The return of Essential Research provided the BludgerTrack mill with its first grist for the new year, but the model is at its least robust when it only has one data point to play with after a long gap. This means BludgerTrack strongly follows the lead of a poll that was less bad for the Coalition than their usual form, resulting in a substantial reduction in Labor’s still commanding lead on two-party preferred. Labor is also down six on the seat projection – one in each mainland state and two in Queensland. The Essential poll also included a new set of numbers for the leadership ratings, and these produced a weak result for Bill Shorten that has blunted his recent improving trend. Full results through the link below.
I wasn’t aware of this program. Well done, Labor.
“People your age”, Lizzie. I think a lot of us bludgers fall into that category…
lizzie @ #1899 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 11:08 am
In that case I intent to use the word “critter” in my, from now, many, many posts. In addition I will add an hypnotic command so that you cannot block me.
So there. 😵🙄 😲
Critter – critter – critter.
Windhover
The reason the allegations are serious is because the emails show the informant offered to cut off the ventilation and film the sheep in distress for money. Earlier footage from this informant, who was paid tens of thousands of dollars, was shown on 60 minutes.
It’s not some hypothetical risk that the informants may be cruel to sheep so they could acquire footage for money. They were open about it.
They have been shamed into it against their better allegiances. What a way to run a cricket raffle.
Raffle is the perfect description. The morons have nfi. Super happy for Patterson, but it should have happened two years ago.
KayJay
I’d never block you, so feel free to be as annoying as you like, if it gives you pleasure. 🙂
lizzie @ #1907 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 11:22 am
My evil plan thwarted. Mate in one. ♛
@Barney
The Scottish Highlands and that west coast that you know are rarely seen from above because of cloud. Here they are from ISS.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92040/a-clear-view-of-scottish-highlands
The selectors are all over the place with NFI. However, going out on a limb I’d suggest that the late call up probably means that Patterson will play in the test.
The vexed question is who will open. Both Burns and Renshaw failed in the CA XI warm up game. Twice. So, will the selectors go with th Khawaja at opener option (and he’s struggling himself a bit with form at the moment) or pick one of Renshaw and Burns to partner Harris and just hope for the best?
My wild guess is that they will go with Burns – but under strict instructions NOT to chase loose balls outside off stump until after he sees the new ball off. That would make the team something like this:
Harris
Burns
Khawaja
Marnus (lol x 100)
Patterson
Head
Paine
Cummins
Starc
Lyon
Richardson
Which means young Pucovski will miss out, which is not a bad thing in my view: just because a sport psychologist (no more than a glorified Arts Graduate IMO) says he is AOK to return to work, doesn’t mean that he should then get the biggest promotion of his life as part of that return to work plan … .Further, young Will needs to work on getting starts consistently and his terrible vulnerability to the short ball. Ideally I’d love to see him play the remainder of the Shield Season and then tour with Australia A before making his test debut next summer.
Of course the selectors could also plum for Siddle over Richardson for the starting XI … sigh.
Peach-Blueberry-Blackberry Cobbler made and in the oven!
#nomnomonPB
Hume rules out standing in Higgins:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/fresh-talent-liberal-senator-jane-hume-bails-out-of-race-to-replace-kelly-o-dwyer-20190121-p50slm.html
What a pair of mouth-breathing fools. Trump must be so proud these boys are in his image.
ItzaDream @ #1907 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 7:30 am
Cheers, that’s the Scotland I saw.
I had the good fortune to travel around their in the middle of summer.
Little to no wind and predominantly clear blue skies.
I vividly remember waking up in the morning in Ullapool and looking out my hostel window at a mirror smooth sea, also cresting a pass and looking down into the valley with the surrounding mountains reflected in the lock, along with the nights which never got darker than twilight, it was divine. 🙂
Abbott rejects Kennett’s claim that he’s (Tones) is an old has-been:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/21/tony-abbott-jeff-kennett-liberal-veterans-stand-aside
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation has made its first donation of the dodgy $443 million it was gifted by Brian Trumble, and its gone to a, wait for it,….. a government agency.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/21/great-barrier-reef-foundation-funds-first-project-after-controversial-443m-grant
Why wasn’t it given straight to that agency by the government in the first place? Oh yeah, so the maaates running the foundation could clip the ticket on the way through.
Another Royal Commission beckons.
ItzaDream @ #22564 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 11:30 am
Ye Gods! A cloudless winters day across the whole of Scotland. I spent a year in Scotland as a wee bairn in the early 60’s. I remember the day that it neither rained nor snowed.
15 years later I spent days in August (The month in which Scotland’s official Summer’s day usually occurs) in the Glenbrittle YHA waiting for the weather to lift enough to climb in the Cuillins. By day 3 we set out in the drech and climbed a dismal 3 pitches in sleet before bailing. Trudging back down we passed 2 natives out for a stroll: “Och, lovely day” one said, “Nae snow…”. Scots climbers make the rest of us feel sane.
Australia Day lamb ad has been released, reaching out to Kiwis this year
https://twitter.com/psyvret/status/1087113569001365504?s=21
Richardson reminds me a little of Duncan Spencer.
A short fast bowler would compliment the talls well, and a West Australian to placate the whining from the West .
sgh1969 @ #1845 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 9:29 am
Thankyou Jon Faine for entertaining me all these years.
Now Melbourne bludgers, who to take over next year …?
I nominate Virginia Trioli.
Tony Abbott has attacked minor parties and independent politicians such as Rob Oakeshott and Clive Palmer, telling voters they’re better off voting Labor.
Holden Hillbilly @ #1917 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 12:09 pm
Tony Abbott doing Lib-Lab…
rhwombat @ #1916 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 11:56 am
Like the Irish joke –
What’s the weather then?
Well, if you can’t be seein’ them hills it’s rainin’, and if you can be seein’ them, it’s about to rain.
(I ‘did’ Scotland in 1980)
“Richardson reminds me a little of Duncan Spencer.
A short fast bowler would compliment the talls well, and a West Australian to placate the whining from the West .”
Reminds me of Steyn, Younis and Malcolm Marshall. ‘Short’ and potent.
KayJay @ #1897 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 11:05 am
It is a play on words using the common wine type called pinot noir, (peenoe nwa, as a french scholar you know this I am sure) a red wine made from grapes often clustered like a pine cone (pinot) on the vine, and the grapes are dark in colour, or noir, or black.
So when you get much older than you are now, you may find that you have to get up in the middle of the night to take a pee, but Pinot More that should you drink this wine, it means you will not need to get up to take a pee!
Amazing the change of tone from pollies and media lizards when something involves people from ‘naice’ homes eh ? In this case domestic violence.
.
.
When a middle-class, high employment area like Camden recorded an almost 50 per cent spike in domestic violence in the two years to 2018, Pru Goward had to ask the question.
“I spoke to Camden police, I said, ‘what’s this about’? They said ‘mortgage stress’.”
……………………”We have to get much better at understanding an offender instead of always focusing on the poor victim.
As she finishes up in the role that was the culmination of more than two decades of service to domestic violence prevention, Ms Goward
https://outline.com/JhdckH
Give him a few months with the High Performance managers, where they try to squeeze an extra few km/h out of him, and I expect he will be slightly faster and less potent.
SK
Would that be with or without a niggling back problem ?
Hopefully both without the back problem and minus the drug issue.
More evidence for an early election?
rhwombat @ #1916 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 11:56 am
I seem to remember you’ve done some serious climbing in NZ – I walked nearly all the parks in the south island a while ago, and at one point was amazed to see kiwi walkers (climbers?) coming out of a rocky valley with crash helmets on!
And here is the closest I got to Aoraki, from Mueller’s Hut:
“Give him a few months with the High Performance managers, where they try to squeeze an extra few km/h out of him, and I expect he will be slightly faster and less potent.”
I’d be happy with a 2 year strength and flexibility program in the gym to make sure he doesn’t develop a chronic injury and turns out to be an 80+ test player, even if he loses half a pace.
So we can blame the bloated Barry O’Sullivan for the Potato?
That figures.
Let’s hope his career goes more the way of Steyn, Marshall and Waqar than Duncan Spencer. Viv was well past it in this clip, but Spencer was genuinely fast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoOsa_DPhK0
PM Morrison as said the next election will be held in November 2019 as i said it would be and my feeling is that the LNP will win that election by a landslide and ALP will be in opposition after that election
“Tony Abbott doing Lib-Lab…”
No Rex. Once again you misunderstand (or choose to ignore) political strategy. Abbott wants anti-LNP voters to vote Labor in safe LNP-held seats that are contested by Independents. Why? Because Independents have a better chance of winning these seats than Labor. (Remember Wentworth?) It’s really not that difficult to comprehend Abbott’s strategy here.
I know you’ll use any pretext (no matter how flimsy) to push your “Lab-Lib” fixation. But this latest effort is really a stretch.
Wayne @ #1934 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 12:52 pm
don
Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 12:27 pm
Comment #1924
Dear Abby
Pay close attention. Close investigation by my team of crack agents (Brown Bear and Bobo Bear) reveal the following.
At or about 10:49 someone purporting to be Lizzie posted a picture without reference of any kind. This picture (now vanished) was of a red headed girl with sunglasses on the top of her head. On the right side of the picture was a hand. On the left hand side was part of another person.
Since then a different photo has appeared with the Pinot More motif which I understand as a little play on words.
Right ❗ Youse lot of imposterators and imperskinators – who has switched photos ⁉
Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Signed —-Sincere but confused. 😵
GG
And a resounding Happy New Year to you too.
Thank you for taking the time out from your interstate vacation, to pen such an erudite post in which you personally attack me with a wet lettuce, rather than address the content of my couple of posts.
Your affability, geniality and friendliness, as always, continue to be a hallmark of your cyber personality. Well done.
You can’t use logic to predict what the selectors will do. Logic played no part in it. You know it’s completely likely that they’ll go for Renshaw despite him being in the worst form of his life, Lasagne because he’s their new Mitch Marsh, Pukovski because Chappell thinks if you haven’t debuted by your 21st birthday you’re not worth worrying about. And they’ll pick Siddle for whatever illogical reason they’ve picked him for all the rest of the tests he’s played in the last 5 years.
The K Pat call up is just as likely to be a bit of face saving as anything serious. He made them look even more stupid than they normally do. I wouldn’t put it past them to reward him with an ‘oh he was close’ and drinks duties before being overlooked for the Ashes squad.
Socrates says:
Monday, January 21, 2019 at 6:13 am
Morning all. Labor proposing another great reform. Transparency plus capping corporate cash politics.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/labor-eyes-electoral-reforms-to-stamp-out-big-donors-20190117-p50s1y.html
———————————————
Amazing how a few months can change some people’s minds, when only two months ago the Labor and Lib combined to reject any attempt to make political donations more transparent and clear.
Who is to believe the Labs when they says this when they squibbed and stuffed up on every opportunity put before the parliament previously.
Who is expected to believe these speculations, let alone any promises?
When Labor eventually got in and Howard was voted out, they just became a pile useless self-obsessed idiots who preferred their own power plays. Too thoughtless, timid and useless to make changes that were required.
Labor, Coalition unite to reject legislative changes which would make political donations more transparent
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-15/labor-and-coalition-reject-changes-to-political-donation-laws/10502660
Updated 16 Nov 2018, 6:32am
Voters will be left in the dark about who donated to the major political parties ahead of the next federal election, after Labor and the Coalition united to reject legislative changes being pushed by the crossbench.
John Passant writes about his 24 hour ban from Facebook for a “breach of their community standards”:
https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/fascism-free-speech-and-facebook-bans,12296
That. Zuckerberg is a right-wing sympathizer through and through.
In Victoria, Labor and the Coalition are on a unity ticket to not reform the upper house voting system. For four years before the last state election both parties had talked about the need for reform.
All talk, no action.
The political duopoly acted in concert, both parties colluded, to not support a more democratic system.
Cynical p0litics – you bet. Believe a word of their promises – Why would you?
It is most likely just a demented robot working for facebook.
I got frequent sms messages from some demented robot at nbn asking me to do a survey on “how did we go?”
This was despite the fact that i did not have a working nbn for two weeks!
To stop it i answered the survey with the lowest scores for most questions. At least it stoped the robot.
But it has made no follow up as to why the low score. All it wanted was an answer. It did not care about what the answer was. As i say demented.
It’s a little parable of the demented nature of the Australian polity.
Fed Labor opposed the Senate voting reform and were widely condemned.
Now, Fed Labor is canvassing an option to give electoral public funding per seat won instead of per vote.
How can a party that touts to support democracy even countenance such an option?
Such an undemocratic option, one that would entrench the political duopoly, should be totally off the table.
Ratsak
Steve Smith’s batting stance and grip are also not logical as was his response in SA.
SW
Passant:
—-
My OH has just rang Optus to accept the NBN. Fingers crossed we wont suffer a degraded service. To pay more for a worse service will not make us happy!
@ratsak – 1:09pm – its just a guessing game based on an assessment of the selectors’ personal biases and prejudices. It would not surprise me if your guesses turn out to be 100% correct.
GREG BROWN
Tony Abbott has attacked minor parties and independent politicians such as Rob Oakeshott and Clive Palmer, telling voters they’re better off voting Labor.
Even Abbott thinks that people should vote Labor.
Police brutality in Victoria:
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/slapped-hurled-to-the-ground-knocked-out-policeman-kept-job-after-attack-on-pensioner-20190121-p50slc.html