Tuesday, November 17, 2015



‘Racism’ and ‘Islamophobia’ cause Muslims to blow up stuff and kill people

Utterly disgusting response to the Paris terrorist attacks from the ‘Grand’ Mufti of Australia, who lays the blame for those vicious and barbaric atrocities at the feet of everyone except the Muslim community and Islamic ideology:

    "These recent incidents highlight the fact that current strategies to deal with the threat of terrorism are not working. It is therefore imperative that all causative factors such as racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitisation [completely the wrong word, by the way – Ed], duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention must be comprehensively addressed."

The Mufti is too dense to realise that any ‘Islamophobia’ that exists (and it rarely does exist) arises directly from incessant daily litany of Islamic terrorist acts, which have been going on pretty much since the 7th Century.

But from the Mufti’s clouded and blinkered perspective, Islam is perfect, so it cannot possibly be at fault. Anything bad that happens cannot be the result of any wrongdoing by Muslims, and therefore he looks everywhere else to find a cause – except in a mirror.

The rest of us civilised people are thoroughly sick of Islam and the perpetual whining and bleating from this highly over-privileged and under-achieving group, and this kind of patronising, pompous and sanctimonious lecturing just makes it ten times worse.

The West’s phobia of a barbaric, supremacist, medieval political ideology that wants to see us dead is a natural response and is entirely justified.

Oh, and if you’re waiting for those protests from ‘moderate’ Muslims condemning the attacks…..

SOURCE






It’s now time to grow up, Australia

Piers Akerman

NEW Social Services Minister Christian Porter has called for a “grown-up” discussion on reforming the overstretched welfare sector. He’s a former West Australian treasurer but anyone who has ever balanced a household budget knows that, as a nation, we can’t keep welfare funding levels at their present level without sending the nation deeper into the red.

As Porter told The Daily Telegraph’s Daniel Meers: “Many of our payments are growing at a rate greater than the ability of the tax base to sustain them.

“We want a system that is fair and sustainable. “It would be inherently unfair to stretch the safety net to breaking point.”

The welfare spending trajectory is truly frightening but Labor and the Greens refuse to recognise this.

Away in la-la land, the two left wing parties are firmly bogged in forms of Neanderthal socialism that rightfully belong in the museum of failed philosophies.

Yet they are both championed by the monolithic ­taxpayer-funded state broadcaster, the ABC, and the terminally challenged anti-capitalist publisher Fairfax, and, according to the surveys, are the parties of choice for young Australians.

Forget turkeys voting for Thanksgiving — or Christmas. Young Australians attracted to the left wing parties are voting for a tax burden that will handicap them for the rest of their lives.

Unless the government is able to achieve meaningful reforms to welfare spending now, Australians who are now in their 20s will be saddled with unsustainable debts which are inevitably going to make their 40s and 50s ­unbearable.

This is part of the reason Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s call for the voting age to be lowered to 16 is so hopelessly irresponsible and must be called for the sheer populism that it is.

Porter wants an adult conversation, while Shorten wants the national conversation to be conducted in the kindy playground.

That’s why Labor and the Greens are currently blocking the Coalition’s attempt to prevent school leavers from going straight on to the dole when they walk out of the school gates.

Where the Coalition believes that school leavers should wait a month — and hopefully find some sort of a job — casual, part-time, whatever — and set a pattern for their adult life before accessing the dole, Labor and the Greens would like to see them locked onto the welfare tit as soon as possible so they will be reliant on government handouts for the remainder of their lives.

With eight out of 10 Australians currently paying taxes solely to meet the growing welfare bill, it is easy for clear-eyed people to see exactly why encouraging even greater numbers to fall into the welfare trap is catastrophically insane.

With the Disability Support Pension payments and Newstart Allowances set to blow out astronomically, these areas must be the first to be reviewed and reformed.

More than 70 per cent of dole recipients have been on the Newstart Allowance, which has a maximum single recipient’s payment of $523.40 a fortnight, for more than a year, while more than 800,000 people are on the disability support pension, which has a maximum basic rate of $788.40 a fortnight for a single recipient.

Porter says the national welfare bill was just $83 billion a decade ago. It currently stands at $154 billion and modelling shows that it is set to increase by more than $120 billion over the next decade to $277 billion a year.

By 2026, welfare spending in today’s dollars will be $81 billion more than current tax revenue.

More money is coming out of the welfare bucket than the nation can afford to put in if it is still to underwrite the massive cost of new infrastructure needed to meet the demands of future generations. These are the hard facts. The facts that Shorten and the Greens don’t want to address.

When Shorten addressed NSW Young Labor in October, he told members of the next generation that they deserved “the right to shape the laws and policies that shape your lives”.

The issues he included and chose to emphasise were “marriage equality, real action on climate change, the equal treatment of women, youth wages, a better university system, international development and animal welfare”.

Homosexual marriage is a non-issue beyond the inner-urban areas of the nation’s ­cities where the chattering classes dominate the media.

When Shorten mentions climate change, he’s referring to the unreliable theory that global temperatures have been affected by mankind.

None of the modelling produced to support this claim has accurately predicted the global climate over the past 30 years.

The women’s rights campaign is such a First World issue that the shrill activists can rightly be condemned for ignoring the unfashionable reality of the total discrimination against women in almost all Muslim societies. The sisterhood is essentially white, over-educated and middle-class.

A better university system would see the removal of the left wing propagandists from the education system.

Youth wages are held back by the socialists, as is international development (unless its funded by taxpaying capitalists), and animal welfare is largely a photo opportunity for activists.

Experienced grown-ups know that good policy may be tough but populist feel-good policy is generally no solution.

If young Australians want to enjoy a nation that looks anything like today’s when they grow older, they will have to start growing up now.

SOURCE






ABC to get new boss as Mark Scott retires

Good riddance to bad rubbish

Mark Scott's successor as ABC managing director could receive a significant pay rise, taking home a salary of around $1 million a year.

The race for Mr Scott's replacement is heating up, with the ABC board preparing to begin interviews with short-listed candidates in the next fortnight.

Former News Corp Australia chief executive Kim Williams and SBS managing director Michael Ebeid are understood to be among those who will be invited to interview for the position.

Fairfax Media can reveal the ABC has applied to the Remuneration Tribunal – the independent body that sets pay rates for politicians and top public servants – for a salary increase for the next managing director.

Consultancy work commissioned by the ABC found Mr Scott's current salary is 30 to 40 per cent below market standards, and should be lifted to attract talented recruits from the private sector.

Mr Scott was paid a total salary of $823,613 in 2013-14. A 40 per cent pay increase would lift his successor's total salary to around $1.2 million.

A decision is expected on the application next month.

Outgoing Nine Entertainment boss David Gyngell, who earned $19.6 million last year, has been known to joke that his "tea ladies" earn more than Mr Scott.

An ABC spokesman said the decision was a matter for the Remuneration Tribunal and that the broadcaster usually applies for a salary increase when a new managing director is being appointed.

The ABC hopes to have a successor finalised by the end of the year. Mr Scott plans to step down in July after 10 years in the role.

SOURCE






Climate change will 'SHRINK sharks and make them less deadly'

This might be good news if it were true.  But this is just a study of fish in a tank.  Not a report of what is naturally happening in the oceans

If temperatures and CO2 levels rise in the way climate experts expect, by the end of the century sharks will be considerably smaller and less aggressive than they are today.

Experts from Australia have discovered that warmer waters and ocean acidification can stunt the growth of the predators and affect their sense of smell used for hunting.

To cope with higher CO2 levels, the sharks studied had to use more energy, and this reduced how effectively they metabolised the food they could find.

During lab experiments, researchers from the University of Adelaide studied Port Jackson sharks in large tanks with natural habitat and prey.

When the water temperature was increased, the team noticed that embryos developed much faster.

However, the combination of warmer water and higher CO2 increased the sharks' energy requirement, reduced metabolic efficiency and removed their ability to locate food through olfaction, or smelling.

These effects led to significant reductions in the growth rates of these sharks.

'In warmer water, sharks are hungrier but with increased CO2 they won't be able to find their food,' said leader Associate Professor Ivan Nagelkerken.

'With a reduced ability to hunt, sharks will no longer be able to exert the same top-down control over the marine food

The Port Jackson shark is a bottom-feeding shark that primarily relies on its ability to smell to find food.

It is found around southern Australia and is a migratory species that travels south in the summer and returns to the north during winter to breed.

Adults can grow up to 5.5ft long (1.67 metres) and the shark is part of the bullhead family.   

Under higher CO2, the sharks in the study took much longer to find their food, or didn't even bother trying, resulting in considerably smaller sharks.

Marine ecologist Professor Sean Connell said the results of the latest study provide strong support for the call to prevent global overfishing of sharks.

'One-third of shark and ray species are already threatened worldwide because of overfishing,' he said.

'Climate change and ocean acidification are going to add another layer of stress and accelerate those extinction rates.'

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