When the cows take over the road and enforce their own set of road rules.
I took this video about 10 to 15 KM east of Conargo, while I was on my way to Deniliquin.
Incidentally, it took exactly five hours for me to get from the Shell service station in Dickson to the Centrepoint Motel in Deniliquin, and it was the first time I’ve made the trip without stopping along the way (I did go through a drive-thru, but that doesn’t really count). The distance travelled was 496.8 KM, making an average speed of 99.36 KM/H.
There were some very interesting scenes in federal parliament yesterday when Craig Thomson, the self-suspended Labor member for Dobell suddenly changed his mind on how he wanted to vote, and sided with the Coalition. He did this at a time when it was too late for anybody in the Coalition to abstain from the vote, and therefore put Tony Abbott’s promise that the Coalition would not rely on the “tainted” vote of Craig Thomson in jeopardy.
Both Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne (the Coalition’s manager of business in the House of Representatives) bolted from the chamber to avoid the vote and cancel out Craig Thomson. Mr. Pyne made it out, but Mr. Abbott did not. Regardless, their goal was achieved; Craig Thomson’s vote was cancelled out.
But to the same extent, Labor got exactly what they wanted. There can be no doubt, despite Labor’s claims to the contrary, that this was a stunt aimed at making Tony Abbott unwittingly break a promise and that Labor got something even better. The footage of Tony Abbott running from the chamber was used in the mainstream media along with captions such as “mad dash” (referring to the media’s “Mad Monk” nickname for Tony Abbott) as some sort of evidence of erratic and unprofessional conduct on Tony Abbott’s behalf.
Those of us in the know are well-aware that Tony Abbott was trying to uphold a promise, but people who don’t pay quite as much attention or interest to politics would have come away from the coverage with the notion that Tony Abbott did something wrong and has questionable judgement. In the short term at least, I think Labor got more out of this than they ever could have dreamed of getting from having Craig Thomson break Tony Abbott’s promise on a fairly minor vote. In terms of the political point-scoring of the day, Labor won simply because the majority of the media ran the coverage in a way which was very favourable to Labor.
Tony Abbott did the right thing and got a roasting for it…and I dare say most of the public don’t even know it.
The thing which I’m left wondering now is, seeing as the stunt worked reasonably well for Labor, what’s to stop them from pulling it again? And if they do, how will the Coalition respond?
The vote, in case you’re wondering, was over whether the Labor government’s plan to increase the federal government’s debt limit should continue to be debated. A minor procedural vote on an important issue. Labor probably won on that point as well as we’ve barely heard a peep about the debt limit in the last 24 hours, when it should have been the Coalition’s main talking point.
As for Craig Thomson himself. Channel Nine’s “A Current Affair” has shelved plans to air an interview with a prostitute who claims to have been engaged by Mr. Thomson at some stage, but won’t say why. One can only wonder what pressure was brought to bear on Nine to prevent them from airing the interview which could have contributed strongly to the downfall of a government. I suspect they were threatened with the loss of revenue from government advertising. I also suspect that we will hear more about this in a few weeks…probably at the hands of “Today Tonight” who would undoubtedly like to find an angle on this story which paints “A Current Affair” or the Nine Network as being “weak”.
It’s amazing how Craig Thomson, one man, can have such a grubby reputation and make such a mockery of something as important as the parliament. Meanwhile, all of us suffer from having an inept government which is being kept in power via the mockery.
G’day Luke. Welcome to 2GB. We last spoke when you were in Melbourne and an ash cloud had grounded my flight…good to hear you again.
Anyway, online gambling, you’re absolutely right. It’s hypocritical of the government to be so opposed to poker machines while embracing online gambling which, as we all know, is exactly where folks will go if the pokies no longer satisfy their gambling urges.
Why doesn’t Wilkie ever talk about online gambling? I dare say that, if you can call gambling a problem (I don’t, I call it a choice), it’s a bigger problem than pokies. At least with pokies, you have to hand the machine your cash, whereas online, it’s your credit card number and it doesn’t hurt until the statement arrives and you realise you’ll be paying it back for years.
I suppose though, if the government are going to tax it, that might just get Wayne Swan his promised surplus.
Perhaps I’m just shocked by this because it’s coming from a government which I generally think are doing a good job, and so an occasional disagreement has more of an impact than an ongoing series of disagreements (when was the last time I launched a tirade against the ACT Government…I’m just so used to disagreeing with them that it hardly seems worth the effort to spend multiple hours per week reinforcing the fact), but this one really gave me a shock this morning.
The New South Wales Government has proposed the banning of a number of things on people’s own apartment balconies including smoking and, wait for it, drying underwear! Apart from the obvious fire hazard of forcing both activities indoors, and the potential of having smoke waft through air conditioning between apartments if people smoke indoors, I can’t help but worry about the seemingly unnecessary intrusion in to the goings-ons in private property by the state. What worries me even more is that people are seemingly willing to cede authority over what happens in private dwellings to the state, rather than dealing with it themselves or through existing means.
SMOKERS could be banned from lighting up on their own balconies under proposed changes to NSW strata laws.
Thousands of submissions were made in the first public consultations on a sweeping review of laws governing strata schemes, and were dominated by complaints about smoking.
Residents also wanted to ban balcony barbecues and the keeping of snakes “given their propensity to escape”. But they asked to be allowed to dry clothes on balconies “except underwear, which should be dried on racks out of sight”.
A report to the government, to be used to create a discussion paper, said smoking “was a significant bone of contention”. “The overwhelming majority of correspondents strongly objected to being subjected to second-hand smoke in strata buildings and demanded smoking be banned from communal areas and open air balconies,” the Global Access Partners strata laws online consultation report said.
The snake one I understand, but we already have laws about how domestic animals have to be kept. We can amend those if necessary, but it’s silly to legislate about such a thing in unrelated legislation about management of apartment buildings.
The smoking one I find bizarre. I live in a unit, and occasionally I receive wafting smoke from my neighbours, but if you are going to live in an apartment then you are surely accepting that you are living in close proximity to other people and, as such, will be less immune to the activities of these people. It’s a situation which calls for a bit of common courtesy, not government legislation and intrusion.
In my case, a quick word with the neighbours resulted in an understanding that they would make an effort to prevent smoke from drifting towards my place, although it was understood and accepted that it would not always be possible. To the same extent, I make an effort to prevent the two doggies from making too much noise. Obviously they’re going to bark when they’re concerned about noises or when they’re chasing a ball, but I try to limit such barking when there is no threat to the security of the property, and by limiting their playtime outside of daylight hours. It’s just common sense that when you live in close proximity to your neighbour, that you need to be mindful of what effect you are having on them.
If people living in an apartment complex can not reach an agreement, then there is a body corporate to whom they can take their disagreement for judgement. Through this process, people retain the right to decide on what is and is not allowed on their property by virtue of the fact that they have an ownership stake in the management of the complex by the body corporate and can vote against a manager or a decision if necessary. Ultimately living in an apartment complex does provide less freedom than living in a property which does not share walls with neighbours, but that is a choice made by people when they decide to live in an apartment instead of a house. This freedom however, should not be further curbed by governments making blanket decisions about all apartment complexes instead of allowing residents and owners to make decisions which suit their own needs.
As for the other idea which was floated of banning the outdoor drying of underwear. Why? What possible reason could people have to be offended by underwear? And why should somebody be forced to pay more to dry their underwear indoors in a dryer or near a heater (which the Fire Brigade regularly tells us is a bad idea) when they can do it for free in the sunshine on their balcony? If somebody has offensive messages on their underwear, then this is something which can be taken up with them or the body corporate, but is not something which requires legislation. I am of the view that underwear should be worn and not seen (I think that underwear visible above or outside pants while being worn in unsightly, but I don’t want to legislate against it, and oppose such legislation in places where it has been introduced), but even I accept that in order for it to be cleaned, it has to be seen. And what about the underwear which is sold in shops? Are we going to put it in locked cabinets like we have with cigarettes?
And how in the heck are we going to enforce it? Are we going to have government-employed building inspectors checking balconies for underwear? Who’s going to pay for that, and what good will come of it? Taxpayers, and none…only a further diminution of freedom.
If we are going to try and prevent inter-apartment offence, then I don’t think that we will stop at underwear, especially if the underwear and smoking ideas are being touted primarily for the “benefit” of young minds and bodies. I can see this progressing to bans on televisions displaying M rated (and higher) material near windows in case a youngster is prying. Perhaps even curtains could be regulated, as we wouldn’t want curtains bearing the Collingwood Football Club’s logo to offend a West Coast supporter, or vice-versa, would we?
Fair dinkum! For a country which allegedly likes freedom and a fair go, we certainly don’t seem to embrace it when we think it would be easier to just get the government to do the thinking for us.
While I was following the coverage of the federal budget this evening, I made a few notes, most of which were published to Twitter. What follows is adapted from those notes.
Rather than all of these spending programs, Wayne Swan would be better off delivering a corporate tax cut as the benefits would reach everyone through lower running costs for businesses creating lower prices through competition, plus increased business profit, and higher tax revenue as a result of the increased economic activity. Instead, Wayne is giving some people money directly, money which is being confiscated from many individuals and businesses through taxes. This creates the likelihood of price rises and inflation.
Wayne Swan claimed that he tried to get a business tax cut through the parliament, but was blocked. This is only partially true. The government tried to tie other tax increases to the business tax cuts, making the package unacceptable and therefore unpassable.
On the topic of the surplus, it really is a budgetary trick. The proof of that is twofold:
Some spending was shifted forward from 2012/2013 to 2011/2012. This make the deficit for this financial year higher than expected, while allowing next year’s bottom line to look healthier. Without this trick, 2012/2013 would probably be a deficit. The really interesting thing about this trick is that, if performed in business, it's called fraud.
When a government is in debt and they have a surplus, they reduce their debt, or at least that’s what normally happens. To the same extent, when you have less debt, you generally have to pay less interest. So, what is to be made of the government’s forecasted interest payments? 2012/2013: $7 billion. 2013/2014: $6.8 billion. 2014/2015: $7 billion. 2015/2016: $8.2 billion. Interest payments are going back up by a significant amount, so debt will be going up too. Wayne Swan’s statement that “the surplus years are here” seems like a prediction of a shortlived period of time.
The Defence cuts seem unwise when there is so much economic and political turmoil in the world, and terrorist threats still being uncovered on a regular basis. We should be keeping a strong defence force.
As expected, the carbon tax’s cost on people appears to fall short of the compensation payments by a very long margin…not to mention that the problem with a “tax and compensate” scheme is that it is rebranded “tax and spend” socialism, with all the problems that brings
Oddly, the Bureau of Meteorology is being given $300,000 to trial advertising on their website. This has to be the only time in history when selling advertising space has lost money rather than made money. It makes no sense. On what is this money really going to be spent?
Wayne Swan muttered something about funding for the government's electronic health records scheme. I would like to know if this is an optional or mandatory scheme? I'm quite happy with my paper records NOT being on a government database. I can see how this could benefit some people, but I’m quite capable of having my medical records released to whomever needs them without the government doing it for me, and I would like to keep it that way. And if we’re digitising existing records, I pity the poor clerk who has to decipher my doctor’s handwriting, and I pity the patients who suffer as a result of errors in the deciphering of their records.
More one-off payments in this budget. How many times can you make “one-off” payments before they’re no longer “one-off”? As long as they’re on different budgets, forever it seems.
One thing I did like, subsidies for “green” buildings have been slashed. Pity the carbon and mining taxes weren’t slashed too.
Away from actual budget issues, Wayne Swan repeatedly addressed the acting speaker Anna Burke as 'Mr Speaker' at the start of his speech. It took him a while to recognise the error and to start addressing her as “Madam Deputy Speaker” and variants thereof. Was it in written in his speech, or does Anna Burke look like Peter Slipper to Wayne?
I was watching ABC News 24’s coverage with the sound muted, while listening to the excellent coverage of 2GB with Ross Greenwood. I noticed that during Wayne Swan’s speech, the ABC only displayed tweets which contained a positive opinion of the budget. After the budget the majority of displayed tweets were positive, but some critical tweets were displayed. Interestingly, the critical tweets were rushed through quickly, with most being given barely enough time on-screen to be read in full, whereas the positive tweets lingered on the screen for ages. Green Party people Adam Bandt and Christine Milne were also given lots of air time with their tweets. Twitter was much more evenly divided than the ABC would have you believe.
There are some interesting claims about the government allowing some TV stations and ABC radio to report select details of the budget from 5pm, which for everyone else were details which were embargoed until Wayne Swan’s speech at 7:30. This was apparently done so that the ongoing Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper sagas would not get as much airtime in the pre-budget news bulletins, so as to not distract from the government’s message. Leaks are nothing new as they happen every year, but allowing embargoed details to be reported early as a distraction from scandals, well that’s a new one.
As you can tell, I’m not impressed by the budget, but it is at least roughly what I expected. I am concerned about the economic consequences though, and I fear that it may take quite some time for future governments to undo the damage being done by this government…and this budget is just one part of the mess.
When people drop out, they are not counted as unemployed, hence the reason the number of people out of work has soared, but the official unemployment rate has not.
Notice too that the big decline started after Obama took office, not before as his reelection campaign would have you believe.
Official statistics can be manipulated in so many ways, and official unemployment seems to be one of the favourites of governments.
I see that Wayne Swan is reportedly going to start handing out more so-called “one-off payments” after tonight’s budget.
I remember when the federal government was not in debt and claimed that the best way to stimulate the economy was to plunge the government in to debt by sending everyone a one-off $900 cheque, along with the various other spending debacles like the pink bats, school shade cloths and overpriced digital set top boxes. It didn’t help…the Australian economy is worse now than it was in 2009, mostly due to the government’s actions.
Now the government is in serious amounts of debt, and Wayne Swan promises a surplus which might make the surplus smaller, except for the fact that most, if not all, of the surplus comes from budget tricks rather than actual savings. But instead of doing the responsible thing and paying off as much of the debt as is feasible, he wants to hand out more one-off cheques…he must sense an election coming soon.
It just proves that these payments, like the stimulus payments, had nothing to do with responsible economic management, and everything to do with bribing voters to overlook serious incompetence in the government. I’ll tell you right now Andrew, the man who once told Alan Jones that “traffic jams cause inflation” will not be the Treasurer once the people have had their say at the ballot box, no matter how much money he borrows to bribe the voters.
I’m a bit concerned by the coverage which the media is giving to the trial of the confessed Norway shooter, Anders Breivik. My concern is with the way he is being portrayed.
It seems that a lot of the media has forgotten everything that we found out about this man immediately after the Norway massacre. As you would recall, we found out that he was a confused paranoid schizophrenic with various views which could partially fit as “right wing” and partially as “left wing” and partially as neither left or right wing.
Unfortunately, now that the trial is underway, much of the media has gone back to labelling Breivik as a “right wing extremist”, which he is not. They have also said repeatedly that he performed a right wing salute in court.
The salute he performed was a raised arm with a clenched fist. It closely resembled a communist salute, but I certainly wouldn’t call Breivik a communist. I don’t know how anyone could have concluded that it was a “right wing salute”.
I just wish large sections of the media would stop labelling this madman, as it does a serious disservice to all of the good, law-abiding right wing people in Australia and around the world to have this madman’s actions incorrectly tied to their world view.
And a good morning on this quite lovely Canberra morning. It is starting to get a bit colder now, but I have to admit to quite liking the way April and May unfold in Canberra. The leaves change colour, the nights become a bit more nippy, and for those of us who are fortunate enough to be awake in the mid-dawn hours, there are some interesting and patchy fogs which adorn the roads.
On this lovely morning I, taking advantage of the windscreen-mounted position of my phone, took this photo of a couple hot air balloons wafting over Commonwealth Avenue.
In this edition:
* Bye bye Bob!
* Canberra is a good place for an international airport
* To Japan’s credit, unfounded fear-mongering does not derail nuclear power
* Mike Huckabee will not be VP
* New brain research leading to better reading skills in school kids
* Is Metricon Stadium breaking AFL rules?
* Heidi Harris to announce her new station on Monday
Bye bye Bob!
As you have probably heard by now, Bob Brown is retiring from politics. The current leader of the Greens in federal parliament will quit his post as leader of the party, and also as a Senator. He will be handing the reigns over to current deputy leader Christine Milne.
In some ways it is nice to see Bob go. One less strange person in parliament pushing an abhorrent wheelbarrow of nutty ideas can only be a good thing, except for one small problem. I see the Greens as being left-wing extremists wrapped up in fuzzy feel-good environmental stuff designed to make them look nicer. They use the guise of being worried about the environment to enable them to push all kinds of socialist and Marxist ideas. Bob Brown, to me at least, is more moderate than the likes of Christine Milne or (I get a shudder down my spine from merely mentioning this name) Sarah Hanson-Young.
Bob Brown is patient, and doesn’t seem to mind how long it takes for him to get his way, and in many ways I think this is what has helped the Greens to reach a point of having some influence in politics. The fact that, under Bob Brown, the Greens have very rarely aggressively pushed their underlying ideas, and have instead made sure that their message is carefully wrapped in pleasantries, is one of the main reasons they have managed to attract voters. They have attracted the people who are uninterested in politics and “like the environment and stuff”; the rusted-on Labor voters who couldn’t support various Labor people but knew that a vote for the Greens would result in Labor government; as well as the true lefties who have quite happily understood the underlying message of the Greens, and have agreed to follow Bob’s lead and not make too much noise, because they know that the majority of Australians want no piece of a socialist country.
Sure, the Greens have been right there every time the Socialist Alliance has held one of its weekly protests about everything, but they don’t go out of their way to publicise it.
This will change under Christine Milne. Anybody who has watched her whenever one of the non-ABC TV stations has given her a platform will know just how forthright (or would that be forthleft in her case?) she is in her support of anything and everything that Karl Marx would have supported. Equally, Sarah Hanson-Young does her bit to whip up the socialist fringe of the country.
This isn’t to say that Bob Brown didn’t have his moments. His repeated attempts to have the “hate media” (read: anyone in the media with whom he disagreed) silenced were a good example. Bob clearly has an angry streak under the surface, and I suspect that 2UE’s Mike Jeffreys may be correct in his analysis that Bob Brown is a very angry man under the surface, but uses that anger to carefully craft a very controlled outward appearance in the hope of getting his own way eventually. Think about it. It really didn’t matter whether Bob was talking about his love of trees, the carbon dioxide tax, or about the latest story in the “hate media”, his delivery was always the same. A continuous monotone hypnotic boredom-fest. I suspect that he was trying to brainwash people through sheer boredom.
It seems to me that under Christine Milne, the Greens will solidify their core socialist voters by being more strident in their advocacy of Marxist views, but will scare off most people in the process. In the short term, this will create waves, but in the long term it should destroy the party.
All that said, if in three weeks time the Greens decide that the Bob Brown approach is better for them, all they need to do is recruit former Obama propagandist press secretary Robert Gibbs, who had the same entirely uninteresting delivery as Bob Brown, with the added ability to never answer a question which he didn’t want to answer, something which dear old Bob never did quite manage to accomplish.
***
Canberra is a good place for an international airport
In other domestic news of late, the subject of Sydney’s second airport is back on the agenda, with Canberra being touted as an option. I like Canberra as an option, but if it happens, I don’t want it to be considered as “Sydney’s second airport”. Canberra Airport should take international flights, especially given Canberra’s status as the capital city of the country. In fact, part of the reason Sydney airport is so busy is because it’s the connection point for many people who are travelling to Canberra from outside the country.
I would also like to see a residential development occur at Tralee. Canberra Airport’s Stephen Byron is opposed to this because it would be under a flight path, but I don’t see this as an impediment. The airport is already there, and therefore anybody who buys or builds at Tralee would be well-aware that aeroplanes may fly over their house, and should therefore be unable to complain about it.
I see both things as being extremely beneficial to Canberra and surrounds, and while I expect to only ever see one come to fruition, it would be nice to have both.
***
To Japan’s credit, unfounded fear-mongering does not derail nuclear power
You may recall all of the fear-mongering after last year’s Japanese earthquake about the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe, and all of the anti-nuclear activists trying to use it as an excuse to end nuclear power generation around the world. As we know, despite the claims that the death toll would be high and the people who would be afflicted with radiation-related illnesses would number in the many thousands, the fact is nobody, repeat, nobody has died, and a mere 10 people have radiation-related illness.
The Japanese government decided Friday that two nuclear reactors in western Japan are safe to restart, in a major step toward bringing idled plants back online for the first time since last year’s devastating nuclear accident — though local opposition could still prevent a restart.
The decision effectively gives the government thumbs up to a gradual return of nuclear power, after nearly all the country’s 54 reactors — which provided roughly 30 percent of Japan’s electricity — shut down because of damages or for routine maintenance and stayed offline amid concerns about their safety.
The Japanese government still needs to convince locals that it’s a good idea, but given how small the fallout has been from the Fukushima plant, especially given the magnitude of the natural disaster which occurred (the earthquake and tsunami), a simple statement of the facts should be enough convince any sensible thinking person that the nuclear power plants are a good and safe option.
***
Mike Huckabee will not be VP
In the wake of Rick Santorum’s unfortunate decision to abandon his run for the Republican Presidential nomination during the week, almost making it certain that Mitt Romney will be the nominee, there was some peculiar speculation that Romney will choose Mike Huckabee as his candidate for Vice President.
Let me tell you right now, that will not happen.
Mike Huckabee, while certainly a plausible person as a candidate, is out of the race for this election cycle. He recently (in the last few weeks), launched a new syndicated talk radio show in conjunction with US radio giant Cumulus Media. The show, which airs at the same time as Rush Limbaugh (the single most listened to talk radio host in the country) has replaced the Limbaugh show on a decent number of Cumulus stations, which is a massive gamble for Cumulus, and is airing on over 180 stations.
Neither Huckabee or Cumulus will be abandoning this show any time soon. Cumulus has way too much riding on this to be suddenly left without a decent show in the midday eastern timeslot, especially seeing as letting Rush go from many of their stations has allowed competitors to air Rush, giving them potentially crushing competition if Huckabee were to walk or flop.
I would rule out Rick Santorum as a VP pick at this stage, but I’m not willing to make a prediction as to who will be Mitt’s running mate if Mitt does get the nomination. What I will say is that it will have to be a solid conservative, because Mitt is not enough of a conservative to enthuse the Republican party’s base.
I just hope some lessons have been learnt from the 2008 campaign. America can not afford another four years of Obama, and another dumb lurch away from the right and to the centre, politically speaking, is the sort of bad idea that could once again see the GOP botch a campaign and give Obama a perfect opportunity to win, despite his terrible polling numbers.
***
New brain research leading to better reading skills in school kids
An interesting story out of Michigan.
New brain research has led educators in New Buffalo to try a different method of teaching kids to read. Instead of teaching just the letters of the alphabet, they are teaching kids to read the sounds in words. It’s having remarkable results. Reporter Ryan Klund from ABC57 News in South Bend, Indiana, has the story:
If you sit in Ms. Selir’s kindergarten classroom you’ll see something, maybe, you’ve never seen before. Every kindergartener is reading a book and pronouncing words that other five and six-year-olds, usually, would never read.
[..]
“It used to be we just thought it was the 26 letters of the alphabet and that’s it,” said Laura Selir. “But there are 44 sounds the kindergarteners all learn.”
“We now know every child can read if taught the right way,” said Erika Milovich, the Instruction Literary Specialist at New Buffalo Schools.
Milovich helped implement the program in ever grade at the school and said that the results speak for themselves.
On state testing this year New Buffalo improved K-5 reading and writing scores, moving into the top three schools in Berrien County. It was the first time New Buffalo made that mark.
(h/t ABC57 News, and also thanks to Casey Hendrickson who alerted me to this story when he mentioned it on his radio show on 95.3 Michiana’s News Channel on Friday)
It’s only being taught in a handful of schools at the moment, but hopefully that number will rise soon as the results are very promising.
***
Is Metricon Stadium breaking AFL rules?
Last night while watching the AFL, I noticed something strange about the way Metricon Stadium on the Gold Coast is putting the vision of the match on the big screens. They appear to be taking the full TV feed rather than a modified version and, consequently, the countdown clock on Seven’s graphics is visible at all times on the big screen.
For those of you not familiar with the way AFL timing works, each quarter runs for 20 minutes of playing time, and events such as the ball going out or someone scoring temporarily disrupt the “playing time”. At the ground, a clock counts up from zero in each quarter and does not stop for these interruptions to playing time, meaning that the players and the crowd can not see how much time is left in the quarter, but instead can see how much real time has elapsed. Most quarters take between 25 and 30 minutes of real time, but can take more or less time.
It is not against the rules for a team runner to pass on a message to players about how long is left in the quarter, and it is common practice for the coaching staff to keep an unofficial record of how much time remains, but it is against the rules for the amount of time remaining in a quarter to be visible.
At many grounds, where a broadcast feed is used on the big screens, the spot on the screen where the time would be shown in normally covered up, however at Metricon Stadium it is not.
I wonder if the AFL have noticed this, and what will be done to fix it?
***
Heidi Harris to announce her new station on Monday
If she’s going to another radio station, anyway.
You may recall that a couple weeks ago I mentioned that Alan Stock had taken over Heidi Harris’ morning drive program on KDWN-AM in Las Vegas, and that there was a rumour going around that Alan’s former station (Heidi’s too, for that matter) KXNT had signed her but not made it public. Well, Heidi has announced that, on Monday, she will be able to make an announcement.
Regardless of where Heidi goes, she has a strong following and will most probably do very well. I wish her all the best, and look forward to her announcement on Monday US time.
I’ve been flicking through some of the coverage of the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, and while it looks like there was some fun to be had, and most of the coverage was positive, there were a few peculiar occurrences which have been glossed over by most of the media.
My favourite one is an event which seems to have been ignored by almost all of the US media. I know that talk radio gave it a mention, but other than that, I can’t find a single instance of this being covered by the American media…in fact, I’ve had to track the story down in the British press. Before I explain that though, some words from First Lady Michelle Obama at the Easter Egg Roll, courtesy of USA Today:
Over at the “Kids Kitchen,” Mrs. Obama joined “Top Chef Masters” winner Marcus Samuelson and the Today show’s Al Roker to help make shrimp and vegetable tacos.
The first lady discussed the importance of vegetables, telling parents: “If we have (too many) fried chicken and the carb-heavy dinners, the kind we all love, we’re not setting our kids up for success. Veggies aren’t really a choice. We think they are, but they’re not.”
This was part of the theme for the day, and is an ongoing theme of Mrs. Obama who has an insatiable appetite for talking about vegetables. And yet, as Britain’s Daily Mail reports, the menu on offer could not have been more at odds with Mrs. Obama’s message.
The Obamas welcomed thousands of children and their parents on to the South Lawn this morning to feast on a brunch menu that included waffles, French toast and slurpees.
Later in the day, visitors were offered choices of cheeseburgers, chicken tenders, hot dog and curly fries, egg salad or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
(h/t Daily Mail)
I particularly like the Obama Burger. Full of everything Mrs. Obama detests, and yet it still bares her name. The token fruit cup or salad at the end of the burger is amusing, but nothing more than a token gesture to allow Press Secretary Jay Carney to say that “healthy options were available” if anybody bothers to ask him about it.
Away from the menu, the Ego In Chief had his face plastered on the basketballs which were being used for the hoop shooting competition. Keith Koffler, among others, has published a photo of ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper holding the basketball.
I would probably refuse to play with a basketball with Obama’s face on it, as I would regard having to see his face for that period of time as some sort of cruel and unusual punishment…interestingly, I may have been right, the ball was used as an instrument of torture, just in a different way to how I would have expected. Back to USA Today for details:
Obama, meanwhile, visited the White House basketball court, half of which was being used for tennis lessons that featured legendary player Chris Evert.
The hoops end featured “Shoot for Strength,” where each shot made by Obama or a guest professional player meant three push-ups for nearby children.
Every few days Nattie and Pebbles go for a run in the afternoon instead of a walk. Usually they are taken up to the front oval of Campbell High School which is usually pretty quiet in the afternoon, especially in comparison to Reid Oval across the road, which is used by every football and cricket player, and every dog in the neighbourhood.
It also has the benefit of tiring them out, so that they want to have a sleep for a few hours when they get home. This is especially useful when it comes to Pebbles as she can be quite exhausting with seemingly near-endless amount of energy.
Anyway, while Nattie and Pebbles were having their run this afternoon, I filmed some of their activities. Enjoy!
I had a to clean up a lot of coffee after hearing Rex Hunt announce this during the AFL Live call of Melbourne V Brisbane this afternoon.
Melbourne’s game plan has been as useful as a flywire screen on a submarine
That, plus the return of Rex Hunt’s Fat Lady Singing (whom I have not heard since Rex’s 3AW days in 2009), and Rex’s great rapport with Sandy Roberts, made that an absolutely fantastic afternoon of radio listening for what was otherwise a fairly ordinary AFL match.
Rex, Sandy, and the AFL Live team at Crocmedia, you have made my day! Thank you.
Julia Gillard gets what she apparently wanted from the get-go.
Earlier in the week she rang Bob Carr and offered him Mark Arbib’s vacated senate seat, and the foreign affairs portfolio, which has been his dream for years. Then she was talked out of it, and denied that there was any truth to the news reports about her phone call.
Bob Carr also denied anything was happening or that he had any interest in the job.
Today, the mind is changed again. It has been announced by Julia Gillard that Bob Carr will be appointed to the senate and to the Foreign Affairs portfolio.
I suppose this means we should look forward to the return of the “good to see you, good to see you” parodies of Bob Carr again.
