Below this post is a live commentary thread on local and regional elections in the United Kingdom from regular guest contributor Adrian Beaumont; I myself am overdue for new posts on late counting in Tasmania and the looming Upper Hunter by-election on May 22, so stay tuned for those over the next few days. Other than that:
• A report by Max Maddison of The Australian suggests the pendulum may be swinging back to a federal election sooner rather than later, due to “the turmoil of the start of the year dissipating and the rate of vaccinations slowly increasing”. This is said to be reflected in the New South Wales Liberal Party’s commencement of preselection proceedings this week for 13 seats, for which nominations will close on May 21.
• The Age reports that Victoria’s Supreme Court will today consider a last-minute bid by ten unions to prevent the Labor national executive from choosing a candidate for the new federal seat of Hawke on Melbourne’s north-western fringe. The national executive had been expected to vote today to endorse former state secretary Sam Rae as part of a deal between elements of Rae’s Right faction, notably federal front-bencher Richard Marles, and the Socialist Left. This freezes out the rival Right forces associated with Bill Shorten and the Australian Workers Union, who favour the rival claim of state minister Natalie Hutchins, who is also invoking the cause of affirmative action. The legal action seeks to establish that the federal party organisation had acted improperly in taking over the state branch in response to the Adem Somyurek branch-stacking scandal.
• The Australian National University’s Centre for Social Research and Methods has published results from a survey of 3459 respondents on “attitudes towards and experiences of retirement and social security income during the COVID-recession and initial recovery”. Among other things, it finds 55.0% support for an increase in compulsory superannuation from 9.5% to 12% as per current legislation, with 20.8% thinking it should be lifted even higher. Only 20.4% said it should remain at the current level, and only 3.8% believed it should be lowered or eliminated altogether.
There was no way the members of the Court were going to subject themselves, their colleagues, their friends and their families, let alone the nation, to the random behaviour of selfish vectors.
Socrates
Where I got really interested in batteries was when it came to running high speed trains onto the existing rail line into Newcastle, Wollongong and a few other places. The issue was avoiding the interoperation issue we have with the existing catenary.
I later figured that catenary free operation would be a good idea for the approach into Canberra. My route would take you in a cutting down the median of Parkes Way. So a catenary was pretty much out of the question.
Later as batteries evolved I realised that you could do without batteries for most of the Newcastle-Canberra route. My dream is an simple, elegant Hawkesbury River bridge with no catenary. Not only improves its aesthetics but it improves the view from the train.
If Scott Morrison was half the marketing man he thinks he is he would have had blue carpets rolled out for him. Regal Blue of course. 🙂
Socrates..
For the benefit of those interested in the Hawkesbury River HSR bridge. It takes a route from just west of Brooklyn (about 300m west of the existing Hawkesbury River station) in a straight line, crossing over the existing rail line near the eastern end of Long Island, then again in a straight line, to a point known to hikers as “the icicles”.. that’s the north shore of the Hawkesbury, a little to the east of Mullet Creek. So, it will be to the east of the existing Hawkesbury rail bridge.
The process of construction is fairly simple. Its a large drill rig that sinks the steel columns (in pairs) down to bedrock. The pairs of columns are cross braced and then the beams (precast, prestressed reinforced concrete) are manufactured elsehwere and barged into place, lifted and positioned to form the bridge. All very straight forward.
What I had in mind was actually a twin-bridge. One for each track, with a gap between. Partly for constructability. Partly to lighten the visual impact.
The only complexity is that the beams widen towards the northern end (last few hundred meters), because this is where the Gosford branch starts.
Now I’m confident that the thing can be built without catenary, so that’s going to help its aesthetics.
Isn’t the ban over in five days anyway?
C@t
Royal purple.
Dio
Yep, but when is the extension of Howard Springs going to be up and running?
C Ch
Catenaries look good, IMO.
Diogenes @ #1604 Monday, May 10th, 2021 – 4:25 pm
Hard to see that happening.
What’s changed?
That’s it, Firefox. Thanks C@t. Still no takers on the running of a book?
You’re one sick puppy bw..
Cud
Like boerwar I am not against the aesthetics of catenary if well done. In my humble opinion the Glenelg tram overhead down King William and North Terrace for extension 1 was well designed, with a shape and colour deliberately chosen to match adjacent heritage buildings.
But cost wise there is no question that catenary at $2 million+ per km plus $20 million per substation, is expensive and needs a certain density of trains using the line to justify the cost. If that demand exists, fine, build caternary. If not, I think we will be seeing a lot of battery electric trains on lower volume urban and rural lines. The German ones already do 130+km/hr under battery power, so performance is rapidly increasing to the point there is little penalty for going battery.
One more thing – you can get away with a narrower reserve width for battery, since you do not need space for and clearance to the poles.
China has run into an ’embarrassment’ with the EU.
Indeed.
The EU sanctioned China over the Uigher Genocide.
China imposes sanctions, not accepts them. As Australia knows full well.
So China did tit-for-tat.
Now there is a strong move inside the EU not to formalize the CAI.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222989.shtml
I can’t see de Belin and Sinclair facing a third trial. The Crown’s had two attempts resulting in acquittal on one count in the indictment, the jury unable to decide on the remaining five counts – this after a hung jury in their first trial in November.
‘Cud Chewer says:
Monday, May 10, 2021 at 6:32 pm
You’re one sick puppy bw..’
There are we aesthetes and then there is the envious rest of humanity.
boerwar @ #1613 Monday, May 10th, 2021 – 6:36 pm
Good to see you are such an avid consumer and propagator of the propaganda, Comrade! 🙂
Socrates
Yes and all the infrastructure to deliver power to those substations in remote places. The AECOM people had a ball piling on costs at this point.
And oh yeah, they padded out the reserve with everything they could think of.
There’s also the fact that having no catenary saves a lot of maintenance costs and its a big source of failure.
Soon we’ll be posting up articles from Breitbart.
This is how the Liberals work …
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-10/federal-budget-ndis-funding-to-surpass-medicare/100129582
Take a working Labor policy. Outsource it to your mates. Get the voters aghast at the cost. Abandon it.
We have already seen Education and the Arts go this way. Welfare is coming along nicely.
Next up … Childcare and Superannuation.
Watch this space.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/05/07/miscellany-election-timing-victorian-alp-turmoil-compulsory-super/comment-page-33/#comment-3604080
https://youtu.be/YeGliQC2wCo?t=38
https://youtu.be/C8WLuQOLq5Q?t=1
Yes. As David Andolfatto of the United States Federal Reserve has observed:
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/fourth-quarter-2020/does-national-debt-matter
The same point applies to the Commonwealth Government Securities issued by the Australian Government. They are just Australian dollar financial wealth held in a Securities Account (the RBA equivalent of a savings account or a term deposit) instead of an Exchange Settlement Account (the RBA equivalent of a transaction account). It is totally misleading to even call these instruments debt. There is absolutely zero need for the government to issue them. They do so as a voluntary choice to give the non-government sector the option of swapping one form of zero risk AUD financial asset for a slightly different zero risk AUD financial asset. They have zero impact on the financial capacity of the federal government. They have no implications at all for the tax rates that taxpayers will need to pay today or in the future. They are not a problem and they are irrelevant to questions about what the federal government should be doing to promote public interests.
That didn’t work.
We now have both the NT and Qld state Labor governments altering youth justice thresholds, thereby significantly increasing the likelihood that Indigenous youth offenders in particular will be incarcerated.
In both cases the tightening followed failed attempts to relax previous regimes that had as an outcome extremely high rates of Indigenous youth incarceration.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-10/nt-senator-says-youth-bail-laws-should-not-be-rushed/100128856
The A-Z vaccine gets some good press:
[‘Emerging data from Britain… suggests AstraZeneca’s much-maligned vaccine works just as well as Pfizer’s mRNA jab in the real world, with two doses of either vaccine cutting the risk of contracting COVID-19 by as much as 70 per cent.’]
https://www.smh.com.au/national/pfizer-beats-back-variants-as-astrazeneca-receives-a-timely-boost-20210510-p57qj0.html
Player One @ #1619 Monday, May 10th, 2021 – 6:46 pm
Any chance Labor could explain this to the punters during an election campaign?
I mean Labor gets it.
Don’t they?
mundo
I’m sure it was mentioned by someone once several years ago. Isn’t that sufficient ?
One occasionally learns new words here. Today’s word – “catenary”.
Some beauty for you bw..
Oh and there’s an industry joke that goes..
“What do you have left when you drop a 10 megaton nuke over Sydney?”
“Cockroaches and rail stanchions”.
Mavis
I’m waiting on the real world data on how these vaccines affect transmissibility, particularly for the more aggressive strains. Its not whether you get the bug, its whether you pass it on that affects our chances of herd immunity.
It appears Israel is doing well on this score so far. It used Pfizer. The data from the UK isn’t yet clear.
My very small opinion on Labor leadership at the moment, not that anyone cares. is as follows.
Albo reminds me of Kim Beasley and Simon Crean. Both very nice, likeable blokes without a touch of mongrel in them. Actually too nice to be be in politics.
Mark Latham, a nutter.
Kevin Rudd, I still don’t know.
Julia Gillard, She might of done more if she hadn’t been white anted but the big one she acheived was the Royal Commission. On a personal note I didn’t like her. The reason? Her voice!!
Bill Shorten, a man that was undermined by his own party very ably led by murdoch. Most probably the best PM we never had
Albo, I don’t think he has the bottle to take it up to scrotum.
The future? Buggered if I know
Over the years I met and spoke with Bill Hayden, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Kim Beasley, Simon Crean and Mark Latham. All through my involvement with the union movement.
I actually shook hands with the great man Mr Whitlam during a school trip to Canberra in 1975 just prior to the dismissal, which sort of sparked my interest in politics and looking out for others which led to involvement in the union movement and service clubs.
Unfortunately I can’t see any way for Labor to win the next election no matter who is leading unless scrotum is still PM.
I have a theory that the Australian voter thinks they elect the PM so they should be the one’s to remove him. I.E if the current retards get rid of scrotum and have someone else take the position they’ll win.
Kind of weird you put ‘attractive’ in that list. None of her value is how attractive she is. Also, teenager (I don’t care if she’s now 18, her prominence rose when she was under that age) and, finally, the premise is wrong anyway: the people you describe (sexist people) actually value attractiveness in a woman very highly – sometimes viewing that as the only quality to judge a woman on.
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/israel/
Israel down to 1% of peak and falling with 3 infections per 100k people reported over the last 7 days and 8 new infections on May 9.
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/united-kingdom/
UK at 3% of peak and falling with 21 infections per 100k people over the past 7 days. And 1,770 infections on May 9
Admittedly the UK isn’t up to Israel’s overall vaccination level yet.
Giving massive favours to real estate speculators is a core part of the problem. They take homes away from prospective first home buyers. They don’t provide secure tenancy. Illegal practices by owners and real estate agents are rife in the private rental market. Looking to private rentals as a big part of the solution to the problem of insecure housing and housing stress is thoroughly misguided.
We need a big and sustained expansion of high quality public housing, much stronger tenancy rights, no tax deductions for buying existing homes as investment properties, and planning laws that are not corrupt – that actually put public interests first.
Cud Chewer says:
Monday, May 10, 2021 at 6:26 pm
C@t
“Royal purple.”
No – barf blue!
Purple is only for the inner sanctum.
Cud
One of the most outrageous cost add-ons I encountered in rail electrification was the charging by power utilities. I quoted a figure of $20 million for a rail sub-station (say an AC output at 15 or 25KV powering a section of heavy rail mainline). I have seen quotes from energy utilities of up to $50 million for one. At that price they could have included around 15km of high voltage power feed in the price. This (private) power utility was trying to make a state rail authority pay for its high voltage grid upgrades, which it needed, and charged out, for many other purposes and clients. I had to get prices for similar sub-stations interstate before the client (no rail engineering or economics background) would believe they were being ripped off.
Anyone who thinks it is a good idea to privatise monopoly service providers should be booted out of the economics or policy making professions, and forced to wear a dunces cap and join the Liberal party.
Cud Chewer:
Monday, May 10, 2021 at 7:08 pm
[‘I’m waiting on the real world data on how these vaccines affect transmissibility, particularly for the more aggressive strains. Its not whether you get the bug, its whether you pass it on that affects our chances of herd immunity.’]
That’s fair enough. When I got my A-Z shot last Thursday I was told that many who were eligible in the Phase 1.b group were cancelling on the back of the reports of clotting, mainly those over 70, prompting my comment that there is at least now some good news re. the A-Z vaccine, though it’s not a panacea.
Christine Holgate on the Project:
Q: Would you still like an apology from the PM?
A: I would love an apology, he can ring me any time (wtte).
No love lost there.
Bore War is one of those right wing cranks who think they are the sole protectors of ‘western civilization.’
Rational Leftist @ #1631 Monday, May 10th, 2021 – 7:14 pm
I find it kind of weird you think that’s weird. If she was ugly, how much press coverage do you think she would get?
Bert
I don’t disagree with much of what you say.
But the fundamental problem that Labor has regardless of policy or leader or calibre of its MPs and Senators is that the Murdoch, Nine and Stokes media will never give Labor a fair go.
They will lie and misrepresent Labor and ignore any failures of the liberals. Just look what they did to Shorten.
That will always be a huge obstacle to Labor success.
I think over the last decade the media have become even more forgiving of the Liberals. It’s hard to imagine how much worse Morrison’s government would have to get to lose their endorsement.
Does anybody still think the Labor “zero” target strategy was a good idea?
Rossmcg:
Monday, May 10, 2021 at 7:37 pm
[‘But the fundamental problem that Labor has regardless of policy or leader or calibre of its MPs and Senators is that the Murdoch, Nine and Stokes media will never give Labor a fair go.’]
Murdoch did the same in the last Queensland election, but Labor improved its position. So it can be done.
Sc,
This seems relevant, if you can access it:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718520302074
From responsibilization to responsiveness through metrics: Smart meter deployment in Australia
Sangeetha Chandrashekeran
Abstract: Smart meters are a central element in strategies to create data-rich environments that enhance the rationalization and technical optimization of electricity production and consumption. Bold claims are made by industry and government that smart measurement devices will enable a new class of responsibilizing subjects who can be nudged and incentivized to orchestrate efficient low carbon energy governance. The carbon governmentality literature reveals the microphysics of power involved in responsibilization-as-governance. However, it insufficiently explains how the individualization of responsibility is shaped by and coexists with other sectoral and policy priorities, and political-economic imperatives. I show how the obdurate political-economic relations of the Australian electricity sector shape what can be measured, who can do the measuring, and who can access the metrics from smart meters. Utopian promises to govern for all by metrics are constrained by industry accumulation strategies, weak regulation and the embedded inequalities of infrastructural projects. I then show how responsibilization is being eclipsed by responsiveness as the new regime of accountability. Responsiveness bypasses active individual consumer decision-making, in favour of technologically-mediated automated processes. I show how responsiveness regimes are being driven by new whole-of-economy accumulation opportunities and enabled through the creation of a weakly-regulated sectoral market for electricity consumption data. Metering is a crucial but insufficient condition for the larger assemblage of responsiveness that involves data mobility through third party access, new forms of market competition, and value creation in demand response.
Some cracking summaries include, re: the Victorian smart metering strategy: “Demand responsiveness was a critical legitimization strategy for the roll out that disguised an accumulation strategy for transnational energy firms and technical system-optimization goals”.
I’d love to hear what the author really thinks!
Just watching the lovefest for Josh and Scotty on 7:30
We are truly blessed!
Blessed I tells ya that Scotty, Josh and the whole Liberal National team are on our case!
It is a wonder to behold!!!!
Mavis
I accept that, but state politics is different and like WA the liberals were a rabble and no amount of biased coverage can overcome that.
Federally the liberals are in charge and their media and rich mates have the whip hand.
I don’t know. My first thought when seeing a young teen activist wasn’t “Phwoar!!!” though, so what do I know?
Mavis @ #1437 Monday, May 10th, 2021 – 7:44 pm
You left out the ABC…and for that matter the SBS
Mavis says:
Monday, May 10, 2021 at 7:44 pm
Rossmcg:
Monday, May 10, 2021 at 7:37 pm
[‘But the fundamental problem that Labor has regardless of policy or leader or calibre of its MPs and Senators is that the Murdoch, Nine and Stokes media will never give Labor a fair go.’]
Murdoch did the same in the last Queensland election, but Labor improved its position. So it can be done.
_____________________
Maybe making peace with the Murdoch’s is a smarter approach? No National Labor Government has been elected without the active support of the Murdoch family!
Rational Leftist says:
Monday, May 10, 2021 at 7:48 pm
I find it kind of weird you think that’s weird.
If she was ugly, how much press coverage do you think she would get?
I don’t know. My first thought when seeing a young teen activist wasn’t “Phwoar!!!” though, so what do I know?
____________
Why don’t you look up Lee Hurst’s joke about Greta ?
Bert @ #1425 Monday, May 10th, 2021 – 7:12 pm
‘On a personal note I didn’t like her. The reason? Her voice!!’
You lost me there Bert.
Couldn’t be bothered reading the rest.
My Liberal voting sister had the same problem.
I don’t speak to her anymore either.