feral poodle

The feral poodle is getting on, I've had her for twelve years and she was at least two years old when she arrived into our family.

Her puppy-hood was not the best; she had suffered starvation and beatings, just skin, bones and mattered hair when she arrived here. This left a lasting legacy; she would flinch if anyone picked up a stick or yelled since she is not by nature a shy dog it is out of character.

She was a handy cattle dog till her blindness got the better of her two years ago, we discovery that her sight was failing when we were rounding up some Angus cows and calves. She stood in the paddock and kept barking at this black object in the grass, on closer inspection we found that it was a stump.

Her work ethic is great her eyesight terrible.

Since then she has steadily declined, she is now virtually blind, the arthritis is playing up and she has recurring bladder problems but this has not stopped her from patrolling the house yard, greeting visitors and general dog duties.

She can no long jump into the farm paddock basher so she waits patiently to be lifted in and sits in regal splendour on the front seat.

She was not a dog that I would have usually had on the farm, this woe begotten toy poodle but she has brought great joy to all the family over her many years.

We did the Australian thing and gave her a fair go sure there were problems, have you ever tried to clean a poodle that has rolled in some long dead animal and stinks to high heaven, but the benefits greatly outweighed the disadvantages.

We are all richer for having known her.

For the poodle's point of view see the song It's Hard To Be a Poodle with a Cowboy by Your Side in the Music from the North Coast sidebar.

power companies

I have just received a phone call from the company that provides the electricity to my home; it was a very interesting conversation.

They asked me if I would be interested in paying a premium to run the place on greenpower, sure it would cost me a little bit more in dollar but I would be saving in greenhouse terms.

This interested me so I asked how many kilowatt hours of greenpower do they produce and where are these green clean renewable power generators located. The person I was talking to couldn't answer this question, so I asked if there was some one in the office that could. Silence was the reply.

The next gentleman on the line I assume was the previous person's supervisor.

So I put the same question to him. The reply was rather vague. Some greenpower was being generated, but he gave no definite answer to the question of how much. There was also the inference that some of the money being collected in the greenpower scheme was being used to fund the development of this new generating plants.

So I said does this mean that if I pay the premium that only some of the power is from renewable sources and the rest is for future projects. I didn't receive a convincing answer.

The next question was obvious. If only x kilowatts of renewable are being generated (I still had not found out the figure) how many kilowatts of greenpower was being sold by his company?

He said he had no way of knowing that, so I pointed out that he would have a list of customers that had purchased greenpower and if they were receiving power bills their usage would also be know to the company. If not what sort of company were they running?

The reply was that that was private business information.

So how does the public know if their purchase of greenpower does come from sustainable sources? The company could be selling more greenpower than they produce.

I could see a way out of this dilemma so I asked the company representive how much would the company pay me if I spent around $30,000 to convert my whole enterprise to solar and sent the excess back on the grid. This would save me dollar since the batteries I would need would be far fewer and the company would have genuine greenpower to sell at the premium price.

It seems the company is not interested in these small scale solutions, which is a shame.

So why is the big end of town not interested in small investments like solar panels, backyard tanks or improvement to public rail services, urban rail networks? Is it because such investments can't be captured and controlled by private investors?

A decentralised power generation system would make sense since the more sources of power you have the more options you would have in time of power shortage and many small targets are tempting that a few large ones if you have terrorist leanings.

Anti-whaling Facebook group growing

The New Zealand-based Facebook anti-whaling group F*CK OFF JAPAN... LEAVE THE WHALES ALONE!!!! now has 145,306 members and 5,044 wall posts.

This is an open-membership group which can be found here.

This site lists the online petitions available.

Japan's whaling fleet remains in the Southern Ocean on its annual whale hunt.

 

Liberals rewriting history in an effort to gain distance from former policies

Bereft of any redeeming features and as politically effective as t*ts on a bull, the Liberals now overreach to 'discover' that John Howard was actually in favour of withdrawing troops from Iraq this year.

Pull the other one! Some in the Liberal Party might have privately favoured getting the h*ll out of Iraq, but Howard would probably have fought tooth and nail to keep Australia's combat troops in the Iraq War.

He was in love with the idea of himself as a 'war leader' - it made him feel oh so Churchillian.

Laurie Oakes defends Wayne Swann's economic credibility

Laurie Oakes writing in the Courier Mail comes to the defence of Federal Treasurer Wayne Swann after the halting start in his new portfolio.

 

"Swan has been very energetic and effective in spearing the Howard government over the build-up of inflationary pressures that are causing interest rates to rise.

But Swan has a more pressing concern than undermining the Howard legacy. His central aim is to get Australians to understand that there really is a serious inflationary problem.

He needs to explain the magnitude of the challenge so the community will accept the need for the tough medicine about to be prescribed.

Some of the Opposition's claims in response have been nothing short of ridiculous. We have had Nelson, for example, denying that rising interest rates are "all the fault of inflation". He should try telling the Reserve Bank that.

We have had both Nelson and Turnbull accusing Swan of "talking the economy down" with his warnings about inflation – as though voters should be kept in the dark, mushroom-like, and not informed of economic problems.

And we have had Turnbull's claim that "for a Treasurer to complain about economic challenges is like a fireman complaining about fires".

Firemen, of course, do complain about fires – as they should. They warn people about the danger of fires and conditions likely to lead to a flare-up. And they condemn people who start fires or fail to take proper precautions to prevent them. Swan is behaving like a sensible economic fireman."

 

It seems that Malcolm Turnbull is not as convincing as he would like, or that effective in his attempts to get enough bounce off his exchanges with Swann to see him gain credibility as the leadership contender.

 

Wealthy Aussie pollie's twisted view of the world

Millionaire former merchant banker and Federal Shadow-Treasurer, Malcolm Turnbull, is claiming that he is protecting Australian democracy by taking the parliamentary 'living away from home' allowance while staying at his own $2 million apartment in Canberra.

I kid you not - the media report is here today.

Stephen Conroy gets his ISP 'filtering' report

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, has just received the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report on proposed censorship at ISP level. 

"This report investigates developments in internet filtering technologies and other safety initiatives to protect consumers, including minors, who access content on the internet. The report was prepared in response to a ministerial direction received in June 2007. ACMA will report annually on its findings for three years. This is the first report."

Not surprisingly the ACMA report points out that the mandatory ISP filtering that Senator Conroy, and his Coalition predecessor, wanted relies on a somewhat simplistic view of the Internet and goes on to list current Australian programs encouraging voluntary filtering by households and businesses.

In the end, this report is nothing more than busy work for bureaucrats, as legislated and regulatory mechanisms are already in place to deal with offensive content.

The Minister's own media release has more than a hint of embarrassment about it when he speaks of "no silver bullets".