Author: bobmcgee

The south pole …

On 17 January 1912 Captain Robert Falcon Scott led a group of men to the South Pole. There he discovered that Raoul Amundsen had preceded them by five weeks.

The five members of Scott’s party died on the return trip.

These events have been analysed extensively and the most important difference between the two expeditions is usually said to be the mode of transport. Amundsen took the trouble to serve his apprenticeship in the Arctic, learnt from the Eskimo and chose dogs to pull him to the pole.

Scott on the other hand …

th… chose London Transport.

Well, not true, this is actually a photo from 1947 in England. Before it was fashionable to blame unusually cold weather on global warming, unusually cold weather just happened. Ignorant folks would blame it on the atom bomb. The tale of the exceptional winter of 1947 can be read <HERE>.

Viscount Monkton of Brenchley …

Easily the most interesting peer of the realm since Screaming Lord Sutch, the Viscount has been enthusiastically waging war on the warmists.

On a recent visit to Tasmania one of the warmists Mr Tony Press, chief executive of the Antarctic research centre, dismissed Monkton’s suggestion that there has been no global warming for at least 16 years, accused him of being unscientific and added the charge that Monkton was suggesting that scientists around the world were involved in “massive delusional group thinking”.

You can read Lord Monkton’s letter to the University of Tasmania  <HERE>. If you are thinking of writing a letter of complaint you could find worse models to follow. The vice chancellor’s email address is in the letter, I took the time to drop him a line saying how interested I am in his reply.

Screaming Lord Sutch’s album Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends was named in a 1998 BBC poll as the worst album of all time.

Sutch founded the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in 1983, he contested over 40 elections, after standing against Margaret Thatcher in 1983 the deposit required from candidates was raised from £150 to £500. At the Bootle by-election in 1990 he secured more votes than the candidate of the Continuing Social Democratic Party (SDP), led by former Foreign Secretary David Owen.  The ignominy was such that  the SDP dissolved itself within days.

Several biographies have been written, sadly none were called Sutch ‘is life.

People said …

Brendon O’connor, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Feb 24 on Ten Networks “Meet The Press” …

People said we weren’t going to price carbon and bring in a very important market-based approach to reducing carbon emissions; it was done.

Quite so. For example Mr Swan on Meet The Press, August 15, 2010, said …

What we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax …

and on August 15, 2010 …

No, it’s not possible that we’re bringing in the carbon tax. That is a hysterically inaccurate claim being made by the Coalition.

And Julia promised on Channel 10, August 16, 2010 …

There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.

Yes, Mr O’Connor some lying bastards did indeed say “we weren’t going to price carbon”.

 

Gillard’s greatest sin …

James Allan, Garrick Professor of Law, University of Queensland is on sabbatical at the University of San Diego School of Law and writes …

I tried a little experiment here at my sabbatical university in California. I asked a few members of the law school (from across the political spectrum) to guess which country in the world wanted to: stop speech that offended, insulted or humiliated some people; that for other matters applying to more potential people, just humiliated them; that reversed the onus of proving when this had happened so that the self-proclaimed victim could basically just sit back and force the accused to prove he hadn’t done this (good luck on that); that makes defendants pay their own legal bills, even if they end up winning, and more.

I got guesses ranging from various South American countries through African ones, and on to Singapore and godawful authoritarian countries in Asia and elsewhere. Not a single one of them guessed Australia. It presumably never entered their heads.

When I told them they couldn’t believe it.

As I said, it’s embarrassing being an Australian right now. And what we all need, all of us regardless of our other political views on other issues, is to fight this awful government proposal tooth and nail.

Sure, there’s been a partial backdown. But it’s only partial. And sure, Ms Roxon is now gone. But even what remains is an egregious attack on free speech. Mr. Abbott and the Coalition need to do more than just oppose this bill. They need to promise they will go to a double dissolution election if necessary to rid us of an outrageous mess.

And that cannot be all. For there already exists s.18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and all of that needs to go too, however much certain lobby groups that matter to the Coalition might be opposed to its repeal. This is about a key matter of principle. Mr. Abbott and Mr. Brandis, seeing where complacency on free speech has led us, need to be firm and make it clear that the whole proposed and existing edifice must go.

If anyone complains that that’s an extremist position, you can tell him or her that in California there would still be much more scope for people to speak their minds than in an Australia purged of these odious Nicola Roxon proposals and purged of s.18C. Even then you would be more constrained in what you can say in Australia than anywhere in the US.

The entire article can be read <HERE>.