Blogs
Consumption Meet Expenditure, Blame Government
Pricing regulator IPART proposed rises of 44-62 per cent [in energy pricing] over three years to pay for a backlog of network maintenance and the Federal Government’s proposed ETS.
The consequences:
Port Macquarie mum Cassandra O’Meara said she was looking for ways to cut use after her family’s power bill went from $500 to $1700 thanks to a new pool and plasma TV. “It’s just ridiculous,” Mrs O’Meara said of the cost jump yesterday.
Bolding mine.
With This Gutter Mind I Thee Wed
On the NSW Government’s Relationships Register, here is everyone’s favourite upper-house Christian conservative, Gordon Moyes:
..there is already adequate protection for their rights under all the laws protecting de-facto relationship whether same-sex or different partnerships. Having the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages administer the relationship register is just an attempt to have a back door marriage.
Over to you, boys:
Heh. Back door.
Limned
cross posted at Terrible Fabulous
This is what passes for political debate in Australia; I’m actually okay with that. Engaging with Tony Abbott’s policies would just give them air. So long as I don’t have to take his statements on sex and climate change seriously, I’m happy to join the rest of Australia in marvelling at the outline of his penis. Here now are some of the key political debate points pertaining to this important issue, as raised by the commenters to this article:
In Arrogance The Wicked Persecute The Poor
If I were to have a scriptural quotation in a gunsight I’d want to do better than this lot.
Coded references to biblical passages are inscribed on gunsights widely used by the US and British military in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has emerged.
The markings include “2COR4:6” and “JN8:12”, relating to verses in the books of Corinthians II and John.
Trijicon, the US-based manufacturer, was founded by a devout Christian, and says it runs to “Biblical standards”.
Come on. Christ the light of the world? That’s supposed to be inspiring for the squaddies?
Manufacturer: I’ll have mine with the full text of Psalm 10 please.
Queen of Speed
Cool.
In 1929 Hellé, driving an Omega-Six, won the Grand Prix Féminin at Montlhéry, becoming ‘the fastest woman in the world’ by lapping the steep-sided bowl at 198 kph. Her preparation for the race had been less than ideal: ‘A green-eyed boy, a friend of one of the costume makers at the casino, had stayed the night. A mixture of morphine, champagne and sex had left her wanting to crawl into a coal hole when she woke up.’
Intellectually, I support compulsory seatbelts, mandatory motorcycle helmets, drink driving laws, speed limits, automatic cameras, stringent engineering safety standards and compulsory third party insurance for all. But there’s something about the interwar motoring culture that’s just… awesome.
No, Mister Rees, I expect you to die
In the story, Kemal Atatürk, prototypical pre-Turkish patriot and butcher, ordered the conscript troops defending Gallipoli from the invaders to die, in order that other troops might take their places.
Paul Howes, ex-Trotskyist turned Murdoch editorialist of the AWU, reads from the same songsheet.
The scorched-earth press conference of Thursday morning, when Mr Rees said any challenger would be a “puppet of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi”, was condemned by AWU national secretary Paul Howes as “a great disservice to his party”.
“The good news of that press conference is it sealed his [Rees’s] fate,” he added.
We’re only beginning to see this meme; that assertiveness and honesty in defence of a Premiership is traitorous in the Left, while shadowy maneouvring is admirable and correct in the Right. It’s not a disservice to the Party, you see, while in the absence of any particular crisis or policy dispute, to do the numbers and knock off a Premier. It’s a disservice to the Party for that Premier not to be a member of the NSW Centre Unity faction.
Left of the NSW Labor Party! You are not asked to fight. You are asked to be dutifully and uncomplaningly stabbed for no particular reason in order that the Right may enjoy purposeless hegemony.
Take their names, take their names
Andrew West quotes Evatt:
The attitude of a small minority group of Labor members, particularly in Victoria, has, since 1949, become increasingly disloyal to the Labor movement and the Labor leadership.
The Daily Telegraph lists the putschists’ puppets:
The document cited (sic) by the Daily Telegraph includes rebel MPs Paul Gibson, Nick Lalich, Noreen Hay, Eddie Obeid, John Della Bosca, Joe Tripodi, Matt Brown, Grant McBride, Cherie Burton, Ninos Khoshoba (sic), Rob Furollo (sic), Frank Terenzini, Richard Amery, Tony Stewart, Tanyia Gadiel (sic) and Diane Beamer…
What a list. These are the people I joined the Labor Party to fight.
Julie Bishop #3
Thankyou Annabel Crabb for this article, which contains a fantastic description of Bishop frantically hunting down her supposedly secret ballot paper to prove that she didn’t vote for the man she’s now standing behind, and also this:
“People are calling her The Cockroach,” one MP told ABC Online.
“She’d survive anything.”
Mr Abbott defended his new deputy during their joint press conference on Tuesday, declaring “She’s a loyal girl!” and patting her.
Dark times
I am so concerned by this Tony Abbott thing. I mean, who are they kidding? This is the institutionalisation of the right in Australia. Sophie Mirabella, who has always been my nemesis (and she knows it; I sent her an email once late at night telling her so), is now in a position of raised influence and must be stopped. Minchin the Foul is kingmaker. This is absurd. Surely there will be either a split or an assassination. We enter dark times.
Bishop, I note, is still entrenched as deputy, serving her leader, whoever that may be. Perhaps I was wrong; this may prove to be a very smart move on her part, enabling her to step forward as the consensus candidate at some point in the future when the Liberal party has so terribly damaged its relationship with the female half of the Australian population through the excesses of Abbott and co. that the only possible way of maintaining some kind of electoral significance is to propel Julie Bishop into the spotlight, I was going to say blinking like a possum but as she is renowned for her blue steel gaze, I would imagine she would probably instead try to stare down said spotlight.
The spotlight would win. That is all.