Tingle, Smith and Borsak think a name change will make the Australian Shooters Party more palatable to the electorate?

The Australian Electoral Commission has announced that The Australian Shooters Party now has a new name - Shooters and Fishers Party or just plain Shooters and Fishers for short.

If I remember correctly, at the 2007 federal election this party received less than one per cent of votes cast and it has certainly been on the nose recently due to the conduct of Robert Borsak in New South Wales.

When it comes to hunting, elephants would have to up there with the whales as iconic untouchables for many Australian voters and the overseas hunting trips taken by Borsak almost guarantees a poor voter turnout if he stands at the next federal election.

I suspect that this has something to do with the name change and attempt to widen its base - but I don't think Tingle, Smith or Borsak remember the old adage of a leopard and its spots.

Cybersquatting on photographs: one form of identity theft on the Internet

One hears a lot about identity theft these days and the need to protect personal online information, but what one doesn't hear about that much is the use of photographs of real people to represent other people who are using the Internet to promote or sell either themselves or saleable items (sometimes through use of a fictitious online persona).

This type of photo squatting is not as simple and straightforward as commandeering the image of a famous person from the past or a current politician/celebrity as an avatar accompanying online comments made using a pen name; this is more a stated claim involving the downloading and re-naming of an existing jpg file and then uploading it again to the Internet to represent a second person/fictitious persona without the knowledge or permission of the first person in the original photograph.

These 'fake' photographs often turn up on auction and dating sites. Sometimes the fakes appear to involve activity bordering on the unlawful, sometimes they appear to simply be misrepresentation of the second person's actual physical appearance - a type of wishful thinking.

What is obvious is that the people who have had their photographs hijacked in this way rarely have any idea that their faces are out there in cyberspace often inserted in biographies which give them street addresses, phone numbers, emails, jobs, partners and/or families that bear no relationship to their own lives.

Do you know where those happy snaps you may have posted on your website or social networking page have migrated to?

Graphic from Silhouette Clip Art

Australian Goanna Pulling Championships, Wooli 4 October 2009

It's almost October, when it will be time for the Goanna Pulling Championships.
Date: 4 October 2009

Venue: Wooli Sports Ground, Wooli

Contact: (02) 6649 7740 for details.

Past contestants

battling it out

in Wooli on the

NSW North Coast.

Pic from Google Images

A pre-Copenhagen 2009 climate change question for governments of the day

It is widely accepted that (i) there is an increase in global warming due to anthropomorphic activity (principally though greenhouse gas emissions), (ii) this increase in warming is/will result in climate change with a significant deleterious effect on natural environment, infrastructure and society, (iii) there is limited extant legislation and/or binding treaty which seeks to adapt human activities in order to reduce these emissions at the national or international level, and (iv) the continent and territorial waters of the Commonwealth of Australia are/will experience the negative effects of climate change earlier or to a greater degree than some other nations.

What is also beginning to emerge is the possibility that few, if any, national governments are willing to create legitimate policy or enact legislation which seeks to either curb actual greenhouse gas emissions or limit exposure to climate change impacts. To date political rhetoric on climate change has been profuse and relatively worthless.

It is also becoming apparent that with a few exceptions change of government is unlikely to lead to real policy change in relation to how a country deals with global warming and, in Australia, any change of government is just as likely to result in a weakening of structural response.

So when will Australians start to band together and sue one or all of the three tiers of government (under existing common, statute law and/or international treaty) in order to effect climate change mitigation?

An critique: CLIMATE CHANGE LITIGATION IN THE LAND AND ENVIRONMENT COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES AND OTHER COURTS,The Hon. Justice Brian J Preston Chief Judge Land and Environment Court of NSW,August 2009