THE MOUSE THAT ROARED: est. 80% of Yamba says no to McDonald's Australia

Yamba chamber vice-president Tania Williams, Janet Purcell and others present petitions to council general manager Stuart McPherson. "Eighty per cent of Yamba's population and a majority of the chamber of commerce members are saying no to McDonald's," Ms Williams said.

Yamba residents have posted on Facebook, blogged, written letters to editor, taken out newspaper ads, worn their opposition on T-shirts, signed petitions in their thousands and made submissions to Clarence Valley Council by the 23 April 2010 deadline, in order to oppose the McDonald's Australia development application for a 24 hour eat-in and drive-through fast food outlet in Treelands Drive, Yamba.

There is at least one site inspection, planning committee meeting and a monthly council meeting to go and, as yet it is still not clear that those shire councillors who have been quietly supporting McDonald's (and its politically connected backers) have even paused to think what around 80 per cent community resistance means for the future of local government in the Lower Clarence.

With only eight of the nine shire councillors eligible to consider this application, Mayor Richie Williamson will also be risking his reputation and possibly any political future he may hope for if the ballot is so tight that he must use his casting vote.

As more than one former shire councillor would be able to recall - Yamba never forgets.

Photograph from The Daily Examiner

Abbott's warmongering ways show he's just another pollie willing to advance his own interests on the backs of the fallen

It's almost obscene the way Opposition Leader Tony Abbott seeks every thoughtless opportunity to get his phizog on the screen or his name in print.

Nicely timed in the lead-up to Anzac Day, Phony Tony had this to say to a Lowy Institute audience:
"It's no secret that the Americans would like additional Australian forces in Afghanistan and have refrained from making a formal request only because they have been told that it would be unwelcome. The Government should explain why it's apparently right that NATO countries should commit more troops but not Australia. Putting more troops at risk is not a decision that any Australian government should lightly make but the near certainty of higher casualties has to be weighed against the consequences of failing to shoulder extra responsibilities and the ramifications of any collective loss of nerve by Western powers. How fair is it to leave Australia's security so much in the hands of other countries' soldiers or to expect America and Britain to do nearly all the free world's heavy lifting? If satisfied that the role made strategic sense and was compatible with our other military commitments, a Coalition government would be prepared to consider doing more.
Should it be made, a commitment to do more in Afghanistan would be one sign that Australia is entirely serious about its overseas responsibilities. It would build on the reputation Australia established during the Howard years as a power that well and truly "punched to its weight". "

Yeah, not content with his War on Wimmin, Dole Bludgers and Boat People, Tony lusts to spill some more real blood if he gets into The Lodge and like most pollies the blood he wants to let will not be his own.
Not content that 90,000 international defence personnel from 46 countries are currently deployed in Afghanistan, this poor excuse for a pollie even slips in a suss question about why NATO's supposedly bearing the burden of increased troop commitment in Afghanistan.
NATO of course is quite clear as to why it's in Afghanistan. It took command of the very un-UN International Security Assistance Force in 2003 after the Coalition of the Willing had finished with its invasion of that country and its member countries were expected to increase troop numbers on the ground in order to impose political and social order.
The same day that Abbott posted his p#ss horn speech on the Liberal Party website, the NATO foreign ministers were announcing their intention to hand back more power to the Afghan Government and its own military.

Oh and by the way, cobber. Australia has been punching above its weight in war and peace keeping missions and doing a great deal of heavy lifting ever since we first sent military contingents overseas to assist Britain and her allies.
Just go ask those marching in remembrance today.

McDonald's? Spare us!

McDonald's Australia has a development application before Clarence Valley Council for a 24 hour a day eat-in and drive-through store in the small coastal town of Yamba which has a permanent population of around 6,000 residents and no 24/7 food outlets.

McDonald's recently announced that its Ballina licensee Scott Campbell will also be the licensee for its proposed Yamba fast food store.

Needless to say the ambient temperature in Yamba has risen considerably as a result of McDonald's move on the town and many are not looking forward to increased traffic, more litter and a focal point for anti-social behaviour after the pubs close.

Apparently Mr. Campbell is aware of the general drift of public opinion and is said to be avoiding Yamba at the moment as he fears being "crucified".

A letter to the editor in The Daily Examiner on 19 April 2010:

McDonald's? Spare us

BOTH Jim Agnew and Chris Pontifex in letters both gave stirring and loving platitudes to McDonald's.

However, they seem a little 'selfish' themselves. Firstly, McDonald's is not building McDonald's House in Yamba, they are building a 'restaurant', a 24/7 operation at Treelands Drive.

A multi-million dollar company giving to charity - so they should but it is my experience that the humble wage earner in Australia (and elsewhere) are the people who give more collectively than any big corporation, ie, Boxing Day Tsunami and Haiti.

Jim, you will not be affected by the increased traffic (already a growing problems over the years and petitioned by residents) on Osprey, Treelands, Gumnut/Halyard roads.

The increasing traffic on these roads already is a problem for residents and has still yet to be addressed and solved.

Nor are you a resident who is virtually opposite the proposed structure or living just doors away or backing onto it.

Chris Pontifex claims it is 'just Treelands Drive and not the centre of town' and asks how it could affect the aesthetic value of the town.

It can and will and Treelands and adjoining streets have homes along them still.

It will affect the aesthetic value of these homes, the street and living conditions along that area.

As far as small business is concerned and the claims they are being selfish - many who claim this are not small business owners in the area or if they are, they are not food-related services.

Small businesses operate on small margins and any invasion to this margin by a large multi-million dollar company like McDonald's will ruin them. (Oh Maccas will employ many youth and many small businesses whose owners have mortgages and families and who employ people in this area can no longer operate and have to close because McDonald's takes their custom, ie, the plight that may face Smoko's in the industrial centre).

But wait! You tell me it is a franchise owner and not the multi-million dollar McDonald's who will benefit?

Exactly how many franchises can be operated by one franchisee?

I've spoken to people who have dealt with McDonald's on a sponsoring sporting groups basis - they all tell me the same. The only sponsorship they received was footballs and vouchers.

So much for 'putting so much into the sports groups' in the community.

Small business here does that already and much more than token gestures.

Why can't they just have a small section of a shopping centre - one small shop like other franchise businesses here?

Why can't they be on the highway?

How can you justify a 24/7 store in Yamba when we are not as big as Ballina and Grafton?

We don't need such excess for such a small town.

CELESTE WARREN, Yamba.

A Facebook NO to McDonalds in Yamba entry:

Michelle Smith It's not about the food for us, it's simply that we love Yamba as a quaint and peaceful holiday place free from chain-store fast food and commercialism. We have raved about the fact that the town is full of small local businesses, cafes and coffee shops and that we really feel like we've "escaped the city" when we are there. I'd like to say "no" simply so Yamba can keep this identity for us and many many more travellers and visitors who go for the same reason. Yes McDonald's plays a huge role in our Australian way of life, but surely they don't need to [be] quite everywhere?

Meanwhile elsewhere in Australia..........

The Northern Star on 7 January 2010:

POLICE are appealing for witnesses following an assault on a 50-year-old Byron Bay man and a 43-year-old man from Alstonville at McDonald's in Ballina. The incident happened at 4pm on Tuesday when a group of three males were asked to leave the restaurant, and then the grounds, after consuming alcohol and abusing staff and customers. A staff member who asked the group to leave was punched in the face and knocked unconscious momentarily. Another male customer came to his aid and tried to stop the group from leaving the scene, but was punched repeatedly in the face. Both victims were taken to Ballina Hospital, where one of the men was admitted. He was later released.

The Gympie Times on 6 January 2010:

"DISGUSTING", is how Magistrate Dennis Beutel described the behaviour of a drunken teenager at Gympie's McDonalds recently.

The Canberra Times on 5 February 2010:

The court heard......had consumed up to five beers between 5.30pm and 1.30am and had not eaten anything, which it was said contributed to his high breath test reading.

Police noticed the vehicle that evening and saw it pull over into the McDonalds car park.

The Canberra Times on 26 February 2010:

.... pleaded guilty to low- range drink driving and operating a vehicle so the wheels lose traction after he was caught with a blood alcohol reading of .060 in Queanbeyan McDonalds car park at 11.45pm.

The Queensland Times on 22 December 2009:

AN IPSWICH man drove just 200 metres to a fast food restaurant while more than three times the limit because he was hungry, a court heard.

Ipswich Magistrates Court was told 22-year-old Kyron Lee Griffiths had driven to McDonalds and home again on December 3.

He was fined $900 and disqualified from driving for nine months.

The Chronicle on 25 November 2009:

.....yesterday faced court after he assaulted a teenage girl working at McDonald's by grabbing her hair and slamming her head on the counter.

........was a passenger in a vehicle going through the McDonald's drive-through at College View at 12.20am on November 1.

He was drunk and angry because a McDonald's worker could not understand what they were trying to order.

Send kisses to Julia in support of community workers

Want to support a pay increase for Australian community workers?
Send Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Julia Gillard an online 'kiss' postcard at Pay Up - No More Lip Service to Equal Pay:
An the online a campaign of the Australian Services Union (ASU). The ASU is the union of Community Sector Workers.
Community Sector workers are undervalued and underpaid and not properly respected. Their work has traditionally been seen as "women's work" and their wages have been restricted as a result.
In 2010, Unions led by the ASU and supported by the ACTU and the Federal Government are lodging a test case in Fair Work Australia using the new Equal Remuneration Laws embedded in the Fair Work Act. The case will impact the working lives of about 200,000 community workers.
The Community Sector is largely reliant on Government funding to run its essential services and to pay the wages of the workers. Winning the case will prove that these workers are undervalued – but, the case outcome alone will not correct the injustice. Workers need the Government to fund the outcome of the case to make Equal Pay a reality.
As to any hope that this might equate to equal pay for women generally - well that is a very long bow to draw.

Here comes the sun......

New images and movies courtesy of NASA at

First Light for the Solar Dynamics Observatory

The subject most Australian politicians don't want to discuss in 2010

Global warming and climate change is one subject that has slipped from the forefront of most Australian political party agendas since the 2009 Copenhagen Summit.

To remind readers that (although the issue is fast becoming an unmentionable one) the urgency of the global problem still exists, here is the outline of an article from the international science journal Nature this month on the current status of international undertakings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

Current national emissions targets can't limit global warming to 2 °C, calculate Joeri Rogelj, Malte Meinshausen and colleagues — they might even lock the world into exceeding 3 °C warming.

Summary

• Nations will probably meet only the lower ends of their emissions pledges in the absence of a binding international agreement
  
• Nations can bank an estimated 12 gigatonnes of Co₂ equivalents surplus allowances for use after 2012
  
• Land-use rules are likely to result in further allowance increases of 0.5 GtCO₂-eq per year
  
• Global emissions in 2020 could thus be up to 20% higher than today
  
• Current pledges mean a greater than 50% chance that warming will exceed 3°C by 2100
  
• If nations agree to halve emissions by 2050, there is still a 50% chance that warming will exceed 2°C and will almost certainly exceed 1.5°C

HISTORICAL DATA: P. BROHAN ET AL. J. GEOPHYS. RES.111, D12106 (2006
Click on graphs to enlarge

Phony Tony just didn't wanna know....

As Australia's Opposition Leader 'Phony Tony' Abbott revs up with manufactured outrage over Kevin Rudd's health funding deal with the states, a neighbour sent me this evidence that he doesn't listen to voters, even very polite ones:
Your message To: Abbott, Tony (MP)
Subject: Forthcoming Leaders' Debate March 2010
Sent: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:11:23 +1000
was deleted without being read on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:18:49 +1000

So which blog did an Australian government ask Google to trash?

From the official Google Inc blog:

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Written in 1948, the principle applies aptly to today's Internet -- one of the most important means of free expression in the world. Yet government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content.

So it's no surprise that Google, like other technology and telecommunications companies, regularly receives demands from government agencies to remove content from our services. Of course many of these requests are entirely legitimate, such as requests for the removal of child pornography. We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship.

We are today launching a new Government Requests tool to give people information about the requests for user data or content removal we receive from government agencies around the world. For this launch, we are using data from July-December, 2009, and we plan to update the data in 6-month increments. Read this post to learn more about our principles surrounding free expression and controversial content on the web.

Here is the raw data for Australian government requests received by Google between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009:

• 155 data requests
• 17 removal requests
  • 52.9% of removal requests fully or partially complied with.
  • 1 Blogger
  • 1 Geo (except Street View)
  • 1 Web Search
  • 14 YouTube

This data does not include any blocking requests or requests to remove child pornography and, the statistics primarily cover requests in criminal matters including information concerning Google user account details or products.

Which leaves an interesting question hanging in the air.

Which blog did the Rudd Government (or one of the state governments) ask Google to remove from the Internet and did Google comply?

BBQ Brumby served on a skewer with sauce piquante

If there was an award for questions from the floor after a National Press Club Address, this one should get first prize:

"Mr Brumby, Sue Dunlevy from the Daily Telegraph. You're saying today —  the title of your address is "putting patients first". But it's not something that you're doing in your own hospital system. Victoria's hospitals see fewer emergency and elective surgery patients within the recommended time than hospitals in New South Wales. You spend $123 less per patient than New South Wales. Your hospital system provides fewer beds per thousand people than New South Wales. And your hospital performance has been going backwards for five years. Why should you be regarded as some kind of authority on health? And why should patients in other states have to put up with a second-rate system because someone who can't run his own health system is behaving like a bully?"

You little bewdy, Sue!

Marine Life Survey finds miracles and wonders

From Marine Life Survey 2009 Image Gallery

The Census of Marine Life (CoML) is a global network of researchers in about 80 nations engaged in a ten-year initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution and abundance of marine life in the world’s oceans - past, present and future. (www.comlsecretariat.org)

A database that contains 18 million DNA sequences of microbial life has been developed by the International Census of Marine Microbes (ICoMM). 2,000 scientists from over 80 nations have drawn ocean samples from more than 1,200 sites worldwide, making the decade-long project “Census of Marine Life – Making Ocean Life Count” one of the largest global scientific collaborations ever undertaken according to Global Adventure, LLC.

From Census of Hard-To-See Marine Life

Track the geographic locations of the Census of Hard-to-See Marine Life here.

Census of Marine Life website here.

Questions floating out in cyberspace

Ever noticed just how many questions are posed on the Internet?

Here are some of those queries offered up into cyberspace by others and my thoughtless answers:

Q. How are the Eyjafjallajökull eruption emissions counted?
A. By the number of vowels in the volcano's name ;-D

Q. Is there anything Conroy’s said in defence of his Great Wall of Australia that hasn’t been misleading, disingenuous or flat-out lying?
A. NO and NO and NO.

Q. Who is the Devil?

A. That bloke on the left of the dispatch box during Question Time.

Q. What did I do today?

A. Removed those hairs that have migrated from the top of my noggin down to my ears {from the way-too-much-info file}

Q. How do planes stay in the air?

A. Interaction between lift, weight, thrust and drag on the back of five Hail Marys.

Q. Why do people blog?

A. There is no one answer - might as well count pebbles on the beach.

Q. Does God exist?

A. Only if you're afraid of the dark or in the middle of a firefight.

Q. Who's to blame for {fill in the blank}?

A. God or Goldman Sachs - take your pick.

Q. Do we have the right to kill people?

A. Put yourself in front of the executioner/soldier/armed assailant and then ask yourself that question again.

Q. Why do Australians, unlike our western democratic brothers and sisters need the government to tell us what we can access on the internet with no choice in the matter and no details of what is/will be blocked?

A. Well actually we don't, but Rudders right-wing wowsers intend to shaft us anyway.

Q. Why do people hunt innocent animals?

A. Mostly because hunting each other is illegal.

Q. Where do snowflakes come from?

A. They're pieces of cloud shaken loose when angels do the Lindy Hop.

Q. Why do bankers make so much money?

A. Because they usually have governments of the day by the short and curlies and no pollie is game to stop them feeding at the trough.

Q. Vote for change, Nick?

A. Nah - that chap Snowden's too busy trying to avoid expulsion from uni over his homophobic, racist and misogynistic slurs on Twitter.

Q. Why can't humans breathe under water?

A. For the same reason they can't walk on top of it.

Q. Is anyone else suspicious that the press conference is at dinner time?

A. Er, no. If the fourth estate is on duty it's on duty - no time off for an extended nosh on the boss's dollar.

Fight! Fight!

Stupid Fight has turned up on my digital radar:
What's this all about?
FACT: A lot of people on Twitter are stupid. Many of these people follow celebrities and try to send them messages. But which celebrity's fans are most stupid? It's time to find out.

As can be seen, this software places followers of right-wing journo Andrew Bolt and Australian Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in the thick as short planks category. Well - surprise, surprise.

Internet activism against mandatory filtering according to Ben Grubb

Not a bad idea for a young bloke:

"Today the costs of running a blacklist were made clear, showing that the filter could be a very expensive operation.
When a URL is submitted to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) it will cost between $173 and $685 per item to investigate, regardless of whether it is "refused classification" or not.
The dollar value was revealed in answer to Greens communications spokesperson Scott Ludlam who had asked ACMA how much it cost to action URLs submitted for the Classification Board to classify.
"In 2008-09, the average cost to ACMA of investigating an item of online content that was not referred to the Classification Board was approximately $173 per item. For items that were referred to the Classification Board this was $685 per item, which included the cost of the ACMA preparing and administering the referrals," ACMA said.
If I wanted to stymie the filter, I'd just keep bombarding ACMA's online complaint form with questionable URLs. If lots of people did this — and we know there are lots of people who feel strongly about the filter — it would only be a matter of time before the costs blew out to completely unmanageable levels." {Ben Grubb, ZDNet.com.au}