After the speeches there was an impressive light display at the castle. Feels like a celebration that one year later Ukraine stands. An emotional, hopeful moment. ???????????? pic.twitter.com/aL1BTT3haE
— Kellan Howell (@kellanhowell) February 21, 2023
Some are in the Mardi Gras mood… others, not so much!
how it started / how it's going pic.twitter.com/zHaDvDP3KU
— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) February 20, 2023
I absolutely love the memes of Joe Biden doing average Kyiv things that Ukrainians have already put together. They’re spreading like wildfire on social media ?? pic.twitter.com/ECybhQbHBU
— Una Hajdari (@UnaHajdari) February 20, 2023
But seriously:
.@POTUS: "One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv. Well I've just come from a visit to Kyiv and I can report Kyiv stands strong."
— Ken Thomas (@KThomasDC) February 21, 2023
"Every member of NATO knows it and Russia knows it as well — an attack against one is an attack against all. It's a sacred oath, a sacred oath to defend every inch of NATO territory,” Biden says in eastern Europe. https://t.co/9hzy4jl0DH
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) February 21, 2023
Biden speaking in Warsaw: One year into this war, Putin no longer doubts the strength of our coalition. But he doubts our staying power… but there should be no doubt. Our support for Ukraine will not waiver.
— Kellan Howell (@kellanhowell) February 21, 2023
I am informed that in the Russian Orthodox faith, Lent does not begin until Monday, February 27th this year, so Putin has some time yet to consider the state of his soul:
US believes Russia carried out a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile while Biden was in Ukraine on Monday, @OrenCNN @NatashaBertrand report.
The test of the heavy SARMAT missile appears to have failed. https://t.co/5L8WpWoYkL— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) February 21, 2023
… Russia notified the United States in advance of the launch through deconfliction lines, one official said. Another official said that the test did not pose a risk to the United States and that the US did not view the test as an anomaly or an escalation.
The test of the heavy SARMAT missile – nicknamed the Satan II in the West and capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads – appears to have failed, officials said. It has been successfully tested before and had this one worked, US officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin would have highlighted the test in his State of the Nation address on Tuesday.
Instead, Putin made no mention of the launch in the speech that lasted an hour and 45 minutes. He did, however, formally declare that Russia will be suspending his country’s participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States, imperiling the last remaining pact that regulates the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.
The timing of the test suggests that the US and Russia were communicating through several different channels earlier this week for deconfliction purposes – US officials also notified the Russians on Sunday night, hours before Biden’s visit to Kyiv, that the president would be making the trip to the Ukrainian capital, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday…
Albatrossity
Biden 1: Satan 0
dmsilev
kindness
I’m baffled how ‘certain’ Republicans have become so openly TeamRussia. I guess I’m conflating my youth when Republicans hated Russia with passion. I know it’s the strongman image they support. Still, it’s the strongman for the Russian Mob they are supporting. I must have missed when that became OK.
Aussie Sheila
He really is a most excellent President. Exactly right for the times. Easily the best in my political lifetime.
Go you good thing!
RaflW
@kindness: That KGB a–hole apparently went off about drag queens and other anti-LGBTQ stuff in his annual state of his spleen speech today. That’s definitely part of the fatal attraction the GOP has with Russian ‘culture’, along with perceptions that it’s the right(wing) type of Christian nation.
Gaaah.
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: so, not ChooChoo One?
eclare
@dmsilev: Thank you so much for posting that earlier!
Chetan Murthy
@RaflW: Masha Gessen spoke in their Frontline interview about how classing all the anti-Putin protestors as LGBTQ was a key rhetorical aspect of his campaign of repression of protests, back in 2012.
Jeffro
(big fan of these ‘deconfliction lines’, me)
whew
GO UNCLE JOE!
eclare
@kindness: Hell, Red Dawn was released when I was in high school!
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: So LGBTQ is the new ‘Jews’. Plus the Jews. Of course. So exactly typical of the type.
eclare
@Matt McIrvin: Noooo! Now my infernal choochoo earworm is back!
Cameron
@RaflW: This is definitely a big part of the attraction. Occasionally I get masochistic and wander off to Wingnuttia and they go on and on about his Christian values. As expected, much wokeness/godlessness/and all the rest of it.
ian
@kindness: Who knows for certain when the exact time was, but I suspect historians will look back at this moment featuring Incurious George
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: Just so. LGBTQ, and esp. trans folks, are the ones picked out by Teh Fash as the pollution in the body politic, this time. It mystifies me how anybody can call themselves a good liberal or progressive, and not see this.
Truly, I thought it would have been women, or Muslims; but no, it was trans folks. B/c they’re few enough that it’s possible for Teh Fash to imagine that they can convince all the normies to cut ’em loose, sacrifice ’em, for the sake of domestic comity. [At which point, they enlarge the set of undesirables, lather/rinse/repeat]
And then there’s good ol’ Andy Sullivan, who last summer was shocked/shocked/SHOCKED to find out that some of his conservative “friends” were starting to demonize gay people like HIM! Calling people like HIM “groomer”. He was *shocked*, he’ll tellya with great umbrage in his voice.
The transphobic shithead.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ian: I’m the founder and President of my own chapter of the John McCain Was Wildly Overrated Club, but his response IIRC was “I looked into his eyes and saw the KGB”
Say what you will about him, and I have, McCain knew how to hate.
Chetan Murthy
@ian: I only learned the story behind this in the Frontline interviews. Apparently Vova showed Dubya a gold cross that his mom had rescued from the house fire that had destroyed all their belongings (apparently Vova had to escape by jumping or something) and then had blessed at some church in Jerusalem. Vova brought it to show Dubya, and boy howdy were there lots of words about God and Christ and shit. Totally snowed the poor dry-drunk.
Chetan Murthy
Does anybody here remember Ray McGovern ? From back at the start of the Iraq War? We all thought he was a stand-up guy back then, eh? He’s briefing on behalf of the Russians, at the UNSC, about Seymour Hersh’s latest conspiracy theory re: Nordstream. Jesus. Just SMDH. All these guys, they’re all *mad*.
HumboldtBlue
I just started watching Cunk On Earth on Netflix and it’s hilarious. Character Philomena Cunk leads us on a tour of how humans made the world around them, and how Greek culture gave us yogurt and theater. She’s like Carl Pilkington’s less dim Bolton cousin, and she is funny.
The weather is foul.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: Ugh yes. AS, the little Irish, Burke wannabe. He’s so utterly transparent to anyone who knows even a little about Anglo Irish affairs and political entanglements.
As for the anti trans stuff, it was tried here in our federal elections last year. To great scorn and no avail. I wonder if the sheer smallness and relative invisibility of trans people doesn’t make this a bit of a ‘bust’ for the Aholes. Not saying it isn’t dangerous and terrible for trans people themselves, but I am wondering just how much salence this issue has with ordinary voters.
Gin & Tonic
@Chetan Murthy: Huh. Is he a pedophile, too, like Scott Ritter?
brendancalling
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I also disliked the overrated bastard, but he was very good at being a dick when the situation warranted it.
eclare
@Chetan Murthy: Yep, that would do it. So easy.
Odie Hugh Manatee
From my reading of Euro writers and comments, Biden is a rock star for doing what he did. Even people over there who don’t care for him say what he did was brave, bold and admirable. The Russians are shitting themselves that nothing was done and that Biden didn’t even flinch at the false missile attack alarms that sounded while he was in Kyiv.
The low shot looking up at Biden wearing his sunglasses with the onion domes and buildings in the background was “fly” according to numerous comments.
Shifting gears, since this is an open thread…
Tomorrow I’m going to bomb an open thread to start talking about something that has been eating me up for the last two months. It involves my wife, our son and the Store Manager for the Brookings, Oregon Fred Meyer. I’m going to talk about some of Henry’s management decisions and the negative effects they have on the employees he is supposed to be leading.
Nothing but the facts because they are damning enough…
Stay tuned… :)
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila:
Here in the US, among Zoomers apparently the percentage of LGBTQ & nonbinary is much greater than in my generation (Gen X). I conjecture that maybe it’s b/c the incredibly *cost* of being either of those, dissuaded many from even trying to express that part of themselves: they just resigned themselves to burying that part of themselves. And so I think that a lot more people know nonbinary kids, and know that they’re just fine. And of course, that’s been true of L&G folks for at least a decade.
Or at least, I *hope* that all of the above is true. It seems like it is …. and I guess we’ll get another sounding in 2024.
Gin & Tonic
@Chetan Murthy: Re: Nordstream
brendancalling
@Chetan Murthy: as I said a few posts back, I have regularly found myself surprised and dismayed to see so many people I respected lose their fucking minds.
eclare
@brendancalling: He saved the ACA, which is where I get my insurance, out of spite toward TFG. Works for me.
Aussie Sheila
@Gin & Tonic: Oh goody! Enough to keep faux news and Q going for the next electoral cycle. Bring it!
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic:
This reply was pretty good:
DaveR 🇺🇦🇬🇧🇺🇦
@wolfman_55
·
Feb 20
Replying to
@jwagsters
Fake news. The EU banned the catching of laptops in its waters as a punishment to the UK for leaving. The UK had previously used fished laptops as a source of chips and many fish and chip shops closed as a result.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
OT – am continuing my Instapot journey. Having mastered fried chicken, French fries, Vietnamese spring rolls and now potato chips (“crisps” to Brit adjacent folks), I decided to shave time and potential scorched pots to making pho broth in a fraction of the time. Made a huge pot ahead of dinner tomorrow, and it will store well. Lovely flavors of star anise, cinnamon, coriander and. ginger characterize this bone/onion broth….
dmsilev
@Gin & Tonic: I trust the laptop was originally the property of one Mr. H. Biden?
HumboldtBlue
Finally! A McClellan victory in Virginia.
dmsilev
@HumboldtBlue: Only took roughly 160 years!
eclare
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah that was good.
HumboldtBlue
@dmsilev:
And in the Tidewater no less!
HumboldtBlue
Corey Forrester is always worth a watch.
The Lodger
@Chetan Murthy: Hey, I remember Scott Ritter before he turned out to be a waste of oxygen.
prostratedragon
Fire and Brimstone,” Trombone Shorty
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
That entire thread🤗
rikyrah
@HumboldtBlue:
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Ladyraxterinok
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Do you have a link to that shot, please
eclare
@Ladyraxterinok: It’s in the thread at comment #2.
West of the Rockies
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I know that store. My ex is from Brookings. Visited just last year with my new wife because it is a beautiful bit of land. Stayed at Whaleshead.
Looking forward to your story.
Another Scott
OpenThread: ICYMI, STATNews has a good summary of what’s going on at East Palestine.
It starts off cringingly, though, in the first picture caption. That’s not a “controlled detonation”!!1
Otherwise, it seems pretty good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Ladyraxterinok:
Someone at Reddit has it up…
Chetan Murthy
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I can’t find it now, but this morning I saw somebody had made a Warhammer 4K (some video game, don’t ask me) character out of that pic of Biden. Dark Brandon indeed!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@West of the Rockies:
It’s a beautiful place to live too! We moved here 30 years ago and settled right in for life. Whaleshead is beautiful state park, just don’t drive an RV or trailer down the hill to the parking lot!
Sister Golden Bear
@Chetan Murthy:
Absolutely.
When in my 20s, trans people were either tragic figures or the butt of jokes. Remember “Ace Ventura” where Jim Carey’s character has extended vomiting when he realized he was attracted to a trans woman. Among trans women it was pretty assumed you’d end up homeless and doing sex work because you couldn’t find any other work (neither were completely true, but neither were they completely false. Those who transitioned at the time were far, far braver than I was.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Chetan Murthy:
I’ll keep an eye out for it… Dark Brandon indeed! It was funny seeing Euro people asking about the Dark Brandon meme and their responses to the story (what stupid crowd at NASCAR).
Chetan Murthy
@Sister Golden Bear: I grew up in the kind of town where LGBTQ kids would have risked being beaten to death if it had become known. TImes have changed (in many places), thank goodness.
Today, I read about one of the contenders to replace Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader: this contender (blanking on name) is a hard-core God-squadder — thinks LGBTQ people, out-of-wedlock childbirth, and all that, are sins. People who recently supported her candidacy are disavowing her, running for the exits. And all of this in a Scotland where recently Sturgeon tried to institute a “you can decide what your gender is” law, and it was *England* that struck it down, not Scotland.
The times they are a-changin’.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Sister Golden Bear:
Our daughter is friends with a trans couple she works with and frequently spends her lunchtime with them in conversation. She enjoys inviting the asshole MAGA green frog guy who likes her to sit at the table with them.
He always declines…lol
HumboldtBlue
eclare
@Sister Golden Bear: I vaguely remember that skit. I don’t remember it being funny, and I know I didn’t realize at the time how hurtful it was. I wonder what the show/actor thinks about it now?
eclare
@Chetan Murthy: I know at least two guys that I went to dances with in high school have since come out as gay. Neither lives where we went to high school. I hope times are better now, I don’t live there either so I don’t know.
StringOnAStick
@eclare: I remember not liking that skit at the time and it was one of the reasons I quit watching SNL. The humour seemed to be nothing but kick down and hurtful to anyone not white/cis/het. I felt like it was just extended frat house humor.
gwangung
@eclare: The creator, Julia Sweeney, actually is working it out on stage.
eclare
@StringOnAStick: I am not a fan of sketch comedy so I rarely watched anyway. I just remember it being weird and def not funny.
eclare
@gwangung: I’ll have to check that out, thanks!
Wow. Amazing percentages on Rotten Tomatoes.
West of the Rockies
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Yeah, the road to the beach is brutal.
West of the Rockies
@Sister Golden Bear:
I really enjoyed the last installment of Tales of the City. The episode involving Anna Madrigal’s arrival in SF was so engaging. Life for trans people seemed pretty damn rough.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chetan Murthy:
If you have an emotional investment in there being an inherent difference between men and women, trans people are a threat to your worldview. Conservatives are hugely invested in men and women being different. Merely not fulfilling the gender roles they believe are correct angers them. Changing gender, or living in defiance of having a gender role, is as hateful to them as a black man becoming president. I fear this particular hate focus is no random flavor of the month. On the other hand, they are so pissed because they have lost the social battle on this, and boy, it switched fast.
Chetan Murthy
@Frankensteinbeck:
I pray that you are right. Whether America is willing to ensure the rights of LGBTQ Americans is (for me) the litmus test of whether it’s a safe country. I’m straight, but I know that if trans folks are cut out of the herd, then eventually they’ll come for my kind: and we’re too brown for that to be too long.
Kent
Honestly, the only Republican in the modern era who seems remotely attuned to what a plague on humanity that Russia and Putin have become is Mitt Romney. Who said as much during one of his debates with Obama and was mocked for it.
I haven’t paid attention to where he stands today
EDIT: Actually he still seems decent: https://www.romney.senate.gov/romney-send-aircraft-to-the-ukrainians-now/
eclare
@Kent: Yes I remember that debate question. I wonder how much of his view is shaped by being Mormon, a religion that was persecuted.
Chetan Murthy
@eclare: And what portion was shaped by being his father’s son. Romney marched in one of the George Floyd protests (and IIRC, his father supported the Civil Rights Movement). I’d be he was, like, the only GrOPer official who did so. It’s not enough: he remained a GrOPer, after all. But it’s something.
HumboldtBlue
eclare
@Chetan Murthy: Very good point.
Odie Hugh Manatee
What I don’t understand is how conservative fucks can scream FREEDOM and STAY OUT OF MY BUSINESS and yet they can’t keep the fuck out the private matters of others and want to deny them their rights. They want to discriminate against others and call it religious freedom.
No matter what pretty ribbon and bow put on their turd, it’s still called hate.
piratedan
@Odie Hugh Manatee: they want the FREEDOM to be in charge and the FREEDOM to be able to tell you what to do, who to love and how to live and be FREE from the consequences of doing so.
these folks are great about manipulating language, seems to me that after they gave “liberal” the dictionary shiv, that they’re doing to same to “woke” and “freedom”, by completely corrupting the meanings to their own ends.
Chetan Murthy
@piratedan: These dumbfucks, they lack a basic skill that all decent humans living in societies need: “What business is it of mine? None? Well then, I’d best STFU!”
Whaaaat shitbirds.
eclare
@Chetan Murthy: I just don’t know how people became such busy bodies and have so much free time to harass others. I’ve spent some time thinking about my senior AP English class because we read some stuff that would be controversial today, e.g., The Sound and the Fury, several weeks on the misogynist authors, Greek tragedies. I don’t ever remember my parents asking me what I was reading, they had their own lives. It’s foreign to me, and I feel sorry for kids who are losing out because some asshole moron thinks a book about Wilma Rudolph should be banned. That class was one of the best classes that I ever took, in a public school in the south.
Chetan Murthy
@eclare: Your comment reminded me of the stunning explanatory power of Wilhoit’s Law:
etc.
Brachiator
@Sister Golden Bear:
I remember these skits. I do not believe that Pat was a problem to be solved, or that the skit was about the people deemed to be “normal.” Pat continued on, without any need to be defined or categorized. Those who desperately needed to pin Pat down were objects of ridicule.
At least, that’s how I always viewed the skits. I agree that the skits were not funny, but that’s because they resisted any resolution or built to an obvious punch line.
eclare
@Chetan Murthy: In its essence, yep.
Tony Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
That would be Kate Forbes, a member of the evangelical Calvinist ‘Free Church of Scotland’ (the Wee Frees, as they are far too cutely known by some) and yes, her views on most matters to do with dirty, dirty s#x stuff would put her squarely on the Right of the GOP and mark her out as an extremist in the Bronze Age, from where many of them stem.
She’s made a big error in thinking someone as retrograde as her could sail into the SNP leadership on a platform that basically boils down to ‘Independence as a Christian Country’. The SNP is obviously quite a broad church (NPI) but she’s economically and socially so far to the Right that their much more Liberal and Lefty majority wouldn’t stomach her.
Citizen Alan
@kindness: The Republicans never hated Russia. They hated the USSR because it was authoritarianism in the support of socialism. They are perfectly fine with brutal kleptocracies and with that’s what we had in America.
Citizen Alan
@eclare: They should really do a remake of Red Dawn in which San Francisco latte-sipping gays, NYC Jews, and Chicago social workers have to arm themselves and become guerilla fighters to take back America after the Midwest has been invaded and conquered by Russians aided and abetted by the GQP 5th Column.
Tony Jay
@Citizen Alan:
They wouldn’t even have to change the title.
I can just imagine the blistering phone call Kevin Sorbo’s agent would receive after his client gets his copy of the script.
“What the danged diddly is this, Maury? They’re making us out to be the bad guys!”
Citizen Alan
@StringOnAStick: I never thought the Pat sketches were very funny, but I never saw them as mocking transgender individuals either (or at least not deliberately so). The joke of “It’s Pat” (such as it was) was that the character was so androgynous that it was impossible to tell what gender Pat wished to express. Consequently, the other characters would make increasingly tortured efforts to figure out whether to identify Pat as male or female but always be thwarted by Pat’s tortured dialogue that somehow unintentionally but continually obscured the issue. Like I said, I never found the sketches funny (though they were funnier than anything Rob Schneider did during the same era), but the humor was meant to be found in the other characters’ desperate desire not to offend Pat by misgendering them. Of course, I can see how trans or non-binary individuals might feel differently.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
I’m not sure Kevin Sorbo would have that much self awareness.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay: Heh Tony, do you have a view on the ideological underpinnings of the SNP? I get it post Brexit, but what was the animating force that got it going. Asking as an Irish/Scot Gael / English Australian absolute mongrel.
montanareddog
@Tony Jay: Ah! The Wee Frees, as opposed to the Wee Wee Frees, and the myriad other schisms of Scottish Calvinists, who put the Judean People’s Front to shame.
Remember when prominent Tory lawyer/politician James McKay precipitated a schism from the Wee Wee Frees, a schism of the Wee Frees, after being suspended for attending the funeral of a Catholic colleague?
Geminid
@Ladyraxterinok: There is a great picture of Presidents Zelenskyy and Biden with Saint Michael’s Cathedral in the background. It was taken by AP photographer Evan Vucci, one of the two-reporter press pool brought along for the trip.*
AP put up a story by Mr. Vucci and two other reporters titled, “How to sneak a president into a warzone without anyone noticing.” The Times of Israel reprinted it with the picture of Biden and Zelenskyy at the top. It’s a wonderful picture, with the white cathedral with its gold domes and a bright blue sky in the background.
I was not successful in linking the story and picture but they can be easily looked up by the title and news site Times of Israel. I think AP also published a number of Evan Vucci’s pictures from the trip.
*Usually there are 13 reporters in the press pool accompanying the President. This time there were ony Mr. Vucci and Wall Street Journal reporter Siddiqui Sibrini(sp?).
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Heh. Professional victims like Sorbo are always on the lookout for anything they can whine about. Even for a mental magnolia like him, it wouldn’t be a herculean ask to see the mockery in a script where the trans characters aren’t firmly presented as Frankenfurtive groomers.
NotMax
@StringOnAStick
When has SNL ever not been that?
Chetan Murthy
@Citizen Alan:
I don’t remember seeing (or never saw) this sketch. Conveniently, today we have a solution, right? “My pronouns are He/Him” (or They/Them, or She/Her, etc). And sure, I remember when it was …. *important* to know whether the person with whom I was talking was a man or a woman. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem to matter to me anymore, except for the purpose of getting the pronouns and forms of address right.
raven
@Aussie Sheila: Hey, I want to thank you! I reconnected with the woman from Sydney I mentioned th other day. She and her partner live in the Keys but are headed back to Australia in n a couple of days!
Aussie Sheila
@raven: Good. I urge everybody that wants to chill out and enjoy a place with (usually) good weather, no guns and friendly people, plus beautiful cities to come and enjoy. It’s a bit exxy, but safe and friendly.
raven
@Aussie Sheila: I froze my ass off in August on 69 but we had no idea it was going to be cold and had nothing but short sleeves!
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
Not really. I’m so old I remember when the SNP were a Plaid Cymru level embarrassing irritant, the kind of minority pursuit that attracted red-faced bellowers in tartan suits while having zero chance of picking up more votes than the Monster Raving Loony Party. Even the birth of an autonomous Scottish Parliament didn’t immediately change that, as Labour still dominated in the country’s most populous areas.
Then there was Blair, and his faction’s utter disregard for Scottish Labour as anything other than a branch-office that provided 50+ reliable seats in Parliament and a loyally clamped mouth when Westminster wanted to field test radical new privatisation strategies away from the London Media market. The SNP became more and more attractive to left-wing Labour refugees who were increasingly willing to make the mental reset from ‘British’ to ‘Scottish’ where embracing ‘flag and country’ patriotism was concerned, as long as that patriotism was centred around healthy dollops of Socialist orthodoxy.
The big shift came in the Noughties, when millions of Scottish Labour voters turned their backs on Gordon Brown’s warmed over Blairism and Miliband’s internally hamstrung version of Labour just looked too Anglocentrically wishy-washy when compared to the SNP’s offering. Emotionally and practically the Scottish Left had made the jump to a ‘more or less socialism in one country’ Party and didn’t look back.
That’s how it appears to me, anyway. I’m sure there are actual Scots around here who could explain in detail how wrong I am
ETA – And yes, a change to some form of PR made this realignment possible.
Aussie Sheila
@Aussie Sheila: The ‘exxy’ bit mainly relates to housing costs. They are shocking at the moment. Terrible for renters. Cost of food, hotels etc are still a bit exxy but not as bad. Minimum wage here is a tad above $21.00 ph. The mandated working week is 38 hrs per week. Plenty work longer than that, but for employees that are not ‘gig’ employees, or where a contract says otherwise, usually hours above 38 must be paid at overtime rates. 1.5x for the first three hours, 2.00x for the rest. Casual employees (meaning a person on a daily or hourly contract) must be paid, at a minimum, the prescribed hourly rate for the job, plus 25%.
Tony Jay
@montanareddog:
It really does baffle me how low down on the granular level religious nutfuckery can manifest. You get the impression that some of these sects would be far happier living up a pillar somewhere as the Stylytic Church of the One True Believer Who God Is Totally Okay With… And My Wife.
zhena gogolia
Damn, I should have stayed up a little later last night. No time for this now.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay: Thank you. I wondered if it had anything to do with Blairism. My late husband was an English trade union official ( he was Australian, but born and raised in England). He was an initial Blair enthusiast, (I never was, but being of Irish/Scot’s extraction, I have never had much time for English Labourism). Anyway, as time went on the ‘enthusiasm’ waned a bit. We both preferred Brown. It was out own ‘safe space’ for political discussion.
God the UK is a mess. I still think of how he would think of what has happened. I know he would have been disgusted by Starmer. He would of course, been apoplectic about events generally in the world. I miss him so much. It was such fun talking and arguing about the events of the time.
Aussie Sheila
@raven: Yes. For anybody contemplating coming to Oz, it can be very cold in winter. No snow unless you are in the mountains south of the NSW border, but still very cold. Always bring a jumper/cardigan or coat, even in Summer. Very changeable weather, in all seasons.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay: Do you mean Scotland had/has a form of ranked choice/preferential voting?
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
UK wide General Elections still elect MPs from Scottish seats via FPTP, but for elections to the Scottish parliament, they use AMS.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay: Okay. I understand.
New Zealand has a similar system. Whatever the minutia, it’s all better than FPTP systems. I hope very much the UK manages to change its electoral system. I honestly don’t think democracies can survive in the English speaking world, half smothered by the rot that is Murdoch (and Dacre in the UK), unless and until a more flexible and responsive electoral system is adopted.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
Yeah, that toothy scumbag bears a lot of responsibility for the crapness of modern Britain, from the easily overturned nature of the good things his Governments did to the absolutely horrific dedication to factional scumbaggery he inoculated and still encourages amongst his acolytes.
On a related topic, there was an absolutely hilarious article in the FTF Guardian a few days ago that encapsulates the narrow line that rag is trying to steer between ‘justifying’ its abhorrent war against The Creature of Nightmares (Corbyn) and gradually building up an arsenal of facts to be used later on to hammer Sir Plastic’s Nu-Lab Government from the Left.
Reading it it’s pretty clear that the author wants to use Thornberry’s story to show how authoritarian and cruel the Blairite faction are to anyone in the Party who doesn’t obey their diktats, and to paint Sit Plastic’s incoming regime as a paler and less interesting tribute act that has dropped any kind of progressive policy in favour of outright ideological eliminationism. While at the same time, the rest of the FTF Guardian newsroom are lying through their teeth about the antisemitism scam and publishing venomous letters from cranks like Mike Katz and Simon Sebag-Montefiore to give the impression that the FTF Guardian is somehow too forgiving of the Beardy Hitler.
Honestly. They are openly, achingly desperate for Corbyn to just go away and stop drawing attention to their years of deliberate misinformation so they can pivot to stories about “How Can Progressives, Women or Ethnic Minorities Vote For Starmer’s Authoritarian Brand?” And the longer he stays around being innocent and honest, the more resentful and vicious they’ll get.
BretH
@Aussie Sheila: My wife is heading to Sydney in a month. She’s teaching a workshop on prenatal and perinatal dynamics. Then a trip to Uluru and a few days on the Gold Coast. Any suggestions on things she could check out?
Aussie Sheila
@BretH: How long will she be in Oz? On clothing, see above. Alice Springs is very cold at night. Next month is Autumn here. Beautiful weather everywhere, especially in QLD and the NT (where Alice is).
Other than where she must be for work, Queensland is great, especially North Queensland, Barrier Reef, Cairns, Atherton Tablelands. If she has more time, the Southern cities, Sydney and Melbourne. It depends. Oz is huge. As big as the USA in land mass. Population centres are scrunched up into around eight to ten cities in the six states and two territories. Canberra, the capital city is beautiful and architecturally very interesting. It was designed by Walter Burley Griffin and is the only really rationally designed place in the country. Except maybe for Adelaide, which was settled by Methodists and Germans.
Go figure.
I hope your wife has a safe and happy time over here.
In Sydney, I don’t know where to begin. The sea water will still be warm. Art Galleries galore, great food everywhere, particularly in out of the way suburbs. If she is staying in a hotel, she would do ok to ask the hotel for guides/booklets and the like.
Hard to be helpful not knowing how long and what interests etc.
trucmat
@Chetan Murthy:
Cunk on Earth seconded. Perfect mocking of a form I actually like … British documentaries. I couldn’t wait to hear her explanation of which book was better … The Bible or The Koran.
Subsole
@Citizen Alan:
Stalinism, bad.
Mobutuism, good.