Monthly Archives: February 2021

Sexual morality is more than just about consent

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I really feel sorry for young girls today having been so badly educated on boy/girl relations. First let me provide this for context and then come back to what I wish to say: ‘Need to reflect on this’: Victorian schools respond to movement calling for better consent education.

Several Victorian schools have issued messages to parents in response to a deluge of sexual assault claims made by young women across the country who voiced their stories as part of a movement demanding better education around consent.

Private schools Xavier College and Geelong Grammar School wrote to their school communities this week after a petition started by Sydney woman Chanel Contos called for sexual consent to be taught in schools from a young age.

It saw hundreds of young women come forward with disturbing allegations of sexual assault and rape from their time as students or soon after, with many describing being forced to perform sex acts or being assaulted while intoxicated or passed out.

However, before reading another word, you should look at the 79 pages of these disturbing allegations. We are dealing with what is potentially a lost generation, and of both young girls and young boys. These are basically high school girls and the best they can think to ask for is that “sexual consent to be taught in schools from a young age”.

I have no idea what the answer here is, but I imagine there are quite a large number of young women who buy into sexual relations at far too young an age and with no idea what their destination is. I know I am old (really ancient) but no one went out with someone else unless they were perhaps thinking this might be the preliminaries of love, children and a marriage unto death. And this from the age of around 13 or 14. No one was messing around, and if you were, both as a male or female, your dating life was almost certain to be brought to an end. Reputation was all.

Consent in my day came with a set of commitments that no one would dare breach. I imagine happiness and fulfilment even today come with similar sets of commitments.

But we live in a post-Monica-Lewinski world, pornography is everywhere and available across the net, and we have, right now, the example of the American Vice-President having slept her way to the top. Beyond even that, there is now birth-control and failing that, abortion almost on demand.

At the moment, the supposed issue is in relation to camper/staff relations among the backroom people in Parliament House. Everything about the way the story has unfolded looks as if it is intended to influence how people vote. The two issues need to be separated, but that is very unlikely to happen when our news media make these stories the feature political issues of the day.

The people who run these stories are evil people whose political morals make me sick. They do it to get more people to vote for Labor and fewer to vote for the Coalition. How to get boys and girls to show greater respect and, dare I say it, more modesty and common sense in their first approaches to dealing with each other sexually, must be the aim. How to get there is completely beyond me, other than to keep these issues away from politics.

Victoria is heading for financial disaster

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Victoria is heading for financial disaster that will make the lockdown look like a minor incident along the road to Dan Andrew’s destruction of the state he has been overseeing. It’s only a small story, of course, but at least it is being mentioned: Building boom blamed for blowouts. It’s described as an “Exclusive” mostly because none of the other members of the Victorian media will go near it. You will never see this on the ABC for example.

VICTORIAN road projects are suffering big cost blowouts as the Andrews government battles to rein in the rising cost of labour and materials. The Sunday Herald Sun can reveal a series of suburban road upgrades have cost more than $50 million more than first planned, and some projects have blown out by nearly a quarter of the original cost…. Cost blowouts also affected works to strengthen bridges in regional Victoria, and just one of seven planned upgrades was completed last year because of changes to projects and rising costs.

It’s modern economic theory that is partly to blame, since everyone is now taught how public spending is necessary to create jobs. Absolutely wrong, of course, but everyone thinks it so that phenomenal amounts of money are poured into one wasteful project after another, projects that will never ever recover their costs in the value of their retunrs to the community. But it is possible that help is on the way, or at least a small modicum of coherence. I’ve emphasised the bits that need to be understood and then become the focus of attention, first for the Opposition and then for the rest of the community.

Opposition Transport spokesman David Davis said the government could not manage the finances of major projects. “Everywhere you look … costs have blown out and timelines are shot,” he said. “The community expects projects to be built on time, they don’t expect money to be wasted or squandered. “Many projects are delayed and its all down to the government’s own incompetence.”

The issue is NET costs, that is, the relative size of the return as against the costs of doing whatever is being done. Seems basic, but there is not a socialist government in the world that gets it right, with almost as many non-socialists as clueless as the socialists.

What it is like to be clinically mad

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Supposedly one person in a hundred is schizophrenic and if their experience is anything like that of Kate Richards as described in her incredible Madness: A Memoire it is amazing that so many people are able to make it through the day. There are also many different forms of madness so a fairly high proportion of people we meet all the time must be mad in one way or another. She herself says that she first entered into madness at around 15-16 but did not know she was in any way unusual until she was in her twenties.

Aside from her own personal experience, which is quite astonishing, is the array of medical and therapeutic facilities that are available in Australia to assist people such as her. I cannot recommend the book more. If these issues interest you, this is a book really worth your time.

Interesting in particular for me are her descriptions of the various psychiatrists she had to deal with who she found aloof and distant. And to tell the truth, it is the kind of work that you would need nerves of steel to undertake. You cannot reason anyone out of their psychoses nor can you be sure they will take their meds.

Here is an an excerpt from her book which gives you some sense of what this kind of madness is like and the kinds of frustrations that must come from trying to help such people. Aaron is her psychiatrist.

In the evening I visit my doctor, Aaron. ‘How are you?’ he asks, as usual. I stand in front of him with my hands on my hips, sticking my pelvis out and then I start giggling and I can’t stop, I keep giggling and now tears are seeping out from the sides of my eyes and smudging the mascara I put on this morning for the first time in years. I’m rocking back and forth on my feet, laughing and crying in equal measure. Aaron doesn’t say anything; he reaches over to the phone on his desk and rings the Mental Health Team at the local hospital.

‘Are you taking your medication?’ he asks, mid-conversation.

‘Of course,’ I say. I have no idea where the bottle of tablets is – somewhere in my bedroom, probably under the bed where the cats sometimes pee.

He hangs up the phone. ‘Are you sleeping?’

‘Thorough waste of time.’ I sit down. ‘I do miss dreaming though. You know Freud thought that dream-life was just as important as waking-life for the illumination of the psyche. I think I agree with him, well I do at this particular moment, God, your taste in art is awful, Aaron.’

‘Kate,’ says Aaron. ‘I would like you to take one of these – now.’ He pulls a blister pack of tablets out of his top desk drawer. His desk is old, made of some wood with lines and whorls and stained dark chestnut.

‘What’s this?’ I ask.

‘It’s an anti-psychotic. Also good for hypomania.’ He stands and says, ‘Just stay there a minute.’ I sway from side to side on the chair. Aaron gives me a glass of water and a round, white tablet.

‘How much?’ I ask.

‘200 milligrams,’ he says.

I stare at it. The tablet is changing shape in my palm. It’s circular, then oval, then it expels a part of itself and becomes two tablets.

I stare at Aaron. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m trying to stabilise your mood.’

He waits, leaning on his desk with his arms crossed. The creases in his shirt catch the light and shine. I smile.

‘Take the medication, please.’

The tablet is furry round the edges where it has mixed with my sweat. I put it in my mouth and take a swig of water and swallow down its bitterness.

‘Happy?’

‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘The Mental Health Team are going to visit you later tonight.’

‘Excellent,’ I say and stand up and bow so that my forearms touch the ground. ‘It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Sir.’

Aaron almost smiles.

Madness is like being captured by terrorists, only worse. And the patient is often their own worst enemy.

 

The calculus of sexual consent

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Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz have both left their jobs in the fall out from the alleged rape.

The photo is from this: Brittany Higgins’ partner David Sharaz speaks out. Everyone is oh so brave, and undoubtedly votes Labor.

Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins’ partner has resigned from his job over fears that the Morrison Government will punish the company he works for by scrapping government contacts.

Former press gallery journalist David Sharaz, who worked for Sky News and SBS before joining a media monitoring company this year, said he accepted he could no longer remain in the role.

Mr Sharaz said his bosses had been supportive and given him time off last week to support Ms Higgins but he accepted that his job, which involves seeking government contracts, was no longer tenable.

In exclusive claims to news.com.au last Monday, Ms Higgins alleges she was raped by a colleague in a minister’s Parliament House office in March 2019.

Ms Higgins claims she was forced to choose between her job and seeking justice.

Mr Sharaz said his decision to resign had “no regrets” for standing by Ms Higgins and supporting her fight for justice.

Let me pair that up with this: ‘Need to reflect on this’: Victorian schools respond to movement calling for better consent education. This, mind you, is about high school girls. What a difference from when I was in high school! Now they teach them how to be selective in who you bonk.

Several Victorian schools have issued messages to parents in response to a deluge of sexual assault claims made by young women across the country who voiced their stories as part of a movement demanding better education around consent.

Private schools Xavier College and Geelong Grammar School wrote to their school communities this week after a petition started by Sydney woman Chanel Contos [see photo below] called for sexual consent to be taught in schools from a young age.

It saw hundreds of young women come forward with disturbing allegations of sexual assault and rape from their time as students or soon after, with many describing being forced to perform sex acts or being assaulted while intoxicated or passed out.

There is certainly a need for something to be taught but I’m not sure I can say exactly what it is. The disturbing allegations link runs to 70 pages and is astonishing in its detail and more disturbing than you can imagine. 

Chanel Contos, whose online petition calling on people to come forward with allegations of sexual assault is forcing schools to change.

Chanel Contos, whose online petition calling on people to come forward with allegations of sexual assault is forcing schools to change.

Toxic treatment of women by Labor and the left

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SA Liberal MP Nicolle Flint.

In its ongoing series of attacks on the Federal Coalition, today The Australian comes up with this: Toxic Canberra too much for MP Nicolle Flint. Here is the gist of it in their own words:

Ms Flint — who was hounded, stalked, and labelled a slut and a prostitute in the vicious 2019 campaign in the South Australian seat of Boothby — has decided she can no longer tolerate the pressures of political life as a female MP….

“I did not put up my hand so I could be the sole candidate ­heckled, mocked and shouted down by GetUp, Labor and union members at community meetings,” Ms Flint told parliament. “I did not put up my hand so my election posters could be defaced with the words ‘skank’ and ‘blow and go’, suggesting I was a prostitute charging $60 an hour.”

Of course, given the nature of The Australian and its entirely anti-government left agenda, these two statements are 16 paragraphs apart. Go to the link and count them for yourself.

It was so awful she stayed in the job for three years

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From The News of the Screws Australian, in a masthead across the front page: Hugs, kisses and dread: the politics of sexual harassment.

The former commerce-law student lodged a police complaint last November regarding Mr Zumbo’s alleged conduct when she worked for him as an electorate officer in his Sutherland office from June 2015 — when she was 21 — to June 2018….

The adviser, now 27, told The Australian of the trauma of the three years she spent working for Mr Kelly, saying she was hospitalised with stress and anxiety partly as a result of the ongoing sexual harassment…. “It was awful. I had to go home to a boyfriend who’d say ‘how was your night?’ “You just feel disgusting and used and scared to go into work again, but what else do you do? This is my job and it’s a good job.”…

Mr Kelly said he had investigated the previous allegations and found they had no basis. Earlier this week he said he had provided a report about his investigation to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, John Kunkel. The woman who spoke to The Australian, said: “I don’t want to be seen as a victim and I also would have fear of what that would mean of getting hired again because I don’t want to be seen as someone who causes problems.

This bit is possibly the most bizarre part of the story.

She recalls being parked in Mr Zumbo’s car, somewhere with a view of the Harbour Bridge, and she has a recollection of being in the back seat of his car and Mr Zumbo trying to kiss her — but cannot recall what else happened.

She was horrified when she ­received a text message from Mr Zumbo that implied that sexual relations had unfolded. “The next day I received a message from Frank saying ‘Thanks so much for a great night. I really hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I’m even more convinced that we’ll make a fantastic political team. How does that sound? Give me a call when you can’.’’

She says she asked Mr Zumbo multiple times what had happened but he would not tell her.“I had no idea what had happened in his car that evening ­although I do remember being in the back seat of his car and him trying to kiss me, but I do not ­remember what happened beyond this point,” she said.

“I confronted Frank about this at work in private. I asked him ‘what happened in your car on Friday night?’ All he would say back, was that ‘anything that happened, you were OK with’, and ‘we didn’t have sex, nothing like that, as we didn’t have a condom’.

Meanwhile, she’s back in the UK running for Parliament.

Unless you know their agenda you cannot work out what they’re doing

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Below are two paras from Bettina Arndt’s Monthly Newsletter. You should perhaps subscribe yourself. This is Bettina’s email address and her various links.

E: bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au
Website: www.bettinaarndt.com.au
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebettinaarndt
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebettinaarndt

And these are the paras I find of interest.

For those of you living overseas, or under a rock, Brittany Higgins is a young woman who last week announced, through the media, that she was raped two years ago, when working as an adviser for the Defence Minister, Linda Reynolds.

As the story unfolded, it was used to mount a ferocious attack on the government. Note the timing – coinciding with the arrival of the Covid vaccine, which should have been a high point for the Coalition which is decimating the Opposition in the polls. It is also hardly a coincidence that Higgin’s current partner, David Sharaz, is a former press gallery journalist, now working for SBS and known to be a fierce critic of the government.

Everyone has an agenda. Such as: Submarine blunder: time to cut our losses from Robert Gottliebsen where we read:

But first, a word about Defence Minister Linda Reynolds. Countless past defence ministers have simply adopted the recommendations of defence personnel and then covered up their mistakes. It was like a game of musical chairs which eventually would end. Sadly for Linda Reynolds it ended on her watch.

I am glad Scott Morrison stood behind her over the rape saga but as the last of the “cover up mistakes” defence ministers she is the wrong person to take on the French and end the contract.

Perhaps that’s why Reynolds was admitted to hospital yesterday.

Perhaps that’s why Reynolds was admitted to hospital yesterday. Might also mention this: Peter Dutton defends handling of information around Brittany Higgins rape allegation. Dutton is also mentioned by Gottliebsen in his article about submarines:

From my observation the two toughest ministers in the cabinet are Josh Frydenberg (ask Google and Facebook) and Peter Dutton.

Moving Frydenberg from Treasury is not an option and Peter Dutton’s Home Affairs portfolio is a huge job but there is no more important ministry in the next year than defence.

Equality discussed by Andrew Jackson in 1832

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This is Andrew Jackson in 1832, sounding not that different from Donald Trump.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society – the farmers, mechanics and laborers – who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.

This is from Andrew Jackson’s Bank Veto message of 1832. The entire message is worth your time.

Victoria may have the worst opposition leader in the world

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First there was this: ‘I will lead from the front’: Michael O’Brien says he’s right man for Victoria. This is what he specifically said. You tell me what he stands for.

“Every single day I get up, I’m determined to work for Victoria and to lead my party so that Victoria can do better,” he said.

“I was elected unopposed by my party after the last election because they know that, as a former treasurer, nobody is better placed to lead Victoria’s economic recovery … than me.

“I think Victorians need a better alternative … and that’s what I’m determined to offer.

“They do not want more of the same – more of the lockdowns, more of the waste. They want to see a better, brighter future, and that’s what the Liberal Party is going to be offering Victorians.”

Empty beyond vacuous. So this is where we have moved onto: ‘Borrowed time’: Liberals give O’Brien ultimatum for May leadership spill.

In what was seen as a significant intervention, opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier, a member of Mr O’Brien’s four-person leadership team, expressed frustration during last week’s party room meeting that opposition MPs were not effectively holding the Andrews government to account for its errors.

According to three sources present at the meeting, Ms Crozier implored colleagues to pursue the government with more vigour.

Not as if there is nothing to pursue Dan Andrews over: Victorian wages still hurting from lockdown. And it’s not just that Victoria has had the worst wages result across the country during the last twelve months. There is this as well, which no one knows anything about.

It came as Moody’s moved on Tuesday to change its rating on Victoria from the highest Aaa to Aa1, saying the double downgrade was sparked by a “marked erosion in Victoria’s governance of its public finances”, with the agency predicting the state’s debt – due to hit nearly $47 billion this year – would remain high until the end of the decade.

The Moody’s move had been widely expected since the other main ratings agency, S&P, downgraded Victoria in December and Treasurer Tim Pallas shrugged off the news, saying the government made no apology for borrowing heavily to cushion the state from the worst of the pandemic crisis.

That Government misdirected spending has been at the centre of the problem for years ought to be evident to anyone who has watched the Andrews government and has the slightest idea about what makes an economy prosper. Yet this is all they can say.

The Victorian Liberal opposition was on the attack on Wednesday over the Moody’s downgrade with Treasury spokeswoman Louise Staley saying decision was an indictment on the financial management of the Andrews government.

“This is a significant worry for Victoria moving into the future,” Ms Staley said.

“Moody’s specifically said we do not have the flexibility to deal with any future shocks.

“In other words the cupboard is bare.”

There is so much waste around, but my favourite is the billion dollar train station at the Shrine on St Kilda Road which will never be used by anyone, ever, other than on one day a year, and possibly not even then.

There are no anti-Covid vaccines

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The article is titled, COVID-19 Vaccine To Be Tested on 6-Year-Olds in which there is a great deal to think about including this:

As detailed in “COVID-19 mRNA Shots Are Legally Not Vaccines,” these inoculations are more accurately described as gene therapies, and by referring to them as “vaccines,” the U.S. government is likely in violation of the 2011 U.S. Code Title 15, Section 1125, which regulates deceptive practices such as false descriptions in medical claims.  According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a vaccine is “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.” Immunity, in turn, is defined as “Protection from an infectious disease,” meaning that “If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.” Neither Moderna nor Phizer claim this to be the case for their COVID-19 “vaccines.” In fact, in their clinical trials, they specify that they do not even test for immunity.

COVID-19 “vaccines” do not impart immunity or inhibit transmissibility of the disease. In other words, they are not designed to keep you from getting sick with SARS-CoV-2; they only are supposed to lessen your infection symptoms if or when you get infected. As such, these products do not meet the medical definition of a vaccine.”

Unlike real vaccines, which use an antigen of the disease you’re trying to prevent, the COVID-19 injections contain synthetic RNA fragments encapsulated in a nanolipid carrier compound, the sole purpose of which is to lessen clinical symptoms associated with the S-1 spike protein, not the actual virus.