Australia will be represented by a diplomat rather than a senior minister at international climate talks in Poland next week aimed at securing an agreement to cut global carbon emissions. Environment Minister Greg Hunt won’t attend annual United Nations climate change talks in Warsaw, saying he’ll be busy repealing the carbon tax in the first fortnight of parliament. Mr Hunt said through a spokesman that he would be “fully engaged in repealing the carbon tax” while the conference was under way.
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Ah you gotta love the AussiesNovember 7th, 2013 |
 40 comments to Ah you gotta love the Aussies |
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Smashing!
Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!
He could have said that he didn’t want to fly there to save carbon emissions, just to see if anyone there has a gsoh.
Memo to self: Buy some Aussie wine in addition to Chilean and NZ rations.
Can’t quite bring myself to down a tinnie of Fosters.
Australia seems to have more than its fair share of academic corruption for some reason.
Now I almost want Australia to win the Ashes.
There are certainly better beers, but at least it comes in big cans. What I can’t stand about ‘craft’ beers here in the US (they are very good, incidentally) is that they all come in 12 oz. bottles, an unnatural quantity fit only to be disguised as an honest pint by a trick glass.
PfP is that 12 fl oz bottle size a hangover (¡) from Prohibition, being easier to conceal? My local independent has some US beers, Goose Island IPA. Can’t better Belgium for beer, but I’ll certainly experiment.
Finally a political leader with some common sense!
Yeah great… But,
They are sending a Diplomat, you know the type of person who wears slip ons because they have trouble with shoelaces. What if he/she signs them up to some swivel eyed Warble Gloaming nonsense of their own bat?
Brian, almost, but not quite.
@ RAB, If a diplomat goes off on a frolic of his own, then he will have wasted some ink, as the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia does not, on my brief skim through it, give a diplomat any power to bind the Commonwealth, and he might just find that he has to pay his own air fare back, or, if one did not wish to add to carbon emissions, perhaps he should walk or take the trains and boats.
But I do often wonder about Her Britannic Majesty’s diplomats at the UN, and how reliable they would be if push came to shove in a vote at the Security Council.
I’m waiting for some one to tell these carpet baggers to get fucked.
Regional, you wouldn’t recognise it if one did.
The definition of a Diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip!
Nick,
Really!!!!!!
Alas, the carbon tax isn’t going to be repealed soon: the new Australian government doesn’t have the votes in the senate. (At the moment either Labor or the Greens would have to vote for repeal, and that isn’t going to happen).
And those large Forster’s cans are a thing for foreigners. The standard Australian beer can is 375ml – a size I have seen nowhere else. Lord knows why.
Michael Jennings writes:
I note this is very close to two-thirds of a pint (378.7ml). I am not sure how any of this connects with policy or posturing on carbon tax.
By the way, how does it go, actually, for a government that fails to collect (enforce collection of) a tax authorised by parliament?
Best regards
What if he/she signs them up to some swivel eyed Warble Gloaming nonsense of their own bat?
The diplomat is under instruction not to agree to anything, and to spend the entire junket getting himself and his fellow attendees completely shitfaced.
Okay, I’ve done some research. Going well away from global warming (although Australians are world leaders in understanding the importance of cold beer when it is warm), the traditional Australian beer bottle was actually the “long neck”, which was one sixth of an imperial gallon (26.67 fl oz, 1.33 pints, 758ml). A crate of twelve beer bottles therefore contained exactly two gallons of beer. With metrification, this was standardised at 750ml, which is helpfully also three quarters of a litre and the same size as a standard wine bottle. When cans of beer became common, they were half this size (13.33 fl oz, 0.67 pints, and a carton of 24 cans remained two gallons). Half sized bottles (“stubbies”) also became common, and quickly became the most popular bottle size. With metrification these were both standardised at 375ml. (Actually, I have simplifed what happened here, as there was an intermediate step of 26 fl oz, but that way lies madness).
So yes, you are right. The 375ml Australian bottle size is a rounding of a pre-metric size that was two thirds of a pint. Australians never thought of it that way, though, because pints were not used as a measure of beer in Australia – at all – for most of the past. The size came into use because it was one twelfth of a gallon, not two thirds of a pint. You can sometimes buy draught beer in pints in Australian pubs now, but this is a consequence of the globalization of the last couple of decades rather than anything traditional.
All mainstream brewers in Australia sell beer in 375ml bottles, but craft brewers have an unfortunate tendency to copy what craft brewers do in other places with respect to bottle size. Thus craft brews sometimes come in those 12 fl oz (355ml) bottles that PfP mentioned, or even worse, the European “small size” 330ml bottle. (The European “large size” 500ml bottle is not much seen in Australia). The beer is usually good, but the slightly short bottles are annoying.
If he stays home from the talks and books no other flights, Australia’ll be a shoe-in for “highest actual drop in CO2 output” for this year.
The bar’s pretty low.
I seem to be on an OT streak here lately, so feel free to stop me, but: there should be a law against putting good beer in aluminum cans. The sooner the better. It’s for the children.
What’s “good beer”? :-p
(I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t like carbonated beverages.)
“It’s for the children.”
You’d not be so casually dismissive if you’d watched as those same children attempted to play Crush The Can On Your Forehead, only to discover that some beers come in steel cans.
You have a point there, Bobby – I don’t think I’ve tasted one out of a steel can yet. It just feels safer with glass, forehead-crashing possibilities aside…
Yous forreners and yous Nancy drinks, getta a Darwin Stubby inyaous.
Incidentally when Carlton United took over the Northern Territory Brewery the initials were moulded into the glass, they were very popular for some reason.
Blowed if I knows. My direct observation, though, is that most draft beer mugs in bars look like pint mugs but hold only 12 oz. due to a punted bottom and thick walls. I suspect skulduggery.
I’m not an expert on American craft beers, but here in the Northeast Sam Adams Boston Lager, and Sam Adams IPA are quite good. They are produced in some volume and shouldn’t be too hard to find in the UK and Europe.
What an unmistakably Australian gesture, bravo! Like naming a municipal swimming facility after a prime minister who drowned in the ocean.
Ted: Come to England and I will buy you a real ale.
Alisa,
Try and find some Sapporo, in a slightly curvy can. Exports to the US and the UK are in steel cans, with a gauge thicker than the skin of a Mitsubishi Zero.
They chill well, stay pretty cold, pretty well, and can be drained WAY too fast on a hot day.
Thanks, Bod. I’m in neither the US nor the UK, but I’ll keep that in mind.
Michael:
Great background on Aussie beer sizes! If beer was sold in twelfths of a gallon, what did they call that size?
When I was in Sydney, beer in pubs was served in schooners, which Wikipedia assures me is three-quarters of a pint, i.e. not a pint, not two-thirds of a pint and not a stubbie either. And we Brits are supposed to be weird with our rods and perches…
Roue le Jour depends in what activity they’re used, we also use rods and perches, I suspect a good spanking for being naughty little boys.
Roue: If you ask for a schooner in Adelaide, it will be a half pint rather than three quarters. And if you ask for a pint in Adelaide, you will get the same size as a Sydney schooner (ie three quarters of an English pint). I bet that one confuses visiting Englishmen. Not only does Australia use its own unique glass sizes with peculiar names, but there is also lots of regional variation. (Australia is not alone in this. There’s lots of regional variation in Germany, too, for instance).
The 12oz bottle size in the US indeed dates from Prohibition and is 3/4 of a US pint (which is 16oz rather than the 20oz of an Imperial pint).
1/3 of an Imperial pint was once a common measure in British pubs, and there was talk a couple of years ago of introducing a 2/3 pint measure. To combat the evil curse of “binge drinking”.
A minister that repeals laws. What a novel concept. I wish it were it a highly contagious virus. ReRhinovirus.
British law states that draught beer in pubs may only be served in multiples of 1/3 pint and multiples of 1/2 pint. The 1/3 pint glass is quite commonly offered at beer festivals, where people are likely to want to try a large number of different beers in a short time. Both the 1/3 and 2/3 pint glasses are more and more to be found in bars specialising in (particularly American style) craft beers: the 1/3 pint once again allowing the drinker to try a larger number of beers before getting drunk, and also to drink small quantities of some of the extremely strong craft beers that are sometimes available. American (and American style) beers are often (or at least sometimes) offered in 2/3 pint glasses in such pubs, perhaps once again because of strength, and also perhaps because this size (13.3 oz) is closer in size to typical American glasses than is a traditional English pint.
SO, is this the new preferred method in diplomatic decorum, in shouting the codespeak equivalent of “Sit DOWN, and STFU, !!!”
Sure, “extra” CO2 BAD. We can talk. We’re just going to make sure no one is making money on it.
And DOUBLY sure when the demand for “consequences”, on “research” deemed disingenuous, is met with empty pockets, and “Um…ok…uh…er…double or nothing?”
This helpful link might clarify Imperial measurements.
http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/volume.htm#floz
I believe that a 1/3 pint is commonly called a nip.