Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Tue Jun 24th Todays News

Tonight around the world, many journalists are hammering home a point .. Al Jazeera is a news network reporting news. Another point they will claim is that Greste was falsely convicted on trumped up charges. It is claimed that the prosecution was inept and used footage of Greste out of context. The truth is Egypt is allowed to prosecute criminals who have endorsed terrorism and misrepresented news around the world. Egyptians have died from Islamic Brotherhood propaganda and Greste has wilfully profited from spreading that propaganda. Had I been paid by Al Qaeda to spruik their activity I would expect the US to arrest and detain me. If anyone wants to help Greste, they should encourage him and Al Jazeera to apologise to the world for spreading propaganda. Egyptians have died for the lies, and not only them. 

The truth is that leftists will cut their own throats before admitting they have been broadly wrong across most issues. Were it any different, ABC would have a bigger audience, and the Age and SMH would sell more papers. Blood is flowing across the Middle East and the only nation capable of peaceful interaction with all the peoples is held in contempt by Al-Jazeera .. Israel. Israel does not want to run the middle east, but she wants peace. You would not know that if you followed Al Jazeera .. or the ABC .. or the Age and SMH. Greste does not deserve to be jailed for seven years in Egypt. And neither does he deserve to profit from the freely flowing blood. 

 The Battle of Bannockburn was fought today, 1314. Scotland won the enduring right to shake their bare bottoms at their enemies. In 1340, the English King commanded a fleet which almost annihilated the French fleet. In 1374, Germany, the people experienced St John's dance. Lefties experience it today when they heard of mosques being planned to be built in inner city locales. In 1509, Henry VIII married his older brother's wife. In 1846, Adolphe Sax could at last play his instrument on stage in front of a public audience. 1947, Arnold reported a UFO .. another expression of St John's Dance. In 1957, The US Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not protected by freedom of speech. In 2010, Julia Gillard surprised the ABC by deposing Rudd, a leader the ABC could not fault, for reasons she did not give. Sadly, she failed to change the policies which did not work .. another expression of St John's dance. On the same day, the longest match in Wimbledon history was played.  ===
For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball
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Happy birthday and many happy returns CamMie Du, Bill Luu, Philip Ly and Ganesha Edu Tour. Born on the same day, across the years. On your day is celebrated the birth of the greatest Jewish prophet, John the Baptist. In 1571, Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi established a council to govern the city of Manila, now the capital of the Philippines. In 1717, The first Masonic Grand Lodge, the Premier Grand Lodge of England, was founded in London. In 1880, "O Canada", today the national anthem of Canada, was first performed in Quebec City, Quebec, during a Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day banquet. In 1937, The United States' first two "fast battleships", the North Carolina class, were ordered from the New York and Philadelphia Naval Shipyards. In 1994, A United States Air Force B-52 Stratofortress based at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane County, Washington, crashed, killing all four crew members, and later providing a case study on the importance of compliance with safety regulations. But you don't need a case study to comply with safety regulations. Your day is for feasting. You don't lose your head, you explore and your song is as sweet as the kindest Canadian and as inexorable as a fast battleship. Cheers!
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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Tim Mathieson’s cry for attention

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (9:06pm)

FORMER Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd have spent much of the nine months since the election overseas, out of the local spotlight. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Tim Mathieson’s cry for attention'
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How jihad became the latest fashion in Sydney

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (9:03pm)

WHY is jihad so cool in Australia that we have become the leading supplier, per capita, of Western fighters in Syria and now Iraq? Our 150 jihadists are disproportionately represented, compared to an estimated 50 from the US, and 400 from the UK, out of 1000 from all Europe.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'How jihad became the latest fashion in Sydney'
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SYDNEY JOINS THE CALIPHATE

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (5:33pm)

Excuse me, but what the hell is this? 
A speaker at the upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas will seek to defend so-called honour killings – the murder of women deemed to have brought shame or dishonour on their family.
Uthman Badar, a Sydney-based Muslim speaker, writer and activist, will deliver a presentation titled“Honour killings are morally justified” and argue that such acts are seized on by Westerners as a symbol of everything they dislike about another culture …
Mr Badar is speaking alone and will not be debated by an opponent. 
Maybe he thinks an opponent would be dangerous. This is revolting.
UPDATE. The cost to attend this speech is $25 per head. Attached, presumably.
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AUSTRALIA’S NEWEST OLDEST ART

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (4:49am)

Stencil shenanigans in NSW: 
An “Aboriginal hand stencil” cited by opponents of a controversial coalmine extension proposed west of the Blue Mountains in NSW has been identified as a recent piece of rock art only a few years old.
A report by engineering consultancy Aecom Australia for Coalpac says the “questionable” hand stencil is likely to be a “modern replica” of a traditional Aboriginal hand stencil and is at most 3½ years old. 
I’ve got canned food older than this – culturally significant canned food. Readers are invited to raid cupboards for their own historic consumables. Send photographs of any domestic artefacts to blairt@dailytelegraph.com.au
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NO FACTS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (4:12am)

No Fibs editor Margo Kingston publishes a lie:

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This simply isn’t true. The myth of Gillard’s supposedly hidden quote was exposed last year by Andrew Bolt. Once again, for unobservant Margo, here is Gillard’s full statement: 
There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead. What we will do is we will tackle the challenge of climate change. We’ve invested record amounts in solar and renewable technologies. Now I want to build the transmission lines that will bring that clean green energy into the national electricity grid. I also want to make sure we have no more dirty coal-fired power stations. I want to make sure we’re driving greener cars and working from greener buildings. I will be delivering those things and leading our national debate about to reach a consensus about putting a cap on carbon pollution. 
Notice that at no point does Gillard say: “But let’s be absolutely clear. I am determined to price carbon.” Not even close. Over to you, Margo. As a follower of the MEAA code of ethics, you’re obliged to offer a correction: 
Do your utmost to achieve fair correction of errors. 
In your own time.
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FUNDED FUNDAMENTALISTS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (3:46am)

Another member of the moocherhideen (Texas division): 
Muslim Killer on Disability and Food Stamps had Diamonds and 200 Credit Cards …
He was too disabled to work. But not too disabled to kill. 
Do read on. Meanwhile, across in the UK, some 500 locals have joined battle in Syria and Iraq against fellow Muslims. Around 300 have returned. Former MI6 counter-terrorism chief Richard Barrett says keeping track of these security risks is “a completely impossible task” for British authorities. Leo McKinstry: 
We have ended up with Muslim enclaves dominated by the burkha, sharia tribunals, forced marriages, and ballot box fraud. Nor do the mosques do much to promote social cohesion. A recent study found that, out of Britain’s 1,700 mosques, just two follow a modernist interpretation of the Koran, while a quarter do not even allow women on the premises.
And the truth is that Islamic extremists have contempt for our society. Their allegiance is entirely to their hardline doctrine, not to this country.
Indeed, it is absurd to describe them as “British” at all, for they have complete disdain for the normal responsibilities of British citizenship.
They are interested only in exploiting us, whether it be through welfare or education or housing or legal aid. 
Even Hezbollah is spooked by the recent surge in violent fundamentalism. Back in Sydney, our jihadi boys cut dashing figures in the latest fashions from the house of Mo:

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Islamic fundamentalists in south-western Sydney are wearing propagandist paraphernalia freely available for sale at local markets and online to show their support for jihadi bloodshed. 
“Submit” seems to be a recurrent motif.
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I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING SHE SAID

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (3:04am)

Sarah Hanson-Young delivers the best speech of her entire career:

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A REALLY BIG QUESTION

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (2:52am)

Anguished carbon justification from Greenpeace: 
The head of Greenpeace UK has defended the need for one of the environmental group’s top executives to fly to work several times a month …
Responding to fresh revelations in the Guardian that the organisation’s finance team is in disarray, and that Pascal Husting, Greenpeace’s international programme director, flies several times a month from his home in Luxembourg to offices in Amsterdam, John Sauven wrote in a blogpost: “as for Pascal’s air travel. Well it’s a really tough one. Was it the right decision to allow him to use air travel to try to balance his job with the needs of his family for a while?” 
Feel the sweat as Greenpeace overlord Sauven continues: 
“For me, it feels like it gets to the heart of a really big question. What kind of compromises do you make in your efforts to try to make the world a better place?
“I think there is a line there. Honesty and integrity to the values that are at the heart of the good you’re trying to do in the world cannot be allowed to slip away. For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’ve crossed that line here at Greenpeace.” 
Forget the line, pal. Your frequent-flying administrator is being shadowed by a doom clown. He’s as good as gone. 
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PATTERN EMERGES

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (2:21am)

Every day is sorry day at the ABC.
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WHOLE CLASS FEELS HIS WRATH

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (1:41am)

Nobody messes with Mr Garvey:

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Rebekah Brooks cleared of all charges

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (9:10pm)

A seven-month trial is so ruinously expensive, even for those found innocent, that it represents an abuse of state power. And that goes double for this trial, which seemed politically and ideologically motivated:
Andy Coulson has been been found guilty in the phone hacking trial, but his co-defendant, Rebekah Brooks has been cleared of all charges.
Coulson, who edited the News of the World before becoming Prime Minister David Cameron’s official spokesman, now faces prison after the jury returned a guilty verdict in dramatic scenes at the Old Bailey.
But Mrs Brooks, who edited The Sun and the News of the World, before promotion to News International chief executive was exonerated after being cleared of conspiracy to hack phones, conspiracy to corrupt public officials and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
The verdicts represent only a partial victory for the police and prosecutors, who have spent three years and tens of millions of pounds attempting to bring those responsible for the phone hacking scandal to justice.
Mrs Brooks had always denied any knowledge of illegal activities at the Sun and the News of the World and after a seven month trial the jury accepted her version of events.
May the Murdoch haters choke on their vomit at this result. 
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Multicultural Australia

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (7:49pm)

February:
A teenage girl has been sexually assaulted by a gang of men in Sydney’s west…
In an attack police believe was random, the 14-year-old girl was initially assaulted by one man in Doonside before his friends joined on Saturday night…
The men are all described as being of African appearance and aged in their late teens to early 20s.
Saturday:
The gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in a Western Sydney car park stairwell has disgusted police. 

The girl was in the Liverpool library forecourt on Saturday night after using the council’s free wi-fi internet when six men approached her and invited her to meet a mutual friend…
The men, described as African in appearance and aged in their 20s, were last seen walking toward a Macquarie Street shopping centre.

We can’t be sure of what really happened, and who is responsible. But the allegations suggest our immigration and refugee programs don’t leave us as safe as we deserve. 
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Peter Greste a POW in Egypt’s war on Islamism and its allies in al Jazeera

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (7:28pm)

This is not about anything Peter Greste did, and I doubt the Australian Government can do much to help him:
AUSTRALIAN journalist Peter Greste and his Al Jazeera colleagues accused of aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood have been jailed for seven years in Egypt. 

Greste and two other reporters working for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera English were among 20 defendants in a trial that has triggered international outrage amid fears of growing media restrictions in Egypt.
Since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, the authorities have been incensed by the Qatari network’s coverage of their deadly crackdown on his supporters.
They consider Al Jazeera as the voice of Qatar, and accuse Doha of backing Morsi’s Brotherhood.
Greste, Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and producer Baher Mohamed were tried with 17 others on charges of “spreading false news” and having Brotherhood links....
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he spoke to Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over the weekend… The talks between the two leaders follow similar lobbying by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who spoke with her recently appointed Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukri over the weekend.
The Government even got the US, bearing gifts, to tell Egypt to free Greste:
US Secretary of State John Kerry is pressing Egypt to allow greater political freedoms on the eve of a Cairo court ruling in the terrorism-related case of Australian Peter Greste and two journalist colleagues.
Kerry became the highest-ranking US official to meet President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi since he came to power earlier this month during a surprise visit on Sunday…
“We also discussed the essential role of a vibrant civil society, free press, rule of law and due process in a democracy."…
US officials also revealed $US572 million ($A618.88 million) in aid, frozen since October, was released to Egypt about 10 days ago after a green light from Congress.... US officials said in April they planned to resume some of the annual $US1.5 billion in mostly military aid to Cairo, including 10 Apache helicopter gunships for counterterrorism efforts in the Sinai Peninsula.
And the evidence was a joke:
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Monday her government was shocked by the sentences. ‘The Australian government simply cannot understand it based on the evidence that was presented,’ Ms Bishop said. 
But Greste is collateral damage in the Egyptian regime’s bloody war against militant Islam:
The arrests of [the al Jazeera journalists] are part of a larger campaign against dissent by Egypt’s military-backed interim government… The Muslim Brotherhood was banned in September and declared a terrorist organization in December. Thousands of its supporters have been arrested, and hundreds have died in clashes with security forces…
Among media organizations, Al Jazeera has received a disproportionate amount of abuse and harassment from authorities and pro-government gangs. The broadcaster is owned by the government of Qatar, which supports the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt accuses Al Jazeera of sharing this agenda—a charge Al Jazeera denies…
Last fall, however, the Washington Post reported that several exiled members of the Muslim Brotherhood were living in hotel rooms in Doha paid for by Al Jazeera. Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has also spoken with a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who says he fled Egypt for Qatar, where Al Jazeera paid for him to live in a Doha hotel for two months…
“These journalists do not in any way bear any responsibility for this,” says Trager, speaking of Fahmy and his colleagues. “They were doing their job. But the parent organization, Al Jazeera, is putting these people in a very compromising situation by not just covering what is happening in Egypt, but, in some ways, actually participating in it.”
To Egypt, Greste will seem a prisoner of war:
In December, Qatar’s Emir Shaikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani said he has a “duty” to support the Muslim Brotherhood ...
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain consider the Brotherhood a threat to national and regional stability and have made several unsuccessful attempts to bring Qatar on side. Instead, Doha has aligned itself with Turkey, whose Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hosted several Muslim Brotherhood conferences and is a vehement critic of Egypt’s interim government. Qatar is the only Gulf state that has shown hostility towards Egypt’s transition, resulting in Cairo returning billions of dollars in Qatari aid and withdrawing its ambassador. Qatar has become a safe haven for Brotherhood members who have fled Egypt, according to an article in the Washington Post headlined ‘Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood finds havens abroad’. “Several of the exiles live temporarily in hotel suites paid for by Qatar’s state-run Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera…” it reads. Doha has ignored Egypt’s requests to extradite Muslim Brotherhood figures, exacerbating tensions between the two countries.
While Muslim Brotherhood strategists plot their next moves in Doha, their fiery religious mentor Yousuf Al Qaradawi — an Egyptian national also being sheltered by Qatar — has been given free rein to stir up dissent in Egypt and shower Saudi Arabia and the UAE with verbal attacks…
It’s worth noting that this divisive figure wanted by Egypt is barred from entering the US, the UK and France.
Greste should wonder why Al Jazeera put him in such danger by supporting militants opposed to Egypt’s military-backed government:
Cast out by — or, perhaps, saved from— the harshest political crackdown in recent Egyptian history, a handful of Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist leaders found refuge here in the Qatari capital, while others traveled to Istanbul, London and Geneva…
At the same time, an exile leadership is starting to take shape here among the shimmering high-rises of Doha. Several of the exiles live temporarily in hotel suites paid for by Qatar’s state-run Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera — and it is in those suites and hotel lobbies that the future of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and, more broadly, the strategy and ideology of political Islam in the country may well be charted…
A high-ranking Egyptian Foreign Ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the “international Muslim Brotherhood” has held more than half a dozen meetings in Doha and a handful in Turkey and Pakistan since the coup, and that foreign funding is propping up the group at home.
UPDATE
Terrible news for the Greste family:
EGYPT’s president says he will not intervene on behalf of Peter Greste, as his family and the Abbott government ponder a response to his jailing. 
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Australian Muslim group says West worse than ISIS, and “honour killings” are just

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (4:34pm)

Young Australian Muslims of Hizb ut-Tahrir say the ISIS terrorist group - which releases propaganda videos showing them shooting and beheading other Muslims - aren’t as bad the West. In fact, the West is the “root problem” and Muslims must “react” to it:
This time the ‘Islamic state of Iraq and Sham’ (ISIS) is the primary object through which Muslims, Islam and Islamic ideals such as Jihad and the Caliphate are being demonised and attacked.
In this regard, Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia emphasises the following points:
1.This episode is little more than the usual neo-colonial tactic of forming a basis on which to justify continued intervention in Muslim lands…
If ‘terrorism’ is the use of violence for ideological or political ends, the world has seen no greater terrorists than western states who have laid entire nations to waste through decade-long invasions and war. Yet they are presented as the philanthropic saviors of humanity whilst the actions of relatively powerless groups reacting to oppressive conditions are blown out of all proportion. At the same time, Muslims in the west who make the sacrifice of going abroad to fight tyranny and assist the oppressed are characteristed as ‘extremists’ and ‘terrorists’…
We should respond to these lies with the truth: the truth that the real problem, the root problem, is western violence, which eclipses the violence of any individual or group many times over and is in fact the cause of the oppression to which people are forced to react.
And there is this apparent threat:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been leading the way in demonising Islam and Muslims… We remind him that Australia made the mistake of going into Iraq aforetime, and that if he does so again, his government and those who support such a move alone will be responsible for the repercussions that ensue.
As I write this I hear the usual pieties from a Sky News panel - how the vast majority of Muslims mean well, and those who criticise their faith are nut-jobs etc etc etc.
Some truth in that, but missing entirely from the discussion is that the troubling minority is a rather large and extreme one, not seen in any other faith here:


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A HARDLINE Islamic group has warned Muslims that the government was trying to “brainwash” their children and that they should resist any attempts to water down their strict view of Islam.
“The government is playing a dirty, dirty game,” Wassim Doureihi told the 600-strong audience at the Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia conference in Lidcombe yesterday…
Mr Doureihi warned the audience that it was “a war on Islam - a war that is being waged in this country as it is in the rest of the world”.
Fellow speaker Soadad Doureihi warned: “This is truly a battle.”
All those journalists denouncing racists might start by denouncing the most obvious examples.
Instead, our cultural elite seems more likely to give Hizb ut-Tahrir a platform to normalise its vile version of Islam:

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A speaker at the upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas will seek to defend so-called honour killings - the murder of women deemed to have brought shame or dishonour on their family.
Uthman Badar, a Sydney-based Muslim speaker, writer and activist, will deliver a presentation titled ”Honour killings are morally justified” and argue that such acts are seized on by Westerners as a symbol of everything they dislike about another culture…
Joint founder and co-curator of the festival Simon Longstaff said the idea is one he had consistently nominated for six years, because the point of the event is to push boundaries “to the point where you become extremely uncomfortable"… Co-curator Ann Mossop told Fairfax Media the speech will “obviously” not advocate honour killings but will discuss the framework in which the killings take place…
Mr Badar is an Australian spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group described by the festival as “global advocacy group working for positive change in the Muslim world via the re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate” - a state under sharia, or Islamic law.
What an utter disgrace.
Would a Christian or a Jew be give the stage to argue why killing disobedient women is good? So why this astonishing license for a Muslim misogynist?
And note the intellectual bankruptcy of the organisers. Longstaff does not understand that free speech comes with a responsibility to attack bad speech, not privilege it. And Mossop’s claim that the speech will “obviously” not advocate honour killings seems belied by the speech’s title:  “Honour killings are morally justified.” And why the glowing describing of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the program?
Note from the blurb that at the very least Badar intends to argue that even when Muslim men murder Muslim women for their “honor”, the West is still the villain and the wife-killers are the “powerless”:
Overwhelmingly, those who condemn ‘honour killings’ are based in the liberal democracies of the West.  The accuser and moral judge is the secular (white) westerner and the accused is the oriental other; the powerful condemn the powerless. By taking a particular cultural view of honour, some killings are condemned whilst others are celebrated. In turn, the act becomes a symbol of everything that is allegedly wrong with the other culture.
Where is the anti-misogynist lobby now? Where are the Muslim moderates to denounce this?  And why is the media so hesitant to criticise a faith whose believers include relatively many who advocate such hatred and excuse such violence? 
Just to remind you what is being defended in Australia - the preparation of the stoning to death of a woman to restore “honour”:
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If you won’t vote for a carbon tax, you don’t deserve a say

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (3:34pm)

The cultural elite seems dangerously disparaging of democracy - particularly when the public dismisses the fashionable faith. From last night’s Q&A:
MARK CARNEGIE: Well, I certainly think that we’ve got to explore other ways of thinking about democracy. I think the silent majority of Australia feel incredibly disillusioned and disengaged…
I’d say is, having been to sort of summits and other things that are meant to be taking the great and the good to get them together to find some way forward, I would - all I would say to you is anything that we try is likely to have a better chance than what we are doing at the moment.
Even worse:
MARK LATHAM:  ... one of the greatest success stories in this country over the 23-year period, has been a policy model along those lines with the Reserve Bank of Australia independently professionally setting official interest rates and I think there must be scope to extend that model to other contentious areas of public policy. The most important long-term issue for the country is climate change, for the planet, is climate change but it’s the worst level of political debate. Surely there is room, at some point, perhaps under a Turnbull-led Liberal Party, to have an agreement about an independent policy-making authority to look after these contentious issues. Take out the partisanship. Take out the scare campaigns. Take out the low-level party politics. And so, too, in framing the Budget. Tony has been involved in this but the Budget debate in this country is just horrible. Again, full of scare campaigns and political opportunism. You could use a model in macro economics similar to what we have got with the Reserve Bank in monetary policies…
TONY JONES: ...a non-elected body where the power…
MARK LATHAM: To make the decisions.
TONY JONES: ...to make the policy is delegated, as with the Reserve Bank on monetary policy.
These people really want you unable to vote against the carbon tax. Really:
MARK LATHAM: That modern politics doesn’t handle big issues very well and we’ve now got to the point, effectively, of policy gridlock, where you can’t expect an Opposition Party like Labor to put forward carbon pricing at the next election for fear of Tony Abbott’s scare campaign.... That’s why I say that you have to think about alternative mechanisms of policy making that are independent, that are non-partisan…
That’s the first step, for both sides to acknowledge that, really, you won’t get much done in this area if you open it up to political scare campaigns. The Reserve Bank model for monetary policy has been phenomenally successful in this country and Australians now have got accustomed to the idea this is how it’s done. So it can be applied in other areas of policy. 
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And that should be about the last word from Baillieu

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (3:29pm)

It is particularly stupid to be taped briefing against your own colleagues, and worse to be so abusive in doing so:
THE Napthine government has been rocked by a leaked recording detailing former premier Ted Baillieu’s strident criticism of colleagues, plunging the Coalition into yet another pre-election scandal. 

The Sunday Age newspaper has blamed a thief for stealing a recorder, which contained a conversation earlier this year between Mr Baillieu and one of its reporters.
Premier Denis Napthine today called on Mr Baillieu and the newspaper to deal with the scandal gripping the Coalition.
In the recorded conversation, which has leaked widely, Mr Baillieu attacks Liberal colleagues including Bernie Finn, Michael Gidley and Murray Thompson and plays down the merits of the newly-preselected Member for Kew Tim Smith.
He is also highly critical of the forces aligned to party heavyweight Michael Kroger, accusing them of being behind the preselection debacle that forced Community Services Minister Mary Wooldridge to contest an Upper House seat.
“You know I am not a briefer,’’ Mr Baillieu is quoted as saying in a transcript while slamming some of his colleagues.
Any hope Baillieu had of a resurrection is now formally dead. 
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Frequent flying green

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (9:10am)

Global warming - general, The green movement

I’ll think Greenpeace really believes in the warming scare when it acts like it preaches:
One of Greenpeace’s most senior executives commutes 250 miles to work by plane, despite the environmental group’s campaign to curb air travel, it has emerged.
Pascal Husting, Greenpeace International’s international programme director, said he began “commuting between Luxembourg and Amsterdam” when he took the job in 2012 and currently made the round trip about twice a month. 
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Big Nanny is the smokers’ secret friend

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (8:49am)

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Terry McCrann says Big Nanny made another Big Mistake, but the Left don’t want to know:
It all started with an article by Christian Kerr in our stablemate The Australian, detailing analysis that suggested the Gillard government’s plain packaging legislation had failed in its intended purpose — to reduce smoking.
Kerr cited analysis which indicated the actual number of cigarettes sold — literally, the “sticks” — had increased in calendar 2013. This was the year after plain packaging ... was introduced in December 2012…
A torrent of abuse was unleashed from the left, initiated by former, ahem, Gillard adviser ... Stephen Koukoulas…
In the usual cocktail of stupidity and dishonesty, the Kouk cited official statistics showing the volume of tobacco consumption in the March 2014 quarter was 5.3 per cent lower than in the December 2012 quarter when the law came into effect.
What he did not point out, and as our graph from the Macrobusiness blog shows, virtually the entire fall came in the March quarter itself — which just happened to follow a thumping 12.5 per cent excise increase. What the Kouk is also unable to comprehend is that the ABS figures he cited are merely a proxy for actual tobacco and cigarette volumes…
The following week it was taken up by left-media central, Media Watch, which naturally took as gospel truth what Koukoulas ...said ...
MW did not note Koukoulas had been an adviser to Gillard around that time, and had been subsequently, arguably, the greatest defender of her, ahem, legacy. Yet in contrast, MW host Paul Barry viciously smeared Kerr as a “regular writer … for the Institute of Public Affairs”; with the IPA in turn “partly funded by the tobacco industry”....
Now note that the graph measures dollar spending… What has clearly happened since the new law is that tobacco companies have pushed cut-price smokes; so if the dollar spend is relatively unchanged, it means that the actual sticks smoked or at least bought must have gone up. 
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Labor and Greens first spend, now shoot the savers

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (8:22am)

Labor, with the Greens’ help, blew the Budget, leaving us to pay $1 billion a month on their borrowings - and rising fast.
But even in Opposition - yet with a block in the Senate - Labor and the Greens seem still determined to make their debt even worse.
Labor sabotages the Budget rescue:

THE federal government will be forced to wait until September at the earliest to try to legislate $12 billion in welfare reforms as Bill Shorten escalates his attacks on the changes to convince voters of the unfairness of the budget.
The Greens sabotage the Budget rescue:
The Australian Greens are set to place fresh demands on the government as they seek to overcome an internal spilt over whether to support the $2.2 billion increase in petrol tax contained in the May federal budget…
Previously, Greens leader Christine Milne said the party would support the tax increase but she later clarified that only if the proceeds were spent on public transport, not roads, as the government intends.
The Australian Financial Review understands Senator Milne will ask her party room to accept a further condition of not allowing some or all of the excise increase to be rebated to miners, loggers, farmers and other big users of diesel…
It is now likely that July 1 will pass with only one significant budget measure - the $3.2 billion deficit tax - enacted.
Other measures due to start on July 1 and which have no hope of passing by then include a $2.6 billion freeze on the indexation of family tax benefits, lifting interests payments and the repayment threshold for higher education fees, worth $3.2 billion, and denying people under 30 the dole for six months, worth $2.1 billion. On top of this the government, in early July, is going to have to pay another $800 million instalment of the schoolkids bonus, something it wants to scrap along with the mining tax.
Another saving blocked:
THE Abbott government’s plan to cut financial assistance to the car industry faces a renewed campaign from the component sector, as Senate opposition to the proposed changes grows.
The Greens have joined Labor and independents in seeking to block the cuts, announced by the Coalition before the ­election…
Independent senator Nick Xenophon, who represents South Australia, was confident the Senate could block the ­government’s proposed $500 million cuts.
It is disgusting that this country is so unwilling to cut the spending everyone knows is dangerously high and not backed by revenue.
Labor bases its opposition to welfare cuts on dodgy data:
Labor based its parliamentary attack on the welfare changes yesterday as Mr Shorten and his colleagues accused Tony Abbott of taking thousands of dollars off families despite his election talk of easing cost of living pressures…
The claim is based on modelling from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra, which estimates that a couple with two children and one income of $65,000 would forego $6100 under the government’s changes.
Henry Ergas fact-checks NATSEM:
Those [National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling] numbers, which were commissioned by the ALP, are iffy: that explains why Labor, though feeding the report to the ever-sympathetic Fairfax press, has covered up the problems by refusing its release…
Instead of being slashed to the bone, welfare spending continues to rise by 2.5 per cent annually in real terms until 2017-18, while total real public spending increases by 3.6 per cent a year…
Unpicking that tangle is impossible without access to NATSEM’s analysis but the press report implies an average annual income loss per family in the bottom quintile is $290 a year — an amount that could be replaced by working two days at the minimum wage. But NATSEM, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, seems to assume there will be no such response.
Nor does it pay any attention to the counterfactual: what would happen were fiscal repair postponed into the never-never.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Not good enough

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (8:20am)

I predict a reshuffle, with Sinodinos omitted:
LIBERAL Senator Arthur Sinodinos is expected to escape a corruption finding from the Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry into his involvement with Australian Water Holdings — but is likely to face severe criticism by the commission.
The Daily Telegraph has learned Senator Sinodinos is not likely to be found corrupt by the commission in its ­findings on Operation Credo but he still faces the potential of ICAC’s reprimand for allegedly failing in his duty as a director of the company and for the quality of his evidence to the commission…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott could face the prospect of having to decide whether he needs a corruption ­finding to sack Senator Sinodinos as Assistant Treasurer or ­whether the senator should go ­anyway if he is criticised by ICAC.
Senator Sinodinos is also set to appear in August in ICAC’s other operation, Operation Spicer — the inquiry into illegal developer donations to the Liberal Party through two alleged slush funds — to address questions on whether he knew about the arrangements as NSW Liberal Party ­treasurer at the time.
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Palmer’s plan to make our economy the Titanic

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (8:06am)

Clive Palmer sells snake oil:
CLIVE Palmer has outlined more than $86 billion in budget savings only to have them shot down within hours by experts who warn that his biggest idea would blow a hole in the nation’s finances…
The first thing would be to spend $7bn rather than $45bn on the NBN…
Communications analyst Paul Budde said that “unravelling” of the NBN would be impossible ­because of the contract between Telstra and NBN Co to build the network.  “… it would cost you $10bn just to pay Telstra out,” Mr Budde said.
The second PUP proposal was to overhaul Australia’s $37bn ­submarine program by spending $10bn instead on vessels from the US… Asked if it was possible to keep the cost of the fleet to $10bn, [Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Mark] Thomson said shipbuilding costs in Australia were too high to make that possible…
Mr Palmer also restated a plan to give companies a one-year delay in their tax payments every year, effectively collecting tax at the end of the year rather than ­expecting them to pay instalments earlier in the year… “If we change the reporting date on that from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, after we know what the results are, after we know we’ve actually earned a profit, we’d release $70bn into the economy through our business structures...”
Deloitte Access Economics ­director Chris Richardson said that plan would not add much to economic growth because it would only shift money around the economy rather than injecting a new $70bn to spur growth… Mr Richardson also said the federal government would lose $70bn in revenue in the first year of the plan, deepening the deficit in that year because tax collections would be delayed.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)                      
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We now foolishly breed our own jihadists

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (5:10am)

Leo McKinstry on a danger Britain imported and then nursed:
The police have estimated that more than 500 young radicals from our shores have travelled to the Middle East to join extremist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a notoriously savage organisation that wants to create a despotic medieval caliphate.
In addition, around 300 jihadists are thought to have returned to Britain after involvement in terrorist campaigns in Syria and Iraq, posing a lethal threat to the fabric of our civilisation. According to Richard Barrett, the former head of counter-terrorism at MI6, the sheer number of these returning zealots means that it would be “a completely impossible task” for our security forces to keep track of all of them....
But by far the worst error has been the state’s addiction to immigration and multiculturalism. Domestic jihadism is the direct creation of a political class obsessed with open borders and the transformation of our society’s structure. Thanks to these two strategies, the Muslim population of Britain has now reached almost three million, while one in 10 British children under the age of four is Muslim. The pro-immigration brigade tells us that this is no problem, since the “vast majority” of Muslims are moderate. But that is more self-deceit at odds with the evidence. One independent survey showed that 40 per cent of Muslims here want to live under Sharia law; another revealed that 32 per cent of Muslim students at university felt killing in the name of religion is justified.
Such attitudes have been reinforced by the state’s fixation with cultural diversity which, instead of promoting integration, encourages migrant groups to cling to their traditional customs, practices, even languages. That is how we have ended up with Muslim enclaves dominated by the burkha, sharia tribunals, forced marriages, and ballot box fraud. Nor do the mosques do much to promote social cohesion. A recent study found that, out of Britain’s 1,700 mosques, just two follow a modernist interpretation of the Koran, while a quarter do not even allow women on the premises.
And the truth is that Islamic extremists have contempt for our society. Their allegiance is entirely to their hardline doctrine, not to this country.
Indeed, it is absurd to describe them as “British” at all, for they have complete disdain for the normal responsibilities of British citizenship.
They are interested only in exploiting us, whether it be through welfare or education or housing or legal aid.
I have tried to raise similar issues with our Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, with no luck:
Andrew Bolt: Scott, we’ve already had 21 jihadists jailed here on terrorism charges, another 150 fighting overseas, two Australians have even appeared in an ISIS video, telling Muslims to come on over and join the fighting. Many Australians would be asking, is it smart, in these circumstances, to take so many immigrants from Muslim countries? Why expose us to this danger?
Minister Morrison: Well, the vast majority, if not complete number, of those who we have concerns about are Australian citizens, Andrew. They’re the ones who have been identified, and are being closely watched, and they’re the ones we’re on high alert for at our airports, both on the way out and the way in, in terms of those who might be participating in that dreadful conflict, which is just absolutely despicable.
Andrew Bolt: Yes, but more than half the 21 terrorists jailed here were born overseas. Almost everyone else was born to people that came in from the Middle East. Shouldn’t we be screening better for cultural compatibility with Australia?
Minister Morrison: Well, when I look at issues under the character test, which is 501, for people of bad character, I’m cancelling visas right across the board and right across any number of different ethnic backgrounds, be they Anglo-Celtic, through to Middle Eastern, through to Asian, to Polynesian, and right across the board. Criminality Andrew, isn’t specific to any one group…
Andrew Bolt: Are you actually denying that there’s a specific problem with Middle Eastern immigrants?
Minister Morrison: What I’m saying is, is that, wherever I’m focused, it’s always on the criminality and the threats and issues that need to be focused on from the government’s perspective. And I do that right across the board. My first concern is people who may present a threat, and where I believe they present a threat then I’ll take the actions that are available under the various laws.
Andrew Bolt: Yeah, but here’s the problem. You can’t screen the children of immigrants coming in, and it’s the second generation that seems to be particularly more militant than their parents who come here. That’s why I think, you know, perhaps the issue of immigration for Muslim countries should be considered as a potential problem.
Minister Morrison: Well, what we’ve found over, not just 50 years, Andrew, but longer than that in this country, as an immigration country, is that, those who come to Australia to work, not to go on welfare, to make a contribution, go right across the spectrum.
(Via Tim Blair, who notes a celebration by Australian Muslims of jihadist barbarity.) 
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How much global warming is just fiddled data?

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (4:31am)

Global warming - general

Christopher Booker:
Steven Goddard’s US blog Real Science [shows] how shamelessly manipulated has been one of the world’s most influential climate records, the graph of US surface temperature records published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.
When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous “hockey stick” graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years. Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology.
Steven Goddard:


Prior to the year 2000, NASA showed US temperatures cooling since the 1930?s, and 1934 much warmer than 1998…
Right after the year 2000, NASA and NOAA dramatically altered US climate history, making the past much colder and the present much warmer. The [graphs] below shows how NASA cooled 1934 and warmed 1998, to make 1998 the hottest year in US history instead of 1934. This alteration turned a long term cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.
image
Steven Goddard again:
I’ve shown how NASA and NOAA have dramatically altered the US temperature record, and they are doing the same thing in other countries, like Iceland and Australia – almost always cooling the past, which creates the appearance of warming.
Jennifer Marohasy:
I’ve since come to understand that the annual average temperature for 2013, which the Bureau claimed was a record, is in fact a wholly contrived valued based on modeling of temperatures, rather than the averaging of actual recorded values. That is, careful scrutiny of the Bureau’s methodology shows that recorded temperatures at locations across Australia are submitted to a two-step homogenization process that can have the effect of changing the entire temperature trend at specific locations. A weighted mean of these ‘homogenized’ values is then used in the calculation of the Australian annual mean temperature. In turn, the ‘homogenized’ values are used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which gives advice back to the Australian government on global and Australian temperature trends…
As part of ongoing research into natural rainfall patterns in Queensland, Professor John Abbot and I have been studying the temperature record for northeastern Australia, as temperature is a key input variable in our neural network models (e.g. Abbot and Marohasy 2014). Considering the data from the late 1800s until 1960, a cooling trend is evident, followed by warming between 1960 and 2001. In contrast, the last 12 years show quite dramatic cooling, Table 1. All three periods have occurred while greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, have been increasing in concentration in the atmosphere.
Our analysis of the maximum temperature trend for the years 2002 to 2013 is based, not on the modeled temperature values used to generate official temperature statistics, but on the unadjusted observed temperatures also available from the Bureau of Meteorology website. The thirty-one sites across Queensland were chosen on the basis that there is a continual temperature record for the period 2002 to 2013 at each of the locations. We choose 2002 as the start date, as the data suggests a change in trend at about this year from warming to cooling. This is consistent with published studies by astrophysicists and physicists (e.g. Nicola Scafetta 2010, Abdussamatov 2012, and Lu 2013) and closely follows the timing of the last solar maximum (eg. NASA update 02/05/2014, http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml). While Table 1 is limited to Queensland, preliminary assessment of data from NSW, Victoria and the Northern Territory also suggests the onset of a cooling trend.
This information is in stark contrast to the information in the State of the Climate Report 2014 recently published by the Bureau and also CSIRO. The report states that “warming over Australia has been consistent” and temperatures are “projected to continue to increase, with more hot days and fewer extremely cool days.”
Jennifer Marohasy again:
The most extreme example that Ken found of data corruption was at Amberley, near Brisbane, Queensland, where a cooling minima trend was effectively reversed, Figure 1.” image
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Hand it to some fraud

Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (4:03am)

The Lithgow Environmental Group was scathing. How could those stupid miners not see the Aboriginal hand print their wicked mine could destroy?
image
The question now is who painted the stencil and why:
image
AN “Aboriginal hand stencil” cited by opponents of a controversial coalmine extension proposed west of the Blue Mountains in NSW has been identified as a recent piece of rock art only a few years old. 

A report by engineering consultancy Aecom Australia for Coalpac says the “questionable” hand stencil is likely to be a “modern replica” of a traditional Aboriginal hand stencil and is at most 3½ years old.
The “now obvious” rock stencil was not there in December 2010 when the site, near Lithgow, west of Sydney, was inspected by two archeologists and three representatives of local Aboriginal groups.
And it does not show any of the hallmarks of a genuine traditional Aboriginal hand stencil in terms of the “thick and easily observed” pigment, the way it was applied or the canvas used. Nor does it match other known Aboriginal cave art in the area.
Coalpac wants to extend the operations of the Invincible Colliery and Cullen Valley Mine so it can continue to supply fuel to the Mt Piper power station and says the plan would create 245 direct and indirect jobs.
But environmentalists are battling the project, fearing the impact on the Garden of Stones region…
The vice-president of the Lithgow Environment Group, Chris Jonkers, found the hand stencil in a cave in the Ben Bullen forest in April.

The group seems very easily fooled. 
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Meh, I think Al Jazeera are parochial and politicised and that convicts their journalists .. the sentence is commensurate with Egyptian standards. Don’t forget, people have died from Al Jazeera lies .. ed
G’day,
Well, what a tragic outcome for Mr Peter Greste and his family and freedom in general. Seems to me that if this man was guilty of the charges for which he has been convicted then as hard and as uncomfortable as it is for a person who is a strong advocate for freedom of speech to say, then he has to cop the punishment for the local crime as per the local law.
 I would never hold up Indonesia as a country of freedom & democracy and justice for all but at least the prosecution delivered pretty damning evidence that has sent Schapelle Corby to prison. Of course it is my opinion and that of most people that regardless of her guilt, the sentence certainly doesn’t fit the crime.
 The same is certainly my opinion in this case in Egypt but the vast difference between Corby and Greste is a matter of Judicial transparency. Where is the evidence that he deliberately conspired to promote propaganda for an out lawed terrorist group and why was any evidence not available to the world even after the sentence of seven years was announced.
This will be a tough one and I sure as hell hope that the President of Egypt will listen to our Foreign Department and the PM and find clemency in favour of Peter Grests. If only to save face, they could just banned him from ever entering the country again. Pretty sure he’d never want to set foot in that place again anyway. If there is any blessing to be had here then it must be that he at lest escaped the hangman’s noose.
Godspeed
Zeg
Freelance Editorial Cartoonist/Caricaturist
0414293765
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4 her, so she can see how I see her







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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of the easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
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"The uniqueness of anti-Semitism lies in the fact that no other people in the world have ever been charged simultaneously with alienation from society and with cosmopolitanism, with being capitalistic exploiters and also revolutionary communist advocators. The Jews were accused of having an imperious mentality, and at the same time they're the people of the book. They're accused of being militant aggressors, at the same time as being cowardly pacifists. With being a chosen people, and also having an inferior human nature. With both arrogance and timidity. With both extreme individualism and community adherence. With being guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus and at the same time held to account for the invention of Christianity... Everything and its opposite becomes a reason for anti-Semitism."
This is how irrational anti-Semitism is. Whatever you hate, that's what the Jew is.
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It's still snowing nicely here. 21cm of new snow. The place is looking better by the minute! Two happy new staff heading home after a morning carving up the fresh delights. Perisher
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However, it should be pointed out that Rudd's '07 success was based on lies .. claiming to be an economic conservative, claiming to have a fairer way of treating asylum seekers and claiming to have better IR laws Not only were they lies then, but it is apparent they have no such policy now - ed
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INTEREST SPEECH BY Matt Ridley IN THE UK HOUSE OF LORDS: Must We Go On Making These Mistakes?

House of Lords, 18 June: My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest in coal-mining on my family’s property, as detailed in the register, but I shall not be arguing for coal today but for its most prominent rival, gas, in which I have no interest.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for her courtesy in discussing the Bill and welcome the fact that the Government have grasped the nettle of energy policy, especially on the issue of nuclear power, after the deplorable vacuum left by the previous Government.

However, I am concerned that we are being asked in the Bill to spend £200 billion, mainly on the wrong technologies, and that we will come to regret that. We are being asked to put in place a system that will guarantee far into the future rich rewards for landowners and capitalists, while eventually doubling the price of electricity and asking people to replace gas with electric space heating. That can only drive more people into fuel poverty.

We have heard a lot about the needs of energy investors and producers. We have not heard enough about consumers. If the industry gets an 8% return on the £200 billion to be spent, just two offshore wind farms or one nuclear plant would be declaring profits similar to what British Gas declares today. That will be an uncomfortable position for the Government of the day.

The Bill is a dash for wood and wind—two medieval technologies—and it is twice as big as the dash for gas of the 1990s. Between 6 and 9 gigawatts will have to be built a year for the next 16 years, compared with 2 gigawatts a year during the dash for gas. I am not sure it can be done, let alone affordably. In the case of biomass, the only way we can source enough is by felling trees overseas. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, Drax will soon be taking more than 40 trains a day of wood pellets from North America. That is not energy security.

Under the Bill,
“‘low carbon electricity generation’ means electricity generation which in the opinion of the Secretary of State will contribute to a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases”.

Shades of Humpty Dumpty: a word means just what I choose it to mean. We are being asked to pretend that the most carbon rich fuel of all, wood, is not a source of carbon. According to Princeton University, trees used for biomass electricity generation increase carbon dioxide emissions by 79% compared with coal over 20 years and by 49% over 40 years, even if you replant the forest.

We are through the looking glass.

Offshore wind, meanwhile, is a risky technology with a track record of engineering problems, sky- high costs, disappointing lifespan and problems of decommissioning. At the moment, we generate less than 1% of total energy, or 6% of electricity, from wind, despite all the damage it has already done to our countryside and economy. We are to increase that to something like 30% in just a decade or so, may be more if nuclear is delayed. It is a huge gamble, and if it fails, the only fallback is carbon capture and storage, a technology that has repeatedly failed to meet its promises at all, let alone affordably, a point made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell.

Even if this wood and wind dash is possible, under the contract for a different system proposed in this Bill, while better than the renewable obligations that preceded it, the subsidy to renewable energy will quadruple by 2020. That is only the start.

On top of that, there are system costs for balancing the unpredictability of wind; transmission costs for getting wind from remote areas to where it is needed; VAT; the carbon floor price; not to mention the cost of subsiding renewable heat and renewable transport fuels. Hence, at a conservative estimate, the Renewable Energy Foundation thinks that we will be imposing costs of £16 billion a year on our hard-pressed economy for several decades.

Why are we doing this? We are doing this because of four assumptions that were valid in 2010 but, as my noble friend Lord Lawson pointed out, are no longer valid to the same extent. First, we assumed we would not be acting alone, so we would not damage our competitiveness. Instead, not only is there no longer a Kyoto treaty, but China is planning to build 363 coal- fired power stations; India 455. On top of that, the European trading system has collapsed to less than €5 a tonne of carbon. Our carbon floor price is more than three times that: £16 a tonne, rising to £32 a tonne in 2020 and £76 a tonne in 2030. Acting unilaterally in this way does not save carbon emissions. It merely exports them and the jobs go with them. Northumberland’s largest employer, the aluminium smelter at Lynemouth, has closed with the loss of 500 jobs, almost entirely because of carbon policies.

The second assumption behind the Bill was that the cost of gas would rise, thus making the cost of energy rise anyway. The Committee on Climate Change said recently in a report that:
“Consensus projections are that gas prices will rise in future”.

This remark has been described by the utilities team at Liberum Capital as “genuinely amazing” in the light of recent events. Now that we know that gas prices have plummeted in the United States to roughly one-quarter of ours, thanks to shale gas; now that we know that Britain probably has many decades worth of shale gas itself; now that we know that enormous reserves of offshore gas near Israel, Brazil and parts of Africa are going to come on line in years to come; now that we know that conventional gas producers such as Russia and Qatar are facing increasing competition from unconventional and offshore gas; now that we know that methane hydrates on the ocean floor are more abundant than all other fossil fuels put together and that the Japanese are planning to explore them; in short, now that we know we are nowhere near peak gas, it is surely folly to hold our economy hostage to an assumption that gas prices must rise.
We will need the gas anyway.

The intermittent nature of wind means that we will require increasing back-up and we cannot get it from nuclear because it is not responsive enough to fill the lulls when the wind drops. Far from replacing fossil fuels, a dash for wood and wind means a dash for gas too, only this time we will have to subsidise it because the plants will stand idle for most of the time and pay a rising carbon floor price when they do operate.

Having distorted the markets to disastrous effect with subsidies to renewables, we are now being asked, under the capacity market mechanism, to introduce compensating countersubsidies to fossil fuels.

The third assumption was that the cost of renewables would fall rapidly as we rolled them out. This has proved untrue and, indeed, as the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies has shown, the cost curve for renewables inevitably rises as the best sites are used up, not least in the North Sea. I am told by those who work in the offshore wind industry that, at the moment, the industry has every incentive to keep its costs up not down, as it sets out to strike a contract with the Government. They will not have to try very hard. Even at low estimates, offshore wind is stratospherically expensive.

The fourth assumption on which this Bill is based was that the climate would change dangerously and soon. Once again, this assumption is looking much shakier than it did five years ago. The slow rate at which the temperature has been changing over the past 50 years and the best evidence from the top-of-the-atmosphere radiation about climate sensitivity are both very clearly pointing to carbon dioxide having its full greenhouse effect but without significant net positive feedback of the kind on which all the alarm is based.

The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and the noble Lord, Lord Stern, both mentioned Professor Myles Allen and they will be aware, therefore, of his recent paper, which found significantly reduced climate sensitivity. If that is the case, the dash to wind and biomass may well continue to do more harm to the environment as well as to the economy for many decades than climate change itself will do.

However, leaving that on one side, as my noble friend Lord Lawson said, the argument against subsidising wind and biomass does not depend on a benign view of climate change. It stands powerfully on its own merits, even if you think dangerous climate change is imminent.

In 1981, my noble friend Lord Lawson, ignoring the prevailing wisdom of the day, as he sometimes does, decided against the predict-and-provide central planning philosophy and instead embraced the idea of letting the market discover the best way to provide electricity. The result was the cheapest and most flexible energy sector of any western country.

We have progressively turned our backs on that. Under this Bill, the location, the technology and the price of each power source is determined by one person—the omniscient Secretary of State. Recent occupants of that position have an unhappy history of not making wise decisions.

Remember ground source heat pumps? They do not work as advertised. Remember electric vehicles? They have been a flop.

Remember biofuels? They have caused rainforest destruction and hunger. Remember the Green Deal? Must we go on making these mistakes?

We have returned to a philosophy of picking winners, or rather, from the point of view of the consumer, of picking losers. Not even just picking losers, but hobbling winners, because of the obstacles we have put in the way of shale gas.

America has cut its carbon emissions by far more than we have, almost entirely because of shale gas displacing coal. By pursuing a strategy that encouraged unabated gas, we could halve emissions and cut bills at the same time. Instead, I very much fear we will find we have spent a fortune to achieve neither.

House of Lords, 18 June 2013
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“but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:31NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Ephraim is a cake not turned."
Hosea 7:8
A cake not turned is uncooked on one side; and so Ephraim was, in many respects, untouched by divine grace: though there was some partial obedience, there was very much rebellion left. My soul, I charge thee, see whether this be thy case. Art thou thorough in the things of God? Has grace gone through the very centre of thy being so as to be felt in its divine operations in all thy powers, thy actions, thy words, and thy thoughts? To be sanctified, spirit, soul, and body, should be thine aim and prayer; and although sanctification may not be perfect in thee anywhere in degree, yet it must be universal in its action; there must not be the appearance of holiness in one place and reigning sin in another, else thou, too, wilt be a cake not turned.
A cake not turned is soon burnt on the side nearest the fire, and although no man can have too much religion, there are some who seem burnt black with bigoted zeal for that part of truth which they have received, or are charred to a cinder with a vainglorious Pharisaic ostentation of those religious performances which suit their humour. The assumed appearance of superior sanctity frequently accompanies a total absence of all vital godliness. The saint in public is a devil in private. He deals in flour by day and in soot by night. The cake which is burned on one side, is dough on the other.
If it be so with me, O Lord, turn me! Turn my unsanctified nature to the fire of thy love and let it feel the sacred glow, and let my burnt side cool a little while I learn my own weakness and want of heat when I am removed from thy heavenly flame. Let me not be found a double-minded man, but one entirely under the powerful influence of reigning grace; for well I know if I am left like a cake unturned, and am not on both sides the subject of thy grace, I must be consumed forever amid everlasting burnings.

Evening

"Waiting for the adoption."
Romans 8:23
Even in this world saints are God's children, but men cannot discover them to be so, except by certain moral characteristics. The adoption is not manifested, the children are not yet openly declared. Among the Romans a man might adopt a child, and keep it private for a long time: but there was a second adoption in public; when the child was brought before the constituted authorities its former garments were taken off, and the father who took it to be his child gave it raiment suitable to its new condition of life. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." We are not yet arrayed in the apparel which befits the royal family of heaven; we are wearing in this flesh and blood just what we wore as the sons of Adam; but we know that "when he shall appear" who is the "first-born among many brethren," we shall be like him, we shall see him as he is. Cannot you imagine that a child taken from the lowest ranks of society, and adopted by a Roman senator, would say to himself, "I long for the day when I shall be publicly adopted. Then I shall leave off these plebeian garments, and be robed as becomes my senatorial rank"? Happy in what he has received, for that very reason he groans to get the fulness of what is promised him. So it is with us today. We are waiting till we shall put on our proper garments, and shall be manifested as the children of God. We are young nobles, and have not yet worn our coronets. We are young brides, and the marriage day is not yet come, and by the love our Spouse bears us, we are led to long and sigh for the bridal morning. Our very happiness makes us groan after more; our joy, like a swollen spring, longs to well up like an Iceland geyser, leaping to the skies, and it heaves and groans within our spirit for want of space and room by which to manifest itself to men.
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Othniel

[ÅŽth'nĭel] - powerful one or lion of god. A son of Kenaz, younger brother of Caleb, who, after the death of Joshua, judged Israel for forty years. He is the first to be mentioned among the "Judges" (Josh. 15:17; Judg. 1:13; 3:9, 11: 1 Chron. 4:13). The Othniel mentioned in 1 Chronicles 27:15 is probably the same person.
Little is recorded of this saviour who came from the tribe of Judah. He followed the Lord with all his heart, and, Spirit-empowered, he fought for Israel and prevailed.
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Today's reading: Esther 9-10, Acts 7:1-21 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Esther 9-10

1 On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, the edict commanded by the king was to be carried out. On this day the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, but now the tables were turned and the Jews got the upper hand over those who hated them. 2 The Jews assembled in their cities in all the provinces of King Xerxes to attack those determined to destroy them. No one could stand against them, because the people of all the other nationalities were afraid of them. 3 And all the nobles of the provinces, the satraps, the governors and the king's administrators helped the Jews, because fear of Mordecai had seized them. 4 Mordecai was prominent in the palace; his reputation spread throughout the provinces, and he became more and more powerful....

Today's New Testament reading: Acts 7:1-21

Stephen's Speech to the Sanhedrin
1 Then the high priest asked Stephen, "Are these charges true?"
2 To this he replied: "Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran. 3 'Leave your country and your people,' God said, 'and go to the land I will show you.'
4 "So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. 5 He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. 6 God spoke to him in this way: 'For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. 7 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,' God said, 'and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.' 8 Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs...."
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