My comment on the recent ructions in the Liberal party

Everybody except those involved seems to think that the dumping of Mr Turnbull as PM was a great mistake. Turnbull presented very well and he would have soon restored his lead over Shorten.  But his party was very divided over climate policy so there was great restlessness among them.  So Turnbull's slight backdown in deciding not to set a specific CO2 target set off a furore which became an excuse to unseat him.

Scott Morrison is a good man but he has no charisma.  Something good could have come of it all if Julie Bishop had been elected PM.  She is very popular and would undoubtedly have taken the party to a victory over Shorten.  But it would appear that she did not have enough friends in the party to make that happen.  The good of the party was clearly not at the forefront of the minds of its politicians

Turnbull gave an excellent farewell speech. It is worth listening to.  There is a substantial excerpt from it below -- JR









The latest global warming fraud

There a lot of versions of the graph below online but I could find none that included calibrations. It's a thoroughly dishonest piece of work as, for any graph to be interpretable, it has to include calibrations.  I have in fact never before seen a graph without calibrations. 

It would ruin the Warmist story if calibrations were included because what is not mentioned is that the differences in temperature between the time periods illustrated are in mostly in hundredths of one degree only, which is practically meaningless.

There HAS been overall warming over the last century or so but it has been only in isolated spurts and is in total less than one degree Celsius. IF such warming continues it would cause as little trouble as the warming we have had so far. It is trivial



IS IT a work of art in a gallery? A chart? It’s neither and both, and it shows a big change in Australia.

IT LOOKS like a piece of art. Or maybe a very brightly coloured barcode. Or even a duvet cover. But the striped image is a visual representation of Australia’s average temperature each year over the last century.

A climate scientist from the UK has released a series of images that depict the warmest and coldest temperatures since records began places all over the globe.

University of Reading climate scientist Professor Ed Hawkins calls the pieces “warming stripes”. He has created them for parts of England, Germany, Toronto, Australia and the world as a whole.

“Each stripe represents the temperature of a single year, ordered from the earliest available data to now,” Prof Hawkins on the website Climate Lab Book.

The coldest years recorded are a dark blue and the hottest a deep red with everything in between a different shade depending on whether it’s over or under the long-term average.

If the average temperatures regularly fluctuated from hot to cold, you could expect to see red and blue stripes relatively evenly distributed.

In the graph for Vienna, for example, which covers a period from 1775 — 2017, the first half of the image seems to be fairly random with lots of reds and blues. But in recent years, the Vienna chart is mostly red denoting hot years.

For the stripes showing the annual global average temperatures, it’s a smooth transition from dark blue to dark red; from record cold years to record hot years.

There’s less data to go on for Australia as records only go so far back. But there’s still a century or so to compare.

Prof Hawkins took Bureau of Meteorology data from 1910 — 2017: “The colour scale goes from 20.7°C (dark blue) to 23.0°C (dark red),” he said.

The lowest annual temperature was recorded in 1917. The highset, more than 1C above the overall average, was in 2013.

In the last 20 years in Australia, only three years have seen annual temperatures dip below average. And during those years it’s dipped only slightly below the line.

But many of the most recent years that have seen above average temperatures that have soared over the line.

SOURCE 






Inner-Sydney primary school bans SOCCER BALLS - to make the playground 'safer'

Parents have been left outraged after their children's primary school banned soccer balls and limited students access to the oval.

Summer Hill Public School, in Sydney's inner-west, sent a letter to the parents of more than 800 students this week to announce the new rules.

Natalie Bamback said her active seven-year-old son Nash Cazilieris was devastated he could no longer play his favourite sport at lunch time. 'He loves playing with the ball... I suppose he will get used to the new rules, but he doesn't like it,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Under the new rules, Summer Hill Public School students will not be allowed to bring anything bigger than a tennis ball in to school.

Parent Michelle Vasconcelos said the new rules were overzealous. 'I understand why they're doing it, because there's a lot of kids that are getting hit – and teachers – with the balls. But at the same time they are kids, they should be coming to school, playing, enjoying the playground,' she said.

The school, which has has two main play areas - a basketball court and an oval - also stipulated changes to children's play time on the oval. Under the new rules, each grade will be banned from the oval one day a week, to 'alleviate overcrowding'. The school said the rule would make the oval safer for all students.

Summer Hill said oval time would be staggered to prevent younger children being injured by older students as they played side-by-side.

Opposition education spokesman Jihad Dib said overcrowding was a huge issue in schools, but he said the problem should not be passed on to the children.

'What you don't want to have is a situation where it's becoming so overcrowded that kids have to sit down at playtime and not do anything,' he said.

Summer Hill Public School, while popular for its successful NAPLAN results, is about 96 per cent full, the publication reported. Anywhere between 80 and 100 per cent is efficient.

A spokesman for the Department of Education said the new rules were not prompted by a lack of space, instead introduced to prevent conflict between the children. 

SOURCE 





Leftist thuggery in Australia too

From the French Revolutiom onward, the Left have always been as  violent and vicious as they can get away with

The office of leadership challenger Peter Dutton has been targeted by vandals who hurled bricks through glass windows and doors.

The pavers were thrown with such force they left gashes in the walls of the former Home Affairs Minister's office after being propelled through the glass.

Despite smashing holes in reinforced glass windows and two glass doors, the vandals did not enter the office, in Strathpine, north of Brisbane.

Vandals also spray-painted anti-Dutton slogans on bike paths in the former Home Affairs Minister's electorate, including one reading 'deport Dutton'.

The 1.45am attack occurred just hours after Mr Dutton declared he had the numbers to challenge Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership.

Police are investigating the attack, but no arrests have been made over the attack, which left an estimated $10,000 worth of damage.

'Police are investigating significant damage caused to an office overnight in Strathpine,' Queensland Police said.

'Police were called to the Gympie Road address by a member of the public, to find brick pavers had been thrown at the windows causing extensive damage.'

Mr Dutton, a former Queensland police officer, tendered his resignation from Cabinet after challenging Mr Turnbull in a spill on Tuesday.

A former immigration minister, Mr Dutton has been targeted by Labor and the Greens for his hardline policies on asylum seekers.

The attack comes after the Strathpine office was hit by pranksters who used post-it notes to alter the words on the sign on the window.

Then on Thursday the flag outside Mr Dutton's office was hung upside down, making the international symbol for distress while leadership dramas unfolded in Canberra.

An office employee turned the flag around after the blunder was discovered.

SOURCE 






Hundreds attend March for Men event in Melbourne

SHE calls herself an anti-feminist and regularly speaks about how Aussies are “demonising” men. Today, she marched with hundreds of supporters.



SYDNEY Watson regularly preaches to her thousands of social media followers about how Australia is “demonising” men.

And today, the self-described anti-feminist has taken to the streets of Melbourne for her ‘March for Men’ to show that “men matter too”.

More than 700 people said they’d attend the Federation Square event on Facebook with 2600 more interested.

A counter-protest, called ‘Stand up for equality: March against Men’s Rights Activists’, was also held in the same location, at the same time.

Close to 500 people said they’d attend the counter-protest while 1300 more expressed interest.

Victoria Police promised a heavy presence at the event and warned anyone attending they’ll be conducting weapon searches and will immediately eject anyone who hides their face.

Two people have reportedly been arrested at the protest.

Ms Watson, who studied journalism before moving into conservative commentary, regularly posts piece-to-camera videos for her burgeoning YouTube audience.

In a video announcing the march, Ms Watson said the march was not going to be about “vilifying each other”.

“As many of you know over the last number of weeks, it’s felt like there has been an assault on men collectively. I want Australians to rally together for masculinity for men’s rights and just to demonstrate that we know that men matter too.

“The purpose of this rally is not to hate on women, diminish women’s rights or make any negative statements about women

“What we’re trying to do is show that we care about the men in our lives and the issues that affect them

“This is about men and women standing shoulder to shoulder to show that we’re here for each other,” she said.

Via Facebook, the counter-protest’s organisers the National Union of Students Women’s Department and the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, encouraged people to attend to “publicly maintain a counter-narrative”.

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