How NOT to prepare for a Cyclone (or fidling while Yasi blows)

Guest blogger Mr Gee on political madness in Queensland:

"Despite the Premier issuing the following announcement yesterday she, and her band of ministerial keystone cops, are still pressing ahead with the preparation for community cabinet this weekend at Airlie beach, Bowen and Proserpine. (Not many of our esteemed Minister's staying at the 3 star motels in Proserpine with nearly all opting for the more prestigious digs at Airlie).

Ms Bligh said the extremely serious weather event now looked likely to cross the coast overnight on Wednesday and all residents should now be taking precautions, including stocking up on essential items.

"Latest advice from the Bureau of Meteorology is that this cyclone will be accompanied by significant flood in low lying areas from storm surge," Ms Bligh said.

"Those residents in low lying and waterfront areas in the Innisfail to Mackay region should be making arrangements to relocate on Tuesday.

"Advice from the Weather Bureau is that coastal areas in Yasi's path will begin to experience wind gusts beyond 100km an hour early on Wednesday.

"So I implore all of those people who feel they may be facing a dangerous situation to leave their homes in plenty of time and relocate to friends and family.

"If you have family or friends on higher ground, go to them.

"I understand leaving your home will cause anxiety but I would rather people were inconvenienced for a couple of days than place themselves in dangerous situations.

So lets go through some of the impacts of this decision to proceed with the cabinet this weekend designed, no doubt, to shore up support for the sitting member Jan Jarrett and to send a message that it is "business as usual" for Government - despite Queensland suffering the most significant flooding ever seen and the imminent threat of the largest cyclone ever to hit North Queensland with the obvious risk to property and lives:

• Many hotels and accommodation houses in the Whitsundays and Bowen are already evacuating residents because of the expectation of significant storm surges

• Public servants in North Queensland should now be focusing on either assisting vulnerable clients and communities or taking steps to get their own family preparations underway (including evacuations as necessary) - not continuing to rewrite the "spin" for Minister's to quote at banal community meetings

• Valuable resources such as Police and other essential senior regional government staff will be tied up in babysitting cabinet - rather than being available to provide assistance that will be needed elsewhere.

• Our Directors-General should be in Brisbane coordinating what needs to be done to get through the latest crisis - again not providing high level babysitting and chaperoning of our politicians

This is political bloody mindedness - and it could cost some people their belongings - or worse - someones' life - by not being adequately prepared by having to cater to a Minister's latest "whim" for useless information."

Ya gotta get hot to play real cool

This has to be the best Looney Tunes ever made:

Three Little Bops


Every 5-year old should be made to see it!

For a great bit of detective work on who played on it, see Marc Myers' post at JazzWax

The Townsville Bulletin delivers again for the Mad Katter

Another scorching little piece in today's Bully by Nathan Paull announcing/marketing the Mad Katter's search for a publishing agent.  You see, it seems that the Mad Katter has been writing a book.

This completely un-newsworthy effort gets a full half page in the new-look, all-colour-advertising Bully.

Why is it that this mob seem to run every press release The Mad Katter makes?  Why do they continue to give air to Katter's magnificently crafted image as "man of the people" and "David against Goliath"?

I wish they (along with the voters of Kennedy) would instead ask what it is that Katter has actually delivered in all his years of making a good living playing the role of the independent maverick MP (and writing books while relaxing in a business class seat)?

As I noted some time ago - having (gutlessly) dealt himself out of the game in September last, the guy is as irrelevant today in federal politics as he always has been.

Mind you, the Bully loves a bit of colour!

A grubby little newspaper

Well, I see that the departing Townsville Bulletin Editor is ensuring that the Bully's priorities are in tune with those of the Murdoch empire - lots of show and no substance.

On the day he launches his new look 'coulorful' broadsheet (way too colourful and cluttered for my liking) he also chose to run this little number accusing the Qld Government of hording donations made at the time of Cyclone Larry.  The piece is, of course, a lazy rewriting of this nasty little effort published yesterday by their sister rag, The Courier Mail. 

They of course failed to report Premier Bligh's response (published yesterday in Fairfax's SMH):

"There are some remaining interest funds and, as a report made public in August last year outlined, any remaining funds would be reallocated to future disaster appeals and that's what's going to happen," Ms Bligh said.

Maybe Nathan Paull and the others at the Bully have to wait for a hardcopy of the Courier Mail to get their news, because they certainly didn't publish any of Bligh's or Mackenroth's response available in today's Mail:

PREMIER Anna Bligh has rejected as "absolutely untrue" the claim Cyclone Larry victims had been denied funds donated to the 2006 disaster's appeal.

"Every single dollar that was donated to the Cyclone Larry appeal has gone to a victim of Cyclone Larry," she said.

Ms Bligh said remaining money was accrued interest which could not legally be transferred until all outstanding claims had been settled.

"There is one outstanding claim that is subject of a dispute between the owner and the builder," she said.

Ms Bligh said she was very distressed that claims over the Cyclone Larry appeal, in which $700,000 remained to be spent, could deter people from donating for flood victims.

Former treasurer Terry Mackenroth, who headed the cyclone reconstruction committee, yesterday pointed to his committee's 2007 report to Parliament which said any leftover funds would go towards future disasters.

"I can guarantee every cent that was donated has been spent," he said.

Mr Mackenroth said every claim that had been issued from Innisfail had been dealt with and laws had been followed.

"The appeal raised $21.8 million and every one of those donations was allocated and spent," he said. "We were never sitting on the money."

Mr Mackenroth also said criticism of means testing for current payouts from the Premier's Relief Fund for flood victims was ignoring federal law.

"The Tax Act actually requires that all the funds be means tested," he said.

"The funds that are given as emergency payments aren't means tested but after that, if it goes into an appeal fund and people want to get a tax deduction it has to be means tested.

"In Cyclone Larry we made that a very generous means test but there was a requirement it be done."

They would have heard the same thing if they watched ABC 24 or Sky News yesterday.

Rubbish journalism

"But it can't transfer until all legal claims against it are finalised, and that is yet to happen."

Damn he's good

Mr Fish's latest:

Like the post header says, damn he's good

Australia Day 2011

Something to think about while waving the flag tomorrow:

• "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it". ~ George Bernard Shaw

• "Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception." ~ George Orwell

• "Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult. ~ Erich Fromm

• "A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common fear of its neighbors". ~ W. R. Inge

•  "Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress." ~ Thorstein Veblen

• "There is a higher form of patriotism than nationalism, and that higher form is not limited by the boundaries of one's country; but by a duty to mankind to safeguard the trust of civilization." ~ Oscar S. Strauss

• "Nationalism ... is like cheap alcohol. First it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, then it kills you." ~ Dan Fried

• "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." ~ Albert Einstein

• "Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill." ~ R. Aldington

• "It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars." ~  Arthur C. Clarke

• “Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest," but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.” ~  Sydney J. Harris

• “(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands” ~ Howard Zinn

• “Patriotism is a religion, the egg from which wars are hatched.” ~ Guy de Maupassant

• “Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

• “Patriotism - the virtue of the vicious.” ~ Oscar Wilde

• “You’ll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

See also: Australia Day — No time to celebrate by Jay McDonald

One can't live on politics alone...

...fashion counts too:

Source: If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

Worth a read

A couple of good links found today:

• Good on him:   School chaplains facing High Court fight.  A guy from Toowoomba has launched High Court challenge because he opposes the Commonwealth funding of chaplains in state schools.  But check out the story's student flood victims angle - I wonder how many school Chaplin's are qualified trauma counsellors?

• 22 Minutes at Helidon on Monday, January 10: Amazing pictures at the Courier mail showing how fast the floodwater's rose at Helidon here

• And finally, Murdoch link to hacking fallout deepens - just because I love stories that shine a light on Murdoch's ongoing abuse of power and because you won't see it reported in The Bulletin

Townsville City Council finally gets something right - maybe

News just in that Council seems to have finally conducted a post-amalgamation restructure, including cutting 16 management positions.

While I received this on my rss feeder, I can't open the feed or find the story on the Bully's website or the Council's media page

As someone who's had a bit to do with Council professionally, I gotta say that this is not before time - it has been patently obvious since their last restructure that, by modern organisational and management standards, the organisation was bloated at the middle and particularly senior management levels.

Of course, the big question will be - have they 'sacked' the right ones.

More to come as I get the details

Update:  The Bully's link is now working here. 

It seems that the cuts are confined to Council's two comercial Waste and Water units.  A good start but still way too much deadwood at the "Executive Manager Level" - Cafe Bambinis @ Woolies WILL be happy

Businesses acting responsibly

As an olive oil lover, I was glad to see news that the Australian Olive Association is to introduce national standards for olive oil labelling within the next 12 months.

Contrast this responsible action of the local olive oil industry with that of multi-national big tobacco who "is hoping a new multilateral free trade agreement will enable it to sue the federal government if Australia introduces plain packaging for cigarettes in mid-2012 as planned."

Bastards! 

But then, maybe it would be good if they sued - I suspect that it would be even more counter-productive than Stupid Rich Person, Gerry Harvey's, attempt at public relations