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A to Zed - I need to Carney

Monday

With the euphoria of World Youth Day at last dying down, Australians refreshed by the week-long shower of spirituality get back to business: arguing about emissions trading and wondering what in heck has got into the Raiders.

On the interest-rate front the latest in the endless series of reports on where interest rates could go next offers no clue for householders. The Reserve Bank's next move on rates could just as likely be to send them higher as it might be to cut them, it says. People with mortgages go back to the recipe books looking for tasty things to do with bread and dripping.

The Government's list of petrol-guzzling cars turns out to match very closely the kinds of cars favoured by government departments, employees on salary packages and MPs.

Word leaks out of an incident at at O'Connor bar the previous night. "I just need to go and do a Carney," is about to enter the lexicon.

Tuesday

Zed Seselja's dairy: "My cunning plan has worked - our announcement on smaller class sizes. Sure it will take four years to make it happen, by which time most kids will be in private schools anyway, but the upside is that we may need small classes in just one small school the rest of the school sites can become direct factory outlets."

Tim Fischer turns down Amanda Vanstone's offer for him to stay on the Armani sofa bed.

Wednesday

The inscrutable Brendan Nelson offers Peter Costello a shadow cabinet position "with a bullet", thereby giving the Canberra press gallery something to do for the rest of the week while it tries to figure out what that actually means. Costello wonders whether to go out and buy a new suit for shadow ministry meetings or a bullet-proof vest.

Singapore cancels the traditional ASEAN end of conference skit night. "Without Alexander Downer doing his howling at the moon impersonation, it wouldn't be the same," a spokesman says. Stephen Smith sighs with relief.

Jayant Patel gets bail and asks to be left alone, echoing the alleged pleas made by his patients in Queensland some years earlier.

Thursday

Zed Seselja's diary: ``At last, clear air for our big announcement about duplicating the Gungahlin Drive Extension. Nobody knows it's coming. You beauty.''

Later on: ``Drat that Stanhope. Just looked at the newspaper he's stolen my dual carriageway! I'd like to make him a piece of public art work, on Easter Island.''

Jon Stanhope on his GDE announcement: "This is responsible planning and management. In fact it's so good I don't know why I didn't think of it before."

John Hargreaves just rolls his eyes.

Friday

Support staff at Parliament House warn they may strike over stalled pay negotiations when MPs return for the spring session.

This will lead to Federal Government paralysis.

Keen observers contemplate what difference that will make.

News that Canberra home rental prices are surging comes as little surprise to residents of the latest housing development.

"Welcome to the Shoe Box and truth in advertising," the display home brochure says.

"At the Shoe Box, all your dreams come true. We have combined the latest mod cons with a compact setting that remains affordable."

Investors flock in and buy up, especially appreciating the built-in triple-bunk beds.

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CARBON EMISSIONS TRADING just doesn’t feel right. Blind Freddy can see the sums just don’t add up! Last month “the world’s best thinkers” at the Copenhagen Consensus reported on a PRIORITISED list of solutions to combat the biggest challenges facing the planet. Their findings included, research showing that even the most extreme carbon emission reductions would have an undetectable effect on warming. The truth is… the damage cost of carbon in about $2 per Tonne - not $20 to $50 as reported by media. SAVE YOUR BILLIONS – direct it to where it will do the most good today rather than tilting at windmills for tomorrow. For example – address malnutrition and malaria cheaply today and save millions from death. The brain dead dilemma is – wasting trillions for naught effect with carbon trading or spend two bob today to iron-in doable good. Carbon cap and trade is extremely costly and will have negligible effect on future climate. The net effect of emissions trading will have the worst impacts on the poorest people. WHAT IS REALLY NEEDED IS SMARTER TECHNOLOGY. WAKE-UP AND BE COUNTED NOW.
Posted by michael haylen, 30/07/2008 10:24:19 AM
MOPPING UP THE LAST CRUMBS OF AN ANTIQUATED PARADIGM – CLIMATE NO CHANGE Who will speak for science when the barbarian is already inside the gate? Science today, that triumph of humanity over primitive superstition, that monument to the evolutionary miracle of the human brain, is now being debased by barbarians. The Church of green warming religions is very big in Christian Europe. Everyday anythings are now blamed on warming and reported uncritically by media. The dumbed-down, trumped-up science is the modern religious medicine used to mesmerise the masses. Institutionalised across the globe, politicians and activists of all persuasions, present their arguments in terms of what ‘the trumped-up science’ is telling them to do. The so called “world’s best thinkers” have grabbed and promoted this moral agenda emphasising sinful behaviour change over technological innovation - purchasing the absolution of carbon offsets for their sins. Climate environmentalism is a political mission with a religious agenda, offering disciples the delicious prospect of being in the right and running things under the motherhood banner of saving the planet - very attractive to the young and fearful old. Activists demand the high moral ground, with an epitaph chanting “O Mother Earth… pardon me for trampling on you.” Any movement enforcing this degree of moral certitude is a sign of uncertain things to come. The science of future climate is in its infancy and is multi-disciplinary, no one branch knows the whole story. The truth is - climate prediction is hard, half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable and modellers don’t expect to do well. We are being asked to take irreversible actions today, to produce un-testable postulates for tomorrow, based on computer simulated predictions in excess of 100 years. Very iffy stuff! When the Western world became increasingly pessimistic about Man’s carbon footprint, science was hijacked to decode nature’s message. The more scientists research global climate, the more we learn how much they don’t know. The more alarmists talk, the more we realize they know even less. We live on a majestically dynamic planet with intertwining complexes. Scenarios for future climate involve natural equations of infinite variables. Fluctuation in the Sun’s intensity is arguably the controlling factor in Earth’s climate. To assume human induced carbon emissions alone will significantly alter predictions is pretentious pseudo-science. Advocating carbon change will change the way you live, but will not change future climate. It’s a blatant tax on breathing. To accept the mantra of evil carbon is to invite the death of nationalism to dinner. That’s the thing about history…when you live it, you’re rarely there. Real science is alive and lives in time. It is what it is. Not what it should have been or would have been. It is what it is. So enjoy the journey, because the destination may not be that great. Look at the best educated generation in history… all dressed up with nowhere to go. Superstition is the mantra of the day. Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? Science, that once esteemed bastion of knowledge and fertile pillar to truth, has been neutered into the floppy-dick instrument of global politics and vested activists. Not only does the censorship of science render it impotent, it also looses its ability to objectively inform the public, producing an atmosphere of deafness towards insight and freedoms. What is at risk is not the climate but freedom. Today we live in the most censored of times. Is it not high time we entered a dialogue to awaken an audience to the enveloping clouds of non-news that invade our everyday? “Global warming” is only a vehicle that exemplifies part of the way the system works. It is the insidious procession of the erosion of human rights through the co-verted use of selective censorship, that we should be most interested in. Climate science is in the van-guard of such a procession. The scientific method is not perfect but it does “sophisticate the superstition” and provides a method upon which to gauge progress and proximity of truth. The funnelling of science to deliver a prescribed outcome happens everywhere everyday. In the past, science has arguably aided well for prescribed beneficial outcomes. But the stakes are sky high and connived in the case of global warming. The western world is not going to cripple itself to iron-out injustice. The moral or philosophical question here is, does the end justify the means or the start of a slippery slope? The real question is, what will they pick on next using “science” to substantiate their stance?
Posted by EDDY LUMPIT, 30/07/2008 10:25:21 AM
John McNamara
John McNamara is Day News Editor at The Canberra Times. Two years working for Labor in oppositon has left him with a warped mind. He was once considered a serious journalist.
Cunning plans ... Zed Seselja
Cunning plans ... Zed Seselja

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