Category: News and Events

The Spey Bridge Disaster

A historic former railway bridge has been cordoned off by police after a section of it collapsed into the River Spey in Moray. The Spey Viaduct, an iron girder structure near Garmouth, was completed in 1886 and while no longer used for trains, was popular with cyclists and walkers.
— BBC News

Oh, the fair Railway Viaduct ‘tween Garmouth and Spey!
Has fallen in the river, I am very sad to say,
On the thirteenth of December in the year twenty twenty five
And any person caught on it would have been lucky to survive!
For many years it carried goods and persons on its rails,
And today it is part of many important trails,
But sadly done is all of that if some strong repairs,
Cannot be made swiftly, to ease the people’s cares,
Did the Moray Council carry out their duty,
To maintain the Garmouth Viaduct of such usefulness and beauty?
Propriety demands a full investigation,
And all I pray should join in righteous indignation,
Should signs be found of malfeasance or prestidigitation,
Or any other such things as would dismay the nation,
If necessary maintenance the Council did not carry out,
And let the noble viaduct fall into ruin and into rout,
They must resolve a remedy, for this we all do pray,
And quickly repair the viaduct without doubt or dismay,
For a bridge across a river that does not fully span,
Is of no use to beast and is neither of use to man,
And such a bridge, I’m sure that none would judge it petty,
Is much less like a bridge, and much more like a jetty,
So Moray Council hurry, to fix the broken span,
And restore the viaduct just as fast as you possibly can,
To rejoin the sundered communities of Garmouth and Spey,
So they can again communicate in their habitual way,
Oh, the fair Railway Viaduct ‘tween Garmouth and Spey!
Has fallen in the river, I am very sad to say,
On the thirteenth of December in the year twenty twenty five,
And any person caught on it would have been lucky to survive!

Farewell Pete, We Wish We Hardly Knew Ye

Opposition Leader Job Seeker Peter Dutton

So, Labor won the election in a total landslide, and Peter Dutton became the first opposition leader in Australian history to lose his seat. I would have much preferred the Greens to hold on to their seats, but this is an outcome I can live with.

I spent most of the day ignoring the election (having voted early on Friday) and turned over to the ABC just in time to see Antony Green call it for Labor. Then, maybe a half hour later, he declared that Peter was out and the panel turned to their Liberal representative (James McGrath I believe) for a comment on this “massive repudiation” of Dutton’s policies. He stared, frozen, at the camera with his mouth hanging open for what seemed like a full five seconds before stuttering to life. It was glorious! (Schadenfreude is undignified, but by god it’s delicious!)

It would be nice to imagine that the Libs will now realise that Australians don’t want nuclear power and don’t react well to American-style identity politics, but I won’t be holding my breath.

It also looks like Clive Palmer and his inane “Trumpet of Patriots” party won’t get a seat in either house, and not only has Clive stated that he would have got a better result if he’d stuck with the “Palmer United” name, he now claims to be too old for politics and won’t bother any more. This is fantastic news for every right thinking person. Personally I numbered all of the 50+ boxes on the Senate ballot paper simply so I could put Clive last, so this pleases me immensely. Piss off, Clive!

It is a good day to be alive in Australia.

Pooches and Popes

On Monday (Australian time) the Pope died. So did my parent’s dachshund Rudy who managed to make it to 21, which is not just extremely good going for any dog but pretty close to the longest recorded lifespan for any dachshund.

Rudy was a good boy, but what about Pope Francis?

In my personal opinion Francis was one of the better Pontiffs of recent times – keeping in mind that the bar for Papal decency is simultaneously pretty low and disturbingly difficult for so many of them to reach. He made some good statements and implemented some good policies, while not being outstandingly horrible to the Vatican’s usual punching bags. With an institution as ancient, hidebound and prejudiced as the Catholic Church that’s about the best you can hope for.

So now the race is on for a new Pope. Unfortunately the prophecies of Saint Malachy have now run out, so we can no longer have fun speculating on which Cardinal best fits whatever nonsensical aphorism he (or a 16th century forger more likely) scrawled down. The big question is whether a progressive (for the Papacy of course) like Francis will make the cut, or if there’ll be a conservative backlash and we end up with someone only slightly to the left of Attila the Hun. There’s also the increasingly traditional speculation over whether they’ll choose someone from the global south, or go with yet another European.

Time will tell I guess. However the dice fall, as long as they don’t elect anyone named Peter the wider world will probably be alright.

Anyway, here’s the song I always think of whenever a Papal conclave rolls around.

Eat Me, Bobby!

“These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. We have to recognize we are doing this to our children.” — RFK Junior on autistic people

There once was a moron named Bobby,
The CDC he liked to lobby,
Already insane,
When a worm ate his brain,
He spreads medical lies as a hobby,

RFK Jr.’s quite yappy,
He lacks the good sense of his pappy,
If you do as he bids,
You’ll kill millions of kids,
But the worm in his brain will be happy,

Anti-vax RFK teaches,
Raw water and milk’s what he preaches,
Before very long,
If we let this go on,
We’ll all be relying on leeches,

Stick that in your all natural crack pipe Bobby!

Why Peter Dutton is Just Crazy About Nuclear!

Peter Dutton and His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition. Yes, it’s an old joke, but it works damnit!

It’s election season here in Australia with voters shortly to choose between the currently incumbent Labor Party under Anthony Albanese and the Liberal-National Coalition under Peter Dutton (there are plenty of other parties but the odds of any of them winning enough seats to form government are so tiny as to be laughable). Good old Pete has been campaigning for quite some time on dealing with climate change by building nuclear power stations, which is something so out of left field for Australian politics that it has a lot of people wondering what’s in the water in the Liberal party room. Well, read on and all shall be revealed!

(Note for Americans and other aliens: The Australian Liberal Party is Australia’s major conservative party, with the Nationals their hillbilly cousins. This causes all kinds of problems, most notably when the sarcastic hashtag #imvotingliberalbecause escaped Aussie Twitter some years back and utterly baffled the poor Americans)

Reason 1: The Liberals have spent the better part of the last 30 years arguing that climate change is a hoax, and renewable energy is a scam. The majority of Australians now know that neither of these things are true and are demanding action on climate, but years of denial have painted the Libs into a corner where they can’t embrace renewables without handing the Left a massive propaganda coup. So they’ve grabbed on to nuclear as an alternate ‘clean’ energy source that won’t make them look like they’re caving to the progressives.

Reason 2: Renewable energy – rooftop solar in particular – has massive potential to take energy generation out of the hands of big corporations and put it into the hands of individuals. This is a nightmare for said big corporations, who will see their profits plunge as people switch to making and using their own power. Nuclear keeps power generation in the hands of big business, which is where the Liberals’ corporate donors/masters want it!

Reason 3: Every non-partisan expert says that it will take at least 30 years to get nuclear power up and running in this country. Dutton denies this with vague hand-waving about ‘breakthroughs’, but from the Liberal viewpoint a big delay is a feature, not a bug. The longer it takes for nuclear to come online the longer the Liberal Party’s big business mates can keep on turning a profit from coal, oil and gas. Dutton’s dream reactor is the one that starts operating in the infinite tomorrow – the tomorrow that ticks over a day every day at midnight.

So there you have it, the three reasons Peter Dutton and the Liberal-National Coalition are suddenly crazy for a nuclear future. What a shower of dicks.

I hope his pants get caught and a bloodbath ensues

Man there’s not a week goes by, not a week, that I don’t hear about a dingo attack on K’gari involving some bastard tourist that could have been easily avoided had some parent – I don’t care which one – but some parent conditioned them to fear and respect those dingoes!