Senator Fielding proves once more that he is barking mad

Senator Steve Fielding, that born-again political nong from Victoria, appears to think that pregnant women on welfare payments would be eligible for paid parental leave from a full-time job that they don't actually have; similarly that drug addicts would deliberately get pregnant to get paid parental leave for which most would be ineligible anyway; women locked away at the pleasure of Her Maj are in full-time employment; that sex-workers are not entitled to benefits paid to other workers because of their job description; and that all late term abortions are obviously some form of fiscal fiddle.
Stevo's a good example for the argument that political candidates should prove mental competency before their names go on a ballot paper.
Mrs. Fielding - how about doing us all a favour and lock your boy in the back shed whenever Parliament is sitting.
Here's OpenAustralia record of the Senate second reading debate on 16th June 2010:
Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Hansard source
I believe we should be increasing the assistance we give to families with children, because having children is expensive and families need all the help they can get. But the Rudd government’s Paid Parental Leave scheme goes about doing this in the wrong way. The scheme is a long, long way from perfect. Instead of having a policy that benefits all families, such as the baby bonus, the government has come up with a scheme that discriminates against parents, depending on how they choose to raise their children. It is a scheme that places higher value on mothers who leave their children in child care, to quickly return to the workforce within a few months after having a baby, and devalues mothers who want to spend more time at home looking after their children. It is a policy that gives money to prisoners and prostitutes but ignores stay-at-home mums and the important unpaid work that they do. Mums who stay at home and look after their kids will be about $2,000 worse off because of the decision than those mums who rush back to the workforce.........
Another huge flaw in the bill is the fact that people who have late-term abortions would still be eligible to receive paid parental leave payments. That is right. Under this bill drug addicts and welfare cheats can rort the system and get paid parental leave money for nothing. Drug addicts and welfare cheats can get pregnant, then after 20 weeks have an abortion and still pocket the government’s cash. It is absolutely ridiculous and it makes you wonder whether the government is making policy on the run again.

Danger! Dogs do doo

 

A friend of mine has a holiday house in another town and she told me of her experience with her neighbours, or more precisely her neighbours' dogs.

The house has no front fence so the property is delineated by a white pebble boarder which the neighbours' dogs have been using as toilet facilities.

 

Since she doesn't visit that often there is a build up of dog dumps which she has to deal with when she arrives.

Because one dog is quite large and the other is small there is no trouble identifying which present came from which dog.

 

She was busy sorting the sh*t and piling the offending articles into neat heaps in the corner of the neighbours' yards so they could depose of the material when she was confronted by one of the neighbours who started to protest about the boomeranging doggy doo doo.

I think they must have seen the murderous look in her steely eyes and decided that she did have a good point and it would be the right thing to assist her in removing the evidence of months of night time dog visits.

 

This was not the thing that fascinated me - that happened when she told me about the light attached to one of the dogs collar so when it did its night time visit it could see where it was going.

Obviously the owner did not want the dog to be confused and do its business in its own yard, after all why go to the trouble of opening the gate if Fido never made it out.

 

This started me thinking of other aids that could be used so the owner could tell if the mission was accomplished.

I thought of a small device that could be attached to a dog's hips, so that when the dog squatted to do the deed it would sound a warning. The beeping noise you hear when dump truck's reverse I think would be appropriate.

 

Then I thought of a aid for a caring neighbour to warn the unwary of their dogs dropping. It came straight out of an old sci-fi TV show, Lost in Space. There was a robot in the show that at the sign of trouble use to shout "danger Will Roberson danger".

Wouldn't it be great if a small vibration sensitive disk could be dropped from the dogs collar after it finished it nightly visit. So the next morning when you walked out to pick up the morning paper if you stepped to close the pile the warning would sound; " Danger {insert neighbours name} danger".

I am sure someone could convert the little speakers you find in birthday cards.

And the Rudd Government wonders why its reputation is in tatters....

On 20 May 2010 the NT News reported:

LABOR backbencher Marion Scrymgour has once again spoken out against her own party's policy by attacking a decision to continue welfare quarantining.
Ms Scrymgour criticised Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin's dismissal of a recent report that revealed income management was not working.
Chief Minister Paul Henderson this week backed the Commonwealth's decision but said the report by the Menzies School of Health Research needed to be examined.
But Ms Scrymgour lashed out at the Federal Government by making an online post on the Crikey website.
She said the Menzies report was based on "concrete sales data", but the Commonwealth was relying on its own "subjective anecdotal" study.
"It is time to revisit the hype and spin that prevailed back in mid-2007 when this measure was introduced," she said.
"To its great discredit, the Commonwealth Government has maintained the destructive combination of universal income management and the winding down of CDEP, asserting all the while that it sought to act on the basis of 'evidence'."
"The evidence compiled in the Menzies report speaks for itself."
Mr Henderson said Ms Scrymgour was "entitled to her view".

This very public spat was based on the finding of the Menzies Report which was published in the Medical Journal of Australia as Impact of income management on store sales in the Northern Territory.

The Australian Medical Association alerted the media in a press release:
Income management, introduced as part of the Northern Territory Emergency Response in remote Northern Territory communities in 2007, has had no beneficial effect on tobacco and cigarette sales, soft drink or fruit and vegetable sales, according to research published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Then Crikey followed up with The Government campaign against researchers who dared question income management on 11 June 2010 and then reported on an incredible piece of government spin on the basic card issue.

This spin included a 16 May 2010 media release from the Minister's office which addressed reducing sugar consumption in indigenous communities as its principal response to the research findings. However this particular release appears to have disappeared from the Internet and only this response from Jenny Macklin survives on the FaHCSIA website.

Now the original document exchange in this disagreement is on record:

The FaHCSIA Critique of the Menzies Report
Response from the Menzies researchers

A 70 year-old, 16 metre, 41,000 kilo* reason why ethical investors, responsible corporations and caring consumers should avoid Sigma-Aldrich

Sperm Whale photograph from The Telegraph U.K.

An adult male Sperm Whale can live to around 70 years of age, reach up to 16 metres in length and weigh-in at approximately 41,000 kilograms.*

This impressive cetacean species was overhunted in the past and is still on the ICUN vulnerable species index, along with pygmy and dwarf sperm whales.

Yet Sigma-Aldrich is defying Australia's ban on whale products and selling myoglobin taken from whale skeletal muscle in this country.

The Age on June 16 2010:

THE Australian arm of global drug company Sigma-Aldrich has confirmed it has sold a sperm whale extract, as a new European report warns of a second wave of commercial whaling.
Sigma-Aldrich's Sydney office said its call centre had handled limited sales of myoglobin taken from sperm whale skeletal muscle.
Myoglobin is used as a biochemical marker for diagnosis of heart attack. Sigma-Aldrich was yesterday advertising the product for sale at $475.86 a milligram on its website, but last night the price had been removed......
The sale of whale products is illegal in Australia under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Their importation has been banned since 1981.

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society has recently released its May 2010 trade report Reinventing the Whale which suggests that: ..the real reason behind the whaling nations desire to lift the whaling moratorium – they have long-term plans to develop new commercial applications for whale oil including in pharmaceuticals and animal feed.

From the trade report:

As part of our research we searched patent registries in a number of countries for inventions listing whale oil, spermaceti, whale cartilage etc.

We were surprised to find thousands of approved patents for products or processes listing whales as a possible ingredient - from golf balls to hair dye; eco-friendly laundry detergent to confectionaries/candy; and health drinks to bio-diesel.

Many were for international use and approved recently.

This does not mean that the patented product is currently in production using whales; in most cases, the inventors will probably have replicated a list of potential ingredients from an earlier patent of a similar product without having tested whale oil themselves and with no plan to use it. However, in light of our other findings, we are concerned that in some cases the patent is a place-holder pending the resumption of international trade in whale products.

We include details of a mere fraction of the patents we found to illustrate what WDCS believes to be significant potential for the reestablishment of whales as an industrial ingredient.

We provide the number, date and country of issue of each patent noted in this report, but more details of all patents identified in our research can be found at http://www.wdcs.org/........

Numerous other patents issued in Japan for food products, or food production processes, refer to whales as a possible source of ingredients.

These include 'whale gelatin' for health drinks (patent approved in 1999) and products to relieve pre-menstrual symptoms (2003); 'whale wax' for jelly candy (1999); hydrogenated whale oil for breads (1991); and whale oil for confectionary coatings for ice cream and doughnuts (2000), melt-resistant chocolate (2008), as well as for use in conjunction with Coenzyme Q10 in dairy and a wide range of other products (2010).

Several of these inventions have also received patents in the USA. Indeed, despite the fact that the USA prohibits the sale, import, and export of any marine mammal part or product, the US Food and Drug Administration continues to list whale products, such as hydrogenated sperm oil, and spermaceti wax, as safe and allowable food additives and lubricants in bakery pans.

Sigma-Aldrich Corp share price.

Planning law and fast food outlets: in England the court sets things right

In light of the Clarence Valley Council Famous Five's stubborn insistence that they had to take the advice contained in a flawed council officer's report on the McDonald's Australia development application for an eat-in and drive through fast food outlet in Yamba on the NSW North Coast, this outcome a world away shows that councillors don't have to follow 'bad' advice like so many sheep:

Judge makes landmark fast food ruling
Michael Donnelly, PlanningResource, 14 June 2010

Planning approval for a fast food takeaway near a school with a healthy eating policy has been quashed by the High Court.

In a landmark ruling a judge declared that the London Borogh of Tower Hamlets "acted unlawfully" when it gave the go-ahead for "Fried & Fabulous" to open for business at 375 Cable Street, Shadwell, close to Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School.

The judge said councillors had voted in favour of permission after being wrongly directed that they could not take account of the proximity of the local secondary school because it was not "a material planning consideration".

The council will now have to reconsider any further planning application for a takeaway at the site in light of today's ruling.

Councillor Peter Golds, leader of the council's Conservative group, said later: "This is a very important High Court decision.

"It clarifies the law and sets a benchmark that will enable local authorities everywhere to take account of health and well-being - particularly of schoolchildren - as factors in determining planning applications." ...............

Today the planning permission - granted in April following a 5-1 vote in favour, with one abstention - was quashed by Mr Justice Cranston, sitting in London.

The judge said that when the application for a hot-food takeaway was granted by the council's development committee in April, an officer's report specifically advised council members that the proximity of the proposed fast-food outlet to the school could not be a material planning consideration.

Richard Harwood, appearing for the council, had argued that at the committee meeting itself the nearness of the school had in fact been treated as a relevant issue and taken into account.

Rejecting the submission, the judge said the officer's report was "a clear direction to the effect that the points about proximity could not be given any weight at all." ...........

There were indications that committee members who had voted in favour of the takeaway would have reached a different decision "if they had been properly directed".

The judge said: "I declare the council has acted unlawfully and I quash the grant of planning permission."

Just what does the Coalition believe about the postponed emissions trading scheme?

For the last six weeks or so the Coalition Opposition has been trumpeting what it calls Kevin Rudd's failure to implement a national emissions trading scheme in Australia:
"TONY Abbott portrayed Kevin Rudd as a leader who lacks the "guts" to fight for his political convictions today after the Prime Minister shelved the emissions trading scheme. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong today blamed political realities for Mr Rudd's decision to delay the scheme until the end of 2012, citing opposition in the Senate and slow global progress on climate action. Ms Wong also said today that Mr Rudd would not go to a double dissolution election on an ETS because he wanted to serve a full term."
The Opposition spin taken up by the media has been that Rudders has sqibbed it entirely and an ETS is off the books completely, but somebody hasn't told that to the NSW Nats who still believe the scheme is roughly on schedule.
Here's NSW North Coast Nats MP for Clarence Steve Cansdell still trying to scare the locals in his latest letterbox drop: