Getting the lowdown on PETA and the sheep

The Australian wool industry appears to have suffered a nervous crisis last week when Australian Wool Innovation elected a board which might be perceived to be against the 2010 industry deadline for abandonment of the practice of mulesing sheep.

Now I can sympathise with the graziers frustration at trying to keep to this timetable in the middle of the longest Australian drought in living memory.
However the RSPCA has a point when it speaks of disappointment if the push to end or severely limit this management practice does not go ahead as planned.
Many in this country were quietly thankful that the wool industry was moving away from viewing mulesing as the principal option to prevent fly strike in sheep.

One gets the sense that our farmers are revolting not just because they are faced with significant change or additional financial costs, but because the U.S. based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) successfully led the anti-mulesing charge in the media.

PETA is not always known for taking a balanced position on every issue.
In fact at times this organisation can act like an hysterical pain in the posterior.
Nevertheless, it is a powerful lobby group which has been running for thirty-eight years with a membership of around 1.8 million world-wide and, on the issue of mulesing as it is currently practiced it does have a good point.

Not only does PETA have a large membership; it has a budget that would put many other similar lobby groups to shame:

Income Statement (FYE 07/2007)

Revenue
Primary Revenue	$28,858,103
Other Revenue	$1,753,581
Total Revenue	$30,611,684
Expenses
Program Expenses	$25,417,759
Administrative Expenses	$1,312,701
Fundraising Expenses	$3,680,667
Total Functional Expenses	$30,411,127
Payments to Affiliates	$0
Excess (or Deficit) for the year	$200,557
Net Assets	$16,164,783

Its leadership wage bill appears to make only modest inroads into this budget, with individual annual salaries ranging from about US$34,000 - $79,000, and it is not afraid of commencing litigation in furtherance of its aims.

So perhaps our farmers and graziers should think again about dragging feet on this issue.
It would seem that baulking over mulesing could result in all pain and no gain for the industry during a period when it is bound to be affected to some degree by the global financial crisis.

Who dies from blogging? Who gets killed by Taser?

Cartoon #369 from XKCD

Now I know that The New York Times was probably the first to foster the idea that regular blogging is hazardous to health (helped along by Dr. Helen's post), but I'm willing to bet that the cartoonist at XKCD is principally responsible for the fact that at least 2, 360 mentions of people dying by blogging are currently indexed by Google. Have pencil and PC and humour will travel and travel and travel!

Unfortunately if you take the time to Google for mention of death by Taser you'll bring up around 2,870 citations and none of those are remotely funny.

This week we can add another mention or two to that score because it has been reported that NSW Police sought to conceal the fact that; "A MAN died of a heart attack after being repeatedly shot with a Taser in one of the first uses of the weapon in NSW".

Unfortunately NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipionie has seen fit to roll out a general distribution of these weapons (which have been used by specialist units since 2002) ahead of the NSW Ombudsman's report which calls for a moratorium on such weapons until an independent two-year review can be undertaken.

Scipie tells us that he was not aware that a man with serious chronic illness had been Tasered weeks before his death.
Garn! Even a police commissioner would have been aware that the vast majority of people Tasered by NSW police had to receive some form of medical treatment.

NSW Ombudsman's November 2008 report on The use of Taser weapons by New South Wales Police Force.

Kevin Rudd is following 'no_filter Yamba' tweets?

Hi, no_filter_Yamba.

Kevin Rudd (KevinRuddPM) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out Kevin Rudd's profile here:

http://twitter.com/KevinRuddPM


Best,
Twitter

Aw, isn't that nice............

If anyone is interested in following yet another of those Joycean stream-of-consciousness tweeters, no_filter_Yamba can be found here.

Reaching for the Moon from the NSW North Coast

With so many night sky watchers living on the NSW North Coast, new Clarence Valley photographer Samantha Jefferson's view of the 2007 eclipse of the Moon from an Australian east coast perspective is appreciated.
Samples of Sam's work can be found at her webpage Stuft.

While canuckdownunder displaying her work at Flickr looks skywards from the Richmond Valley.

Forty-five years ago today in the United States of America

Section of the Zapruder film taken on 22 November 1963

Last night I realised that this morning it would be forty-five years to the day since then U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Although the years and the dislosures have tarnished the image of the Kennedy Camelot forever, I still remember where I was when I heard the news.

People power saves the day in the Lower Clarence

Lower Clarence residents (particularly those living in Maclean) were rejoicing this week as a grass roots campaign, to stop Clarence Valley Council selling a vital public car park and adjoining green space, proved successful.

On Wednesday of this week, by a vote of 5 to 3, Council decided not to go ahead with offering the land for sale.
Those five shire councillors who opposed the sale are commended for their good sense.

Cr. Ian Tiley deserves individual mention for his speech against the sale which had the visitors gallery break into spontaneous applause.

All who took part in this successful demonstration of people power deserve a pat on the back.
Meetings, letters to the editor, emails and phone calls to councillors, submissions to council - all played a huge part in the outcome.

In particular, Ian McLennan worked hard to gather support from the Maclean community, as well as conducting a survey over a 2hr period in the park - with 74 of 91 surveyed opposing the sale.

Congratulations also to Janet Purcell for her determined effort to get the word around.

See history here and here.
The Daily Examiner article here.

Possum Comitiatus on the national economy

Possum Comitatus writing in Crikey last Tuesday:

The economy is lukewarm to tepid, but not dead.

For a country supposedly in the middle of an economic crisis so grave that it cannot be described without the obligatory passing mention of the Great Depression, yesterday’s ABS retail turnover figures were hardly the stuff of nightmares.

At worst, the national economy appears to be treading water. At best, the national economy appears to be treading water. We might not actually be going anywhere, but it’s a pretty good outcome when you consider that expectations play a sizeable role when it comes to the willingness of people to open their wallets, and the last 6 months of media coverage framing those expectations has been the equivalent of some nutter standing on the corner banging on about the end of the world being nigh......

Retail turnover data is the least worst measure we have when it comes to the rubber hitting the road of the real economy in terms of how money is flowing out of people’s wallets and into the nation’s cash registers. What it shows at its most basic level is that some States are faring better than others as the financial crisis has increased the spread of retail activity between States, highlighting the disparity in economic activity driven by regional factors across Australia....

If NSW wasn’t such a basket-case, the national figures would be looking quite spiffy all things considered. We don’t so much have an economic crisis as we a NSW crisis.

It will be interesting to see if the Rudd Government's one-off payments to self-funded retirees, pensioners, familes and low-income earners (due in December) will actually lift NSW up to the 0.0 line on the graph.