May a plague of ravenous grasshoppers descend on all your front lawns and a horde of hungry mice infest your homes!

The Rudd Labor Government wants to introduce a national emissions trading scheme which doesn't do much to reverse the growing amount of greenhouse gases Australia is pumping out each year.
The Liberals and Nationals are determined to delay the scheme but eventually want any scheme to do even less that Labor's current plan.
The two Independent senators are almost deliriously exercising their power to frustrate the nation, while The Greens are at least consistent in their message that neither major party has put forward an ETS which benefits the country and appear to have good intentions for what it's worth so far.
In last week's wanton self-indulgence by these short-sighted wizened gnats on The Hill, it felt like the rest of us were being slowly nibbled to death by ducks as we waited for the inevitable trashy Senate outcome.
This week we endure endless posturing over the now separate renewable energy legislation.











Up to my ears in climate change
Byron #

Why is the Rudd Government defending the oppression of women with the blood of our troops?

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been enjoying a high level of public approval since the 2007 federal election and part of the reason for this is that he is obviously careful of his public persona.

Mr. Rudd is quick to issue statements and face the cameras whenever there is a serious foreign affairs incident, a overseas terrorist attack or Australian service personnel die on active service in the 'good war'.

However, he is very, very quiet when the Afghanistan Government he continues to support is reported in this manner by Human Rights Watch this month:

Afghanistan's influential international supporters should insist that President Hamid Karzai act to amend the notorious law that formalizes discrimination against Shia women, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch learned today that the amended bill was published in the official Gazette on July 27, 2009 (Gazette 988), bringing the law into force......

A copy of the final law seen by Human Rights Watch shows that many regressive articles remain, which strip away women's rights that are enshrined in Afghanistan's constitution. The law gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands. It grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers. It requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying "blood money" to a girl who was injured when he raped her.

Perhaps Mr. Rudd might care to break his silence and confirm or deny that he has investigated this report and inform the nation of the position his government intends to take if women's human rights are being extinguished in this way.

The new Afghanistan law cannot be condoned on a political, social or cultural basis - it makes all Shia women little better than chattels and married women slaves who can be starved to death.

At the time of writing this post there were 31 separate Google News items concerning this new Afghanistan legislation, starting with the BBC.

Dear Mr. MeadowLea, about those seeds...........

I have noticed a MeadowLea margarine advertisement screening on television for the past few weeks which focuses on the goodness found in the seeds used to make its spread.

On the MeadowLea website it claims:

Farmers grow our canola & sunflower seeds
MeadowLea spreads are made from over 70,000 natural seeds. The canola seeds that go into our MeadowLea spreads are Non-Genetically Modified. Our canola seeds are sourced locally from Australian Seed growers, whilst the sunflower seeds are sourced from the warm climate of South America.

Now I do not doubt that at this moment MeadowLea intends to honour this online claim.

However, I did not catch this non-GM pledge repeated in the particular television ad I saw.
Neither have I seen this exact claim on MeadowLea packaging.

What is claimed on the MeadowLea tubs is that the Canola Oil used is non-genetically modified. Something that can be safely stated in Australia, as refined oil made from GM seed does not have to be so identified on a food label because it is not considered to have identifiable genetically modified plant DNA remaining.

There appears to be a long silence on the nature of the sunflower seed used in the manufacture of the margarine.
No mention is made of the fact that in the warm climate of South America mentioned by Goodman Fielder there have been genetically modified sunflower seed field trials underway since 2007 and, although there isn't a commercial quantity available yet the absence of a non-GM claim for this ingredient leaves the company with a lot of wriggle room should it chose to source from GM sunflower in the future.

So Mr. MeadowLea, Original, Salt Reduced, Light, Extra Light, Canola, Lactose Free - I think I'll give all margarine a miss for now.

If you genuinely want your products to be viewed as special a rethink of your labelling and advertising strategy might be advisable.
This is not the time for commercial ambiguity.

Oh, Mr. KRudd! Case of the missing punctuation mark and the body in the library

Sometimes Twitter gives everyone a bit of a laugh at the expense of those pollies who use it.
This is Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday last when (with a missing full stop the culprit) he accidentally told all that climate change and global economic recovery were critical for his personal future:

KevinRuddPM Melb last night spoke 2 US leadership dialogue. Working w Obama Admin on climate change & global economic recovery critical for future KRudd
about 11 hours ago from web

{I know, I know - little things amuse little minds!}

However, Twitter was the last of a working week's worries for the Libs and Nats.
It is getting harder and harder for them to ignore the cadaver sprawled behind the chesterfield in the library, as each new poll keeps pointing to a politically deceased Malcolm Truffles Turnbull.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, in the 13th to 15th August AC Nielsen poll the Leader of the Opposition's approval rating sank to 31% and his disapproval rating is a graveyard 60%.
In June 2009 his Nielsen poll approval rating was a lowly 32% and his disapproval score was already running at 60% - which rather indicates that Aussie voters are well and truly ready to plant him in the ground.
Something I'm sure KRudd will point out all week long, with careful attention to punctuation.

Iluka jetty and pontoon: The Glass House revisited?

Almost a year after Clarence Valley Council deferred any decision concerning the proposal to site a new jetty and pontoon on the Iluka foreshore until a formal community consultation was completed; a number of residents in this small but vibrant North Coast community at the mouth of the Clarence River are beginning to mutter about a lack of transparency on the part of both councillors and staff and, the growing smell of an all-mates-together attempt to give the owners of a local waterside hotel cheap year-round access for those weekend and holiday boaties who wish to front the hotel bar without having to worry about tides.

The original quote obtained for a jetty and pontoon (at concept stage and dependent on additional siting costs) was $35,000, which when real sites were actually canvassed quickly blew out to an estimated $100,000 - $135,000.

The first $100,000 for this 36 metre long jetty (plus 10 metre by 3 metre floating pontoon and 11 metre gangway) is apparently to be sourced from a $50,000 State Government Waterways grant and a further $50,000 private donation from the owners of the hotel.
Although given the current economic climate, one wonders just how secure these offers really are.

According to Clarence Valley Council documents, in April 2009 it gave development consent for the jetty and pontoon project. A project which by that stage was firmly constrained by the wishes of the private donor.

Since then the Iluka community has been informed that Council will be obliged to find an additional unbudgeted $65,000 (plus unspecified costs for electricity/lighting) in view of the detailed structural plans now at hand.

At an extraordinary meeting on 29 June this year councillors voted to slip this $65,000 into an already strained 2009/10 budget, having previously outlaid $10,200 on pre-construction work to date.

This makes Clarence Valley residents and ratepayers (through Council and the Clarence Coast Reserve Trust) significant financial contributors to the proposed limited-access recreational facility and, it is highly likely that if the jetty goes ahead costs will have risen further by the time construction commences.
At least one resident is raising concerns that this jetty is a mini-Glass House in the making.

What is also worrying residents is the fact that neither councillors nor council staff seem to have considered ongoing maintenance costs for this timber-piled jetty or factored in the possibility that a predicted increasing frequency for severe adverse weather events may also add to these costs.

An additional concern is that this jetty and pontoon project is being progressed ahead of any completed Iluka Bay foreshore plan of management and, at present this plan's projected objectives are being informally massaged to fit the jetty project in argument put to councillors.

Quite frankly, local government has handled this matter badly from start to finish, having been initially mesmerised by the offer of a private donation and never really taking the time to stand back and consider any legitimate Iluka community priority list before tallyho-ing after the hotelier's dream.

For those locals who like to keep watch, a brief online history of the jetty and pontoon proposal:

Clarence Valley Council Civil & Corporate Committee Meeting,11 November 2008
Clarence Valley Council Business Paper, 9 December 2008
Clarence Valley Council media release, 6 January 2009
Clarence Valley Council Extraordinary Meeting, 29 June 2009
Clarence Valley Council Business Paper for 18 August 2009
Attachment to August 2009 Business Paper

Swell of support for jetty upgrade
Council calamity over Iluka jetty
New jetty will take 28 small boats
Iluka jetty price tag goes up

Photograph from G'day Pubs: Existing private jetty

Memo to Dear Rupert and the Mainstream Media

These past few months I've been reading a lot of online chatter about how mainstream media needs to recoup the costs of providing news, make a profit for shareholders and stop advertising revenue haemorrhaging.

I've also been reading items on the expense associated with researching in-depth news stories and how unfair it is that bloggers apparently get a free ride on the backs of MSM journalists.

Now I can't answer for every other blogger or online news website visitor, but I think that Rupert Murdoch and other print media owners are allowing their financial problems to overly colour commercial responses to emerging trends in how ordinary people access/receive their daily news.

I suspect that part of the reason that traditional media owners are so blinkered is that their own editors and journalists are not being entirely honest with them about how they come by some of the facts which end up in published articles (and it's not just that some journos surf the blogs looking for information or ideas for a story).

The reality is that not all bloggers or online news readers simply take from the MSM without giving back.

Whenever I come across something of significant political, environmental or social interest and, after I have gathered together a parcel of research on same, I often pass it on to journalists at no cost and for no glory.

I do this because I feel the material is important and traditional media still has a readership reach that I, as a small blogger among many millions world-wide, cannot hope to emulate.

It is not unknown for my research to form the body of a Page One or Page Three article in local and sometimes even national newspapers.

I rather suspect that I am not unusual in doing this and, I also expect that Australian bloggers like myself will no longer feel inclined to pass on what has often been many hours of research (including emails/long distance phone calls to confirm documents) if the likes of News Ltd or Fairfax decide that MSM news will no longer be free to view online.

So Mr. Murdoch, be prepared for the possibility of an inexplicable spike in costs associated with news gathering and 'scoops' if you go ahead with user-pays news online. Bloggers may just decide that giving you something for nothing is no longer a good idea.

At least Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters realises that matters are not as black and white as Murdoch suggests when he writes Why I believe in the link economy.

Thoughts of the Global Financial Crisis & Climate Change not bringing you down? Then try NASA's Asteroid Watch

Pic from Astronomy 1307

Thoughts of the Global Financial Crisis & Climate Change not bringing you down?
Feeling rather guilty because there are still some days when you wake up smiling?
The answer is a mouse click away!
The US Government space agency NASA has gone all Flash Gordon over at Asteroid Watch:
"Nuclear explosions and spacecraft impacts are two of the more relatively mature options for deflecting Earth-threatening objects and they have been studied in some detail (for example, see Ref. 1). Another option has been suggested for the small subset of asteroids that might also pass close to the Earth a few years prior to the predicted Earth impact. For these unique cases, the pre-impact close encounter affects the asteroid's motion so strongly that a relatively tiny change in its velocity prior to the close approach will be multiplied several fold during the flyby, thus allowing the asteroid to miss the Earth on the next pass. In these relatively infrequent cases, even the very modest gravitational attraction between the asteroid and a nearby "micro-thrusting" spacecraft (nicknamed a "gravity tractor") could provide enough of a change in the asteroid's velocity that an Earth collision could be avoided (see Ref. 2). Successful mitigation requires that a threatening asteroid must be discovered and physically characterized soon enough to allow the appropriate response; the current NASA Near-Earth Object Observations program is operated with this in mind. But, since the number of near-Earth asteroids increases as their sizes decrease, we are most likely to be hit by the relatively small objects that are most difficult to find ahead of time. As a result, consideration must also be given to the notification and evacuation of those regions on Earth that would be affected by the imminent collision of a small, recently-discovered impactor. However, if the object could be found far enough ahead of time and our space technology used to deflect it from the Earth threatening trajectory, it would be a tremendous demonstration of our space-faring capabilities!"

Yup! Always knew that a hot rock banging on the noggin was a

B-I-G threat to my peace of mind 'n' life and limb.