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\nMy heart was as heavy as a field of butterflies in spring when the news lobbed on Monday that high-level [LOOK LEFT] cocks in Wolfsburg had signed off on allowing their inconsequential Arse-tra-alien subordinates to bend and stretch their way to a class-action settlement in the time-honoured game of prison shower Twister. Yesssss!
\nZe Chermans will kick the tin for up to $127.1 million for Dieselgate class action victims, who own (or owned) the company\u2019s disgraceful, filthy shitheaps.
\nIf you\u2019ve been dead from the neck up since about 2015, Dieselgate was, of course, the board-level criminal conspiracy, in which a decision was taken to kill people prematurely in the name of profit, by cheating emissions regulations and pumping up oxides of nitrogen in Volkswagen dung-box diesel exhausts.
\nOxides of nitrogen kill about 50,000 people annually in Retardistan. If you read the peer-reviewed study in respected academic journal, Environmental Pollution, you\u2019d see they estimated fraudulent Dieselgate emissions causing 45,000 disability-adjusted life-years to be lost, at a cost of $39 billion US dollars (and that\u2019s just in \u2018Murica).
\nDieselgate has now cost Volkswagen more than 30 billion Euros, in total, and several high-level Volkswagen and Audi arseholes have gone to prison. Others, of course, parachuted out onto their wallets, fortuitously to live happily ever after, presumably in a hot tub full of Veuve Cliquot. And high-class hookers. In countries that don\u2019t extradite. And, let\u2019s face it - if you\u2019re going to be in prison, that\u2019s how to do it.
\nEven more of a side-splitter for me: Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda are doing this \u201cwithout admission of liability\u201d.
\nI ask you: Could they actually harbour some hope against hope of looking any less like morally adrift mother-lovers? In fact, those disingenuous Volkswagen \u2018Straya arseholes said, in a statement, that the $40 million (wriggle room) settlement would be a:
\n\u201c...significant step towards fully resolving the diesel lawsuits in Australia.\u201d
\nI guess that\u2019s true - except for the people who became disabled because the excessive NOx gave them some life-limiting cardiovascular disease. But, really, who cares about them?
\nThe company droned on, seemingly without end:
\n"The settlement, on a no-admissions basis, concerns five class-action lawsuits covering all affected vehicles in Australia. Volkswagen expects the proceedings will be concluded in 2020."
\nIf only Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda cars were as reliable as their corporate bullshit. Here\u2019s my problem with this \u2018zero admission of liability\u2019 caper:
\nIf the cops kick in your door at 3am, they zip-tie you at gunpoint and tell you they think you really did kill all those children, and the Department of Public Prosecutions agrees, you get two basic options:
\nOne: Plead \u2018guilty\u2019 and go straight to sentencing. Two: Plead \u2018not guilty\u2019 and go to trial, where your guilt (or not) is established.
\nWhat you specifically don\u2019t get to do, when some dude in a wig says: \u201cHow do you plead?\u201d Is get in wig-man\u2019s face and argue: \u201cMaaaate, look, I\u2019m not sayin\u2019 I killed all those schoolgirls, right - but just gimme \u2026 I dunno ... 8.7 to 12.7 years, we\u2019ll sort that out, and that\u2019ll be the end of it. I think you\u2019d agree that\u2019d be a significant step towards fully resolving this mutually inconvenient issue.\u201d
\nAnd yet - that\u2019s kinda what\u2019s happening here.