Hello Pub patrons and a hoppity happity easter to you all.
For a bit of fun welcome to “THE PUBS FIRST TRIVA CHALLENGE”
Every 1/2 hr “or close to it” I will ask some questions. They will be a mix of politics,history,science,geography,anything really that comes to my simple mind.
You have strictly 15 mins to answer . NO exceptions,last minute pleadings will be dismissed unless accompanied by a suitable bribe.
NO GOGGLING ANSWERS ALLOWED AT ALL. YOU MUST ANSWER BASED ON YOUR OWN KNOWLEDGE. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT . I AM RELYING ON YOUR HONESTY SO I SHOULDN’T,T HAVE TO WORRY AS YOU ARE ALL DECENT,LAW ABIDING HONOURABLE PEOPLE.
You can join in at any time of the game but only from the current questions. Accompanied by standard bribe for being tardy
I am the sole judge and no arguing will be allowed unless accompanied of course, by aforementioned bribe.
Prizes will be determined at a later time. The amount of bribes I receive may have a bearing on the prizes.
No chance of a ICAC inquiry here.
Have fun the first game will begin at 3.00pm
DId I mention I am open to bribery?
THE PUB 
Can’t see the problem here…
BK, you’re a true champion. Thanks for your help in collating the pieces you do every day, but also for your pointed comments, which are always full of wit and wisdom.
BK
Many happy happy’s, and thanks for giving us a gift everyday with your links.
BK – may I add my congrats on your B’day and thanks for the links with which I start my day!
Yes, many happy returns, BK. Long may your good health and your daily reports continue with the wit and perception we cannot get in the MSM.
And as others noted yesterday, we are extremely privileged hereto get so many good links from BK, Leroy and Leone. The blog, of course, has strength from so many astute and eloquent posters, but this trio bring so many links to our attention so often.
Happy birthday BK
BK,
Conversation piece…
This is a piece I sent to a lady last year, who publishes a modest quarterly journal in the Adelaide Hills…she enquired about a piece on the subject of “Art”. I sent her a piece along with the explaining email..she decided to publish both, as she believed they complimented eachother.
Hello Audrey.
Here is that piece I told you about….interesting ; the theme is one I have mulled over for many a day. Coming from the working class and being so poorly educated, I have many times felt the “cut” of scorn and the scourge of mockery at my early clumsy attempts at creativity in writing and such.
Curious, that most scorn comes not from those sympathetic to the artistic creative desire, but from one’s own class….as if one was “getting too uppity”….My 86yr. old mother, whose account of her and her young sister’s trip with their parents in an open rowboat from Renmark to Mildura in the depression and published in “the Riverlander” in 1958, was originally met with horror by those very companions for fear of exposing their poverty to the world!…..and even now she will not put into print some very interesting stories, lest her still surviving relatives become insulted at the telling.
I still receive a casual dismissive wave-of-hand by some academic friends for what they perceive “popularist” writing style. I simply reply that while I may not have a framed diploma from a registered tertiary institution, I have had “coaching” from some of the best writers in the world…all just sitting there on my bookshelf!
You see, Audrey…I have truly learnt that lesson..: “The whole world runs on bluff!”
Anyway…I hope you can use it….regs’ Joe.
A Work of Art…or…The Art of work?
The motivation for this piece came from four flat-box displays of ladies embroided cotton / lace handkerchiefs. I had purchased them some years before at a garage sale for the pitiful sum of fifty cents each box…..one from Nth. Ireland, two from Switzerland and the other from China. Looking at them in their tissued, flat boxes, with the delicate lace-edges folded into diamonds or squares, the brilliant white contrasted with the small embroided flowers and sundry delicate patterns, I thought them too, too beautiful to be used other than as a display…So I made four frames and placed those “works of art” behind glass to be admired rather than soiled.I could imagine the girls or women hard-at-work, worrying over those pieces of cloth…..Pieces of work became pieces of art…hence the title of this article!
I am an artisan(tradesman)…my father was an artisan (stone-mason)..the people who made those hankies were artisans, a multitude of people producing, constructing, moulding, knitting and on and on are artisans…coming from the French ; “without art”.
Getting back to my father ; the stone-mason…in his employment around Adelaide he built many stone walls and such. He built that curving weather wall along the Glenelg foreshore..by the sideshows..(is it still there?). He told me years later that if I was to go to one particular place along that wall, I could see, shaped within the stone work, a map of Italy, with all the provinces in varying shades of stone, built cunningly into the wall!….indeed ; a cunning stunt!…Artisan becomes artist!
So perhaps it could be proposed : Who stationed “artists” and “artisans” in their prospective environs? What are the boundaries of these environs..ie. when does artisan become artist and vice-versa? Can art be interpreted as the “one-off” piece of deliberate intent? If an artisan uses his craft skills to produce a “one-off” article for decoration or beauty, does that one piece become a work of art? Likewise, if the artist takes a “one-off” work and by reproductive prints, mass-produces many images, does that work then become craft?
Are there then ANY boundaries to “art”?…does art exist in itself? Or is it an adjunct to physical existence…and not a separate construction of the imagination?…..and if it was, then surely every wicked creation, every insidious act could also be construed as a “work of art” alongside sublime desire!
Perhaps the boundry between Art and the Artisan can be adjudged as ; Artisan being a measure of one’s craft skills, whereas art ; the measured, skillfull baring of one’s soul!…..while there is chance of ridicule in the former, there is every chance of absolute condemnation in the latter….How deeply we choose to express one or the other is perhaps a judgement on one’s personal strength of character.
Can everybody be an artist..or is there art for everybody?….I’m certain the answer is ; yes, to both…although there may not be a market for everybodys “art”! There is a risk of mockery in too much display and, I’m sure many of us are aware that the road between flattery and mockery is VERY short and VERY straight! But here again, the depth of soul-baring would, I’m sure , lift that sublime piece towering above the dross, such is the power of sincerety and in the end, there being so many avenues of material, visual or musical expression these days, the Andy Warhol claim of 15 minutes of fame may just be around the corner for all of us……The big question is : Would you want it ?
Just Google the URL or title and click through to the top result to see more of these.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/campbell-newman-man-jon-grayson-to-keep-stake-in-eddie-obeid-firm/story-e6frgczx-1226890797237#
Campbell Newman man Jon Grayson to keep stake in Eddie Obeid firm
Michael McKenna The Australian April 21, 2014 12:00AM
QUEENSLAND’S top public servant intends to retain his major stake in a company set up last year with former Australian Water Holdings boss Nick Di Girolamo and Eddie Obeid Jr.
Jon Grayson, picked by Campbell Newman to become director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet because of his business experience, says he has only a passive interest in Gasfield Water and Waste Services and is not aware of any dealings by the company since he joined the Queensland government, in March 2012.
Mr Di Girolamo and Mr Obeid were among six equal shareholders in GWWS when it was set up last May but transferred their shares to Dennis Jabour, the company’s sole director and Mr Obeid’s cousin, in August.
Mr Grayson said GWWS was created to “facilitate the exit of AWH’’ from an earlier joint venture, Gasfields Water Management, he had with the water infrastructure company in Queensland.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/ibac-resists-phone-taps-but-seeks-broader-powers/story-e6frgczx-1226890690228#
IBAC resists phone taps but seeks broader powers
Chip Le Grand The Australian April 21, 2014 12:00AM
VICTORIA’S peak anti-corruption agency has moved away from telephone taps in stark contrast to its predecessor, the disbanded Office of Police Integrity, whose prolific use of listening devices raised concerns in political and police circles.
The Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, the body that replaced the OPI, has only one confirmed use of a telephone tap warrant over the past two years.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/proposed-ppl-cuts-no-solution/story-fn59niix-1226890705406#
Proposed PPL cuts ‘no solution’
DENNIS SHANAHAN, POLITICAL EDITOR The Australian April 21, 2014 12:00AM
TONY Abbott is expected to reject Commission of Audit proposals designed to rein in his signature $5.5 billion a year paid parental leave scheme and reduce its cost to the budget and business.
The Australian understands the commission has put forward a range of alternatives that would limit the scope of the scheme but the Coalition is cold on the proposals because they do not maximise the attraction to as many women as possible to enter the workforce and increase participation levels.
The options in the audit report, which is expected to be released within two weeks, would cut the number of parents who would qualify for paid leave and ease costs on big businesses facing a 1.5 per cent levy to help pay for the scheme.
One senior government source said the commission’s report “defines the problems but does not offer solutions”.
The Prime Minister has been under intense pressure to reduce the PPL scheme that would give parents earning up to $150,000 a year their full salary for up to six months.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/environmental-hurdles-for-airport-rail-link-20140419-36xt2.html
http://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/concerns-aired-over-east-west-link/story-fnii5sms-1226890649687
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/20/disability-pension-for-under-35s-comes-under-coalition-scrutiny
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/rubin-hurricane-carter-dead-at-76/article18071079/
http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/japan-south-korea-set-up-diplomatic-channel-to-address-comfort-women-issue/
As Mandy Rice-Davies would say, “They would say that, wouldn’t they?’
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/ama-gives-cautious-support-to-disability-support-crackdown-20140420-zqwz5.html
http://www.andrewleigh.com/blog/?p=6106
https://twitter.com/bencubby/status/458040244319690752%5D
http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/overlapping-health-system-just-helps-to-jump-queue-20140420-36yoj.html
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/funding-csiro-is-vital-if-we-want-to-future-proof-our-world-20140420-zqwym.html
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BK.
A Grange of your birthyear is on its way, I expect a thank you note on CFS letterhead.
Jaycee,
Fantastic piece. I can relate to your ‘explaining’ email and I reckon your 86yo mum came from the same book as my mum despite the fact they would have been a couple of decades apart in age. For many years I have yearned to write my mother’s story but she cottoned on to me and clammed up. After she died I began quizzing my oldest brother in an effort to fill in the gaps in what I remember and what I eased out of mother before she got wind of what I was up to. My brother pretended to be helpful but finally in desperation he bluntly told me to give it away because ‘they aren’t all dead yet’ !!!
Puff
1945 was a little before Max Schubert’s first creation, but thanks for the thought!
It’s blowing a gale up here so we may have to eat inside at lunch. Today is the first opportuniity my dear old mum will have had to see little Logan. She’ll go right off!
Happy birthday BK. 69 is such an auspicious number with potential for all sorts of things to happen. I wish you great enjoyment of this coming year!
yes, Janice…when I read your writings, I could see that you were or are trying to sustain that “passage of familial knowledge” that used to be so wonderfully related down the generations through oral tales…but with the now greater use of “in print” copy, there is a tendency toward the fear of such copy falling into the “wrong hands”
I heard through the “family grapevine” that many letters by my (long deceased) grandmother to her young married children were being witheld from me as there was a suspicion that I was “up to something” and : horror of horrors!..may even be trying to “besmirch” my grandmother’s good name!??….though, as I have explained…just what in God’s wide world a “poverty-enriched” family and mother could have got up to in those deprived years of the depression and the 2nd.ww. , besides “duffing a couple of sheep or rooting the station manager” could have been is beyond myself rationality….(I didn’t really say “rooting the station manager”) but I did find the answer in an obscure letter…she could have been..just possibly, but certainly not probably ..; a communist sympathiser!! …whereas, in truth, she was more likely a B.A. Santamaria person, if she was anything!…but you get the drift…
Just read Abbotts statement on the death of Neville Wran. It’s utterly contemptible. No more than desultory passing wave in Wrans direction.No empathy, no decency and no sense of history. If Abbott approved the words, he should be called out.
BK
Usually an indication of what it will be like in Canberra tomorrow.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2014/apr/21/australia-has-it-pretty-damn-good-so-why-arent-we-cheering
https://news.vice.com/articles/australia-wants-to-selectively-slaughter-sharks-for-three-more-years
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/22795602/one-stop-shop-not-ready/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/times-are-so-tough-in-italy-that-mafiosi-are-considering-getting-jobs-9272384.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/melanoma-rates-in-the-uk-are-up-five-times-on-the-1970s-9272463.html
My take on Abbott’s insult to the Late Mr Wran and hhis family:
Abbott is a low-born guttersnipe who never rose above the sewer he was birthed in. His parents did the most appalling job of raising a stupid cunning human being to be the most cold entitled mannerless creep that has ever been inflicted on the Australian people.
If I had my way I would deport the lot of them back to the UK.
In all the convicts, crooks, fortune-seekers, adventurers and unfortunates, among with the good, talented and ordinary people to be sent or willingly came to Australia, the Abbotts would have to be the most destructive family ever to arrive on our shores. Their son is the worst example of humanity to ever live in this land. And in that I include Ivan Milat et al.
Or maybe they did their best by trying to contain him in a seminary where rules would modify his behaviour and sociopaths can be accepted?
In my opinion, if he did not get a privileged and protected upbringing he could have ended up as a serial killer. I think he gets off on causing suffering, and the more people suffer, the more he thinks they deserve it. In the olden times he would have been the King’s Torturer.
It is my humble honest opinion of the man and I am sticking to it.
621
Leroy
Not only this problem for them.
About a fortnight ago the Italian Police arrested over 50 of them all along the Italian Riviera.
This is worth a read , quite good satire.
http://theaimn.com/2014/04/21/19611/
My family history has to wait until the oldies have passed. And there is nuttin anyone can do because I know it ALL. tehetehetehetehe.
Vale Neville Wran.
At he risk of name-dropping, I happened to know Neville Wran when I was a member of the Double Bay Branch of the ALP, circa 1968-70. That paradox alone is worth retelling. It was in the heart of big-money, deep-blue Tory territory. Darling Point, Bellevue Hill, Point Piper and Rose Bay were all close by. Yet it was the most stimulating Labor branch I have ever belonged to.
Its active members included Neville Wran, Jim McClelland, and Lionel Murphy, plus Prof Sol Encel and various professionals. The Young Labor sub-branch was very active, It was intellectually stimulating going to any meeting and exchanging ideas. Wran, unlike his two close friends, had not then entered parliament, albeit he was active at conferences. He was a tireless worker even then in keeping the branch lively. He had charisma, and we all hoped he’d run some time, even if it had to be in the Senate or the state upper house, which is usually the price of living in such an area. He did later run in the upper house, until the heavies got behind his push for leadership and found him Bass Hill.
NSW politics is both a bearpit and a can of worms. It is impossible to survive that without some tarnishing, but he did better than most. He set up a good record on native forests, and on taking a firm stand against the Big Oil- Auto Industry heavies in forcing lead additives out of petrol. NSW with 40% of the car consumer market did not even need the rest of Australia onside.
Cyril Wyndham ranked him the best Labor leader he’d known. I wouldn’t go that far, but he was certainly among the greats.
GD
“Diamond” Jim …
RC reports are usually useless.
His produced a useful one. Particularly if you had access to the ‘classified’ volumes.
Yes, I always found Diamond Jim worthwhile, Ctar. So much so, that I was a little worried that towards the end he retreated from his former closeness to Lionel Murphy.
Murph seemed to me a little like Lloyd George – achieved a lot while still having some roguish elements about him. Wran never dropped his loyalty to Murphy, at one point getting into trouble with the law over it.
From the link to the AMA support for DSP changes –
Honestly, what utter garbage. NFI of the process for getting this miserable payment at all.
From the way all these experts and doctors and MPs have been talking it sounded like a GP’s word was all there was to getting DSP. I thought things must have become much easier since I applied in around 1995, so I checked. It’s still the same rigmarole. You fill in a form – 30 pages worth – that asks intimate questions about your family, your living arrangements and your relationship(s) as well as your health and medical problems. Your GP fills in a form. If you are being treated by a specialist as well they write a report. You list all those treating you are working with you on a health issue – counsellors, psychiatrists, psychologists, physiotherapists, social workers, whatever – on the form. Centrelink might contact any or all of them and ask for a report. Then you take all the paperwork to Centrelink and they pack you off for an assessment by a ‘health practitioner’ aka a doctor. It used to be a doctor with a government contract to do this work, around here it was a local GP who I knew well socially. He did all the Centrelink work. Maybe that’s different now, maybe they have a list of ‘health practitioners’ to choose from, maybe not, I haven’t looked into that bit. BUT the rest of the process is the same. You go for your assessment interview, taking along all your relevant scans, X-rays, appliances, medical information whatever. You will be asked about your medical problems and your ability to work. You will be given the third degree, in other words. The assessor then writes a report and some person at Centrelink, after reading that report and studying all your paperwork decides whether or not you can have a pension.
All your GP does is fill in a form explaining your medical issues and giving an assessment of the ways your medical problems affect your ‘ability to function’. The word ‘work’ is not mentioned on the medical report form at all.
So – there is still the ‘government doctor’ involved, despite what Dr AMA says, and your GP certainly does not make any decision about whether or not you can work or whether you should or should not receive support.
I really wish these idiots would get their facts sorted before they run to the media. It took me five minutes to find all I needed to know.
GD
On Murphy an observation – It is always a serious mistake, repeated many times here in Australia, to make someone Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Customs, and ASIO.
Something will always go wrong that can’t be shared.
I remember quite some years later delving into an event that happened in a Transit Lounge at Sydney Airport for I don’t know quite what – not corruption, just a not great decision, I guess.
Despite that a new building for the A-G’s Dept in the early 1990’s was named the ‘Lionel Murphy Building’ (as was the biggest law library in the Sth Hemisphere).
How nice – little Timmy Wilson gets a salary boost.
http://mobile.news.com.au/finance/money/new-human-rights-commissioner-tim-wilson-gets-expenses-package-of-56000-on-top-of-salary/story-e6frfmci-1226891151479
Leone,
He needs it for those snappy suits he wears.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/twice-done-over-by-onearmed-bandits-20140420-36ywu.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-21/national-water-commission-budget-cuts/5401140
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-21/matthewson-shine-a-light-on-shady-lobbying/5401058
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/during-asia-trip-obama-seeks-to-rebalance-americas-relationship-with-the-region/2014/04/20/055e3ba0-c73c-11e3-9f37-7ce307c56815_story.html
Good grief – powdered alcohol. What could possibly go wrong?
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/20/palcohol-powdered-alcohol_n_5181672.html
The unshakeable, undeniable, unavoidable Nemesis stalking Abbott and the LNP.
From Theodor Mommsen ; “History of Rome”.
“…But history will not submit to curtail the true leader of their due honour, because her verdict may lead simplicity astray in the presence of bad leaders, and may give to roguery occasion to lying and fraud. History too is a Bible, and if she cannot any more than the Bible hinder the fool from misunderstanding and the devil from quoting her, she too will be able to bear with and to repay, deed for deed, them both.”
Such is and will be the judgement and fate awaiting those blackguards.
leonetwo
I don’t think Palcohol will live up to its hype.. Ethanol has a freezing point below -100 C so it must be absorbed by something.to make the powder form . For a generous allowance of one part ethanol to 3 part absorbent that would meant for just a can of beer you’d have to have about 60 grams of powder.
Abbott is a mean little man, and that is how history and herstory will rate him.
NEW THREAD – THE SACKING OF THE CES
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