Hitting the ground, not only running but ready for action

It certainly looks like Tony Abbott has hit the ground running and that he is determined to see the opposition actually meeting its job description by opposing the government, with the first order of business being to defeat the truly bad ETS proposed and developed By Brother Number One and Penny W(r)ong. It may just be me but I detected more than just a scrap of “fire in the belly” in Tony Abbott’s interview performance on the 730 report last night and the look on Kerry’s Face was one of absolute delight to have Tony on the other side of the desk. Tony was immediately on message that the CPRS was a massive tax that would require a huge bureaucracy to administer it for no environmental gain. This is a message that is absolutely true and one that will get traction in the electorate even if Brother Number One puts that Glock to his head to play Russian roulette by calling a double dissolution election.

TONY Abbott has vowed to muscle up on Kevin Rudd, saying he can win next year’s federal election by turning the heat on the Labor Government.

Mr Abbott set his sights on the Prime Minister within hours of his stunning victory in yesterday’s Liberal Party leadership showdown.

But Labor hit back at the former amateur boxer with a blunt advertising campaign which signals a new intensity in federal politics.

“It will be a clean contest but where I think that Kevin Rudd deserves to have his follies and fatuities exposed, I will do that,” Mr Abbott said.

He accused Mr Rudd of spending too much time overseas and being a prime minister who “loves a crisis to give him an excuse to run to the airport”.

Labor’s rapidfire attack targeted Mr Abbott, saying he was taking “Australia backwards on climate change and back to WorkChoices”.

The fact that Labor has already started to develop and run election style ads attacking Mr Abbott and that they have already rolled out The Silver Bodgie to declare Tony Abbott unelectable and a “temporary” leader  shows just how scared they are to be facing someone who is a real, take no prisoners, political pugilist  . I think that anyone who wants to make the call that this change will mean an easy retention of the lodge by Brother Number One at the next election is kidding themselves and perhaps they should remember the basic premise of all of Sly Stallone’s Rocky films where a man that every one has written off pulls of an unlikely victory by sheer will and determination…

Cheers Comrades

An Abbott and a Bishop have an exciting day in Canberra…

The new Leadership team, Tony Abbott and deputy Julie Bishop, at Parliament House in Canberra (picture from the Australian)

There are some days when I am a little bored by Australian politics and I find it just a to big an ask to find something interesting to write about here. Today when all of the “action” was happening I was actaully out doing the grocery shopping. I did manage to see Tony Abbott’s press conference in the TV department of Big W and in the absence of a remote control to turn the sound up I had to be contented with reading the wonky subtitles (with worse spelling than mine!) I remain delighted by the result , not because I think that Tony Abbott is my dream leader for the Libs but because it means that Brother Number One’s terrible CPRS scheme is effectively dead. I feel that the country has dodged a very nasty bullet here with the inevitable defeat or deferral of this nasty and stupid bill.
The Australian public are in interested in the mundane things like making a living and looking after their families. They have never taken to kindly to unnecessary taxation that is created under false pretences, because even if you are a dyed in the wool Warminista there is no doubt that no ETS is going to do anything at all about reducing our emissions. Not one gram less CO2 will be emitted under the government scheme, and even if it did make a difference to our emissions, that saving will be dwarfed by the increases from the likes of China and India. That is a simple and very saleable message for any opposition willing to actaully oppose the government’s dishonest message on “climate change”.
So we begin another chapter in Australian Politics and time will tell how it will turn out, frankly I think that politics has just become more interesting and that has got to be a good thing.
Cheers Comrades

Swiss ban on minarets, and another religious question closer to home

Well this is a turn up for the books, and one that will have the latte sippers choking on their caffeine fix. I am just waiting for them to start frothing at the mouth about the “racism” of this plebiscite and for them to insist that it proves that western culture is evil and that we should ,as a consequence of this vote, engage in a storm of self loathing…

Zurich's main train station had many posters in favor of the minaret ban. Credit: Arnd Wiegmann

On one level, the vote to ban minarets in Switzerland is a triviality. The constitutional amendment does not ban mosques, it does not pull down the country’s four existing minarets, nor does touch the practice of Islam in Switzerland or bear on the many issues concerning Swiss Muslims. In all likelihood, the political establishment in Bern, which abominates the amendment, will find some way to overturn it.

But on another level, the 57.5 to 42.5 percent vote represents a possible turning point for European Islam, one comparable to the Rushdie affair of 1989. That a large majority of those Swiss who voted on Sunday explicitly expressed anti-Islamic sentiments potentially legitimates such sentiments across Europe and opens the way for others to follow suit. That it was the usually quiet, low-profile, un-newsworthy, politically boring, neutral Swiss who suddenly roared their fears about Islam only enhances their votes’ impact.

I think that any political movement that wants to rule the world can and should, in the first instance, be questioned and then if it is found to have a deleterious affect upon the society it can and should be limited by legislation if that is the will of a clear majority the people. I am reminded of another religious question that is being considered  some time this morning (here in Oz) the only difference between the two issues is that the religious zealots here want to build far more ephemeral towers amongst the smoke and mirrors of the derivatives markets forcing all of us to listen to the Gaian call to prayer whenever we make a cup of tea or turn on a light…

Personally I don’t know which would be worse or (dare I say it?) more  pernicious.

Cheers Comrades

Joe sets his sights on the big chair

As it gets towards an end game in the Liberal party over the leadership it seems that Malcolm’s terrible show of public whining and his almost suicidal (in the political sense) media blitz has resulted in the more palatable candidate to the electorate, Joe hockey finding a way around his self-made road blocks to the big chair.

Mr Hockey would be able to insist that, although he favoured the CPRS, the division in his party required it to look more closely at the proposal through a committee examination that would continue until at least February.

Under the deal, Mr Abbott would become the opposition’s Treasury spokesman and Senator Minchin would take on finance – the same portfolio he held in office under John Howard.

Mr Hockey would not confirm his intentions last night, but contacted The Australian to deny television news reports that he had decided to run, saying he was still agonising over the issue.

However, sources said he was a near certainty to run and would confront Mr Turnbull with his plan in Canberra this morning.

We may not know today how things are going to go for the Liberal party leadership but we can be certain that the Turnbull experiment is over whichever way the vote in the party room goes and it seems that the only person who does not realise that is Malcolm himself. Now perhaps it may be time for him to bow out with some dignity and grace like his predecessor because the time has come to put the good of the party ahead of his religious belief (in climate change) and his personal ambitions.

Cheers Comrades

An incredible 80 per cent of Australians don’t even understand the ETS and want the Rudd Government to explain it better”

In the comments for my previous post on this topic Ray was excited by the prospect that the ETS issue could be the one that keeps Brother Number One in the lodge for the next two terms, but the Galaxy Poll done for the Sunday Mail suggests that the CRPS is by no means a lay down missaire for the current governments electoral prospects.

Tony Abbott seems to be ahead of the pack at present (image from the Australian)

The secret talks yesterday came as an exclusive poll for The Sunday Mail reveals voters have overwhelmingly rejected Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to help rush Kevin Rudd’s ETS laws through Parliament.

The Galaxy poll also shows Coalition supporters strongly prefer Mr Hockey as leader over Mr Turnbull and declared challenger Tony Abbott.

The results are more shocking for Mr Turnbull, as they strongly endorse the Liberal rebels trying to oust him – showing that 60 per cent of voters want the ETS delayed.

An incredible 80 per cent of Australians don’t even understand the ETS and want the Rudd Government to explain it better.

The devastating poll will reinforce the push from within the Liberal Party for Mr Hockey to put his hand up to lead the party as a still defiant Mr Turnbull faces a growing rebellion.

As I see it if 80% of voters do not understand how the CRPS is supposed to work then they will be amenable to the simple message that it won’t actually do anything to reduce our emissions and that it will cost everyone a Motza to do Sweet F A for the environment, the opposition can also work with the message that that such a big problem should be approached with caution and not the undue haste that Brother Number One is applying to the “problem”. This is a message that can work even for the electors who believe that the “warming” is man made and amenable to some sort of “engineering” solution.
Anyway I think that next Tuesday will be an very interesting day for the politically involved.
Cheers Comrades

Oh yeah Andrew Bolt facing the collective couch on The Insiders conservative chair this week should be interesting and I bet the CRU emails get an airing…

As dead as Malcolm’s leadership prospects?

At the risk of sparking a backlash from some dumbarse storkers at you-know-where (who have so little self respect that they can’t take the slightest bit of fair criticism), I feel compelled to report on the amazing lack of interest shown in the current Liberal leadership debacle over at …. well, a certain website that shall remain nameless (apart from below!)

Here’s a current screen shot (click on image to enlarge):

Boy, for people who usually delight in sticking it to the Liberals especially over the Global Warming debate, there ain’t a lot happening at that blog. It looks like no one is really interested in even contributing any new posts, let alone commenting.

Face it, the expirement has failed boys. The souffle has not reheated. Maybe change the name to:

G R O U P S H R I N K 

Tesco has paid £25 million to have its plastic bag scheme endorsed by Professor Mohan Munasinghe

It doesn’t rain but it pours! Just as the Warminista faithful begin to treat their abraded and chafed knees (injured while scrambling to find excuses fro Phil Jones and his pals) a new scandal emerges for the faith because it seems that the UK retailer Tesco has paid £25 million to have its plastic bag  scheme endorsed by Professor Mohan Munasinghe :

Professor Mohan Munasinghe has admitted his report had not given a full picture of the situation in Ireland

Professor Mohan Munasinghe claimed the supermarket’s policy of rewarding customers who reuse bags with ClubCard points was ‘more effective’ than charging.

In fact, when Ireland introduced charges in 2002, the number of throwaway bags given out by stores was slashed by 90per cent overnight.

Similarly, a decision by Marks & Spencer to introduce a 5p charge in May last year brought a drop of more than 70per cent with immediate effect.

By contrast, Tesco claims to have reduced the number of bags issued by a much lower 50per cent over a three year period through offering tiny Clubcard incentives.

The idea that Prof Munasinghe could endorse the Tesco scheme as ‘more effective’ has raised new questions about the integrity of some climate change scientists.

{…}

Prof Munasinghe is one of the UK’s’ most highly regarded experts on climate change.

He is Vice Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the organization that shared 2007’s Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.

The endorsement of Tesco’s policy appeared in a report, Consumers, Business and Climate Change, which was published amid much fanfare at the Royal Society last month.

It has emerged that Tesco employees were involved in compiling the report. However, while they were mentioned by name on one page, their connection to the store was not disclosed.

The group included David North, who is Tesco’s Community and Government Director. He was at Downing Street as Tony Blair’s private secretary for a time.

Mr North is among a list of people who are said to have made an ‘important contribution’ to the report. This will have included providing information on the ’success’ of Tesco’s bag policy.

Tesco has previously been found to have manipulated statistics on the reduction in plastic bags handed out at the tills to make them seem larger than they really are.

Personally I am the sort of shopper who (mostly) makes good use of those “green” bags each week when I do the shopping (even though I sometimes feel a bit foolish carrying them around before I get into the supermarket) so my use of disposable plastic bags has declined by more than 90%. The fact that Tesco were willing to pay £25 million pounds to have their scheme endorsed and that it was done   so glowingly even though the scheme is far from being the most effective way to reduce the use of plastic bags   says a real lot about the integrity of some “Climate scientists” and it just adds fuel to the fire of disarray that is haunting the Waminista faith. After all if they can be bought, so cheaply, by a retailer just imagine what the buckets of money involved in say , Labor’s CRPS scheme, could do to skew the results of research.

The line from the Tom Cruise film “Jerry Maguire” comes to mind when it comes to “climate sicientists”  you know the bit where he says “show me the colour of the money” because there are such large amounts of it being thrown it this “problem” and most of it has some sort of strings attached (as in the Tesco example) and eventually those strings will be tugged.

Tis the way of the World Comrades…

My bold added to the quote BTW

A death knell for the CRPS and Turnbull’s time in the big chair

Time to get out of the big chair?

The only question that matters when it comes down to the leadership of the Liberal party is will Turnbull hold on long enough to deliver the government a yes vote on its disastrous CRPS bill. Personally I think that no matter what he personally thinks about the Warminista faith Turnbull would do irrevocable harm to the Liberal party were his supporters in the senate to give Brother Number One and Penny W(r)ong passage of their bill. My best guess is that Turnbull will play the only viable hand he has and that is to delay the bill until after the Copenhagen conference by sending it to a senate committee. Thus he will avoid rejecting it outright and he will be able to save some face. Probably not enough to retain the big chair but enough to just  keep his dignity.

The Liberal Party is in turmoil tonight following the resignation of six frontbenchers, including Tony Abbott and Senator Nick Minchin, after they refused to back Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull’s position on the controversial emissions trading scheme.

Liberal frontbenchers Sophie Mirabella, Senator Eric Abetz, Tony Smith and Stephen Parry have also quit their positions over the ETS, leaving Malcolm Turnbull’s future as leader in doubt.

In a press conference tonight Mr Turnbull said he respected his colleagues’ decision but the issue was now one of integrity and it would be irresponsible for the party to not take action on climate change.

So who will be the next leader of the Liberal Party? well at present Tony Abbott is shaping up as front runner closely followed by Joe Hockey who is rather less keen to go at present . Frankly I think an election on the issue of climate change is probably winnable now in a way that it would not have been two years ago, quite simply teh whole edifice of the Warminista faith is crumbling and the Australian public will not elect anyone promising to wreck our economy with a new and ludicrous tax impost   no matter how much that impost is sold as a pious virtue on the altar of Gaia.

My prediction: Tony Abbott as leader and Joe Hockey as deputy.

Cheers Comrades

Why I still say “No” to White Ribbon Day

I  had the opportunity to watch question time yesterday and I was entirely  unimpressed to see both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition solemnly declaring support for White Ribbon Day. Brother Number One was waxing eloquently about how he felt responsible and  ashamed about domestic violence because it was a problem of his gender done to the women and children of our nation. The aspirant to lodge was no better. The whole performance as  sanctimonious and cringe  worthy in the extreme.

Don’t get me wrong, I abhor domestic or interpersonal  violence of any sort and I even appreciate the good intentions of those organising this event but when the premise  of White Ribbon day is so flawed should we really just go along for the ride to give the appearance of “doing something” about domestic violence?

The premise is flawed because domestic violence is a human behaviour  problem evident in both genders and it should be recognised and addressed on that basis. If that were the foundation of this “event” there would be no one quicker than me rushing to sign the pledge. As it now stands I just can not support WRD because it  exists to demonise only men for something that both men and women do.

Ok I have said why I can’t support WRD (as I have before) so I think that I should be making a counter suggestions of ways that we, as a society can address  the problem of domestic violence. In the first instance I agree that as a society we should be willing to get involved, at least to the extent of reporting any incidences that we see of domestic violence. We need to lead by example in our own families by learning to resolve our interpersonal disputes by negotiation  and setting good examples to our children. We also need to recognise that the changing gender roles in our society has apparently given licence to young women to be more blatantly violent as the many more  cases of  girls/young women committing violent crime show.

Both boys and girls need to learn ways to either resolve their differences peacefully or  to walk away without feeling that such a  resolution of a dispute is actually a loss of face. Of course this is a very big ask and all that I can do is put the idea out there and try to teach it to my children. This is a very hard and difficult social problem to solve and just relying on tweaking men’s guilt chips is not going to do it. So lets try and make the next White Ribbon Day something that we can all support by removing the innate misandry by making it a day to be aware of and to address ALL domestic violence.

Living in hope of a better world  Comrades

Sipping from the poisoned chalice

The woes of  Malcolm Turnbull  are all swirling around a religious issue and the fact that he shares the same faith as dear old Brother Number One . Turnbull does not however have the unqualified support of his party room on the dreaded ETS , more importantly he has tried to suggest that he has control of the party and that he can deliver the sort of vote in the tabernacle senate that the deal hammered out with Penny W(r)ong requires.

Foolishly Turnbull has nailed his colours to the door of the church of Gaia along side those of Brother Number One and the wiser heads in his party are not willing to genuflect alongside him to the profits of the Waministas by accepting “party discipline” and voting as the leader expects. and when it came to getting a clear indication of party support Turnbull fudged it by not putting the question to a vote instead claiming to have won the issue by acclimation . This has clearly backfired  and now I expect that we may be seeing the last days of his leadership.

Realistically he was in a damned if you do or a damned if you don’t situation because if he had put the matter to the vote and lost he would be required to loose face and back down from his  stated faith position, had he won the vote by a small margin the Government would have pilloried him for not having the support of his party, and if the party room had decisively voted against the deal (with the devil) then Turnbull would be hoisted on the petard of his own oft stated declarations of faith.

As I see it a leader in a democratic party is obliged to represent the wishes of those he leads, and if he can’t do that then he is obliged to step aside and let someone who has the confidence of his party take his place. I actually like Turnbull the man and I respect his sincerity , his integrity and his charm but I think that he has grossly miscalculated the way the tide has been running on the issue of “climate change” , not only here but at the global level  and the coincidental timing of the ETS legislation with the revelations from the CRU emails finds him well and truly wedged by circumstances but had the opposition had the courage to truly oppose the government on the utterly impotent ETS (good only for the spivs and shysters) then and only then would the opposition be in a position to take the keys to the lodge from the death like grip of Brother Number One. Instead Malcolm finds his lips numbing and turning blue from the contents of the chalice he has been sipping from…

Cheers Comrades

The Premier and the barmaid: Did he do her or didn’t he? And if not why not? And if so who gives a sh*t?

This American barmaid made lots of money for having sex. I guess that means she's a self admitted prostitute?

I am most surprised to read the steamy allegations  made by the peroxide blonde American barmaid Michelle that she “fell under the spell” of South Australian Premier Mike Rann and had really sick sex with him: on his desk .. on his office floor … on a golf course … and in a dunny!

But what surprises me most is not that he would do her if given the chance. I mean, why the hell not? No, what surprise me is that SHE would actually do HIM in first place. He’s not exactly Errol Flynn or Tom Cruise or Engelbert Humperdinck or Julio Iglasis now is he? There’s no sexual attraction pouring out of Mike’s pours. – he looks more like a poofter choir boy. Well, he IS from Adelaide.

Good luck to Mikey if he did actually get it in and get it off with her but I reckon this thing might have been cooked up by Michelle and her “estranged” husband who just happens to be going to court next week for … wait for it … assaulting Mike Rann with a rolled up magazine!

I reckon the $200,000 she got for telling the porkies about porking might just cover Mr Michelle’s legal costs, who can now go to the Judge and say:

“Your honour, I had good reason to belt him – he f*cked my wife.”

That is all. It’s only South Australia, which doesn’t really count. Who gives a sh*t?

“I have no fear,” a boat captain, tells the reporter.

I am amazed that so many “Open door” Latte sippers don’t hang their heads in shame for their  support and encouragement the criminal disregard for the lives of “asylum seekers” that is clearly evident in the admissions from these people smugglers.

Tamil asylum seekers who were onboard the Oceanic Viking pictured in an Indonesia detention centre. Picture: Budhi Oka

“I have no fear,” one man, a boat captain, tells the reporter.

“I heard that when we are arrested in Australia, we are put in a fancy prison with good facilities, and are being brought back home in a plane to Jakarta, and then back here (to West Timor).”

The captain says he has tried four times to take asylum seekers to Australia, but every time he was arrested by Indonesian police who he later bribed to get out of prison, according to the report.

[...]

The reporter, who was filmed on board one of the syndicate’s boats, says the asylum seekers are hidden below deck, sometimes in ice boxes, only emerging under the cover of darkness for fresh air.

If police boats arrive, they are locked inside and piles of fishing nets are used to disguise the illegal cargo.

A second man, who also claims to be a smuggler, says the operations are well planned, with several police decoys in place.

“For every departure we arrange four or five different locations to mislead the police,” he says.

“We also prepare different places to hide and several boats we can use. We can change our plan at the last minute if necessary.”

Vaessen said some admit they feel troubled risking the lives of asylum seekers and their children on small boats.

“They all know not everyone arrives safely,” she said.

Source

Perhaps part of the solution would be to organise it with Indonesia so that if their nationals are caught operating these leaky boats and convicted under Australian law that the guilty serve their sentences in a less salubrious Indonesian prison….

You know it makes sense

Cheers Comrades

Oh yeah and yet another boat has been detained, Good one Brother Number One!

Climate Research Unit emails, a smoking gun for scientific fraud?

Like a lot of sceptics I have been following with great interest the revelations contained in the hacked emails that have been the focus of so much interest this week. Putting aside the issue of how the information was made public there is no doubt that the revelations with in this body of evidence is rather damning for the Warminista faith.
Andrew Bolt has of course been giving this story a lot of scrutiny and he sums up very well the questions that this story raises:

It’s in fact a conspiracy of many of the world’s leading global warming scientists that involves massaging data, dodging scrutiny, hounding out sceptical editors, fudging figures, the possible criminal destruction of data under FOI request, tax avoidance, gloating over a sceptic’s death, character assassination of sceptics. admissions of using “tricks” to “hide” inconvenient trends, farming grants, private admissions of grave doubts in their own public warming warnings, close collusion with green groups, the joint concocting of the most alarmist announcements and more.

Andrew Bolt

Andrew has considered various aspects of this scandal here here here here and here

The reactions of the faithful have all gone entirely to the expected script and the Warminista  rag the Guardian predictably trying to suggest that the revelations are either of questionable veracity or that the candid comments and opinions are entirely benign.

In another alleged email, one of the scientists apparently refers to the death of a prominent climate change sceptic by saying “in an odd way this is cheering news”.

Ward said that if the emails are correct, they “might highlight behaviour that those individuals might not like to have made public.” But he added, “Let’s separate out [the climate scientists] reacting badly to the personal attacks [from sceptics] to the idea that their work has been carried out in an inappropriate way.”

The revelations did not alter the huge body of evidence from a variety of scientific fields that supports the conclusion that modern climate change is caused largely by human activity, Ward said. The emails refer largely to work on so-called paleoclimate data – reconstructing past climate scenarios using data such as ice cores and tree rings. “Climate change is based on several lines of evidence, not just paleoclimate data,” he said. “At the heart of this is basic physics.”

Ward pointed out that the individuals named in the alleged emails had numerous publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. “It would be very surprising if after all this time, suddenly they were found out doing something as wrong as that.”

Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Centre and a regular contributor to the popular climate science blog Real Climate, features in many of the email exchanges. He said: “I’m not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I’m hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.”

When the Guardian asked Prof Phil Jones at UEA, who features in the correspondence, to verify whether the emails were genuine, he refused to comment.

The alleged emails illustrate the persistent pressure some climatologists have been under from sceptics in recent years. There have been repeated calls, including Freedom of Information requests, for the Climate Research Unit to make public a confidential dataset of land and sea temperature recordings that is “value added” by the unit before being used by the Met Office. The emails show the frustration some climatologists have had at having to operate under such intense, often politically motivated, scrutiny.

Of course I am reminded of the very  many times that my own resident Warministas, PKD and Craigy have relied on the veracity of “peer review” when the emails show that the process can be subject to undue  influence from the Warminista faithful, precisely as i have thought for years . This is a story that has a while to run and I think that when it is considered fairly on the facts that we are going to find that there will be a large member of the Green faith laity who are going to be very lost indeed as the foundations of their faith are undermined by the latest revelations.

This story has the legs to run for quite a while and I can’t help wondering if it will be a nail in the coffin of Brother Number One’s ghastly ETS bill or if the prospect of a new revenue stream overwhelms any notion that such action is warranted by the “science”.

Hmm an interesting time ahead for those involved in this debate.

Cheers Comrades

Second Life, on life support?

You just can’t be interested in modern life and ignore the social networking media that is so important to the way that individuals interact in a connected world. Heck even I have a presence on most of the common platforms, My Space, twitter and Facebook but I never embraced Second Life, I was intensely suspicious of a platform that requires users to pay to play.

The Maldives were the first to open a virtual embassy in 2007

A year later, newspapers fell over themselves to cover it, devoting many column inches in their business, technology and lifestyle sections to profiles and trend pieces. By the end of 2007 Second Life had secured more than 600 mentions in UK newspapers and magazines, according to the media database Lexis Nexis.

IBM bought property in 2006, American Apparel opened a shop the same summer, Reuters installed avatar journalist Adam Pasick – also known as Adam Reuters – to report on virtual happenings, and countries established virtual embassies.

The number of people joining the site jumped from 450,000 to four million in 2007.

But just as quickly as it had flared, media interest ebbed away. References plummeted by 40% in 2008 and dropped further this year. And businesses diverted their resources back to real life.

My daughter likes Runescape which allows its users to make their avatar as unique as they are in Second Life but that game can be played for free. My initial thoughts on the second life concept was that it would be like the virtual reality games postulated in science fiction and I thought of the spoof of such games on Red Dwarf:

Part two

Part three

Of course it is by no stretch of the imagination as interactive or user friendly as “Better than life” on Red Dwarf and that has to be the other reason that so many people find the concept intriguing but the actuality disappointing.  the social networking platforms that truly work for their users are the simple ones that meet the expectations of their subscribers and while no one can begrudge  the creators of  these platforms the right to make a quid from their idea no one likes to pay for something that does not live up to its hype.

Me?

I’ll stick to blogging and “icing” opponents on Facebook’s   “Mafia Wars” because the former satisfies my need to discuss and argue about the issues of the day and the later because it satisfies my inner mobster.

Capiche Comrades?

Bob making sense on Australia’s population

How many can live well in our paddock?

Politicians and intellectuals who advocate a continuing exponential  growth in our population, and an ever expanding immigration program are part of of that mad scurry to add more people to the wide brown land. I have travelled over a great deal of this lovely country and as vast  and beautiful as it is the one thing that stuck me is just how hard it would be to just eke out a living in many parts of it. As Carr observes in his piece we really only have a relatively narrow strip around our coastline that is fertile enough to ecologically  support our people. And the city planners keep insisting on paving over the  best arable land with urban sprawl…

Bob Carr

We celebrate every advance for thermal and photovoltaic solar, clean coal, natural gas and energy efficiency. But there is a risk high population growth may mandate new coal-burning power plants, especially in Victoria. And they send any national greenhouse targets through the roof.

Unless we go for nuclear, which surely joins the checklist of possibilities. If an environmental impact statement on our new population target canvassed that option, you could praise the high-growth advocates for their honesty.

Tanner suggested people in high-density countries would consider strange our reservations about high immigration. The implication is that every last place on this battered planet should cheerfully sign on for the population explosion.

I think other countries can understand that Australia has a narrow fertile coastal strip and the rest is arid and semi-arid. We resemble North Africa more than North America. Curious as we are, I think Australians don’t want to be packed tight, and remain attached to space, air, the natural world.

And instead of more coastal suburbs they may even prefer the glimpse of waves breaking on golden sand through the branches of a eucalypt. Funny that.

One of the things that never ceases to amaze and amuse me is the way that the Latte sippers are all Gung-ho about saving the planet, and they talk about lessening their personal impact by doing things like becoming vegetarians (which is an evil act BTW) and yet those very  same people will be waving placards and wanting to wedge the immigration door fully open. It is as if they are just too stupid to see that this is a blatant contradiction.  The limits of our water supply is already  abundantly clear in the city near me  and the thought of two more energy hungry Desalination plants  in SE Queensland should be sending the Greenies into a spin, but instead we have even them helping to push the the population bandwagon ever  faster. We just can’t maintain our standard of living  if the population keeps growing exponentially. Ask any farmer about the difference between running fifty sheep in that 20 acre paddock and running 150 in the same space and he will tell you which one can be sustained in the long term …

Cheers Comrades