News and notes from around the interweb:
- Story the President of the Mormon Church tells about a near-death experience on a plane in 1976 is embellished
- There’s not a single photo of the Concorde flying at Mach 2
- Australia’s Northern Territory tendering contracts to keep quarantine facilities open for five years (HT: Loyalty Lobby) So much for “C U in the NT tourism slogan.)
- Hotel industry employee explains how you annoy him
- Sara Nelson won’t help her union members with the exemption process for mandatory vaccination at United Airlines
- Who wants to be Associate Manager of Hyatt’s loyalty marketing?
- The ‘new Norwegian’…
Our first aircraft has been painted! Named after Raet national park in Arendal, Norway.#aircraft #aviation #dreamliner #B787 #boeing #norse #norseatlantic #aircraftlivery pic.twitter.com/CWzUBd2D8G
— Norse Atlantic Airways (@flynorse) August 15, 2021
And once again, Gary feeds the bigot trolls in 5, 4, 3, 2…. (in reference to the story of the Mormon leader that has absolutely nothing to do with points and miles, but will appeal to the bigot-wing that Gary seems to want to foster on his blog).
Come on, Gary, your blog should be better than this. YOU should be better than this.
…and that’s not even getting at the C.U. in the N.T. vulgarity. You could have covered the story of quarantine extensions in Australia without the 6th grade attempt at humor.
@ Gary — Well, at least this guy isn’t complaining about people asking repeatedly for the occupied Pineapple Suite…
the Australian government does not want any one in the country to say hello to each other. what else do you need to know about the mental retardation of the government
Australian, putting the mate in in-mate now and forever.
@Thing 1 – I linked to a travel blog about the story of an air mishap
And of course the obligatory Sara Nelson cheap shot.
Australia seens to be all in on a “COVID forever” life. I imagine we’ll see Sydney and Melbourne on lockdown many times in the next few years. Glad I had several chances to visit in the past, but not expecting to live long enough to do it again.
Sensationalist misleading headline derived from a story on news.com.au, a tentacle of the Murdoch Evil Empire.
A reading of the article (on quarantine in Australia) shows some insights if you pick your way through it.
Hell Gary, you can do better than that…. can’t you?
@DaveS – “I imagine we’ll see Sydney and Melbourne on lockdown many times in the next few years.”
I bet they keep this crap up for at least a decade, if not forever.
@ Gary
Your leading headline and the content of the linked article do not match up.
The tender is for the provision of bus services to an from an existing quarantine facility.
The article itself clearly states that such services are unlikely to be needed for the COVID epidemic for a 5 year duration, more likely less than 2 years.
The article also states that the duration of COVID deployment will likely depend upon poor vaccination rates in other countries and the need to control incoming visitors – you might stop to consider that our geographical neighbour, Papua New Guinea, for example, is struggling with COVID on top of generally poor health care services, a low age of life expectancy (mid 50s with 1 in 5 children dying before the age of 5), etc. A friend of mine travels there from Australia for her work as high court judge – she has lost several of her local judicial colleagues to COVID.
The article also states that this facility is available for use for other disaster scenarios as may be required at a future date.
It is prudent for the Australian governments to furnish quarantine facilities which are out of the city hotels, such as this one in the Norther Territory.
Various governments around the world continue to deploy various measures to restrict entry to their countries and executive various quarantine policies.
The concept of quarantine is not hard to grasp and not new. It has been adopted since the 14 century. The quarantine station on Sydney’s North Head (now Q Station) was operational from the 1830s to 1984 for arriving ship passengers, available if required for migrant ships with suspected disease.
Meanwhile the national vaccination rates are far from the level needed to protect the country – at about 21% second dose for the full population and a dose rate peaking at about 270,000 per day.
The current wave in the state of NSW has reached the highly vulnerable Indigenous population with the worrying statistic of 40% of regional cases in Aboriginal children.
The Northern Territory has a significant Indigenous population at high risk if COVID spreads through “the bush”.
Meanwhile, your own administrations, including those in Texas and Florida play politics whilst infection rates soar again.
Now Gary – given the disconnect between your main headline and the content of the cited article, it is one again clear that you have no integrity when it comes to misleading your readership.
Clickbait? Yes, certainly.
Integrity. Nah, none.
Thought leader? No way. Your content can’t trusted as accurate or considered.
Inciter of right wing trolls and nut jobs? Absolutely!
Purveyor of mistruths about COVID? Definitely a dangerous spreader of misinformation.
Be well.
The only good thing about this in Australia is it might keep out more Chinese and Asian immigration which is destroying the genetic fabric of Australia. Unfortunately, politicians who understand the dangers of immigration are cowards there. Let’s hope they use Covid variants as an excuse to prevent Asian immigration in the future.
@ Jackson Waterson
Actually genetic diversity increases biological fitness – it’s called heterozygous advantage. The opposite is inbreeding 😉
To quote a University of Queensland study:
“While not widely practiced, first cousin marriage is legal in 19 states, and some first-cousin marriages are legal in seven states. Sexual relations and cohabitation are only prohibited in nine states. Approximately 0.2% of all marriages in the United States are between second cousins or closer. That means that there are about 250,000 Americans that are in these relationships.”
@ Jackson Waterson
Agreed. Heaven forbid those immigrants raise the average IQ of the Australian population!
@platy
I actually agree with you %100 on this one, unlike our previous disagreements. Cheers.
This probably shows the diversity of Gary’s readers, contrary to what many are complaining about.
@Jackson Waterson
What Asian would want to co-habit with any offspring of a racist Jackass like you????
Australia and New Zealand have allowed themselves to become dystopian authoritarian nightmares. Awful to see.
@ Expat
Forbes published a ranking of top 25 countries by IQ on 11 January 2019. Australia made 16th and the USA 28th on the list. Be well.
@ Ben.
Thanks for the feedback. Respect for sharing. Be well and fly safe.
@ Man
Well, mate, the difference between dystopia and utopia can be one of perception. We don’t have 100,000s of COVID dead, nor hundreds of millions of guns because we live in fear. We don’t storm our Parliament buildings, deny election results, or pass state directives forbidding use of masks and vaccinations. We don’t kill each other at anywhere near the homicide rates of the USA. We don’t have nearly half the population believing in creationism. We have access to universal health care, reasonable access to university eduction regardless of wealth. Far from perfect, maybe, but there are some benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked. Oh yeah, with ship the bad beer (Fosters) and cheap wine (Yellowtail) across the Pacific and keep the good stuff for ourselves! 😉
@platy
Thanks for supporting my IQ point with data. Most of the Asian nations have even higher average IQ than Australia (China #2). So the more Chinese deplorables move to Australia, can raise average IQs in both countries…