New plan to take gas out of Aussie kitchens

At a time when the electricity grid is under great strain from Greenie meddling, this is insane. I personally remember occasions when my gas stove allowed life to go on unimpeded during an electricity blackout. These days I have multiple oil lamps in addition to my gas stove. I did use them during a late-night blackout recently

I have also noted that most chefs seem to prefer gas stoves. They give immediate and visible temperature control

They’ve been a staple of our kitchens for generations, and it seems Aussies will not give up their gas appliances without a fight.

On Tuesday, property firms Lendlease and GPT Group will come together to help launch the Global Cooksafe Coalition, with plans to phase out gas ovens and stovetops, citing health and environmental concerns.

The property giants have plans to stop installing gas kitchen appliances in new builds in all OECD countries by the end of the decade, and to only do all-electric retrofits in existing properties by 2040.

The campaign has the support of high-profile chefs including Neil Perry, Darren Robertson, Palisa Anderson, Rob Roy Cameron, William Gleave and James Edward Henry. At least one other major Australian property developer is expected to join the Coalition in the next few months, sources said.

But readers have rejected the idea, with a masive majority saying people have the right to use natural gas in their own home.

With more than 1900 readers voting in our online poll by 11.30am AEDT, more than four in five (83 per cent) said they opposed the plan to phase out gas kitchens.

Just 11 per cent said they were in favour of the campaign, while 6 per cent of readers said they were undecided on the issue.

Readers also expressed their opposition to the gas plan in comments, with some labelling it “insane” and “idiotic”.

One reader commented that gas “has been the saviour of many people duting the floods when power was out”, and that “we demonise everything these days”.

Some 76 per cent of poll respondents said they cooked with gas at home - slightly higher than the estimated 65-70 per cent of Australians who use gas domestically.

Chef Neil Perry said electric was “definitely the future of cooking” in both homes and commercial kitchens.

“It’s just cleaner, it’s more efficient and it’s definitely more beneficial for the environment. Everything tends to be neater and cleaner without gas,” he said.

Lendlease Global Head of Sustainability Cate Harris said electrification across operations was “essential” for the company to hit its goal of absolute zero carbon emissions by 2040.

“While the transition to electric cooking powered by renewables will take time, it’s already underway at our new commercial development Victoria Cross Tower in Sydney, and we’re looking forward to working alongside our Coalition partners to drive and accelerate industry change,” she said.

Dale O’Toole from GPT said all-electric kitchens “potentially present financial savings in new developments” and suggested moving away from gas would protect owners from having outdated appliances as the transition to renewable energy picks up momentum.

While the Global Cooksafe Coalition targets appliances in the kitchen only – so gas hot water or heating in the home would still be possible – several Australian jurisdictions are aggressively pursuing plans to electrify homes completely.

From next year, ACT infill developments will not be connected to the network, while Victoria has plans to take gas out of schools and hospitals, and from 2023 it will drop incentives for gas home appliances.

Why the moves against gas

The moves have been prompted by concerns over the health impacts of gas in the home, as well as the greenhouse emissions caused by natural gas.

Dr Kate Charlesworth from the Climate Council said cooking with gas was estimated to be responsible for up to 12 per cent of the childhood asthma burden in Australia, and a recent California study showed home gas stoves were associated with elevated levels of benzene, a known carcinogen.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/new-plan-to-take-gas-out-of-aussie-kitchens/news-story/0e2a9c743a769b12c20000e87ce13058

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Seriously harmful vaccines and negligent medical advice

Julie Sladden

I was recently accused of lying. This was a little hard to swallow as it was over a directly referenced quote. At the same time, I found the accusation understandable. So much has happened over the past two and a half years, it’s difficult to know who to trust anymore.

Take this example: Pfizer recently admitted they didn’t test for transmission because they were too busy moving at the ‘speed of science’ (to be honest, they really didn’t need to admit it – just ask any double, triple, quadruple jabbed person whether they’ve had the virus yet). Yet we were repeatedly told by authorities the vaccine would stop the virus in its tracks. Trustworthy?

Or this example: The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) revealed it did not know the myocarditis risks of the Pfizer and Moderna products until five months after provisionally approving them for use. Five months! Trustworthy?

Meanwhile, adverse event reporting systems around the world indicate more adverse events in Covid vaccines than all previous vaccines developed over the past 50 years, combined. Yet we were subject to months of multimedia messaging that claimed the vaccines were both ‘safe and effective’. Trustworthy?

It turns out that for a small (but significant) number of people, the vaccines are neither safe nor effective.

People like Tyson Illingworth (known to his millions of fans as ‘tyDi’). He is an acclaimed composer, songwriter, and DJ with a swag of awards. Like so many others trying to ‘do the right thing’ he stepped up for his first dose with ‘complete faith and trust in (Australia’s) leadership and medical system’.

What happened next was alarming. He writes, ‘Within days I started to feel severe and unbearable shooting pain and paralysis in my hands and feet.’

Soon afterward, Tyson was rushed to hospital. ‘I couldn’t believe the vaccine could do this to me, especially when we were all told it was safe and effective and if there was a reaction it would be minor.’

But there was worse to come. Before release from hospital, Tyson was strongly advised to get the second vaccine by the neurologist. ‘I acted on the neurologist’s advice and ended up taking the second vaccine… in hindsight I cannot believe I listened to her as I have always thought of myself as a critical thinker, and instead I took advice from a doctor who had no regard for my personal situation.’

Tyson’s symptoms were further exacerbated by the second dose, and he was rushed to hospital once again. ‘I was unable to move, my hands felt like they were on fire, and I struggled to get through the day… I thought my life was over…’

A couple of months later he contracted the virus, sending him to hospital yet again.

Tyson’s life has changed immeasurably. Where there should be touring, performing and interviews, instead is terrible pain, medications and doctor’s appointments, and a new understanding of the state of medicine in Australia.

Vaccine claims and censorship

The COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme was established to help people receive financial support if they’ve experienced harm because of a Covid vaccine. The application process could be described as complicated, at best. Many patients find they are ineligible to claim due to the limited list of recognised adverse effects. In addition, submitting a claim requires a doctor to complete a 10-page report documenting their medical opinion and link to vaccination – something many doctors are unwilling to put their name to.

Tyson experienced this also, ‘I had 5 different doctors confirm that my condition was caused by the vaccine, and they all said they cannot go on record.’

Thank you AHPRA position statement…

(The position statement makes clear that any health advice which undermines the national immunisation campaign may result in investigation and regulatory action. Result? Many doctors are too scared to report an adverse event for fear they might be investigated.)

Despite these limitations, the claims scheme budget is set to blow out to almost $77 million by July 2023. That’s a lot of claims.

Un-informed consent

Tyson rightly questions the advice he was given recommending he take the second dose of the vaccine. ‘One would think that when a patient presents with severe neurological issues in hospital a specialist would think first, “I will do no harm and disclose the risk”… The information about neurological side effects was available to every clinician at the time, a simple Google search would have revealed this.’

A formal complaint from Tyson to the QLD health ombudsman returned a letter acknowledging that although the doctor advised him to get a second vaccine, despite being injured by the first, the practitioner was (conveniently) indemnified.

However, an April 2021 letter from Greg Hunt to both the AMA and the RACGP released under freedom of information outlines the parameters of this ‘indemnity’ and confirms ‘as with all vaccines, informed consent is required before the administration of each vaccine dose’.

The Australian government’s six-page consent form lists only a handful of potential and ‘rare or very rare’ side effects including blood clotting and heart inflammation. No mention of neuropathy or potential for other serious side effects emerging or not yet known due to incomplete safety data of these provisionally approved injectables.

So, what exactly is informed consent?

Every health practitioner should know ‘consent is a process, not a form’, says medical professional insurer Avant. ‘Gaining consent from your patient means more than just going through a checklist of risks… you need to understand the risks that are material to your patient.’

Medical professional insurer MIPS agrees that it is important that professionals ‘identify the risks that the patient is most concerned about.’

Given the nature and severity of Tyson’s reaction to the first dose it would be reasonable to be concerned about the risk of a reaction to the second.

This ‘un-informed consent’ story is all too common and one I have heard repeated time and again. Being simply handed a form to read and sign does not equate to informed consent. It never has. Especially when administering a provisionally approved medical product.

If the government’s indemnity scheme is dependent on informed consent, and informed consent didn’t happen, what happens when the patient suffers a vaccine injury? Where does the buck stop?

It stops with the patient, the person at the receiving end of this bureaucratic mess. In this case that person was Tyson who now suffers debilitating symptoms.

How bureaucracy undermines trust

The recently amended National Law, which regulates medical practitioners, is set to give AHPRA even more power to silence doctors if they are deemed to be undermining ‘public confidence’. This means if doctors disagree with public health messaging, like a ‘safe and effective’ mantra, they risk disciplinary action.

How then will patients be able to trust they are receiving the best health advice for their individual circumstances alongside up to date evidence, and not the government-endorsed public health message of the day?

They won’t.

For someone who used to trust our medical system, like Tyson, I’m not sure that trust can be earned back. And with the way things are heading, I wouldn’t trust it either.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/dont-trust-me-im-a-doctor/

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Brainless politics

Getting the nation moronically into debt to placate Covid panic merchants may be the best thing the Liberals have done in decades…

They have left behind such a flat purse that, for the first time in almost thirty years, the federal government has piddling discretionary funding with which to buy support (or silence) from interest groups.

Labor will have to stand or fall on how its policies affect the majority of Australians’ day-to-day lives.

It is no wonder that parliamentarians are spending their waking hours trying to cover up what a vulnerable position the sparse kitty puts them in. Their endless summits, roundtables, working groups, and ‘listening’ exercises get tarted up as inclusiveness. These ego-fests are actually about trying to ‘duchess’ as many interests as possible until the day when cash giveaways can return.

It is also a desperate attempt to come up with ideas for cheap (and popular) policies that can be flogged to the masses.

Labor’s long-time playbook is of zero help on that count. It reads: capitulate to the most maniacally unhinged of activists and promise whatever it takes to keep them feeling the love.

Not at all coincidentally, this usually involves profligate spending.

Labor’s brains trust is not helping either, as it is dominated by self-aggrandising journalists, pompous academics, and overly-entitled brats who think that spouting trite undergraduate garbage about gender politics places them on par with the great thinkers of the Enlightenment.

Such hubris has Labor scuttling about, struggling to hide that without handouts it has little of real substance to offer the public.

The idea that most Australians spend their days fretting about an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, working conditions for highly paid women, or any of the other elite froth that Labor has adopted to bolster its inner-city credentials, is laughable. For a government to attempt to pass off such fringe distractions as if they are central concerns of the nation should give a resounding free kick to any credible opposition.

On that front though, there is only tepid humming and hawing rather than any serious alternatives.

The Liberals are not only letting Labor choose the battlegrounds, but are also too scared to say when one of Albanese’s policies is just window-dressing. If they were fit to lead the country, Dutton’s opposition would expose Labor’s shallow rhetoric and then calmly move on to talk about practical ways to make the majority of lives better. Their failure to do so reveals a complete lack of intellect, gumption, and spine.

The real problem is that both major parties suffer from the exact same rot at their core. Over decades of unimaginable prosperity, both parties have fallen into lazyiness and expedient policy-making that relies on largesse rather than merit to get over the line. Neither has had any incentive or need to do serious thinking because they have been able to simply spend taxpayer’s money instead (or promise to).

Both parties have encouraged the view that government exists chiefly to serve the whims of the loudest groups of whingers and ‘I’m a victim’ rent-seekers. It is no wonder that identity politics has risen swiftly and with such toxicity: it is the quickest way to get rewarded, and it plays to the divide and conquer mentality that lies at the foundation of payment-based politics.

Throwing money around is nothing new, but adopting that tactic at the expense of far-sightedness and real direction – qualities both Labor and Liberal willingly surrendered during Australia’s run of good economic times – is no way to govern for the common good. All it does is popularise the notion that there is no truly shared interest, only a never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction and payoff that cunning grifters disguise as ‘reflecting modern values’.

Both parties have lost the courage to say that constant government charity is unacceptable, because it has been advantageous for them to pretend otherwise.

Both parties have ceded the ability to develop – let alone deliver – tangible, practical measures that go to the heart of what the majority of Australians really care about.

This is not rocket science. Humanity’s basic desires have changed little over millennia: shelter, food, meaningful work, and the ability to raise a family while living in relative peace and privacy.

The secret to Labor becoming a government in the true sense of that word, and the Liberals earning a way back from opposition, is identical for both parties. It will not be found in the ‘progressive’ obsessions of Labor’s loony left or the return to Christianity favoured by the Liberals’ bible-thumping faction. Instead, it lies in re-learning how to develop policies from a position of austerity, maturity, and broad relevance.

Sadly, with Labor already dropping come-hither hints about being able to spend more if they win a second term and the Liberals happy to ride along, it looks like rewarding a patchwork of petty gripes is a future that suits both of them just fine.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/cashed-up-come-hither-politics/

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'Accidental' homeschoolers are rising as some parents feel they have no choice but to withdraw their children

Gemma didn't set out to homeschool her daughter, Bonnie. Bonnie had loved kindergarten and Gemma assumed that, the following year, school would go just as smoothly.

"We entered prep very excited and full of wonder, ready to start the mainstream [school] experience," Gemma says.

But it was 2020, and Bonnie's start in school coincided with the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schoolyard conversations, and restrictions like social distancing and mask-wearing, had Bonnie concerned.

"She came home full of questions and then full of worry," Gemma says. "And that's where the anxiety started to build."

It was the beginning of Gemma's journey to becoming an "accidental homeschooler".

That's the term used by Rebecca English, a Queensland University of Technology researcher and lecturer specialising in non-mainstream education.

The term describes a cohort of home educators that Dr English says is growing. Accidental homeschoolers are those people who have tried one or several different schools that haven't worked for their child, "so they have found themselves home educating or distance educating", she says. "They just felt they had no choice."

It's a decision that carries implications beyond a child's education. Overwhelmingly, it's women who take on the homeschooling responsibility in a family, Dr English says.

"The short-term impact is the loss of possibly a woman's full-time wage," she says. In the medium-to-long term, it might equate to lower superannuation, and a drop in how much money a family can spend in their local community.

Rising figures mean these are issues that need addressing, Dr English says.

In Queensland, where she is based, there were 900 homeschooled students a decade ago. Today there are about 8,500. In the past year alone, Queensland homeschool registrations have jumped 69 per cent.

Dr English believes the figures reveal a system in need of change. "There are reasons that all of this is falling down. And we need to have a broader conversation about this as a country."

After Bonnie's anxiety about school "started to dial up to 10", and she was diagnosed with anxiety and autism, Gemma says she tried to make the school experience work. She sought external specialists as well as extra in-school support.

None of it was enough. "[Bonnie] was so worried and she was so scared that she wanted to be around us and she didn't like the separation from us. "For us, it just became a point where we had to try something different," Gemma says.

Bonnie's school was nurturing and well-intentioned, but Gemma says teachers were under-resourced and over-worked. They didn't have the specific skills needed to help her daughter feel safe and comfortable at school.

The family finally made the decision after term one this year to withdraw Bonnie and homeschool her. "It wasn't the [fault of the] school and another school wasn't going to be the answer. It was the system as a whole. And we had to make a change," Gemma says.

She argues that schools need more flexibility — and more time — to be able to focus on the individual needs of students.

Dr English agrees. She argues that schools need better support to be able to manage issues such as bullying, as this is one of the main reasons parents choose to home educate, according to her research.

Her research also highlighted the indirect factors leading some parents to choose to homeschool. Some of these include social and emotional issues a child might face, such as anxiety or depression, or because they identify as being on the autism spectrum and find classroom noise difficult or overwhelming. "And so they're much happier at home," she says.

Dr English argues that an uptick in homeschooled children is something that "can't be disconnected from the teacher crisis" — that is, the widespread shortage of Australian teachers.

"Realistically, schools are really pressed. The institution of schooling really needs to be looked at more deeply … There just isn't the time to do that support work," Dr English says.

She argues that teachers are too stretched and that too much of their working days are consumed by "data-driven" work demanded of them by education departments, leaving them insufficient time to devote to individual students.

"If teachers were better supported, more people would join the profession [and] less parents would feel disaffected and would be resorting to home education," she says.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-21/accidental-homeschooling-families-on-the-rise-rebecca-english/101589182

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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