I’m looking forward to an improved average speed on my next trip to Deniliquin (which is a mere two weeks away) as those annoying 12 kilometres or so of roadworks near Gundagai have been completed. (I could be sure it was more than 12km of roadworks…but I’ll trust the article for now) No more utter boredom of driving through an 80km/h (or worse) zone thinking “so where are the workers anyway?”…unless it’s a Monday in which case they were there. I never quite understood why a single carriageway road needed to be slowed down to 80km/h on days when roadworks weren’t actually taking place.
THE final 5km section of the Hume Highway duplication between Albury and Woomargama will open to motorists today with little fanfare.
Meanwhile, a ceremony involving NSW Roads Minister Michael Daley and member for Riverina, Kay Hull, will be held further north at Coolac at 11am when the Hume Highway bypass of the village is officially opened.
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The $179 million Coolac bypass involves 12km of dual carriageway between 12km and 24km north of Gundagai and 4km of existing road between the Dog on the Tucker Box and Muttama Creek.
I suppose this means I won’t see the “roadworks next 300km” or similar sign near the Sturt Highway exit either.
Your “Jerk of the Week” submission
Andrew Demetriou (CEO of the Australian Football League)
Why should this person be the “Jerk of the Week”?
For having a “green round” to save the AFL from climate change, on the weekend after the Australian Senate voted against the Emissions Trading Scheme (cap and trade).
Your Name (Optional)
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Jerk Of The Week airs shortly after 11am Canberra time, 6pm Vegas time today on Newsradio 840 KXNT in Las Vegas, and kxnt.com (if the webstream ads don’t get confused and block out the segment). It is also podcasted at kxnt.com a short time after the segment airs.
That’s a title I never expected to have to write…but then again, I never really expected them to launch a “green round” either.
The issue of climate change affects us all, the game we all know and love is being severely impacted by climate change
[..]
the footy community from grass roots through to the AFL, the clubs, our corporate partners and the stadiums are banding together and calling in the experts to come up with solutions to save our game and ensure its healthy future
What utter drivel. Need I remind Andrew Demetriou, CEO of the AFL, that global temperatures haven’t risen for the better part of the last decade?
That’s right Andrew. I will not be watching, listening, commenting or otherwise on the matches this weekend. I won’t even be paying attention to the results. And I will repeat this every time you pull this stunt.
AFL Green Round, Round 20 of 2009, is hereby officially boycotted.
Golf could resume its rightful status as an Olympic sport as of the 2016 games, depending on the outcome of a meeting of the International Olympic Committee in October.
The board will submit golf and rugby sevens — a faster-paced version of the standard 15-a-side game — for ratification by the full 106-member IOC assembly in Copenhagen in October.
The board also gave final approval to the inclusion of women’s boxing in the 2012 London Olympics. Boxing had been the only summer Olympic sport without women competitors.
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Golf was played at the 1900 Paris Olympics and 1904 St. Louis Games. The sport’s backers say bringing the game back into the Olympics would help it develop worldwide, noting many governments only fund Olympic sports.
Tiger Woods and other top players have indicated they would play in the Olympics if golf gets the nod from the IOC.
“Golf is a truly global sport and it should have been in the Olympics a while ago,” Woods said Tuesday. “If it does get in, it would be great for golf and some of the other small countries that are now emerging in golf.”
Golf proposes a 72-hole stroke-play competition for men and women, with 60 players in each field. The world’s top 15 players would qualify automatically, and all major professional tours would alter tournament schedules to avoid a clash with the Olympics.
Rugby, which was played in four different Olympics between 1900 and 1924 in the full 15-a-side format, proposes the 7-a-side version for both men and women. The International Rugby Board would scrap its Sevens World Cup to ensure the Olympics is the sport’s top event.
Final approval of the two sports will require a simple majority vote by the full IOC in October. It’s unclear whether they will be voted on individually or together.
Rugby I care less about as an Olympic sport, but I do think it should probably be there.
Apologies for the break in transmission. I’ve been pretty well snowed under with menial tasks for the last few days and haven’t felt like writing much here during my downtime. I was going to post photos of the Tuggeranong Weather Station this morning, but the upload scripts on the photo gallery seem to be broken, so after half an hour of being annoyed by that, I gave up.
I should also note that I know that I am behind in Sunday audio clips. I will catch up this weekend by posting two audio clips. On that front I have come to the conclusion that the backlog of airchecks to post is going to become quite annoying to manage if I keep posting them in chronological order. What I really need to do is produce a list, and start posting them at random like I do for the Musician(s) Of The Week award, whilst adhering to the “must be three months old” rule.
Normal transmission will resume shortly. Until then, here’s something which I found a couple weeks ago by accident, and which brightened my day considerably. Mike Jeffreys interviewing Scott Driscoll from The Retailers Association on 2CC on the 19th of June last year.
It would appear that I am still suffering withdrawal symptoms from a lack of Mike Jeffreys on the radio.
Sure, I got the theme music of the two confused a bit when I was in primary school…but even I knew which show involved a genie and which show involved a witch.
At least they managed to put the right show to air.
This week’s award goes to Phil Harris, and the feature song is a real classic…The Thing. Other than his much, Phil is well known as the voice of Baloo in Disney’s The Jungle Book.
While I was walking down the beach one bright and sunny day
I saw a great big wooden box a-floatin’ in the bay
I pulled it in and opened it up and much to my surprise
Ooh, I discovered a (boom-boom-boom), right before my eyes
Ooh, I discovered a (boom-boom-boom), right before my eyes
I picked it up and ran to town as happy as a king
I took it to a guy I knew who’d buy most any thing
But this is what he hollered at me as I walked in his shop
Ooh, get outta here with that (boom-boom-boom), before I call a cop
Ooh, get outta here with that (boom-boom-boom) before I call a cop
I turned around and got right out, a-runnin’ for my life
And than I took it home with me to give it to my wife
But this is what she hollered at me as I walked in the door
Ooh, get outta here with that (boom-boom-boom), and don’t come back no more
Ooh, get outta here with that (boom-boom-boom), and don’t come back no more
I wandered all around the town until I chanced to meet
A hobo who was looking for a hand-out on the street
He said he’d take most any old thing, he was a desperate man
But when I showed him the (boom-boom-boom), he turned around and ran
Ooh, when I showed him the (boom-boom-boom), he turned around and ran
I wandered on for many years, a victim of my fate
Until one day I came upon St. Peter at the gate
And when I tried to take it inside, he told me where to go
Get outta here with that (boom-boom-boom) and take it down below
Ooh, get outta here with that (boom-boom-boom) and take it down below
The moral of this story is if you’re out on the beach
And you should see a great big box and it’s within your reach
Don’t ever stop and open it up, that’s my advice to you
‘Cause you’ll never get rid of the (boom-boom-boom), no matter what you do
Ooh, you’ll never get rid of the (boom-boom-boom), no matter what you do (boom-boom)
If we were talking about Hillary, then I would suggest that trading twenty cows for another cow probably isn’t a wise business move (although the prospect of Bill gaining twenty cows and starting a dairy farm does amuse me), however we aren’t talking about Hillary.
A Kenyan man’s offer of 40 goats and 20 cows for Chelsea Clinton’s hand in marriage may still be on the table — and Hillary Rodham Clinton has promised to convey the “very kind offer” to her daughter.
To laughter at a town hall meeting Thursday in Kenya, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked the U.S. Secretary of State if the Clintons had made a decision on the dowry offer. In 2000, a Kenyan man wrote to then-president Bill Clinton offering the animals in accordance with African tradition.
After a pause, Clinton said, “My daughter is her own person, very independent, so I will convey this very kind offer.”
Clinton has denied rumors that her daughter, 29, is planning to get married this summer.
Well we can’t let the plans of a zoo wedding out just yet. Mr. Zakaria might work out the story if we do that.
It has been quite a week in the list of blogs I frequent. A week ago (I forgot to mention it at the time…I think I noticed after I had tripped on the stairs and just wanted to sleep away the pain) GrodsCorp shut down, with site owner Scott Bridges citing his plan to travel through India and the middle-east as the reason.
I’ll miss GrodsCorp. I almost always disagreed with them, especially of late, but it was a fun way to see what the other side of the political divide was up to, and I quite enjoyed reading the site. It’s unusual for me to regularly enjoy a site that I disagree with, so they (Scott and contributors) deserve credit for that.
I am also somewhat relieved. Back in the day when The Spin Starts Here was outranking this blog in Google searches for my name, it was great to have GrodsCorp in the top three results with their profile of me. These days, with this site having a great Google ranking, and The Spin Starts Here’s vitriol no longer online (yes, we’ve patched up our differences, but having some of that stuff being presented as fact to people who didn’t know better was not helpful) that is not so convenient as the profile is dated, and I have matured and grown significantly since then. I’ll also admit that my political views have moved, and my understanding grown, since my abortive run for the federal seat of Fraser in 2007. I’m leaving my copies of that stuff online for the fun and nostalgia of it, but it is nice to know that it’s not going to be one of the dominant things to appear when searching for me in the future.
Scott is continuing his online presence in the form of a personal blog, so he won’t be disappearing completely (unless he becomes the president of the combined nation of Indiastan during his trip, in which case an army of “journalists” can do his bidding for him), but I will still miss the GrodsCorp dynamic anyway.
Padders over at The Right Aussie has stumbled upon what is quite clearly a case of racism favouring Aborigines from The Pharmacy Guild of Australia and our beloved federal government.
Today whilst reading the Western Magazine, a weekly publication inserted into regional newspapers, I made a cursory glance over two advertisements covering the full right hand side of page nine
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The ad at the top of the page was offering three scholarships to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, valued at $15,000 each (to a maximum value of $60,000); and the ad below it – obviously applicable to everyone else – offered 30 scholarships at $10,000 each (to a maximum value of $40,000).
[..]
But it doesn’t stop there.
I quote a portion of the text from the first ad (for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders):
Students interested in studying pharmacy at university need to have an interest in health, communication and science.
And from the other ad (for everyone else):
Students interested in studying pharmacy at university need to achieve high marks in English, Mathematics and Chemistry.
So, one can only draw the conclusion that not only will Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders get an extra five grand per year for doing the same course, but it is hard not to infer that the matriculation requirements are not as rigorous as those for non-Aboriginals.
The full ads are visible at the above linked page.
So when will this nonsense end? Why do we need to single out Aborigines for special treatment here? Would it be too much to ask to expect them to compete with everyone else for the scholarships on a level playing ground?
Clearly this is aimed at the supposedly lesser-educated Aborigines, and is designed to give them a better chance at making something of their lives. It doesn’t make any sense though because if I, as a non-Aborigine, chose to drop out of high school and then wanted to study pharmacy, I would have to do the bridging courses of my own volition…I wouldn’t get an extra handout to assist me or motivate me, my motivation would be the chance to reach my goal. If an Aboriginal person can’t be motivated to do bridging courses and then apply for a scholarship on the grounds of eventually reaching their goal, then why should we be paying them an extra five thousand dollars and set aside places for them, when truly motivated people could take those spots for less money?
The bottom line is that we shouldn’t…but try and tell that to Kevin “Sorry” Rudd.
But for whatever reason, Kim Jong Il didn’t want Bill around doing much talking either, and sent him back along with an offering to Barry Bamster of a few US citizens, hoping that Bill will never be sent to North Korea ever again, lest they need to have one of their missile tests while his plane is coming in.
Perhaps, Barry, you can make Bill your ambassador to Antarctica…he can take Al Gore with him to report on increases in ice levels.
(thanks to Heather Kydd for the link to the video)
This time around though, I think it’s a crying shame. I have almost no time for the comments section of RiotACT, however when it comes to the stories themselves, I think RiotACT has performed an incredibly valuable service to the ACT, especially under John’s guidance over the last year or so.
If there is one thing for which I have to give John credit, it is being the source of pressure which led to the AFP’s media unit getting press releases online more than once per week. Whilst I have access to the press releases through their direct distribution to media outlets, I do appreciate the fact that AFP stuff is now online in a timely manner.
On a less positive note, I’m reminded of what I said to a friend on the phone the day John returned to RiotACT…”it won’t last, there is no way it will be profitable”. I’m sorry that I was correct. As much as I disagree with John on a number of issues, the fact that he built RiotACT in to a respected local news outlet, respected not just by the public, but by the rest of the media as well, is a testament to John’s hard work and dedication. Alas John has succumbed to the financial needs which press on all of us, and is off to fulfil those needs.
It looks like RiotACT’s future is going to be similar to its past. Not for profit, volunteer driven, and leeching off the ABC with the occasional bit of self-inspired brilliance. Sad really. The loss of a decent independent news service.
This does make me wonder one thing though. If RiotACT can’t be profitable, how does Rupert Murdoch expect a pay-for-access lockdown of his online news services to be profitable? Rupert might have more readers, but when more than half the articles on his sites are recycled news agency articles which are freely available elsewhere (heck, Google hosts copies of Associated Press content), a pay-for-access version of his news services would have to be really really special to turn a buck.
The following is stuck on the screen during a Prime TV ad break during Today Tonight.
disappear or kids disappear. Making me disappear and I
Not that I have really been paying much attention to Today Tonight, I have had it on the TV, muted with subtitles while I do other things, and have noticed that some stories have had pockets of live captioning. The stories are all pre-recorded, but there are bits of the stories which weren’t pre-captioned and have been noticeably live-captioned. Very strange, very annoying.
The owners of the Tuggeranong Hyperdome have taken the ACT Revenue Office to court over claims its assessment of the unimproved value of the land was excessive.
[..]
[They] objected to the unimproved land value assessment in 2007 of $41.5 million which was used to calculate the rates payable.
The applicant says the unimproved land value more than doubled between January 2005 and January 2007 and a more appropriate assessment was $25 million.
[..]
It is understood similar proceedings have been launched by Westfield, the owner of the Woden and Belconnen shopping centres.
If this is successful, how many more people will get independent valuations of their land? Could this be one of the Stanhope government’s amazing budget-hole-plugging measures…if so, surely it would just be easier to legitimately increase rates the way the Green balance-of-power-holders would do it…by adding a global warming levy of say, 3000%. That would win many brownie points with the Greens, and seriously test how many people really believe that humans are responsible for non-existent warming. It’s not as politically expedient though.
If this case is proven, then I will have to praise the Stanhope government for reaching new levels of sheer clever sneakiness.
Your “Jerk of the Week” submission
The people on The View
Why should this person be the “Jerk of the Week”?
Trying to discredit Michelle Malkin’s book about all of the corruption in Obama’s White House by inventing quotes, and then attacking Michelle again after she left the set.
Your Name (Optional)
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Jerk of the Week with Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd airs on Newsradio 840 KXNT Las Vegas (and kxnt.com) shortly after 11am Friday Canberra time (6pm Thursday Vegas time), and is podcasted at kxnt.com shortly thereafter.
