Welfare creates a poverty of values
Piers Akerman – Sunday, August 14, 11 (09:11 am)
Quicker than a brick through a window, the navel-gazers were blaming everything and everyone for the British riots except those smashing the glass and looting.
That pinpointed one of the real issues at the heart of the problem, the refusal to nail those actually responsible for the murder and mayhem, the hooded young men and women out for a little excitement during the long twilight of the northern hemisphere summer.
I feel responsibility for the riots needs to be taken by UK Labor. The kids after they are turned in say as much. The empty gestures and broken promises of UK Labor have created a mixture of dissatisfaction and entitlement responsible people are appalled by.
There are many similarities between those riots and ALP inspired Cronulla, Macquarie Fields, Redfern and Democrat inspired LA.
Also there is a hatred for police which is part and parcel of the underclass. A belief among lefties that police need to be tethered.
Sun 14 Aug 11 (09:22am)
Mon 15 Aug 11 (11:38am)
That’s true DD, but the dysfunctional state of many parts of British society is due also to an all-pervasive soft-left ideology of which Labour is only the most visible element. There is far less robust debate about issues in Britain than here because the Left has a much stronger hold on the media there.
Take global warming for example. We’ve had several Brit warmist identities come here and express surprise at how we’re even debating the issue. True, we have courageous journalists with integrity like Piers, Janet A, Bolt, Jones and Blair, and others, but there are good people there too.
The big difference there is the sheer size and influence of the BBC, which is overwhelmingly left wing. They have several TV channels, many radio stations and a plethora of websites constantly spouting left-wing dogma, and forever identifying and marginalising conservative voices. They’ve got the game down to such a fine art that most people would not consider them an intrusive influence, but they are.
Everyone was brought up with the BBC knocking on their doors demanding hundreds of pounds of ‘TV Licence’ to fund BBC propaganda, so they don’t see it as outrageous. A good deal of BBC is innocuous fluff, but they’re very good at nudging the political centre further left in small increments with their news and current affairs divisions.
Now that Britons search in bewilderment for reasons to understand why their society has become so dysfunctional and violent, the real reason is literally staring them in the face, right out of their TV screens. The overwhelming, monolithic leftist power of the BBC, which controls more than half the media, and sets the parameters within which governments may produce an agenda.
If the Brits want to get serious about wrenching their society back away from the soft-left dysfunction that has gradually ruined their education, their police, their families and almost every other institution, they have to disable the one big institution that has promoted the general disintegration, yet flourished itself: the BBC. The BBC strongly promotes every destructive policy setting that has led to the disaster, from child-centred, non-disciplinary teaching in schools where the child’s desires are paramount and learning is virtually optional, to non-confrontational policing where offenders are reasoned with rather than arrested. From the glorification of single motherhood to the aggressive promotion of welfare dependency as a legitimate lifestyle choice, the BBC is the strident voice of modern Leftism, defending all the factors that have led to the breakdown of civil society.
Not even Thatcher could successfully tackle the BBC, but things have got a lot worse since then and it’s time to act. Until they break up and sell that massive monster of Leftism, it will be impossible to turn Britain back into a country where individual responsibility and civil society are once more the norm.
Mon 15 Aug 11 (04:43pm)
John A, we agree. The BBC is a very big dog. They produce more than the ABC too, and this influences the world. I don’t want that to excuse the ABC from their failure of duty. Q&A;, Current affairs, news and Media Watch are appallingly one sided. Occasionally they show two sides when they explore the ALP Green divide.
Mon 15 Aug 11 (06:16pm)
Absolutely, DD. Can you imagine what state our own country would be in if ‘our’ ABC were three times as big and three times as influential? It would be a catastrophe. It’s bad enough as it is, but the BBC is that much bigger than the ABC and Britain is therefore in a correspondingly more dysfunctional state. The ABC is a joke here, a motley crew of pompous prigs like Tony Jones and pantomime clowns like Wil Anderson. No one here with an intellect would subject themselves to the stupidity, but over there the BBC dominates and can hardly be avoided. No wonder blighty has gone pear-shaped!
Mon 15 Aug 11 (11:12pm)
To John A -
Some very good and well expressed thoughts re the huge Leftist propaganda machine, the B.B.C..
How can the B.B.C. understand what is going wrong in British society when the B.B.C. is steeped in the very culture that is the root cause?
Our own Leftist propaganda machine, the A.B.C., has done untold harm to our country.
May the A.B.C. never become as influencial as the B.B.C..
JJ.
Tue 16 Aug 11 (12:45am)
JohnA:
Your comment and Piers’ blog really resonated as we watched Q&A;tonight,
Labor’s ABC works to corrupt democracy in the same way as the BBC, and it was all up there tonight.
Whatever the subject raised, slagging off at Tony Abbott was the only game in town.
It’s an absolute miracle that he’s doing as well in the polls as he is---hopefully testimony to enough Australians not being as stupid as LaborGreens think they are---for now, anyway.
On the coal seam gas issue, all of the flak was for Abbott, for trying to highlight the plight of the farmers, and the need to protect Australia’s food security, but it seems no one knows [ can it be possible??] that Tony Burke, as the Minister with the responsibility, and up there tonight joining in the attack on Abbott, ignored the advice commissioned and received by his office, that----
[ ‘said it could take more than a millennia for the Great Artesian Basin to recover from the damage caused by the extraction of water associated with the coal seam gas.
Advice from the Water Group within Mr Burke’s department said the companies had been “extremely conservative” in their estimates of how much water they would take from the Great Artesian Basin. The Minister’s Department said it could be “at least 1000 years” before water levels recovered.’]
He gave the go-ahead in spite of the advice.
It seems all these great Left wing ‘environmentalists’ are so desperately worried about putting the dreaded ‘pollutant’ CO2 into the air, that they’re willing to look the other way while Australia’s vital aquifers and the Great Artesian Basin are put at risk of pollution and depletion for up to 3000 years [ some hydrologists say] .
To ‘save’ us from CO2, they’re planning to foul our precious water supply with it, burying millions of tonnes of it next to aquifers ----- and to provide supposedly cleaner energy in the form of coal seam gas, they’re willing to not only destroy the properties of farming families, but to expose Australian citizens to the toxic chemicals of the fracking process, and risk the destruction [ for all intents and purposes] of the precious aquifers of the driest continent on earth.
All of this happens while the ‘settled science’ gets shakier by the day.
And of course , while Brown preaches to Tony Abbott, and the Greens are sucking the farmers in with their cynical and opportunistic support for them on CSG, no journalist of the MSM is the least bit interested in asking the Greens in Australia’s interests, how, since they’re not just against CSG, and CCS, but are demanding an end to the use of coal in any way, both as base load power provider, and as an export------ exactly what, how and when is any renewable going to take over the powering of Australian industry---and which renewable is going to provide the export income we get from coal, aluminium and all the carbon-intensive industries.
It’s treasonous that those journalists supporting this anti-Australia policy, deliberately avoid asking these questions they know GreenLabor can’t rationally answer.
None of these Leftists are environmentalists---not GreenLabor, WWF, Greenpeace, Climate Institute etc etc ---they’re environmental vandals.
This travesty and betrayal of Australia is only possible because the Left owns the ABC as surely as the UK Left owns the BBC.
Tue 16 Aug 11 (05:43pm)
Truth, the best part of the partisan ABC is that their bias also galvanises conservatives. The Howard battlers were held together by the knowledge that the stuff spoken was bad lies by the ABC. But over time, those bad lies become the ‘truth.’ That is what happened with Howard, Nixon, Thatcher, Bush ... the bad lies serve a good purpose for a time, but cannot be opposed in the end.
Tue 16 Aug 11 (11:29pm)
Truth,
When Mr Howard seemed invincible the media conducted a campaign based on the false rumour that AWB was bribing Saddam Hussein.
The damage to the Australian wheat farmers is on going in that the selling of Australia’s wheat crop has fallen into the hands of a group of Americans whose loyalty is not likely to be in the best interests of Australia.
I suggest you add the initials AWB to your list.
Wed 17 Aug 11 (12:45pm)
It’s true DD that the ABC’s lies and distortions have a galvanising effect on the conservative base. Also, the inmates at the ABC Sheltered Workshop occupy a kind of left wing echo-chamber, where no non-leftist idea can ever be heard above the constant affirmation and reiteration of green and soft-left platitudes, and that tends to put off average, mainstream Aussies who are in the ‘uncommitted’ range. The routine, gratuitous insults and put-downs of conservatives that seem so natural and funny to those inside that ABC echo-chamber can be a real turn-off to the middle-of-the-road voter. It may well have helped Howard win all those elections.
But while the ABC’s influence is currently limited, it has big plans. It now has no less than four TV stations, and wastes over a BILLION taxpayer’s dollars per annum. It’s mostly funded by the very Australians it takes such delight in lampooning and marginalising - average Australian families who don’t live in the inner cities and pay most of the tax. They’re usually the one demographic not represented on its unwatchable current affairs panel shows.
The ABC wants to become as powerful in Australia as the BBC is in the UK, but if we want to continue to live in a reasonably functional society, we had better do whatever we can to prevent that. When the Libs win big next election, they should do everything necessary to put a lid on the ABC’s expansionist ambitions. It might already be too late. They may have reached critical mass, where their influence on the governing class may already have grown to the extent where it can no longer be contained. If that’s the case, god help us.
Just look at what’s happened to Britain, where the BBC reigns supreme. Even after more than a decade of obviously dysfunctional Labour government, the Conservatives were unable to win an election in their own right. In charge of more than half the media, the BBC controls the agenda. They’ve even forced the Conservative party to become a kind of Labour-lite, incapable of taking the tough steps necessary to re-establish a resilient civil order. The Conservatives’ main concern even in the wake of the riots is to avoid doing anything that might give the BBC the excuse to continue their label of them as ‘the nasty party’.
The BBC has successfully demolished most British social institutions which once underwrote a functioning, healthy society, such as the traditional family and the church, so that now there’s really only one socially influential institution left: none other than the BBC itself. So successful and insidious is the BBC’s influence, most Britons would not even identify it as a major cause of their country’s appalling state. They’ve soaked the nation in left-wing ideology so deep and so long that it has become intuitive and reflexive for most Britons to cast blame according to the BBC’s own leftist agenda – against capitalism, against the ‘racist British character’, against the ‘mean-spirited’ conservative platform, anywhere but where it belongs.
That’s why Britain has little hope of once more becoming a successful civil society, and it’s why we must at all costs prevent ‘our’ ABC from ever becoming as powerful and influential as their BBC.
Wed 17 Aug 11 (05:09pm)
Truth and JJ, you’re absolutely right. We should as much as possible let our MPs know what we think about the growth of the ABC. It’s a battle for the soul of our country.
Jack-boot Left gives dads a kicking
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (06:50 pm)
THE reaction to my column last week pointing out the perils of a fatherless society is a case study in how intimidation, vilification, distortion and outright lies are being used in an attempt to silence unfashionable opinions.
… is from EconLog’s David Henderson who recalls how the Herbert Stein described the failure to understand that taxes on corporations are taxes on people:
I remember that in addressing the issue in the 1980s, the late Herb Stein said that it’s as if people think that if the government imposed a tax on cows, the tax would be paid by the cows.
SUNDOWN
Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (12:38 pm)
It’s all over for local solar cells:
The only Australian company which manufactures solar cells is closing the operation.
Silex Solar has announced it will stop making the cells at its western Sydney facility, with 30 jobs to be lost ...
Silex has blamed a “very tough market” for the decision, but the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union is pointing the finger at the New South Wales Government.
Union state secretary Tim Ayres says the Government’s decision to cut the state’s Solar Bonus Scheme is a major factor.
In other words, solar isn’t viable unless solar-equipped households get lots of money from other taxpayers. A Silex Solar boss on ABC news earlier said that his company wasn’t seeking handouts, but simply a “level playing field”. As he explained it, this seemed to mean matching Chinese subsidies for solar cell manufacture. In other government-assisted green news:
Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. The unglamorous work of insulating crawl spaces and attics had emerged as a silver bullet in a bleak economy – able to create jobs and shrink carbon footprint – and the announcement came with great fanfare.
McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.
One year later, the number of new jobs created: 14.
“The jobs haven’t surfaced yet,” said Michael Woo, director of Got Green, a Seattle community organizing group focused on the environment and social justice.
“It’s been a very slow and tedious process. It’s almost painful, the number of meetings people have gone to. Those are the people who got jobs. There’s been no real investment for the broader public.”
Green types have an abnormal fondness for meetings. These must have been epic.
In 2008, Reuters published one of those stories predicting that green power would be cost-competitive with fossil fuels in five years. Headline: “As Energy Costs Soar, U.S. Looks to Solar.” Among the prophets was Richard Feldt, then the CEO of Evergreen Solar, who said that “it’s not far away” and called for more subsidies. On Monday, Evergreen filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
POWER PAY
Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (12:22 pm)
More money trouble for the government’s weakening link:
Embattled federal Labor MP Craig Thomson is in further strife after breaching strict parliamentary rules relating to his financial and pecuniary interests.
The Government MP last night updated his register of pecuniary interests, notifying the House about a$90,000 legal bill paid for by the Australian Labor Party in May of this year.
But Mr Thomson – who is alleged to have misused union funds to pay for prostitutes – breached the rules requiring him to update his register within 28 days …
News Limited can reveal Mr Thomson only updated his register after being alerted by Daily Telegraph reporter Andrew Clennell to a forthcoming story on the ALP payment.
No comments on this case. Yet.
HEART OF GOLD
Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (11:53 am)
One of the good lads from Britain’s riots:
A 13-year-old boy has walked free from court after admitting smashing up a shop with a stolen golf club as his mother said the riots are because the government does “f*** all” for children …
She is on benefits, does not live with the boy’s father and has 10 other children, the court heard … His mother described him as a ‘’good lad’’ who had never been in any trouble before and had gone out to visit his grandmother when he got caught up in the violence.
As a victim or perpetrator?
I’m not sure I believe these thieves
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (04:20 pm)
Isn’t it just remotely possible that “refugees” prepared to steal from our banks may also have told one or two lies to get here?
THREE refugees who used credit card details skimmed in the UK to steal thousands from Australian banks have been sentenced.
All three were handed jail terms, but a Victorian judge has suspended the prison terms for two of the Sri Lankan men, who survived torture, beatings and other atrocities before fleeing to Australia.
That should help Abbott
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (04:11 pm)
A useful exchange:
HOWARD government minister Helen Coonan is about to announce she is quitting politics, opening the way for NSW Liberal Party president Arthur Sinodinos to replace her in the Senate.
Father denied: ideology trumps biological fact
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (04:03 pm)
But he is the father, isn’t he?
A MAN who donated sperm to a lesbian couple will have his name stripped from their child’s birth certificate after a successful legal bid by the birth mother’s ex-partner.
The woman took the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and biological father, to court in May to have the donor’s name replaced with her name in the document.
The female child was born in 2001 and the women split in 2006, although they continued to share parental responsibility.
The man also played a role in the child’s life.
NSW District Court Judge Stephen Walmsley ... said the man and the child obviously had a strong emotional attachment.
“I have considerable sympathy for (the man)—he has done what he considers has been his very best for the child.”
Outside court the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said he was devastated and labelled the outcome an injustice.
“She’s not my daughter as far as the law is concerned,” he said.
Sun sets on another solar outfit dependent on government help
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (02:33 pm)
Our clean energy future?
The only Australian company which manufactures solar cells is closing the operation.
Silex Solar has announced it will stop making the cells at its western Sydney facility, with 30 jobs to be lost.
The company will continue to make solar panels, using imported components.
UPDATE
Texas is the latest place to discover what Australians have already found - that the wind tends not to blow much on the hottest days, when people most need power for their airconditioners:
Texas has 10,135 megawatts of installed wind-generation capacity. That’s nearly three times as much as any other state. But during three sweltering days last week, when the state set new records for electricity demand, the state’s vast herd of turbines proved incapable of producing any serious amount of power.
Consider the afternoon of August 2, when electricity demand hit 67,929 megawatts. Although electricity demand and prices were peaking, output from the state’s wind turbines was just 1,500 megawatts, or about 15 percent of their total nameplate capacity. Put another way, wind energy was able to provide only about 2.2 percent of the total power demand even though the installed capacity of Texas’s wind turbines theoretically equals nearly 15 percent of peak demand. This was no anomaly. On four days in August 2010, when electricity demand set records, wind energy was able to contribute just 1, 2, 1, and 1 percent, respectively, of total demand.
Over the past few years, about $17 billion has been spent installing wind turbines in Texas. Another $8 billion has been allocated for transmission lines to carry the electricity generated by the turbines to distant cities. And now, Texas ratepayers are on the hook for much of that $25 billion, even though they can’t count on the wind to keep their air conditioners running when temperatures soar. ...
The wind-energy lobby ... hype has obscured a dirty little secret: When power demand is highest, wind energy’s output is generally low. The reverse is also true: Wind-energy production is usually highest during the middle of the night, when electricity use is lowest.
UPDATE
Seattle’s pink batts scheme is not as stupid and expensive as Kevin Rudd’s, but just as useless:
Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. The unglamorous work of insulating crawl spaces and attics had emerged as a silver bullet in a bleak economy – able to create jobs and shrink carbon footprint – and the announcement came with great fanfare.
McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.
But more than a year later, Seattle’s numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.
What is it about “green” that makes it synonymous with “stupid”?
That’s one of thse questions we should ask the Sunday Age to answer, since it’s asked for our help to steer the global warming debate.
(Thanks to readers John and Tim.)
Labor paid to save Thomson - and itself
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (12:16 pm)
Labor will do anything and help anyone to save itself:
NSW Labor paid more than $90,000 of MP Craig Thomson’s legal bills and gave him a loan because he would have brought down the Gillard government if he went bankrupt.
A senior Labor source said: “We paid because if he hadn’t he’d be bankrupt (which would render him ineligible to remain in parliament)."…Mr Thomson is also under pressure over other accusations, which he strongly denies, that he verbally abused charity worker Louise Duff at a club function on the weekend, threatening to “finish her career” and “name her in parliament”.
Asked in Question Time yesterday if Mr Thomson had her confidence, Ms Gillard said: “I have complete confidence in the member for Dobell. I look forward to him continuing to do that job for a very long, long, long time to come.”
Charming. If she’d say that, what else might she say to stay in power?
(No comments, to save us legal headaches. Thanks to reader the Great Waisuli)
UPDATE
LABOR MP Craig Thomson has admitted he was given a “sum of money” by the ALP’s NSW branch to pay his legal bills after claims his former union credit card was used to pay for the services of prostitutes.
The Member for Dobell updated the register of members’ interests last night, well after the allowable 28 day time limit for making such a declaration.
The amendment does not disclose the sum involved, reported to be $90,000.
In a letter to House of Representatives deputy clerk David Elder, Mr Thomson said the money went to his legal counsel, defamation specialists Kalantzis Lawyers.
Are you now or have you ever been a sceptic?
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (11:11 am)
Senator Barnaby Joyce meets an ABC presenter, Alex Sloan, who can parrot a slogan without having made any apparent effort to check the content:
(UPDATE: Listen here, for full enjoyment.)
Joyce: I believe the climate changes all the time. I believe in the work of Professor John Christie and Professor Roy Spencer. Do you believe all scientist believe in global warming?
Sloan: I look to scientists who have been peer reviewed, Barnaby Joyce.
Joyce: Do you believe Roy Spencer and John Christie were members of the IPCC, Alex?
Sloan: Barnaby Joyce, let me go to . . .
Joyce: Because they were. They were the lead atmospheric scientists of the IPCC. Why don’t you read their stuff?
Sloan: It’s not because I choose not to. Barnaby Joyce, we lean on the peer review system in this country and in the world in terms of scientists. And that is about scientists asking questions of other scientists.
Joyce: I’ve just given you two IPCC scientists and you’ve said that you don’t recognise their work....
Joyce: Do you believe that this tax will have any effect on the climate?
Sloan: (four seconds of silence). Barnaby Joyce, what I suppose we’re being told . . .
Joyce: Well, why won’t you answer that question?
Sloan: Well, probably yes.
Joyce: You’re the only person in Australia who believes that.
Against such incuriousness, such gullibility, even in the “elite” media, how is reason to triumph? Another question to put to the Sunday Age.
UPDATE
More from the ABC, which once was a showcase of the intelligentsia:
Deborah Cameron on ABC 702 yesterday:
IF [Mitch Hooke, Minerals Council of Australia, is] against a rational considered debate then that means he’s into the idea of an irrational and unconsidered debate. How in the world can that be good for mining? I mean in the long run? How can that be good for an industry?
Is the ABC’s mission to entertain or explain? To dumb down or raise up? To confirm prejudices or challenge them?
The flash mobs show their teeth
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (10:45 am)
Flash mob thefts are taking off in the United States:
These “flash robs” are a criminal take on the “flash mob” phenomenon in which large groups of strangers are organized via social networking services or e-mail to show up at the same time and place for mass public performances or pranks.
And a new report this week from the National Retail Federation—the world’s largest retail trade association—concludes that shop owners everywhere should be on the alert for more flash robberies… A July survey of retailers across the country found that 79 percent of businesses polled reported being a victim of a “multiple-offender” crime in the past year. At least 10 percent of those cases involved flash-mob tactics.
The survey also concluded that juveniles were involved in 83 percent of all multiple-offender incidents, and that social media or texting was known to be involved in organizing at least 42 percent of the cases.
Examples:
Feb. 22: About 30 to 40 young people dashed into a Holiday Gas Station in St. Paul, Minn. They snatched up dozens of juice bottles, candy, chips and other junk food, then took off without paying.
March 4: Teens in Chicago ran onto the sales floor at Filene’s Basement, grabbed items and ran out. At The North Face, they entered screaming and yelling, knocking over displays and grabbing clothes worth about $3,000.
April 25: About 20 teenagers in Washington, D.C., went into a G-Star Raw store, leisurely went through clothing and ran out of the store with merchandise. In the short time they were in the store, the teens stole $20,000 worth of clothing.
June 23: About 40 people stormed a Sears store in Philadelphia, stealing thousands of dollars in sneakers, socks, watches and other items. Police apprehended 15 juveniles and one adult who were cited for retail theft and conspiracy.
Then there’s the flash mob violence:
The incident comes as police departments around the country are dealing with flash mobs.
» Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter ordered a curfew to crack down on flash mobs after several people were injured in separate instances this month.
» The opening day of Wisconsin State Fair this month was marred by racially motivated mobs involved in at least 11 violent attacks.
» In Los Angeles, a man was shot when hundreds of gang members gathered at Venice Beach after some of them posted on Twitter.
And in Britain:
Scotland Yard has made a string of arrests of people suspected of inciting the violence across England by using BlackBerry Messenger, Twitter and Facebook.
These are the rioters, lit up by the flames
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (07:49 am)
THE rioters who burned England for three mad nights are now being frog-marched through the courts.
Look at them carefully, because these 1400 people are evidence.
They are living proof England was being dismantled long before the first building was torched last week.
All that the flames did was let us see at last what kind of people were hidden in the cavities of a decaying society.
And for Australians the worry is this: we know their type. We’ve glimpsed them at times at some riot, a child’s murder, the smash of a car crammed with drunken teens…
We then saw, briefly, how our own most basic social unit - the family - has for an underclass crumbled, and how the most basic loyalty - a parent’s to their child - has been forgotten or farmed out to the state.
We then saw people made lazy, resentful and greedy by being handed everything, from the food on their plate to the plasma in the corner, from some taxpayer whose own habits of work and order seem from some alien planet.
But judge for yourself from these court reports from English newspapers this past week.
True, among the thousands of last week’s rioters are many who don’t fit whatever stereotype we’d like to impose. But these are just some of the stories that seem to me terribly common - and dangerously familiar.
From The Daily Telegraph:
A 13-year-old boy has walked free from court after admitting smashing up a shop with a stolen golf club as his mother said the riots are because the Government does “f...all” for children…
(His mother) is on benefits, does not live with the boy’s father and has 10 other children ...
From the Daily Mail:
(A) mother who faces being evicted from her council home after her teenage son was arrested over looting spoke out, insisting parents are not responsible for decisions made by their children.
Charity worker Maite de la Calva, 43, ...says her son, Daniel Sartain-Clarke, 18, is innocent of the charges and was caught “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
From The Daily Telegraph:
(The) court heard how (a) 15-year-old boy ...took part in a series of looting sprees at the same fashion store over a six-hour period last Monday night and into the early hours of Tuesday ...
District Judge Deborah Wright interrupted to ask where his mother thought he was at that time of the night.
From the public gallery, the woman replied: “He was at home at 3am.”
The district judge told her: “Well, he clearly wasn’t because he has pleaded guilty to two offences.”
The mother replied: “I didn’t know he was there, I thought he was at home.”
From The Guardian:
A 15-year-old from ... London appeared with his stepfather after the court heard that his mother was too angered by his actions to attend…
The court heard he had been at a bus stop with a friend in the early hours when they saw a gang of youths run past and enter the Costco store ...
The boy ...took an MP4 docking station… He was arrested after his friend’s foster mother reported her concerns to a social worker ...
(The magistrate) asked: “What I want to know is, what is a 15-year-old doing out and about at one in the morning?”
From The Daily Telegraph:
The cheat is worse than the tax
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (07:46 am)
THE tut-tutting started even before the first protester outside Parliament House yesterday unfurled the first banner.
This was the crowd that last March was so “offensive” and even “sexist”, frowned one ABC radio presenter.
And the thousands of protesters who again gathered in Canberra yesterday to rage against the Gillard Government’s carbon dioxide tax turned out to be just as angry and rude as last time.
“Dump the Frump,” read one sign. “Ditch the Witch,” read another.
There was a lot of shouting and a coffin was paraded to symbolise the death of democracy.
Meanwhile, workers inside the building sorted through thousands of government propaganda packs explaining the tax, which outraged householders had sent back, some with obscenities scrawled on them.
Yes, there’s an anger out there probably not seen since the dismissal of the Whitlam government, and journalists are in full reprimand at such rudeness to another Labor Government.
“Today’s carbon tax rally was a freak show,” sneered one News Ltd reporter. And the protesters’ calls for a new election were “sooky”.
The protesters were “vilifying” Prime Minister Julia Gillard, declared a Sky newsreader.
But what worries me far more than this raucous anger is that the Gillard Government so recklessly unleashed it, eroding the bonds of trust that still keep us together. Unlike what we saw in Britain last week.
Understand that anger yesterday, which we’ll see even more of next Monday, when the truckies’ “Convoy of No Confidence” reaches Canberra.
A year ago yesterday those protesters outside Parliament - and millions of other Australians - heard Gillard promise, just five days before the election, “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”.
It was a promise she repeated on election eve to The Australian. Treasurer Wayne Swan even scoffed that claims Labor would sneak in the tax after the election were “hysterical”.
Yet a carbon dioxide tax is precisely what Gillard has since delivered for no other reason than that the Greens, with just a single seat in the House of Representatives, wanted it, and Gillard in turn wanted their support.
There is no way to gild what was done.
Take a deep breath, John
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (06:56 am)
The Climate Insitute’s John Connor denies he relied on dodgy data in claiming China was doing more than us to tackle carbon “pollution”:
China now dominates the global clean energy industry… China, for instance, is in the process of implementing regional pollution pricing schemes that cover populations far greater than Australia’s
While you consider whether Connor is right, have a look at Beijing’s air:
Don’t mention the war
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (06:51 am)
No wonder Gillard’s communications chief is gone
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (06:39 am)
Julia Gillard’s communications - tone, content, strategy - have been terrible, so I’m not surprised:
Russell Mahoney has stepped down from the senior role to become a senior adviser to the Prime Minister, focusing on foreign affairs communications…
The move comes two months after former chief of staff Amanda Lampe, an ally of Mr Mahoney dating back to their time working for the former NSW Labor government, left the Prime Minister’s office.
Mr Mahoney is said to have not enjoyed the same close working relationship with Ms Gillard’s new chief of staff, Ben Hubbard, as he had with Ms Lampe, leaving him out of the loop as the government struggles to turn around its falling poll numbers.
A good communications head would have forced Gillard months ago to drop her infuriatingly patronising sing-song. He would have run a mile from the Christine Nixon book launch. He’d have devoted more than half a day to talking about a plan as massive as a $100 billion high-speed railway - or, even better, deep-sixed it.
Basically, Gillard needs to get herself a pro at this game, and preferrably someone who’s not very sympathetic to Labor spin themselves.
Revolution at the comrades’ university
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (06:20 am)
Some of our universities have surrendered themselves to the extreme Left. Take Melbourne University:
Register now for this important conference!
Friday, September 30 – Monday, October 3, 2011
Sidney Myer Asia Centre, Melbourne University ...Featuring:
JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER, renowned US economist and ecologist, Monthly Review editor and author of The Ecological Rift, The Ecological Revolution, The Great Financial Crisis (with Fred Magdoff); Marx’s Ecology; Ecology Against Capitalism; and The Vulnerable Planet.IAN ANGUS, a founder of the Ecosocialist International Network and editor of climateandcapitalism.com. Author of Confronting the Climate Change Crisis: An Eco-socialist Perspective; Food Crisis: World Hunger, Agribusiness and the Food Sovereignty Alternative; and The Global Fight for Climate Justice.
Three days of feature talks, panel discussions and more than 20 workshops to discuss solutions for a world in crisis…
Organised by Green Left Weekly, Resistance and the Socialist Alliance
Sponsored by the Office of Environmental Programs, Melbourne University
Reader watty has some questions:
1.Who funds the Office for Environmental Programs, Melbourne University?
2. Why is a Melbourne University Department a joint sponsor for a Green Left, Resistance and Socialist Alliance Climate Change conference ?
3.Just who authorises this Left Wing propaganda on a Government funded Australian University campus?
If you doubt Melbourne University has committed itself to green propagandising and recruitment, note the following declaring on its Office for Environmental Programs website:
The University of Melbourne signed the Talloires Declaration in 2002.
In doing so, we joined 300 other higher education institutions from around the world, and affirmed the importance of the environment as a foundation of our education and practice.
“We the presidents, rectors and vice chancellors of universities from all regions of the world are deeply concerned about unprecedented scale and speed of environmental pollution and degradation, and the depletion of natural resources.”
As a signatory of the Declaration the University has agreed to act upon the ten fundamental points forming the Talloires Action Plan.
1. increase awareness of environmentally sustainable development
2. create an institutional culture of sustainability
3. educate for environmentally responsible citizenship
4. foster environmental literacy for all
5. practice institutional ecology
6. involve all stakeholders
7. collaborate for interdisiplinary approaches
8. enhance capacity of primary and secondary schools
9. broaden service and outreach nationally and internationally
10. maintain the movement
“Maintain the movement”? How is this declaration compatible with academic freedom - including the critical freedom to dissent, to question?
O’Farrell gets windy
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (06:09 am)
I hope O’Farrell trusts more to his gut instinct than to his protective reflex:
THE Premier, Barry O’Farrell, was forced to recommit to his government’s renewable energy targets after he stated a personal view that he did not want to see any new wind farms approved in New South Wales.
Mr O’Farrell made the remarks on 2GB yesterday during a discussion about the impact of wind turbines on rural communities.
He said his government’s planning reforms ensured community concerns would be taken into account when new wind farms were being considered as projects, but he would prefer that no more farms were approved.
‘’[Planning Minister] Brad Hazzard’s made what I think is a good decision which is to push them off to the Planning Assessment Commission to make sure local concerns are heard, but as I’m told no new applications have been lodged, we haven’t approved any applications - and if I had my way, we wouldn’t,’’ he said.
The Greens are furious:
They accused the Premier of pandering to ‘’climate [change] deniers and wind witch doctors’’ while Labor’s Luke Foley described the move as ‘’pure opportunism’’.
In fact, it’s proponents of wind farms who are the true “wind witch doctors”, flogging a horrendously expensive scheme as a makebelieve fix to a makebelieve problem.
There’s no “black” knowledge or “white”
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (06:02 am)
The patronising racism of the Left just cripples Aboriginal students. Or as Professor Martin Nakata puts it more delitcately:
UNIVERSITIES needed to reassess student support mechanisms and focus more on academic skills and better discipline content to better tackle the underpreparedness of many indigenous students.
Professor Nakata called for a more sophisticated approach.
“It needs to be now said that we as indigenous people have picked up on some very liberal agendas that have distracted us from the preparation of the learning journey for students,” said Professor Nakata, who is director of the Nura Gili indigenous centre.
Nakata is allowed to say this because he has immunty from the charge of racism, at least from the New Racists:
Unhealthy persuasion
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (05:47 am)
Some cases will deserve our compassion, but this is also moral blackmail on a huge scale:
THE full extent of despair and unrest inside the immigration detention network has been revealed, with documents showing 1507 detainees hospitalised in the first six months of this year, including 72 psychiatric hospital admissions, and 213 treated for physical injuries resulting from self-harm.
International Health and Medical Services, the network’s health provider, treated 723 detainees for ‘’voluntary starvation’’ during that period. Police, meanwhile, were notified 264 times of possible criminal behaviour.
Daniel sends it back
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, August 17, 11 (12:01 am)
Dear Prime Minister,
I have chosen to return to you the unopened Government propaganda publication titled “What a carbon price means for you” on the 1st anniversary of your promise; “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”.
Considering the misleading and erroneous reference to carbon as opposed to carbon dioxide, as seen through the unopened transparent plastic wrap on the covering of the above mentioned publication. I wonder if you and your Government have applied enough intellectual rigour in your appreciation process to understand that Carbon and Carbon Dioxide is not the same thing? If you and your Government do understand the difference, why would you choose to disseminate propaganda that uses deception, in order to promote a policy that you made a solemn promise to all Australians that you would not impose?
Since you and your Government as evidenced through you and your colleagues’ words and actions, do not have the integrity to communicate to the Australian people without deceit and obfuscation. When your own words as a measure of integrity are clearly not even valued by you. You should not be surprised that I like most Australians have simply stopped listening to you and your Government.
So please take your propaganda publication back, I do not need another egregious example of you and your Governments disdain towards all Australians.
Yours Faithfully,Daniel
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