Month: April 2013

Hookers …

It’s a long time since I read it but I do recall that Guy Du Maupassant wrote a very elegant and touching story concerning a young man, a courtesan and a raffle.

Compressed into 25 words or less it goes something like this. Nearing the end of high school the boys put in a franc each and the one whose name was pulled out of the hat got to spend the jackpot on a high class hooker at a high class bordello. Once the deed was done the lucky winner explained the means by which he had come by such a princely sum. The lady, both touched and amused, declared that she couldn’t possibly take his money … and gave him back one franc.

Perhaps the first known case of crowd sourcing for hookers. If you’re inclined you can contribute to the modern version <HERE>.

Debtski …

Total tax revenue last financial year … $317 billion.

Projected for this year … $340 billion.

Increase over last year 7.25%.

Yes, I said increase. Mr Swan and Miss Gillard are crying woe is us because of an unexpected fall in government revenue. If you expect more than a 7.25% increase in annual income you may well be disappointed!

There are three things to consider expenditure, expenditure and expenditure. These are the key to the budget black hole.

And the government continue to promise plenty of expenditure …

Autumn advances …

Back from the dacha, and for any that are at a loss as to where that is, it’s in the central goldfields of Victoria.

Autumn is a splendid time of the year, nights are cold but if there’s not much wind days are generally warm.

First thing in the morning, I resuscitate the fire, take the lovely Gayle (name changed to protect her identity) a cup of coffee and then a walk around the house, through the vineyard ending up at the stable as the sun comes up. Until a couple of weeks ago there were two retired ponies to feed, sadly Taffy has shuffled off this mortal coil, so now it’s a moment shared with Katie. Whilst she begins the long chomp through a manger of chaff, Fifi the fox terrier checks out the storage and tack areas for rodents. Katie and Fifi have a relationship that would lead to divorce or even murder between humans. When Fifi was a pup Katie actually landed a kick on Fi that those who saw it could never imagine she would survive. Katie keeps trying but the dog is pretty quick and always careful. I have no idea what offence she started the war with, but Fifi McGee is, these days, the epitome of good manners, no barking at the pony, no nipping at heels.

The change of seasons brings a change of birds. I always look forward to the arrival of the Flame Robins. They have been back for three weeks now, the boys are resplendent in red from in front or black with striking white wing bar from behind. Numbers are not big this year and I anticipate that it will stay that way because of the lack of rain since December.

Despite the dry the eucalypts are flowering strongly, the nomadic nectar feeders are making the most of it. In the last couple of weeks the regular Musk Lorikeets have been joined by both Little and Purple-crowned Lorikeets, beautiful flashes of green dashing about, easily heard but often difficult to get a good look at. On Saturday a group of Purple-crowns decided it was time to present themselves for a photo shoot. I have never had such close views. The light was splendid, they were apparently unconcerned at my presence … all I needed was the camera.

Today I took the camera and the birds reverted to form, beautiful flashes of green dashing about, this was the best I could manage …

Purple-crowned Lorikeet

SONY DSC

 

 

The slushpuppy …

Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along.

“There will be nothing wrong under a government I lead”.

The whole AWU slush fund affair is nothing more than a vile smear from such blackguards as Michael Smith, Larry Pickering and that utterly despicable Kangaroo Court of Australia … the last so scurrilous I dare not post a link.

Although, it does seem that Victoria Police are investigating the matter. Seems Miss Gillard told one Mr Fordham, on 2GB, in March, that she was in the same room as Mr Blewitt when that infamous power of attorney was signed.

The Australian …

With questioning so far of witnesses in Queensland, Victoria, NSW and Western Australia, up to a dozen detectives are particularly interested in the creation and operation of a union election slush fund, misleadingly called the AWU Workplace Reform Association.

The entity was set up and formally registered in Perth with the help of Gillard’s legal advice (as a solicitor at Slater & Gordon) to her then boyfriend and client, AWU official Bruce Wilson, and his union sidekick, Ralph Blewitt. The two men allegedly used it as a slush fund to siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars from Thiess during the construction company’s development of a major project that required both labour and industrial peace from AWU members.

Some of the money, which was kept secret from everyone else in the union, would go into a $230,000 terrace house at 85 Kerr Street, Fitzroy, bought by Wilson (in Blewitt’s name) at an auction he attended with Gillard, whose firm would manage the conveyancing. The terrace house was Wilson’s home in Melbourne during his relationship with Gillard and his time as secretary of the Victorian branch of the AWU. The money from the property’s sale a few years later went directly to Blewitt and Wilson, not the union, whose national leadership discovered too late that the union had been used in a scam.

So the question is “Do the police have evidence that Mr Blewitt and Miss Gillard were on opposite sides of Australia during the relevant period?”

I guess their ABC will keep us informed …

 

Irony …

The Israeli blockade of Gaza makes life hard for the people of Gaza. It’s a bad thing … ask anyone in Gaza.

On the other hand it makes it hard to import rocket building materiel into Gaza, which means that folk in Israel can go about their business with a reduced risk of being blown up. That’s a good thing … ask anyone in Israel.

Some British aid workers felt sorry for the people of Gaza and decided to take aid overland. If the aid got there the people of Gaza would have a truck load of stuff that they wouldn’t otherwise have had, if it didn’t get there the effort would at least highlight the plight of the Gazan people. They made it as far as the Libia Egypt border where they were turned back, subsequently they were kidnapped. Theirs was a noble and compassionate impulse …

Awad al-Barassi, the Prime Minister of Libya, visited at least two of the victims in hospital  before they were able to fly home. He told media that three women had been raped and that two of them were sisters. He said the sisters had been raped in front of their father.

Noble, compassionate and naive. Now forget noble and compassionate, hang on to naive. In the face of the horror that was the bombing of the World Trade Centre one of our worthy opinion makers, paid by the Aussie taxpayer to serve up one side of political thought, had this to say on how to deal with Osama bin Laden …

“What if that involved bringing him somewhere, absolutely safely, sitting down with him, treating him like a human being and talking about it, and then Osama bin Laden going home again, not bombing the hell out of bin Laden?”

Quite so, Virginia Trioli of their ABC.

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, the Tsarnaev brothers hijacked a car with a “Coexist” bumper sticker. They come in a number of flavours but this one is typical …

imagesIf it wasn’t for the first letter we wouldn’t need the sticker.

But, saving the best for last.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s former brother-in-law points to the Boston bomber’s possible motivation …

He was angry that the world pictures Islam as a violent religion.

The Sun …

Noteworthy events that appear briefly in the main sequence of this video:

00:30;24 Partial eclipse by the moon

00:31;16 Roll maneuver

01:11;02 August 9, 2011 X6.9 Flare, currently the largest of this solar cycle

01:28;07 Comet Lovejoy, December 15, 2011

01:42;29 Roll Maneuver

01:51;07 Transit of Venus, June 5, 2012

02:28;13 Partial eclipse by the moon

ANZAC eve …

The radical Muslim group Hizb ut Tahrir declares that Muslims should not celebrate Anzac day. It says government requests for Islamic schools to note Anzac day is an unacceptable imposition of foreign values and history.

Got that? Foreign values and history.

Muslim Aussie kids in Muslim Aussie schools generously sponsored by the Aussie taxpayer. Kids that will grow up and take their place along side other Aussies of different cultural backgrounds as the Aussie adults of tomorrow.
If that’s not what their Muslim parents want then why come to Australia?

Cool …

With each passing year, it is becoming increasingly clear that global warming is not a scientific theory subject to empirical falsification, but a political ideology that has to be fiercely defended against any challenge. It is ironic that skeptics are called “deniers” when every fact that would tend to falsify global warming is immediately explained away by an industry of denial.

David Deming is a geophysicist and a professor at the University of Oklahoma, the argument leading up to the conclusion above is worth a read <HERE>.