The world according to Abbott in 150 words or less

The world according to Tony Abbott in 150 words or less....

Garrett has committed the equivalent of industrial manslaughter, Stephen Conroy is a Labor bagman carrying election bribes to the media, the poor often prefer to be penniless and homeless, the country will be better off if more income producing government assets are sold, unfair dismissal rules and penalty rates for weekend work should be tossed out the window, NSW & QLD public hospitals would be more economically viable if run by the mates network, a dying Bernie was faking his indignation, it is always the the highway's fault when my official car cuts in front of a truck, every young girl should go to her marriage bed gift-wrapped as a virgin, only women should do the household ironing, climate science is crap, the national economy is boring and my knob is so-o-o much bigger than Kevin Rudd's so you should trust me.

It literally took Barnaby Joyce years before he permanently parted company from reality and started to spout nonsense - the current Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has reached la-la land much sooner it seems.

International Women's Day Brunch, Yamba 6 March 2010

LOWER CLARENCE WOMEN’S GROUP
INVITES YOU TO

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
BRUNCH

SATURDAY 6 MARCH 2010
10 AM – 11.30 AM

TREELANDS DRIVE COMMUNITY CENTRE YAMBA

GUEST SPEAKERS
‘Love Bites Program’
ENTERTAINMENT
‘Youthful voice & guitar’

RAFFLE for local Women’s project
‘Deborah Novak mounted photos’

DONATIONS TO UNIFEM

Cost: $10 per person Concession $5.00

Please book by Thursday 4 March
Yamba Community Centre
Tel: 6646 1478

General enquiries:
Susan Howland – 6645 0001 or 6646 2129 or 0427 975 131
susan.howland@clarence.nsw.gov.au

Support of the Office for Women’s Policy and Clarence Valley Council is appreciated.

How we found out that there is a bunyip in the creek

Possibly a true story.....

The day was just like many others. Dusk was falling and the frogs were warming up for the night-time chorus.

Then we heard a strange yodelling sound and looking down towards the flat we saw someone running up the creek bank and falling into the long grass.
So the hubby and I jumped into the paddock basher and motored down to see what was going on.

Lying in the paddock was the next door neighbour "Bob" as naked as the day he was born. The smell on his breath left no doubt that a large amount of alcohol had been consumed (and possibly a assortment of other rather more illegal substances).

He was mumbling about being attacked by a large, black, hairy bunyip.
So on the lookout for Bob’s clothes and the bunyip, I grabbed a bucket and headed down to the creek to get some water as our neighbour was not in good straits.

After we cleaned him up we loaded him into the Torana and drove him home.
His wife strongly objected to him entering the house, so Hubby took him into the shed. A couple of horse blankets on the hay and Bob was as snug as a bug in a rug.

On the back veranda I found an esky with one long neck and quite a few empties.
I filled these empties up with water, replaced the screw caps and took them down to the shed.

Bob was regaling Hubby about the bunyip and how it attacked him: his heroic efforts to fight the dreaded beast and how he escaped its clutches.

Seeing me or more likely the beer, Bob insisted that he needed drink. I gave Hubby the only bottle of beer left in the esky which he and Bob shared while I went back to the house.

When I returned Bob was still worried that the bunyip was coming to get him, so Hubby had convinced him that I knew a sure fire bunyip stopping spell.
Glaring at both of them, I told them that I could cast a bunyip proof barrier around the shed, but if I did both of them will have to stay in there till dawn. Hubby fairly bolted out of the shed.

In casting my sure fire spell I walked around the shed reciting all of the plant botanical names I could think of - finishing with a rousing chorus of “grevillea robusta, GREVILLEA ROBUSTA, GREVILLEA ROBUSTA!"

Bob looked happy when I completed the circuit of the shed and the spell was in place, but as we started to leave his doubts grew.

It was then I remembered that a side effect of this spell is that it makes beer go flat and taste like water. Bob was keen to try the beer and to his surprise the spell worked. He was very pleased when I counselled that if he needed to check if the spell was still working all he had to do was have another bottle of 'beer' from the esky.

Would you believe it we finally arrived home in time to feed the Angus poddy calf.

Somerville responds to climate change denialism

 

A Response to Climate Change Denialism

Richard Somerville, a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, issued the following statement in response to a recent request to address claims recently made by climate change denialists:  

1. The essential findings of mainstream climate change science are firm. This is solid settled science. The world is warming. There are many kinds of evidence: air temperatures, ocean temperatures, melting ice, rising sea levels, and much more. Human activities are the main cause. The warming is not natural. It is not due to the sun, for example. We know this because we can measure the effect of man-made carbon dioxide and it is much stronger than that of the sun, which we also measure.  

2. The greenhouse effect is well understood. It is as real as gravity. The foundations of the science are more than 150 years old. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat. We know carbon dioxide is increasing because we measure it. We know the increase is due to human activities like burning fossil fuels because we can analyze the chemical evidence for that.  

3. Our climate predictions are coming true. Many observed climate changes, like rising sea level, are occurring at the high end of the predicted changes. Some changes, like melting sea ice, are happening faster than the anticipated worst case. Unless mankind takes strong steps to halt and reverse the rapid global increase of fossil fuel use and the other activities that cause climate change, and does so in a very few years, severe climate change is inevitable. Urgent action is needed if global warming is to be limited to moderate levels.  

4. The standard skeptical arguments have been refuted many times over. The refutations are on many web sites and in many books. For example, natural climate change like ice ages is irrelevant to the current warming. We know why ice ages come and go. That is due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun, changes that take thousands of years. The warming that is occurring now, over just a few decades, cannot possibly be caused by such slow-acting processes. But it can be caused by man-made changes in the greenhouse effect.  

5. Science has its own high standards. It does not work by unqualified people making claims on television or the Internet. It works by scientists doing research and publishing it in carefully reviewed research journals. Other scientists examine the research and repeat it and extend it. Valid results are confirmed, and wrong ones are exposed and abandoned.  Science is self-correcting. People who are not experts, who are not trained and experienced in this field, who do not do research and publish it following standard scientific practice, are not doing science. When they claim that they are the real experts, they are just plain wrong.

6. The leading scientific organizations of the world, like national academies of science and professional scientific societies, have carefully examined the results of climate science and endorsed these results. It is silly to imagine that thousands of climate scientists worldwide are engaged in a massive conspiracy to fool everybody. The first thing that the world needs to do if it is going to confront the challenge of climate change wisely is to learn about what science has discovered and accept it.   

[Taken from Scripps Institution of Oceanography announcement]

Is Tony Abbott failing to read the mood of the electorate?

Another of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's policy one-liners surfaced over the last few days in relation to health services and he is now proposing the 'return' of local boards to run public hospitals. No real change to the centralised federal and state administrative systems which allocate health funding and no significant increase in that funding - just another layer of bureaucracy added back into the mix in New South Wales and Queensland in particular.

This is what the man (who as former Health Minister resisted calls to increase federal health funding over his five-year tenure and left office with Commonwealth funding running at approximately 42-43% of total health funding) had to say in yesterday's press release, which refined his message to include the possibility of the abolition of NSW and Queensland area health service management leaving each region without a co-ordinated approach to service delivery or forward planning and presumably individual hospitals left to fight for their own piece of the federal-state funding pie.

Community response to this Coalition policy and its lack of detail appears lukewarm to say the least with the state governments highly resistant to the idea and, the Essential Report poll of 1,033 respondents between 9 and 14 February on the question of responsibility for Australia's public hospitals clearly shows that Abbott is not reading the mood of the electorate on the issue of who should be taking responsibility for our hospitals.

Q. Would you support or oppose the Federal Government taking over the responsibility for hospitals from the State Governments?
Total support 58%
Total oppose 10%
Strongly support 26%
Support 32%
Neither support nor oppose 19%
Oppose 7%
Strongly oppose 3%
Don’t know 13%

Over half (58%) of those surveyed support the Federal Government taking over responsibility for hospitals from the State Governments, 10% disapprove, 19% neither support nor oppose and 13% don’t know.
People aged 55 years and over were more likely that those in other age groups to support a Federal Government takeover of hospitals (79%).
People in NSW were more likely than those in any other states to support a hospitals takeover (67%), while people in Western Australia (18%) and South Australia (17%) were more likely to oppose such a move.
Males were more likely than females to support a hospital takeover by the Federal Government (65% v 52%).
Support for a Federal Government takeover of hospitals from the State Government was highest amongst Labor voters (70%), followed by Coalition voters (63%) and then Green voters (54%).

Abbott's foray into the area of industrial relations policy last Friday and his pledge to roll back workplace relations legislation until it reflects the intent of John Howard's much hated Work Choices also appears set to lead the Coalition down a rocky road.