All the fun of the fair

2,663 comments on “All the fun of the fair”

1. Boerwar @ #449 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 3:59 pm

   p1

   Are you drowning, or just virtue signalling?

   Your originality has waned sharply of late. Anything we can help with?

2. Take the punitive climate pledge, probably.

3. We all knew this was coming:

   Democrats are stewing in a caucus mess of their own creation with the sloppiest train wreck in history. It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process. And these are the people who want to run our entire health care system? Tonight President Trump posted a record performance in the well-run GOP Iowa caucuses with record turnout for an incumbent.

   You could put the Democrats in charge of a trainwreck and they’d still find some way to trainwreck it up even more. 😐

   Anyone feel like fact-checking the “record turnout” claim?

4. Boerwar @ #449 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 3:59 pm

   p1

   Are you drowning, or just virtue signalling?

   You don’t like the mirror or you do like the mirror?

   BTW, Comrade Xi has replied. He reckons that you are on the money about coal not having a future beyond 2050.

5. Modi just called back.

   He might have it all wrong but he reckons that coal has a future.

   He was a bit confused when asked whether coal AND the planet could both have a future.

   I am sure that P1 will clear that one up with Modi.

6. Tony Windsor
   @TonyHWindsor
   ·
   5h
   The best news today is Canavan is out of the Ministry.
   Joyce and Canavan will now set about undermining the Govt with a view to forming a Hanson in shorts grouping with some of the Qld hillbillies ….they will use the balance of power to create havoc ….more popcorn!

7. Mr Bandt used his first press conference as leader to say he would focus on community campaigning to build pressure on the government “to force them to act on climate change or go”. His aim was for the Greens to secure the balance of power in both houses of parliament at the next federal election.

   They’ll leave when Morrison decides to have an election – we hope. And I’m betting he’ll delay that as long as possible.

   https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/adam-bandt-elected-new-leader-of-the-greens-20200204-p53xgj.html

8. lizzie
   I would have thought that Bandt’s aim would be to reduce CO2 emissons.
   hey ho.

9. Leroy

   “It will be interesting if relationships with the ALP improve, I suspect maybe, a bit. RDN annoyed a lot of Labor people during his time, Adam could be a chance for a fresh start.”

   The Guardian:

   “On the Greens leadership change (Richard Di Natale resigned yesterday, to spend more time with his family), Anthony Albanese tells Patricia Karvelas:

   Look, our opponent is the coalition, and that is what we’re focused on. The Greens remain essentially a Senate-based party. We’ll see how it works having their only member of the House of Representatives as the leader.

   But I don’t see that it will make an enormous difference. From time to time, Adam Bandt’s rhetoric is more extreme than Richard Di Natale’s rhetoric was, but we’ll wait and see how that plays out.

   The truth is that I’m running for Prime Minister against Scott Morrison, not against the Greens or Clive Palmer or One Nation or anyone else.”

10. I have seen somewhere else that over 300 officials have been sacked for some malfeasance or other: including stealing donated goods and stripping doctors of masks so that the perps could have them instead.

    Anger (mis)management is going to be a thing in China over the coming month.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-04/coronavirus-disabled-boy-dies-in-china-after-father-quarantined/11927180

11. Beige Bandit is more extremist than Dirty Dick Dinna?

12. Good to see Bandt being honest and authentic in his aim of preventing a Labor win at the next election.

13. https://www.ft.com/content/95efca74-4299-11ea-a43a-c4b328d9061c?sharetype=blocked

    Climate targets may force energy groups to leave $900bn worth of coal, oil and gas assets in the ground.

    In that context of the climate emergency, the cost of writing off stranded assets could be seen as a small price to pay. But the amounts involved would be breathtaking. According to Lex estimates, around $900bn — or one-third of the current value of big oil and gas companies — would evaporate if governments more aggressively attempted to restrict the rise in temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the rest of this century.

    Even in what the industry might see as the more benign case of a 2C rise — which was the target countries agreed to meet at the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change — energy producers, including coal miners, would have to write off over half of their fossil fuel reserves as stranded. If the 1.5C threshold were to be met then the pain would be greater, leaving over 80 per cent of hydrocarbon assets worthless.

    …The various carbon budgets give some sense of just how much is at risk for energy producers, including the state-owned energy companies. In the best case for them, a rise of 3C, almost all of the remaining carbon stock — 96 per cent — could be burnt. But at the lower bound of 1.5C, using the IPCC allowance, a mere 16 per cent of the carbon is usable. In other words, over 80 per cent of carbon in the ground would be stranded and theoretically worthless. Even at 2C, 59 per cent of fossil fuel reserves would be stranded.

14. Adam Bandt on the Greens priorities under his leadership:

    “A Green New Deal is a government-led plan of investment and action to build a clean economy and a caring society.

    And these two elements of a Green New Deal – government taking the lead to create new jobs and industries, and universal services to ensure that no one is left behind – are the values that I have been fighting for my whole adult life.

    I joined the Labor party at high school, and I left at university because Labor started putting up fees for education and putting people into so much debt. It was inconsistent with my values.

    It meant that people like my father, who was the first person in his family to go to university, were going to face barriers that no one should have to face.

    As a lawyer, I fought big corporations on behalf of clothing outworkers, and also represented firefighters and even coal workers battling with privatisation.

    And in my seat of Melbourne we have brought together people from public housing to young families, and that is what a Green New Deal is going to do as well. Because it provides a vision of the country that takes on the challenges that we are facing, that everyone is able to get behind.

    And we’re going to talk a bit more about the Green New Deal and how it addresses these climate crises, the jobs crisis and the inequality crisis, over the coming months.

    But let me just give you three things at the moment that I’ll be fighting for as part of the Green New Deal: first is get dental into Medicare.

    That is unfinished business for us in the power-sharing parliament back in 2010. We managed to get dental into Medicare for kids, and we need to do it for everyone across the country.

    Second, make education genuinely free. And the first cab off the rank for us at the moment is going to be targeting those fees that people who are sending their kids to public schools are being forced to pay.”

15. Adam Bandt:

    “We are facing a climate emergency, a jobs crisis, an inequality crisis, and the government’s only response is to shrug and say, “Well, get used to it, because this is the new normal.”

    Well, I refuse to adapt to kids wearing gas masks.

    I refuse to accept a society where people put off having children because they are feeling so insecure about their jobs and their life.

    And I refuse to accept people living in poverty in a country as wealthy as ours. And I refuse to accept the dismal standard of this government, led by Scotty from marketing, whose love of coal has contributed to these fires that we are seeing at the moment, and the climate emergency we are facing.

    And I refuse to accept the dismal standard of a Labor so-called opposition who chooses the middle of bushfires to celebrate coal, and who votes with the Liberals to give tax cuts to millionaires.

    We are a smart and wealthy country, and if we have the guts to take on the big corporations and the weak politicians that they have in their pocket, we can solve these crises. We need a Green New Deal.”

16. Dinner tonight at Kingston, Dutto, Joyce, Canavan, and ……
    It won’t be too long before the plotters plot.
    Or is Dutto just another version of Costello, lots of hoof pounding, snorting, prancing and …… nothing ?

17. VP

    Good to see Albanese in lock step with the Coalition and the Murdoch media propagataing the “extreme Greens” meme.

18. Morrison Mugs Mandarin Muppets!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/03/some-australian-universities-delay-semester-start-amid-coronavirus-crisis

19. Almost 10,000 people register as robodebt class action gains momentum

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/feb/04/almost-10000-people-register-as-robodebt-class-action-gains-momentum

20. ‘Pegasus says:
    Tuesday, February 4, 2020 at 5:12 pm

    VP

    Good to see Albanese in lock step with the Coalition and the Murdoch media propagataing the “extreme Greens” meme.’

    Albo didn’t say that the Greens were extreme. He did say that the Rouge Bandit has said some more extreme things than Dirty Dick DiNatale. I suppose that is why you voted for him in the leadership contest?

21. Pegasus says:
    Tuesday, February 4, 2020 at 5:10 pm

    Adam Bandt:

    “We are facing a climate emergency, ‘

    Exactly. Which is Bandt he is promoting his Climate Street Fighters Green New Deal CO2 Emissions Strike Pledge:

    1. Reduce personal housing footprint to the world average.
    2. Refuse to fly except in emergencies.
    3. Sell car.
    4. Eat low miles, low storage, low refined food, low irrigated foods and low storage energy foods.
    5. Eat no dairy and no beef products.
    6. Wear the same clothes and shoes until they wear out.
    7. Do not use cans. At all.
    8. Stop drinking alcohol.
    9. Stop smoking dope.
    8. Do not live in houses which use hardwood in construction.
    9. Despatch dogs and cats.

22. lizzie @ #463 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 5:09 pm

    https://www.ft.com/content/95efca74-4299-11ea-a43a-c4b328d9061c?sharetype=blocked

    Climate targets may force energy groups to leave $900bn worth of coal, oil and gas assets in the ground.

    In that context of the climate emergency, the cost of writing off stranded assets could be seen as a small price to pay. But the amounts involved would be breathtaking. According to Lex estimates, around $900bn — or one-third of the current value of big oil and gas companies — would evaporate if governments more aggressively attempted to restrict the rise in temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the rest of this century.

    Even in what the industry might see as the more benign case of a 2C rise — which was the target countries agreed to meet at the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change — energy producers, including coal miners, would have to write off over half of their fossil fuel reserves as stranded. If the 1.5C threshold were to be met then the pain would be greater, leaving over 80 per cent of hydrocarbon assets worthless.

    …The various carbon budgets give some sense of just how much is at risk for energy producers, including the state-owned energy companies. In the best case for them, a rise of 3C, almost all of the remaining carbon stock — 96 per cent — could be burnt. But at the lower bound of 1.5C, using the IPCC allowance, a mere 16 per cent of the carbon is usable. In other words, over 80 per cent of carbon in the ground would be stranded and theoretically worthless. Even at 2C, 59 per cent of fossil fuel reserves would be stranded.

    Makes you understand why some people desperately want to convince you that “Coal has a future”, doesn’t it?

23. Political donations:

    https://theconversation.com/how-big-money-influenced-the-2019-federal-election-and-what-we-can-do-to-fix-the-system-131141

    Nine months after the 2019 federal election, voters finally get a look at who funded the political parties’ campaigns.

    The data reveals that big money matters in Australian elections more than ever, and donations are highly concentrated among a small number of powerful individuals, businesses and unions.

    These are significant vulnerabilities in Australia’s democracy and reinforce why substantial reforms are needed to prevent wealthy interests from exercising too much influence in Australian politics.
    :::
    Several other large donors also emerged at this election. A A$4 million donation to the Liberal Party from the company Sugolena, owned by a private investor and philanthropist, takes the prize for the largest-ever non-Palmer donation.

    Businessman Anthony Pratt donated about A$1.5 million to each of the major parties through his paper and packaging company Pratt Holdings. The hotels lobby, which has been influential in preventing pokies reforms in past state and federal elections, also donated about A$500,000 to the Coalition and A$800,000 to Labor.
    :::
    Money in politics needs to be better regulated to reduce the risk of interest groups “buying” influence – and elections.

24. @slpng_giants_oz
    ·
    10m
    In case you missed this 30 second homage to Murdoch’s talking points from Michael McCormack during his condolence speech today.

    ❌ Fuel Loads

    ❌ Arsonists

    ❌ NOT without precedent

    Disrespectful hubris

25. Adam Bandt hates Labor more than di Natale, and probably more than other Federal Green (with the possible exception of Steele-John).

    He is the ur Green Woke Bloke. The type that ceaselessly moan on twitter about how terrible Labor is but rarely if ever trouble themselves with the Liberals. A lot of them seem to be one time Labor members, where not being immediately feted as the new Messiah of the Working Class and rewarded with preselection in a safe seat they’d never deign to live in, they promptly decamp to the Greens in a huff. They maintain weirdly obsessive hatreds of Labor and Labor women in particular (Van Badham and Ged Kearney are among the more popular choices for their impotent rage).

    So I expect Green attacks on Labor to intensify with the elevation of Bandt to the leadership. This is fine. The Greens spending all their efforts attacking Labor is nothing new, or interesting.

    If Labor ever want to be in government again they must utterly disavow the Greens. Any hint of a partnership, a coalition or whatever you call it with the Greens will see the voters that actually decide elections running straight into the sweaty embrace of ScoMo. For the Greens, who are utterly uninterested in winning elections and even less intersted in delivering on whatever grandiose promises they’ve made that day (that sounds far too much like work), this is irrelevant. For Labor, a party that actually can do and wants to do the hard work of government, its vital. They must disavow the Greens now, and permanently. Hopefully Bandt knifing di Natale will make this easier.

26. How Australia’s love affair with coal looks from afar, and why it matters

    Europeans have been watching Australia’s bushfires and climate change policies with growing dismay

    https://insidestory.org.au/why-protesters-are-picketing-siemens-in-hamburg/

    In Europe, bewilderment is a common response to the Morrison government’s climate policies. Most commentators find it difficult to fathom why complacency and denialism prevail on a continent, perhaps the most vulnerable of all to climate change, whose people seem to have the resources to transition quickly to a net carbon-neutral economy and lead the world in developing innovative renewable energy technologies. But how to explain that Australia’s response to climate change is shaped, as much as anything, by its culture wars? Or that the Australian coal industry receives government subsidies while the parties currently or previously in government happily accept donations from the coal industry?
    :::
    Once there is broad agreement globally that CO2 emissions need to come down fast, it is also conceivable that the UN Security Council will be given the task of ensuring that countries do their fair share. The pressure on Australia may well come in the form of sanctions and tariffs that will hurt an unprepared economy.
    :::
    That isn’t the case this time. Nobody outside Australia thinks that Australia has the sovereign right to pursue policies that contribute to the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, to name but one example — let alone to pursue policies that hasten global climate change. Many in Europe take the Australian government’s extremist views on climate change personally — this is no longer about other people whose rights need to be upheld. It is about our future.
    :::
    It amazes me how unprepared the Australian public seems for the eventuality of other countries turning on Australia because it is seen to be wilfully ruining the commons. Australians ignore the resolve of other countries to tackle climate change — and overseas awareness of Australia’s role as an unrepentant contributor to global warming — at their peril.

27. Bandt

    Second, make education genuinely free. And the first cab off the rank for us at the moment is going to be targeting those fees that people who are sending their kids to public schools are being forced to pay.”

    While I have every sympathy with this goal, I don’t see how the Greens can do this on their own.

28. Peg

    The UK, for example, is a flaming hypocrite on this.

    They exported their coal-fired manufactures to China and they import 800 million tons of embedded CO2 emissions.

    A year.

    By way of contrast, one million Australian Greens voters generate only about 20 million tons of CO2 emissions a year.

    Unless they are on the Pledge in which case their annual emissions would be less than 5 tons eatch.

    Which reminds me, I’m thinking of introducing a secret handshake so that Pledgers will be able to recognize fellow Pledgers when they meet.

29. Ian Farquhar @ianbfarquhar
    ·
    1m
    In my job I often meet military members in multiple countries. Most are impressive people: educated, well read and thoughtful. Only in Oz do you meet the likes of Molan: small minded ignoramuses; the type you’d meet at a suburban Liberal Party branch meeting. Bad culture in Defence.

30. Nobody outside Australia thinks that Australia has the sovereign right to pursue policies that contribute to the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, to name but one example

    The emissions that have destroyed the reef were very largely not Australian in origin. They were overwhelmingly produced in the industrial economies of the northern hemisphere. The blame game run by the Greens is just a heap of lies.

31. MB

    Minor means a few cases obviously which you have identified, even including an overseas jurisdiction whose rules do not apply here.

    To conflate workplace conditions with ordinary crime is misguided. One is by and large accidental, the other is intentional. A vigorous occupational health and safety scheme is designed to prevent accidents. A criminal system is designed to deter and punish intentional acts to some extent with rehabilitation.

    Expressions like “zero tolerance” are unhelpful and do not represent any standard and, by the way you express it, involves an impossible ability to foresee what might occur.

    It is obvious that the driver responsible for these deaths will be sentenced for a very long time. No part of that sentence will be on account of him representing a risk in the foreseeable future. It will be as punishment for what he has done and as a deterrent not only to himself and to others from similar behaviour. He, unlike most drunk driver, carries the personal responsibility of what he has done compared to most others who think they can get away with it because there has been no consequence.

    Criminal sentencing will also be about punishment, deterrence and risk and the importance of each will differ from case to case. To endeavour to extrapolate out, from this case, or any others, some overriding principle that says risk prevails above all is wrong.

    Operating on a risk hypothesis of course will disadvantage those for whom risk is an innate or essential element of life – ie the poor, the indigneous

32. Lizzie

    The Greens have no intention of keeping that promise, or any other. They know, as well as anyone, they’ll never be in a position to deliver on anything. And their obsession with purity means they wont be able to negotiate for it. For the Greens what is important is to be seen to be “standing up for what matters.” Delivering on what matters is for other, lesser, people to concern themselves with.

    So this, and ay otger Green announceable, is really better seen as just marketing, rather than an actual policy.

33. The marine environment is warming very quickly….becoming hypoxic in many places and anoxic in others. This poses a threat – a very real threat – to nearly all life. For this, the Green response is to blame Labor. This serves their political goals and tends their hatred. They are a complete fucking disgrace.

34. BW ‘Which reminds me, I’m thinking of introducing a secret handshake so that Pledgers will be able to recognize fellow Pledgers when they meet.’

    I don’t think that will be necessary, they should stand out from the rest…. Threadbare cloths, smelly, gaunt, and walking everywhere.

35. Lambie pops up and superannuation pops up as an issue for Labor:

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/feb/04/jacqui-lambie-wants-deal-on-union-busting-bill-as-soon-as-possible

    Senator Jacqui Lambie is looking to strike a deal with the government “as soon as possible” on the union penalty bill, while Labor struggles to contain a debate in its own ranks about union-backed superannuation funds.

    Lambie is meeting the industrial relations minister, Christian Porter, on Tuesday to continue negotiations on the bill, which would lower the threshold for the deregistration of unions and disqualification of their officials.
    :::
    The comments are likely to spark a renewed bout of lobbying by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, which has taken out ads urging Centre Alliance to join Labor and the rest of the crossbench in blocking the bill.

    Meanwhile, senator Tony Sheldon, the former Transport Workers Union national secretary, has written to Labor colleagues warning of “alarming consequences” if Labor backs a government bill to allow workers to opt out of superannuation funds nominated in their workplace deals.

    The superannuation bill implements a recommendation of the trade union royal commission that workers should “have freedom of choice of superannuation fund”.

    The shadow assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones, has suggested Labor could support the bill and met concerned colleagues on Tuesday to discuss the issue after Sheldon raised it in caucus.

36. 3z

    I agree. They don’t seem to work towards these improvements, just make a policy on it and gloat about their higher standards.

37. I see the Usual suspects are dead scared of Adam Bandt as leader.

    Albanese saying Bandt makes extreme statements just shows the MUrdoch Fossil fuel lobby is charge.

    Those are the ones that call the Greens extreme.

    We know those so called extreme statements have turned out to be real.

    Just look at today’s bushfires. As predicted by the “extremists”

38. Jeez, what a fwark up in Iowa.

    Makes the National Party look like the captains of competence.

39. Bandt is just another anti-Labor vuvuzela.

40. This gymnasium in Wuhan has been converted into an overflow hospital – plenty of beds!

    

41. Polk County Democratic Chairman Sean Bagniewski, whose county includes Des Moines and has 177 precincts, told CNN he has boxes with paper results from the county’s precincts, but no way of reporting them to the state party.

    “There’s no way to report them. We’ve got them,” he said.

    Some precinct chairs told Bagniewski they’d been on hold for an hour-and-a-half to two hours — and sometimes had their calls disconnected after getting through.

    He and other Polk County officials asked precinct chairs who hadn’t reported their results to take pictures of their tallies and send them to the county party’s executive director, who then tried to drive them to state party HQ. She arrived at about 9:15 p.m., but was turned away and told that precinct chairs should call their results in as usual.

    

42. And here is the Emirates check in counter at Beijing Airport…

    https://mobile.twitter.com/russian_market/status/1224592388125069314

43. Interesting how the Green hatred has ramped up here today from the usual Labor suspects (plus some new ones). They apparently see Bandt as much more of a threat than Di Natale was. They may be right about that – time will tell.

    But it simply never seems to occur to some people here that Labor has little (if any) chance of forming a government in their own right on their current primary vote. I honestly wonder if some of them actually care about such trivial side issues like forming government? Blind ideological hatred is just so much easier!

    It is amusing to contemplate how silly will they look should they (again!) have to try to form a minority government with Green support.

44. RI @ #488 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 5:00 pm

    Bandt is just another anti-Labor vuvuzela.

    Well that was quick. Don’t suppose you can cite anything he actually did in the handful of hours he’s been Greens party leader to instigate this view?

45. Hartcher just said that the DiNatale experiment, the centrist doctor, has failed and now they have a leftist firebrand instead.
    Q. Will that be successful? Hartcher. No idea.

46. The more the Greens campaign against Labor the better. Labor will be advantaged when voters can see that Labor and the Greens are distinct and opposed to each other – that the Greens have no franchise over Labor.

    The Greens are an anti-Labor voice. This is clear as can be. For mine, I continue to hope that Labor will place the Greens next-to-last on their HTVs.

47. ar

    Bandt is a Federal Green. They are defined by, among other things, their contempt for Labor. They are on the same page as the LNP in this. He has been elected leader because he will continue to implement the dogma of Bob Brown.

    They are all of a piece in this. They have an institutional hatred of Labor. This is part of their political DNA.

48. I’ve got an idea.

    Let’s round up the usual suspects.

    I am still waiting for Peg et al to predict the date by which Bandt will save his first Kg of CO2 emissions as Leader

49. lizzie @ #455 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 4:53 pm

    Tony Windsor
    @TonyHWindsor
    ·
    5h
    The best news today is Canavan is out of the Ministry.
    Joyce and Canavan will now set about undermining the Govt with a view to forming a Hanson in shorts grouping with some of the Qld hillbillies ….they will use the balance of power to create havoc ….more popcorn!

    Would I be surprised to see them link up with Clive Palmer? No.

50.