I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Our new kiwi coach Robbie Deans has really tapped into the Wallabies as a bunch of backs again and we have beaten Ireland and France pretty convincingly in recent weeks.
Makes sense to me. It's all about movement with us. We are rugby league players in this country.
Our defense is still good. We held France off our line for long periods of time (with one mistake) and Stirlo pulled off an intercept try. It reminded me or the 2003 World Cup semi against NZ.
We've improved on the breakdown as well. The main lesson we need to learn to beat England. Clearing people out not by standing still and pushing hard, but by getting a run-up (movement once again) and crashing in there.
Poetry in motion. The poetry of PAIN!
Bring on the Poms.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Rudd and the OZ united in helping China Inc's takeovers of Aussie companies
Swan has rejected, sorry delayed by 90 days an application for Sinosteel to take over WA based iron ore miners Murchison Metals. On the face of it that looks good. BUT as you read the article you will see that a couple of other aquitions have been approved since the start of the year on the QT. This is news to me. This disturbs me.
Rudd is trying to walk a very fine line here. He wants to please his Chinese mates, and he wants to stay on side with Aussie voters.
A man can't serve two masters and a Prime Minister can't server two countries.
It appears that Rudd has more recently decided to represent Australia. I suppose I should be grateful.
The OZ certainly wants me to be. This is reportage, not an opinion piece, and yet it is shamelessly spun to favour Rudd.
I remember reading in Feb about Swan clarifying the rules so that the approval process for foreign investment would be transparent - so as not to upset the Chinese, he said. I warned at the time this was fishy.
I don't remember reading in Feb that Sinosteel had been allowed to fully take over Midwest, another iron ore mining company a month previously. I dont remember reading about it because it was not mentioned in my linked article about Chinese govt takeovers. I dont read the business pages. Perhaps it was in there. But this information extremely relevant to helping the reader form a fulling educated view on Rudd position on Chinese investment. It should have been in the earlier related article.
The OZ has been forced to reveal the approval now because now Rudd wanted coverage for his more recent rejection, sorry again, delaying announcement and they could not be seen to be so fundamentally biased, but The Australian is at pains to stress the Government was not at fault.
I can only conclude the OZ does not want us to form an informed position about Rudd's policy on Chinese investment. It is prepared to withhold information and to spin it Rudd's way when forced to reveal it. If the OZ is shamelessly selling us out to foreign communist dictatorships so as to maintain a priviledged position with the PM's press office they will come to regret it, and soon.
It's not the OZ's job to defend the government in a factual reporting piece. It's is their job to report the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . Put IN the takeovers WHEN they happen. LEAVE OUT your interpretation of the government's motives. Leave that to the Rudd-besotted Paul Kelly in the editorials and opinion columns.
This opinion piece from Matthew Stevens today also adheres to the idea that Rudd's position on Chinese investment has "changed". It's changed from give it all to em, to give them half of it. Rudd proposes a 49.9% ceiling on ownership by foreign governments. The author points out this may well be in breach of free-trade treaties we are currently a party to, let alone the new one coming up with China. It also says the 49.9% is as good as 89.9% in terms of control in most cases. Ironically the opinion piece his less biased than the reportage. But both pieces have trouble representing the facts. There are conflicting bits of information between both. The opinion piece says says that the takoever of Midwest was done in March, not Jan (and that they dont own 100%) When was it guys?
Although Murchison is a relatively minor player, it is active in a region east of Geraldton that is becoming the new frontier of iron ore development after the Pilbara in the northwest of the state. The Rudd Government, which earlier this year approved Sinosteel's takeover of Midwest, another iron ore miner in the area, is clearly concerned about any consolidation of Chinese control in the region.Wha??? When did that happen? "Minor" company or not I want to know if the Chinese government owns it. What's all this "the Rudd Government ... is clearly concerned" bollocks? That basically means that the government did not say they were concerned on record, but the journo has made her own inference and stuck it in, at the behest of Rudd.
Rudd is trying to walk a very fine line here. He wants to please his Chinese mates, and he wants to stay on side with Aussie voters.
A man can't serve two masters and a Prime Minister can't server two countries.
It appears that Rudd has more recently decided to represent Australia. I suppose I should be grateful.
The OZ certainly wants me to be. This is reportage, not an opinion piece, and yet it is shamelessly spun to favour Rudd.
But the Government has been extremely wary of the strategic aims of Sinosteel all year. The Chinese metals and mineral trader had its application to take over 100 per cent of Midwest approved in early January, just after Labor won office.
This was before the new Government had a chance to focus on the significance of the issue in the midst of a resources boom.
"Before the government had a chance to focus?" If the PM has stayed at home a bit more maybe it would not have got past him. Kevin 24/7 my arse. Kev knew and he had a position as that was let the Chinese government have it and make sure the press don't report it.
I remember reading in Feb about Swan clarifying the rules so that the approval process for foreign investment would be transparent - so as not to upset the Chinese, he said. I warned at the time this was fishy.
I don't remember reading in Feb that Sinosteel had been allowed to fully take over Midwest, another iron ore mining company a month previously. I dont remember reading about it because it was not mentioned in my linked article about Chinese govt takeovers. I dont read the business pages. Perhaps it was in there. But this information extremely relevant to helping the reader form a fulling educated view on Rudd position on Chinese investment. It should have been in the earlier related article.
The OZ has been forced to reveal the approval now because now Rudd wanted coverage for his more recent rejection, sorry again, delaying announcement and they could not be seen to be so fundamentally biased, but The Australian is at pains to stress the Government was not at fault.
I can only conclude the OZ does not want us to form an informed position about Rudd's policy on Chinese investment. It is prepared to withhold information and to spin it Rudd's way when forced to reveal it. If the OZ is shamelessly selling us out to foreign communist dictatorships so as to maintain a priviledged position with the PM's press office they will come to regret it, and soon.
It's not the OZ's job to defend the government in a factual reporting piece. It's is their job to report the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . Put IN the takeovers WHEN they happen. LEAVE OUT your interpretation of the government's motives. Leave that to the Rudd-besotted Paul Kelly in the editorials and opinion columns.
This opinion piece from Matthew Stevens today also adheres to the idea that Rudd's position on Chinese investment has "changed". It's changed from give it all to em, to give them half of it. Rudd proposes a 49.9% ceiling on ownership by foreign governments. The author points out this may well be in breach of free-trade treaties we are currently a party to, let alone the new one coming up with China. It also says the 49.9% is as good as 89.9% in terms of control in most cases. Ironically the opinion piece his less biased than the reportage. But both pieces have trouble representing the facts. There are conflicting bits of information between both. The opinion piece says says that the takoever of Midwest was done in March, not Jan (and that they dont own 100%) When was it guys?
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Rudd doesn't give a XXXX
Nelson is on the right track again by raking the piss (pun intended) out of Labor's 4-pot definition of binge drinking. This is populism at it's democratic best. The comments on the news.com.au article are awesome. Everyone in OZ is now a humourous right-wing blogger. I love this country.
Rudd looks like a proper tosser.
I am reminded of Kerry O'Brien's question before the election when he asked Rudd if he could not recall his NYC strip club escapades because he was a "two pot screamer". Genius.
This will dawg Rudd up to and beyond the Gippsland bi-election, which Labor are sure to lose. The "Uteman" political ads by the brewing lobby (shown here on the ABC's Insiders - skip ahead in video to 2:30) are brilliant. Whilst Gippsland is natural National Party territory the ALP would have hoped to snare some blue collar support because of Rudd's poll-ratings and media-driven momentum. The result of this election will confirm that those who voted for Howard all those years have not fundamentally changed, and can't be made to change by nerds like Rudd.
I commend Nelson having the sense to see this. Rudd is still smarting from when Nelson put the "blowtorch" on him over petrol. Now Nelson keeps the political heat on, dispite the opposition of the entire commentariat. It's a shame this week's newspoll data will not pick up this announcement and it's effect. Nelson has best the instinct for the electorate of all current pollies. This is all the more commendable because Nelson is a doctor and could be forgiven for superior posturing much more than businessman Turnbull and bureaucrat Rudd.
Who better to make the judgement about our nation's health than a doctor? Doctors like Nelson are always dispelling hocus pocus health scares because they care MORE than the do-gooding idiots. Bullshit hurts, it never helps. On health policy Rudd is the political equivalent of a holistic naturopath acupuncturist. His insistence on vegan abstention from booze will ring well with tofu-munching yoga class-attenders, but the rest of us think he's a either a knob or a nut.
Another Tube!
Rudd looks like a proper tosser.
I am reminded of Kerry O'Brien's question before the election when he asked Rudd if he could not recall his NYC strip club escapades because he was a "two pot screamer". Genius.
This will dawg Rudd up to and beyond the Gippsland bi-election, which Labor are sure to lose. The "Uteman" political ads by the brewing lobby (shown here on the ABC's Insiders - skip ahead in video to 2:30) are brilliant. Whilst Gippsland is natural National Party territory the ALP would have hoped to snare some blue collar support because of Rudd's poll-ratings and media-driven momentum. The result of this election will confirm that those who voted for Howard all those years have not fundamentally changed, and can't be made to change by nerds like Rudd.
I commend Nelson having the sense to see this. Rudd is still smarting from when Nelson put the "blowtorch" on him over petrol. Now Nelson keeps the political heat on, dispite the opposition of the entire commentariat. It's a shame this week's newspoll data will not pick up this announcement and it's effect. Nelson has best the instinct for the electorate of all current pollies. This is all the more commendable because Nelson is a doctor and could be forgiven for superior posturing much more than businessman Turnbull and bureaucrat Rudd.
Who better to make the judgement about our nation's health than a doctor? Doctors like Nelson are always dispelling hocus pocus health scares because they care MORE than the do-gooding idiots. Bullshit hurts, it never helps. On health policy Rudd is the political equivalent of a holistic naturopath acupuncturist. His insistence on vegan abstention from booze will ring well with tofu-munching yoga class-attenders, but the rest of us think he's a either a knob or a nut.
Another Tube!
Friday, June 13, 2008
Labor is no friend of Adam Smith
This piece by ALP minister for small business in the OZ is so deeply founded in bullshit that it is in danger of drowning.
The article asserts that ALP understands competition and Smithian economics more than conservatives. I am always sceptical, rather, dismissive of this claim. Every time it is made there is a perverse anti-competition motive for it.
The perverse aim of this piece is to somehow say that means-testing the baby bonus (one of the unpopular parts of the budget that needs spinning out of existence) is natural conclusion of following free-market competition-encouraging ideas, when it is precisely the opposite. This is just another exercise in Labor spin, or more correctly, misrepresentation; still more correctly, lying.
Rudd said to the author "We need to spin this shameless vote-buying anti-competition class-war redistribution as good for competition because we are "economic conservatives" now. Can you write it up for us?"
"But that's bullshit" came the reply, i'm sure.
"Yeah, but that's what we are good at around here. Hop to it, son" commanded Rudd, testily.
And so the author waded in up to his neck and let rip a real stinker...
The bit of BS of the piece is that conservative Governent regulate more than Labor governments.
Wrong. Howard deregulated the labour market. Rudd is re-regulating it.
The second chunk of BS is how conservative governments increase the welfare state, and ALP is about winding it back.
Wrong again. Howard introduced work-for-the-dole, increased employment, intervened in the NT and waged war on welfare wherever he went. The so-called 'middle-class welfare' of the baby tax break is nothing of the sort as i have explained ad neaseum, but I will explain again.
Welfare is taking money off one person through tax, and giving it to another.
Taking less money off someone to begin with, say via a baby-based tax break, is ... a tax break, not welfare at all. The country needs more kids. The baby bonus is sensible social policy that tried to bring this about through the means at the govt's disposal: rewards through less tax. What's more - and since the ALP now claim to be good little economists too they will understand the power of incentives - it encourages people to have kids, regardless of their income.
Means-testing the baby bonus rewards low to middle income people for having kids but not better-off people, although it's arguable that households above the 150K cut-off are better off. Sooo, going back to incentives, means-testing the bonus discourages people who are better off from having kids. Maybe not alltogether, but they wont be able to afford as many. If they do have a third child, it makes sure that he or she wont be able to send them to an independent school. One less middle-class well-educated free-thinking kid is one less person who will vote Liberal. "Job done", says Rudd.
Means testing the baby-bonus takes a policy that did not discriminate against winners, and makes it discriminate. This is the definition of an anti-competitive policy.
To the victor, the spoils. This is the essence of competition.
To penalize winners for winning goes against the very nature of competition. And it IS the very nature of the resentment-fueled envious grasping class-warring ALP. The ALP thinks that its ok to discriminate against winners. Since they believe humans only win by being cruel and currupt. Their cyncism is killing this country and every other country they hold sway.
How can the ALP claim to favour competition when they not only support policies the penalize winners, but try and hide them behind political spin so the policies can work their poisonous effect unnoticed and unacknowledged, and all the more effectively. Their false overtures to competition use economic language to uneconomical ends. They are at bottom an attempt to find a more intellectual and thereby more socially acceptable way of indulging their hatred of the good and the great. The spin is as dangerous as the resentment that drives it.
The biggest lump of BS in the piece asserts, in the typical pseudo-intellectual fashion of sound-biting communist, that the Liberals favour "private-enterprise, not free-enterprise". Is the Author suggesting that government-owned enterprise is somehow more free? I dare him to state openly the logical consequence of the bland bollocks he propounds.
One of the central pillars, sorry THE central pillar, of the Free Market is the idea of Private Property (my capitals, for these ideas should be elevated to the status of deities). The people own their own stuff. The people earned the money themselves. The money belongs to the people, individually, and not to the government. If the government takes the money they need a damn good reason. And they are not doing us a favour if they let us keep OUR money.
Welfare means taking our money and moving it around. A tax break is by defn NOT taking our money. The two are clean different things. They only seem the same in the eye of the government official who thinks the money was theirs to start with, and they decide who gets it.
If the ALP would stop claiming to have more rights to our own property that we do ourselves, they might see the huge contradiction at the bottom of their perverse assertions. They would realize that their attempts to represent themselves as more appreciative of competition than conservatives are an insult to the most noble human notions of truth and reason.
Hopefully then they would then lose the will to live. Nah, who am I kidding they would have to care about the truth for that to happen.
The article asserts that ALP understands competition and Smithian economics more than conservatives. I am always sceptical, rather, dismissive of this claim. Every time it is made there is a perverse anti-competition motive for it.
The perverse aim of this piece is to somehow say that means-testing the baby bonus (one of the unpopular parts of the budget that needs spinning out of existence) is natural conclusion of following free-market competition-encouraging ideas, when it is precisely the opposite. This is just another exercise in Labor spin, or more correctly, misrepresentation; still more correctly, lying.
Rudd said to the author "We need to spin this shameless vote-buying anti-competition class-war redistribution as good for competition because we are "economic conservatives" now. Can you write it up for us?"
"But that's bullshit" came the reply, i'm sure.
"Yeah, but that's what we are good at around here. Hop to it, son" commanded Rudd, testily.
And so the author waded in up to his neck and let rip a real stinker...
The bit of BS of the piece is that conservative Governent regulate more than Labor governments.
Wrong. Howard deregulated the labour market. Rudd is re-regulating it.
The second chunk of BS is how conservative governments increase the welfare state, and ALP is about winding it back.
Wrong again. Howard introduced work-for-the-dole, increased employment, intervened in the NT and waged war on welfare wherever he went. The so-called 'middle-class welfare' of the baby tax break is nothing of the sort as i have explained ad neaseum, but I will explain again.
Welfare is taking money off one person through tax, and giving it to another.
Taking less money off someone to begin with, say via a baby-based tax break, is ... a tax break, not welfare at all. The country needs more kids. The baby bonus is sensible social policy that tried to bring this about through the means at the govt's disposal: rewards through less tax. What's more - and since the ALP now claim to be good little economists too they will understand the power of incentives - it encourages people to have kids, regardless of their income.
Means-testing the baby bonus rewards low to middle income people for having kids but not better-off people, although it's arguable that households above the 150K cut-off are better off. Sooo, going back to incentives, means-testing the bonus discourages people who are better off from having kids. Maybe not alltogether, but they wont be able to afford as many. If they do have a third child, it makes sure that he or she wont be able to send them to an independent school. One less middle-class well-educated free-thinking kid is one less person who will vote Liberal. "Job done", says Rudd.
Means testing the baby-bonus takes a policy that did not discriminate against winners, and makes it discriminate. This is the definition of an anti-competitive policy.
To the victor, the spoils. This is the essence of competition.
To penalize winners for winning goes against the very nature of competition. And it IS the very nature of the resentment-fueled envious grasping class-warring ALP. The ALP thinks that its ok to discriminate against winners. Since they believe humans only win by being cruel and currupt. Their cyncism is killing this country and every other country they hold sway.
How can the ALP claim to favour competition when they not only support policies the penalize winners, but try and hide them behind political spin so the policies can work their poisonous effect unnoticed and unacknowledged, and all the more effectively. Their false overtures to competition use economic language to uneconomical ends. They are at bottom an attempt to find a more intellectual and thereby more socially acceptable way of indulging their hatred of the good and the great. The spin is as dangerous as the resentment that drives it.
The biggest lump of BS in the piece asserts, in the typical pseudo-intellectual fashion of sound-biting communist, that the Liberals favour "private-enterprise, not free-enterprise". Is the Author suggesting that government-owned enterprise is somehow more free? I dare him to state openly the logical consequence of the bland bollocks he propounds.
One of the central pillars, sorry THE central pillar, of the Free Market is the idea of Private Property (my capitals, for these ideas should be elevated to the status of deities). The people own their own stuff. The people earned the money themselves. The money belongs to the people, individually, and not to the government. If the government takes the money they need a damn good reason. And they are not doing us a favour if they let us keep OUR money.
Welfare means taking our money and moving it around. A tax break is by defn NOT taking our money. The two are clean different things. They only seem the same in the eye of the government official who thinks the money was theirs to start with, and they decide who gets it.
If the ALP would stop claiming to have more rights to our own property that we do ourselves, they might see the huge contradiction at the bottom of their perverse assertions. They would realize that their attempts to represent themselves as more appreciative of competition than conservatives are an insult to the most noble human notions of truth and reason.
Hopefully then they would then lose the will to live. Nah, who am I kidding they would have to care about the truth for that to happen.
Hey! Teacher! leave that language alone
The QLD teachers union has published a guide to English Grammar, full of grammatical errors! University of Queensland emeritus professor Rodney Huddleston criticises it thus:
But what do they say in their defense:
(note my Oxford comma after "mathematics" haw haw)
"Anyone who analyses 'won't' and 'capable of' as adverbs, 'a pair' and 'set of' as adjectives, or 'Sam's' as a possessive pronoun has no business to be preparing a resource on English grammar for teachers."Ha! This is the same teachers union which is busily shoving their perverse left-wing anti-human ideologies down your kid's throats. Maybe they should learn something about grammar before they teach it, and about life before they presume to interfere in the parent's job of morally educating their own children.
But what do they say in their defense:
ROFL! Now I see. Mistakes are just 'different perspectives', just like how little Timmy's assertion that 4+4=5 is another perspective that needs to be defended - at the expense of the other students who got it right, of mathematics, and of human progress generally.
"It's a totally different perspective and a totally different way of organising and thinking about language,"
(note my Oxford comma after "mathematics" haw haw)
Friday, June 6, 2008
AU?!!
OMG Is this idea for an Asian Union the worst idea you've ever heard or what?
It's ridiculous. And apparently thrown together in a panic. It has no detail.
The idea of Asian countries ceding sovereignty is truly ludicrous. The Europeans should never have done it either.
Kevin Rudd referred to the apocalyptic conflicts that weakened the countries of Europe so much that they lost the will to have sovereignty as France and Germany sorting out their differences.
Idiot. Insensitive Idiot.
The EU does not prevent further wars in Europe. The USA and Russia do. The league of nations was started after WWI to prevent WWII. We all know how that ended. The constitution of the United States did not prevent the States from rebelling. Abraham Lincoln did.
An Asian Union will not prevent wars in Asia. It will cause them.
If we force Japan, India and China to combine their legal systems, economies and currencies to the detriment of their national interests (as has been done in Europe) they will almost certainly break apart. That separation will require conflagration.
Thank heavens it is impossible to make this happen. The countries of Asia will never agree to it.
Japan already tried to unite them once. Can't see it happening again.
It was mentioned to me before the election that if Rudd won we would just have to trust in the institutions and the people of this fine country. It's working out well so far (hence the fact i have not blogged for weeks). Australia instinctively protects itself from bullshit. What is amazing me is that there is so much consensus across the political divide between all the serious thinkers. The chorus of jeers from old Labor PMs in the OZ is brilliant. (I hate Keating but he's not a lightweight like Rudd.)
Rudd's stupid ideas are getting shot down even before they leave the ground. He does not have the guts to push them through.
He does not even have the guts to bring back unfair dismissal which he was elected to do!!
I love it.
It's ridiculous. And apparently thrown together in a panic. It has no detail.
The idea of Asian countries ceding sovereignty is truly ludicrous. The Europeans should never have done it either.
Kevin Rudd referred to the apocalyptic conflicts that weakened the countries of Europe so much that they lost the will to have sovereignty as France and Germany sorting out their differences.
Idiot. Insensitive Idiot.
The EU does not prevent further wars in Europe. The USA and Russia do. The league of nations was started after WWI to prevent WWII. We all know how that ended. The constitution of the United States did not prevent the States from rebelling. Abraham Lincoln did.
An Asian Union will not prevent wars in Asia. It will cause them.
If we force Japan, India and China to combine their legal systems, economies and currencies to the detriment of their national interests (as has been done in Europe) they will almost certainly break apart. That separation will require conflagration.
Thank heavens it is impossible to make this happen. The countries of Asia will never agree to it.
Japan already tried to unite them once. Can't see it happening again.
It was mentioned to me before the election that if Rudd won we would just have to trust in the institutions and the people of this fine country. It's working out well so far (hence the fact i have not blogged for weeks). Australia instinctively protects itself from bullshit. What is amazing me is that there is so much consensus across the political divide between all the serious thinkers. The chorus of jeers from old Labor PMs in the OZ is brilliant. (I hate Keating but he's not a lightweight like Rudd.)
Rudd's stupid ideas are getting shot down even before they leave the ground. He does not have the guts to push them through.
He does not even have the guts to bring back unfair dismissal which he was elected to do!!
I love it.
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