Mixed bag from John Anderson. First listened to his talk with Daniel Priestley on AI and entrepreneurship. Quite a few contradictions within the guest's stated views. I think he was saying things he didn't believe, himself (i.e. a salesman).

Then it was over to his his chat with John Lee. Much better. More interesting subject matter too, covering the situation between Israel and Iran; America's likely involvement (recorded before any bombers set out); and passing mention of Britain having been brought reluctantly to increase spending on defence, with Australia just about the last holdout, actually *reducing* its defence efforts.

The latter is definitely worth a listen. A plus side with both was that Anderson was doing a much better job as interviewer than other recent efforts.

Today Jo's posting is on Starmer's U-turn on net zero. I like her description of the new "policy" as a marketing word salami.

And here's a reading of an electricity bill in Texas. Magnificent!

tomo,
Isn't the BBC having an alarmist presenter exaggerating climate claims a bit of a dog bites man story? Not really a surprise.

The droughts floods dualism is also familiar here. One year we had Tim Flannery (later to be appointed as our first Climate Change Commissioner) warning that our dams would never fill again, and the state governments all putting up desalination plants. Now we've had consecutive years of pretty heavy flooding on the east coast. Somewhere in the middle, one of the desalination plants was taken out of commission by flooding.

It's fun how The Science seems to be just as ambiguous in its predictions as the old-time augurs and haruspices.

Turns out we never needed Monty Python, we only needed to wait fifty years and it'd be all around us.

tomo,
Yeah, a miscalculation sounds like something easily and cheaply rectified for the future. The real miscalculation was the decision to try and run the grid on renewables. The consequences of *that* miscalculation are not so easily fixed, and not cheap at all.

Linked in a comment at JoNova's was this article on Norway's unrealised capital gains tax. Pertinent in Oz where the government is talking about applying such a tax to superannuation funds (pension funds) above $3m investment value. I obviously have nothing like that in my retirement investments, but it's the thin end of the wedge. The soak the rich strategy only comes to an end when there are no more rich people.

tomo,
Haven't seen any YouTube surgeons, but it paints an amusing picture. Seems Play School was better preparation for the real world than anybody realised at the time.

Haven't been interested in F1 for a long time. It was great fun in the '80s with all sorts of innovations, but gradually the bureaucrats have taken charge. Anyhow, obligatory grumpy-old-man rant out of the way, it does seem Robert Kubica has made a great comeback.

The item on the drawbacks of battery-powered farm equipment reminded me of a recent brouhaha in Sydney over electric buses being charged with a diesel generator.

In that item we have another instance of third-rate reporting:

Barbara Wise has set the record straight, saying the fleet was fast-tracked to soothe bus shortages in the city's north and are replacing trains while the government converts the South West link to a Metro service.