Barney Joyce is an idiot - the proof

News from the Courier Mail this morning that Barney Joyce, representative of the man on the land and all things rural and agricultural "has written off an $80,000 taxpayer-funded four-wheel-drive after trying to drive through a swollen creek before Christmas."

This of course is the same idiotic practice that resulted in the deaths of quite a number of people in the lead-up to and during the Queensland floods.

Joyce's excuse?  "There was no flood indicator, the road was not closed and there was a sign saying ''drive slowly." 

In other words, "It wasn't my fault it is the fault of whichever Government is responsible for road signs."  Clearly the man is totally reliant on the nanny state to tell him what to do and what not to do and what is safe and what is not.

Despite not being in his familiar home patch (the incident happened in Burren Creek, in northern NSW) he failed the most basic farmers' test when confronted with a swollen creek - get out, roll your pants up (only if you're gentry, not a working farmer) and wade in to check the depth and strength of the flow.

Not only is this proof of what we've long known in our hearts (that the man is an goose), it also demonstrates that, while he might be a member of the Nationals, he isn't really OF the land.  Dare I say, it also shows him to be a bad example to little children, grey nomads and young ute owners.

Given his stupidity, I wonder if he has to pay the excess on the car insurance ?

Update: Just to highlight my point further, the Murdoch News site reports that he was actually driving through country very familiar to him - making him an even bigger idiot.  They also report that "... he said he didn't feel threatened by the flooded creek which was "more like a lagoon than a raging torrent" - a bit like a 19-year old ute driver who thinks he's infallible - making him a 44-year old idiot!

Update #2: Could it be - a Queenslander who is even more of an idiot that Barney?  While I feel sorry for this guy and his family, why would you use petrol to start a fire (he clearly was never a Boy Scout) and, if you did, why exactly would you choose stand next to the fire with the petrol can by your side?  And just like Barney, this idiot's family figure it's all the fault of Government

Cut everybody's welfare (but not mine)

It's good to see that the Business Council is acting according to script.  The ABC reports today that the BC (an appropriate abbreviation really) is calling for cuts to disability pensions and oversees aid to fund disaster recovery.  Of course no suggestion of any cuts to business welfare:

The Business Council says cuts to disability services and foreign aid should be considered as alternatives to the flood levy.


...in its pre-budget submission, the Business Council, which represents Australia's top 100 companies, says the government should instead press ahead with returning the budget to surplus through short-term spending discipline.

Council president Graham Bradley says all current spending should be reviewed and disability pensions may not be the best use of government money.

Read on and you'll even find the word "incentivised".  Now I haven't heard that one for a while!

Stupid rich people do it in Adelaide too

Just to show that it's not just stupid rich people in Queensland who build homes in stupid places (and stupid planning authorities that let them), there's this from the Adelaide Advertiser's site  about the foothill slopes of the Mt Lofty Ranges behind Adelaide - a city where any property on elevated land is worth a absolute motsa:

Creek dams won't protect 3500 homes from floods
MORE than 3500 homes would be flooded in a 1-in-100 year downpour, even if two dams were built on Brown Hill Creek, a new report has revealed.

The report has reignited tensions between five local councils struggling to strike an accord to protect local homes from flooding along Brown Hill and Keswick creeks, the Hills & Valley Messenger has revealed.

With the April 30 deadline looming for the councils to reach a consensus, Mitcham Mayor Michael Picton has admitted it is unlikely the date will be met.

“It’s unacceptable to have so many properties without protection after over $100 million is being spent,” he said.

A draft report to review a 2006 master plan on flood management along the creeks was recently released by engineering company WorleyParsons.

It states 3500 homes in the lower reaches of Brown Hill and Keswick creeks would be flooded - even if the recommendations in the 2006 plan, including building two concrete detention basins in Brown Hill Creek, were implemented.

Forget about storm and tempest - God protect us from Local Governments and planning authorities!

ET brought a lemon - Stupid rich people and that Cyclone

Stupid rich people's toys.
Port Hinchinbrook post Cyclone Yasi

Most of my posts about Cyclone Yasi (and the SE Qld flood for that matter) have at some point discussed stupid rich people buying or building houses in stupid places (like foreshore sand dunes).

There is no better example of this apparently universal malaise (so energetically supported by planning authorities) than Port Hinchinbook just south of Cardwell.  If you're interested in stupid rich people getting sucked in by property developers to build in stupid places have a read of Critics predicted damage to Port Hinchinbrook by Matthew Moore and Tom Reilly at the SMH but note, their piece doesn't even begin to touch on the graft and corruption that enabled Williams to develop the Port Hinchinbrook site (think Jo and the White Shoe Brigade).

And if you need an example of how stupid stupid rich people really can be, check out this little report from the Nine News site on Andrew Ettingshausen's plans to return to Port Hinchinbrook.  Of course, no mention that he really doesn't have much choice given that he failed to sell his property in 2009 and that it would have been failing in value ever since (and would now be even more unsaleable).

The Townsville Bulletin and Magnetic Island. Again!

I hate to harp on about this, but this morning's Townville Bulletin has done it again. 

Their 32-page "Wrath of a monster" pictorial supplement (not available online) includes some 118 great pics and not a single one of them relate to Magnetic Island!!.

If you are interested in the Island (or not) DON'T visit The Bully's online galleries as it only encourages them - rather, check out these great island pics in The Magnetic Times or even those in my earlier Yasi posts here and here

The young people are revolting and their revolution is live

One of the interesting things about being largely isolated from the world and self-absorbed in the priorities of getting power, water and food during and immediately after Cyclone Yasi, was hearing snippets of information about the people's revolution in Egypt.

This morning our time, Mubarak as essentially given the people of Egypt the finger by installing his vice-president to "lead" the nation.

I suspect that today the real revolution starts in Egypt. 

Image: Tahrir square crowds, Feb. 11, 2011. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

Watching all of this unfold this morning reminded me of the fantastic Gil Scott-Heron track The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.  Written for an earlier young people's revolution, it still hits the mark.  (I'd also argue as others have that Scott-Heron was one of the originators of rap and hip hop, or street poetry as it use to be known)

I love it when young people are revolting - after all, it is they who create change, not self-interested old men like Mubarak.  However, we know from previous revolutions large and small that, without a clear idea of and manifesto for the change you want to create, the revolution will be unlikely to achieve it's potential, let alone its objectives.

I fear the young people of Egypt aren't organised in this way and as such their organic revolution will either flounder or, in the long-run, result in a worse than status-quo outcome. 

I hope I'm wrong.

Finally, some great coverage about Cyclone Yasi's impact on Magnetic Island

At last, someone has filled the gaping hole in the mainstream media's coverage of the impact of Cyclone Yasi in this region and on Maggie Island in partcular.

The Magnetic Times has again delivered what The Bulletin and many others have failed to even acknowledge.  It's a great read with some fantastic pics including the one below.  Read it here

The Painic Bay Jetty walkway
Source:  The Magnetic Times.  Photo:  George Hirst

Yasi repair priorities

The Erosion Patrol article in today's Townsville Bulletin about repairing the city's beaches says heaps about both the Bulletin's ability to critically appraise the spin that comes out of Council and Council's priority setting for its Yasi clean-up efforts.

From the article we learn that:

• Rich idiots built/brought a house on a foreshore sanddune in the city's northern beaches
• The sea persistantly tries to reclaim it's dune
• Nobody is responsible for approving the developments or choosing to live in them
• All taxpayers are responsible for restoring these front yards (and property values)

You'd also assume that, after the Strand, these were the only beaches damaged by Yasi's storm surge.  Mayor Tyrell (or should that be Mayor-in-wanting, the very quiet Dale Last) and the Bulletin would be much better informed if they actually visited that other suburb, Magnetic Island.  If they did they'd see damage like this on the Nelly Bay foreshore:

By my reckoning, this part of Nelly Bay has lost about 15 metres of beachfront!
 
I would have thought that Tyrell or Last would have worked out by now that:

1. Magnetic Island is Townsville's prime tourism asset and as such produce an economic benefit for the whole city,
2. Part of the Island's sales pitch is it's 23 beaches,
3. Beachfront mansions in Bushland Beach are of no productive benefit to the city or its economy

Naive me! 

I also learn in the Bully's hardcopy that Mayor Les has actually flown over the Island in a helicopter.  I wish I'd known - I'd have given him the finger back

Footnote:  I should also point out that, while the damage in the pics was caused by Yasi's storm surge, the reason for the damage is the reshaping of the Bay when the western end was blow-up, bulldozed and filled-in to make the Nelly Bay Harbour which you can just see the beginning of in the bottom two pics.

What I learnt from Cyclone Yasi

While Yasi's winds here were equivalent to a severe Category 2 or weak Cat. 3 cyclone there are some useful things I learnt (or were reminded of) for next time:

1. The wind follows the land - the gullies and valleys - just as fires and flash floods do


2. Get a manual coffee grinder


3. Solar houses don't have to wait for the power to come on


4. Get an alternative mobile phone charger - car, solar, wind-up, whatever


5. A surprising number of people build stupid houses in stupid places


6. Building on or immediately behind the foreshore dune is dumb - it's a sand dune for god's sake! It has a purpose - to move, to replenish the beach! 


7. The ONLY media that works/adds value in a crisis is local ABC radio and a battery powered receiver - it must be defended at all costs


8. There is no such thing as too much duct tape


9. Don't assume that because there's a cyclone, it's gonna rain - fill the bath all the way.


10. Emergency alert text messages are great - if you have a mobile


11. Charge the camera beforehand - taking pics on the mobile chews up battery time


12. Tell everyone beforehand to only text you and not to ring


13. Get more ice beforehand, fill the fridge up with it (unless you have a solar house of course)


14. The Internet is invaluable until you lose power - but only because in enables you to track the cyclone closely. 


15. News sites are hopeless and facebook is downright dangerous in the hands of a teenager who cant discern rumour from fact or possibility from probability.


16. Print media is useless unless they can can get an edition out before the power comes on


17. The BOM site is fantastic but I suspect most people don't know how to read the forecast maps


18. Most people have no idea of the country on which they live or how it works


19. Most people (and journalists) have no appreciation of the geography of Queensland


20. Don't wait for the last minute to buy your beer supply and when you do don't forget to get extra for all of those chats with the neighbours after


21. Always be nice to the Ergon and CityWater guys - they are worth their weight in beer at the very least.  They do an amazing job in appalling conditions

And finally, when everyone is locked down and until the storm passes, you are starkly reminded that ultimately in this world, you are on your own baby.

What is it with The Townsville Bulletin and Magnetic Island?

The Bully (like much of Townsville) has a funny relationship with Magnetic Island, just 3km off the coast and closer to the CBD than most suburbs in the town. 

Their coverage of Cyclone Yasi's impact on the Island since their first edition on Friday has been woeful and amazingly, they haven't even bothered to send a photographer over to capture the impact on the region's major tourism asset.  Then of course, the probably haven't sent one over for the last 6 months either.

But they are determined to make good - in their own inimitable style of course.  They've put Mary Vernon's phone pics up in a gallery (including one of her street number for some reason?) and Maggie actually made front page today!  And a humdinger it is too!  "They've all gone batty" is the witty little editor's effort to headline a story about a guy drinking at the Picnic Bay pub who got bitten by a fruit bat - no doubt because he tried to handle it or was so p*ssed that he fell or walked into it.

Don't bother following the link to read the story as it only encourages them, but to summarise, the innuendo is that Islanders are about to get raped and pillaged by marauding bats whose roosts and food trees have been destroyed or stripped.

Of course, I suspect that the real reason they ran the story (other than a rabid bat scare always sells up here for some reason) was that they finally had a professional Maggie pic (slightly p*ssed man with bandage against a lovely blue backgound) without having to send the photographer to the Island.

As I will expand on in a separate post at some stage, in a natural disaster the print media are a waste of space (as is social media pretty much). 

It's just that, with the exception of their first post cyclone edition which consisted almost entirely of pictures, The Bully is a waste of space most of the other time as well.