Jon the Hat

A two state solutions would only work if Israel could trust that Palestinian groups would not continue to fire missiles. And indeed that Israel would actually stop all settlers. Neither side has attractive government majorities without the nutters unfortunately so this is incredibly difficult to achieve. They could use some FPTP!

I have a little sympathy for this at the start - lets face it everyone said the same things about SARS etc, and nothing happened. That sympathy ends once coverage from Italy started coming through.

Getting banned for a week was great!

I’m thinking the more people who see Nige making a tit of himself the better. Not that I’ll be watching.

There are so many members of the house of Lords these days some of them are bound to be competent.

Cats kill wildlife though, and wildlife is better than people

I have cats at the moment which are sweet, but we still spend substantial time talking about when we can buy a house and get a dog again

Very true, and unfortunately there are plenty of those on both sides.

We were always going to have a blip. Here it is.

Beautiful free kick. Arse.

Electric cars seem a far better option than Hydrogen as range improves along with new battery and charging tech. Already the range is far more than 90%+ of journeys. Power is soon going to be sufficient for most lorries as well, and charging solution make this tenable even for demanding vehicles uses like mine haul trucks. Hydrogen may have its place in specialist uses like smelting and continuous operating environments.

He cares a **** load more than Hamas leadership that is for sure.

Perth is always expensive, but a small jar of Marmite just went from $4.50 (often $4 on offer) to $6. Its a crisis alright.

They aren't fighting to get the hostages, they have already accepted they are going to die I think. They are fighting to rid themselves of Hamas. No point stopping now.

Its the harbinger of doom! Christmas.

Yes that is a fair point. It was a silly comment on my part . That is literally how job creation works though, you spend money, other people get to keep it. The more tax you pay the less money you have to spend. Governments, and particularly the Australian government give very generous tax breaks for capital investment because they know very well building stuff is very expensive here, particularly in regional areas. I haven't looked in detail at these companies, and some may well be playing games which the ATO will challenge, but most will be spending a lot of money on say developing green energy, for which they get a tax reduction. It is how governments get things done, but the media likes to wind people up with it. In the list AusFox shared, Glencore even appear in both the taxpayers and non taxpayers, likley on the same money in a parent company and the operating company. It is shit analysis imo.

Well done - you've learned something about the economy! Just think, if you lived in a socialist country they would tax you a lot more and you wouldn't be able to afford to do all those things.

"The fact that an entity pays no income tax, does not necessarily mean that they are not meeting their obligations," Ms Saint said. Personally I would go further and say it usually means they are doing exactly what the AU government wants them to do and investing in jobs and wealth creation in Australia. I would also note that like you their employees pay tax on their incomes, they pay GST and state / property taxes like everyone else. This is about corporation tax, which is 1) on profit not sales and b) subject to a range of government incentives based on how they want companies to act. The ATO estimates the tax gap - ie what they believe they are entitled to vs what they collect is as little as $3Bn, which while a lot is % wise pretty low. They also might not be right, as tax authorities often argue between themselves over who gets to tax profit in the case of multination companies, hence the rise of Bilateral APAs.

Firstly, its great you can sit thousands of miles away and tell the most persecuted people in history that they don't need to worry about their homeland, which is surrounded by countries who want them all dead. Secondly that they should not respond to the worst terrorist attack the world has ever seen in terms of proportion of population attacked, context and atrocity. Fortunately, it seems Hamas allies are hanging them out to dry. Iran and Hezbollah both backed off this week, do hopes that this doesn't escalate into a regional conflict improve a little. Make no mistake though, Isreal is at risk, especially when the world's apologists give Hamas a free pass to do seemingly anything withou reprisals. I come back to my earlier point that Israel have no good options. They know well the opprobrium that comes there way, they intractability of Hamas and any other Palestinian leadership to any offers of peace over decades, the daily rocket and other attacks on their people which no one gives a shit about, and the horrors of air and ground attacks on both sides. They also know they cannot leave Hamas in control of Gaza, and there is no other way of getting them out. We can only hope this is over quickly, and the new leadership in the coming years on both sides give each other some better options.

Fair point. Joys of teaching. I remember a young teacher who was always being wound up by a complete dickhead in our class. Eventually he snapped and grabbed the kid by the throat to nobody's surprise. We were all interviewed. No one say anything of the sort.

They literally had 15 on Israel last year vs 13 for the rest of the world in total. You cannot tell me over 50% of the worst things in the world last year involved Israel. Utter nonsense. I think it is great he resigned, he has demonstrated the absence of rational thought on this issue and so Kier can do better.

Miranda was mildly amusing if you wanted to watch something silly. Mrs Browns boys I find utterly appalling.

All of that happens elsewhere in the world and they do nothing. Yet the only democracy in the Middle East is their main target. Looks a bit suspect to me. Its classic holding the Israelis to a standard you would never use for any other country bullshit.

Woohoo

Ah yes the UN, who have spent the past 50 odd years making more resolutions condemning Israel than all the other nations put together. You could almost think they have an issue with Jews.