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Post by pim on Dec 31, 2021 17:41:32 GMT 10
“Left wing Murdock (sic) press” - the alternative Alice-in-wonderland universe of the paranoid (and paranormal) deranged conspiracy theory obsessives …
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Post by pim on Dec 30, 2021 14:58:44 GMT 10
She is 60 years old now so any sentence could mean death inside prison. When does Prince Andrew have his trial? If the Queen doesn't give him up, we should immediately become a republic. Oh wow stop the presses! From the depths of some crypt or other deep in the aspirational heartland of Prosperity Gospel Sydney an ultimatum issues forth … I’m sure that at Buckingham Palace, or at Windsor Castle, or Balmoral or any of the six royal palaces in the UK they are incontinent with shock and dismay at this Thunder from Down Under. Quite reminds me of a locker room limerick from my salad days spent carousing … From the depths of the crypt at St Giles Came a scream that resounded for miles. Said the vicar: “Good gracious! Does Father Ignatius Not know that the Bishop has piles?”
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Post by pim on Dec 30, 2021 6:40:15 GMT 10
In the absence of leadership safety is our personal dutyDecember 24, 2021 www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/in-the-absence-of-leadership-safety-is-our-personal-duty-20211222-p59jn6.htmlLeadership?As a retired registered nurse, I have friends and family working in the NSW public health system. Unless privy to inside information, most people are unaware of the dire situation in which hospitals find themselves this week: desperate (“QR codes return but mask rules resisted”, December 23). Disaster management plans are being implemented, staff are having leave cancelled and those on leave are being recalled. Others are isolating because of having come into contact with COVID-19 positive patients and visitors, unwittingly and despite their efforts to maintain best practice. So if you think that masks don’t matter, social distancing is a nonsense and QR codes are a relic of the past, think again. Living with the Omicron virus is another of the PM’s marketing slogans that provides no protection against catching or spreading COVID-19. We are all at risk and it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure that this risk is mitigated by continuing the safe practices we began earlier in the year. Otherwise, there might not be enough staff to look after us and our families if we need them. And that is looking more and more likely. Patricia Farrar, Concord With prolonged wait times for COVID-19 PCR tests and even longer wait times for notification of results, there is little point in reintroducing QR code check-ins. With thousands of new cases daily in NSW, contact tracers are well behind already. By the time notification of a contact occurs based on receipt of a positive test and tracing based on QR code check in, it is likely to be well past the time of relevance. Mask mandates, on the other hand, impose an immediate positive impact on case numbers with no stress on Health Department manpower. Come on, Premier, some common sense, please. Margaret Hogan, Lindfield The Prime Minister and NSW Premier have joined the Friends of Omicron: 95 per cent of NSW adults are vaxxed and wear masks, just 5 per cent are recalcitrant. Yet in the face of the exponentially virulent Omicron strain, the PM and Premier stubbornly refuse to mandate the almost costless measure of wearing masks, and instead endorse the “right” of the 5 per cent to imperil the health and safety of everyone else. Expert advice is being ignored. Frontline workers and their families in health, retail and hospitality along with their clients and customers are being forced to play Russian roulette every day without moral or legal support. This is ideological madness and utterly irresponsible. Howard Dick, Toronto It is long past time for a co-ordinated federal approach to this continuing pandemic. Australians have put in the hard yards with lockdowns with so many of us being under helicopter surveillance while in hard lockdown in “areas of concern”. We were not considered “adults” then so why now? Political expediency with no responsibility? Opening up and removing QR requirements and mask wearing less than two weeks before Christmas was foolhardy and was always going to lead to calamity. Vicki Copping, Oatley I’m perplexed. Our Premier is from the camp that believes in the sanctity of life from conception and that you do not have the right to end your own life when it becomes unbearable, and actively ensuring you don’t get to make that choice, yet he’s okay with the notion that it’s up to you to protect yourself from catching and passing on a nasty and potentially lethal disease to others because he does not want to interfere with your right to make your own “adult” decisions. Alicia Dawson, Balmain Is Dominic Perrottet going to take personal responsibility for his embarrassing backflip? Bill Plastiras, Vaucluse When it comes to changing your mind on mask mandates at this particularly precarious point in the pandemic, I suspect I’m not the only NSW citizen happy to grant our Premier a “get away with a back-flip free” card. Peter Fyfe, Enmore I tried to get a test at the drive-through centre at St Ives on Sunday but at 12.30pm was turned away – within sight of the facility that was due to close at 1pm in the worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic (“Queue dismay as Sydneysiders’ festive plans collapse”, December 23). I went to the Hornsby Hospital test centre where I queued with others before being ushered into a waiting room half full of people. The test was negative, but I’ve since been advised that someone being tested at the same time was positive, which makes me a casual contact. It’s possible I went into the test centre without COVID-19, but left with it. Malcolm McEwen, North Turramurra We’ve heard plenty of reports of long queues at testing centres, but what about getting the test results? We were required to have a test within 72 hours of travelling interstate. We lined up and our tests were done. The next morning, my wife received her negative results. One week later, I am still waiting for mine. Four hours on hold on the phone and no answer. Eight months of planning for an interstate family get-together, a week’s accommodation, plane flights, car hire all cancelled. Michael Egan, Killarney Heights The Prime Minister, who doesn’t hold a hose, doesn’t buy sufficient vaccines for the population saying it is not a race, obviously hasn’t purchased sufficient rapid antigen testing kits for the country as they are impossible to buy in pharmacies. Looks like my 101-year-old mother will not be able to attend the family Christmas as everyone attending must have a negative test to enable her to leave the aged care residence. This is a requirement of the facility as the virus is quickly spreading through aged care in Sydney. Bronwyn Willats, Mittagong A sincere apology and an immediate withdrawal of any suggested moves to charge an unvaccinated person for hospital care is needed. Who would be next: young people who go to a government-allowed nightclub or pub, or the many other ways poor personal decisions are made? And who will adjudicate? As I readily take more personal responsibility for the safety of our community and myself so should our Premier take responsibility for considering the total lack of ethics in this matter. Sue Hearn, Glebe However stupid it is not to be vaccinated, to suggest such people pay the cost of their treatment is ridiculous. Taken to its logical extreme, will we charge melanoma cases because they didn’t slip, slop, slap 30 years ago? Or an 18-year-old who takes one stupid risk on a night out? Who will draw the line on this? Is this government road testing reactions to user-pays medicine? Michael Berg, Randwick
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Post by pim on Dec 30, 2021 6:33:15 GMT 10
Where is the PM? Has anyone checked Hawaii?www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/premier-takes-let-it-rip-to-next-incredulous-level-20211228-p59kfq.htmlOn reading the letters (December 28), I wondered, where is the PM? He was all over the place when he and the Premier were saying that all mandates must go, masks out the window, do away with QR check-ins and all that guff about personal responsibility. Now it has all turned to custard, as fully expected, he is nowhere to be seen. Is this a new form of Where’s Wally for the Christmas holidays? Has anyone checked Hawaii? Ron Wessel, Mount St Thomas
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Post by pim on Dec 30, 2021 6:28:41 GMT 10
Leadership?
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Post by pim on Dec 29, 2021 22:13:46 GMT 10
Geoff Kitney, a veteran of the press gallery who has seen prime ministers come and go since Whitlam, argues that Scott Morrison doesn’t “lead” because he doesn’t want to lead … It’s time for Scott Morrison to govern, except he never willPolitics for Morrison’s Coalition is about scheming to stay in power, while Australia starts regressing into its old insular ways.Geoff Kitney Columnist Dec 28, 2021 – www.afr.com/politics/federal/it-s-time-for-scott-morrison-to-govern-except-he-never-will-20211227-p59kajIt’s time! Well, OK, not very original and not really capturing the national mood the way this memorable slogan did in 1972 when Labor offered its most commanding leader, Gough Whitlam, as the alternative prime minister to feeble Bill McMahon. Anthony Albanese is no Gough Whitlam. Which might be Scott Morrison’s best hope of another election miracle because Morrison actually is beginning to challenge McMahon as one of the country’s least-convincing prime ministers. Scott Morrison at his Horizon Church during the 2019 election campaign. The prime minister has stacked his cabinet with a large number of people who share his brand of Pentecostal Christianity.The Coalition desperately needs to go into this election with voters convinced that Albanese and his program are too risky. That said, the argument that it is time for a change of government is hardly less compelling than it was in 1972. The truth is, the Morrison government has become a government in name only, led by a leader who has little to offer as he seeks to take the Coalition to a fourth successive term in office. The Morrison government is occupying, not governing. After seven years of Coalition government, Australia is standing still. In fact, it is regressing. Modernisation on the back burnerJust as in the long years of Menzies governments, vital work to modernise Australia is on the back burner. Just as the Menzies governments – held to ransom by the then-Country Party – protected old industries and insulated the economy from global forces of change, so is history being repeated as the National Party holds the nation to ransom to protect the coal industry. Australia is back to its bad old, inward-looking, she’ll-be-right, habits of the past. The bitter partisan divide in Australia is deep and widening. Optimism has given way to frustration and fear. A leader to bring the country together again and to take the decisions needed to prepare the country for global challenges ahead is an urgent national need. Morrison can’t. Morrison’s foolish tribalismIn fact, all the evidence suggests he doesn’t want to. The partisan games he has played throughout the COVID-19 pandemic prove it. Morrison’s foolish tribalism has undermined the authority of the prime ministership and emboldened state leaders to act in ways that threaten the future of the federation. Is Albanese the person capable of bringing the nation together again? In the way that a Labor leader did last time the country was coming apart at the seams – Bob Hawke in 1983? From observing him for a long time I think he is a decent person with good instincts. But it is a big leap from there to being the Prime Minister needs now. But a decent person would be a good start. I don’t get Scott Morrison. There is something not quite right with him. There is a falseness about him, a lack of empathy, a coldness that I find very odd, set against his professed deep Christianity. I do not know how he reconciles his hard politics with his professed belief in the teachings of Jesus. Pentecostal Christians’ influencePeople argue that Morrison’s faith is his own business and that critics hate the fact that he is a conservative family man with faith. But his faith is part of a bigger political story: The steadily growing influence of Pentecostal Christians within the Liberal Party as a result of years of grassroots infiltration by activists. Morrison has stacked his cabinet with a large number of people who share his brand of religious expression. The blurring of the vital line between church and state. Pentecostalism is an American import, based on a strange mix of faith in two Gods – the Christian God and the God of Free Markets. These beliefs are intertwined into what has been termed “prosperity gospel”. Trust us with your money might seem to be an odd appeal from the Morrison government.Capitalism and Christ! How does that work? This might suit fundamentalist America but, I would have thought, would repel traditional hard-bitten, no-bullshit Australian scepticism. But I might be wrong. Maybe the decades of brain-washing of too much US culture via commercial TV and Murdoch media has changed us. Morrison certainly believes the capitalism message is a winner. As he does so often, Morrison reduces the complexities of running a nation to a simple, catchy slogan: “Can do capitalism”, not “don’t do governments” “I think that’s a good motto for us to follow,” he says. As with most such slogans, this bears little resemblance to the truth. The Coalition has governed Australia for nearly 20 of the last 26 years. The size of government is greater than it has ever been – and the latest budget outlook shows it continuing to grow, even with debt at eye-watering levels. The Coalition is addicted to splashing cash. Yet the Coalition will run, as its big economic theme for the coming election, that you cannot trust Labor with your (taxpayers’) money. “We created the problem. Now trust us to fix it”, they are saying. Trust! Such an important word in the current political context. Trust has a chequered history in federal politics. Outright lies from Howard governmentJohn Howard ran with “trust us” in the 2004 election, after the outright lies his government perpetrated in its zealous effort to thwart asylum seekers reaching Australia. Voters went along with it because they saw then-Labor leader Mark Latham as too risky. Trust us with your money might seem to be an odd appeal from the Morrison government, given its record of the most blatant “pork-barrelling” we have seen. Again, risk-averse Australian voters may be persuaded that, despite its trickery, the Morrison government is less likely to make a mess of things than Albanese Labor. But to me, this coming election is about more than “trust” against “risk”. This election should be about casual corruption and the collapse of accountability. It should be about the rapid decline in standards of public probity and the Morrison government’s contempt for accountability: the obscene imbalance in the allocation of public grant funds to suit its own political purposes; the casual way lies are told, in the expectation of no adverse consequences; the way ministerial standards have collapsed; the way almost every difficult issue is treated as a political problem to “manage” rather than to be solved. For there to be no consequences for a prime minister and a government behaving so badly is to say that these standards are OK. To accept declining standards of accountability is to treat our democracy with contempt. To me, integrity issues top the list of reasons why this government does not deserve to be re-elected. To me, this is the main reason It’s Time.
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Post by pim on Dec 29, 2021 18:01:32 GMT 10
Which Jesus did he find? The sermon on the mount Jesus or the Pentecostal Prosperity Gospel phony Jesus?
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Post by pim on Dec 29, 2021 17:31:17 GMT 10
Well then I wish you and the virus a joyful coupling. Just remember to keep your new found love affair completely exclusive. No sharing with anyone else! But look on the bright side: you and your virus can closet together in the greatest intimacy keeping yourselves exclusively to each other and forsaking all others. Now how good is that, as your Pentecostal prime miniature would say!
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Post by pim on Dec 29, 2021 17:22:36 GMT 10
She’s not dead yet! It’s a bit early to mourn her passing. Personally I believe she’s holding out for her 70th jubilee. No other British monarch in the history of this more than thousand year old monarchy has passed that milestone. After that a slow fading away and a gentle closing of the curtains. After her jubilee she should make Charles Prince Regent so he can do her job as an “acting king” while she puts her feet up with a gin & tonic (bugger doctor’s orders) and plays with her corgis.
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Post by pim on Dec 29, 2021 9:02:23 GMT 10
And she votes too!
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Post by pim on Dec 28, 2021 12:22:08 GMT 10
I realise it’s unseemly but we’re into some sort of death watch with the Queen and if Charles is expected to step into her shoes and find they’re a perfect fit then his reign is doomed from the start. Because of Charles’ age of necessity it’ll be a relatively short reign and he appears to have flagged that he’ll make it about downsizing the monarchy which is probably not a bad idea - there are plenty of barnacles to scrape off that creaking old edifice and too many snouts in the royal trough. I’d give him ten years at most and it’ll pass to William who, unlike his Dad, won’t have to wait until he’s pushing 80 to inherit the Top Gig. If Charles makes his tenure in the top job about housecleaning and downsizing that’ll be more than enough to keep him busy. He won’t be like the Queen, he can’t be like the Queen and it’ll be unrealistic to expect him to be like the Queen.
The closest parallel will be the reign that followed Queen Victoria, the current queen’s great great grandmother. That was the reign of Edward 7th. It lasted nine and a half years to be followed by the Queen’s grandfather George 5th. Edward 7th had been on a death watch for years too, waiting to inherit the top job. There was quite a lot of social ferment in his day. The two excellent BBC period series that I remember were “A Horseman Riding By” and the utterly superb “Duchess of Duke Street”, both of which give you the flavour of the time and provide an insight into why Edward’s reign is called the Edwardian Twilight. It was an era that was coming to an end, or drawing to a close before the world went to hell in 1914. Is that what Charles’ reign will be? The Carolingian Twilight? Nobody suggests that Edward failed because he wasn’t like his mother and I hope we don’t subject Charles to expectations that he would be manifestly incapable of fulfilling.
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Post by pim on Dec 28, 2021 7:19:55 GMT 10
That depends on the national public health system of any given society. In the UK with its NHS you can bet your left testicle that it would be distributed and administered for free. In Australia with our Australian Medicare which is a publicly owned system of national health insurance I’d say it would either be free or subsidised under the PBS or Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. I venture to speculate that it would be free because the Covid-19 vaccine has been free. A cure for cancer? Just pop this pill or bare your arm for this vaccine? I’d feel an election coming on. You bet it’d be free. The countries of Western Europe with their systems of nationalised or subsidised cradle-to-grave health care? I’d say it’d be free. That brings us to North America and I draw a blank. I used to think that your country Canada had a public health system and social security safety net that had more in common with ours and Western Europe than with the United States but what the hell would I know. As for the United States I view that country as a public policy dystopia and a model for the world of how not to run a country - especially a public health system. So you could bet your arse that in the United States they would find a way of distributing and administering a cure for cancer that was inequitable, favoured the rich, and cost an arm and a leg. Think about that!
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Post by pim on Dec 27, 2021 13:44:23 GMT 10
This isn’t America, so please stop acting like a YankRoss Gittins Economics Editor December 26, 2021 www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/this-isn-t-america-so-please-stop-acting-like-a-yank-20211226-p59k6a.htmlIf there’s one thing that annoyed me about 2021, it’s the way people have been aping all things American. Our financial markets copped a bad dose of it, the media got carried away, we looked to the Yanks – the smart ones and the crazies - to know what we should think and do about the coronavirus, and many on the ‘Right’ of politics took their lead from Trump’s Republicans. One on one, I like the Americans I know. But put them together as a nation, and they seem to have lost the plot. We’ve long imagined the US to be the wellspring of everything new and better, but these days it seems to be racing headlong towards dystopia. Who’d want to be an American? Who’d want to live there? There’s nothing new, of course, about American cultural imperialism. You’ve long been able to buy a Coke in almost any country. Or, these days, a Big Mac or KFC. But globalisation has hugely increased America’s influence in the world. Wall Street dominates the world’s now highly integrated financial markets. What’s less well appreciated is the way advances in telecommunications and information processing have globalised the news media. Call it the internet. These days, news of a major occurrence in any part of the world spreads almost in real time. One thing this means is that you can read the latest from The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald in almost any country. But another thing is that we get saturation coverage of all things America. These days, America’s greatest export is “intellectual property” – patents and copyright covering machines, medicines and software, but also books, films, TV shows, videos and recorded music, and news and commentary from all of America’s great “mastheads”. Of course, the little sister syndrome applies. Just as Kiwis know more about us than we know about them, so we and people in every other country know more about the Americans than they know about us. Just ask John Fraser, Malcolm Trumble and “that fella from Down Under”. And remember this: when you’re as big and as rich as America, you’re the best in the world at most things – but also the worst in the world. These guys win the Nobel Prize in economics almost every year but, no doubt, have the biggest and best Flat Earth Society. They have loads of the super-smart, but even more of the really dumb. Back to this year’s Yankophile annoyances, as soon as Wall Street decided America had an inflation problem and would soon be putting up interest rates, our local geniuses decided we’d soon be doing the same. Small problem – we don’t have a problem with inflation. Our money market dealers know more about the US economy than they know about their own. To them, we’re just a smaller, carbon copy of America. If you’ve seen America, you’ve seen ’em all. The Americans have a lot of people withdrawing from the workforce – leaving jobs and not looking for another – which they’re calling the ‘Great Resignation’. Wow. Great new story. So, some people in our media are seizing any example they can find to show we have our own ‘Great Resignation’. Small problem. Ain’t true. Following the rebound from the first, nationwide lockdown in 2020, our “participation rate” – the proportion of the working-age population participating in the labour force by have a job or actively looking for one – hit a record high. With the rebound from this year’s lockdowns well under way, the rate’s almost back to the peak. A lot of America’s problems arise from the “hyperpolarisation” of its politics. Its two political tribes have become more tribal, more us-versus-them, more you’re-for-us-or-against-us. The two have come to hate each other, are less willing to compromise for the greater good, and more willing to damage the nation rather than give the other side a win. More willing to throw aside long-held conventions; more winner-takes-all. The people who see themselves as the world’s great beacon of democracy are realising they are in the process of destroying their democracy, brick by brick – fiddling with electoral boundaries and voting arrangements, and stacking the Supreme Court with social conservatives. Donald Trump continues to claim the presidential election was rigged, and many Republicans are still supporting him. It’s not nearly that bad in Australia, but there are some on the ‘Right’ trying to learn from the Republicans’ authoritarian populism playbook. When your Prime Minister starts wearing a baseball cap it’s not hard to guess where the idea came from. Or when the government wants to require people to show ID before they can vote, or starts stacking the Fair Work Commission with people from the employers’ side only. Enough.
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Post by pim on Dec 26, 2021 22:38:19 GMT 10
Poor Jews, they should have stayed in their ghettos as God intended.
Poor women, they should have stayed barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen or flat on their backs with their legs spread, as God intended.
Poor blackfellas, they should have been content to stay as slaves, as God intended ….
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Post by pim on Dec 26, 2021 18:14:45 GMT 10
Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk! Eat yer hearts out! ‘It’s so liberating’: India’s first salon run by transgender menFounder Aryan Pasha wants La Beauté & Style to be an inclusive and comfortable space, as well as tackle prejudice and provide employmentAryan Pasha, founder and owner of the salon, second from right, with his staff. ‘We face a hostile environment,’ he saysNeeta Lal Fri 24 Dec 2021 www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/dec/24/india-first-salon-run-by-transgender-men?CMP=Share_iOSApp_OtherThe beauty treatments listed at the new La Beauté & Style salon are much the same as those offered by the dozen or so other parlours that dot the traffic-heavy Dilshad Extension area of Ghaziabad, 17 miles (28km) east of Delhi. But that is where the similarity ends. The wall behind the reception desk is painted in rainbow colours; a mural of a trans man with flowing multicoloured locks decorates another wall; a woman wearing a sari is having her eyebrows plucked next to a trans man who is telling a stylist how he would like his hair cut. La Beauté & Style salon created history in September when it opened as India’s first salon run by transgender men. The owner, Aryan Pasha, 30, is a lawyer, activist and India’s first transgender male bodybuilder. He opened the salon to create a space where trans people would feel comfortable requesting beauty treatments. Everyone is welcome, he says, not just the LGBTQ+ community. Of equal importance was creating a business that would generate employment for his community, which “continues to face social discrimination and rejection in academic institutes, as well as at workplaces, despite the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019,”, he says. “While conducting food and ration-distribution drives during the epidemic, it was heartbreaking to encounter young transgenders who were educated and skilled but jobless due to their gender. They were surviving on charity donations, while others were forced to return to unsupportive and abusive families in their villages,” says Pasha. Aryan Pasha, owner of the Beauté & Style salon in Delhi – and India’s first transgender bodybuilder.With financial help from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids and the Gravittus Foundation, a Pune-based charity that works for social change, Pasha set up the salon with his partner, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, 43. . Tripathi has been a transgender activist since 1999, campaigning for numerous causes from HIV to community-led social enterprises. Through their charity, the Gaurav Trust, the couple focuses on raising awareness and protecting the health and rights of male sex workers and others within the LGBTQ+ community. ’My family turned its back on me, but the salon embraced me,’ says one stylist“Despite our collective advocacy and action over the years to mainstream issues like the welfare, rights and health of transgender people, stigma remains a major challenge. We face a hostile environment within schools, colleges and at the workplace, which leaves us scarred for life,” says Pasha, who transitioned from female to male after gender-reassignment surgery in 2011. According to a 2017 study by India’s National Human Rights Commission, 92% of transgender people in India are deprived of the right to participate in any form of economic activity in the country; 99% have suffered social rejection on more than one occasion, including from their family; and 96% are denied jobs and forced into areas such as sex work or begging to survive. At La Beauté, the six newly trained staff earn £100 to £300 a month, depending upon their level of expertise and skill. More beauticians are being trained near Mumbai. “We plan to open our next salon in Pune and ultimately go national once we get more funding,” says Pasha. A customer gets a haircut at the Beauté & Style salon.Bhanu Rajodiya, 25, says he was at the lowest point in his life when Pasha recruited him. “I used to work at an export house in Delhi and earn £80 to £100 a month, but I lost my job during the pandemic. My family turned its back on me, but the salon embraced me and I now have a secure job with a fixed income. It’s so empowering.” Another employee, Nakshatra Rajput, who transitioned last year, worked in Delhi as a team leader but lost his job when the management discovered his identity. The salon, in a busy satellite town near Delhi.“They started finding faults in my work and the work atmosphere became so toxic, I had no choice but to leave. This was despite the fact that I was transparent about my gender to the HR department when I joined. They hired me for my skills and paid me well, but kicked me out at whim,” says the 25-year-old. Rajput added that though his parents and friends had accepted him, Indian workplaces were far from inclusive. “This discrimination really hurts. After leaving my first company, I joined another one but had to leave that also within days because of my identity,” he says. However, he is happy that La Beauté opened a door for him and trained him as a hairstylist – and has recently made him a part of the salon’s management team. “I feel loved and appreciated here,” he says. “I no longer have to act or hide behind a different identity just to do my job. It’s so liberating. And that’s how society should be too – inclusive and diverse,” he says pointing proudly to the salon’s rainbow-hued walls.
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Post by pim on Dec 26, 2021 17:15:39 GMT 10
Mad Matt stop trying.
Accept that I won’t take my medical advice from you or anyone else on this benighted board. Instead I’ll take my medical advice from the properly accredited public health authorities.
Thank you and good night.
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Post by pim on Dec 26, 2021 15:10:39 GMT 10
Thunders Mad Matt, secure in his keyboard anonymity at the bottom of the world. I’m sure the Canadian government is sitting up and taking notice - NOT.
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Post by pim on Dec 26, 2021 13:08:16 GMT 10
And up yours too, Mad Matt!
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Post by pim on Dec 26, 2021 13:05:19 GMT 10
In 2020 in my experience vaccination passports were a distinct possibility and a necessary development, they were never a conspiracy theory. I now have a vaccination certificate both in hard copy and in digital form. I underwent a medical procedure last week and had to produce it. I was happy to do so. I also have an approved international vaccination certificate linked digitally to my passport. Welcome to the new reality.
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Post by pim on Dec 26, 2021 0:21:01 GMT 10
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Post by pim on Dec 25, 2021 17:41:48 GMT 10
Long delays expected after Santa required to check in at every fucking chimneywww.theshovel.com.au/2021/12/21/long-delays-santa-check-in/Children around the world have been told to expect extended delays on their Christmas presents following Santa’s realisation that he’ll have to scan a QR code every time he enters a new chimney. A stressed Santa Claus said he hadn’t factored check-ins into his Christmas eve delivery schedule and was concerned he was already running behind. “Each state and jurisdiction has a different app I need to download. I’ve got to sign-up with all of my details and wait for a confirmation text, and that’s before I even get on the road. It’s a nightmare,” he said. Santa said that there were other requirements to consider too. “Some chimneys require a proof of vaccination, some of which are linked to the check-in app, others which aren’t. There are states that require me to have had a negative test result within the past 72 hours, and then get another test on arrival. Have you seen the queues for testing recently? “And then once I’m on the road, I’ll have that whole thing of standing there with my phone trying to get it to recognise the bloody QR code while holding a bag full of presents in my other hand. I’m really not looking forward to this”. The exception will be New South Wales where Santa will be able to do whatever the fuck he likes. Santa has been denied entry into Western Australia.
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Post by pim on Dec 25, 2021 9:34:00 GMT 10
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Post by pim on Dec 25, 2021 7:49:49 GMT 10
« DNA-altering » smells of a conspiracy theory. We part company at that point. It’s Christmas Day in the morning over here and I don’t have time to deal with conspiracy theories. Have a Merry Christmas with your family old friend, whenever Christmas Day happens in your time zone.
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Post by pim on Dec 25, 2021 1:14:46 GMT 10
Sounds most unfortunate and one can only wish them a speedy recovery. It’s a bit like wearing seatbelts isn’t it. Wearing a seatbelt isn’t guaranteed to save you in a bad automobile accident. You can still die or end up maimed. And yet we consider the wearing of seatbelts in motor cars and aeroplanes to be such a no brainer that anyone who refuses to wear one is considered an idiot. Indeed as a society we consider the wearing of seatbelts in motor vehicles to be so important that heavy fines are imposed by law enforcement for failure to wear one. In my state of South Australia you’re fined $381 AUD plus a further $60 AUD Victims of Crime fee for failure to wear a seatbelt. Plus you lose three demerit points if you’re the driver. That’s three points out of twelve. If you rack up twelve demerit points you lose your drivers licence. I’m sure you’d have something similar in your part of Canada.
Thing is nobody bellyaches publicly about the seatbelt rule. Nobody tries to parlay the seatbelt rule into some grandiose “personal freedom” issue and nobody tries to argue that the wearing of seatbelts should be a matter of “personal responsibility” rather than mandatory.
The mandatory debate is a separate issue. Your argument appears to be about the efficacy of anti-Covid-19 vaccines. You claim that they’re useless. I disagree. Vaccines won’t give you an impenetrable armour against infection. The social aim is herd immunity and on the individual level the official medical advice is that being vaccinated will prevent you from becoming seriously ill. I accept that advice and act accordingly. I see a parallel with the wearing of seatbelts in motor vehicles. It doesn’t guarantee that you will emerge unscathed from an accident. You can still get seriously injured or die. But wearing a seatbelt gives you a better chance of surviving a car crash. Of course that has to be combined with driving within the parameters set by the law, exercising due diligence and never getting behind a steering wheel after drinking alcohol. The parallels with COVID-19 apply here too. By all means get vaccinated but also look to your lifestyle: hand washing, social distancing, mask wearing …
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Post by pim on Dec 24, 2021 11:46:14 GMT 10
Scotty Smirk and Mirrors wants us to “take personal responsibility” and to “do the right thing” when it comes to our responsibility as citizens. It’d be interesting to shine a spotlight on Scotty’s own record on this score and I will get to that in a future post. But would “personal responsibility” extend to paying tax? New ‘Honesty Box’ system – ATO to ‘trust Australians to do the right thing’www.theshovel.com.au/2021/12/23/new-honesty-box-system-ato-to-trust-australians-to-do-the-right-thing/The Australian Tax Office has taken the Prime Minister’s lead and will move to an honesty box system whereby citizens will take personal responsibility for the amount of tax they pay. Announcing the changes, the ATO repeated Mr Morrison’s words, saying it was time to move away from a culture of mandates and instead let Australians use common sense when managing their own affairs. “Australians don’t want the ATO in their lives, and to be totally honest, it’ll cut down our workloads quite a lot if we don’t need to be in theirs,” a spokesperson for the ATO said. “So, in the spirit of personal responsibility, we’ve decided to scrap tax returns and employee payments and we’ll now just have a box out the front of our office. If you feel compelled to pop some money in there, great. If not, that’s fine too”. The ATO said they were yet to brief the Prime Minister on the changes, but assumed he’d be fine with it. “I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t support the socialist, nanny-state idea of the Tax Office mandating the payment of taxes!” the spokesperson said. The new ‘pay-what-you-like’ taxation model has been successfully trialled in some sectors already, with companies such as Google, Chevron and NewsCorp operating on the optional taxation model for years.
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