Blog
Random Notes - Idle ThoughtsRandom Note — The Banking Royal Commission we had to have
It was Otto Von Bismarck who made the observation that: ‘No one should see how laws or sausages are made. To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making’
In the first couple of decades of the 21st century we are starting to get a glimpse of how things are done. How the financial sausages are made at the big end of town.
In previous years perhaps the corporates were just more able to contain and bury their corrupt behaviour and practices because their profiles were seen to be beyond reproach by customers who lived in a more naive, trusting, respectful and gullible time. People also weren’t as articulate nor had the ability to cut through the impenetrable veil of corporate bureaucracy as well as not having the access to politicians and media (both social and traditional) that are available today and just a few key strokes away.
Four in ten millennials don’t know 6 million Jews were killed in Holocaust
More than one-fifth of millennials in the U.S. — 22 percent — haven’t heard of, or aren’t sure if they’ve heard of, the Holocaust, according to a study published Thursday, on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Additionally, 41 percent of millennials believe two million Jews or fewer were killed during the Holocaust, the study found. Six million Jews were killed in World War II by Nazi Germany and its accomplices.
Glass has never been so half empty — Nick Cater, The Australian
In July 1998 Clinton, then US president, warned that the world had just 535 days to deal with “one of the most complex management challenges in history”. Billions of computer chips could be infected by the Y2K bug. “This is not one of the summer movies where you can close your eyes during the scary parts,” Clinton lectured. A month earlier The New York Times had warned: “A few scattered optimists still argue that the problem has been grossly exaggerated, but most experts insist that it is now too late to avoid serious disruptions.” Not for the first time, scattered optimists found themselves on the right side of history as the year 2000 began without the digital conflagration we had been told to expect. The eagerness to believe the worst that gave licence to the Y2K hype set the tone for this melancholic century. For much of the 20th century, Australians looked forward to the golden age, confident that scientific progress would overcome obstacles and that prosperity would continue to grow. Today hardly a bulletin goes to air without news of a fresh catastrophe lurking just around the corner caused by mankind’s lust and stupidity.
The Way To Win The Culture War Is With Fighting — Miranda Devine
The Left’s “long march” through the institutions that Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci once dreamt of has been a raging success. Every time a Labor-Greens government is voted in, it wastes no time appointing fellow travellers and cleaning out anyone associated with the old regimen. The bureaucracies become further embedded with leftists committed to cultural change. But when Coalition governments arrive they don’t do much more than benignly preside over the status quo, even when run by avowed conservatives. John Howard pushed back on the black armband view of history but even after 11 years in office, he only managed to slow the leftward drift. Even then, at the end, he embraced climate voodoo.
The idiocy of cultural competence — Dr Bella d’Abrera, The Spectator
The conference’s jam-packed schedule was almost a parody of what one would imagine a conference entirely devoted to something called cultural competence would be. Words such as ‘intersectionality’, ‘diversity’, ‘gender’, ‘privilege’, ‘race’ and ‘power’ were flung about with reckless abandon and inserted into nearly every title of nearly every session. The guest star of the show was none other than Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasame, who no doubt delivered his keynote address ‘Cultural competence and structural racism in the higher education sector and broader society’ to rapturous applause. The strategy reveals that the Centre is taking what some would say, is a fairly holistic approach to the task at hand by using a number of measures to achieve 100 per cent cultural competence by 2020. These are: 1. ‘Education.’ A re- writing of all university curricula, not just the humanities, so that all graduates will think the same way upon leaving university; 2. ‘Research’. The dissemination of identity politics taught within the university into the wider community; 3. ‘Culture.’ Ensuring the wider community, not just students, are fed a diet of radical identity politics; 4. ‘Organisational Design.’ Ensuring that the decision makers and people running our institutions are all exponents of cultural competence, and finally; 5. ‘Engagement.’ Capturing and controlling social media.
Random Note —- Forget the here and now. Where were they then? Rewind the clock a decade or so
To illustrate the total futility of our self-righteousness and self-inflicted all pain, no gain trajectory and the demonization of coal fired power, according to the UN’s own climate model IF every nation that signed up to Paris genuinely sticks to their commitment and promise, the reduction in co2 emissions will result in a reduction in the worlds temperature by 2100 by less than 0.2 degrees.
Random Note –Free Markets and Free Trade
With respect to the myth of free trade, the best example is that of the Jeep Wrangler revealed in the New York Times last year. Produced in the US for $40,500 and exported under a free trade agreement, the Wrangler on the showroom floor in China can cost $71,000 because of the various taxes Beijing charges on all imported vehicles. The one question that is being forced upon our political class and the commentariat with respect to free trade, free markets and AGL gaming the energy market is this: Are free markets about promoting competition or restricting competition as AGL seeks to do?
Suddenly it all starts to crystallise. It all starts to make sense — AGL and Getup
It all starts to crystallise. A former Labor operative and partner of Labor front bencher Tony Burke. A former Getup operative. Now a senior manager in public advocacy at AGL. That is shorthand for spin doctor, shaping and delivering the message. To complete the circle it was Bill Shorten who, when head of the AWU was a founding member of Getup and also donated $100,000 in union funds as start up capital.
Random Note — Andrew Vesey, CEO of AGL — A byword for rolled gold hypocrisy
So is government interference in the energy market a sovereign risk or not? Make up your mind because as the beneficiary of government interference in the form of billion dollar subsidies for renewables to the detriment of coal, Vesey and AGL don’t seem to have any problem or any great concern at all about market interference and sovereign risk.
Random Note – AGL and Liddell
Privatising our once state owned electricity assets without certain caveats, must now be categorised as one of those “..it seemed like a good idea at the time..” moments, all in the name of and at the altar of free markets. No problem with that basic underlying principle and I’m sure the belief and intent was that the new owners would keep it running as a coal fired power station and if not, sell it to someone who would. As commented on already, Andrew Vesey, the absent American landlord/CEO of AGL is fast catching up if not already overtaking the American boss of Telstra in the early 2000’s, the rambunctious and much loathed Sol Trujillo