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.

Guilty Bastards

Thinking of voting Green? Before you do you should look into their practices in the bush. In an article entitled Green philosophy burns bright once again by Roger Franklin the Green’s disregard for the people who live and work in the bush, for their lives and for their assets is fully explained.
As for reducing fuel levels with controlled, “cool” burns during spring and autumn, the cultists will always fight that tooth and nail, as they did for years in and around Nillumbik. A procession of fire experts visited the district and saw nothing but disaster in the making, but their reports and warnings were rejected by a council whose officers were busy ticketing residents for collecting fallen wood from the verges in front of their properties, amongst other offences against green goodness. Dare to cut down a tree, even on private land, and the fines were ruinous.
Lives lost to the Green Goddess but still they force their insane and dangerous practices on the country, most recently in Tasmania, and what amazes me, people still vote for them. Read the entire piece

Fire Fighting resources

I come from the Karri and Jarrah forests of SW WA and bush fires were an integral part of life and death on the farms and town in the small community of Pemberton. For these reasons I am always aware of the dangers; I feel for the victims and the volunteer and professional firefighters.  I would also like to think that the firefighters get the best equipment available.. Yesterday in The Australian Geoffery Luck wrote of lack of meaningful air support for these guys.
The huge Sikorsky/Erickson S64 Aircranes that Australia leases from California may look impressive, but they represent gesture politics. What counts in water-bombing is turnaround time and load. Each of the giant helicopters can carry 9500 litres of water, but they take almost a minute to suck it up; they fly slowly to the fire at 100km/hour; and they can remain airborne for less than three hours before refuelling.
He suggests an answer. bombadierThe Bombardier, a high-wing twin-turboprop aircraft, can scoop up its 6000 litres in 12 seconds, skimming any lake, river or the ocean at 130km/hour, fly to the fire at 300km/hour, dump and return for more while the Skycrane is still lumbering along with its first load. A single 415’s ability to deliver 80,000 litres an hour within a 4km radius of its water supply means a squadron could have saved Mount Stromlo in 2003 — as well as most of the 500 houses destroyed or damaged in the Canberra fires. The Victorian townships destroyed in 2009 were within operational reach of Lake Eildon, 60km away. Spain has a mix of 14 older models and the new 415 series and  a GDP similar to ours so I wonder why the issue hasn’t come up before.  It can’t be the dollar and it certainly can’t be because we don’t have a need. Queenslander and pilot Warren Bowen comments in a letter to the editor.
Australians should be aghast and dismayed we do not have a fleet of dedicated fixed-wing water bombers. The hire of American choppers must come at enormous expense each fire season. It is certainly high time federal and state governments, together with big insurance, embraced the concept. While Luck points out a fleet of six Bombardier 415 aircraft would only cost around $210m, the big costs come with crews and training. As an ex-RAAF Vietnam vet and life-long airline pilot, I would guarantee hundreds of airline crew would volunteer for such a mission. Airline management would have to condone and authorise such arrangements as they “own” a pilot’s hours, which are restricted in time units by law. Many US airline pilots continue to fly fighters, bombers and transport aircraft as part of the National Guard and are subject to call for active service. If Greece can support a squadron of eight such aircraft, surely we could.
When I see the choppers operating it just looks like a thimble full of water being dropped into a huge furnace. It has to be worth a debate at least.

Pirates doomed

BRITAIN’S first private navy in almost two centuries is being created by a group of businessmen to take on the Somali pirates who are terrorising an expanse of the Indian Ocean. Simon Murray, Clencore chief, is building the force. Its armed vessels – including a 10,000-ton mother ship and high-speed armoured patrol boats – will be led by a former Royal Navy commodore. He is recruiting 240 former marines and other sailors for the force.
The pirates will face former marines in armoured patrol boats capable of 40 knots and able to withstand incoming Kalashnikov fire. They will be armed with close-quarter battle weapons, such as the M4 carbine, and sniper rifles with a range of 2km.
I could never understand why shipping companies and/or their clients didn’t do something about the piracy. A well trained Infantry section of ten men could stop piracy dead in the water and they wouldn’t cost much. Include a cameraman to film the destruction of the pirates and their small craft and send that to be transmitted on local Somali TV and the problem would fade.
“The guys started off with their own PR being around poor fisherman having waste dumped in their waters. But sympathy disappears when you start killing people and extorting companies,” says Sharp. “There are 38 piracy training camps run by rogue special forces. It’s financed by people buying shares in their teams. So if you fund their boat, you get a share in the ransom.” Sharp believes the proceeds are fuelling micro property bubbles in places as far afield as Nairobi. “Ultimately that’s being paid for by Lloyds and the insurance market,” he adds.
I admire the initiative and hope it comes to fruition

Water to Ice – 370 times more expensive

THE future of skating rinks is on thin ice, with the carbon tax causing a number of family-run Sydney rinks to creak under the financial strain.
The policy has also left its mark on commercial ice cube suppliers, making tap water 370 times more expensive by the time it makes its way to the ice cooler in cube form. Another popular skating rink in the Macquarie Shopping Centre is being forced to fork out $10,000 more per month on electricity bills. One family-run rink in Penrith was forced to spend $100,000 replacing the system they had installed in 2000, with the federal government’s carbon tax leaving running costs “astronomically” high.
But these complaints are from small business and when have the ALP cared about them? Carbon tax, the ALP gift that keeps on taking, but, as Wayne Swan points out, Wheetbix still costs the same.

New Theme

I’ve had to change theme due to the old one becoming unworkable.  The advent of Word Press 3.5 has brought many problems to the blogging community and a lot of theme coders are yet to catch up. I guess the new year is a good a time as any to change and to prepare for the election year when we finally get the chance  to elect  adults to the Treasury benches.

Twisted Wayne

WAYNE Swan’s maths may have been questioned when he predicted a Budget surplus – but when it comes to the carbon tax, things are adding up. Well, that’s what the Courier Mail reckons and we all know they will print whatever Wayne tells them to. Wayne chooses a few grocery items and notes the prices have actually gone down a few cents over the period June December 2012. Apparently, the price of ten grocery items that are subject to Woolworth’s marketing strategy are the final assessment for how much the Carbon Tax is costing us poor voters.
Mr Swan was on leave yesterday but acting Treasurer David Bradbury told The Courier-Mail it was “further evidence Tony Abbott’s shameless scare campaign on pricing pollution was complete and utter nonsense”.
What is shameless is the ALP’s insistence that the Carbon Tax isn’t going to hurt us.  The very basis of its purpose is to hurt us and force us to use less electricity.  The rising costs of power are not only reflected in our power bill but will eventually impact on everything that we use that is manufactured by electricity. Electricity isn’t the only evil being taxed.  A Publican reports his refrigerant gas bill is increasing from $20,000 pa to $170,000 pa and if your local council landfill projects generate more than 25,ooo tonnes of greenhouse gasses (and many do) then if you think that $23 times 25,000 plus  isn’t going to be divided amongst the ratepayers then you are not thinking it through. Still, its OK as Wayne says ‘Weetbix still costs the same as it did in June’ In another Wayne amazing revelation he claims the vitriol in parliament is all Tony Abbott’s work. This is a follow-on from Mc Ternan telling Gillard that as she can’t campaign on her government’s achievements, there being none of note, she needs to demonise Abbott and try and make him unelectable in the eyes of the voters. Her first attempt was to tell one of her staffers to phone up an ALP supporter and tell her to phone up Aborigines in Canberra at the time and inform them that Abbott was going to tear down the Aboriginal Embassy in Canberra. It was an out and out lie but that was OK, it’s the current ALP way. It caused a riot and threatened the security of the PM and Abbott. The staffer was duly elected as the scapegoat and sent of the Britain to a good job to keep him out of the media’s way. Another major ALP vitriolic attack was the infamous Misogyny Speech when Gillard spoke in defence of Slipper who must be the most misogynist person ever to hold a position of responsibility and in doing so spent 30 odd minutes accusing Abbott of being a misogynist! Abbot of course would be the least misogynist person in Canberra but McTernan, who supposedly wrote the speech, is quiet happy to lie to achieve his aim of having the ALP re elected later this year. It was after this attack that the Libs started asking questions of the PM about her involvement in the AWU scandal where substantial sums were stolen by her then boyfriend and an accomplice ably aided and abetted by the PM. The Libs didn’t even start this debate – it was disenchanted ALP members that raised the issue. These questions cant be termed as vitriolic as they are based on facts whereas the Canberra riots and the misogyny speech were based on outright lies. The ALP campaign is working as Abbott is currently unpopular but when lack of popularity is based on a lie it wont last.    

ABC Bias

ANDREW MCINTYRE in this morning’s The Australian
It also would explain why so many educated, generally mildly apolitical, well thinking middle class people with a regular diet of the ABC and Fairfax, simply are not aware that, for instance, the world has stopped warming for the past 16 years, that hurricanes and extreme weather events have declined and are not related to global warming, that Doha was a dismal failure, that the NBN has never had a cost benefit analysis, that Green jobs cost money … and jobs, that growing the economic pie is not the same as redistributing tax revenue or that the Great Barrier Reef is not being destroyed.
Explains the strange attitudes of some of my family and friends.

Polls

The Polls are back where they should be with Coalition 48% to ALP 36% first preference and 54 – 46 2PP which I think is fairly accurate sample of the ALP’s standing in the community. More importantly the Greens are trending down and are now at 8%. Considering that most of their policies are aimed at the destruction of our economy then this can only be seen as a positive.

Hoax calls

Reading this morning’s paper I notice some people were amused at the hoax perpetrated by two 2Day FM talking heads prior to the news of the hoaxed nurses suicide. Making telephone calls that make decent honest folk going about their business look rediculous is funny? I listened to a spokesman for Auststereo describing how devastated they were at the news of the suicide and how they were worried about the two talking heads. They are receiving counselling FFS. In my opinion the only counselling they should be getting is from Centre Link. Poor taste merchants making people look stupid for ratings – a good reason not to listen to FM radio. Today the station claims they tried to phone the Hospital before they put the hoax to air. This is the first time that it has been mentioned so it looks like an invention to me and I wonder if they approached this alleged call with the same vigour applied to the original call. On Saturday Southern Cross Austereo chief executive Rhys Holleran said the two presenters involved were “shattered” by Ms Saldanha’s death, but said he was confident no laws were broken. No laws broken!   It’s not about the law you scruff,  it’s about poor taste and the obvious lack of any standards of decency.

Deja vu

Re reading The Fatal Shore when this caught my eye. Governor Darling is having an argument with the media in 1826.  He is losing to Wentworth and Hall who are pressing for trial by open jury and representative assembly so he;
…makes a clumsy lunge against the opposition press. He tried to muzzle the Australian and Monitor by imposing newspaper licences, which would be withdrawn if they printed a ‘blasphemous or seditious libel”  John Macarthur also urged him to kill their circulation with a stamp duty of 4 pence per copy.
186 years later they’re still trying it on.  
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