The little town that doesn't....

Doesn't want McDonald's plastic hambugers and wall-to-wall litter that is.

Pic found on Facebook

Mercurius on Hockey-ed Wingnuts

Can't do better today than to read Mercurius across at Larvatus Prodeo as he hold forth on Wingnut as she is spoke: “Personal responsibility”.
Here's the journalist's take on Aussie Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey's free market credentials Joe Hockey blames government intervention for global financial crisis; and here is Uncle Joe's speech IN DEFENCE OF ENTERPRISE' ADDRESS TO THE EIDOS INSTITUTE 12:30PM WEDNESDAY 14 APRIL 2010.
Particularly enjoy the fact that the boy thinks that:
"Enterprise separates the human species from the rest of the Earth’s living creatures. Without it, human beings would have achieved nothing beyond our most basic animal needs".
Yup. Forget empathy, altruism, collective effort and opposable thumbs - 'twas the individual and free markets which set us firmly on the path out of pre-historic Africa.

My old mum was right - Teh Tube makes us dumb

One from the locker that I forgot to post!

I don't know how many times as a teenager I was told that the television in the living room was an 'idiot box'.
All those visions of Frankie Ifield yodelling, rope petticoats swirling and (by today's standards) sedate rocking around the clock apparently set the old grey matter permanently on snooze mode.
Only grandads glued to the cricket on the radio were immune to its insidious effects.
And it looks like my old mum was right - lotsa Aussies have finally forgotten how to turn the thing on!


mUmBRELLA says: "Total prime time TV audiences have fallen below 5m in Australia, according to a new analysis of viewing data so far this year. This is despite the arrival of the new Freeview and subscription TV channels to tempt viewers. According to the analysis of figures across the prime 6pm to 10.30pm slot, the average audience has fallen from 5,027,868 in 2008 to 4,969,810 in 2009. This marks a decline of around 60,000 prime time viewers per evening – or a fall of just over 1%. This is despite the Australian population growing by more than 2% during the same period."

Pic from GraniteGrok

Who was it that told McDonald's that it didn't have to bother with decent supporting documentation for its proposed fast food development in Yamba?

In a previous post I pointed out that the Australian arm of that large foreign multinational McDonald's had included a misleading Traffic Impact Assessment with its Development Application (DA) for a 24 hour eat-in and drive-through fast food outlet in Yamba at the mouth of the Clarence River on the NSW North Coast.

A brief look at the Statement of Environmental Effects (SEE) it also lodged with Clarence Valley Council in support of this new development shows that its spin above fact attitude continues.

On Page 13 McDonald's describes a prefabricated building of "compressed fibre cement with applied finishes. The applied finishes are in a combination of colours, including grey, black, brown and red that provides a distinctive 'MacDonald's' look" as being "designed to reflect a coastal character".

This hardly sounds like a building with coastal character or one which would be markedly sympathetic to either Yamba's existing post-2000 commercial and original architecture mix in Treelands Drive and environs or to the town's tourism branding objectives.

Based on the basic layout diagrams supplied, the McDonald's store intended for Yamba may look very like the facade of this one at Sydney's domestic airport although positioned differently on the proposed block:
That McDonald's has done better than these aesthetically barren generic pre-fabs is evidenced by what the company has done in other countries which have obviously demanded a more culturally sensitive approach and more appropriately sized signage, as exampled by Singapore:
McDonald's Australia has not confined itself to spin about its architectural plans. At times its description of matters both it and Clarence Valley shire councillors must properly consider in relation to the Treelands Drive DA is downright misleading.

In the text on Page 8 of the SEE, McDonald's states; "Bounding the subject land is a a vacant lot zoned 2(a) Residential under Maclean Local Environmental Plan (LEP) 2001...."

However, there are actually two adjoining vacant residential lots at the rear of the site with building entitlements.

Clarence Valley Council's own mapping supplied to McDonald's clearly shows that although both are zoned low density residential and are on the same deposited plan, these are two separate lots. As does Council's online interactive mapping which clearly indicates two different street numbers, lot numbers and land area dimensions:
Google Maps and Google Earth also show these two lots - but just to be on the safe side I telephoned the Yamba real estate agency which is currently selling one of these vacant lots and this agency is under the same impression.

If all this mapping is correct then this is a serious omission on McDonald's part because both of these residential lots in Kookaburra Court need to have any impacts on amenity considered before development consent is either given or refused, as does the house which abuts a rear corner of the development site. Consideration which McDonald's appears intent on downplaying by 'disappearing' one lot entirely from much of its documentation text.

As for its general understanding of the commercial precinct in which it seeks to place this hamburger joint - this would border on the hilarious if the issue was not so serious.

McDonald's asserts that two businesses (which are very visibly extinct in Treelands Drive) are actually alive and well and, doesn't appear to understand that there is a permanent cinema in Yamba which is not only alive and well but in the process of expanding its seating.

Now McDonald's Australia is no stranger to NSW planning legislation and local government requirements, so its very lackadaisical and unprofessional approach to the Yamba development application is quite frankly puzzling.

To recap; this multinational states that it doesn't know details of bus routes in the immediate vicinity of the proposed development site, has not done a meaningful study of the two Treelands Drive intersections subject to significant increases in traffic if the development were to go ahead, appears ignorant of the number of properties adjoining the site, obviously has not adequately looked at the character of either the street or town and probably intends to build the restaurant to a set design with no distinctive 'coastal' character.

On 9 February 2010 McDonald's and Clarence Valley Council staff had a pre-lodgement meeting and the company asserts in the SEE Introduction that the DA "meets pre-lodgement conditions".

Which leaves me pondering a question: Who was it that apparently gave McDonald's Australia the impression that it would be acceptable for the company to just throw together a token Statement of Environmental Effects and Traffic Assessment attached to the building design and site layout?

I can think of no other reason for such inaccurate information being so insouciantly presented for consideration by Council in the Chamber in the near future, except that McDonald's has formed an opinion that the Yamba community can be discounted and shire councillors herded like so may sheep.

How Teh Mighty Marohasy has fallen

Had to smile at this from Jen herself:
Jennifer Marohasy is sceptical of the consensus position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and gives entertaining and informative talks on 'Climategate'. Dr Marohasy is quoted in the leaked emails from the UK's Climate Research Unit.
Gee whiz - quoted in a few emails. What fame!

On climate change scepticism...

Excerpts from the transcript of an American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium. If you find those interesting go to the transcript and audio at the Science Show

Riley Dunlap on climate change sceptics as authors:

Back in the '80s there were only a couple of years, in the '90s we miss a few years, sort of a reasonably consistent flow and we get in the 2000s, and there's just been an explosion in these books quite recently. If we do it by decade it jumps out at you more. We've jumped up to 64 books espousing some version of climate change denial since 2000. Several of these books are bestsellers. On Amazon, you find them in Borders, Barnes & Noble, Hastings, they're carried by the Conservative Book Club, they reach a large audience. Now, the key issue; how many of these books are linked to conservative think-tanks? It turns out to be 78%. What you see here originally almost all were. I'm going to give you some insight into where these come from.....

Okay, now we get some insight here. We now distinguish between natural science PhDs, a PhD in another discipline, and no PhD. What of course you can see is the lowest connection to think-tanks are down here among people without PhDs. In addition, a main source of books these days are self-published books, Author Press et cetera, Author House, I think it's called, anyone can publish a book. And another thing that's going on is a lot of these books are self-published and these are the folks who aren't affiliated with the think-tank. I found one, a retired real estate agent in British Columbia, he started writing books after he retired and he decided to do one on climate change because it's a hoax et cetera.

William Freudenburg on those anti-science websites and vested interest think tanks:

Usually at a AAAS meeting when there's any talk about the connections between science and society it's in the old framework of public understanding of science. How well is the information getting to society? There's less attention to what some sociology and philosophy of science people have written about, about how scientists are affected by society. When you get outside of the halls of the AAAS, there's plenty of attention, especially in the United States, and it's almost all bad: JunkScience.com, which was set up by someone who used to fight the so-called junk science on cigarette smoking; American Thinker...they lie; ClimateSceptic.com, ClimateSceptics.org, which looks a lot like Wikipedia, doesn't it.

Then blizzards happen and of course we conclude from this...Inhofe is out there building an igloo...that if it snows in Washington DC that proves that the global climate is getting colder. You've got some very conservative outlets that pick up the trope and repeat it that scientists are hiding evidence, and eventually it quite often gets into relatively mainstream media such as CNN. 'Is this a trick or is this the truth?' And you find a few important scientists saying that every error exaggerated the impact of change. That's a testable hypothesis.......

And you heard from Dr Dunlap that that campaign is going on today.

Some of his other research that you didn't hear about, an earlier study he did with Jacques and Freeman, found 141 books expressing scepticism about anything environmental. And in that earlier study, 92% of the books were from conservative think-tanks. And this is not by any subtle way of doing the math, either the author worked for it, they published it, or both. In essence, there would not be a so-called scepticism literature if it were not for the work of some well funded, hard working, skilled in PR, conservative think-tanks.

Stephen Schneider on the scientist as sceptic:

So we're going to talk about the issue of scepticism. I'm going to start right out now; what's the difference between scepticism and denial? There's no such thing as a good scientist who isn't a sceptic. I changed my opinion in 1970 from cooling to warming, published it first, it's one of my proudest moments in science because we found, as the evidence accumulated, that there were a number of reasons, it's all explained in chapter one of Science as a Contact Sport, and I still have to hear things from those famous climate professors, the ones that publish all the papers in the referee journals, professors Limbaugh and Will, you know, about how... 'Oh Schneider, he's just an environmentalist for all temperatures', it's a great line!....

The purpose in the advocacy world is to win for the client or the ideology. In science that is a quick ticket to not getting funded, not getting promoted and not getting your papers accepted. So you don't start with a level playing field because the two epistemologies of advocacy and science are so diametrical that it therefore is actually career counterproductive for scientists to try to act in the same behavioural way that the opponents do.

if god's away on business who's looking after il pappa?

In Rome it must feel as though the Christian god has taken his eye off the latest incumbent in that long dynasty of power-hungry old men, as the media unearths more and more about Pope Benedict's failings in relation to the pastoral care of his flock and his alleged protection of paedophile priests.

Bad news keeps be made public despite the best efforts of some Catholic laity to counterattack.
Last week the Canadian media and at least one blog Catholic Culture were reporting:

Seven Ontario bishops and Cardinal José Sanchez, the prefect for the Congregation for the Clergy, were aware by 1993 that the secretary-general of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith had committed sexual abuse, according to a February 1993 letter from the bishop of Pembroke (Ontario) to Canada’s apostolic nuncio.....
By 1993, however, Bishop Windle had become aware that there were four or five victims. In his letter to Archbishop Carlo Curis, who served as apostolic nuncio to Canada from 1990 to 1999, Bishop Windle urged that Father Prince not be given a papal honor or promoted to the episcopate, noting that such a move could prompt victims to speak out publicly.

In Australia Cardinal George Pell is rather unnaturally silent for one who loves the media spotlight, but then he is thought to have a similar inadequate history in matters of pastoral care.
A spokesperson on his behalf has accused the Herald Sun of running an inquisition.

Rather alarmingly, it seems the Vatican never learns for it is rumoured that Rome intends to send Pell to Ireland to help restore confidence in the Irish Church after the paedophile scandals there. Pell himself also appears to have been the alleged subject of at least one sexual abuse complaint in the past and, even though that complaint was not proven it does leave his proposed intervention open to alternative interpretations.

1985 Letter to Oakland Bishop John S Cummins, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, concerning a then 38 year-old priest who is reported to have plead guilty in 1978 to misdemeanour charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting young boys in a church presbytery:

Most Excellent Bishop

Having received your letter of September 13 of this year, regarding the matter of the removal from all priestly burdens pertaining to Rev Stephen Miller Kiesle in your diocese, it is my duty to share with you the following:

This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favour of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ's faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner.

It is necessary for this Congregation to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time.

In the meantime your Excellency must not fail to provide the petitioner with as much paternal care as possible and in addition to explain to same the rationale of this court, which is accustomed to proceed keeping the common good especially before its eyes.

Let me take this occasion to convey sentiments of the highest regard always to you.

Your most Reverend Excellency

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Bishop Cummins letter to the then Pope John Paul II:

DIOCESE OF OAKLAND

VOTUM EPISCOPI

Most Holy Father:

I wish to present the petition of Father Stephen Kiesle for laicization. He wishes to return to the lay state and to be relieved of all the obligations of the priesthood, including celibacy.

Father Kiesle was born on February 14. 1947 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He attended elementary school in Lakewood, California and San Lorenzo, California. He entered St. Joseph's High School Seminary in 1960. Upon graduation he entered St. Patrick's College Seminary in 1964 and began his theological studies at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park in 1968. Father Kiesle was ordained on May 19, 1972 at St. Francis de Sales Cathedral by the Most Reverend Floyd L. Begin, Bishop of Oakland.

It does seem clear, now, with hindsight, that quite probably Father Kiesle should never have been ordained.

He has experienced a variety of psychological, emotional, and sexual difficulties during his pri"esthood. In August of 1978 he was arrested by the police and charged with having taken sexual liberties with at least six young men ranging from eleven to thirteen years of age during the period of November 1971 through May 1978. When he appeared in court, Father Kiesle pleaded "nol o contendere" to the charges. He received a three year suspended sentence and was to remain on probation for three years. He was to meet regularly with his probation officer. He was not to be alone with any juvenile, nor was he to work with any juveniles without an adult being present. He was also required to register with the police department of any city in which he would be residing. It was during this period of time that Father Kiesle took an extended leave of absence.

Unfortunately, from the time of Father Kiesle's first court appearance there was a great deal of publicity surrounding his conduct. Lengthy news reports appeared in all of the major newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area. as well as throughout California. Some of the publications also printed pictures of Father Kiesle. As a result his case and alleged wrong-doings received maximum publicity exposure. Some of the newspaper accounts were able to obtain rather specific details of his conduct from the police report. Father Kiesle has been in psychiatric therapy since this difficult situation first became public in August of 1978. He still continues to see a therapist on a regular basis.

I would credit Father Kiesle with great cooperation in seeking out psychiatric help when asked. On the other hand, his dealings with me as expressed in his own statement unearthed for me the problem he had with authority and obedience. I had arranged with two neighboring bishops to provide employment in special assignments for him outside of pastoral ministry during the months that he would be in thereapy. He adamantly refused to consider these although later, on his own, he took a temporary assignment in one of those same dioceses. I felt obliged to poi'nt out the inconsistency of his judgment.

I prevailed on one of our excellent young priests to provide him a home with some possibilities of limited work. That assignment carried on for many months but it was obvious that there was no development either in work or in any other interests. I feared the wasting of time was profoundly detrimental to a man of his age. At the time, therefore, that he did procure a job of reasonable support, I asked him to take a year away from the parish and assume responsibility for the managing of his own life. That decision, as hard as it was, seems to have been very beneficial to him. I believe it has contributed much toward his present resolution of his life.

Given all of the circumstances surrounding this case and Father Kiesle's irrevocable decision to leave the active ministry, it would seem to me most prudent that his petition be granted. Therefore, since all of these things are attested to in the Acts of the case, it is our opinion that this case should be submitted to you with the petition that Father Stephen Kiesle be relieved of all of the obligations of the priesthood.

Given at the Chancery of the Diocese of Oakland this 19th day of June in the Year of Our lord 1981.

John S. Cummins

Bishop of Oakland

Broken Rites list of 117 Catholic priests, religious brothers and seminarians who have been sentenced in Australian courts since 1992.

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