Did you know? A morning tea trivia break

World's digital content equivalent to stack of books stretching from Earth to Pluto 10 times....
The world's store of digital content is now the equivalent of one full top-of-the-range iPod for every two people on the planet, following the explosion of social networking sites, internet-enabled mobile phones and government surveillance.
The Guardian, 18 May 2009 Internet data heads for 500bn gigabytes

French president Nicolas Sarcozy claims he was in Berlin on the evening the Berlin Wall fell and that he helped dismantle a part of the wall on the spot at Check Point Charlie. His claim has been torn to shreds by historial information available from Internet searches which appear to show that he did not arrive in Germany's capital until days later.
Simple Thoughts, 9 November 2009, Skeptics question French President Sarkozy’s Facebook post suggesting he saw Berlin Wall fall & The Australian, 12 November 2009, Sarkozy's Berlin Wall claim falls over

The average Australian adult male is only around 1.2 feet taller than the average adult male orang-utan. Australia's Environment Minister Peter Garrett is reputedly 2.1-2.4 feet taller than this red ape.
Wikipedia Human height, & Orangutan Outreach & Mike Portnoy 2009

Researchers found a strong link between wages and height, particularly for men, with each additional 10 centimetres of height adding three per cent to hourly wages.
The "height premium" was two per cent per 10 centimetres for women, researchers from the University of Sydney and Canberra's Australian National University (ANU) found.
They calculated that every five centimetres above the average height of 178 centimetres boosted a male's wages by the equivalent of an extra year's experience in the labour force. WA Today, 17 May 2009, Study finds tall people at top of wages ladder

An Adelaide property developer, Ross Markris, heads the BRW 2009 young and rich list for the under 40s.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September 2009

U.S. billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has only donated $340,358 to major American political parties since 1978 but film maker Steven Speilberg has donated over $1M in the same period.
Newsmeat, Hall of Fame-Billionaires, 2009

Monsanto staffer claims that 1 bale of cotton makes 215 pairs of jeans, but there is no data on how many litres of GM oil comes from those harvested cotton plants.
Monsanto & Co on Twitter, 13 November 2009

Google suggests over 26 million indexed entries when given the search term "how to get away with a lie" and then produces 47 million items if you proceed with this search.
Google Australia, 13 November 2009

There are at least 1,817 individuals in Australia who currently control wealth worth over $30 million.
Australian Tax Office, 19 October 2009, JCPAA Submssion

Australian Households



RESERVE BANK BULLETIN – APRIL 2009














U.S. National Debt



Newsmeat, 2009

Is it any wonder that the Murray Darling Basin river systems are in trouble?

Thirty major dams and over 4, 000 weirs clutter the Murray-Darling Basin's rivers. Total dam storage is two-and-half times the average annual runoff, meaning they exert enormous control over river flows. Most of the Basin's rivers are regulated by dams and weirs. [Australian Water Association, 2009]

At least most Tweed Daily News online readers believe in climate change

From the Tweed Daily News on 17 November 2009

Online opinion poll on the same day the Tweed Daily News reported on Rising sea levels predicted

An historic moment everyone wishes hadn't happened - Australia's first official catastrophic fire warning issued for Wednesday 18 November 2009

BOM Radar 17 November 2009

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has issued the first official catastrophic fire warning this afternoon:

FIRE WEATHER WARNING FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Issued at 4:25 pm CDT on Tuesday, 17 November 2009.

Wednesday, 18 November 2009 is forecast to be very hot and dry for most of South Australia. Fresh northwesterly winds over the pastorals and parts of the northern agricultural districts will shift fresh southwesterly during the day.

Catastrophic Fire Danger [100+] is forecast for the Northwest Pastoral and Flinders Total Fire Ban districts.

Extreme Fire Danger [75-99] is forecast for the Northeast Pastoral, Eastern Eyre Peninsula and Mid North Total Fire Ban districts.

Severe Fire Danger [50-74] is forecast for the Riverland Total Fire Ban district.

The Country Fire Service advises that fires burning under these conditions are likely to be fast moving, unpredictable and uncontrollable. You should action your Bushfire Survival Plan now.

Total Fire Bans
As a consequence of the forecast fire danger, the Country Fire Service has imposed a Total Fire Ban in all the Total Fire Ban districts listed above.

For more information on Total Fire Bans and how to prepare for fires, visit the CFS web page at http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/ or call the CFS Bushfire Information Hotline on 1300 362 361.

For the latest weather information, listen to your local radio station or visit the Bureau of Meteorology web page at http://www.bom.gov.au/.

This Warning will be updated by 7:00 am on Wednesday, 18 November 2009.

When did Australia turn into a nation of cheats?

In October this year the Australian Tax Office appeared before a bi-annual hearing of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit and explained its approach to companies which were liquidated then reformed, as a new company using the same assets, in order to avoid meeting debt obligations to creditors and employees:

Phoenix activity

In 2008-09, we maintained a focus on those who engage in Phoenix activities, and intervened earlier to ensure the liabilities of current entities were kept up to date and paid on time. We ran a targeted letter/phone campaign directed to those who appeared at risk for repeat Phoenix behaviour.
The Tax Office, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Treasury are working together to identify a range of potential legislative remedies that could help us better address fraudulent phoenix behaviour.
Since 2000, ten company directors have been prosecuted for phoenix-related offences, arising from Tax Office referred matters. An additional four briefs of evidence are currently with the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP), with charges laid in relation to three matters. The are currently five potential prosecution cases in the pipeline for referral to the CDPP.
During 2008-09, 124 phoenix cases were finalised raising $83.3 million in tax and penalties. [ATO submission to the Joint Committee dated 19 October 2009]

Since then Adele Ferguson writing in The Brisbane Times and The Age has revealed that:

CORPORATE Australia is littered with company directors who have managed to survive multiple company failures, a trend that suggests illegal ''phoenix'' companies are on the rise.
Research compiled exclusively for BusinessDay by Dun & Bradstreet indicates a 25 per cent jump in the number of companies entering external administration during the 2009 financial year that had at least one director who had already been involved in a wound-up business.
Even more alarming, of the 10,264 companies that went belly up in the year to June 30, a staggering 43 per cent involved companies with directors of previously wound-up companies.
The research indicates the worst offenders tend to gravitate to the building and construction sector, employment agencies, labour hire, security and infrastructure.

and

Using a database of 2.8 million credit-active entities in Australia, Dun & Bradstreet revealed an 18 per cent surge in companies entering external administration in 2009. At least one director had previously been involved with four wound-up entities.
Dun & Bradstreet's chief executive, Christine Christian, said the research showed that directors on the board of a company that has gone into external administration were 250 per cent more likely to be involved in an insolvent wind-up in the following 12 months.

Phoenix companies are not a new phenomena as the answer to a 2005 Question on Notice by the then Member for Barton Robert McClelland confirms:

The Commissioner of Taxation advised me that since 1998 the Tax Office has maintained a planned and co-ordinated focus on individuals who use, or promote the use of, successive company structures to intentionally evade payment of taxes. A major focus of the Tax Office has been on serial (Phoenix) offenders who use deliberate and fraudulent methods to avoid their obligations.

This type of business activity is not unknown on the NSW North Coast and in recent years has cost the local workforce and retirees with small investment portfolios dearly in some instances.

The length of time the problem has been a highly visible issue combined with the low number of prosecutions and often risible court-imposed penalties leads to the following questions:

• Is it really good enough for the Australian Tax Office and Directors of Public Prosecutions to clearly place a sustained regime of prosecuting phoenix activity repeat offenders in the too hard basket?
• Has cheating creditors and employees become an accepted method of conducting business in Australia?
• Now that the Member for Barton is Australia's Attorney General, what is he going to do about the holes in corporate law which are allowing dishonest company directors to get away with this blatant form of theft?

The lights weren’t on, but Monsanto was at home

MADGE Australia and friends went to see Monsanto and came away with a story to tell:

Monsanto turned out the lights yesterday after the ladies of MADGE Australia, Cropwatch, and Gene Ethics arrived to deliver bags of GM canola roadside weeds.

Agri-chemical giant Monsanto is the patent holder of the GM Roundup Ready canola crop recently planted in Australia. Bob Phelps of Gene Ethics also attended.

After obligatory photos in the Monsanto lobby, the ladies went to the door. It was locked. Then the Monsanto lights went out.

MADGE Australia's Madeleine Love explained the visit.

"The GM weeds were Monsanto's property, and they were on our roadsides. We'd prefer not to be cleaning up, but we didn't want to leave them there to contaminate GM free crops."

"They were physically removed from beside farmer Gai Marshall's GM free canola crop near Berrigan, NSW. There are many more, further up the road."

"Monsanto was told about their GM weeds, but they didn't come and clean them up.

Monsanto has a record of suing farmers who accidentally have these GM plants on their property [Percy Schmeiser]."

"We don't know anyone in Australia who would want GM weeds, so we were returning them to their owners. Strangely, Monsanto didn't seem to want them either."

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Rees and NSW Labor Party pledge to forego political contributions from developers, but will the Opposition agree?

The Daily Telegraph on 15th November 2009:
"Developers are the biggest donors to NSW political parties, feeding suspicions that public policy-making could be bought. In the lead-up to the 2007 election, developers donated $8.2 million to the ALP and $4.4 million to the Liberal Party.
Mr Rees said it was time to end the perception that politicians were hostage to developers' interests.
"From today, the NSW Labor Party will ban donations from developers,'' he said.
"It will cover all members of NSW Parliament, all local councillors and all party units and organisations.
"Delegates, the reason for all these measures is simple _ it's time for a fresh start.
"One way or another, the next State election will be conducted under a public funding model.
"The era of big donations is over.''

But will the Libs, Nats and right-wing minor parties block this move in the NSW Parliament?
Will they keep their options open to yell "Corruption!" during the election campaign?