I am amazed at all of the Hoo Ha about this girls upcoming adventure and I wish her well not the least because may daughter finds her so inspiring as do so many young people.
Cheers Comrades
You have to think that the inmates have taken over the asylum when an openly gay TV presenter is sanctioned for making fun of lesbians in the course of mocking a rather silly “invention” on the box.
Ah but this happened in the land of my birth where “political correctness” is king the undemocratic hereditary ruler.
Cheers Comrades

Barnaby Joyce, ahead of the pack on this issue
This topic is a good example of how any sort of bad news can eventually become so mundane that it gets right under everyone’s radar. If we are entirely honest with ourselves we would have to admit that upon hearing about another boat arriving we would be hard pressed to do a full 360 eye roll. A modest sigh is the full extent of my response these days.
In provocative comments made during a parliamentary visit to the island, Senator Joyce said all the people he had seen
‘‘seem very happy here — which is a concern’’.He said the line that differentiated refugees from economic migrants had been conveniently blurred, which was encouraging people to come to Australia for economic reasons. ”Unfortunately the Government needs to toughen policy,’’ he said.
His comments came after two more boats, carrying a total of about 40 people, were intercepted at the weekend, bringing arrivals this year to 128 boats and nearly 1500 people. This compares with seven boats and 161 people last year.
Of course Joyce is right, we do need to toughen up the system and to send those who don’t qualify as “refugees” back to where they came from. In an amusing contradiction to the usual deep green grab bag of political positions I heard Tim (the sky is falling) Flannery on ABC 2′s Fora program advocating for less immigration because of the environmental impacts of this country having an ever larger population.
For the life of me I can’t see even one good reason for us not to grow our own Australians rather than to continually importing them, and yes I know that I am a migrant myself, but when I came here there were less than 1i million here and now the number is closer to 22 million, a number that has more than doubled in less than my life time.
I have long argued that no population can grow exponentially forever but no one from either of the mainstream parties seems willing to acknowledge that particular pachyderm. The conservatives because they are so focused upon wealth creation and the socialists because they have some rather naive “we are all one” mindset. If we are to build a sustainable future then we need to be realistic about the carrying capacity of this land and as I see it we can be a rich nation where our population is “Just right” or we can be a poor one where there are too many people, the amount of water, food and energy will have to be spread far too thinly for the majority to have a good life.
Cheers Comrades
Peter Dutton. Photo: Penny Bradfield
The decision by Dutton to quit Dickson was driven by necessity, not choice. He survived the Ruddslide, but only just, holding his seat by about 200 votes. He could have run again in Dickson but he’d lose. That’s not because Rudd is unassailable in 2010, though he probably is, but because what was left of Dickson has been pulled out from under the Liberals by the most recent redistribution.
On the party’s analysis it is now a 2per cent notional Labor seat. The redistribution carved out great swaths of the rural areas and it now takes in the hardcore Labor area of Kallangur. Despite his profile and local popularity, Dutton would not have prevailed.
The unstated consensus supporting this conclusion is that under Malcolm Turnbull there’s every likelihood the Coalition will go backwards at the next election. Dutton’s chances of being saved by an anti-Rudd swing are negligible.
He could stay and fight, of course, and become a defeated hero in much the same way former Howard minister Mal Brough did. But the hardheads in the party will not tolerate what they call the “Burke and Wills” option. Anyone serious about rebuilding the party knows Dutton cannot be left to become a noble lost cause.
That’s because he’s one of the toughest young operators on the opposition’s front bench. Despite being only 39, a recommendation in itself for a party now likely to be out of office for at least two terms, he has been hardened by government office, serving as minister for workforce participation and as assistant treasurer.
What makes me rather less than happy though is the thought of living in an electorate where the an idiot of the left holds the seat in the national parliament. Well I suppose that we will just have to hope for a miracle on that score but when a redistribution so alters a seat as to make it unwinable for either side of political spectrum then surely something is rotten in the system.
Cheers Comrades
8)
Truck driver Peter Venn of Kallangur NO GO: Peter Venn of Kallangur has sworn off toll roads after being slugged $68 a week commuting to his previous job. Picture: Drew Fitzgibbon
BRISBANE’S soon-to-be-completed road tunnel under the river is shaping up as a $3 billion white elephant, with motorists declaring they won’t use the tollway.
Three-quarters of respondents to The Sunday Mail’s Queensland Speaks survey said they would refuse to pay the $4.20 toll to use the Clem7 when it opens early next year.
The 6.8km link between Bowen Hills and Woolloongaba is expected to shave a third of the time off cross-city travel but only 16 per cent of people said they would use it.
The thing is when you only occasionally use a toll road $4.20 will not seem like much but if that road becomes a part of your daily commute the cost can very quickly become quite significant as it was for truck driver Peter Venn exemplifies . On my trip home from Cleveland I could have taken the Gateway but they recently removed the toll booths and have switched over to using either a car mounted transponder or billing people via a machine reading their number plate. I don’t use the bridge enough to get the former and I object to the later so I took the old fashioned route home via Old Cleveland Road and across the Storey Bridge. I don’t really think that my journey time was really that much longer at all and I suspect that for many commuters the cost benefit analysis that we all do when deciding on the route to home, will see this tunnel very much under utilised because with some tunes on the stereo* and the prospect of a welcoming home the commute home can be a great time to unwind from the days stresses and a few minutes more travelling time won’t be worth the nearly $50 a week that it would cost to use the tunnel.
Cheers Comrades

* in my car the music of the burbling exhaust has to sufice because you can’t actually hear a radio over wind noise…
Yesterday this blog was graced with a visits from the Aussie Bloggosphere’s more lively nut jobs, Damian Lataan. This is a chap who seems to believe every mad conspiracy theory going, from the “911 truther”stuff, the “protocols of the elders of Zion” no conspiracy is too mad for this Damian , especially if it says that the Jews , Israel and the United States are involved in some evil plan to control the world.
Which is why I was rather surprised to see this comment posted to a rather flippant AGW themed piece I wrote the other day:
Hall, are you implying that imperfectly filling a D-cup does qualify one to make comment on the enviroment(sic)? And would filling both cups instead of merely one enhance the chances of you allowing her to comment?
Taking the notion to its logical conclusion, what qualifies you to comment on the environment? Sexist arrogance alone surely isn’t going to be convincing.
I have crossed swords with this nut job before but that was on his home turf and he was quite happy to just delete my comments when he had no answers to them. Undeterred I did the right thing and asked him to behave he was immune to any good sense as usual.
Better get ruthless then sunshine. I’m quite happy to prod and poke the right-wing with their lies and distortions to the point where I slow them up with the need to moderate.
I tried to explain to him that he was on my turf now and that when it comes to comments here that they appear only if I want them too, sadly the poor fool thought that he was able to do as he pleases here.
As you well know Hall there are many ways around the filter.
Hall, I’ll address you here and refer to you elsewhere as I see fit. How you address me is of no interest to me.
Your few regular bloggies no doubt will get a free ride straight into your blog. My intention is purely to make life difficult for the right-wing. I come by, say my piece, let readers judge for themselves whether or not what I say has merit and leave it at that. I have no interest whatsoever in actually arguing with the right-wing pseudo-intellectual nutjobs that roost here. If you want to block it; that’s your business. I’m quite happy to expose your right-wing pedantic and somewhat arrogant stupidity elsewhere. Not a problem.
Now at this point I could have just decided to ban the arsewipe but I was feeling a bit mischievous so I decided to mess around with his comments a little because by this time they were all rather nasty insults and I wanted to make the point that he was very wrong indeed about my control of my own blog.
What followed was a flood of comments to most of the pieces on my front page and Lataan being added to the banned list here.
Well this Damian would not accept defeat and look what magically appeared in my inbox:
Hi Iain
From: damian lataan (lataan@adam.com.au)
Sent: Fri 9/25/09 6:45 AM To: iambeingnice@hotmail.com G’day BirdbrainYour deceit will become well known. Left or Right-wing, nobody likes people who resort to deceit.Hurling insults at each other is just the rough and tumble of the blogosphere and I’m quite happy with it, but deceit is something else. It needs to be vigorously exposed to all and sundry, Left and Right.I’m not interested in your pathetic little threats to make me look stupid; you’ve only managed to make only yourself look stupid.Lataan
Now I realise that the kind thing to do would be to ignore him but in many ways an arsewipe like Lataan is just so deliciously over the top that he is actually almost a parody of himself. The trouble with him is that he functions totally on hate, and while he may think that he is fighting the good fight for a good cause he has aligned himself with every vile uber-left cause on the planet from Hamas, al Qeada, Saddam Hussein, to Chavez and Castro, if they oppose the USA or hate the Jews Damian has a shrine to them in the posts of his blog and he goes into bat for them, but worse still is the fact that he has no manners when visiting blogs like mine.
Boorish behaviour like his achieves nothing, it convinces no one of the validity of a cause, in fact it is actaully counter-productive because it provides a good reason to dismiss the opinions of the more reasonable members of “teh left” especially when they seem to defend him ,at the cost of their own credibility.
Cheers Comrades
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a holiday camp for young crims
Ah that hoary old chestnut of how to sanction juvenile offenders, tell me honestly who thinks that the courts are too soft on the little buggers? Anyone would think that the only purpose of giving any of them a day in court was to reform them:
“(There is) no significant difference between juveniles given a custodial penalty and those given a non-custodial penalty in the likelihood of reconviction,” the study, published yesterday, says.
“Other things being equal, juveniles given custodial orders are no less likely to reoffend than juveniles given non-custodial orders. (The) adverse effects of imprisonment on employment outcomes and the absence of strong evidence that custodial penalties act as a specific deterrent for juvenile offending suggest that custodial penalties ought to be used very sparingly with juvenile offenders.”
Despite the report’s findings, Queensland’s Deputy Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg yesterday called for a crackdown on young offenders.
“They are just treating the justice system with contempt; they’re taking it for a ride,” Mr Springborg said.
“Most people would understand that kids deserve one chance, maybe even two, as long as it’s not a serious crime of violence, such as murder or rape, but when you’re getting your third, fourth and 56th chance, it’s not good enough.”
I am with Lawrence on this one when he suggests that after a couple of chances with the very soft “community corrections orders” then we should play hard ball with the little scrotes, and while the holiday camp environment of juvenile detention centres may not be a huge deterrent at the very least it keeps them off the streets for a while.
Cheers Comrades
To that end, Stone said Twitter aims to offer premium features for commercial account users this year.
“We wanted to show people that we’re here to stay and here we are making money,” Stone said.
Those features, which could debut in test form, are envisioned as for-pay features and potentially could include “light analytics” tools that allow commercial users to gather data on their followers, he said.
Hmm when a Tram driver gives multiple updates on the self pleasuring regime you can bet that purveyors of Porn are going to be interested in doing some “light analytics” of his twitter feed. But then again his employers may well take notice of it as well when he tweets while on the company dollar. There is a downside to telling all on the net…
Cheers Comrades
8)
Please note that that Andy Blume’s feed is entirely public as are his Twitpics
This post has been edited to reflect the fact that Andy tells me in the comemnts that the trams are run by a private comapany and not by the government. Further Andy has now protected his tweets just to stop little old me reading them, Ah well we can thank the Lord for small mercies.
Nice looking woman, but I find the consciously beautiful people some what tragic, especially when they trade on that beauty for their livelihoods, But the idea that perfectly filling a D cup qualifies you to comment on the environment really funny. I also can’t help wondering if the lady in question will be embarking on a personal reforestation program though, you know just to be entirely consistent with here save the jungle message

Hat tip to the bloke in the left hand seat

Is facebook your local electronic pub?
For all of those who are sick of talking about twitter I’m going to offer a change of pace and talk about Facebook today instead
The Facebook group, created in October, was entitled “Suggestions to help big RON save a few clams” and offered ways for the department to save money without privatising prisons.
The Public Service Association responded by applying to the Industrial Relations Commission for an unfair dismissal case to be heard before the officers were fired.
Justice Frank Marks told a hearing of the case today he had some concerns about the fairness of the investigations into the officers.
Oh all right I know that the two are both social networking platforms and despite my reservations about both I have a presence in Face book, Myspace, and most recently twitter as a means of understanding this thing called “modern life”. So naturally stories like the one that I quote above catch my attention, and they also highlight the way that platforms like Facebook and twitter blur the distinction between the public and private domains. So when a group of Co-workers get together over a beer or two and have a whinge about their workplace at the pub that is one thing, but if they do it in an electronic pub like facebook it is probably thought to be just like that beery bitch session, but with megabytes.
In the case in question quite clearly the men’s employer saw it somewhat differently, they saw it as a form of publishing and that it should be subject to all of the expectations and restrictions and obligations of that act which apply when you write about real people and real organisations. It cost the men their jobs. There are many people out there who seem to think that anything goes on the net, and that it is district and separate from the “real world” and they get incredible irate when you suggest people should be accountable for their actions. But why should anyone have licence to toss the shit around if they do it in the internet ether? Because that is what the “its the internets, get over it crowd” are essentially arguing and I think that to accept that is to give up on civilisation and civil discourse.
The internet has made communication and opinion much more democratic, now anyone with a PC and a connection can have their opinions out there, as public as the daily paper, but I think that the people that do make the most of the opportunities need to also know that there are responsibilities that go with putting stuff out there on the web and that there could be repercussions if you make the wrong call because you made the wrong assumptions about the medium as these men seem to have done.
Cheers Comrades
8)
Many Happy returnsCheers Comrades

Ford unveiled its new EcoBoost engines in Frankfurt. The 2.0-litre turbo version will power the Falcon in 2011.(click on image for the story)
There is no doubt that they are far too porky though, as I discovered when I stripped the parts car that I bought. Anyway as much as I think that the numbers may well add up for the new engine (pictured above) I cant help thinking that building a Falcon with a four banger would be some sort of unnatural act, I can’t help thinking that the Falcon will have to go on a very serious diet to be accepted in the market place powered by any four cylinder engine. An EcoBoost engine Would make a very nice power unit for a clubman though….
Cheers Comrades
Firstly I want to apologise to Jeremy for mocking him in the previous “Lethal Twit” post. Attacking him over the continuing harassment from the Grods alumni was wrong and I sincerely regret it.

This is the face of an Internet stalker, an obsessive who spends his spare time pretending to be me.
He has a very long history of misrepresenting himself on the internet he and his pal AJ created a fraudulent internet presence pretending to be Corey Delaney and they take great delight in boasting about it here , But that is just the tip of the ice berg of his mischief making on the net, He also boasts about his trolling of dating sites where he has pretended to be a female Nurse just so that he can scornfully mock the people that are looking for love.
He has made special hobby of pretending to be me on the internet he posts comments in my name all over the place usually taking a piece of text from my writings and using selective quoting and inappropriate context to try to make me look silly, Now if I become aware of such a comment I get in touch with the site owner who has been defrauded and explain that the comment was not made by me and I ask for the comment to be removed. This is rather time consuming and very tedious. he has done it so often at JF Beck’s blog that the regulars know very well when a comment in my name has been posted that it is likely to have come from him. I literally can’t comment there any more because of Surname’s efforts.

This is the screen shot posted by Surname to boast about his fraud.
His latest stroke was to sign me up for the White Ribbon day pledge, not such a bad thing many of you may think, you know because the campaign is all about addressing domestic violence. But there is a history behind his choice here and it goes back to a blog post that I wrote a couple of years ago called No to white ribbons and several posts on the same topic like “Toxic relationships and domestic violence , or a white ribbon is no answer” But John has been especially inspired by my choice of words from the “no to white ribbons” post where I said:
Women who goad, nag and belittle their partners must accept some responsibility for the consequences of their actions. I don’t condone men lashing out under such continued provocation but I can understand it. So lets be real here domestic violence is bad but it is about an unhealthy relationship dynamic rather than the vice and virtue inherent in each of the genders.
He has referenced this bit of writing of mine countless times but usually he only quotes the first sentence here so that he can imply that I am excusing domestic violence and to make me look worse he usually deletes the word emboldened above (as it is the original piece) his selective quote then makes me look like an apologist for wife beating. He had his nose very much out of joint on this part of his “hobby” when he tried to peddle this meme at Andrew Bartlett’s blog and I was able to demonstrate that he was deliberately misrepresenting me and a reading of the thread shows.
Anyway back to Surname’s last stroke where he signed the WRD pledge in my name the historical context that I have outlined above explains why he thinks it is such a ‘jolly Jape” and my following the tweeting of the Grods alumni lead me to the message I cite above. I was a great deal less than happy about this so after writing an email to the WRD people to have Surname’s fraud removed I dutifully took screen shots and retired to consider my options. As Ray Dixon suggested in the Lethal Twit thread I probably should have written this post instead of that one, but you don’t get a total do-over when you have made a mistake in this world so there is no point in having too much regret about it now.
What can anyone do when confronted by pimply faced scum bag like John Surname/Winston? I have been operating on the assumption that all of the Grods alumni are equally responsible for the acts of any individuals and that is probably not entirely fair on the bit players in this long running soap opera, But what is guy to do when those same bit players protect him and they are acting as willing accomplices to the likes of Surname/Winston?
So the bottom line is if you come across comments posted around the traps that look like they are from me, but don’t look that consistent with what I actaully say here then it is probably more of Surname/Winston’s bullshit, drop me a line if you like and let me know what you have seen because he is a busy little shit who seems to spend a great deal of time on his harassment efforts, the latest being a fake Iain Hall twitter account.
Of course it is only correctly labelled as a fake now because I complained…
Cheers Comrades
In the last paragraph before my conclusion I said that John Surname was the creator of the fake Iain Hall twitter account. However in the light of the admission (in the comments) from Damian Doyle (AKA “Toaf”) it was his doing I of course now know that my attributing that to Surname was in error.
Of course this is a kite that just won’t fly on planet Latte where our esteemed leader , Brother Number One has been insisting that it can be done to all and sundry. If his rhetoric is to be believed well then just getting up the ETS will save us all (do I hear a hallelujah?). We have had months of public discussion where the opposition have been constantly berated for refusing to give the government the carte blanche to impose a new tax on every aspect of our energy economy.The sad truth is that the opposition have not covered themselves with any glory on this issue either they have meekly gone with the thrust of the ETS scheme even though they have baulked at the details. All because they have lacked the cahones to actually oppose it because they know that it will do squat to alter the total amount of CO2 emissions generated in this country.
Now as the deadline for the Copenhagen conference beckons we find Brother Number One and Penny W(r)ong scrambling to lay the ground work for the expected failure of the negotiations
KEVIN Rudd has talked down prospects of international agreement at a crucial climate change summit in Copenhagen in December, amid fresh predictions the conference is doomed to failure.
The Prime Minister warned yesterday international agreement was “not nearly a done deal” and shifted his climate change pitch to domestic politics, attacking opposition disunity on the issue.
His attack came as Climate Change Minister Penny Wong also appeared pessimistic about Copenhagen but said Australia should still embrace an emissions trading system to set an example.
The comments came as an expert in international negotiations told The Weekend Australian there was no prospect of agreement in Copenhagen because differences between the positions of the US, the European Union, China and India were too great.
The only example that this country will set if an ETS gets up is of how to totally bugger up an economy in very short order, all for no actual planetary benefit. Remember that at something less than 2% of the planets total emissions no amount of pain here will make the slightest bit of difference globally#.
Now I am all for improvements in energy efficiency I hate the notion of wastefully using a finite resource when we can do it more cleanly and to that end I can appreciate the benefits of improving the thermal efficiency of our homes, and making our transport do more with less. I even like the idea of using the sun to directly heat domestic hot water and lowering domestic energy consumption but I think that Photo-voltaics are some what over rated by followers of the green religion. All of these improvements in the efficiency of our energy economy have merit but there is still no way that all of these measures will constitute a filling of the doom sayers prescription for the planet, not if we want to maintain a decent standard of living it won’t.
Maybe the real bottom line for the alarmists is that they really want us all reduced to “living in a hole the road with nowt but a handful of cold gravel for our tea”
We should all be angry with all of our politicians , on both sides of the house for not being at all pragmatic about what is politically possible , here on planet earth. Because both sides have missed the opportunity to side step entirely futile and empty gestures like an ETS scheme and to instead move straight to working out just how we can keep adapting to make the most of the climate of our blue world, just as our ancestors have since they first descended from the trees on the African plains millennia ago.
Good government is all about the art of doing what is possible with honesty and integrity but we are being offered hyperbole and spin on AGW from the government and the opposition are not doing much better. Hopefully when the Copenhagen talkfest fails we may see some sense but sadly I doubt it. So as I suggest in my title when are we going to see a politician admit that we can’t do it and that another approach is needed?
Ikke holde vejret Kammerater
Imagine that you are an up and coming young(ish) chap at the Victorian Bar and you send out a series of messages into the ether via that great time waster TWITTER:The messages note your progress on a journey from Geelong back into Melbourne.
Case adjourned. Geelong departed. Noun verbed.
Followed an hour later by
Avoid westgate bridge. Traffic ludicrous and truck-filled.
then this
Obviously pulling over to tweet isn’t making it faster, but STILL not at bridge. Bloody gridlock.
and an hour later by this
BRIDGE SIGHTED. So close I could almost walk to it. (I’d get there three hours quicker, too.)
and finally this
Westgate overcome. Traffic tweeting concluded.
Reading this little string of messages got me thinking about the laws that relate to the use of mobile phones whilst in control of a motor car, and the number of times in recent memory when texting has been cited as a major factor in a fatal crash. and I wonder how long will it be before we read a headline like this:
Hypothetical I know but not unimaginable in an age when some people think the universe needs to know when the evacuate their bowels and how many sheets they neatly fold to wipe.
Cheers Comrades
Update :
I repost here the apology that I opened my post And the Internet’s real stalker is …. with:
Firstly I want to apologise to Jeremy for mocking him in the previous “Lethal Twit” post. Attacking him over the continuing harassment from the Grods alumni was wrong and I sincerely regret it.