Headlines Tuesday 22nd July

Foolishly fuelling nation’s problems
Piers Akerman
THE Rudd Government’s hype machine went into overdrive promoting its silly Sorry Day, its 2020 rear-view summit, its foolish FuelWatch policy and its war on binge-drinking alcopop consumers.

But once the spotlight moved on, the machine directed its energies to other policies, the stillborn Asian economic grouping, the redundant nuclear non-proliferation drive and the unscientific zero relevance CRAP emissions trading scheme.

Indigenous groups have all but forgotten the all-singing, all-dancing Sorry ceremony. Some want to see the money, some want a new ATSIC, some want an indigenous Parliament, the Sun, the Moon and the stars.

Meanwhile, the health problems of the most at-risk group in Australian society have still not been addressed and appalling incidences of child sex abuse continue to be reported.

The 2020 Summit started to fall apart as soon as the self-nominated members and Kevin Rudd’s personally selected participants admitted that the agenda was pre-determined and for the most part they had spent a weekend in Canberra as extras in a self-indulgent orgy of ideological cant.

Faced with rising petrol prices, the Rudd Government seized on a Western Australian fuel price monitoring scheme and announced it would take it national by the end of this year.

Again, examination of the scheme has shown it to be an absolute sham but Canberra seems determined to stay the course and waste more taxpayers’ money implementing a program which not only did not work in WA but probably cost Western Australians money.

Last week FuelWatch was whacked out of contention by two damning reports, one from WA’s Deputy Price Commissioner Aaron Rayner to the Senate Economics committee’s hearings in Perth, and the other in the form of an extensive examination of the data used by the ACCC which has been so supportive of the Rudd Government since it came to office last November.

The ACCC has a lot riding on FuelWatch, and has even employed the former WA Petrol Commissioner to demonstrate its solidarity with the bogus program.
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FIFTY YEARS OF NOTHING
Tim Blair
Global warming panic celebrates its 50th birthday. Well done, old chap. You still haven’t killed a single human, bug or plant, but at least you’ve made these two change their lightbulbs.
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COAL WORLD
Tim Blair
Local fright merchants recently became all panty-bunchy over plans for just ONE new coal-fired power station in Victoria. Meanwhile:
Abu Dhabi (largest of the seven UAE emirates) has announced that it will switch to coal-fired power plants. Dubai (the second largest) is already building four of them - with a combined output of 4,000 megawatts - as a first-phase investment in coal. Apart from the United Arab Emirates, Oman (widely regarded as “the next Dubai") has signed a contract with South Korea for the construction of several coal-fired plants.
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VALUES APPLIED
Tim Blair
Western exceptionalism is a good thing, as even the ABC now realises.
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SALIK IS RIGHT
Tim Blair
Nathan Myhrvold reports from Greenland for the New York Times:
I’d like to say that global warming was evident during my visit, but that is not really the case. Indeed, Salik tells me that he and most Greenlanders are pretty skeptical about it ...
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WHY STOP THERE?
Tim Blair
Barack Obama expects to lead the 57 states for eight to ten years.
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AUSTRALIANS OVERWHELMED
Tim Blair
The Age‘s Michelle Grattan:
Australians overwhelmingly say they are willing to pay more for goods and services to help reduce emissions, in an Age/Nielsen poll that also shows Kevin Rudd has popular support for how he is handling climate change.
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CLEAN AND GREEN
Tim Blair
Wind turbines! They’ll solve all our carbon problems.
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The Age sacks its last conservative columnist
Andrew Bolt
The Age has sacked its always lucid and informed columnist John Roskam - just a couple of months after trying to convince him to write weekly, rather than fortnightly. Apparently his sin was that he was in demand “everywhere”, from the ABC to the Financial Review. And they apparently needed his space, and only his space, for a columnist who is clearly “nowhere” - Leftist Shaun Carney.
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Bolt Still Disappointed That The Party He Doesn't Support Isn't Like Him
Andrew Bolt
Michael Short, business editor of The Age, continues his assault on the warming evangelicals running the rest of his paper by publishing yet another article (this one by Professor Geoffrey Kearsley) finally telling Age readers the truth about global warming - that it stopped a decade ago
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Nanny wants daddy
Andrew Bolt
How is this the business of a ”Sex Discrimination Commisioner” anyway?

Elizabeth Broderick said she wanted to strengthen the Sex Discrimination Act to penalise those employers who stick family-friendly fathers on the “daddy track” by refusing to promote them.
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If Penny Wong were French, we’d be freezing
Andrew Bolt
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong yesterday told me the proof of global warming was a drought in the Murray-Darling. It’s the ultimate exercise of self-absorbtion - that if something happens to us, it must be happening to everyone.
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Americans doubt what Australians swallow whole
Andrew Bolt
In one area, at least, Americans are less religious than Australians - or at least better informed:

Overall, 71% of Americans say there is solid evidence of higher global temperatures, compared with 77% at the beginning of last year. There is less of a consensus about the cause of global warming. Roughly half of Americans (47%) say the earth is warming because of human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels.

But nearly as many people (45%) say that rising global temperatures are either mostly caused by natural environmental patterns (18%), say they do not know the cause of warming (6%), or say that no solid evidence of warming exists (21%).
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What child is safe if artists rule?
Andrew Bolt
An intellectual is meant to think things that lesser mortals don’t or can’t. So one short-cut to at least seeming intellectual is to publicly think what no sane person would:

THE murderers of British toddler Jamie Bulger are being given a sympathetic treatment in a controversial new comic play opening in Sydney tonight.

The play The Age of Consent presents a series of monologues by a character named Timmy, who is based on the two Jamie Bulger killers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables.

Director Shannon Murphy believes the play, showing at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, presents the boy as “both criminal and victim”.

“I feel a huge amount of compassion for the Timmy character,” she said yesterday…
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Home is where the work is
Andrew Bolt
I’ve heard Sharan Burrow myself waxing at length, and with evident satisfaction, of the time she’d just spent in Geneva and New York:

UNION leaders have turned on the ACTU, accusing president Sharan Burrow of lacking competence, being overseas too often and afraid to attack the Rudd Government because of her friendship with Julia Gillard.
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Beijing gets the gold for monstering the media
Andrew Bolt
The Olympics were given to Beijing with the assurances that this would force the totalitarian government to open up - as indeed it had promised. The International Olympic Committee’s Kevan Gosper was sure China would let 1000 flowers bloom:

(T)he Chinese authorities have changed their legislation to ensure that the international press can report on the games as in previous games… (W)hen games time comes and there’s 25,000 members of media, as you say, I would expect the Internet to be free and I would expect that all journalists and radio operators and broadcasters will be free to operate as they would have been in Sydney.
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No fairness, please
Andrew Bolt
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting complains about fairness and accuracy in reporting:

For years, the chief media problem with coverage of global warming was a simple one: too much balance.
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Like the way The Age reports global warming
Andrew Bolt
Hmmm, which candidate is the New York Times hoping, praying, pleading will win?

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES -- less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.