we're falling behind the Boratland in high-speed rail: China and Kazakhstan will jointly build a high-speed railway connecting the central Asian nation's cities of Astana and Almaty, with the project to be completed in 2015, the Kazakhstan Railways president Askar Mamin said Tuesday in Beijing. Trains on the 1,050-kilometer-long double-track planned line connecting Kazakhstan's capital Astana with its biggest city Almaty, will run at a maximum speed of 350 km per hour, serving 5 million passengers annually, said Mamin at a luncheon party with entrepreneurs from China and Kazakhstan. China, Kazakhstan to jointly build high-speed railway
Get those bells ready, there might be a new ( recycled ) witch this afternoon. Julia Gillard calls leadership spill I think it will be close, while Gillard deserves to go now, KRudd will be harder to get rid of come September. M
Abbott will romp home against either Julia or Kevin. Labor's only hope would be to bring in someone completely new, but they are far too stupid to do that.
Still plenty of true believers out there, Rudd will be the underdog, I think it might be closer than expected, especially if Abbott doesn't keep his mouth shut
True, but the Libs could very easily run a very effective campaign against Rudd. And they certainly will. There is just so much material out there showing how much he is hated even by his own party, and what a crap PM he actually was (some people seem to have forgotten this as Gillard has proven to be even crappier). QLD is the only state where there is any love at all for Kevin. The election will be closer but Abbott will still win in a canter provided he makes no major mistakes. IMO of course.
Agree, but all that stuff was "fresher" at the last election and the Libs ad campaign really didn't capitalise on the **** ups. Hopefully they have a different media team this time
Oh well, looks like we've still got the lovely J - Big K wimped it - mind you who would volunteer to be captain of the Titanic? move the deck chairs as much as you like, it's still gunna sink...
Don't you guys think this was a setup by Julia? An attempt to make her look stronger. Again, please Australia, vote them out. Pete
No it wasn't, but it was partly contrived. I was in Canberra yesterday with some connected Labor people, who were working their phones all morning and buzzing with the blow by blow progress. By the time Gillard announced the spill, she knew Rudd didn't have the numbers, so the process was thereafter intended to reinforce her authority. What (shouldn't have) surprised me is that Rudd didn't have the guts to nominate. He is a coward and a dog. As for his speech "stop Abbott walking into the Lodge as if he owns it", WTF was that about? I love it when Labor figures trot out "people tell me they don't want Abbott as PM". They should get out more and talk to the 70% of people who aren't going to vote for them.
Well the latest piece of hypocricy:Simon Crean has now(now that he's resigned the front bench)given his full support to Jooolia. 3 blokes have left the sinking ship:Chris Bowen,Kim Carr and Richard Marles.
I just love political spin. They are right in saying that "the people" don't want Abbott....OMG who actually does really want him? .....but fair call on the 70% of people not wanting labor, though I suspect some of that 70% will still vote for them and probably because of Abbott
no way, it's necessary, we need to subsidise more single mothers with their justified sense of entitlement by flopping out more kids to different fathers, it's not their fault is it?....along with the requirement that everyone needs a new plasma every 12 months courtesy of the cash hand outs. lets not forget the well organised nbn roll out (we all need that) and the totally criminal waste of money on revitalising schools with unnecessary capital works whilst we cut back on tafe and secondary school budgets. what was that about accountability? oh, we seem to be close to the government ripping into our superannuation, wonderful!
and what that chart excludes is the 45-50 billion for the NBN, which is "off budget" because it's been cast as an investment rather than govt expenditure. In order to recoup the "investment", NBN will have to be floated. As a wholesale carrier, the valuation wont be large enough, so they are actively planning to be a retail carrier, i.e. a reincarnation of the state owner monopoly model. We all know how well that works for consumers... Meanwhile, I caught up with a mate who works there this week. The internal dysfunction goes from bad to worse. Substantial parts of what's been done so far are having to be scrapped and started again, because they rushed in order to make announcements that suited the govt. It's possibly the biggest waste of taxpayer's money in the country's history, incompetence at unprecedented levels, cheered along by the equipment vendors and consultants who are making money from it and the the govt boosters who are clueless about telecommunications.
I've been in telecoms and data networking for 30 years, I've never seen such a shambles anywhere in the world. I am astonished by the facile arguments by "experts" that the pro-Labor media runs to boost the NBN. Most of these people are well known as lightweights within the industry, consultants who've never written a line of code or configured anything more than a dial-up modem. FTTN could have been done for under 6Bn, then user-pays for people who wanted fibre to their home. The Labor concept is just stupid all the way through and they've created the impression that subscribers will get fibre speeds at home for the same price as ADSL today, which of course won't happen. The incoming Lib govt will inherit a mess, with about $20Bn in contracts locked in, to build something that will cover less than 30% of the country. I could spend time telling you about the NBN sh*tfight with telstra cable pits and their plan to hang yet more cables from telegraph poles. Ever seen the cable spaghetti that blights suburban streets in Los Angeles? That's what the NBN wants to do to Sydney. Even if Labor won the coming election, the NBN cannot be achieved for the current astonishing budget and/or by the people appointed to build it.
