Headlines Friday 31st October

Principles addressed
Andrew Bolt
I am so glad that Education Minister Julia Gillard is leading a charge to improve spelling standards in schools. No doubt she touched on that matter in this speech yesterday:

Opening address to the Australian Primary Principles
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Britons snowed
Andrew Bolt
Inside the British Parliament:

The UK Climate Change Bill passed another hurdle last night as MPs voted by a massive majority of 460 to back the amended bill…

Meanwhile, on the roof of the British Parliament:

Snow came down in London - the first October dusting since 1934.
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Palin makes a fool of her critics
Andrew Bolt
Elaine Lafferty, former editor-in-chief of Ms magazine, says only the dumb think that Sarah Palin is, too:

It’s difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin’s “intelligence,” coming especially from women such as PBS’s Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I’m agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin.
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Worse is better and less is more
Andrew Bolt
From the same people who didn’t realise their bank deposit guarantee to stop a run would cause one:

THE Rudd Government will press ahead with its emissions trading scheme, arguing that modelling to be released today proves it is pro-growth and good for the nation’s long-term economic competitiveness.

Yes, they really do believe that raising the price of our electricity and all things gassy will give us more growth and cheaper exports.
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Australia, USA to 'jag world into action' on climate change
The federal government will try to engage a new US administration to work with Australia to tackle climate change, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.

Comprehensive economic modelling released by Treasury today has painted a rosy picture of how emissions trading will affect the economy and households.

The modelling found the scheme would barely impact on economic growth and incomes, both of which would continue to grow.

Mr Rudd today said the government would act responsibly in implementing a scheme, and simultaneously try to "jag the rest of the international community into action".

"That's the hard bit," Mr Rudd told ABC Television.

"But we face an election very soon in the United States, both Republicans and Democrats have committed to action.

"One of our first challenges will be to engage the incoming American administration in working with us on this.

"If America is on board with concerted global action and the Europeans, and critically, the emerging economies China, India and elsewhere, we have a prospect - a prospect - of getting there." -This is the same PM who undiplomatically lied publicly about a phone call to the current US President. I suspect that whomever wins the US Presidency won't have money to throw away on Rudd's pet project to get him elected to the UN.- ed.
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Vic police probed in sex, drugs investigation
Police have been linked to the operation of an illegal brothel, and to corruption involving street prostitutes and drug dealers.
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Rudd announces 2,000 indigenous school scholarships
The federal government will help pay for 2,000 scholarships for indigenous students to attend some of Australia's top secondary schools. - boarding schools? But Rudd just apologized for stealing children from their families - ed.
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“Stealing” them again
Andrew Bolt
Just eight months after saying we will never, never again take Aboriginal children away from their families and dump them in church-run institutions, Kevin Rudd makes an announcement:

THE Federal Government will fund a big expansion of the country’s main indigenous boarding school scholarship scheme to allow an extra 2000 Aboriginal students to attend top secondary schools.
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Oink oink
Andrew Bolt
In a dispute between a factional warrior and a idealist over a big pot of money, I’m on the side of Lindsay Tanner:

A DISPUTE between two senior federal ministers has disrupted Government plans to embark on a multibillion-dollar “nation building” program to help shield Australia from recession…

Accounts suggest that Mr Albanese was unhappy with the legislation produced by Mr Tanner, and asked that it be pulled because it gave him insufficient ministerial discretion over how the money would be allocated.
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Hang the consistency
Andrew Bolt
Hang an effigy of Sarah Palin, and get fame:

The owner of a home that has a mannequin dressed like the Republican vice presidential candidate and hanging by a rope says it’s just a “scary” Halloween decoration… Several locals and tour buses have swung by the house to snap photos of the scene, and some gawkers say it is humorous.

Hang an effigy of Barack Obama, and get arrested
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Keating storms Gallipoli
Andrew Bolt
Paul Keating smashes windows in church, throwing bricks at demons that aren’t actually there:

While launching Churchill and Australia, a new book by renowned Labor Party speechwriter Graham Freudenberg, the former prime minister said: “The truth is that Gallipoli was shocking for us. Dragged into service by the imperial government in an ill-conceived and poorly executed campaign, we were cut to ribbons and dispatched—and none of it in the defence of Australia.

“Without seeking to simplify the then bonds of empire and the implicit sense of obligation, or to diminish the bravery of our own men, we still go on as though the nation was born again or even was redeemed there. (It is) an utter and complete nonsense. For these reasons, I have never been to Gallipoli and I never will.”

I’ve seen thousands of Australians paying homage to the dead boys at Gallipoli. I can’t say I met any who thought our country was born or redeemed there, or thought the campaign there was anything but a disaster.

All they wanted to do was express their sorrow for so great a sacrifice, their admiration of such astonishing courage, and their gratitude that even in the face of a pointless disaster, Australians answered the call to duty.
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Thinking hot, feeling cold
Andrew Bolt
TREASURER Wayne Swan had to get out of his woollies yesterday before telling us the world really was warming - and we must pay.

You see, just days before he stood in Canberra, waving a Treasury document he claimed would help stop us heating to hell, his own family had shivered through a day that should make him finally wonder if there really is any global warming.

Brisbane, his home town, had just endured its coldest October morning in 32 years, yet here was Swan telling us to spend billions in the belief the planet was cooking instead.

It’s not only here that global warming believers are feeling a chill they never expected.
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Going to water in a crisis
Andrew Bolt
THE more the Brumby Government tells us Melbourne won’t run out of water, the more you should panic.

Here we go again, with (No) Water Minister Tim Holding burbling that this time he’s fixed the draining of our dams, now just a third full and falling.

He’s taking water from dusty Goulburn farmers, and is building a $3.1 billion desalination plant, so fixed!

“It’s a solution for decades to come, not for 10 or 20 years, but for 50 years-plus,” he promised.

Except it isn’t, of course. It’s 20 years and a million more Melburnians since we built our last dam, and in 20 years we’ll have yet another million residents in this city, all needing a drink, shower, flush and sprinkler.

So, with rainfall again as scarce as it used to be before the wet decades after the war, it’s no wonder Melbourne Water chairman Cheryl Batagol last week said, well, actually, minister . . .
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Parallel universe costed
Andrew Bolt
The Australian’s headline makes some heroic assumptions:

Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme blueprint: $1-a-day to save planet

It won’t be a $1 and it won’t save the planet.

The Treasury costings it’s talking about - which claim Rudd’s emissions trading scheme won’t cost much at all - makes even more assumptions.
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Never mind that we need him
Andrew Bolt
A decision to make you embarrassed - for its irrationality in this case, if nothing else:

A MIGRANT doctor and his family are being forced to leave Australia, and the Victorian town that desperately needs him, because his son has Down syndrome.
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We deserve better than the ACCC
Australian small business deserves better than the ACCC, which has proven itself to be completely incapable of looking after their interests, argues Alan Jones. - technically, we deserve better from them. The previous government had to go softly with them because they were fighting their battles on IR. The current government benefits from their incompetence. - ed.