Taking on Gillette and the Family Court

Bettina Arndt

First, a great new video. I had a long talk to Ilan Srulovicz, the brave CEO of the Egard Watch company, who took on Gillette. Ilan was inspired by the dreadful toxic masculinity message of the notorious Gillette ad to make his own hugely successful video promoting what’s good about men. It was a courageous move to put his company on the line like that but it paid off, attracting overwhelming support for his video. I was so pleased to discover this interesting young man is heavily involved in men’s issues and determined to keep making his voice heard.

Here’s the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LIg8XKRAbg


Help make sure the Family Law Inquiry exposes the real issues

Last week I reported on my recent trip to meet parliamentarians in Canberra – showing you the wonderful video of Senator Amada Stoker grilling the TEQSA bureaucrats about their dismal handling of campus rape adjudication.

The other issue which was top of my agenda on this trip was the upcoming Family Court Inquiry. I’ve been posting a bunch of news stories on my social media about the strenuous efforts of feminists to try to close down this inquiry. It just shows how desperate they are to hide the truth which hopefully will emerge, particularly during public hearings, about the rampant use of false violence and sexual abuse allegations and related perjury issues, as well as the failure of the Court to enforce contact orders – which are the issues that interest me the most.

I had very helpful meetings with many of the key players involved in the inquiry and have promised to do everything I can to try to make sure good people are making submissions and appearing before the committee.

Via email from Tina: Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au






Mandatory maths won’t STEM decline

Even with 400 hours of secondary school mathematics under their belts, it seems that Year 10 students in New South Wales remain underprepared for the 21st century. One proposed remedy is to make mathematics compulsory from Kindergarten through to Year 12.

Prioritising mathematics was announced as part of the NSW Government’s promise to ‘take the curriculum back to the basics’ — apparently in response to the interim findings of the recent NSW Curriculum Review.

Unfortunately, with the Review’s author conceding that the main question is whether the proposed reforms are even heading in the right direction, the report epitomises the lack of clarity, vision and strategy in Australian education.

Weirdly, while chewing up a lot of taxpayer dollars, the NSW Review is being undertaken well before a planned review of the Australian Curriculum in 2020. So policy decisions will be made for students and teachers in one state that may turn out to be even less aligned to practices applying to students across the country than they are now.

Rather than starting with a post-mortem of how we got into the current mess, the NSW effort echoes other misguided reviews, showing a fixation on globalisation and technological threats and promoting yet more educational experiments.

Technology specialist and CEO of global marketing company Freelancer, Matt Barrie, recently referred to Australian education as a “basket case” that produces “avocado toast” graduates whose poor skills – especially in computer science and engineering – explain the national slump in productivity.

Any curriculum can set forward priorities. The NSW Government seems intent on bringing mathematics to the fore, but does this make STEM the holy grail?

Education systems that regularly outperform Australia do not expect their school leavers only to master STEM subjects. In Finland and Singapore, for example, there is also an intensive, sustained focus on languages and humanities subjects. Producing well-educated citizens who can contribute to the national good is a sophisticated undertaking.

Improvements do not come from the ad hoc compilation of ideas or from intermittently bolting subjects on to the curriculum.

A more constructive approach would be to identify policy mistakes that have let down many young Australians, but which have been cleverly avoided by high-performing school systems elsewhere.

This should include an honest analysis of what has worked, what has gone wrong and why, and what can be done – without fear or favour – to change things for the better for future generations.

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'I save $200 per week': Student, 21, on a $33k salary reveals how she manages to put away $10,000 a YEAR

I did this sort of thing in my teens and 20s -- as I documented on October 13 and earlier -- so it is good to read that it is still possible

A 21-year-old student and administration officer on a $33,000 salary has revealed how she manages to put away $10,000 a year in savings.

The woman - who gets paid $1,090 every fortnight after tax as well as $4,000 a year from her Centrelink Student Supplement - said she is diligent with her pay cheque.

As soon as she gets paid every two weeks, she transfers $720 for rent, before popping somewhere between $200 and $400 into her savings account, where she currently boasts $7,000.

'I like to save at least $200 per week,' the student told the publication.

The woman's other monthly expenses include an $80 phone bill, $90 on public transport, $50 on her gym membership and $20 on her internet.

She still has her HECS Debt to pay off, but isn't sure of the figure because she is still studying.

'I put an extra $20 per week away so when electricity bills come I don't notice,' the woman said. She also avoids having to pay for Netflix by using her family's logon.

In order to cut down on some expenses, the woman said she meal preps meals and salads at home with her boyfriend, which she brings to work and university. 'We usually meal prep together on a Sunday and take half [the food] each. I spend $30 altogether,' she said.

Typical items on the menu include a healthy spaghetti bolognese with plenty of vegetables and tuna salads.

She makes these last throughout the week by making bulk portions.

What are the woman's top saving tricks?

* Meal prepping lunches for the week with her boyfriend.

* Bulk cooking and making a massive spaghetti bolognese last several days.

* Using her family's Netflix logon.

* Putting away $20 a week, so she doesn't notice when she gets a utility bill.

* Avoiding cafe and restaurant-bought foods as much as possible.

* Buying half price clothes.

The woman said she often takes home leftovers from her boyfriend's parents' home, and tries to avoid buying cafe or restaurant-bought foods.

She also scours for bargains when it comes to clothes, and recently managed to pick up a $50 half price dress for a wedding.

'I think for a university student I'm quite lucky with money,' the woman said. 'I have a good job that allows me to save and even get a student supplement.'

She said that once she is working full time and not studying, she hopes to be able to save even more - but added that the good habits she's established now will hopefully stand her in good stead in the future.

SOURCE 





'No one listened and then someone died': Fisherman explains why he NEVER lets his family swim in the ocean as the number of hungry, killer sharks increases

Greenie protection of sharks responsible

Fishermen have warned more people will be killed following an explosion in Queensland's shark population and a string of attacks in the water.

Two British backpackers have this week been mauled near Airlie Beach as they snorkelled in the Whitsundays.

Alistair Raddon, 28, had his right foot bitten off as his friend Danny Maggs, 22, copped a leg bite on Tuesday morning.

The shark attacks occurred only a month after Queensland's Labor government removed more than 160 drumlines from 27 beaches.

This followed a Federal Court ruling which ordered the end of shark culling in the Great Barrier Reef.

Nathan Rynn, a Townsville-based commercial net fisherman who operates between Cardwell and Bowen, near Airlie Beach, said surging shark numbers would cause more fatal attacks in the water.

'We've got a catastrophe waiting to happen,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Friday. 'If the government doesn't place some more protection over tourists, swimmers and recreational users, there's going to be more and more of these deaths every year because their numbers are exploding and they're getting hungry.'

Mr Rynn is so worried about predatory sharks in the murky waters of north Queensland he advises his own children to stay out of the water in Townsville.
'Once upon a time, I would have taken them to the local beaches here,' he said.

'If I see mothers or fathers with their kids running down into the water, and they're a fair distance off the beach, I go and tell them, "If I was you, I'd get your kids out".'

David Swindells, a commercial fisherman based at Yeppoon in central Queensland, said he advised swimmers to avoid deep water.

'Put it this way: I'd advise them to stay in shallow water,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'Only go up around your knees.'

In November 2018, Melbourne medical researcher Daniel Christidis, 33, died after being attacked at Cid Harbour at Whitsunday Island during a trip with friends and colleagues.

That tragedy followed two separate attacks – also at Cid harbour – on Tasmanian woman Justine Barwick and 12-year-old Melbourne girl Hannah Papps within 24 hours in September.

Well before those spate of attacks, Mr Rynn said he and other fishermen had warned Queensland's Department of Agriculture and Fisheries about the danger of the surging shark population.

'I warned the department about two to three years ago about the increase in shark numbers - it wasn't just myself - there were other guys that were giving them information on shark predation in our fishing nets,' he said.

'Before last year's attack at Cid Harbour, I said that there's only a matter of time there's someone going to be killed. Bang. We had someone unfortunately killed.'

Mr Swindells said shark numbers had exploded after fishermen were banned from culling them. 'Since they've stopped us culling them, there's been a massive explosion in the shark population,' he said.

'There had not been as many shark attacks as there are now so why would they remove the drumlines to put the general public at risk?'

Mr Swindells, a director of the Queensland Seafood Industry Association, said the state Labor government appeared to be removing shark drumlines in a bid to chase Greens preferences in Brisbane electorates.

The drumlines were removed in September, however, after animal rights group Humane Society International challenged the policy in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

The Federal Court in September upheld the AAT's April decision, despite a challenge from the state government.

In 2015, former Queensland fisheries minister Bill Byrne, then the Labor member for Rockhampton, told Parliament there had only been one death at a shark control beach in the 53 years since drumlines had been introduced.

'For decades, Queensland's Shark Control Program has made it safe to swim in our surf,' he said.

'Since the program began in 1962, there has been only one shark fatality at a shark control beach in Queensland.'

Put another way, sharks have killed as many swimmers near Queensland beaches during the past year as the previous 56.

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Life Was Better in the 1950s and '60s

Malcolm Smith

Life is good. I was born in 1949, and my parents had to scrimp and slave to make ends meet. Now I am an affluent retiree. I've seen the world, and the world is at my fingertips by virtue of the machine with which you are reading this. When I get sick, as I eventually will, there will be medical treatment available which was undreamed of when I was young. Nevertheless, I shall go out on a limb and state that life was better in the 1950s and '60s - not materially, but in the things which really matter. Compared to today, it was particularly good for those growing up. I quail at the thought of the challenges the grandchildren will have to face.

     Now, of course, old farts are always proclaiming the superiority of life when they were young and vigorous. It automatically invites the response: "You wouldn't really want to go back to time when [name your favourite bad example]?" Of course not! There is no such thing as a golden age. To just to even the score, I shall mention a few aspects of that time I do not miss.

    Firstly, prior to Vatican II, there was a lot of prejudice and bad relations between Catholics and Protestants. However, it never came to any sort of significant discrimination or other social evils. And it was not as bad as the present day war of the ungodly against the religious.

    Secondly, there was constant industrial action ie strikes. Far from me to say that unions are useless, but it definitely the case that membership has collapsed over the past decades, and workers have still become more prosperous. Strikes were most common in unions under control of the Communist parties, which also managed to infiltrate the whole political scene. It was not terrorism, but subversion and treason which we had to face.

     Thirdly, there was the pernicious habit of smoking, which robbed my father of at least 20 years of his life, and my brother and brother-in-law of at least 30. Today 16½ % of adult men - one in six - smoke, with a slightly smaller percentage for women, but in 1945 it was 72%.

     So what was life like materially when I was growing up? For a start, we could go to the measuring worth website and compare the value of money in 1966, the year decimal currency was introduced, with that in 2016. You will immediately note that there has been rampart inflation; based on the CPI, a dollar in 1966 would buy what $12.63 did 50 years later. More to the point, however, the "income value" was twice that of the "real price". What that means is that an hour's labour, or a day's labour, allows you to buy twice as much as it did 50 years ago. In 50 years, we've all become twice as rich.

     Sewage did not come to my suburb until the early 1960s. Prior to that, we had to use an outhouse in the backyard, which a council worker would empty once a week. (What a stinking job!) Television (black and white, of course) did not arrive here in Brisbane until 1959, at which time we all gathered outside the electric goods store to watch the simplistic programs on display. Prior to that, we used to sit around, sometimes in the dark, listening to serials, comedies, and dramas on the radio. And, of course, there was "Saturday Night at the Movies". Three cinemas graced the suburb closest to mine. We got there by public transport, of course, because cars were a middle class luxury, as were telephones. (My family didn't have either.) The lack of cars resulted in another phenomenon: a proliferation of corner stores. You could get your household needs at three such stores within walking distance of my home.

     I know this is all going to sound like the dark ages to a generation brought up on computers, the internet, mobile phones, CDs, and DVDs, but don't you imagine it! Our parents had it tough: first the depression, and then the war. But we grew up in the flush of post war prosperity. Let me give you a few pointers.

It was possible to raise a family on a single income. At the bottom of economic ladder where my family belonged, the wife and mother often had to seek part time or casual employment, but single incomes were regarded as the norm.

Despite that, they could afford children. They don't call us baby boomers for nothing. Today, despite everyone being twice as rich, our fertility is well below replacement rate. What has gone wrong?

In 1950 it required 301 weeks' of average income to purchase a median-priced house in a capital city. This was reduced to 200 weeks in 1955, and stayed that way for a couple of decades. Now it is 455.

We had full employment. Governments were in danger of losing office if unemployment went as high as 2 per cent. There were cases of workers leaving a job in the morning and picking up a new one in the afternoon.

As far a education went, anyone who was at all bright could automatically get a scholarship to university. That was how I, the son of an invalid pensioner, took my first degree. The second I financed by not too arduous part time work. I still don't understand why, these days, a degree should cost you a year's income.

And finally, we didn't lock our doors at night. Crime might have been reduced in recent decades, but it nowhere near as low as what my generation was accustomed to.

     So, materially, life in the 1950s and 1960s was not too bad. But socially it was much better. Every index of social disintegration is worse now than it used to be.

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