Thanks Ian, shame you didn't post the link 1st time around I will now do a little more research on this one......very interesting As far as biased viewpoint's are concerned...we all have our own, even The Economist Some example of The Economist?s biased reports: - CNN iReport
Lets take a moment to pray. Dear lord, I hope and pray that by the end of this year, Fiona Shrek, AKA Fanta Pants, (think about it Moretti) will no longer be in charge of the politbureau of Australia. She is not very nice and tells big porkies all the time. She has a head on her like a dropped pie, and an arse like a webber BBQ lid, and she is a pillow biter from way back. She is so good at her job she couldn't run a hot bath let alone the country. Amen
they may not be perfect and I can well understand the left not liking them, but they make more sense and are more accurate more of the time than most publications and they are not motivated by sensationalism. CNN are hardly focused on intellectual journalism, but they were the only media organisation who raised questions when the French launched their military campaign in Mali. The rest of the world remained largely silent. Another interesting quote from The Economist: Europe has 7% of the world's population and 50% of the world's government spending.
The costs of living in the lucky country Sydney and Melbourne climb list of world's most expensive cities | World news | guardian.co.uk
No, that was from an article on Angela Merkel trying to sort out the Greek mess a few issues ago. In fact, I think the quote comes from a Merkel speech. I enjoy the table of financial indicators at the back of every edition, a dose of reality. e.g. We all obsess with China, but Germany's current account balance is stronger and of course Germany is the only EU country that runs a budget surplus. There's no shortage of education, health care and welfare in Germany, but there are a lot of hard working people, a culture of honesty, and saving rather then spending, most of which is absent in southern Europe. My sadness about Australian Labor is that they take their policy direction mostly from the UK/French centre-left model, despite it's obvious failures, whilst ignoring the functional German/Swiss/and even Poland models. France has lots of "tax the rich" rhetoric just like Gillard, but 40% youth unemployment, is that really where we want to go?
that's more to do with our overvalued currency, I assume they convert everybody's costs to US$ then compare. When we go back to 85c normal logic will resume.
Not what you expect from the Guardian (known as Guardianista in the UK): The end of nuclear power? Careful what you wish for Flawed and stalled as the plans for toxic waste may be, at least they exist. There is no way to clean up CO2, the greater evil George Monbiot The Guardian, Monday 4 February 2013 20.30 GMT Abandoning a proven and reliable *low-carbon *technology as climate *breakdown accelerates is a special form of madness.' Is this the end? According to the Green MP Caroline Lucas, new nuclear power in this country has been "completely derailed". She may not be wrong. She was talking about the decision by Cumbria county council to reject the nuclear waste dump the government had planned. But she could just as well have been responding to the new report by a parliamentary committee, or to the declaration of surrender by Centrica: the last British company with a stake in the technology in the country. Put the three of them together and they add weight to the claims of those who maintain that atomic energy is finished in the United Kingdom. As I've spent much of the past two years defending it, this is a hard admission to make. I don't blame the people of Cumbria for rejecting the dump: the plan was an expensive, erudite and technically advanced dog's breakfast. The location the government had chosen had only one virtue: availability. Or so it thought. The nuclear-friendly county turned out to be no more enthused about mopping up the industry's excretions than the rest of Britain. No dump in Cumbria means no dump anywhere. The whole thing was misdirected anyway: it was a waste of waste. The material the government wants to bury could produce according to an estimate endorsed by the chief scientific adviser to its energy department enough low-carbon energy to supply all the UK's electricity needs for 500 years. Integral fast reactors can, in principle, keep recycling nuclear waste until a tiny residue remains, whose components have half-lives of tens rather than millions of years. The government's failure in Cumbria could become an opportunity: to treat the waste as an asset, rather than a liability. But I'm not holding my breath. No one has made atomic energy harder to love than the industry that supplies it. Today its long and colourful record of corner-cutting, incompetence and cover-ups was supplemented by the Commons public accounts committee's report. "Basic project management failings continue to cause delays and increase costs" at Sellafield, where the waste is being stored. The past is a mess, the future a thicket. Centrica was reported on Sunday to be pulling out because the cost of building new plants has soared. While other sources of low-carbon energy are getting cheaper, nuclear power at least of the kind being promoted in Britain is becoming more expensive. Every year the industry raises its demands, insisting on more lavish guarantees before it builds. The higher the cost, the weaker the argument in favour of the technology becomes. I think the point might now have been reached at which attempts to build the favoured model (the European pressurised reactor) in the UK should be halted until the costs have been reassessed and, preferably, compared with the likely costs of integral fast reactors. There's no point in assembling clunky third-generation power stations if fourth-generation technologies are cheaper and easier to build. Many people will be delighted to read this gloomy assessment. Before you join them, please think about the consequences. Ten days ago, the Japanese government announced that it is abandoning its promise to cut the greenhouse gases the country produces by 25% by 2020. The reason it gave was the shutdown of many of its nuclear plants as a result of the Fukushima disaster. Nuclear power saved about a quarter of a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year in Japan: equivalent to just under half the UK's emissions. Much of it will now be replaced by coal and liquefied gas. Germany also decided to shut down its nuclear power plants after the Fukushima crisis, due to the imminent risk of tsunamis in Bavaria. Last year, as a result, its burning of "clean coal" otherwise known as coal rose by 5%. That was despite a massive cut in its exports of electricity to other European countries. One estimate suggests that by 2020, Germany will have produced an extra 300 million tonnes of CO2 as a result of its nuclear closure: equivalent to almost all the savings that will be made in the 27 member states as a result of the EU's energy efficiency directive. If the UK fails to replace its nuclear plants, which generate 22% of our electricity, the same thing will happen. Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy which is essential if we're to have any chance of meeting our climate change targets is hard enough. Replacing fossil fuels and nuclear power with renewables is harder still. As thermal power plants perversely attract less opposition than wind turbines, the temptation to replace nuclear power with fossil fuels will be overwhelming. Abandoning a proven and reliable low-carbon technology as climate breakdown accelerates is a special form of madness. Flawed and stalled as the nuclear clean-up plans may be, at least they exist. Neither the government nor the fossil fuel companies have any programme for cleaning up carbon dioxide. This waste is, in aggregate, orders of magnitude more dangerous than the materials produced by atomic energy plants, and even harder to make safe. It's a choice of two evils, but one is much worse than the other. I accept that for now, the facts are against me. Enjoy it if you will. But then step back a pace, and consider what it means.
Your right again Ian. Every time I hear that lovely inspirational speaking voice of Gillard's sounding like she's some reject from Kath and Kim, I have to guzzle a few more Diazepam to help me believe " It won't be long now before she's gone"
I sat through a presentation from the CBA today Ian. That 85c, its going to be quite a while. Not likely in the next 3- years anyway.
This is not true. Cleaning up CO2 is as simple as planting trees. The real cause of our CO2 issue is the fact that the population has grown larger and unbalanced versus the number of trees. Large human population equates to higher energy needs, thus we need more trees not less to restore the balance. Nobody wants to do this because their is not profit to be made. Pete
Is this true, or is it Lib spin? More people have arrived by illegal boat so far in 2013 than the start of any other year on record, as the latest illegal boat arrived with 55 people on board, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Scott Morrison and Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection, Michael Keenan said today. More than 900 people have arrived since January 1. This is the biggest start of a year for illegal boats on record and follows a record calendar year of boat arrivals in 2012 of 17,270 people, Mr Morrison said. Even in the middle of the dangerous monsoon season Labors failed border protection policies are proving an irresistible lure for people smugglers who are continuing to send record numbers of people to Australia on illegal boats. Labors record breaking run of failure on our borders continues and every day Julia Gillard just cements her reputation as the worst steward of our borders of any Prime Minister in our history. These record arrivals make a mockery of Labors recently released asylum budget update which claims they will stop the boats and slash spending by $2 billion, despite failing to implement the full suite of Coalition policies necessary to actually stop illegal arrivals, Mr Morrison said. Mr Keenan said: This latest boat arrival comes as the Department of Immigration has revealed today in Senate Estimates that Labor has been presenting a Budget based on the farce that they have stopped the boats despite illegal boat arrivals already at record numbers this financial year. The Labor Party has wasted $6.6 billion of taxpayer money trying to fix this problem of their own making. This wasted money could have been spent on improving hospitals, education and relieving the burden of cost of living on families. Instead under this Government the boats will continue to come and the Australian people will continue to pay back Labors debt for many years to come, Mr Keenan said. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Newspaper headlines in September will be: "Highest number of suicides ever recorded in Australian history". Probable cause has been linked to suffering people having to listen to fncken election spin for too long, and Rudd not pissing off. Fnck Gillard for putting us all through this pain, causing business instability, etc. She and her government AND the independents should all just step down now! This year is ruined ... thanks Labor. Pete
It's like the last year of the Keneally govt in NSW - she knew she was going to be wiped out, the Labor machine knew it, the media knew it, but they all hung on till the bitter end. It's the opposite of democracy. Meanwhile Gillard will spend the next 6 months locking in spending commitments which prop up the rump Labor vote and will leave a huge unfunded headache for the new govt. NBN Co. has locked in contracts with penalty exit clauses that no commercial organisation would use. There will eventually be a corruption enquiry there too, in my 30 odd years in the telco/networking business, I've never seen so much money wasted by so many incompetent people for so little result. We the consumers and taxpayers will pay the price for decades to come. Only positive possibility is Gillard gets dumped for Rudd and he goes to a snap election to release us from the misery, but I think a switch to Crean as a caretaker for the remainder of the term is more likely, then Labor backbenchers will campaign with Gillard/Swan as the scapegoats. This will be a good option for Gillard, she can distance herself from the election wipeout and have her "legacy" of first women prime minister, plus a $600K per year pension package too. Then the ABC will give her a permanent gig on Q&A so that the simpering lefties can fawn over her like they do for Fraser now.
Sounds like our Desal plant here in Victoria Ian. It seems all these government ministers and employees aren't very clever in negotiating contracts.
$ 600K p.a. For what, f..ing the country. My first reaction was you have to be joking. But its probably true. We are fools. What a waste.
I am sure they know how to negotiate contracts BL, I think it's more a case of greasing someone's palm. I see this A LOT at my work and I see how some locals are millionares because of this shifty behaviour.
It will be interesting to see where Mr. Holding goes after quitting this week. He was the water minister behind the Desal plant. Leaving the sinking ship and the multi billion $ debt we have to pay probably to some private company that has benefited. There's just something about Labor, they seem to rush into everything without dotting "I"s and crossing "t"s and **** everything up!
That is why Bligh bailed so quick after the elections in Qld, because as an outgoing retiring premier she is on a six figure pension instead of 80k as a back bencher. The rest of us have to fund our own retirement, while these lying tossers get paid for their disasters and are not held accountable. If Bligh had sent a public company broke for the 70 Billion debt she left qld in, she'd be jailed. Fanta Pants, Swann, and Krudd have created a near 200 bill mess, they to will be getting paid for the mess they leave. It will take many years to sort it out, by then the next pack of socialist shirt lifters will be ready for office.
