An open thread, where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
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- Saturday Salon 4
Paul Burns, Graham Bell, Klaus K, Klaus K - Climate Policy Salad 21
carbonsink, Ambigulous, Ambigulous, Robert Merkel, Sam Clifford, pablo [...] - Look familiar? 13
Andyc, steve, Mercurius, Sam Clifford, Terangeree, Mark [...] - The Big Brother post we had to have 119
Paul Burns, madeinmelbourne, Kim, Kim, Kim, sublime cowgirl [...] - Celebrity Gossip Friday 19
Ambigulous, Helen, Darlene, Darlene, Darlene, nasking [...] - Would judicial activism have saved the Howard government? 2
Ambigulous, Katz - Analysing Austria 172
Ambigulous, Darlene, Jane, Paul Burns, Mark, Paul Burns [...] - Papal apology? 13
Katz, Enemy Combatant, Enemy Combatant, daiskmeliadorn [was chappie], casey, Ambigulous [...] - How would you feel about Australia without koalas? 28
Brian, wbb, Brian, wilful, David Rubie, myriad [...] - Legal eagles take flight 27
Andrew Reynolds, Tim Lambert, Youie, NS, FDB, NS [...] - Disaster resilience 20
Robert Merkel, mel, GregM, MarkL, joe2, Robert Merkel [...] - Tracking urban eccentrics 41
wbb, wbb, Francis Xavier Holden, Lefty E, danny, Terangeree [...]
I’m waiting for Nelson to Blame Rudd’s Trip for causing is.
[link]
Second!!
Goodnight Frank C. [it’s after midnight in Godzowncountry :-)]
Will make a couple of separate comments. Frank, have you ever tried to register and actually get on Centrelink’s On-Line Sewrvice. I did, once, unsuccessfully. And I’ve watched friends mess up with their passwords and be told to come back in a week. I resort to a personal visit to our local branch (though its a hell of a way to walk from wherte I live on the edge of town, and so far as I can work out, (I’ve been in Armidale full-time since 1978)no bus goes past them. When ytou ring them, as I did last week, you first have to negotiate your way past some telephonic robot with a hearing problem, spend some time listening to supermarket music. etc, before you get a reply.I know this because I rung them this week to enquire why what they told me in a recent letter about receiving a $125 utilities allowance on 20 March and an increase to $33 in phone internet allowance (the latter applicationhaving had to be snail-mailed to Hobart of all places because I couldn’t log on top their on line service)hadn’t come true. While it probably was Kevin Rudd’s fault I prefer to do what I always do, and blame the computer, since the Centrelink man told me all the moolah’s coming next cheque. We’ll see. I lost faith in Social Security being nice several weeks after the desfeat of Whitlam.
Being the computer incompetent I am, I can’t link to this, but it was on this morning’s Google news. Perhaps somebodsy else can do me the favour?
The American Journal of Psychiatry reports that people w3ho text message and e-mail all the time are mentally unstable. Other manifestations of this apparently dangerous and difficult to treat mental condition include obsession with updating computer hardware and software, intense irritation when deprived of one’s computer, pre-occupation with sex {missing out on that one]etc, etc. No mention of bloggers. So my question is, are we all really just barking mad?
Paul Burns [4]:
Well, now that you mention it: we must be. Bow-wow, woof-woof-woof!
And here I was thinking that this was simply a far cheaper and mentally more stimulating alternative to going the pub and talking about football, trucks, C&W music, bloody greenies and the latest policy evil committed by the Milky-Bar Kid.
Graham,
Far safer, too. You don’t run the risk of rinning into saome Neanderthal objecting to you wearing a Socialist Alliance T-shirt and punching you in the mouth. Mind you, on the now rare occasions I get a few in me, I can be very provocative, especially if the person talking to me is a RWDB.
Yesterday saw the publication of the Productivity Commission’s Discussion Paper: “Urban Water Reform”, which either (a) escaped press scrutiny amid COAG’s Murray-Darling agreement & today’s “Earth Hour” or (b) was reported in ways which showed just how clever were the Commission’s trivialised beat-ups / dog-whistles on the “costs” of water restrictions, and banal examples of inequity.
A cynical policy analyst would characterise this Report as another in a decades-long raft of privatisation policies (proposed/ implemented), the aims of which were/ are to shift publicly-owned utilities into the hands of privately-owned multi-national corporatons; however with those careful beat-ups and dog whistles to divert intensive scrutiny, and MSM for the most part uncritical of, or complicit in promoting Monetarist and privatisation policies, such critical analysis is likely to be muted / well-buried.
The report, luckily, is available as a downloadable document on
[link]
The report is a policy analyst’s dream (or nightmare) of uncritical (and unacknowledged) adoption of a Friedman-Barnett Monetarist / Economic Rationalist paradigm, and ungrounded (and indefensible) claims about the lack of research / case study material, which do not survive a couple of Google searches. Greenwich U’s Public Services IRU lists 5 down-loadable research papers since Jan 2007 (& more before that)! [link].
Canada’s TV network CBC has links to 5 investigations / case studies into the topic in Feb 2003 [link]
Tho’ my PolAnal skills have been happily rusting in retirement for a decade, I’ve had a preliminary (& very rough) go at the first parts of the Overview on [link]
Queenslanders have no trouble in identifying one of the Overview’s “taken for granteds”: ownership of many of QLD’s water resources is still vested in Councils, a considerable number of which have small enough populations to mean that ownership of very valuable resources rests with relatively few ratepayers. This might indicate why, yesterday, Premier Anna Bligh seemed to “backflip” over further state buy-outs of water resources.
Believe me, that’s just the tip of an iceberg of uncritical acceptance, significant omissions, dubious (and sometimes quite dishonest) claims, deliberate trivialisation to catch media attention, and sniping bias like: “addressing the requisite market issues is hardly ‘rocket science’”
This report is a Very Important Document on an issue affecting every Australian - the supply of water through resources and Infrastructure we actually own & have paid for through rates (mostly) and taxes, and whether we want it “flogged off” by the Right to multinationals whose only real concern is profit. Several of the case studies available ia the CBC and PSIRU sites indicate that water privatisation has, in Atlanta (Georgia) and Hamilton (Canada) been a disaster; that private companies are withdrawing from water contracts in Europe because conditions & safeguards don’t make for big profit margins, and a very dangerous situation in developing countries where, thanks to World Bank pressure, water resources have been taken over by multinationals.
Disturbing enough to precipitate this old duck out of retirement!
And at the other end of the seriousness scale, I thought I would share this, which I just stumbled on in that wonderful interwebsy way one does while looking for something else entirely.
Heh!
That’s ace!
PC,
Loved it. One can only wonder what it looked like to a drunken doped-out Poe. Maybe this was where The Black Cat came from?
Pavlov’s Cat [8];
More wisdom in that than in what’s been in the news[?] media lately.
BTW, POisoned Dwarf’s topic this week is digging up the pensioner story and they may be hit by the Razor Gang
Links to Stories :
WA Angle - [link]
Dwarf Story 1 - [link]
“Editorial”:
[link]
And note the timing - Just as Rudd is out of the Country - watch Nelson and Co bleat about abandoning the Pensioners.
Oh and another News Ltd “Campaign.
[link]
PC, that is just so brilliant. Thanks for sharing.
Dr. Cat, that was indeed a brilliant bit of work. (Look at that technique, just splendid!) Thanks for sharing it!
btw, in other news, just had a quick scan over the list of the mighty 1000 who are to attend the big summit. Not that I would understand the significance of particular names. But did anybody else besides me find it a bit creepy that each individual’s name was followed by the identification of their sex? And not just a quick (F) or (M), but a full “Male” or “Female”. Why stop there? Shouldn’t you get to know what everybody’s blood-type is, too?
J-P-Z [16]:
]. They were hauled over the coals about being blatantly sexist by leaving out half the talent in the country in their selection process - and this is one way they can throw a tantrum over being chastised.
Creepy? Bloody oath it was! But that’s typical of the petulant behavior of Australia’s Failed Elite [your’s just nukes whoever offends them - quick-’n'-easy
Our weak-as-dishwater anti-discrimination laws supposedly prevent someone being identified by religion or ethnicity in a list like that - but, well, for those in the know, the “nose knows” …. otherwise the place would be full of damned koons, wogs, balts, Salvation Army, chinks,
bog -Irishlower socio-economic-group Australians of Anglo-Celtic descent,half-castesIndigenes of diverse and unpicturesque heritage, unwealthy Catholics, recreationalfishermenfisherpersons and other assorted smelly riff-raff.I mean, we do have standards to maintain, old chap.
Don’t mind if they do increase aged pensions. But if theyu do, (and this may or may not have escaped Milne and friends, they will also have to increase carer pensions, disability pensions, veterans pensions (if under 65 - remeber Vietnam?), single parent pensions, etc, etc, which which no doubt result in a cry to increase student allowances, unemployment benefirs, etc., etc. Which will then result in accusations of Whitlamesque spending, (as if they’re not alreadsy being made by Andrew Robb, Shadow for FA)and others. I mean, a PM going overseas for seventeen days, de4spite the fact when he gets back he’ll still have 3 weeks to concentrate on the Budget - he’s a tourist like Whitlam! danger, danger, danger! As if the Rat never went on jaunts around rhe world at taxpayers’ expence.
Does anybody else see an eerie resemblance to the Right Wing campaign orchestrated by the CIA against Whitlam? Or is the only difference that its happening right away, not in Labor’s second term? Does anybody really believe the American Imbecile is not very very pissed off that we are pulling battle troops out of Iraq and won’t surreptiously try and destabilise the Rudd Government? Sfter all, Bush is Nixon’s heir, even if he is pig-arse ignorant about China.
Paul Burns [18];
[a]. Don’t worry about veterans’ pensions. I reckon they will get get “streamlined” and “improved” in the next year or so; get ready for a glut of weeping-digger images on TV news and current-affairs shows.
[b]. You can’t blame Emperor George II The Loser for trying to deflect attention from his latest blunders and onto this atheistic bin-Laden-lovin’ Commie from down under. Wonder where the U.S.Marines will land? Going sideways through the surf at Noosa of Bondi mightn’t look too good on “Good Morning America”.
Seriously though, liked the way Kevin Rudd deflected The Born Loser’s “man of steel” insult; that would have infuriated America’s Worst President
From Frank’s Dwarf Story:
This is weird, looking-glass logic. The couples’ pension is calculated as a percentage of the singles’ pension, not vice versa.
The equitable thing to do is to pay each member of a partnership a single pension.
It’s invidious and inequitable for individuals to be penalised financially simply because they are deemed to be exchanging bodily fluids with each other. Two pensioners living under the same roof who are deemed not to be into the fluids exchange thing would each receive a single pension.
It’s a nonsensical tax on respectability.
Good point Katz. Gay couples are not under such scrutiny because the state prefers, like Queen Victoria, to ignore their bonding. They get individual payments making it ‘pay to be gay’. In this circumstance, anyway.
Hey, Mark,
What can you tell us about your blog at the Oz.
When does it start?
Is it only going to be a 12 hour one?
Will it be only once per week or more often?
Will you be responding to commenter’s as you do here?
Looking forward to it to hopefully balance out the extreme right wing tripe that is currently there except perhaps for Mega.
Cheers, Scorpio.
Wow!
Congrats to Mark if @22 is on.
Joe2,
[link]
Well spotted Scorpio.
The dark forces have taken yet another man.
They haven’t got him yet!
Mark has to go through the initiation process yet.
17 days of brainwashing while Keven 07 is away and the highly experienced forces of evil are running rampant.
[link]
Well spotted! I didn’t know that was there.
It’s for the Higher Ed supplement, actually! So it’s gonna have stuff along the lines of what I’ve been writing for them.
[link]
When I get around to writing for them again. But I’m too busy at the moment with my own higher education - ie finishing phd.
I think once a week - and I’d certainly intend to respond to commenters. But it’s not really going to be political blogging as such.
Spoilsport, Mark.
Just when the thought of your trial by Piers, in room 101, was getting exciting.
[But it’s not really going to be political blogging as such.]
Well, Mark, we could soon fix up that little problem, no worries.
Love your Blog Mark
I also had been reading a blog of one Jack Robertson from a link I followed from a comments post from here - great style and content IMO when he blogged regarding politics.
But as of a few days ago it seems to have been scrubbed - I do hope all is well with Jack.
(if this content is not applicable or there may be a better posie, please let this blog greenback know)
DaveMc, Jack R drops in here regularly so perhaps he can enlighten you!
How about incense censers at ten paces with Christopher Pearson?
Holy water at twenty-five paces with Paul Sheehan.
And Nulla Nullas at Forty Paces with Noel Pearson
And who could resist a jolly good slapping from Caroline Overington. Must go, just got all excited again. And happy belated 40 Mark.
[link]
Cheers, joe2!
Katz, the trouble is that “two can live as cheaply as one”. Not quite but rent, and to a certain degree utilities are no greater for a couple than for a single. Couples still only require on fridge, one washing machine etc. It is far easier for a couple to live on 456.80 per fortnight each than it is for a single pensioner to live on 546.80 per fortnight. That is why reports have identified single pensioners who rent as those under the most financial stress.
I don’t doubt that Su.
I’m simply pointing out two things.
1. The argument mentioned in Frank’s story in favout of increasing single pensions is illogical.
2. The two-for-one argument is equally true whether or not the two are exchanging bodily fluids.
2) is absolutely true, I agree.
1) is nonsense
Even given a) Glen Milne is an annoying twerp and b)Kevin Rudd is out of the country: c) Single Aged pensioners without assets are desperately poor still obtains.
Condition c) is independent of a) and b). Or to put it another way, just because it is in News Limited and just because the opposition will milk it for what it is worth, does not make it a story of no consequence.
Here’s one of those quietly earth-shattering bits of news:
[link]
If this comes to pass, it represents a bigger financial revolution than anything that FDR presided over during the New Deal.
It is also indicative of the pervasive stench of fear emanating from finance sectors world-wide.
Who said that the credit crunch was no big deal?