Click to see the bike in action
This is a post for my urban readers who are getting so uptight about the lack of public transport, I would be a bit concerned about Tram lines though.
Cheers Comrades
and yet another hat tip to Len 
Could this be the last straw for Brother Number One?
Yeah well we all know that smoking is bad for us, that is a given and I would encourage everyone who smokes to give it up but this action by Brother Number One is just meant to distract the electorate from his many many stuff-ups. And of course Tony Abbott will go along with passing any necessary regulations to make this tax rise happen if he didn’t Brother Number One would be screaming that Abbott wants to encourage smoking. or that he is in the pay of the tobacco companies.
This is a blatant exercise in distraction and an exercise in tax gouging from the smoking public. I reckon that it is right up there with the gouging done at a state level with speed cameras . Just watch out for the same argument about taxes on cigarettes being a “voluntary” tax and those not wishing to pay it having the choice to give up smoking. It is bullshit when that argument is applied to speeding fines and it is bullshit with tobacco taxes.
If I didn’t know better I would suggest that our dear Brother Number One has a sweetheart deal with the supplier of those nicotine patches that are endlessly advertised on the TV.
Baaa Comrades
Concerned about the holes in this
Another day and another Labor policy is placed on that rather crowded back burner…
KEVIN Rudd has put another election promise on the backburner with his controversial internet filtering legislation set to be shelved until after the next election.
A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said yesterday the legislation would not be introduced next month’s or the June sittings of parliament.
With parliament not sitting again until the last week of August, the laws are unlikely to be passed before the election.
Labor promised before the last election it would force internet service providers to block access to illegal content such as child pornography and X-rated images.
As I have said before I am at best rather ambivalent about this policy but I am not surprised that it has been shuffled out of the limelight by an increasingly desperate government seeking to remove as many of is vote sapping policies from public view as it can in a desperate attempt to retain the treasury benches.
You can bet that this policy will never move back to the front of the stove. The numbers men know that both the libertarians and the far left socialists oppose this idea and that they just could not risk their ire at the ballot box especially as the government has already upset the followers of the Green religion by dumping the ETS.
Cheers Comrades
"You cannot reheat a sueflay" - but can you wear one?
Iain is a selfconfessed punk rocker fan (he said so and if you look closely at his self portrait to the right here you can still see the safety pin still in his ear)
But give me The Beatles any day.
Why? Oh, I dunno, something about them actually playing good music … you know, the type you can listen to 40 years after it was made and it still sounds up-to-date.
But I did not write this special, one-off, cutting edge post to have a go at Iain, even though I am still waiting for his cheque for all my guest posts.
I wrote to have a go at the Herald Sun, over this article:
SIR Paul McCartney says it was a blessing The Beatles never reformed.
The musician – who quit the Fab Four in 1970 – admits the possibility of him, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr reuniting was often discussed but never happened, and McCartney thinks it was for the best.
Would you have liked to see the Beatles reform, or do you agree with McCartney? Share your thoughts below.
This is all kinds of stupid on all diffrent levels. The Herald Sun has reached new heights of idiot.
Look, half The Beatles are DEAD, how can they be reformed?
And what do they need reforming from?
Smoking dope in the 60s?
Taking LSD?
Rooting 1000s of girls?
Get real, they were not the only ones and now even THE POPE HAS FORGIVEN them (sorry I cant find the link to the Vatican).
Have a look at this photo of Paul McCartney
(its above you will need to scroll up)
Hes 67 years of age.
But does you think he dies his hair?
Share your thoughts below.
UPDATE
I have found the Vatican link:
Catholics forgive Beatles for being hedonests, druggies, fornikators & devil worshippers
Now on Twitter
“Hi, how’s it going? Here I am, just like I said I would be, at midnight,” read the firebrand leader’s first post shortly after the stroke of 12am local time, received by some 36,000 people who follow his site.
“I’m going to Brazil,” he Tweeted.
“I’m very happy to work on behalf of Venezuela,” he said alluding to a brief summit he had planned later today with Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Mr Chavez posted his first tweet under the profile @chavezcandaga, which roughly translated from colloquial Venezuelan dialect, means “wild” or “naughty” Chavez.
The Venezuelan leader in the past has railed against domination of online social networking sites by the capitalist world, and has said he now intends to reclaim the medium for partisans of the left.
The irony is that most of the latte sippers who indulge in this electronic vice do a very good job of enriching the telcos by their streams of nonsense on those hand held devices. Ah well their hero Hugo will set them on the right path to socialist nirvana but being from “the west” our coffee loving friends are going to have some very serious lessons in self loathing but I am sure that they are up to the task because they are so good at hating everyone else that it won’t be too big a step for them .
Cheers Comrades
These poor bastards lost the lot. Click on photo to make big.
Today I take a break from my usual crap and go for the jugular of the big corporate crapheads.
I’m talking about the biggest Cs with a capital “C” in the cuntry – insurance companies.
Good on the southern Queensland town of Roma for “taking on the big guns of the Australian insurance industry” who are weaserling out of claims for damage in the recent flood of the century, mainly Allianz & Elders Insurance it seems according to this ABC report:
About 500 homes were damaged when the town flooded last month.
Roma Mayor Robert Loughnan says the technicalities (of insurance cover) have caught out some of his constituents.
“There seems to be a pretty critical definition between flood and water inundation, and a lot of people are finding out that the hydrologists who are working for the insurance companies are recommending against them because in many cases they’re stating it’s a flood, not an inundation of local water,” he said.
The council is taking matters into its own hands and has commissioned a hydrologist for a second opinion.
Allianz and Elders Insurance have not responded to the ABC’s inquiries.
Well I actually have two messages.
One is to people living in flood prone areas, this is what you should do to make sure you get covered next time something like this happens:
1. Listen to the radio.
2. When you hear that a big flood is coming get up on your roof.
3. Remove a heap of roof tiles, or sheets of tin which is what you probably got.
4. Get the hose.
5. Stick the hose in the holes and let your whole house get “inundated”.
5. Lodge a claim for storm damage – you’ll be covered for that.
6. Make sure you say “Oh look, my f*cking roof got blown off and the rain got in”.
Oh, and my message to Allianz, Elders and the like? It’s this: Continue reading
I used to love watching Dad’s army, with of all people my late dad, and we both loved the show because despite the humour at the ineptitude of the characters There was a great deal of respect for the real home guard who would have bravely defended their home and hearth had Hitler actually invaded. Sadly for the people of this country Brother Number One has been a far worse leader than Capitan Mainwaring in Warminton-on-sea and it seems to me that we are witnessing him doing an impersonation of Corporal Jones and crying “The election is coming DON’T PANIC! DON’T PANIC! the election is coming!”As the Prime Minister continues to dump contentious and costly policies before the May 11 budget, some Labor MPs fear too many policy reversals and broken promises are being wheeled out in too short a time, creating a perception of panic.
Mr Rudd yesterday walked away from his 2007 claim that the election campaign should feature three leaders’ debates including a contest on the Sunday before polling day.
It also emerged that a plan to build 260 childcare centres on school grounds, which was dumped last week on the grounds it was not needed, was on course for a $500 million blowout.
Mr Rudd’s sudden decision to shelve the emissions trading scheme until at least 2013 and adopt Tony Abbott’s “wait and see” approach was criticised by environmentalists as a betrayal and by business as a potential threat to $50bn of investment.
Despite campaigning in 2007 on a climate change platform and describing the issue as “the greatest moral challenge of our time”, Mr Rudd yesterday deferred the CPRS to avoid a Coalition scare campaign on price rises and save $2.5bn in the budget.
On the way to the bus stop with the kids I happened to catch Penny Wong trying to sell the government decision to postpone the ETS scheme til 2013 and I could not help weary a rather wry smile as she tried to argue that this was a good decision and not an admission of defeat. Wong tried very hard to blame the opposition for the failure, she ducked a weaved she made excuses and for me the magic moment was when Fran Kelly dug out archival recordings of Wong’s own rhetoric about the need to act with urgency. Words uttered only a short time ago by our minister for climate change that she now repudiates.
What we are seeing is a government it total panic mode, the collectively had a brown trouser moment when the GFC became apparent and hastily created make work schemes that were fatally flawed or so badly designed so that beneficiaries were the spivs and scam merchants they have made wild promises that they can’t keep and now that they face an upcoming election the want everyone to forget their “mistakes”.
If every a government deserves to join the one term club it is the one we have now .
Cheers Comrades
8)
solar panels on a house
He said he discovered the government’s rules would lead his pension to be cut.
”The government preaches that it wants you to cut your carbon footprint and as soon as you do it they punish you for it,” Mr Campbell told News Ltd papers.
Mr Campbell said the issue was confirmed in a letter from the office of Families Minister Jenny Macklin, which said the social security test applied to any money from an electricity company ”either as a direct payment or as a credit or rebate on a person’s electricity bill”.
”We could suffer a loss of pension for trying to do a good thing,” Mr Campbell said
.
It is not like selling energy back to the grid is going to make anyone rich here , Brother Number One’s Green credentials just got that bit rustier. Heaven in a hand basket what anyone with solar panels is doing is not selling power to the grind they are storing their own energy there and only if the the home owner uses less power than they collect (and sell to the grid) should the surplus be considered as income for social security purposes.
Shine on Comrades
Adele Carles
Although Mr Barnett may make a statement condemning his behaviour, Dr Phillips said Mr Buswell would still retain his seat with the budget looming around the corner.
“This is what makes it such a big affair,” Dr Phillips told WAtoday.com.au.
Troy Buswell
“Troy Buswell’s record (has) been a very rocky one in a couple of respects.
“He has more or less been warned by the Premier that the next major mistake might be the last one.
“If this was the first mistake, it would not be so serious but there are a series of them.
Respected Edith Cowan University and Curtin University political analyst Harry Phillips said these revelations have been exacerbated by Mr Buswell’s previous indiscretions.
It takes two people to have an affair and I for one won’t condemn either one, It is their business and that of their respective partners. We do have a rather good attitude that supports the notion that even politicians are human and that they can have a private life that is desecrate from their public existence
My expectation is however that the usual suspects will be loud in their condemnation of Buswell and equally vociferous in their excuse making for Carles. A society that believes in gender equality should make no distinction between them and as much as they talk the talk I bet my latte sipping friends will not walk the walk on this one.
Cheers Comrades
Lest we forget Comrades
Out of use: Swindon's speed cameras were deemed a 'blatant tax on motorists'
Now the Conservative-run council has urged other authorities to follow suit, saying the money can be better-spent on other measures to cut casualties.
In the six months after the five fixed cameras were switched off at the end of last July, nine accidents were recorded – exactly the same number as the same period the year before.
Between August 2009 and January this year, there were seven minor injury accidents and two serious ones – neither fatal – at the four sites monitored by the cameras.
By contrast in the six months from August 2008 there was one fatal accident and eight minor ones.
Over the same time period, the number of motorists prosecuted for speeding in the Wiltshire town fell from 3,681 to 2,120 – a drop of almost 58 per cent.
Of the 2008 total, 1,393 were from the fixed cameras which have now been deactivated – the rest were detected by mobile cameras which remain in use.
The drop, revealed in figures released under the Freedom of Information Act, means the Government – which receives income from the fixed cameras – has lost revenue totalling around £80,000.
Today the council’s delighted leader, Roderick Bluh, said the fact that far fewer speeders had been caught while the number of accidents hadn’t increased showed the decision had been the right one.
‘Fixed speed cameras are more about fundraising than road safety, and I would suggest these figures prove that,’ he said.
‘These figures completely vindicate our position. There has been no increase in the number of accidents.’
He admitted the cut in speeding tickets would give the Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘a bit of a headache’ but insisted the move was for the good of local motorists.
As the article points out most people stick to the speed limits most of the time (just as I do) and when these devices are taken out of use there is no change in the road toll. The message here to governments is simple if you want to collect a tax from motorists then be honest about it and stop pretending that speed cameras have anything at all to do with road safety.
Cheers Comrades
8)
The bone of contention here is the right of every child to know who they are (image copyright Iain Hall)
A lot of lesbian couples choose to use a donor who is known to them. He would then be, technically under the law, the father. If he is also playing a role in the child’s upbringing, I believe his name should be on the birth certificate.
‘We talked about that, but decided not to use a known donor, mostly because there was no one in our lives who we considered suitable.
‘Besides, you have to be really careful about the agreement you make with the man you use, so that everyone understands their role in the child’s life, and we decided an anonymous donor would make it far less legally complex for Betty to assume her parental status.’
But what of Lily-May? How will she fare without a father? It is the issue that exercises Christian groups and campaigners for traditional family values, and one every single-sex couple or lone mother must address.
‘We decided to have a child without a dad, we can’t deny that, but I don’t think it’s wrong,’ says Natalie bluntly. ‘There are plenty of kids brought up in both gay and straight families without dads.
‘There are single mums; families where fathers have left; families where the dad has died – there are now so many different types of family out there and people should respect this diversity. We just have a different kind of “normality”.’
It’s different, not to say groundbreaking, given the historic nature of their daughter’s birth certificate.
The bone of contention here is the right of every child to know who they are and that requires that they know who their father is. There have been far too many examples of adopted children and those conceived like this girl who suffer the great anguish of being cut off from their progenitors; excluding the father’s name from a child’s birth certificate is just plain wrong.
Individuals like these women obviously think that their obvious love for this child is enough, well maybe it will be. You know miracles can happen but more often nature overcomes nurture and wishful thinking is just not enough.
Cheers Comrades
