If this Biden feeling ‘jacked up’, I shudder to think what he’s like when he’s not. He’s not doing a great job of spruiking his own achievements and his answers are devoid of stats or figures - likely because they weren’t able to bring notes in. He’s sadly making trump look more coherent and lively by comparison.

This is an argument I’ve been pitching in the Australian context for some 20 years now - we should have been world leaders in solar technology, to the extent that by now we should have massive solar farms across the North of Australia in order to export clean, green energy up to Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and other near-neighbours. We could have created a whole new industry of both research and advanced manufacturing, and if we’d nationally sequester our resources correctly we could be doing every step of the way - dig out the minerals, refine them, manufacture them into panels, export those panels - all the while generating very low cost energy and exporting it for profit as well! Not to mention so many new jobs!

Even once you take away all of the obvious arguments for climate change action (environmental, ethical, prevention of future disasters etc.) there was always going to be a strong financial incentive in a capitalistic market to move to technology that has the lowest input cost to generate energy, which just so happens to be renewables. It just baffles me that so many politicians crucified themselves on the altar of coal when they could’ve been remembered for ushering in simultaneous economic benefit and environmental benefit, with a long term impact of lowered inflation through cheaper power bills, but that’s what the minerals lobby in this country has managed to achieve. What a disgrace.

Good to see a world leader using the economic arguments in addition to the other more obvious ones.

The logic is that road deaths go up during holiday periods (which is sadly a statistical fact here) so they ramp up enforcement and double the penalties for those periods to try to correct for it. I’m not a huge fan of the idea, but from a purely statistical and scientific standpoint it does at least make some amount of sense. My individual circumstance is a bit of a curveball because my punishment was way outstripping my crime, but I do have some understanding for the idea of double demerits. I think my issue was that what should have been a one-point offence (doubled to two points) became an eight-point offence just because I was on a provisional licence. That part I’m still very salty about.

Yeah, I was on my P-plates (provisional licence) at the time where you have can have up to seven demerit points before losing your licence. As a P-plater, every speeding offence automatically is moderated to the maximum value, four points, and because it was a ‘double-demerits’ weekend (for public holidays), that four points was doubled to eight points. I received more demerit points than km/h I was over the limit.

For reference, if I was on my full licence and it wasn’t double-demerits, it would have been one point out of a total twelve. Instead, I got eight points which suspended my licence. Thankfully the magistrate I had was reasonable and granted my reduction - that also meant I didn’t have to pay court costs and I represented myself, so the whole thing cost me the initial $35 court booking fee. I managed to get something that resembled justice out of it, but I’ll still have a bitter taste in my mouth because of the whole rigamarole for a long time to come.

I challenged a licence suspension in Australia when I was 19 years old. I gladly paid the $560 fine but I would’ve lost my licence for three months because I was driving 7km/h over the limit on a ‘double-demerits’ weekend. The magistrate sent me to a fortnightly driver’s course for 12 weeks, all the while I kept my licence, and after the course was over I fronted court again and successfully argued my three month suspension down to four weeks.

I’m pretty sure that going to court over traffic violations is a thing in any country that allows going to court over traffic violations.

FYI in most Australian jurisdictions, you can’t demand that the individual police officer who fined you attend court to defend themselves. That part is most likely a US thing.

To be fair, forcing everyone back to the office and then giving them individual offices kinda makes less sense than forcing everyone back to the office to all work in one space together. At least that way it’s actually encouraging human interaction - if you’re working from a private office you might as well be working from your private home.

Not suggesting that any of that is a good idea at all though. Forced working from an office is now officially an antiquated idea.