Author: bobmcgee

AFL resources were used to lobby the Victorian government on behalf of a mining company part-owned by league chairman Mike Fitzpatrick and former chief executive Andrew Demetriou.

In what both men admit was an inappropriate use of the AFL’s resources, Fairfax Media has confirmed that the league’s executive for government relations last year emailed the office of the then mining minister Nick Kotsiras about issues affecting a mining company that Mr Fitzpatrick has a financial stake in and whose board he chairs.

Creswick Quartz Pty Ltd, which uses a patented method to extract quartz from old gold mines near Ballarat, has Mr Demetriou among its shareholders.

The email from the AFL executive is understood to have led to a meeting between Mr Kotsiras, Mr Demetriou and two Creswick Quartz directors where the company’s proposed operations and permit requirements were discussed.

The revelation raises questions for the AFL, Mr Fitzpatrick and Mr Demetriou about why the resources of the league – one of Victoria’s most powerful organisations – were used to assist the private business affairs of Mr Fitzpatrick, who is in London for the Rio Tinto board meeting, and Mr Demetriou, who recently joined James Packer’s Crown Resorts.

The AFL bosses may have ruined the game we all used to love but they obviously looked after themselves pretty well.
Note for my American audience … The AFL administers Australian Rules Football, you know the game you all think doesn’t have any rules. Well actually the game does, it’s just the administrators that don’t.

Unsettling news …

Climate change seems to have jumped the shark so far as the average punter is concerned but having been told that the science is settled governments are busily regulating vacuum cleaners, preventing gas extraction and pursuing policies which will soon lead to rolling blackouts in Britain and Europe and increased energy costs in the US.

Predictions based on the only settled science have proven to be somewhat inaccurate, and the smart new technology somewhat inadequate.

Germany’s state of the art offshore wind farm shows what a state the art is in …

The wind farm was officially turned on in August last year but was shut down again almost immediately due to technical difficulties that have still not been resolved – and now lawyers are getting involved.

The wind farm comprises 80 5MW turbines situated 100 km off the north German coastline. The difficulty facing engineers is how to get the electricity generated back to shore. So far, every attempt to turn on the turbines has resulted in overloaded and “gently smouldering” offshore converter stations.

Built at a cost of hundreds of millions and costing between €1 and €2 million a day to service, the project is estimated to have cost €340 million in lost power generation over the last year alone. And if the problems with the technology are deemed not to be the fault of the operator, German taxpayers will be on the hook for the running and repair costs, thanks to the German Energy Act 2012.

In the Arctic sea ice is disappearing because of global warming meanwhile in Antarctica sea ice has reached its greatest extent since satellite recording began because of global warming. A situation that prompted one commentator to ask …

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The answer, Duggie me old mate, is only in the southern hemisphere. But rest assured it will be very bad for the wildlife and also for Kiribati where the surface area for each Kiribatan is just a third of what it was in 1960.

Just this very day the ABC set aside its fascination with interspecific sex and brought us this gem …

JAKE STURMER: The nation of Kiribati is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to climate change.
It’s about 7,000 kilometres north east of Australia and is already feeling the devastating impacts of rising tides.
The water is destroying homes, making soil more salty and decimating crops.
If some climate scientists are correct, the majority of Kiribati could be underwater by the end of the century.

If we are going to evacuate Kiribati the sooner we do it the better … whilst there is still room to put them somewhere else.

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Meanwhile the surface area of Kiribati has not diminished and the sea level graph shows that the risk of being swamped by the sea is considerably less than the risk of being swamped by their own population …

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I take comfort in the fact that a substantial part of Australia is still above water and that we haven’t been swamped by climate refugees …

In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production.

But like any good doomsday cult nothing seems to be disproved when the end of the world fails to happen.

Another pronouncement of the illuminati concerned wetness, reported in the Sydney Morning Herald April 27 2012 …

WET areas have become wetter and dry areas drier over the past 50 years due to global warming, a study of the saltiness of the world’s oceans by a team including CSIRO researchers has shown.

Just imagine the floods get worse and the drought gets worse simultaneously. It remains a popular meme in the settled science.

This effect can be abbreviated to DDWW, dry dryer, wet wetter, and apparently it works well over the oceans (especially dry oceans) but it was tested on land (Greve et al 2014) and it’s true … for only about 10% of the land area. And for about 10% of the land area the opposite happens. Which leaves about 80% of the land area where there is no clear signal of what happens. (DDWW/DWWD/D?W?). Go figure.

One commentator  has obviously been keeping up with our Bureau of Meteorology’s secret adjustment business and points to the truth …

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The Gillard puzzle …

Julia Gillard worked in the industrial department of Slater & Gordon from 1988  to 1995. The Australian Workers Union was a client of S & G’s. Bruce Wilson was one of the officers of the AWU.

Jules seems to have forgotten the old saying about not getting your meat where you get your bread and entered into a romantic relationship with Bruce.

Th AWU Workplace Reform Association was incorporated in 1992. The legal work was done by Ms Gillard, off the books as it were. It was a slush fund controlled by a small coterie that included Bruce Wilson. A construction company, Theiss, were the principal donors to the fund, the coterie were likely the principal beneficiaries.

The AWU-WRA provided approximately $100,000 for the purchase of a house for another member of the coterie. Ms Gillard was involved in the legal proceedings in this matter as well.  The lawyer with inside  knowledge of the legal issues of the fund and the girlfriend of its mastermind, declares that she was not a beneficiary. Nor was she aware that anything untoward was afoot, nor did she do anything wrong such as sign off on a power of attorney in the absence of the individual involved or accept money for renovations to her house.Theiss probably thought they were buying industrial peace from a union. The Union itself knew nothing about it. A few officers of the union were moonlighting in style.Slater and Gordon eventually found out. I can imagine that the thought of one of its lawyers dabbling in a side-show behind an important clients back, to the disadvantage of that client and the benefit of  her boyfriend might have had them thinking about ethical considerations, their reputation and their commercial future. On  March 4, 1996 Jules found herself on the agenda of a meeting of the full partnership of Slater & Gordon…gillard11111_thumb

 

Nine Eleven …

We have an emotional envelope that ranges from very happy to very sad and off in a different direction to very angry. We can get to the limits of the envelope over quite little things, in tears over spilt milk, angry at dirty footprints on the carpet, thrilled at a compliment to our good looks.

It’s a range that doesn’t seem big enough for some of the big things.

On this day in 2001 a terrorist attack in the US killed nearly 3,000 people. Ordinary people going about ordinary lives. I knew on that day that it was an event that would cast a shadow on the rest of my life. And it does.

That evil act, and many others before it and since, was done in the name of religion.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. Steven Weinberg 1999.

Islam does not have a monopoly on evil but at the present time it poses a very significant threat to civilisation. I hear and read that Islam is a religion of peace. This comes from politicians, christians and nice decent people that wish it were so. If instead you read  the Quran you will find at least 109 verses calling for violence including Quran(8:12) …

I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

… and if you would like to track the relevant videos down you can watch adherents of this creed in action.

Today, I am thinking of those who died this day in 2001 and since innocent victims of barbarism. I extend my sympathy to those who lost loved ones in that attack and subsequently.

A sense of proportion in our narrow compass of emotions is a good thing. And if you would like to see civilisation continue then it is necessary to see things as they are, not as you would like them to be.

 

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The snail’s tale …

National Public Radio, August 08, 2007 4:00 PM ET

It’s hard to prove conclusively that a species is extinct, but Gerlach says he’s all but certain that in the late 1990s, the last Aldabra banded snail curled up inside its purplish shell and died. In a paper in the journal Biology Letters, Gerlach lays the blame on an unusual series of summers so long and hot that they killed off all the younger snails.

“So the juveniles just weren’t surviving, and the adults gradually died off,” Gerlach says. “Now we don’t have juveniles or adults.”

Gerlach says he found the proof he needed in shells gathered up by collectors. Smaller shells, once common, disappeared with the frequent long, hot summers. He suspects — but cannot prove — that these bad summers are a side effect of global warming. If he’s right, then this snail has earned itself a grim distinction: It would be the first species in the modern era to become extinct as a direct result of climate change.

All but certain, that would be like 99.999%.

Saturday, Aug. 23, 2014 … Good News and a photo.

Abdullah the cat …

Well, it’s true, Peppa Pig never inspired anyone to become a doctor.

The Muslim Council of Great Britain … “The majority of mainstream Muslims would not find Peppa Pig offensive, and anecdotally we know of many Muslim children who watch the show for its entertainment value. Those who do have issues with this can simply refrain from watching the show and purchasing Peppa Pig memorabilia”.

Just how culturally insensitive is the ABC to peddle this stuff.

You can make sense of all this <HERE>.