If the rest of the Parliament doesn’t withdraw support from them, surely the in-fighting will be the end of them seeing as the poll numbers are just getting worse and worse.
I’m at a loss to explain the two-party preferred figures. Labor and the Greens both lost ground on their primary votes, and yet the Labor number is unchanged. Are Newspoll assuming that all non-Liberal/National votes automatically get distributed to Labor?
Meanwhile Julia Gillard has suffered quite a personal setback after the events of the last few weeks.
During the break – marked by the Prime Minister dumping her written agreement with Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie on poker machine reforms and the controversy over her office’s role in triggering a riot on Australia Day – Ms Gillard’s personal standing fell. Satisfaction with the Prime Minister dropped from 36 per cent last month to 33 per cent last weekend.
Ms Gillard also gave ground to the Opposition Leader as preferred prime minister, with her seven-point lead last month halving to three points as her support fell from 43 per cent to 40 per cent while Mr Abbott’s was a steady 37 per cent last weekend.
(h/t Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor of The Australian. Note: subscription required to view entire article.)
I have to say that I’m happy that the ban on unleaded petrol is New South Wales has been scrapped, but I’m also a bit miffed that they came to the decision last night. If they could have just held on for another day, then I would have been able to get around to writing about how stupid I thought the idea was. You see, I was actually looking forward to the opportunity to prove that, on occasion, I disagree with politicians who are usually on my side, and I’m not afraid to take them to task over it.
PREMIER Barry O’Farrell has backflipped on his controversial ethanol policy, dumping a government ban on unleaded petrol due to begin on July 1.
The cabinet decided yesterday to dump the ban a week after the leaking of secret cabinet documents revealed that Energy Minister Chris Hartcher had tried and failed to get the ban dropped last month.
The dumping of the ban came after it was revealed Mr O’Farrell was proceeding with it despite advice to the contrary from Mr Hartcher, his department, the ACCC, the Crown Solicitor and two independent reports.
The ban on normal unleaded fuel was supposed to force petrol companies to make more E10 fuel to meet the mandate of 6 per cent of all fuel being made with ethanol.
(h/t Andrew Clennell of The Daily Telegraph)
To be completely upfront about this, the ban would not have affected me as I don’t use regular 91 octane unleaded petrol. I’m pretty sure (yes, mechanical me and my lack of mechanical knowledge) that my car is supposed to run on 95 octane petrol or higher, but apart from that I have had problems with previous vehicles which I put down to the 91 octane fuel. All that said, I do treat the 91 octane fuel as a backup measure if premium 98 octane unleaded petrol is not available and I need fuel. I refuse, absolutely refuse, to use the ethanol stuff.
In theory, ethanol-blended fuel is safe in modern vehicles, but as I understand it, the fuel is less efficient and so any cost savings at the bowser are quickly offset by the fact that you use more of the stuff. There was also going to be the spectacular problem that it was not going to be possible to produce enough ethanol to meet the demand, which would force the price up, potentially making the premium unleaded fuel cheaper than the ethanol-blended fuel. And then there were the strange exemptions which were going to be granted to service stations, allowing some of them to sell regular unleaded for short periods of time…a product which was not going to be manufactured because it would be almost impossible to sell due to the ban, and for which the logistics were never worked out as service stations would either have to keep an underground tank on standby for the regular unleaded or clean out the ethanol-blended tank for a day of selling the regular unleaded, after which they would have to clean it out again before putting ethanol-blended fuel in there.
Madness!
It was also part of a plan to reduce New South Wales’ carbon dioxide emissions so as to prevent mythical man-made global warming. More madness.
But to my mind, the biggest problem here was not all of that, but rather the fact that due to a poorly thought-out government policy, competition was going to be reduced, choice was going to be reduced, and the consumer was going to suffer.
POWERFUL 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones has been revealed as having passionately lobbied the state government to stick with a 6 per cent ethanol mandate which marked the end of unleaded petrol.
The former Liberal speechwriter-turned-talkback radio host unexpectedly arrived with ethanol company boss Dick Honan to a meeting with Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner last November during which Mr Jones lobbied for the mandate.
The meeting occurred a month before Mr Stoner pushed successfully in cabinet against a proposal from Energy Minister Chris Hartcher to dump the mandate.
(h/t Andrew Clennell and Evelyn Yamine of The Daily Telegraph)
I assume it was an ill-conceived attempt to help farmers…but surely a conservative radio host should know better. Haven’t we learnt all that we ever needed to know about the perils of having governments pick winners and losers in industry of late? Even those with the shortest of memories could point to the multiple collapses of subsidised solar energy companies in the US as example of why we don’t support governments that want to do this sort of thing.
Now if only the Republican candidates would spend a little bit more time on this subject and how they would fix it, and a tiny bit less time on attacking each other. Don’t get me wrong, the in-fighting and the vetting of each other’s records is a good and healthy thing, but sometimes I wonder if they spend just a little bit too much time on it and not enough time on the things which are affecting the day-to-day lives of the rest of the people in the country.
Since I last wrote about this a few days ago, it has come to light that one of Julia Gillard’s own staff tipped off a union official who then tipped off the protesters about the location of Tony Abbott. Julia Gillard’s press minions also perpetuated the myth about Tony Abbott calling for the demolition of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
The more this unravels, and the more the unions are found the be involved, and the more we see of Julia’s people perpetuating untruths about Tony Abbott, the more this all looks orchestrated to get the left-wing of the Labor party and the left-wing of the public-at-large back on side. It is really starting to look like the whole thing was designed to make Julia Gillard look like the hero of the left, and some sort of uniting figure between black and white Australians against a mythical divisive Tony Abbott.
It has backfired badly and could cost Julia Gillard and her government dearly. Today we see that Andrew Wilkie, who already had the Gillard government in his bad books after they stabbed him in the back on poker machine reform, is ready to not just withdraw support for the government, but also support a no-confidence motion in the government, and today’s Galaxy poll couldn’t have come at a worse time for Julia Gillard as it will surely make a few people in the Labor Party think very carefully about attempting to kill off the whole scandal right now by dumping Julia Gillard in favour of the allegedly more popular Kevin Rudd. They could do that…but would have to eat the “we know he was bad, but we didn’t expect her to be worse” humble pie that would go with it.
Either way, surely this government is toast and is, just like NSW Labor did before the last election, going through the motions until they get kicked out of office in a landslide. One can only hope that, in such a holding pattern, they’re not going to change leaders like they’re going out of fashion. That was a spectacle which will hopefully never be repeated by any government ever again.
About this story which popped up over the weekend about a new regulation for the New South Wales police to not have visible tattoos. I think it’s a good idea and about time.
The police are there not only to uphold the law, but to appear to uphold the law and appear to be upstanding and exemplary citizens. They should be the antithesis of, for example, bikie gangs, in appearance and behaviour. Having large tattoos sends the wrong message about the police officer.
In many ways, this is just a logical extension of the uniform which is designed to provide a certain image of police officers, and assist with enforcing discipline. If someone wants to have a tattoo and be a police officer, then they should have the discipline and common sense to have a tattoo which can be covered up by normal clothing.
As for the opposition’s opposition to this measure. This measure is clearly part of a much larger reorginisation of the police force, and wouldn’t be necessary if the previous Labor governments had done their job and given the police the support and resources they need. I put a lot of the blame for the current string of drive-by shootings at the feet of the Labor governments who did not provide the police with the necessary resources to prevent things from reaching this point.
Yesterday’s protest in which Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott were effectively held hostage in a cafe by Aboriginal Tent Embassy protestors was a disgrace. It confirmed virtually everything Tony Abbott had said about it being time to move on from this ridiculous ongoing protest shanty town.
While I respect the rights of people to protest peacefully, yesterday’s scenes proved beyond all reasonable doubt that the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is not a protest movement in favour of peace and reconciliation, but is instead a protest movement aimed squarely at highlighting and supporting differences between Australia’s democratic and “western” culture (which is supported and embraced by a large majority of Aborigines), and a perverted form of ancient Aboriginal culture where Aborigines want to live in violent, no-modern-convenience societies while still being propped up by the taxpayers in the society that they want to destroy.
I’ve been over this ground many times before, so I won’t go in to the whole argument about how wrong the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is, or my solution to the rift between some Aborigines and the rest of society. Instead, I’ll focus on yesterday’s protest, today’s subsequent protest, and where I think this is headed.
The Aboriginal Tent Embassy has been irrelevant for ages. We have barely heard from them in years and years, and yet yesterday hundreds of them were there to hold a protest. Yes, yesterday was Australia Day and yes, it is to be expected that they would hold their usual “invasion day” nonsense, but it normally doesn’t happen with the sort of numbers we saw yesterday.
It is not unusual in the slightest to see the Left come out in support of the Tent Embassy in the media…not in the slightest, but normally the Left don’t support violence or hateful comments against Julia Gillard, and yet, they are defending this:
Protester Gwenda Stanley of Moree almost tried the shoe [Julia Gillard’s shoe which fell off in the altercation] on before changing her mind. “I don’t want to walk in the shoes of a dead woman!” Ms Stanley joked
.
(h/t Daily Telegraph)
That same shoe, which was for all intents and purposes, stolen, is now being auctioned off on eBay. Proceeds of crime? Death threat, joking or not?
And look who has the shoe and is auctioning it off…Tent Embassy elder Pat Eatock.
(Picture h/t Gary Ramage of The Daily Telegraph)
Now, thanks to a court ruling last year (the case that Andrew Bolt lost), I can’t discuss how much of Pat Eatock’s heritage is Aboriginal. In much the same way that it is illegal to camp opposite Old Parliament House, I can’t discuss Pat Eatock’s heritage…the difference though, of course, is that for one reason or another, the law seems to not apply to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy’s occupants, and they have very little respect for the law, or the country itself anyway, as today they went and burned the Australian flag outside Parliament House, because for some reason they can’t understand why people are upset with them over yesterday’s disgraceful incident.
But not everyone is against them. Leftist blog New Matilda (I thought it had shut down…apparently not) has come out in support of yesterday’s violent protest. They claim that it wasn’t violent (or that the police who were protecting Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott as they ran to a car, were the ones who were violent), and that it’s a giant media conspiracy to claim that there was any violence (the statements seem contradictory, but they’re both in there).
So, let’s look at what happened yesterday. There was chanting, which is acceptable.
There was an angry mob surrounding a cafe and banging on the windows of said cafe…the windows were for all intents and purposes the walls of the cafe and there was genuine concern that the glass would break at any moment. Intimidation…illegal. Property damage…illegal. Detaining people against their will…illegal. This counts as violence in my book.
Then there were the attempts to block the path of the police as they hurriedly escorted Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott to a waiting car…maybe illegal, maybe not, but definitely wrong and intimidatory.
Julia Gillard tripped during the scurry to the car and she lost a shoe. The shoe was then taken by the Aborigines and a death threat was made against the Prime Minister. Illegal.
The shoe is now being sold. Selling stolen property is a crime.
And despite all of this, the Left still support the protest.
This support is straight out of another playbook. The “defend Occupy” playbook which the Left used in the U.S. last year to defend the Occupy camps which turned violent, and to try to cover up the rapes which occurred at some of the Occupy camps, and to try to claim that it was all just some media conspiracy that was trying to make the Occupy camps look bad (as if they ever needed any help in looking bad).
I don’t think any of this is a coincidence. I think the plans were drawn up after Andrew Bolt lost that court case last year.
It’s pretty simple really. The Occupy movement has gone nowhere in this country. There’s a handful staying in Martin Place in Sydney just so that they can remain in the background of Channel Seven’s Martin Place studios, but elsewhere they are almost non-existent or in such small numbers that people would mistake them for homeless people (which reminds me, last year a large number of Homeless people in the U.S. said that they wanted to reclaim the parks from the Occupy crowd). To maintain a minor position in the public consciousness, the Occupy mob occasionally camp out overnight in a place where that is prohibited, so that the media will report on their arrest.
Here in Canberra, Occupy had perhaps a dozen people on the first day, but they didn’t stay for the night and didn’t bother to turn up the next day. Their biggest problem is that most areas near Parliament do not permit camping…but there is one site where a group who claim to have a particular ethnic heritage are permitted to camp illegally…the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. And the court case last year just gave every white person in the country the ability to claim to be of Aboriginal heritage without ever being questioned about it.
Both the Tent Embassy and the Occupy movement were increasingly irrelevant forces in this country last year, but with that court case last year, an opportunity arose for Occupy to set up camp outside Parliament on the same site as the Tent embassy. They couldn’t just move in though…that would be too transparent. Instead, a plan had to be drawn up.
Australia Day is always a day of protest for the Tent Embassy, so nobody would be likely to bat an eyelid if the protest was a bit larger than normal as it could be put down to people giving them more support, especially if you can get some left-wing academic to claim that flying the Australian Flag is a racist act, just a few days before Australia Day (The Sydney Morning Herald seems to have pulled that article, but the ABC still has it online…attempts to rewrite history perhaps?). It is also predictable that, on Australia Day, a politician would make a comment about Aboriginal affairs and the Tent Embassy. It’s not hard to twist any statement on the matter to suit the agenda of the Tent Embassy, and that’s what they did with Tony Abbott’s comments. The protest could then be about whatever comments were made by a politician on this “ever so sensitive day for Aborigines”.
What couldn’t have been predicted was how lucky the protestors would get. They would have known that Julia Gillard would be near their protest, and picketing her would have been a big news story by itself…but for the object of their derision, Tony Abbott, to be there too…well they really did hit the jackpot. They were able to set up a hostage situation while keeping just enough distance for it to not be considered as one. They then followed through on the rest of their plan of making inflammatory statements and letting the media run with it.
Today, the Left have come out and defended the Tent Embassy protestors, and we have had another protest. Shortly, I predict, the rest of the plan is for Occupy to come out in support of the Tent Embassy and join them in “solidarity” at the Tent Embassy. It gives both movements some relevance again, and allows the Left to use both movements to advance their agenda outside Parliament.
What happens after that will probably depend on how the rest of us react and how our politicians react, but have no doubt, this whole thing was heavily planned and orchestrated, and we have only just seen the start of it.
This could become a massive story with massive implications very quickly.
US Senator Rand Paul (Republican-Kentucky) has been detained by the Transportation Security Administration for refusing a full-body patdown after a screening determined that something needed further investigation.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s press secretary Moira Bagley tweeted on Monday that Transportation Security Administration officials were detaining her boss in Nashville, Tenn.
“Just got a call from @senrandpaul,” Bagley tweeted at about 10 a.m. on Monday. “He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.”
[..]
Sen. Rand Paul’s chief of staff Doug Stafford told The Daily Caller the Senator “was detained by the TSA after their scanner had an ‘anomaly’ on the first scan.”
“He offered to go through again,” Stafford said in an email. “The TSA said he could only have a full body pat down. He would not consent to it. He offered to go through the scanner again. The situation is ongoing.”
Sen. Rand Paul has previously referred to the TSA’s use of full body pat downs as the “universality of insult,” and he called on the agency to end the tactic.
Apart from the fact that, from a PR perspective, detaining one of your most vocal political critics might not be the most sensible thing to do, this move by the TSA may very well be unconstitutional as Sen. Paul was on his way to Washington to attend a rally and a Senate session. Article 1, section 6, clause 1 of the United States Constitution prohibits the arrest of Representatives and Senators on their way to or from sessions of government:
The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
And the Senate is indeed in session today, with a vote scheduled for 4pm, as the Senate’s website notes:
Monday, Jan 23, 2012
2:00 p.m.: Convene and begin a period of morning business.
4:00 p.m.: Proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of John M. Gerrard to be United States District Judge for the District of Nebraska.
Detaining one of your most vocal political critics is bizarre. Doing so in an unconstitutional manner is a really good way to get yourself abolished.
The TSA has denied that Senator Paul was detained, although I happen to think that they have contradicted themselves.
The TSA says Sen. Rand Paul “was not detained at any point” but “triggered an alarm during routine airport screening and refused to complete the screening process in order to resolve the issue.”
“Passengers, as in this case, who refuse to comply with security procedures are denied access to the secure gate area,” the TSA adds. “He was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement.”
(h/t again Daily Caller)
If he was escorted out of the area, I think that counts as detention. Asking him to leave and having him leave on his own would be fine, but escorting him out is, to my mind, a form of temporary detention.
Either way, he has almost certainly been prevented from attending today’s Senate session, so it could be said that the TSA has interfered in the political process as well as potentially breaching the constitution.
As I said at the top, this could become a huge story with huge consequences very quickly. Watch this space.
Update: It is worth noting that Senator Paul did eventually make his way to Washington D.C on a later flight, so he wasn’t entirely prevented from attending the Senate, however the issue of the unconstitutional detention of a Senator making his way to a Senate session still stands. End Update
An email to 2UE’s John Kerr, who was accused by his second caller of the morning of being obsessed with Brussels Sprouts because he had made one mention of them earlier in the morning
Good morning John,
There was an article on page six of Friday’s Canberra Times which was brought to my attention yesterday and gave me a good laugh, so I thought you might like it. The first paragraph in particular was quite interesting.
“A soft-drink shortage is gripping Australia due to disruptions in supplies of carbon dioxide – the gas that puts the pop in soda.”
So, now we have a shortage of carbon dioxide? When we’re always being told that we have to have a carbon tax because there’s too much carbon dioxide? It certainly made me laugh.
And about Brussels Sprouts. I never really liked them as a kid but would eat them under protest with tomato sauce on them. Now I don’t mind them plain but still like to have the tomato sauce on them, not because I want to cover up the taste of the sprouts, but because I think they’re plain and don’t really have much of a taste of their own. People say that chicken has no flavour…well I disagree, it’s Brussels Sprouts which have no flavour.
Have a good week John. I’ll try to give you a call next weekend.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
One does have to wonder how the carbon tax will be calculated on factories which produce carbon dioxide as their main product…perhaps if they start recycling the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere they would receive carbon credits.
(h/t Tom White for bringing the Canberra Times article to my attention)
The last Federal election saw over 500 cases in the ACT where a person may have voted more than once, according to official Australian Electoral Commission data.
1458 people across Australia actually admitted to multiple voting. Of those, 19 cases were referred to the AFP for further investigation, but at the conclusion of the investigation just 3 people were issued with a formal police caution.
The figures have been obtained by Senate Opposition Leader Senator Eric Abetz, a former Special Minister of State.
The 506 potential multiple votes from the ACT add to the national total of 29,920.
“In every one of the 506 cases in the ACT, not one was referred to the Federal Police – that to me is cause for great concern,” Senator Gary Humphries said today
“By the AEC’s own admission, a simple denial of multiple voting leads to no further follow up by the authorities.
“It is imperative that Australia’s voting system is robust and its integrity is upheld. If the net result of 29,920 cases of multiple voting is no prosecutions at all, where is the disincentive?
“We may need to consider better methods of ensuring voter identification at election time.
“It’s also clear that there needs to be a much greater emphasis on pursuing alleged offenders if we are to maintain confidence in our electoral system,” Senator Humphries concluded.
(h/t The RiotACT)
It’s just a shame that this is being brought up now, at a time of year when very few people will notice, because it is a real problem and it is probably changing the outcome of elections…and when you consider just how close the last election was, it’s a very real worry.
Of particular concern to me is this line from Senator Humphries’ press release:
By the AEC’s own admission, a simple denial of multiple voting leads to no further follow up by the authorities.
In other words, if you deny that you voted more than once, the prosecution will not be pursued, mainly because there is no real proof that it was actually you who turned up to all of those polling places.
Personally I am in favour of requiring voters to produce photo ID at polling places, although this still doesn’t entirely solve the problem as it does not stop fraudulent identity documents from being used and therefore does not provide enough evidence to prove that anybody has actually committed electoral fraud. Therefore I also support the idea of requiring that people have their photo taken when they have their ID checked…while this doesn’t stop the multiple votes at the time, it does provide actual proof for a prosecution, which in turn provides a real disincentive to cast multiple votes.
I elaborated on my thoughts and reasoning in a lengthy comment over at The RiotACT which is copied in below for your convenience.
It’s not just party hacks who vote multiple times; people who want more of a say in the process for one reason or another do it too, whether they be non-party affiliated ideologues (I count myself in this category, although I have not voted more than once in any election), angered with the status quo to the point where they think they have to take action, simply pompous enough to think that their view is more important, or some other reason, or perhaps a combination of the above.
At the last ACT election, a friend nearly gave me their vote because they weren’t interested enough to vote. It was tempting, but in the end I came to the conclusion that it was better for them to simply not cast a vote (by turning up and casting an invalid vote) than to give somebody more of a say than they deserve. The interesting thing about this though is that if it had worked the other way (ie. they couldn’t be bothered voting and asked for a copy of my vote so that they could submit an identical vote) there would be no way to track it as, for all intents and purposes, we would have both voted individually.
In the last federal election I considered studying the electoral roll and presenting to polling places as various people from the electoral roll…never twice to the same polling place and never twice as the same person. This way it would be difficult to prove that I, or any of the people I presented as, would have actually voted twice. Further, to assist in avoiding attending polling places as somebody who has already voted, I would map out where the people that I intended to impersonate live and avoid impersonating somebody at their nearest couple of polling places.
The biggest danger from this plan would come from, ironically, party operatives (ie. the pamphlet pushers and their supervisors) who circulate between polling places throughout the day and might recognise me in multiple places. It would also have been imperative to avoid any location which, at the time, contained a candidate, as appearing in the background of footage of candidates in multiple locations could pose a problem.
Again, I did not go through with this, partially because it would have been the wrong thing to do, and partially because I had to work on election day and would not have had the time or energy to make it worthwhile, especially seeing as the only way to make this worthwhile is to ignore safe seats and visit marginal electorates…and our nearest marginal electorate does not have the density of population or polling places to aide in the efficiency of such an operation.
I do believe that something should be done to try and stop electoral fraud, but branding people with ink is not the answer. Any ink can be removed with enough effort. At best such a plan would just slow down those who are keen to vote more than once. It certainly does not prevent somebody malicious from fronting to a polling booth as somebody else in order to prevent that person from voting, even if they then do not remove the ink and simply pay the fine for not voting themselves.
I do believe that requiring photo ID at polling places is the way to go. I do not believe that people with less identifying documents are more likely to vote for Labor or the Greens, nor do I believe that said people lack the resources to obtain valid identifying documents. My mum, for example, does not have photo ID and, quite reminiscent of a scene from ‘Mother & Son’ doesn’t quite understand what it is, thinking that an old photo of herself counts. This is something which can be overcome through an advertising campaign, and perhaps some assistance from a close family member or friend (I could take Mum to a government shopfront at any time and help her get a Proof Of Age card if she ever wanted one, for example).
The benefit of photo ID is that it proves that you are who you say you are and that you are not somebody else (something which ink can not do). There is still the small problem of identity theft and forged documents, although it is much harder to produce such documents these days due to the protection mechanisms in modern identity documents.
At the same time, I do not believe that a live electronic database tracking who has and has not voted, and checking people against that list when they present to vote, is a viable option either as it is too open to abuse, be it by somebody running around with fake ID or by a rogue electoral worker or by a hacker.
A potential solution would be to take a photograph of a person when they show up to vote and have presented their ID. Then, later on, any recorded instances of a person voting more than once could be checked against the photographs taken at the polling places and prosecution could be based on this evidence…the penalties might need to be a bit tougher than they currently are though, otherwise it might not be worthwhile chasing people.
Multiple voting is a problem which can be minimised, but not entirely eliminated in my view. Active checks of ID on the day, while gathering enough evidence (photos) for follow-up if necessary is in my view the simplest, safest and most-effective way to minimise the problem while still erring on the side of caution so as to not accidentally prevent somebody from exercising their right to vote.
And I’ll let your imagination work out what RIH might stand for.
North Korea’s menace of a ruler, Kim Jong Il, is dead. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Unfortunately his insane son Kim Jon Un will take over as leader, although one does have to wonder if the fact that Un is even more crazy than Il could result in a destabilisation of the family’s leadership in the future, and hopefully the end of an awful regime…although when I say “hopefully”, I do still worry about the fallout from such an end to that regime.
For what it’s worth, as this screenshot will attest (blurring added to protect the identity of those who “liked” my status update) I had this news up on Facebook at 2:21pm, mere moments after I received a mobile alert about the news from Matt Drudge’s excellent DrudgeReport.com, and before most (not all) of the Australian media had caught up…alerts from Drudge are very rare, so you know that something very big and very serious has happened when an alert comes through. On this occasion it was good news.
(update, image should appear now. Dumbo here typed “mp3” as the file extension rather than “jpg”)
Casey Hendrickson posted about it at about the same time as me, and although he and I were both beaten by most US news outlets, we both beat CNN to the news…hardly surprising. Anyway, Casey noted something which amused me as well:
North Korean TV says he died from “Physical and mental over-work”.
Ahhh those communists, always claiming that work is bad for you.
Casey also muses:
His psychopath son, Kim Jong Un, will now take over. We’ll know soon if the world will stay the same, be better, or if we’ll see WWIII break out.
I’m tipping that it will stay the same for the moment, but when enough people in North Korea cotton on to just how nuts Kim Jong Un is, we will see a fracture in the country which will result in in-fighting, followed by some people defecting to the South to escape while the rest of the nutters keep fighting against themselves and eventually fire at the defectors, which will reignite the Korean war…whether that leads to a global conflict, I don’t know, but I think the markets are on the money with their fall in reaction to the news of Kim Jong Il’s death.
Casey has more information about this on his blog at http://caseyhendrickson.wordpress.com/ including information on why he thinks North Koreans will not rise up against their government (video not available in Australia…I’ll try and find a version which is later) for the most part I think he is right, but I also think a small number of people deciding that they’ve had enough will be enough to start a conflict there. It’s well worth a read.
But until a conflict breaks out, there is some time to celebrate the death of an evil man…and that is precisely what I intend to do.
Update: In the spirit of happiness, this made me burst out laughing, a website which is dedicated to photos of Kim Jong Il looking at things http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/. Again, h/t Casey Hendrickson for the link.
I sent this email to 2UE’s John Kerr in the wee hours of Sunday morning
Hi John,
I’m at work at the moment, so I can’t call, but I’m enjoying listening anyway.
I just heard your comments about McDonald’s and I have to agree. Apart from having a decent product, the stores are all locally owned and provide employment for a huge number of people across the country, and not all of them are kids either. It’s a success story of the free market, providing services that people want, need and desire, and thriving as a result.
McDonald’s gets blasted for being unhealthy, and you might remember the so-called documentary a few years back “super size me”. Well multiple independent studies have followed the methods employed by that film to discredit McDonald’s and, to their surprise, the participants not only lost weight, but were deemed to be healthier by their doctors. I don’t endorse living entirely off McDonald’s food, but in moderation it’s fine.
A friend of mine, Casey Hendrickson, who hosts a breakfast radio program in Indiana, put together a video about the studies in to McDonald’s called “Using Their McSmarts”. It’s on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj6imJNQXBY if you’re interested.
Changing subject, when you speak to Derek Dryden next, could you please say thanks to him from me. I ordered a book through his website a couple weeks ago. The book is out if print and was probably never sold in Australia. One if his staff, Kate, was able to track down the publisher and order a reprint for me. It should arrive in a few weeks. Fantastic service. Derek and his staff deserve a big thanks.
Have a wonderful week John!
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
For your convenience, here is the video to which I referred:
Also if you are wondering, the book which I ordered from Derek Dryden’s Better Read Than Dead is radio host Mark Levin‘s “Men In Black” which is about judges overstepping their authority. Amazon has used copies for sale, but Derek’s people were able to order a reprint which is preferable in my view. The book is topical today given that a judge in New South Wales is pushing for the abandonment of jury trials…again. The day we let the elites strip us of our right to a jury of our peers is the day that we can say goodbye to a civil society.
I’ve been listening to New Zealand radio for a while so that I can listen to them discussing the results of their federal election and must say that I am very pleased by the result.
John Key and his National Party, which is a conservative party, have been returned with greater numbers, and with the help of other conservative parties, will have a majority in parliament. Labor had one of their worst results in history with about 26% of the vote, and it seems that the Greens have picked up a bunch of Labor votes as the Greens got more than 10%…it’s similar to the situation here in a way with the Greens slowly but surely taking the more left-wing voters away from Labor.
They have voluntary voting over there and had a fairly low turnout by their standards…only 65% of people voted. I wish we had voluntary voting here John. It worries me that our close elections are probably decided by votes from people who probably couldn’t care less about politics or elections. I wonder how different our last federal election would have been under a voluntary voting system, especially seeing as the Coalition had more votes but ended up losing the election.
Anyway, I’m in awe of New Zealand and how well they seem to be doing in spite of the natural disasters which they have endured. It’s a testament to the success of John Key and conservatives in New Zealand, and I’m glad that New Zealanders are getting behind him.
Just quickly on the subject of a Melbourne Cup holiday. We tried that in Canberra and it failed miserably. Venues had to put prices up because of public holiday pay rates so people tended to stay home and the venues lost business. Work functions ceased because nobody was at work and caterers lost out as a result, and the general culture of the day, which promoted workplace harmony and added a bit of interest to an otherwise fairly standard work day, was lost. It works in Melbourne because the race is based there and people can go to the track…it doesn’t work anywhere else because everywhere else has an existing Melbourne Cup Day culture which mostly revolves around work and private functions.
An email to Larry Williams of New Zealand radio station NewsTalk ZB
Hi Larry,
I just wanted to say thanks to you and the NewsTalk ZB team for the great election coverage tonight. I’ve been listening from Australia and have to say a very big congratulations to John Key, the National Party and conservatives in general.
As an Aussie who is suffering from a Labor government, it’s great to see the New Zealanders have the common sense that Aussies seem to lack.
If I work out the time difference, I’ll be listening for a little while in the morning before I go to sleep. I’m on night shift at the moment so I think your show starts around the time my shift finishes.
I don’t understand this one any more. The federal government is clearly intent on awarding the next contract for the operation of the Australia Network to the ABC, but is also so hopelessly intent on pretending to be following correct processes that it has yet again changed the rules in the hope that the inferior bid of the ABC will somehow be declared the winner.
The Government has terminated the tender process to find a new operator for the Australia Network due to “significant leaks” relating to the contract to run the broadcaster.
The communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy announced the decision to terminate the process late on Monday afternoon, saying the process had been compromised to such a degree that a fair outcome could not be achieved. A decision will now be made by March next year, he said.
Of course when Conroy says “fair outcome” he actually means “giving the contract to the ABC because those people at Sky will corrupt the Asians with a ‘Bob Brown’s hate media’ view of my inept government”.
Recently, the Government requested that the Australian Federal Police investigate developments surrounding the tender including the leaks, according to a report in The Australian Financial Review. That request came after The Australian published a story claiming that Sky News had been nominated as the preferred tenderer for a second time.
Yes, that’s right, a second time. The last time Sky News were about to win, the government changed the rules as well. Back to July goes the time machine…
Doubts have emerged about the tender process to determine who will run the Australia Network, after it emerged that the Federal Government sidestepped an independent assessment that Sky News would be better placed to run the broadcaster.
Fairfax newspapers report today that Sky News’ bid was originally favoured over the ABC’s offer by a majority of the public servants charged with overseeing the process. But the panel’s role was effectively ditched after the Government made a late decision to modify the rules governing the tender.
This all reminds me of the good (aka bad) old days of the ACT Government under the leadership of then-Chief Turnip Jon Stanhope where every decision went to a “public consultation” where people who could be bothered going along to the consultation sessions were promptly ignored and ridiculed by the government officials in attendance, and the government just went ahead with its own plans anyway.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a Labor/Greens federal government is using the tricks of a Labor/Greens territory government…I just wish that if they were going to do stuff regardless of the outcome of reviews/consultations/committees/etc that they would just do it instead of wasting money on the reviews/consultations/committees/etc, but then who would they pass the blame to when it all goes badly? Oh, of course, Tony Abbott, just like she did with the boat people policy when they fell in a giant steaming heap, and didn’t the opinion polls absolutely love her for that?
Julia, just give up and call an election. It’s clear that you have no idea how to govern…just let us elect someone else, please!
