The bar at Mos Eisley Spaceport

Or the Green Room for Sydney World Pride’s guest speakers?

You decide:

Let’s ease into it gently with the bartender. Looks normal enough. On my planet, the beard would have provided enough information to make the pronouns superfluous, but hey, could be a different species, right?

Next up, starting to get tricky. Sporting probably the weakest attempt at facial hair since Elliot Page did Movember, and a hat that screams “unpacking theology may not end well for you”, this one is anyone’s guess.

Ok, this one’s easy; it’s more than one person in the same body (they/them). Definitely from another planet.

This one is obviously human, unless they have 1970s retro wallpaper on planet Zarg. Good to see the name and aim of the organisation is hiding in plain sight – STRAP(on).

Did you know the previously satirical (now woke and establishment) magazine, Private Eye, used to refer to Her Maj, Queen Elizabeth as “Brenda”? Never needed to mention pronouns though, can’t think why.

Say it loud, I’m she/her and Proud.

Ok, this one is surely having a laugh at our expense. “Tuck”. Riiight.

Next up, “I’m not ready for my close-up now, Mr DeMille”. It’s almost as if, I dunno, she/her hadn’t grown up learning how to apply make up.

I’m pretty sure I saw Dr. Julia Erht (she/her) playing drums for Beltane Fire at the Mean Fiddler in 1989. Or maybe they were part of the crew who built the porch extension for my parents’ house.

Ok, we’ve found the backup captain for the Millennium Falcon, should Han Solo not make it on time. He/him can definitely do the Kessel Run in 12 Parsecs.

P. J. O’Rourke isn’t dead, she/her has just returned to she/her planet, baby.

Walking on the beaches, looking at the…. Aaaargh! Not that!

The great thing about athletes is how healthy they look.

“The crystal ship is being filled…”. How many Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters would it take? Not enough have been poured, nowhere near enough.

I wonder whether “multiply neurodivergent” means something on they/them planet? Not sure there’s a direct translation in Earth languages.

This one’s easy; definitely alien, we’ve even got a cartoon from she/they planet.

Finally, this is clearly off-world.

Bill’s Opinion

Happy World Pride, Sydney. You voted for the idiots who are now using your rate money to fund this.

Follow the link to the list of speakers and ask yourself if any of them, even one, would be a good role model for your child?

The Wi-Fi Password people have really have very little in common, the Ls hate the Ts, the Gs only love themselves, nobody understands the Qs and the Is, and everyone hates the Bs. The one thing these people have in common though is they are all very broken.

The good news is, this is their last hurrah. I predict that, in years to come this World Pride will be seen as the high tide of the wokemon bollocks.

Scotland just lost a First Minister because the rest of the country said, “yeah, nah” to it. It’s over, go back to your constituencies and prepare for normality.

I don’t want to talk about it

….how you broke my heart.
If I stay here just a little bit longer
If I stay here, won’t you listen to my heart?
Oh, my heart

Here’s an unscientific test; do you personally know anyone who has died in the last two years? Lets limit the scope to someone who you’ve spoken to at least once in the last five years.

Same question, but someone who’s had an unexpected medical condition or diagnosis?

How about suicides or suicide attempts?

Does it feel like the number of people falling in these anecdotal categories has increased recently? Does it make you ask any questions?

Maybe it’s not just anecdotal:

Excess deaths 13% higher.

Suicide rate per capita 9% higher in “world’s most locked down city”.

Have you seen unusual stories like this recently?

21 year old dies suddenly.

If you only consume news from the traditional sources, you might not have seen this highlighted or given much attention:

Rich countries are having more excess deaths than poorer countries. Who had that on their 2023 bingo card?

The lack of journalistic curiosity to not write more articles on this is bordering on being a superpower.

What was the significant factor impacting the rich countries that poorer countries didn’t have? Was it four letters starting with a lower case m?

I don’t know, but perhaps someone might have a look into it? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

How is 13% excess mortality not yesterday’s, today’s, tomorrow’s headline? In what universe is that not the lead story until we learn the reasons?

How are the faces and names of the public health officials of Victoria and their political masters not being plastered over the media until the excess suicide rates have been explained and addressed?

How many times do editors need to write “died suddenly” before they suspect there might be common causes?

Bill’s Opinion

Something is happening here. Let’s be charitable, let’s call it embarrassment. The people with the final decision rights on what story runs each day are embarrassed at how utterly wrong they’ve been on the seriousness of Covid, the morality and effectiveness of lockdown policies and the broken promises of “safe and effective” vaccines.

They bought and regurgitated the government talking points without question. They sent journalists to press conferences with questions such as, “Premier, should you have locked us down earlier and harder?”, or “Minister, shouldn’t you be considering jail for the unvaccinated?”.

It’s a little embarrassing to now admit how completely disastrous and devastating that position has been to the public health, both physically and mentally.

So instead, they are spiking any pieces daring to suggest the Emperor is wearing no clothes.

How do I know this?

The article above about the poor kid in Queensland was written by Alex Blair. I was going to berate him for his lack of curiosity (sub news category “health problems” really?), but then I looked at his Twitter feed. Oh, he’s curious enough all right, he’s just not getting that curiosity published by his editor.

It’s the same story for Frank Chung. Very carefully edited news articles, but his Twitter feed is more free with the questions.

It’d be fascinating to read Alex and Frank’s spiked articles. Perhaps there’s a book’s worth.

As that famous pederast, John Maynard Keynes, once said, “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”.

Well, in the case of editors of our main news outlets, we have the answer; plug our fingers in our ears and sing La La La La.

What goes on?

….in your heart,

What goes on in your mind,

You are tearing me apart,

When you treat me so unkind.

R. Starky.

Tap tap. Is this thing on?

Recently, my commute has involved significantly less public transport and worse, less walking from the pool to the home office. Hence I am finding fewer opportunities to write here and my consumption of podcasts has increased.

A pleasant diversion from my usual Chem Trails, Pizzagate, lizard invasion podcast themes has included a couple of good astronomy channels.

I’ve heard some interesting discussions on the Drake Equation and Fermi’s Paradox, where the speakers have been wrestling with the juxtaposition of the magnitude of the number of possible life-bearing planets yet the deafening silence emanating from them.

So… possible scenarios;

  1. We’re alone
  2. We’re the only intelligent life
  3. Intelligent life is so incredibly rare we may never meet or even exist simultaneously
  4. We’re like animals in a zoo, observed by a vastly more advanced civilisation

There’s precedence in human history for scenario 4…. it is similar to how we treat the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island.

What a terrifying concept it would be to learn we are being watched by a civilisation that might solve our energy, health, longevity problem and perhaps remove many of our triggers for deadly conflicts…. yet they don’t lift a finger.

If you were a child on the North Sentinel Island, and at this very moment you became aware that in the same world you were living, there were hospitals, dentists, pain relief, cures for diseases that may have recently killed your family, education, warm clothes, supermarkets full of nourishing food, candy and Xboxes, etc, would you be happy with the alien zookeeper’s decision to keep you in the Stone Age on North Sentinel Island?

Let’s give the child a name, so we might think less abstractly; Sebastian.

How do you think Sebastian would feel once that knowledge of a safer, less precarious life was gained?

Hard to know, but I’m going to guess anger is up towards the top of Sebastian’s list.

And yet, here we are, leaving Sebastian to the mercy of situations we solved as a species hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years ago.

But, of course, the North Sentilese are a unique case, right?

We generally prioritise the well-being of children in remote and isolated communities. It’s morally the right thing to do, if we know we can vastly improve their physical well-being and longevity.

Or, is it a lot more common than we’d like to admit?

Australian life expectancy is 81 years (male) to 85 years (female), unless one is living in very remote Aboriginal community, in which case, it’s 66 and 70. 15 years difference.

It’s not completely comparable to the North Sentinelese, but it’s analogous.

In the meantime, a lot of airtime and Canberra hours (they’re like normal hours except they cost YOU money) are being expended on a campaign called The Voice from the Heart, which may culminate in a referendum laster this year.

What is the campaign lobbying for?

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.

Ok. Any more detail on what legal form that might take, maybe what it means practically to aboriginal people or even the taxpayer?

If you can find something more, good luck.

In fact, one of the main members of the campaign has explicitly said we shouldn’t concern ourselves with the details.

Well, that’s ok then.

Bill’s Opinion

I will admit to two changes of opinion with this. Firstly, I was against it, because it looked like another lipstick on a pig solution that wouldn’t address the health and well-being of all the Sebastians living hundreds of miles from a modern hospital.

Then, after some discussion with a good friend who is close to the campaign, I thought “why not?”.

Now, I find myself wondering about Mary Kane and her son, Charles Foster. She knew she couldn’t provide for him on the farm and, once gold was discovered, she arranged for his education and well-being away from their remote community.

Perhaps we should use The Voice discussion to have a conversation about the morality of choosing not to bring Sebastian into town?

Rosebud.

Don’t mention the war

I have memories. They may be, as Clive James suggests, unreliable, but I can’t erase them.

One memory is of people often saying “it’s a free country” in response to either a suggestion that they’ve said something offensive or that someone was doing something not illegal but outside of the norm.

It must be two decades since I last heard that retort, TV re-runs and YouTube videos of Hancock’s Half Hour notwithstanding.

What I mean is, “it’s a free country”, was said all the time, by people in the pub, the local market, outside church, in the newsagents.

You pulled a face when they said “Paki” when referring to the cornershop owner Mr Patel, originally from Bombay, India? “It’s a free country”.

Someone raised an eyebrow at a risqué joke? “It’s a free country”.

What about the girl who has moved in with her boyfriend, or the teenage lad down the road who’s just confirmed what everyone had known since he was in Primary School; that he’s gay? “It’s a free country”.

If I were to speculate on the reason it was such a common catchphrase, I’d guess it was a reaction to our opponents in the Cold War. The things we said weren’t policed by government in the way the Russians were. it was a point of pride.

We don’t hear it so often, if at all now.

Perhaps there’s a reason for that.

Here’s a few news items to contemplate:

Woman arrested for silently praying in public.

Pregnant woman arrested for Facebook post.

Comedian can’t perform to a sold out theatre.

Film not allowed to be shown in UK cinemas.

This trend is self-sustaining. The political theory of the Spiral of Silence suggests people increasingly self-censor when they perceive their views are outside the Overton Window.

So what topics can we no longer express that perhaps we might have done in the recent past? Let’s call this test the LinkedIn filter; i.e. would I be prepared to hit the 👍 button on an article on this topic for my professional network to see? If the answer is no, it would seem we can no longer discuss this in public.

Here’s a list to get us started:

  • Asylum seekers waiting to cross the English Channel have passed through at least three safe countries already. Why did they not claim asylum in one of those?
  • Openly funding the Ukraine response to Russia is a highly risky tactic for the west and has likely delayed the inevitable diplomatic solution.
  • Some cultures are inferior to those originating in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Islam, in particular, is still desperately needing its version of the Renaissance to arrive.
  • Most of the world’s governments wet the bed over Covid and then failed to admit it when the data was clear in April 2020 and carried on self-harming for over a year.
  • Trans women, particularly the most vocal in the media and social media, are nearly always acting out a sexual fetish, autogynophobia. Their human rights do not trump those of actual women.
  • Stereotypes are often rooted in truth. There’s a reason the Lebanese in Sydney have a reputation for corruption, for example, or Nigerians in London are wildly more successful than Afro-Caribbeans.
  • The gender pay gap has multiple causes, duh patriarchy is unlikely to be a significant one. In fact, we never talk about it when I attend the local Patriarchy Chapter secret meetings.
  • The best way to equalise the gap between Australian aboriginals and the rest of the population is to treat them equally – equal laws, no subsidies to live in remote locations, removal of at risk children, etc.
  • Polyamory is yet another con trick, like third wave feminism, resulting in unhappy and regretful humans.

Bill’s Opinion

There’s loads more verboten topics to go on that list. I may pin this post on the main menu and keep updating it. Feel free to suggest a few in the comments.

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

Fear and self-loathing in Oz Vegas

Apologies for both the interval between posts and the thematic repetition today. I tried to write about something else but the idea that the west hates itself just keeps popping up everywhere.

Let’s forget the self-saucing outrage pudding that is the Whinger and Ginger royal schism; it has an element of western self-loathing but, frankly, a plague on both their houses.

Australia is more amusing however, as it prepares for its traditional festive fun of convincing itself it doesn’t deserve to exist.

One of the half dozen legacy media organisations, TV channel Ten, has publicly announced its new policy of not making reference to Australia’s national holiday, the imaginatively named Australia Day (January 26th).

Imagine RTÉ boycotting St Patrick’s Day, Canal Plus giving Bastille Day a miss or an American TV channel ignoring July 4th. Their boycott announcement would be a virtual suicide letter.

For those who previously hadn’t given enough of a damn about Australia’s national day to find out what it celebrates, here’s the cliff notes; it marks the 1788 landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove. So, not the first arrival of Europeans on the continent, nor the “discovery” of Australia by Captain Cook, but the start of the first European settlement.

Ok, the settlement was a penal colony so, regardless of how the incumbent residents felt about it, not the most auspicious of starts for a nascent nation. History doesn’t care about your feelings though, to misquote Ben Shapiro. That’s yer actual history, Australians, own it.

Those who would boycott Australia Day refer to it as “Invasion Day”. They have a fair point, of course. Things definitely went rapidly downhill for the locals when the British and Irish arrived.

At this point, we could spend a few hundred words describing the historic and ongoing injustices against the aboriginal population, including the modern trend of people fraudulently claiming an aboriginal identity for the kudos and financial rewards available to them in (particularly) eastern city metro areas.

It’s not really the point though, is it? January 26th, 1788 wasn’t the day that started; that was probably more likely to be 19th April, 1770, when James Cook made Australian landfall on a mission specifically to find new lands for Britain. That’s when the Aboriginal people’s future was set.

Bill’s Opinion

The raison d’être of the boycott is a rejection of the Australian history. The date of the national day doesn’t matter at this point; it might as well be Christmas Day or a randomly-selected date from the calendar.

The people who don’t like Australia’s history don’t like a national day that celebrates a significant date in Australia’s history. It probably wouldn’t matter to them what that date was.

Ultimately, they will get their way; the Australian national day will move from January 26th.

How do I know this? Because they are fighting against people who value a feeling of national unity, nationhood. Eventually those people will realise, like the mother of the baby presented to King Solomon, a national day that divides a nation can’t continue forever.

The only real question is, will those boycotting January 26th get behind the new day and come together to celebrate Australia the nation at that point?

I don’t think so. I don’t believe that’s how this ends. See the previous post for reasons why.

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

Eventually, our decline becomes difficult to wilfully ignore. On a personal level, the inability to fit into a favourite pair of trousers is a harsh and obvious indicator of change.

At a national level, articles such as this are a sign we’ve lost our confidence and have done a deal with those who wish us harm.

There is an undercurrent of racism about the negative coverage of Qatar during the World Cup, the first to be held in a Muslim nation.

Western sensitivities around banning alcohol, homosexuality and demands around worker’s rights have a ring of moral colonialism.

Does it? Sensitivities?

That second sentence smuggles the concepts of killing migrant workers through negligence and jailing gays in the conversation under the cover of our differences over alcohol. Moral colonialism indeed.

Dr Tanveer Ahmed goes on to equate dressing as a crusader with wearing Nazi uniforms.

Again, really?

Can you name another culture in the world that would invite immigrants to their country and then provide column inches for such self-loathing in their national newspaper?

Would China allow it? Nigeria? Qatar? Argentina? Singapore? I don’t think so.

Here’s another article to consider, bemoaning the decline of New Zealand, particularly in the quality of its education. The statistics comparing it to Singapore are damning. Even if the Kiwis woke up to the problem today, it’s a multi-generational effort to reverse the decline.

In the UK, we talk of a managed decline since the days of empire, a melancholy acceptance of a slow fall down the world rankings since the war.

It’s worse than that though, as the title of this article infers; Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly”, is how a Hemingway character describes his process to bankruptcy. Perhaps we are in the suddenly stage of our cultural decline.

Britain has been here before, of course. A thousand years ago, we had this pathetic notion of paying off the Vikings to leave us alone, the Danegeld.

But, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, “…once you have paid him the Danegeld, You never get rid of the Dane.

We’ve lost our cultural self-confidence and now our guilt over the past is preventing us from progressing in the future.

Those who would do us harm have noticed this and, like Dr Tanveer Ahmed, they are keen to exploit our insecurities.

Also, as Douglas Murray points out in The War on the West, many of those who would do us harm are us. We’re doing it to ourselves.

Cultural relativism doesn’t stand up to historic or logical scrutiny.

For example, murdering wives on their husband’s funeral pyre is not just an aspect of culture, it’s immoral. Fortunately, those nasty colonial British were culturally insensitive enough to ban it. It’s not clear whether Dr Tanveer Ahmed thinks this was an intervention too far.

Slavery has been the default condition in every human culture forever. The first time in history it was banned was 1833.

When did Dr Tanveer Ahmed’s culture ban slavery? Well, if he identifies with the Islamic world, not until the 20th century. Perhaps he would prefer to identify with the country of his birth, Bangladesh. If so, maybe he could visit some clothing factories there and let us know his findings.

Bill’s Opinion

My Christian faith is not particularly strong, but I’m very grateful for the benefits accrued to me by those who came before us with that strength of faith. Perhaps I am a cultural Christian.

The Victorians had a concept of “muscular Christianity” underpinning much of their global endeavours. We could cynically suggest it was convenient to have a justification of morality to explain why they imposed Common Law on the colonies, but Indian widows benefit from it today, nonetheless.

We’ve since replaced our faith with atheism and lost our confidence in the superiority of our culture along the way.

How do we reverse this cultural decline? are we too late?

Perhaps we could make stronger counter arguments to the cultural relativists. Maybe it’s time for us to seek our own reparations; the abolition of the global slave trade cost Britain dearly.

We not only had to pay compensation to the slave owners but the Royal Navy acted as the oceanic police for a century to close down the trade, both in the Atlantic and the Indian oceans.

There are people alive today in Britain who lost family members at sea in battles with slavers and the entire British economy had a brake on progress during that time, relative to those nations that were late in banning the trade.

If a politician could show their working to calculate a figure, they’d get my vote if they vowed to send some invoices to other countries. Let’s get that dialogue started, rather than taking domestic lectures from Bangladeshis on the negative impact of colonialism.

Are you a “blue collar worker” in Australia?

Are you worried about your job security or wages growth relative to your domestic outgoings?

Did you vote Labor (sic) at the last general election?

If you answered “yes” to both of those questions, consider the possibility you’re a bit of an idiot.

Don’t get me wrong, my opinion is that voting is a diversionary tactic to prevent us from forming lynch mobs and distributing instant righteous justice to politicians.

However, voting for a party that was always going to open the immigration spigots just as the country was hitting 40 year highs in inflation is nothing short of an act of self-harm. Do you practise bulimia too?

Perfect economic storm to hit Australia 2023.

To be fair, the article is written by Leith van Onsolen, a man even more famous than me for predicting 17 of the last zero housing crashes in Australia, so caveat emptor. The difference between us is, the economy isn’t my career expertise unlike LvO.

At the same time as the economy will slow in response to the RBA’s aggressive monetary tightening, Australia’s labour supply will grow sharply in 2023 on the back of record-high net overseas migration (NOM).

A key reason why Australia’s unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since 1974 is because Australia lost hundreds of thousands of migrants over the pandemic. Therefore, many of the jobs created went to unemployed Australians rather than migrant workers.

Record high net overseas migration is going to cause economic stress for Australian workers?

If only there was a lever someone, anyone could pull to influence that. Bueller, anyone?

Bill’s Opinion

Since becoming an Australian citizen, I have never exercised my right (legal duty, actually) to cast a vote. I’ve simply not appreciated the false choice offered me.

The “unaparty” choice became all the more apparent in Covid time when the only difference between the two major parties was who would lock us down earlier and harder.

If I were to vote though, I’d be highly suspicious of a party claiming to be for the working class whilst overseeing a return to immigration at exactly the same time a four decades record slowdown and interest rate shock arrives.

There is one member of the Australian left who gets it though; (National) Socialist, Sally McManus, head of the ACTU.

Covid near-culpa

The half-pologies are coming in thick and fast.

This week, it’s Josh Szeps’ turn. His podcast here, is where you will find his near-culpa.

I have some time for Josh; although there are many aspects to his world view I can find disagreement with, he’s one of the few podcasters on the political left, or in fact, Australian podcasters (but I repeat myself), I feel is capable of thought deeper than a hashtag.

Some of his contemporaneous views can be found on this Twitter thread. He got some stuff right (libertarian principles about border closures), but others wrong (acceptance of the pharmaceutical press releases).

Today’s podcast goes somewhere towards an apology, but he can’t quite get there.

To be clear; if, since January 2020, you have at any time expressed the view or been silent when the policies were announced, that we should keep people in their homes, close schools, force people (either by law or by employer) to take a medical treatment or wear a face mask, then you need to apologise.

It needs to be an apology that’s sincere, and therefore doesn’t contain the word “but” in the sentence.

Until you do that, we’re going to view you with deep suspicion for the remainder of our lives together.

Actually, let’s be honest, we’re going to view you with deep suspicion forever. But we might be able to have some kind of relationship based in civility.

Josh admits to being wrong on two counts; he totally swallowed the lie that the vaccine prevents transmission AND that it was 90% effective at preventing hospitalisation.

He also is halfway to accepting the risk of heart issues in healthy young people is greater than the disease itself.

BUT….

(“Everything before the word ‘but’ is bullshit”)

Josh believes he was wrong but for the right reasons. That is, his epistemological method was correct, while the conclusion it reached may have been incorrect.

More on this later.

The last ten minutes of the podcast are where we hear the real “sorry, not sorry” near-culpa. Apparently, “you weren’t a genius to have feared that and not taken the jab”, for example.

Well, my precautionary principle told me I shouldn’t take it. Yours, on the other hand, tells you not to take the 4th one. I don’t need to claim genius status, but mine isn’t the position that’s changed.

There is also a very telling line; “shut the fuck up because we are in a pandemic”.

Bill’s Opinion

Shut the fuck up? Really?

Shutting the fuck up is what we should do when experiencing actual authoritarianism?

We all have to do some personal accounting for the last three years.

If you took your school age child to get a couple of shots of a medical treatment that you didn’t know was safe, I cannot trust you again. I will have to treat you with extreme caution forever. Your judgement is faulty.

When I say, “didn’t know was safe”, I mean COULDN’T have known was safe. There hadn’t been enough time. It matters not whether the evidence now is it was or wasn’t safe; you took a risk based on a damn lie, “safe and effective”.

At the time, that was unknowable. Your epistemology did not put enough weight on that fact.

Fear overcame and killed your libertarian principles.

What’s missing from Josh’s current view is the accounting for how he got it wrong. It seems just out of reach for him to realise his government lied to him. Not just once, but multiple times on multiple subjects. He’s in Plato’s Cave and he can see the shadows but can’t turn around to see their source.

In 2022, we all now know which side of the barbed wire fence we would have been on. I’m afraid Josh Szeps is due an uncomfortable conversation with himself about which side he would have been on.

Write about what you know

…is the famous advice offered all nascent writers.

But what if you don’t know very much at all?

You become a self-obsessed female writer, churning out the same words, just in a different order, once a week, that’s what.

There’s a few examples kicking around. My favourite is Kate Mulvey, who Desert Sun has written about a few times, pointing out the repetitive and yet inconsistent bollocks she throws out every few weeks (click the link while it still works – he recently told me he has a huge gender reassignment surgery bill was due, so won’t be renewing the web hosting contract).

We also have Jenna Hates, who writes Dear Diary style columns about annoyances most of us don’t have time to be bothered with.

We have a newcomer to the Gonzo-churn ™ genre; Mary Madigan (and a new category for this organ).

Mary’s output is starting to pick up speed now. The problem is, she’s got nothing to write about but herself. Let’s give this problem a name:

Kevin Rudd Disease; (genetic) – an inability to compose more than two sentences without using a first person singular pronoun. Prognosis: fatal tedium.

Today, Mary comments on Jennifer Aniston’s infertility by telling us we shouldn’t comment on Jennifer Aniston’s infertility (yes, I know). Except before she‘s travelled more than halfway though her column, she’s turned it around to be about Mary:

I’m not famous, and my hair isn’t nearly as lovely or iconic, but once you’re a woman over 25 and you have a partner, there’s no escaping the interest in your fertility. Suddenly, everyone in your family behaves like a tabloid journalist and you are treated like a celebrity, but unfortunately, still asked to wash up the dishes.

Forget being asked, how’s the weather? People go directly to: So, when will you have kids? Do you want kids? Have you had your fertility examined? Would you freeze your eggs? Do you make enough money to have a kid?

One can see how that line of questioning would grate. How annoying for Mary.

That’ll be the same Mary Madigan who authored this introspection about her future fertility and ability to financially support a family, right?

The moment I realised I wanted to become a mother was also the moment it occurred to me that I wasn’t in a financial position to afford a baby. In some abstract way, I’ve always figured I’d eventually have a baby. But it’s only been recently, as I hurl towards the end of my twenties, that I’ve felt that longing.

Bill’s Opinion

Jennifer Aniston tacitly signed the deal with the devil when she took the massive coin from show business; privacy was the price. She knew that. It’s been the deal since the silent movie era.

Mary Madigan wants us to stop talking about the thing she got paid to talk about 6 months ago.

Next month she’ll write a column about how we need a national conversation about it, or some such similar bollocks.

Apparently, she earns $65,000 a year for her brand of Gonzo-churn. That’s not a bad effort, but she’ll run out of combinations of the same words to use before she reaches retirement age, so will probably need to find someone else to write about.

If you’re reading this, Mary, Kate Mulvey recycled a few ex-lovers, changing the names around each time. Just a suggestion.

Health experts warn of a new wave of….Covid hysteria

Or, “please believe us and let us be relevant and important again”.

A scan across the headlines of the Australian mejia indicates there is a new wave of covid hysteria building.

Obviously, the betwetters at the Sydney Morning Herald are leading the way:

But News are not going to be outdone:

The ABC crayon-users have been deployed too:

The ABC invokes Betteridge’s Law of Headlines; no, it very definitely isn’t a time for people to get a fifth dose. None of the previous ones did any good, so what magic fairy dust do you think they have sprinkled on the latest one?

For aesthetic and blood pressure reasons I’ve saved you from viewing yet another picture of Kerry “please wash your hands, even though I’ve known it doesn’t spread that way since March 2020” Chant, but take it on trust that she’s back behind the microphone.

What the fuck is going on?

Bill’s Opinion

Anyone in 2022 with an IQ above room temperature must surely know by now, the news media doesn’t report current affairs objectively. Realistically, they never did, how could they?

But the concept that news occurs and is then reported to you is also a busted flush. They decide on the narrative and then commission articles to support it. The 1619 Project being simply a version hiding in plain sight.

A small number of Australian editors have decided we’re not scared enough about the sniffles and a summer cold so they’re going to ramp up the reporting.

The stupid thing to do is to attempt to work out the reason why. Remember, that way madness lies.

….but doubling down as the narrative of their safetyism, lockdowns, ineffective and dangerous medical interventions collapses would be a reasonable guess.