Happy birthday and many happy returns Thanh Tong, Andy Minh Trieu and Simon Cai. Born on the same day across the years, and only one in the running for Cleo Bachelor of the Year. Remember, birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
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Hollow warmist hoo-ha over Doha
Piers Akerman – Monday, December 10, 2012 (3:52am)
THE latest climate conference in Doha has produced more hot air but nothing of substance.
Naturally, Australia’s hot air specialists, Climate Minister Greg Combet and Trade Minister Craig Emerson, are out-producing all others with their claims of some sort of a victory.
Australia had signed up to the outcome of the talks – before they had even begun.
That’s how craven Labor now is to the Greens and the latte-lapping members of its inner-city branches.
Show Labor a United Nations protocol, no matter how loopy, and the nation will have signed up before anyone has had a chance to read the large headline, let alone the fine print.
Naturally, Emerson says Australia has done “the right thing” by industry as well as the planet in recommitting to a second period of the Kyoto Protocol.
He says Australian businesses can now participate in global emissions trading markets and access lowest cost abatement measures.
Will someone tell this clown that the price of carbon is in the basement and that the markets have collapsed.
No mention was made of the decision by the major developing polluters China and India, along with the United States, which refused to have anything to do with this UN scam.
Those who signed along with Australia include the West’s economic basket case, the European Union, and a lot of Third World nations looking as always for a free meal.
In the real world, the weak case for dangerous man-made global warming has become even weaker with the failure of the planet to heat over the past 16 years though carbon dioxide emissions reached record levels.
The International Science Coalition, a grouping of scientists not affiliated with green organisations and not reliant on the UN for handouts, has noted that even a prominent climate scientist close to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr Mike Hulme, has admitted that ‘only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies’ reached the IPCC “consensus” about human influence on the climate, not thousands as is commonly implied by the panel .
The ICSC Chief Science advisor, Professor Bob Carter, from Queensland’s James Cook University, said: “So the famed IPCC consensus about humans causing dangerous climate change is based upon the opinion of fewer expert scientists than have now written to the Secretary General challenging it.”
“That 134 experts now advise that ‘current scientific knowledge does not substantiate’ alarm over global warming surely requires that the media and the public reassess the IPCC’s popular but scientifically misguided belief.”
The climate scare has always been based on alarmists using flawed computer modelling.
Time after time, the global warmists’ predictions are shown to be false, their predictions hopelessly wrong, as in the case of the Australian government’s chief climate alarmist Tim Flannery.
The expensive exercise in Doha is nothing more than an extravagant extension of the usual nonsense, accompanied by more of the same apocalyptic scare-mongering that these frauds find necessary to generate whenever their agenda is exposed.
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THAT’S THE INTENTION
Tim Blair – Monday, December 10, 2012 (8:23pm)
The best column review ever, from reader Murray J.:
hey Tim i really enjoy your articles
but your face is quite scary and it scared my 5 year old son and he started to cry
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FINLAND WINS
Tim Blair – Monday, December 10, 2012 (8:02pm)
F1 driver Kimi Raikkonen – sometimes criticised for being unexpressive and dull – proves that he’s a cheerier Christmas presence than Nicola Roxon:
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SLIGHT DETOUR
Tim Blair – Monday, December 10, 2012 (2:11pm)
Apple’s iOS 6 system sends motorists on a Mildura mystery ride:
Tests on the mapping system by police confirm the mapping systems lists Mildura in the middle of the Murray Sunset National Park, approximately 70km away from the actual location of Mildura.Police are extremely concerned as there is no water supply within the Park and temperatures can reach as high as 46 degrees, making this a potentially life threatening issue.Some of the motorists located by police have been stranded for up to 24 hours without food or water and have walked long distances through dangerous terrain to get phone reception.
No such problems with my Garmin, although it did once send me to a KFC location that had closed nearly a decade earlier. It was a ghost KFC.
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THEY TRIED
Tim Blair – Monday, December 10, 2012 (1:37pm)
This seems to make matters worse:
Austereo CEO Rhys Holleran has admitted the station attempted to contact the hospital after recording a prank phone call involving a nurse who later took her life.In an interview with Melbourne radio station 3AW this morning, Mr Holleran said his team hadtried to liaise with London’s King Edward VII Hospital before airing the controversial call.“We rang them up to discuss what we had recorded. Absolutely (before it went to air). Weattempted to contact them on five occasions… because we wanted to speak to them about it,” he said.“It is absolutely true to say that we did attempt to contact those people.”
And then they went ahead and broadcast the recorded conversation anyway.
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RULES FOR FOOLS
Tim Blair – Monday, December 10, 2012 (6:37am)
We already have enough laws, right down to inconsequential matters such as the colour of cigarette packets and what we’re allowed to wear on our heads when we ride bicycles. Beyond laws, we have conventions and standards that further guide behaviour. Barely any element of our lives escapes regulation.
Yet the inevitable response when something goes wrong is to demand still more regulation, even in cases where regulation already exists. The UK, for example, is currently trying to stay awake during endless analysis of the Leveson inquiry into the media – an inquiry that ended up recommending new media rules on top of rules currently in place. As Private Eye editor Ian Hislop wondered: “Why can’t we just enforce the laws? The ones we already have against phone hacking, harassment, libel, bribery etc etc.”
Good question. Existing rules and conventions also cover much of the Australian media, but that hasn’t stopped the reflexive demand for further regulation in the wake of 2Day FM’s lamentable decision last week to broadcast a prank call made to a London hospital treating Kate Middleton. Then followed the apparent suicide over the weekend of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who took the call from presenters Michael Christian and Mel Greig and fell for their Queen and Prince Charles impersonations.
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LEUNIG FOR THE PEOPLE
Tim Blair – Monday, December 10, 2012 (5:58am)
Good journalism costs money, as the SMH’s Darren Goodsir reminds us, which is why his paper no longer gives away its annual Michael Leunig calendar. Instead, Fairfax is selling this year’s crapload o’ whimsy for $2 a shot.
This sounds awfully like capitalism, which Leunig and his followers generally oppose. To correct matters, Professor Bunyip offers a free version crafted by his own Leunig-quality hands:
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RESEARCHER SEEKED
Tim Blair – Monday, December 10, 2012 (5:48am)
It must be exhausting putting Media Watch together every week. Those 15 minutes of ABC smugness are so wearying for Jonathan Holmes and his sizeable staff that they can only work for nine months of the year before their annual summer-long sleepathon.
Media Watch must find it especially tiring searching out its quota of typos and grammatical blunders. Ingeniously, the ABC itself has stepped in to help, offering a raft of errors in an ad for – wait for it – aMedia Watch researcher.
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WATCH THAT POWER FLY
Tim Blair – Monday, December 10, 2012 (5:25am)
Former Greens leader Bob Brown is a big fan of German solar power. Now he can follow efficient German magic sun energy online as it does almost nothing.
(Via Dan F.)
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OUR LADY OF THE DREDGES
Tim Blair – Monday, December 10, 2012 (4:59am)
Two and half million cubic metres of silt will be dredged from near Webb Dock as part of a $1.2 billion redevelopment of the Port of Melbourne.The plan, which includes a new container terminal at Webb Dock, also calls for the dredging of 50,000 cubic metres of contaminated material that will be dumped near the centre of Port Phillip Bay, and there will be no environmental impact assessment because the state government says it is not necessary …Jenny Warfe from the Blue Wedges coalition of community groups has raised concerns about the impact of the project on Portsea Beach.
This calls for a song.
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This was not one man who wrought such evil
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(4:25pm)
How many of us helped let loose the social constraints - not least marriage - that bred such evil?
DEPRAVED triple killer Leslie Alfred Camilleri might just be the devil incarnate behind three horrific murders.A notorious monster condemned to die in jail, Camilleri was a street-level Svengali who broke the monotony of his aimless existence by jamming amphetamines up his arm…The murder of 13-year-old Prue Bird in 1992 appears to have stirred Camilleri’s want for perverse power over girls.It culminated in a crime that still rates as one of the nation’s most horrific.He and Beckett subjected Bega schoolgirls Lauren Barry, 14, and Nichole Collins, 16, to 12 hours of rape and terror that ended in the most brutal of deaths in 1997…As Supreme Court Justice Frank Vincent would later say: “It is not difficult to see the origins of your anger and social alienation.’’One of six children, Camilleri did not know his father until age 13.He had no home life due to his mother’s personal problems and gained no formal education.An illiterate, he spent time in a boys’ home and, after being accused of burning down a school classroom, was declared “uncontrollable’’ and absconded.Between the ages of 10 to 12 Camilleri lived on the streets around Kings Cross.
No father present. And in their place abandonment, drugs and porn.
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Labor slip back to 46 per cent to 54 against
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(4:09pm)
Interesting. Essential Research has Labor’s vote back to about where it’s been most of the year - not just down the toilet but past the S-bend: Labor 46, Coalition 54. Julia Gillard still holds a handy lead as preferred prime minister, but her approval rating has fallen from 41 per cent a month ago to 37.
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Husband blames hospital, too
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(4:05pm)
Hmm. More needs to be learned before conclusions are drawn and a lynch party formed to hang the prank callers:
Friends of grieving widow Benedict Barboza told Britain’s Daily Mirror tabloid that Jacintha’s husband isn’t just angry with the DJs who played the prank, but he’s also deeply upset with the hospital and how they have handled the tragedy.“He’s very angry about all the proceedings, not only about the DJs but all the handling of the situation in the hospital. He feels very angry about the hospital management. He’s been full of stress about the whole thing. It’s not a very nice time,” Benedict’s friend Stephen Almeida told the paper.
UPDATE
The 2Day FM presenters speak:
Seven’s Today Tonight and Nine’s A Current Affair have both laid claim to the pair’s first interview, to run in their 6.30pm program tonight.The pair had cancelled their appearance on Ten’s The Project as they were ‘’too unwell’’, a 2Day FM spokesperson said…@ACurrentAffair9 ... tweeted, ‘’Tonight on #aca9 - the #2dayfm DJs give their first interview to @TracyGrimshaw Mel “It was the worst phone call I’ve ever had in my life."…Grimshaw herself went on Twitter to deny the radio hosts had been paid for the interview…‘’I would have to say that they are shattered people.’’
I really think some of their critics are no better themselves, and less compassionate. Incidentally, how many radio and TV stations gladly aired the audio of the stunt played by the two young presenters now being flayed as scapegoats? And they really are scapegoats - sacrificed for the sins of the collective:
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Christmas comes
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(11:43am)
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The Langton law: first to say “racist” loses
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(9:42am)
I’m still waiting for the public apology Marcia Langton promised for falsely and viciously accusing me of believing in the “master race” and “racial hygiene”.
I was also appalled she last week played the racism card against Tim Flannery.
But now she does it again, this time to lawyer Josh Bornstein. I love it when Leftists fall out, but have had enough of the cheap use of the word “racist” to win cheap debating points and silence dissent:
IN an extraordinary Twitter exchange revealing the high level of tension between sections of the Aboriginal leadership and environmentalists, Marcia Langton has sarcastically referred to herself as a “nig nog”.The exchange began when prominent labour lawyer Josh Bornstein tweeted: “Am I the only one to be heartily sick of Marcia Langton’s abuse and invective?”Mr Bornstein received an encouraging response from several people including Nareen Young, chief executive of Diversity Council Australia, former Victorian Labor MP Denise Allen and Moira Rayner, former human rights commissioner.He then attacked Professor Langton over her Boyer lectures in which she singled out environmentalist Tim Flannery…“Did Flannery intend in this statement to be provocative and racist—asserting wrongly that mining would occur in this area because of the transfer of title to Aboriginal people—or has he succumbed to the environmental campaign ideology that Australia’s first people are the enemies of nature?” she said in her fourth Boyer lecture…Mr Bornstein tweeted, “Tim Flannery is racist and all black fellas are budding mining magnates. Did I get that right, Marcia Langton?”Professor Langton replied: “No stupid, you didn’t.”
After he commented on her “mild and unimaginative abuse”, the Melbourne University professor snapped back, “Doodums. Did the nig nog speak back? ...”Mr Bornstein said while his tweet followed Professor Langton’s “highly charged” attack on Professor Flannery, it was a comment on her abusive tone over a long period. “If you read through all of her material it is full of invective and abuse,” he said.
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Shock. Labor spent too much and now earns too little
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(9:13am)
Labor couldn’t produce a surplus even during our greatest mining boom in a century, and has given us red ink just when the money is running out:
The Business Council of Australia yesterday called on Labor to spell out a medium-term strategy to get the budget firmly back into the black amid signals that the government is prepared to dump its promise to deliver a small surplus this year.The federal Treasury modelling suggests this year’s projected $1.1 billion surplus could turn into a $4.5 billion deficit, while next year’s projected $2.8 billion surplus could end up $11 billion in the red if the latest unexpected slowdown in nominal gross domestic product growth persists.
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Corals are stronger than the warmists’ credibility
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(9:10am)
The latest research, published in Nature: Climate Change today, blows away the theory that reefs were doomed due to rising ocean acidification caused by the higher take-up of carbon dioxide in the seas.Researchers have found a common coralline algae that grows at the leading edge of coral reefs is not nearly as susceptible to changing ph levels as coral because it contains high levels of dolomite…“Our research suggests it is likely they will continue to provide protection for coral reef frameworks as carbon dioxide rises,” the paper says…Further counter-intuitive results on coral survival have come from an extended project on the Great Barrier Reef to measure the health of deep corals.The Catlin Seaview Survey has found the damage to coral reefs is literally skin deep, with corals located in deeper water below even the worst impacted sites thriving and in pristine condition. The findings raise the possibility that damaged corals may have an increased opportunity for recovery by recruiting new corals both from adjoining reefs and those located immediately below.The early findings from the survey have astounded the scientists involved, including Ove Hoegh-Guldberg...
Ove surprised? I tried to warn him he’d been hyping the coral scare but he just got angry and abusive…
If he could now get the government to settle down:
Julia Gillard:
Julia Gillard:
Our great tourist assets are highly sensitive to climate change, the Great Barrier Reef to take one example.
Australian natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef are already being damaged...
The Australian Government is committed to protecting the fragile eco-system of the Great Barrier Reef from the impacts of climate change...
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Warmists sign us up for another free money giveaway
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(8:43am)
The global warming gravy train just got richer for free riders and professional alarmists:
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet declared the “loss and damage” provisions would not leave Australia exposed to financial claims, insisting yesterday that the aim was merely to help countries adapt to change.But experts say the obligation - written [in Doha] into the global climate accord for the first time - would lead to long-term demands on rich countries to pay for rebuilding if hurricanes and other disasters could be linked to climate change…The new provisions are tied to a proposed $100bn annual fund that rich nations are yet to endorse… The agreement on “loss and damage” was seen as the major development of the summit. South Centre director Martin Khor, who leads an association of 52 poorer nations, said it was a huge step in principle. “Next comes the fight for cash,” Mr Khor told the BBC in Doha…Greens leader Christine Milne backed the agreement to pay for “loss and damage” and said Australia should be willing to outlay $2bn to $3bn a year to help developing nations and that the cash should be in addition to existing foreign aid.
...a UN roadshow designed to culminate in Paris in 2015 with a legally binding treaty for all nations appears to be heading for another Copenhagen catastrophe…Australia appears innocent and alone in doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do…This year the pressure was on the US over a long-held ambition of developing nations for a new process to make rich countries pay for climate-change damage.With climate change now held responsible for every major natural catastrophe, the liabilities are potentially incalculable.It is the nasty streak that runs through the UN process - a chance for revenge against the US and the West.The US threatened to crash the Doha talks until the liability was capped at the $100 billion ($95bn) a year that had already been agreed to. But getting the issue of reparations on the formal agenda may reduce the long-term prospects of success.
FROM Doha it’s clear the rest of the world cannot sustain the UN-led model for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and Australia should recognise it by junking the Kyoto Protocol and the carbon tax it helped create…By sticking with Kyoto, Australia, with Europe, has adopted a high-cost pathway to cut emissions while others won’t do the same.
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Column - If the pranksters were wrong, then so is this vilification
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(7:30am)
THE self-righteous are doing to two radio announcers what they claim these smart alecs did to a British nurse who killed herself.
As in, hold the two of them up to an intense public shaming.
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India’s thin are our fat
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(7:22am)
The physique of poverty in India:
Take Nagpur, where 36% of the population lives in slums. According to NFHS-3, both children and adults living in slums in the city were worse off in terms of their nutritional status than the non-slum population. “Among children age 0-5 years, the prevalence of stunting is 79% higher and of underweight is 47% higher in slum areas than in non-slums areas (48% vs 27% children stunted and 42% vs 28% children underweight),” states the report.
The physique of poverty in Australia:
An Australian study has found that children are more likely to be obese if they are from low-income families…Associate Professor Dr Jenny O’Dea says her study of 8,500 children ... showsabout 9 per cent of children from low-income families were obese, compared to about 4 per cent of children from high-income families.
A first world cure is proposed for the dietary problems of the poor:
OBESE people on low incomes are getting far less access to weight-loss surgery than people on high incomes with private health insurance, new research shows.
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Why didn’t 2Day FM just call again?
Andrew BoltDECEMBER102012(6:59am)
Tim Blair says one little bit of basic manners may have prevented the disaster that followed 2Day FM’s prank call to British nurse Jacintha Saldanha:
Southern Cross Austereo, owners of 2Day FM, has plenty of adults. Some of them are lawyers, who gave the all-clear for the hospital item to run. Significantly, they apparently did so without observing a rule that radio stations usually follow for prank calls: they didn’t seek permission for broadcast from the people who had been pranked. Austereo boss Rhys Holleran declined to say on Saturday if permission had been granted by the nurses interviewed, which we can take as a no. Former Austereo presenter Paul Murray confirmed to Fairfax that the radio network’s policy ‘’is that you must get the subject’s permission before you put the prank call to air’’, but that ‘’those rules don’t extend to subjects who are overseas’’.If applied universally, that rule may have prevented this entire debacle from ever reaching the airwaves. ‘’I don’t think you can blame these guys completely for what happened,” said another ex-Austereo host, Peter Helliar. “Nobody knows what frame of mind the nurse was in.’’ A follow-up phone call, standard procedure in local pranks, may have helped. And we know 2Day FM had her number.
UPDATE
This is a classic example of regulators doing exactly what’s not required, given the public has already sorted this out and the broadcasters couldn’t feel more sorry:
THE communications watchdog is considering bypassing the complaints procedure that gives broadcasters the right of first response and opening its own investigation into the radio company behind the prank phone call answered by nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who later committed suicide.The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after London’s Metropolitan police contacted NSW police yesterday to confirm their assistance if needed. A spokeswoman for Austereo’s 2Day FM said the fallout was “growing, not receding”, and said a “witch hunt” was under way.
UPDATE
There is no need for yet more laws against free speech when public shaming will achieve all that’s needed to change our manners. The letter written by the chairman of King Edward VII’s Hospital, Lord Glenarthur, to Max Moore-Wilton, chairman of 2day FM’s parent company, Southern Cross Austereo:
I am writing to protest in the strongest possible terms about the hoax call made from your radio station, 2Day FM, to this hospital last Tuesday.King Edward VII’s Hospital cares for sick people, and it was extremely foolish of your presenters even to consider trying to lie their way through to one of our patients, let alone actually make the call.Then to discover that, not only had this happened, but that the call had been pre-recorded and the decision to transmit approved by your station’s management, was truly appalling.The immediate consequence of these premeditated and ill-considered actions was the humiliation of two dedicated and caring nurses who were simply doing their job tending to their patients.The longer term consequence has been reported around the world and is, frankly, tragic beyond words.“I appreciate that you cannot undo the damage which has been done but I would urge you to take steps to ensure that such an incident could never be repeated.
UPDATE
If we are to now have rigid laws against free speech to prevent a tragedy that could not have been predicted, should we also include laws against the public shaming of some repairmanwho may also become suicidal when exposed on TV?
(Thanks to reader Andrew.)
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