(Miscellaneous debris)

[Psyber]

Admittedly this is compiled by the Liberal Party, but it is interesting to read.
I've just posted the introduction and the link so those who don't want to admit to themselves that it is true can ignore it easily.

Yesterday marked 100 days since the Gillard Government returned to office.
You can read about the Prime Minister’s 100 crippling gaffes,back flips and compromises here.

http://saliberal.org.au/portals/0/files ... 00days.pdf

[redandblack]

I started reading that, Psyber, then decided only people who read the Liberal Party website would bother to get past the first few.

It would go down well at Branch Meetings though.

[Psyber]

I started reading that, Psyber, then decided only people who read the Liberal Party website would bother to get past the first few.
It would go down well at Branch Meetings though.

I've just posted the introduction and the link so those who don't want to admit to themselves that it is true can ignore it easily.

[mick]

I started reading that, Psyber, then decided only people who read the Liberal Party website would bother to get past the first few.
It would go down well at Branch Meetings though.

I've just posted the introduction and the link so those who don't want to admit to themselves that it is true can ignore it easily.

I havn't read it, it is simply self evident on a daily basis that this government is a train wreck, The most ardent ALP supporter must be feeling at least a little disappointed.

[Gozu]

I'm no Labor hack but I certainly feel disappointed in this Rudd/Gillard Labor government.

[redandblack]

I agree, Gozu, I'm a bit disappointed also, but I wonder whether any Government now can be anything else. I think it's almost impossible now for any govt to do much without being roundly criticised by someone or some vested interest.

eg: Psyber, your devastating list presumes that being criticised by BHP, or mining companies is somehow a failing

Another example is the insulation scheme and the Schools building programme. The insulation thing was a stuff-up, although it achieved its main aim. The Schools programme has now had 2 enquiries, both of which said it had a 97% success rate, but the perception is that it was a disaster. If you repeat a lie often enough, it's perceived as fact.

This govt (IMO) makes the mistake of trying to emulate the Libs on such policies as immigration, etc. I'd prefer them to win or lose with a policy based on decency, rather than fear and falsehoods.

[Leaping Lindner]

Admittedly this is compiled by the Liberal Party, but it is interesting to read.
I've just posted the introduction and the link so those who don't want to admit to themselves that it is true can ignore it easily.

Yesterday marked 100 days since the Gillard Government returned to office.
You can read about the Prime Minister’s 100 crippling gaffes,back flips and compromises here.

http://saliberal.org.au/portals/0/files ... 00days.pdf

Sorry regardless of your politics that is just pathetic. Sums up the politics in this country at the moment. One line soundbites with no substance.
Gillard went to a Union movement meeting!! NO!!! REALLY???? She must be a Marxist. The opposition leader is a member of the National Civic Council, and was a founding member of the Lyons Forum and I know which organisations scare me more.

[Gozu]

I agree, Gozu, I'm a bit disappointed also, but I wonder whether any Government now can be anything else. I think it's almost impossible now for any govt to do much without being roundly criticised by someone or some vested interest.

I hear what you're saying but they'll keep getting the s__t kicked out of them if they continue trying to ape the Libs. They don't stand for anything other than trying to remain in power. Sure big tick for their handling of the GFC with the stimulus packages, BER etc they were successes. What else have we had:

-Mandatory internet filter
-wanting to extend welfare quarantining nationwide
-a pissweak ETS that was then dumped
-suspending the applications of boat people from Afghanistan & Sri Lanka (in an election year)
-jacking up ciagrettes by 25% a pack (hurting in the main poorer people)
-East Timor off-shore processing
-The citizen's assembly response to climate change (thankfully the Greens got rid of that)
-"The Real Julia" crap
-Taking that NSW MP Bradbury to the NT to try and look tough on boat people
-Claiming Julian Assange & WikiLeaks had done something illegal and then not being able to say what

[Gozu]

I forgot the backdown on the Mining Tax too so it's no surprise to see the big mining companies are starting up another ad campaign. Why not when you know this govt will roll over all the time spend some cents to potentially save some dollars.

[Gozu]

Almost on cue, "We'll love the ALP again, if it'll just come back to the Right":

The Weekend Australian publishes a whinge from a social conservative former ALP MP, Michael Thompson, complaining that there’s “No place in Labor for people like me“:

The middle-class progressives are killing the party to which I once belonged.

LABOR is being frog-marched towards political irrelevance by a coming together of the self-styled progressives from the party’s hard Left and a breed of right-wing official and parliamentarian who has forsaken the religious beliefs and traditional family values of earlier right-wingers for a new creed: “Whatever it takes”.

Well, quite. They’re perfectly happy to support Labor – just so long as it doesn’t actually act as a progressive party. Just so long as it doesn’t provide decent public services paid for by taxing the wealthy, or stand up to the powerful, or treat asylum seekers with compassion, or enact legislation that meaningfully tackles the risk of climate change, or work to end government discrimination against minority groups. They’re perfectly happy supporting a right-wing Labor party, almost as much as a right-wing Liberal party. Isn’t that balance, right there?

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2 ... the-right/

[Psyber]

This seems to be an apt spot to insert this snippet.

The UN refugee agency says Australia's immigration detention system is being clogged by growing numbers of rejected asylum seekers who should be sent home.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees regional representative Richard Towle says large numbers of people now coming through the asylum system in Australia are not refugees and "the challenge is how to find fair and humane and effective ways of allowing them to leave this country to go home", Fairfax newspapers report.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/lat ... o-home-un/


Oh, and of course the ALP did start life as a conservative group not a "progressive" one..

The government following Federation in 1901 was formed by the Protectionist Party with the support of the Australian Labor Party. The support of the Labor Party was contingent upon restricting non-white immigration, reflecting the attitudes of the Australian Worker's Union and other labour organisations at the time, upon whose support the Labor Party was founded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy

[redandblack]

What were the Liberal Party policies in 1901, Psyber?

Stop the Boats




trick question, of course

[Psyber]

What were the Liberal Party policies in 1901, Psyber?
Stop the Boats
Well of course the Liberal Party
trick question, of course

Indeed - since it wasn't about at the time to have policies!
[ And it has Labor roots! ]

From Wikipedia:

Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office.
The United Australia Party or UAP was an Australian political party that was the political successor to the Nationalist Party of Australia (1931)

The Nationalist Party of Australia was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the name given to the pro-conscription defectors from the Australian Labor Party led by Prime Minister Billy Hughes.

The Commonwealth Liberal Party (CLP, also known as The Fusion, or the Deakinite Liberal Party) was a political movement active in Australia from 1909 to 1916, shortly after federation. In 1909 Alfred Deakin, the leader of the Protectionist Party merged with the Anti-Socialist Party of Joseph Cook to form the CLP on a shared platform of opposing the Australian Labor Party. It was defeated by Labor at its first election held in 1910.

The Protectionist Party was an Australian political party, formally organised from 1889 until 1909, with policies centred on protectionism. It argued that Australia needed protective tariffs to allow Australian industry to grow and provide employment. It had its greatest strength in Victoria and in the rural areas of New South Wales. Its most prominent leaders were Sir Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin, who were the first and second prime ministers of Australia.

The Free Trade Party which was officially known as the Australian Free Trade and Liberal Association, also referred to as the Revenue Tariff Party in some states and renamed the Anti-Socialist Party in 1906, was an Australian political party, formally organised between 1889 and 1909. It advocated the abolition of protectionism, especially protective tariffs and other restrictions on trade, arguing that this would create greater prosperity for all. However, many members also advocated use of minimal tariffs to create government revenue only.

[dedja]

Dear oh dear Alexander ... it's so hard when you're not in the limelight anymore.

Oh the poor born to rulers ...

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opin ... 5973557580

[Gozu]

Dear oh dear Alexander ... it's so hard when you're not in the limelight anymore.

Oh the poor born to rulers ...

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opin ... 5973557580

"Bidding farewell to our worst foreign minister":

That Downer was our worst foreign minister of recent decades goes without saying. Possibly he was our worst ever, but that’s a matter for foreign policy PhDs.

But he was more like his predecessor Gareth Evans than either would wish to admit  —  long-serving foreign ministers, both with grotesquely over-inflated conceptions of their world influence, both somehow encapsulating the very worst of their parties and therefore, automatically, capable of inspiring loathing in opponents. But let’s be charitable  —  if nothing else can unite the divided citizens of Cyprus, maybe five minutes with Alex will do the trick.

In the end, AWB summed up Downer’s foreign ministership perfectly: the deliberate turning of a blind eye to the bribery by a National Party scam of a tyrant against whom Downer was at that very moment making the case for war, about whose toppling Downer would later boast  —  and against whose forces we would shortly send our troops. The wilful failure of accountability and the intellectual dishonesty of Downer’s response upon discovery  —  along with that of Howard and Mark Vaile  —  turned even the Howard Government cheerleaders at The Australian against him.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/07/02/thi ... july-2010/

[Psyber]

Here is another snippet not worth a thread of its own, but one that touches on debates we have had in the Politics and the General Discussion sections.
In those the issue of the validity of research and learned opinion has been at issue versus doing your own searches, reading, and decision making.
I have expressed concern about the effect the drying up of government funding and the "publish or perish" mentality has had on academic ethics.
But you would think anything published in the Lancet would have been fully "peer reviewed" before publication.

This is from the British Medical Journal: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full
I quote the first few sentences only.

How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed

In the first part of a special BMJ series, Brian Deer exposes the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school.

When I broke the news to the father of child 11, at first he did not believe me. “Wakefield told us my son was the 13th child they saw,” he said, gazing for the first time at the now infamous research paper which linked a purported new syndrome with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.1 “There’s only 12 in this.”

That paper was published in the Lancet on 28 February 1998. It was retracted on 2 February 2010.2 Authored by Andrew Wakefield, John Walker-Smith, and 11 others from the Royal Free medical school, London, it reported on 12 developmentally challenged children,3 and triggered a decade long public health scare.

“Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated by the parents with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children,” began the paper’s “findings.” Adopting these claims as fact,4 its “results” section added: “In these eight children the average interval from exposure to first behavioural symptoms was 6.3 days (range 1-14).”

Mr 11, an American engineer, looked again at the paper: a five page case series of 11 boys and one girl, aged between 3 and 9 years. Nine children, it said, had diagnoses of “regressive” autism, and all but one were reported with “non-specific colitis.” The “new syndrome” brought these together, linking brain and bowel diseases. His son was the penultimate case.

Running his finger across the paper’s tables, over coffee in London, Mr 11 seemed reassured by his anonymised son’s age and other details. But then he pointed at table 2—headed “neuropsychiatric diagnosis”—and for a second time objected.

“That’s not true.”

Child 11 was among the eight whose parents apparently blamed MMR. The interval between his vaccination and the first “behavioural symptom” was reported as 1 week. This symptom was said to have appeared at age 15 months. But his father, whom I had tracked down, said this was wrong.

“From the information you provided me on our son, who I was shocked to hear had been included in their published study,” he wrote to me, after we met again in California, “the data clearly appeared to be distorted.”

He backed his concerns with medical records, including a Royal Free discharge summary.5 Although the family lived 5000 miles from the hospital, in February 1997 the boy (then aged 5) had been flown to London and admitted for Wakefield’s project, the undisclosed goal of which was to help sue the vaccine’s manufacturers.6

[Gozu]

"Is The Australian addicted to Monckton's denial?":

Journalist Graham Readfearn writes: His choice of the Gershwin song It Ain’t Necessarily So was unfortunate, if not a little ironic.

In an opinion article published in The Australian, professional climate change denier Christopher Monckton tried his hardest to convince readers that “thoughtful” politicians were beginning to ask “privately, quietly” if a supposed climate crisis was not “necessarily so”.

They were beginning to ask the “Gershwin question” mused Monckton, referring to the song in the 1935 musical Porgy and Bess — a song delivered, ironically, by the musical’s drug dealing character Sportin’ Life.

An addiction to a drug can be a terrible and debilitating experience and just as it is in the case of The Australian’s apparent addiction to climate denial, it can be degrading, embarrassing and professionally damaging.

Christopher Monckton is one of the world’s most charismatic climate deniers, yet he has no qualifications at all in climate science. Among his beliefs are that the UN is attempting to create a world government and young climate campaigners are like the Hitler Youth. Others have also examined Monckton’s creative CV.

This lack of genuine expertise and tendency towards conspiracy theories don’t in themselves deny Monckton the right to an opinion, but the thrust of his views have been roundly rejected by practically every climate scientist currently researching and publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2011/ ... 9s-denial/

[Psyber]

I don't see how anyone actually sane can deny climate change is occurring.
The only room for debate I can see is that of how much current human activity is really contributing to it.

[fish]

I don't see how anyone actually sane can deny climate change is occurring.

Try Tony Abbott!

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has reiterated his scepticism about climate science, suggesting the world has stopped warming despite a new report by Australia's leading scientists showing statistical evidence that temperatures have been rising for decades.

[Psyber]

I don't see how anyone actually sane can deny climate change is occurring.

Try Tony Abbott!
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has reiterated his scepticism about climate science, suggesting the world has stopped warming despite a new report by Australia's leading scientists showing statistical evidence that temperatures have been rising for decades.

That doesn't change my view - Tony Abbott seems to have been a little odd after that episode where his "son" turned out not to be.
Perhaps he is just not hiding his extreme views as well.
[ I didn't support everything John Howard stood for either.]