Hope it's not a fizzer

It's a James Ashby interview that looks like it will shed further light on who in the Liberals helped him bring his case, and who lied about it.

Update:  what a tease the 60 Minutes trailer for the interview is.    Another allegation of sexual harassment (but not by who - if it's poor old Slipper, people will probably say "old news, can't he be left alone?");  someone called a liar;  a claim that is "dynamite".    Twitter is full of rumour that Pyne ought to be worried, but we shall see.

Update 2:  fizzer.  Although I did miss, while going downstairs to see where X Factor was up to, the bit that was "dynamite".

Look, anyone with any sense knows Pyne has been deceptive about this from the get go, and that Abbott has lied in the past about his role in political intrigue (Hanson), and almost certainly knew more about the Slipper/Ashby matter than he will admit.   Brough comes across as a complete sleazebag.  Yet   Ashby also remains a person impossible to sympathise with because of the way he played politics too.  

It was all a nasty bit of political dirty work from a Coalition that was desperate to seize power if they could.   [And now that they have it, they're still failing to win hearts and minds.]

But we knew all of this already.

Everyone needs a hobby...

These Two Guys Studied Their Feces for a Year - The Atlantic

(Actually, it's quite an interesting science story about gut biome again.)  

Fast food every night, then?

In what's probably just another bit of Slate click baiting, this article with the heading Let’s Stop Idealizing the Home-Cooked Family Dinner is still a profoundly silly piece by Amanda Marcotte.

Yes, let's accept that working mothers can have a hard time juggling work and getting dinner ready every night.

But honest to God, the range of easily prepared meal components (by which I mean things like pasta or curry sauces in jars, meal "kits" in a box, pre-sliced or diced meats, even frozen vegetables) which, served up with a pile of steamed vegetables (just how hard is it to steam vegetables?) makes the modern cooking task for relatively healthy meals about twice as easy as it was 40 years ago.

And what does Marcotte or her quoted sociologists expect as an alternative?

Utopia

I've been watching most of Working Dog's new show Utopia on the ABC, and I have to say it has grown on me.

As a satire of how the public service works (well, perhaps the semi corporatised version of the public service?)  I think it does very well.  

Last night's "job performance review" co-plot rang very many bells with I saw in my exposure to the PS, although that was a couple of decades ago now.  (I doubt that it has changed much, though.)

I thought the episode on the Very Fast Train was also pretty good, in terms of how economically unjustifiable ideas can refuse to die.

But I did miss the first episode - and I am bit puzzled as to how the Rob Sitch character has ended up as the boss of an outfit in which he is perpetually unhappy and never gets his way....

A problem easily fixed?

Seeing Adam Creighton is against an increase in compulsory superannuation, I now feel pretty confident that some increase was in fact warranted.  And let's face it, the Coalition is not saying they are against an increase happening eventually, they've just delayed it.

But what I wanted to note was Creighton's argument in the Australian this morning that compulsory superannuation is a "failure" because it is failing to reduce dependency on the pension to a large enough degree.

Yet the reason he gives for this - the pension assets and income test being too generous - is surely one of the economically easiest things to change in future.   And what's more, isn't ensuring that more money is in super in the first place one of the key ways of ensuring that the tightening of the test is easier to politically and economically justify?

Surely you would have more chance of arguing for phased in reduction of government contribution to pension support if you can point to the increase in superannuation income that you're also ensuring for the future?

Update:   just wanted to make it clear again that I was saying that changing the assets/income test is economically easy - in the sense that it can be relatively clear where to set the line and what effect it will have on future government outlays - but not that it was necessarily politically easy.    However, it becomes politically easier if you can tell people their superannuation will be larger too.

And here's another thing - I've noticed small government types are pretty hot for the Singaporean system of health care which works to a large extent on forced contributions to health savings accounts.   (Someone on boring old Amanda Vanstone's Radio National show was talking up something similar the other day.)  

So why are they so against compulsory super savings in Australia?  Is it just because of Union involvement in industry super?

And really, whatever arguments are against compulsory superannuation (due to fees and questionable tax treatment for those who need it least), do small government economists really think people left alone make adequate savings for retirement? 

I hear a lot of whining, but don't hear much about alternatives....

The old Michael Ware is back on my TV

Seven years ago I noted how annoying I found former CNN war correspondent Michael Ware, an Australian given to talking in perpetual hyperventilating Steve Irwin style.

And he's on my TV right now, on The Drum, with Brisbane's Story Bridge in the background (he lives here?) and he's still the same, and still really irritating.

In other Arab news

While admitting that I like the idea of being in charge of an Australian version of the Saudi Arabian institution known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, I would have to run it better than this:

Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice on Tuesday removed four of its staff from the Riyadh office after it found them guilty of assaulting a British national and his Saudi wife....

Reports late on Friday said that the Briton was approached by the members of the Commission when he took a check-out at a supermarket reserved for women and families.

When they asked him about his presence in the special lane, he answered that he was with his wife and had the right to use it.

However, the Commission members felt frustrated by the answer and followed the couple until they reached their car outside the mall where they had a physical altercation.

Update:  a little bit of video of the guy being jumped on for being in the women's checkout lane can be seen at the Daily Mail here.

I'd hate to see what they do to someone who goes through the "12 items or less" lane with 13 things.

And by the way, the Daily Mail site has a picture of Riyadh, a city you don't often see much of:

What's the building that looks like the eye of a needle?  I'll have to check:  I see, it's Kingdom Centre, which has a shopping mall, hotel and apartments.   [And, being Saudi Arabia, public floggings in the courtyard on the hour for men caught looking sideways at women with accidentally exposed ankles.]

You can also go up to the "skybridge" at the top.  Photos at its website here. 

Update:   looking around at other local websites reporting this widely publicised story, I have to admit that most of the 40 comments at Arab News (most of which appear to be Saudis) are critical of the Virtue Police.   One comment details another incident, which I repeat for its comedy value (as long as you're not the victim):

There have been many such instances which either go unreported or no action is taken even after a complaint is lodged. A few years ago, the religious police raided a staff house belonging to a corporate in Olaya locality of Riyadh which housed a few Keralites among which one of them happened to be a friend. The religious police searched the entire flat and found a few pornographic CD's, all the flat members were locked up in the toilet from 10 PM to 4 AM and the entire duration was spent by the religious police examining the evidence thoroughly on a flat screen television. Fortunately the flat members were let out after the call for Fajr salah and the religious police left without saying a word.

Ms Popularity

Judith Sloan is having a hot run in the unpopularity stakes at the moment.  From The Australian:

JUDITH Sloan makes some false assertions about how one of my reporters does her job (“Paper’s slant against self-managed super is just so wrong”. 2/9). Sloan suggests she’s “pretty sure” the journalist did not ferret through the Australian Taxation Office website to get figures about self-managed super funds and that she was “probably fed them” by industry super funds.

After speaking to the reporter, and backed by my knowledge of how she works, I am more than pretty sure that Sloan is wrong. My reporter got the numbers from the ATO. She was not fed them by interested parties.

It is one thing to vigorously contest issues. It is another to make false claims about the professionalism of a journalist because you disagree with the angle of a story — all without checking your assertions.
Michael Stutchbury, editor-in-chief, The Australian Financial Review, Sydney, NSW

Well, this is confusing...

We seem to have a bit of a bizzaro world reversal going on in the reaction to the Abbott government putting substantial delay into an increase into compulsory superannuation contributions paid by employers.

The Australian website has been running as its headline article a David Crowe report that would not keep the Abbott government happy at all.  The subheading:

WORKERS will take a $20,000 hit to their retirement savings from a shock deal in the Senate to repeal the mining tax, with the Abbott government blaming Labor for forcing it to agree to the change. The losses could reach twice as much for young workers on high incomes, according to an exclusive analysis for The Australian that reveals the impact on millions of employees who will miss out on an increase in their superannuation over the next five years.

(Of course, the paper also contains a "You're Magnificent, Abbott!" piece by the ever obsequious Denis Shanahan about the very same deal.) 

But over at Fairfax, we have Peter Martin talking up the decision to not increase the tax contributions because it was clearly going to eat into salary growth too much.  With the headline "The Coalition helps the workers", the Martin article takes exactly the Abbott line on the issue.

It will be some time before I know what to think about this....

The El Nino that may or may not come

Stalled El Nino poised to resurge : Nature News & Comment

Certainly, no one expects a super strong El Nino now, but I am curious about what happened to the large body of subsurface warm water that they had been tracking across the Pacific earlier this year...

Just trying to be helpful

About this nude celebrity photos in the cloud being stolen business:   I think, given the ubiquity of youthful ownership of phones with cameras, that it's probably a fair assumption in the West that about 95% of males under 25 are already the subject of a nude picture (either of all of their body or part of it), and about 70% of females.   (The other gender difference being that, for men, the majority are likely self taken, but for women, more are taken by their boyfriend.)   It's become so rampant that it may as well be incorporated into some sort of coming of age ritual.  Perhaps at 21,  everyone could have a nude shot of their choice (personality dictating how rude the choice actually is) loaded up to the national  iNude service, with access available to anyone for a modest (ha! pun) fee - perhaps $1 per view, with nearly all of that going to the photo subject.  Of course, how to deal with those who then save and spread the pic to others for free is something I'm not sure how to deal with - I see that the Snapchat self erasing idea is pretty easy to evade.   But if we believe libertarians, if you make the cost of legitimate access cheap enough, people won't pirate.  (A likely story...)

Anyway, the point of the exercise is that if society is based on an assumption that everyone can or will be legitimately viewed nude, celebrities can stop fretting so much about their secret nude photos being stolen.  I guess that's assuming the photo they are worried about is a mere nude one.   If it is one involving sexual activity that they did not want taken or realised - well, the fact that you were already available nude on line might make the unfairness of further intimate releases so much clearer that they are less likely to be clicked on.  (And civil action against the person who released them more justified.) 

As the title says, just trying to be helpful...

Nuclear disasters last a long time...

Radioactive wild boar roaming the forests of Germany - Telegraph

 This rather surprising report states:

Twenty-eight years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, its effects are still
being felt as far away as Germany
– in the form of radioactive wild boars.

Wild boars still roam the forests of Germany, where they are hunted for their
meat, which is sold as a delicacy.

But in recent tests by the state government of Saxony, more than one in three
boars were found to give off such high levels of radiation that they are
unfit for human consumption.

 In a single year, 297 out of 752 boar tested in Saxony have been over the
limit, and there have been cases in Germany of boar testing dozens of times
over the limit.

Germany's radioactive boar problem is not expected to go away any time soon.
With the levels of contamination still showing in tests, experts predict it
could be around for another 50 years. 

Astounding hypocrisy

There are few things more annoying than libertarians who freely admit to flaunting the property rights of American film and TV producers by downloading pirated copies of whatever fantasy gory pornquest they currently enjoy, and then deride government attempts to stop them.

And the justification that they give - well, business always knows right, according to libertarians, except when it interferes with their TV viewing habits:

The IPA believes a better way to deal with online piracy in Australia would be to introduce a "fair use exception".

Mr Breheny said he was "concerned" and "alarmed" that the government was not placing more emphasis on the importance of innovation and technological advances, such as content streaming platforms, to resolve piracy issues over ineffective regulations. He said ultimately rights holders needed to take responsiblity by ensuring their content was accessible and affordable.

Yeah, an individual's right to own and do what they want with their property is really important to libertarians, and one of the few things they want government to do is to protect such rights, but their view on TV piracy  comes down to this:  "hey, studio/government, if you don't let us watch it for free, or at least make it cheap enough, of course we'll steal it anyway.  What d'ya expect?" 

 

Gin considered

Some amusingly odd bits from a review of a book about the history of gin:

All the horrors of 18th-century Gin Lane are here, including instances of child alcoholism. In an effort to stop the entire population of London reeling with gin, successive governments tried different restrictions. But the determined always found a way. Captain Dudley Bradstreet set up a secret distillery in Holborn in 1736; in the street outside the door he placed a wooden cat, with a leaden pipe concealed under its paw. Customers would approach and whisper “puss”; if they heard a “miaow” in reply, they would then whisper their order, put coins in the cat’s mouth and the gin would be funnelled through the pipe. 

Williams lavishes loving detail on the evolution of gin’s manufacture, as well as its slow Victorian ascent of the social scale. Tonic wasn’t far behind; at the Great Exhibition of 1851, a 27ft (8.2m) fountain flowed with Schweppes. The 20th century brought glamour: the swish cocktail bars of London’s smartest hotels and the advent of James Bond’s gin/vodka martini. The publicity-loving diabolist Aleister Crowley claimed to have invented a gin cocktail called the Kubla Khan number 2, which involved the addition of laudanum.

How were the chronic alcohol problems of urban England in the 18th and 19th centuries actually overcome,  I wonder?  Can't say that I know of the answer to that.  Surely it wasn't just the moral example of Queen Victoria?

Also, I didn't recall this:

Their 16th-century predecessors in Holland – gin, or “genever” as it was called there, was thought to have been invented medicinally by one Dr Franciscus Sylvius – would recognise the process now. So how did the beery British get a taste for it? Williams blames William of Orange, noting that the phrase “Dutch courage” is thought to have originated with soldiers taking slugs of gin in the Thirty Years War.

 Sounds like an entertaining book.

Update:  OIC - the "gin epidemic" was mainly a feature of the 18th century.  Interesting article all about it here.

And as for what happened with drinking in England in the 19th century, try this:

They offer evidence of how cost and access effect consumption:

"(T)he 18th-Century gin craze was linked to the government's encouragement of gin production and restriction of brandy imports; the rise in consumption in the 19th Century was associated with rising living standards."

However, that nose-dive in alcohol consumption you can see on the graph in 1914 was the result of "the most sustained attempt to come to grips with drink in British history":

"Measures included shorter opening hours, higher duties on beer, and significant reductions in both the production and strength of beer. The amount of beer consumed in 1918 was nearly half of the pre-war total, despite rising incomes, and arrests for drunkenness in England and Wales fell from 190,000 to 29,000 between 1913 and 1918."

The historians also point to important cultural effects. One observed a decline in drinking in the late 19th Century and suggested that this was due to "many counter-attractions for working-class consumers (music halls, football, cigarettes, and holidays)".

How Islamic State happened

BBC News - Islamic State: Where does jihadist group get its support?

Sounds like a decent explanation here of the political bungling in the Middle East led to money flowing to IS.


Incidentally - now that Saudi Arabia is scared of what they have (not entirely intentionally) helped create, when is someone in the West going to call on them to help solve the problem by putting their own military in the fight?