Age Bin

Amanda Vanstone warns against the politics of envy, telling us that the top 2% of taxpayers pay 25% of the tax. Why would that be, I wonder? Well, let’s skip the top 10%, for the moment; let’s look at the top 2 – the top 0.000 000 01%.  Gina Rinehart and the Pratts, together, have 27 1/2 billion dollars. That’s ever so slightly more assets than the bottom 14% of Australians put together, right there.

Very few people realise how very rich the rich people are in this country. If string cost a thousand dollars a millimetre the poorest 10% of Australians could afford enough to measure the joint of their little finger.  The average household would have under half a metre.  Gina Rinehart’s allocation would stretch from Federation Square to Tullamarine Airport, as the crow flies. Do the math.

Rich people in this country sit on heaps of treasure like Smaug on his hoard, flying out to attack anybody who wants to diminish their wealth by a farthing.  Their influence distorts our politics, our economics, and our media. Politicians, and ex-politicians, compete to lick their boots.  And now we are told that we ought to be grateful that in absolute terms some of them pay more tax than I do. 

Bring back death duties for estates over, say, fifty million dollars. It’s not as if Gina want to pass it on to her children anyway.

Assets of bottom 14% - ABS Household Wealth and Wealth Distribution, Australia, 2011–12

Top 2 wealth from BRW Rich list

Actually, they have an excuse for binning this one - Richard Deness of the Australia institute makes much the same points at http://www.theage.com.au/comment/australia-needs-to-be-fairer-if-it-wants-to-be-richer-20141013-115bdo.html

Out of Chaos

In God the Geometer, doesn't the universe look like someone trying to remember how to draw

the Mandelbrot Set?

Age Bin part the millionth

Since nothing else seems to be working, why don't we land our Superhornets in ISIL territory and leave them there with the keys in the ignition? It may be expensive at first, but if we can tempt the enemy away from their pickup-truck-and-machine-gun model and into our billion-dollar high-tech way of warmaking then we have a fighting chance.
I mean, who are we kidding?  Kipling nailed it a hundred and thirty years ago:
"Strike hard who cares -- shoot straight who can --
The odds are on the cheaper man."

Trivia question

Which single book has been made at various times been made into movies starring

Alan Bennett

Anthony Newley

Baby Leroy

Carol Channing

Cary Grant

Dame Flora Robson

Dudley Moore

Edward Everett Horton

Eydie Gorme

Gary Cooper

Harvey Korman

Imogene Coca

John Bird

John Gielgud

Leo McKern

Lloyd Bridges

Malcolm Muggeridge

Martha Raye

Martin Short

Michael Crawford

Michael Redgrave

Miranda Richardson

Peter Cook

Peter Sellers

Red Buttons

Ringo Starr

Sammy Davis Jr.

Sir Ralph Richardson

Sterling Holloway

Steve Lawrence

Telly Savalas

W.C. Fields

Whoopi Goldberg

Wilfrid Brambell

Wilfrid Lawson?

Payola

Went to the Equalizer, a really shitty movie.  The low point came when Denzil Washington, who is neither Edward Woodward nor his bootlace, had an extended killout in a Home Depot hardware warehouse, offing the villains with barbed wire nooses, pruning saws (I think), and - for god's sakes - battery-operated power drills to the head.
You cannot kill a person with a power drill to the head unless they're held down against a wall or floor. Even if they don't move of their own accord, which seems unlikely, the drill just push them away. It will spin off the skull without penetrating, and if it doesn't it will still take some time - seconds - to get through the skull to the brain, allowing them to avoid death by stepping away. You'd be better off hitting them over the head with it.
You'd also be lucky to have a barbed wire spur pierce a vein, and you can't shoot someone at a distance with a nailgun.

Age bin

Banning the burqa from Parliament House would be a good start, but still leaves far too much scope for male terrorists to disguise themselves as women.  We should accept nothing less than a policy of complete nudity below the waist. 

Some might suggest that certain groups might have religiously based objections to this policy, but that boat has surely already sailed.  And been boarded.  And returned to its country of origin.