Retired infantry officer. Conservative by nature and politics; Happily married and father and grandfather of eight. Loves V8 powered Range Rovers, Golden Retrievers, good books and technology and think there should be open season on Greenies. Born in the mid forties and overdue for servicing but most parts still work.

Carbon Tax costs Virgin and Rex $30 million

Virgin Australia (VAH) has felt the cost of the carbon tax, announcing a net profit after tax of $23 million, down $28.8 million on the same period last year. The company estimates the impact of the carbon tax at $24.4 million. But not to worry says Combet, the business is still profitable;

AUSTRALIA’S aviation industry is profitable and will continue to grow despite Virgin Australia’s complaints about the carbon tax, federal Climate Change Minister Greg Combet says.

Virgin on Tuesday announced a drop in interim net profit and its chief John Borghetti said a competitive market meant the $24.4 million cost of the carbon tax could not be passed on to passengers.

Combet says just pass it on to consumers but Virgin  say intensifying competition in Australia’s domestic travel market drove down ticket prices and stopped it from passing on the carbon tax to customers. Rex Aviation has felt the cost of the carbon tax as well, announcing a 36% drop in profits and they lay the blame squarely on the Gillard government’s carbon tax. I wonder how many years it will take and how many billions of dollars will be lost  before the ALP accept the carbon tax is poisonous.

How bad can it get?

Another day in hell for Julia as The Australian front page details all her troubles.  The ALP must hate them for regularly pointing out how hopeless they are  and whilst in denial, they waste time blaming the messenger. Mumbles has a piece on how they have always got their leadership selection wrong over the last decade and this comment caught my eye;

I don’t know why, but I picture a footy coach holding a magnetic whiteboard, rearranging all the positions and hoping for the best. He looks at the bench & just shakes his head.  His trouble is that it is 3/4 time and Labor are 40 goals behind. Abbott is starring at full forward and has kicked 15 goals so far. They can’t blow the final siren soon enough!

Noifsorbuts on Mumbles blog

With everything the ALP promise being compromised by Wayne Swan’s panic over the inevitable impending huge deficit they are just bouncing off the walls of public opinion. With Gonski, NDIS, the billion dollar Business Plan announced as fact but unfunded and with boat people ramping up more unplanned debt and the poorly designed MRT stuffing up forecasts it is only going to get worse.

And then, the  UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend.

Bolt has been going on about the haitus in temperature rises for yonks and has been ridiculed by the Chicken Littles of the over-zealous Greens and other useful idiots – maybe now they will shut up but don’t bet on it.  Pachauri is correct when he says it would need 30 or 40 years to break the trend but I would suggest that could be extrapolated to thousands of years to allow scientists to take into account Solar and planetry cycles that may have my great great great etc grand kids  freezing their appendages off.

But really, I don’t think the current debate being about the existence of Climate Change is the problem -changing climate is  a given.  What concerns me is Gillard and the Greens thinking that a tax that severely disadvantages Australian industry and her people is the answer.

In an attempt to tie up the religious vote  a parliamentary inquiry has suggested that Religious organisations running schools, health and aged-care services will not be exempt from Labor’s new anti-discrimination laws under recommendations that could see them sued by people who disagree with church ethos.

In a majority report, Labor and Greens members of the Senate legal and constitutional affairs legislation committee had found “no organisation should enjoy a blanket exception from anti-discrimination law when they are involved in service delivery to the general community”.

In moments like this I tend to think ‘Well you voted for ’em – now cop it’  but I worry about how much damage they can do before September and how difficult will it be for the adults to wind back the  social engineering.

Poor Julia can’t catch her breath as problem after problem that she or Swan have created comes back to bite her.  She hasn’t even had time to confer with McTernan and invent more lies about Abbott.  No achievements to speak of to brag about and her ‘Abbott is an evil misogynist’ speech tossed into the waste bin of public opinion, she has nothing left.

The media are talking about leadership spills and how many seats they will lose,Paul Howes brings public scorn on himself and his union mates by suggesting Gillard is a great leader and  Grahame ‘Whatever it takes’ Richardson, ex ALP heavywieght’ says Go Julia, before you completely destroy the ALP.

All this without a mention of the theft of public monies by Craig Thomson and Eddie Obeid.

Pass the popcorn – a tragedy of Shakespearian proportion beckons.

Kloppers’ demise due to setting standards

News.com seem to think Kloppers’ demise is due to an authourative set of rules that the company issued 2 years ago.

Staff at BHP were outraged when the company under Mr Kloppers issued an incredible 11-page missive banning office staff from eating smelly lunches at their desks, sticking post-it notes on their monitors and keyboards and placing jackets on chairs.

Many employees were outraged by the elaborate dossier, which stated:

  • Food must not be eaten at workstations
  • No food emitting strong odours are allowed
  • Mobile phone ring tones must be kept at low volumes
  • Post-it notes are to be removed from monitors and keyboards at the end of the day
  • Workers are warned to watch the tone and volume of their voices
  • In meeting rooms, all whiteboards are to be cleaned, equipment turned off, cables put away, chairs pushed in and cups and bottles thrown away
  • iPods and MP3 players must not be brought into work
  • Small bags must be stored under work stations during the day
  • Clothes must be put in “designated storage areas”
Can’t see the problem – I’d have to agree with all those points.  Every company has rules, or should have, that allow people to work together in harmony and in the interests of the company. Outraged?  Go work for someone who doesn’t have standards. If it’s true that Kloppers’  demise is partly due to this memo then I fear for BHP Billiton.        

Greens have dummy spit

The Greens and the ALP are undergoing a trail separation. Christine Milne says, amongst other things, that the ALP have put the interests of Evil Big Mining ahead of the country. I think she’s talking about the ALP’s decision on the Tarkine reserve. Bourke decided to base his decision on jobs rather than endangered species, not for any altruistic reasons, but to protect another endangered species closer to his heart – Australian job seekers who may vote ALP. Conservationists say the Tarkine is the second largest intact stretch of rainforest in the world, and is home to more than 60 rare, threatened, and endangered species. Name them! By mid-afternoon, and with government figures lining up to embrace the split, Senator Milne appeared to backtrack.
Asked by David Speers on Sky News if the agreement was dead or not, she said: ”It’s in place on paper, yes, but our signatures are on it and that means something. Whenever I have signed an agreement to give a government confidence and supply, they can rely on the Greens’ word.”
That’s great news – we can rely on the Greens word – something that hitherto has never occurred to me. So news of the marriage split now seems to be exaggerated with Julia still allowed in the marriage bed. Maybe it’s just a lovers tiff or one of a party positioning themselves in the eyes of their kids (read voters) before September when hopefully, they both lose their share of the house.
“Good riddance to them,” said one Labor MP, who criticised the Greens for their “self-righteous” attitude to asylum-seekers, support for death duties and “obsession” with gay marriage
And, can I add, for their negative attitude to anything that provides jobs for Australians.

Nauru is working

Illegal refugees are sewing their lips together in Nauru. Apparently they are disappointed that they didn’t progress straight to a life of social security wealth. Pity we couldn’t talk some of the Human Rights spokespeople into doing something similar, or at least shutting up about our unwanted trespassers. Others are on a hunger strike. Yawn!

Thomson

Craig Thomson at his filing hearing;
“What was disappointing about today was it became clear that not only was last Thursday wrongly done by the police, but after 18 months in relation to investigating this matter they still don’t even have witnesses that they’re able to produce for us in terms of some of these issues that are here,” he said after the brief 15-minute hearing..
What utter rot. The hearing is designed to set dates for further hearings and set bail if applicable. It is not the trial proper where witnesses are called. If Craig thinks the police don’t have any witnesess then great – when they come up with a conga line of them he will be further shattered, and beside, giving a person like Thomson a list that he can use for witness tampering doesn’t sound smart to me. Oh, and the police weren’t wrong, he had the choice to go to Victoria and talk to police but he refused, thus leaving the police no option but to force the matter by arrest and bail. Is his lawyer qualified or his he just trying to muddy the waters? Antony Green, the election analyst of ABC fame has a piece in the Drum arguing that Thomson should step down. The ABC luvvies are screaming but Anthony has a point. How can Thomson represent his electorate when obviously, all of his efforts will be targeted to trying to stay out of Pentridge. FWA, a child of the ALP and unions has found against Thomson and clearly lists his offences. Whether or not he is found guilty in a court of law is a later issue. Legal matters whilst in process define his offences as allegations and not yet proven thus he is innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the law. In the eyes of the FWA however he has already been found guilty of offences against the union itself. The FWA is cited as the abiding authority to union executives when it suits them so why isn’t it relevant now? Whatever the outcome of the court case, based on the FWA investigation he is now considered by most Australians to be a man of dubious ethical standards who has used stolen funds to pay for nefarious activities not to the benefit of the union members. If he thinks it is OK to defraud poor old union members then what are his standards in dealing with public monies. Interestingly, all of this would have been considered by Gillard leaving no interpretation other than she thinks there is nothing wrong with his behaviour. My first thoughts are that Thomson should just cop his punishment and disappear into the dustbin of tainted ALP MPs, providing its not already overflowing. However, if it can be arranged for this matter to get mention, say every month up to September, then it might well end up doing some good for the country in that punters will be reminded that we are being governed by people who support the rorting of funds of the poorer side of the socio-economic divide. H/T Michael Smith

ALP Disinformation

The Dark Side continue with their “Turnbull would be a better leader” push to try and sow more doubt in peoples mind about Abbott.Today’s contribution is from Windsor, of all people, who claims the Coalition would win with Turnbull. I’ve got news for you Windsor – the Coalition will win with Abbott and you, amongst others, will be out on your traitorous arse. The ‘Turnbull would be better’ line is used in conjunction with the ‘Woman hate Abbott’ line and both are a construct of the ALP. Turnbull is a reasonable operator and has his uses but is a Wet and we don’t give Wets leadership if we can avoid it. The bulk of Coalition supporters will be very pissed off if Turnbull gets the nod not just because he’s not good enough, but for it to happen we’d need a spill in the Coalition. Of course the Dark Side would love that but it would be a death knell for us and it ain’t going to happen. If you are only a casual political buff then be aware, whenever you hear the ‘Turnbull would be better’ line it is ALP born – no Coalition follower would entertain the thought for more than a second ‘Abbott is negative and hates woman’ is quoted daily. Not just in the ALP circles and Coalition hating bloggers, but in the media generally and the polls do support the idea. But, once again, be aware, that it is an ALP invention. An Opposition leader being negative – who would have thought that could be true…amazing….never happened before. Utter rubbish. Rudd, Gillard and Swan were negative in opposition – it’s what oppositions do. They peruse the bills put to the house and if they don’t like ’em – they say so. The ALP fought Howard’s Pacific Solution with gusto and seething hatred and were more negative than Abbott has ever been. The difference being, of course, was that Howard’s Pacific Solution actually worked and was the best of a lot of possible solutions as evidenced by the fact that after years of being negative and calling Howard all sorts of vile names, the ALP had to accept the Pacific Solution and take it on board as their own. Abbott’s negativity,remember it’s his job to call the government to question, has been a little more realistic. He questions the Gonski Review and the NDIS, not because they are necessarily bad ideas but because Gillard has a habit of holding a press conference and announcing another ‘brilliant’ social idea. Unfortunately she doesn’t factor them into the budget – she can’t – the bin is empty – they’ve spent it all. Gillards unfunded policies have the same validity as my intention to buy a brand new Range Rover – ain’t ever going to happen this side of winning lotto. Abbott is also negative about the NBN, cynical might also apply. The government announced what was possibly a good idea but the costs skyrocketed from 2 to 3 billion to 30…40…50 billion based on a conversation between Rudd and Conroy on a flight between Melbourne and Canberra. If there is a business model the ALP are keeping it under lock and key so, I ask you, who wouldn’t be negative, who wouldn’t be cynical? How much is it going to cost and where is the money coming from – it’s not in the budget. So Abbott hates woman or they don’t like him so the story goes. It is reflected in the polls which simply shows people are still swallowing the ALP line. It goes like this; McTernan tells Gillard that she can’t campaign on her governments achievements, there being few; and that her one chance is to try an make Abbott unelectable. Hence the Misogyny speech and the ‘Abbott is negative’ line. Not only that but 20 or 30 years ago he once hit a wall near a woman whilst at uni and he tried to stop abortion drug RU486 therefore he hates women. The Misogyny speech was delivered by Gillard during a debate where she was defending Slipper, the same guy who likened women’s genitalia to bottled mussels in a text to a subordinate. The hipocrisy of that speech and the circumstances of it’s delivery never fails to astound and disgust me. There actually are people who refer to it as if it was a great speech. Abbott is only as negative as his position demands. From the day he became opposition leader up to the day the Writs are issued for the next election his role is to call the government to order on bills that are of questionable value and to pass those that are reasonable which he has done on about 150 occasions. Once in election mode he changes to a more positive role as he starts outlining his policies. It has ever been thus.

How’s it all working out for you so far Julia?

130131-Alston

  Gillard announces election to be held on 14 Sep handing the Coalition a huge advantage. Day One – ALP Craig Thomson arrested and charge with 149 incidences of fraud. Day Two – McClelland announces retirement Day Three – Ms Roxon and Senate leader Chris Evans announce retirement How’s it all working out for you so far Julia? Tomorrow should be a lay-day for us punters but certainly not the ALP hierarchy or Rudd’s ‘make him PM again” team as they try and recover from the weeks self inflicted problems or capitalize on them. Can’t wait for Monday.  Will Gillard still be the PM….how many more are planning on retirement….are they deserting a sinking ship or is there a plan? Considering Roxon is involved in the AWU grand theft case maybe we have more announcements next week and she is bailing while she has the option. It’s not unknown for ministers to resign from their positions to set themselves for a run at the leadership but the thought of Roxon or Evans getting the nod is just to much to contemplate.  Evans is the engineer of the open borders policy and Roxon is simply a hatred filled zealot and she claims she wants to spend more time with her family. So do the bulk of the electorate. GIllard says they both come to her 12 months ago to discuss this issue and maybe they did but for them to choose today to resign was obviously a shock to Gillard and leaves the impression of rats deserting a sinking ship.  It would appear at first glance that the ALP are simply not happy with Gillard and I can understand that. Interesting times ahead and I predict matters will come to a head sooner than later.      

Thomson arrested

The new look Julia (wiser and softer) with her McTernan recommended glasses has announced the election date as 14 September.  She hasn’t been to the GG so no writs have been issued….. it’s only words at this stage. In entirely unrelated news Craig Thomson has been arrested and is looking at 150 fraud charges.  Well, I think it’s unrelated – or is it? Slipper next and then what does Gillard do? Running out of options. There was talk this morning that by announcing an election date she could avoid a by-election in case Thomson or Slipper were charged but as I read it the no by-election clause is only relevant after the writs for an election have been called. Considering the politics of the Thomson fraud case I can only imagine the police would be extra extra careful that they had cast iron evidence before cuffing him. How embarrassing for the country. Whatever Gillard’s aim is the press will be all over Thomson for a day or two.  The ALP are ramping up their demand that Abbott should release his policies now so they can find or create mistakes.  Remember attacking Abbott is their only tactic as they can’t campaign on achievements. Abbott, of course has no intention of playing the ALP game and will release policies and costing after the budget is released – at a time and place decided by Coalition tactics, not Gillards Standard procedure.      

Wet and Windy!

poolWind is making the palms dance and the pool overflowed two days ago. Since then we’ve had 235 mm of rain and the winds apparently exceeded a 100 km/hr. At high tide today Brisbane CBD will once again flood although not as badly as in 2011. Telstra stars; Hundreds of thousands in communication blackout as Telstra outage leaves everything north of Gladstone without phone, internet or Triple Zero access leaving half of state in the dark. I have a daughter at a retreat near Maleny just north of Brisbane and a long way south of Gladestone who had to use her Optus work phone to contact us as her personal Telstra is out of service. The high winds are unusual as cyclones seldom get this far south but Oswald still had some punch as it hit Brisbane.  Trees blown across power lines has put thousands in the dark including my son who has just arrived to recharge his phone. Another daughter with a premie baby is getting out of hospital and taking her new son home today. Access to her suburb will be difficult but possible as the Ipswich area starts to go under with a peak expected at midnight. All in all, just another January in Brisbane.
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