Blogs

“There is no more important title in our democracy than ‘Australian Citizen’.

And we should make no apology for asking those who seek to join our Australian family to join us as Australian patriots - committed to the values that define us, committed to the values that unite us.

Our success as a multicultural society is built on strong foundations which include the confidence of the Australian people that their government, and it alone, determines who comes to Australia.”
- Malcom Turnbull calling for migrants to become 'Australian patriots'

“When it comes to taking on extremism and terrorism things have to change”
- Theresa May

The person responsible for taking on extremism and terrorism in the UK is the Home Secretary.

Theresa May was Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016.

During that time she attempted to cut 20% from the police budget.

Since May became home secretary in 2010 total police numbers in England and Wales have fallen by 46,700 or 19.5%.

In the UK three companies control of 71% of national newspaper circulation and six companies control 81% of regional newspapers. In the USA six companies control 90% of all media, that’s consolidated from 50 companies in 1983. In Australia four companies - News Australia, Fairfax Media, Seven West Media and APN News – are estimated to account for over 90% of media industry revenue in 2015/16.

Batshit crazy, conspiracy-theorist, One Nation candidate Malcolm Roberts was elected to the Australian Senate with 77 first preference votes. He is paid a base salary of $241,130 per year plus expenses.

The CSIRO is the Federal Government body responsible for scientific research and development in Australia. The Federal Government has cut $115 million from their budget, axed 120 jobs (including 100 scientists), and appointed Christopher Pyne as the minister responsible for them.

It’s so sad. The good old corporate dinosaurs that are making a buck from industries that do more damage than good are coming under increasing pressure from managed Ethical Funds. Over the past few years the amount of money invested in ethical funds in Australia has doubled to over 50 billion dollars. Surprise, surprise those investors who put their money in managed ethical funds received a better return than from the traditional managed fund.

The biggest smiles in Congress and the US Senate are on the faces of the Republican ideologues. Blindsided by President Donald Groper during the never ending US Presidential campaign, they will be the major beneficiaries of President Groper’s political demise. Irrespective of what we may think of President Groper’s behaviour, he is not, unlike those Republican Senators and Congress members who currently have a Cheshire cat size grin on their dials, an ideologue.

Have you noticed how the interaction between human beings involved in a financial transaction is charging. I’m old enough to remember the days when cash and bartering were the main means people used for their day to day transactions. Today the act of passing change from one person to another is slowly being superseded by the ubiquitous tap of a plastic card. Technological innovations have not only had a significant impact on financial transactions, we now pay a third party for the luxury of being involved in a financial transaction, they have also changed the way human beings interact.

There are “dole bludgers” and “corporate bludgers”. When it comes to 24 carat bludgers, Australia’s banking oligopoly – National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, Westpac and their little brother Macquarie Bank – take the cake. The Treasurer Scott Morrison has done the big four banks (who between them control over 80% of Australia's financial system) a big favour by introducing a six basis points (0.06%) banking debt levy which will claw back approximately 1.5 billion dollars a year over the next four years.

You and I are bipeds, the most dangerous and cunning animals created by evolutionary forces on planet earth. When our ancestors took their first tentative steps and raised their heads above the savanna two to three million years ago, we scavenged what the other animals left for us. Our ability to clearly see the horizon when we stood up on our two hind legs was our eventual undoing. Nature played with our DNA creating branches of the human evolutionary tree that eventually petered out. The first human prototypes were just that, human prototypes. Evolution is never linear.

FAKE: to practise deception by giving a false indication or appearance of something.
PROPAGANDA: the systematic widespread promotion of a certain set of ideas, doctrines or values.