deep

There are not so many these days, soon there will be even fewer.

It’s hard to find information on what people are doing, the Greens/ALP coalition don’t want us to know what damage they are doing to us now and into the future.

Cardboard Kev slashed a reported $20 million from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2008 knowing full well they would have to scale back services; and information, once freely available to commentators like me who have no research budget, disappears from sight.  Going to the ABS site to look for employment within the Social Trends statistics reveals . . .  nothing.

Right down the bottom of that screenshot, arrowed in red, is ‘Work’ as a social trend. Go there, to the Social Trends page,  (follow this link) and click on it.  You will find (at time of writing)  . . .

It puts me in mind of this government, it is either temporarily unavailable or doesn’t exist.

I had started out to write an article on the effects of the Greens/ALP IR changes, but I gave up when the information became too hard to find.  I’m guessing that was Kevin Rudd’s intent when he slashed the ABS budget.  If the data is unavailable or doesn’t exist you can’t be troubled by it.

Hammered into the coffin of our country.  With the near total reliance on turning our country into the world’s largest quarry the Greens/ALP alliance have done irreparable damage to our future.

This latest indicator is very concerning.

Dollar ‘could soar as high as $US1.20′

 

THE Australian dollar has broken through another threshold at $US1.05, and market strategists say there is nothing to stop it rising as high as $US1.20.

The currency has now risen by 7.2 per cent against the US dollar in just three weeks and 15.2 per cent against the yen.

Although the rise in the currency is a bonanza for importers, it threatens to undermine manufacturing and many service industries, while sectors of the farm community will also be hard hit.

Link

 

There are many reasons that currency fluctuates but much of this continual rise is attributable to the eagerness the Greens/ALP have to sell off our nation to the highest bidder,  in this case the Chinese.

Our terms of trade are at near record levels, but its not producing a great deal for our economy.  In fact the promised budget surpluses (by the Greens/ALP) are receding.   Everything this government does, makes our futures look worse.

We are exporting vast amounts of our resources and importing similarly vast amounts of goods manufactured overseas which makes our balance of trade look great.  And as the dollar rises imported goods get cheaper so we buy more of the stuff.

But we are buying it back from China after we sold them the raw materials to make it.   The added value goes into their economy, not ours.

So what’s driving up our dollar to unprecedented levels?

It’s simple and the answer is still  China.   But its not what they buy from us, nor what we buy back from them.  That is just about a zero sum game.

We have become the proxy investment for China.  We are now an economic dependency to China and we are seen as the pipeline to investing in China, but without the risk of nationalisation of industry or the ethical issue of investing in a country with a poor human rights record.

More later . . .

Last week, Saturday to be precise, I lost my landline – no phone, no internet.  It took a few days to restore.  It happened previously in January during the floods when we lost our service for a couple of weeks.  Cables torn away during landslips or similar.

Just one more reason why we should move away from cables laid in the ground and go wireless, at least here in the bush when restoration can take days or weeks.

But maybe the White Elephant, the insane notion of a government built communications network, will never happen anyway and all the waste to date will have given a few randoms a shiny cable they didn’t use.

 

NBN costing turning into Archilles heel of Government

 

The remarkable cancellation of the National Broadband Network building tender, followed by the dramatic resignation of the head of network construction at NBN Co, Patrick Flannigan, shows that all is not well with the costing of Australia’s biggest ever infrastructure project.

On the one hand, the Government, through NBN Co, is saying that the prices tendered by the 14 competing building companies were too high.

On the other hand, union bosses such as NBN project coordinator for the Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union, Allen Hicks, are saying that hourly labour costs tendered for the NBN were in line with what workers doing similar jobs on other Australian projects are being paid.

Thus, if NBN Co has ditched the tender process and started negotiating one-on-one with Silcar (Siemens and Leighton) or Telstra, NBN Co (read the Government) may well find itself in an untenable position.

First, having cancelled a bona fide open tender, NBN Co will have to compensate the building companies for the millions they spent on their submissions. NBN Co may deny this but it’s hard to see how the builders would not win if it went to court.

Second, if NBN Co does a deal with Silcar, Telstra or someone else to pay workers less than the rates similar workers are already getting on other projects, then it will almost certainly find itself facing a problem with unions.

The problem for the Government of course is the rigid politically sensitive cost figure it has imposed on the NBN. Having essentially said that by hook or by crook the NBN will be delivered for $36 billion, it has painted itself into a corner.

 

Link

 

Well . . .

Those of us with a functioning intellect said there was no way this could be brought in for the price the Greens/ALP claimed.  And the waste they planned would blow out to increased waste.

And those of us with functioning intellects said what’s the point of it all anyway?  Why dig up the country to put cables in the ground (that won’t survive a little mudslide) while the consumer (remember them Juliar?) is moving away from fixed lines to mobile internet.  It’s the only real growth area.  And the government ought to know that – this from their own department of statistics.

Mobile wireless (excluding mobile handset connections) was the fastest growing internet access technology in actual numbers, increasing from 2.8 million in December 2009 to 4.2 million in December 2010.

More later . . .

It’s growing wider, the chasm. The one between the former honeymooners Juliar Gillard and Bomber Brown.

Everyone recalls the happy marriage between the two, with the vows consisting of such untruths as an asylum shopper processing centre in East Timor, a people’s assembly for the Church of the Latte Sipping Global Warmers and no carbon tax under the government Juliar leads.

And of course we know she was deceptive. She meant none of it. The asylum processing centre was never discussed with East Timor’s elected government and will never proceed, the people’s assembly was shoved in the bin and the carbon tax suddenly appeared as policy.

So was Juliar faking it all? Was it the real Juliar? The fake Juliar? Or the Juliar we have seen all along, the lying Juliar. Or did Bob, in consummating the marriage, take Juliar by the scruff of the neck, bend her over and insist she accept his feeble thrusts?

After all he keeps excusing her backflips and somersaults, saying she has to ‘shift ground on that commitment’. But because she is bending to his will he fails to see the shifting of the commitments, even while declaring it so.

Bob Brown: “However, I find her strong, she’s got a very clear mind. She does what she says she will do and I am impressed by that”

Well Bob, she can’t be shifting ground on her commitments while doing what she says she will do. How can you claim opposites to both be true? Unless you’re lying about one of them.

Can two liars have an honest relationship? Apparently not.

Bob Brown warns Julia Gillard’s attacks on Greens are ‘divisive’

Greens Leader Bob Brown today attacked a “poorly advised” Julia Gillard for her savage dismissal of his party and warned her comments could be “divisive” for the agreement supporting minority government.

“The reaction we’ve already had… one caller in tears over the way the Prime Minister has described the Greens,” Senator Brown said.

“I think, for some reason, the Prime Minister has turned her fire on the very people who have supported her in government,” said Senator Brown.

“I’ll talk to her about that. She’s wrong. But we’re above turning that sort of verbiage against those who vote a different way. It’s just not uniting. It’s divisive, that sort of language.”

Link

Bob’s hardly a reasonable spokesperson for what is ‘divisive’. His record on inclusiveness is appalling. Even that one sentence is indicative of his inability to relate with others. But he’ll ‘talk’ to Julia’. He’ll give her a few backhanders and bend her back to the appropriate position.

His.

Incidentally, there’s a cracker of a typo  in that linked article.  A Freudian slip by the copy writer.

“I think the Prime Minister has to lie with her statements, and I think she’s getting poor advice on it. But that’s the nature of politics.”

Has to lie with her statements?

We agree Bob, we have seen the tsunami of lies mate.

If you have any prescience at all (even a tiny bit), you will be able to see some imminent changes within the federal government.  The NSW state elections, the ALP heartland, has caused some rumbles in the federal sphere.

Three things.

The Greens are toast.  I predicted the beginning of the end for them in my last post.

The ALP will distance themselves even further from The Extremists Greens.

The Independents will start back peddling.

The NSW election was an interesting model of what happens to arrogant and disconnected governments with records of appalling waste and fiscal mismanagement.  The people, even the ALP’s own supporters, jump ship.  And they don’t go further left and they don’t choose Independents.

That they don’t go further left is exemplified in the seat of Marrickville;

Swing to Greens is tinged red

 

LABOR was taking heart last night from Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt’s performance in Marrickville, where the swing against her to the Greens appeared less than expected.

Ms Tebbutt said it was a ”surprise” that Labor had polled ”so well against the Greens”.

(Edited – read full report here)

 

Despite the ALP being terrible, it was perceived that The Greens were worse.

And why not?  Look at the Greens candidate.

The battle for Sydney’s inner west took an ugly turn yesterday when police were called to investigate vandalism of Marrickville Greens’ candidate Fiona Byrne’s campaign posters that were defaced with swastikas.

The Nazi symbols appeared on Ms Byrne’s posters in Petersham and Enmore on Friday night, some scrawled with the words: ”Watch out for the Nazi.” Other threats have been made.

Ms Byrne is the mayor of Marrickville Council, which controversially voted to boycott Israel four months ago. The boycott has sparked threats to other Marrickville councillors.

The backlash is not surprising, there would be many who see a boycott against Israel as being very sinister – revealing the real motive behind The Greens.  Forget the environment, The Greens are about achieving dystopia and total social control.

Incidentally I commented on Juliar’s gigantic earlobes on 21 March, jokingly suggested I would get more hits.   Well . . .

 
Forget political comment, just talk about the ears if you want readers.

I read few blogs, certainly no political ones.  I don’t have the time and they will be, just like mine, perfectly predictable.   Bloggers, unlike some news outlets, are partisan.  And why not.  We are not media outlets.  Just mere commentators.

I do, however drop into the ABC’s excellent election coverage site at http://www.abc.net.au/elections/home/

Here, and at associated sites, one tends to get unbiased reporting and great insightful comment by Antony Green.  I don’t read Antony’s blog though, as before no time, too predictable.

On the ABC election site (covering NSW) though, Antony made a good point.  He said “It is often said that governments tend to win one election more than they deserve, and the consequences for the government at the next election are usually severe”.

It happened in 1993 when Paul Keating won the ‘unwinnable election’.  After ten years of ALP destruction it was thought that the Labor Party would not be returned.   But they were, they got one more than they deserved.  The following election, in 1996, the consequences were severe and the ALP were swept from office. losing 29 seats.

In 2004, perhaps, it could be said that win for the Lib/Nats was the one more than they deserved and the following election in 2007 saw them bundled out with the severe consequence of the former Prime Minister losing his own seat.

So was the 2010 federal election a portent for the ALP?  They barely hung on, only forming government by partnering with the ‘extremists’ and independents.  This parliamentary term is the one they didn’t deserve and they will be driven from office with sticks and stones in 2013?

I predict the NSW state election today will be a peek into the crystal ball for the next federal election.  Just as important today though will be to witness what happens to the Greens.

Rising from nothing to compete head on with their federal coalition partners, the Greens have made strong headway into main stream political life.  Amazingly, with few policies.  And amazingly, even fewer they actually believe in.   They have no economic policies, no comprehension of real world politic and are largely supported by either the economically illiterate or the proverbial ‘doctor’s wife’.  The latter being a fictitious voter for whom there is never a social consequence; lunches are taken as before, regardless of the state of the community they ignore and have no understanding of.

But they have reached their pinnacle.  Like the Democrats before them they dabbled, they achieved some glory and they will fade away.  Much of the discontent with them is of course due to their success.  The more visible they become the more risible they are revealed to be.  Even their most rabid supporters struggle to find excuses for their hypocritical behaviour today.

I tend to be the usual insular Queenslander.  Nothing goes on beyond the borders of our great state until you get to Canberra.

But there is an election going on in a little state to the south of us.  And it’s nasty.

The NSW Labor MP for the western Sydney seat of Cabramatta is sticking by the party’s tactic to link his Vietnamese-born Liberal rival with One Nation founder Pauline Hanson.

Nick Lalich’s team has been handing out a Vietnamese-language Labor leaflet featuring pictures of Ms Hanson, local Liberal candidate Dai Le, and Chris Spence, a former One Nation member who is the Liberal candidate for The Entrance.

Ms Le on Wednesday accused Labor of running a “smear campaign” by trying to link her to Ms Hanson, who has strong views on immigration and multiculturalism.

So the ALP have been handing out leaflets which purport to portray Ms Le as a supporter of the policies of Pauline Hanson, which we all know the ALP, and their indoctrinated supporters, believe to be racist.

How ironic.  And how stupid.

Pauline Hanson was not and is not a racist.  She was simply opposed to the massive numbers of migrants, particularly those who failed to integrate into Australia’s culture.  Her concerns centred around our once homogenous society, a society she saw being increasingly fractured by cultural schisms.  Sadly for Pauline, she was unable to articulate her view without being branded a racist – this was, and remains, transparently untrue.

But the peoples that most concerned Pauline were Asians.  She said, in her maiden speech to Parliament in 1996.

I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40 % of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate.

‘Asia’ is not a race, it is a geographical region.  Her concern is that people who come from a a particular geographical region form ghettoes and do not assimilate particularly well.  She’s right.  In fact the multiculturalists encouraged it.  And the evidence of her statement can be seen anywhere in the world as multiculturalism took hold in the sixties and seventies and flourished into full blown ghettoism in the nineties.

The area where Nick Lalich is handing out the leaflets, in Vietnamese, is the seat of Cabramatta, an area known to have social problems.

Premier of that little state, Kristina Keneally, drives this too by linking Ms Le with another Liberal candidate, Chris Spence, who is a former One Nation member.   She reckons;

“It was a long, deep and meaningful relationship that Chris Spence had with One Nation, and quite frankly I am disappointed in Mr O’Farrell and the opposition that they would endorse Mr Spence,” she told reporters.

“And I think it’s disrespectful for the Liberal candidate for Cabramatta to be seen with Mr Spence.”

Disrespectful to whom?  Asian people?  Ms Le is Vietnamese born Kristina.

And the ALP conspiranuts continue with this bizarre drama;

“It’s strange that Pauline Hanson in the 11th hour throws her hat into the ring in NSW (when) she’s from Queensland,” he said.

“There’s some unholy alliance there between Chris Spence, the Liberal Party, Barry O’Farrell and Pauline Hanson.”

It gets funnier;

The Labor leaflets also claims former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser was no longer a member of the Liberal Party because it was racist.

“He told me himself that they’ve lost their way, they are now a racist party and he will remove himself from that party,” Mr Lalich said.

Sniff the air.  Can you smell the desperation?  I can smell it even up here in paradise.   Here are the candidates, Dai Le and Nick Lalich.  Nick is the bemused looking dude in the white shirt.

I spoke about the arrogance and incompetence of the current regime the other day. The incompetence goes on.

Detainees recaptured in Christmas Island jungle

POLICE have caught two escapees in jungle near the Christmas Island detention centre, 24 hours after the Immigration Department claimed everyone was “accounted for”.

The two men were found near the popular tourist spot Hugh’s Dale at around 9.30am local time.

The Australian Online has been told that in recent months it has been common practice for detainees to jump the fence from the Aqua and Lilac compounds on the edge of the detention centre for a swim at a freshwater waterfall, returning the same day.

But the detainees arrested this morning are thought to have been gone from the centre for at least a day and possibly longer.

Authorities believe they may have run away during the chaos last Thursday night when an angry mob burned down large sections of the detention centre in a violent confrontation with police who used tear gas and beanbag rounds.

Link

So these escapees have been hanging out somewhere or other. While the locals have been reassured they are all in custody again.

At a community meeting yesterday, Immigration Department assistant secretary for irregular maritime arrivals, Fiona Andrew, told residents that all detainees had been accounted for at the centre.

A few hours later, she was contradicted by AFP operational commander on the island Chris Lines, who said an official headcount was incomplete.

 

The current administration puts me in mind of many things, none of them good due to the appalling incompetence. This is what I was thinking as I was typing this.

Update: And if you think it’s just some public servant who is the dolt, think again.

‘One or two’ asylum seekers could be missing

The Federal Government says a small number of asylum seekers could still be missing from the Christmas Island detention centre but it is not exactly sure how many.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen yesterday said all the asylum seekers had been accounted for after a week of riots and protests which led to Federal Police taking control of the facility.

However he was later contradicted by police who said there were discrepancies in the records.

Link

The stupidity is all the way through. One or two could still be missing? You have no idea at all do you Chris.  The other day you thought they were all accounted for.

Some dude was arrested last night, according to this report, for helping himself to some junk on the footpath.

Man arrested over hard waste theft

 

A man was arrested early this morning for stealing a vacuum cleaner from a hard rubbish collection at Chirnside Park in Melbourne’s east.

Police questioned the 58-year-old Lilydale man after the vacuum cleaner was taken from outside a house in Kimberley Drive.

Police say stealing from a nature strip is considered theft of council property.

Link

 

Say what?  Well I always thought if you bunged your crap out on the footpath you were just chucking it away.    And as the Council have not yet claimed it, surely it can’t be theirs yet.

I guess there has to be some understanding of what you have actually discarded.   I mean if you leave your bike there that isn’t rubbish, and it isn’t the Council’s either.  But we are all well schooled in what is and what is not free for the taking.  Until now.

Well.  Maybe we were right all along.  The cops are back peddling pretty quickly now it has hit the media.

Vacuum-cleaner man won’t be charged

 

Victoria Police has backed down from its hard line against hard rubbish hunters after a man was arrested for taking a vacuum cleaner from a collection in Melbourne’s outer east.

The 58-year-old Lilydale man was taken into custody just after midnight for allegedly stealing the appliance from a hard rubbish pile on a nature strip in Kimberley Drive, Chirnside Park.

 

There’s more.  The cops seem to have been confused.

 

The council responsible for the collection, the Yarra Ranges City Council, had been unaware of the arrest until media reports.

In a statement, Yarra Ranges deputy mayor Len Cox contradicted the police position.

“Any items placed out for hard waste collection remain the property of the resident until collected by the contractor,” he said.

I remember as a kid going to the local tip and collecting junk, probably to my folk’s dismay.  But we kids built all  kinds of stuff with it.  Bikes, billy carts and trolleys.  There was one tip near where I lived as a kid, which had a huge lake in part of it and we built a raft out of old oil drums and timber.

I guess doing stuff like that is where I learned to be a handyman.

I still scavenge, though these days it’s using eBay for recycled building materials, or asking around.  Maybe I will show a few of the things I have made around here with recycled timbers and stuff.  Next time.

This is the guy by the way, though this pic was taken some time ago.  It turns out the fellow was a five times motocross champion in the 70s.

Poor bugger. What a big fuss by the law.

The urban dictionary defines warpig as a -

warmonger a term that originated in a Vietnam era Black Sabbath song used to describe corrupt politicians who start senseless wars primarily to boost the profits of the military industrial complex

And the example given is -

George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld are warpigs who invaded Iraq to save Haliburton from bankruptcy.

I wonder if now, with the military bombardment of Libya by the ‘coalition of the warpigs’, those who rushed to condemn George Bush will be doing the same to Barack Obama?

I wonder if their ideology extends to their own, or if their beliefs are flexible, and warpigs can only exist on the right side of politics?

They said it was all about the oil. I wonder what Barack himself thinks about warpigs who ‘start senseless wars primarily to boost the profits of the military industrial complex’.

Those who start wars about oil.

Why wonder, Barack made it clear nearly a decade ago, in 2002;

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Abridged – read the entire speech here

Gotcha Barack.

Saddam butchered people, defied UN resolutions, developed chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s bad. But he posed no threat to the US. What you wanted to do was wean your country off oil, not serve the interests of the oil giants, not go to war.

Tell us Barack. How’s that coming along?

Who is the warpig now Barack? But don’t worry, the left have all come over to the side of Big Oil.

They opposed the war against Iraq, but they’re all warpigs now.

Former Australian PM Cardboard Kev says the air strikes ‘are vital’, the alleged Australian PM Julia Gillard said ‘intervention (was) necessary to end violence and bloodshed’ and the real Australian Prime Minister Bomber Brown said it was ‘the right move to make’.  They’re all about starting ‘senseless wars primarily to boost the profits of the military industrial complex’.

Shooters with pretend guns? Or today’s warpigs?