KRudd makes the Top 10 list of the world's most well-paid pollies and Oz pensioners are happy for him

According to The Times online Oz Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is the world's 10th highest paid political leader.

This fact is of course immensely pleasing to aged and disabled pensioners across the country - particularly those he promised to protect against the recent pension increase being eaten into by public housing rent rises.

Oh, he didn't keep that promise did he?

KRudd pic from News.com.au

Federal Coalition laboured to produce a Clayton's CPRS

Under the headline Coalition Plan to Save Jobs and Reduce Costs, yesterday the Liberal Party and Nationals Coalition produced a train wreck of an emissions trading scheme outline, with its published list of 'amendments' to the Rudd Government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Set out below is what Malcolm Turnbull (with the approval of his shadow cabinet/party room) wants to negotiate in allegedly good faith.

I particularly like the fact that, on the face of it, 90 per cent of carbon credit permits will apparently be free to major polluters virtually forever after - which leads to the inevitable question; "Why bother to implement an emissions trading scheme in the first place?".

Which would of course be the whole aim of this Coalition exercise in intransigent anti-global warming spin.

Trade Exposed Industries

• Amend the CPRS to provide a single level of assistance for emissions intensive trade exposed (EITE) industries at 94.5 per cent until 2015 and 90 per cent thereafter.
  
• Lower the threshold for assistance from the CPRS proposal of 1000 tonnes of CO2 per $1 million of revenue to 850 tonnes of CO2 per $1 million.
  
• Continue to provide assistance to Australian EITE industries at 90 per cent until 80 per cent of their international competitors have also implemented carbon abatement measures.
  
• Include primary food processing such as dairy and meat in the EITE scheme.
  
• Allow industries that include a series of sequential or parallel production processes to have these assessed as a single activity in determining assistance.

Agriculture

• Permanently exclude agricultural emissions from the CPRS.
  
• Obtain Government agreement to introduction of an agricultural offset scheme in line with similar offset schemes to be introduced in comparable economies such as the US and EU.

Coal Mine Emissions

• Exclude coal mine fugitive emissions from the CPRS.
  
• Provide the Minister with authority to use regulation to control fugitive emissions with the objective of achieving a 30 per cent reduction by 2025 as technology and international best practice allow.

Lower Electricity Prices

• The Coalition will continue to advocate an intensity-based cap-and-trade model for generators. This delivers the same emissions cuts as the CPRS but with a much smaller increase in electricity prices.
  
• This would greatly reduce the burden on small and mid-sized businesses, which receive no compensation for higher power bills under Labor's proposals.
  
• Under the CPRS retail electricity prices will rise by close to 20 per cent in the first two years. Under an intensity approach, retail electricity prices would rise by less than 5 per cent in the first two years.
  
• If the Government continues to refuse to consider the intensity model, the Coalition will negotiate for an alternative approach to cushion near-term electricity price increases for small businesses.

Compensation for Electricity Generators

• Coal-fired generators must be better compensated for loss of value they experience from the CPRS, to ensure security of electricity supply and enable them to transition to lower emission energy sources.
  
• The CPRS offers coal-fired generators 130 million permits over five years worth $3.6 billion. Yet three respected private sector analysts estimate their losses at $9–$11 billion.
  
• Assistance should be increased to 390 million permits over 15 years (or about $10 billion). Assistance should be allocated to all generators in proportion to the losses they suffer.
  
• In the absence of access to the Government's secret Morgan Stanley report, this represents the Coalition's best estimate of appropriate generator compensation given the available data.

Energy Efficiency and Voluntary Action

• The Coalition will negotiate for a national "white certificate" energy efficiency scheme so households and businesses earn credits for efficiency measures, and contribute to reducing national emissions.
  
• Likewise, the Coalition supports creation of a voluntary offset market in advance of the introduction of the CPRS, and amending the CPRS to ensure voluntary abatement leads to a lower national level of emissions.
  
  

If Malcolm Turnbull understands an ETS the way he knows his Shakespeare then Australia is in real trouble

I couldn't believe my ears on Sunday last, there was our fearless Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull holding forth on Shakespeare in an attempt to denigrate the upcoming Copenhagen international climate change talks.

He was foolishly repeating what he'd said to a gathering of foreign correspondents on Monday week; "And as another one of my companions noted it is worth remembering that Copenhagen was the home of Hamlet, famous principally for indecision. So that is a sombre reflection."

Uh, no, Malcolm. Hamlet is popularly supposed to be a tale played out in "Elsinore or Helsingør north of Copenhagen, on the place where Denmark is closest to Sweden - only 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) of water divides the two countries", (possibly in a castle which was erected around 1420) and on a nearby plain and in a generic churchyard.

Denmark's capital Copenhagen while situated close by is historically separate from the old port town of Helsingør.

Every final year highschool English student would be bound to know the difference.
I certainly hope that Turnbull has a better grasp of the principles of an emission trading scheme, than he does of geography and the Bard.

Horatio
Byron

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.

Ralph Lauren brand owner hits out at blogger for laughing at advertisement blunder and blogger hits back

PRL USA Holdings, owner of the brand Ralph Lauren, issued a DMCA notice on 2 October 2009 to the blog PsD: Photoshop Disasters, for laughing at a Blue Label advertisement of a super skinny model (with distorted dimensions) which is still being displayed in Google cache as I write.

PsD now has a second Lauren advert posted The hits keep coming with a photo allegedly taken in Sydney - proving once more that displaying a humour deficit can lead to more people finding out about your company's photoshop blunders than if you had originally just taken it on the chin.

Image from PsD post The hits keep coming, 14 October 2009

Mysteries of the sea.....

Greenpeace International has an online blacklist of fishing vessels allegedly involved in unlawful commercial fishing.
One of these boats was built in Castile, operates out of an Italian port and apparently sailed at one time under the flag of Afghanistan while fishing in the Mediterranean.
It seems that you can legally register an ocean going vessel in that war-torn landlocked country.
This must rank up there somewhere with the notion of a Swiss Navy.

Local film maker Pauline Clague's latest work featured on ABC TV in October 2009

Pauline Clague, originally from the Clarence Valley and with family still living there, is featuring on ABC Message Stick this month.

Pauline is now an accomplished writer and film maker - I'm sure that the documentary will be both interesting and informative as this press release suggests:

Maralinga-The Anangu Story

Producer: Pauline Clague
TX Date: Sunday 18th October, 1:30pm, ABC 1
Monday 19th October, 5:00pm, ABC 2
Friday 23rd October, 6:00pm, ABC 1

50 years ago British atomic tests were carried out on Australian soil at a place called “Maralinga” in north-western, South Australia.
Yvonne Edwards talks about her feeling on the bomb tests: “When the bomb went off. Like the spirit of the people that were buried there, went up in the bomb, and this man looked down and he is crying and all the kangaroos and emus are just skeletons around the place were the bomb went off”
Originally a Reserve for the Anangu, their mission at Ooldea was shut down, but they were not told why. They were mostly moved to new country, Yalata on the coast near the start of the nullabor plains.
Some of the Anangu people had effects from the radiation poisoning, others were workers in the seventies and eighties at Maralinga Village. Many have passed away, but some are still enduring the effects of the exposure to the poison today.
Many are still grieving the loss of their people and land from that time, Yvonne Edwards ”sometimes I cry at night. My aunties, uncles, they was young, they all died. Just like us here now, in our fifties, we got nobody over sixties and seventies in our community. Even people died when they was young. I lost a sister, when she was in her twenties, from cancer. I lost an uncle, forties, from cancer. My aunty died, from cancer”
Earlier this year a book of Anangu stories and paintings about their lives and the effects the bomb had on the Anangu people of that region was published. Christobel Mattingley the co-author, who worked alongside the Oak Valley and Yalata communities, states how she feels about the project “ The story of the injustices to the Aboriginal people, the Anangu people, through the Maralinga atomic testing are not widely known or remembered now. It’s a chapter that people have forgotten and it’s a tragic chapter and it’s an –extremely important chapter of Australian history.”
Despite the history of this area and the hardships incurred by the bombing, the Anangu are hoping that the final restricted zone, of which Maralinga Village is a part, will be returned to them in December this year. The soil may be contaminated, but it is still their home. They know they may not be able to camp in some of the areas, but like their stories they are trying to pass on to the future generation the stories and the land of their peoples.

Photograph from Australia Council for the Arts

What's in that icecream you are eating?

What's in that icream you are eating that wasn't there in your grandmother's day?

In Australia the Federal Government has in total eight pages listing foods using gene technology and approved for sale under the Food Standards Australian New Zealand Act 1991.

Including nine versions of New Leaf potato, canola seed/oil/flour/syrup, corn/flour/oil/syrup/food grade ethanol, cotton oils/cottonseed oils, glucose made from fungus, soy foods/oil/protein meal, pectin, baker's yeast/yeast, icestructuring protein made from fish, food processing enzyme made from a bacteria, and sugar beet.

Genetically modified organisms can now form part of the production process or ingredients in foods - from takeaway foods like fish & chips/meat pies, frozen convenience food such as lasagna/pizza, to staples like bread through to traditional desserts that your grandmother used to make.

GM products approved as food, food additives and processing aids (PDF 79 KB)
GM products approved as therapeutics (PDF 19 KB)
GM products approved as pesticides or veterinary medicines (PDF 9 KB)

List of applications and licences for Dealings involving Intentional Release (DIR) of GMOs into the environment on behalf of CSIRO, BSES Ltd, Florigene P/L, Dept of Primary Industry (Vic), Bayer Crop Science P/L, Monsanto Australia Ltd, Queensland UT, University of Queensland, University of Adelaide, Hexima Ltd, Dept. of Primary Industries & Fisheries (Qld), Imugene Ltd, Dow AgroSciences Australia P/L, Syngenta Seeds P/L, Dept of Primary Industries, Aventis CropScience P/L.

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

Photo from Google Images

The adorable cuteness of being

Baby Squirrel from Daily Squee

First floods, then dust storms, now fire - NSW North Coast braces for further troubles in 2009

Brooms Head fire on the Clarence Coast

By late yesterday afternoon, there were 18 fires still listed by the NSW Rural Fire Service on the North Coast - thirteen of these in the Clarence Valley, two in the Kyogle area, one in the Coffs Harbour district and one each in the Richmond and Tweed Valleys.

Heartfelt thanks to those Firies on the frontline and other emergency service personnel. They may be very busy this summer.

The Daily Examiner Clarence Valley fire photographs

NSW RFS fire safety information sheets - Prepare, Act, Survive

Bright winding ribbon discovered at edge of solar system - it's the Universe waving Earth goodbye

This week NASA announced the discovery of a bright winding ribbon within the heliosphere surrounding our solar system.

One jaded local (tiring of the uphill battle to get government to do something about actually reducing national, state and regional carbon emission levels rather than just talking around the problem) suggests that this ribbon is the Universe giving one last wave goodbye to an Earth choking to death on greenhouse gases and other pollutants.