Contract criminals with no links to their victims are hired online. Innocent people are being killed

 

 

“This represents more than ‘cancel culture’, more than another cynical effort by the elites to circumscribe what may be said on a particular issue. It represents an overturning of the virtues of the Scientific Revolution itself, and of that central freedom of Enlightenment: the freedom to question authority.”

 

“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie captures it well. She writes about the ‘cold-blooded grasping’ in certain youthful circles – ‘a hunger to take and take and take, but never give’, ‘a massive sense of entitlement’, ‘an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care’, ‘an astonishing level of self-absorption’, ‘language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence’, ‘a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter, but not in the intimate space of friendship’. And, of course, ‘an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others’.”
― Brendan O'Neill, A Heretic's Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable

When police announced last week that they had arrested three alleged would-be assassins en route to murder a man as he collected his children from daycare, the questions from reporters came thick and fast.

Did police cut it too fine in arresting the hired guns as they drove to the daycare centre? Was there a risk they could’ve got away in traffic? What if they’d taken a different route, changed their minds midway, shot another motorist as police closed in?

Contract criminals with no links to their victims are hired online. Innocent people are being killed

Reeves faces a historic challenge with record state spending The Times

 

Pro-Israel group gets £7m from UK government to ‘identify’ antisemitism Middle East Eye

 

England sees second worst harvest on record, analysis shows Independent

 

Epstein survivors sue Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon

After Epstein victims reached major settlements with JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, two more shoes dropped on allegedly “complicit” financial institutions. Adam Klasfeld – “Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors filed a pair of federal lawsuits against the Bank of America [via Court Watch] and the Bank of New York Mellon [via Court Watch] on Wednesday, accusing them of ranking among the “complicit financial institutions” who valued proximity to a wealthy and connected predator more than complying with anti-trafficking law. 

“Rather than merely providing routine banking services to Epstein, Bank of America went far beyond what a non-complicit bank would have done and instead assisted Epstein in setting up the necessary financial structure to operate his sex-trafficking venture,” the 49-page lawsuit says. In 2023, survivors settled similar lawsuits against J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank for $290 millionand $75 million. Another lawsuit filed today estimates that Bank of New York Mellon processed $378 million in payments to women trafficked by Epstein. 

Both lawsuits cite the ongoing “follow-the-money” investigation by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) into Epstein for the Finance Committee. During the investigation, Wyden found that billionaire Leon Black paid $170 million to Epstein for purported “tax and estate planning advice” from his Bank of America account, compensation that he found “far exceeded” that of other professional attorneys and advisors involved in Black’s estate planning. Attorneys David Boies and Sigrid McCawleyfiled both class action complaints on behalf of an anonymous Jane Doe, who says she met Epstein in Russia in 2011 and was sexually abused by him until 2019, the year of Epstein’s prosecution and death…”

Australian tropical rainforest trees switch in world first from carbon sink to emissions source

 Australian tropical rainforest trees switch in world first from carbon sink to emissions sourceGuardian

Save Our Signs’ Preservation Project Launches Archive of 10,000 National Park Signs

404 Media: “On Monday, a publicly-sourced archive of more than 10,000 national park signs and monument placards went public as part of a massive volunteer project to save historical and educational placards from around the country that risk removal by the Trump administration.

Federal firings could skyrocket in shutdown

• The White House threatened to fire thousands more federal employees yesterday, and rolled out new hiring standards for those who’ll replace them — then a judge issued an order complicating the whole process.
• Why it matters: President Trump is using the government shutdown to further his push to completely upend the federal workforce.
• State of play: OMB director Russell Vought said yesterday that more than 10,000 federal workers could end up getting fired during the shutdown. That’s more than twice as many terminations as the White House said it was conducting just last week in court filings.
• Yes, but: Yesterday afternoon, federal judge Susan Illston in San Francisco temporarily blocked those layoffs. “It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs, and it has a human cost,” she said at the hearing, according to the AP’s report. “It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”
• Zoom out: At almost the same time, Trump issued an Executive Order laying out new hiring policies. The order directs agencies to create staffing plans that align “with Administration priorities,” and notes that 300,000 federal employees have left the workforce this year, more than double the historic average — and a result of programs meant to encourage them to leave.
• Catch up quick: In court filings last week, the White House said it planned to lay off at least 4,100 federal workers. Some of the firing notices that went out on Friday have already been rescinded at the Department of Health and Human Services.””

See also The New York Times Gift Article]: How Much Smaller Is the Federal Work Force? Shutdown Plans Offer a Clue. “Before the government shutdown began Oct. 1, many agencies published contingency plans — routine frameworks that are typically updated before a shutdown. These documents included details about which programs will be suspended and how many employees will be furloughed until the shutdown is over.They reveal, to some extent, how much President Trump has slashed the federal work force through firings, layoffs and incentivized resignation programs, because they also include a recent report of how many employees work at each agency…”

Diwali of lights - Toxic neighbours: Caravans clog suburban streets sparking calls for new laws

 It’s Diwali, a time for light, community and fresh starts

Saunders’ payment process full of conflicts, report says A review of a $315k retirement payout for Cate Saunders leads DPS to overhaul how it handles conflicts and incentive-to-retire payments

Toxic neighbours: Caravans clog suburban streets sparking calls for new laws

China Reacts After U.S. Pushed Netherlands To Seize Chinese Owned Company

Former Labor premier turned lobbyist Morris Iemma had a “regular catch-up” scheduled with a senior adviser to Chris Minns, who he petitioned over a stalled housing development in Menangle which later received provisional go-ahead from the NSW Planning Department.

A trove of documents obtained by The Sydney MorningHerald also reveals Minns did not disclose a meeting with Iemma that occurred just a week before the former premier sought to lobby his office over two major housing developments.

From leader to lobbyist: How Morris Iemma opens doors for Sydney property developer

How Morris Iemma helped James Packer get his way on a $100m Potts Point development

‘The Fraud’ links Labour minister Steve Reed to hacked data scandal The Canary

China Reacts After U.S. Pushed Netherlands To Seize Chinese Owned Company Moon of Alabama

OpenAI has five years to turn $13 billion into $1 trillion TechCrunch

Elon Musk Is Making Cybertruck Sales Look Better by Selling a Huge Number to Himself Futurism

Western executives who visit China are coming back terrified Telegraph

The Ghosts of the Physiocrats Relearning Economics 

Process knowledge is crucial to economic development Programmable Mutter

Trio win Nobel economics prize for work on innovation, growth and ‘creative destruction’Reuters. As in the Swedish central bank prize i the name of Alfred Nobel 

Trump Plans to Use Men With Guns as Part of IRS Campaign Against “Left-Leaning” Groups

Trump, in particular his key deputy Steve Miller, is gearing up to launch his war against political enemies, above all Soros’ Open Society

Is your workplace a theatre of the absurd?

Memories of Vaclav Havel and his obsession with the theatre of the absurd came flooding in 

So many absurd managers are like a spectre that delights my memories from the mixing of 40 years of legislative to taxing moments 

Theatre of the Absurd is a style of post-WWII drama characterized by illogical plots, nonsensical dialogue, and a focus on the meaninglessness and anxieties of the human condition. Plays often feature characters in bewildering situations where they engage in pointless actions without making progress. 

Influenced by existential philosophy, this movement rejects traditional dramatic structures and explores themes of futility, bewilderment, and despair, sometimes mixing tragedy with comedy…

Is your workplace a theatre of the absurd?

Acknowledging the strange nature of work, and injecting some humour, can make us feel better

We accept a lot of things in corporate life, which, on closer examination, are not normal at all. 

Many professionals spend their days in client meetings, their time parcelled into billing-sized chunks. Nearly all of us move from one back-to-back meeting to another, all of it transactional, then carry on answering emails at night, in what Microsoft calls “the infinite workday”, where there are no time boundaries. And to top it all, someone else has total power over us, and our career path. 

This cognitive dissonance is the inspiration for recent books such as The Expansion Project, or the TV show Severance, which present office life as dystopian. And the built-in lack of agency that we have in corporate life is also making a lot of people miserable. A Deloitte survey of Gen Z workers found 40 per cent were “stressed or anxious all or most of the time”; another, by Gallup, found the proportion of global workers who are “engaged” in their jobs fell from 23 to 21 per cent last year.

Workplace consultant Christine Armstrong has identified an epidemic of malaise among “lost leaders”: high-earning lawyers, consultants and senior staff who “look powerful [but] don’t feel any great power”. They may have been at a company for decades, with the attendant organisational knowledge, high status, and a job that looks interesting from the outside. But many spend their energy navigating endless internal politics. “You’re stuck in a film that you didn’t choose to be in,” Armstrong explained when I interviewed her earlier this month. It’s a situation that would grind anyone down.

All of this goes unspoken, most of the time. But what if we made explicit the contradictions inherent in corporate life? This was the premise for a recent event by the Law Society of Ireland. It runs an annual festival — cleverly titled Well Within the Law — to promote wellbeing and supportive workplace culture in the profession. The theme of its 2025 event, last month, was “This is Absurd”. 

Here’s the sell: “In the legal profession, we are experts at smoothing contradictions. Between public duty and private wellbeing. Between professional authority and personal limits. We tidy the mess, manage the contradictions, and press on. But those contradictions don’t disappear. They accumulate.” 

The festival aimed to bring these contradictions into the open. “Not to solve them, but to name them, and to ask what it means to live and lead inside them.” It asked attendees to try to embrace the absurdity that “happens when we stop rationalising and admit what doesn’t make sense.”

Sessions included stories “designed to unsettle rather than soothe” and discussions of why “waiting for the perfect system is futile”. Speakers included comedians and writers as well as lawyers. It was all framed with a Beckett quote: “We’re all born mad. Some remain so.”

Festival organiser Antoinette Moriarty said the festival sought to “address the inevitability of people feeling overwhelmed and overworked. We looked to literature, and the absurdists are a group of writers who invite us to accept what’s happening and try to make sense of it, and in the process of doing that, the relief comes.”

Even if you don’t have the bandwidth to mount an existential-style festival, you can still embrace — and challenge — the strange contradictions of corporate life. There are plenty of small ways to inject variety, creativity, even mischief, into the office. 

At the Charter Workplace Summit in New York this week, Bree Groff, author of Today Was Fun, which makes the argument for enjoying ourselves at work, talked about creating “micro mischief, macro joy”. 

Some of her examples of “mischief”: having everyone take turns at starting the team meeting with a blast of their favourite teenage music; or committing doing one thing at work each day in a very slow way: Groff suggested taking time over making coffee in a French press (cafetière). “These are all acts of agency,” she told an audience of US corporate leaders.

Plenty of my colleagues already spend ages on their coffee “workflow” each day. And I’d love to play Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf to a captive audience of competitive peers. But another of Groff’s ideas — “hosting a zipper-free day at work” — was too much for me, an uptight Brit. Even once I’d realised that “zipper-free” meant wearing sweatpants to the office — rather than something rather less safe for work.

Still, it made us laugh. 

Isabel Berwick is FT Working It editor and author of ‘The Future-Proof Career’

What Happens When You Start Dancing In Your 60s

I was at the cemetery today putting some flowers down. 

As soon as I walked away a lady came up to me and said, "Hey, how are you today?" I said, "Oh damn, you can see me?" 

She freaked out and took off running.

The food you eat affects your kidneys, and that in turn may affect your mental health.

What you eat is more important than you ever thought, and it pertains to your mental health.

 

Lord Of The Irish Dance Michael Flatley At 67

He hasn’t danced for nearly a decade. He has damaged bones and tendons and claims to know all his vertebrae by name. But he’s still fiendishly driven. - The Guardian

What Happens When You Start Dancing In Your 60s

“By now I’ve spent upward of 5,000 hours in ballet classes, and roughly 1,600 hours more in other, non-ballet dance classes. …  I dance as if it were my job.” - Slate

RIP Moose - As a smug, elderly person

The worse thing than being talked about is not being talked about

Coffee Snobbery in the Construction Industry

Words Pearl Bullivant Photo Reece Stretto

Bring Back the 'Bad Old Days' Dear Pearl - 

Please help me, as I try to come to grips with the snobby coffee culture that has invaded the building industry!

I'm an electrician, and on pretty much every building site I've been at lately, a fellow tradie will arrive to work late, emerging from his anally clean RAM or Ford Ranger with a tray of coffees and bags of cinnamon scrolls. These blokes will pretty much always be juiced up, with sleeve tattoos and manicured eyebrows, wearing dicky jogger pants and some wanky designer runners, and I'm left waiting while they sip their latté and change into hi-vis.

I've got a few more years left in me before surrendering the tools, and I'm finding myself longing for the 'bad old days' of meat pies, vanilla slices and Moove iced coffee to soothe the VB hangover, along with the occasional sight of a bum crack and beer gut. Honestly Pearl, what is the world coming to?

Neale Bondi

10 The Beast November 2025 Issue 250

Something Called a 'Magic' Dear Neale - If only the main issues with the construction industry were tradies with latté, scroll and tattoo addictions! But I do feel your pain, sweetie. My husband, Blair, has become a proud and insufferable coffee snob. And he makes no apologies for his snobbery, which coincided with donning the cycling lycra - prior to that, his caffeine intake was limited to boring old tea.

His snobbery has leeched all the joy out of ordering a coffee, and I cringe 

Something Called a 'Magic' Dear Neale - If only the main issues with the construction industry were tradies with latté, scroll and tattoo addictions! But I do feel your pain, sweetie. My husband, Blair, has become a proud and insufferable coffee snob. And he makes no apologies for his snobbery, which coincided with donning the cycling lycra

- prior to that, his caffeine intake was limited to boring old tea.

His snobbery has leeched all the joy out of ordering a coffee, and I cringe with embarrassment as he explains the technicalities

of a "long mac topped up" or a "piccolo with a dash of milk" to some unsuspecting young barista.

Last month, he returned from a cycling trip raving about something called a 'magic'. Mean-while, Pearl is ordering a regular cappuccino and wondering if conflict over coffee is worthy grounds for a third divorce?

Your letter has Pearl longing for the bad old days of black, sugarless Nescafé instant. I would routinely down four to fuel my 5am run to South Coo-gee, before heading off to work sans breakfast for a 12-hour day at a posh Phillip Street establish-ment. Post work, I would down numerous G&Ts before fighting for a taxi outside Chifley Square.

But would I trade my cappuccino at Bogey Hole for an $18 jar of Blend 43? No way, not in an instant (pun intended)!

Sweetie, as you wait in frustration on building sites, riled up by the vision of takeaway lattés, remember that trends and people (like my husband) change. I'm sure you will recall the bad old days of Underbelly-style property developers, Norm Gallagher and the Builders Labourers Federation, corrupt political-de-veloper relationships, infinite red tape and on-the-take council inspectors. Today, those powerful property developers have lobbyists and political donations (rather than murder) at their disposal and cosy relationships with the CFMEU.

As for coffee, we have lived through International Roast vs Moccona snobbery, keep cups and alternative milk trends, all usurped by something called a'magic. You can enjoy your retirement knowing those young guns will be working until they are 80 to fund their monster trucks, gym memberships, wanky shoes, sleeve tattoos and latté addictions (and their annual trip to Bali).

Pearl Bullivant  Clovelly

As a smug, elderly person, I can appreciate that my presence causes terrible annoyance to politicians and marketers. A blight on the landscape, with my lined skin and thinning hair, I’m smug in the awareness that I’m healthier, less conservative, more engaged, and a darned sight more resilient than the generations I’m leaving behind.

Oblivious to consumerism and ‘want’ accumulation, I’m living the hipster’s dream (without the $15 spelt loaf), unencumbered by acquisitions, an SUV, or fast food.

Is it any wonder I’m a government and marketing nightmare? From ‘Knitting Nannas Against Gas’, to Dick Smith’s controversial vision for a sustainable future, oldies like Pearl are pushing dangerous ideas and refusing to contribute a skerrick of our meagre pensions to the excesses of a consumerist society.

If oldies are not spending money, but instead loitering in publicly funded libraries and spreading propaganda when we aren’t listening to publicly funded radio, wouldn’t it be preferable to the government if we were confined to our homes by the regulation of our favourite form of transport: the mobility scooter?

Well, that just happens to be the suggestion of Nationals MP, John Williams, who is pushing for gophers to be limited to 6km/h (as well as a ban on vehicles over 150kg), plus on-the-spot fines and compulsory registration, after his wife was supposedly hit by a speeding gopher.

If driving a gopher 10km/h makes one a speed freak – if dozens of injuries and deaths have been linked to gophers over the years – how does Mr Williams explain the silence from politicians and the media when it comes to deaths caused by truck drivers? Heavy vehicles were involved in 194 fatal crashes – resulting in the deaths of 212 people – during the 2016/17 financial year. The lives of innocent people have been wiped out in a second by trucks travelling above the speed limit, by drivers who are pushed to the limit by unscrupulous businesses focussed solely on the bottom line Trucks kill a disproportionate number of people, yet governments do little to restrict haulage or hold anyone accountable, particularly the big two supermarkets, whose contracts with freight companies are deliberately convoluted to avoid accountability for death and impairment. 

In his case against gophers, Mr Williams is also concerned that elderly people who have surrendered their driver’s licences are now behind a mobile scooter’s wheel. What a pity that this level of concern isn’t afforded to truck drivers with bad driving records, who get back into the cab and turn their vehicle into a lethal weapon. Instead, it’s a pathetic wrist slap – rarely jail time – for a death caused by an unsecured load, a speeding B-double unable to keep to its lane, or a meth-pepped truckie.

In the hypocritical silence, it really wouldn’t surprise me if the government has decided that the economic benefits of heavy vehicle transport far outweighs any downside associated with deaths caused by trucks.

And, as for the dozens of deaths caused by gophers, Mr Williams, just wait until the Range Rover (mobile phone at ear) Yummy Mummy set are behind the wheels of mobility scooters – only then will you have a valid cause for complaint.

Moose with his mate Mick

I used to swim with Copyright Guru Moose and went to few bucks parties with him 

Taken Before His Time - Bondi Farewells a Brilliant Man

Words James Hutton and Louise Bryant Photo Eugene Tan

It was an ordinary Sunday winter morning at Bondi Icebergs.

The weekly relay teams were lining up when a new swimmer appeared poolside. It was Hollywood star Owen Wilson, hoping for a quiet lap or two.

But 'Moose' Moore was short a swimmer, so he did what any true Icebergs member would do

- he roped Wilson in. The movie star did as he was told, swam his leg and helped Moose's team to victory. Later, when asked on national television how he was enjoying Bondi, Wilson replied,

"Yeah, I swam with some guy called Moose!"

Variety even reported the encounter on its website.

"On a private visit to the famous Bondi Icebergs swim club, Wilson accepted an impromptu invitation to join a team at the weekly winter meet, where he swam a leg of the relay in the chilly ocean pool without losing ground to competing teams," wrote Michaela Boland.

That was typical Moose - a joiner-inner, raconteur, bon

24 The Beast November 2025 Issue 250

vivant, keen ocean swimmer and friend to many. A very gifted wordsmith and storyteller, he eventually lost his words to dementia and, after a long battle, died peacefully on September 18 with his loving partner Louise by his side.

One of his advertising mates described him as "very clever, quietly crazy, irrational, unpre-dictable, argumentative, inspi-rational, sometimes annoying, charming, extremely intelligent

- and everyone loved him."

Moose's story resonated far beyond Bondi. He was the subject of two major features in The Australian, a segment on A Current Affair and a personal essay by Louise in Vogue Australia during Dementia Action Week. His journey also inspired Think Again, a national dementia-awareness campaign launched by News Corp, urging Australians to think about their brain health and take action.

Moose is survived by Louise Bryant and his daughter, Phoebe

Bondi Iceberg - They met every day at the pool for years – until the coffee cup ‘incident’

No Kings: What will Australia be like in 2058? A new novel imagines division, unemployment — and activism

No Kings rallies lack Soros czechs 🦋🐸🦋

A Long-Awaited Longevity Mystery Solved Ground Truth

Rock Never Dies—But It Does Get Older and Wiser

Rock is for the young, but rockers can age gracefully.

Triolo’s memoir, The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere, is about three meaningful circumambulations the author completed around three separate sites, and how the practice of walking in circles might offer a unique approach to grappling with crises that are environmental and personal. The narrative details Triolo’s walks around Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash; California’s Mount Tamalpais; and the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana, the largest Superfund site in the United States.

The Wisdom of Walking in Circles

What will Australia be like in 2058? A new novel imagines division, unemployment — and activism

What if every law needed a vote? A gripping vision of future Australia where one public servant risks everything to make change stick.