Election 2016

[M61A1]

You think 0.005% is "tax"?

"Tax" is whatever the rules say it is, not what you think is fair. Tax is usually one of the biggest expenses. Given that a bunch of bureaucrats are in charge of spending it, it's sensible to minimize the bill.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Irish corporate tax on sales is supposed to be 12.5% but Apple were granted an exemption to this which allowed them to record European sales in Ireland and pay almost nothing.

 

The EU has ruled that this is tantamount to illegal State aid to give an unfair advantage over competition. Just about every democratic country in the world has laws preventing the stifling of competition.

 

Companies of course always try to minimise their tax bills, but if you violate anti-trust laws doing it, you are in a lot of trouble no matter where you are. Apple (and the Irish government) should not have been so stupid.

 

 

[M61A1]

I don't know enough about it to go any further, just quoting what I read. I also read that it may have consequences for other companies as well, including some Australian ones.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

ALP and the LNP taking Chinese money

 

Sam Dastyari pledges to support China on South China Sea beside Labor donor

 

 

[Marty_d]

ALP and the LNP taking Chinese money

Sam Dastyari pledges to support China on South China Sea beside Labor donor

The article is beyond the AFR paywall

 

But in any case political donations in general are on the nose. In my opinion the only donations allowed should be from private Australian citizens with a limit of say $1000. Big donations from corporations whether Australian or not are just buying influence.

 

 

[spacesailor]

Legal tax !We all know that the Big company's are getting away with far to much tax avoidance, if they payed the same tax percentage as the blue-collared worker's the pollies wouldn't have to touch the GST or cut the oldies pension's. (mine)

 

spacesailor

 

 

[M61A1]

Or if the govt just stayed within their means perhaps...legal is legal.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Yeah I agree in general terms that "legal is legal".

 

But there's "clearly legal", "marginally legal", "probably not legal even though you think it is", and "Legal? Seriously? What are you smoking?"

 

The last two categories, and occasionally even the second one, are determined ultimately in courts of law where one legal argument is pitted against another (regrettably someone has to lose) and usually when people push it too far in the eyes of the authorities, government, etc.

 

There seems to be a fair amount of big company tax "minimisation" which skips the first category.

 

 

[spacesailor]

If this & other future governments stop giving great big freebies to other ho so poor countries, that we never get help with in times of need, we could give the pollies a little more $.

 

But whats the xxx, they (the pollies) would want the lot as usual, the more they get, the more they want!.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Marty_d]

If this & other future governments stop giving great big freebies to other ho so poor countries, that we never get help with in times of need, we could give the pollies a little more $.But whats the xxx, they (the pollies) would want the lot as usual, the more they get, the more they want!.

 

spacesailor

I assume you're talking about foreign aid. Trouble is, if you stop giving it, someone else steps in. I'd rather see our tax dollars going to fund nice secular schools than Saudi Arabia coming in and funding wahabi brainwashing centres.

 

 

[Bruce]

That's a good point Marty, I would like somebody who thinks like you to check that our foreign aid is being well spent.

 

Failing that, I think it likely that most foreign aid is actually counter-productive. For example, our aid can pay for bores which enable nomads on the Sahara fringe to stay put instead of moving on and letting the vegetation recover. Or it can pay for a road so the countries military can more easily come to rape and pillage remote villages.

 

Without real good policing, I would stop most foreign aid.

 

 

[Spooks]

I always thought foreign aid was a bribe rather than 'aid'

 

 

[Marty_d]

Just found this. Gold.

 

Kindergarten Cop and the 45th Parliament of Australia

 

 

[dutchroll]

One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts in his first speech to parliament yesterday:

 

"It is basic. The sun warms the earth's surface. The surface, by contact, warms the moving, circulating atmosphere. That means the atmosphere cools the surface. How then can the atmosphere warm it? It cannot."

I have yet another bruise on my head, courtesy of my desk. My sincere thanks to the 77 people (yes, count them, he got 77 first-preference votes and ended up in Parliament) who helped elect him.

 

"It is basic. The sun warms the earth's surface."

 

Yes it does, so far so good. Only about 50% of incoming solar radiation does this, but yeah let's continue.

 

"The surface, by contact, warms the moving, circulating atmosphere."

 

Well yeah it's called conduction which is a form of radiation transfer. But why do I feel this argument is about to spear off the rails?

 

"That means the atmosphere cools the surface."

 

Yippee! There we go! Hang on everyone, we're in for a wild ride! No it doesn't mean that, my young Socrates (yes in his speech he compared himself to ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, who I suspect is struggling to get out of his grave at this very moment and thump him). The surface is cooled because it loses its heat through radiation at night. If we had no atmosphere the earth's surface would still cool. Let me repeat that for you Malcolm - without an atmosphere, the surface would still cool. How therefore, Malcolm my young heroic philosophical genius, do you contend that it is the atmosphere which causes the cooling, if the fact is that the Earth's surface will cool whether an atmosphere is present or not? Look, I know it was the crux of your argument and you're probably now having trouble figuring out how to answer that, so let's move on.

 

How then can the atmosphere warm it? It cannot.

 

Malcolm, my incisively brilliant friend, an atmosphere is composed of gases, right? What do gases do when they are hit by infrared radiation? Well that depends. Some of them are not bothered in the slightest and totally ignore it - a bit like your leader Pauline regarding checking her facts on how many refugee kids attend certain schools. But some of them due to their molecular structure absorb then re-radiate that energy in all different directions, some of which heads back down the surface from which it came. And what happens, Malcolm, when radiation hits the Earth's surface? I think we already covered that didn't we? It would warm it, wouldn't it, like you admitted it does right back at the beginning?

 

And thank goodness it does warm it Malcolm, because otherwise we would freeze as literally all of the energy re-radiated from the Earth's surface would simply rush off into space and leave us a wee bit chilly. But on the flipside, we would want just enough of these warming gases in the atmosphere and not too much, wouldn't we? Because that could get toasty in the longer term, right?

 

 

[Marty_d]

There's no doubt about him, Malcolm Roberts has a towering intellect.*

 

*Compared to a retarded hamster.

 

 

[poteroo]

Easy on him DR. The 1st timers were all asked to speak,(without preparation I believe),on any subject they preferred, in order to 'fill in time' while the House was getting something else organised.?? If his oratory was indeed 'off-the-cuff', just standback when he has time to thoroughly research the subject.

 

As a former scientist, I struggle with the climate change debate at the science level: reading Heaven & Earth by Ian Plimer was a several week effort! My recommendation to Parliament is to only read a prepared statement by someone who knows something about it.

 

happy days,

 

 

[Marty_d]

This is the man who believes that observational data has been faked... by NASA.

 

Malcolm Roberts has apparently "researched" the subject for years, obviously by listening to other tin-foil hat wearers. It's his favourite subject. His oratory may have been off-the-cuff, but I wouldn't expect any improvement even if he had months to prepare.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Easy on him DR.

No, stuff him. If someone wants to crap on about important policy matters and has the ear of "the people", they should do their research properly, especially if they're actually a politician!

 

The only problem with "Heaven and Earth" is that it was riddled with factual and scientific errors. This was the start of Plimer's downfall from having a reasonable scientific reputation. Plimer extended himself outside of his own area of expertise - which is mining geology.

 

For one of many examples, and a particular whopper which gets dragged out by sceptics repeatedly, Plimer maintained that a single volcanic eruption (Pinatubo being his example) produces more CO2 than humans do annually. What do the actual earth scientists who study volcanic eruptions say? Terry Gerlach is the guy who led the study of the eruption of Pinatubo. He is a volcanic gas geochemist (bit different from a mining geologist) with the highly reputable US Geological Survey:

 

My article “Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide” appeared in the June 14 issue of the American Geophysical Union’s publication Eos and addresses the widespread mis-perception in the media, the blogosphere, and much of the climate skeptic literature that volcanic CO2 emissions greatly exceed anthropogenic CO2 emissions. I wrote the article to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic using only published peer-reviewed data with a minimum of technical jargon for a broad spectrum of Earth science researchers and educators, students, policy makers, the media, and the general public. AGU has made the article public; anyone can

[/url]download a copy

. There is also an

Eos online supplement

, although I have a better formatted pdf version that is available upon request.

 

The bottom line? Annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions exceed annual volcanic CO2 by two orders of magnitude, and probably exceed the CO2 output of one or more super-eruptions***. Thus there is no scientific basis for using volcanic CO2 emissions as an excuse for failing to manage humanity’s carbon footprint.

**For the uninitiated, "two orders of magnitude" is a factor of x 100. Like trying to tell people the population of Australia is 2.3 billion when it's actually only 23 million.

 

***There have been 2 super-eruptions in the last 2 million years.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

I always thought foreign aid was a bribe rather than 'aid'

New UK Minister for International Development, Miss Priti Patel in the Daily Mail today - a lovely article about how she has taken a couple of weeks to read about all the UK foreign aid budget, ( £12+ Billion per annum - 0.7 % of GDP ringfenced by law. . . ) and where it is all spent, and by whom. I won't reproduce the article here as anyone can read it.

 

It appears fairly evident that many of the 'Aid' agencies are Huge, non taxpaying companies, haveing CEOs on HUGE salaries, employing huge amounts of people, which obviously absorb much of the aid funds which they are charged to manage, and is a very BIG industry in itself. There ought to be a root and branch clearout of the shysters and some sensible oversight as to where this money is going. It is apparent that at the moment, no one seems to know for sure . . . why the boat is not being seriously rocked amazes me,. . . and I am not alone.

 

When winter brings it's low temperatures to the UK once again, I would rather see elderly pensioners, most of whom have paid their dues to this country, financially, some of them Militarily as well. . . being given a little more assistance with their energy bills, rather than having to decide between 'Heat and Eat'

 

Giving sums of money to Nuclear powered India, with it's own space programme, and Ethiopia to create a new version of the Spice Girls for their TV viewers. . . etc. . . ( There ARE more stupid uses of these funds - read the article - it's a hoot ! )

 

Miss Patel has said that many of her questions to these organisations are as yet unanswered. . . . .( Don't hold yer breath sweetheart. . .) the bloody magic money tree being abused AGAIN. . .what a shock !

 

Never mind, it's only UK taxpayers' money. . . .as usual. . .

 

 

[dutchroll]

There's no doubt about him, Malcolm Roberts has a towering intellect.*

I want to ask him on a public forum, with TV cameras rolling, how he explains the surface temperatures of the moon ......which has no atmosphere.

 

Like, just for fun.

 

 

[Bikky]

As Marty pointed out;

 

This is the man who believes that observational data has been faked... by NASA.

We can only accept that the moon is not scalding hot because NASA (don't forget, NASA is full of scientists and therefore, can't be believed) tells us so.

 

Crackpot theories are far more interesting than reality and unfortunately, there are too many people on this planet too lazy to think.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Funnily enough the moon's surface temperature can get up to 100 deg C in direct sunlight during the day because there is no atmosphere. Our atmosphere both reflects and absorbs some of the sun's energy directly, but on the moon 100% of it reaches the surface.

 

Conversely it can get to -180 deg C at night, again due to the lack of atmosphere. The heat just radiates straight back out into space and there is no atmospheric "blanket" to trap it near the surface. So the "average" temperature is pretty chilly.

 

Of course none of this supports his contention that a planetary atmosphere causes surface cooling! This is the same for all planetary bodies and moons. I don't even know how he can stand up and say this stuff. It's not embarrassing to not know the science because, yeah of course it can get pretty complicated. However it's embarrassing to tell everyone you know it when you obviously actually don't.