Abbott in the Twitterverse

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Frank_Tireur‎: Tony Abbott saying there's "something fishy about the numbers" makes me think he might've made Barnaby the Finance Minister again.
Twitter

trvllngjwllr: Every time i hear or see Tony Abbott, i want to punch him in the face #irrationallyangry
Mobile Web

people_skills: Everything Tony Abbott & the Liberal Party does and says is wrong. #myliberal
Web

jtousis: Why is Tony Abbott getting around in a school uniform today?
Twitter for iPhone

WebsterSmoggule: Follow me on boats, Abbott tells PM http://bit.ly/aitz7o #alot
twitterfeed

‎	zackster‎: Tony Abbott asking the government to explain economics to him, no surprise there .... apparently there's more just than adding 'BIG NEW' +no Twitter

gregfoletta: @p4ts Tony Abbott: no matter what you do, you're still Tony Abbott. That's gotta suck.
TweetDeck

ingovetoday: Yeah right Tony they're the victims of the agreement not you. "Abbott claims bosses bludgeoned into pact" http://bit.ly/btkH0C #miningtax
TweetDeck

MikeJohnsonMP

Has Tony Abbott blown the election with his Opposition to the Mining Tax, now that the Industry itself is satisfied at the new deal? #FB
mobile web

"So what": the face of not-so-good governance on the NSW North Coast

Last weekend a copy of Clarence Valley Council's June 2010 Budget Submissions Summary was doing the digital rounds much to the enjoyment of local cynics.
Of particular note was this answer to one concern raised about the fact that after 6 years council still had not reconciled a $1.2 million deficit brought into the amalgamation process by Grafton City Council: "So what".
But what really had locals opened mouthed was this answer to concerns about lack of transparency and accountability:
"As the 'senior administrator' who recommended that CCRT funding be used for lifesaving services, I (Rob Donges) have taken responsibility for including Iluka and will take responsibility should a higher authority determine that this funding arrangement is grossly negligent or some such thing."
That last line comes after a previous entry which goes:
"LPMA representatives have verbally raised concerns as to the funding of this service from CCRT and staff have provided our reasoning. Nothing more has been heard. If the Authority were to formally advise that the funding is inappropriate, we would recommend it be funded elsewhere i.e. General Fund."
The merry cynics are now laying bets that the Land and Property Mangement Authority won't be amused when it learns that its attempt to informally manage the problem of past misallocations of what could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in Clarence Coast Reserve Trust funds has been seen as something council staff can brush aside - especially as it was a resident's complaint which first brought the matter to light and council management has been very careful not to consult with the NSW Department of Lands itself just in case it wasn't left with anymore wriggle room.
Clarence Coast Reserve Trust Budget 2010/11

Shame on you all! When election promises go south

Image of O'Farrell and Cansdell from Steve Cansdell MP's Clarence Chronicles, June 20120

From Clarence Valley Review letters to the editor on 30 June 2010:

Expecting a lot

Ed,
In response to the article "Don't expect too much from Coalition, says Nats Chair" (CVR 23/6/10) I believe the electorate is expecting a lot.
If the Coalition Party does not and probably never intended to complete the Pacific Highway upgrade by 2016 then I say to those politicians, including the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Barry O'Farrell shame on you for exploiting those families who have roadside memorials to their deceased family members along the Pacific Highway.
I recall the many photographs which included Mr Cansdell taken beside these memorials in the printed media and on television trying to extract sympathy votes from the electorate.
I say shame on you all. Are there no politicians today with any dignity and fortitude in standing up for what they believe in without having to toe a party line?
The Coalition Party are backing away from every key commitment espoused by Mr Steve Cansdell against the present basket case State Government.
The electorate are not fools, it is the same old ploy used by all political parties when an election is imminent that any incoming Government will have a "very bare cupboard".
Is there no one out there who has dignity, honesty, shows respect for others and have a desire to help every member of the Community by becoming an Independent member?
If so, please step forward, we need you.

Lyne Dobson, Waterview Heights

Northern Rivers resident gets the last laugh on local tip charges

According to one NSW North Coast mayor:
"The State Government’s waste and environment levy is $20.40 a tonne to dump rubbish at the tip – charged on top of the council’s fees.
This amount is set to rise each financial year for the next five years until it reaches a capped price of $70 a tonne.......additional costs could not be absorbed into the current council budget, so they would have to be added to the waste levy in rates."
According to one NSW North Coast resident:
"After finding out what I had to pay to take my home e-waste and other items to the nearest council operated tip, I sent all of it over the border instead with a Queenslander returning home. Cost? It's free at that particular tip destination, so it was nothing, nil, nada, zero, zilch."
He also says he has no intention of voting for the Keneally Government because of the way it continues to milk regional New South Wales.

Pic at Google Images

Those sidebar polls are back again

I've just been reminded that North Coast Voices ran a series of sidebar polls in the lead-up to the 2007 Australian federal election.

So today we have posted the first for election year 2010 - on the subject of Tony Abbott and campaign promises.

Eyes right and join in the fun. Poll results will be published in posts at a later date.

The second poll planned will be on the topic of Julia Gillard.

Clarence Ahead invites climate change adaptation expert to speak at Yamba, 6 July 2010

At 6.30pm on Tuesday 6 July 2010 Professor Garry Willgoose is giving a talk on "Climate change, its consequences, and us" at the Yamba Bowling & Recreation Club by invitation of Clarence Ahead .

Admission is $30.00 and includes two course meal, tea or coffee. Bar service will be available. Further information can be had from Des Plunkett Ph: (02) 66. 433044.

Dr. Willgoose is an ARC Australian Professorial Fellow from the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment at the School of Engineering, University of Newcastle, with expertise in the areas of hydrology; climatology; water resources; ecohydrology; erosion; climate change adaptation; mine rehabilitation; mine closure; mine environment; mining; uranium; nuclear waste disposal.

Rather amusingly I was alerted to this Clarence Ahead initiative by an obvious climate change denier writing in one of the NSW North Coast newspapers.

The letter writer appears to believe that the academic, who in September last year was reported to have said that more frequent heatwaves will present big problems in regional areas.....the biggest impact [of climate change] will be on health, water and local government works programs, will probably support the denialist position.

This should make for an interesting exchange during any question and answer segment on the night.

Photograph from University of Newcastle website

Whales can be grandmothers too

Pilot Whales from Sea Fijii Travel

It is no secret that the pro-whaling lobby likes to characterize all cetaceans as 'fish'.
The Swedish Wire reported last month that:

Kristjan Loftsson, Iceland's millionaire whaling king, doesn't really see the difference: "whales are just another fish," he said at a crunch meeting of the International Whaling Commission.....If they [whales] are so intelligent, why don't they stay outside of Iceland's territorial waters?"

However, the fact that whales are social mammals often living in close kinship groups is well-known and research continues into why this is so.

According to Victoria Gill at BBC News on Friday 2 July 2010:

Scientists have discovered an evolutionary reason why humans and whales both have grandmothers.
As post-menopausal females age, the researchers say, they become increasingly interested and helpful in rearing their "grandchildren".
This could help explain why female great apes and toothed whales (cetaceans) have lifespans that extend long beyond their reproductive years.

To celebrate a summer of Royal Society science festivities, all Royal Society journal content is free to access until 30 July 2010, so the full research article by Rufus A. Johnstone and Michael A. Cant The evolution of menopause in cetaceans and humans: the role of demography can be downloaded as a PDF file:

Human females stop reproducing long before they die. Among other mammals, only pilot and killer whales exhibit a comparable period of post-reproductive life. The grandmother hypothesis suggests that kin selection can favour post-reproductive survival when older females help their relatives to reproduce. But although there is an evidence that grandmothers can provide such assistance, it is puzzling why menopause should have evolved only among the great apes and toothed whales. We have previously suggested
(Cant & Johnstone 2008 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 5332–5336 (doi:10.1073/pnas.0711911105)) that relatedness asymmetries owing to female-biased dispersal in ancestral humans would have favoured younger females in reproductive competition with older females, predisposing our species to the evolution of menopause. But this argument appears inapplicable to menopausal cetaceans, which exhibit philopatry of both sexes combined with extra-group mating. Here, we derive general formulae for 'kinship dynamics', the agerelated changes in local relatedness that occur in long-lived social organisms as a consequence of dispersal and mortality. We show that the very different social structures of great apes and menopausal whales both give rise to an increase in local relatedness with female age, favouring late-life helping. Our analysis can therefore help to explain why, of all long-lived, social mammals, it is specifically among the great apes and toothed whales that menopause and post-reproductive helping have evolved.....

Our analysis thus implies that females of most social mammalian species will experience a decline in local relatedness with age, but that the two unusual and very different social arrangements that characterize menopausal species (respectively, female-biased dispersal and local mating in ancestral humans, and philopatry of both sexes combined with extra-group mating in pilot and resident killer whales) both give rise to an increase in local relatedness with female age. This build-up of local relatedness over the reproductive lifespan of a female means that the great apes and toothed whales, by contrast with most mammals, are predisposed to the evolution of reproductive restraint and altruistic helping behaviour later rather than earlier in life. The value of an explicit focus on kinship dynamics is that it reveals the underlying similarity between the ape and whale cases, which would otherwise be obscured by the differences in their social structure....

The expected benefits of ceasing reproduction in order to selectively assist close kin will thus increase with age in the ape and whale cases because younger females are less likely than are older females to have close relatives in the group—there is little value to sacrificing the possibility of direct reproduction to become a helper at an age when there are likely to be few or no kin present to help.