'Cause a light-hearted view of the world never goes amiss.....

Footpath sign in the main street of Maclean "The Scottish Town" on the NSW North Coast...........everything else is just old newspaper wrapping this quick and easy meal.

Thanks to Clarencegirl for the pic.

There's more to lose than a few dollars if antimony mining is again allowed in the Clarence River catchment

…………wealth is about more than money.
Quality of life and the environment feature pretty high on my agenda. And we need to be mindful of what happens after we sell off the farm. In the case of the proposed antimony and gold mines in the Wild Cattle Creek and Tyringham areas - the mining company would be Chinese, the approving authority the Bellingen Shire Council and most of the workers (and there is unlikely to be too many of them) would probably be based in Coffs.
But who cops the risk if a tailings dam fails and mercury or other heavy metals spew into the tributaries of the Nymboida River?
The Clarence Valley, of course.
And it appears unlikely to receive any of the benefits.
Mining has helped Australia ride out an international financial storm, but we need to be careful that we look at more than dollar signs when considering projects. There's more to lose than a few dollars.

[David Bancroft, Editor, The Daily Examiner 2 July 2011]

Willie Soon tells the world that porkers can fly

 

“One of the world's most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies.

Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for his view that global warming and the melting of the arctic sea ice is caused by solar variation rather than human-caused CO2 emissions, and that polar bears are not primarily threatened by climate change.

But according to a Greenpeace US investigation, he has been heavily funded by coal and oil industry interests since 2001, receiving money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world's largest coal-burning utility companies.

Since 2002, it is alleged, every new grant he has received has been from either oil or coal interests.

In addition, freedom of information documents suggest that Soon corresponded in 2003 with other prominent climate sceptics to try to weaken a major assessment of global warming being conducted by the UN's leading climate science body, the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Soon, who had previously disclosed corporate funding he received in the 1990s, was today reportedly unapologetic, telling Reuters that he agreed that he had received money from all of the groups and companies named in the report but denied that any group would have influenced his studies. ‘{The Guardian on 28 June 2011}

Porker flew in from Google Images

For no other reason than this political comment appears to be getting up Gerry Harvey's nose [video]

http://youtu.be/7ZSRLbRQVHk

The Sydney Morning Herald 4 July 2011:

MFC and GetUp! had planned to launched a 60-second television commercial targeting Harvey Norman, which is a major TV advertising client.
But the groups said the ad had been refused classification by industry body Commercials Advice - which provides classification and information to advertisers, agencies and production houses - on the basis that it might expose free-to-air TV stations to legal action.
The ad was due to be shown during this week's State of Origin rugby league decider.
GetUp! national director Simon Sheikh said the classification decision amounted to corporate censorship.
"The reason given to us for the refusal was that running the ad may expose networks to lawsuits from Harvey Norman, but this assessment is beyond [Commercials Advice's] mandate," he said in a statement.

Markets for Change
‘NoHarveyNo: How Australia’s largest furniture and electronics retailers is driving the destruction of our native forests.’: Executive Summary and Report
Commercials Advice (CAD) 2010 Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice

We want to buy your farms and mines, says China

 

我們要買你的牧場和礦場我們要買你的牧場和礦場我們要買你的牧場和礦場

"We want to buy your farms and mines"
The Daily Examiner 2 July 2011

Chinese Government 'world view' as expressed at the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China:

China is a development nation with a large population but limited resources. In the new century, strengthening China's cooperation with other developing nations in the fields of science and technology and economy has become unprecedentedly urgent and important. Such cooperation will obviously create ways and means for taking full advantage of the respective strength of different countries, alleviating poverty, accelerating economic development and making fortunes for their people. Such cooperation will also become a stimulus to the south-south cooperation and enhance our international competitiveness and risk resistance so as to allow more positive involvement in the economic globalization process, safeguarding our economic interests and security, and enhancing the visibility of developing nations in south-north dialogues.

The China Shandong Jinshunda Group Co Ltd through its Australian mining exploration arm, Anchor Resources Ltd, is now seeking ways to put this philosophy into action at Wild Cattle Creek in the Clarence River catchment.

* Wild Cattle Creek: China encourages mining in Clarence River catchment in order to conserve its own national resources? 25 June 2011
* Is Chris Hartcher trying to flannel the Clarence Valley? 30 June 2011
* No problems with any new Wild Cattle Creek tailing dams, according to the China Shandong Jinshunda Group 1 July 2011

NAIDOC Week 4-10 July 2011

NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Local NAIDOC Events Calendar

FFS! Is Abbott for real?

When I first heard this masterful piece of economic nonsense last Thursday I couldn't believe my ears.
When asked about foreign mining companies and the money they derive from Australia's non-renewable resources, Tony Abbott said; "We’ve got to remember that foreign investors take millions out of our country but they put billions in first"
It seems Abbott refuses to recognise that he has no capacity for basic economics.
Rio Tinto alone produced net profit after tax of A$37.4 billion in Australia in the 10 years to 2009. That's about 3.74 billion annually that it probably took home to head office in a brown paper bag.
As for the tax these multinationals pay, well that's quite frankly laughable.
In the 2007-08 financial year 4,290 mining companies had combined incomes which totalled $160,323,192,189 with combined taxable incomes of $29,010,243,407.
Net tax actually paid was $8,068,463,15 after all allowed deductions had been made.
Of course the royalties mining businesses paid in the past were all tax deductible, and as exporters these same companies get such a whopping collective GST refund that it all but wipes out the financial impact of money paid in taxes by the industry as a whole.
Any fool can see that foreign mining companies are on a sweet deal here. So what does that make Tony Abbott - a specimen lower than a fool or simply a Lib?