JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
I hate the term ‘cost of living’ – it implies you rely on the monetary system to live
50
Maybe “transactional” living?
00
It is in line with the Government having the power to decide what is ‘essential’.
It fits with Government’s treatment of households as liabilities and people as vectors of disease.
Lives are a cost.
Find it increasingly sinister to have government pushing annual jabs on old people, while raising the next generation to see human life as a terrible thing that needs to be destroyed for the sake of the planet.
Every time I read cost of living – and this is frequent at the moment, I get a chill…
00
Donald Trump has upended world trade with punitive tariffs. Unfortunately the basis for them appears to be very unscientific.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14568177/The-simple-secret-Donald-Trumps-dodgy-tariffs-formula-revealed-baffled-economists-pour-scorn-US-Presidents-irrational-calculation-global-trade-levies.html
Trump wants to bring jobs back to America-a worthwhile endeavour- but the man sitting by his side in the white house-Elon Musk- is as guilty as anyone of exporting American jobs with his plants in other countries, especially China and other American Favourites such as Apple has also exported numerous well paid jobs overseas. Amazon has avoided taxes for years as have other large American organisations with their domicile in the Irish Republic.
Here in the UK we don’t import many American cars-often too large, too brash and not well made-but Several such as Ford make engines here and cars in Europe, repatriating profits back to the US.
We shall have to see how this all works out as undoubtedly some countries have been taking advantage of the open market in America -the general tariff for both Britain and Australia at 10% is at the lower end although our vehicles and steel will be subject to 25% tariffs.
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The best answer may be to impose tariffs on the digital market, which some European countries are already doing.
20
US exports to Australia are subject to a 10% GST.
The GST was a Federal amalgam of various State based taxes to provide the States with a stable and growing funding base.
There are some exceptions … but these are also subject to ongoing ‘BIO-Security concerns’ – like the current total ban on US Beef.
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Australian exports to the US are now subject to a reciprocal Federal 10% tariff – but the individual US States are still allowed to levy additional sales taxes on Australian imports.
Rather than leveling the ‘playing field’ this US tariff has marginally tipped the scales further in the US’s favour. In addition this 10% tariff has been applied to one of the few countries that the USA has a positive trade balance.
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The UK, with it’s 20% VAT and it’s positive trade balance with the US – got off pretty lightly.
50
Caterpillar, John Deere, Boeing and most big ticket items, even yachts if the owner charters them out, are GST exempt. At least the exporter never sees the GST and local users do the paper work so no GST is paid. Our FTA which was blown up had 99% of US goods duty free into Australia.
It was quite a while ago but iirc that FTA had many restrictions on our access to the US market. One I remember is sugar,
Australian Sugar Exports to US
Australia exports a relatively small amount of sugar to the US, less than 2% of its total export volumes, but it remains a lucrative market due to the significant price premium.
For the fiscal year 2023, Australia received an additional allocation of 1,891 tonnes of raw sugar under the US tariff-rate quota (TRQ), bringing the total allocation to 89,293 tonnes.
20
A decade ago California oranges were being dumped on the Australia market and they were tasteless. So in terms of reciprocal tariff.
‘The leading fresh fruit imports into Australia from the United States include California table grapes, California stone fruit, citrus, California pomegranates, and California and Pacific Northwest cherries.’ (USDA)
21
Where is he going to find all those slaves to do the work? If done by robots, he will have to tax them as slaves to keep the Govt. coffers full.
Then find markets to sell the stuff….
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DOGE is doing a good job of liberating people from federal bureaucracies. So far 280,000 federal jobs gone in under 3 months. Imagine getting them into productive activity to put food on the table rather than the stifling work they have been doing spending other peoples money in the process..
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Not sure what your point is about US companies operating overseas. They were just responding to business/policy environment of recent decades.
21
The ‘ very stable genius’ strikes again , his base will be impacted the most.
16
We noticed
10
Donald Trump retaliatory tariffs “around the world.” The list of countries included Australia’s Heard and McDonald Islands, which are inhabited only by seals, penguins and birds.
50
No cheap guano for the States, then.
Auto
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Are there restaurants on the McDonald islands? Are they part of a chain?
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He was just closing loopholes.
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Heard Island Has had touristc climbing Australia’s tallest mountain. ‘The Great White Whale’
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31
ummm ..
Published the day after31 March … possibly?
Auto
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Was thinking the same. Release date/time was late on 31 March.
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https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-will-do-more-science-with-new-power-strategy/
Not much sun for a solar panel in deep space.
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WOW! If this is fact, EVs will suddenly become very attractive. Even if this tech could provide the power required to power an EV 5 years without charging or maintenance. WOW!!
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I read the comments under that article, and apparently there’s quite a way to go before they get to supply the energy for a garage door opener.
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EV battery problem solved!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k1tbf8muMc&t=12s
(2 min video)
10
The battery is rated at 0.0001W. And obviously not reversible so would need another battery or capacitor in an EV.
Lets say a typical vehicles averages 200W over its operating life (4.8kWh/day). Then you would need 2,000,000 of them to make an EVB power pack. The nickel would not be a limiting factor but the diamond possibly.
I could not find the weight but based on size and materials, I am guessing between 3 and 4 grams. Lets say4. So the 200W EV battery will weight 8 tonne. A bit heavy for an EV.
If it was re-designed for 10 years and say 1mW. it might move into a practical range. But they would need to be making diamond wafer cheaply.
Our household power usage averages around 7kWh per day. So a low cost version would ben nice to power a house.
20
The H&S crowd are up in arms about button batteries already – we will never be allowed to have these!
00
US taxpayer-funded green energy projects crashing
https://freebeacon.com/energy/green-energy-company-on-brink-of-bankruptcy-months-after-winning-375-million-biden-loan/
No wonder the economy is in trouble.
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Not surprising. Don’t believe that lithium battery recycling will ever be commercially successful.
00
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No uptick in the UK: –
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/01/net-zero-is-sending-british-steelmaking-to-the-scrapyard/
And – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy5rlvkzq2xo
“British Steel could decide to shut Scunthorpe plant in days”
The UK is supposed to be rearming.
Even our pitchforks will be made of imported steel. If China will sell steel to us – they’re closing Scunthorpe steel-works.
I weep.
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The Minister for industry is a Jonathan Reynolds.
I know very little about him.
He has the power to nationalise the industry or part of it.
Perhaps he will be decisive.
Or – like Sir Starmer – he may set up a consultation, two quangoes, three task-forces, four feed-back committees, …
Auto
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All the highly productive Asian economies, including China, are approaching their demographic cliff. South Korea faster than the others with median age now 46 years and increasing 1 year every two years in elapsed time. It makes sense to invest in the USA where immigration and declining life span has kept their median age down.
Japan has been investing in USA for decades to support its ageing population. The median age in Japan is now above 50 years.
Trump was saying during his tariff announcement that Taiwan was planning a huge semiconductor plant in the USA and he had tasked Lee Zeldon to help with the permitting process.
USA has a median age around 38 years. So relatively young by Asian standards.
India and Bangladesh have median age under 30 years so are prospective locations for investment. And I believe open for business. Thailand has been a target location for European investment but its median age is now 41.
China is ramping up investment in Indonesia. Australia has dabbled in Indonesia but China is now providing significant investment.
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My latest research.
The Feds are hiding the eagle death data
By David Wojick
https://www.cfact.org/2025/04/02/the-feds-are-hiding-the-eagle-death-data/
The beginning:
“Imagine there is an industry product that is killing thousands a year and the number is growing. The government is tracking it closely, while keeping the data secret in order to protect the product. Outrageous, right? But that is exactly the case with wind power killing eagles.
Every wind-killed eagle found at an industrial wind site is quickly reported to the federal Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Every year each site also submits an annual kill report to FWS. None of this data is publicly available.
The FWS eagle kill data is all a big government secret designed to protect the wind industry from public outrage. This has to stop.
The public has a right to know about all these eagle kills. In addition, this data would support research on ways to reduce the killing. For example, it has been suggested that painting the blades black would help the eagles avoid the blades. In fact, there are a lot of technologies that could be studied given comprehensive kill data.
It is no secret where all this kill data is. It is all in one big FWS database called the Injury and Mortality Reporting System (IMR), but all you can do is enter your kill data. You cannot look at anyone else’s data such as all the kills in a given wind facility or group of facilities.
Important wind facility groups might include those using a given technology, or in a specific county or congressional district. There are lots of analyses that might be important, but only FWS can see all this data. It is a government secret.”
Lots more in the article. Please share it.
Wind power is killing a lot of eagles. The federal government is tracking this destruction, but it is all a big secret. We have a right to know what is happening to our eagles.
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David, luckily we have no eagles left here to get chop-chop-chopped because when the indigenous Maori arrived here on their canoes from the Pacific islands, not only were they cold they were hungry.
In those days (the beginning of the Little Ice Age) giant flightless KFC birds freely roamed the hills. These moa were so tasty they were soon wiped out, which then caused the demise of its sole avian predator, the Haast Giant Eagle or pouakai (old grumpy), the world’s largest eagle EVAAAH!
Along with the huia, another endemic bird prized for its ‘chiefly’ feathers, these 3 birds no longer give grief to those who want to harness the sustainable profits of free wind-generated subsidies and/or power/control over the taxpayers.
Ain’t colonisation a beach!
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At risk of being admonished, here’s a Tucker Carlson discussion with an in the trenches COVID doctor, threatened for trying to treat patients.
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden: How Vaccines Got Politicized and the Medical Industry Lost All Credibility
https://rumble.com/v6rk1nr-dr.-mary-talley-bowden-how-vaccines-got-politicized-and-the-medical-industr.html?e9s=src_v1_epp
Warning to the sensitive … the word ‘evil’ is tossed out few times in reference to the way the established medical authorities comported themselves.
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Why would you be admonished?
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It started about 1965.
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Where is John Cook when we need him?
What is he up to these days? He has been very quiet.
Not complaining.
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His escalator stopped moving back in 2015, but he’s probably still a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne.
01
A WARNING FROM THE ENERGY REALISTS OF AUSTRALIA
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/a-warning-from-the-energy-realists
Around the Western world, subsidised and mandated wind and solar power have been displacing conventional power in the electricity supply. Consequently, most of the grids in the west are moving towards a point where the lights will flicker at nights when the wind is low.
This is a “frog in the saucepan” effect and it only starts to worry people when it is too late.
It may be too late for Britain and Germany.
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My smugness will no doubt come back to bite me, but so far my lights have not flickered during the multiple power outages on the electrical grid. In fact even if the power went out for a week, recent experience suggests that I would not even notice.
The big effect will be felt by those who are unable to protect themselves, like those on the Gold Coast who recently suffered the after effects of a very mild cyclone.
Now, having tempted my fate I await my doom.
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FWIW
A look at “Liberation Day: How Trump Ended the Globalist Grift”
More at
https://open.substack.com/pub/coffeeandcovid/p/morning-in-america-thursday-april?
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FWIW
“HIS OPPONENTS ARE IN A BATTLE OF WITS: Here’s Why Trump Will Win the Tariff Standoff.”
https://instapundit.com/712328/#disqus_thread
Well Oz is carrying a handicap then!
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We’re only half equipped.
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And
“EU President Ursula von der Leyen is Apoplectic, Worries of Asian Product Dumping into EU
April 3, 2025 | Sundance | 291 Comments
The response from the EU is exactly what we would expect to see from the end of the 80-year-old Marshal Plan.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyden has three big concerns with the new trade/tariff reset. I strongly suggest everyone to read the EU concerns slowly to fully absorb decades of hypocrisy now surfacing: ”
More at
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/04/03/eu-president-ursula-von-der-leyen-is-apoplectic-worries-of-asian-product-dumping-into-eu/
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Plus
“He Wasn’t Kidding”
“Perhaps the tariff order is the start of something good….
I can’t find a single thing to disagree with in that order — except that the schedule Trump was waving around was 50% of the tariffs the other nations put on us rather than 100% in many cases. If that’s a “ok guys, its exactly half, drop yours or it goes to all of it” — or even if all Trump did was compute on the trade imbalance rather than go line-by-line and item-by-item then that’s ok. I’ll defer judgment on this.”
More at
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=253086
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Care to list the exorbitant tariffs Australia places on US goods?
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Did he say there were any?
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Why then are “reciprocal tariffs” being put on our exports?
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Maybe somewhere in here?
https://www.abf.gov.au/importing-exporting-and-manufacturing/tariff-classification/current-tariff/schedule-3
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https://www.clarkeglobal.com.au/understanding-customs-tariff-classification-in-australia/
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/AUS/australia/tariff-rates
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The U.S. is claiming that Australian tariffs on U.S. goods average to 10%.
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Yet under the FTA 99% of US goods imported are duty free.
In the heat of battle I wouldn’t believe Trump any more than China or Russia.
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“In the heat of battle I wouldn’t believe Trump any more than China or Russia.”
That sounds fair..
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“Maybe, somewhere” Thanks a million.
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Free research and you don’t like the answer? (TIC)
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“Maybe somewhere in here?”
A fine example of how Govts crush our lives to protect their particular mates and sponsors. When they say ‘free trade’ you know they have a completely different definition of the word ‘free’, its like their idea of money in a budget where ‘free money’ is something totally different on the planet they inhabit..
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The Australian reported that Australia charges 114% tariff on U.S. imported steel and 50% on kitchen sinks as two examples.
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A quick search does not confirm this. There was a high tariff on steel bar but the article says it was lifted in ’22.
However, under the Australia Free Trade Agreement (AUFTA), most goods imported from the U.S. are free of duty.
All AUFTA goods were to become duty-free on January 1, 2022
10
There is not free trade between USA and Australia. Biosecurity restrictions apply to many food items.
Australia subsidises electricity to exporting industries so they can compete.
It also seems there is a particular gripe over the Australian Federal pharmaceutical scheme.
This is a huge shakeup for global trade and it will be a while before the dust settles. Global manufacturers are looking to invest in the USA to take advantage of the protection and access to the US market that they see will boom. It will be labour constrained but open opportunities for productive jobs rather than paper shuffling in things like trading carbon credits and permitting offshore wind farms. Think of the out of work ex government employees moving into productive work like building the next semi-conductor plant. All the ex EPA employees would be in line for well paid jobs in new production facilities.
Rio Tinto is investing in the USA. It will be looking to close aluminium refining and smelting in Australia while expanding in the USA.
Think about how Australia would perform if the country focused on making stuff rather than limiting carbon combustion. Australia’s growth industry is government bureaucracy. It makes doing everything more difficult and more expensive.
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Are you seriously suggesting that a nation has no right to impose biosecurity measures?
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As much as other nations can require tariffs – if they want to prioritise their economic well being over perceived biosecurity threats, that is their choice.
If we like paying more for imported goods safe in our biosecurity, sure, that is up to us.
Biosecurity costs and tariffs have the same impact on trade, whatever the motivation
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Especially when it comes to fertilizers and herbicides.
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Indications are that Trump wants to hoover up ALL the good paying industries and strictly limit competition. Looks like they are even getting Rolls Royce.
That leaves the rest of the world selling coffee, bananas and avocados into the US. Where do we get the currency to buy American?
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“Where do we get the currency to buy American?”
Why would we want to H? Do we really need their Starlink or Facebook? What can they make, apart from things that kill people, that we can’t get elsewhere? ..or even make ourselves? Hmm.. ABC says-
“Machinery and vehicles — think of brands like Tesla and Harley Davidson — make up the bulk of the US products shipped in. Aircraft, spacecraft and associated parts is another large category, pig meat, spirits, fresh grapes, chocolate, preserved fruit and nuts, confectionery and sauces, 21% of its medical supplies..”
Anything there we cant get somewhere else in the world?
PS- Does our luxury car tax on imported vehicles count as a tariff for Pres Trump as well?
00
H
Think about that the other way – what inducements has UK been giving Rolls Royce to stay in UK?
I did see it mentioned that it was a partial move – IIRC the UK Government is a leading shareholder so might not approve of a complete migration. They’re pretty well spread around –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Holdings
And
“Rolls-Royce opens new facility in Bristol, UK to develop components for cleaner, quieter, more-efficient jet engines”
https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-releases/2020/09-01-2020-rr-opens-new-facility-in-bristol.aspx
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FWIW
“Forester’s unique legacy in Queensland”
https://www.robertonfray.com/2025/04/04/foresters-unique-legacy-in-queensland/
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I am surprised by absence of any word about US strongest export – the dollar.
It looks like it is a dream come true for BRIXes of any colour and hue, even for truly unaligned countries to deal between themselves in cowrie shells.
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The US will remain the world’s biggest economy by far and with it the $US. It’s the only viable alternative to gold. And a country where the rule of law nearly works. Unless there is a scam like the derivatives in 2008 where greedy countries parked their own currencies in what they thought were government guaranteed mortgages, except they were entirely fake. China was likely the biggest loser, but nothing was said as other countries will not admit to not trusting their own currencies. That lack of trust underpins the strength of the $US. And partly because there are lots of things to buy from the US. Elon Musk has made that obvious, not just with Tesla but also Starlink and space services for hire.
And as Trump says, these US tariffs are just half of the tariffs imposed on US goods. And they are still quite small when you consider the usual markup on imported goods is 100%, so a 20% tax at wholesale is only a 5% tax on retail.
But the US car market has been outrageous as US cars faced 25% government taxes (tariffs) in the EU while the US only charged 5% on BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Skoda, Alfa Romeo, Porsche,.. But it’s enough to stop the flight of all US manufacturing and to retain critical strategic functions like steel making, not steel melting which is all that is done in the UK today.
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“The US will remain the world’s biggest economy by far and with it the $US. ”
..said a Senator in the Roman Senate in about 376AD, or the Spanish king in the 17th century, or even Britain in 1900..
I’d give it 10years, lets see if we are both alive then to check.
” And they are still quite small when you consider the usual markup on imported goods is 100%, so a 20% tax at wholesale is only a 5% tax on retail. ”
That’s a dodgy statement, retailers take the money they pay for goods, tax included, and just add 100% if they can sell it for that. rather than thinking it is ‘trust’ in the American dollar that makes it the reserve currency, I think its more that you will suffer ‘regime change’ if you work against the Americans. If you’re lucky enough not to be Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, your national airline might lose a couple of airliners through mysterious circumstances the moment you think about a gold-backed currency instead of using the $US. Ask the Malaysians..
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International contracts are written in USD because it is the easiest and cheapest to hedge, or lock in, the forward value of the contract in your own currency and if ten tankers of oil, a couple of Airbusses and some LNG are all paid for on the same day the USD exchange rate won’t have a short term hissy fit.
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Is it too much for most people to understand that, just as with people, Australia can’t keep spending and borrowing without restraint?
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Just as the Labor government pushes their debt over $1,000 Billion dollars despite a massive windfall in coal and gas exports. But Australians are not allowed to use what we sell. While 36 coal mines wait for approval that will never come. The government does not want dirty money because they are saving the world. Too bad about Australians.
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Because our masters have said that ALL Australian coal and gas belong to them. The Australians are to be left a smoking hole in the ground and slavery. Slaves don’t need energy.
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Australia is the second largest exporter of LNG in the world, 80% in the hands of foreign companies. It needs to be capped so that more gas can be supplied to the domestic market, which should bring prices down.
It should be an election issue, but the majors don’t want to upset those foreign companies. Let’s wait and see.
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Yes it appears so. All will be OK as long as the Gubmint keeps handing out “entitlements”, subsidies, power bill offsets, HECS payouts etc Hell there is even money to spare to give a few hundred mill for the GBR and billion to send to the US (cause they need it) for a quantum computing thingy and billions to spend on a hole in the Snowy Mountains and $40B every single year for indigenous stuff. So really there cant be a problem can there?
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Is it a psychological threshold?
My understanding is the FDR just began printing money to claw out of the Great Depression.
Printed fiat money built weapons for WWII.
The idea of money produced wealth.
Borrow upon aspiration.
Isn’t gold only really valuable because we all agree?
It is unusual and shiny and doesn’t tarnish.
Works up until confidence in the aspirations collapses.
I suppose it’s similar to Net Zero.
Maybe confidence in aspirations collapses when men start aspiring to be mothers.
Gold for the mistress
Silver for the maide
(Or is it the other way ’round?)
Copper for the Smithy, cunning in his trade
But, says the Baron
Sitting in his Hall
Iron, cold iron, is Master of them all
40
Gold is a major and essential component of all our now computer run world. It is has a substantial cost to find and extract. So it is not fundamentally worthless like fiat currency or paper money. It is an element of the periodic table. There are no compounds in nature. It was valuable before money existed. Even Moses wanted to know how his people could make a golden calf while he went out to get tablets.
A fiat currency is worthless except in your belief that it has a buying or trading potential. The very idea of currency was outrageous for most of human history and charging interest was a sin in Christianity and in Islam. Roman soldiers were in fact paid in salt and beer. Thus sal for salt or salary. Which you could trade but there was nothing muck manufactured to buy anyway. Even cloth was rare and all hand woven and skins were currency from say Scandinavia to Persia. The British empire was built on trade and especially on cloth.
Gold is still unique and eternal and has intrinsic value at any time or place. It was the great treasure of kings and kingdoms at the highest level, everything was paid in gold. Ransoms were paid in gold. And taxes, tributes.
Nixon dropped the gold backing of US currency only in 1971, a massive risk but the world did not collapse. It was very interesting that Musk and others wanted to visit Fort Knox to see if the gold was still there. And refused by the US Army. Then it all went quiet. It remains a great question and was behind the plot of the James Bond film Goldfinger.
Taxes on goods crossing borders were tackled by the 350 cities around the world who joined the Hanoverian league for tax free transport. Prior to that everyone stole from goods in transit until there was nothing left. In Australia before Federation, Birdsville was a customs and taxation town on the Queensland border.
The world is still finding its way with border tariffs which America has been very reluctant to use, assuming it could outproduce other countries with cheaper goods anyway. Until the same Nixon backed China. Now Trump is saying clearly that free trade is a joke and everyone is ripping off the US. And hinting strongly that they could all drop their tariffs at once and trade fairly. Again confident that America could outperform everyone else, but it lacks cheap labour. Which is the very rich want uncontrolled migration. Unfortunately the only ones who want to migrate are unskilled, unlike the last 150 years of European migration.
The other area in which Trump is interested and even championing is Bitcoin and other fungible tokens. Much harder to fake than printed money and expensive to make, it is eternal, tradeable and can electronically bypass borders and tariffs and taxes, which is why it is a favourite of criminals. Sure there is risk you can lose a big percentage but in much international trading that is no worse than tariffs and other taxes and by the time you pay all the levels of tax, you may have little left anyway.
Trump is leveling the playing field. No one else. In Australia our governments are trying to stop oil, gas and coal while ripping off taxes on exports of the same. And spending our money on endless crazy energy schemes while nuclear power is actually illegal. Like using gas or burning wood or even picking up sticks in the forest in Victoria. We need our own Trump. As does the UK and Nigel Farage is applying for the job. Here we have rich dilletantes Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, Simon Holmes a Court and Clive Palmer. Woe is us.
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TdeF
Don’t pick on Birdsville! All those towns on the border east of it also had customs houses
00
Donald has come out of the gate with chaos : belligerent demands to ‘buy’ countries, plans to ethnically cleansing the Palestinians, throwing Ukraine under a bus while sucking Putin off , and has now tanked the market …….. and you want him here ??.
05
I personally want “him” here – if “he” recovers .
Peter Dutton? Have a lot of heartfelt stuff to say to him, as many on this blog.
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Recovers from what ?, emperor syndrome ?.
02
From a chip on his shoulder.
Which Emperor ? Unloved Napoleon Buonaparte, 5’6″ with a crown?
Such a big, rich, super-successful in more than one sense man could not keep a year long mateship for the sake of Cabinet unity – weeks at times!
I bet he remembers word to word what this or that Australian politician said about him in the last few years.
10
” and you want him here ??.”
YES! Although I’d swap him for Musk in charge at the drop of a hat! You really should take your blinkers off and look more closely at the politicians you have, and their effects. Anyone who is not making money out of them can see how we are being driven downwards in our standard of living by these parasites.
20
Well you would say that, wouldn’t you?
10
Not being a rocket surgeon, and lacking the learned economic acumen of the US Congress, the Australian government, or say, Joe Biden … I was just thinking …
were I to wake one fine day and find that a new Dark Age had begun, which would I rather have at hand, some shiny gold, or some well crafted artifacts of steel and other configurations of elements from the Periodic Table?
But of course, a new Dark Age can’t possibly happen here.
Science and the educated would never allow it.
40
Over the course of the US settlement, Tobacco backed currency for a longer period than gold did (although in a smaller geographic area).
A non-smoking mate in the Netherlands bought up a heap of tobacco at the start of lockdowns – when you are in prison, tobacco has value. With frequent excise hikes, you can probably get as much profit from putting away some tobacco for a few years as you would gold.
00
Stop voting for parties that do that!
No accountability? Whose fault’s that?
Eventually the government runs out of other peoples money. Govt: let’s go for broke, it’s all crashing and burning anyway.
#17
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Watched an interesting piece last night The Order.
Quality work but Hollywood through and through, tying together eg, swasticas, White Nation and 6 Jan Capitol…
Yet a sense of injustice cause by the modernity to the “core people” was seeping in…
So a Lone Cowboy declared the war on the rest, in and out of US boards, 188 countries, if I am correct.
Americans, Russians and Germans (in past) are inflicted by the same Weimar Syndrome.
Except USA was never defeated.
PS. A friend drove us from LA to Portland, along Pacific Coast, we saw a bit of that country – reminded me our mid NSW, though very different landscape…
20
JC II,
Agree absolutely ! The worse – the better, that was my misspent youth motto.
At least, the sooner Victoria is declared bankrupt, the less painful will be the recovery.
30
Libertarians will fix it, if only they could get some votes.
30
Taxes aren’t to pay for public services – they have the money printer there.
Taxes are to make sure that households and businesses don’t save too much – we tend to be too prudent. To keep the currency afloat, they need to take money away from us to throw around. Then the value of saving is diminished.
If taxes were to pay for public services, they would vary more from year to year, eg. to respond to a natural disaster (or a fake pandemic)
Once you understand that taxes are to stop us saving, you realise it doesn’t really matter who you vote for – it is about choosing who should splash your productivity around for you
00
“Is it too much for most people to understand that, just as with people, Australia can’t keep spending and borrowing without restraint?”
Yes, it is DM. One of the joys of democracy, and of course, its major failing! Democracy will never work when politicians can promise the stupid to look after them, hence democracy will never work! It will always end up at this, too many people do not want to take responsibility for themselves and their actions, its easier to vote their hand into someone else’s pocket.
Get rid of politicians and it will not be a problem. Ban Govts from borrowing money and it will not be such a big problem. Use gold and silver as a currency and it will not be such a problem either, but let professional liars borrow with no liability or print money endlessly, and you will always end up in a collapsed society.
30
Agreed on the problem with democracy.
Not sure I have anything much to offer on ways to eliminate or even reduce the dead hand of government.
I do think that your comment about people taking responsibility for themselves and their actions is a promising perspective.
If it is to be it is up to me.
10
‘ … hence democracy will never work! ‘
Democracy works reasonably well, certainly better than a repressive dictatorship without freedom of speech.
00
Fool me once shame on you
https://imgbox.com/mY9QoPXL
/Last one before the target date…
20
Idaho introduces death penalty for kiddy fiddlers
Governor Brad Little has signed a law that grants courts the authority to impose the death penalty on pedophiles found guilty of lewd conduct with children under 12.
https://x.com/ShadowofEzra/status/1907877384746831911
No more drag queen events in kindergardens then…
80
“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”
– Thomas Sowell
40
I can’t keep up with EV car sales. Weren’t last month’s figure
Down?
Personally, I don’t think Hybrids should count.
10
I believe that the actual percentage of BEVs on the road is around 8.7%. This figure may have increased due to the increased sales of cheaper Chinese BEVs.
00
Basically a hybrid is an ICE with regenerative breaking and electric boost during acceleration. If you run out of petrol I doubt you can drive to a servo.
20
It is not difficult to look up measurements … typical is around 30 miles on battery alone, which should be plenty to find a gas station.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g46933140/plug-in-hybrids-longest-range/
That’s based on track testing … but with regenerative braking and reasonably sensible driving you should get something close. It varies somewhat between models, as you might expect.
If people do leave them plugged in at night, and they do a bunch of short trips to the shops and back, drop the kids off, etc then they probably end up well ahead on fuel costs. Problem is the electricity costs aren’t real cheap either.
Albo says that in the future, you will be able to use solar power to charge your EV overnight … but that’s only after they have drilled the cable duct through the middle of the Earth.
00
BTW, that site often comes across a bit RenewEcomedy, but at least it publishes contrary opinion.
30
Trump surprised all by winning in 2016.
Perhaps even himself.
Few imagined the dark depth of the Blob and the extremes it would descend into to expel the interloper.
Methinks even Trump.
I hope he hasn’t under-groked that the anti-populist international Progressigentsia are Kamikazejihadists that will burn their own nations and the World if they can’t get their way.
40
Agreed with one minor edit. Replace “will burn” with “will try to burn”.
In the battle for hearts and minds the enemies of reason don’t stand a chance.
40
“In the battle for hearts and minds the enemies of reason don’t stand a chance.”
There is absolutely no evidence for that statement in any democracy! Basically, people get fooled time and time again at every election, finding some reason within themselves to vote once again for more floggings and theft. 20minutes watching ads on TV would show you how easily the enemies of reason control the masses, sad, but true!
00
I was thinking longer term.
00
Oxford dictionary is quarterly updated by some statically defined method.
I vote for Progressigentsia to be included asap.
Kamikazejihadists are, in my opinion, is very incorrect.
You feel justifiably strong against Imperial Japanese samurai spirit, perverse military code but, but…
A friend, who fought in two Israeli-Arab wars, shared his personal stories which shed unfavourable light on their “manliness” .
Generally I believed him, despite his service to the country, he was sometime abused due to his German ethnicity, so he left.
You might know that German settlers came to Holy Land before Jewish ones, so did his family – about 1880.
00
Looking at the BoM site [sic] to compare models (we’re warmer than half of Australia today, is that what a breakdown is?) there was a header at the top:
“Until the outcome of the 2025 federal election, the Australian Government is operating under caretaker conventions”.
Has there been a coup and no churnalists showed up? Did the Donald secretly purchase your country overnight during ‘Liberation Day’ festivities? Or is King Charlie the Turd’s representative, the Governor-General, now brandishing his sceptre above the uranium and iron ore mines of the Great Red Outback Klan (GROK)? There was a link:
https://www.pmc.gov.au/resources/guidance-caretaker-conventions
It appears Canberrans will continue their tomfoolery although no new law changes can be made prior to the Big Day Out or Back In. Is this standard procedure or is it unprecedented due to The Manufactured Crisis? Foreigners want to know. Thanks.
10
Not sure I understand all of the threads in your question Greg, but …
the advice from the PMC is remarkably straight down the line. The bureaucracy continues but there is no longer a minister in charge. It is like Yes Minister but without the minister. Only Sir Humphrey remains.
Some including me have said that government runs much more smoothly without the ministers. Sir Humphrey agrees!
30
It happens in New Zealand as well.
https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/our-business-units/cabinet-office/supporting-work-cabinet/cabinet-manual/6-elections-transitions-and-government-formation/caretaker-convention
That said, dunno why the BOM needs to notify people, but perhaps it’s on all Aus government websites?
00
Hey Honk, many thanks for increasing my vocabulary, Had to look it up as I thought you might have just invented it. It’s a term that a/ I will use in its context to baffle the uneducated and b/ use it out of context but when I need a word to mean something else i.e. I’m going out for a groke
00
The monthly UAH satellite lower tropo temperatures for March 2025 are out, showing an increase over AUSTRALIA.
There is much discussion about whether the Hunga Tonga eruption of 15th Jan 2022 plays a part.
The following graph does not prove anything.
It is, however, suggestive that Hunga Tonga could be playing a part.
Geoff S
https://www.geoffstuff.com/htstart.jpg
10
Thanks Geoff, good to see you onboard. All that water vapour in the stratosphere supposedly acts as a greenhouse gas, according to NASA.
00
I don’t really want to pay a subscription for news, but it looks like that’s what I must do. I have for some time now relied on the UK’s Daily Mail, unwilling to continue paying for drivel and/or insufficient content from the likes of Epoch Times and Australia’s Daily Telegraph.
But is there an apolitical (ha!) or at least politically fair newspaper any more, which provides comprehensive news and current affairs? What are you folks reading? Obviously, I do a few laps of the internet most days, reading fairly widely, but so much is paywalled these days that I am almost cut off from the big media outlets.
I’m looking for lots of content if I have to pay, not just the Daily Mail’s celebrity-heavy ‘news’. It goes without saying that I won’t pay for the likes of the SMH. I used to subscribe to Quadrant Online but found, once I had culled the pompous, self-regarding and wordy stuff there wasn’t enough left to justify a sub. I found Epoch Times to be somewhat interesting, but again there was insufficient content worth paying for. Of course I frequent a few high quality blogs such as Jo’s.
Suggestions plizz?
00
I think the answer to your question is no, there is not a politically fair newspaper any more. And I’m not sure there ever was. The news has always been written to target demographics. Increasingly I am not part of any of the target demographics.
And I don’t think being cut off from the big media outlets puts you at any disadvantage. Unless you want news and current affairs filtered to fit the mind set of the pipers who are calling those tunes.
If something happens you’ll here about it here or on one of the other blogs. Even google can still be your friend if you realise you are doing the modern equivalent of listening to Tokyo Rose.
00
FWIW
Keeping up
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvtlBsu7GF7-SBwwYqBOnc8AhTcTqzQapDTZKCkVM61kVtCy09fJrgl3hRth7QtttmCoHL6L6Ws85AiTUWNC9zE6HRokEYbbTedIEaopWrbJEUw82Q7jr5mnSndmmFzBTAUqjppjwhhj62JEWwSessCrUQ3_0mQQ5Y_e-zoqji9sdWcn9HfXmXfCfgxzo/s16000/Meme%20-%20leftist%20to%20rightist.png
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/04/true-dat.html
00
FWIW
Thankfully for Jo’s blog!
“Geez, Man. Even Tech Blogs Are Lying Because They Are Too Political”
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2025/04/03/geez-man-even-tech-blogs-are-lying-because-they-are-too-political-n3801418
And a few others
00
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-04/superannuation-cyber-attack-rest-afsa/105137820
“Australian superannuation funds hit by cyber attacks, with members’ money stolen”
The fund has been cyber attacked. The system shows people 0 balances.
The fund is still liable to the people if it lost their money – no? Isn’t it the funds money that has been stolen?
Language here seems very – sorry, computer says no, nothing we can do…
00
And of course, orange man did it “With heightened anxiety around superannuation balances due to Trump’s tariff announcement, opportunistic scammers may try to take advantage of the situation,” she said.
00