ABC’s Leftist views at odds with the public
Piers Akerman – Thursday, July 07, 11 (06:36 pm)
THE future of the politically-driven ABC, the audio-visual arm of the extreme Green Left, needs to be reviewed. It has abused its charter. It does not contribute to a sense of national identity, inform or entertain as its charter decrees.
There was nothing on TV tonight, and that program is included in that. I didn’t watch it, but am confident that your words describe it accurately, being commensurate with my past experience with the ABC.
The ABC were the last to know the ALP had fractured when Rudd was dumped. But they were the first to promote Gillard as viable.
Children don’t know how bad the ABC is. Schools have failed in the area of critical analysis. You are doing a good job, Piers, with this. But I must point out that those among the conservative movement failed to identify at the appropriate level of the failings of the ABC prior to 2007. This left the young to be exploited by Get Up and similar groups.
The ABC have been abysmal, but they have triumphed with marketing. They have fierce unprofessional protectors in the media too. It was a failing of the Howard administration that it didn’t address the issue. But then there were always more important things to do.
With the changeover to digital, there is an opportunity for change.
Thu 07 Jul 11 (09:35pm)
Fri 08 Jul 11 (01:57pm)
I disagree DDB. The ABC were the first to report on moves to dump Rudd, they just stuffed up the follow up.
It concerns me to see so many on this blog wanting to circle the wagons and boycott the ABC. You are a mature guy with thoughts of your own. You can sift the televisual wheat from the chaff. Surely you would listen to and read a wide variety of the media and decide for yourself what sounds right, what sounds iffy, what sounds wrong? Encourage interested kids to do likewise. Let them find their own way, learning to think for themselves.
I agree there are frequent lapses of professionalism around the ABC. What the heck. Only those that choose to be taken in by it will be, others will see through it. I would have been disappointed if Howard had got too interventionist in the running of the ABC. I would have preferred a more neutral board as well, just so that they didn’t become a political prize for the party in power. Even if you’re not enamoured of the ABC culture trying to change it every time there was a change in government could only be a bad thing.
Anyway we should at least acknowledge we choose to come to a blog that is not naturally neutral on all issues. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
I don’t see you blogging so much these days. Hopefully this means you’re busier with work?
Grambo, by addressing the issue I don't mean the destruction of the ABC, I just won't accept it has to be unprofessional and incompetent. It may be the ABC voluntarily disbands in much the same way the NYT and SMH seem to be going. There are ways of getting the ABC to behave properly, although their journalists will oppose it.Thank you for your concern. No, I have no more work now than before, but I am busier. I was lucky enough to pick up the unpaid work of moderating The Bolt Report Supporter's Group on FB.Also, Grambo, I am one of those people who don't mind teachers telling students their thoughts. Most students despise fools and see through it when teachers proselytise. - ed.
Ezra Klein writes on Twitter:
The job numbers should change the debt ceiling debate. Economy needs more support now, austerity should wait. They won’t.
Funny, I see things in a different light. Seems to me that there is no evidence that having the federal government borrow lots of money and spending it has been very effective. Certainly, the predictions of the effect of that spending by its proponents have been very inaccurate.
I’m with the Hayek character from the rap video:
We brought out the shovels and we’re still in a ditch…
And still digging. don’t you think that it’s time for a switch…
From that hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over.
The long run is here. It’s time to get sober!
Having the government return to the level of spending of say, 2007, isn’t austerity. It doesn’t even imply that there will be a reduction in overall spending. My dogma says that when government spending grows dramatically via borrowing and the money is spent on mostly unproductive stuff, that actually discourages consumer spending. Reducing government spending might encourage confidence in the future and encourage employers to hire more workers. It happened in 1945. That confirms my belief in my dogma. I wonder what the Keynesians are holding onto to confirm their worldview.
SUNDAY CARBON SUNDAY
Tim Blair – Saturday, July 09, 11 (03:18 pm)
Crime is down in chilly Canberra:
Cold weather over the weekend has helped keep the number of criminal incidents a little lower than usual, as people opted to stay indoors.
In other Canberra news, I’ll be in the capital for tomorrow’s historic lowering of the global temperature. Of course, so will Monotone Bob:
Senator Brown said he would be standing alongside Prime Minister Julia Gillard when she publicly announces the emission trading scheme details on Sunday.
The excitement builds! Brown looks forward to celebrations:
Greens leader Bob Brown says any polling done after the carbon tax package is released will show Australians embracing the scheme.
His confidence is derived from the most absurdly loaded polling question ever asked:
The Greens have released their own commissioned poll conducted by online agency Essential Research.
More than 1000 voters responded to the question: “All sides of Australian politics have policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to help address climate change. Do you believe that the best way to achieve this is to pay money to the big polluters to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or tax the big polluters?”
Unsurprisingly:
The result was 60 per cent said tax the polluters …
It’s a Greens victory!
359 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S CHILD TERROR TAX
Tim Blair – Saturday, July 09, 11 (05:36 am)
The long campaign to horrify children continues as Carbon Tax Sunday looms:
Primary school children are being terrified by lessons claiming climate change will bring “death, injury and destruction” to the world unless they take action.
On the eve of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s carbon tax package announcement, psychologists and scientists said the lessons were alarmist, created unneeded anxiety among school children and endangered their mental health.
Climate change as a “Doomsday scenario” is being taught in classrooms across Australia.
Resource material produced by the Gillard government for primary school teachers and students states climate change will cause “devastating disasters”.
“As well as their terrible impact on people, animals and ecosystems they cause billions of dollars worth of damage to homes and other buildings,” the material says.
Complaints about death threats, anyone?
ALL OF THIS IS PROBABLY RACIST
Tim Blair – Friday, July 08, 11 (11:44 pm)
THREE-WAY LEFTWAR
Tim Blair – Friday, July 08, 11 (01:24 pm)
Ideological mayhem at Marriqville Council:
A council has been accused of being too concerned with international human rights to invest in picking up their own residents’ green bins.
Some 150 outdoor staff at Marrickville Council went on strike yesterday claiming they were expected to heft an extra 17,000 green waste bins a week without extra staff or trucks.
One garbage collector, who declined to be named for fear of retribution, said 60-year-old men had been ordered to pick up an “unmanageable level” of bins for eight hours a day, increasing risk of injury and killing morale.
So we’ve got green issues versus the Middle East. And next:
The council - which recently came under fire for a proposed boycott of Israel - yesterday hired strike-breakers and said it would outsource green waste collection since garbos had “refused to” do it.
United Services Union general secretary Graeme Kelly said it was unprecedented for a council to bring in “scabs”.
“The hypocrisy of Marrickville Council is absolutely breathtaking. The council is more concerned about the human rights of people in Palestine than the working rights of its own staff,” Mr Kelly said.
Maybe they should build a big wall around the place.
NUMBERS FIXED
Tim Blair – Friday, July 08, 11 (01:21 pm)
Two years ago, U.N. researchers were claiming that it would cost “as much as $600 billion a year over the next decade” to go green. Now, a new U.N. report has more than tripled that number to $1.9 trillion per year for 40 years.
GRAND RAPIDS KILLER
Tim Blair – Friday, July 08, 11 (01:18 pm)
Mass murder in Michigan:
A gunman opened fire in two Michigan homes Thursday, killing seven people before leading police on a high-speed chase through downtown Grand Rapids and taking two hostages in another home, authorities said.
Within hours, dozens of officers with guns drawn had cordoned off a neighborhood near a small lake in the northern part of the city and shut down nearby Interstate 96. With the man surrounded, state police warned residents to stay in their homes.
Grand Rapids Police Chief Kevin Belk said officers were communicating with the suspect, 34-year-oldRodrick Shonte Dantzler, who released one of two hostages, a 53-year-old woman, amid negotiations with officers Thursday night.
Two children are among the dead.
UPDATE. The killer still has two hostages.
Bolt Report reschedule
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (05:13 pm)
Our Perth edition will be shown at 9am, not 10am, because of Julia Gillard’s tax announcement.
Everywhere else stays on 10am, but my 4.30pm edition will have an update on the package with Terry McCrann.
I’ll also be back at 9pm on Sunday night for a carbon dioxide tax special, with Hugh Riminton hosting, and John Hewson and Erwin Jackson - two warmists.
It will be like Insiders all over again.
For all that pain, here’s a calculation of the gain. Oops. I exaggerate
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (12:35 pm)
Julia Gillard on Thursday:
So what difference would this make to the world’s temperatures?
Let’s assume the climate really is as sensitive to carbon dioixde as the IPCC has claimed - a very big assumption - and lets accept the calculations presented in Nature:
The team used a combination of global climate models and historical climate data to show that there is a simple linear relationship between total cumulative emissions and global temperature change… Until now, it has been difficult to estimate how much climate will warm in response to a given carbon dioxide emissions scenario because of the complex interactions between human emissions, carbon sinks, atmospheric concentrations and temperature change. The new research shows that, despite these uncertainties, each emission of carbon dioxide results in the same global temperature increase, regardless of when or over what period of time the emission occurs.
These findings mean that we can now say: if you emit that tonne of carbon dioxide, it will lead to 0.0000000000015 degrees of global temperature change.
So the calculations. Gillard’s massive taxes and billions in subsidies for green powers will over the next decade avert0.00024 0.000024 degrees of warming, providing she does all she claims she will, and provided global warming theory works as advertised.
And to achieve even that, how much will Gillard have to rachet up her tax over the next decade?
UPDATE
Oops. Sorry. I exaggerated the effectiveness of Gillard’s tax by a factor of 10. Thanks to reader David for pointing out the tax is even more useless than I led you to believe.
Three paws to Gerard
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (10:19 am)
This week’s Media Watch Dog is up. You must bookmark it. Unless you really do wish to keep believing the ABC does not suffer from group-think.
Gerard Henderson will be my guest on Channel 10’s The Bolt Report tomorrow - 10am and 4.30pm.
And not just on Abbott
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (09:54 am)
GetUp and the closing down of debate
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (09:33 am)
ONE of the things we must never lose in this country is our freedom to speak our mind.
But this week many chief executives got a letter from a lobby group called GetUp, whose founding directors included Bill Shorten, now the Assistant Treasurer.
Some extracts:
Dear CEO,
You may be aware that ... the Australian Food and Grocery Council has reportedly put its support behind a multi-million dollar campaign to fight proposed legislation to put a price on carbon pollution ...
As such, it is our intention in the next few days to provide easy to use product information to our membership such that they can boycott goods and services that are linked to the scare campaign ...
GetUp! has more than 570,000 members ... We’re asking companies the below questions and we’ll inform our members and the Australian public of the answers to these.
1. Do you accept the science of climate change?
2. Do you believe the Australian Government should take action to address climate change in the cheapest and most effective way possible?
3. Do you support the proposed AFGC campaign against carbon pricing?
4. If you do not support the AFGC campaigning against carbon pricing will you immediately write to the AFGC to inform them of your position and will you resign your membership ...
To me, this seems close to blackmail.
Moreover, it is appalling that companies are threatened with a boycott, even if they are merely sceptical about the science of climate change - a science fiercely contested even by the greatest scientists.
GetUp’s claim to have 570,000 members is a bluff. You can get listed as a member just by signing a GetUp petition.
In fact, its most recent annual report says just 17,295 people gave any money to GetUp, which actually gets much of its funding from unions.
But GetUp has an outsized reputation, thanks to the eagerness of journalists to treat it as the voice of the streets, and to the fact that that one of its officials, Lachlan Harris, became the media adviser of prime minister Kevin Rudd.
It’s used that reputation to become a big player in a wider push to make free debate on some Leftist issues too scary for dissenters.
Another example. The GetUp website ran several appeals to members to disrupt the current speaking tour of global warming sceptic Christopher Monckton, publishing a list of his venues, and particularly highlighting the Brisbane Broncos Leagues Club.
The club received more than 100 messages from people it took to be club members, and panicked, cancelling Monckton’s booking.
GetUp then deleted its website appeals, making the Broncos decision look more like a genuine grassroots protest.
But it’s not just GetUp that’s now trying to shut down debates or delegitimise them, especially when the topic is global warming.
I don’t mean the increasingly desperate abuse, such as calling sceptics deniers, which warmist Prof Robert Manne openly admits is meant to make people like me seem like Holocaust deniers.
And all of this for nothing
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (09:31 am)
All pain, no gain. The tax won’t change the temperature, but will choke our growth:
Citigroup Global Markets said the carbon price would double as a tax on consumption but should have less impact on consumer prices and growth than the last major tax reform of the GST. It predicted a one-off spike in inflation of about 0.8 per cent, mostly in the first three months of the carbon tax, assuming a $25 per tonne carbon price. The pace of economic growth would slow by 0.5 of a percentage point.
And to bribe voters into backing this destructive and futile tax, one of the greatest spending sprees since Labor’s last:
MORE than 1.85 million pensioner households will receive a $210 a year upfront windfall in carbon tax compensation… And the government will attempt a dramatic transformation of the rural sector using $1 billion of carbon price revenue over four years for soil carbon sequestration and developing skills to combat climate change, after lobbying from rural independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott.... she announced the creation of the $3.2 billion Australian Renewable Energy Agency.... Coal-fired power generators will be offered loans to prevent financial impairment and trade-exposed industries will receive 94.5 per cent compensation...
UPDATE
Judith Sloan says the tax has been made even more useless, if possible:
Given what we know about the cost structures of the various means of generating electricity, it is absolutely clear the tax will not be high enough to induce the behavioural change that is the purpose of the tax in the first place. It is what I like to call a homeopathic approach to dealing with CO2 emissions.
What this means is that if the government is determined to meet the target of a 5 per cent reduction of emissions by 2020, then the jumble of inefficient schemes such as the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target will have to do the heavy lifting rather than the carbon tax…
The government is quick to point out that nine out of 10 households will receive some compensation and about 70 per cent will be fully or more than fully compensated.... The first thing is that providing compensation to households actually operates against the purpose of the tax—which is to change behaviour in order to reduce emissions.
UPDATE
Terry McCrann despairs that we could be embracing something so pointless and so damaging:
The argument from Treasury that “pricing carbon” is the equivalent of tariff reform serves only to announce the decline and utter intellectual fall of a once great and useful public institution. Suffice to say that tariff reform removed artificial costs on business and consumers. The so-called “pricing carbon” will do the exact opposite: impose entirely artificial and utterly pointless costs on both business and consumers.
UPDATE
From the ABC itself, more evidence that this giant upheaval is all for nothing:
EMMA ALBERICI:….The Hartwell Group of international economists, historians and climate scientists are warning Australia that this market-based approach to tackle global warming doesn’t work.
Professor Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics is the group’s spokesman.
GWYN PRINS: There’s not credible evidence that it’s had any affect in accelerating reductions in carbon dioxide in Europe.
UPDATE
All pain, no gain:
THE Australian named as co-chair to President Barack Obama’s newly created committee on manufacturing has a message for the Australian government: the carbon tax is ill-timed and bad for investment.
Darwin-born Andrew Liveris, who runs the $US54 billion ($50bn) Dow Chemical, thinks a price signal on carbon fails to appreciate that fossil fuels will continue to be the dominant source of energy and suggests the government needs to appreciate the problem more holistically.
“I think it’s not well timed,” Liveris told The Australian.
“The problem with carbon pricing in isolation is that Australia will be on its own in doing this and it may end up becoming a very difficult place for people to come and invest in...”
(Thanks to readers Owen, Steve, Rosalind, George and Gab.)
When the Greens announce Labor policies, Labor is doomed
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (09:29 am)
WHY on earth Labor’s fatal pandering to the Greens? Why yesterday’s bizarre press conference?
Yesterday a major initiative of the Gillard Labor Government was announced not by any Labor politician, but by Greens deputy leader Christine Milne.
And I do mean major - involving the spending of $3.2 billion.
Want more proof how little authority Prime Minister Julia Gillard has, and how much the Greens are filling that vacuum?
Milne called her press conference to announce Gillard would create yet another green bureaucracy of the kind that has so far overseen the pink batts fiasco, the cash-for-clunkers disaster, the green loans blow-out and the solar panels free-for-all.
This new Australian Renewable Energy Agency would spend billions on renewable energy research and development, babbled Milne brightly.
Never mind that this is exactly the kind of spending a Productivity Commission report last month warned had proved wasteful here and overseas.
As it said: “Policies supporting renewable energy sources are more expensive, reflecting the higher costs of large-scale renewables production and particularly small-scale solar technology, which was found to be very expensive in all countries examined.”
Here’s a concrete example of such waste.
In 2009, this Government handed $90 million to Geodynamics, a green power company whose shareholders included now Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery and which is trying to exploit geothermal power in South Australia.
Share price since? It’s halved, with the project’s test wells collapsing and the site flooded by the kind of rains Flannery predicted would never fall again.
But what must worry Labor more than the waste of yet more billions is that the Greens should been seen as so in charge of this Government, despite having only a single seat in the 150-member House of Representatives.
It’s this kind of moral and political surrender that has serious Labor figures extremely worried.
This week former Victorian Labor secretary Stephen Newnham predicted Labor and the Coalition would soon swap preferences to kill the Greens.
Oakes: leadership talks, but Shorten shy
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (08:45 am)
Laurie Oakes:
Labor’s desperation was reflected in gossip about the leadership in Parliament House over the past few days.
It was claimed Bill Shorten had told colleagues he did not believe he would be ready to assume the role this side of the next election.
Other names were allegedly canvassed.
If not Shorten, then it’s someone who can at least manage the slide to defeat with dignity (Simon Crean) or someone who is the last hope of a party so depserate they’d rather win under someone they despised than lose under someone they liked.
Hello, Kevin.
I wouldn’t blame just the activists for Labor’s green folly
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (08:40 am)
Paul Kelly today:
It is extraordinary that Labor was so slow to grasp the lethal strategic risk climate change policy posed to its political foundations. This is because the debate over 2004-08 was dominated by climate change activists invoking a faith-based imperative for action and an alleged brand of new politics that worked a treat against the wearying Howard government.
Paul Kelly in 2009:
I believe that the (Liberal) party room will endorse a series of amendments (to the Government’s emissions trading scheme) which will be the basis for negotiation with the Rudd Government. I mean frankly if they oppose that, that would be signing their own political death warrant… This raises the prospect that the legislation won’t pass and that the election next year will see climate change as a frontline issue. Now this will be a mortal political threat to the Opposition.
Laurie Oakes today thinks Gillard’s carbon dioxide tax message could at last be a winner:
IT should be possible to sell Julia Gillard’s climate change package to voters. Despite Tony Abbott’s alarmist claims, it can be portrayed as a good news story… I can reveal that work done by Treasury in final preparations for Sunday’s big announcement shows that over a million more households will benefit from over-compensation via tax cuts and extra payments than was first thought.
Laurie Oakes in March thought Gillard’s carbon dioxide tax message could at last be a winner:
So last Monday - again in dire trouble and desperate to turn things around in the carbon tax battle - Gillard faced the Q&A audience again. And again it paid off… The performance at last gave some direction to the Government’s botched campaign to sell the policy.
Laurie Oakes in December 2009 thought Kevin Rudd’s carbon dioxide message could be a winner:
There is also a strong view that action must be taken to reduce emissions. The “do nothing” ... approach has very little support in the community.
It’s not hard to imagine the response (Liberal Senator and sceptic Nick) Minchin would have got if he’d tried to sell his “no need for action” line to mothers of young children in Adelaide as the temperature hit 42C the other day.
So (Malcolm) Turnbull is right when he says a party without a policy to deal with climate change would have no credibility.
Laurie Oakes in November 2009 thought Kevin Rudd’s carbon dioxide message could be a winner:
Kevin Rudd and Company can hardly believe their luck… Unless (Opposition Leader Malcolm) Turnbull can bring the climate change dissidents to heel, the Liberals will face humiliation at the polls...
Labor has a green viper in its nest
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (08:35 am)
If Labor does not kill off the Greens, the Greens will kill Labor, bit by bit:
A KEY national union could shift its financial and political support from Labor, with Victorian union leader Dean Mighell pushing to take control of the 130,000-member Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union.
Opponents of Mr Mighell, the state secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, said it was about him moving the national union’s support to the Greens. But Mr Mighell said it was about the union taking an independent stance.
Still no runaway warming
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (08:23 am)
The global temperature is up for June, but still just 0.3 degrees above the average over the past 30 years.
The real threat to the media isn’t the News of the World
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (07:52 am)
I think killing a vibrant newspaper and sacking the innocent is a mistake and will not work, if it is meant as a sign of contrition:
THE brief speech that brought to an end 168 years of the News of the World came without warning at 4.15pm (1.15am yesterday AEST). It lasted less than five minutes and turned a scandal that had disgusted millions into a personal catastrophe for many reporters, feature writers, photographers, designers, editors and sales staff who had nothing to do with hacking mobile phone messages.
There was no warning, so only a small crowd gathered to hear the announcement in the newsroom on the second floor of News International’s offices in east London.
Rebekah Brooks, its former editor and now chief executive of News International—part of News Corporation, parent company of The Weekend Australian—arrived with the present editor, Colin Myler, and two security guards. She explained that she was meant to be reading a statement from James Murdoch (emailed to all News International staff at 4.33pm) but had decided to say a few words of her own. Staff said later they were expecting her to announce her resignation. Instead Ms Brooks shut the paper and then left with the guards.
I understand that most of the guilty have long left or been pushed out. I am told - but am not able to verify - that many of the frankly disgusting allegations are not true. I also understand only too well that this issue is being whipped up to hysterical levels by media and ideological competitors hoping for an advantage.
But I come back to my central point. Closing the News of the World and sacking the innocent will not buy off the critics. Such a dramatic move signals instead that News accepts there is a scandal big enough to warrant this penance, but it has not yet offered up the guilty.
I repeat: I am told that many of the allegations being made are not true and the guilty are long gone. But that only compounds the public relations error that led to the closure of this paper.
UPDATE
And, sure enough, this issue is being exploited by the enemies of debate:
The leader of Australia’s Green party has called on the government to investigate Rupert Murdoch’s extensive media holdings in Australia.
Party leader Bob Brown, a senator, urged the inquiry following fresh revelations in the UK over the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.... Mr Brown said the potential for similar activity in Australia should be probed.
Brown’s call is a disgraceful and opportunistic slander. He would know almost as well as I that there is not a single News Ltd paper or editor in this country that would stoop to the tactics alleged against the News of the World. There has never been any such suggestion, and I challenge Brown to present any evidence to the contrary.
And I would warn everyone of the real challenges to media freedom - challenges that should discomfort even enemies of News Ltd.
Ask yourself the following:
- who bullied Channel 7 and 9 into reversing their decisions not to screen Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s address to the nation on Sunday to sell her carbon dioxide tax?
- has pressure also been put on any networks not to screen Tony Abbott’s reply, at least until the following day?
- is there a remotely credible explanation for the Government’s decision to rework the tenders for the Australian Network service, and to switch authority for selecting the winning bidder from the Foreign Affairs Minister to the Communications Minister - other than that the Government wanted to block the Murdoch-linked Sky News from winning?
- was a protest delivered by the government at Channel 10’s decision to give me a TV show, even one consigned to near-wasteland hours of a Sunday? Does this explain the Government ban on Ministers appearing on it?
- and what other strings is the Government pulling to rig media coverage in its favor?
Given the above, be very alert to the Government seizing the News of the World scandal to further intimidate its critics here.
Green extremists abuse children in class
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (07:01 am)
No shame, and also no sense of self-preservation. Does Labor think its indoctrination will produce future Labor voters ... let alone rational citizens?
PRIMARY school children are being terrified by lessons claiming climate change will bring “death, injury and destruction” to the world unless they take action.On the eve of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s carbon tax package announcement, psychologists and scientists said the lessons were alarmist, created unneeded anxiety among school children and endangered their mental health.Climate change as a “Doomsday scenario” is being taught in classrooms across Australia.Resource material produced by the Gillard government for primary school teachers and students states climate change will cause “devastating disasters”.
Here’s an example of previous such child abuse by warming alarmists - the video unveiled at the Copenhagen summit:
Here’s another, from Britain’s 10:10 lobby group:
EMBED-Crazy Offensive 10:10 Global Warming Commercial - Watch more free videos
(Thanks to readers CA, Case and Drew.)
Green is just another excuse for just another tax
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (06:53 am)
Just another big tax in Britain:
Millions of people believe soaring green taxes are simply an excuse to take more money from their pockets, MPs say.
In a hard-hitting report they warned that environmental levies - supposedly there to help the planet - are badly tarnished.
They called on the Government to ‘put its money where its mouth is’ and use receipts from fuel and aircraft duties to improve public transport rather than just fill Treasury coffers.
The Environmental Audit Committee also urged ministers to restore the public’s trust by using green taxes more carefully and more openly.
The report came just days after official figures showed that green taxes topped more than £40billion for the first time last year. Most fell on motorists, who paid a highest-ever amount of £27billion in fuel duties.
(Thanks to reader Mervyn Sullivan.)
Yet another
Andrew Bolt – Friday, July 08, 11 (07:30 pm)
The boat arrivals have slowed, but not by enough yet to save Julia Gillard:
Another 66 asylum seekers have arrived in Australia by boat, bringing to more than 400 the number who have come since the government announced its people swap deal with Malaysia.
That anouncement was more than two months ago, and the deal is still not signed.
$1.5 billion lost, no one punished
Andrew Bolt – Friday, July 08, 11 (04:09 pm)
Absolutely astonishing, that so much money could be wasted without a single person being sacked or even demoted
MORE than $1.5 billion has been wasted in the eastern states under the federal Government’s Building the Education Revolution schools stimulus program, with the nation’s two biggest states failing to provide value for money under the program.
The third and final report into the BER, conducted by former investment banker Brad Orgill, has found Victorian and NSW, have not delivered value for money for public schools under the program with public schools charged an average of up to 60 per cent more for school buildings, despite no differences in quality…
The size of the spend on the school buildings component of the BER, the so-called Primary Schools for the 21st Century component, for public schools was $2.985bn, $2.203bn and $1.79bn respectively for NSW, Victoria and Queensland.
When comparing the rates achieved by Catholic Schools to those achieved by public schools in those states $1.53 billion was wasted under the program. Although it is fairest to compare public schools with Catholic schools because they have similarly centralised control structures, when comparing public schools to independent schools that figure blows out to $2.57 billion.
Thatcher’s pearls before swine?
Andrew Bolt – Friday, July 08, 11 (11:25 am)
I’m far from being convinced that this won’t be the mocking caricature that’s so religiously clung to by members of this professional class.
(Thanks to reader Kevin.)
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