Shock, horror! Aussies drink less booze than the Irish, Scots, Brits and possibly even the Kiwis

Wikimedia has this World Health Organisation map from 2008 on display along with a ranked table of world alcohol consumption based on sales.

According to a The Herald report earlier this year; "Statistics show that nearly 50 million litres of pure alcohol were consumed in Scotland in 2007 - the equivalent of 11.8 litres for every person aged over 16 - putting the nation above Spain, Italy and France in the World Health Organisation's (WHO) league table of alcohol sales.
The figure is equal to every Scot over 16 drinking 570 pints of normal-strength beer, 125 bottles of wine or 42 bottles of vodka, and enough for every adult to exceed the sensible drinking guidelines for men of 21 units of alcohol per week."

Will all Nationals and Liberal MPs blindly follow the leader and block certain budget measures

The carer supplement promised in the Budget is now before the House of Representatives as Social Security and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009.

Likewise the financial assistance to local government to be brought forward into this financial year is presented as Financial Assistance Legislation Amendment Bill 2009.

The appropriations bills which will allow government to progress the September increase in pensions and other measures are also before our parliamentarians.

There are at least 400,000 North Coast residents waiting to see funding from the 2009-10 Commonwealth Budget flow to local government and households.

Coalition MPs should take note of that fact, particularly Nationals Member for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker who has become notorious for blindly following the leader and attempting to thwart government expenditure and whose latest effort on record on 12 May 2009 could only rely on political tripe:

I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance, because we have a government in this country that is hostage to the 24-hour news cycle. We have a government that is hostage to the 10-second sound bite and its media spin doctors. We will see handed down in this chamber tonight what the Australian people will know as a traditional Labor budget on steroids. It is going to be a budget that will usher in the era of big deficits. It will be a budget that will usher in the high level of unemployment that we are expecting in the months ahead. It is a budget that will burden the Australian people with massive debt and burden their children with massive debt.

It is time for all our parliamentarians to leave the rhetoric behind and remember the welfare of their own electorates, which are set to benefit from this budget.

Update:

Since placing this post on NCV's publication schedule the Leader of the Opposition's Budget Reply speech has been delivered with its classic dog whistle:

But tonight I will make one suggestion of a suitable offset for the Prime Minister’s consideration. One that would make for a healthier Australia and lessen the burden on public hospitals rather than increase it. The Government could comfortably afford to retain the current private health insurance rebate without any cost to the published Budget outcome by increasing the amount of excise collected on tobacco by 12.5 per cent (or about three cents extra per cigarette).

Members of parliament of all persuasions need to think carefully about the economics of such a move, when in the past taxation increases on tobacco have seen a decrease in consumption and sales of tobacco products (which form a significant income stream for many small businesses).

If this were to occur after a Turnbull-inspired tobacco taxation hike then a decrease in taxation revenue available to government is possible (eating into the optimistically projected $120 million increase in tobacco excise predicted for 2009-10 in last year's MYEFO) and, any immediate benefits from this increased taxation are likely to flow to the states rather than the Commonwealth through the GST and FAG relativities.

It is no accident that the Coalition has chosen tobacco as their political smokescreen for mindless resistance for the sake of resistance - it is rather a good distraction as the debate can quickly degenerate from discussing revenue raising measures to vilifying smokers. However, even non-smokers can do the maths.

Whale migration: It's the trooping of the flukes on the NSW North Coast

Photograph from The Far North Coaster

The Far North Coaster online magazine this week reminds us that now is the time to look seaward for spouts on the horizon, fluke slapping displays and whales moving close to shore :

The annual northern migration of humpback whales along the east coast of Australia is under way, with the first sightings reported off the North Coast over the last few weeks.
Wally Franklin, a researcher with Southern Cross University’s Whale Research Centre and co-director of The Oceania Project, said the northern migration usually began around the start of May.
“About this time we begin to see one or two whales and now we are into May the flow will start to pick up. The peak of the northward migration past Byron Bay occurs in June and July. There is evidence that the timing of the migration can vary between years, but generally the whales are incredibly regular,” Mr Franklin said.

Want to read one of the better Budget overviews? Go to Gans

After delving into the 2009-10 Commonwealth Budget papers and listening to some of the doom and gloom coming from sections of the mainstream media, I was beginning to doubt my first impressions of that which I was reading.

Then I clicked onto The Age and Joshua Gans' Going boldly backwards.

Joshua can also be found at Core Economics

Post-Budget thoughts on things economic from around the traps

The Howard years were basically a time of the economy falling off a skyscraper, enjoying the thrill, and yelling "I've fallen 20 floors and feeling fine".

Balneus blog on 14th May 2009

Swan's trick of not even mentioning the size of the deficit/surplus is a first, well almost.
As for the forecasts, they may well turn out to be right, or not. What will happen as the economy recovers is fairly forecastable. When that will happen is pretty unforcastable.
It could be next month, it could be next year, it could be in three years' time.
Your guess is good as Treasury's - probably better.
Peter Martin on his blog, 13th May 2009

The Panel's key finding is that the three-pillar architecture of Australia's retirement income system — consisting of the means tested Age Pension, compulsory saving through the superannuation guarantee and voluntary saving for retirement — should be retained. The retirement income system is facing increasing challenges as the 21st century unfolds which will test the sustainability, adequacy, acceptability and coherence of the system. The three‑pillar architecture is well suited for a balanced and flexible response to these challenges. and

However, there is some need for adaptive change to calibrate the three pillars so that the retirement income system serves its purposes and retains its strengths.

From the media release and cover letter to the Henry Report initial findings released on Budget night 2009.

Kevin Rudd on ABC radio this morning stated that the budget would protect Australia's AAA rating, according to Standard and Poors. Read here Standard and Poor's own admission as to why they rated Lehmann Brothers as A at the time they went bust, and make up your mind as to whether S&P AAA ratings are worth a cracker.

Mark Crosby over at Core Economics blog on 13th May 2009

LAST night the Australian Government handed down its budget for the coming financial year. The centre piece of planned spending on the environment is $4.5 billion for "clean energy". This is defined as energy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost employment.Most of the money, $2.4 billion, will be used for the development of low-emissions coal technologies. This announcement could be interpreted as an attempt to appease the coal industry and unions – it is certainly unlikely to benefit the environment.

Jennifer Marohasy at her blog of the same name on 13th May 2009

If you judged by press releases, you'd reckon this was the greenest budget ever. And it is indeed good in parts, though not nearly as good as you might think. The first thing to note is that the CPRS targets and the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target haven't changed, so emissions won't change at all (though it may mean we buy fewer permits overseas), nor will the fraction of our electricity generated from renewable sources. What the funding in this budget might do is change the technology mix available to us to achieve those targets.

Robert Merkel over at Larvatus Prodeo on 13th May 2009.

KEVIN Rudd's silent war on the NSW Government has moved to open hostility, with Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday effectively blaming the Rees Government for Sydney's infrastructure snub. And the Prime Minister warned he was not prepared to invest "billions" of dollars in Sydney projects until the NSW Government got the planning right.

The Daily Telegraph, 14th May 2009

The Federal Government has been warned that it will need to rethink some elements of its Budget superannuation package in circumstances where long-serving politicians and senior public servants appear to have emerged unaffected by changes to the contribution caps for high-income earners.

The apparent oversight was acknowledged by Deloitte superannuation partner John Rayner, who said that in the interests of equity among higher income earners, the burden needed to be shared by everyone.

The only acknowledgement of the problem in the Budget is to grandfathering arrangements that apply "to certain members with defined benefit interests as at 12 May, 2009, whose notional taxed contributions would otherwise exceed the reduced cap".

The problem confronting the Government is that public servants and others are enjoying contributions of as much as 22 per cent to their superannuation, compared to the standard 9 per cent provided by the superannuation guarantee and then topped up by people in defined contribution schemes.

Mike Taylor at Money Management on 13th May 2009

THE ABC will produce edgier TV drama and invest in more feature films, but will have to abandon plans to establish more digital radio stations as a result of the 2009-10 budget. "We're delighted with this outcome -- in this economic climate, it's a good outcome," said ABC managing director Mark Scott.

According to The Australian on 14th May 2009

The rural health care sector has applauded Budget measures aimed at improving access to medical services in the bush.
The Government has made changes to the pharmaceutical and medical benefits schemes to allow nurse practitioners and midwives to prescribe subsidised drugs and let their patients claim back services under Medicare.
Helen Gosby from the Australian College of Nurse Practitioners says it is great news for patients in remote areas.
"Now we'll be able to give them the full range of care so they don't have to wait for the flying doctor to come back into town," she said.
The Government will also spend $134 million boosting payments to lure medical staff to the bush.

ABC News on 13th May 2009

It was a Goose Waterloo

The geese have met their Waterloo. Defeat was absolute and humiliating and it couldn't have happened at a better time.

Just when they had become totally overbearing and their confidence level had reached its peak, disaster struck in the form of Black Neck Storks or Jabiru as they are locally known.

Each year around this time the storks fly in with the newly-fledged young from their nearby nesting sites.
This year the parents arrived with two youngsters that small they still had their L plates on - the landing was not pretty.

The adults then wandered down the swamp for a bit of quality parent alone time, while the kids played in the shallows.

The geese obviously did not see the whole family arrive but they soon spotted the two youngsters, so en mass they marched down to put these intruders to flight.
The plan was going well, the geese had them surrounded.

The name calling was in full voice when one of the stork parents decided that the barnyard bullies had over stepped the mark and walked back from down the other end of the swamp.
It was no contest, the stork walked through the ranks of geese which fled in all directions.

A small group of geese tried to regather in the middle of the swamp.
This was the chance the black swans had been waiting for; two pairs of swans executed a beautiful pincer movement from the sides that sent the geese straight into the area where the storks were waiting.

This time the youngsters decided that it was their turn to chase the geese which they did with glee.

The geese ended up in the shed paddock, they have been there for two days.
Their dreams of farm domination in tatters around their webbed feet.

Previous post in the Geese Saga:
Worrying times under this feathered fascism
Goose stepping in all this rain.....

Rudd-Conroy internet censorship trial generates new error message

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Click on image to enlarge

Mainstream media stung by sociology student - blogosphere tut tuts

Dilbert cartoon from Dilbert.com

Adding my penny's worth on the state of mainstream media.

Ars Technica reports on sloppy media practices:
"According to the AFP, the hoax traces back to Shane Fitzgerald, a student at Ireland's University College Dublin. Upon learning of the death of the Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre, the student modified his Wikipedia entry, adding a completely fictitious post that was nicely designed to fit perfectly into any obituary. "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear," the added material read in part.
Fitzgerald was apparently curious how far his hoax would spread, and expected it to appear on a variety of blogs and similar sites. Instead, to his surprise, a search picked it up in articles that appeared at a variety of newspapers. Fitzgerald eventually removed his own fabricated quote and notified a variety of news outlets that they had been tricked, but not all of them have apparently seen fit to publish corrections or to ensure that their original stories were accurate, even though fixing a webpage shouldn't be a challenging thing.
Of course, it shouldn't be a surprise that journalists use Wikipedia as part of their research—especially in this case, as Jarre's entry comes out on top of the heap in a Google search for his name. However, the discovery that so many of the writers apparently failed to find an additional source on that quote comes at a rather awkward time for journalists in traditional media, who are facing a struggle to stay above water as the newspaper industry is sinking and the line between traditional journalism and casual reporting gets ever blurrier.
A key part of the argument for maintaining traditional journalism is that its trained reporters can perform research and investigations that the untrained masses can't, and the content they produce is run by editors and fact-checkers. The revelation that their research is often no more sophisticated than an average Web surfer's, and that the fact checking can be nonexistent, really doesn't help that argument much."

Comments on article

More GM lobby machinations?

Times Higher Education earlier this year:

A charity has come under fire for failing to declare all industry affiliations of the experts it enlisted to compile a booklet explaining genetic modification to the public.
The pamphlet was produced by Sense About Science (SAS), a charity that claims to promote scientific reasoning in public discussions.
According to anti-genetic modification campaigners and academics, it failed to mention links between some of the experts who wrote the booklet and GM firms.
For example, the guide's biography of Vivian Moses, emeritus professor of microbiology at Queen Mary, University of London, and visiting professor of biotechnology at King's College London, does not mention that he is also chairman of CropGen, a GM lobby group that receives funding from the biotechnology industry.
It says only that he has been "a full-time researcher in biochemistry and microbiology" and is now "primarily concerned with communicating science to the public".
Critics also argued that the guide should have noted that the John Innes Centre, where eight of its 28 contributors are based, received funding from biotechnology companies.
Michael Antoniou, a geneticist at King's College London, described the omissions as "outrageous".
He said: "GM is a sensitive issue. People have been extremely suspicious because of its industrial connections. So it is imperative that they declare these in this context, as in a journal publication."
Dr Antoniou, who himself provides technical advice to anti-GM campaign group GM Watch, speculated that SAS had not disclosed Professor Moses' directorship because it was afraid of arousing public suspicion.

GM Watch tells us that there are even more 'scientists' hidden in the woodpile:

The pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science (SAS) has been caught with its pants down by Private Eye. The famous satirical magazine has obtained a confidential draft copy of SAS's recently published GM guide which shows it had a "ghost writer" that SAS failed to declare. Here's the article.
Private Eye No. 1232, 20 March - 2 April 2009, Books and Bookmen (p.26)
A spat has broken out over a Times Higher Education article highlighting the failure of a new guide to GM food, 'Making Sense of GM', to disclose its industry connections. Tracey Brown of Sense About Science, publisher of the guide, condemned the T.H.E. article as "mischievous" and "rude" and claimed it relied on "tortuously indirect links" between the authors and the GM industry.
But the Eye has a copy of an unpublished draft of the guide - and it seems it wasn't just the industry links of some of its authors that didn't appear in the final published version. One of the guide's listed authors, Andrew Cockburn, is also missing. Who he? None other than GM giant, Monsanto's former director of scientific affairs, and a figure so controversial that when former PM Tony Blair invited him to author part of the government's official GM Science Review, it led to questions being raised in the House and the resignation of one of the expert panellists. No wonder Sense About Science felt erasure was the better form of valour.

*Sense about Science issued a statement to the effect that in the end Cockburn did not review its GM guide.

In addition,this month MADGE blew the whistle on Graincorp:

AUSTRALIANS will soon be eating genetically modified food whether they like it or not.

The nation's major grain handler, Graincorp, announced this week that genetically modified canola will be mixed in with the main crop in this year's harvest.

Anti-GM groups say the decision means canola oil and a large amount of commonly bought processed food made with canola will now be genetically modified.

They say staples that will become genetically modified include baby food, potato chips, biscuits, frozen vegetables, crackers and pre-prepared meals.

They claim the move is premature because GM food has yet to be tested properly.

"All GM food has been created randomly. The DNA of these plants has been altered and no one really knows where it will go," said Madeleine Love, spokeswoman for Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering (MADGE).....

Graincorp corporate affairs manager David Ginn confirmed the two streams of canola will be mixed together this year after the October harvest.

Meanwhile, GMO bananas are being trialled in Queensland and can be now added to North Coast Voices' March 2009 GMO watch list.

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