pmccarthy

In October 2024 Anthony Albanese bought a $4.3 million clifftop property at Copacabana on the NSW Central Coast. The main access road to the area is Avoca Drive. Back in January 2023 Albanese had personally announced 70 million dollars in federal funding for upgrades to Avoca Drive on top of the 30 million Labor had already promised during the 2022 election campaign. The federal contribution totalled 100 million dollars with NSW adding another 30 million on top of that. Senator Gerard Rennick moved Senate motions demanding the business case and the correspondence behind the decision. The government confirmed the Commonwealth had produced no federal business case of its own and had relied entirely on NSW assessments. When the Senate asked for the correspondence between the federal and NSW governments Infrastructure Minister Catherine King refused to release it citing Commonwealth state relations concerns. One hundred million dollars for a road on the Central Coast with no federal business case and the paperwork hidden from the Senate. But no money to finish the freight backbone of the country.

This is the worst period of government I can remember in my lifetime. Perhaps except the Whitlam years. The ideology is to take from us all and redistribute to those who the Government sees as deserving. For which, read labor voters.

Bugs bunny

I like this quote. It is from Victorian member of the legislative assembly WC Smith MLA in an 1874 speech. Talk about prejudice! In such cases, where through the poverty of the ground mines could not be profitably worked with European labour, the European population had no objection to Chinese exercising their proper function-namely, that of gold-field Scavengers. But all this time the Chinese were being educated underground by European miners. They were rapidly acquiring knowledge as to underground work. Chinese carpenters could now put timber together almost like cabinetwork. They did not work so rapidly as Europeans, but they worked for a price at which Europeans must give up competition with them. The Chinese had taken the outposts. They were at Haddon, Creswick, and Scottsdale, and were gradually extending their operations, and unless some reasonable arrangement was arrived at, they would gradually oust the Europeans altogether. They had no responsibilities in the form of wives and children, and all they looked for was rice, with a stolen fowl occasionally to flavour it, and some opium; and the amount they contributed to the general or local revenue was insignificant. As soon as they had mastered the underground work, which, as he had said, was being taught to them by Europeans, it would be impossible for the latter to compete successfully with them. They were allowed to work in poor mines, and he did not see how they were to be prevented by-and-bye from being introduced into mines paying dividends. That would be the inevitable conclusion, and this difficulty must be fairly looked in the face by Ballarat and every other gold-field. There were 350,000,000 of Chinese in China, and that fact alone demanded serious consideration.

We are hoping for rain on Sunday. All is very dry, still watering the garden.

Instead of support for ex-defence personnel, the Budget provides an additional $44.3 M to Office of Special Investigator to investigate and prosecute alleged Afghanistan war crimes.

I don't mind their views on the environment; it's a free world. I despise their politics on race and gender, particularly the antisemitisim.

Though I despise the greens, I agree.

Yep. Unions to the Labor governments. Huge sums involved.

Gilligans Island

Cos every little things gonna be alright

I have been back since and got to Pagan and Mandalay. But in 1985 Rangoon was crazy. There were slabs missing in the footpath and if you fell in you would be swept away in a giant storm drain. We thought the beer had no alcohol in it but instead had some hallucinogenic drug that made everyone weird.

I was there then too! I never got beyond Rangoon, stayed at the Inya Lake hotel for a couple of weeks on a mining job.

We just drove 250 km in our Toyota hybrid. Efficient and comfortable.

I am reading a book about the WW2 Burma campaign. The US 111 Brigade retreated from Blackpool to Indawgyi Lake and couldn’t take the badly wounded. They were all shot to save them from falling into Japanese hands.