Pearls and Irritations

September 9, 2026 Another great analysis by Kos, but in focusing on the generations and their influence on political outcomes it misses the fundamental approaching world crisis and the impact that will have on all the generations as it invades the self-satisfied nature of the current political space. We know that actions being taken around the world, with some serious and exemplary exceptions are by far insufficient to adequately deal with the approaching Armageddon of climate change.

September 9, 2026 Kos Samaras provides some arguments for the Greens’ lack of vote share but misses one very important point: from the 1980s onwards the unremitting hostility of the mainstream media has been turned on the Greens. This bias against the Greens has been far more rigorous and effective than its bias against Labor. The Greens are painted as both dangerous radicals and hypocritical, incompetent clowns, so many people have never even considered voting for them.

September 9, 2026 Bob Brown has given us an excellent concept: that if Australia produces five per cent of global emissions, then we are responsible for five per cent of the damages caused. So, we should be giving Nepal $350 million, not $8m, towards their $7 billion in damages. We should be responsible for 4,650 of the 93,000 people affected by the disaster including 300 of the dead or missing. We should be responsible for 1500 of the 30,000 heat-related deaths in Europe this year.

September 9, 2026 John has written an excellent summary of the impact of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. More than that he has written something that should, but won’t, focus the minds of the policy elites of the West on their gradual decline into irrelevance to a future world. I have remained frustrated for decades that the bulk of humanity remained under the Western boot simply because they did not realise their collective strength.

We can stand in the way or lead the charge Giles writes with insight and enthusiasm on the growing lead of electric vehicles over the ICE type. This is a repeat of the century ago move from Horses and carts to internal combustion engines vehicles. All of us can be in the lead in making this change or we can resist the future by hankering for the past. Let’s do the former!!

September 9, 2026 There’s another way to look at The Greens’ static numbers. Lack of money to extend their advertising reach, lack of personnel because of party structure unlike community independents, and so many poorly educated people. The major flaw in Amy Remeikis’ otherwise excellent book Where it all went wrong is that it shows how Howard demolished secondary and tertiary education via funding decisions but does not examine the consequences that continue to this day.

September 9, 2026 It worries me that this and many other articles looking for the cause of One Nation’s rise omit what seems to me one of the main causes if not the main one. That is social media algorithms feeding people outrage to keep them clicking to sell more ads. If more and more people spend more of their waking hours this century feeling outraged on their phones it doesn’t surprise me as a retired psychiatrist if the national thermostat for anger in our brains has been changed.

September 9, 2026 It is difficult to read James O’Donnell’s piece on the Mapping Social Cohesion study without wondering whether unmentioned climate change has contributed to our collective pessimism about the future. He says our declining sense of belonging “cuts across all social groups and classes”. It is not simply cost-of-living pressures making us more inward-looking.

September 9, 2026 Jack Waterford is again speaks truth when truth matters. The governing partiers have lost voters’ trust as it is clear (and very unacceptable) that they bend the knee to lobbyists, big corporations, big party donors and foreign influencers. They hide intentions by manufacturing words and phrases that seem benign but are only partial truths – just enough to keep voters in their place. Before this trend gets worse, voters must oblige the government to listen to them.

September 9, 2026 While I agree migration patterns will become unmanageable if the climate catastrophe keeps growing, we also have to stop the wars that make people move. These wars are largely prosecuted by The West: wars of bombs, economics, politics. The bombs are obvious and are often political too – regime change, anyone? Economic wars exploit nations by plundering their resources and keeping them in debt through disadvantageous loans and trade. Political war is often hidden in plain sight.