Who Says Scum?

I am not sure how reliable this is, from YouGov. The takeaways are that those on the political left are many times as likely as those on the right to think it OK to be offensive. And that Remainers are twice as likely as Brexiteers.

It accords with my own experience of social media.

There is something a bit counter-intuative about this. The left like to portray themselves as more kinder and more caring than the right. But in fact, the opposite is true.

It is also my anecdotal experience that

Shock Jock: The Ride to Hell

I do not vary often listen to commercial radio stations here in Australia.  But today, I was waiting for a minute or two in a garage workshop, and heard something along these lines on a radio phone-in on the rather loud workshop radio.  Someone had evidently phoned in to say they did not want the vaccination.

SHOUTY SHOCK JOCK: So why don’t you have the vaccination? You’ve heard the government doctors telling you: you need to get vaccinated!

REASONABLE SOUNDING CALLER: [Explanation of the evidence of studies showing that vaccination does not prevent the person vaccinated from getting the Delta variant of Covid]

SHOUTY SHOCK JOCK: You’re not an expert! And if you don’t get the vaccine, mate, you’re in danger to us all.

REASONABLE SOUNDING CALLER: [Explanation of the evidence of studies showing that vaccination does not prevent people passing on the Delta variant]

SHOUTY SHOCK JOCK: Haven’t you been listening to the news? Millions of people are dying from Covid! Just get yourself vaccinated!

REASONABLE SOUNDING CALLER: [Explanation of evidence that the number of people in Australia who have died from Covid is a minuscule fraction of people who die from other causes]

SHOUTY SHOCK JOCK : It’s like talking to a brick wall here! You’ve heard what the government doctors are saying! Just get vaccinated, mate!

REASONABLE SOUNDING CALLER: [Start of an explanation that this is not about medicine; it’s about control, and freedom]

SHOUTY SHOCK JOCK : Well, mate, you can have your freedom when you get vaccinated! Just get vaccinated! Now let’s hear from Sheila from Tumbletown…

The inescapable picture which emerges from all of this is that there is a lynch mob cartel of government and media which is doing what Salem did under the witch hunters, what France did under the reign of terror through until the eventual demise of Napoleon Bonaparte, what Russia did under the Lenin and Stalin, what Germany did under Hitler, what Italy did under Mussolini, what China did under Mao, and what North Korea is now doing under Kim. Namely, suppressing any expression of freedom in favour of a slavish acceptance of government propaganda.

Naval Defeat

It is, perhaps, unsurprising,  that the French are so cross about Australia allying itself  with the United States and the United Kingdom in relation to its next submarine fleet, jettisoning its disastrous attempt to buy submarines from the French. They are always cross.

This particular crossness goes back to the end of the 18^th century, when the French bankrupted its own nation in order to do the heavy lifting for some rebellious Americans (then largely consisting of slaveowners and smugglers) to break ranks from the British. Since then, the Americans have been remarkably lacking in gratitude to the French. The Americans did make a half-hearted attempt to go to war against the British in 1812, but their heart was really not in it, and once they had failed to invade Canada, and the British had set fire to what later became the White House, relations between the United States and the United Kingdom have been remarkably good. Much to the annoyance of the French.

No Charity for Christian

The basic facts in relation to the resignation of the Australian Attorney-General, Christian Porter, can be simply stated.

Back in the 1980s, when he was a schoolboy, he attended a debating competition. So did a schoolgirl, called Katharine Thornton.  They were both in their teens. There might or might not have been some teenage fumbling between them. There might or might not have been sex.

Unhappily, Katharine Thornton developed mental illness, and came to believe, and to tell her friends, that she had been raped by Christian Porter. Even more unhappily, she took her own life last year.

Christian Porter is a politician in the centre-right of politics, and as such a target for the ABC–Labor Party alliance in Australia. They went gunning for him, and the ABC’s journalist Louise Milligan published a story which essentially accused him of rape, whilst suppressing evidence suggesting that Katharine Thorton’s allegations were a fantasy triggered by the “recovered memories” theories of American psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk[2].

Christian Porter had little option but to respond by way of libel action. The ABC had no available defence of justification, but they have had the considerable advantage of inexhaustible access to taxpayers’ money to fund their lawyers.

Out of the Frying Pan

Many, many years ago, I bought an SKK frying pan. Excellent. They come with a 2 year warranty. In my case, that is of course well expired.

Unsurprisingly, these things get gunked up. Not only on the bottom:

But also, increasingly, inside, where one cooks one’s morning bacon and eggs:

History’s Slaves

I find myself wondering what Leo Tolstoy would be thinking today, if he was still alive. He was never really one to suffer fools gladly.  He would have looked around, that any rate if he were in the Western world (which he might well have chosen for his golden years. He would not have liked Putin Bling, I suspect) and observed tens of millions of docile sheep, treading sadly into servility, not for one moment questioning why they are increasingly being controlled and impoverished by governments in the name of Covid and climate change.

Would he have characterised the politicians who are busy closing off our freedoms as evil? I rather doubt it.  He was reluctant to characterise even Napoleon – would surely be characterised as a war criminal by today’s standards – as much to blame for the millions of people that he killed. He seemed to think it was all pretty much fate. He wrote:

It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power…should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals [the ‘great men’], and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and complex causes.

And perhaps more graphically:

Bristol Fashion

My children have long known (at least, I have told them) that they will have become seriously rich when they, or one of them, can afford to buy me a new Bristol; out of current account without really noticing.

For a while, this eminently sensible standard looked rocky. Bristol Cars went bust.

But is seems they are being revived.  It is reported that a chap called Jason Wharton is planning to resume production. Bristol Cars has been taking soundings.

Mine is the one in the middle

I still have my lovely 411, which I bought in the early 1980s. But, to be honest, it is now starting to be a bit of a classic, rather than an everyday car.