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Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Dec 24, 2013 14:15:54 GMT 10
"...gravy train staffed largely by well-paid women"
For a guy who says he stands against the arbitrary divisions which separate us, he sure likes throwing shit at people on the other sides of those arbitrary divisions.
I also do not understand what his problem is with "well-paid women". If they were shittily-paid women would that be more to his liking? Or would he just prefer to see well-paid men instead?
If it's staffed by women, that's probably because they're the ones who applied. The public service is actually pretty effectively non-sexist, at least at the less stratospheric levels (a friend once observed that it's very ageist though - if you want to get ahead, you better start early. No idea if that's true, though).
Something else I have noticed here is that young women in the public service are frequently (but not always) much more career-focused than the guys - they want opportunities, they see opportunities and they grab them; and they do the study and work to make sure they have the best chance that they can. Maybe that's just the places I've visited, but it's a great thing to see. I wish more of the young blokes understood it, though ... actually, I wish _I_ did ...
Also, depending on the qualifications they have, $70k doesn't necessarily sound all that well-paid to me, at least for a position in Sydney. In Canberra that's not huge - you'll be struggling to buy a house here on that salary if you have a family to support. I imagine Sydney and Canberra are pretty close on that score.
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Post by angra on Dec 25, 2013 7:56:00 GMT 10
MoC - you can't even think about buying a house in Sydney unless you are on at least $100k. I imagine the same is true for Melbourne.
Solution - move to the country, where the REAL people are!
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jreidy
Junior Member
Posts: 60
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Post by jreidy on Dec 25, 2013 16:52:23 GMT 10
"largely staffed by well paid women..." Hilarious, I would bet the m/f staffing ratios are at 49/51 at best, well that happens to be the population as a whole. I don't recall him or other conservatives saying Qantas or other failing companies were staffed largely by well paid men.
Merry Christmas everyone.
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Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Jan 1, 2014 20:32:19 GMT 10
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Post by angra on Jan 2, 2014 9:01:12 GMT 10
Yep. And he has a snide piece about a person reported for genital mutilation (what country was he visiting? Why is this a secret!) while ignoring the string of violent attacks and shootings that occurred over the holiday period.
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Post by jack on Jan 3, 2014 19:26:00 GMT 10
Weird huh? Someone who's so cavalier about lobbing FOI requests on scientific institutions is now complaining about how the rescue of the Akademik Shokalskiy from Antarctic sea ice is disruptive of 'serious' science. With hindsight, I guess, the Australian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014 may not have been such a good idea. But then, where were all the naysayers back in November when they were preparing to leave? But this is cool - the Aurora Australis ship webcam... www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
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Post by jack on Jan 4, 2014 20:01:49 GMT 10
Andrew Bolt, a.k.a. Bolt of the Antarctic, has applied his renowned maritime and polar exploration expertise to compile another list, this time of questions to be asked of all and sundry involved in the ill-fated Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014, a.k.a. the Spirit of Mawson Expedition. The following is my attempt to quell his thirst for Teh Troooth. Who paid for this expedition?Looks to me like one of those public/private partnerships so favoured by conservatives, with costs defrayed by paying passengers. How did the expedition team come to include Turney’s wife and two young children? How serious was this scientific endeavor?Presumably paid for by Turney through an arrangement with the operators of the vessel. The expedition included a team of 20 or so of Turney's scientific colleagues. Does the presence of a scientists' spouse and kids necessarily have a bearing on 'seriousness'? Particularly when there's a further complement of paying tourists? Was the choice of ship wise, given it is not an icebreaker?The MV Akademik Shokalskiy has apparently been operated for Antarctic adventure tours for a number of years. Their web page states: The forty-eight passenger Akademik Shokalskiy was originally designed and built in Finland for polar and oceanographic research. This 216-ft ship is nimble and ice-strengthened, capable of reaching some narrow passages on Antarctica tours and Arctic expeditions that many larger cruise ships cannot. Cruising speed in open water is 10 knots.
www.southernexplorations.com/antarctica-tours-cruises/adventureClassAkademikShokalskiy.htm It might be assumed Chris Turney put his faith in what he thought to be an experienced operator of such voyages. Perhaps it was misplaced faith, or perhaps it was just a perfect storm of rotten bad luck. How did the ship, in these days of satellite imaging, high quality weather forecasts and radar, come to get stuck in ice?Perhaps ask the ship's master, who bears responsibility for conduct of the voyage, or alternatively the owners/operators. How much did the rescue cost?As is now well-known, according to recent news reports, $400,000. Who pays for this rescue?I understand ultimately the vessel's owners/operators and underwriters have responsibility under relevant maritime laws and conventions. Why have the ABC and Fairfax media, so keen at first to announce this expedition was to measure the extent and effects of global warming, since omitted that fact from their reports after the expedition became ice-bound?I guess for the same reason that 98% (apparently) of US news reports had omitted that angle. When 70-odd souls became stuck in sea ice, it ceased to be a novelty sciencey thing and became a human interest drama. Why have all those reports - and the expedition leader himself - neglected to mention that sea ice around Antarctica has increased over the past three decades - and is greater than the ice cover Douglas Mawson found a century ago?Have they 'neglected' that? I'll leave that one for open and honest debate, if that's at all possible. Bolt also seized upon the following list of questions from Anthony Watts... How much damage has this fiasco done to real science expeditions in Antarctica, not only from a delayed logistics standpoint, but also from PR standpoint?Probably roughly the same amount of damage it would have done if MV Akademik Shokalskiy had come to grief on any other of its adventure cruises, which they do quite regularly during the Antarctic summer. Conceivably it was just Chris Turney's rotten bad luck that this happened on his particular expedition. As for the 'PR standpoint', I suppose the damage will depend on how vicious and mendacious Bolt and the other wingnuts are prepared to be. Why did the stranded ship reach out for weather forecasts and data when they should have been equipped for this in the first place?Again, a matter for the ship's master and owners/operators. Presumably the ship's facilities met the standards required by the underwriters. If not, there may be hell to pay in some boardroom somewhere. Who will be responsible if the ship ends up being stuck in ice permanently or gets its hull crushed and sinks?…The owners/operators and underwriters. Ferchrissakes. Why would Turney book this ship when it has only the barest of ratings for sea ice?…See above. Was Turney mislead [sic] about the intensity of the ice by his own beliefs that Antarctic sea ice was melting?You'd have to have that discussion with Turney, but I have serious doubts he would get anything like a fair hearing. UPDATE: Questions emboldened to enhance readability.
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Post by jack on Jan 6, 2014 10:54:53 GMT 10
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Post by angra on Jan 6, 2014 11:28:52 GMT 10
I don't suppose Bolt has bothered to read this - www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/2014/jan/04/antarctic-expedition-was-worth-it-chris-turney"Unluckily for us, there appears to have been a mass breakout of thick, multiyear sea ice on the other side of the Mertz Glacier; years after the loss of the Mertz Glacier tongue. There was nothing to suggest this event was imminent. We have had regular updates on the state of the sea ice in the area and had been monitoring the region for the last year. We also had regular weather forecasts from two different sources: one from the Australian Antarctic Division base at Casey and the other a European company called Meteoexploration used by expeditioners. Both forecasts suggested consistent conditions... Let's be clear. Us becoming locked in ice was not caused by climate change. Instead it seems to have been an aftershock of the arrival of iceberg B09B which triggered a massive reconfiguration of sea ice in the area." They were actually on the return leg of the expedition and had gathered much scientific data.
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Post by jack on Jan 9, 2014 9:22:48 GMT 10
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Post by angra on Jan 16, 2014 10:34:23 GMT 10
Poor Andrew. He's just back from New Zealand where it has been cold and there is still snow on the mountains! So AGW must be a fantasy.
But now he's back in Melbourne "I am plunged back in the same global warming madness, with a local heat wave treated by warmists as a proxy for a world-wide heating."
Obviously he didn't attend any classes in Logic during his one year at Uni.
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Post by jack on Jan 19, 2014 11:00:47 GMT 10
Bolt and Timmeh Blair continue tenaciously to hold to account the former PM Julia Gillard. Both bloggers note Gillard's failure to live up to "her vow to 'call out misogyny and sexism wherever I see it'". The indictment, apparently, is that Gillard squibbed it when she delivered a lecture on 15 Jan to the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research (ECSSR) in Dubai, a country in which women can be gaoled when they try to report being raped. Bolt's Exhibit A is the avowal Gillard made in Parliament during the course of Parliamentary 'debate': Enough is enough... When I see sexism and misogyny, I’m gonna call ‘em for what they are. But wait, it appears that statement has been elided. Here's what Gillard actually said: Enough is enough. I've had enough, Australian women have had enough. When I see sexism and misogyny, I'm gonna call 'em for what they are.
www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3608051.htm So, inconveniently, Gillard's avowal was made in the context of domestic political argey-bargey. Bolt and Blair, however, are interested in the avowal that some people thought that she made (as their hero Abbott might put it). Bolt's Exhibit B quotes Blair who quotes Gillard from the Q/A after her speech: Gillard barely touched on women’s issues during her speech, but there was this answer to a question (at 1:07:40) from a New Zealand student who asked about female representation in Middle Eastern politics:
Ah, well, ah, it, you know, it’s, ah, not, not for me, ah, to, ah, you know, determine how, ah, countries and individuals determine these issues ... So much for her vow to "call out misogyny and sexism wherever I see it". Blair's quote is actually a 10-second preamble of Gillard's grinding 2-minute reply, which I've painstakingly transcribed (give or take a couple of ah's) as follows: ... people will think them through for themselves, (ah) but if you're asking me what are my values and what drives me and what's my perspective on the world, (ah) my perspective on the world is that, (ah) men and women are equal in every respect, (ah) and that (ah) that means for societal organisations, (ah) whatever (ah) aspect of society we're looking at, whether that's (ah) business or (ah) government decision making (ah) or civil society organisations or legal systems, (ah) that ultimately that should replicate and represent the equality between men and women, (ah) and I think that that is both a question of (ah) philosophy and human rights, (ah) but it's also a question of capacity, (ah) because if you believe as I do that merit is equally distributed between the sexes, (ah) and you look at institutions that are predominantly male, (ah) then that does mean that there are a lot of women of merit who aren't getting to show their talents and capacities. (ah) I think all of these questions are (ah) pressing in our world in... in... they're always pressing questions but they're also in our world, in our economies, in the economies that we will live in in the future, the economy that (ah) you'll grow to see and work in - obviously, being a younger person - when people like me are well and truly put out to pasture - um, the world you'll live in is one where the premium for economies will be on knowledge and innovation, (ah) and so people won't be able (ah) to take their full place in that global economy (ah) unless they are relying on the skills and capacity of all of their people, because all of the brain-power (ah) will be needed to hold your competitive position in that world. So, Gillard in fact did argue the case for female emanicipation, albeit in a very drily 'diplomatic' delivery. But of course Bolt and Blair are quite correct to call Gillard out on her hypocrisy!!1!!!Obviously she ought to have let the Dubai ruling elite have it with both blazing barrels, thus perhaps sparking a nasty diplomatic incident and giving the Dubai authorities a pretext for limiting further intellectual engagement with the West. Yep, that'd show 'em! CHEAP-SHOT UPDATE: Forgot to mention earlier that Bolt titled his post "Gillard can't shout 'misogynist' in Arabic." Hilariously, if you check the url for that post it would appear someone can't spell 'misogynist' in English... blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/gillard_cant_shout_mysoginist_in_arabic/Education Revolution should have started closer to home, etc.
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Post by angra on Jan 22, 2014 5:59:36 GMT 10
To save yourself the trouble of wading through the excrement, someone has set up a twitter feed of comments to Bolt's blog. The latest are are full of praise for The Bolt Report being extended to one hour. "One hour is great news Andrew. But I hope it won’t clash with ... Hymns of Praise." and "You could start with the Lord's prayer" (maybe this one is sarcasm) twitter.com/boltcomments
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Post by jack on Jan 23, 2014 15:49:49 GMT 10
Damn that Ben Cubby, doesn't he know it's all about Andrew?
Anyway, the throbbing of my favourite corn indicates it's getting nigh on time to reprise the meme about the Australia Day Race (Mini) Riot.
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Post by angra on Jan 24, 2014 13:55:22 GMT 10
I find it amusing that Bolt launches vendattas against anyone who evens mentions him, let alone offers a word of criticism. Now Ben Cubby is in the Bolt's laser sights because he tweeted in an offhand moment that Bolt was deranged.
Yet how much slagging off has Bolt been guilty of over the years, of anyone who doesn't share his beliefs?
This should be fun. Nothing like a bit of journo bitchiness to liven things up.
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