The Nationals are revolting!

We've seen how Truffles Turnbull has managed to turn a positive outlook pear-shaped before now.
The last attempt to get a republic up and running being a case in point.
So it did nothing but place a silly grin on my phiz when I read that Turnbull was at it again, and that the Nationals (supported by the Libs) were revolting against his political stage direction.

Kicking over the traces on cabon sinks and infrastructure.

An unnamed Coalition senator unburdening to The Australian placed a finger on the problem:
‘’He’s trying to run things too much like a business, giving out an order like a CEO and then expecting it to be followed,’’.

What all this shows is that his colleagues have finally woken up to the fact that there is nothing for which Truffles will die in a ditch, unless it affects his own ego or personal income.
And someone has to be prepared to contemplate dying in that metaphorical ditch, if rural and regional Australia (and areas like the Northern Rivers) are going to avoid being shoved aside by the big cities and their sprawling suburbia.

So the last word goes to the Nationals Senator Boswell:
“Last night’s Senate vote shows that rural Australia remains a force to be reckoned with on the national political stage,”“Those who ignore the interests of the bush will pay a political price."

Saturday's look at 2008 JADA art acquisitions

John Philippides has taken out the major prize with his drawing entitled Portrait 2. The work is a portrait of the artist’s mother who has been the subject of many of John’s works. The artist lives and works from his home at Leura in the Blue Mountains of NSW.

The $15,00 in acquisitions were Peter Bellew, Tuncester Track, Godwin Bradbeer, Man in a Squared Space, Sussie Heymans, Sequence, Anne Judell, Zone and Gosia Wlodarczak, Crumpled.

The winning work and acquisitions will join the Grafton Regional Gallery JADA Collection which contains an impressive selection of Australian drawing and is added to exclusively through the award every two years. This years winner also has the added prestige of winning the award on its 20th anniversary.
JADA will be on exhibition from 24 October to 5 December at the Gallery followed by a tour to eight regional and metropolitan galleries throughout 2009 and in early 2010.

Click to enlarge

A bloke's gonna be sorry he said that

A link to last week's media release from Monsanto Australia was sent to me the other day.

In it this daft farmer from Borowa, Geoff Mason is quoted at length, in fact the entire release is all about Geoff and his luuurv for GM corn.

"It's stems are as strong as tree trunks. I'm impressed with the way it stands up. It'd take a cyclone to blow it down."

Yeah mate, and out Borowa way the flyers are so big that a horse and rider will travel 3 days before getting back out of that pouch they accidentally rode into.

Pic comes from Wikimedia.

New Windows Error Message # 24-12

The lowdown on federal public service job satisfaction

From PS News, Edition Number 107. Updated to Wednesday, 3 December 2008 :

PSsssst...!

Numbers game
Statistics galore have been released this week dissecting the size, attitudes, preferences and personnel in the Federal Public Service with the annual (and thick) 'State of the Service' Report issued by the Commissioner.
Packed with unbeatable information about who's been doing what, where, when and with whom in the past 12 months, the unfortunately acronymed SOTS report also divulged what federal employees really think about their jobs, bosses, workplaces and profession.
And, to some extent, the news is all good!
77% said they had a satisfying job; 71% were proud of their Agency; 65% would recommend it as a good place to work; 45% thought they were well managed and two-thirds said they had a achieved a good work-life balance.
On the other hand the news could be seen to be less rosy.
Looked at another way those same stats tell us that 23% thought their job wasn't really that satisfying; 29% weren't particularly proud of their Agency; 35% wouldn't recommend it as good place to work; 55% thought they weren't being managed well and a third hadn't quite struck a good work-life balance.
What is they say about statistics again?

Who's who and who's moving in the NSW PS

Where's the Murray-Darling, climate change, coastal erosion, water shortages, renewable energy?

This is Media Monitors for 3 December:

The following graphs show the top five domestic, international, business, sports and talkback stories for the week. They count the number of times a story has been mentioned across print, radio and television.

Domestic













Are we all really that shallow? Why does a new film knock major climate change and water issues off the top of the national debate for an entire week?
No wonder the Rudd Government thinks that it can tread water on announcing firm greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to advance the carbon credit scheme.

It's good news week

Over at Pollytics Possum Comitatus takes a squiz at population, age and two party preferred polling at the 2007 federal election:

"The patterns here are interesting – for seats that received a swing that was smaller in size than the average of 5.4% (which happened to be a majority of seats, as it was a chunk of seats with large swings that drove the average up), the percentage growth in the size of the 65 yr and older population in those seats was, on average close to the national average of the 65+ growth, which was 2.7%
However, in the seats where the swings to the ALP were greater than 5.4%, the percentage growth in the 65+ population increased above the national average as the ALP swing increased beyond its national average.
That black regression line tells the story – it tracks the national average in the growth of the 65+ age cohort until it hits the ALP swing average, than grows substantially as the ALP swing grows..
Further food for thought is that the people that moved into the 65+ demographic aren’t even baby boomers – it will only continue to get worse for the Coalition."