“I said, smooth talking, brain washing Ain’t never gonna get me what I need”

As someone who has never thought much of the government of Brother Number One it is very easy for me to take a certain delight in its failings but this latest betrayal of an election promise is breathtaking in its blatant cheek.

Tanner, who is usually an urbane inner-Melbourne debating type, scraped the bottom of the rhetorical barrel defending the indefensible.

He compared current spending on self-serving advertising with what happened under Howard, pointing out that in its last year that government spent $250 million on ads, while Labor only managed to splurge $200 million in its first two years.

Before you start cheering this parsimony, you should realise this is actually even better than it looks.

In Tanner’s mind, Howard really spent much more. “In today’s dollars that’s more like $280 million,” said the minister.

So there you have it, seasonally adjusted spending larks. That’s policy innovation.

In fact, the whole great big mining tax ad campaign defies political logic.

Before the election, Rudd put his hand on his heart and promised he would never engage in the sort of political advertising we saw under Howard.

It was a “cancer at the heart of democracy” and Rudd pledged to resign if he didn’t adhere to high standards, including audit oversight of any ad spends.

Now if they were being honest (OK I know we are talking about politicians ) they could have sold this decision as a new stimulus package for the economy designed to work through the advertising industry, you know by paying for massive amounts of dosh to the Add makers we are saving the economy of the Porsche dealers and the makers of the blackberry.

As some one on the Insiders was saying yesterday, who believes government advertising anyway? Surely the community is now so cynical about anything so promoted that they just mentally turn off when they see the the damn things? I am blessed in that I just don’t watch commercial TV enough to even see the crap but I really do resent just about all government advertising because no matter who is in power it is nearly always lies , misinformation and spin.
I give you the Saints who say succinctly in about three minutes precisely what I feel about this and every bit of advertising in general and political advertising in particular.

Glen Milne is right about this too

Cheers Comrades
8)

Dayboro Day 2010

Updated with a slide show of pictures taken of the parade over the fold

Its that time of the year again when Dayboro has its annual street festival and this year I am going with my lovely daughter , or rather I am taking her there so she can hang out with her mates while I find something to occupy myself with. We are going to go pretty early so hopefully we can find a parking spot that is not too far from the action.
Cheers Comrades

Coleman dead – nature wins

When child star Gary Coleman filled our TV screens in the TV sit-com Diff”rent Stokes about an old white guy with a white daughter and two black sons but with no mothers, we just presumed that the old white guy must have had two diff’rent wives one white and one black that he killed off so he could get his own TV show and exploit the one (GarY) who was a charismatic midget:

But by the time Gary unfortunately passed away last night at age 42 it had become clear that it was all a real cheap trick.

Gary was not a cute little midget and was in fact the cruel result of the old white guy’s scierntific expirements on animals.

Be warned, do not mess with nature because it will always reclaim its own.

The power and the sales pitch

Sitting here yesterday I had the phone ring and as you do I tried to guess who was calling. Either my brother or a telemarketer flashed in to my head as I picked up the phone . It turned out to be the later and the woman on the line told me that she was from “Queensland electricity” and she was trying to get me to change over to her company as our electricity supplier for a  5% “saving in our energy costs. As a matter of principle I detest telemarketers, not the individuals but the whole invade my space to try to sell me crap idea of the telephonic equivalent of Junk mail. Sometimes I have been moved to mischief and I have “played” with the person on the line , once I kept someone doing market research “that will only take five minutes” on the line for nearly an hour (it was a slow day here   ) because I found reasons to procrastinate  and ponder each and every question all the while being a model of kindness and cooperation. Yesterday however I was not in the mood for that “send me some literature and I’ll think about it “ was  what I told her as I hung up.

Anyway it was time to take the kids to the bus stop  I thought that it was incredibly ironic that as the mellow  tones of the ABC news reader announced that electricity prices here in Queensland would be rising by twelve percent.

The thing is when we were given the sales pitch for the privatization of electricity here we were assured that it would keep prices down through competition. I had my doubts then and now it seems that we are to be made to pay for the attempts to encourage consumers like me to switch from one company to another This just seems totally wrong to me , not because I can’t afford the extra cost but on a matter of principle. If a private company spends money on marketing then that cost should come out of their profits not be used as an excuse to increase prices. Likewise if there is a need to spend on extending the network then those costs should be met from  investing current profits into the business not by just increasing prices to existing couystomers.

Instead we face an almost unending spiral of rising energy costs. Strangely The Blight government seems to think that  we should endorse their schemes to sell of even more of the family silver and to believe that doing so will benefit the people of the state. I just think that the promise that privatization would “save consumers money “should not be allowed to be forgotten and that a government worth its salt should disallow such rises. The fact that they can do this but they won’t says heaps about just how beholden they are to those who not only own the electricity distribution businesses but the government as well.

Cheers Comrades

The Chainsaw cure for FGM!

There is absolutely no reason at all to allow Australian doctors to mutilate the genitals of girls to appease the barbaric desires of any immigrant group.

AUSTRALIAN doctors are considering a controversial form of genital mutilation on baby girls.

The practice involving cutting a girl’s genitals, sometimes with razors or pieces of glass, could be allowed in a clinical setting to stem illegal backyard procedures which are leaving young girls scarred for life.

The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians will next month discuss backing “ritual nicks”, a modified form of genital mutilation.

But experts are divided on whether to allow the practice, given that in some cultures it is used to remove the sexual feelings of women.

Female genital mutilation has been outlawed in Australia since the 1990s but is common among African, Asian and Middle Eastern communities.

This suggestion is PC madness!!!

Frankly anyone who allows their daughters to be so mutilated should be charged with child abuse, have their children removed from them and maybe then  they should also have their own genitals mutilated with a chain saw!

It makes me MAD Comrades!

Good News from the Gulf of Mexico

I must say that after the continuing bad news about this disaster this report is most welcome

View from the open rear of a cargo plane looking down on ships gathered round the Discover Enterprise rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

After 24 hours of pumping thick drilling mud at high speed into the ocean floor, which lies 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) under the surface of the sea about 50 miles off Louisiana, officials said the pressure of mud had stemmed the leak. However, BP’s engineers were still trying to stabilise a column of mud filling the well sufficiently to enable a concrete cap to be put in place.

“Over the course of the last 12 to 18 hours, they’ve been able to force mud down, and not allow any hydrocarbons to come up,” said coastguard admiral Thad Allen, the top US officer on the scene.

Cheers Comrades
8)

Runners and their decison making abilities

My friend Ray has been rather keen to take up the “policy on the run ” meme about Tony Abbott and the opposition all because some policy decisions are not put to the party room for mass approval but I expect that he will have a good reason why an even bigger decision By the government of Brother Number One to shelve the ETS was not even discussed with the ministers involved and that they only heard about it through the media.

Elsewhere in Parliament House, climate change department secretary Martin Parkinson told a Senate estimates hearing that many senior bureaucrats learnt of the emissions trading delay when the news was leaked to the media.

Dr Parkinson said: ”There is no point gilding the lily,” and many in the department were ”very disappointed”.

”They could see their hard work, their commitment and their professionalism was not going to have a payoff at the moment,” he said.

Departmental staff were now preparing emissions trading ”time capsules” to be opened ”whenever this current impasse is broken and we can have an appropriate debate in this country around climate change”.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the decision to shelve the scheme was made shortly before it became public. She ducked questions about whether it was made by cabinet or the powerful strategic priorities and budget subcommittee.

The Age believes many cabinet ministers – including Energy Minister Martin Ferguson and Environment Minister Peter Garrett – learnt of the delay through the media.

Speaking at the same conference as Professor Flannery, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott claimed the Coalition was now greener than Labor

My Bold in the quote

The facts of the matter is that both sides of politics elect leaders to lead and the delegate decision making to an executive group who do not have to get approval from the entire party before they act. Politics on both sides of the street would be unworkable otherwise. Now I am sure that there are individuals in the coalition who don’t like the decision to enunciate a tough stance on those who turn up unannounced seeking to immigrate to this country. But they do not hold a majority in the party room and under the democratic system numbers count. Likewise the alarmists in the Labor party just have to wear the  back-flip (with pike) from Brother Number One on the CPRS.

When it comes to “policy on the run” you have to ask yourself this are you going to trust someone with the stamina to run a full marathon in an Iron man event or some one with a dodgy ticker who wears the fancy shoes but can’t run in the first place?

Cheers Comrades

Going for Five

Well that was a good way to show those southerners that we Queenslanders are the best.

Five in a row is a big ask but obviously not impossible.

Cheers Comrades

Tough Love on asylum seekers from Tony Abbott

I remember way back when, In my first post after Brother Number One changed the rules that I was sure that the attempts to be humane would end in tears, and it has for this Government. At first they claimed that their changes would not alter the number of boat arrivals, then they insisted that it was due to “push” factors. I even remember that during the last election campaign Brother Number One was calling the detention centre on Christmas island and unnecessary white elephant and now we find that it is not big enough to contain the numbers who are coming. Well the Australian people will appreciate the tough love prescription offered by the opposition because the marketing department of People Smuggling Inc don’t.

“Refugee status is not a permanent condition and you need a policy to reflect that,” he said.

“This government’s got itself into an absolute bind because it’s worked this out but refuses to introduce TPVs.”

Mr Morrison said the new TPVs would be valid for between six months and three years. This would allow greater flexibility when it came to offering short-term protection for those in acute need, such as Tamil asylum-seekers displaced by war.

There would be no family reunion rights under the new scheme and people would have no right of return, meaning that if they left Australia they would be barred from re-entry.

Refugees whose visas were extended for more than a year would have full access to services such as Medicare and language training as well as work rights.

But anyone unable to find a job could be required to work under a mutual obligation arrangement similar to the work-for-the-dole scheme for domestic jobseekers.

“One of the best ways to help (refugees) is to get them into work,” Mr Morrison said.

“If they’re unable to get work, let’s get them busy working on projects around the community in return for the opportunities and benefits they’re getting.”

Temporary protection visas were introduced by the Howard government in 1999 but abolished by the Rudd government on the grounds that they failed as a deterrent and left refugees in a state of limbo.

Valid for three years, they barred people from accessing the family reunion scheme.

As a result, refugee groups said they provided an incentive for asylum-seekers to bring their families with them on the hazardous boat crossing.

Mr Morrison said a Coalition government would also reintroduce the 45-day rule, which barred anyone who lodged their asylum claim after more than 45 days in the country from accessing certain benefits. The rule was designed in part to discourage frivolous claims.

The Coalition’s announcement comes amid claims there has been a 20-fold increase in the number of immigration staff sent to Christmas Island to deal with the flood of asylum-seekers.

The big lie that my latte sipping friends want to believe is that every person who claims asylum is genuine and not someone who is seeking use such claims as a means of getting around this countries immigration requirements. Those wearing the froth on their lips just don’t want to admit that many who say they are fleeing persecution are massaging the truth.

Our obligation under the dodgy UN charter is to provide refuge to those who are genuine and that does not mean that we are obliged to give those claimants any right to stay here permanently, nor does it oblige this country to accept their families either. If they are genuine in their claims of persecution then what the opposition proposes meets their needs but of course if they are defacto immigrants such changes are far less satisfactory. But isn’t that how it should be?

We as a country need a refugee regime that is tough but fair, one that balances both head and heart Brother Number One and his cronies have been all heart and no head on this issue and the result has been death for some who chanced it on the boats and humiliation as  the government has had to address the situation spiralling out of control over the last couple of years.

Apart from those desperate inner city bleeding hearts the opposition’s new policy hits all of the right marks, Those in need of protection will be protected, there is no way that those who arrive illegally can get the desired permanent residency, there will be no way that they can act as a vanguard for an entire family, yet those on TPV’s will be able to work and they will have access to health care.

Cue the invocation of John Howard and the so called “pacific solution” by a desperate government

Well done Tony a policy that the country needs and that the people will support.

Cheers Comrades.

8)

I do not need to see this to know what its about

I would not root any of them, would you?

This week I branch out into the high powered world of movie reviewing and bring you the first ever review of a film before it is even released and before I have even seen it:

Sex and the City 2 should be renamed:

“Middle aged botoxed glam tarts kick up sand in the desert but can’t get an Arab into bed”.

These 40 to 50 year olds have run out of men to screw in New York (word has got around you see) and so they take off for Arabia and go prancing around the desert with their o-so “bard” lines and dolled up faces while singing kareeoaky very badly (mimed too) looking for men to lay in Abu Dabuh, or some Arab place that sounds like that.

They even have a gay wedding while dragging Lisa Manilli (sister of singing sensation Milli Vanilli) into the whole thing. They defy all the cultures and social norms of their host muslim country and get pissed while spitting in the face of people’s traditions and laws in their own land like the stuck up sassy o-t-t tarts that they are.

Meanwhile we are supposed to believe that these i’ve-had-thousands-of-different-men-in-my-vagina-but-I’m-not-a-slut pieces of low-growing fruit are actually married! F*ck me, who would want to marry someone who slept with half of New York?

Role models they are not but these four phoneys are sending all the wrong messages and are doing more harm than good to the feminist cause because the bottom line is they are just glam seeking cheap-lay gold diggers who have not a half a brain between them. In real life stuff just doesn’t work out for women that try to live like they do.

There – I have said it. So crucify me now. Okay I have only seen a few clips and read some American reviews but I do not need to see this film to know that I stand by my words that Sex in the City 2 is a shit idea and a shit movie about shit people.

Rating: 0 stars. Comment: Crap, don’t bother.

Wayne Swan needs to learn the importance of “measure twice and to cut once”

Nicholson's cartoon is on the money with this new tax but perhaps the ones on their way to an apointent with the gilloteene is actually the government of Brother Number One.

Although any government minister will have whole departments full of willing minions to do the mundane tasks of his office you would think that as treasurer that Comrade Swan should be able to tell the difference between numbers of different values.

As the Treasurer implored the mining industry to drop its “rhetoric and threats” and negotiate with the government, his weekend claim that miners pay effective tax rates of between 13 and 17 per cent was torpedoed by tax office figures produced by the opposition.

The ATO data said miners paid an effective rate of 27.8 per cent, which rose to 41.3 per cent with the inclusion of state royalties.

Of course what the attempt to make the mining industry  a milch cow has shown (sadly not for the first time) is that Brother Number One and his cronies are far too hasty with the big ticket announcement and then they struggle to find a way to make it work. Perhaps they really need to take a lesson from those in the country who actually make things. Any apprentice carpenter has it drummed into them “Measure twice and cut once” that way valuable materials are not wasted. It seems to me that Comrades Swan has been caught out here thinking that inches are the same as centimetres and as any builder will tell you that is the sort of mistake that will bring tears and failure.
Cheers Comrades

Kristina Keneally and the spin cycle

As politician’s go Kristina Keneally seems to be trying very hard to do the right thing for her state but she is rather hampered by a very dodgy crew in the NSW Labor Party. It is however rather sad to see the normally upfront and honest woman begin to take up Brother Number one’s habit of applying spin to every news story to try to wring the very last morsel of political mileage out of any announcement.

Pedal power ... Kristina Keneally and Boris Johnson.

When Kristina Keneally stood in Parliament during question time on Wednesday clutching a letter from the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, she put it to good use.

Mr Johnson, the Premier declared, had ”saluted” her for the decision to purchase an ”Oyster-style” transport smartcard for Sydney. Technology from it will be used in Sydney’s version.

”There you have robust endorsement by a leading light of conservative politics,” Ms Keneally crowed at the opposition benches. ”London may be 10 hours behind Sydney but their mayor is 10 years ahead of the NSW opposition”.

Conveniently not disclosed by the Premier, though, is the real reason for Mr Johnson’s glee: royalty payments of $3.5 million to Transport for London, the super-department of which he is chairman.

The fees must be paid because the smartcard developer, Cubic, and Transport for London jointly own some of the intellectual property to be used.

I really like Boris Johnson because he  is not only an amusing fellow (see his appearance on Top Gear) but also he is very much a “what you see is what you get” sort Pollie. He walks the walk and that is damn refreshing to see. Ah but the lady in red on the other hand has been hanging out with some rather more dodgey inspirations.
Every day I am thankful that I don’t have to rely on public transport but for those who do the attempts to create integrated ticketing systems seems to be something of a disappointment in many places that have tried it, the experience up here in Queensland has, like Sydney been rather fraught with difficulty.

Ah well, if the Poms can do it right and  sell the that success to willing buyers well good on them but there is a big difference between being delighted at doing a good deal for his London constituents and saluting the government of NSW.

Cheers Comrades

PS Is it just me or does KK look rather silly in that cycling outfit?

The council’s president, Ihsaan Hendricks, said people “cannot expect the Muslim community not to express its pain and anger”.

The thing is in a pluralist and multicultural society restraining, or better still not even having feelings of “pain and anger” when someone mocks aspects of any religion is actually required if there is to be any social harmony.

But the satirist, who regularly torments politicians including president Jacob Zuma, said: "I don't regret doing the drawing. It was one of the safest of its kind. It poses the question and it has some empathy with those Muslims who feel others are too fanatical. If we can't express opinions in a democratic society, we really are in trouble."

Today the paper’s editor-in-chief, Nic Dawes, and other staff were fielding calls from angry readers. Anonymous comments included “You’ve got to watch your back,” and “This will cost him his life.”

The cartoon was Zapiro’s response to a Facebook page, “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”, which was prompted by threats from a radical Muslim group against the creators of the American TV series South Park for depicting the prophet in a bear suit.

Many Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam to be offensive.

In 2005 a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad which were subsequently republished elsewhere, sparking violent protests that killed several dozen people.

South Africa’s Muslim Judicial Council was today holding an emergency conference to discuss the Zapiro cartoon with the intention of requesting “a very personal meeting” with him.

The council’s president, Ihsaan Hendricks, said people “cannot expect the Muslim community not to express its pain and anger”.

I think that all belief in the supernatural is bollocks but I am willing to give anyone’s belief in such things as much respect as they themselves are willing to give their detractors. On this score many followers of Mohammad score negative marks. The cartoon in question here is actually a damn good illustration of the desperate dour seriousness that followers of this faith so often exhibit.

I read elsewhere that the best defence at the attempts by some Muslims to bully the world into seeing the deity as they do is for all of us to stand together and defy their dire threats, to “spread the risk”. Well I for one think that our freedom to take the piss out of any sort of god-bothering is important and we give that up at our peril because that is the beginning of the slippery slope towards theocracy and the destruction of our rights to free speach.

There are idiots of the left who want to insist that any criticism of Islam is an example of “Islamophobia” but they do so at the risk of their own secular credibility.

Cheers Comrades

8)

Hands free tweeting needed by amateur road condition reporters now!!

While the ability to receive tweets and to have them read out by your car will be welcomed by the many addicts of this media.The real need for these poor slaves of the electronic narcotic is the ability to compose and send hands free while they are at the wheel.

It is against the law to tweet while driving.

Hands-free tweeting is coming to Britain. New technology being fitted to some Ford cars will give drivers Twitter updates read out loud to them robotically while they’re driving. Future versions will enable drivers to dictate their own tweets via a voice recognition system without taking their hands off the wheel.

The system, already in the American Ford Fiesta, also reads out text messages received on drivers’ smartphones, and is expected to be fitted to the Focus in Britain next year and then rolled out across the range.

Without that capability there will continue to be an ongoing shadow over anyone who tweets traffic reports on a long drive from say Geelong to Melbourne, that complain about the awful traffic and then  insist that they did pull over to compose and send every traffic report…
Cheers Comrades

Amusing about the island state

Cheers Comrades