Essential Research has broken with its usual fortnightly schedule to publish a second poll in consecutive weeks, giving us a third set of numbers on response to the budget after Newspoll and Ipsos. The poll records the two-party gap narrowing from 53-47 in Labor’s favour to 52-48, although the primary votes are little changed: the Coalition are steady on 38%, Labor down a point to 36%, the Greens steady on 10% and One Nation up one to 7%. Results on the budget are in line with Newspoll and Ipsos in suggesting a favourable response, particularly compared with the budgetary norm, with 44% expressing approval and 28% disapproval, and 28% saying it made them more confident in the economy, compared with 23% for less confident. Nonetheless, enthusiasm for the tax cuts was muted (only 22% expected they would make a difference to their household), and further questions identified concerns about their equity. Full results here.
I truthiness news, the White House spokesperson today condemned Hamas for launching 41 Palestinian protesters into unsuspecting Israeli bullets.
lizzie (Block)
Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 8:54 am
Comment #47
Good luck with the cleanup. 😷
Dogs are very forgiving and loving.
Full moon on the 30th. (clever reference to coven.)
fess
Of course Trump would do that too, meanwhile, he would be very pissed with the latest
Shimon Prokupecz
@ShimonPro
In denying Manafort’s request to dismiss his DC case judge writes in her opinion “The Special Counsel would have been remiss to ignore such an obvious potential link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.”
7:10 AM · May 16, 2018
poroti:
Nikki Haley says Israel acted with restraint. 🙁
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/un-security-council-meets-to-discuss-violence-along-the-israeli-gaza-border/2018/05/15/9599baae-583e-11e8-858f-12becb4d6067_story.html?utm_term=.193225f8d837
Observer @ #49 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 8:55 am
Fully agree. I might once have supported some expansion if not to the 1967 seized areas, somewhere in the middle. However Israel has behaved so shamefully that I now support either a return to the 1948 border or a single state solution with FULL democracy. Perhaps they could have a Lebanon style power sharing arrangement such that the President or PM must be Jewish the Speaker Arab or some such.
Lizzie
Oh dear. Hope your dog is better today?
Life is too short to care about the Idiocy of some. The scroll wheel has been my friend.
Oh well the fascist government of Israel continues to do what it does best, that being shooting innocent protesters, bringing shame to its people and defying international opinion. They are a disgrace.
Confessions
Israel’s UN ambassador ,with a straight face, called on the UN Security Council to “Condemn Hamas for War Crimes” as “every casualty on the border is a direct victim of Hamas.” .
lizzie
We’re females. We can’t possibly be thinking for ourselves.
…and on that theme, the article on meritocracy is very relevant and interesting.
“Oh well the fascist government of Israel continues to do what it does best, that being shooting innocent protesters, bringing shame to its people and defying international opinion. They are a disgrace.”
Yup. 🙁
“every casualty on the border is a direct victim of Hamas.”
No…they are casualties from Israeli bullets. The “look at what you made me do” defence does not work in this instance.
zoomster
It’s good to be in touch with strong women when I’m feeling a bit down. 🙂
lizzie:
Sorry to hear about your dogs.
I’m sure you’d rather be a ‘Confessions coven’ than one of ‘Bemused’s bullies’.
😆
Coincidence ? Israel taking a PR flogging and what is at the top of the GG today ? They’ll need to try harder than that.
.
“Anne Frank’s secret pages of sex
Dutch researchers unveil hidden pages from Anne Frank’s diary, on which are written risque jokes and candid musings on sex.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/researchers-find-pages-of-sex-dirty-jokes-in-anne-franks-diary/news-story/04173c8abc698d4e8bc29b965756d038
Ante Meridian @ #46 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 5:54 am
Yeah right,
The only point of learning something is so you can subsequently pass a test!
Don’t worry about developing understanding and the ability to apply what you have learnt.
I think I know where the idiots come from!!!
Confessions @ #54 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 9:05 am
Indeed. They only attacked using small arms when they could have used bombs or even nukes. Quite restrained. 🙄
poroti @ #64 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 9:20 am
Reminds me of the (jewish) Joan Rivers joke, very politically incorrect no surprise, about how you pick tourists on 5th Ave – the English muddle about with their mouths open, the Italians look gorgeous and unconcerned, the Germans are tall blond blue eyed handsome and dressed in tight fitting sexy leather – — what was it with that Ann Frank person she went on, hiding in the attick; I’d have been hanging out, she said to 2 thousand roaring fans in the State Theatre, hanging out the window calling down – I’m in the Attick! I’m in the Attick!
The NSW Planning minister has just been interviewed on ABC Sydney radio saying what a wonderful success the urban developments in the Canterbury and Ryde districts have been .
Any minor problems like over-crowding, urban desertification, windswept canyons, traffic gridlock, no buses, no trains, and no support infrastructure like schools or hospitals has been Labor’s fault and, if not Labor’s fault, then local government’s fault.
The Planning Department’s part in all this has been a major triumph. Sydney has been spectacularly turned into GladysWorld™ and all its citizens should be proud to live in this truly global city.
Which is why all urban development in these two areas is being put on hold for at least the next two years.
The minister then manages to escape out the back door of the studio before the phone calls from peeved listeners – not only from Canterbury and Ryde, but from all over Sydney, north, south, east and west – commence, begging him to extend the moratorium to their districts as well.
Luckily for the Minister, capital punishment was abolished in NSW decades ago.
Or else he’d have been strung up.
Barney,
If your future depends on it, you learn to pass the damn test, whatever it takes. You don’t want to be the one who develops understanding and application only to be left behind while those who just concentrated on what was required get ahead.
And I repeat. If the outcome is stuffed, the test is stuffed. If the desired outcome is understanding and application, that’s what the test should be for. Don’t blame teachers for meeting requirements, blame the requirements.
Barney in Go Dau @ #65 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 9:24 am
Indeed. And the test becomes a meaningless exercise.
From BKs curation:
The problem is the use of the work ‘reform’ and the meaning attached to it by such people.
All LNP governments purport to advocate or carry our ‘reforms’, but their ‘reforms’ are a perversion of the word.
‘Reform’ is defined as: “the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc.” whereas what the LNP regard as ‘reforms’ are the complete negation of this.
zoomster @ #59 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 9:12 am
It’s the women that support abusive males that make me angriest.
BB
The two year moratorium in Ryde and Canterbury-Bankstown relates to two things.
One relates to slowing planning proposals in those areas. Not outright refusals but they have to show a greater amount of evidence that there is sufficient infrastructure to cope (specific of which are not clear)
The other relates to an exemption to Complying Development Medium Density. That is the scary one. Completely privatised development of small unit blocks and townhouses. People will go barking when they get approved and built next to them and they have no ability to object or have their concerns aired.
“The NSW Planning minister has just been interviewed on ABC Sydney radio saying what a wonderful success the urban developments in the Canterbury and Ryde districts have been …..
The minister then manages to escape out the back door of the studio before the phone calls from peeved listeners – not only from Canterbury and Ryde, but from all over Sydney, north, south, east and west – commence, begging him to extend the moratorium to their districts as well.
Luckily for the Minister, capital punishment was abolished in NSW decades ago.
Or else he’d have been strung up.”
Problem is the dumb voters will vote the Property Developers Party (aka NSW Liberals) back in next March
lizzie @ #47 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 5:54 am
Sorry about your dog, not a nice thing to wake up to.
I’m very jealous of you Bludgers with dogs, I would love to have one but in my situation that would be a very selfish choice as what would happen to it when I move on to somewhere else.
The best I can do is to make friends with the local dogs which provides some amusement for the locals as the concept of dogs as pets is still a relatively new one here.
To highlight this, my next door neighbour has a new puppy due to the disappearance of their previous one.
To some here dogs are still mainly a source of protein! 🙁
lizzie,
I feel your pain. Once, well actually more than once, when I was looking after an Irish Wolfhound called ‘Murphy’, and if you know Irish Wolfhounds they can be as tall as a small human, I woke up in the morning to a kitchen wall sprayed with urine and a kitchen floor covered in a great, big steaming pile of poop! I had to clean it all up because I couldn’t just leave it there while I had my morning restorative cup of tea and then attend to it, invigorated.
So, many paper towels later, and a floor mopping and wall cleaning with as many smelly cleaning products as I could lay my hands on, I finally got to put the kettle on and have a cup of tea, which, by this stage, had the purpose of calming my uneasy stomach!
Nevertheless, I took Murphy out for his morning constitutional after breakfast, however, contrary to my belief that he had evacuated his entire gut overnight on the kitchen floor, he ‘rewarded’ my sterling efforts in the kitchen with another big dump on the dog track near the house! Which I, of course, had to clean up.
He was not ‘Dog of the Day’ for a few days after that!
BiGD,
I have ‘virtual dogs’. I look after other people’s dogs when they go on holiday and don’t like the idea of putting them into kennels. All care and no Vet bills! 🙂
Barney in Go Dau says:
Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at 9:24 am
Ante Meridian @ #46 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 5:54 am
Don,
Only an idiot would not teach to the test. Not just for NAPLAN but anywhere. That’s the whole point of teaching and tests. I find it hard to believe that any sensible person would do otherwise.
If the outcome of passing the test is stuffed, that’s an indication the test is stuffed, not the teaching.
Yeah right,
The only point of learning something is so you can subsequently pass a test!
Don’t worry about developing understanding and the ability to apply what you have learnt.
I think I know where the idiots come from!!!
If I were to prepare students with the course work for General/Standard Mathematics in the HSC, but they were entered for the much more difficult calculus based Advanced Maths course, since I had decided not to teach to the test, but to give them a solid grounding in Mathematics, your children doing my course and you as a parent would be correct to be livid over such gross mismanagement.
If a student is prepared well, and understands the mathematics, then they will probably do well on the NAPLAN test, but not nearly as well as if they knew what the general standard required is, and how the questions will be presented.
This is why it is imperative that HSC mathematics students do past paper after past paper after past paper – doing that increases their understanding, and gives them an idea of what to expect, and they will perform to the best of their ability, not to the worst of their ability, just because questions are phrased differently.
And yes, the whole point of doing the HSC is so that you can pass the HSC tests, and get a score which will get you into the further education and thus career that you want to prepare for.
Why would it be otherwise?
I am always impressed how the cities of Australia that have both state and local governments manage to muddle through regardless.
Yes, there’s a lot of idiotic things that happen when the people who do zoning aren’t the same as the people who do infrastructure.
But for the most part (at least in Melbourne. Sydney does appear to be feeling the consequences), the end result is alright, despite the chaos.
Reforms for the LNP means less for people, and more for big corporations.
C@tmomma @ #72 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 9:37 am
Melania! And Ivanka!
‘I cant help feeling a bit dissappointed in the poll. It is clear that there are people out there stupid enough to fall for cynically designed budgets, and so Morrison keeps giving them to us. As time goes on people will realise the deep flaws in this budget, but by then it may be too late.’
Thought it was just me feeling disappointed.
As time goes by people will forget the deep flaws….if they ever knew…
The same old anti Labor narratives are starting to surface in the lead up to the next election. Labor have to think about debunking all those old myths and misconceptions while there’s still time…..
Good Morning
Israel is an Apartheid state based on theocracy.
In no other state would we accept as legitimate a state controlling its population based on religion.
The Israeli government has stated plainly they are against the return of the Palestinians because it would mean the end to the Jewish State.
Let that sink in. They are saying their religion is more important than their democracy.
As soon as you realise thats the case that puts them in the same basket as Iran. The difference is that Israel does have more human rights if you are not an Arab.
This is a criticism of their government not of the Jewish people.
Of course we know why this has happened. The Jews were persecuted and suffered under a holocaust.
So did gypsies so did gay people.
There is no state or return for gay people or gypsies I know of. So the only reason for the existence of Israel is religion.
If Israel wants to take the higher moral ground and say its a democracy it has to show why its religious apartheid system is better than the divisions in Lebanon’s parliament.
Thats of course ignoring the whole proportionate force argument especially when exercised by an occupying power.
After all are they terrorists when they are doing exactly what the French Resistance did during World War 2. Or what the ANC did during Apartheid?
I am against theocracies. They are not democratic. Just as South Africa was wrong so is Israel precisely because its a state based on religion. A state created out of fear. An artificial construct to assuage the guilt of the West.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
We did not see the West rush in to intervene here either. However afterwards we did not assuage our guilt of non action as an international community by establishing an Apartheid state based on race.
We should take the same lesson of a state based on religion.
Ante Meridian @ #69 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 6:33 am
I think you’ll find those that develop understanding progress more easily through there future education as they have a starting point on which to build.
Those who focus on learning for a test are basically starting from scratch every time a new topic is introduced.
The main thing that is stuffed about NAPLAN is how the results are used and published, this was never what they were designed for.
Another issue is that they are not very responsive, smaller, less intimidating and more frequent testing would give schools and teachers the ability to address any issues immediately rather than waiting until the next year.
re: NAPLAN
It seems to me that large sections of the media and, surprisingly, the teaching community, have misunderstood what NAPLAN was for …
I have no contact with the education system anymore, so I’m sure I’m completely out of touch with the actual day to day implications of NAPLAN, but still.
NAPLAN was never intended to be an assessment of the student, it was supposed to be an assessment of the system.
Doing badly on regular exams has consequence for the student (and indirectly the school) because it has impacts on the student’s future employability, or ability to get into the university course of their choice etc.
Doing badly on NAPLAN should have no negative consequence for the student or the school – the reverse in fact because poorly performing schools should receive additional funding or other resources to bring the school up to standard.
Trying to fudge NAPLAN results – teach to the test to get a ‘better’ result, colluding with poor performing students to duck the test – is self defeating, or it should be. If, as a teacher, or a school, you manage to squeeze a slightly more pleasing headline result out of NAPLAN it should mean that you are dudding your class/your school out of getting more money because you are artificially hiding how poorly your students are doing.
Clearly I’m not involved in the system, and I’m quite willing to believe that the intended feedback (poor performance resulting in better resourcing) is not happening and that there are other dynamics – private schools, eg, would clearly have more vested in looking good to justify their fees regardless of actual performance, etc etc – but still, what seems to be going wrong with NAPLAN is not the assessment itself, but either the proper feedback isn’t being applied, or more disturbingly, no one involved actually understands what it is supposed to be doing.
Nick McKenzie tweets
BREAKING – Blackmail charges against CFMEU chiefs John Setka and Shaun Reardon to be dropped in massive embarrassment for coalition’s royal commission into unions. Unmitigated disaster for police, prosecutors and royal commission and massive coup for union movement. #auspol
PB has been an emotional place the last few days and there have been misunderstandings and misinterpretations coming from all directions, unfortunately there are some PBs (plural, i.e. more than one) who just like to try and push buttons to get a response.
The two situations don’t sit well together!!! 🙂
NAPLAN results prove conclusively that teaching standards in Australia are stagnating, because exactly the same percentage of students are below the median today as when NAPLAN first started, at all year levels.
(Yes, that was a joke, although most politicians probably wouldn’t pick it.)
@ Guytaur – don’t worry, the government will be comforted that the other royal commissions are uncovering plenty of wrongdoing 😉
2/3 is not bad.
C@tmomma says:
Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at 9:37 am
…”It’s the women that support abusive males that make me angriest”…
…
Can someone please tell me if this remark was intended as irony?
Shana Morgan
Verified account @shana_morgan
4m4 minutes ago
BREAKING: A judge has awarded Sophie Mirabella $175,000 in compensation after she was defamed in a Benalla Ensign article. @bordermail
God this goverment sucks.
SloMo blames QLD Labor:
Sky News Australia
Verified account @SkyNewsAust
1m1 minute ago
.@ScottMorrisonMP:We had to wait for the Queensland State government to have an election because they didn’t want to upset the arm and latte set in Central Brisbane.
MORE: https://bit.ly/2BuFqi1 #LiveNow
On the Domestic Violence this is a real thing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity
Think Donald Trump.
If anyone thought that O’Dwyer was personally contributing to the Lib ‘female fund’, it was from general campaign funds, according to Cheryl Kernot.
Does everything Libs say have a double meaning???
Zoidlord @ #91 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 10:10 am
which she will immediately donate to a worthy cause, indigenous health I would imagine, and drug addiction services, so many …
lizzie @ #47 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 8:54 am
For the record, I have never been upset by anything you have said to or about me.
But then I tend not to hold or remember any grudges. 😀
Absence of Empathy
Do you really not understand?
Sigh…
Absence of Empathy @ #90 Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 – 10:09 am
Let me clarify for you, Absence of Empathy, as you don’t appear to have comprehended what I was referring to.
I was NOT referring to abused women that support abusive males due to fear of further retribution, or Stockholm Syndrome.
I WAS referring to women, especially on blogs and social media, but also in the wider community, who weigh into a discussion about violence against women, verbal or physical, by men, to support the male sex, and to craft apologia for them, often due to the female’s bias against or dislike of, the woman, or women, being abused. Or even more generally because they can see a path of advancement for themselves as a result of their vocal support of the male. Or due to their cockamamie religious beliefs.
I hope that has cleared it up for you.