This is rather interesting, showing that the claim that immigration leaves one’s culture intact is myth. Change the people, and there are fundamental changes. Take gun rights for example, which is really a white thing, and that is why the Left fights so hard to destroy such rights, because the Left’s reason for existence is to destroy the white race, especially themselves, so long as this is not done too quick, and they can enjoy the comforts of treason, while they last:
  https://vdare.com/articles/gun-control-and-demographics-immigrants-vote-against-american-gun-rights

“So Virginia gun owners just dodged a legislative bullet in the form of a proposed ban on so-called assault weapons. But a demographic bullet is still aimed right where it can do the most damage: the ballot box. The Great Replacement that Leftists celebrate—even as they call it a racist conspiracy theory—is the primary reason gun rights are in the crosshairs in Virginia and throughout the country. Immigration has consequences, meaning foreign-origin voters, and if the GOP doesn’t figure that out soon, gun rights will go the way of Confederate statues, along with other American rights currently undreamt of. Consider the most recent near miss: Four moderate Democrats sided with Republicans in Virginia’s Senate to block a ban on semi-automatic sporting rifles such as the AR-15. Magazines of more than 12 rounds were targeted, too. This provoked some eloquent opposition. “The people of Virginia are demanding that someone, anybody that is in power, please stand up and defend the Second Amendment,” said Sen. Amanda Chase, a gun-rights champion and GOP gubernatorial candidate. “If I am going to continue to do the law-abiding work of the people I am going to have to arm myself, so I went through all the training, got the licensing and all that and I will just tell you—I won’t miss” [‘We don't need weapons of war’: Va. Gov. Northam reacts to failed assault weapons ban, by Tim Barber, WJLA.com, February 18, 2020]. Senator Chase was right: Real Virginians are indeed demanding that someone defend their rights, as the massive gun-rights rally on January 20 surely showed. But the last election results showed something else: Non-white Third World immigrants in Richmond and Northern Virginia who put the Democrats in power last election are doing their best to take those rights away.

     At the end of a long day, one of the subtle pleasures is UFOs, which I derive a devilish delight from researching. Really, I don’t care too much if it is true or not, but it gets up the nose of mainstream scientists, so that just has to be good.
  http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html

“In the 15 years since Chad Underwood recorded a bizarre and erratic UFO — now called “the Tic Tac,” a name Underwood himself came up with — from the infrared camera on the left wing of his F/A-18 Super Hornet, he’s become a flight instructor, a civilian employee in the aerospace industry, and a father. But he has not yet spoken publicly about what he saw that day, even now, two years after his video made the front page of the New York Times. As he explained before speaking with Intelligencer, Underwood has mostly wanted to avoid having his name “attached to the ‘little green men’ crazies that are out there.” The story of the Tic Tac begins around November 10, 2004, when radar operator Kevin Day first reported seeing odd and slow-moving objects flying in groups of five to ten off of San Clemente Island, west of the San Diego coast. At an elevation of 28,000 feet, moving at a speed of approximately 120 knots (about 138 miles per hour), the clusters were too high to be birds, too slow to be conventional aircraft, and were not traveling on any established flight path, at least according to Day. In a military report made public by KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, Day would later observe that the objects “exhibited ballistic-missile characteristics” as they zoomed from 60,000 feet to 50 feet above the Pacific Ocean, alarmingly without producing sonic booms. All told, radar operators with the Princeton spent about two weeks attempting to figure out what the objects were, a process that included having the ship’s radar system shut down and recalibrated to make sure that the mysterious radar returns were not not false positives, or “ghost tracks.”

     Liberal academics constantly proclaim that conservatives of all shapes and sizes, are threats, that must be dealt with. There are examples of this every day. And, acts of violence continue against conservatives on campus, especially the US. Australia does not seem to have any conservatives on campuses, having culled them all out so that the Great Replacement can proceed uncontested, at least intellectually:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/28/rutgers-prof-conservative-media-and-gop-are-existential-threats-to-usa/
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/28/rap-sheet-117-acts-of-violence-and-harassment-against-conservatives-on-campus/

     It is thus ironic that the Left are concerned about Humanities on universities being regarded as the new enemies within. Here is something on this in the British scene from a Left newspaper:
  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/humanities-british-government-culture

     There is a new book out by New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society, that should be mentioned, then dismissed without buying or reading its fine print, because, in a decadent post-truth society, that is how we intellectually treat our opponents, mention and dismissal, with no serious study, because there is nothing more to seriously study anymore:
  https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/28/21137971/the-decadent-society-ross-douthat-book

“Is Trump a symptom or a disease? And if he’s a symptom, what’s the underlying sickness? Decadence is one possible answer. This is very close to the argument New York Times columnist Ross Douthat makes in his new book, The Decadent Society. According to Douthat, the US — and really the entire Western world — is stuck in a kind of cultural doom loop. In many ways, Douthat says, we’ve become victims of our own success and are now locked in a state of malaise, in which our culture and politics feel exhausted. Douthat’s definition of a “decadent society” is that we’re trapped in a stale system that keeps spinning in place, reproducing the same arguments and frustrations over and over again. Trump’s election is simultaneously a sign that a lot of people were desperate for something different and a reflection of the shallow and frivolous culture that spawned him. Douthat is a conservative, and so there’s a temptation to treat this book as a reactionary screed, or an angry protest against the modern condition. But I think it’s much more than that, although at times it does lapse into some familiar tropes. He puts his fingers on something real, something a lot of people feel on the left and the right, namely a belief that the status quo is broken and needs a reboot. I spoke to Douthat by phone about the story he wanted to tell in this book, why our dysfunctional politics is a sign of a much deeper problem, if his book is — deep down — an indictment of liberal capitalism, and if he sees any way out of the decadence he diagnoses. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

     Only in America? Well, it starts there in the land of the mad, but soon every woke politically correct thing gets to Australia, a viral infection of the mind. It used to take about five years, but now it is much quicker.
  http://alisondb.legislature.state.al.us/Alison/default.aspx
  https://yellowhammernews.com/alabama-democrat-proposes-bill-mandating-all-men-have-vasectomy-at-age-50-or-after-third-child/

“State Rep. Rolanda Hollis (D-Birmingham) on Thursday filed a bill that would mandate every Alabama man to undergo a vasectomy within one month of his 50th birthday or the birth of his third biological child, whichever comes first. Democrats in the Alabama legislature last year brought up the possibility of introducing such a bill during the abortion debate on 2019’s HB 314, known as the Human Life Protection Act. “Under existing law, there are no restrictions on the reproductive rights of men,” states the introduction to Hollis’ new bill, HB 238. The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee. HB 238 specifically would mandate each vasectomy occur at the respective man’s “own expense.” During the debate on the Human Life Protection Act in 2019, Hollis read from a poem “If My Vagina was a Gun,” comparing the Second Amendment rights debate to the debate over a woman’s right to an abortion.”

     On-line porn has had a destructive impact upon young men, who are ceasing to be healthy sexually functioning beings. They are sex addicts who paradoxically don’t have sex:
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/new-breed-sex-addicts-dont-have-sex/

“Kabir*, 26, is looking for porn on the internet compulsively, as he has done every day before and after work since he began full-time work. Instead of socialising or working, Kabir spends almost £400 a month talking to sex cam girls, who charge him for the opportunity to instruct them how to undress or pleasure themselves on camera. He drinks Red Bull and black coffee to stay awake. Frayed and ashamed, he now wants to stop. I find him on a sex cam confessions thread of the forum “NoFap” – an anti-porn use site where men, desperate to stop looking at porn, counsel each other. Many of the users of NoFap are also non-porn consumers: wives of addicts; mums trying to wean their sons or sometimes daughters from porn, and even siblings looking to stage an intervention....”

     I think this sort of paradox is called a pragmatic inconsistency, where a white person says to be afraid of white people, or distrust them. Thus, one should be afraid and distrusting of the person saying that, which seems to undermine what is said:
  https://summit.news/2019/12/27/michael-moore-white-people-are-not-good-people-you-should-be-afraid-of-white-people/

“Film maker Michael Moore told Rolling Stone “white people are not good people” and that “you should be afraid of white people.” During an interview on the ‘Useful Idiot’ podcast, Moore said that people should cross the street if they see three white men approaching them because at least two voted for Trump. “Two-thirds of all white guys voted for Trump. That means anytime you see three white guys walking at you, down the street toward you, two of them voted for Trump. You need to move over to the other sidewalk because these are not good people that are walking toward you. You should be afraid of them,” Moore warned. “I refuse to participate in post-racial America,” he added. “I refuse to say because we elected Obama that suddenly that means everything is okay, white people have changed. White people have not changed.” Perhaps Moore might want to check FBI homicide statistics and then revisit his statement. This is by no means the first time that the rotund film maker has collectively demonized an entire group of people based on their skin color. Last year, he called on “angry white American guys” to “give it up” because they are demographically doomed. Back in January 2018, he asserted that America needed to be “cleansed” of its white privilege. He also previously celebrated the fact that that white men are “dying out” because America “will be a better country.”

     Remember all of those UN peacekeeping missions in places in Africa, which led to disaster? You would have thought that they had learnt to keep their heads down and just keep talking, but no, the UN is at it again, pursuing unspeakable evil, at least from my point of view.
  https://summit.news/2019/12/28/un-moves-towards-handing-dictatorships-power-to-control-the-internet/

“The United Nations wants to hand power to dictatorial regimes like China to control the Internet, prompting fears of a massive new free speech purge. The General Assembly has approved a resolution sponsored by China and Russia to set up a committee of “international experts” whose role would be to stop “the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes.” However, many caution that the move is merely a back door for authoritarian regimes to further censor dissent. “The United States, European powers and rights groups fear that the language is code for legitimizing crackdowns on expression, with numerous countries defining criticism of the government as “criminal,” reports AFP. Human Rights Watch said the list of sponsors for the resolution is “a rogue’s gallery of some of the earth’s most repressive governments” and “gives countries legal cover for internet blackouts and censorship, while creating the potential for criminalizing free speech.” Governments like China already censor and turn off the Internet during times of civil unrest while doling out ‘social credit score’ punishments for those who criticize the state. The Communist country is also rolling out a plan to force its citizens to pass a facial recognition test to use the Internet. Criticized the authorities? No Internet for you.”

     Angry-faced Greta, believes that we need to dismantle Western civilisation to “save the world,” as if the world cares. No, it is not about the climate, but, surprise, surprise, social justice, anti-racism, you know the song sung by the leftist elite every day to impressionable young, or whoever is open to their viruses of the mind:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/29/greta-thunberg-goes-full-marxist/
  https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-strikes-un-conference-madrid-by-greta-thunberg-et-al-2019-11?barrier=accesspaylog
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/02/29/delingpole-trolls-greta-fans-at-climate-protest/

“In her latest public statement, she says that 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 fuelled it. We need to dismantle them all.

     This is a great one, and you need to see the video to fully appreciate it.
  https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/los-angeles-county-das-husband-pulls-gun-on-black-lives-matter-protestors-at-his-home/

“Well this isn’t going to play well in liberal la-la land. On Monday morning, a group of Black Lives Matter protesters showed up in the pre-dawn hours at the home of Los Angeles County’s district attorney Jackie Lacey, reportedly for some type of demonstration. What they were met with was Lacey’s husband pointing a gun at them when he answered the door. Protesters showed up at 5:40 a.m. and rang the front doorbell. Lacey’s husband, David opened the door and that was when he pointed the gun at the group, according to Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African studies at Cal State Los Angeles, and protest organizer Justin Marks. In a video of the encounter, Abdullah rang the bell, and Lacy opened the door. “Good morning!” Abdullah could be seen saying on the video. “Get off my porch!” said the man who answered the door, later identified as David Lacey. “Are you going to shoot me?” Abdullah asked. “I will shoot you! Get off my porch!” Lacey said in an angry tone. “We’re calling the police right now!”

     The super-rich are truly mad and bad, and the really sad news is that they are seeking immortality, to oppress us for eternity:
  https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/super-rich-live-forever-implanting-21600372

“The super-rich will soon be able to "live forever" thanks to sophisticated scientific breakthroughs effectively bringing about the end of death, experts believe. Speaking to Daily Star Online, futurologist and former Labour MP Dr Ian Pearson said that the next few decades will see the blurring of lines between humans and machines. He argued that such technology is already here to some degree, with retina implants and microchips, but the coming years will see that technology take a massive leap forwards. "Think of it as like adding an extension to the brain, similar to adding a conservatory to a house," he said. Dr Pearson believes that by the 2050s, we will have achieved what he calls "electronic immortality". This will enable those with the means to afford it the ability to extend their minds into something resembling The Cloud. Such a development could open up remarkable opportunities, including, Dr Pearson says, "telepathic communication". Describing what this could look like, he explained: "Microscopic implants measuring just millimetres across could be inserted, linking up to our brains." This would also see humans able to communicate across the world, by transmitting our brains via something like The Cloud to another vessel, such as a cloned human body, on the other side of the world.”

     This must be the reductio ad absurdum of the hate laws, since, when does it stop? Race? Sex? Gender? Well, what about nudists?
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8061029/Nudists-want-hate-crime-law-protect-textiles.html
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIWmEFTvRFA&feature=emb_title

“You may think the biggest threat to nudists would be some sunburn or pesky insect bites in the height of summer. But naturists say they are increasingly facing abuse - and now want to be protected under hate crime laws. British Naturism, which represents about 9,000 nudists, wants the right to get naked in public to be recognised as a 'philosophical belief' in the eyes of the law. Its president, Mark Bass, told the Mail on Sunday they were lobbying for the change 'so we are not abused in our day-to-day lives. These days we all agree that shouting abuse at somebody because of the colour of their skin, their sexual preference or their religion is not acceptable. Yet naturists still receive that type of abuse based on their dress code. We are not asking that people should be forced to be naked. 'But everybody should have the freedom to choose how they dress, including if that choice is to wear nothing at all.' And writing on British Naturis's website, he added: 'Despite attempting to avoid confrontation, it is not uncommon for a naturist to receive abuse from a neighbour or when out walking. 'You would be upset if somebody shouted abuse or threatened you because they did not like the colour of your shirt - we would prefer not to receive such abuse for not wearing a shirt.' Last March, hundreds of people protested against a nude children-and-adult swimming session in Stoke-on-Trent, claiming it would attract paedophiles. And Dr Bass said one naturist recently had a dog set on him, adding: 'We are now moving from hate speech into actual physical attacks.'

     It has become part of modern fitness culture that to be fit, one needs to take 10,000 steps a day. Well that is fine if one has no injuries, and has legs! But, apart from that a study has now challenged the fundamental idea that weight loss will come from the 10,000 steps ideology.
  https://www.studyfinds.org/10000-steps-a-day-may-not-spark-weight-loss-after-all-study-says/

“Those in search of a slimmer waist, or just interested in maintaining their current weight, have long been advised by health experts to log at least 10,000 steps per day. Reaching that magic number daily is thought of as a real accomplishment for many people, and countless walkers utilize fitness trackers and smart watches to ensure they reach their goal day in and day out. Well, a new study is bringing the 10,000 step theory to a grinding halt. Researchers from Brigham Young University have concluded that no number of simple steps alone are going to prevent weight gain or induce weight loss. A total of 120 freshman students at BYU were analyzed for this study. The research was conducted during the students’ first six months on campus, and their steps per day were tracked on a daily basis. Participating students walked either 10,000, 12,500 or 15,000 steps every day for six days a week. During the duration of the experiment (24 weeks) the students’ diets and body weights were also tracked. The research team were especially interested to see if steadily increasing the amount of steps per day each student took would result in increasing weight loss. For instance, if students walking 12,500 steps per day would end up losing more weight than those walking 10,000 per day. Surprisingly, the end results indicated that it didn’t matter whether the students walked 10,000 or even more than 15,000 steps per day. Many students still ended up gaining weight. For what it’s worth, it’s exceedingly common for college freshman to gain some weight during their first few months away from home, the phenomenon even has a nickname (the freshman 15).ie 0%

To The Australian         Chris Kenny rightly warns that Australia needs to adopt a firmly independent approach towards the UN ("Forget the UN, we need to do what's best for ourselves", 7-8/3). Participate in discussions, yes, but not feel bound by past, present or future UN decisions. As he says, we cannot assume that UN demands are "sensible, competent or necessarily issued in the best interests of all nations." There may indeed be "some vested political or commercial interests" behind much UN behaviour. This common sense applies to indigenous affairs as well as climate change and the current health crisis. Much of the foolish agitation for constitutional recognition and the signing of a treaty or treaties takes its strength from well-meaning but unrealistic UN declarations. The government should back away from that campaigning and focus purely on non-controversial action to improve Aboriginal welfare and education.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     Our side of politics claims that there is social media bias against conservatives. Well, the other side have rolled out their social scientists to challenge this:
  https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/researchers-have-already-tested-googles-algorithms-for-political-bias/

“Motivated by the long-running argument in Washington, DC, computer scientists at Northeastern University decided to investigate political bias in YouTube's comment moderation. The team analyzed 84,068 comments on 258 YouTube videos. At first glance, the team found that comments on right-leaning videos seemed more heavily moderated than those on left-leaning ones. But when the researchers also accounted for factors such as the prevalence of hate speech and misinformation, they found no differences between comment moderation on right- and left-leaning videos. "There is no political censorship," said Christo Wilson, one of the co-authors and associate professor at Northeastern University. "In fact, YouTube appears to just be enforcing their policies against hate speech, which is what they say they're doing." Wilson's collaborators on the paper were graduate students Shan Jiang and Ronald Robertson. To check for political bias in the way comments were moderated, the team had to know whether a video was right- or left-leaning, whether it contained misinformation or hate speech, and which of its comments were moderated over time. From fact-checking websites Snopes and PolitiFact, the scientists were able to get a set of YouTube videos that had been labelled true or false. Then, by scanning the comments on those videos twice, six months apart, they could tell which ones had been taken down. They also used natural language processing to identify hate speech in the comments. To assign their YouTube videos left or right scores, the team made use of an unrelated set of voter records. They checked the voters' Twitter profiles to see which videos were shared by Democrats and Republicans and assigned partisanship scores accordingly.

     While the Left and globalists rant and rave on about universal human rights and universal morality, which seems to always justify unending immigration of the Third World to the West, the fact of the matter is that most people in the world do not accept the universal morality of the West. Thus, on slavery, to take on high level white guilt issue, this is not even a crime in most of the world:
  https://news.trust.org/item/20200212132545-vdpzu

“Slavery is not a crime in almost half the countries in the world, a study of global laws said on Wednesday, urging nations to close legal loopholes that allow abusers to escape punishment. Many states lack laws which directly criminalise and punish exerting ownership or control over another person, according to the Antislavery in Domestic Legislation database, launched at the United Nations headquarters in New York. "Slavery is far from being illegal everywhere and we hope our research will move the conversation beyond this popular myth," said Katarina Schwarz, a researcher at the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab, which led work on the slavery database. "It will surprise many people to learn that in all of these countries there are no criminal laws in place to prosecute, convict and punish people for subjecting people to the most extreme forms of exploitation." More than 40 million people are held in modern slavery, which includes forced labor and forced marriage, according to estimates by the International Labour Organization and the anti-slavery group the Walk Free Foundation. Ending modern slavery by 2030 was among the global goals adopted unanimously by members of the United Nations in 2015. But although historic laws that once allowed slavery have been scrapped worldwide, researchers for the database found that many of the 193 U.N. member states have not gone on to explicitly criminalise slavery and other exploitation.

     I have often wondered what the cost of the multitude of politically correct institutions and cultural artefacts actually costs in dollar terms. We have nothing for Australia surprise, surprise, but there are now some astonishing US figures, putting it at $ 10 billion a year just for college students:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/12/10/study-college-students-spend-10-billion-a-year-on-mandatory-social-justice-courses/
  https://www.thecollegefix.com/social-justice-general-education-requirements-cost-u-s-students-10-billion-a-year-report/

“The direct financial burden of social justice general education requirements is at least $10 billion a year nationwide — and rising fast — according to a report released Friday by the National Association of Scholars. That’s just one detail among many in the 275-page “Social Justice in Education” study authored by David Randall, director of research for the right-of-center academic association. The report “aims to catalogue the extent of social justice education, and the way it has seized control of the machinery of higher education.” Universities nationwide require students to take a course that falls under the social justice umbrella, such as a diversity, multicultural, sustainability or experiential learning class, Randall said as the association debuted the report at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. To determine the $10 billion figure, Randall said he put the estimated cost of one required course under the social justice umbrella at $2,000 and applied that cost to students nationwide. “That was trying to be unbelievably conservative,” Randall said of the figure. “We make no attempt to talk about how much it costs to pay for each dean of community engagement, each advocate for sustainability. Our next report on administrative growth will cover that. But the true figure must be much, much higher. That was trying to give an absolute bargain basement estimate.” The report focuses on 60 colleges and universities, both small and large, public and private, to hone in on how higher education has been transformed into “training camps for progressive activism.”

     Along with the closely related child grooming situation, there is the equally grim phenomenon of child prostitution in Europe, and it is horrid:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/12/10/underage-prostitute-forced-have-sex-200-times-five-days-paris-suburbs/

“A 16-year-old girl was held captive for five days in an apartment by a group of men who forced her to have sex 200 times for money. Police arrested five men on Saturday in Chaperon-Vert Gentilly, a suburb of Paris, after raiding the apartment which had been used as a makeshift brothel, Le Parisien reports. The suspects are aged between 17 and 22, with two already being known to police for prior drug convictions. According to the victim, she had been a runaway who soon found herself getting into prostitution in the no-go Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, which she claimed was of her own volition at the time. She then stated that she ended up at the apartment in Chaperon-Vert where customers would contact her on a dating website for sex. Soon after, the teen was forced to stay in the apartment and only allowed to sleep between two or three hours per night. The teen eventually managed to discover the address of the apartment and contacted her mother who tipped off the police. In the tenth floor apartment, police are said to have found what Le Parisien described as a nearly-rotten mattress along with a garbage bag full of used condoms. Money and a book of accounting were also found at the scene. Such cases are on the rise across France with the prosecutor’s office of Créteil claiming that last year they saw 20 cases compared to just three cases five years ago. Last month, a report published by the Observatory of Violence Against Women in Seine-Saint-Denis revealed that nearly a third of all underage prostitutes in Paris’s no-go suburbs are under the age of 15, with some as young as just six years old being forced into prostitution. The study also revealed that in half of the cases, the “clients”, or abusers, used social media and the internet to facilitate sexual exploitation with minors.”

     I am back by popular demand. Overcoming the summer sloth and apathy to present another mind probing article for your reading pleasure, even though it is now autumn, or is it spring yet? I don’t know, some days it is hot, some days cold, the seasons all blend intro each other in my scrambled egg  mind. And, what better way to kick off the new season, but to celebrate plastic, one of the true joys of creation, and one of my favourites. Here is an article about how plastic bags help the environment:
  https://www.manhattan-institute.org/plastic-bags-help-the-environment

“Banning them provides no benefit other than to let activists lord their preferences over others. Why do politicians want to take away our plastic bags and straws? This moral panic is intensifying even as evidence mounts that banning plastic is both a waste of money and harmful to the environment. If you want to protect dolphins and sea turtles, you should take special care to place your plastic in the trash, not the recycling bin. And if you’re worried about climate change, you’ll cherish those gossamer grocery bags once you learn the facts about plastic. During the 1970s, environmentalists wanted to restrict the use of plastic because it was made from petroleum. When the “energy crisis” abated, they denounced plastic for not being biodegradable in landfills. They blamed it for littering the landscape, clogging sewer drains and global warming. Plastic from our “throwaway society” was killing vast numbers of sea creatures, according to a 2017 BBC documentary series. The series prompted Queen Elizabeth II to ban plastic straws and bottles from the royal estates, and it galvanized so many other leaders that greens celebrate what they call the “Blue Planet Effect,” named for the series. More than 100 countries now restrict single-use plastic bags, and Pope Francis has called for global regulation of plastic. The European Parliament has voted to ban single-use plastic straws, plates and cutlery across the Continent next year. In the U.S., hundreds of municipalities and eight states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon and Vermont—have outlawed or restricted single-use plastic bags. Greens in California are pushing a referendum to require all plastic packaging and single-use foodware in the state to be recyclable, and the European Union has unveiled a similar plan.”

     Well, well, well, just look at this and weep:
  https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/queensland-government-plan-could-see-lollipop-workers-earn-180k/news-story/743bf6ee6d3df10ef980ce0edd0cbcdd

“A new Queensland Government plan could reportedly see lollipop workers earn close to $180,000 a year. The massive wage would apply to jobs on regional construction projects under minimum conditions being considered by the Labor Government. The Government is trialling minimum requirements for major state-funded projects, similar to a Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union’s industry agreement. It will force builders to ensure subcontractors apply the rates, but builders claim the move will drive up costs by at least 30 per cent. They also say it will put principal contractors at risk of breaching workplace laws on adverse action and coercion in relation to subcontractors. The requirements would apply to projects worth more than $100 million, the first understood to be the $130 million expansion of the Cairns Convention Centre. The project’s 122 pages of minimum conditions, sent out to tenderers in October, include five per cent annual pay increases, requirements to pay weekend hours at overtime rates of 200 per cent and 12 per cent superannuation contributions, according to the Australian Financial Review. Under the plan carpenters would earn $198,000 a year on a 46-hour week and traffic controllers about $178,000, according to calculations from the Master Builders Association.”