Backyard pool safety: At long last the penny has dropped at Clarence Valley Council

Having lived in the Clarence Valley for over 35 years and reckon I'm almost a local (but true-blue locals keep moving the goal posts and are now saying you have to be here 40+ years to qualify although they said 10 years ago it was 30+ years) I'm thrilled to bits that Clarence Valley Council is at long last going to do something about back yard pool safety.

We installed a pool 28 years ago and we're still waiting for Council to come and give it its final inspection to say all is AOK with its fence, gate and other safety features.

In a media release titled Pools and fences failing to pass safety guidelines

Clarence Valley Council says it has commenced inspection of swimming pools and fences to ensure compliance under the Swimming Pools Act and Australian Standards.

Mayor Richie Williamson said, “In the first round of inspections, Council officers have been disappointed at the extremely large failure rate, with 9 out of 11 swimming pools and fences failing to pass safety guidelines. This is of great concern, especially as statistics show half of the children under the age of five that drown, do so in private swimming pools or spas.” (www.safewaters.nsw.gov.au)

The majority of failures have involved climbing points too close to the fence and unsatisfactory latching mechanisms.

Council staff will be continuing random inspections throughout the Valley, and will be taking strict action, including on the spot fines if major defects are discovered or pools are unfenced.

It is recommended that owners of pools check their fences and gates to ensure they are working correctly.

A pool safety checklist is available from Council’s offices in Grafton and Maclean, or can be downloaded from the Dept of Local Government website www.dlg.nsw.gov.au – backyard swimming pools.

Independent MP for New England Tony Windsor calls Clarence Valley residents 'feral'

From A Clarence Valley Protest on 3 February 2011:

In which the Independent MP for New England Tony Windsor considers Clarence Valley communities to be feral.

Exchange between Ernest Kitta and Chair of the Inquiry into the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in Regional Australia Tony Windsor, at the Griffith hearing on Tuesday 25 January 2011

Mr Kitta—First of all, I have a couple of questions. What is the environment? It is a very loose term. In the dictionary it says the environment is your surroundings. I think that in Griffith here we are in the most beautiful surroundings you could have, so why take water away? You are taking water from the environment if you send it out to the lakes; you are not giving it to the environment at all. The other one—I am not an irrigation farmer—is that probably, when we get a good flood, some of the water comes in this direction, but by our dams and crops we have provided an environment for the roos and everything else that they would not have had before.This question has been raised quite a bit, and I will not go over it again, but I think it needs emphasising. It is the top end. They are working on the wrong end. They are rationing at the bottom end instead of increasing the supply at the top. The designs have been done for many years for these dams that the previous speaker mentioned. What they do is to go over to the Clarence River and tell the people there—real scare tactics—'We're going to take all your water and send it west.' No such thing has ever been proposed. They proposed to take, I think, the flood waters of 30 per cent of the catchment. I think they would be quite happy to see the flood waters go; they had a flood recently. So it is plain political scare tactics to tell those people that there is no water to come over here. It has really had the lie given to it in Queensland now with the good flood they have had up there. Surely they would not miss a bit of water if they sent it down here. That is my whole point.

CHAIR—Thank you, Ernest. That site for the Clarence dam is in my electorate, and when you go over there and mention that they go absolutely feral! I will tell them you have endorsed it!

Desperate wives in Iceland

It seems even small Iceland (population less than half a million) isn’t immune when it comes to predatory men in the community.

Paragraph in a copy of a March 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks Cablegate:

Desperate Wives

Social service providers report regular contacts with a population of foreign women who have immigrated to Iceland to marry Icelandic citizens whom they have met on-line or through friends and relatives already married to Icelanders. Some of these women live in circumstances akin to slavery. A lawyer for the capital's Intercultural Center offered an example of one Icelandic husband who quit work and insisted that his Chinese wife work three jobs to support him. Only able to sleep for four hours a night, she eventually suffered a breakdown. Some Icelanders at one of her workplaces found her pro bono legal assistance, thanks to which she obtained a divorce and permits to remain and work in Iceland. The Intercultural Center lawyer learns of several such cases a year, most often involving "extremely beautiful" Russian and Baltic women in their twenties brought to Iceland as "trophies" by men in their fifties. The women work long hours, and their husbands take their salaries; some of the men reportedly also sell sexual access to their wives.

DuckHand! Townsville does gallows humour in midst of Cyclone Yasi

clembastow Clem Bastow
Well, I think we can all agree that #duckhand was a perfect example of Australian gallows humour. Hang in there, FNQ! #tcyasi

vanbadham Van Badham
@clembastow I want #DuckHand to run against TAbbott in his seat at the next goddamn election. I will MOVE THERE to vote for DuckHand #tcyasi

Is this man trying to impose a 24hr McDonald's fast food outlet on unwilling New Norfolk residents?

North Coast Voices recently heard from a resident of New Norfolk in the Derwent Valley, Tasmania, with news that the Rockefeller Group had lodged a development application with Derwent Valley Council for a 24 hour fast food outlet in that town and that this was thought to be on behalf of McDonald’s Australia.

The Derwent Valley shares many characteristics with the Lower Clarence Valley where McDonald’s opened another of its fast food outlets in December 2010 in the face of opposition from many Yamba residents.

This is the public face of the Rockefeller Group - Mr Robert Rockefeller.

As Mr. Rockefeller is currently a board member of the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry he can presumably be contacted at email admin@tcci.com.au or fax 6420 7541 if any reader wishes to let this developer know what they think of a McDonald’s 'restaurant' in a relatively small town dependent to some degree on tourism based on early Australian history and the natural environment.

Please feel free to discuss in the comments section of this post.

Do you know where your dog or cat is tonight?

A reminder to pet owners on the NSW North Coast from The Daily Examiner on 24 January 2011:

THE Northern Rivers is one of the worst areas in the state for cat and dog attacks on native wildlife.

According to statistics collected by the Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service (WIRES) over the past 12 months, 267 native animals were attacked in the Northern Rivers region, 191 in the Clarence Valley alone.

Grafton has been listed as the worst area with 62 attacks recorded.

Paul Johnston from the WIRES Clarence Valley branch said the figures represented only the attacks which had been reported to WIRES and “do not include the thousands of animals which die from unreported attacks or those who fall victim to feral cats and dogs who are more likely to eat their prey compared to domestic ones”.

Following Grafton was Yamba with 19 wildlife attacks, with cats responsible for killing a larger percentage of native animals compared to dogs.

In the Northern Rivers, cats were responsible for 14 out of 25 attacks in Ballina and eight of 16 in Alstonville.

Teresa Woodley has been a WIRES carer for the past 10 years and said despite treating the many animals brought to her as a result of an animal attack, the real culprits were the two-legged kind.

“Owners simply need to be more responsible for their pets, especially in rural areas like the Clarence Valley where wildlife is plentiful,” she said.