What's what?

Yeh a billion to one? I'll take those odds. Put a dollar on for me, see I'm not greedy, but I do deal in cash.

Hahaha.

Speaking of dumb maths and spurious claims, the federal budget is at hand!

I'm sure the Libs were a bit off-beam dropping the science today though. Yesterday would've been good...even better would have been April 9th.

https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/unicorn-day/

Everyone's a winner!!!!

Well...

Who wants to put the boot into the Boomers...again?

https://grattan.edu.au/news/expect-a-budget-that-breaks-the-intergenerat...

Only weak fucks like you Facto !

As you greedily Hoover up the fallacious modern trope that old white people are responsible for all the world’s failings. Boomers built this country and made it the peaceful, open , happy society you inherited you sniveling ungrateful fuck.

Not a very nuanced argument, Blowin. They also had advantages that subsequent generations will never experience such as free education, a welfare state safety net for travel and experimentation, and a once in a generation real estate boom. It was also their generation that imposed the neo-liberal order that we (you!) rail against. They're now pulling the levers on treasury to advance their wealth as subsequent generations struggle in ways they'll never know.

Also, Boomers didn't build this country, everything was already here, what they built were monuments to their wealth and ego while simultaneously destroying the avenues for progress and prosperity that they enjoyed.

Not all Boomers of course, just their generation. Privatisation, neo-liberalism, middle-class welfare etc etc.

Hahahaha.

Forget Thor, beware the mighty Blowie and his 'fish killing baton'!

Hoi, numpty, cool your jets, breathe, and have a re-read. How is the question I posed actually framed?

Then maybe check out the article.

Or not.

Usually 'not' in your case.

Totally agree , Stu.

But it’s undeniable that they took post war destruction and turned it into the peace loving Australia we inherited. Free education started in 1972 (?) boomers were born after the war. They grew up hard working from the get go. And they tried without the modern day Seppo style aspirations of McMansions and kicking the bloke next to you to the kerb in order to get ahead.

It was a time of fairness due to the spirit of the age that they were responsible for. The vast majority of boomers were just hard working mums and dads like the parents I grew up around. They weren’t responsible for the massive jump in house prices or the modern wage insecurity anymore than you or I are responsible for it . They led Simple lives after their parents bitter war years. They set the tone for our lives .

I’m thinking of the bloke I’m looking after. Left school at 13 , worked as a cabin boy on a coastal steamer straight away giving his alco mum all his pay . Left home at 14 . Did his time in national service. Raised a happy healthy family off his bread run job then bought a little beach house up the coast.

Just a great fella . Did the right thing by everyone, worked hard and led a simple , healthy life and did his part to make Australia the safe , open , liberal place it is.

That’s who the boomers are .

Read this little ode to the modern generation whining about the boomers and their contributions to climate change.Don’t totally agree , but it’s not dissimilar to putting the boot into the boomers :

Well said, some of them need an app to tell them how to snap one off.

I agree to a point Stu but blaming the boomers for all those things ignores that it was the previous generation who had the power and made most of those decisions. Reagan and Thatcher were not boomers and even John Howard was born too early. Yes we had advantages in many ways but our lifestyles were much more restricted than those of young people today. Compare the real cost of airfares in the 70s to today. Very few people had overseas holidays at that time. Even local travel was more expensive, difficult and dangerous. Shit I look back in wonder at surviving some of those early road trips and I could name half a dozen who didn't. To my mind the real,problems began with the generation who came of age in the Eighties the tail end of the boomers if you like but they were the "greed is good" generation. In surfing, for example, there was an extreme shift in attitudes between roughly 75 and 80. Most of the seventies "pro" surfers survived hand to mouth and some made huge sacrifices for fuck all reward because they loved what they were doing. There were always those bankrolled by the bank of Mum and Dad (quick shout out to MR and Shaun!) but they were a tiny minority. What happened in surfing was a microcosm of what happened in wider society. You can blame it on the boomers if you like and yep, I will agree we contributed, but the real problems were those in power in our youth and the cultural change induced by the Neo-liberal policies they introduced.

I think I can hear some John Williamson comin' on!

Blowie, as someone that was born to the cry of the currawong and the laughter of the kookaburra, serious question, were you ever an Oakley man in your younger surfie days?

I picture you in a pair of Blades.

Maybe you still rock a pair?

Or just some cheaper and betterer heavily-tinted polarised ones from the servo or chemist that are really good for fishing, but.

Rosy lens-colour of course.

I had frog skins.

I wish I could say it was the low point of my fashion career but it doesn’t even come close.

I thought oakleys are P.C ..

So long as the lenses are rose-tinted, all is literally rosy.

It’s obviously not you in that photo Facto.

The only apples you put in your mouth are held by a babies arm.

Now THAT is creepy.

Oh, and it's an onion, you pig-ignorant wankpuffin.

[Edit...hahahaha]

Ive got a few acquaintances who are very pro brexit... I just dont even understand what they are on about at this point. They say we voted leave so you have to give us what we voted for... but as far as i can see alot of the reasons different groups voted for it contradict each other.
Many leading Brexiters came out saying hey Norway and Switzerland arent so bad! Then some people voted for a Norway solution. Norway is a part of the single market and has free movement of people from EU, currently has the same ability to decide on non eu immigration as the UK.
Clearly others voted on an immigration reasons. So they cant possibly support a Norway solution.

So, even now they havent worked out theyve been lied to...

I dont get Brexit.

Why have a vote if they are not going to respect the outcome?

Why have a vote if it was too hard to apply in the first place?

And then talk of a second vote?...WTF?

Kind of defies the purpose of having a vote in the first place, dont like the outcome, let revote until we get the result we want.

@ ID
Because politicians these days refuse to represent and respect the will of the people.
Brexit is the perfect example of political arrogance.

"Why have a vote if it was too hard to apply in the first place?"

Good question. You'd have to wonder why Farage quit after the vote, eh?

WA had a referendum on daylight savings. It was opposed.

Then they had another referendum on daylight savings. It was opposed.

Then they had another referendum on daylight savings. It was opposed.

Then they had another referendum on daylight savings. It was opposed.

Who says democracy doesn’t work ?

RE: Brexit and democracy. A hypothetical.

Why would a second vote not be democratic?

Same people. Same issue to vote for.

I'd be curious what a second vote would deliver.

Because it’s removing any gravity from the initial result.

If your favourite party won an election then Fred Niles’ party agitated for a revote and muscled his way into ( somehow) becoming Prime Minister of a federal majority parliament would you be stoked ?

The issue is settled , to even waste energy on disputing it is undemocratic.

The rehashing of the WA daylight savings referendum was a minor issue and it still felt like a slap in the face pisstake from the lobbyists and their pet politicians for their refusal to accept the will of the people.

@Blowin,

No, I wouldn't because terms of government are in our constitution. Not so Brexit, so it's not a valid comparison

I've got no skin in the game, but from my vantage point Brexit comes across like a thought bubble. No explanation of how it'd happen, no exit strategy, and no safety net for the people and the companies who will suddently be left very worse off.

Just pull the grenade's pin and justify it as democracy.

Even the Brexiter's can't agree on how it should happen, hence the current political stalemate, so how can they expect the punters to make an informed vote?

England has existed for thousands of years , EU experiment has existed for a few decades . But you think certainty is the sole domain of the remain vote ?

Say you live in Melbourne and have done for 40 years but want to return to the warmth of your Queensland home state . But you’ve got no money , no job and no car . How do you get there ?

Fuck knows.....you just make it happen cause the cold is doing your head in.

That’s how you leave the EU if necessary.

Hey True Blue, um, England hasn't existed for thousands of years.

Fark, I posted something this morning on this thread about the Diggers, & 1066 even got a mention.

Keep dumb & carry on, ol' bean.

I wont answer that one way or the other, but if you want to head that direction, then I think fairness is the goal they should aspire to. So if they leave then people and companies shouldnt be worse off than they were before Brexit.

Destroying someone's livelihood to appease another's ideology is perverted. There's no guarantee the country will be better off in the long run anyway.

But the EU is worsening the lives of those who wish to leave and they were in the majority.

Politics is compromise

Ideology is more powerful than a living. That’s why there’s not as many coles checkout suicide bombers as you’d assume that drudgerous job would justify.

"Ideology is more powerful than a living."

There's an inscription for a politician's headstone - just after he's assasinated by the proletariat.

When the proletariat rise up it will be ideological.

The main issue about Brexit, and why those who proposed the referendum should hang their heads in shame, is the risk of civil war in Northern Ireland. Everything else is trivial bullshit.

The Budget! Shit THE Budget. The one that will control how the government spends our hard earned over the next year, though probably not since Slomo and co are about to get a large boot up the arse courtesy of the electorate. So the fifteen minutes Frydenberg spent cobbling it together from left over bits of Labor policy and dimly remembered lessons from Costello, Hockey and Slomo himself, will probably be a complete waste of time, as will the thousands of hours spent by the commentariat carefully analysing it. But what the fuck, with the problems we have had with time lately, I am all for wasting it. Who would have guessed that you could bend it so tightly that the arse end of 1972 is, right now, pushing against the thin glass wall separating it from the present. Yeh we can hold it off apart from a few odds and ends squeezing through the (delicately named) wormhole and yep the fractured bits of defunct politicians are out there floating around looking for sympathetic hosts, creating unprcedented levels of political turdery. In normal times, with the talent at our disposal, we might have had hopes of Olympic Gold in the event, but the US with Captain Trump and the UK, with a talented squad including May, Farage, Johnson and Corbyn, will fight out the Gold in Tokyo. Our only consolation is that we can at least be sure of beating NZ who are seriously out of form under Ardern. Of course we will take Gold, as usual, in Mammal Extinction, but we take that for granted.

But the Budget! THE Budget. Get some focus here stop wandering around like Malcolm Fraser searching for his trousers. It's happening now, get the fuck on with it. Think write downs, tax cuts, pork barrels. Think election, election, election. Think desperation. Think bullshit, lies and deceitful rhetoric laid on with a trowel, slapped on like mortar in a wall of commons. Think cheap sweet junk food, solid lumps of pure white and deadly sucrose wrapped in immediately digestible starch. Think diabetes. Think a communal diabetic coma as the shit hits the pancreas like a sledge hammer, permanently fucking our insulin supplies and leading to the kind of blindness, physical, emotional and moral, that would be necessary to consider voting for team Slomo. Think BRIBERY. Let's piss the politeness off and call it for what it is. BRIBERY. They are trying to buy your vote for a woollen blanket, a few beads and a fucking huge, unsustainable boost in your income if you happen belong to that exclusive class of those who already have more than they need. Otherwise it's the blanket, the beads and fuck off.

Yeh it's all about winning the unwinnable election, pulling a Keating against his own party. The FOX is still trying get into the hen house. The slavering lackies at The Oztralian and The Daily Tellycrap are working overtime with their colleagues at SLY News to tunnel under the wall, find a way through the razor wire, pick the locks and get their hands on a few of those juicy chooks they are sure will be the undoing of No Bullshit Bill. But the secret is out, whispered amongst the true believers as they share a quiet smile. IT'S EMPTY. Get used to it. You're fucked. NO HENS! So no more hanging out with the government heavies, sucking on the taxpayers tit, no more recycling a couple of sentences from your favourite press release and calling it a days work, no more, nevermore, nevermore, nevermore.

If the idiots kick off in Ireland again they’ve got absolutely no one to blame but themselves.

The sake that you’d shift responsibility from those firing the guns and exploding the bombs to anyone else is reprehensible.

They’re grown ups. Dont kill anyone ....how hard is it ?

A better comparison would be if say, ... australia had a referendum on whether to stay connected to the british empire or become a republic...

How would some of you feel if australia actually voted for it's independence from the british empire? Chose to be a republic?

then john howard came out staight away and said..." yeh nah, let's not do that, we'll vote again..."

Not happy jan!

Another vote, or continuing democracy, is not over on the issue, but instantly voting again is just a big fat turd in the face to the majority that voted to leave

Another fairly typical big fat turd in the face, following a string of recent turds in the face...

I'd be more worried about war withn england if it doesn't go ahead in some form. Some pretty grumpy leavers at that protest the other day

Either way england is fucked, both sides will blame any outcome on the other side from here on, forever and ever...

No! Responsibility goes all the way up the line. If you take a situation which is stable and for no substantial reason destabilise it in a way that causes a war then you are much more guilty than those doing the shooting. Do you have any idea what a hard border would do? It would be worse than sudenly putting a hard border with passports and customs checks all the way from Tweed to the NT, thereby causing tens of thousands to lose their jobs, causing massive shortages in goods and services on both sides of the border and this in a community with well established divisions over hundreds of years. Your comment is as ignorant as it is offensive. So maybe it's my turn to throw a few fucking insults at you since you so regularly dish them out at me. You are a narrow minded bigot so full of your own bullshit you can't contain it, you have yo spread your stinking shit around. The depth of your ignorance is unplumbed, you just get mouthier and mouthier, more and more certain the less you know.
By your own admission you won't even talk politics in the real world. Why? 'cos your a low life fucking coward, a whinger who knows that their crap wouldn't stand a chance in open discussion and whose ego is so weak it couldn't cope with the derision your views would attract.

Maybe a 'better' comparison but still not a good one.

The Australian Republic model was designed well before the party began lobbying in the 90s. Ted Mack, for instance, was a staunch Republican but didn't support that particular model.

So Australian voters knew exactly what would happen after the vote. England, not so much.

Like I said, even the Brexiters cant decide how it will happen, there're huge differences from that side of the issue alone. So if they don't know what the model is (after the vote!) then how could anyone make an informed decision before it?

I could care one way or the other about Brexit, however it's that, the foolish and iresponsible short-sightedeness of it, to raise hopes without any idea viable roadmap for what happens after the vote that I feel strongly about.

A fully-informed debate as per our 1999 Republic referendum? No problem. Take it on the chin and move on.

Blind Boy... If your mate, Bling shitstill, I mean Blurt Shunter, i mean Bill Shorten fails to beat Scrote Mo, He should commit hari kari.

Yeh, it's a fair question.

But it's been a weird and winding road that's put england in this particular position. A road where pretty much no one actually thought it'd get up. But it did, so the pollies need to sort it out.

So to say 'too hard' or even worse 'yeh nah' just ain't gonna cut it.

The most amazing thing is two years of planning and fighting and they've got nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.

Stalling? Obstructing? Or just plain old paralysed?

Whatever it is, the current situation is staggering. It seems in this ridiculously fast paced world the politics on many things has just flat out stalled. Even worse, stalled with no spark...

Sheepdog. Yep

Biggest budget bullshit ever!

Sheepdog, at this stage, I think he probably would. I understand that we have had a long period of appalling governance and that public confidence in politicians is at an all time low, but I think there is a good chance he will lead a government that will be far from perfect but will be stable and deliver policies that deliver greater equity then we have had for several decades. Could be wrong but I am hopeful ........ it's good for my health if nothing else.

Allied to the republic 'debate' here, when the UK dissolves, at the very least, and being positive, we will have to change our shitty flag. The Union Jack will be meaningless.

Actually, thinking about it...why wouldn't the LNP types keep, literally, flying the flag!!??

Australia, you're standing in it!!!!

Your attitude seems strangely familiar , Blindboy.

“No! Responsibility goes all the way up the line. If you take a situation which is stable and for no substantial reason destabilise it in a way that causes a war then you are much more guilty than those doing the shooting. “

You realise you just expressed the exact same opinion as Fraser Anning don’t you ? Removing all responsibility from the deranged individual with the too itchy trigger finger who is forced into killing innocent bystanders because the mean old politicians “ destabilised “ their lives.

Go tell the victims of the Christchurch massacre that it’s insulting and offensive to believe that someone should be held accountable for their personal decision to express their political displeasure through indiscriminate bloodshed .

The usual shallow idiocy. Shock us all Blowin. Name a non-fiction book you have read recently.

Good question.

There was a huge book fair up the road recently and we scored big time. I got some great reference books on the coast and fishing , got some good surfing books - particularly stoked to find Nick Carrol’s Lisa Anderson bio - and the entire set of stormrider atlas. Found a nice copy of Oscar Wilde’s collected works amongst many other great finds.

Last non- reference non fiction was “ The Great Depression- a diary by Benjamin Roth” . Bit of an eye opener as to the extent of any real economic disaster.

Non of my reading really changes my opinion on your world view though BB. It’s still all about removing agency for the individual .

And yes , your comments mirrored Frazer Anning exactly, despite your displeasure at the fact. If you think that idiots in Ireland are helpless in their urges to murder innocents to protest a decades old dispute , then you are no better than those excusing the NZ loser who shot everyone at the mosque . It’s the violent act of the individual who pulled the trigger , it’s their fault and their fault alone. No one forced them to kill people.

Ah yes the agency of the individual, it just rises above trivial concerns like poverty and sectarianism. It feels no emotion. It always acts like a moral automaton. Blowin you sound like an over-priveleged prat who has no understanding of hardship or the depths of dome culture. By calling them idiots you only reveal that, not only are you one, but as usual, you are callous and unsympathetic to anything but the pathetic whingeing of people just like you.

Oh so you’re telling me that Ireland is currently racked by poverty ? And this lack of disposable income justifies murdering others because they are a different religion ?

And if you think that the Irish troubles are any more relevant in this modern era than the sectarianism that the NZ loser was referencing then you’re deluded.

You think that innocents getting blown up is justified because Protestants don’t like Catholics ? Then you are also condoning white supremacists in lynching black people because they aren’t used to co existing.

This is just a guess , but I’d bet you were a teacher of some description. Probably high school. No one does deluded condescension like a school teacher..

Keep digging, 'digger'.

Keep sneering at the thoughts of others whilst never voicing your own .

According to you. Which we all know is like, I dunno, depending on our current PM for the 'facts'.

Keep on digging, 'digger'.