So there is a truckie (or two) that’s already hit the road to travel to Canberra to declare no confidence in the current Gillard-Brown-Windsor-Oakeshott-Milne Government. (There are a few others I could lob in, but you get the general idea, most of us aren’t too sure who is actually in charge of the country at the moment.)
It warms the very cockles of my heart to see so many ordinary Aussies (that happen to drive humungous trucks) hitting the highways to make their voices heard. As a staunch defender of the little guy I think its only right to give them a decent plug and to encourage everybody to join in on the action.
So if you have an electric scooter, a skateboard, a tractor, a car, a Winnebago, bicycle, ute, horse ‘n’ cart, an ambo or Mac truck, you can hook up as part of this convoy… the details of which are located over at Just Grounds, party central for the No Confidence Convoy.
The supremely excellent Jo Nova has also given the ol’ convoy of no confidence a decent plug and, being the Picasso that she is, has created this map outlining the 11 routes that our Aussie truckies will take as they converge on Canberra:
So the convoy will arrive in Canberra one week after this little protest:
…where about 5000 people descended to mark the one-year anniversary of the mother of all whoppers:
FINAL THOUGHTS…
At the start of Australia’s most disastrous government ever, Joolya said “game on”.
Guess she should have been careful what she wished for.
Anyone else remember Prof. Dr. David Bellamy? He is a rather eccentric botanist from the UK, who used to be on TV when I was a kid. Anyway, according to David Bellamy, CO2 (the stuff that Julia Gillard wants to tax the bejeezus out of) is plant food and the world would be a whole lot better if we had more of it. But I digress. We should head back to basics, not down my memory lane.
This whole Carbon Tax thing (which isn’t really a carbon tax, it’s really a Carbon Dioxide or, what the hell, Oxygen Tax) is proving to be a tough sell for our Jools.
Prior to the federal election back in October last year, with her political neck dangling precariously close to a noose, Gillard solemnly promises not to lob a Carbon Tax ugly upon Australians. If you are one of the very few who hasn’t seen the evidence that this really happened, watch this:
Some weeks later, with the federal election behind Australia (where Gillard gets rescued by a couple of country bumpkins who are now apparently detested by their electorates), and a deal has been struck with minority party The Greens, Gillard stands on a Canberra balcony to announce that Australia needs this Oxygen Tax. It’s was time to move forward. Apparently, and unbeknownst to most of them, Australians had voted for change.
It should come as no great surprise that parts of the media cried foul, accusing her of lying, taking votes in the election fraudulently. This led to stuff up Number 1 (and that’s only if you don’t consider the original announcement to be a stuff up).
Gillard responds to the outrage by accusing the media of playing semantics and word games.
The media counter punches by playing back her solemn pre-election promise, over and over, until everyone in Australia knew they’d been told a pre-election porker. Round one was decisively won by the “shock jocks”. Voters are pissed.
Realising that voters are angry (which is really not ideal when you rely on them for your job), Jools sets about making amends, which catapults her straight into stuff-up number 2.
“It’s the big polluters that will pay!” she declares. “Consumers will be compensated. Some might even be better off.” Swan and Combet, like well behaved choir boys, chime in to the chorus.
Meanwhile, the electorate, not believing a word that’s being uttered, thinks:
“Hmm, if you slug a great big new tax on companies, they will pass this onto me. If you compensate me, it won’t change my consumption of energy which is, apparently, the objective of all this pain anyway. You cannot be serious when you assert that I might actually PROFIT from this tax? If you’re gonna take my money, only to give it back, why not just leave it with me in the first place?”
Hard to argue with that logic.
Across town, the big polluters, employing plenty of union members, shrug their shoulders, smile sweetly and say: “That’s okay, you bring in this Oxygen Tax and we’ll just move our jobs overseas.”
Paul Howes (one of the now infamous faceless men) hops onto talkback radio and declares that not one union job is to be lost to this tax. Compensation for big polluters is now on the table and The Greens look set to start squealing like Banshees.
To add to the mounting woes, the UN comes along with its hands outstretched. “We’ll take a share too,” they tell Australia. “How much will you give them?” asks the Opposition.
Gillard offers up one of her now-famous non-answers.
By now this tax, which some commentators think is intended to balance the books by 2013, is starting to look like a useless money-go-round or some kind of socialist-driven wealth redistribution scheme. There doesn’t seem like they’ll be much left over to balance books once everyone has their compensation paid out. Across Australia, the Oxygen Tax concept is sinking faster than the Titanic.
To clear the mind and unwind, Jools makes a dash to the U.S. to rub shoulders with Obama Man. She nicks a speech from Bono, sobs a bit in Congress, rent-a-crowd stands up clapping, and she somewhat inelegantly kicks a Sherrin footy around the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, back in OZ, Newspoll is out there asking people what they think. It asks them what they think of the Oxygen Tax. Voters tell Newspoll the Oxygen tax sucks. Labor’s primary vote has sagged miserably to 30%, the lowest ever recorded for Federal Labor. The short answer is voters think it’s time for an election.
Oh you know I don’t listen to polls, she giggles when confronted.
Not classified an official stuff up, but definitely odd given that polls were the reason old Kevvie was knifed. Needing mates, Jools takes herself off to visit a friendly Aunty.
Tony Jones, who many would like to whack over the head with a wet piece of lettuce, is not exactly a hard-hitting journalist. Gillard makes a number of declarations – most notably the one relating to the end of coal-fired power stations in China.
They are shutting them down! she announces to her eager audience. Slight problem, though, China is shutting down older, smaller power stations and replacing them with much bigger ones, and it’s got them coming online at least one per week.
The inevitable claims of another porker abound. Another stuff up. Another loss of credibility. Australia’s first female PM who nobody believes anymore. Is this as good as the first female PM gets?
The Oxygen Tax is a fizzer. She should give away sales, it’s not her thing.
SO WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
Hey, glad you asked.
There are a few facts that everyne should know when it comes to making up their minds about the Oxygen Tax.
These are:
Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is a block-buster drama from Hollywood. As such, it shouldn’t be confused with real life.
There is NO EVIDENCE to link CO2 to driving any increase in world temperatures. In fact, the evidence from ice core records and other data sources suggests that CO2 levels follow temperature increases although there is a lag of up to 800 years. In other words, if the world’s temperature goes up, 800 years later, CO2 levels may increase as a result.
This torpedos the basis of the alarmist argument which rests on the premise that CO2 drives up temperature. The primary culprit for the world’s temperature is most likely the sun (and clouds).
When people think “carbon” they think black sooty stuff. But what Jools wants to tax is Carbon Dioxide or CO2. CO2 is a naturally occurring, harmless trace atmospheric gas. Remember David Bellamy?
Carbon and Carbon Dioxide are not the same thing. The use of the word Carbon is misleading since Jools wants to tax CO2. We measure CO2 in parts per million, it’s that small. It’s the stuff you breathe out. It’s plant food. It’s not a pollutant nor is it an environmental villain. Fact is, we all need CO2 to live.
Those big cooling towers you see on TV spewing out stuff from chimneys? The stuff coming out is steam. Water vapor. Nothing polluting about that either.
The polar bears are doing just fine and Al Gore has bought waterfront California property, which rather suggests that sea rises will not be catastrophic, despite what his movie says.
Even if you shut down Australia altogether, stripped all living creatures so there was zero emissions (at least from us), it would result in a saving of 2mm sea rise and a drop in temperature of 0.0123°C.
In Australia, the Oxygen Tax has already killed off the following leaders – Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull and Brendan Nelson. My prediction is that Julia Gillard is next.
Australia produced 1.38% of global human emissions of CO2 in 2011. (EIA, 2011a)
Each year global emissions increase by twice Australia’s total annual output. (2.8%/year (EIA, 2011a). If we all emigrated and left a bare deserted continent, it puts off the warmer Armageddon by just six months.
We always knew there would be talking, and discussion, and discussion about the things raised in discussions, they’ll be dialogue (but no sloganeering) and more discussions as we talk through the issues relating to the dialogue.
A kiwi branding expert is calling for countries who are opposed to the All Blacks’ haka to ask their fans to decide if they want to see it.
Dr Mike Lee, of Auckland University’s Business School, was responding to scathing criticism from Sunday Times journalist Stephen Jones who wrote at the weekend that while it once was a loved “theatrical affair”, opposition to it was now growing.
Jones believed anti-haka feeling was due largely to New Zealand’s preciousness around how other countries responded to it while Lee believed he was simply suffering from an “inferiority complex” because Britain lacked anything similar.
“If some countries think it’s such a big deal, why don’t they just ask ticket purchasers to vote on whether they want to see the All Blacks do the haka live before a game or not.”
I’m told that there is an annual contest at the University of Arkansas calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term. This year’s term was apparently “Political Correctness” and this was the winning definition:
“Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end.”
Once upon a time there was a world of little people that believed in living within their means.
Then the desire for power got the better of the very few who decided they wanted turns at running the country.
The country held an election to decide.
To convince all the little people to vote for them, the power seekers made promises.
It was quite easy to make promises, after all, they were spending money that wasn’t theirs.
The money belonged to the little people.
And the little people got excited about all the “free” stuff they were going to receive, even though they owned the money.
And many of them decided to vote for the person who made the biggest promises.
Of course, being democratic, every few years, a new election was called.
They got to choose whether the power seekers stayed in power.
Once again the power seekers made promises, with each one keen to outbid the other, so those promises got bigger and bigger, until one day the money being spent on promises was much bigger than the money being earned.
So the power seekers faced a stark choice. They decided not to stay within their budget, but to keep on spending.
At first, all the little people’s savings that had been carefully stored away got eaten away until they were exhausted.
Then, once the bank was empty, the power seekers looked about, and started to borrow, so that meant they could keep up their spending although they didn’t have enough money.
Then in 2010, all the little people went off to vote again.
This time the little people weren’t so sure, so half voted for one group of power seekers while the other half voted for the other group of power seekers.
It was left to a couple of power seekers from the regions to decide who would spend the little people’s money.
And the power seeker that they chose, on behalf of all the little people, swore faithfully that in a few short years all the money that had been borrowed would be paid back and once again the little people would feel financially secure, knowing that if the world’s other nations got into trouble, Australia would be ok.
JUST in time for next week’s midterm elections, VanityFair.com has released a racy 2011 “beefcake” calendar whose “pinup boys” – their heads digitally mounted on the provocatively posed bodies of male models – are some of the top names in the Republican party.
Among the Republican power players portrayed in the calendar: 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain and Kentucky Senate hopeful Rand Paul, both goofily covering their crotches; Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, naked and in a creature-like pose with clawed hands and a ditzy, childish expression; Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, shirtless and holding his nipples in a sailor get-up; and House Minority Leader John Boehner, stroking his neck in a tiny pink Speedo.
In addition to the images, the calendar has descriptions for each individual, including their “turn-ons” (in the case of “Mr March” John McCain, it “varies with each election cycle”) and their “turn-offs” – with McCain’s listed as “plucky brunettes who favour rimless glasses and folksy aphorisms”, FOXNews.com said.
Editors Note: Sexy bloke pictured is Marco Rubio, Florida senatorial hopeful. (You can click on the image for a larger shot of him in all his glory.) He lives in Miami, Florida, is a Gemini and is married. His turn-ons include Cheerleaders (his wife is a former member of the Miami Dolphins squad); neologisms (in his book 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future, he invoked the imaginary word “idearaisers”). His turn-offs include lazy Florida voters—Rubio boldly suggested raising the retirement age.
Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld complaints about an ice-cream company’s magazine ad featuring a pregnant nun, ordering that it not be published again.
The print advertisement by Antonio Federici, published in The Lady and Grazia in June, featured a heavily pregnant nun eating from a tub of ice-cream, accompanied by the slogan “immaculately conceived”.
The ad was part of its “ice-cream is our religion” campaign.
Some Catholics are said to have found it offensive, the UK advertising standards board agreed and banned it.
Quite right, too.
That should please the Catholics.
You’d think the UK Ad Standards Board would feel satisfied at a job well done.
And the company, the recipient of all this free global publicity, should be happiest of all.
All this attention, that hasn’t cost a cent, has saved them a fortune in future advertising fees.
LONDON – The long-awaited health select committee report on alcohol abuse has called for tighter restrictions for drinks marketing, including the introduction of a 9pm watershed for TV advertising, but has stopped short of calling for a blanket ban.
Instead MPs have turned their attention to the price of alcohol.
The report, made public today, recommends that government introduce a minimum pricing regime, a measure which is bound to annoy supermarkets who believe they should have the freedom to set their own prices without state interference.
MPs say a minimum price of 50p per unit would save 3,000 lives per year.
The wide-ranging report devotes a chapter to ‘Marketing and the drinks industry’.
It raises concerns that alcohol marketing vastly outspends government alcohol awareness campaigns.
According to the report, drinks brands spend up to £800m a year on advertising and sponsorship, dwarfing the COI spend of £17.6m.
