An open thread where, at your long weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
34 Responses to “Friday Salon (Easter edition)”
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[whistles]
Fristmas is indeed yet to come, but in the meantime, happy Easter to all.
Must… not… get sucked into staying up and reading any longer or I’ll start raiding the bag of easter eggs I bought for kids tonight.
Must… ignore… chocolate stash…
Sorry I’ve been absent this week guys. Been frantically finishing up organizing a conference for just after Easter.
I hope everyone has a great Easter.
The government is planning to give away 3 billion dollars in its water plan to ‘buy out’ irrigators in the Murray Darling River system.
Thats nearly $300 for every taxpayer in Australia going to people who paid nothing for the water and many of whom are rich anyway. To save your $300, stand up to the government on this point , write to your MP and get active! Its worth the saving!
Melbourne’s “Patriot” Landeryou Caught Taking Commie Help.
And in related news, has anyone heard anything more about that Qld Greens Senate preselection? Nothing on their website, nothing in Google News and the ballot was a week ago last night, apparently.
David, latest I heard was this.
Just one other thing,what the hell is a lefty like you doing using google? Consider yourself slapped over the wrist with a damp lettice leaf
steve, do you mean using Google to search or host my blog?
In either case, the answer is simplicity and convenience. Oh, and they’re free.
I also eat McDonald’s. That’s not free.
But, feel free to throw techno-suggestions about what would be better to use at me.
oh, and yeah steve, the last sentence of the Brisbane Times article is:
Which presumably meant by COB yesterday, but no news has been released. At all. This smells like a very interesting power struggle indeed.
That’s funny, Landeryou making fun of other people’s weight!
DJ, your avatar keeps changing and it’s freaking me out.
Alex, I’ve tried to stop it.
I uploaded the new one (white shirt) about six weeks ago, and I’ve even told Gravatar to cancel the original one. I just re-checked there, and the previous image doesn’t even show up as an option.
Sorry, I don’t know how to stop it. Gravatar don’t even have an email to log a help request with…
There is an interesting debate about WorkChoices going on at Janet Albrechtsen’s blog (part of The Australian newspaper’s web site)
Here’s my contribution, in reply to Energy_Quant of Sydney, who wrote:
“If this (Howard’s) battle can be won, Australian prouductivity will leap forward again as the last vestiges of the lowest common denominator system are destroyed. The politics of fear and loathing of success will be dead.
There is no better cure for despair and hopelessness than opportunity.”
I find it a mockery that you can accuse the old industrial relations system as being “lowest common denominator”, then resort to the “lowest common denominator” use of the word “opportunity”.
If the old IR system was the fear or loathing of success, what’s the “successful use” of a word like “opportunity” outside the context of going through a process that not only assesses opportunity, but also assesses risk and reality?
Where’s your mention of “opportunity” as part of “a journey towards success” - a journey where opportunity is just one step in a development process?
A journey that factors in a willingness to “review the process” - to face “reality” ?
By refusing to release all data on the “reality” of how AWAs affect society, the Howard Government is merely selling hope, rather than guaranteeing the satisfaction of “success” for workers and their families.
The solution isn’t to replace one “lowest common denominator” with another. Yet this is clearly what the Howard Government have attempted.
…From Justin
I’m sorry, I seem to be inexperienced in some of my use of html.
I will again wait for moderator to fix my intended link to The Australian newspaper blog.
…From Justin
Seeing as it is easter, this seems particuarly appropriate:
So, you want me to be at work today, Kieran?
a) Easter public holidays are gazetted by the several States and Territories, not the Commonwealth.
b) There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents State Governments from declaring public holidays around the times of festivals that have traditionally been highly significant in the Christian Churches.
Declaring a public holiday is hardly the same as ‘imposing any religious observance’.
Fixed, Justin.
Actually I meant to say that I’m NOT going to sell any of my allocation.
David:
Yes, get your sorry arse to work and be productive.
I’m well aware that the constitution doesn’t in this respect bind the actions of the states. None the less it’s relevant that in a supposedly secular state, provision is made for the followers of one religion and not others.
Absolutely not.
Certainly Easter and Christmas exist as public holidays, even for secular people, because our society derives from one where the Catholic Church and its feast days regulated society.
What we could do is say that if any religion wants a day off, then everyone gets a day off that day. So there would be new, universal public holiday’s for Eid, Chanukah, etc.
Talk Like A Pirate day http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ and the related followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster http://www.venganza.org/ cannot be forgotten, either.
That would probably help make multiculturalism and religious tolerance more popular.
David, check out the hide of this.
My ears were burning, even on this Holy Day.
David Jackmanson (surely not your real name), I am very sorry indeed I didn’t acknowledge your role in the production of the “Beauty and the Beast” graphic we used in our exclusive expose of the Greens preselection in the Perfect State. I certainly welcome your tabloid treatment of the issue on your site, very nicely done.
Come to that, I also failed to credit evil Hollywood Left multi-national Disney who I gather own the Beauty and the Beast franchise.
I will seek guidance from relevant authorities about how to deal with both terrible omissions. All non self-harm suggestions welcome.
As for the Qld Greens, our sources up there (some guy called Sam and others) are unsure about what’s going on. Certainly Lipstick Larissa Waters won the postal ballot but Big Juanita seems unhappy about being done over so comprehensively so may be attempting to impose herself using an alternate process to a ballot. When we find out, the OC will let y’all know in our usual subtle and caring way.
Easter peace everyone, even to Phatbaldboy Alex above who seems like an angry chap to be involved in the domestic violence field, hopefully he follows his own advice and stops beating those he meets,
Andrew
Thank goodness Johnny never gets out my way. It’s good friday and the Springvale, Melbourne asian restaurant scene is typically in full swing. They way they are all prepared to work public holidays would be warm encouragement to John I’m sure.
John doesn’t get out much, I last saw him about 25 years ago and I don’t think he has appeared in public since.
So the famous Doctor Kellogg’s favourite remedy for all ills is out then?
Holy moly, could this really be the person who’s vilely trashing a woman about her weight?
As David points out, he had to distort the (unattibuted) pic of Juanita Wheeler in order to make her look bad enough for his post to be “funny”.
I see the Age has indulged in no such distortion.
ozpolitics has the latest Morgan Poll results. Wonder how the Fed Libs will go from here now that we have Costello, Nelso and Turnbull all acting without advice from the relevant public servants. Once a Government loses the faith of the Public Servants it is usually in a death spin from which there is no way out.
The Three Hundred Dollars a year for every taxpayer seems like a lot of money to one particular problem.And yet it works out to be what over a 365 day year, or a 38 hour week?Thats if it is coming out of workers pay!If it was coming out of regular GST payments ,what does it amount to in a given period of transactions!?If this money went directly for environmental work straight from ,say,GST. transactions to those actually involved in the day by day work,would it also involve GST collections on goods and services?Why would this present government pluck this figure out of the air unless it saw money rolling back in as well?The usual critics maybe underestimating Costellos ability to embarass them forever.
That tie hanging exposed below the jacket button is not a good look. Nor is big lumpy thing in right inside pocket spoiling the line the way to get around either. Looks like there’s a bit of loose shirt tail right of tie too.
I do have to say that from my understanding Juanita is at least nationally a polarising person and rather unpopular amongst some sections of the Greens membership (well at least active NSW Greens members I know). The dislike almost sounded like something I’d expect from someone in the ALP.
In the wake of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Malcolm Turnbull rightly suggests that one of the big problems is deforestation. (see Saturday’s SMH)
Mally, darling, I agree, but there is this little matter that you really will should fess up over to the citizenry at large, having made a substantial amount (one would like to think) of your current completely and utterly OTT wealth from precisely that–logging.
Backgroud Briefing Transcript March 2, 2007
I have no problem with Damascus-like conversions, but unless the Minister for the Environment willing to reinvest the $25 million he made from Axion Industries, through their rape of the Solomons, into ‘re-aforestation’ the hypocricy is nothing short of breathtaking.
The Government have this nerdy school kid mentality which suggests that they are not prepared to make concessions unless every body else does, (so there). Meantime Mally has gone off to lecture and berate, poorer nations about doing their bit and not chopping down trees.
Friends, Larvae, fellow blogosphere denizens! Lend me your electrophysiological methods of auditory brainstem response!
If you think that Hicks’s trial, subsequent conviction and undertakings are bizarre, check out the case of one David Henson McNab, a Honduran (despite the name) fisherman and businessman, doing eight years on a 2001 federal conviction in Alabama based on a law in another country that was repealed in 1995.
[LINK]
Is this loony or what?
Wot a serious salon!
You all need to write some limericks. Write us a limerick to get the count up to 50 and the Solomon Islands Tsunamis appeal gets some more money. Only 15 more needed!
Dear Larvatus Prodeo administrators
I’d like to make an official request that the category ‘asshat’ be renamed ‘arse-hat’ in recognition of the Australian spelling and pronunciation.
Please find attached a picture of an arse-hat, made, naturally, by the ever-inventive Portuguese.
Sincerely,
Fiasco da Gama