ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG has his Christmas cartoon up





The Premier of Queensland is a liar

In 1911, a conservative Queensland government appointed Eleanor Bourne to head up a new school nursing service -- spurred by concerns over a huge incidence of trachoma in the children of Western Queensland.

Both vision and hearing were to be tested initially and other testing was soon added.  The service had a mandate to test every schoolchild in the State at least once.  As a result, many problems were detected early and referred to doctors.

The service was particularly important to  Aboriginals (native blacks)  as both hearing loss and eye problems are something of an epidemic among Aboriginal children -- and the parents are usually far too timid to do anything about it. Many blacks can see and hear today because of interventions the school nurses spurred in their childhoods.

So what did the Anna Bligh Labor government of Queensland do in 2011?  Abolished the service in its centennial year -- on "funding" grounds. There was next to no outcry as Leftist governments are always right, according to the media.

But it was a vicious and heartless decision so the new Labor Party leader Anna Palaszczuk promised in her 2015 election campaign to restore the service -- including vision and hearing tests plus offering nutrition advice.   But cynicism about a politician's promises is always justified so we read that late this year the service was revived -- but testing for vision problems only.

In between the Bligh and Palaszczuk Leftist governments there was however the conservative government of Campbell Newman.

So when the revival of the school nursing service was being discussed, who did the media blame for its abolition?  Campbell Newman, of course! Bligh was in power until 2012 so there is no ambiguity that Newman was completely innocent of the charge.

But believing anything you read in the newspaper is rightly regarded with cynicism.  More interesting is what Palaszczuk herself said about the matter.  In January 2015, only four years after the abolition of the service, she blamed Newman.  I quote: "Ms Palaszczuk promised to spend $12 million over four years on restoring a school nurses program she says was cut back by the Newman Government"

So she is a barefaced liar.  With the abolition of the service being so recent, a claim of memory failure could hardly fly.

And such lies are Leftist form.  Leftists very rarely take responsibility for their stuff-ups.  All follies are blamed on the other side and the other side's triumphs are claimed by them. 

Note how the abolition of the White Australia Policy is routinely attributed to Leftist eminence Gough Whitlam when it was in fact abolished in 1966 by the conservative Federal government of Harold Holt.

And in the eulogies accompanying the death of Whitlam, I saw nobody admit that  Whitlam's eulogized free university policy was abolished not by the conservatives but by Bob Hawke, a Labor party Prime Minister.  But from all the talk at the time, you would have thought that it was the conservatives who had abolished it.  And so on ...




Festive banners enrage taxpayers - because the word Christmas was left out 'so people wouldn't be offended'

Banners wishing people a 'Verry Merry' have been torn down in Sydney, due to their omission of the word 'Christmas'.

A banner strung up in The Rocks in Sydney's centre was torn down on Tuesday after complaints flooded in from furious taxpayers claiming it was offensive and a misguided attempt at political correctness.

Nearby to the 'Very Merry' sign stands a contemporary statue of a Santa Claus which has been built entirely of plastic crates bearing the message 'Very Merry Crate-mas'.

The contentious 'Very Merry' flag, which was unfurled by the New South Wales finance department, was branded a waste of taxpayer money by one particularly outraged Sydney-sider. 'Stop spending my money denying an Australian (and world) celebration,' The Daily Telegraph reported.

The complainant's view was mirrored by NSW Minister for Finance, Services and Property Dominic Perrottet who said the sign was 'nonsense' and the result of political correctness gone mad.

'Very Merry means absolutely nothing to anyone,' Mr Perrottet told The Daily Telegraph. 'When you leave out the one word that matters all you're left with is a vacuous, bland platitude. It's nonsense.'

Mr Perrottet ensured the flags would be replaced on Friday with more straight-forward signs wishing people a 'Merry Christmas'.

The debate surrounding Christmas tradition continues on from the controversial claim made by two Australian academics who said it was unhealthy for parents to lie about the 'magical' story of the holiday.

Professor Christopher Boyle and researcher Dr Kathy McKay said in November that believing in Santa Claus and the mythical stories of Christmas did more harm than good.

'All children will eventually find out they've been consistently lied to for years, and this might make them wonder what other lies they've been told,' they said in an essay titled A Wonderful Lie. 

SOURCE





The green autism

Michael Davis

Dear Leader slayed it on The Bolt Report the other day:

"With the same force we said ‘Stop the Boats’, we have to say ‘Stop the Climate Con’. And by ‘Stop the Climate Con’, we mean ‘Stop lying to the people of Australia on both sides of politics that you can have clean and green energy without destroying the economy. Stop lying. Choose between the two. You either go the Left route and say, ‘We don’t care about the cost, we don’t care how high electricity bills go, we don’t care who goes out of business, we don’t care what happens to the economy or manufacturing. We’re going to pursue our climate change agenda.’ Fine."

He’s right, of course. As it’s oft been noted, environmentalism is a bizarre ideology. On the surface, it makes sense: if we have to suffer a bit now in order to achieve sustainability, future generations will thank us for it. It’s just utilitarianism; the goal is to minimize harm, because we can’t abolish it altogether. But that doesn’t quite explain the greenies’ outright sociopathy. Environmentalists don’t regret the economic damage they cause working- and middle-class Aussies. When they happen upon some uneducated boob who’d rather not sacrifice himself and his family to Mother Gaia, their response tends to be one of mixed annoyance and scorn.

We could chalk this up to the greater hypocrisy of Leftism: just as the partisans of tolerance make the most exacting censors, and the champions of the proletariat are the most unselfconscious elitists, so too our humanist friends tend to value the lives of ferns above those of flesh-and-blood people, let alone unborn babies.

But I couldn’t help but think it was something more than that.

I was still mulling over Rowan’s words when I finally started reading Ryszard Legutko’s new book Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. As it happens, my ‘something more’ was right there in the introduction. Legutko writes, ‘Although today’s ideology of environmentalism fashioned idolatrous reverence for the earth and its fauna and flora, it did not change the [Lefty] enthusiasm for treating human nature and society in a dangerously technological manner.’

That’s exactly right: it’s the progressives’ unflinchingly materialist view of the world. They see human beings as equal parts producers and consumers – cogs in an economic machine that must be carefully managed, from their work habits to their diet to their recreation. Climate change sceptics, therefore, aren’t to be empathized with, because any harm that comes to them is scientifically irrelevant. This is why climate change denialism is so often likened to creationism. It doesn’t matter that the adoption of Darwin’s theories never led to a tax hike, a wave of unemployment, or skyrocketing utilities bills. That has nothing to do with proper execution of the scientific method.

Seriously, next time an SJW compares climate change to evolution, ask them what the human cost of adopting Darwinism was. The cleverer, more insidious ones will point out that climate change has tremendous human cost. (It set off the Syrian Civil War, after all!) But mostly you’ll get blank stares, like they don’t understand the question. Because they don’t. They are – and I’m trademarking this one – empathetically autistic. They can only ape compassion. It doesn’t come to them spontaneously. And even at that they can only empathize according to predetermined formulae. Refugees, yes; battlers, no. Blacks, yes; whites, no. Gays, yes; straights, no. Eco-terrorists, yes; climate denalists… well.

Admittedly I have my share of greenie sympathies. I think it’s generally a sound idea to not pollute the air, considering how much breathing we do between us. And I’m opposed to deforestation because I was raised on a heavily wooded rural property and I like forests. They’re nature’s playground, minus the dirty needles (usually). But isn’t that incentive enough? Do we really need to approach conservation like balancing a giant carbon-emissions chequebook? Do we need to scare people into thinking their ute’s going to tear a hole in the ozone layer, through which the Whore of Babylon will ride a seven-headed beast and usher in the End Times? I’d think it’d be far easier and more sensible to say, ‘Hey, don’t dump those chemicals in the ocean – we need that water for fish!’

SOURCE





Leftist teachers politicize year 3 students at Sydney school

The education department is investigating teachers at a Sydney school after Year three students were made to launch a petition against child refugees in detention.

The NSW Department of Education is investigating a petition from Year 3 students at Helensburgh Public School, south of Sydney.

In the petition sent to politicians students as young as nine-years-old said they were heartbroken after being told of 'trapped' children living in 'detention like-like conditions,' The Daily Telegraph reported.

The letter from class 3L signed 'Friends of Children in Detention' reads: 'There are more than one hundred children on Nauru, who are living in detention-like conditions, trapped, with no hope for a better life.'

The children also wrote handwritten messages and drew pictures of children behind bars.

The education department has confirmed it was investigating if staff were involved in the matter.

One politician sent the letter, Independent Senator David Leyonhjelm, wrote to NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli asking for an explanation.

'What we've seen is a decline in education standards. What's obvious is teachers are being diverted from teaching useful things to politics,' he told The Daily Telegraph.

The principal at the school, Chris Connor is a councilor at Wollongong Council and a former Labor deputy mayor

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here