How about this? Clotheslines banned in much of the USA

News from the home of prohibition, the USA, confirms the view that global warming doesn't rate too highly there.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that electric clothes dryers in the US represent about 6 per cent of domestic power consumption and this doesn't account for commercial laundromats or the 17 million homes with gas-powered dryers.

Very few US citizens buck the system by having backyard clothes lines that dry clothes using wind and solar power.

However, civil disobedience is practised by some US citizens, including Sharon Vocke, who routinely breaches regulations when she hangs her laundry on her line, homemade of course - there is little joy for Hills hoist retailers here.

Mrs Vocke's line is rigged with a pulley system and slung from her porch to the garage in this affluent pocket of sweeping, unfenced gardens and sprawling homes.

"It takes me about six minutes to violate my neighbourhood covenant and it's worth every second to have my clothes smell nice and to know I am not harming the air we breathe," the 46-year-old said recently in a submission to Connecticut's General Assembly Energy and Technology Committee.

The committee was considering a law giving homeowners the right to use clotheslines despite neighbourhood fears that displays of underwear would undermine property values. But as with similar proposals in Vermont and New Hampshire, the reformers failed and bans stay in place.

The town of Poughkeepsie in New York State has a "laundry law" and imposes $US100 ($106) fines on anyone caught drying on front porches.

Bans on clotheslines seem to be based on the opinion they are unsightly and a mark of poverty.

Premier Costa?

Privatisation of NSW electricity in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday.

"The joke in state political circles this week was that Morris Iemma finally found a backbone: the trouble was, it was Michael Costa's."

"Costa didn't care whether he destroyed the party, the factions or the Government as long as he got the result. For Costa, it was total war."

Would you like a little Horst Wessel with your gruel, Oliver?

'Jackboot Jenny' Macklin is goosestepping across the welfare arena again.
This apologist for the reich is suggesting that it will not just be parents with young children who may be issued with a Centrelink debit card instead of cash into bank account welfare payments - in future old-age pensioners may possibly be open to having their pensions quarantined and she is also not ruling out instances where 100% of a pension, benefit or allowance may be quarantined.

What the Minister for Community Services is signalling is that this Federal Government intends to follow the wishes of neo-con think tanks and the big retail chain stores/supermarkets and, turn as many Centrelink payment categories as possible into versions of 'food stamp' welfare.
It won't matter if you have no young children or don't drink, drug, smoke or gamble.
What the minister is progressing here is a move to a universal quarantine.

Just so that everyone who is now receiving any form of government pension, benefit, allowance or concession feels that all is well as their liberty is being crippled by Neu Labor, I have included a link to the Horst Wessel here.
Feel free to sing along as Rudd and Macklin turned us all into Australian untermenschen.

A little Northern Rivers art to brighten the weekend

The Valley
Artist Steven Giese

Rock pools at Minnie Waters

Artist Christine Denham Kempnich

Untitled

Artist Lyn Hope