Nikon P950 @ 2,000mm hand held.  See below for the normal eye view.

Another glorious winter day, 23deg and yay! it’s the winter solstice and the days start getting longer again. Our winters are not hard to bear, but I do prefer the summers.

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A couple of weeks ago I mentioned my belief that the tendency to left wing progressive politics is directly related to intelligence. High intelligence = Labor, low intelligence = Liberal (actually they lie as usual, they are conservatives).

Here’s a quote from The Guardian today: “In western countries, people with high education levels have been moving steadily to the left, while people with less education have been moving to the right, as French economist Thomas Piketty’s latest research shows.”

So it’s not just me.

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Yesterday I mentioned Crikey, a web site dedicated to a deeper analysis and with a bit more irreverent and iconoclastic viewpoint. It  was started by Stephen Mayne, who’s best known as a shareholder activist. He buys shares in companies so he can attend annual shareholder meetings and ask hard questions of the CEOs, CFOs and board members who don’t like being put under pressure. I’ve known about it for several years but being a paywall site, I held off subscribing.

However, in this lockdown period, and saving money by not having to spend it on fuel for the cars (noticed that?), I decided to subscribe at last. I’ve taken out a three month subscription at the moment for $55, but I think I’ll continue, especially as they’re offering 12 months for $99.

When you do the sums, it’s a 5-day a week newspaper for 38c a  day. Likewise, I subscribe to The Guardian for $120 a year. That’s a 7 days a week newspaper for 33c a day. That’s a lot cheaper than printed newspapers were. The only drawback is it’s harder to wrap the food-scraps up in. 🙂

I raise the article about how priests in the Catholic church are simultaneously employees and not employees according to whether the church is in court or whispering in the PM’s ear as an inspiring article. It revealed something that hasn’t been in the public’s knowledge and needs to be known.

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Nikon P950

I mentioned that I’ve received my new camera, shown above. Its claim to fame is that the lens goes from 24mm at the wide end to 2000mm at the long end. That’s longer than the longest telephoto available in the film days. That would be pretty useless without image stabilisation and/or a tripod, but stabilisation is supposed to allow hand holding in good light. I put it to the test yesterday. Here’s a scene at 50mm, normal eyesight view:

You can just see a yellow spike in the water just to the left of centre (right click and choose View Image to see it bigger). Now here’s 2000mm:

That’s sharp! Handheld and with no post-processing sharpening. Here’s another shot:

That’s the 50mm “normal” view. Here’s 1000mm:

And here’s 2000mm:

Here’s the reverse view at 135mm, medium telephoto:

See those rocks in the distance?

There’s a shag on the rocks. All handheld in a moderate breeze. I’m impressed. I shot a bit of 4K video too but I can’t show it here in its full quality due to this website’s limitations. I’ll just say it’s nice, although you do need a tripod at the long end when shooting video.

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A few weeks ago I made a complaint on iiNet’s website about having to buy an extra data package due to exceeding the 250GB monthly limit. I said that most other ISPs have no limit, and Telstra in particular have been upgrading their 25Mb/s customers to 50Mb/s at no charge. It was boosted by an article I read recently that said “the vast majority” of Australian customers are on 50Mb/s. I felt, in view of my 7 year loyalty, that I should be better treated.

A couple of weeks later I got a call from iiNet, in a very hard to understand accent from their South African support centre, with a satellite delay to make it harder, to ask me about my complaint. I explained it all again and the guy said he’d pass me on to the next level.

I was put onto another lady who turned out to be in the Philippines. I explained it all again and she put me on hold while she talked to her manager. Eventually she came back and said someone would give me a call about it.

Needless to say, no-one has called. Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that TPG, iiNet’s parent company, are advertising Unlimited Data in their advertising.

I think that’s it for iiNet. I’m going to switch away. They used to be the best in the business when they were Perth owned and supported, but they’re crap now that they’ve sold out to TPG who have a reputation for being ruthless. I’ve been unhappy for some time and there are alternatives. Time to give them the big kick.

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Sanur, 2016  © PJ Croft 2020

A beautiful day, only 18deg but I don’t seem to be feeling the cold. I had washing on the line yesterday when it was so wet, but managed to get it dry and off the line just before it started raining again. It’d had a nice rainwater rinse.

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I’m pretty upset at the moment. I’ve just read an article on Crikey Why In God’s Name (I’m a subscriber, more on that in a minute) about the Catholic church in Australia. It’s been in the news because Catholic priests have been getting JobKeeper payments of about $1500 a fortnight since they started in this pandemic period.

But this is about double what priests are usually paid and the church has been asking the priests to return about half this payment. This is illegal. Employers, nota bene, are not allowed to withhold any of the JobKeeper payments or set any conditions for employees to receive it. The government pays the employer and the employer must pass it on, 100%. So, the Catholic church is acting illegally by asking its priests to return half their payments.

But since so many Catholic priests were found to have been sexually abusing children and young men in the past decades, it has mounted a legal defence that the church is not an employer and priests are not employees, so the church can’t be held legally responsible for the crimes of the priests.

So if they are not employers, why are they getting JobSeeker payments for their “employees”?

Well, it’s because they asked the Prime Minister! He’s a real God Fearer, don’t forget, a member of that Happy Clappy organisation called the Hillsong Church. Although he didn’t disclose it to us, he authorised the Catholic Church to get the JobSeeker payments. It pays to have friends in high places, doesn’t it?

So, although no members or employees of media, theatre and the arts, and no universities or employees of unis are eligible, and are “dying” as a result, the PM’s church friends have been given special treatment.

Do you feel any outrage? Do you see any hypocrisy? I’m so angry!

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Along the same lines, ever since Australia started its own system of awards for service, the “Ocker Awards” as they’re sardonically called, people have been a bit cynical about who gets them. It turns out we’ve had a right to be, because Crikey has done some analysis of who’s been getting these gongs. And lo and behold, it turns out that the awards committee that chooses the recipients is stacked with Liberal Party members, and up to77% of the awards have gone to Liberal Party members. What a surprise!

Let’s never forget the ludicrous new awards that that loony Liberal polly, Tony Abbott, instituted without any authorisation, without even telling his own cabinet before announcing them, the Australian Knighthoods. What a joke. He made three Aussies Australian “Knights”, thus instantly devaluing the existing top Ocker Award recipients, then the following year he made the Duke of Edinburgh an Australian Knight! It was obvious that the Jook thought this was ridiculous, although he was too polite to say so.

The Liberal Party of Australia is a corrupt institution and is an embarrassment to this country. I despise them.

Ball’s Pyramid, 551m, off the coast of NSW, featured in the TV program mentioned below. That’s Lord Howe Island in the distance. Credit: NSW Tourism

Wow, day 92, three months of self-isolation. Not really. As I’ve said, it’s no hardship for me and I don’t hesitate to venture out now if I need to. In fact next Tuesday I’m going to meet up with one of my “photo-dawg” mates for a brekky at a restaurant, the first time we’ll be doing this since early February, I think. (I can tell because I write all my spending down in my notebook, remember? Very useful.)

It will be an opportunity to show some photos from my new Nikon P950 camera, I hope. I was going to go out just now but the rain set in so I’ll wait a while. It should be OK a bit later.

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Lord Howe Island.  Credit: NSW Tourism

I’ve been singing the praises of the ABC’s co-production, with a French company, of Australia’s Ocean Odyssey, about the eastern Australian ocean current. What a magnificent program. It’s shot in high definition and it shows, beautifully detailed colour, perfectly shot and graded. The underwater shots of fish and mammals are fantastic. There have been two one hour episodes and I think next week will be the last one. Highly Recommended!

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Oh yeah?

Er, I don’t think so. A South Pacific Island in the middle of Western Australia? If you click on the link, sure enough you get an image of a tropical island. 🙂  I guess I might try and contact them to tell them of this mistake.

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I’ve been reading a biography of Albert Einstein for the past few weeks. It’s one of those door stopper books, about 10cm thick, almost too big to hold. Have you noticed how big and thick books have become in the past decade or two? As I say, unwieldy and difficult to hold when you’re reading in bed, which is the only time I do read books these days. Consequently I only get through 10 or 20 pages a night, which in a 550 page book, which this one is, takes many nights.

Anyway, I was wondering if it would hold my attention (it was only $9.99) but it definitely does. Einstein himself was really just an ordinary bloke although being more than 100 years ago, the times were pretty different to now. He had a good sense of humour and seems to have been quite a nice bloke. He had love lives and married, fathering two sons. One was quite like him, but the other son had a mental condition and needed care. Unfortunately Einstein fell out with his wife and although it took years to get a divorce, he moved away from Zurich to live in Berlin with his new love. She was actually his first cousin, but it didn’t seem to matter.

Anyway, I’m gripped by the book. The author (an American) has done a magnificent job of research, incredibly detailed with references. He even goes deeply into the science, explaining first the Special Theory of Relativity, then the later steps to make the General Theory. I suppose it helps if you know a bit about it before you read it, and it would definitely need a strong interest in physics, but that’s me. I’m only about 40% in but I look forward to bedtime to get into it.

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The other thing I’m reading is Silicon Chip magazine. I’ve been a regular monthly reader for decades and have not thrown an issue away since 2013  (yes, storage gets a bit ridiculous). In fact I subscribed for the first time a couple of months ago so I get them in the mail now.

I wanted to look up a model railway project a few weeks ago, and once I started reading and going through other back issues, mainly 2014 to 2017, crumbs, it’s like I’ve never read them before. I’m really enjoying reading them as if they’re fresh issues again.

But wow, electronics has changed. I can do the older stuff, but so much now is based on the Arduino microprocessor, which is a computer on a small printed circuit board. It’s very cheap, about $10-15, but you really need to understand how to program them and connect it all together. I’ve been left behind in this area.

The other thing is that electronic components are a bit difficult to handle and solder now.

See that white thing on the right? Now look closer and see the tiny white thing just above centre? Now look even closer and concentrate on the small white rectangle at the bottom of the grey area. That’s a surface mount resistor! It’s so small it’s hard to see, let alone pick up and solder. There are no wire leads, you have to place a tiny drop of glue to hold it in place, then use a tiny soldering tip to solder each end to a pad on the board. Yow!

See the black thing on the left? That’s a plastic container, upside down. When I detach it from the cardboard and sticky tape and turn it over:

I’ve placed it next to an SD card to show the size. That’s a surface mount integrated circuit. Again, it’s hard to pick up and will need very careful soldering to the printed circuit board. Yoweee! My eyes are a bit bleary these days and this is getting a bit hard for me.

Anyway, I still find it interesting. These are two “hard to get” components for a Silicon Chip model train controller which I’m thinking of building. Two actually. I’ve bought two sets of PCBs and these parts. They are actually for an old style DC controller to get me going. I’m a great believer in DCC but as I’ve said, the controller is Arduino based and I just don’t understand it. (This is the January issue, this year.) There’s no kit available so I’m faced with building this quite complex thing from scratch. I’m baulked by it. Annoying.

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I should add that I’ve been reading these electronics magazines since 1960 when Dad gave me my first copy of Radio, TV and Hobbies magazine, as it was then. That’s 60 years! I was trying to build a crystal set at the time, when we lived in Rockingham. That’s what got me started in electronics. Thanks Dad!!

R, TV & H became Electronics Australia in the 1960s sometime, and I claim the credit for the introduction of the Letters to the Editor pages as I wrote making the suggestion in about 1966. The letters pages started  the next month. I never got any acknowledgement, though.

Electronics Australia died in the 1980s, amazingly. It seemed to be a fixture, but not so. Silicon Chip had started up “just down the road” with one of the EA journalists as the new boy, the upstart. And thank goodness, it’s still going now. The original upstarter was a very, very conservative editor (no such thing as global heating, etc) and I thoroughly disliked his attitudes, but he’s retired now.

Which is leading me to say that they’ve scanned the entire output of the magazine from its inception back in the 80s and all these issues are available as PDFs on USB thumb drives. They’re not cheap, costing $100 for each decade, $500 for the lot. I might buy the ones from the late 90s through to now, two or three sticks at $100 each. Then I can give away my collection of the paper issues a last.

A couple of weeks ago I actually got a bit ruthless and tossed my entire collection of about 30 issues of Mercedes Enthusiast mag into the recycle bin, along with about 20 copies of DIYODE, the other electronics hobbyist magazine. I kept thinking I was going to scan the interesting articles, but I never got around to it and lost interest.

This DIYODE magazine is another example of projects all based on microprocessors and using 3D printed parts. This is all a bit beyond me, I’m afraid. I’ll stick to my model railways. Actually, what better application is there for 3D printing? I would love to be able to make my own small plastic buildings, bridges and so on. But at ~$1400 for a good 3D printer, I’m not ready for that. Not to mention the space it takes!

Lake Hillier, WA       Picture The Guardian

It’s a little more like winter, but I haven’t been tempted to wear anything warmer than my T-shirt yet. Lovely 20deg days with a bit o’ rain and a bit o’ sun. Nice.

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More WA shots…

Albany, WA. Calm waters, or ocean surf, take your pick.

Off Coogee Beach.

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This is a shot of a right-wing anti-vaccination/Covid-19-is-a-hoax demonstration in Sydney last week. Funny lookin’ star on the flag, yeah? It’s missing a point. This is the six point Jewish star. Seems to me, THIS IS A PSYCHO OP. Anyway, since when does our flag have a red background?

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How about this?

You received this message because you are a registered member of Meetup. You cannot unsubscribe from Meetup emails that provide important updates about Meetup’s policies. Please visit your account settings to adjust all other email settings.

What?? You cannot unsubscribe? I don’t even know what this Meetup mob is. I don’t remember joining it and I don’t want their emails.

OK, I’ve had a look at their website and I vaguely remember something about it but I don’t remember how I joined, I haven’t done anything with them, and I can’t find any way to unsubscribe and disengage. Crazy.

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Things are getting back to normal. I went to the Clarkson shopping centre on Friday and the cafes and food hall are open again. I didn’t actually eat there because I’ve developed different habits now – I skip lunch, mostly, so I don’t need to eat in the afternoon.

However, despite only having two meals a day, and small meals at that, my weight stays stubbornly at the same level. I eat much less than I used to 20 years ago, but I weigh more and I can’t get it off. It’s because I’m less mobile, I know. Sigh.

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People complain that it’s hard to find work. I put an ad up on NextDoor, the neighbourhood website, looking for a young person to clean and polish my cars for payment. Answers? Nothing. So what are young people complaining about?

I also just answered a Facebook ad for car radio installations, telling the guy what I wanted done. He immediately said no, didn’t want the work. Phut!

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Dull day today. Not much happening I’m afraid, sorry.

Taken with a 400mm lens, Bali 2017  ©  PJ Croft 2020

We’re only 11 days away from midwinter, 21 June, and it’s still 24deg, a bit cloudy but plenty of blue sky and sun. Merveilleux. Big rain forecast for tomorrow and Friday, though.

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I used a French word there, not that I speak French, I don’t but I like to put on a faux act 🙂

I must comment on the ABC’s Sunday night program (I can’t even remember the name! Operation Buffalo, that’s it). It’s obviously big budget with big stars but it’s so ridiculous it’s almost parody to me. There’s a supposed British army general who is supervising the British atomic weapon tests at Maralinga in the early 1960s and when he is taken out into the desert (at night, in his scarlet dress uniform with medals!) to see Aborigines, he tries to speak to them in French! “Parlez vous Francaise?” His nick name is Cranky. I think Wanker would be more appropriate. The three Aborigines are sitting around a roaring, blazing camp fire, dressed in what seem to be clean clothes straight from Coles. It’s ludicrous. This program doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be serious historical documentary or comedy. The acting is awful, the script is atrocious. I’ll watch the remaining episodes but….

It’s not a patch on the program in the weeks before, Mystery Road. That was absolutely superb. It’s set in Broome, which is fictionalised as Gideon, and stars Aaron Pederson. He is fantastic. He has almost no facial expressions but he doesn’t need to, he conveys menace and determination as a good cop tracking down drug dealers up there. Broome looks nice although you don’t see much of it. Lots of side stories which are hard to follow at times, but I would watch it again. Recommended.

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I wrote (ranted!) last week about the Robodebt scheme, where the Department of Human Services (aka Centrelink) levied unwarranted debts against the poorest, weakest members of society, and were found to have been acting illegally. They are having to refund hundreds of thousands of those illegal debts amounting to an estimated $710 million.

That was last week. Now the figure has been revised and guess what – it’s doubled to around $1.5 billion! That’s $1.5 billion that has been ripped off the weakest, poorest, disabled members of society, money that could have been spent on food, medicines, car repairs, household services and all the other things that keep society going.

Once again, the minister responsible, Stuart Robert, is making no comment and definitely no apology. It’s despicable!!

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Everyone who knows me thinks I buy cameras at the drop of a memory card, but the fact is that the last time I bought a camera was 2016. I admit I have a lot of cameras, in fact to jog my memory I’ve just started a database to list them with serial numbers, and I have nine digital cameras. Oh, ten if you count the very first one from 2004 which is in a box stored away. And one dates from 2008.

Anyway, all this is leading up to saying that I haven’t been very excited by photography for a while, and so I’ve made the jump to a new camera which I’ve been eyeing for a while and which I hope will get me going again.

Nikon P950

What’s exciting about it? The lens. It starts at 24mm at the wide end but it zooms to 2000mm! That’s like a telescope. Normally that would be mandatory tripod territory, but the image stabilisation is so effective that it’s fully usable hand held, they say. It’s tested here Nikon-Coolpix-P950-review with a big sample gallery, and the sharpness and quality from a fairly small sensor are just remarkable.

Fully zoomed. It’s a physically big camera but not too heavy.

The tests show incredibly good detail, even zoomed right in, although atmospheric pollution in the tester’s location (Seattle USA) reduces contrast. In our clear air it should be fine although heat haze will always be a problem here in our warm weather.

But that’s not all. It shoots RAW (i.e. digital “negatives”) and video at up to 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 30/25fps progressive (non-interlaced). That’s remarkable.

I haven’t got it yet. I bought from an eBay store which says their stock is in Sydney, but I got an order confirmation email which implied that it may have to come from Hong Kong. End of the month, anyway.

So, my first new camera in nearly five years. Yah!

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My West Indian lime tree is now producing limes much faster than I can use them. I’ve got a bag of halves in the freezer for drinks, but I have another dozen or more on the bench. I’ll have to juice them. Picking them is a dangerous job. The spines on the branches are deadly. I have to use a long-arm squeeze-handle picker-upper.

I read a few weeks ago that you shouldn’t wait for fruit to fall, you should pick it off the tree because by the time it falls, fruit fly can get to it. OK.

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I had a Facebook message today from my very nice Bali friend from last year, Kasih, asking when I’ll be coming back to Bali. I had to reply, sorry, no can do. First, we’re not allowed to travel outside Australia at the moment, but mainly because I can’t risk it. I’m in the highly vulnerable category for Covid-19 and I could never feel relaxed about being in Bali, even if I could go. I would be too nervous. Any cough or symptom would have me on edge. Sorry, I can’t see any way I would go until we can be sure that either we have an effective vaccine, or sure that the virus has been eliminated. Neither seems likely this year and probably not next year either.

My friend thinks she’ll go back there later this year. I think this is wishful thinking. Even assuming air travel is allowed then, it’s still too dangerous. Indonesia doesn’t test properly and under-reports its cases, making it appear safe when it’s not. An Aussie died of the virus there last week. He must have been a resident I’d say. That shows that it’s still a hotspot.

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Aaaah, beautiful sunshine. Time to get my washing off the line before tonight’s and tomorrow’s rain.

One of my former colleagues has posted on Facebook about the great times during the Americas Cup defence in Fremantle in 1986/87. These are a couple of my pics from that time.

Americas Cup Fremantle 1987  © PJ Croft 2020

There were three Kookaburras, did you know?  ©  PJ Croft 2020

I’ve had to remove the slide show because it was taking too much space.

Ely Cathedral  2008  © PJ Croft 2020

Another byoot day, 24.4deg and virtually no wind. Lovely.

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    It defies belief, how nasty, awful, horrible donald trump is. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, also a former chief of defence staff, in other words pretty well qualified, has said what everyone knows, that trump is not qualified to be president and he won’t be voting for him in November. And Powell is a Republican.

So what does trump do? He acts exactly like a child. “Oooh, he said nasty things about me so I’m going to say nasty things about him.” This idiot just attacks anyone who criticises him, just like a schoolboy in the yard. He’s a child!

Yet the Republican Party, that venerable US political party of old, usually referred to as the GOP which stands for Grand Old Party (it took me years to work that out in the days before the internet), sits back and stays silent. They don’t care how bad their candidate’s performance is, all they care about is being re-elected in November.

How can nearly half of Americans support this clown? His performance in office just gets worse and worse, week by week, yet nothing shakes their faith in him.

It’s long been my belief that support for the liberal, progressive side of politics (that’s small l, not Liberal) is directly related to intelligence. The more intelligent you are, the more likely you will support progressive parties and policies. Conversely, the less intelligent, the more likely you are to support the conservative side, the less progressive, the ones who oppose change. In fact if you look at the bell curve of IQ, I’ll bet that voting intentions line up with conservative voters on the left, low IQ side, and the progressive voters will occupy the right, high IQ side. I’ll do some research on this, I think.

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Paris 2008    © PJ Croft 2020

I’ve spent a lot of time working with a new program I’ve found to build a web site. I suppose it’s a bit surprising that I’ve never had my own web site and to be honest it’s because I’ve never known how to do it. I’m not bad with most software but I don’t know everything and web sites have always been a mystery to me.

Anyway, this new software (new to me) is called Wix, http://www.wix.com. It’s an Israeli company and it’s all drag and drop, no coding needed. It’s free if you have your own domain (hosting site) but they’ll host it for you for a basic cost of US$10 per month, or more realistically US$14 per month for a few extras.

It looks quite good with lots of templates to choose from, and it’s fairly easy so far, but it doesn’t take long to get bogged down. I started trying to build folders of my images but I seem to be endlessly changing things to the way I want them, then finding it doesn’t look right and having to lose the work I’ve done, then doing it again and so on. No doubt a teenager could do it in his sleep, but I’m not sure it’s the software for me. I’ll post progress if it happens.

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Nottingham, UK.  ©  PJ Croft 2020

I’m using a lot of software from a UK company called Serif these days. They’re based in Nottingham. Serif of Nottingham, geddit?

They used to sell fairly mid-range software but a few years ago they decided to go big time and compete with Abobe, the US 500Kg gorilla that produces Adobe Photoshop which they only rent for a monthly fee. In other words you go on paying and paying.

So Serif have produced three main programs under their Affinity brand, — Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher. Unlike Adobe, you can buy the software for a very reasonable once-off price (usually A$50 approx.) and it’s yours to use as long as you want. You get upgrades within versions but if you are happy to stay, that’s all you pay.

I’ve bought all three programs and the Designer was half price during the lockdown period, about $25. Bargain! Recommended.

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I do actually have a website – it’s this one. Although the host is WordPress.com, I pay $30 per year for my own domain name which is http://www.bullsroar.me  The “.me” means “me, myself, I” if you follow me. But I can’t display my images except in-line and I want to do more than that.

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Having got rid of that old Sony TV, I’ve been doing some tidying up in that room and bingo, I’ve found something that I’ve been looking for for more than a year. It’s a JVC car radio that I bought in 2012, a double-DIN Bluetooth unit, AM/FM and CD of course. I wanted to put it into the Magna before I sold it, but damned if I could find it. I found it in a box that was hidden below other stuff.

Now, what to do with it? I have a nice Kenwood DAB+ radio/CD/USB/Bluetooth in the cupboard as well. In the Honda I have a JVC double-DIN touch screen AV unit, plus the original Honda 6 disc CD changer that I took out.

The Mazda has a Sony Bluetooth/USB/phone single DIN that was in the car, so that’s OK. (But I can’t get it out of demo mode!)

In the Verada I have the original Mitsubishi 6 disc changer in the dash, but there’s a disc inside and I can’t get it to eject. I have a “new” second hand JVC DAB+ A/V double-DIN touch screen unit which I want to install.

So, got that? That makes a total of five, or is it six, between three cars. Ridiculous. If I could only get started.

Trigg Beach 2004 from yesterday.

Trigg Beach, same as yesterday but July 1975, 45 years earlier.  © PJ Croft 2020

Perth skyline June 1988. Not many tall buildings.  © PJ Croft 2020

Perth Station from Forrest Place 1976   ©  PJ Croft 2020

Palace Hotel before the Bond erection  1980   © PJ Croft 2020

Barque Endeavour July 1988   © PJ Croft 2020

Just a few of many hundreds of my photos which are getting a bit historic now. A bloke should publish a book, I suppose.

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It’s been suggested that I’m wasting my breath, getting upset for no purpose after my venting about Robodebt yesterday. OK, let me quote a few relevant phrases:

All that is required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.  (Burke)

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.  (Niemöller)

The only wrong thing to say is to say nothing.   (Meghan Markle)

These were said in vastly different contexts but they still have application to this evil government’s depredations on the weakest members of society. The view of the Liberal Party is that the best way forward is for government to get out of the way of entrepreneurs and businessmen (and women) so that they will build businesses and the wealth generated will trickle down in the form of better wages.

The problem with this idea is that no matter how you fiddle the figures, the wealth does NOT trickle down. The money is staying at the top. CEO and senior executive salaries have skyrocketed but wages have stayed stagnant. The gap between rich and poor is growing faster than at any time in history. The multiple between shop floor wages and top executive salaries since the 1950s has grown from about 10:1 to 300:1 or more. It’s not just in other countries, it’s happening in this country too.

The other Liberal Party attitude is that if people are poor, it’s their own fault. They should just get a good job! That’s an actual quote of this party a few years ago (Joe Hockey, then treasurer, now ambassador to the USA). Just go out and get a good job, that’s all you need to do to get on.

The problem is, good jobs are becoming scarcer, automation is taking jobs, both skilled and unskilled, wages are at their lowest level of growth since the 1930s, wage theft by employers is now endemic, training opportunities and apprenticeships have been ruthlessly cut for a decade, TAFE has been gutted and university is now almost unaffordable.

So if you’re one of the thousands who can’t get training or experience and can’t get a job, you are forced onto welfare and a payment which is about 50% below the poverty line.

And that’s where the next nasty Liberal Party philosophy cuts in – if you’re on welfare, you’re probably going to cheat. So they devised this Robodebt scheme of looking at tax records, making assumptions without evidence, then sending letters without warning accusing people of cheating and demanding they repay a supposed debt. This is a debt that in most cases doesn’t exist. They, Centrelink, don’t have to prove it, you have to prove you don’t owe the money.

So the next step is the debt collectors. Documentation of a suicide due to Robodebt

One death is one too many and there were many more. That’s why I will speak out in my own small way. I’m not going to stay silent while evil flourishes.

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More quotes from an article in The Monthly today:  One robodebt victim, blogger Andie Fox, wrote about her own difficulties with Centrelink as well as a private debt collector, and had her personal Centrelink records “mistakenly” sent from Minister Alan Tudge’s office to a Fairfax journalist, who then wrote an article questioning the validity of Fox’s claims.

Debts were raised against the dead, the intellectually disabled and the homeless. All the way into 2019, in fact, the Morrison government was still contemplating an expansion of the robodebt dragnet. The whole grotesque scheme was always, quite obviously, an ideological exercise: an attempt to blame the structural problems of a capitalist economy upon the poor.

I can’t write any more today – I feel sick.

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Yes I can. Here’s an article from 2016:

Human Services Minister Alan Tudge told A Current Affair last week that people who owed debts to Centrelink could end up in jail, but the government’s new automated computer system chasing welfare debts makes a basic mistake that is leading people to believe they have been unfairly targeted.

“We’ll find you, we’ll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison,” Tudge told the program. The government says it is chasing up $4 billion in welfare debts through a new automated system that matches people’s income declared to the Tax Office with their income declared to Centrelink over the same financial year.

Minister for Human Services. What’s human about that? Threats of prison! For debts! What’s next, transportation to the UK on prison ships?

My old beach – Trigg.   (Trigg Island is there – see that low rocky thing in centre distance?)  © PJ Croft 2020.  Oh, I had some great swims there with my dogs from 2000 to 2013. I miss it!

I boil with suppressed rage when I read about this evil Liberal-National coalition government’s unlawful (i.e. illegal) Robodebt scheme. For those who don’t know Australian politics, it was a scheme hatched about four or five years ago based on their belief that there was widespread fraud occurring by people on welfare, true or not.

The government touted it as cracking down on dishonesty about reporting income to the welfare agency Centrelink, and it was said to be raising nearly a billion dollars in wrongly received welfare payments.

They did this by looking at the declared income received by clients, then, even if this was intermittent income received from part time work, or income received for only part of a year due to losing a job, or part of a year due to falling ill, then assuming that this rate of income applied for a whole year. This was called “income averaging”.

If you were targeted, the first you would know about it was when you received a letter saying you had to repay Centrelink $X – which could be thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and usually was.

The people who received these demanding letters were the same people who depended on welfare for any number of reasons, especially sickness, mental illness, physical disabilities, family breakup and domestic violence and so on. The common thread is that they are, almost by definition, on the bones of their arse, with no savings, dependent on those welfare payments. Can you imagine the shock at opening that envelope telling you you owe thousands or tens of thousands of dollars? Especially as it contained implied threats that legal action would be taken, and not just that, the department would be garnisheeing your bank account or your tax refund to retrieve this money. And they did it!

The result was that several people, at the very least, were driven to suicide. Probably more.

“Pursuing robodebt was the signature policy of Taskforce Integrity. The name says it all: a taskforce created to deal with those who lack integrity. Stuart Robert launched the initiative with this claim: “You are not just cheating and stealing from the government; you are stealing from your neighbour; you are stealing from those genuinely in need.” This is the same guy who is notorious for trying to make dodgy claims himself! Who eventually repaid $38,000 in taxpayer money for “residential internet costs.” ” (The Guardian 4/6/20) If it was all above board, why did he repay it?

Yes, the Honourable Stuart Robert MHR, Minister of the Crown for Social Security. The same guy who:

• used a taxpayer funded trip to China to transact business for a company he was involved in;
• while he was assistant treasurer, joined a company whose founder-director had a rape conviction;
• drew intense criticism for an exorbitant internet bill, which he charged to taxpayers at a rate of $2,000 per month. Robert blamed “connectivity issues” at his home and has since paid back the money. He repaid more than $35,000;
• he quit the front bench in 2016, after an internal investigation found he had shares in a trust linked to the mining company of a Liberal donor;

These are just a few of the reports and allegations of dodgy dealings by this guy. Just Google “Stuart Robert wrongdoing”. Yet he was put in charge of persecuting low income, sick or disabled people on welfare.

“The messaging in official statements, echoed by staff in Centrelink offices and call centres, encourages clients to feel worthlessness, anger, embarrassment and humiliation. All of this for $282.85 a week (pre-Covid-19), while the national poverty line was $457 per week. Anyone receiving support already knew that the Department of Human Services wanted them to feel bad about it, and robodebt doubled down on the notion that we were guilty in fiscal terms as well.” (The Guardian 4/6/20)

It’s not going too far to say that the government, through Centrelink, was “putting the frighteners” on vulnerable people.

As if this were not enough, trying to contact Centrelink was a world of pain. If you tried to phone it was almost impossible to talk to anyone. You were either on hold for two hours or more, or you were passed from person to person, answering difficult questions requiring access to documents.

The effect was that Centrelink didn’t have to prove you owed a debt, you had to prove that you didn’t owe anything!

Now a class action in the courts has finally found that this method of income averaging was unlawful. The distinction between unlawful and illegal is a bit arcane but unlawful means against civil law but not amounting to criminality. Huh.

So the government has to repay around $710m to tens of thousands of welfare recipients who were effectively frightened into repaying this money. But they will not apologise, saying that because it’s before the courts, they can’t.

Who was the instigator of this savage, cruel scheme? None other than our Bible thumping Christian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who likes to think of himself as a man of the people. His henchman was the current attorney general Christian Porter, my local member. He’s a member of the hard right of the Liberal Party, an acolyte of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a hard right wing group who believe the ABC should be privatised, who advocate a flat tax of 30% on everyone, no matter what your income and other rabidly crazy ideas.

Perhaps you sense my disgust!

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“Australians lead the world in panic buying in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to new research that has analysed Google searches, including those for toilet paper and supermarket opening hours.”

Yeah, well, we Aussies are the best in the world at a lot o’ things, so being world’s best at panic buying fits, doesn’t it?

In fact, I hear we’re sending a team of panic buyers to the Olympics next year. It will include competitors in the “Most rolls of dunny paper in a trolley event”. Gold, for sure.

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I’ve done a long drive on the Mitchell Freeway today, from here to Osborne Park and back, about 50Km all up. Thank goodness the roadworks are finished around Karrinyup Rd, Hutton St and on into the city. I was so sick of negotiating cones and temporary lanes for a year or more.

Has the standard of driving improved after all the talk about how this virus has led to a “reset”. Maybe a bit, but I was still being tailgated and the hoons in their black Commodore utes were still weaving between lanes, trying to gain a few cars’ advantage. Grrrr.

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I took the opportunity to do a car wash and boy, the MX6 comes up well. The paintwork is in very good condition. I’ll do a good polish and it should be ready to advertise to sell. It’s a nice car but I’ve had my fun. I’m too fat for it.

Same with the Honda – I don’t need it, it’s too big. It’s for sale.

He who hesitates… I said this car was a good buy and someone else thought that too, because it’s been sold. Damn. That was a very fast sale because these cars are slow sellers. I’ve seen one stay on sale for two years and as far as I know it still hasn’t sold. There must be some problem with it. Oh well, it would have been a stretch too far for me, I think.

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Phew, if this is winter, let it continue. A beautiful warm 25deg day and the next week is forecast as an almost unbroken string of 22-23deg days and sunshine. I’m sure winter will arrive, but it’s not here yet.

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I’ve been saved from another, perhaps silly, purchase today. Aldi advertised an 8″ throat bandsaw for $129. This is a relatively small machine but ideal for model work. I wanted it, but knew I don’t really need it. Consequently I delayed going to Aldi today until about 3pm and by then their stock had been sold. Oh well, again it wasn’t to be and I’ve been saved.

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The gullible British public voted to leave the EU four years ago, then a few months ago they voted for that liar and con man Boris Johnson (actually only 43.5% voted for the Tories, 56% didn’t want the Conservatives. Yet such is the stupidity of first past the post voting).

Well, you stupid Poms, you bear the cost of more than 52,000 COVID-19 deaths to date. If you voted Tory, you are responsible for this grossly excessive death toll. The UK is one of the worst affected countries in the world, and why? There’s no special reason. How is it that Germany, with a far greater population and borders with several countries has a far lower death toll?

The reason is very poor leadership by Boris and his Tory henchmen. Poor decision making, mistakes, failure to test and trace, and they aren’t even counting all the deaths in their aged care homes!

If you voted Tory in the UK, you carry a share of the blame for this horrific death toll in Britain. Fools.