Sharing a thought on Internet censorship which landed on my desk.....

Oi! Senator Conroy - it's September already. Where's that promised report on your Internet filtering trial?

Colin Jacobs in The Australian this week Conroy won't tame 'wild west' web

A brief history of Australian Internet censorship proposals at Libertus.

If Frank Sartor becomes the next NSW premier......

If 'Cranky Frankie' Sartor were to become Premier of New South Wales then I would seriously have to consider voting for a (gulp) Nat at the next state election!

Nonimouse
James Creek

Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents.
Email ncvguestpeak at live dot com dot au to submit comment for consideration.

Iluka hotel denies donation purchased jetty rights

Sedgers Reef Hotel emphatically denies a rumour that its $50,000 dollar donation to Clarence Valley Council gives it mooring rights for hotel patrons on the jetty being built adjacent to this hotel.

The Daily Examiner, 28 August 2009, p.3

Baby Boomers: keeping dementia in mind

On Tuesday Alzheimers Australia released a report by Access Economics Keeping Dementia Front of Mind: Incidence and Prevalence 2009 - 2050.

This report highlights the fact that by 2050 1.1 million Australians are expected to have been diagnosed with some form of dementia and by 2020 there will be an estimated 75,000 baby boomers with dementia.

"Every week there are more than 1,300 new cases of dementia. By 2030 there will be more than 3,600 and by 2050, about 7,400 new cases each week. The dementia epidemic is here. Dementia is a fatal disease and as yet there is no cure.".....

Dementia is predicted to become the third greatest source of health and residential aged care spending within two decades, costing 1% of GDP based on Australian Institute of Health and Welfare calculations.

"If current trends continue through to 2060 spending on dementia will outstrip that of any other health condition, reaching $83 billion (in 2006-07 dollars) and representing around 11% of all health and aged care expenditure.

Probably time we baby boomers started thinking of the best way to avoid becoming one of these cited statistics and learn all about those health measures which can be adopted to lessen the possibility that it will be us who will suffer from Alzheimers or another dementia of old age.

Executive Summary - Keeping Dementia Front of Mind: Incidence and Prevalence 2009 - 2050

Report Keeping Dementia Front of Mind: Incidence and Prevalence 2009 - 2050

Appendices - Keeping Dementia Front of Mind: Incidence and Prevalence 2009 - 2050

'Keystone' Keelty goes out on the heels of yet another bungle

AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty must wonder why his last day as head of the Aussie federal police will not be remembered for praises sung in his honour, but instead for the fact that a national security breach became very public and his force was placed in the position of trying to deny that it had a surveillance plane with heat seeking technology.
It seems no-one in the AFP thought to tell Vic police that this small plane was a s-e-c-r-e-t.
Just another blunder to remind us all of the many which occurred under his watch.
Over to you, Tony Negus....

The Herald Sun has all the laughs here.

Another APN newspaper gets it in the neck from ABC TV 's Media Watch

ABC TV Media Watch on 31 August 2009 featured an assessment of last Saturday's Tweed Daily News exploitative front page, which targeted a vulnerable person with a disability and allegedly resulted in that person's hospital admission.

Media Watch received no answer when it contacted Tweed Daily News with the usual invitation to supply justification.

What could the newspaper say? After all: by taking advantage of the confusion and distress of an ordinary person; by needlessly identifying him in a frontpage photograph and exposing him to condemnation, ridicule or gossip; by focussing on the supposed alarmed reaction of its female journalists; the newspaper was only obeying APN News & Media's Readers First guidelines which in practice pander to ignorance and dumb down the news.

With circulation figures and advertising income the principal drivers for this 'new' journalism, what better way to boost its supposed Saturday circulation of 10,000 sold papers than having a full monty on Page One.

The Media Watch presenter called the 120 year-old Tweed Daily News a wretched little rag.

Perhaps he should have also taken APN to task for the very flawed publication philosophy it has foisted on its editors, may of whom cannot always walk the frequently fine line between exploitative and ethical news reporting.

Daily Examiner editor leaves the building: don't slam the door on the way out

Because I could never look at Brendan Nelson's hair in the same way again......

.....after First Dog On the Moon's original foray into the subject of hair with a life of its own.
Here is the second and probably final cartoon concerning teh pate pelt from that tonsorial master writing in Crikey.

Click on image to enlarge

NSW minister for beds has resigned over a scandal between the sheets

John Della Bosca has resigned as health minister and leader of the legislative council after it was revealed the 53 year old had a six-month affair with a 26-year-old-woman.
News Limited publications have had a field day with their kiss-and-tell revelations. Leading the pack has been Sydney's Daily Terrible (aka The Daily Telegraph).

The 26-year-old woman provided a statement to The Daily Telegraph claiming Mr Della Bosca:

* STOPPED a security guard from checking her identity, and did not get her to sign the visitor's register, when he took her into his parliament office where they had s*x;

* MISSED a morning flight to the NSW regional city of Armidale for a hospital opening and meetings with health officials and spent the afternoon with her;

* BRAGGED about his affair to an Upper House colleague, who offered to employ the woman, because he believed people thought he was a "square"; and

* TOLD the woman he had the backing of caucus to replace Mr Rees, whom she said Della Bosca labelled a "freckle-faced Latham".

The woman said last night that Mr Della Bosca had repeatedly told her he loved her.

"I don't know how he managed to do his job when he spent so much time with me," she said. "There were times when John would cancel work to see me."

Their relationship only ended last month - she said at her behest - after Mr Della Bosca did not follow through on what the woman claims were repeated promises to leave his wife, the federal MP Belinda Neal.

Equal Pay Day, Australia 1 September 2009

Equal pay for equal work - still a global sick joke at the expense of women.

In Australia 40 years after the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission established the principle that women should receive equal pay for equal work and 10 years after establishment of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999 (EOWW Act) the following conditions still exist.

· Women working full-time, year-round in Australia are paid only about 83 cents for every dollar earned by men.
· Lower wages mean less lifetime earnings for women giving them a lifetime of fewer choices.
· Some women in CEO and finance positions earn less than half of their male equivalents.
· The pay gap for women key management personnel is on average 28.3%, 11% higher than the national average gender pay gap.
· The average superannuation payout to a woman is projected to be $150,000: that’s half of the average payout to a man in 2010-11.
· The 17.3% gender pay gap is a national average that opens up to over 30% in some industry sectors.
· Pay inequity reveals systemic discrimination and continued under-valuation of women’s work.
· Equal pay for women can raise family income which means more money to spend on food, housing and childcare. Single mothers and working families lose thousands of dollars annually to the wage gap.
[ taken from http://www.equalpayday.com.au/]

* If current earning patterns continue, the average 25 year old male would earn $2.4 million over the next 40 years while the average 25 year old female would earn $1.5 million (AMP NATSEM (2009), “She works hard for the money”, Income and Wealth Report, Issue 22, p. 34 available at http://www.amp.com.au/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=bdb250665a6cc110VgnVCM1000002930410aRCRD
* Women are two and half times more likely to live in poverty in their old age than men — by 2019, on average, women will have half the amount of superannuation that men have (Queensland Government (2009), “Women and Superannuation”, Focus on Women, Office for Women, Information Paper 3) available at http://www.women.qld.gov.au/resources/focus-on-women/
* The pay gap starts from the moment women leave university, with female graduates earning on average $2,000 p/a less than male graduates ( GradStats 2008, Table 4, available at http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/content/view/full/24)
[taken from National Foundation for Australian Women]

"Many Australians believe women won equal pay in the 70s - but they are wrong," ACTU president Sharan Burrow.

Yes, you've come a long way but you still have a long way to go - and it's only taken an entire lifetime (from babe in arms to retirement) for women to achieve an average female wage rise from around 50 per cent of the average male wage to about 83 per cent of the average male wage. A mere 33 percentge points increase towards wage equality.

Cartoon from Google Images