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

If the killer tomatoes don't get you that half-glass of wine will!

Non-iodised salt is bad for you. So is refined sugar. Ditto caffeine, processed meat, dairy fats and all those trans-thingummyjigs. Nicotine of course will almost always kill you.

It's not healthy to drink water during a meal, it's unhealthy to drink water at the end of a meal.
Food dyes, MSG and food cooked over charcoal or in a microwave are harmful. No wait, well maybe. Fresh air good. Sunlight dangerous.

Exercise every single day to live longer. You don't have to exercise each day to live longer.
Don't make your home near power lines, main roads or mail clearing centres (someone may go postal).
Cities are unhealthy places, however you will get sicker during an illness if you live in the country.
Pain is universal, but you will feel less of it if you are well off.
Your fate is in your genes. No your fate is in your own hands.

In whatever manner you behave you might eventually die from SARS, bird flu, haemorrhagic fever, tidal wave, hang nail or an attack of the killer tomatoes. The experts all agree - every body dies!

Now we're told that imbibing any alcohol whatsoever will eventually raise our cancer risk.

For heavens sake - will those professional moral panickers forever running to the media give us all a break. Modern life is full of risk, every day and every minute. Life's like that. In fact it has been like that since the world began.
Because life is more than the political agendas of professors, politicians, parsons and bureaucrats.

Psst....heard the one about a republic?

Anyone else notice just how fast talk of an Australian republic died down after Federal Labor's Australia 2020 summiteers disappeared into the sunset?
Roy Morgan Research gives a clue as to why in the results of a telephone poll taken last weekend.

In early May 45% (down 6% since Feb. 2005) believe Australia should become a Republic with an elected President, while 42% (up 2%) support Australia remaining a Monarchy and 13% (up 4%) are undecided — according to a special Morgan Poll of Australians taken last weekend (May 3/4, 2008).---
Gary Morgan says:
“Despite the discussion generated at the recent 2020 Summit on Australia’s future, Australians’ support for becoming a Republic with an elected President has fallen to its lowest level in nearly 15 years.
“Roy Morgan ‘Issues Research’ due to be released next week at the Future Summit shows Australians are more concerned with economic and environmental issues than they are with symbolic issues involving changes to the Australian Constitution that has worked well for over a century.
"What would please the Monarchists is 64% of those aged 14-17 say Australia should remain a Monarchy, with 23% supporting a Republic and 13% undecided."
“Kevin Rudd and his “Republican” colleagues should forget about changing the Constitution over the next few years and concentrate on making sure working Australians can “survive” with higher interest rates and higher prices.”

Even those of us, who are less in love with a monarchy than they are deeply afraid of what politicians and elites (who believe in the divine right of each to govern the majority) would do to the Constitution, will be pleased to see Kevin Rudd get a black eye on this issue.
It was arrogant of him to try and force a debate in the first place.

The low dingo intends government to be carbon neutral by 2020

Little Morrie Iemma was shouting it from the rooftops yesterday.
"The Government's plans to become carbon neutral include reducing green house gas emissions from building energy use to year 2000 levels by 2020."

Yeah right - take another twelve years to get government administrative operations and buildings to go carbon neutral.
While this year or next you privatise, and remove from full state control, that dirty greenhouse gas producing electricity industry for the multinationals to play ducks and drakes with.
Morrie you're a low dingo.