually John you’ll come to the realisation that a more technologically advanced, non CO2 emission, more short term economic alternative is the only revolutionary shifting course for the entire globe.
Our “ best and brightest “ scientists are fighting over funding to measure the problem rather than fixing it, Manhattan Project like.
I’m not even arguing for lessor funding at this point, just redirection to advancing a revolutionary alternative that the poor nations people will adopt because it’s in their immediate economic in interest.
Got anything particular in mind? Or is this just more of your wishful thinking.
Jumpy: “Eventually John you’ll come to the realization that a more technologically advanced, non CO2 emission, more short term economic alternative is the only revolutionary shifting course for the entire globe.”
Sounds like green hydrogen which is hardly new tech. Norway was producing green hydrogen as the feed to green ammonia production before WWII. Some people are now saying that green ammonia would be better than green hydrogen as a fuel for some forms of transport.
bilb – Here’s another example of rampant electoral fraud and yes, it’s a Republican (quelle surprise!)
zoot, no link!
Jumpy, the whole IPCC schtick was to allow developing countries to pollute their way to prosperity, while the advanced economies cut back emissions.
It’s cheaper and in many cases easier to bypass that phase because the technology is there.
Most new wind and solar projects will be cheaper than coal, report finds
Brian: Oops – not sure what happened there.
Edward Snodgrass forged his dead father’s signature on an absentee ballot and then voted again as himself!
As you do, and then claim it was “an honest error”.
So there’s not a scintilla of evidence of voting fraud yet it’s rampant.
Ok looney zoot.
FIFY. If you’re going to quote me please don’t cherry pick you pathetic little man.
And in related news it appears Mike Pence might be growing a spine.
Haha, and now Harris will finally visit the Dem border clusterfuck.
Why ?
Because trump is going there again soon.
Haha, he still owns their heads.
Any news if AOC will be accompanying her ?
And the Hits just keep on coming.
Of the MSM media sources surveyed about, the US is the least trusted.
https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2021/us-ranks-last-among-46-countries-in-trust-in-media-reuters-institute-report-finds/
Let them crash and burn I recon.
Jumpy, not really sure that what you imply follows. If you have a prominent organisation like Fox News together with others, then everyone can say they don’t trust the news in general.
Brian” A really interesting one on the damage done by the concept of meritocracy:
“Our faith in meritocracy is stopping us from thinking clearly about inequality, ” writes Peter Mares” It is a concept that allows well rewarded people like us to think this OK because we have merit. We can also slip into thinking that it is OK for people in crap jobs to be paid less and generally looked down upon because they have less merit.
I often used to think that it was unfair that someone like me (who had an interesting, often satisfying job, that allowed me to spend more time in the air conditioning) was paid more and had more status than most of the people who worked for me. So have a look in a mirror and then think of how meritocracy thinking amongst politicians and others is used to justify the gross inequality in our society. It is not just a problem amongst conservatives.
https://insidestory.org.au/the-myth-of-merit/
Zoot: “And in related news it appears Mike Pence might be growing a spine.”
My son’s take on Pence was “that at least he is sane.” Didn’t like his Christian right thinking.
Pence did the right thing when it counted and would have been wasting his time trying to publicly opposing Trump. Who knows what Pence did quietly behind the scenes to try and divert some of the really crazies.
Hope he can talk a bit of sense into the Republicans. It is badly needed at the moment.
John, the Peter Mares article is mainly an exposition of the work of Michael Sandel, an American philosopher, and Michael Young, an English sociologist. In both cases the society and culture they worked in was more unequal and more stratified than ours, so a class analysis works better.
That’s not to say we don’t have similar issues and value presumptions. However, it’s hard to know what to do with this:
In the ABC’s recent Australia Talks survey, around 70 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement “In Australia, if you work hard, you can be successful no matter what circumstances you were born into.
It’s true that the possibility exists for you to be successful no matter what the circumstances of birth. In practice it can be quite difficult. Then again, how do you define “success”.
To unravel things from there would take reams, but education – schooling, university and TAFE – do create pathways for social mobility.
John, I spent most of my working life as a ‘boss’ and had 6 or 7 layers below me. At the same time the minister would have seen me as middle-management.
I grew up in a district of German farmers. My great grandfather who migrated as a teenager put himself down as a “manservant” on the shipping record. My mother started life as a ward of the state in Adelaide.
As Lutherans the norm was that everyone was equal before God. Workers hired at the farm ate at our table.
So as a boss my default approach was to treat everyone as a human. It was noticeable that some, if they knew my rank, and I was senior to them would treat me with a phony deference that I found strange.
In sociology classes they talked about ‘the internalisation of ruling class values’. By and large schools are set up to reproduce prevailing values, but there is always a notion of enabling kids to decide for themselves, which upsets conservative people if it becomes too overt.
Haha, The Taipan just got a text from QLD Health Department that letting her know her Covid-19 test was negative, woo hoo.
Problem is she didn’t get a test, her name is not Kim and the Lab ( Dorevitch Pathology) only has clinics in Victoria ( haven’t been there in 10 years )
Well done the efficacy if Government.
In Government We Trust.
Brian, you’re not a “ Boss “ unless you pay out of your own pocket.
You probably were mostly a certain sized cog ( meritocracy? ) in a machine of bigger and smaller cogs with the real boss being the taxpayers.
I consider the status of “ Boss “ it be a very risky and courageous position when failure results in loss and devastation, not smaller cog size.
If one doubts this, try it.
Jumpy, you don’t get to define the meaning of words. Taxpayers did not tell me what to do, although some like Rona Joyner and Angel Rendle-Short tried to.
Here’s another interesting account of Rona Joyner.
They were not quite as powerful as those accounts suggest, although they gave us trouble.
And, no Joh Bjelke didn’t tell me what to do.
Nor did I tell anyone what to do. I asked.
That’s a bit rich coming from the left that redefine definitions on a minute by minute basis depending on the target they’re attacking.
Those that pay the piper call the tune Brian, not the piper.
Apparently everyone want to claim bosshood but haven’t got the stones to risk everything to deserve the title.
Nope. Not according to Merriam Webster:
“a person who exercises control or authority”
And not according to the Free Dictionary:
“a. An employer or supervisor.
b. One who makes decisions or exercises authority.”
And not according to Dictionary.com:
“a person who employs or superintends workers; manager.”
And not according to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary:
“a person who is in charge of other people at work and tells them what to do”
And not according to the Oxford Dictionary on Lexico:
“A person who is in charge of a worker, group, or organization.”
And definitely not according to Vocabulary.com:
“A boss is an authority figure, often the person who tells you what to do at work. If you work as a waiter, your boss might be the restaurant manager.”
Maybe you should learn English instead of posting this drivel.
Citation required. Otherwise it’s just more drivel.
Jumpy; “Brian, you’re not a “ Boss “ unless you pay out of your own pocket.” It may be capitalist orthodoxy but it seems a bit narrow to me and all about being so weak that you have to pay for power.
There are other forms of power than the paycheck and different people respond best to different forms of power. For example, very immature people tend to respond to perceived “punishment power” while more mature people tend to respond to “expert power”. Good teams tend to be flexible with power moving in an informal way depending on whose expertise is most relevant at the time, who has the bigger stake in a particular decision and how important a particular decision is to various people.
You wouldn’t get much respect from me or most of the people who worked for me if you kept demanding your way on the grounds that you were paying.
I worked in the public service when it was independent and not politicised. The notion that it was politicised under Joh Bjelke Petersen was pretty much a myth. Appointments were made on merit (there’s that word again). Seniority was only a factor when merit was equal, and it never was.
Politics did come into it in the senior echelons in rare cases, when someone had been spectacularly militant in union activities or similar, and then only at very senior levels.
In the main, on professional matters, we told the politicians what to do.
My Australian Oxford says a boss is “a person in charge; an employer, manager, or overseer.”
Bloody hell Brian. NSW wins state of origin 26-0!!!!!
What are you doing up there?
John, my prediction was NSW by at least 20. The current NSW team is the best rugby league team I’ve seen, and they are playing to potential.
NSW has 4 times as many players to pick from (it used to be 3 times), so I think it’s going to be a 3-0 series.
Other records are being broken. It’s the first time QLD has been held scoreless at Lang Park. It’s the first time QLD has been scoreless since 1994. It’s the first time Game 3 has been held in NSW with the series decided (worry is that crowds won’t show for a meaningless game in Sydney, even if COVID permits. Nathan Cleary has now kicked 17 goals in a row, and so it goes….
Brian: One of the commentators said that NSW was doing so well because many of its players came from Penrith and were used to to playing together.
Qld has benefitted in the past from key players from the Broncos and Melbourne storm being used to working together but the Broncos are down near the bottom of the table.
The ARL’s policy of dividing the competition into “premium” and “other’s” may be damaging the whole game and working against Qld.
Here’s Ted Cruz redefining Critical Race Theory during the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference.
Since CRT is nothing like that we must assume Senator Cruz is part of “the left” according to our Mackay correspondent.
Alright, I’ll play this barely tangent game referencing by a dude I know little about and who’s utterances I care nothing for.
But zoot needs to insert racist CRT into it.
Fine, what do the Marxist founders of CRT say it is ?
( little hint: Don’t ask a racist troll a question you don’t already know the answer to )
Best analogy I’ve found so far (not strictly Crt and probably a bit beyond Jumpy’s comprehension abilities but I’ll give it a go anyway):
As for definitions of CRT Wikipedia is a source as good as any.
Brian: “John, my prediction was NSW by at least 20. The current NSW team is the best rugby league team I’ve seen, and they are playing to potential.” Fair comment. I thought the game had changed over the last few yrs with both sides getting better and NSW getting much better.
BTW Jumpy, it would be appreciated if you didn’t try to change the subject – which was your ludicrous assertion that “the left” (whatever that is) redefines definitions to suit its arguments.
This is particularly stupid on this blog, whose commenters make no attempt to hide their left leanings and on which the only contributor who attempts to redefine words is your good self.
John, NSW certainly benefit from having a solid core of Penrith players, but supplemented by players from really good teams like the Roosters and Souths.
Certainly also the Broncos troubles have hurt Qld, and the other two teams are firmly in the bottom half.
A large part of the Broncos problem was off-field, where they went bad a few years ago. Now they have a new CEO, a bloke who was CEO at the Storm and wanted to move north. Plus they’ve appointed Ben Ikin as football manager, who was a close second in the competition for CEO.
It will take a few years to build but we’ll see how it goes.
The game has changed drastically with the new rules, but the players are also smarter and fitter.
Brian: “Groundbreaking solar inverter solution points way to grid free of fossil fuels.” https://reneweconomy.com.au/groundbreaking-solar-inverter-solution-points-way-to-grid-free-of-fossil-fuels/
“The Australian Energy Market Operator has formally recognised that an innovative technology solution based around solar inverters has resolved one of the most vexing problems of the transition to a grid dominated by wind and solar – how to provide “system strength.”
The breakthrough has occurred in north Queensland, where the fine tuning of inverters at four solar farms and one wind farm has allowed AEMO to declare that a shortfall of “system strength” in the region has been resolved.”
Avoids reductions of renewables for the sake of grid stability and/or other costly means of allowing renewables to stay at target.
Well that’s a disgusting analogy zoot.
Equating higher melanin to a disability!!
At least you were being honest in admitting being a racist, and that CRT is as well.
As I predicted, way beyond the level of Jumpy’s comprehension.
For those competent in English I would add that in the analogy I quoted CRT would be equivalent to studying the hotel’s structure.
Unfortunately, in the nether world occupied by the death cult that used to be the Republican Party, studying the causes of racism makes academics racist, just as studying the causes of crime makes them criminals – total nonsense but it keeps the rubes (including those in Queensland) fired up.
Oh, I comprehended completely.
There is no equivalence between race and ability.
My guess is the hotelier had to sell due to being uncompetitive with his non discriminatory competitors. Another way Capitalism fights discrimination.
Nowhere did I even hint that there was. The subject of the analogy is discrimination, not skin colour or disability.
You have demonstrated here time after time you just don’t understand analogy so I’m not surprised you have no idea of what I was saying.
Now, getting back to the thread, why do you believe you have the power to redefine words because some unidentified entity called “the left” has, according to you, redefined a word?
Does this mean that you think it’s ok to have sex with underage women because that’s what Matt Gaetz does?
Hahaha, this is what happens when any weird twisted racist caricature of a person taps a keyboard with indemnity.
Obviously to all that see but non will step in to stop the train crash because tribalism.
Mates should stop mates when they’re destroying themselves.
As for definition changes, what has “ misogyny “ always meant before Gillard.
John, good news on solar inverters.
It’s unfashionable to think so but new technology may yet get us out of the mess we are in, albeit not completely unscathed.
We have a COVID lockdown. Means a social event we had planned with old colleagues tomorrow is kaput, I have to do a rescue job, won’t say more.
The amazing thing with this lockdown is that not one of the usual suspects complained this time, or said it wasn’t necessary. Even Gladys B was too busy with her own.
I had to drive on the Western freeway just after six, and there was almost no-one there, except that were I pull off and head home there was still a tailgater, as there always is, because the legal speed limit is actually 50kph on that stretch.
Well file this under “No shit, Sherlock!”
No link, zoot!
Jumpy: “Hahaha, this is what happens when any weird twisted racist caricature of a person taps a keyboard with indemnity.”
Yes I have noticed from time to time and it is not inspiring.
“Canada weather: Dozens dead as heatwave shatters records”
On Tuesday, Canada again recorded its highest ever temperature for the third straight day – 49.5C (121F) in Lytton, British Columbia.
Before this week, temperatures in Canada had never passed 45C (113F).” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57654133
I don’t think that I have ever been out in shade temperatures as hot as this. Experience when i was younger would suggest that by body may not not have been able to absorb water fast to stay alive.
Doubly dangerous in places that have been designed to keep people warm. We remember advising an old Swedish friend on the basis of Pilbara experience to wrap a wet towel around her and sit in front of a fan. Reply: Oh no!!! My mother advised me never to stand in a draft when my clothes were wet.
“Australia hasn’t learnt the lessons of its bungled COVID vaccine rollout”. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-30/australia-hasnt-learnt-the-lessons-its-bungled-vaccine-rollout/100252912
No praise for the federal government.
That is weird. It was there when I hit “Post Comment”. Of course, I didn’t check after posting. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. But here’s take two:
File this under “No shit, Sherlock!”
And to indulge our Mackay correspondent.
You (and Ted Cruz in my example) seek to unilaterally redefine terms which (in your case) are in common use.
Nowhere in that speech does PM Gillard redefine misogyny.
However the Macquarie Dictionary played catch up and amended its definition to reflect the usage of at least a century.
My emphasis. Source: Wikipedia.
zoot, the title of your link was 50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says.
As it happens I just listened to ABC RN’s Rear Vision. They were looking at taxation in the modern state post WW1. Two big lessons.
First, the rich only pay tax when the want to. If you tax them too much they find a way of avoiding tax. Best to tax them modestly.
Second, there were proponents of trickle-down from the outset. No-one ever made a serious case for it, and it has never been shown to work. This does not stop interested parties and ideologues from proposing it.
John, I remember when I was about 30 and we lived in a house in Kenmore once having to do something on the open back concrete patio and it was hot as Hades. I got the thermometre and it went up to just over 120F, which is about 50C. I think that was ground-level however, not 1.5m above.
Can’t remember precisely, but I don’t think I stayed there long.
Officially we are aiming to stabilise hotter than it is now, which I don’t regard as smart, wise or acceptable.
Thanks Brian. That hints at me pasting (or copying) erroneously.
zoot, I’ve had difficulty, as the software ‘improves’, in copying more or less than I intended, and accidentally wiping things.
Hi all, have been meaning to drop in since I heard from Brian about Paul Burns (thank you again Brian). Was particularly motivated by the Canada weather which I see John has commented on above. There’s a good explainer by Peter Kalmus in the Guardian, but as he says, even though the mechanics can be explained, the underlying cause is climate change and we are in a climate emergency.
Recently in Victoria we’ve had floods and storms – the storm situation in the Dandenong was very serious (fortunately no one died) but relatively little reported on at the time because there was no access, no power and no internet coverage. The fact that this can happen so close to a major city is a real wake up call.
I lived in the Dandenong for 25 years (until 2001) and we often had storms, but nothing on this scale of destruction. Apparently it was so severe because the winds were from an unusual direction. Similarly coasts in Victoria are eroding, not just because of sea level rise (though that’s a factor) but also because deep sea currents are changing.
These complex and (to most people at least, except those scientists who specialise in these areas) unexpected effects of climate change are very concerning. As one who teaches about climate change, I’m still at a loss as to how to get the message through that this situation is really serious. Our federal govt, of course, but to some extent the ALP too, are still taking the ‘technology will save us’ line, but it won’t – certainly not those dying in Canada. We need major changes in the way we live, including serious reduction in consumption in wealthy countries like ours, but how do you get that message across?
I see auto correct has changed ‘the Dandenongs’ which I wrote to ‘the Dandenong’ sorry I missed that – just to clarify, it is not the city of Dandenong (an outer suburb of Melbourne) that I’m talking about, but the Dandenong Ranges, to Melbourne’s east, normally called ‘the Dandenongs’ here or even, by people who live in them, just ‘the hills’.
On June 25, 2021 at 8:33 pm Jumpy wrote
I have just discovered that the report also shows the least trusted US media source is Fox News by quite a margin.
So Cosby is not guilty, just like Pell.
Well done media prosecutors.
Yes zoot I’m in agreement. It also says,
Because they’re in the same basket of lying activists “ journalists “.
I however don’t redistribute their lies like you do.
When exactly does everyone think the left ( that I remember) switched to pro Big Government, pro Big Pharmaceutical, pro Big Surveillance Spooks, pro Big Media Conglomerates and pro Big Censorship?
The left I knew and loved distrusted all of them, and rightly so.
Please come back.
Depends on what you mean by “not guilty”.
Yes, his conviction has been overturned because he didn’t get a fair trial. However his admission that he had given quaaludes to women he had pursued sexually still stands.
There’s a report on the AV Club and its comments contain quite an interesting discussion of the legal niceties.
OK I’ve munged the link again. It should be here.
Tell us what you remember about this “left” and maybe we can help you.
As far as I know “the left” has always been pro Big Government, pro Big Surveillance Spooks and pro Big Censorship, according to people on “the right” like you.
So you agree Fox News is the least trusted media source in the US? Which source do you depend on for the propaganda you spray around here? Things like – Twitler won the election, there was massive voter fraud, Biden is cognitively deficient etc etc
Jumpy: “When exactly does everyone think the left ( that I remember) switched to pro Big Government, pro Big Pharmaceutical, pro Big Surveillance Spooks, pro Big Media Conglomerates and pro Big Censorship?”
Funny thing is that I think some of the things in your list are things I associate with the right.
Easy to see why we have difficulty discussing the relative merits of left and right.
Me I like social justice, a healthy environment and the freedom to think for myself.
Val: I lived in the middle of WA for years so have lots of experience with hot dry and the strategies to deal with hot dry. In addition, your body seasonally adjusts over time.
Also lived on Groote Eylandt for years so also have lots of experience with dealing hot humid and the different strategies to deal with it.
Someone in Canada who normally has to fight with the cold would be at a lot more risk from something as extreme as 49 deg C heat until their body adjusts and they know what to do about it.
zoot, being a bit pedantic, when you switch to the link you made you have to scroll down on the graph box. Then you find that Yahoo on 34%, and Buzzfeed on 30% are lower. Also Huffpost on 36% is not much better.
Maybe there is a bit to say about Americans and the pollster.
On mistrust Fox News seems to be a clear winner.
Val, I was and am very pleased to see you here again.
I have not posted about it, but I’ve been feeling very concerned about people who suffered the big, destructive storm in Victoria. Certainly, dangerous climate change, or as some now call it ‘global heating’ is here.
As to communication, I think a big topic, and I certainly don’t have all the answers.
One thing is for sure, the torrent of science, reports, studies, commentary etc is rather overwhelming. I find I’m treading water, rather than writing.
Today I heard that we need to balance fear and hope, and if we don’t have a measure of both, we are not fair dinkum.
The balance has tipped a bit for me since the bushfires and COVID.
Now I need to geh zu Bett as my mother used to say.
As pedant from way back I must agree Brian. I should have made clear I was pointing out the most distrusted.
I’m still hanging out to find which media company Jumpy follows. He’s remarkably coy in suggesting sources we could/should trust.
I should be outdoors working today, but I’m grounded because of weather.
There is a conjunction of several things in my life, around health, family, COVID, the end of the financial year, last year’s tax return etc etc before I think about the blog and what I might do to assisit the cause of the ALP in regaing the treasury benches.
I’m very aware that this blog has had technical difficulties which reduce its function and usability. I haven’t approached Viv since early last year, through lack of time, and the last time I emailed I didn’t get a reply.
I didn’t understand then as I have recently discovered, not everything you send by email actually goes, and sometimes you don’t know of the failures, at least in the service I use. I’m told this is a common failing which comes with software development, according to my younger son who would know, because no-one builds software from the ground up. Maybe they do in China, but not in the world we inhabit.
The bottom line is that I need to do a few things before I finish another post, and like ScoMo, I have a path but no timelines.
I’ve just renewed the subscription to the blog’s host, and it will now automatically renew for the next three years, so my basic commitment is there. Meanwhile next Thursday I have laser surgery on one eye. I’m not sure how long that will disrupt me, they say three or four days usually. They promise it will be painful, so I don’t know what my experience will be.
Fundamentally I’m committed to the blog, and very aware that climate is pivotting, and I think Australia’s approach to COVID has just pivotted.
So there are 500 things to write about. Writer’s block is not the problem, but I’m not sure how the next little while is going to work out.
Brian, it’s your blog, you do what you need to do. Sorry to hear that the fates are conspiring against you, and I hope everything is sorted as soon as possible. Please don’t stress, your efforts here are greatly appreciated.
zoot, thankyou for that.
Stressing is too much like hard work, so I try not to bother with that.
I’m trying to keep up with everything, and found this of interest:
These electorates have the highest climate risk. So why are they less likely to demand more action?
Australians in electorates that are generally more exposed to the impacts of climate change are less likely to demand more action, according to a comparison of survey results and climate risk data.
Five of the seven electorates most at risk are in outer metropolitan Qld. 11 of the top 20 are in Qld.
They have fingered the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast. I haven’t investigated exactly where these seats are, but I suspect conservative political ideology and am wondering whether sea level rise is implicated. It tends to be ignored in the climate story.
Eleven of the 20 seats are designated ‘rural’, 2 are ‘regional’, 6 are outer metro Qld and only one inner metro, in Victoria.
Jumpy, your 6.49
What I think you meant to say was
“ When exactly does everyone think the Right ( that I remember) switched to pro Big Government, pro Big Pharmaceutical, pro Big Surveillance Spooks, pro Big Media Conglomerates and pro Big Censorship?
The Right I knew and loved embraced all of them, and proudly so.”
I’ve amended it for you using your accumulated thoughts over the years a guidance.
Brian: “Australians in electorates that are generally more exposed to the impacts of climate change are less likely to demand more action, according to a comparison of survey results and climate risk data.”
I noticed Richmond, where I live, was on the highish side. My guess is that for this electorate most of the risk is associated with coastal erosion and sea level rise and, for these areas, the area and number of people affected is fairly small with most of the effect a fair way into the future. A few houses have fallen as a result of coastal erosion but the experts seem to be saying that this is due to cyclic dune movement rather than sea level rise. Ballina Is where I live may be in trouble if sea level rises say one meter. Don’t expect it to be a real problem in my lifetime.
The point I am making is that not many people in Richmond will be affected in the short term by climate change and the low support for more climate action reflects this low demand for climate action. Similar logic may apply in some other electorates.
John, that’s all understandable. When I checked last up and down the coast I was using a 2.4m setting, because that’s what the US defense department were using as the upper limit a few years ago for 2100, and local governments should be using a longer period for planning purposes than people like you and me, plus they should be using the upper limit rather than the median.
Sooner or later insurers and lenders will be doing the calculations if LGA’s and state governments don’t. Just when this will happen I don’t know.
My phone has just given me this article – Climate explained: when Antarctica melts, will gravity changes lift up land and lower sea levels? which shows how complicated sea level rise is, and also that there are many factors, currents being one.
For how much to expect it uses the common IPCC stuff, which I think will change with the new reports next month, but are still likely to be conservative.
Gavin Schmidt of NASA, a climate modeller with interest in paleoscience, says the models of ice sheet decay are not even close. Nor do we really know how the main factors around the globe will interact. And we definitely can’t predict that the effects will be smooth and linear over time.
So you and I will be most likely OK, but the next generation, I’m not so sure.
BTW Ballina was pretty much under at 2.4m from memory, as was much of the Gold Coast and the Sunny Coast.
Brian: “BTW Ballina was pretty much under at 2.4m from memory, as was much of the Gold Coast and the Sunny Coast.” Aware of that and wouldn’t have moved to where I live if I thought I was going to live another 50 yrs. Even then earthworks or other action may keep Ballina going longer.
The point I was trying to make is that people tend not to vote on the grounds of what things are going to be like in 50 yrs time. They are more likely to be driven by the much shorter term, particularly if climate action=significant short term pain such as loss of job. (I can understand a coal washery expert being a bit reluctant about killing the coal industry.)
John, I think I took your point.
I’ve just happened upon an interview with John Englander – We Must Begin Planning Now for an Inevitable Sea Level Rise, who has just published a book Moving to Higher Ground: Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward.
He reckons 30 years is a good planning horizon, which is the home mortgage period. However, on time periods he says, talking to a mayor and the planning director:
First thing I would do is say: Let’s talk about time spans. I use 100 years as long, 30 years as a medium, and a decade as a near term. We should agree that we are planning for the lifespan and use of the building and transportation infrastructure. I’d tell them: We don’t have to prepare for a hundred years today, but if we do, our community and our investment will have a greater return, and in a rapidly changing world will be seen as a place that’s prepared for the future. That becomes a strength. We don’t have to do it all at once. But we need to lay the right foundation. In other words, you can build a 10-story building a floor at a time, but you’ve got to have the right foundation to support the final structure. We need to make an honest assessment of where we’re headed and turn the danger and risk into a strength.
He reckons we could be looking at not much in the next 10 years, but 2 or 3 feet by 2050, or “we could easily have 7 to 10 feet, 2 to 3 meters, depending on how warm the planet gets” in the next 100 years.
He says significant SLR is pretty much unstoppable. We need to get emissions down to 280ppm, but meanwhile we need to prepare for moving to higher ground.
Can’t say I disagree.
ABC Just-in) “We should thank the unemployed for their service. They’ve been used to control inflation.” By business reporter Gareth Hutchens https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-04/the-unemployed-have-been-used-to-control-inflation/100259072
“In recent decades, it’s been a policy choice in this country to have a national unemployment rate of somewhere between 4 and 5 per cent — no lower.
That’s because, since the 1980s, econocrats have asserted there’s a level of unemployment that’s “natural” for prevailing conditions.
They’ve called that natural level of unemployment the “NAIRU” — the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment.
According to their theory, if the unemployment rate is allowed to fall too far below that “natural” level, wages and inflation will start growing too quickly.
So they’ve been using interest rates as a policy lever to try to keep the unemployment rate on that natural level, or slightly above it.”
Even worse we punish the people who are unemployed because the Reserve Bank and governments have decided to keep unemployment at about 4%.
Read the article for more.
Yes John, I read that article this morning.
What exactly do you think the natural unemployment rate should be to to trigger the Federal Reserve into market manipulation?
All I see them doing is reacting to bubbles they create.
( also bubbles created by other Federal reserves as well )
Jumpy: “What exactly do you think the natural unemployment rate should be to to trigger the Federal Reserve into market manipulation?”
I don’t think there is a “natural unemployment rate.” Particularly if we are using a crude tool such as interest rates to control it.
If we are trying to control unemployment and inflation we need to start by trying to understand what is driving these changes and what may be done about it.
John, the Government or the Federal Reserve can’t “ control “ unemployment.
I know it’s not politically correct to say but some folk are unemployable and some just refuse employment.
And a vanishingly small few risk being an employer.
Jumpy: “John, the Government or the Federal Reserve can’t “ control “ unemployment.”
Governments can do a lot of things that affect unemployment. For example:
If construction industry employment is low it can start things that require construction industry work.
It can do what Rudd did when faced with the GFC and boost the economy and jobs by making special payments to the poorly paid.
It can reduce the number of jobs by cancelling or deferring jobs.
The Reserve has more limited power but I would suggest that the Reserve could slow the current housing boom by increasing interest rates.
I could go on and on.
Jumpy: “I know it’s not politically correct to say but some folk are unemployable and some just refuse employment.”
Yep there are some folk… Then again at any one time there are some people who do a good job who struggle to get work because there is a shortage of the work that needs their skills. (It is often a problem for middle aged workers who have become more and more specialized like I was when I was retrenched. Not helped by a lack of short exams/courses that would allow them to convince people that they have what it takes to move into a slightly different industry.)
When I worked for the CES (around the time of the recession we had to have) I kept hearing this from self righteous pillars of the community (my parents were heavily involved with the church). It was true, but the numbers were much smaller than the aforesaid self righteous pillars believed.
I reckon at least 99% of the CES clients I dealt with were desperate to find a job. There was one family who managed to avoid ever finding work but they were the only bludgers I ever came across.
The question must be what do we do for the unemployable? Our present strategy of condemning them to live in poverty while Centrelink punishes them for being unemployable is distasteful (to say the least).
Zoot: “The question must be what do we do for the unemployable?”
Ask yourself how many jobs people do in Australia that do nothing to help Australia or the world?
Then ask yourself how many jobs actually have a negative effect?
Did you ever ask yourself whether things would be better most of us worked less hours and shared the available work more fairly?
When I were a young bloke economists started to take fright if unemployment went above 2%.
When I was older, someone made an example of the Paxtons, who preferred to draw pictures in the sand on the beach.
My reaction was that society would probably be better off if they spent their time drawing pictures on the sand.
Ralph Garnaut and some of his mates would like to see unemployment with a 2 in front of it. One way would be to do what Frydenberg did for six months, and put an end to poverty (apart from the 2.1 million he thought were undeserving and worthless).
That would change industrial relations utterly.
But Hutchens in the linked article was right, it’s been a policy choice in this country to aspire to a national unemployment rate of somewhere between 4 and 5 per cent.
And to make sure the poor are miserable.
The latest Juicemedia We make everything good sh** wasn’t beeped on my phone.
John – only for the last 42 years.
In 1979 I was asked to comment on something (can’t remember what it was) and my answer included the observation that people who were prepared to live on the dole (which I believe wasn’t as pitiful as it is now) should be lauded since they were not competing with the people who really wanted to work.
At the time people I knew were still under the illusion that automation would reduce the number of jobs necessary to keep the world running and as a consequence we would all have much more leisure time. How gullible we were.
The perils of advancing age: I’ve just remembered that the bulk of my 1979 essay concerned itself with the necessity of finding another way of providing income to people if employment was going to go the way of the dodo. (I’m oversimplifying here)
This is why I like the concept of UBI.
Brian: “The North American heatwave shows we need to know how climate change will change our weather” https://theconversation.com/the-north-american-heatwave-shows-we-need-to-know-how-climate-change-will-change-our-weather-163802?
Basic message is that the mudslides in Japan are linked to the US heatwave. You will be interested in the science.
Zoot: Australians and the planet might be a lot better off if we spent less, worked less and shared the remaining work and profits more fairly.
Think, for example:
What would happen if we got rid of most advertising!
Or reduced housing size and split up some mansions instead of building more. (The average Australian house area per house resident is currently 87m2/resident. The largest in the world and 3 times what it was 50 yrs ago.)
John, I’m in complete agreement with you.
We could also mandate that new houses be built according to passive solar principles.
The rental house we currently inhabit has been designed so that it is unbearably hot in summer and freezing in winter. A lot of this would have been avoided if the floor plan had simply been flipped left for right.
While I’m here, last night I watched “I Am Not Your Negro” on SBS on Demand. It is James Baldwin’s view of the racial divide in the US and I found it compelling. His perspective is different to the usual simplistic rhetoric. Well worth watching.
Zoot: “We could also mandate that new houses be built according to passive solar principles.”
Agree in principal but we do have an acute affordable rental crisis where I live. The educated middle class is sometimes too focused on good things to have rather than making something small and low cost enough to be affordable by the people at the bottom of the pile.
In QLD we already have a cornucopia of beloved mandates that make new dwellings less affordable.
https://www.business.qld.gov.au/industries/building-property-development/building-construction/laws-codes-standards/sustainable-housing
It’s always trade offs, every time. You can’t mandate extra cost and complain costs are increasing.
You can’t demand more local manufacturing and folks spend less for the same standard of living.
Everything in life, including economics and commerce, are trade offs.
Jumpy: “In QLD we already have a cornucopia of beloved mandates that make new dwellings less affordable.”
Dunno whether you read my post on affordable home ownership but I did say that councils etc can block very low cost housing with unnecessary rules. How much of your beloved list is about necessary safety and health?
My take is that one of the key factors in less affordable housing is the things developers do to increase their profits by developing for the rich and doing nothing for the poor.
John, that was a great article about climate/weather at 12:13 PM. It’s good to have atmospheric scientists telling us about these things.
I noted especially the limitations of climate models, and the computing power necessary to do a better job.
You probably saw the article Most buildings were designed for an earlier climate – here’s what will happen as global warming accelerates.
Seems many of our buildings are fragile, and are designed for parameters that are now being stretched or broken.
Reminds me, our house has concrete stumps, and some have cracks that might have to be fixed to pass a building inspection.
BTW I heard today, the Miami building is said to have caved first low down in the building, which is the opposite of what I heard first.
Brian, I was pointing that reality years ago, that many or most houses built today are unlikely to survive their mortgage payments. Of course that depends upon where they are and how protected they are by their surroundings. We’ll see how that plays out.
On the Miami building, I’ve done an exhaustive study of all of the images and footage available to me here and my conclusion is that the the failure was caused by the roof facade of the central section (the section that failed first and visible in the security camera footage) came off falling to crash through the pool deck damaging the columns at the base of that section , and 7 minutes later the central section collapsed.
The evidence for that is in the actual collapse video very obviously if you look carefully. In the first frame of that video, which was a cell phone recording from a security video screen, you can see that the facade of that section is missing, ie the roofline is not continuous as it should be. I first thought that that building section had already collapsed one floor and stabilized. The problem with that is that there are lights on in that section in the first few frames and are quickly extinguished as the collapse gets under way.
So it is pretty obvious that the facade came off and the force of that section falling twelve floors delivered the energy required to fracture the columns. There was a woman on her 4th floor balcony talking to her husband on the phone and saying there was a huge hole in the pool deck. Sadly she is one of the victims as 7 minutes later the central section collapsed. The hole in the pool deck was witnessed from 3 different directions, the 4th floor balcony, the adjacent building, and through the car park entrance in a second video.
On of the Engineer commentators looking at the buildings reported condition repeated wondered why the repair contractors had begun their work on the roof rather than in various rust spawl damage locations around the structure. Now we know why. It could very well be that the work on the roof which involved a lot jack hammering actually caused the failure. We may never know that as the contractors are unlikely to be specific considering outcome.
If you were going to be Jumpy about it you might think that hearing of the collapse the contractor raced to where he knew there would be CCTV footage, recorded the collapse from the start of the central failure, leaving out the previous 10 minutes, deleted the original and put out the cell phone recording to give a doctored view of the collapse (there was a lot of that going on in Trump Republican America).
Of course if this is the sequence then that will be recorded in the layering of the rubble, if they think to look for it. Also if this is the cause then that will provide comfort to Condo owners as it removes the overwhelming thought that Condos can just spontaneously fail without warning. The failure of the roof facade was preventable from what I can see the roof sealing did not continue from the horizontal up the vertical facade which in Hurricane prone Florida would have delivered all of the corrosion ingredients to the facade/roof junction, a reliable site for cracking. I had lots of discussions with my father who was a Frank Lloyd Wright flat roof fan but who also had to deal with roof leaks on many government buildings (Commonwealth Bank buildings mostly, a then client of the CDW).
bilb, I’m sure Jumpy will be here any moment now to tell us it was all the fault of government.
Zoot: “Iceland’s four-day working week trials an ‘overwhelming success’, report finds.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-06/iceland-four-day-working-week-trial-success-report-finds/100270388
“The trials, run by Reykjavík City Council and the Icelandic government, were held between 2015 and 2019, and ultimately included more than 2,500 workers — or about one per cent of Iceland’s working population.
As part of the project, employees from a range of professions — including offices, kindergartens, social service providers and hospitals — moved from a 40-hour working week, to a 35- or 36-hour working week, but received the same pay.”
“”Organisation was key to working less — and the reward of reduced hours provoked people to organise their work more efficiently — with changes made to how meetings were run, as well as schedules, and in some cases to opening hours,” the report noted.”
I convinced my employer to allow me to switch to a 4 day in return for a drop in weekly pay as I approached the end of my career. I did it because I was no longer interested in promotion and I wanted more time off. Around about that time I started taking longer holidays with the deal being that I used my computer to keep in touch and spend time working if something came up that needed my expertise.
At the time I had just finished a large commissioning job with the owners rep from hell. My wife said to me that I talked about early retirement quite often and if my boss jacked up I could tell them to get stuffed.
My take was:
1. Working the same hours in less days meant that I spent less time per hour actually worked getting ready to go to work, commuting and winding down after work . From an employers point of view less “working time” was spent on starting and finishing work and on lunch and tea breaks.
2. Working less days with the same hrs/day would miss most of the gains listed above but could mean employees that have better morale and work harder.
In my case some of the really profitable work ideas I had came when I was bushwalking. It was also a time when I did a lot of work related problem solving. I used to say from time to time that my employers should pay me to bushwalk.
I’ll leave this one to World Renowned forensic structural engineer, psychic clinical psychologist and most unbiased expert on earth, BilB.
Praise be upon Him.
John,I’m not surprised government workers and unions thought working less for more taxpayer money was a resounding success.
Imagine the success of a 3 hour working week.
JohnD,
My factory in NZ had pretty much the same work structure.
36 hour working week for 40 hours pay, but no public holidays as these were organized to coincide with the 5th week day, and overtime calculated as time over the 36 hours rather than the day itself. I checked the policy out with the union and they signed off on it. Of course I didn’t get t work those hours but was happy that the staff enjoyed it.
The factory was open 5 days mostly as people chose their days so that the factory was attended for the whole week.
Good on you Jumpy. I do have a lot of specialized concrete structure experienced have been heavily involved in build Ferro Cement boats in the 70’s (including my own 44 foot boat). Cement boats are at the extreme end of “concrete” structures with my hull being just 19 mm thick, but the absolutely most extreme was the 73 foot Helsal, the first boat to win the trifecta of Sydney Hobart lines honors, winning on corrected time, and breaking a race record. Helsals hull was a post stressed structure just 10 mm thick. It was however a ferro epoxy cement construction. Helsal’s feat held up for 35 years and took a 90 foot maxi yacht to overtake it.
Expert no, very knowledgeable and experienced .. yes, as I am by personal experience with psychopaths.
I should say that I am only too happy to applaud your achievements, Jumpy. Do you have any?
I got the impression they got at least as much done in 36 hours as they had in 40, so they actually worked harder/better. The report noted:
Of course note linguist and English scholar Jumpy will probably disagree. Praise be upon him.
Jumpy: “John, I’m not surprised government workers and unions thought working less for more taxpayer money was a resounding success.
Imagine the success of a 3 hour working week.”
I would be concerned about you if you failed to come up with a comment like that.
What I have observed is that different jobs vary substantially in terms on the effect of tiredness/hours worked.
For example I have found that detailed design and long hours don’t go together. One commissioning job I worked on involved working 70hr weeks shift work for a month. I had to do some detailed design for another job while I was on the commissioning job. A bloody lot of my design was spent fixing up the mistakes I made because I was too tired. It is just one job where I commented of the long hour brigade that: “They spent long hours fixing up the mistakes they made because they were working such long hours.” The commissioning team was bloody hopeless at solving the problems that came up because they were all so tired. When there was a difficult problem they would stuff around until they came up with a possible solution. They would then chase this idea, usually find it didn’t work then try and find another solution. A good team that is not exhausted would would come up with a number of possibilities, evaluated the alternatives and maybe pursue several in parallel so that there was a better chance of solving the problem sooner.
To what extent does plasterers performance drop off when they work very long hours?
Thanks for the detailed story on the Miami building, bilb.
I saw my elder bro and his wife tonight, so we may have sent the virus back to Rockhampton with them.
We’ll be in the news if we did.
He and she said many things, but my bro reckons farmers have to have commonsense, accept risk and deal with reality.
John, I never managed to achieve a proper life-work balance.
I’ve probably said before that I had 34 work groups, albeit in three branches with competent branch heads, but with such diverse operations and work cultures that always generated issues.
The killer though was that I was on 18 committees/working parties, including a national meeting at least once a month, usually in Melbourne, plus I used to assist the secondary school inspectors in appraising teacher-librarians for promotion, which meant showing up at places like Tully, Mt Isa, Gladstone, Hervey Bay and Goondiwindi, to name a few.
When I was 38 I took up running for fitness, and finally settled on starting the day at 6am with a 5-8km run. I found that if I was trying to solve problems the best solutions showed up late in a run when I wasn’t thinking about the problem at all.
The job was inherently stressful and I do believe that if the Labor idealogues had not taken over and showed us the way out I would have died in the job.
So I owe a big thankyou to the three musketeers when Wayne Goss took over, Glyn Davis, who later became VC at Melbourne Uni, Peter Coaldrake, who went to QUT and one Kevin Rudd, and you know what he did. They turned the place inside out. My bro-in-law, who was a surveyor, found himself locked out of the office the Monday after the election, and in the Botanical Gardens with his workmates.
I found I couldn’t sign up to their values, when the prime one was valuing people while their practice showed they did not.
Just to advise, I’m all prepped and ready to head off for day surgery in about 45 mins.
Of relevance here, it is laser eye surgery with this magic machine. There is only one in Australia – at the Qld Eye Institute.
What they do is shave the surface off your cornea, which they tell me renews itself every 3-7 days.
So they said I’d be doped up today, but to expect extreme pain tomorrow, which I gather eases as the cornea surface regrows, and should be good by Monday. Thing is, this is routine for the specialist who is doing it, but I gather it is fairly new. My optometrist, who is a very smart woman, had never heard of it.
Her advice was to plan to do nothing, then see how it works out.
So not sure when I’ll be back here, but possibly not for a few days.
Brian: “John, I never managed to achieve a proper life-work balance.”
I would have liked to have worked less and lived more but did manage things better than many. I was never ambitious enough to work ridiculous hours to progress the career.
Most of my career I was able to do what I decided to do rather than what others insisted I do. I used to say I had a bucket full of problems and a bucket full of solutions which I was able to match up and pursue. When I identified a new problem that I thought was worth pursuing I would check the solution bucket or try and come up with something new if a solution was not there. I also prepared economic models that helped decide what problems were worth pursuing. These models also allowed me to work out how much my wins were worth and tell my boss what the wins were.
Also was much better at organizing organizers than organizing which meant I wasn’t bogged down organizing.
Your story suggests that you were bogged down with too many perceived “must do personally” things.
John, I think we had very different jobs, and it’s true that there was a surfeit of jobs I couldn’t delegate. And a lot, it must be said, was paper shuffling during the age of the photocopier, and before the age of the computer.
Success was not so easily measured in my job. In fact I was very glad to be going when the whole KPI movement arrived.
One of the rewards of working around suburban yards is that you can look back and see what you’ve done at the end of the day.
BTW, laser operation was more of a zap. Watch the green light for 10 seconds max.
So far no pain, but three sets of eye drops, one 4pd and two 6pd.
Two sorts of painkillers, plus an anaesthetic eye drop that kills the pain for 20 mins in an emergency, but at the price that healing is paused for that time.
Treated eye is blurry, but shouldn’t be. Probably good in the morning.
Tired.
Brian: “Success was not so easily measured in my job. In fact I was very glad to be going when the whole KPI movement arrived.”
Ah yes. KPI’s. Easier to use when you are doing something like running a concenrator.
I took advantage of senior foremen leaving to flatten the organization. Part of the strategy for making this work was giving the foremen KPI’s that allowed them to see how they were going. I didn’t give them targets, just a method of providing their own feedback and a buzz when they were able to keep on getting better results. (Which all fed into improving the overall KPI’s that I was trying to improve and use to keep my manager off my back.)
I also used KPI’s to measure production performance. The results at Groote Eylandt were interesting. We used to think that D shift was the gun shift because the foreman had a way with words and D shift held all the records. However, when I started measuring a number of KPI’s on a shift crew what I found was that B shift was consistently the best performer. Freddie the B shift foreman came across as incoherent and not very impressive. However, he always trying to get a bit more through no matter what was going wrong. The KPIs included delays so when the D shift foreman tried to claim that Freddie was pushing too hard the delay data did not support the D shift claim. Had a similar experience at Newman. The old gun crew turned out not to be the gun crew at all. Consistency and keeping on trying was what counted.
The problem with KPI’s is that organizations can get obsessed with them even though what really counts for many jobs is intangible and not easily quantifiable. There are also problems when KPI’s are expressed as performance vs “agreed targets”. (Measures how skillful someone is at negotiating an easy target.) Ditto when real performance is hard to measure.
Watching what happened in the TAFE where H taught was interesting. The public service was being told to use the way private enterprise did things but sometimes….. QA for example, included how well the photocopier use was being reported . Measuring real teacher performance was just too hard.
Worth a read: “Morrison’s ‘new deal’ for a return to post-COVID normal is not the deal most Australians want.” https://theconversation.com/morrisons-new-deal-for-a-return-to-post-covid-normal-is-not-the-deal-most-australians-want-163889
John: agreed, well worth the read.
“Embarrassing:” Ley to appeal court ruling she has duty of care to young people on emissions. Can’t have government ministers giving a stuff about the future of our children can we???? https://reneweconomy.com.au/embarrassing-ley-to-appeal-court-ruling-she-has-duty-of-care-to-young-people-on-emissions/
It is about 30 yrs to 2050. This means that anyone who will live to 80 could be up to 50 yrs old now and still live beyond 2050. That is a lot of voters to be pissed off by Ley for being excluded from Ley’s duty of care.
‘Moral obligation’: John Howard intervenes to prick Payne and ScoMo’s conscience on Afghans who risked everything for us. https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/moral-obligation-john-howard-intervenes-to-prick-payne-and-scomo-s-conscience-on-afghans-who-risked-everything-for-us/ar-AALWyJK?ocid=winp1taskbar
If we stop using the unemployed to control inflation, will we all be better off? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-11/if-we-stopped-using-the-unemployed-to-control-inflation/100279494
and https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/e32b79485c7bed5bc0d0824c18825079?src
Only RBA and government stupidity are keeping unemployment above 3%. https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/e32b79485c7bed5bc0d0824c18825079?src
I’d think you were agreeing with Libertarians John, if I didn’t already know you think more government stupidity and central planing was the answer to the problem.
Anyone know exactly when women and Aboriginals were counted in “ unemployment rate “ stats ?
Given that they represent well over half the population, those graphs are a lot misleading.
Jumpy: “I’d think you were agreeing with Libertarians John, if I didn’t already know you think more government stupidity and central planning was the answer to the problem.”
Do I need to repeat that I think government vs private depends on what is being talked about and I reject both “private is always best” and “public is always best”?
At the moment the main thing the RBA’s very low interest policy seems to be driving is hyper inflation in the housing market in addition to increasing the risk of a GFC style collapse when the interest rates go back to normal. (The risk could be reduced if the government gradually limited the amount that could be borrowed for housing.)
The government seems to be obsessed with reducing taxes even though the justification was supposed to be a balancing of the budget that was blown out of the water by covid.
The logical thing for the government to do is to improve the lot of low income earners.
They might start by introducing a UBI that is big enough to ensure that everyone would be able to survive the covid crisis no matter what happens to their jobs. (Bonus is that it would become worthwhile to do things like pick fruit instead of losing most of what they earn to welfare clawback.) See for example: “New finding: jobseekers subject to obligations take longer to find work.” https://theconversation.com/new-finding-jobseekers-subject-to-obligations-take-longer-to-find-work-162093.
John, the dole is a UBI for those unwilling to pick fruit.
I keep asking again and again, how much per week for everyone exactly ?
Centrally plan this government stupidity precisely please and we can start to do some rough math.
Jumpy: “John, the dole is a UBI for those unwilling to pick fruit.”
Actually, a UBI means that fruit pickers on the dole get to keep the all the money they get picking instead of too much of the money earned clawed back by the government. Given that most fruit pickers have to move pick it would be quite easy to end out of pocket when the governments’ clawback is taken into account.
Have a look at the fruit picking section of “WHAT IS WRONG WITH NEWSTART?” http://pragmatusj.blogspot.com/2019/07/what-is-wrong-with-newstart.html
Someone on a UBI has a lot more incentive to work and save than someone on the dole.
HOW MUCH for fuck sake ? Put a number up.
I’m getting the distinct impression you’re repeatedly dodging that question for a reason.
Jumpy, John doesn’t have access to Treasury’s numbers. Ross Garnaut in putting up a similar scheme didn’t put a number on it, because an economist sitting outside treasury can’t.
I’ll check out again and let you know what he said, but the news is that I’m here, but not reading with full comfort yet. I’m going to stop the painkillers tonight, so we’ll see, but I think the progress is roughly where it should be. I’ve got a bit more blurring in the treated eye than I had before, but apparently patience is the order of the day.
Brian, glad to see you’re progressing.
That said, a staunch proponent of a UBI should at least have a proximate dollar number surly. You don’t need Ok Tedis Ross Guanos opinion. The number is the starting point of the debate.
Is it closer to $1/week or $1,000/week ?
At what point does it become a disincentive to work ?
I know if it’s the latter for the Taipan and myself it’s retirement alongside our employees.
Also, if the U in UBI is not “ Universal “ then John needs to invent another name for what he calls it.
The term “ working age “ in Queensland is everyone 11 years old and above, there is no upper limit.
https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/employing/taking-on-staff/employing-children/restrictions
How many would that be, 90%ish of 5.2 million.
How much each, roughly, within $50 range ?
Didn’t East Germany have a proper UBI ?
In other words, “If I can suck on the Government welfare teat I’ll do it in a heartbeat”.
A bit rich coming from a so-called libertarian.
Come to think of it, here’s a chance for Jumpy to put a figure on something.
How many dollars per week would be enough to make him say “Stuff it, forget being a libertarian, I’m going to retire and depend on the Government.”
OK, it’s a bit unfair to do Garnaut in brief, but I’ll try.
First up, leave off the ad homs to Garnaut, please. They are irrelevant to his ideas. This isn’t a facility for your personal need to vent. BTW I think it was Lihir rather than Ok Tedi that Garnaut was involved in.
Garnaut’s concept is for an Australia Basic Income, available to all adult residents (not ‘citizens’) at a rate of $15,000 pa.
Garnaut would extend eligibility to all individuals earning less than $250,000 pa, and with individual wealth of <$2 million. He would tax all income up to $180,000 pa at 37%, or 32.5% if possible, and thence at 45%.
He points out that anyone wanting to work would keep 62% of what they earn. Now it can be effectively 20%.
If you don’t want to work, no questions asked, and no government program to make your life miserable.
Garnaut believes this would create an environment in which workers who work actually want to work, and would be more inclined to cooperate with management in increasing flexibility and productivity.
It would also facilitate moving in and out of further training, which he also has ideas about.
Garnaut’s purpose is to generate discussion in the context of fair dinkum policy reset within an open democratic ideas, a discussion that would include treasury working the numbers, not to govern by dictatorial fiat.
Pedant alert: in paragraph 4 shouldn’t “>$2 million” be <$2 million? (Or have I misunderstood something).
Apart from that it all sounds eminently sensible to me.
My inclination would be to use some of Garnaut’s and OP’s ideas to roughly double the amount, to about $30,000 pa, halve the eligibility, and then scale it up to about $120,000 pa.
It’s a bit more complex, but I do have a basic concern about the affordability of a full UBI and also concerns about giving those who don’t need it.
See also Poverty Lines.
Thanks zoot, fixed now.
Let me have another go at eligibility.
I think it may be more practical to roughly double the amount, which brings it pretty much in line with the latest Henderson Poverty line, in the link I gave.
Make that available to all below the median single male income, whatever that is. From that point to $120,000 pa scale down pro rata.
I reckon when you’ve got $120,000 pa and are only being taxed on the portion above the median, then you have enough not to need government help.
Jumpy: The way I see a UBI would be that it is paid to all Australians and people with residential visas who are living in Australia. It may vary with age but would not depend on income, assets, marital status or job seeking efforts. It would be linked to the minimum wage.
It would fully replace unemployment benefits, the old age pensions and child allowances. It may only partially replace things like the invalid pension.
Converting to the above would save big mobs now wasted on a complex administration system. It may also save time for employers who are supposed to answer jobseeker job applications.
A few figures:
Australian minimum wage (Mar 2021)=$772/week
(For a single unemployed person, with no children, aged 22 or over, the JobSeeker Payment is just $565.70 a fortnight or $282.85 a week. If they are renting privately they can also receive Rent Assistance of up to $139.60 a fortnight, which is payable if their rent is more than $310.73 a fortnight.
Single old age pension with allowances=$477/week.
Single person jobseeker mid Covid=$566/week (Before allowances?)
I would suggest that the UBI for all adults who are not on invalid pensions be set at $500/week with no rent allowances allowed.
Even setting the working age UBI at $283 has benefits because there will be no clawback, waiting times etc.
The Brotherhood of St Laurence is very critical of the current scheme. https://www.bsl.org.au/about/advocacy/unemployment-benefits/
Brian: I think that one of the important things about a UBI is the simplicity where nothing has to be monitored to determine the amount. Part pensions for example drive people mad because it drops as soon as your weekly income rises. Really hard for small business people with highly variable income and expenses.
You simply pay a UBI based on age and nothing else and the rich get the same UBI as an unemployed person but pay more tax because they have higher incomes.
Me I like the idea of combining a simple UBI with a simple flat tax to give serious simplicity for a system that is still progressive because of the UBI.
Four questions NSW needs answers for as its COVID outbreak intensifies.” Interesting article on what is going wrong in NSW. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-12/four-questions-for-nsw-as-its-covid-outbreak-intensifies/100284790
Shame the federal Gov didn’t help facilitate lessons from Vic.
Brian: “I reckon when you’ve got $120,000 pa and are only being taxed on the portion above the median, then you have enough not to need government help.”
Under what I am proposing someone who earns $120,000 p.a. would still get the same UBI as someone the same age earning $120 p.a. The difference is that the $120,000 p.a. person pays more income tax to cover the UBI while the $120 p.a. person pays no income tax.
Hey, blogmeister Viv has fixed the comments box!
John, on the UBI I can agree with you, as long as the amount provides enough for the recipient to lead a dignified life. I think this becomes a stretch if you include everyone, but happy to be wrong.
John, on COVID the feds don’t seem to contribute anything. Morrison has been telling us that NSW are world champs, and no-one should do lockdowns.
Gladys B keeps telling us that the decisions are designed to provide minimum disruption of people’s lives.
It seems apparent that she has underestimated her opponent.
I do know that Victoria tried to learn from other states. Whether NSW did, I would not know.
Qld is definitely operating in a way that is different from the ultra-cautious approach they used last year.
From listening to the press briefings, they say that around 70% of transmission is inside family homes. Chris Bowen this morning pointed out that in his electorate there can be two or three houses beside each other belonging to one ‘family’ and come meal-time there may be only one table.
Kerry Chant is saying that by the time they find one infection, the whole family is infected, and all tend to be out and about in casual part-time jobs etc.
New Daily has an AAP report on the virus.
It will be “almost impossible” to end the lockdown this Friday.
Chant and Berejiklian have said, we would not be here if everyone was vaccinated, but I’m not sure blame will accrue to the right people.
Brian: I think SW Sydney is particularly challenging because they have a lot of migrants that are used to being very close to the extended family. (Gladys understands this because she comes from a similar background.) Winter makes it worse because people want to be out of the cold.
So far our patch has been OK. It is a long way from Sydney and the people seem to be willing to wear masks and register.
Having said that there is nearby Mullumbimby, the anti-vax capital of Australia. Some of the shops have been banning people who have recently been vaccinated because they may be circulating the virus that was part of the vaccination. H has had her two jabs and I will be getting my second jab on Thursday unless I come down with some wog.
Brian: “John, on the UBI I can agree with you, as long as the amount provides enough for the recipient to lead a dignified life. I think this becomes a stretch if you include everyone, but happy to be wrong.
My thinking on the UBI is driven on my article “WHAT IS WRONG WITH NEWSTART?” For example:
“Clawback: Unemployment payments are reduced if a single recipient earns more than a very small amount. For Newstart, the benefit for a single person would be reduced by 50 cents for every dollar earned above $52 per week (averaged over 2 weeks) and 60cents for every dollar earned above $127 per week. The Newstart allowance drops to zero when other income reaches $527 per week. (March 2018) To put this in context, someone receiving the current minimum wage could earn $52 in less than 3 hrs. and the marginal tax rate for someone earning over $180,000p.a. is 47% including medicare. My understanding is that someone whose other income varies from fortnight to fortnight will, all else being equal, receive less on average than someone whose other income remains the same from fortnight to fortnight.”
Have read of the bit on fruit picking and stop wondering why the unemployed are reluctant to go fruit picking,
That is why I want a very simple UBI that may change with age but does not change with income, assets and marital relationships. Saves a lot of admin costs and remove disincentives to work.
John, I can’t take UBI further at present. Garnaut is proposing it in the context of reframing how the government and the economy work. He thinks what he suggests could be done starting from where we are. I’m not sure it’s worth doing unless it can be done at a level sufficiently generous to end poverty and institute dignity for all.
The economics is out of my league, so I’d be happy to see the proponents seriously duke it out.
On COVID, I think were are at a serious cleavage in the road, so I might have a look at that.
Hahaha, this is zoots go to trusted media gal,
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/12/28/rachel-maddows-defense-to-oan-defamation-lawsuit-is-that-on-air-statements-shouldnt-be-considered-fact-869161/
Her lawyers defence “ her audience knows she’s spouting hypebowl without a shred of evidence “
The judge agreed, she got off.
( disclaimer: I watch 2 Madcow rants per week just for the comedy of it 🙂 )
Well that’s two more than me (per week, I might see two a month) but I admire your dedication.
Now what’s the source of your real news?
Oh, the links are back.
Gotta remember how to use them, well done whom ever is responsible. Both thumbs up.
Test.
Note to Judge: No, her fans believe everything she says is fact, they even use it on blogs as factual argument.
FWIW, just dipping into the links, this is indeed awkward – Awkward: Rachel Maddow asked on ‘The View’ if she’s part of reason nobody believes the news.
Strange defense and strange judgement.
I can understand that “literally” might be hyperbole in saying that OANN is “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda”.
But when she says:
“Their on-air politics reporter (Kristian Rouz) is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”
it should be true, or she shouldn’t say it.
Beyond that I wouldn’t comment without reading the transcript of proceedings, which I’m not going to do.
Operation today was quite instructive, and my hand more sore and tender than I expected.
There were 7 in the operation theatre, other than the surgeon. They cooperated so well it was hard to see who was in charge. I think it was the youngest and smallest, who was designated as the ‘scout’, who seemed to be checking everything and making crucial decisions.
A nurse was being trained in the role of handing instruments and stuff to the surgeon. He was a very open and approachable bloke, who explained exactly why everything had to be held the way it does, and said she had to be aware of what he was doing as well as everything that was going on in the room.
He explained why he doesn’t take his eyes off the spot, so he doesn’t have to find his place, so when she hands over the instrument she needs to force it into his hand, then let go.
If she speaks to the surgeon and he doesn’t answer, she needs to press the issue until he does.
BTW I’m assuming that the nurse can be a ‘he’ and the surgeon can be a ‘she’.
I ended up in having a lot of confidence in the place, owned by Ramsay Health and operated for profit.
The judge’s ruling against OAN was a bit more nuanced than Jumpy’s link would suggest – that pesky first amendment for a start, plus Maddow was quoting The Daily Beast which hadn’t been sued by OAN.
The judge’s decision was handed down on Friday 22 May 2020. I’m surprised it has taken our Mackay correspondent more than a year to bring us the good news.
To Jumpy’s OAN slapsuit against Rachel Maddow the obvious defense is that a channel which perpetually spews unproven conspiracy material, has no reputation that can be damaged by “ration conclusions” drawn from unproven conspiracies. In fact OAN almost certainly profited from the attention given by MSNBC and should be required to pay the Maddow show a dividend.
Trump’s supporters believe every one of Trumps 31,000 lies.
So that is … lets see 31,000 times 90 million offended thinking people who could each land a slap suit on Trump for his lies. So that would be 2.79 trillion potential suing opportunities against Trump and his compulsive lying.
Here is a little maths test for Jumpy. What is any number in millions of dollars times zero, zero being the credibility and reputation of OAN?
“Farmers protest against workers’ pay changes, arguing fruit and veg prices will soar.”
Some farmers are claimed to be using piece rates to screw the workers because the piece rates are not fixed by awards. By contrast, hourly rates allow a worker to see if they are being paid properly.
For example: “Mike Wren, 51, hit the harvest trail in Western Australia last year for a country change from his marketing job.
He spent the summer picking apples on an hourly rate. Recently, he moved to citrus on a piece rate.
Matt Wren picked on piece rate pay
Mark Wren said picking was hard work, but he enjoyed it. Photo: Supplied
The difference between the two wages was stark.
On an hourly rate, Mr Wren made about $1200 a week. On piece rates, that dropped to $700 to $800. He also had to pay a single-room board of $190 a week.
“The turnover [of staff] was unbelievable. You were struggling to make minimum wage,” he said of work on the citrus farm.”
If farmers want to boost productivity they might think about using piece rates to calculate productivity bonuses.
Ripping off workers is not the only problem in the industry. The bargaining power of the supermarkets isn’t helping prices.
Thanks, zoot and bilb. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the USA.
I’m reminded a couple of decades ago Canadian science broadcaster and activist David Suzuki saying of his broadcasting career, that you couldn’t get into the sewer and expect to come up smelling like roses.
Public discourse has been further trashed since then in a way that he could not have foreseen.
Today has been a bit harder for me. Have had to go back to pain medication, which does my head in, hopefully just for today.
John, I’m not fully across the issue of agricultural labour, but Labor says it will fix it. There has to be a question as to whether this government is really trying.
On the supermarkets, my understanding is that they operate on razor thin margins. If you sell an item at 1 to 2% profit a dozen times a year, you are laughing. However, the competition between them is real.
I have shares in Coles and a few in Woolworths. Their turnover this year has increased with COVID, but they have had to do extra stuff, so their earnings are down.
The competition authorities and government have never come up with a scheme that gives farmers a decent farm-gate profit. As they will tell you, they tend to be price takers with no bargaining power. Having more supermarket companies in the market can make things worse rather than better.
Brian: Paying under award is wage theft. My understanding was that thieving by a servant would attract a higher sentence than ordinary thieving because of the trust issue. Somehow, in this country, thieving from a servant has become OK.
Think, for example, if anyone from Coles was jailed for paying Coles employees below award? Or if any farmer or gig operator has been punished for using schemes that mean most workers will not get the award hourly rate.
Coles screws its workers to compete. Its competitor then has to screw its employers to compete with Coles annnnnd.
Farms are caught between big suppliers like Monsanto and big customers like Coles. Farmers selling off their coops probably hasn’t helped either.
Free markets aren’t all good.
In the meantime, “Almost half of NSW big irrigators have failed to install meters on pumps.” A new water law introduced on December 1 last year made it mandatory for water users in NSW with surface pumps of 500mm and above to have tamper-proof meters installed and validated by a certified professional.
But the Natural Resources Access Regulator (NRAR) has found that while while 55 per cent of major irrigators’ pumps 500mm and above were now fully compliant or working towards it, the remainder had still not been fitted with accurate meters.
Perhaps we need a royal commission with teeth? In the meantime clamp down on employers who are not paying award wages.
When you think times are getting tough for people and want to lend a hand here is a very compassionate program in Malaysia.
https://youtu.be/1D5rkAunOy8
Another registered Republican is indicted for voter fraud, this time in Arizona.
I wonder if the Cyber Ninjas know about it yet.
Brian: Good to see Qld finally come good in Origin III. Gripping game.
Yes, indeed, John.
For the uninitiated, Qld won the third State of Origin series in a thriller 20-18 after being walloped by the Blues in the first two games.
As with many SOO games there was only a centimetre here and there that made the difference. At one point in the second half the TV flashed up the total points scored by each team over the last 40 years. I think it was 2000 to the Maroons and 1980 to the Blues. From memory the Blues scored another 6 after that.
NRL SOO is normally some of the most competitive sport you’ll see on the planet, so it was good to see a tight match again.
Not the good news: “Global warming turning Amazon basin into CO2 producer instead of absorber, researchers say.”
“A recent study found the Brazilian Amazon released almost 20 per cent more CO2 than it absorbed from 2010 to 2019”
Deforestation, forest clearing by fire and climate change are among the key drivers of the transformation, the authors say
Yes, John, and it’s not the only bad news on climate.
Rainfall from transpiration has already been affected. However, the Amazon has not yet ‘tipped’. That is, it’s disappearance is not yet inevitable.
Woodside Petroleum and Whitehaven Coal have both been given ‘outperform’ ratings by the major broker I get equities research feeds from. The broker is seeing upside in investments in gas, coal and petroleum.
Not good for the planet. I don’t have a link yet, but I believe the WRI finds that the world build for renewables is less than the increase of demand. In other words, burning fossil fuels is increasing.
Brian: Then there is the NT where connection of large solar generators is being held up by fears about the effect on the grid.
“Scared of solar:” Why the Top End’s first big solar farms are not switched on” Not impressive. The lowest cost (solar) is supposed to be used first.
On top of all that, MOON WOBBLYNESS !!!
It’s officially “ throw ashes on head “ time. We’re DOOMED….
Yes Jumpy, the universe is conspiring against homo sapiens.
John, I wonder whether someone in the NT Utilities Commission thinks all we need is gas rather than this new-fangled stuff.
Or something. Who is really the problem here?
Jumpy: Shame your link didn’t give any actual figures for the wobbly moon effect.
Something else for Jumpy to panic about.
It’s a pity global warming stopped in 1998.
John, I think it’s not big, but I’ll try to investigate.
That brings to mind that old Cat Stevens favorite …
Yes, I’m being followed by a Moon Wobble,
Moon Wobble, Moon Wobble.
Leaping and hopping ‘cause our Moon Wobbles,
Moon Wobbles, Moon Wobbles>
….. and the Pacific Islander verse
Learning to swim ‘cause our Moon Wobbles,
Moon Wobbles, Moon Wobbles!
John, if you go to NASA says ‘moon wobble’ may cause a problem for Earthlings , you can find a link to the article. I’ve had a geek, and I think this is the story.
High tide flooding (HTF) is significant to many low-lying sites when it happens, but tends to happen once or a small number of times each year. The effect varies in intensity over a cycle of 18.6 years.
Presently it is in a high impact phase, and will become an issue again from the mid-2030s. At that time SLR will have progressed enough to make the next high phase problematic, with the incidence rising from about 1-6 days to 50-70 days, depending on the site.
The purpose of the study was to alert planners so that they can take protective or evasive action.
I think you can find tools at NASA if you follow the links from their story, for US cities at least.
The study was based on current IPCC SLR forecasts, which will almost certainly change in a couple of weeks time.
Looks like Chyna can be blamed for good times as well as bad.
zoot thankyou. I think a lot of things came from China. Like silk, and I think the common chook was originally a Chinese pheasant.
I’ve just spent half an hour looking at a report on climate change from the US Global Change Program which came in a daily feed I get from Google.
Thought it was completely wimpish on sea level. Eventually looked for the date and found it was published in 2009.
The Australian poor could be worse off: ”
JULY 16, 2021: For Minimum Wage Workers, Rent Is Now Unaffordable in Every County in America.”
“There is now not a single state or county in the US where a minimum wage worker on a 40-hour week can afford a two-bedroom home at the fair market rent, according to a report published by the National Low Income Housing Coalition this week. In 93 percent of US counties, such full-time minimum wage workers can’t afford a one-bedroom apartment, either.”
“To crunch these numbers, the NLIHC relied on a common metric for housing affordability: a home is affordable if it requires workers to pay up to 30 percent of their monthly income in rent. Using this metric, NLIHC’s report found that workers would need to earn a little less than $52,000 per year—or $24.90 per hour—to afford a modest two-bedroom home, or at least $20.40 per hour to afford a one bedroom. The US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.” (To put that in context we found that a $US would buy much the same in the US as $Aus in Australia.)
John, poor fellow America. Not sure we are much better.
Yanis Varoufakis thinks that the control of capitalism is fading away in favour of techno-feudalism.
That’s from the AFR, but there is plenty if you search on Youtube.
Perhaps the clearest sign that something serious is afoot appeared on August 12 last year. On that day, we learnt that in the first seven months of 2020, the United Kingdom’s national income had tanked by more than 20 per cent, well above even the direst predictions. A few minutes later, the London Stock Exchange jumped by more than 2 per cent. Nothing comparable had ever occurred. Finance had become fully decoupled from the real economy.
So:
Value extraction has increasingly shifted away from markets and onto digital platforms, which no longer operate like oligopolistic firms, but rather like private fiefdoms or estates.
What this means for the serfs, if he’s right, I’m not sure.
I need to do another one of these posts, because comments shut down after two months.
Brian: Maybe try running it as a short conversation starter.
Yeah. Maybe start with Biden bombing Somalia. Not all Black Lives Matter apparently.
Or him allowing Nord Stream 2 but not Keystone.
Or perhaps the White House and social media colluding to ban the free speech of political decent and violations of the State mandated belief code.
Any of that would be fine by me.
Jumpy: Your opinion on this article: “Thousands rally in Brisbane against lockdowns and masks as the state records no new cases.?” (Including the bit on where the lockdown border closure is located?)
From the link:
“Under current restrictions, persons outdoors are not required to wear or carry a mask as long as physical distancing is maintained,” a police spokesperson said in a statement.
“We will be reviewing all available footage of today’s events to determine if any clear breaches have occurred.”
I’d like to see them all charged, because they are putting other people in danger.
John, do the same to them as was done to the BLM marchers in April last year. Absolutely nothing.
Interesting to see Jumpy standing in solidarity with Al-Shabaab Jihadis.
Nope, pointing out hypocrisy.
Just like the “ Jim Crow voter ID “ when Delaware requires voter ID.
Or “ corporate fair share taxation “ when Delaware is a US corporate tax haven State.
Stay duped Buddy, it’s probably more comfortable.
Jumpy, somehow your reply does not surprise: “John, do the same to them as was done to the BLM marchers in April last year. Absolutely nothing.”
Context is important. (I have been in protests from time to time – big ones can actually make an impact in areas I feel is important.) BLM protests do have the potential to save lives and encourage people to think of discrimination in places where it is an issue like parts of Australia.
The anti lockdown and anti vax protests have potential to cost lives.
Interesting, the BLM protests that preceded the highest covid death count in this Country was somehow, “ in context “ about saving lives.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-06/black-lives-matter-rallies-held-across-australia/12325442
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia
It was dangerous both then and now John. It’s just that I try to be consistent with the facts and reality rather than politically blinkered.
Interesting concept. Because the Somali Jihadis are black the US govt should ignore their depredations.
NSW postponed their local government elections for 2020 to 4 Sept 2021. However, because of the lockdowns the election has now been postponed to 4 Dec 2021.
The plan this time is to use postal votes and the internet so that, as seems likely, the vote can proceed despite covid and lockdowns. Will be interesting to see how this will work and what will be done to prevent cyber attacks.
This may be relevant next year when we a due to have a federal election with a prime minister who is becoming increasingly unpopular.
Says the person who consistently posts alt-right talking points here and apparently thinks floods from half a millennium in the past are relevant to current climate change.
Pull the other one. It plays Jingle Bells.
Troll, try to play the ball for a change.
Your constant cringe trolling is getting so old it’s petrifying.
Who pays you to come here and look stupid?
Haha, no one, you ?
In any event, Biden said that massive monetary inflation will miraculously lower price inflation. Does anyone except Democrat fans believe that nonsensical bullshit ?
George Soros of course. (Who else??)
Mind you it’s really easy work when replying to someone who doesn’t even understand argumentum ad hominem.
(Tip for new players: If the argument is “I do this”, a response of “No you don’t” with examples is not ad hom.)
Jumpy, you’ve missed a couple of things.
A quick scan of your link on BLM demonstrates that most protesters were wearing masks.
This was at a time when the official medical opinion down-played aerosol transmission.
Since then, (1) aerosol transmission has been recognised (2) the Delta variant is at least and probably more than twice as contagious.
At the time I was against the BLM happening, but the organisers tried to make it Covid-safe. In NSW the court ruled in favour of the protest happening. In Victoria the organisers were fined.
The situation is different now in a number of ways. Legal action is being taken in most jurisdictions. NSW have 20 detectives working on identifying protesters who may have broken medical orders.
The biggest difference, however, is as obvious as the nose on your face. Here we have a bunch of dingbats organising what could be a superspreader event in the middle of what the state authorities have described as a national emergency, putting themselves, their loved ones and the whole community at risk.
BLM was nothing like that.
So here goes another half an hour of my life I’m not going to get back.
Brian, practically, it’s no different. “ They “ were wrong is not an excuse to validate or excuse actions that were called out as wrong. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8408895/Scott-Morrison-calls-protesters-charged-attend-Black-Lives-Matter-rallies.html
Best to stop wasting your time rewriting history.
Best to recognise the facts and brace yourself for the upcoming wave. That’d be my advice as a concerned individual with a tiny bit of skin in your game.
Only in your fevered imagination.
Consensus reality agrees with Brian. Therefore you lose the argument.
I’m told that the Twitterverse is alive with the news that former Qld premier Campbell Newman is running for the senate as a libertarian.
What brought this on was a by-election in the safe Labor state seat of Stretton. The Labor member suffered cancer at age 40, recently resigned and died. Labor held comfortably I gather. This was Newman:
LNP Primary vote in Stretton in 2015 election “disaster” 37.9%. Six and a half years on in 2021 it’s 32.6%. Jim Bellos is an excellent candidate who should be in Parliament but let down by a party and leadership that never stands up for anything.
I think he is also upset by the return of the Borg – Former leader Lawrence Springborg elected LNP president in ‘historic moment’ for party.
Then there was a rant about the rights of COVID protesters. He said, I’m told, that no politician should be anywhere near decisions on restricting human freedoms, like closing borders or wearing masks.
If he runs it will be interesting as to whether anyone votes for him. I would think he’d have to throw in a bit of racist dogwhistling to peel off the One Nation vote, but that might be too subtle.
The TV news tonight included a reference saying Newman is looking at running for the Senate.
If he did, he would surely have to start a new party, as he’s not the most collaborate bloke around.
Not sure how to say this, but John D and I have been having an overdue discussion about where we are with this blog.
We have both found that we were reluctant to recommend the blog to other people because of what may happen to them in the comments thread, should they wish to comment.
The WordPress software has a provision to disallow comments with nominated words, author name, email etc. We’ve taken action so that the original intent might be realised:
to establish Climate Plus as a blog with two focusses, firstly on climate change and secondly on topics of current interest.
It seeks to make important information accessible and to provide a venue for sharing and engaging in an environment that is both congenial and civil. Vigorous contestation of ideas is welcome within those parameters.
On reflection, I think I’ve always known that we would come to this point since the time Ootz invited climate scientist Roger Jones to comment, only to be set upon by a character known as Jumpy.
Now all we have to do is create some new posts, which is easier said than done.
There is still work to do.
Wow, this place had a bit of a spruce up, the links and quote function are back!
There is also a breath of fresh air … oh I see … the caretaker took the rubbish out. According to physics second law of thermodynamics it is called entropy and quite a natural process. How is zoot coping with his plaything gone, and for that matter what ever happened to Ambi?
Well done Brian, thank you.
Ootz, good to see you here again. I was going to let you know when we finished cleaning up. I still need email subscription function.
Ambi left in full flight about February. Nothing we did, just attending to those who need him most.
Now all I have to do is write stuff. I reckon new post tomorrow. Yes, I know, I’ve said that before.