ROWAN ATKINSON: Our honeymoon with electric vehicles is over so, for now, my advice is to hang on to your old petrol motor

His point about old cars is well taken. These days there is rarely any need to buy a new car. My 2004 Toyota Echo still runs like a watch and has never let me down. It has only ever needed wear and tear items replaced and routine maintenance

I love electric vehicles — and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped.

Sadly, keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV. There are sound environmental reasons not to jump just yet.

Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master's in control systems.

Combine this, perhaps surprising, academic pathway with a lifelong passion for the motorcar, and you can see why I was drawn into an early adoption of electric vehicles.

I bought my first electric hybrid 18 years ago and my first pure electric car nine years ago and (notwithstanding our poor electric charging infrastructure) have enjoyed my time with both very much.

Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but they're wonderful mechanisms: fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run. But increasingly, I feel a little duped. When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesn't seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be.

As you may know, the Government has proposed a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. The problem with the initiative is that it seems to be largely based on conclusions drawn from only one part of a car's operating life: what comes out of the exhaust pipe.

Electric cars, of course, have zero exhaust emissions, which is a welcome development, particularly in respect of the air quality in city centres. But if you zoom out a bit and look at a bigger picture that includes the car's manufacture, the situation is very different.

In advance of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, Volvo released figures claiming that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are nearly 70 per cent higher than when manufacturing a petrol one.

How so? The problem lies with the lithium-ion batteries fitted currently to nearly all electric vehicles: they're absurdly heavy, huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they are estimated to last only upwards of ten years.

It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile's fight against the climate crisis.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of effort is going into finding something better.

New, so-called solid-state batteries are being developed that should charge more quickly and could be about a third of the weight of the current ones — but they are years away from being on sale, by which time, of course, we will have made millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries.

Hydrogen is emerging as an interesting alternative fuel, even though we are slow in developing a truly 'green' way of manufacturing it. It can be used in one of two ways. It can power a hydrogen fuel cell (essentially, a kind of battery); the car manufacturer Toyota has poured a lot of money into the development of these.

Such a system weighs half of an equivalent lithium-ion battery and a car can be refuelled with hydrogen at a filling station as fast as with petrol.

If the lithium-ion battery is an imperfect device for electric cars, concerns have been raised over their use in heavy trucks for long distance haulage because of the weight; an alternative is to inject hydrogen into a new kind of piston engine.

If hydrogen wins the race to power trucks — and as a result every filling station stocks it — it could be a popular and accessible choice for cars.

But let's zoom out even further and consider the whole life cycle of an automobile.

The biggest problem we need to address in society's relationship with the car is the 'fast fashion' sales culture that has been the commercial template of the car industry for decades.

Currently, on average we keep our new cars for only three years before selling them on, driven mainly by the ubiquitous three-year leasing model.

This seems an outrageously profligate use of the world's natural resources when you consider what great condition a three-year-old car is in.

When I was a child, any car that was five years old was a bucket of rust and halfway through the gate of the scrapyard. Not any longer. You can now make a car for £15,000 that, with tender loving care, will last for 30 years.

It's sobering to think that if the first owners of new cars just kept them for five years, on average, instead of the current three, then car production and the CO2 emissions associated with it, would be vastly reduced.

Yet we'd be enjoying the same mobility, just driving slightly older cars.

We need also to acknowledge what a great asset we have in the cars that currently exist (there are nearly 1.5 billion of them worldwide).

In terms of manufacture, these cars have paid their environmental dues and, although it is sensible to reduce our reliance on them, it would seem right to look carefully at ways of retaining them while lowering their polluting effect. Fairly obviously, we could use them less.

As an environmentalist once said to me, if you really need a car, buy an old one and use it as little as possible.

A sensible thing to do would be to speed up the development of synthetic fuel, which is already being used in motor racing; it's a product based on two simple notions: one, the environmental problem with a petrol engine is the petrol, not the engine and, two, there's nothing in a barrel of oil that can't be replicated by other means.

Formula One is going to use synthetic fuel from 2026. There are many interpretations of the idea but the German car company Porsche is developing a fuel in Chile using wind to power a process whose main ingredients are water and carbon dioxide.

With more development, it should be usable in all petrol-engine cars, rendering their use virtually CO2-neutral.

Increasingly, I'm feeling that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end, and that's no bad thing: we're realising that a wider range of options need to be explored if we're going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created.

We should keep developing hydrogen, as well as synthetic fuels to save the scrapping of older cars which still have so much to give, while simultaneously promoting a quite different business model for the car industry, in which we keep our new vehicles for longer, acknowledging their amazing but overlooked longevity.

Friends with an environmental conscience often ask me, as a car person, whether they should buy an electric car. I tend to say that if their car is an old diesel and they do a lot of city centre motoring, they should consider a change.

But otherwise, hold fire for now. Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12171473/ROWAN-ATKINSON-honeymoon-electric-vehicles-hang-old-petrol-motor.html

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‘I could have gone blind if I hadn’t been able to go private’

This is very common with government heathcare but this instance from Britain is particularly disturbing.  It's a bit better in Australia.  Once you get into a government hospital the treatment is very good.  But the waiting list to get in can be very long, several weeks at least.  No good for anything urgent.

When her sight started to blur in one eye, Marianne Jones wasn’t too worried – but what happened next was terrifying and exposes the broken state of an NHS system failing millions of patients every day

Marianne Jones had always been short-sighted but, when her eyesight began to fail, she was facing a terrifying choice – pay now or pay with her sight later

It was three days before my silver wedding anniversary holiday that I booked an optician’s appointment to check out my suddenly blurry right eye.

For days previously, all I could see were wavy lines, distorted faces and floating blobs. I’ve been extremely short-sighted since I was a teenager (my nickname is Mr Magoo) and have check-ups more regularly than most. So, I was concerned but not overly so, putting my eye problems down to the strain of staring at the computer for too long. Still, I wanted to put my mind at rest before heading off for a 12-hour flight to Mauritius, for a celebration we’d saved long and hard for.

I hadn’t planned for the potential dire consequences of my symptoms, or the very British drama that came next. One hour later, on a Friday afternoon, the optician studied a scan of my problematic eye and declared I needed emergency treatment for what appeared to be fluid leaking into my retina.

I was told to head to the A&E department at Moorfields NHS Eye Hospital in London, as soon as possible. “You never know, they might treat you straight away,” my optician offered, not very convincingly.

I fear he knew what was coming. I arrived at Moorfields bright and early the next day as an emergency out-patient. A kind security guard pointed out the reception area, where I fumbled with the paperwork and tried to return it through the wrong gap. By now I could only make out dark shapes through my bad eye and even putting one foot in front of the other was disconcerting. I was nauseous, disorientated and alone, my husband having driven to the Midlands the previous morning to drop off our dog with relatives.

There was already a queue, but not a huge one. After handing in my “cheese counter” numbered ticket, I joined a row of other patients on plastic chairs. One woman was sobbing, her husband with his arms around her, another couldn’t open her eyes and had to be led around by the professional but harried staff who looked like they hadn’t sat down in a long time.

Two sets of tests and three hours later, I was ushered into a tiny, blue-curtained booth, where a registrar told me that I had a condition called Myopic CNV, brought on by my short-sightedness and resulting in blood vessels growing where they shouldn’t and leaking into my retina. It’s not common and it is very serious. The treatment – an injection into the eye – took seconds, was easy to administer and had a high success rate. But speed was of the essence and I was already approaching the danger zone.

I kept hearing the words “urgent” and “emergency” and it suddenly occurred to me that I was in real danger of losing my sight.

I’m almost certain that, had I waited the full three weeks, I would now be blind in one eye

A member of staff was dispatched to find the next available slot for treatment. Naively, I presumed it would happen that same day, but she returned to report that the next emergency NHS appointment at Moorfields was in three weeks’ time.

The registrar said what I was thinking: “That’s too late”, and picked up the phone to call hospitals nearer to my home in Kent (I’d chosen Moorfields that day because it was the easiest hospital to get to on public transport). Eventually, she reached a registrar at the ophthalmology department of Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. More “urgents” were used and I was put into their system. I asked how soon the hospital might contact me, the registrar hoped it would be soon but gave me the phone number to write down. I must call them first thing Monday morning, she told me. I thought it was odd to be asked to chase up my own emergency referral, but sensed that she had been here before.

My worried husband and delighted dog arrived back home that night to find me in a state of panic, the sight in my eye having become progressively worse. I wasn’t in pain but could see almost nothing but dark shapes. After two sleepless nights and the day I should have been jetting off to the sun, I shakily called the hospital phone number. Over the next two hours, I repeated this dozens of times, but the line simply rang out before cutting me off.

The craziness of being unable to contact the hospital I’d been told to chase so that I didn’t go blind, led to us quickly making the decision to go private. I simply wasn’t prepared to play Russian roulette with my eyesight.

I called Moorfields – this time its private wing. They answered straight away. The price of the consultation, scan and one injection came to £2,799. I could be seen immediately. So, that lunchtime I had the surreal experience of walking past the A&E department where I’d been 48 hours earlier and round the corner to its private hospital, with shiny sofas, vases of hydrangeas and serene staff who had time to chat about their weekend.

Within the hour I’d been talked to, examined and scanned by a consultant who also worked over the road at the NHS hospital. He told me he needed to treat me immediately. I was too shocked to feel squeamish as he led me to a surgery room and injected medication into my eye to help restore my vision (you’re awake but anaesthetic drops mean it isn’t painful).

For a perverse crumb of comfort, I asked him what would have happened had I gone on holiday and taken my chances with the NHS appointment. He informed me that, in his opinion, my eye condition was so severe that had I left it another week there was a 30 per cent chance of me losing the sight altogether, a statistic that increased with every passing day. I’m almost certain that, had I waited the full three weeks, I would now be blind in one eye.

I have now become just another statistic, with four in five high street optometrists saying their patients have paid for private procedures in the past six months. There are about 640,000 people waiting for an NHS ophthalmology appointment, more than any other speciality – accounting for roughly one in 11 people on a waiting list of a record-high 7.8 million people. Being told an easy treatment was effectively out of my reach unless I paid for it, brought home that our NHS is not only broken, but shattered and in tiny pieces on the floor.

Two days before my sudden visit to Moorfields, prime minister Rishi Sunak walked through its doors to learn about the research being carried out in the world of artificial intelligence. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the real-world problem of humans not receiving urgent treatment in time was discussed.

I walked out of there almost £3,000 lighter, but not blind. Three weeks on I have still heard nothing from the hospital in Sidcup and wonder if I ever will. I’m now back in the NHS system and have been referred to a different hospital for a follow-up appointment. My condition is one that will need regular monitoring, quite possibly for the rest of my life and I couldn’t possibly fund this privately even if I wanted to. I frequently think about those other distressed souls that I shared the emergency waiting room with a few weekends ago. How many of them had savings to raid or a supportive family to offer help? I wonder which of them needed emergency treatment that day to save their sight and who was offered the appointment that I turned down. The one that quite possibly came too late.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/waiting-lists-eye-operations-nhs-crisis-b2452397.html

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Aussie living in London reveals British things she thought were weird after making the move

She is absolutely right about British customer service.  When I would walk into a London shop for any reason,  all the staff would pretend I did not exist.  But I never tolerated that for more than a minute.  I would simply say in a loud voice "I hate being invisible".  That would be an electric shock to the staff concerned.  They would literally run to serve me. Why?  I had done that most abhorred British thing;  I had "made a scene".  I can be something of a stentor at times so that would have helped too

 

She mentions her shock of British customer service and that when she first arrived, she thought 'everyone was so rude'.

She said 'No one says hi to you when you first walk into a shop, people will literally just ignore you customer service wise.

'When I went and got my phone plan down, I sat down and was like "hey I want a phone plan' and they're like 'yep no worries".

'The girl turned around tapped in her computer for no joke 20 minutes, did not say a word to me and didn't even look at me.

'I was like is this normal? This is the most awkward thing I've ever done.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-12775789/Aussie-living-London-British-things-weird.html

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Widespread costs of living shocks

I am one of the older generation who are not much affected by the crisis. We usually own our own homes so have no rent to pay and have built up savings through a lifetime of work.

But the reports below do bother me and I wonder what I could do to help. I already provide ultra-cheap rental accomodation to four people but I will have to think of doing more

Just about everywhere you look, there are worsening signs that Australia is no longer the lucky country – for just about all of us.

Just about everywhere you look, there are worsening signs that Australia is no longer the lucky country.

From record-high rents to skyrocketing mortgages, a cost-of-living crisis to the alarming emergence of a ‘working poor’ population, the country faces an unprecedented storm of factors putting pressure on millions of people.

And very few Aussies are immune.

“We’re seeing a new demographic of people turning to charities for support over the past 18 months,” a spokesperson for St Vincent de Paul Society in New South Wales said.

“It has been very concerning to see a growing number of people in employment and families on dual incomes reaching out in a time of desperation because of the cost of living.”

Whether paying a mortgage or renting, working for someone or running a business, earning a little or making a lot, this is a startling look at just how tough things are right now.

Skipping meals or not eating at all

An estimated 3.7 million households are battling serious levels of food insecurity, not-for-profit Food Bank revealed in its 2023 Hunger Report.

Food insecurity describes the need to make “unenviable choices about what and when they eat” such as skipping meals or going whole days without eating.

Foodbank’s research shows an extra 383,000 households are grappling with food insecurity than a year ago.

More than a third of the population – more than the total number of households in Melbourne and Sydney combine – are having to “compromise their meal choices”, the organisation said.

The proportion of Aussies who are experiencing “some level of distress in meeting the most basic needs” when it comes to putting food on the table is racing towards 50 per cent.

“Food insecurity is waking early and sending your child off to school with a rumbling tummy and empty lunch box because you’ve been forced into an impossible choice between paying the rent or buying food that week,” Foodbank chief executive Brianna Casey said.

“Food insecurity is living at home alone as a pensioner, convincing yourself that three meals a day is a luxury, and that two – or even one – will suffice.

“Food insecurity is rushing to the fruit platter at a working lunch in the office because fresh fruit and vegetables have become a treat, rather than a dietary staple.

“Food insecurity is now having a mortgage, a full-time job and a side hustle, yet food is a discretionary spend in the household budget.”

Cutting dangerous corners

As the country brazes for a particularly hot summer, the Australian Council of Social Services warns vulnerable households will go without cooling as a result of cost pressures.

An ACOSS survey released in October shows 74 per cent of people on income supports are slashing spending on cooling, while 62 per cent are cutting back on the use of lighting.

“As we head into a summer of extreme heat, the federal government needs to deliver a substantial package to urgently address energy affordability for people on low incomes,” ACOSS program director of climate and energy, Kellie Caught, said.

“Energy is an essential service, one which has serious implications for people’s health and wellbeing.”

Meanwhile, a recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data release shows seven per cent of people who needed to see a doctor in the 12 months to June delayed the visit or didn’t go at all because of cost-of-living pressures.

“This was double the number compared to 2021-22, when 3.5 per cent of people put off or did not see a GP when they needed because of the cost,” Robert Long, head of health statistics at the ABS, said.

One-in-five people delayed or avoided seeking mental health treatment because of the cost, while 10.5 per cent of patients needing to see a specialist didn’t due to price pressures.

“There was also an increase in people who delayed or didn’t get prescription medication when needed due to cost, from 5.6 per cent in 2021-22 to 7.6 per cent in 2022-23,” Mr Long said.

Crushed by mortgage repayments

Since the Reserve Bank began hiking interest rates back in May last year, the cost of meeting repayments on the average size mortgage has soared.

Those with a home loan balance of $590,000 – the national average – are forking out $1345 more per month, or an extra $16,140 per year.

“That’s a huge amount of extra money to be spending on your mortgage, especially when the cost of almost everything else is also going up,” Graham Cooke, head of consumer research at finance comparison website finder.com.au said.

Even if those huge increases were happening in isolation, rates of distress would be high, but with a cost-of-living crisis on top, countless Aussies are now up against the wall.

Martin North is the principal of economic research firm Digital Finance Analytics and tracks household cash flows, with data indicating more than half of mortgage holders are in cash-flow deficit each month.

That is, half of all mortgage households are now spending more than they earn every month.

“Looking in detail, we find that recent purchasers, especially young growing families, are most exposed,” Mr North said.

Many bought when mortgage rates were sitting around two per cent, and when then-RBA Governor Philip Lowe assured people the official cash rate would likely remain on hold until 2024.

It didn’t. Home loan rates are now sitting at about six per cent.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/startling-proof-australia-is-totally-stuffed-and-almost-noone-is-getting-by-unscathed/news-story/f1cf9d1e3c8b76fb2052b3b869409a67

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Aussie homeowners warned ‘perfect storm’ to hit as insurance is cut from budgets

This is a real problem. Recent natural disasters have cost insurace companies big so they have to allow for such big costs in the future. And increased premiums are the only way to do that. My home insurance has trebled in recent times. I can afford that but many can't. So they risk losing everything

Homeowners are crossing their fingers as the cost of living crisis has more Aussies cutting insurance from their budgets.

The increased frequency of extreme climate events, inflation, and Australians’ love for urbanisation in places most likely to be hit by weather have created a “perfect storm” in insurance markets.

Insurance Council of Australia chief Andrew Hall painted the grim picture during an address to the National Press Club on Thursday.

He said the “difficult choice” to forgo insurance or to be underinsured was creating a protection gap – the extent to which potential economic losses are not covered by private insurance.

“It’s the difference between what should or needs to be insured and what isn’t insured,” he said.

Many Australians have tried to maintain cover but Mr Hall said the risk was greatest in areas where “the threat of high natural peril risk is driving the biggest increases in premiums.”

“As the protection gap widens there will be serious implications. The first is the additional vulnerability that households and families, particularly middle and lower-income earners, will face if the worst happens.

“It means that when disasters and accidents occur, they disproportionately up-end the lives of people particularly in vulnerable lower socio-economic groups.”

As a result, he warned, taxpayers will be carrying more additional risk to clean up after a disaster and more pressure on the government’s coffers.

Banks will also be increasingly exposed.

A recent report by the Actuaries Institute suggested nearly one in eight Australian households is facing home insurance affordability stress.

Since the Black Summer bushfires in 2019, Australia has experienced 18, as Mr Hall described, “insurance catastrophes”.

“Last year alone, the insurance industry in Australia paid 302,000 disaster related claims, which caused more than $7.25bn in insured losses,” Mr Hall said.

The ICA boss said proper mitigation was key and pointed to an example of premiums dropping by on average 34 per cent in Roma, Queensland after the construction of a flood levee.

He also urged for a further strengthening of the National Construction Code to make homes more durable for the environment where they’re built.

Mr Hall welcomed the call from national cabinet to stop putting homes on flood plains.

“All too often, we have built our homes in places where we can touch and feel and absorb nature – in bushland, on river frontages, and backing on to beaches,” he said.

“But in so doing, we have put ourselves on flood plains, in fire-prone bushland, or coastal areas in direct paths of cyclones.

“We have ignored the red flags of nature.”

He also urged state governments to wipe the 10 per cent stamp duties on insurance customers.

“If insurance policies for houses or cars did not exist, or were priced out of reach, then the population would demand it of the government.

“For the sake of our future protection and productivity, Australian governments at the state and Federal level must have an eye on reform of insurance taxes.

“There is a clear opportunity here to think about how to incentivise states to lower their insurance taxes to ensure more people have the private cover that will protect.”

https://www.news.com.au/finance/money/budgeting/aussie-homeowners-warned-perfect-storm-to-hit-as-insurance-is-cut-from-budgets/news-story/49ce464c33827b76f1097002f43ec789

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‘Heretic’ grandmother banned by Tasmanian Anglican bishop

Anglicanism is traditionally tolerant of theological variety.  It is not even clear that all the episcopate believe in God -Runcie, for instance.  So this news is a surprise.

An Open Letter To The Lancet

The Lancet is prestigious and publishes some good studies but it is under heavily Leftist influence.  It published, for instance, an article that criticized the American invasion of Iraq. And Leftists like the authoritarian responses to Covid.  They took the heavy-handed Chinese Communist approach as their model

 

A Lancet paper has made outrageous claims that Covid vaccines are highly effective in reducing Covid and all-cause mortality for older Australians. This paper, used by the Australian Government to support more boosters for the elderly, is debunked in the following open letter:

Open letter to Bette Liu, Sandrine Stepien, Timothy Dobbins, Heather Gidding, David Henry, Rosemary Korda, Lucas Mills, Sallie-Anne Pearson, Nicole Pratt, Claire M. Vajdic, Jennifer Welsh, and Kristine Macartney, authors of “Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination against COVID-19 specific and all-cause mortality in older Australians: a population based study”. The Lancet, Vol. 40, 100928, November 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanwpc.2023.100928

also to Richard Horton (editor of the The Lancet)

and Paul Kelly (Australian Chief Medical Officer)

Concerns Regarding Data Integrity And Analysis

The retrospective, observational study of 3.8 million Australians of over 65 years, during eleven months of 2022, has reached the following broad conclusion:

“COVID-19 vaccination is highly effective against COVID-19 mortality among older adults although effectiveness wanes with time since the last dose.

Our findings emphasise the importance of continuing to administer booster doses, particularly to those at highest risk.”

This paper and its conclusion have been cited by the Australian Chief Medical Officer in an Australian Senate Estimates inquiry [1] to support government policy of continued vaccination for older adults.

The research has been funded by the Australian Government through various government agencies and by pharmaceutical companies.

As it stands, the conclusion of the paper is unclear, if not invalid, because it states that vaccination is “highly effective”, but “wanes over time”. Can a vaccine be “highly effective” only for a limited time? How limited?

The time limit to effectiveness is one of the key issues to be discussed below.

Data Integrity Issues

Most of the paper, consisting of four large tables occupying most of a printed page each, is a presentation of dosage statistics of the Australian population, which, while not irrelevant, are not germane to the main subject of the paper.

The space could be better used. The main subject and conclusion of the paper depend critically on analysis of the data relating dosage to COVID-19 and all-cause mortality shown in Figures 1 to 3.

These “death by vaccination status” data, central to the study, are largely absent from the paper. Importantly, the conclusion quoted above requires analysis of accurate Australian COVID data which are well-known to have serious integrity issues, which have errors originating from data collected from disparate sources and from flawed data recording procedures.

For example, someone who dies soon after being vaccinated with one dose may be recorded as the death of an unvaccinated person [2].

Also, COVID-19 mortality is intrinsically an unreliable statistic, because attribution of a COVID death may be erroneous. A death (ICD 10 code U07.1) could be with COVID (defined by a positive PCR test) rather than from COVID (the disease).

Sometimes, COVID deaths (ICD 10 code U07.2) have been assigned by judgement without doing any tests.

Raw COVID-19 mortality data by dosage, essential to the paper have not been disclosed in the paper, even in a summary form. How did they select and validate COVID-19 mortality data? The authors need to discuss the data of Figure 1 and 2 and should publish their compilation of the raw data, so that readers can replicate the results of their paper.

A further deficiency is: that measuring vaccination effectiveness (VE) by survival rates against only COVID-19 mortality is inadequate because it assumes falsely that vaccination does not have lethal side effects. Even the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has admitted [3] that there were 14 COVID vaccine-induced deaths to March 2023.

With mass vaccination, non-COVID excess deaths have reached about double COVID-19 deaths [4], which should be investigated for association with vaccination. Yet, with only a brief discussion suggesting how vaccination may reduce all-cause mortality, the authors have inserted “all-cause mortality” in the title of the paper, insinuating vaccination is also effective against all-cause mortality.

Method And Analysis Issues

Even ignoring data integrity issues, ignoring non-COVID excess deaths and supposing VE is validly measured against only COVID-19 mortality, the paper still suffers seriously from methodological and analytical defects. Vaccination, COVID-19 mortality and all-cause mortality data are available since 2021 and well into 2023.

Why does the paper select and analyze only eleven months of 2022? There were surges in deaths in 2022 accompanying the rollouts of the first and second boosters, but the paper does not consider that they may be related to vaccinations, rather than only to the COVID disease.

Instead of analyzing 2022 data as a whole, COVID and all-cause mortality data are analyzed in two separate periods: one five-month period and one six-month period. For different dose groups, vaccine effectiveness (VE) is evaluated by COVID-19 survival effectiveness for three windows: less than three months, three to six months and more than six months.

Such divisions of time periods need to be discussed, because analyzing survival over multiple fixed time periods involves unstated assumptions about the time taken for vaccines to have their effects, and the delay effects should be discussed.

The risk of errors increased due to survivorship bias, where deaths may “fall between the cracks” between survival windows. With two data periods, three dosage groups and three survival windows, there are 18 different vaccine mortality rates to compare to two unvaccinated mortality rates.

As may be expected, there are 18 different VE measures with a wide range of results depending on the various combinations. Importantly, the results appear random with no consistent VE pattern across the two time periods or between the dose groups.

In their main findings, the best and most convenient cases were selected for reporting. For example, from Figure 1 in the first period, the main finding reported was “VE of a 3rd COVID-19 vaccine dose within 3 months was 93 percent (95 percent CI 93–94 percent) whilst VE of a 2nd dose >6 months since receipt was 34 percent (26–42 percent)

Among unfavourable findings (see below), the most favourable finding has been cited by the authors to show COVID-19 vaccination is highly effective, but only relatively and “wanes with time”. Some of those unfavourable findings are masked by what appear as glaring anomalies, probably serious errors collected in table below.

From Figure 1 of the paper, the “Dose3>180 days” group has higher mortality rate (per 100 person-year) than the unvaccinated, yet they have positive vaccine effectiveness of 63.4 percent (COVID-19 VE (percentage) column below).

This and few other examples are shown in the table below, where a “Relative Risk Reduction (percentage)” column (should be the same as COVID-19 VE (percentage)) has been added here with shaded cells, simply calculated from the mortality rates given.

In the June to November period of Figure 1, the “Dose2 8-90 days” group had 1.218 mortality rate per 100 PY, compared to 0.49 for the unvaccinated. This shows that even in the short-term of less than three months, that vaccinated group (second shaded cell from the bottom) had 2.5 times higher risk of dying from COVID than the unvaccinated.

How could the authors claim for that case (second last column in the above table) a positive VE of 13.9 percent in their paper?

The paper needs to disclose the sorts of adjustments used to achieve positive “COVID-19 VE (percentage)” for those cases where the vaccinated groups had higher mortality rates than the unvaccinated. Those negative relative risk reduction results calculated here for those cases, if unexplained, would invalidate the main conclusion of paper that COVID-19 vaccination is highly effective.

Similar criticisms can be raised against the analysis in Figure 2 and Figure 3, where the method of adjustment for obtaining VE results for all-cause mortality is also not transparent, even though the raw all-cause data would be more accurate than COVID-19 data for reasons explained and discussed above.

On all-cause mortality the authors made unsubstantiated comments such as “COVID-19 vaccines also appeared effective against other specific causes of death…those who are more likely to get multiple vaccine doses, or to be vaccinated earlier are healthier and less likely to die from any cause…”. Emphasis added.

On Pfizer/BioNTech’s COMIRNATY vaccines alone, the TGA’s DAEN database [5] recorded (subject to underreporting) over 82,000 adverse events associated with many different diseases. Moreover, those comments are contradicted by the authors’ own analysis.

Figure 3 of the paper shows clearly that the authors’ own calculated VE against all-cause mortality (rates not shown) are all negative for those cases shown in the above table (last column).

Therefore, COVID-19 vaccination was ineffective and had increased all-cause mortality among some groups of older adults. Their evidence of ineffectiveness is consistent with Australian macro-data where all-cause mortality have increased significantly for older Australians vaccinated since 2021 [4].

Summary Of Critique

The approach of this study depends on official COVID data which have integrity issues, which the paper does not acknowledge.

Only 11 months in 2022 of official data out of possibly more than 24 months have been selected for the study.

The “death by vaccination status” data which link dosages with mortality data have not been discussed or disclosed. The key data used need to be publicly available for replication of the findings.

The unseen key data collection has been selectively analyzed, by dividing into separate time periods, dose groups and survival durations, producing 18 comparisons. The method of analysis is unsound and has led apparently to random results, without identifiable regularity.

The vaccination effectiveness results were not simply calculated, but adjusted. The details of the adjustments need to be disclosed.

The unadjusted results contradict the general conclusion that “COVID-19 vaccination is highly effective against COVID-19 mortality among older adults”.

Out of 18 comparisons of adjusted results, the most favourable and convenient findings have been selected and presented to draw the main conclusion which is not generally valid.

Conclusion

As it stands, the paper has serious deficiencies in data integrity, data selection bias, flawed methods of analysis, undisclosed adjustments of results, selective reporting of findings and the drawing of invalid conclusions.

The Australian Government has chosen to take this paper as authoritative evidence to justify its health policy, which has been associated with many excess deaths particularly in older Australians, but those deaths have been brushed off without investigation as coincidental, unrelated to vaccination.

The paper, in its currently published form, has serious methodological and analytical defects, resulting in errors and misleading conclusions.

Therefore, the paper needs substantial revision to address the issues raised or it should be retracted.

https://principia-scientific.com/an-open-letter-to-the-lancet/

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Driving with autism: Big change for some Australian licences

The term autism covers a very wide range of behaviours so this regulation seems likely to capture some people who are not likely to be problem drivers. I am a high-functioning autistic and I drove for 60 years without once hurting myself or anyone else.

The legal basis of this would also appear to be shaky. What evidence do they have implicating autism in bad driving? None, I am sure. To prodce such evidence they would need to have a very precise definition of the problem behaviours and that is precisely what is not possible with autism

The prime manifestation of autism is social insensitivity of various sorts so it is difficult to see how that could be a driving problem. So this is a very silly piece of regulation. Courts should assess the actual behaviour rather than some speculative claim about its origin.

A quiet change to the national standards that govern driving fitness has left autistic Australians in legal limbo, potentially facing fines of more than $9000.

The 2022 Assessing Fitness to Drive standards were the first to list autism as a condition that “should be assessed individually”, but there is huge variability about how the new rule applies across states and territories.

That puts many autistic Australians, particularly those who were diagnosed later in life, years or decades after they earned their full licences, in a confusing place of legal limbo.

The Assessing Fitness to Drive guidelines are updated every few years and cover a range of medical conditions, including diabetes, epilepsy and vision. They are written for health professionals who treat people with conditions that may impact their driving.

According to Austroads, which develops the guidelines in conjunction with other groups, autistic drivers aren’t required to automatically report their diagnosis, but the “overarching requirement is that a person with a condition that may impair safe driving will need to report and be assessed”.

Each state and territory interprets the guidelines differently, making for a lot of confusion — as well as some eye-watering fines and costs.

Tests of driving fitness also vary across jurisdictions. GPs often request an on-road assessment from an occupational therapy driver assessor, which costs around $1500. If the test is failed, subsequent “driving rehab” lessons cost between $130-$150 a pop.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/on-the-road/driving-with-autism-big-change-for-some-australian-licences/news-story/5e970476bec65f31d8d69cb7bd095a67

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The facts that pro-Palestinian demonstrators need to know

The writer below sees a knowledge of the full facts as an antidote to the present upsurge of antisemitism. I think he is being far too optimistic. What the pro-Palestinian demonstrations reveal is how deeply runs the river of antisemitism in the West, a river that has now burst its banks.

Memories of Germany's Nazi horror have long kept antisemitism from being expressed in Western societies but that historic hatred has always been there and the Gaza conflict has caused it to burst into the open.

The big fault in Jews that causes them to be hated is their success in all sorts of ways -- particularly financial. And that provokes envy, a powerful destructive force that is such an ancient human folly that it is expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments. It is a huge mental affliction that seethes in the minds of many unbalanced people.

And if Jewish success generally is offensive, Israel is REALLY offensive. Israel is not only succesful at building prosperity in what was once desert, it is TRIUMPHANT. It has repeatedly defeated attacks on it despite all odds against it. And that triumph provokes burning rage. A triumphant Jew is the very antithesis of what Jew-critics want. It is a towering insult to the envier mind

And where a towering rage is what is driving antisemitism, reason, rationality and facts are of no effect. What the pro Palestinian demonstrators say is founded in rage only, with the facts being completely irrelevant. The facts will be rearranged to suit the rage

And where does the rage come from? It comes from the Left, for whom rage is basic. The eruption of hate that emerged when Trump was elected reveals what drives Leftists. Rage and hate are the drives of most Leftists. So, where I see Israel as admirable in its success, the Leftist sees it as outrageous and deserving of total hate.

The divide over the Gaza war is a window into the ghastly reality of what drives the Left/Right divide in modern Western societies. Its "pro-Palestinan" motive is just window dressing for Leftist hate. It is not "pro" anything. It is just a demonstration of deeply-rooted hate.

During a call-in show with the late Christopher Hitchens, many years ago, a lady asked a simple but discerning question. After praising Hitchens for his insight, she asked how much of that insight came from talent and what rested on simply ‘knowing about stuff’.

While few can attain the knowledge, experience, and wit of Hitchens, knowing a few basics facts is surely considered the bare minimum to be a member of a society who wishes to participate in the marketplace of ideas… Or, if you don’t know ‘stuff’, you should at least be open to learning.

In our self-censorious age, it is more fashionable and pseudo-sophisticated to regurgitate the prefabricated phrases of the ‘bien-pensant’. It saves the effort of learning and thinking. Given this, we should not be surprised to find so many spouting propaganda without knowing the depth of their ignorance. Nothing illustrates this better than the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, beginning on October 7, killed around 1,200 Israelis, mainly civilians, making it the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. One mustn’t forget that many Israeli Arabs also perished. One of these inconvenient facts forgotten by pro-Palestinian placard-wavers (who are really pro-Hamas, even if they don’t know it), is that some 20 per cent of Israelis are Arabs and 17 per cent are Muslim. Documents found on the bodies of Hamas terrorists show that the intent of Hamas was to kill as many civilians as possible, including detailed plans to target elementary schools. Another note, recovered by the Israeli Defence Force, read as follows:

‘You must sharpen the blades of your swords and be pure in your intentions before Allah. Know that the enemy is a disease that has no cure, except beheading and removing the hearts and livers. Attack them!’

Video footage, gathered from bodycams of the terrorists, shows them torturing their victims. The bodies found of Hamas’ victims bear the scars of the inhuman suffering they were subjected to before they were killed. There is a recording of a Hamas terrorist calling his parents with the phone of his victim, bragging with glee that he killed 10 people. Another is of terrorists boasting of having cut off the heads of their victims and playing with them.

This is the conduct of Hamas, an organisation designated as a terrorist group by, among others, the US, the UK, the European Union, and Australia. Remember, Hamas was voted into power in 2006 by a slim margin over Fatah in the Gaza Strip, they never allowed another election.

Another ignored fact is the fundamental difference between Israel and Hamas in how they treat their citizens and civilians during conflicts. While the former has made sure that every one of its citizens have access to shelters from the random rocket attacks, Hamas shelters their rockets in schools and hospitals, using civilians as human shields for weaponry and combatants, knowing that Israel will hesitate to attack due to humanitarian reasons. For Hamas, this is a win-win situation – either its civilians will prevent Israel from attacking, or if Israel does strike, the civilian casualties will be used for PR and engender sympathy among the gullible.

The actual welfare of the civilians has never been a consideration for Hamas, underscored by a report that said Hamas is hoarding 200,000 gallons of fuel for its militants, who hide in hundreds of kilometres of tunnels, while hospitals and water treatment plants are running low. Hamas openly calls for the destruction of Israel, and yet Israel is the one providing clean water to Gaza.

Even after the slaughter of Israelis, the Israeli military sent advice to residents in Gaza to move to the south in anticipation of their ground offensive in an attempt to reduce civilian casualties. Which other country will tell their enemies in advance of their combat strategy to avoid civilian casualties? The Hamas leadership, on the other hand, has ordered the civilians in the north to stay.

Around the world, mindless mobs have gathered and marched in support of Hamas and in condemnation of Israel, as if there is any moral equivalence. It is petulant and self-righteous. In Victoria, protestors saw fit to storm the office of Defence Minister Richard Marles. In Sydney, protestors were shouting ‘F*** the Jews!’ Elsewhere, the language reveals the callous nature of pro-Hamas protesters, with one man in London saying that ‘Hitler knew deal with these people’.

One might be tempted to say, and many do, that the slaughter of 1,200 Israelis is the culmination of Israel’s occupation of Gaza. But Israel does not have any presence in Gaza. In 1967, during the Third Arab-Israeli War, Israel occupied the then-Egypt-controlled Gaza (which is seldom mentioned), only after being fired upon from positions within Gaza. In 2005, Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza, forcibly removing the few thousand Jews who settled there.

But Israel has cemented the borders of Gaza, meaning that it is an open-air prison, others might pipe up. Perhaps Israel wouldn’t need to if the Hamas Charter didn’t specifically say that it intends to obliterate the state of Israel. But Gaza also has a border with Egypt, which the Egyptians have kept closed without any condemnation. Is it not morally worse for Egypt, an Islamic country that had occupied Gaza for years, as well as all the other Arab states in the area, many of whom very wealthy, not to open their doors to their brother and sister Muslims? The reality is that the Arab nations, like Hamas, care not a jot for the citizens of Gaza, whom they see only as a useful chess piece in the game of international relations against Israel.

The moral confusion over the Israel-Hamas conflict stems from not knowing ‘about stuff’. For if people knew a little more, there would be mass pro-Palestinian protests against Hamas. As such, in the utter moral confusion, antisemitism of the crassest kind is allowed to flourish again in the West, decades after ‘never again’ was promised.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/revelation-of-ignorance

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The problem with trying to ‘fix’ men

The problem with any drive towards ‘fixing’ men’s mental health is a lot of blokes like being blokes. It is easier. An important reason why men on average die younger than women is that they do more dangerous things -- both at work and during recreation. Male suicides are often the result of a judicial system weighted against them in family court matters. And the biological differences between men and women are an obvious cause of differing disease patterns between the sexes. So attempts to "reform" men are unlikely to affect such important differences

International men’s day takes place today. There are plenty of good people working hard to raise the event’s status, but in many quarters it’ll be greeted with shrugs.

The same compelling stats will again do the rounds: that men die younger, receive longer prison sentences for the same crimes, do worse academically, represent the vast majority of our homeless and remain much more likely to kill themselves. Most will only be aware of the last statistic, even though it’s most likely the net consequence of all the others. Some people will acknowledge the problems facing men and boys but only offer up cursory platitudes and simple fixes. ‘Men need to talk more’, ‘Men need to cry more’, ‘Men need to hug other men without the catalyst of a last-minute goal’.

The subtext of such attitudes is almost always that men need to change. Women it seems, are the eternal finished product, ready for market. Whereas men are the equivalent of one of those robot dogs you see online that can do a bit of dancing but can’t quite master the stairs.

Even when men aren’t seen as individually defective, they are often viewed as collectively at fault. Feminists who take a sympathetic view of men’s mental health will sometimes go on to assert that men’s problems are yet another consequence of the patriarchy. But this just can feel like an attempt to get back to the ‘real’ agenda, like whenever the latest ‘Just Stop Something’ protest group inadvertently reveal that a sudden obsession with cavity insulation has something to do with Karl Marx.

The patriarchy is often imagined as a self-conscious act by men to protect both the status quo and each other’s interests. I’m not sure we’re all that concerned about one another’s welfare, given we are after all a species for whom the funniest thing imaginable is seeing our best mate take a football to the nuts. Most blokes don’t want a cultural revolution or, indeed, those fix-all solutions favoured by the ‘manosphere’ either, where they tell men to ‘crush’ self doubt and ‘unleash’ their inner beast. The closest most of us come to unleashing our inner beast is when a visiting in-law puts the heating on in September.

On a day-to-day basis the vast majority of blokes are doing their best to protect and provide for the people they care about. They may be a bit rubbish at remembering important dates, or the names of any children other than their own, but most are trying to be a dependable presence for the people they love.

When it comes to mental health, they would probably like to feel a bit happier, a bit calmer, sleep a bit better and feel less alone. It’s a hard thing to admit, but middle age and fatherhood can be a lonely business. At this age women are often still making friends: Annabelle from NCT, Claire from the school gate, Hannah from tumble tots, and that Pilates instructor who insists on leading all female classes. When I’m at the school gates my intention isn’t to make friends, it’s to, and this might sound crazy, pick up my son and take him home. Women excel in their ability to share the details of their lives with friends and family. It’s why a show like Loose Women has existed for nearly a quarter of a century; we recognise the value of a group of women getting together to share, moan a bit and laugh about the rubbishness of the hapless blokes they’ve been saddled with.

This kind of exchange is a lot harder for most men. For a start, when we do get time together, the last thing we want to do is talk about anything meaningful. This can easily lead to a situation where a man comes back from three days with his mates and has no new information to report to his partner. She’ll seek life ‘news’ but the only new thing he’s sure about is Greg’s fringe, which Greg spent the whole time getting hammered for.

His partner might conclude that this emotional distance is sad. In some ways she’s right, one of the great tragedies of being male is you never get to tell another man how you truly feel (the flipside being that you don’t have to listen to their woes – it may be flawed, but it’s not without logic).

The downside of this system is that as blokes bumble into middle-age the tough stuff of life becomes inevitable – disappointments, death, the cost of a family pass at Centre Parks. When the sad stuff goes undiscussed men can end up existing in an emotional vacuum.

But are those who say ‘men just need to talk more’ right? I suspect that even if men are encouraged to open up more, most of us are never going to become head tilting empaths or help our mate journey to find his ‘inner child’ (in fairness, we’d instantly forget the name of that child).

I suspect the real answer is something of a compromise: with men opening up more, but gradually and at their own pace. I wonder if something like the successful campaign for eating five fruit and veg a day could help. When spending time with a friend, aim for five new things you can tell your partner about them when you get home. In the process of finding out those things you might end up discovering something important. Or maybe, just like the original fruit and veg plan, you’ll only manage two, but at least you can convince yourself that the emotional equivalent of a Terry’s chocolate orange counts for the other three.

The problem with any drive towards ‘fixing’ men’s mental health is a lot of blokes like being blokes. The simplicity, the directness of communication, the fact you can make a full plan using just nine words spanning three text messages. So men might be open to some adjustments in behaviour, but only if it’s evolution rather than revolution.

We should keep this in mind the next time yet another campaign for men’s mental health calls on us to bare our souls. Men may need to talk a bit more – but let’s retain a bit of realism, the average bloke isn’t likely to go from nought to 60. Emotionally speaking, we’re less sports car and more family saloon.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/the-problem-with-trying-to-fix-men/

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Can A Woman Fall In Love With A Man She’s Not Physically Attracted To?

The conclusions Sabrina Haynes comes to below are congruent with my personal experience. I have never been better than average in looks but for most of my life I have had no trouble attracting women, usually pretty good-looking ones. Why? In line with what she says, I have a lively sense of humour and high intelligence. I joke a lot and understand a lot. And I have great self-confidence

I was always confident that if I could just get a woman to have a meal with me, the magic would happen rapidly and she would want to see me again. Now that I am 80 and physically frail, it no longer works but it did work for many years. Sabrina does nail it below

The dominant social narrative currently at play is that a majority, if not all women are superficial beings who want a guy with a six pack who earns six figures. Women who are picky (or merely just selective) about their mate rightfully end up sad and alone, while the men they rejected go on to be successful.

At least, that’s what the manosphere thinks. The more reasonable among us probably disagree with this. In many couples, one individual is more attractive than the other. This isn’t always the case, of course, but there are actually benefits to women being the one who is more attractive in these scenarios. One study found that couples, where the wife was more physically attractive, had better positive outlooks as opposed to couples where the husband and wife matched one another in attractiveness.

Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t all about looks, money, success, or what car he drives for a lot of women (I can already hear the protests coming from the responses), but how exactly do women fall in love with unattractive men? The answer isn’t all that surprising, really.

The Pete Davidson Conundrum

Davidson isn’t a supermodel or even very good at his job, according to some, but that hasn’t stopped him from being romantically linked to some of the most successful and beautiful women in the public eye.

To be fair, you might not think that Kim Kardashian, Kate Beckinsale, Phoebe Dynevor, or Emily Ratajkowski are the most deserving of fame or success, but from a somewhat objective standpoint, they have the advantage over him in terms of physical appearance. Whenever there’s a question of inequality, specifically in terms of attractiveness, it boggles the mind. Women might look at that and think, what’s she doing with him? Men might think, what does he have that I don’t?

It’s been scientifically proven that women find a funny man “irresistible.”

I received a fair amount of pushback in my circle for arguing that Davidson’s girlfriends, both past and present, choose to be with him because he’s funny, sweet, and vulnerable (their adjectives, not mine), but the science doesn’t lie. It’s been scientifically proven that women find a funny man “irresistible.”

Pete Davidson and his famous celebrity girlfriends might be a bit too far-removed for some of us, so I’ll use a more realistic example. A friend from college, let’s call her Helen, confirms this.

In our senior year, she briefly went out with a friend of hers, so I called her to talk about their first date. “We had been friends for several years before this,” she says. “I didn’t think he was drop-dead gorgeous or anything, but he wasn’t terrible looking.” I can corroborate that, but here’s where it gets interesting. “We had amazing chemistry,” she says, still gushing, though this happened years ago. “He was super smart, very sweet, with an amazing sense of humor. We shared similar interests, and when we talked, it was a back-and-forth, effortless kind of banter.” Sadly, they didn’t last due to distance, but she says, to this day, it was the best first date she’s ever had.

Comedian Iliza Schlesinger Explains

We know that it’s possible for men who aren’t the most visually stunning to land a 10, but how exactly does it happen? Comedian Iliza Schlesinger, winner of Last Comic Standing and a frequent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, explains it for us.

A matter of years ago, Iliza was flying back to her home in LA when she struck up a friendship with the man sitting beside her, Brian. He worked at a hedge fund, was a Yale graduate, and owned a home in Beverly Hills. They got along, but he wasn’t the most physically attractive guy. And, to make things complicated, he was into her, and she didn’t feel the same at first. But all of that changed.

“You cannot fake intelligence, you cannot fake sense of humor, you cannot fake wit. He had those things. He was unattractive,” she says, “We were friends for a full year.” But as their friendship grew, his feelings for her did as well. She wasn’t into him, until he revealed that his mom had cancer and became really emotionally vulnerable with her. “This is my big thing. As a woman, you can become attracted to a man you’re physically not attracted to because of personality. [For] men, it doesn’t work. You’re never like, that girl is a warthog, but it turns out she’s really funny, so I wanna put my mouth on hers.”

“It was all the kindness, how smart, how funny, all the stuff…my heart opened up.” Iliza admittedly fell in love with a guy she wasn’t attracted to who had been more or less pursuing her, but unfortunately, it didn’t end well. As it turns out, Brian lied about his mom being sick, his job, and his college education, among other things, and she eventually found out. After they broke up, she went on to write and star in Good on Paper on Netflix, based on her experience with him.

Women Are Cerebral, Men Are Visual

“Women are cerebral, men are visual,” Iliza explains. This, in part, is what she attributes to how she fell in love with a man she wasn’t initially attracted to. It’s also important to note that though she wasn’t attracted to him when their friendship began, her feelings for him grew as she got to know him.

It seems that a lot of men feel that most women initially write them off right away if they’re not better looking — but in a lot of cases, that isn’t accurate. Had she never formed a friendship with this man, she wouldn’t have become attracted to him. But his character (at least at first) made up for that.

Even the looks of a Hemsworth brother can’t prevent the most boring man from being off-putting.

Men often misguidedly think that women want the hottest man possible because it’s what they themselves value in a mate. Women want an attractive man, but even attractiveness can’t save a man who takes himself too seriously, can’t take a joke, knows nothing of personal hygiene, can’t hold a conversation, or doesn’t know how to dress well.

The same study, which found couples are more positive where the wife is the more attractive of the two, also found that a man’s attractiveness wasn’t the sticking point for wives — it was his level of support for her. At the same time, the couples where the husband was the most attractive found lower levels of support.

A subreddit on r/dating provides a wealth of knowledge on this topic. One guy sums it up perfectly:

“Women, for the most part, do not find men attractive the same way we find them attractive. Meaning that I would go out with a girl as long as she is attractive, sexy, or pretty…I will give her a chance. She doesn’t have to be smart, funny, etc. And I know that might seem wrong for some, but I understand that, by nature, that’s how most guys are. Women, on the other hand, are attracted to something special about you. Not necessarily your looks, I know plenty of guys who are very handsome and attractive but lack personality, social skills, confidence, and so on. That’s why a lot of average-looking guys can get women to notice them if they are funny, mature, and confident with who they are. I think that’s what most women see as attractive. Anything physical is a bonus.”

It wasn’t Brian’s looks or even his fake Yale degree that attracted Iliza to him. It was his emotional vulnerability, his sense of humor, his intelligence, and so much more.

For my friend Helen, her amazing chemistry with her long-time guy friend wasn’t based on his appearance, but on their shared interests, their ability to keep up with one another, their conversation. “Sparks were constantly flying,” she tells me. “Over time, I grew to be more physically attracted to him because I was so engrossed in him. Our connection was magical.”

The Take-Away

Is it possible for a woman to be attracted to a man’s mind? The short answer is yes. Attraction is a powerful thing, and we can’t over-analyze or explain it a lot of the time. Again, even the looks of a Hemsworth brother can’t prevent the most boring man from being hard to be around and off-putting. Similarly, intellect, sense of humor, character, charm, and all the other indescribable qualities we’re drawn to can’t stop us from falling for the guy we wouldn’t think we’d be interested in at first glance.

https://thesavannapost.com/can-a-woman-fall-in-love-with-a-man-shes-not-physically-attracted-to-ddef01120bb5

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The big peril of non-monogamy

Your partner may meet someone whom they like better than you.

"Open" relationships are often tried and seem a good idea at first but in the end a committed monogamous relationship is a better route to long term security in a relationship. The woman below found that out the hard way. She has lost her partner and is suffering badly as a result

For those of you who have been following my last few posts, you know that my relationship with my husband is tenuously holding on by a very thin thread. Four years into our non-monogamous exploration, his new, very serious, relationship with an HSV2+ partner has caused our relationship to implode.

In the nine months since he started dating his new partner, we have had to grapple with the significance of introducing someone with an STI into our sexual lives, in the face of very different views on the associated risks. We’ve also had to negotiate my husband’s request to change our non-monogamy agreement and transition to becoming non-hierarchical. And, on top of that, we’ve been navigating the contrast between his new, highly sexually and emotionally charged relationship and our long-term, relatively less sexually intense relationship involving three kids, a dog, a mortgage, bills and the other realities of married life.

Yeah… it’s been a fucking awful few months….

From my perspective, all of this started nine months ago. Right around the time — actually, to be totally exact, it was exactly at the time — that he met his new partner. Before that fateful point in time, things had been mostly humming along between us. We’d survived the roller-coaster of the first few years of the massive transition from monogamy to having sex and relationships with various new partners. We’d entered a fairly stable phase of our non-monogamy.

I was pretty confident we were kind of normal. Yes, obviously, there were some points of friction and just general blah-ness that comes with a quarter of a decade of living together, but overall I felt good about our relationship. We were talking about the future. We were going out on date nights every couple of weeks. We enjoyed our time together on vacation. And we were getting through the daily hum of family life without too many hiccups. Plus we were kind of rocking non-monogamy, with both of us having stable partners that added rather than depleted from our life.

I totally acknowledge that there were parts of our relationship and life together that weren’t perfect. There were days were we struggled with our different communication styles — I’m rapid-fire and he’s a thinker-before-speaking type of guy. There were periods when we felt a bit less connected, preferring to spend our evenings on our separate mobile devices watching our own shows rather than spending the evening compromising on watching a show together. It wasn’t shits and giggles every single minute.

But I still felt our relationship was good.

Nine months ago, it wasn’t just between us that it was good. Our family unit was strong. With three teenagers in the house, many people assumed our home life was full of teenage hormones, drama and rolling eyes. In reality, our three kids have always been fairly lovely people to be around, even during the throes of adolescence. Unlike many families in which the teenagers disappear into grungy basements to sit in front of screens all day and all night, our teens spend a lot of time with us. In fact, we spent so much time together that we would sing-song to each other “just the fiiiiive of us” as we sat down for our almost-daily family dinner.

Up until recently, I thought we were the lucky ones — lucky to have such a close, connected family. I felt lucky to have a 25+ year relationship with a man that I loved, respected and wanted to grow old with. An us against the world kind of feeling.

And then, there was this fateful day when he met her and suddenly things changed.

The shift was neither subtle nor slow to come about. It happened fast. Practically overnight my husband became distant and irritable around us, spending more and more time out of the house. He stopped coming to bed at the same time as me preferring to stay on the couch until the wee hours of the night texting with his new partner. His evening absences met fewer family dinners and those that he was physically present for, he didn’t contribute to the conversation.

I started to gripe about the situation. I even dared suggest that his new relationship was causing more harm than good and that maybe it was time to end it and get ourselves back on more stable footing. I foolishly thought that if she was out of the picture we could go back to the way things were before. I was wrong.

Instead of considering the role that this new relationship was having on us, my husband was thinking something very different. He finally told me that he’d been unhappy for years. He felt that’s why we were in the situation we were in. Whereas I completely blamed his new relationship and felt that his emotional connection with his new partner was causing havoc on our relationship and the sanctity of our family unit, he thought the havoc had nothing to do with her. I was gob-smacked — and if there was ever a time to use the word gob-smacked this is it — when he told me that the problem was our relationship. He said that he had felt our marriage had been lacking for many years and he was done with being unhappy.

Since that shocker, he has made clear that he is “digging in his heels and pushing back” on what he views as years and years of me not paying enough attention to him. The problems in our relationship, according to him, are so bad and so terrible, that we need to fix them now or he will leave.

I am totally destabilized. I feel complete dissonance between what I experienced and what he says he experienced in our marriage. I thought we were happy. Perfect? No. But happy. He says he wasn’t for years. I did not know and feel blindsided by his newly expressed version of our life together.

I admit, I have struggled to believe him. The timing is problematic. If he’d been unhappy for years why did it only come out when he met his new partner? I can’t help but think he is actively trying to rationalize his decisions about his new partner by convincing himself that he was unhappy with me. Re-writing our history and making me the bad guy may be a lot easier than taking a look at his actions.

He admits she’s been a “catalyst” but even without her, he says it was a matter of time before he was going to leave me. Seriously?

I want to scream at him: What were you doing or going to do to stop this from happening? Why didn’t you fight for us? Why didn’t you tell me before it got this bad?

We are now in a stalemate. I blame him for falling in love with someone and being blind to the impact this has had on his decisions and thought process. He blames me for not believing that there has been a big problem between us for years.

I feel like I have two choices in front of me: Either continue to believe that the problem stems from her or start to reflect on whether there were major cracks in my marriage’s foundation that I didn’t see (or didn’t want to see). Was our non-monogamous exploration an attempt to fill those cracks? Did we open up because our marriage was unhappy? If so, can we fix things before things crumble completely?

I desperately want to go back to believing we are the lucky ones. But I am not sure it will ever be “just the five of us” again.

https://hello-lizsinclair.medium.com/the-unravelling-of-a-non-monogamous-relationship-when-love-and-hsv2-enter-the-equation-0b16c80f2145

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Men’s welfare at the mercy of feminist ideology

One should be wary of stereotypes in matters of divorce and child custody. When my wife walked out with our 5 year-old son, I might well have had grave concerns for his welfare. I did not. I thought his loving and capable mother would look after him well and was happy to leave him in her care

And my positivity was rewarded. She thought the boy needed his father and made a point of sending him to me for a day each weekend. No custody dispute whatever. With goodwill many custody disputes could be avoided and the lack of goodwill is the real problem. Not all fathers may be able to act as I did but those who try it may be surprised at how trust engenders trust

ANGELA SHANAHAN

For two days this week the lawns of Parliament House have been strewn with 2500 empty shoes, one for each of the men and boys who die in Australia each year through suicide. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare our male suicide rate is overall three to four times higher than the female rate, and mainly involves men in mid-life. These are the major predictive facts about suicide: being male; being divorced, widowed or separated; living alone; being unemployed. The suicide rate in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is twice that of the non-Indigenous population.

Meanwhile, the government is concentrating all preventive efforts on domestic violence against women, always seen as “gendered” violence; in other words, men being violent towards women. According to organisations such as White Ribbon, domestic violence is just a male problem. It is their fault. What’s more, according to its media releases this week for White Ribbon Day, most men just can’t see it or know what to do about it. White Ribbon demands they “educate” themselves because “violence against women is at epidemic proportions, and (our research) contrasts that with the reasons men have given us for not getting involved. We think men will see that there’s no good reason to not step up this year and either make a donation or educate themselves. Because with one in three Australian women being a victim of violence, it’s not just a women’s issue, it’s everyone’s issue”.

But guess what? According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics there are 47 male deaths from suicide per week. Meanwhile, there are 71 females who die from fatal domestic violence per year, that equals 1.36 per week. So male suicides, which are 35 times as numerous as deaths from DV, should also be everyone’s issue. But where is the advertising campaign? Where is the support? The ads that are all about “gendered violence” just blame men, and boys, and the support for men at risk of suicide, except for veterans of the armed forces, is almost nil.

You might say these two issues, DV and male suicide, are not comparable. But think about them in the psychosocial terms of the health and social wellbeing of the community. Most importantly, how well do we value the health and welfare of each section of the population, male and female?

Domestic violence is, as I know, real and has all sorts of serious intergenerational effects. My paternal grandfather was a violent man, who terrorised his family. But, and this is the big but, where is the nuance in the “domestic violence is gendered” statements like the ones White Ribbon uses? It is all the fault of men and apparently the men have to educate themselves. This is simplistic. It is ideology, plain and simple.

What of the pathologies that plague all of us, and our whole society? Why is something that involves two people presented as one-dimensional: man bad perpetrator, woman good victim? The DV lobby does not allow presentation of this problem in any other way, because allowing any nuance might question the simplistic assumptions that underlie the narrow, prismatic feminist ideology that governs all current social legislation, especially in family law.

One fact of male trauma the feminist trope will not admit is that men’s mental and psychological welfare is often eroded by the constant blame and fear of being blamed. No wonder, as even White Ribbon admits, men are confused. None of the DV advocates who speak in terms of “gendered violence” and male “toxic” behaviour look at the root causes of violence.

Importantly, these overlap with the causes of male suicide: substance abuse, unemployment, isolation, intergenerational dysfunction (especially in Aboriginal men and young boys), and family breakdown, which affects all classes and groups of men, but particularly men in the highest age bracket for suicide.

Since 2008, the highest suicide rates have been observed in middle-aged males (aged 40-49). But groups such as White Ribbon are not really interested in the male’s welfare within a marriage or domestic partnership; furthermore, its view of female welfare is so one-dimensionally seen as victimhood that it never admits the couple dynamic.

However, male suicide, though complex, is often triggered, in the words of the AIHW research, by “a recent stressful life event”, especially divorce or final separation from a long-term partner. That has been cited by all research into Australian male suicide as the overwhelming reason behind the rise in middle-life suicide, especially where children are involved.

Divorce is not just a single event; it causes a cascading series of problems, and men in contested divorce cases often find themselves in a maze of legal and financial dead ends, with a mounting psychological toll of usually concealed trauma.

An inquiry into the operation of family law earlier this century was one of the longest in Australian history and found suicide among Australian men was disproportionately associated with family law disputes, especially over custody of children. What is more, the level of false accusations was outrageous. Consequently, in 2006 family law was redrafted to give fathers more say in parenting their children after divorce, with a presumption of shared parenting.

Now, due to the untoward influence of the feminist lobby, for whom all marriages are potential minefields of domestic violence, that sensible and humane principle has been abandoned. This is not “reform”. It is a regression to the past. It is a disastrous change, which will cause more false accusations of violence and more harm to fathers of children and, consequently, more male suicides.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/mens-welfare-at-the-mercy-of-feminist-ideology/news-story/fa4a22ad9f7412ea7b69dc7185be624a

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EU approves controversial weedkiller glyphosate for another 10 years

A win for sanity.  Because it is cheap and very effective the Green/Left have long hated it and  tried to drum up evidence of its harmfulness. The big problem is that it is NOT harmful in normal use.  Lawsuits have however cost Monsanto a lot of money.  Background on the campaign against it below

https://antigreen.blogspot.com/2019/03/rounding-up-roundup-racket-matt-ridley.html

The European Commission has approved the use of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate for another decade, with a spokesperson for Australian growers backing the move as good news for exports.

Authorisation in European Union countries was set to expire on December 15, after a one-year extension was given last year.

Without access to the chemical, which kills a broad spectrum of weeds, farmers claimed food production would have been affected.

The weedkiller is also widely used among the broader population by backyard and professional gardeners. 

Farmers globally were worried the commission would not renew its approval, given strong pressure from anti-glyphosate campaigners, and claims that glyphosate is a health hazard.

But the commission defied those expectations in a split decision this week, after key member states France, Germany and Italy abstained from voting.

Earlier this year, a class action lawsuit was launched against the makers of glyphosate by people diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma who used or were exposed to Roundup.

In September, a preliminary nine-week trial in the Federal Court in Melbourne heard from expert witnesses about whether glyphosate is carcinogenic to humans.

Closing submissions in that trial are scheduled for January.

Research on glysophate 'intensifying'

In a statement, the European Commission said the approval was "based on comprehensive safety assessments carried out by the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency, together with the member states".

It said there was "no evidence to classify glyphosate as being carcinogenic".

In granting a 10-year extension, rather than the usual 15-year time frame, the commission said research on glyphosate was "intensifying".

"New insights on the properties of glyphosate relevant for the protection of human health and environment can be expected," it said.

It also said the 10-year approval came with several new conditions, including the prohibition of use as a desiccant, or drying agent, and the setting of maximum application rates.

The European Union's (EU) chemical regulation system is a two-step process, meaning member states have the right to ban products even if approved at EU level.

Shona Gawel, chief executive of peak body GrainGrowers, said a glyphosate ban in the EU would have been bad news for Australian growers.  "I don't like to speculate on exactly what it would have meant but … it could have impacted on exports," she said.

"There are also other countries that watch the EU fairly closely, so we suspect that would mean they might have started to reflect the EU requirements."

Ms Gawel said Australia's chemical regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), had ruled glyphosate to be non-carcinogenic.

"I know the APVMA scientists have reviewed close to 4,800 peer-reviewed articles and datasets around glyphosate usage, so I think we have to trust the science," she said.

Ms Gawel said that while farmers do use chemicals that are harmful to human health, it was done in a safe way.

"It's a little bit like with our family pets at home — if we give them a flea treatment, if we used a chemical like that outside of the way the label dictates, it would be harmful," she said.

"So it's the same approach when it comes to the use of chemicals on farms, that growers have training and they use chemicals in compliance with labels."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-11-17/eu-approves-glyphosate-weedkiller-10-years-aus-growers-support/103119106

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Families waiting for public housing frustrated as almost 1,400 government-owned properties sit empty in WA

When I was a landlord, I did from time to time have tenants leaving my property in a mess. I usually had the place habitable again within a week -- usually by bogging in myself to do a cleanup. When government is the landlord, however it commmonly takes months to get the property ready for new tenants. It stays vacant meanwhile. An old-old story about government inefficiency

Families experiencing homelessness in regional Western Australia say public housing is sitting empty and boarded up for months and even years at a time — forcing some into overcrowded and unsafe living conditions.

Geraldton woman Dena Comeagain and her two-year-old son Boston have been relying on family members for a place to live since July, after a series of private rentals they were living in were sold.

Ms Comeagain is on the priority housing waitlist, but she could still be waiting over a year for a house.

She said the past few months — moving between crowded houses and not knowing when they would have a place of their own — had been unsettling.

"It's taking a toll on me now; everything is, with being homeless," Ms Comeagain said.

"I just want to get up and go, but I can't because I have nowhere else to go.

Ms Comeagain's frustration builds when she sees empty public housing boarded up around Geraldton.

As of June, there were 191 vacant public homes in the Midwest and Gascoyne, which includes the regional centres of Geraldton and Carnarvon.

There were 1,380 houses across the state sitting vacant.

In December last year, the Midwest-Gascoyne had the highest rate of vacant public housing in WA at 13.7 per cent — three times the state average.

The December figures, which were provided to WA parliament earlier this year, show empty public housing has been climbing over the past three years.

Statewide, empty public housing increased from 2.5 per cent in December 2020 to 4.2 per cent in December 2022.

Ms Comeagain said she had called the Department of Communities about empty properties she thought could be suitable for her and Boston.

"I am angry when they keep telling me the same yarn over and over ... that's their job, to get the people so they can be fixed, so people can be housed."

Ms Comeagain is not alone in her frustration.

A report to a parliamentary committee on the Funding of Homelessness Services in WA, released in June, found there was a significant number of public housing properties in Western Australia that were vacant or under-utilised.

The parliamentary committee heard anecdotal evidence of properties that had been empty for many months, and even years.

Ten people under one roof

Housing advocates are also concerned that lack of public housing is a factor contributing to unsafe overcrowding.

Over the past few months, Ms Comeagain and Boston have stayed with family members, and at times there have been 10 people living under one roof.

Ms Comeagain she found the overcrowded living difficult, especially after hearing about the death of a 10-month-old baby in the Midwest in July while awaiting public housing.

"I could be in the same situation. I'm a single mother and I'm living the same way those girls were with their babies," she said. "We want to break that cycle.

"[The Department of Communities] should be able to house people so they can have a safe home for their babies."

Ms Comeagain craves stability. "Having a safe haven for my baby, putting him in daycare and getting my life back on track, getting a job again and just being stable," she said.

Potential health issues

Veteran housing advocate Betsy Buchanan said it was difficult for families in desperate need to see empty houses. "I think it's it makes them feel very powerless and very unheard," Ms Buchanan said.

She said overcrowding led to many health issues. "It means that the children get very ill ... that places huge stress on the entire family and the mothers and grandmothers often feel personally responsible, when the overcrowding is really triggering a lot of the illness," she said.

A Department of Communities spokesperson said the number of vacant public housing properties in the region had dropped by 50 since last December, with 35 properties and 12 units being refurbished.

Another 12 "untenable" properties were demolished to make way for a road reserve.

The spokesperson pointed to damage caused by tenants as a factor contributing to properties being vacant, alongside the lingering impact of Tropical Cyclone Seroja and the collapse of the department's property maintenance contractor in the region, Pindan, in 2021.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/families-waiting-for-public-housing-frustrated-as-almost-1-400-government-owned-properties-sit-empty-in-wa/ar-AA1jZFmn?ocid=msedgntp&cvid;=760bcf06825d42248be9878a481dbf52&ei;=14

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