Patrick Carlyon has written many stories on Vic politics for the Herald Sun. After a quick survey of 10 or so (on Google), it is unsurprising to find every single one is slanted with a formulaic attack on Labor plus numerous personal and gratuitous slurs aimed at Dan Andrews.
"LACK OF TRUST IN LEADERSHIP [aka Dan Andrews] SPREADING QUICKER THAN VIRUS"
[No it isn't.]
"Melbournians are angry at their leaders!"
[aka Dan Andrews. And, no. Mostly they are not.]
"Daniel Andrews and his cohort don’t want us to explore the truth. " [WTF does that mean?]
"Why can't Daniel Andrews just say sorry?" [Well, he has.]
"...it sometimes seems unclear whose side Andrews is on." [Seriously]
"Andrews undermines his own authority every day he delivers his press conference." [Poll numbers would say otherwise]
"Andrews’ fumbled attempts at allaying blame have compounded the rage." [I'm sorry, what rage? Only Qanon anti-maskers and fake liberty nuts are "enraged."] "Why won’t he short-circuit the Victorian surge of impotent rage?" [Ah, eyeing another Walkley, eh Paddy?]
"Daniel Andrews has lost the confidence of the people. We have rules in Melbourne where no rules are needed!" [You should be writing these pompous and meaningless stump speeches for the Liberals. Oh, wait. You are!]
These have been a few selections from Patrick Carlyon.
Speaking of mugshots. The US prison population is the second largest in the world. In total! Not as a ratio. Roughly 1.68m people are incarcerated in the U.S. in 2023 from a population of 322m. In China, the estimated prison population is 1.69m from a pop of 1.42 BILLION. 1/6
By any measure, America is incarceration-crazy. And no, it doesn't have more crime than anywhere else comparable. It ranks 5th for murders in the OECD group of wealthy nations, 8th in robberies and 16th in assaults.2/6
A rise in prisons for profit doesn't explain the total numbers of sentences, as only 8% of US prisoners are in privately-run jails. That being said, since 2000, the numbers housed in private prisons has increased 10% compared to an overall rise in the prison population of 3%.3/6
Not so much a "backlash from pharmacies" as a campaign by a chemist lobby group run by an attention-seeking stunt-loving former LNP campaign manager and potential LNP senate candidate. Trent Twomey is not doing this for the sick, or the pill-pushers; he's doing it for Dutton. https://t.co/VoLq2CUqnq
From 2018: LNP MP Warren Entsch's one-time staffer Trent Twomey chaired a panel which recommended broad priorities for $20 million in grants. A separate committee awarded $2.5 m to QRX Group 1, one-third owned by Twomey's wife Georgina. https://t.co/L1Rp956xRh9news.com.au/national/no-co…
"I am stunned that you don't think there's a conflict of interest," Labor's Sen. Watt told Senate estimates in 2018 over denials a $2.4 m grant to Trent Twomey's wife to expand the family pharmacy business was a bit suss. Twomey's current anti-Labor campaign sounds like payback.
Moving up fast on the outside in the fuck-wit stakes... Far-right psychosis, part IV.
PS: This hoary old chestnut of dogs vs cars has been around for at least ten years. It's as bogus now as it was then. sightline.org/2009/11/02/dog…
If all dogs in the OECD vanished, the effect on the carbon-footprint of the planet would be zero. Dog food comes from by-products of existing meat & cereal production for human consumption. Between one to two-thirds of crops are grown as feed for animals raised to feed humans.
In a hypothetical "dog-free" world, the inevitable unpalatable "by-products" of existing meat production would still exist and would simply end up as land-fill, or be riskily turned into animal feed. (Remember where mad-cow disease came from?)
(Shades of Trump). Coalition staffers may have taken classified documents after election loss. Labor’s Sen. Anne Urquhart has told senate estimates Services Australia investigated two staff in Linda Reynolds’ office for transferring data off government network.
Oh, Lindy. "Senator Reynolds’ office was emailing a large volume of official documents from government email accounts to a private Gmail account," Sen. Urquhart said. “I understand the documents in question were marked with the classification ‘official’." theguardian.com/australia-news…
Sen. Urquhart then said she was told the staff members felt they had to go along “with the theft of the classified documents” because they were directed to do so by Reynolds. Services Australia chief executive officer, Rebecca Skinner, declined to answer.
The greatest damage of #Jobgrabber's shopping spree through cabinet isn't in the sordid mechanics of it, but rather in the reputational damage it causes; democracy is fragile and exploitable, convention is optional, rules can be flouted, trust in social structures diminishes.
This broken ground is where despotism flowers. Trashing the rules, the laws, the expectations we have of institutions, is the modus operandi of half a dozen actors across the globe - Trump, Boris, Morrison, Erdoğan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orbán in Hungary. 2/3
That these buffoonish, cynical, not very bright, yet profoundly cunning actors, rise at all, succeed at first, remain dominant for a time and then inevitably fail by their own sheer vanity and nasty temperament, is a post-modern phenomenon no one is close to understanding. 3/3
In terms of risk, with the rise of Omicron, we are right back where we were this time last year when there were no vaccines available at all. The same uncertainties, the same supply problems, the same confused & ideologically delusional messaging, the same incompetent Liberals.
The difference is there is now no appetite left - no political wiggle-room - for lockdowns, curfews, mask mandates, or border closures that might help prevent an Omicron surge...
Meanwhile, the booster rollout is patchy and confused. The numbers don't add up. GPs are in the dark. The official messaging is blasé and unconcerned. Because of when I got my 2nd AZ shot, I can't get a booster for another month. By then, millions will be fighting to get it.