Samuel's Blog

Election poll result

This is the result of the exclusive SamuelPoll (errr, well if you have a batter name for it, then let me know).

August 21st, 2010 at 05:11am

Lin Hatfield Dodds is a dangerous hypocrite

The “do as we say, not as we do” gore-bull warming enthusiasts strike again….this time in the form of Greens Senate candidate for the ACT, Lin Hatfield Dodds.

Senate candidate Lin Hatfield Dodds says she’s not environmentally irresponsible for owning a V8 Toyota Landcruiser.
[..]
Ms Hatfield Dodds told The Canberra Times that poor public transport options forced her family to buy a second car about two years ago. The other family car was a Toyota Echo. The 4WD was chosen to take the family on monthly camping trips.

”I’m not at all worried about driving a four-wheel drive I’ve always said I don’t fit the mould of what people often perceive a green to be,” she said.

Well Lin, that’s just because most Canberrans don’t realise that the Greens’ socialist utopia inevitably involves the almighty administrators living a much more luxurious life than the rest of the population. It’s sold as “being nice to the environment” and “equality”…but you and I both know that this is not the case.

Back to the point though…monthly camping trips? Really? Aren’t those campfires bad for the environment or causing global warming or something? And if the rest of us are supposed to give up our large vehicles, how come you can’t lead by example. There are plenty of places to camp which do not require a four wheel drive in order to access them.

This is exactly the sort of “do as I say, not as I do” mentality that led to the delays and blowouts in cost of the Gungahlin Drive Extension. Admittedly the Stanhope government shares the blame for this by ineptly not simply overruling the cuckoo activists when they had the chance…however the Save The Ridge mob, supported by the Greens and the Socialists were the main cause of the delays in construction, the resulting blowout in costs, and the necessity to increase overall costs further by making the second lane a “we’ll just have to do that at some later stage” proposition for the ACT government. How is this a “do as I say, not as I do” issue? Because the Save The Ridge nuts use the GDE.

We can’t allow these people to take control of our government. We can’t risk having proponents of large central government in power when they pretend to be interested in “fairness”, but really just want to increase their own personal power and thrust some delusional socialist doctrine upon us. If they can cause a GDE fiasco at a local level, imagine what chaos they could cause at a national level. If you thought the Building the Education Revolution disaster was bad…you ain’t seen nothin’ (to borrow a quaint phrase) until you’ve seen Bob Brown as Dear Leader.

By the way, I love how The Canberra Times (aka The Fyshwick Guardian) not only tries to justify Lin’s hypocritical use of a V8 4WD with details of her carbon offset program (memo Lin: offsetting is not the same as reducing) but also seems to think that the only members of the Legislative Assembly are Greens:

Of Canberra’s four MLAs, three drive a Toyota Prius and the fourth has a Smart Car

I’m sure life would be much more in-line with the ideological standpoint of The Fyshwick Guardian if this were the case…but unless I missed something, the Hare-Clark proportional voting system hasn’t extended itself to removing all but the representatives of the party with the fewest elected members. Do the journos know something about the plans of the Greens that we don’t?

(with thanks to Jeremy Hanson MLA for the link to the article…seeing as I’ve mentioned Jeremy’s name, I should probably point out that my views do not necessarily reflect his)

Samuel

1 comment August 12th, 2010 at 11:38pm

Election Poll: Week Three

After almost a year, we finally have a new poll. The plan at this stage is to have this poll repeated each week for the remaining three weeks of the election campaign. Results will be released on a week-by-week basis, with a full comparison of results on election day.

July 31st, 2010 at 07:34pm

Preliminary hot-to-vote card for the ACT

With the Australian Electoral Commission having today announced the candidates for the seats of Fraser and Canberra in the federal election, and the candidates for the ACT’s two senate seats, it’s time for me to publish a preliminary how-to-vote card. This is all subject to change, and a finalised version will be published either on election day, or once I have cast my vote if I decide to put in a pre-poll vote.

There are a few objectives in the how-to-vote card. Firstly, I acknowledge that for the House of Representatives at least, it’s a safe Labor seat, so whilst it’s important to try and replace Labor, it’s also important to try and reduce the margin and make it less safe for Labor if they do retain the seats. In the Senate, the main objective is to maintain at least one Liberal seat…the other objective is to keep crazy people like the Greens out of the Senate. The idea of a returned Gillard government with a Greens balance of power in the senate is downright scary.

Fraser
1. MILLIGAN, James Keith (Liberal Party) — obviously he must come first
2. HEDGES-PHILLIPS, Quintin (Secular Party of Australia) — I find a bunch of their policies to be quite scary, especially ones about climate change, mining taxes and illegal immigrants etc, but they have minimal chance of gaining enough seats in parliament to do much of anything, so I’d rather have them than the Labor party. He also has a job which I can respect (Television Presentation Co-ordinator…and he’s not an ABC person!) and isn’t a career politician, which is more than I can say for many people from the other parties.
3. LEIGH, Andrew (Australian Labor Party) — this is tough, do I put an economist with the poor sense to join Labor ahead of the business owner with the poor sense to join the Greens? In any place other than Canberra, the answer would probably be no, but I can’t risk giving the Greens enough votes to take the seat of Fraser. Without an incumbent, this is a real possibility, so as hard as it is, a Labor economist (hopefully one with more brains than Wayne “traffic jams cause inflation” Swan gets third spot.
4. ESGUERRA, Indra (The Greens) — she might be a business owner, but she’s a Green, and I can’t support the socialists and their global warming alarmism.

Canberra
1. JONES, Giulia (Liberal Party) — “Giulia with a G” would have been a great addition to the Legislative Assembly, so hopefully we can get her in to the federal parliament.
2. BRODTMANN, Gai (Labor Party) — Another case of “I’ll put Labor ahead of the Greens just to keep the Greens out”.
3. ELLERMAN, Sue (The Greens) — No comment required here.

Senate
The senate is tougher to work out because the field is, at first impression, quite poor. There’s a couple good people in there, but they’re the minority. I’m tempted to simply vote above the line for the Liberals here, because they’re the only ones who are worth a vote, but this exercise wouldn’t be much fun if I didn’t try to work out the order in which the remaining rabble should receive preferences.
1. HUMPHRIES, Gary (Liberal Party) — I like Gary personally, although I find him to be less conservative than I would like…this has probably saved him in the strangely left-wing ACT though. That said, he has been a good Senator and will be receiving my vote again. I was tempted to give him second preference and give the other Liberal candidate the first preference, as this tactic helped me to get both Jeremy Hanson and Zed Seselja over the line in the ACT election, but given the nature of the ACT, I can’t risk Gary missing out on his quota, and he must therefore get my first preference, with the other Liberal candidate receiving my runoff.
2. WATTS, Matthew (Liberal Party) — See above
3. GLYNN, John (Independent) — From here on, the field devolves significantly. I know almost nothing about Mr. Glynn, however if, like much of the ACT, he is relatively left-wing, at least he will be an independent left-winger rather than part of a socialist party machine, like all of the following candidates.
4. LUNDY, Kate Alexandra (Labor Party) — I chuck most of her pamphlets in the bin after spending a minute staring at them in bewilderment…but I’d rather have her stay in her seat, than see her displaced by a Democrat or a Green
5. CHURCHILL, Darren Mark (Democrat) — This is where I start getting desperate, trying to work out which socialist is less dangerous than the next socialist. Darren is a casual relief teacher…if I can keep him away from indoctrinating teaching children, well that’ll be something. I also think the Democrats are less dangerous than the Greens.
6. DAVID, Anthony John (Democrat) — If he can keep a Green out, that’s wonderful.
7. PARRIS, Hannah (Green Party) — Of the two Greens running in this race, Hannah has made less scary press statements.
8. MATHEWS, David (Labor) — David disqualified himself from getting a higher ranking in the preferences by dishonestly appearing in a photo of supportive locals in one of Mike Kelly’s (incumbent candidate for Eden-Monaro) pamphlets, and then tried to defend his position on WIN News last night by claiming that, as he supports Mike Kelly, he is entitled to be in the photo. David, you’re not a local unless you live in the electorate. The only reason you’re not coming last in the preferences is because of the scary woman who follows.
9. HATFIELD DODDS, Lin (Green Party) — I can’t believe that the Greens have found a local who is scarier than Kerrie Tucker. Kudos to them for doing so. Now can they please hide this person away in an office where we never have to hear from them ever again?

As I say, the order may change a tad between now and the election, but this is how I see it for now, and how I would vote if the election were to be held today.

Now that we have a finalised list of candidates, I’ll send some interview requests to the candidates who interest me. This will not be all of them…in fact it will probably not be most of them. I may expand my scope a tad and seek interviews with some interesting candidates from outside the ACT as well. Stay tuned!

Samuel

July 31st, 2010 at 04:18pm

If the official polls favour Labor, why do the online polls favour the Coalition?

The Nielsen and Morgan polls of late have generally been in favour of Labor…not by much, but by enough. The few online polls that I found today do not seem to represent this trend though, which I find quite interesting. The online polls are all in favour of the Coalition by a large margin.

First up, there’s this one on the Yahoo7 website:

62% to 28% favouring the Coalition, with a sample size of 1,500

Then the daily Sky News poll:

(click image to enlarge)

67% to 33% favouring the Coalition. Sample size unknown.

And the daily NineMSN poll, directly under the headline of Tony Abbott’s announcement to slash the national immigration intake. The question, whilst not the same as the other two polls, has the same relevance and implications given the policies of the two parties.

(click image to enlarge)

82% to 18% favouring the Coalition’s immigration policy. Sample size 64,021.

So if the big polling companies, with smaller sample sizes, are showing a much closer margin in favour of Labor, is it time for us to start asking questions about the sampling methods of the polling companies?

Samuel

1 comment July 25th, 2010 at 04:23pm

What time will the leaders debate end tonight?

The leaders debate is scheduled to begin at 6:30pm and end at 7:30pm, but with 72 minutes of speaking time in the debate, it would seem quite impossible for it to be over by 7:30.

Add in the time required for journalists to ask questions, the time for the MC to run through the rules and moderate the debate, and I can’t see this finishing before 7:50. In fact, I’d suggest that it will finish around 7:55, with the coverage from the networks finishing at 8pm.

I note that the ABC (whom I shall not be watching) have scheduled half an hour of analysis after the debate from 7:30-8:00, with ABC News on at the earlier time of 6pm. I’d suggest that they’ll only have a short amount of analysis and will be out at 8pm.

I’ll be watching Seven’s coverage, although I’m considering bringing in a second TV so that I can monitor Seven’s “polygraph” “polliegraph” (thanks to Cheyne for picking up this error) and Nine’s “worm” while I conduct some live blogging during the debate tonight.

I note that Seven have used a “scientific method” to select a representative cross-section of the community for the studio audience. I wonder if this scientific method is similar to that which was used by the Climategate scientists to skew and alter the data in favour of their dodgy global warming theories? Only time will tell.

Samuel

July 25th, 2010 at 03:10pm

Is Julia out of ideas already?

Today’s great ideas certainly don’t seem to be of her own creation.

First up, The Australian from June 30:

TONY Abbott will spend $1.5 billion to improve front line mental health services if the Coalition is elected.

Under the Real Action Plan for Better Mental Health, the Coalition would target young sufferers of mental disorders and build a range of new mental health centres to address the problem.

The opposition pledged today to deliver 20 new Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres, 60 additional youth headspace sites and 800 acute and sub acute early intervention beds.

Julia Gillard today via Health Minister Nicola Roxon:

Ten new youth mental health services will be established by a re-elected Gillard Labor Government within a year to help local young people cope with depression, substance abuse and other mental health issues.

The extra headspace sites have been chosen on advice from headspace, on the basis of community need.

That one took three weeks to copy and reduce in size.

Now we’ll set the time machine for March last year:

The government is being urged to introduce a $3000 cash stimulus plan to encourage drivers to crush their old cars, protecting the environment and the struggling car industry.

That was here in Australia. Over in the US, the scheme kicked off in July:

The program is offering a 35-hundred dollar allowance to those who trade in a car or truck that gets 18 miles-per-gallon or worse for a new vehicle that gets 22 miles-per-gallon or more. As further incentive, the allowance jumps to 45-hundred dollars if the new vehicle gets ten miles-per-gallon or more than the old one. The Cash For Clunkers program is being embraced by most auto dealers nationwide but they must be registered with the program to participate. Full program details are available online at www.cars.gov.

It didn’t take long for the fund to be completely overwhelmed with claims, and for congress to need to pump more money in to the fund (and increase the United States’ public debt, which is expected to reach $USD 1.47 trillion, or 41 cents of every dollar the federal government spends). There were plenty of complaints of delays in cheques being sent to motor vehicle dealers, and even more complaints of cheques never arriving due to minor errors on the forms, leaving the dealers severely out-of-pocket.

Over in Germany, where they’ve had a similar scheme, they are now looking at a large dive in car sales, which will likely result in widespread job losses.

US Congressman Ron Paul made similar criticisms of the US cash for clunkers scheme, but also noted this, which I think has been largely missed by most people:

Low-income earners who would have been in the market for those perfectly serviceable, working cars will have fewer to choose from, and those cars will probably be more expensive than they normally would have been. Automotive repair shops actively lobbied against this program, as it will destroy many of the cars they would have repaired. They were out-lobbied. And of course, Americans as a whole are hurt, because this additional bailout of auto companies comes at our expense through inflation….

Requiring cars to be destroyed and new ones made to replace them might help the auto industry in the short run, but any improved fuel economy will not make up for the environmental impact of junking one car and making a new one. So this is not a program that should really make environmentalists happy.

So, what has Julia announced today?

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has copied Barack Obama’s cash-for-clunkers scheme to shore up Labor’s climate change credentials ahead of the election.

The government promises to give motorists a $2000 rebate if they trade in a car built before 1995 for a low-emission, fuel-efficient model.

Of all the ideas Julia could have copied, this has to be one of the worst. It certainly shows that her, and her government, have no real idea about managing the economy. They’ve plunged us in to deficit, and if they’re allowed to put this plan in to place, they’ll plunge us further in to deficit, while putting many people out of work.

Samuel

July 24th, 2010 at 08:59pm

Moving Forward

At 2am, we will move forward…but a vote for Tony Abbott, at 2am, is a vote to move back. A Gillard, Labor, government, will always move forward, we will only move forward.

I acknowledge that, due to the errors of the past, some states are not as forward as others. I therefore promise, that a re-elected Gillard, Labor, government, with its commitment to moving forward, will, over time, aim to move some states forward more than others, to compensate for an historic lack of moving forward.

Under our plan, one day, we will all be able to move forward together.

To the people of Western Australia, I say, that a vote, for the Gillard, Labor, government, will be a vote to keep you moving forward. It is our plan that, after two years of diligent work and sensible, careful, moving forward, by my trusted and loyal time lord Wayne Swan, you will have moved forward to where the eastern states are today.

Then, together, as a nation, we will all move forward together.

Julia

1 comment July 18th, 2010 at 02:47pm

Gillard likely to call the election on Sunday

As per the information I relayed to 2UE’s Stuart Bocking last week from my sources about Julia Gillard calling the election this coming weekend, one of Andrew Bolt’s readers has relayed some information to him about a sudden change to Julia’s weekend schedule which puts her in good stead to visit an appropriate official on Sunday:

Julia Gillard’s office on Thursday night cancelled her opening of the new Holocaust Centre in Melbourne next Sunday, 18 July. This has been arranged for some time, so it’s quite a move.

If she is to call the election on a day, she has to be where the G-G is (but she’s leaving for overseas Friday) or the senior Governor, who would be the NSW Governor, and that would be in Sydney.

My information says August 28 for the election, however Andrew is suggesting August 21. I’m sticking with the information from my sources though as I doubt that Julia will want to call an election with the bare minimum amount of notice, as it will be seen as a bit too much of a rush, and will further highlight her current rushed approach to policies and announcements.

Samuel

2 comments July 12th, 2010 at 01:02pm

The secret to long life is onion sandwiches

It’s interesting to me that almost everyone who lives to a really old age or keeps working until a really old age seems to have something to which they credit their longevity, and almost without fail it is something which you couldn’t imagine a scientist saying in a thousand years.

Last week, one such story crossed my desk:

REDLANDS, Calif. — It wasn’t snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night that stopped Chester Arthur Reed from his appointed round. The mail handler just felt it was time to call it quits at age 95.

The fork lift operator retired Wednesday as the nation’s oldest postal worker, ending a career without taking a single sick day. It’s a feat he attributes to a healthy diet of watermelon, alkaline water and an onion sandwich with mayo every day.

“If everyone in the nation ate watermelons, they’d get rid of all the doctors,” Reed said.

Despite being partially deaf and walking with a stoop, Reed has worked for more years than many of his co-workers have been alive and has accrued 3,856 hours — nearly two years — of sick leave for not missing a shift in 37 years.
[..]
His military service, which included physical conditioning with pilots, is evident in the rigid discipline surrounding his health. It’s his favorite topic of conversation, said Reed’s co-worker Verna Ortiz, 50.

He believes in drinking alkaline water, to minimize acids that can damage digestive system, and eating sandwiches made “with a lot of mayonnaise and get a big slice of onion” because the vegetable is closely related to garlic, one of the healthiest foods you can eat, he said.

“He taught me to stay away from the two S’s: salt and sugar,” Ortiz said, adding she lost 10 pounds in six months by taking his advice.

In truth, I think that staying at work helps a lot of people to reach an old age happily and healthily simply by keeping active. Their eating habits certainly help, but I think an active mind has a lot more to do with it than we might realise.

Samuel

July 6th, 2010 at 05:59pm

Arizona have the right approach to illegal immigration

OK, so maybe I will mention immigration policies today…just not domestic policies at this time, not until later tonight anyway.

I was very pleased to see Arizona enforcing federal laws earlier this year about illegal immigration, and was hardly surprised when various federal authorities tried to stop them. It really says a lot about the supporters of illegal immigration in the Obama regime that they would rather not be seen to support illegal immigration by doing something obvious such as repealing the laws about it, but would rather just have it happen quietly and illegally by trying to stop others from enforcing the law.

I was even more pleased overnight to spot a good idea from a Republican candidate about how to handle the illegal immigrants who have already set up camp.

Ratcheting up the debate over immigration in his state, a candidate for the Arizona utilities commission is threatening to cut off power and gas to illegal immigrants if he’s elected.

“It is not a right. It is a service,” Barry Wong, candidate for the Arizona Corporation Commission, told The Arizona Republic.

The Republican candidate argues that the policy would be a cost-saving measure for consumers.

Though it would cost money for power companies to check immigration status, he said it would ultimately save money because power companies would not have to build new plants to serve the illegal immigrant community, presumably passing on that savings to consumers. His plan, if elected to the five-person commission, would be to require utilities to check immigration status.

“There is a cost ratepayers shouldn’t have to bear because of the illegal immigrant population,” he said, while acknowledging the idea would probably attract “criticism about human-rights violations.”
[..]
Wong, who was born in the United States, is the son of Chinese immigrants. He previously served in the Arizona House of Representatives.

Note that last bit. He’s descended from people who immigrated legally. The whole point about the illegal immigration debate both here in Australia, and abroad in places such as the US, is that there are legal ways to immigrate, and there are extremely good reasons why we have these rules and procedures in place. Genuine refugees are a different kettle of fish, but people who are simply illegal immigrants do not, and should not, have the right to access public facilities, be it power or other things.

If you shouldn’t be in a country, then you have no right to expect access to the various bits of the country simply because you managed to sneak in.

Samuel

2 comments July 6th, 2010 at 02:45pm

Sharron Angle

One of the keys to defeating the Barrack Obama regime is defeating his supporters in Congress. It’s not possible to vote Obama out until 2012, by which time, if left unchecked, the damage could be catastrophic and take decades to fix. It is, however, possible to vote out many of his supporters later this year…one of them is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada). In fact, it’s probably fair to say that defeating Harry Reid is one of the most important things that conservatives need to aim for.

As such, I was very pleased to see that the winner of the Republican primary was Sharron Angle, a good conservative.

Sharron appeared on The Patriot Express radio show earlier today on KLAV Las Vegas. I found it to be most interesting, and I dare say that if he had more people like Sharron in government around the world, it would be a much better place.

Here’s the audio, courtesy of Patriot Express Radio.

[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/SharronAngle20100706.mp3]
Download MP3

Samuel

July 6th, 2010 at 11:45am

Immigration policies

I was hoping to write something about immigration policies this morning, but unfortunately Julia Gillard has been prattling on for the better part of twenty minutes so far without actually saying anything, and I don’t have time to wait for her to announce an actual policy as I have to go to work this year.

I’ll have to write something tonight, assuming that she has finished talking by then.

Samuel

July 6th, 2010 at 11:28am

Nuclear explosion to solve oil spill problems?

I’ve heard it mentioned a few times that a nuclear explosion could kill off the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but until today I really hadn’t given it much thought as BP seem to be doing a reasonable job of sealing off the oil leak…a task which is clear extremely difficult given the location of the leak and the sheer pressure at which the oil is being pumped out by natural forces (I think many people forget that the oil is being pushed out by the earth and not being pumped by a machine).

BP are getting there, but they have suffered setbacks and that region is entering its hurricane season, so it’s probably a good time to consider some alternative courses of action just in case the current efforts suffer further setbacks or fail outright.

The nuclear option, at first, seemed silly to me…but I gave it another look after Maritz (whom I have invited to resume her regular columns whenever it suits her) sent me some information about old successful Russian attempts to seal gas leaks with nuclear explosions. It turns out that the method is tried and tested, and even more interestingly the Obama administration (who have done nothing but delay everyone else’s efforts to plug the leak, clean up the oil and protect the coastline) have ruled out the nuclear option. It’s clear to me, especially given the Obama administration’s renewed push for Cap and Trade (aka, the ETS or the “Great Big New Tax on Everything” as Tony Abbott would call it) in the wake of the oil spill, that the Obama administration is loving the oil spill as it gives them the opportunity to berate private industry, and in particular the oil industry, for their “evil and nasty ways”.

So, should we consider the nuclear option? Well former Russian Minister of nuclear energy and veteran Soviet physicist Viktor Mikhailov certainly thinks so, and with good reason:

“A nuclear explosion over the leak,” he says nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. “I don’t know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is solved.”
[..]
For some, blasting the problem seems the most logical answer in the world. Mikhailov has had a distinguished career in the nuclear field, helping to close a Soviet Union program that used nuclear explosions to seal gas leaks. Ordinarily he’s an opponent of nuclear blasts, but he says an underwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico would not be harmful and could cost no more than $10 million. That compares with the $2.35 billion BP has paid out in cleanup and compensation costs so far. “This option is worth the money,” he says.

And it’s not just Soviet boffins. Milo Nordyke, one of the masterminds behind U.S research into peaceful nuclear energy in the 1960s and ’70s says a nuclear explosion is a logical last-resort solution for BP and the government. Matthew Simmons, a former energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and the founder of energy investment-banking firm Simmons & Company International, is another calling for the nuclear option.

Even former U.S. President Bill Clinton has voiced support for the idea of an explosion to stem the flow of oil, albeit one using conventional materials rather than nukes.
[..]
The Soviets first used a nuclear blast to seal a gas leak in 1966. Urtabulak, one of its prized gas-fields in Uzbekistan, had caught fire and raged for three years. Desperate to save the cherished reserves, Yefim Slavsky, then Minister of Light Industry, ordered nuclear engineers to use the most powerful weapon in their arsenal.

“The Minister said, ‘Do it. Put it out. Explode it,'” recalls Albert Vasilyev, a young engineer and a rising star in the project who now teaches at the Lenin Technical Institute in Moscow.

Vasilyev remembers the technology behind the program with obvious pride. “The explosion takes place deep underground,” he says. “We pinch the pipe, break it and the pipe collapses.” According to Vasilyev, the blast at Urtabulak sealed the well shut leaving only an empty crater.

Matthew Simmons, energy adviser in the George W. Bush administration, who was mentioned in that article, is in charge of the Ocean Energy Institute these days. The OEA seems to be more interested in “renewable” energy than oil, and even seems to be pushing the “Peak Oil Theory” about the supposed imminent drying up of all the oil wells in the world (a theory which has surely lost credibility given the fact that many experts believe that the oil repository involved in this oil spill alone could keep spewing oil for two years if left open), so one would assume that it would be an organisation which the Obama administration would pay some attention to…but apparently not. Anyway, Matthew explained how the nuclear option would work to Sean Hannity on Sean’s radio show earlier this week:

Matthew Simmons, founder of the Ocean Energy Institute, joined Sean on the show to discuss former President Clinton’s latest comments suggesting that Navy could blow up the oil leak and cover the well with debris. “If we sent a small nuclear device it would turn the rock into glass,” informed Simmons, “President Clinton is absolutely right.” The New York Times reported that the Obama administration has already rejected the idea but the “nuclear” option seems to be growing steam. “What’s the percentage of success,” questioned Hannity. Simmons, without missing a beat replied, “100 percent.” Those are pretty good odds.

It seems to me that if the nuclear option is anywhere near as good as Simmons believes, then there are two main reasons why it hasn’t been deployed already:
1) As previously noted, the Obama administration have no intention of speeding things up as, by twisting the facts, they can use the oil spill for their own political purposes.
2) BP, who have also said that they’re not keen on the nuclear option, want to try to salvage the oil well and re-use it once the leak is plugged. Given their investment in the project to-date, this is a reasonable objective on their behalf.

We need to remember that, if BP had their own way, there is no way known that they would have been drilling so far out and so deep in the ocean; government regulations making it virtually impossible to setup drilling operation on-shore have forced BP out in to the deep ocean. We should also note (and I’m amazed that the Australian media seems to have ignored this fact, I picked it up originally from either The Wall Street Journal This Morning or The Mark Levin Show…don’t remember which one now, but it’s been fairly well reported in the US) that BP, pretty much ever since fishing in the Gulf was banned due to the oil, have been paying the fishermen to get them to use their fishing vessels to assist in the clean-up. They did this of their own accord, long before the government made any pronouncements whatsoever. It is also BP who have been doing everything in regards to slowing and stopping the oil leak.

BP are certainly not blameless in this incident as, by all reports it seems that they may have cut some corners which contributed to the leak…we’ll need to wait for the investigation to publish its findings before we know any of this for sure, however it is BP who have done more than anyone else to try to contain the damage as much as possible.

I’m not surprised at all if BP want to try to reuse the oil well…something which a nuclear explosion would probably prevent…but given the amount of time we have spent waiting for this to be plugged, and the fact that the hurricane season could very well make stopping the leak an even slower process, surely it is time for the nuclear option to be put on standby just in case BP are not able to reach their August deadline for the current efforts to succeed.

Admittedly hurricanes could be of some use in helping to disperse the oil…but that’s only really the case once the leak has been plugged, as there’s not much point in dispersing the oil if more is bubbling up to the surface all the time.

The fact is, the nuclear option is our best option to stop this oil leak if BP’s current efforts do not succeed for one reason or another.

Samuel

July 3rd, 2010 at 02:06am

Thoughts on Julia Gillard

An email to 2GB’s Jason Morrison who is presenting his show live from Parliament House today.

G’day Jason,

My immediate reaction to Julia Gillard is that we finally have two parties which have clearly defined and different ideological standpoints. Apart from the point of illegal immigrants, it is clear that Labor is left and Liberal is right…it’s been ages since we’ve been able to truly say that. People actually have a choice now.

Julia may have been appointed by the right-wing, but only because Kevin Rudd was sinking the ship…it is still the same team, but one which will now run with clear left-wing policies on things like global warming and workplace relations.

I say bring it on. This type of clear difference is what this country should have more of.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

June 24th, 2010 at 03:25pm