Deutsche Bahn trolls Greta’s gullibility

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Well, well, well. At the very least Greta Thunberg has all of the characteristics of a gullible teenager. The railway company, Deutsche Bahn, decided to give the recalcitrant Swede a taste of reality by pointing out her cheeky stab at overcrowded trains when she was actually riding in 1st Class. So much for her statement about patriarchal systems of oppression.

“After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.”

Just when we thought the Germans lacked a sense of humour.

Which bullshit artist to choose in 2020?

Deeply left-leaning Robert Reich has written an opinion piece in The Guardian on why Trump should fear Warren Sanders. Cute.

The ultimate irony here is that America has grown up on decades of Trump’s chest beating bluster. Before he was president he was idolized in TV shows and movies. Yes, even Democrats loved him, or at the very least his wallet. What you see is what you get. That is Trump’s charm, as repulsive as many might find it. He doesn’t pretend to be anything other than the brash character that he is. To that end he is authentic.

On the other hand you have bullshit artists like Elizabeth Warren who pretend they are who they are not. It isn’t lost on Americans that Warren has lied about her cultural appropriation. Her bowling alley admission and subsequent apology were as hollow as hijacking minority status to advance her career. She has no persona.

Bernie Sanders too. Bernie pushes hardline socialist ideals but he himself has three mansions. No one should begrudge his making the system work for him but once again it only makes him look a rank hypocrite to espouse that he is one of them.

While Bernie looked the goods in 2016, he has had a heart attack and his health will be an issue.

Reich puts it on the line with,

“This is where Warren and Sanders come in.

Their core proposals would make the system work for everyone and alter the power structure in America: Medicare for All based on a single-payer rather than private for-profit corporate insurance; a Green New Deal to create millions of good jobs fighting climate change; free public higher education; universal childcare.

All financed mainly by a tax on the super-rich.”

Reich could square away climate change in a jiffy by questioning why his alarmist mate Barack Obama bought a $15m mansion by the sea in Martha’s Vineyard? Millions of jobs via the Green New Deal? What for? Unemployment is 3%. Free education? I agree there on the basis of the quality of professors on display during the impeachment hearings. It is a crime to make students pay $70,000pa for such drivel.

Of course, it is so easy just to tax the super-rich. Never mind that the top 1% pay c.40% of the income tax take. Had it occurred to Reich that if they embark down the line of a socialist economy the super-rich won’t make the same returns meaning funding these schemes will collapse under the weight of their own lack of due diligence, something Elizabeth Warren was left looking ridiculously stupid in one of the recent debates.

Reich should learn the key tenet of socialism – the reason mice keep dying in mousetraps is that they don’t understand why the cheese is free.

Of course, the lefties reading this piece will say that Trump is the biggest bullshitter of them all. That may be true but he doesn’t try to hide it. That is the quantifiable difference.

Robert Reich should know that a soon to be octogenarian and a dotty aunt don’t make for the type of combo to convince America to change. Better the devil they know.

The lost plot

Is anyone surprised that nothing was achieved at the COP25 summit? How is it possible that 27,000 disciples knelt at the altar of the UNFCCC to listen to a pigtailed teenager and came up empty handed?

UNSG Antonio Guterres lamented, “I am disappointed with the results of COP25…The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis.”

What annoys FNFM is the sanctimonious shame culture that consumes these meetings. Heretics are outed and slammed. Australia is never far away from a beating. Yet the show goes on. COP26 will misuse data and amplify the hysteria.

Even more disturbing is how this woke behaviour is finding its way into our financial institutions.

Instead of looking to diversify earnings and maximize shareholder returns they are taking stands on climate change. The Big 4 Aussie banks refuse to invest in anything related to the Adani coal mine. Another 35 global banks will do likewise.

One could make a clear case against investment were the Adani coal mine to carry excessive financial risks but it doesn’t. The end user in India has a giant thirst for decades. This is money for jam.

Bank boards should ask themselves, since when did any customers seek climate advice from their loan managers? It is ludicrous.

APRA should forget regulating the banks over fees or charging dead people but question the economic rationale behind decisions like Adani. It is not to say banks don’t have a right to deploy capital as they deem fit but there should be a sensible purely financial explanation behind it, not one wrapped in ideological dross.

The ultimate irony here is that banks, forever showing diversity in the workplace, don’t seem to want to apply it to the loan book which is so ridiculously skewed to mortgages. There is nothing prudent about that.

So maybe the UN COP summits are having the desired effect behind the scenes. Howl at the moon long enough and get teenagers to scream “how dare you” to shame our banks into folding to local public pressure, which in reality amounts to a handful of misguided students with placards and Twitter accounts who wish to wag class.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if a housing collapse sent some of our heavily geared Aussie banks toward insolvency which could have been averted were they to have made a rational decision to lend to Adani, the very business they told us would kill them.

On a final note, how do we have banks disinterested in taking advantages where little competition exists? Isn’t that the holy grail of financial strategy?

The beauty behind Adani (and other projects like it) is simple. No need to embark in competitive intelligence to find out what their banking rivals are doing. Just listen to their public statements on what they aren’t doing and take the spoils. Higher margin and lower risk. It is not rocket science.

An open letter to Peter Fitzsimons

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Dear Peter,

It wasn’t so long ago that Fact Not Fiction Media penned an open letter to your lovely wife Lisa after she suggested to newly elected PM Scott Morrison – the man who won the unwinnable election – that he should pick up the phone to NZ PM Jacinda Ardern if he was ever in doubt about policy positions.

Never mind the election results that showed, not only how he managed to ‘unite’ the LNP after the wilderness of the Turnbull Coalition, but his ability to read the pulse of the voters, especially in Queensland. The rest is history.

Never mind the realities that 570,000 Kiwis (11% of their population) choose to live here vs 39,000 Aussies who live there. Can anyone point to the tidal wave of New Zealanders returning to their homeland to embrace the policies pushed by the high priestess of woke? Thought not. Quelle surprise that Australia already outranked her Wellness Budget even before her superior social media skills caused the press to lavish endless praise without lifting a finger to provide context.

So it is with little surprise to read your dig at the British and Tony Abbott after the resounding landslide won by Boris Johnson this week. We get that you don’t like the former Member for Warringah.

Your remark about “Little Britain” is utterly baseless. Did you see sterling rally on the result? Did you see the positive reaction of UK stocks on the FTSE? Financial markets, as you know, echo economic confidence. Not quite sure what bigger endorsement Boris Johnson could have got?

If you let your olfactory senses go wild at the Avenue Rd Cafe over the aroma of the election, it seems way more Brits side with Mr Abbott by that metric. Plenty of Aussies, including me, relish Brexit as a massive opportunity. We’ll get to that. First things first.

Even if we were to indulge your ‘Little Britain’ theory a little further, which part of not being a part of the EU, which presumably is the basis of your negative comment, will the Poms or Aussies miss out on? What adverse externalities would ensue for Australia?

Australia ends up being a winner from Brexit. We already do as much with the UK in bilateral trade than Germany & France combined. Bilateral trade with the UK is 1/3rd that of the Eurozone based on a population 1/8th the size. A strong UK economy is much better for Aussie businesses per capita. They understand this.

Should Aussies celebrate the fact that poverty levels in the EU have ballooned by a further 30m people since 2006? That is right, c.109.2m people (21.7% of the total EU population) live below the poverty line according to Eurostat. No, it is not due to the entry of so many new EU members, many which joined in 2004. Poverty has been a consequence of grossly incompetent centralised control out of Brussels. Yet where is the media on this? Deathly silent.

Eurozone growth has crawled to a trickle. Pent up uncertainty in the UK will now dissipate as the clear majority won by BoJo will allow the free hand of capitalism to turn the financial spigots on. President Trump will have no hesitation in putting an FTA together. A deal with an economy comprising 25% of world GDP is no bad thing. I’m sure ScoMo will oblige 10 Downing St too. Japan will be lining up to make sure Mitsukoshi can stock Fortnum & Mason teas in Ginza. All will be spiffing. Aussies benefit from a stronger UK. Little Britain?

Maybe Brits felt uneasy signing over more sovereign rights to unelected bureaucrats like former EC President Jean-Claude Juncker who was often found stumbling around drunk? Maybe they saw Juncker threatening to cut off voting rights to the Austrians if they democratically voted in a right-wing eurosceptic president was a tad totalitarian? Did you see that 18,500 Austrians signed a petition to tell the EU to respect their nation-state democracy? Therein lies the point. The EU is all for nation-state democracy as long as it aligns with Brussels. Anything else sees reprisals. A mouth-watering prospect no doubt.

Perhaps we might question why Switzerland voted 126-46 to tear up a 24yr standing invite to join the EU? Lukas Reimann of the Swiss People’s Party, who proposed the bill said:

“It is hardly surprising that the EU looks like an ever less attractive club to join. What, after all, is the appeal of joining a club into which the entire world can apparently move?”

Maybe the British saw through the recent EUP announcement of a ‘climate emergency‘ ahead of the COP25 summit? How much faith can the British have when EU MEPs rejected the following amendment of that legislation by 563 votes to 59:

“that climate change is one of the many challenges facing humanity and that all states and stakeholders worldwide must do their utmost to measure it scientifically so that policy, and especially spending is based on observable facts and not on apocalyptic fearmongering or unreliable models; emphasises that there is no scientific consensus on what percentage of climate change is anthropogenic and what percentage is natural”

Surely this is not a big ask to demand that any decisions are based on fact, not fiction. Yet the EU is no stranger to ludicrous policies.

Who could forget when the EU legislated to heavily fine companies and hand out jail sentences to bottled water companies that claimed their products rehydrate after a 3-yr study? It is probably this type of brainless stupidity that was a swing factor in encouraging Brits to want to jettison from such insanity. All self-inflicted wounds at the hands of the EU, certainly not because British voters somehow lack intelligence.

Could it be that the EU left the UK, not the other way around? Is it possible that the British were plain fed up with the prospect of having even more EU oversight? The idea that the EU thinks that fixing the problems of the EU are best served by having ever more EU regulations.

If Brexit proved anything, it was the idea that the EU has to reform. Unfortunately, the EU seems willfully blind to look in the mirror and admit that is indeed the problem. Now the UK has a strong mandate to leave, the power of populism will only be emboldened among other member states. The more successful Britain shows itself outside the bloc, the more other countries can have the confidence to leave this utter joke of an institution, a close second only to the buffoonery at the UN.

In closing, there is a touch of irony to know that the media beat-up of Trump’s endorsement of BoJo caused a landslide while Obama’s blessing of ‘remain’ ahead of the referendum caused a resounding defeat. We shouldn’t forget that every candidate poor old celebrity Hugh Grant endorsed lost their seats.

Probably because the average Joe and Joanne are the ones living in the real world.

Perhaps your title should have been, “who wants to cling onto the EU?”

All the best,

Mike Newman

Taylor rants about toxic masculinity and private equity

Poor old Taylor Swift. As she took her Billboard Woman of the Decade award, she went on a typical celebrity rant about toxic masculinity and all the other oppression she has faced which still allowed her to cream millions.

Yet the most striking part of her speech (from the 11 minute mark) was to get upset at the sale of her works to a private equity firm and not being consulted about how she feels.

Boo hoo.

Taylor, when you sign with a record label and that company is bought out, it is merely a transfer of rights which you signed over. If your works mean so much to you by all means approach the PE consortium and ask to buy it back so you can control it. The true value of your worth will be what sticker price they put on it.

Either you’ll be outraged at the low price they put on it which you’ll say undervalues your worth or be disgusted at how expensive it is because they are mercenaries who seek to extract maximum returns, you know. The very capitalist system you despise.

Put simply, shut up and stop telling the world how tough your life is from your ivory tower behind a gated security wall.

If you though Impeachment embarrassment couldn’t get worse…

While the Democrats continue to tell the American people that impeachment is a constitutional matter of grave national importance, their actions reveal the exact opposite.

If we thought wearing Batgirl costumes or listening to a Stanford law professor confess she crosses the road to avoid walking past a Trump building were evidence enough of how flippantly they have executed the hearings in a professional manner, a Democrat Congressman, Cedric Richmond, decided to stream the President’s Cup golf during the vote.

All class. Good to know taxpayers are paying this Congressman to indulge his passion whilst on the job.

DiNatale has a go at democracy

FNFM does not know where to start. What part of overwhelming victory doesn’t Greens Senator Richard DiNatale get? Such rhetoric by the left didn’t work ahead of the election. Stands to reason the result speaks for itself afterwards.

Perhaps DiNatale might wish to relive an interview former England & Wales Greens leader Baroness Bennett had with Nick Ferrari at LBC during the 2015 election campaign as to why the British voting public ignored the Greens in 2019.