BY and large I have no argument with Australia Day honours but these two did attract my atenttion.
Public Service Medal (PSM)
Martin Gerard BOWLES, Yarralumla ACT. For outstanding public service in delivering highly successful energy efficiency policies and remediation programs for the Home Insulation and Green Loans programs.
One wonders if he would have been made a saint had the programs actually been successful.
Order of Australia – Officer (AO)
Professor Stuart Forbes MACINTYRE, Brunswick West Vic For distinguished service to the social sciences and to the humanities as a leading academic in the areas of 19th and 20th century Australian history, particularly through advancing the understanding of social and political life, and as an author, researcher and mentor.
I am on the board of Street Swags, a registered charity that raises money to make swags to distribute to homeless street people. Head office is in Brisbane but we have expanded to the NT, NSW, WA and Victoria. So far we have distributed 17,0000 swags Australia wide.
On Saturday12 November we are holding a concert at the Brookfield Showgrounds to help us raise funds for this most worthy of causes.
You can book tickets through Tickertek
Hope to see you there.
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AKA Ashes to ammo.
A good friend of mine died and we cremated him in Mooloolaba. Before he died we were talking about what to do with his ashes. As he had spent most of his working life in Sydney he wanted them thrown over the Gap with all his Sydney friends present. We both laughed at the obvious outcome – there is always an updraft at The Gap and everyone would go home with a bit of Graham on their blouses or suits or in their hair.
It happened and as we predicted everyone was covered in his ashes as they toddled off home. I imagined my friend giggling while he looked down on the scene.
That was a good outcome but this is better
Two guys are talking about what to do with their ashes after they are gone. They were both avid hunters and one remarked;
“I want my ashes placed into some good turkey-load shotgun shells,” he said. That way, someone could go kill a turkey with me .
“I could rest in peace, knowing that one more turkey, the last thing he saw, was me screaming at him at 900 feet per second.”
If you don’t smile at that image then your just too serious!
Soldiers could go on killing terrorists for years and dead coppers could keep on inflicting damage on the scruffs of the world.
There are no limits.
They set up a company Holy Smoke, which has been in business for a couple of months and charges $850 for a case of shells. The company has shipped out two orders. The feedback, Holmes says, is positive.
I wish them well and if hunting Greenies ever becomes legal, I’ll be in it!
If the last thing Bob Brown ever saw was me screaming at him at 900 feet per second my life would have meaning and I would know that even in death I had helped to secure Australia’s economic future.
Just joking Bob;)
With both my preferred AFL and NRL teams out of play I’m going for Collingwood and Manly.
I courted my bride of 41 years at Manly and I just heard on radio that they are silvertails and underdogs – that’ll do me.
Collingwood because everyone, other than the rusted on supporters, appear to hate them.
Filthy…unwashed…alcoholics…
A couple from Melbourne being confronted with Aborigines for the first time. Camped at Kununarra I can’t really disagree other than to say I have come across some who aren’t like that.
They are shocked and obviously haven’t been out of their suburban comfort zone before now. They aren’t racists either, just describing what they have seen.
They tell me their friends are totally unaware of the real circumstances that exist in the North and I could only suggest they go back and tell their friends the truth.
If you go to South Headland don’t expect to sit down in the shopping centre. The seats are full all day with aborigines waiting…talking
…yelling out at each other. You can get a seat for the days after “Payday” however, as they have money for grog and are in the pubs or long grass. They really do call it Payday as if they have done something to earn the money the government gives them.
Its the seamy side but it is what the foreign and southern tourists are witnessing. We all know there are success stories but you have to root them out.
If you camp at the Crossing Inn at Fitzroy Crossing don’t go to the bar if you are white and civilized as you will be very lonely. The bar is full of aborigines all day and into the night. Fights, spitting and yelling very loudly is all the go on the banks of the Fitzroy River.
I traveled along the road from Windjana Gorge to Fitzroy River and experience two tyres slashed by the rough road, all in about 20 minutes. I was looking at the tyre after the second flat trying to get on top mentally when a vehicle stopped. Malcom, big, black and friendly took one look at the situation and me and said “I’ll fix it” He wielded the tyre plug kit like the pro he was – “done hundreds mate!”
He comments further “Funny really – you white guys invented cars and us black fellow fix ’em” We all laughed -I let him have his moment and thanked him profusely. He was the deputy manager at Leopold Downs and a very likable man with his two year old daughter in tow who he obviously loved and looked after.
Any amount of aborigines have helped or joined in conversations but they are in a minority and their less able brothers and sisters tar them all with the same brush.
Sad really.
If you want proof that a price on Carbon is ideologically based then the attendance of The Climate Institute, The Australian Conservation Foundation and Getup at rallies should set you straight.
Thirty years ago the same type of people were rallying against a looming Ice Age and before that we were being warned that we would all starve from over-population
As many as 8000 in attended the Sydney rally while rallies were being held in most other capital cities as the second stage of the “Say Yes” campaign launched late last week by actors Cate Blanchett and Michael Caton.
Meanwhile, the rest of us, almost 30 million, went on with our lives working or relaxing with family.
@JimWallaceACL
Just hope that as we remember Servicemen and women today we remember the Australia they fought for – wasn’t gay marriage and Islamic!
Jim’s timing maybe out and the tweet certainly isn’t PC but it is a correct statement.
AUSTRALIA’S controversial plan for a refugee processing centre in East Timor was effectively taken off the agenda before last night’s opening of the Bali ministerial summit, with senior officials making it clear the proposal would not form part of the final discussions.
Who actually believed it would ever happen? From the day Gillard announced the plan it was obvious that it was only intended to take the heat off her and never intended as a real solution.
An extract:
“History is written by the winners…..that is why there are so many empty pages in French history books.”
Take the time to view – it is very entertaining.
Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation says Australia has a direct moral responsibility for any nuclear fallout.
Fair enough as long as we accept that Japan has a direct moral responsibility for Aussies killed in accidents involving Japanese vehicles.
Same logic.
The Greens and Lefties will be crowing about the danger of Nuclear power but Australia is well know as being geographically stable so the current Japanese problems have no bearing whatsoever on our Nuclear power debate.
Two earthquakes and no tsunamis of note in my life time in the entire continent do not cut it as a factor in the debate.
The same type of characters that panic about climate change used to panic about nuclear energy and to try and force us to join their church come up with the term ‘China Syndrome‘, a scenario where a reactor accident would develop into a self sustaining heat source and burn all the way from the US to China.
In a small way the Three Mile Island accident proved the extent of truth in the proposition as the molten core material got exactly 15 mm of the way to China as it froze on the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel.
No one died but that’s not the point. The Left has an ideological abhorrence of anything nuclear, possibly emanating from the cold war days when they agitated for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Unilateral because they only wanted the US to disarm – the communists in the USSR were the good guys after all and anything that might bring the Great Satan to her knees was on their ‘to do’ list
It will be a long long time before Nuclear energy racks up more deaths that coal fired energy.
If ever.
Ziggy Switkowski, former chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation has this to say;
In Australia, opponents of nuclear power already point to the situation in Japan as evidence of the dangers of nuclear reactors. They conveniently sidestep the loss of life and damage caused by exploding oil tanks, burst gas mains, electrical fires: hazards that come with living in a tectonically active region.
Possibly tens of thousands dead from the earthquake but about half of the media coverage is about the nuclear disaster which, so far, has killed exactly no one.
Let’s just concentrate on helping Japan get back on her feet.
UPDATE:
There is an incredible amount of misinformation and hyperbole flying around the internet and media right now about the Fukushima nuclear reactor situation.
To get a good layman’s description and maybe become better armed to enter into debate on nuclear energy you might like to read this piece at bravenewclimate
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