Life in Oz...& Dubai

Letting them get away with it

2012-03-02T15:46:00.000+11:00

Back to the subject of trucks and truckies being allowed by authorities to get away with endangering other road users, which I talked about it in one of my earlier posts on the Hume Highway triple fatality.

Bits of information are dribbling out in relation to that crash. The latest is that the B-double which crushed three people had the day before been caught speeding at 133kph, in spite of trucks having 100kph speed limiters fitted by law. Driver Vincent George was fined but allowed to carry on driving.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, police were following guidelines, never made public, from the Roads & Maritime Service (the old RTA).

The policy gives police the discretion not to issue a defects order if the truck is speeding downhill in neutral.

Twenty-five metres long, fifty tonnes, freewheeling downhill at over 130kph. That's professional, responsible drivng!

Which idiot wrote that policy? Which idiots approved it as policy? And why didn't the police ignore it?

Wrong again

2012-03-02T15:05:00.000+11:00

Our tabloid-style gossip-obsessed 'journalists' have got it wrong again.

The opposition has egg on its collective face too, after days of childish questions and comments.

The subject this time is the appointment of our new Foreign Minister following Kevin Rudd's resignation. Ex-NSW Premier Bob Carr will join the senate to replace Mark Arbib, who resigned his seat, and become our new Foreign Minister.

We've had days of the Prime Minister being ridiculed in the media and the House, the gossip being that she had offered the job to Carr but been overruled by members of her cabinet, in particular by Stephen Smith who wanted the job.

The stories were that only a day or two after her resounding leadership contest win she still had no authority and was being controlled by the real power, the '~~bogey~~faceless men' the Opposition keep rabbiting on about.

Speculation, predictions and gossip. Even the so-called 'quality' media has plunged down to that level of 'journalism'.

Do they just make it up or do they believe 'sources' without realising the 'sources' have their own agenda? Whichever it is it's poor, lazy journalism.

In the reshuffle, Robert McClelland lost his front bench position. A spokesperson said he will confer with his family and will issue a statement regarding his future intentions later today.

I feel a tearful 'it's been an honour to serve the people' press conference' coming on.

Classy stuff

2012-02-29T16:02:00.000+11:00

The standard of people foisted on us to be our 'representatives' in state and federal politics is a regular theme here.

There's another fine example from Canberra, reported in today's Sydney Morning Herald:

"A SENIOR Liberal senator branded a colleague a ''f---wit'' yesterday during a heated discussion about cut-price milk.

The NSW Liberal senator and farmer Bill Heffernan used the expletive to describe the Victorian Liberal senator Scott Ryan, who favours cheap milk.

Sources said Victorian Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella leapt to Senator Ryan's defence, telling Senator Heffernan: ''Why don't you go and pop your Alzheimer's pills.''

SMH report here

It's the way she tells it

2012-02-28T16:45:00.000+11:00

I was listening to the Prime Minister on ABC radio this morning and the reason she has such difficulty getting the public to relate to her is obvious from the interview.

She's stiff, stilted. awkward and sounds far from natural.

Even when she's ad-libbing she sounds as though she's reading from something written by a speechwriter. It's a combination of the words & phrases she uses and her delivery.

Margaret Thatcher had a similar problem and had expert coaching to try to at least soften the way she came across.

Our PM is in urgent need of something similar.

Listen to the interview here.

'Like Dubai' cliche

2012-02-28T16:21:00.001+11:00

My blogger pal Jad Aoun has been waging a campaign for a while now.

He says on his blog profile: "Welcome to the place where I track the over-used, tired, cliche to describe destruction, demise and doom: looks like Beirut".

He sends out The Looks Like Beirut Certificate to the guilty parties.

I'm thinking of copying his idea in relation to Dubai, having seen a number of 'like Dubai' references to new developments.

The latest is Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, commenting on James Packer's proposal to build a high rise hotel at Barangaroo.

She doesn't like his plan ''to plonk a clumsy Dubai-style hotel" in the development.

Have a look at jadaoun here

Clover Moore's comments here

Gillard 71, Rudd 31.

2012-02-27T17:20:00.001+11:00

In spite of all the white anting that's been going on to destabilise the government, designed to get Rudd back the job of leader, they're exactly where they were when his party fired him.

Seventy percent of them don't want him as their leader.

It's achieved exactly nothing in the personal ambition stakes but it's severely damaged their party and it's been damaging for Australia.

From the leaks before the last election all the way through to today it's been a distraction, obviously taking focus away from what governments are elected to do.

I'm not holding my breath but maybe now they can get back to doing the job we pay them, and pay them well, to do - run the country.

Watching ministers in tears as they said who they would be voting for and listening to the self indulgent speeches has been nauseating.

I'm sick and tired of self serving, self important, self indulgent politicians, blatantly interested in nothing but their own position of power, influence, privilege and money, insulting us - as Rudd did in his loser's speech - by parroting "we serve the people of Australia, not ourselves"

They say it when they resign too - 'it's been a privilege to serve the people'. Senator Mark Arbib has just done it in his resignation speech following the leadership election. That also included the tired old 'need to spend more time with my family' - as though the same doesn't apply to people working all hours but not in politics.

The old cliche about people getting the politicians they deserve is yet another cliche that can't be right. We don't deserve the rabble we currently have in Canberra, surely.

Ridiculous

2012-02-26T13:47:00.000+11:00

Gambling has never made any sense to me but the extremes it's going to leave me speechless.

This ad is running in today's papers ahead of tomorrow morning's Labor Party leadership vote:

I have to say that if people are brainless enough to risk their hard earned wages on guessing the colour of a tie or a jacket that may be worn, they deserve to lose it.

Truck deaths charges

2012-02-22T15:06:00.002+11:00

A follow-up to my post last Thursday about the triple fatality caused by a B-double truck driver.

The driver - serial offender Vincent George - has been charged with three counts of dangerous driving causing death. His licence has been suspended - yet again - and he will be in court - yet again - in May.

Police are saying that when the results of toxicology tests are known he may face further charges.

There have also been reports suggesting he's been driving beyond the legal hours.

In addition to that, they found that the speed limiter on the truck had been disabled.

Road safety authorities are reported to be carrying out an unprecedented operation on the trucking company, Lennons Transport Services, which employed George, a driver with a history of offences and licence suspensions.

They are inspecting trucks at the depot and also on the roads of several states. They're saying that the drivers will be tested for drugs and alcohol and their trucks will be searched, some by drug detecting dogs.

ABC News reports that Police Assistant Commissioner John Hartley says the operation should sent a warning to the entire trucking industry.

"We are determined to send a clear message to truck operators flouting safety regulations across the state. You will face serious criminal charges," he said.

Many of us who share the roads with these oversize and inappropriate vehicles will think the operation should have been undertaken a long, long time ago.

Speed limiter disabled? You see the number of trucks hurtling along at way over 100kph and that's no surprise. More like par for the course.

Drivers doped up so they can stay awake to drive more hours than legally permitted? Common knowledge. Years ago there was a burst of publicity about rampant pseudoephedrine use amongs truck drivers. The story soon disappeared though.

Years of indifference. Years of policians in bed with the trucking industry. Years of increasing numbers of these vehicles on our inadequate roads. Years of people being killed by them.

To say enough is enough is an understatement.There needs to be an ongoing, constant inspection of trucking companies, of all heavy goods vehicles and their drivers. Not just electronic surveillance, log books, speed limiters. As we know only too well, they can be circumvented.

It also needs physical inspections. Highway patrols, trucks pulled over for roadside drug & alcohol tests and vehicle inspections. Weighbridge stations all open 24/7, not the hit and miss system we have now.

Truck companies need to be regularly inspected without notice. So do the premises of individuals who operate as sub-contractors with their own trucks.

As for the case in question, a person convicted of killing someone by dangerous driving can be sentenced to a maximum of ten years imprisonment. If there's a conviction, let's see the full weight of the law this time.

I don't know what the law says about the driver's employer in an instance such as Vincent George/Lennons.

At the very least their decision to employ a driver with such an appalling record endangered other road users, so anyone involved in that decision should be removed from the company, and the industry, immediately.

And of course if there was any knowledge of vehicle tampering or of drivers' illegal behaviour then again the severest action possible needs to be taken.

And we need our politicians to get the trucks off our roads.

Afternoon update

It's a running story which will go on for a while, especially as the police are still looking for a couple of dozen Lennons trucks which are out on the roads.

Meanwhile we're hearing that of 23 vehicles so far inspected, ten of the company's trucks have been tampered with, including seven allegedly modified to exceed the maximum speed of 100kph. Some modifications have been reset back to where they should have been, according to AC John Hartley on the radio this afternoon.

And a driver has abandoned one of their trucks in Victoria. Police said the driver was nowhere to be seen but they found a log book in a rubbish bin.

Oh, and you'll never guess: "Lennons declined to comment."

However, the company website assures us:

A state of the art C-Track real-time GPS fleet management system has been implemented to ensure that the vehicles and drivers are continuously monitored.

Lennons Transport Services implemented a strategy that ensures that Lennons and their clients due diligence requirements are met by implementing the Trucksafe Industry Accreditation program as well as the Transitional Fatigue Program.

It is a policy of Lennons Transport Services that we will operate to ensure that the well being and safety of all our employees will never be compromised in the day-to-day operations of the business.

Picky of me I know, but I'd like to have seen them say other road users' safety would not be compromised. They only mention their employees.

Enough already

2012-02-20T14:02:00.001+11:00

For weeks now the main story in the press has been ex-Prime Minister Rudd's alleged upcoming challenge to unseat incumbent PM Julia Gillard. More than the main story, it spills over to the inside pages, the editorial and columnist pages too.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that nothing else is going on when, even with a minority government, things are in fact happening.

The traditional media rants and raves against the 'new' media of the internet, against bloggers, against Twitter. They need to take a close look at their own role in their decreasing relevance.

Gossip in place of real news, endless opinion polls about how the political parties would fare 'if an election was held now' - which it isn't, an obsession with personalities and 'celebrities', a complete lack of balance.

It's no wonder we're turning increasingly to the wierd world web for our news.

The media frenzy about the alleged challenge has reached such a pitch that the government seems to have been sucked into it. Front and back benchers and party officials are increasingly talking to the media about it rather than the real issues. It's reached the stage where it's started to dominate the agenda.

Ploughing through the pages of it you keep reading that Mr Rudd is going to mount a challenge but he isn't going to because he has nowhere near the numbers he needs to win.

The real story - and it's only worth publishing as a one-off - is that not surprisingly Mr Rudd would like his old job back, but he doesn't have the support to get it.

That's it, print it - once - and move on to more important things.

As the media isn't going to do that there's only one answer.

The PM has to call a leadership election herself. Ask her rivals to put up or shut up. Have the vote and put an end to the nonsense now.

Birds Eye View

2012-02-18T17:02:00.002+11:00

A natural thing to do, watching the cricket on a Saturday afternoon.

Fatal system failure

2012-02-16T17:29:00.008+11:00

Back to my theme of getting trucks off our roads, because there are two stories being covered in the media today.

One is about yet more deaths by truck. A young woman's car had broken down on the Hume Highway, a tow truck driver was helping her and both were killed when a B-double hit them.

Reports are saying that the B-double driver didn't see them until it was too late, tried to swerve but hit them.

Didn't see them!? Why not? Sitting way up high in the cab of a large truck?

We need some serious questioning of the driver and any witnesses to get to the bottom of that.

The other story is that Vincent George, the B-double driver who crushed a Ford Mondeo killing the three occupants, was in court for another driving offence and his appalling driving record came to light. He's been convicted of seventeen offences.

He's been caught speeding ten times...how often he's endangered other road users by speeding in his monster truck without being caught we can only guess at.

He's been found guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

He's been found guilty of negligent driving.

And he's had his licence suspended five times.

Here's what he did on the Hume Highway. Yes, he's on the wrong side of the road, which is a dual-carriageway - you can just see the carriageway he should have been on in the top right corner.

Photo Ten News/Daily Telegraph

He was obviously a danger to other road users and he shouldn't have been allowed to drive anything, let alone B-doubles.

How did the system fail so disastrously and allow him to keep on driving?

And what about his employer, Lennons transport, who must have known his driving record? Why did they employ him to drive B-doubles?

Their response to the Daily Telegraph is no surprise: "Contacted yesterday to ask why George was allowed to continue driving trucks despite his bad record, Lennons Transport did not return calls."

Three innocent people dead because a rogue driver was not taken off the road.

Not good enough, is it. It needs an investigation to find why and who, followed by changes to the system and for those responsible to be held accountable.

By the way, if you're not sure about the size and weight of a B-double, the photograph gives an indication.

Small but nasty

2012-02-14T17:30:00.000+11:00

We have plenty of wildlife around including regular visits from Rainbow Lorikeets, Kookaburras and even a pair of King Parrots.

Less welcome, much less, is the abundance of spiders.

This one I very nearly walked into a little earlier:

Big but harmless, it's a Golden Orb.

Much nastier was one of these my neighbour found wandering around the garden on Sunday, a Mouse Spider:

And even nastier, because my neighbour on the other side was bitten by one last week, is the White Tail:

Very painful I'm assured, large swellings, an urgent drive to the doctor and a few days to recover.

There seem to have been many more spiders around this year than usual, a result of our very damp summer I guess.

The bottom two photos are from the excellent website of the Australian Museum

Glass houses and stones

2012-02-10T19:30:00.001+11:00

There was a huge fuss in the middle of last year when (surprise, surprise) an Indonesian abattoir was found to be severely mistreating animals. There was understandable outrage when film of the abuses was screened. A lot of it was because Australian animals were being mistreated - as though the nationality of the animals is relevant.

Our government put a temporary ban on live animal exports to Indonesia, amid the usual hysteria about job losses and businesses going bust.

There was massive media coverage and on radio I heard more than one caller talk about the same kind of appalling treatment being meted out to animals in our own abattoirs.

Now film has emerged of exactly that, recorded in secret and screened on ABC TV's Lateline last night.

To their credit the owners of Hawkesbury Valley Meat Processors handed over the film to the authorities. It has also been handed over to police. Although, as it's described as a small family business I'm surprised that the owners appear to have been unaware of what was going on.

The abattoir has been closed and apparently the workers involved have been stood down. Let's hope that's just the start of it. The Prevention of Cruelty act allows fines of up to $110,000 or two years' imprisonment.

Something we complain regularly about in Dubai is the lack of enforcement of laws and regulations. It looks very much as though we have the same problem here.

It makes very unpleasant viewing, but the Lateline report is here.

Small runway

2012-02-09T19:06:00.000+11:00

No room for error with his landing.

Upholding the law?

2012-02-08T16:46:00.000+11:00

Disturbing information has come from the NSW Police Minister's office.

Our police force paid out more than $5 million in the last financial year to compensate people for false imprisonment, police assault and malicious prosecution.

Law & order is a joint effort between police and public. But for the public to work with police we need to be able to trust them, to have confidence in their honesty and integrity.

Behaviour like this does nothing to promote confidence and trust.

I read the report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Crystal ball malfunction

2012-02-07T16:02:00.000+11:00

No surprise to me that yet again alleged experts were wrong in their ~~guesses~~ predictions.

Just about all of them told us that the RBA would reduce rates at their meeting today. No doubt about the reduction, it was just the amount on which there was some disagreement.

The RBA left the rate unchanged.

It surprises me that the media perseveres with asking 'experts' what's going to happen in the future. Whether it's interest rates, the economy, the outcome of elections or the result of a football match, the odds are that they'll make the wrong call.

Snail mail

2012-02-06T15:53:00.000+11:00

I wonder whether this the real reason behind the phrase 'snail mail'

Snails make what must be an arduous and dangerous vertical climb of about a metre to get into my post box. Just so that they can eat the paper the postie has left.

Paper. What on earth is the attraction of paper to a snail?

Different eyes

2012-02-03T13:47:00.000+11:00

There's a Reuters story on our richest person, Gina Rinehart, which has the headline "Australia's iron lady on road to world-scale wealth - report'

The story has been picked up by the paper I read each morning when I'm in Dubai, Gulf News. But they seem to have seen it through different eyes and the way they've headlined it amused me: "Widow amasses fortune worth $18b"

Sounds very different doesn't it.

Here are the stories: Reuters and Gulf News

More weather

2012-02-02T13:36:00.002+11:00

Our very unsummerlike summer shows no sign of changing. Well, except to get worse.

The Bureau of Meteorology currently has this list of weather warnings on its website for New South Wales.

Severe Weather Warning for Upper Western, North West Slopes & Plains, Metropolitan, Northern Tablelands, Illawarra, Central West Slopes & Plains, Hunter, Mid North Coast and Central Tablelands forecast districts,

Flood Watch,

Flood Warning - Clarence River,

Flood Warning - Bellinger River,

Flood Warning - Macleay River,

Flood Warning - Hastings River,

Flood Warning - Manning River,

Flood Warning - Orara River,

Flood Warning - Gwydir River,

Flood Warning - Peel-Namoi Rivers,

Flood Warning - Castlereagh River,

Flood Warning - Culgoa-Bokhara-Narran Rivers,

Flood Warning - Warrego River,

Flood Warning - Paroo River,

Flood Warning - Barwon-Darling Rivers,

Flood Warning - Nambucca River,

NSW/ACT Severe Thunderstorm Warning 1.

Its worst in the north and north-west with about 2,500 people cut off in various areas and the SES has just ordered the evacuation of about 2,000 people in the town of Moree and its surrounds. There are reports that helicopters are having to be used to get about 600 people out.

Another Canberra farce

2012-02-01T15:19:00.001+11:00

So much of what comes out of Canberra is farcical, and the 'security scare' debacle is up there with the best.

The catalyst for it is making news because the Opposition is trying to make political capital out of the involvement of 'the PM's Office'. It's another one of those ridiculous instances of an inanimate object being blamed for an action.

It's down to individual people, not places. A PR from the PM's office tipped off a contact who tipped off protesters that Opposition leader Tony Abbott had made some remarks about them. And that he was nearby (with the PM).

A staffer hoping to gain brownie points and a contact with her own agenda. Not 'the PM's office'.

Naturally, in the telling the tale changed to something the protesters wouldn't like, so off they went to shout at TA.

And that's when it turned into a Monty Python sketch.

The pollies were in a glass fronted restaurant and the protesters started banging on the windows.

The security detail interpreted it as a physical threat to the PM and TA and decided they had to run for it.

Well, TA should run for it, the PM needed for some reason to be manhandled by her guards...

Photo. AAP

Photo. Alex Ellinghausen

TA, white shirt blue tie, not being manhandled by the guards. The PM, on the other hand, looks as though she's being wrestled to the ground by a member of her Close Personal Protection team.

I wasn't there so I can't comment on the level of danger or whether the mad dash for the car was necessary. But the way it was carried out does raise questions.

Was there no other way out of the restaurant, the only option being to charge through the crowd?

Was it necessary to drag the PM along in such an undignified way?

Wouldn't they have moved quicker had she been allowed to run too?

Why are the uniformed police pushing & shoving at the rear, shouldn't they have been to front and sides?

Was there no assessment of possible protests? It was Australia Day (Invasion Day to aboriginals) and it was only metres from the so-called tent embassy protest.

In the end it looked like a panic-stricken stuff up.

Wierd weather

2012-01-31T16:24:00.000+11:00

Yesterday was warm at 32C and uncomfortably humid - more or less what it should be at this time of year, February being our most humid month.

But the weather report said it was only the third day this so-called summer that had gone above thirty celcius, and that really is very unusual.

I've just looked at the seven day forecast which for tomorrow says heavy rain, winds at over 30kph and temperature max of 20C.

Humidity, I hate it, for the next week will be between 76% and 84%.

It's all down to El Nino's opposite, La Nina, apparently.

Huge rainfall further north with flooding and thousands evacuated. Our friends in Bellingen are cut off again, the roads in and out are flooded and the bridge between the two parts of the town is also under water.

More truck fatalities

2012-01-24T17:59:00.002+11:00

After the B-double truck smashed through houses on the Pacific Highway, I posted my firm belief that these huge freight trucks must be phased off our roads.

Today three more people have been killed in a collision with another B-double truck.

"A B-double truck collided with a car on the Hume Highway, near Menangle, about 11.25am (AEDT) on Tuesday, crushing the vehicle and killing its three occupants.

The accident happened on the Menangle Bridge over the Nepean River, with the B-double's fuel tank rupturing and spewing the fuel into the water below.

Initial reports suggest the truck was travelling south when it crashed into a guard rail on the highway and careered onto the other side of the road.

The three occupants of the car, whose ages and sex are not yet known, died at the scene after the truck drove over the top of them, flattening their vehicle like a pancake."

It happened just a few hours after another B-double and a truck (some reports say two B-doubles) had a crash on the Newell Highway near Dubbo. One truck exploded into flames, incinerating the driver.

But like so much else that urgently needs action, nothing will be done. Lots of hand-wringing from politicians but they're hand-in-glove with vested interests. The rule is money before all else.

The trucks will continue to blight our roads and innocent people will continue to be killed.

The story and photo are at Nine News

Animal cruelty going unchecked.

2012-01-22T18:51:00.000+11:00

The European Union has more legislation than you can poke a stick at. It seems to cover every aspect of daily life, even to the most pedantic detail.

One of the areas subject to a huge amount of detailed legislation is animal welfare.

Yet Spain is allowed to continue with its traditional barbaric treatment of bulls.

Apart from the inhumane slaughter of the animals in bullfights there's another inexcusable tradition that's long overdue for banning, reported today by AP. It's news because a man was fatally gored by a terrified animal during a 'flaming bull' festival.

"Many towns in east and northeastern Spain celebrate feasts with "toros embolados," or "flaming bulls," which feature the animals racing around, shaking their heads as a reaction to flames or fireworks attached onto or close to their horns."

Just look at this:

A reveller releases a bull with flaming horns during a Spanish festival. Photo: AP

I find it hard to believe that a modern, advance and civilised country hasn't banned such barbaric treatment of animals. And that the EU allows one of its members to continue with this mistreatment.

I read it in the Sydney Morning Herald. You can read the full report here.

Scammers still using snail mail

2012-01-21T18:19:00.003+11:00

Back in December 2010 I posted on my Dubai blog about a snail mail approach I'd received.

To save paraphrasing it, here it is with changes marked to reflect the new offer that was in my snail mail box yesterday.

E-mail is the way they arrive.

Offers to make me a squillionaire. They always come by e-mail.

I get plenty of them. I bet you do too.

Millions of dollars are sitting in a bank account and in return for helping liberate them you get to keep a large amount.

Today I had a very different and interesting approach.

By snail mail. Personalised.

A stamped envelope containing a typed letter on headed notepaper (remember them?) arrived in my mail box.

It's from a firm of lawyers in Madrid with an address, telephone number, fax number and two e-mail addresses.

The stamp ~~says it's from Portugal (is that where Madrid is now?) and it~~ cost 80 euro cents.

The writer identifies himself as a barrister, personal attorney to a deceased ~~gentleman~~ lady with the same surname as me.

The bank of the late ~~gentleman~~ lady has issued a notice to the barrister to contact next of kin, otherwise the the account will be declared unserviceable and the money diverted to the bank treasury.

That would be a shame because the sum involved is "~~Seven~~ Twelve Million Five Hundred Thousand ~~Euros Only~~ United States Dollars"

Barrister ~~Santino~~ Antonio Barbero Diaz tells me that "so far all my efforts to get hold of someone related to my client has proved abortive."

His suggestion is that he presents me as the next of kin,'"...since you have the same last name...", so that the proceeds can be paid to my account. He will of course provide the bank with "all the legal documents to back up your claim as my client's Next of Kin..."

The deal?

A nice touch - ~~10%~~ 20% of the money is to be shared"amongst the charity Organisations". The remaining ~~90%~~ 80% is divided equally between myself and barrister ~~Santino~~ Diaz.

Another nice touch - ïf this business proposal offends your moral ethics, do accept my sincere apology."

It's a new one on me. A correctly addressed snail mail letter, personalised by surname, the cost of a stamp, the cost of the paper and envelope...

2.1 metres...plus a bit

2012-01-16T13:16:00.001+11:00

We were diverted around this an hour ago.

Signs you can't miss on both sides of the bridge telling drivers that clearance is 2.1 metres.

You'd think an allegedly professional driver would know the height of his vehicle, but obviously not.

Cricket trivia

2012-01-15T13:57:00.000+11:00

We're about to trounce the Indians in the Test match over in WA...again.

With their formidable batting line-up it was predicted to be a close and exciting series but the Indians have badly underperformed, unfortunately. We like to see our team win but we also like a real battle. So far it's been far from that.

What I find fascinating with the Australian team is that although we often make high scores, most of the batsmen fail so often. The high scores we rack up are all-too-often down to one or two batsmen with high individual scores.

Our first innings over at the WACA is a good example.

Total was 369...but 254 of the runs were from two batsmen. The next five batsmen averaged only 10 runs each. (The four bowlers got sixty runs between them at an average of 15 each).

In the amazing earlier match at the SCG the first three batsmen managed a miserable total of 24 runs, an average of 8 each. The huge final score was due to the next three batsmen putting on over 600 runs.

In the last series, against South Africa, it was the same story. First Test, first innings total was 284 with one batsman getting 151 of them. The other six batsmen managed 70 at an average of 12 each.

In the second innings no-one made a score and the seven batsmen ashamed themselves with a total of 15 runs. (The four bowlers made 32).

The first innings of the second Test was back to relying on one or two batsmen to get a score. Two batsmen made 166 between them, the other five only added 59, average 12 each.

The second innings was unusual in that four batsmen made scores, with the other three failing. Four made 221 but the other three only contributed 13 runs.

I know, I should have better things to do. I'm not obsessing about it, it's just something that I've noticed over the past few years.

A fire reminder

2012-01-12T17:16:00.000+11:00

It's been easy in this cold wet summer to forget that we're in the bushfire season. But it doesn't take much for fires to appear.

We've had a couple of warm sunny days, then yesterday we had strong NE winds all day. Perfect fire weather and we've had a couple.

One of them was here on the Central Coast where about 100 hectares are reported to have burnt. The fire started in grassland but the wind took it across a road and away it went.

It took many hours but eventually firefighters supported by a water-dropping helicopter managed to control it.

No reports of property damage or injuries to people, fortunately.

Buy my dud product.

2012-01-10T20:10:00.000+11:00

Businesses are told repeatedly that to be successful they have to embrace 'social media'. It's the way they can communicate with, have a conversation with, their customers. It's the way of the future (sorry, "going forward"). Ignore it and you're finished, they're told.

What they're not told and all too many, amazingly, don't realise is that the first, most vital step is to get the bloody product right in the first place.

There is no point marketing a dud product. And that includes marketing in the virtual world.

Another example hit me in the face the other day. I called into a coffee shop which had posters about the place saying 'follow us on Twitter' and 'like us on Facebook' and 'visit our website at www. etc'.

In the non-virtual world - that is, in the actual real-world coffee shop - the staff were huddled together in the kitchen area, studiously ignoring the few customers.

Used crockery cluttered a few tables. They were ignoring that too. Service, and I use the word very loosely, was terrible.

Interaction between staff and customers was near to zero. There was no greeting, no welcome. Attracting their attention to spend money buying their products wasn't easy.

Yet there they were all over the internet, presumably thinking that it was the answer to increasing their miserable trade.

And of course they'll be joining the ranks of retail whingers blaming us for not spending, for buying online. They'll blame the weather. They'll blame the government, wage costs, taxes. They'll blame anything and everything except their own incompetence and mismanagement.

More truck deaths

2012-01-08T21:19:00.002+11:00

Yet another fatal crash involving a truck. This one even worse than usual.

Once again it was on the Pacific Highway. A B-double truck and a ute hit each other and the truck slammed into two houses.

Reports say it was caused by the ute driver being on the wrong side of the road. No information as yet whether speed, driver fatigue or anything else was a contributing factor.

A young boy, asleep in his bed, was killed outright as was the ute driver and eight are injured, some critically according to reports.

While it may well have been the ute driver's fault, the damage was caused by the truck and it reinforces the fact that these huge, heavy, unwieldy trucks have to be phased put. We have to get them off our roads.

The only people who don't want to get them off the road seem to be the trucking lobby and our politicians. The rest of us understand that freight should be carried by rail.

As usual the road is blamed, as is the lack of a speed camera. It was on a non-divided stretch of the highway. And a speed camera there had beend eactivated some time previously as it was deemed to be simply there to generate income.

Of course the roads are a contributing factor, they're not designed to take the huge trucks that use them. We simply don't have the roads to carry huge, wide, long, heavy trucks.

But we can't upgrade every road in the country into a dual carriageway with wide lanes to accommodate them.

It's not just on unimproved country stretches of the Pacific Highway that huge trucks are inappropriate. Other road users have to contend with them even into Sydney on the incredibly narrow and busy lanes of the Pacific Highway through the northern suburbs. Even good truck drivers can't keep the bloody things in one lane and it's even worse on the corners and sharp bends.

And that's the good drivers.

Then there are the cowboys with their weaving about, speeding, lane changing, tailgating, to make it all much worse.

The answer is to get the freight onto rail and take the trucks off the roads. And only the government can do that

It's the product, stupid.

2012-01-07T18:12:00.000+11:00

After fifteen years as Australia's best selling new car, the Holden Commodore (rebadged as Chevrolet Lumina in the Gulf) has been knocked off its perch by Mazda3.

The reports are all about the trend to smaller cars being the reason. None of them mention what I'm convinced is a major factor.

The product has steadily got worse over the last few years.

I've had a number of Commodores, the last one before we moved back to Dubai was a VS. A great car, 3.8 V6 but fuel efficient, excellent handling, roomy but sporty (0 to 100kph in 7.2 seconds).

I sold it to a friend when we moved and it's still performing as well as ever.

When we decided to move back I made the mistake of ordering the new Commodore Series II SV6 (the same sporty model as the last one) so that it was ready for me when we arrived.

I should have been less impatient and arranged a test drive. Had I done that I wouldn't have bought one.

The only improvement is the interior, which to be fair is very good.

As for the rest, it's the opposite of an improved model.

There's a new 3.6 V6 engine with claimed improved fuel consumption. In reality it's far worse than the old Commodore.

Response to stamping on the accelerator is far from instant. There's a very noticeable delay in the command being answered.

It's impossible to keep the car at a constant speed, you're on and off the accelerator trying to adjust it all the time, and the delay in response makes it even more frustrating.

The wing mirrors are as good as useless. Designed for look rather than functionality - surely the reason you have them - they're far too narrow. They can be positioned to either show vehicles behind but no road or road but no rear vision.

You need them positioned to show vehicles approaching or overtaking, so you can't use them for parking unless you fiddle around changing them all the time, which is impractical.

The rear window is at an angle that distorts the rear view, so reversing is difficult. The wing mirrors give you no help.

Visibility is very bad, with overly thick pillars on all four corners and between front and rear windows.

Then there's the unnecessary use of digital technology when it's not as useful or user friendly as the old mechanical system it replaces.

To see your mileage you can no longer glance at the mileometer reading. You have to click through a menu using the steering wheel-mounted controls and look at it on the little screen. Your eyes are off the road all the time you're scrolling through the menu trying to find the right information.

Companies here are endlessly complaining about business being bad. It's all the fault of the internet, of our changing spending habits, of the strong Aussie dollar, of government actions, of concerns about the Euro and the US economy.

Anything but their own actions, in fact.

The Commodore is a good example of a vital underlying problem that they all suffer from. But don't see, or won't admit.

They haven't got the bloody product right.

The best use of the money?

2012-01-03T15:37:00.000+11:00

It's been announced that Sydney Cricket Ground is to be upgraded, and I don't have a problem with that.

What I have a problem with is the $130 million state and federal governments are contributing. Or more accurately, we taxpayers are contributing.

When so much of our infrastructure and vital services are in desperate need of improvement, not just in Sydney but throughout the rest of the state, surely the SCG shouldn't be top priority for our money.

It's the simple things...

2011-12-26T19:03:00.000+11:00

I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into a Myers department store earlier today.

Boxing Day. My guess is that it's the busiest day of the year for retailers. It seemed it anyway.

Hordes of people pushing and shoving. Orderly but endless queues for the fitting rooms. Loooong queues at pay stations.

Killing time, I wandered off to look at stuff for men. I thought I might compare prices with Duty Free and if they were anywhere near I was prepared to spend some money.

No prices marked on the stuff. Just a barcode.

So they expect me to go in search of a customer service executive, a marketing consultant, or whatever they're called these days, which are harder to find than a Tasmanian Tiger.

In the unlikely event that I find one, I would then have to traipse after her so that she can check the price of the item.

Then I have to take it back where I found it if I think it's not value for money.

Repeat for every item I'm interested in.

No thanks.

They can't be bothered to do something as simple as put a price on the stuff they want us to buy, I can't be bothered to give them my money.

Retailers have been whingeing all year that we're not spending enough with them, yet they do so little to make it easy for us to shop with them. And it's the easy stuff they get so wrong so consistently.

Putting a bloody price on your stock is hardly rocket science is it. It would even give your staff, most of whom stand around bored out of their minds for most of the time most of the year, something to do.

Airport rip-off

2011-12-22T17:31:00.000+11:00

The flight I was meeting this morning arrived late, so I was stuck at Sydney Kingsford Smith for something like two and a half hours.

Naturally the coffee and snacks are overpriced, at a good 50% more than the same thing outside the airport.

But the worst rip-off has to be the parking. Less than three hours and I was stung for $52.

Brunei pics

2011-12-14T16:30:00.000+11:00

The two weeks in Brunei were in the country's second largest city, Kuala Belait. Second largest but it's very small - the town centre is three streets covering an area of about 100 metres X 250 metres.

There's a very nice little park on the riverfront next to the hotel we stayed in and that's where I took this photo. They obviously take littering very seriously:

This sign in the main street intrigued me, especially the second item that can be treated:

Small country town it may be but multi-tasking has reached Kuala Belait in a big way:

Brunei is very close to the equator so it gets rain. Lots of it. So they have big open drains to run the water off:

You need to watch where you're walking so you don't fall in...but that's only half the problem;

Happening Dubai

2011-12-05T19:59:00.003+11:00

We've been back in Dubai for a week after our trip to Brunei and it's a good time to be here.

Daytime temperature is in the high twenties celcius with very low humidity and, for Dubai, the sky is quite clear.

There's plenty going on too.

Sporting-wise, the Third Dubai International Parachuting Championship is happening here in Dubai Marina. The huge international Dubai Rugby Sevens have just finished...with a win for England. And next weekend is golf's Dubai World Championship.

Global Village is open for business, with pavilions from many countries forming what's in reality a huge souk (market) with some real bargains.

And the Dubai International Film Festival, with Tom Cruise here for the world premier of his latest Mission Impossible movie, which was partly shot around, and on, Burj Khalifa.

December 2 was the 40th anniversary of the formation of the country. It's the longest lasting union in the Arab world which gets stronger each year and there were major celebrations all over the country.

Flight's booked for Sydney next week...and in spite of it being summer there now the weather looks less than inviting. The Sydney Morning Herald is telling me cloudy, showers, maximum 20C. And the coldest first week of summer for more than four decades.

Talking of flights, there's a story in the paper here this morning about Emirates, my airline of choice.

The traditional carriers all complain about the unfair advantage Emirates (and Etihad & Qatar) have in being government owned and demand their governments' protection.

But as I've said before, that's not the real reason they're doing so well. It's mainly about product and service.

A couple of examples.

Reading about American Airline's Chapter Eleven application we're reminded that many US (and other) airlines charge for checked baggage. Others with a free allowance give 20kg for economy pasengers. Emirates gives 30kg free.

Now Emirates are offering a baggage delivery service here in the UAE. Travellers coming through Terminal 3, the dedicated Emirates terminal at Dubai International, can arrange to have their baggage collected and delivered to them. Up to four bags will cost AED200 (US$54) delivered to Dubai or neighbouring emirates, and AED250 to the further emirates. Extra bags are AED10 (US$2.72) each.

It's the sort of thing the other airlines omit to say when complaining about Emirates taking their business. And it's service they don't match. Their default strategy in hard times is to cut services, give their passengers less and charge them more.

It rarely works, in any business.

Back in Dubai

2011-11-28T01:40:00.001+11:00

We arrived back in Dubai after two weeks in Brunei at about 1.30 this morning on an overnight flight with Royal Brunei and I've been struggling a bit all day.

I have trouble sleeping on aircraft anyway but the bumpy ride made it even harder. Just about every time I dozed off we hit some potholes which made it bumpy enough to wake me. The announcements about getting back to your seats, fastening seatbelts, lights coming back on, seatbelt sign bleeping made sure I was awake anyway.

Something like ten aircraft all arrived at Dubai within about half an hour and that's a lotta people to process. Since we cancelled our residency we don't have the E-Gate card - an electronic way to pass Immigration in about 30 seconds - so we had to join the queues.

Twenty desks but only five operating. Immigration staff like they are all over the world, not wanting to be there, doing very little to keep things moving quickly, being grumpy at best, even surly.

Fifty minutes it took to get through. Just what you need after an eight hour overnight sleepless bumpy flight.

At least it meant not having to wait for the luggage to come up. In fact the next flight's load was going round and round and the previous flight's, ours, had been offloaded to the side of the belt. Ours bags were amongst the pile, so that was the easy part for once. With the speed of the E-Gate card it usually meant a thirty minute wait for our bags to appear.

The roads were't too busy so the taxi ride from airport to apartment at Dubai Marina was an easy one.

We got some shuteye, made it to coffee at Dome (an Aussie franchise) at Dubai Marina by about ten. Then we had lunch at one of our favourite Arabic restaurants, Al Halab at Mall of the Emirates. Fresh lemon & mint juice, hommos, tabouli, shish tawook, freshly baked Arabic bread.

I felt better after that.

G'day from Brunei

2011-11-23T14:04:00.000+11:00

Been here a week, flying back to Dubai on Saturday evening, then back to Terrigal mid-December.

The week here so far has been sunny, hot and humid. Tropical downpours but they've been during the night. The one exception was Saturday when we had a trip planned into the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan.

The driver picked us up after lunch for the 1.5 hour drive and it rained all the way. That limited our sightseeing, but there's very little to see anyway.

We had a look around the two major tourist attractions, the Royal Regalia Exhibition and the Brunei Museum.

I was completely underwhelmed.

Then a visit to one of the two major mosques. Beautiful, but I've seen so many beautiful mosques that it was a bit ho-hum I'm afraid.

So it was a drive back in the rain for another hour and a half plus. Very little to make nearly four hours in the car worthwhile.

Sunday was planned to be a full day sightseeing, but having established there are virtually no sights to see we cancelled it.

A tourist destination it ain't. It's a business destination, which is the reason we're here of course.

I have plenty of photographs but I forgot to pack some cables and I can't upload them to my computer. I'll do that when we're back in Dubai and post them then.

Away for a month

2011-11-11T17:22:00.000+11:00

I saw my visitors off on Wednesday and now I'm off tomorrow for a month.

Mrs Seabee has a business trip to Brunei and I'm tagging along for the ride, then we're going on to Dubai.

I've never been to Brunei so that'll be interesting - I'll probably post the occasional observation here and some photos when I'm back in Terrigal mid-December.

I'll leave you with a photo of some of my feathered friends who came earlier to see me off:

Holiday snaps

2011-11-07T20:40:00.000+11:00

I took my UK visitors down to Brooklyn today, a place I haven't visited since we moved up to the Central Coast about fourteen years ago. We used to drive up there for the day from Sydney before that and I'd almost forgotten what a pleasant place it is.

I only took a couple of photos but I thought I'd share them:

Brooklyn's just off the F3 not far north from the Wahroonga interchange, has a marina, a fisherman's co-operative, a pub and a few shops, a handful of restaurants including a couple of seafood restaurants that look good (and I'll try one day soon for lunch I think).

Time for a whinge

2011-11-01T12:12:00.000+11:00

I'm really never at my best in the mornings, especially before I've had my coffee.

And the standard of service - total lack of service is more accurate - in our coffee shops here in Terrigal makes it even harder for me to plunge into the day.

My regular place, Vanilla on Church, is closed on Tuesdays so I have to go elsewhere.

The choice is limited for me because all but two of the many cafes insist on serving trendy boutique designer coffee. And most of it is awful stuff. (If I drank cappuccino or latte it might be OK but I don't, I drink long black without sugar so there's nothing to disguise the taste).

I tried the first one this morning, sat for ten minutes while the ~~waitresses~~ waitpersons gathered around the till and ignored the customers. I gave up waving my arms about and left after five minutes.

Tried the other one and the waitpersons weren't gathered in a flock but they still ignored the customers.

I'm convinced there's a waitperson college where they're taught the art of looking around the cafe/restaurant without ever making eye contact with customers or looking at the tables.

Where they're taught that after delivering something to a table they must return to the counter empty handed, walking past cluttered tables but not picking up a cup or a plate.

I sat for nearly ten minutes, waving my arms about, until a customer service executive wandered over to ask whether I'd been served yet.

If I hadn't been suffering caffeine deprivation I'd have left after five minutes.

It makes me wonder whether it's the service they expect and accept themselves when they go out for a coffee or a meal.

Heading north

2011-10-20T18:12:00.000+11:00

I'm driving up to Queensland tomorrow.

The plan is to spend a couple of days with my nephew and his family, who live inland from Noosa, and then drive back with two visitors from the UK. They're flying home out of Sydney on November 9 so I have a couple of weeks to show them a few places.

We'll take it easy on the drive south and I'll probably take them into places like the Gold Coast, Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay, Port Macquarie and I thought maybe Hawks Nest/Teagardens too. We'll just find a motel or hotel when we're ready to stop.

We have friends up in Bellingen, near Coffs, so I'll give them a call when we're in that area and if they're home we'll stop by for an hour or so.

A couple of days in Sydney is part of the plan plus obviously the attractions here on the Central Coast.

It'll be at least a week before I'm back on the computer I should think.

Laughing bird

2011-10-19T18:25:00.000+11:00

Before we moved to Dubai I attracted kookaburras as regular visitors by giving them a couple of bits of free food each day...not enough to make them dependent on the handouts, I hasten to add.

I've picked up where I left off and I'm happy that a parent and a young kookaburra have started visiting every so often. Here's one of them this morning:

The latest Qantas fiasco

2011-10-10T20:10:00.000+11:00

I've been listening on the radio to interviews with representatives of Qantas and the unions.

The latest selfish nonsense is that the planned strike has been called off at the last minute, after flights were cancelled or rescheduled, stuffing the plans of nearly fifty thousand travellers.

The PR machines for both sides are at full rev and both sides are taking out large advertisements blaming the other for the problems.

It's been a downward spiral for a long time for Qantas and I can't see it getting better any time soon.

It's not just the strike problems but the ongoing bad press of all too frequent accidents and incidents - exploding oxygen bottles, the near fatal A380 engine blowout, the 747 from Dallas Fort Worth having to divert to Numea because fuel was low.

If either side really cared about the public whose support they're trying to attract they'd do what the public wants. Stop the stupidity, stop damaging one of our major brands, stop inconveniencing travellers and get it sorted out.

The talk is all about an Aussie icon, yet it's a privatised company beholden to its shareholders. If we wanted to keep it as Australia's airline we should have kept it in public ownership - albiet run on a strictly commercial basis.

For years, union restrictions and high salaries relative to competitors have been a major problem.

But also for years, management has been a major problem too. Refusing to fly to places they should be flying to. Taking sections of the operation offshore. Bad aircraft purchasing decisions. Blaming competitors for the problems the company brought on itself.

I was never impressed with Geoff Dixon, the previous CEO, in my opinion far too political, far too aggressive and an average performer at best. His successor Alan Joyce is if anything even more aggressive.

High salaries and benefits are not just the province of the union side by the way. Reflecting the situation that's causing so much fury around the world, Qantas executives and directors are paying themselves vast sums from a company which, according to their own statements, is not doing well.

Have a look at the Crikey link at the end of this post, reporting Geoff Dixon being the highest paid airline executive in the world. I've also given a link to a media report of Alan Joyce's five million dollar plus annual salary

From what both people said on radio it's a standoff. They both insist they're right and neither side seems prepared to sit down and talk sensibly.

The radio report talked about the international arm of Qantas being under pressure from Middle East airlines, because they're government owned, have tax and salary advantages not enjoyed by Qantas.

That public/private ownership thing again. If it's an advantage for Middle East airlines to be government owned, why does the same not apply to Qantas?

That's only part of the picture though.

The simple reality is that airlines like Emirates are so much better than Qantas.

I use Emirates whenever I can. New aircraft, great inflight service. The best inflight entertainment system of all, important on long-haul flights. Baggage allowance for economy class is thirty kilos.

Qantas gives us an old fleet, sloppy to bad inflight sevice, poor entertainment, twenty kilos for baggage.

And they don't/won't fly to the Middle East's most popular destination, Dubai.

Crikey's report on Geoff Dixon's millions.

Current executive salaries

Doing the obvious at last.

2011-10-04T16:11:00.000+11:00

Something I've been going on about for years is harvesting and recycling water instead of pumping it out to sea.

That's how we waste trillions of litres of water, even though we're the driest inhabited continent, we have regular and long droughts and we run our rivers dry through crop irrigation.

Now, at last, there seems to be a small step in the right direction.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald: "The City of Sydney council is finalising plans for a recycled water network to be established throughout much of the Sydney."

It's been a long time coming.

The vast majority of the water we use is not for drinking but for commercial uses. Council's chief development officer for energy and climate change, Allan Jones, says that no more than 20% of the city's water needs to be of drinkable quality.

The SMH report is here

Typical long weekend

2011-10-02T18:18:00.001+11:00

It's a long weekend so naturally it's wet, cold and windy.

We went into summertime this morning too, the clocks went forward an hour and the temperature managed to get to a high - if that's the right word - of 16C.

With the wind and rain it felt a lot less and the town is full of miserable looking tourists trudging around wondering why they didn't stay in bed all day.

The sky is falling!! Again.

2011-09-27T16:47:00.000+10:00

More negativity and another repeat scare campaign from vested interests, this time AFL and rugby clubs combining their efforts and money to oppose the government's proposed attempt to help problem gamblers.

The idea, in simple terms, is to have gamblers using high-cost poker machines commit to a limit on their bet. That is, you think you can afford to lose $100, you set that as your limit. When you've lost it, as you will, the bar comes down.

The clubs - which in reality are as much casinos as football clubs - are using the same old tired untrue scare claims as others before them. It'll be the end of the clubs, they'll have to stop their sponsorship of Good Things, there will be massive job losses.

These are clubs with billion dollar TV deals and more sponsorship than you can poke a stick at. Yet a curb on people giving them even more money, which they can often ill afford, by pumping it into the clubs' pokies will mean the end of the world as we know it.

Of course, many people will fall for the nonsense, just as they do with so much crap from politicians, business leaders and others. I'm encouraged though by the thrust of most of the comments left on media reports about the campaign, which demonstrate that there are people who see it for what it is.

Read the Herald's report here.

Unnecessary gloom

2011-09-25T17:02:00.000+10:00

We have very low unemployment, one of the strongest economies in the developed world, companies making good profits, a resources boom, a high standard of living and high quality of life. Yet there's nothing in the air but doom and gloom.

Retail billionaire Gerry Harvey commented on the paradox recently in his usual blunt style when he said "Australians should be as happy as pigs in shit".

The relentless negativity is being driven from the top, from our elected leaders, leaders of business and the media. Their focus is nothing but their own interest and to hell with what's good for the country.

The federal opposition's deliberate strategy is negativity. Keep shouting that everything the government does is wrong, play the fear card, drum up support for that view and with a minority government the chances of getting into power are improved.

Big business like the miners and banks, in spite of making record profits bigger than many countries' GDP, are running negative fear campaigns against any new regulation or tax.

The media concentrates on negativity, highlighting all the negative spin the opposition and companies are pushing and publishing whatever bad news they can find from home and abroad.

Example, we had a week of reports that a vast convoy of trucks, cars and caravans several kilometres long was massing to descend on Canberra from all over Australia. The so called Convoy Of No Confidence in the government was to protest against the proposed carbon tax, the mining super profits tax, the short-lived ban on live animal exports to Indonesia.

Not by coincidence, those are the things the vested interest cabal has been concentrating on.

The convoy would block all roads around the capital and bring the entire city to a halt.

It was classic alarmist stuff and in reality there were no problems. The start of the rally was delayed because so few had bothered to turn up. Naturally the opposition addressed them to whip up more fear amongst the few hundred protestors and the ABC reported the leader of the opposition even took the opportunity to drive the lead truck into town.

For more negativity the media runs opinion polls every few days on the performance of the government, the popularity of the PM, people's preferred leader of the ruling party. They endlessly fuel speculation about a leadership challenge, undermining the PM's authority and standing.

White anting is the phrase for it.

The relentless negativity, whingeing and predictions of doom eventually get through to people and take us on a downward spiral to gloom and depression.

But as long as our leaders think of nothing but themselves and their own interests it won't change. And it won't change because they're not about to put the interests of the country first.

Perfect day

2011-09-23T19:58:00.001+10:00

Sunshine from a blue cloudless sky, temperature at 30C with a gentle breeze, crystal clear air.

Perfect.

Then about 5pm a southerly came through and the temperature dropped ten degrees in less than an hour.

The weekend is forecast for a maximum of 20C with some showers.

Today I did a lot of work outside but it's shaping up for a weekend doing stuff inside the house.

There's plenty to be done inside and out so I just go with the flow of the weather.

Bushfires have started

2011-09-20T15:50:00.001+10:00

After the big wet we've had there's a worrying amount of fuel for bush and grass fires, so all it needed was a spell of warm dry weather.

Leura fire. Photo. Nick Moir, Sydney Morning Herald

The big problem fire seems to be at Leura in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney which the Rural Fire Service has listed as Out of Control.

They have thirty fire trucks and three helicopters trying to protect property but they're having to work in the thing the fire fighters hate most, swirling strong winds. The weather bureau has issued severe wind weather warnings for several areas and wind is around 50kph with gusts of over 100kph.

The gum trees around my house are bending and whipping about in the gusts and there's a very loud noise from the wind blasting through the trees.

The RFS website currently has 80 incidents listed. In addition to Leura there are three others with an alert level of Watch & Act and status of Out of Control.

The advice for that level is: When you hear a Bushfire Watch and Act Message, it means a fire has started and conditions are changing. The fire danger rating will probably be very high to severe. Your life may be under threat and you need to act now to protect your family and your neighbours.

The warm weather is forecast to last all week and the winds will be with us through tomorrow too.

RFS website.

We lose again

2011-09-17T17:58:00.004+10:00

How we're treated with contempt by our politicians was revealed yet again in an article in the Herald. The subject was water.

I've posted before about the appalling water mismanagement we get from our politicians. When it rains most of the water we collect is simply funneled out to sea, and we don't recycle water. Instead we get energy inefficient desalination plants.

But Heath Aston's article throws light on a much more sinister game involving the $1.5 billion sale of the Kurnell desal plant by our state government.

"Fifteen months ago workers at a dam 200 kilometres south of Sydney switched off a set of high-pressure pumps that have played a critical role in safeguarding Sydney's precarious water supply.

Transfers from Tallowa Dam, on the upper Shoalhaven River, had added more than a trillion litres to Warragamba Dam over the past decade before the taps were turned off.

The absence of that extra water, which fell from 152 billion litres in 2008 to zero this year, has been crucial to Warragamba remaining below 80 per cent full - the trigger point at which the Kurnell desalination plant must be shut down."

While water is being pumped out to sea the desal plant is running, using huge amounts of energy, and we have to pay extra for the desalinated stuff. All to keep Warragamba dam at less than 80% so that the state government can collect a billion and a half for the sale of the plant.

And you can bet there'll be clauses in the sale contract that give the buyers, probably foreign investors by the way, guaranteed income whether the plant runs or not. Just in case Warragamba by accident fills to over 80%.

The government gets a boost to the budget, the buyers will get a guaranteed income. The only losers will be us. Stuffed again by our elected representatives.

The full story is here.

Moonlight

2011-09-13T22:43:00.000+10:00

There was a big moon and a silver sea this evening:

Wow

2011-09-09T18:01:00.002+10:00

I just left the computer and walked into the lounge to be greeted by this:

It was the most vivid rainbow I think I've ever seen, the colours very clearly defined.

I ran for the little digital camera because I thought I'd share it with you.

The wonders of modern technology; I saw it literally no more than two or three minutes ago and here it is on the wierd world web already.

Help with the gardening

2011-09-05T18:31:00.001+10:00

With all the rain there was over the past few months our garden when we arrived back was a lush green. Unfortunately most of it was weeds:

There was, still is, a lot to do in the house so I hadn't got around to the garden. But a volunteer came in and he's done a great job clearing the weeds:

He works hard and long every day, digging out the weeds and taking them away.

Here he is:

Hes building a nest, or mound, and'as brush turkeys build HUGE mounds he needs all the greenery he can get.

Getting there

2011-08-28T17:36:00.000+10:00

If you've been though a house move you'll know the chaos you have to put up with for a good few days.

Furniture is, generally, in the right rooms but not where you finally want it.

We have polished timber floors in most rooms and just dragging furniture around isn't good, it damages the floors. So each piece needs to be lifted and moved carefully. I can tell you the muscles feel it fairly quickly...

You have to sort out the artwork to decide which pictures will hang where. Then do all the measuring to get the picture hooks in the right place...after dashing off to the hardware store to get the hooks.

The kitchen is probably the worst. Piles of crockery, glasses, kitchen gadgets all needing to be put somewhere. And usually the first place isn't right when you start to use them, so you move it all around to different drawers and cupboards.

Clothing is much the same. The first priority is to unpack it and hang it in wardrobes or put it in drawers. But when you start to use it you realise it's all over the place and getting dressed means walking about looking for the next item.

So that gets moved too, at least once.

And setting up the electrical equipment. If you move from overseas as we have the plugs have pins that don't fit the sockets so they all have to be replaced.

Wire up speakers, amps, CD players, radios...then you find out that some were damaged in the move. Or in our case, maybe in the crash into our neighbour's house.

But we're getting there.

Most of the heavy lifting is done and most rooms are sort-of organised. At least with the furniture in place and most of the artwork hanging in place...with gaps where the damaged ones will hang when they're repaired with new frames and glass.

From here it's mainly tidying up. Moving stuff to more convenient cupboards, getting all the books and music sorted out on the right shelves or in the right cupboards.

We had plumbers in last week for half a day upgrading the taps and fittings in two bathrooms and next week we need to organise an electrician to replace seven or eight old light fittings with new ones.

Then I'll have to get out into the garden to see what needs doing there.

Never a dull moment.

Third time lucky

2011-08-25T17:58:00.001+10:00

At the third time of trying the shipper finally delivered our belongings. A week late, drama along the way but it's here.

The RTA kept the container for nearly a week doing whatever tests they needed to do in relation to the crash into our neighbour's house.

I would have thought all they needed it for would have been to check that it was secured properly (it was) and that the weight was OK for the truck (it was).

Why that took a week is anyone's guess.

We found surprisingly little damage, considering. But naturally the stuff that was damaged was stuff I'd have put on the 'please take special care of this item' list.

A beautiful art deco floor lamp (I'm a collector of art deco) shattered. A unique art deco flower vase badly damaged.

A prized hand carved very large Thai wooden horse now only has one ear.

The fax machine is now in two parts, two paintings have smashed frames and glass, but the paintings themselves are OK.

I anticipated much worse after what it had been through.

A sea voyage from Dubai. From and back to base here when the first truck broke down on the F3. Back up the F3 followed by the crash into the neighbour's house followed by the whole rig being lifted up by crane, then dragged at 45 degrees out of the neighbour's drive.

A week with the RTA, back to base, unpacked and loaded onto a furniture truck, then finally up the F3 yet again.

There were 120 packages in all but we managed to get the majority unpacked so the delivery guys could take the packing material away. I'm glad they did because it was almost a full truckload.

We still had twenty or so boxes unopened when they left - clothing, bedding and books mainly - and all that packing material is cluttering up the garage until they come to take it away next week.

And I tell you what, I'm aching all over. Moving furniture around, carrying boxes of books from room to room, assembling shelving is manual labour the muscles aren't used to.

A rest from it tomorrow because we're in Sydney all day.

Overgrown schoolboys...

2011-08-22T20:49:00.001+10:00

...yet they'll be ministers in our next federal government.

The standard of our members of parliament is nothing less than appalling.

Today's Sydney Morning Herald reports yet another example of their infantile behaviour:

It was raining heavily in Canberra on Wednesday so, after question time, Julia Gillard walked the corridors back to her office rather than cut across a courtyard as she usually does.

As she strolled past opposition MPs' offices, Christopher Pyne and Joe Hockey, like two schoolyard ne'er-do-wells, trailed about 10 paces behind, heckling. Hockey was bellowing the Engelbert Humperdinck lyrics: "Please release me, let me go, 'cause I don't love you any more …" Pyne, doing his best to affect a menacing gravitas, was taunting repeatedly: "You're drowning Julia, not waving, you're drowning.''

Photo. Sydney Morning Herald

The Honourable Christopher Pyne. Federal Member for Sturt.

Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training,

Photo. Ray Strange. Herald Sun

The Honourable Joe Hockey. Federal Member for North Sydney.

Shadow Treasurer.

As the writer of the article, Phillip Coorey, says, by any measure it was disrespectful behaviour towards a prime minister.

But it was more than that. Regardless of the office of the victim it was inappropriate behaviour for any adult. Stupid, childish behaviour by any standard.

From people who will be federal government ministers it's astonishing.

This is the standard of the people who will govern us.

The electors of North Sydney and Sturt should know what they need to do at the next election.

As should electors of all the other constituencies which have sub-standard, unworthy, embarrasing candidates foisted on them.

You can read the full article in the Sydney Morning Herald here.

Still camping

2011-08-19T17:57:00.001+10:00

We have no date for the container with all our belongings to be delivered. It's still on the truck and the whole rig is with the RTA while they investigate how and why it ended up in the front of a neighbour's house.

So we're still camping, but thankfully in this weather it's indoor camping. We have power, heating, functioning bathrooms and kitchen, a few odd chairs and a kitchen table. We also have a couple of suitcases of clothing so we're not too uncomfortable.

We won't know what damage there is to our belongings until the container's eventually delivered and unpacked.

It's got the usual fragile glass stuff you have around the house - mirrors, table tops, shelves, lamps, pictures, drinking glasses, crockery - but anything could be damaged in a crash like that.

Fortunately for the people involved, the house and hopefully our stuff in the container, the truck didn't have much speed when it ran into the house. The damage was really caused by the weight rather than speed.

It was a huge slice of luck that no-one was hurt and you'll see why if I describe the location.

Our street, like many in Oz, runs along the crest of a hill. Our side has enough level land for houses, then the back gardens drop away down a hill.

The opposite side has no level land, it drops away just a couple of metres from the street. The houses on that side have their entrances at that ground level but the land drops away so sharply that from just inside the front wall there's a lower level. In other words, in effect they have their front doors on the first floor.

The house the truck hit has a downward drive and the roof eaves are level with the road, so it's a steep slope. Joining the end of their drive to the front of the house is (was) a timber deck. Fortunately the deck is more than a metre above the ground at that point.

The runaway truck's front wheels demolished the decking and it lurched into the abyss. The bottom of the chassis jammed on the concrete edge of the driveway and that's what stopped it.

The second photo in my previous post gives an idea of the layout.

Had the truck gone into the house, remember, that would have been at first floor level, so it would have crashed through the floor to the lower level.

I don't think there's any doubt that it would literally have totally destroyed the house and it would all have careered on down the hill. If that had happened the two people in the house and the truck driver wouldn't be with us now.

Back with a bang

2011-08-16T14:23:00.002+10:00

Our arrival home is making the evening television news.

Our container arrived...

...through the front of a neighbour's house.

Fortunately no-one was hurt.

Yesterday I posted that the container truck had broken down and they'd re-scheduled delivery for this morning. Promisingly, the truck arrived on time.

But.

Instead of reversing into the driveway to where they'd unload, the driver made a mysterious and very bad decision.

He parked on the slope between the drive and the road.

He and his crew had a coffee and then decided to reverse the truck to where they should have parked in the first place.

The driver later said the brakes failed, including the hand brake. What happened was that the truck rolled forward, across the road, down the driveway opposite and into the front of the house.

Fortunately the house is built on a steep hill and between the driveway and the house is - was - decking over a deep hole.

That saved the house, the occupants, the driver from a very serious situation because the front wheels went into the hole, the bottom of the truck jammed on the edge and it stopped.

As a result, although the front of the truck hit the front of the house it didn't carry on through.

There is, my neighbour tells me, interior damage to the floor, a couple of walls and a bathroom but an engineer has inspected it and said there's no major structural damage and the house is safe.

Two fire trucks, an ambulance and the police turned out and as it was commuter time the road was chaotic for a while.

Long discussions about what to do took place because the truck loaded with the container is jammed down a deep hole, the road isn't wide enough for a tow truck to manoeuvre even if they could pull it out...so they called for a large crane.

The plan is apparently to lift the front of the truck and drag it back until it's in a position where they can tow it.

It's six hours after the event and the crane has just arrived. I've checked and a lot of men in orange safety jackets are milling about talking, pointing, measuring...

The police say our container is now evidence. They need to keep it for at least 24 hours after they get it out to check that it doesn't break any laws.

The removal company say that as it's a unique situation they can't tell me much more right now.

When the authorities have finished with the container it may come straight to us or it may have to go back to base. They'll give me a new delivery time when they can.

By the way, for anyone who fancies a particularly interesting removal, we're using Allied Pickfords.

I must say that they've been good with communication. They've kept in touch by phone regularly and an executive turned up to apologise and get first-hand information.

Welcome, welcome, welcome

2011-08-15T09:17:00.000+10:00

I see from StatCounter that a lot of people are coming here from my now defunct 'Life in Dubai' blog. Thanks for taking the time to do that and welcome to 'Life in Oz'.

We only arrived back in Oz yesterday, I turned on the computer really only to update my virus protection but I had a quick look here to see what was happening. I haven't had a chance yet to do any tracking back to see who the visitors are...some old friends are there I hope.

A quick update for anyone who may be interested - a good non-stop flight on Emirates, although because strong tail winds were going to push us along the departure was delayed for about 45 minutes. (Sydney International has a night time curfew to give residents some noise-free sleep). Even so we arrived early and had to fly around in a holding pattern until the airport opened.

It was about 13C and bucketing down with rain.

Now adjusting to the six hour time difference is the main focus. Going to bed at midnight when the body thinks it's only six in the evening takes a few days to sort itself out.

The container with our belongings was due to be delivered to us at seven this morning. I knew it was all too good to be true - they called to say the truck had broken down. The clutch has gone, they say, so it has to be towed back to base, the container reloaded onto another truck...tomorrow is the new promise.

It's a cool day with a blue sky, a few clouds, sunny, clear air with no sand or cement dust in it -

Police lose the plot

2011-08-12T19:40:00.001+10:00

The riots in the UK have made clear to even those who couldn't see the bleedin' obvious - especially the police and politicians - that the police have their policing wrong.

Exactly the same mistakes are being made by our police here and for the same basic reason.

In the UK, here in Australia and in many other western countries, they've changed the reason for their existence.

The primary role of police is preventing crime, protecting law abiding citizens from harm and property from damage. The key word is prevention.

That's what they've changed. And what a monumental and society-changing change it is.

Now they let the crimes happen and try to catch the perpetrators afterwards.

They changed police force to police service and started calling people they deal with their customers.

This change in police culture is broad in its reach. There wouldn't be many of us, for example, who haven't seen police with radar guns hiding behind shrubbery to catch people breaking the speed limit laws.

Allow them to break the law and catch them afterwards.

What they should be doing is preventing the lawbreaking. A police motorcycle rider sitting in full view would deter speeding, would prevent the lawbreaking, would give us safer roads.

At the other end of the scale it's the same. In the UK the rioters and looters were allowed to do as they pleased as the police stood and watched. They did nothing to prevent it. After the damage was done the police are using CCTV footage to arrest the criminals and bring them to court.

The criminal activity spread like wildfire as other morons saw that the London looters were allowed to do as they liked, so they copied it. And they were allowed to carry on unhindered.

What stopped it? Police out on the streets. Doing what they're supposed to do, prevent the lawlessness.

In the UK, exactly as we have here, cuts to the police budgets are blamed.

Simplistic rubbish.

The blame must go to the change in police thinking, on the way the resources are utilised and the thinking behind it. They're no longer a force but a service, with customers. They aren't on the beat, are not visible on the streets, but are sitting back in centralised police stations watching CCTV.

A few years back a mate's shop in Terrigal was ram-raided and a lot of valuable stock stolen. The shop is literally across the road from the police station. But that's all but been abandoned and is manned for only a few hours a day.

In the British parliament debate on the riots PM David Cameron said that at any one time only 12% of officers are on the beat. He refuses to accept that the police cannot be organised more effectively.

I'm sure the same applies here.

We need more effective use of the police we have and they need to go back to basics.

They need to be out on the streets preventing crime.

Nearly there...

2011-08-11T21:58:00.000+10:00

I've just received an e-mail from the shipping agent in Sydney to say our container-load has been cleared by Quarantine and Customs and is ready for delivery.

I'm amazed, I assumed it would take much longer and I anticipated a bill for fumigation and/or taxes, neither of which have been mentioned.

We're in on Sunday morning so I'll call the agent on Monday to arrange delivery as soon as they can.

Can't wait to be back!

As you were.

2011-08-08T21:07:00.002+10:00

With the current GFC dominating the news I thought it would be relevant to copy & paste from my Dubai blog this post which dates from over a year ago:

Learning from mistakes?

Major factors behind the global economic meltdown:

Historically low interest rates held for a very long time.

Vast amounts of money spent or committed by governments.

Banks' tele-sales people pestering consumers with phone calls offering credit cards.

The financial industry creating 'complex financial instruments' (actually worthless pieces of paper), sold to each other and unsuspecting investors for huge amounts.

Huge salaries and bonuses for bankers and other business executives, based on short-term (this year's) profits and share prices.

Retailers offering big-ticket items at big discounts with no deposit, nothing to pay for several months and financing at very low interest rates.

How we're dealing with the global economic meltdown:

Historically low interest rates held for a very long time.

Vast amounts of money spent or committed by governments.

Banks' tele-sales people pestering consumers with phone calls offering credit cards.

The financial industry creating 'complex financial instruments' (actually worthless pieces of paper), sold to each other and unsuspecting investors for huge amounts.

Huge salaries and bonuses for bankers and other business executives, based on short-term (this year's) profits and share prices.

Retailers offering big-ticket items at big discounts with no deposit, nothing to pay for several months and financing at very low interest rates.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

I've never believed the old cliche 'we learn from our mistakes'. The evidence is that we don't, we just keep repeating them.

Two part economy

2011-08-05T22:26:00.002+10:00

I've been living in Dubai for the past six years, and I see an interesting comparison with Australia.

Let me give a brief bit of background.

In Dubai we had the construction boom the whole world was talking about.

There were two important things the world got wrong about it, which is relevant to the subject.

One, "that's what oil money does". In reality, oil money had nothing to do with it.

Dubai has never had much oil. There's been a brief burst of income from the sixties from a couple of small fields, which was very sensibly invested in infrastructure.

Two, "Dubai is all about real estate". In realty, from its beginnings in the 1880s, it was about business, about trading. Oil is less than 5% of the economy.

Actually there's a third thing the world misunderstood. 'Dubai' didn't put the mind-boggling sums of money into its vast developments. A huge amount of the money was from outside investors, who poured literally hundreds of billions of dollars into the emirate.

Dubai, as always, put money into infrastructure designed to support the real economy, including a vast new road system, the first Metro rail system in the region, a huge new public bus fleet, huge development of Dubai International Airport and the start of a brand new airport which will, when it's eventually finished, be the largest in the world.

(Sceptics should bear in mind that in just fifty years Dubai International has gone from start-up to now being the world's fourth busiest international passenger airport, with 50 million passengers. It's also the world's seventh busiest cargo airport, handling nearly three million tonnes last year. And it's rapidly climbing both league tables.)

I'm not really digressing, because the point is that Dubai very clearly had a two-part economy. The boom of the temporary real estate bonanza was one part, the other part, the important part, is the real underlying economy.

That's where I see the comparison in my first sentence.

Australia clearly also has a two part economy, the temporary commodities bonanza and the real underlying economy which is the important part.
As with Dubai, the wealth being generated by the bonanza isn't being fairly or widely spread. As with Dubai, it's dependent on outside factors beyond our control. As with Dubai, it will come to an end. And we need to strengthen our real economy for when it does end.

We need to get on top of the situation, and quickly. The irreplaceable natural resources are being taken, huge profits are being made but as a nation we're not getting our fair share.

We must maximise national income from the boom while it lasts, to invest in developing the real economy. In both infrastructure and business.

For example, we need a rethink on tourism, which includes appointing new people with new thinking. Since the Hogan 'shrimp on the barbie' campaign we've got it wrong time and time again and our tourism revenues have long been on the slide.

We need more manufacturing, and in particular value-added industries.

Sending so much raw wool overseas for others to turn into consumer products and sell around the world at a good profit is the least possible business we can do with the resource.

We should be keeping plenty of it back here and processing it for our designers to turn into high-value materials, fabrics, clothing, furnishings.

We cut down our trees and sell them as woodchip. We should be using it to create more wealth for ourselves by making everything from top level furniture to toothpicks from it.

Exporting being difficult because of the tyranny of distance has long since been untrue. Our big trading partners are now in Asia, but even north America and Europe are easily reachable with modern transport.

We need an efficient, fast rail system to move material around the country to manufacturing and export points. We need airports - and an airline - relevant to the twenty-first century. And we need the ports upgraded so that we can ship exports out efficiently instead of seeing dozens of ships anchored on the horizon waiting to get in.

The frustrating thing is that with the quality of our politicians and the level to which our politics has sunk, none of it will happen.

We'll continue to let the bonanza slip away from us and we'll continue to do the simplest thing possible. Shear it, grow it, dig it up and send it in bulk overseas for others to make the profits from.

Dept. Store extinction

2011-08-04T20:58:00.000+10:00

Here in the rest of the world Australia rarely gets a mention in the media.

It's usually the bizarre - the neck bomb story from Mosman is curently making news internationally, shark and croc attacks get coverage, 'roos attacking pensioners and other animal stories do to.

On the serious side there's the very occasional story about how we avoided the GFC, our high interest rates, and the Aussie dollar's rise is included in foreign exchange stories sometimes.

The big retail slump is one such story currently getting Australia into some of the news outlets.

While the reduction in spending is pretty much across the board the reports emphasise that by far the worst hit are the department stores.

And last month of course David Jones gave the markets warning that a dramatic slump in sales would result in a half year 20% drop in profits against last year.

I'm sure they'll all trot out the usual excuses - the high dollar, people buying online or overseas. But, have you been into a dapartment store recently? I was back in Oz a couple of months ago and wandered around a few of them.

That's where you'll see the root of the problem. It can be summed up in one word. Boring.

Strange, but not unusual for far too many companies, that the management can't see the obvious.

I couldn't believe how boring, how uninviting, unfriendly, bland the stores are.

Boring shop design - although in reality 'design' is too strong a word to describe the layout.

Boring products, displayed in the blandest way possible.

No customers in sight, so the stores are manned by bored staff who stand around in their bland, empty environment for hours on end. Nothing to do but move a few hangers aroud, shuffle things on shelves.

Department stores have turned themselves into the dinosaurs of retailing.

Nearly there

2011-08-01T22:52:00.000+10:00

I did the final paperwork for the move back to Oz today, which was cancelling the Dubai residence visas.

My sponsor did mine but as I sponsor Mrs Seabee I had to battle the bureaucracy myself to get hers cancelled. And to get back my deposit of AED10,000 ($2,5000), which I had to pay to get her visa in the first place.

Actually, for a government department, it wasn't too bad. Waiting around is inevitable but it's an orderly numbered tickets system and plenty of seating while you wait to be called.

For the visa cancellation you need both sponsor and sponsored's passport, your airline tickets showing that you're actually leaving, the inevitable photocopies of it all and an Arabic letter detailing what it is you're applying for.

Every office has a small, crowded, chaotic typing centre which issues the appropriate letter, for a small fee and after a long wait.

Deposit refund is another section, another numbered ticket, another long wait in the typing office for an Arabic letter, photocopies of all the cancellation paperwork, a walk in the 50C heat to the bank branch outside where after a short wait I was given my deposit back in cash.

So that's all the paperwork done and the flight is booked, arriving in Sydney on the fourteenth.

The tracking system says the ship with our container has arrived on schedule in Sydney. Customs and Quarantine will take a couple of weeks or maybe a bit longer, so hopefully it should be delivered not too long after we arrive.

Power tends to corrupt...

2011-07-17T21:53:00.000+10:00

...the first part of Lord Acton's often repeated saying which he made back in the eighteen eighties.

It's very relevant to the momentous events going on in the UK surrounding Rupert Murdoch's brand of 'journalism' I would say.

Another saying that springs to mind is 'one law for the rich, one for the poor', but this time it's happening in reverse from the usual meaning.

The hypocrisy of the general public is never more evident than in the Murdoch saga.

He's made his squillons and gained his power & influence by feeding the public obsession with gossip and personal details about people's private lives, the more dirt-raking the better. His papers are as downmarket as you can get, with even the once internationally respected The Times and Sunday Times going on a rapid downward spiral when he took them over.

The public's insatiable appetite for dross gave tabloid rags like The Sun and the News of the World the highest readership in the UK. In Australia it's the same with his tabloids versus the broadsheets. Friends tell me it's the same in India, where he's also building an extension of his empire.

Then the hypocrisy. As long as the gossip and lurid details were about royalty, footballers, politicians and 'celebrities' the illegal means of obtaining the information were not questioned.

But when exactly the same methods were used against ordinary people - an uprising.

It's not the unprofessional, immoral, illegal actions which have caused such outrage. That's been caused by who the victims are this time.

They won't of course, but people should take a long hard look at themselves for accepting illegal practices when they were used against well-known people. That's encouraged the practitioners to see their illegal, immoral actions as normal practice, happily accepted by the public.

Then there's the side to this saga that will be society changing.

When our Rupert bought into the UK's newspaper world he was a breath of fresh air. He challenged the establishment, as very few did in those days, and broke the print unions which were killing the hand that fed them. (I had personal experience of them when I worked in London ad agencies).

But as his influence with the public - read voters - increased so did his interference in politics. Now there is evidence not only of his power to influence the highest levels of government but of his organisation's illegal activity in phone hacking, fraudulently obtaining personal information ('blagging') and bribery of police.

The mutual back-scratching of News Corp., politicians and the police isn't new but it's reached new depths.

No-one knows how much more there is to discover. Was it confined to the now thankfully defunct News of the World? (Always a dreadful example of tabloid 'journalism'). Was it even confined to the UK? The FBI in the US is looking into alleged breaches of US law. Here in Australia, where his empire began and where he owns nearly two thirds of our big city newspapers, MPs are calling for an inquiry into media regulation.

This time News Corp won't be able to sweep it under the carpet as they did earlier, sacrificing a couple of, albiet guilty, fall guys. I've always maintained that the culture of an organisation is set at the very top. Underlings do what they believe the boss will be happy with, often what the boss indicates he'll be happy with.

To make matter worse, far from making a couple of minor mistakes in handling the crisis, as Murdoch told the (his) Wall Street Journal they'd done, he's made uncharacteristically massive errors. I suspect the years of increasing power and influence have made him overconfident about what he can get away with. But arrogance and treating people with disdain aren't cutting it any more.

It needed an immediate admission that the practices were totally unacceptable. An immediate apology and promise that he was on his way to sort it out and hold those responsible, right to the top, to account. An urgent personal apology to the family of the murdered teenager Milly Dowler, the hacking of whose phone started the public outrage.

He should not have refused to attend the parliamentary hearing - a bad decision since reversed only as he realised the severity of the storm and threats of a summons to appear were made.

He should have immediately dropped his bid to buy the whole of BSkyB, 'pending the outcome of the current investigations'. Instead he tried to remove it from the political arena by having it referred to the competion watchdog, then had to withdraw the bid anyway. Calls are now being made to consider whether News should be allowed to retain its existing 39% holding.

All in all, mistake piled on mistake. As I said, out of character and massively damaging to the empire. Perhaps even fatal to it in its present form.

It will certainly lead in the UK to a formal distancing between media proprietors and politicians and between the media and police. Perhaps a new media regulator, maybe no more self regulation. More attention will be paid to the meaning of a 'fit and proper' person in relation to media owners. Quite possibly stronger regulations about the percentage of media one person can control.

Very senior people are going to be held responsible for their actions and lose their jobs - instead of the usual platitude of 'I take full responsibility' with absolutely nothing happening thereafter.

And much more transparency all round.

The results of all this may well be felt in other countries, including Australia, which could also end up with changes relating to media.

It's a big, big story which will run for a while yet, with more sensational revelations to come I'm sure.

Hot & cold

2011-07-13T19:44:00.000+10:00

The weather here in Dubai is very different from Terrigal at the moment.

Friends tell me it staggered up to 12C in Terrigal, while here the top today is set to reach 45C.

That's in the shade of course, as temps are measured internationally, so out in the sun it'll be much closer to 50C. The humidity isn't as bad as it usually is in July so as I love the heat for me it's not uncomfortable.

Mind you, you can't spend too much time out and about in fifty degrees.

The big problem we've been having is the sand and dust. For the past couple of weeks the conditions have conspired to give us air we have to eat rather than breathe.

The world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa, has been looking like this:

Photo: Karen Dias Gulf News

The forecaster today added that "skies are beginning to clear". I hope they're right, thick dusty air is the absolute worst condition in my opinion.

By the way, my friends also told me a bloody cockatoo has been stealing all the oranges from the tree in my backyard back in Terrigal. A small tree, it had something over thirty oranges which were ripening nicely. The cockie obviously knew when they were ready and has been taking them so I've told my friends to go and get the rest for themselves.

A doddle

2011-07-06T21:49:00.004+10:00

I'm getting the paperwork sorted out for the move back to Oz and I did the car ownership transfer yesterday. I wasn't looking forward to dealings with a government department and its bureaucrats and I was astonished to discover that it was easy, quick and efficient.

There's a Traffic Department nearby. The information desk person directed us to the adjacent Tasjeel facility where, he told us, they would do everything.

Both buyer and seller have to go together and the car has to be re-tested and re-registered, regardless of how recently it was last done.

I paid AED150 ($37) for Express 'Drive Thru' Service and it was well worth it. We parked the car and sat in the air-conditioned office while someone took the car, jumped the queue, put it on the test bed and did whatever was necessary. Ten minutes later the car was driven back to the office.

Meanwhile we handed over insurance policies (the buyer has to be insured before the transaction can take place), copies of our passports including the residence visa page, driving licences, the existing registration card. Completed a simple one sheet form with basic information about the two people and the vehicle. Paid the fees.

That's it. Ten minutes later we were handed all the receipts, the buyer was given the new rego card. Done

It was one of the simplest transactions I've ever had with a government department anywhere.

One interesting fact. The whole transaction was done in English even though we're in an arabic country and the officer was a local Emirati. Can you imagine the uproar if in somewhere like Australia our dealings with a government department had to be carried out in a language other than English? The Emiratis take it with good grace and humour.

It is, incidentally, a reflection of one of the things I particularly like about Dubai, it's truly international. Emiratis make up only about 15% of the total population and the other 85% is from just about every country on the planet. Fortunately we have a common language, English, with which to communicate.

The move is fixed

2011-07-04T20:50:00.003+10:00

The move back to Terrigal from Dubai is fixed.

The container with our belongings has left the huge Port Jebel Ali, forty or so kilometres outside Dubai, and the flight's booked for mid-August.

We've added a few things, especially clothing of course, to what we shipped from Oz to Dubai back in 2005, but not a huge amount. Most of the container is stuff simply being returned. A lounge suite, replacing the one we sold before we left Oz, and a new bed plus few bits of china, some artwork and that's about it for the new stuff.

We're using Allied Pickfords to ship our belongings. The Filipino guys who came to do the actual packing were great but I haven't been impressed with the company's admin/paperwork so far. It's been the usual inefficiencies so many companies are guilty of, with delays caused because files were not passed on to the next person in the chain, documents already supplied being being asked for again, the insurance policy not being forwarded to me until I chased it up.

Still, it's now all done and we just have to wait to see how it all turns up at the other end.

We're sort-of camping in the apartment, with just the basics. The kitchen and bathrooms are fully equipped of course and we have a table & chairs, bed, the laptops and a TV. It's comfortable enough for a few weeks.

The process I'm not looking forward to is dealings with the bureaucracy before we can leave.

Firstly I have to transfer the car to the new owner, which involves a visit by both parties to the traffic police. That's planned for the next day or two. I'm not sure what's involved when we get there, it'll be the usual thing here of playing it by ear.

I sponsor Mrs Seabee so I have to cancel her residence visa and reclaim my deposit of AED10,000 ($2,500+). Not something I'm looking forward to, Immigration is usually chaotic, confused, packed. People at each desk tell you something different from the last person you saw, the signs telling you where to queue are often wrong.

One huge improvement the last time I had to go was that they'd insalled a ticket numbering system. You know, take a ticket and go to the designated counter when your number is called.

That replaced absolute bedlam, where it was every man for himself, 'queues' not north-south but east-west, pushing and shoving, shouting and waving papers in the face of the person behind the desk.

I have my fingers crossed that the improvements have continued and it may be a reasonably orderly transaction. My own residence visa cancellation has to be done by my sponsor.

The Terrigal end is reasonably well set up. Our house was leased out for the past five years but we took it over again a few months ago. I've had a couple of visits to get things cleaned and tidied up and while there's still a lot to do - the house needs a complete repaint inside and out and the garden had gone somewhat feral - it's fine to move back into.

We stayed in Dubai much longer than planned. Mrs Seabee got so involved in her job that she wanted to stay longer and although I was ready to come back we compromised as married couples do and did what the wife says.

I'm really looking forward to being back.

Hang your head in embarrassment

2011-04-27T19:53:00.005+10:00

We've just had three weeks in the UK, where they're holding a referendum on a change to the voting system.

The proposition is to change the first-past-the-post vote with a system roughly like our preferences system.

Over my morning coffee I came across this feature in the UK Daily Telegraph, a fair summing up of the standard of politics, and politicians, we labour under in NSW:

"At a drunken party in his parliamentary office, the Police Minister, naked but for a pair of “very brief” underpants, climbed on top of a female MP and pretended to have sex with her. The Health Minister, who was 53, used his office to entertain his 26-year-old mistress. The Ports Minister visited porn sites on his official computer.

The Regional Development Minister – known to the local tabloids as “Sir Lunchalot” – charged taxpayers for a holiday to Dubai and Italy. The Education Minister promised to “stand by” her husband after he was arrested buying ecstasy. Several ministers were implicated in a corruption scandal involving a female town planner who approved illegal high-rise buildings in return for sexual favours and designer handbags. And the Aboriginal Affairs Minister? Well, he is doing 14 years after his conviction on multiple counts of child sex abuse.

Supporters of the Alternative Vote at next month’s referendum argue, in the words of the Yes To AV campaign, that it will lead to “more honest politics”, “rebuilding” lost bonds of accountability and trust between MPs and their voters. The antics over the past four years in the Australian state of New South Wales – one of only two places in the developed world to use the exact form of AV proposed in the United Kingdom – do not, frankly, support this claim."

Could the reason we have compulsory voting be that no-one, except possibly their families, would bother to vote for them?

You can read the Telegraph feature here.

Labor earnt it

2011-03-27T19:39:00.004+11:00

Predictably, one of the biggest landslides since federation in the NSW state election.

It looks like the 93 seat parliament will have a maximum of 22 Labor seats, down from 50 in the last parliament.

It's no more than Labor deserved after years of incompetence with arrogance added to incompetence in the final weeks. The Keneally government ended its reign with two fingers to the electorate, pushing through making the Barangaroo development the only project in NSW exempt from planning laws on contamination and dissolving parliament in an attempt to avoid scrutiny of the electricity ~~sell off~~ give-away.

It shows us what politicians think of democracy, but also how useful it is for electors.

Will Premier-elect O'Farrell's government, and his promises, be any better than we've endured for so many decades I wonder. Experience says don't hold your breath.

It's a bad sign that his first comments are the usual pollie cliches - 'we have a mandate'...'we'll govern for all'...'promise to return honesty and accountability to government'.

They all say the same and we're always disappointed.

Think about the governments we've had over the last quarter century for example. They were led by Barrie Unsworth, Nick Greiner, John Fahey, Bob Carr, Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees, Kristina Keneally.

The state didn't go forward under their governments, didn't even stand still. We've been going steadily backwards. Roads, health care, transport, law & order, water, infrastructure in general...someone please give me a clue as to any progress we made under any of them.

Is it now a new dawn or a false dawn I wonder.

It's getting dangerous

2011-03-07T15:23:00.002+11:00

I said in my last post I'd talk about the vicious nature of the attacks on political opponents, particularly from the far right, copying what's happening in the US.

Unlike the US, where the fringe Tea Party is pushing their mainstream party to the right, here it's the official opposition which is doing the pushing. But like US we have the so-called shock jocks of talk-back radio right behind them.

They were accurately described by Ian Verrender in the Sydney Morning Herald the other day as "furious frothing creatures ramping up the debate and whipping up a storm of outrage in the hope of picking up some ratings".

Full of their own importance, their pomposity was perfectly illustrated by Alan The Parrot Jones on 2GB.

The Prime Minister of Australia was ten minutes later than the appointed time for an interview and Jones believes he is important enough to launch into a tirade berating her for it.

He constantly interrupted her, overtalked her, called her not Prime Minister but Julia.

I would have said: "You are showing no respect for the office of Prime Minister of Australia. This interview is ended". Regrettably the PM didn't do that.

The Opposition, as expected under the leadership of one of John Winston Howard's attack dogs, finds issues on which they can express their fake rage. A few weeks back it was the flood levy. Now it's the carbon tax. They'll find something else after that.

It's not the policies they're really against, they're just used as a rallying flag. The shock jocks jump on the latest bandwagon even though they and their rabid followers don't understand the subjects they're frothing at the mouth against.

That's not what it's about. It's about power for the pollies and ratings for the jocks.

MPs in favour of the carbon tax are revealing that they're receiving death threats, demonstrating the irresponsible use of vitriol in the race for power, which is really what it's all about. It's about the Opposition removing the government so that they can have the power. How they do it, following the appalling example of JWH, is irrelevant. The end justifies the means.

And of course there are plenty of people who fall for it and take it to the predictable next level. Here's an example of the intellects we're dealing with, a message left for Independent MP Tony Windsor:

"You're a f..ing liar, a dog, a rat, a big f...ing MP dog... and you wait you're not going to get voted in again. I hope you die, you bastard," the caller said.

We're rapidly moving into very dangerous waters here and instead of pulling back to a more rational, intelligent debate our politicians are going to take us further out.

Tony Abbott won't condemn the comments from his party members, won't distance himself from them. That's no surprise, he learned under the patronage of John Howard. He'll do and say anything to get to The Lodge and just like his mentor he'll then do and say anything to stay there.

The cliche has it that people get the politicians they deserve.

Like so many cliches it's wrong. We don't deserve this lot, whatever political colour they are.

Bottom of the barrel politics

2011-03-04T18:34:00.001+11:00

As I've said in earlier posts, I was less than impressed by John Winston Howard's way of going about politics

And I've been unimpressed by our state politicians for longer than I can remember. Just think back to the Premiers and their governments' achievements over, say, the past quarter century...Unsworth, Greiner, Fahey, Carr, Iemma, Rees, Keneally.

Can you think of anything that lot have done to improve things for us, of any improvements to the state.

But I've been away for five years and I've missed the daily exposure to our elected representatives' behaviour.

Back in Oz and listening to them now I'm appalled. I'm disgusted. They really don't deserve to be there. This is the behaviour of bad mannered school children.

No wonder we have the undemocratic compulsory voting system which doesn't allow us to withhold our votes in disgust. No-one would vote for them other than the diehard party faithful, whose vote is not a positive for their own people but a negative to keep the other lot out.

I was going to talk about the level of debate but I won't dignify their antics with that term. There is no debate.

There's screaming and shouting, there are personal insults flying. The Speaker bellows 'Order! Order!' which they ignore. Comparing the PM to the madman Gaddafi is just the latest example.

Given the opportunity, MPs won't talk about their policies, instead they just slag off the other party.

And what they say seems to have been written by ten year old schoolboys.

There's another fine example of this captured on video in the Senate, from Senator Mary Jo Fisher.

But it's actually much worse than just appalling scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel behaviour. We have the vicious nature of the attacks, particularly from the far right, copying what's happening in the US. That's worthy of a separate post so I'll talk about that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, check these links and weep at the level our politicians have descended to.

Watch the video here.

Gillard-Gaddafi comparison, and more.

Listen to this

2011-02-22T23:24:00.003+11:00

TV Channel 9 here in Oz has broadcast an amazing interview over her mobile phone with an Aussie woman trapped in her Christchurch office building after today's earthquake.

Major disasters are actually not one event but a jigsaw of individual, very personal stories. It's the small individual experiences that make up the big picture.

This is another example of that.

She sounds calm but she must be terrified.

Listen here: "I'm trapped under a desk, I can't get out, it's dark, I'm bleeding, and I just don't what's going on out there".

Ánd by the way, it's a side of mobile phones, often so annoying and cause for complaint, that we don't think about. Try to imagine the comfort of it to someone like this, trapped in the dark, not knowing what's out there, what's going on, what her situation really is. She at least has contact with a friendly voice, feels that she's not alone.

Another example of a very personal story that was part of a much larger jigsaw - and another showing the value and comfort of a mobile phone in these disastrous situations - that still raises the hair on the back of my neck whenever I listen to it was during the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria. It was a real time audio of one person trapped right in the middle of it, facing a terrifying death.

I posted it on my Dubai blog, here:

Rhiannon, only twenty years old, called radio station 3AW as the fires raced towards the house where she and a group had taken shelter.

Later Update

Ann Vos, the woman trapped under her desk, was later found and rescued without serious injury.

This time the domino theory looks probable

2011-02-17T19:30:00.000+11:00

While the scaremongers have in the past often warned of the domino theory it hasn't actually happened. But it does look as though it's happening this time.

And where it's happening is taking world leaders by surprise. Especially in the west, where successive governments have propped up, financially and otherwise, the regimes which have now gone or are under threat.

First we had Tunisia, then Egypt and there's increasing unrest in Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Iran, Yemen, Bahrain...

In the west they're usually lumped together and believed to be the same. But while they have in common the fact that they don't have democratic political systems, they're actually quite different from each other. Absolute monarchies, life presidents, secular, Islamic republic...

They also have very different economies, very different wealth, very different societies.

Currently they all also have in common the fact that large numbers of the people want change. And they want change because they want a better deal, a better life.

In the poorer countries the unrest is about standards of living and jobs. In the wealthier such as Bahrain it's about politics. Much as in Northern Ireland it's politics dominated by religion - Catholics vs Protestants, Shia vs Sunni.

I'm hearing a lot of surprise that modern westernised Bahrain, with at least half the population being expatriate, is one of the dominos. But in fact there's long been unrest there.

I remember on my second visit back in the late seventies seeing huge piles of sandals and flip-flops in the streets. In answer to my question I was told that there had been large demonstrations the night before and the demonstrators can run faster from the security forces if the kick off their sandals. From the amount of footwear I could see it must have been a good-size demo.

Coming back to my hotel after dinner I saw Public Defence units on most street corners and intersections.

The mining super profits debacle

2011-02-16T16:07:00.001+11:00

If we ever needed proof of how wrong the government was to back down over the resources super profits tax, we've got it today.

According to figures just released by the Treasury the backdown has cost us $60 billion over the next decade. We were going to get $99 billion, but thanks to the backdown we're actually getting $38.5 billion.

Then, as expected, today BHP Billiton has announced record profits of $10.5 billion for the last six months, which is 72% up on the same period last year.

What an appalling decision the backdown was, and to me competely inexplicable.

The miners spent a few million dollars on a scare campaign making highly dubious claims, panic ensued, the government didn't bother to mount a counter campaign using the true facts but instead simply backed down.

They negotiated with the miners to see how much they were prepared to pay.

Government negotiating with taxpayers to see how much they're prepared to pay? When has that ever happened, until this disgraceful episode?

I've never been invited to join negotiations about how much tax I'd like to pay, have you?

Our resources are just that - ours. The miners are granted leases to dig them up and sell them. A reasonable profit is expected and acceptable. But these are unprecedented windfall profits.

And remember that these huge windfall profits are not the result of anything the miners are doing, it's all about the growth of China.

The resources are finite, which means future generations won't have them to produce wealth. So what was, still is, needed is a tax on the excess profits which should be used to create a sovereign wealth fund.

That way our future generations can benefit from the resources we're so quickly depleting.

More Egyptian history

2011-02-12T12:26:00.000+11:00

What an amazing couple of weeks in Egypt.

The seemingly unmoveable Mubarak regime has gone. A regime not only brutal in the way it usually treated dissent and which had all-but destroyed any organised opposition but which was, let's not forget, also supported and propped up by the West.

In spite of all that a largely peaceful mass uprising by the people has removed them.

Amazing.

While it is a people's revolution the critical part the military played in the revolution should be acknowledged. Surprisingly to me they stood by and let the revolution take its course.

It was a big dipper of a revolution and it was touch and go there for a while.

It looks to me as though the original thinking of the regime was that it would fizzle out afer a few days, so they did nothing.

Then they tried to show that chaos would be the result by loosing off some thuggish 'supporters' to create violence.

By and large, and to their credit, the crowd didn't resort to retaliation with violence and the chaos the regime wanted didn't really happen.

The numbers waxed and waned, but calls for 'million people' demonstrations boosted the numbers again.

It was touch and go on Thursday when Mubarak was expected to resign by just about everyone but didn't.

If there was going to be a violent reaction, the disappointment at that point was going to ignite it.

Again to their credit, the people were restrained but determined.

There are lessons in it too for American foreign policy makers and their western allies, not that they've ever learned from their mistakes in the past though.

Once again they've been supporting a brutal, undemocratic dictator hated by his people.

And think about Iraq & Afghanistan - you can't impose a political system on people, the people themselves have to do it.

As the Egyptians have so wonderfully shown.

A land of extremes

2011-02-04T17:39:00.000+11:00

Cyclone Yasi devastating the north, severe flood warnings in Victoria...and here on the NSW Central Coast we have a total fire ban because of the danger of bushfires. All at the same time.

Aussies in Dubai

2011-01-30T17:45:00.000+11:00

Back for a month

2011-01-26T20:10:00.000+11:00

Flights are booked and I'm flying back to Sydney on Monday. I'll leave again early March for what should be the last trip back to Dubai before our permanent move back.

I'm using up Air Miles points, the equivalent of the Aussie FlyBuys, so I'm with Malaysian Arlines. Not the most convenient, with a stop in Karachi, an aircraft change in KL and a total of 18 hours. Add on the journeys to & from airports plus check-in time and door-to-door looks like being close to 24 hours.

I'd use Emirates' non-stop flights by choice but they want four times the number of points being charged by MAS.

It's a straight change-over in KL with one hour between arrival of one flight and departure of the next, so fingers crossed we arrive on time...and the luggage gets transferred.

We travelled for years without luggage ever going astray, but over the past seven or eight years it seems to have become pretty regular. Each time though the airline has found it, undamaged, and couriered it on to us.

No comment

2011-01-18T20:23:00.000+11:00

I've just realised that all the comments have disappeared from my postings.

It wasn't deliberate and I have no idea how they disappeared. I guess I must have clicked on something somewhere that did a total delete.

Sorry.

Second steps

2011-01-17T23:20:00.001+11:00

Starting to get the estimates for our furniture to be shipped back to Terrigal from Dubai and I was reasonably pleased with the prices.

I expected higher but the three quotes I have are all between $6,000 and $7,000 door-to-door.

Checking around with friends who've moved on in recent times I got a list of removalists who haven't done too much damage. There are plenty of horror stories about, so getting recommendations is better than just picking the cheapest.

Then there's the car - I have a Mazda6 here. I thought Murphy's Law had struck yesterday when a loud and expensive sounding noise started coming from somewhere when I put it in drive gear.

"Bloody hell. A new gearbox", I thought, "Just before I want to sell it".

I took it straight to the Mazda dealer who fortunately diagnosed it as damaged engine mountings, and they found a leaking hose. It'll be fixed by this evening for about $100.

Phew.

First steps

2011-01-14T00:11:00.001+11:00

Well, we've taken the first steps in moving back to Terrigal from Dubai.

I e-mailed some removalists, two of the four have bothered to call me so I've arranged for them to come and give us a quote.

Mrs Seabee has resigned from her company, the big boss is in town today to discuss it so I guess by the end of the day we'll know how much notice they think they'll need and therefore when she can leave. I think it's going to be about May before we're back.

I'll be back for February, getting some stuff done around the house. It's been leased out for the past five years so there's work to be done.

Not too much, because we had good tenants for the last three years who looked after the place well. But earlier tenants obviously left the doors and windows open during rain because there's damage to the hardwood floors, so two rooms need sanding and polishing.

The wind blowing through from those open doors & windows has obviously caused the front door to slam many times because the stained glss has seven broken panels. So a new door is on the shopping list for February.

And it's time to repaint the whole house, it looks a bit grubby and a coat of paint will freshen it up nicely.

The garden was a jungle but we got on top of that when we were back over Christmas. Got gardeners in to get rid of the fishbone fern that had just about taken over in the front. I tied to deal with the fern myself but there was just too much of it, and it was too well established. It took four trailer loads to the tip to get rid of it.

And we had four tall cocos palms taken out. I like them but the mess from the fruit and falling fronds isn't worth it. A couple of straggly bottlebrushes went too.

There's still a lot to do but I can manage from now on, and I enjoy being out gardening in the fresh air.

Coming home

2011-01-09T01:44:00.001+11:00

Been living in Dubai for the past five years which is why there aren't too many posts on here.

I'm actually a very regular blogger but it's nearly all, almost 1200 posts I was surprised to see, been on my Dubai blog, Life in Dubai.

But it's time now to come home so I'll soon be annoying people here on 'Life in Australia' instead of on my Dubai blog.

It'll take a little while to get the move completed. Mrs Seabee has to stay long enough for an orderly handover at her company, we have the car to sell and the apartment in Dubai Marina to sell or lease.

And there's the bureaucracy to battle with. Cancelling electricity & water, telephone & internet, the e-tag for road tolls, the e-gate card which allows us to bypass Immigration queues at the airport. I'm not sure if we have to cancel our Emirates ID card, so I'll have to check that.

Not forgetting the cancelling of visas and getting the deposits back - about $3000. That'll be fun.

I'll be back in Terrigal for February to get work done around the house. It's been leased out for five years so it needs a bit of work to bring it up to scratch before we get back permanently. Then back to Dubai the first week of March.

So for a while I guess I'll be active in the two blogospheres

Gone - but the damage is done.

2007-12-06T19:20:00.006+11:00

John Winston Howard.

He put selfish personal ambition above all else. Above his party, his country, the people.

He started by dragging his party to the far right, he ended by just about destroying it.

He made lying by public figures acceptable, he made it acceptable to take no responsibility, he made it acceptable to blame others, he led the charge in our plummeting standards of decency and honesty, he made it acceptable to claim credit for good things that in reality were beyond any ones person's control.

He encouraged a climate of selfishness, paranoia ('be alert not alarmed'...'we do not want these kind of people here'), of bigotry and racism.

He took the country to war against the wishes of the majority, he subjugated Australian policy to that of the far right administration in America.

What his admirers called his never-say-die attitude is correctly criticised in others as bull-headed stubborness.

He had no ideas of his own, his mindset being firmly stuck in the fifties. So he hijacked others' policies.

He gave us a thuggish, incompetent, mean-spirited cabinet.

He frittered away our money on vote-buying handouts while the country's infrastructure fell apart.

And his main claim to success, the economy and low interest rates, was almost entirely due to world events and nothing to do with Howard or Costello. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

What a legacy.

Personal ambition.

His fifties mindset took the conservative movement lurching to the far right - just as Thatcher did in Britain. After a brief period of flirting with that, the electorate came to its senses and moved back to the centre. His promises for an orderly hand-over of leadership were exposed by his refusal to step down and the disintegration of his party is the result. As with Thatcher's Tories it will take a long time for the party to recover from his excesses, unless Labor is so bad that the Coalition gets back in by default.

He needed to feel important, needed to play with the big boys on the world stage. A role in the South Pacific wasn't enough. He needed to be at 10 Downing Street, at BigW's ranch, at Buckingham Palace with the Queen. At the photo opportunities, who will ever forget his puffed out chest and schoolboy grin, like a groupie with a pop star.

Don't be fooled into thinking it was for the good of the country, it was all about John Howard and his selfish ambition.

The lies

The list is long. Never-ever a GST, children overboard, core and non-core promises, troops in Iraq while he was denying that a decision had been made to join the invasion forces. It goes on and on.

"I don't want people like that in Australia. Genuine refugees don't do that..."

The culture of a society is heavily influenced by its leader. JWH gave respectability to lying by public figures, by the peoples' elected representatives. He lied simply to gain votes - we're back at selfish ambition again. Say anything, fabricate anything to win a few more votes.

"Not me"

Lack of accountability, lack of responsibility, were made respectable by JWH and others followed his example. How many times did we hear 'no-one told me' from the PM and his ministers. How many times was a scapegoat from the public service sacrificed to protect them.

Plummeting standards

It started, I suppose, with the Miniserial Standards debacle - the much-touted set of required standards being gradually weakened to fit what was actually happening. It went on into the endless lies, the misrepresentation of facts, the blaming of someone else, the appeal to bigotry and racism in the hunt for extra votes, the mean-spirited attitude to others.

Claiming credit

His big claim of success was the economy - the good times were all thanks to Howard he claimed.

What arrant nonsense.

There is no argument that the good times started to roll at least two years before he came to power, thanks to the previous government's IR changes plus world economic events. It was in full swing by the time Howard took office.

An aside - who was it who largely broke the power of the unions? Hawke and Keating - remember the pilots strike? Remember the BLF? Howard's contribution, through Peter Reith, was black-clad, balaclava-hooded goons with German Shepherds against Aussie workers on the docks.

World interest rates were at all-time lows - zero percent in Japan, one and two percent elsewhere, and naturally our rates went down too. That was not the work of John Howard. Our rates were not as low as the others, but he never came clean that we still had higher rates than most countries.

He claimed credit for the mining boom in the run up to the 2007 election in a bid for important WA seats. In reality John Howard had nothing to do with it, the windfall was caused by China, and other countries such as India too, booming to a level never before seen.

Balance of trade deficits reached new records time after time. The key reason was that our exporters couldn't get the product out to people who wanted to buy it. The infrastructure of roads, rail, ports can't handle it, so exports are a fraction of what they should be. Where did Howard put our money? Not into infrastructure for the country's future but into small hand-outs to people to buy their votes and into the pork barrel.

For more than eleven years, John Howard led us on a voyage driven by greed and fear, into parochialism and paranoia, selfishness and racism, bigotry and corruption, and other dark places in the Australian psyche where we never should have gone. It was a mean and ugly trip and, as I've said before, history will judge him harshly.

Update at the end of 2010.
JWH has published his memoirs and he's still at it. There was never an agreement with Costello, he acted in the best interests of (not himself but) the country, the election loss was not his fault but others' and he was responsible for the good times we had (in reality living on credit with a bill to be paid eventually, as we've seen over the past couple of years). That the voters of Bennelong didn't even re-elect him as their MP was the fault of someone else too.

More water than we need. But...

2007-06-12T19:08:00.001+10:00

Hundreds of billions of litres of water all over the area and all but the tiny percentage that happened by chance to fall in the catchment areas will simply end up in the ocean.

We really do need to call our politicians to account for their appalling mismanagement and incompetence.

Central Coast dams 90% empty, yes 90%, and the water that we do receive is deliberately thrown away.

It's not that we don't actually collect a lot of it. All the rain that hits the roads, the roofs, the built-up areas has to be collected by guttering, down-pipes, drains. We get that bit right.

Then having collected it, what do we do? We put it all together and funnel it out to sea.

Meanwhile the fools blather on endlessly about new dams, about desalination.

COME ON!! We know the problem, we know how to fix it. Use the water we collect instead of sending it out to sea.

THEY WANTED TO KEEP HIM???

2007-06-10T22:37:00.000+10:00

I find it hard to believe my eyes.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald report:

"Outspoken Muslim leader Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly has stood down as Australia's Mufti.

The controversial Islamic cleric was reappointed mufti at a meeting of Muslim leaders in Melbourne today, but declined to accept the position.

Sheik al Hilaly was a surprising and controversial first choice for the Muslim leaders, who have come under intense pressure over the past year to sack the Mufti.

In a statement issued today, the council said Sheik al Hilaly had "gracefully declined'' to accept another term.

They wanted to re-appoint the man who has done as much as anyone to damage relations between Muslims and non-Muslims!

I'm almost speechless.

I hope immediate past president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Rehin Ghauri, is correct when he said:

"Most Australian Muslims would applaud his departure. The ordinary Muslims don't like to see him as mufti.''

It wouldn't be the first time that religious leaders have shown that they're out of touch with their followers. I really do hope there's some follow-up with a survey of 'ordinary Muslims' so that their feelings can be aired.

The Sydney Morning Herald report is here.

Government Water Policy: 'Pray for Rain'.

2007-05-17T19:06:00.000+10:00

If it wasn't so tragic, displaying such lack of vision, you'd have to laugh.

"I say without any hint of irony, you should all continue to pray for rain.
John Winston Howard.

In denial in the face of the evidence of global climate change, in denial that the endless drought, the empty dams, the year after year lack of rainfall could be the result of it.

Record windfall tax revenues from Australian companies. Record commodity prices, because of other countries' explosive development, not our government's policies.

But the well-being of Australia and our future is ignored in favour of self-interest, of buying the next election time after time, of retaining power with handouts. No investment in the creaking infrastructure that's hindering our exports. No investment in water management.

Keep spending the money to keep yourself in power and tell us to 'pray for rain'.

History will judge John Howard harshly.

That'll have'em rolling in the aisles, John.

2007-05-15T23:44:00.000+10:00

"We won't buy poll victory: Howard"
JOHN Howard says he will not recklessly spend his way out of electoral trouble to gain a boost in the polls, and had not expected an immediate boost in popularity from the recent budget.

So says the report in The Australian.

Well, the polls are saying we're going to take the money, but not thank you for it.

60% said it was a good budget, 11% were neutral, 17% uncommitted and only 12% said it was bad.

But on the two party preferred vote, it's 59% Labor, 41% Coalition.

So in spite of the transparent attempt to buy the election, in spite of the diversion of investment from creaking infrastructure, from the water crisis, from anything with vision, to vote-buying handouts - it seems to have failed.

And not surprisingly, JWH has the bare-faced nerve to tell us it was never intended as a vote-buying budget and he didn't expect a poll advantage.

Ho, ho, ho.

I wonder how that compares with the private conversations they've been having.

I'm pleased to say that it looks as though, whatever tricks he tries, the Australian people have had enough of John Winston Howard.

Stand by for some more dirty tricks - along the lines of previous ones - 'never ever be a GST' or 'children overboard' for example.

Newspoll is here.

The report is here.

Praise the Lord - Vanstone's gone.

2007-04-26T19:32:00.001+10:00

There are still far too many of JWH's dreadful favourites left in government, but at least we're free of Amanda Vanstone.

She deludes herself in believing she was unpopular because she made tough decisions that had to be made. She made the wrong decisions based on ideology and bigotry. Added to that is the utter incompetence and, in true Howard government style, the blaming of anyone other than herself for it.

Instead of the ignominy her record demands she's rewarded with the plum, enviable, cushy Ambassador to Italy job.

How better the country would be if the worst one of all, Ruddock, was also rewarded with a job somewhere far, far away.

Santo panto

2007-03-18T22:43:00.000+11:00

So the pantomime involving Santo Santoro, Minister for Ageing, has concluded, with Santo exiting stage right.

I mentioned the issue a couple of posts ago, when JWH was upholding ministerial standards with his ususal response: 'He has my full support. He did nothing wrong.'

Less than a week ago, Our Great & Fearless Leader: "...has refused to sack Ageing Minister Santo Santoro over his apparent breach of ministerial guidelines on share ownership.

The Prime Minister said in Tokyo today that Senator Santoro’s breach, revealed in The Australian today, was inadvertent and did not result in personal profit.

Well, it's now revealed that in addition to that little inconsequential inadvertent forgetfulness, Mr Santoro also was 'negligent' in the reporting of 72 investments.

Oops.

It also turns out that bragging he'd donated the $6,000 profit on the original CBio shares to charity was another inadvertent slip of the memory.

...it was in fact a non-profit political lobby group that promoted pro-family, anti-abortion policies. The president of the group, Family Council of Queensland's Alan Baker, is the same man who offered him the financial advice to purchase the CBio shares.

Not surprisingly, JWH has now quickly decided to abandon Santo and act the wronged, righteous victim. He smells the political wind.

In another breathtaking piece of hypocrisy, Our G&FL said: There is no excuse for somebody not complying with the rules.

Yes folks, Mr Howard says: There is no excuse for somebody not complying with the rules.

"Believe me, I'm a politician."

The Australian has the story here.

Waste of time, waste of our money.

2007-03-15T23:51:00.000+11:00

There's a story in Murdoch's tabloid rag about a racist attack in Campbelltown.

"A white supremacist gang is believed to be responsible for a brutal attack on students and teachers at a Campbelltown high school yesterday" it tells us.

Towards the end of the report these paragraphs caught my eye.

They raise a few questions in my mind.

If the gangs were clearly identified as long ago as 2003, why and how are they still operating? What have the police been doing?

If Taskforce Var was set up as long ago as 2002 to tackle gangs in schools, how and why do we continue to have attacks by intruders? And, for God's sake at a rate of more than one a day!

And last but not least, how much of our tax dollars went into these operations, which have obviously been an abject, total failure?

Standards? What standards?

2007-03-13T22:16:00.000+11:00

Another in a seemingly endless supply of examples of the fall in standards led by JWH.

We're back with 'Ministerial Standards' - a misnomer if ever there was one. It's been well-documented that the standards have been watered down to fit the action each time a minister failed to comply with them.

Ministers must make a full declaration of share ownership - but of course if they 'inadvertantly forget' some that they own and fail to declare them, well, that's OK. Can't be helped. We all make mistakes.

Howard backs Santoro amid new ethics controversy
Matthew Franklin
March 13, 2007

JOHN Howard has refused to sack Ageing Minister Santo Santoro over his apparent breach of ministerial guidelines on share ownership.

The Prime Minister said in Tokyo today that Senator Santoro’s breach, revealed in The Australian today, was inadvertent and did not result in personal profit.

Senator Santoro told The Australian last night that he had forgotten to list shares he owned in unlisted biotechnology company CBio on his pecuniary interests register when he became a minister early in 2006.

The report is in The Australian, here

Breathtaking hypocrisy

2007-03-12T23:59:00.000+11:00

John Howard lives in another world doesn't he.

Today's Sydney Morning Herald story about the latest opinion polls have Our Great & Fearless Leader at his hypocritical best:

"I can't ignore the fact that we've had quite a series of bad polls over the past few months and I ask myself why is it that the polls are so bad for the government at present?" Mr Howard said.

"I think one of the reasons is that the Labor Party has successfully created the impression that it doesn't matter who is in government, the economy will continue to grow."

The government would continue to attack Labor over the economy, industrial relations and personal accountability, he said.

"We'll be focusing on those things but we'll continue to hold the Labor Party and individuals in the Labor Party to account."

Breathtaking.

Attacking the opposition on IR and personal accountability - and this from John Howard, with his record!

I'm simply speechless.

As for "...the Labor Party has successfully created the impression that it doesn't matter who is in government, the economy will continue to grow.", well, it's more than an impression, it's largely true. It would take an almost unbelievably incompetent government and bureaucracy to foul up during a world-wide boom period.

When the world economy is bad, that's what causes Australia's woes..."It's all beyond our control." When the world economy is good it has no effect on Australia, our good times are all down to the PM!

JWH insists that he is totally responsible for the good times we've been going through. The facts show a totally different picture. His 'success' has been that was in the right place at the right time. Pure luck, nothing more.

It's universallly acknowledged that the boom started two years before Howard came to power. In other words, he jumped on the bandwagon started by Hawke & Keating.

His tenure coincided with a world boom, world-wide record low interest rates, with previously unseen amounts of money sloshing around looking for a home, with the incredible rise of China and India, and the development boom in the Arabian Gulf, that have sent prices rocketing.

In fact Australian interest rates have been consistently higher than other OECD countries. We have not attracted investment from the trillions looking for somewhere to go, they are going elsewhere. We are missing out on the demand for what we can dig out of the ground. Add to that the fact that we have a bad balance of payments account and the PM's claims are shown to be very hollow.

A Reuters report today highlights how we're missing out on the China boom. The last two paragraphs are particularly telling:

Australia faces commodity setback
Reuters

Sydney: It's long been accepted wisdom in Australia that a new golden age for commodity exports is just around the corner given the rise of China right on its doorstep.

Yet, new research by economists at UBS suggests the optimism may be misplaced.

"It was such an attractive, intuitive idea that the rise of China would inevitably lead to a surge in demand for our commodities," said Adam Carr, a senior econ-omist at UBS. "All we had to do was invest more to work out the supply kinks and Australia would enjoy an export bonanza."

"Well, it's been five years now and there's still no sign of the promised land," he argued. "And when you delve into the data the evidence suggests the consensus has been wrong all along."
If he's right, it will be a sore disappointment for policymakers who are counting on growth in export volumes to take over from domestic demand in driving the economy.

Just last week, Malcolm Edey, head of the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) economics department, painted a rosy outlook for global commodity demand, led by the economic boom in China which, he estimated, could last for several decades yet.

"What we can say with confidence is that the world is experiencing a very large increase in resources demand which is likely to go on for some time," said Edey.

The high level of global commodity prices has certainly been a boon to Australia's terms of trade - what it gets for its exports compared to what it pays for imports. Those terms have climbed more than 30 per cent in the past three years to hit highs not seen in half a century, delivering a windfall to incomes, company profits and tax revenues.

Yet, while prices have risen, the actual volume of exports has lagged far behind, so trade has been a drag on economic growth for almost all the past five years as imports have risen much faster.

Most worrying of all, I'm not sure that it's just politics, I think Mr Howard actually believes what he's saying.

Australia's future

2007-03-12T01:34:00.000+11:00

How many times are we told that Australia's future is safe in the hands of our wonderful youth?

The trouble is, there are too many like this pair of mindless morons.

Duck killed, pigs hurt in attack

08Mar07

A DUCK was killed and two pigs were attacked with a shovel on Monday after two students broke into Brisbane Water Secondary College.

The pair, both aged 14, of Umina Beach and Ettalong Beach, climbed barbed wire fences to carry out the attack.

It is understood the students gained access to the college's animal enclosures sometime between 5.40pm and 7.15pm.

Once inside, the students allegedly killed a large white duck by stomping on its head.

They then used a shovel to attack a large Berkshire pig being groomed for this year's Royal Easter Show in Sydney.

It was expected to be put down this week if vets confirmed the animal had suffered a broken hip or left hind leg.

Another pig suffered eye injuries and cuts to its body.

Nesting ducks were chased and tormented in the raid with one being thrown into the pig enclosure.

Middle school Parents and Citizens president Bruce Graf said it was disturbing anyone would attack defenseless creatures.

"It's very disheartening because the students put so much time and effort into looking after the animals,'' he said.

Brisbane Water crime manager Chief-Insp Darren Bennett confirmed two young people had been identified in relation to an incident at the school.

He said they would be spoken to and allegations of animal cruelty would be dealt with under the Young Offenders Act.

Central Coast Express Advocate

Spoken too and dealt with under the Young Offenders Act? They need to be taken to with a shovel and have their heads stomped on.

Today it's defenceless animals, tomorrow defenceless people. Get these criminals off our streets now and punish them severely enough for them to be too terrified to continue their evil ways.

Why we love pollies.

2007-03-04T18:34:00.000+11:00

Australian minister quits over row

Reuters

Sydney: Attacks by Australia's conservative government against its resurgent opposition over links to a corrupt state leader were turned on their head yesterday when a Cabinet minister quit amid the growing scandal.

In a blow to Prime Minister John Howard as he faces an election later this year, Human Services Minister Senator Ian Campbell quit Howard's Cabinet after it was revealed he met "corrupt" former Labor politician Brian Burke last year.

Attacks

Howard's government has ratcheted up attacks on new centre-left opposition Labor leader Kevin Rudd in the past week over three meetings he had with Burke in 2005 before he became Labor leader.

Treasurer Peter Costello launched volleys of criticism in parliament against Rudd for meeting a man he said was a convicted criminal and corrupt influence peddler. Costello said anyone who dealt with Burke was "morally and politically compromised".

Another senior government member, Tony Abbott, likened dealing with Burke to "supping with the devil".

Howard described Campbell's meeting as an error of judgment, even though it was within his portfolio duties as the then environment minister.

So we can now be confident that Howard will instruct his underlings to withdraw their remarks and replace them with accusations of errors of judgement?

Or are we to believe what we're told - when doing the same thing, the guvmint only has innocuous lapses of judgement while the opposition is morally and politically compromised by supping with the devil.

Praise the Lord!!

2007-01-23T22:06:00.000+11:00

She's gone! Vanstone dumped.

"A very colourful person" according to Our Great & Fearless Leader.

Not quite how I'd put it.

Seems she could well be in line for a plum diplomatic post somewhere but who cares, at least she's out of our government.

Sadly there's no hint of Ruddock being dumped.

By the way, isn't it good to see that environmental matters will be under the direction of a highly qualified person, well prepared for the role in his career as a Merchant Banker.

The story is here: Vanstone dumped

Drought? What drought?

2007-01-17T20:10:00.000+11:00

The dams are at 13.5% capacity and heading rapidly emptier. The forecast is, surprise surprise, for below average rainfall.

But that doesn't change the visionary thinking of our policy-makers.

They have a cunning plan. Wait for rain.

Well done! Great strategy! That'll fix the problem.

Here's the story from the Central Coast Express Advocate:

Fight to stave off Level 5

16Jan07

WATER authorities are waging a last-ditch battle to stave off Level 5 water restrictions by March.

Water storage in Central Coast dams is only 13.5 per cent of capacity and has been dropping between 0.1 and 0.3 per cent each week.

With six weeks of summer left the coast is edging towards 12 per cent the trigger point for Level 5 restrictions. This would limit each resident to 130 litres of water a day.

But Gosford Wyong Councils Joint Water Authority hopes increased supply from the Hunter, along with underground pumping and lower than expected consumption, will see the coast `"squeeze through'' until rain arrives.

Rainfall over the dam catchment areas has been scarce this summer. Mangrove Creek Dam received just 4mm of rain last week compared to 24mm this time last year.

The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted "dryer than average rainfall conditions and warmer than average temperatures'' for the next three months.

The water authority was not expected to consider going to Level 5 restrictions at its monthly meeting at Wyong Council today but it will be on the agenda if dam levels continue to dwindle.
It was also expected to defer a decision to give the go-ahead for temporary desalination plant at Budgewoi Beach until February.

This was despite dire warnings in a report to be tabled at the meeting.

The report stated that surface water flows in the past 12 months were the lowest on record, rainfall had not altered the generally critical water situation and stream flows were at ``critically low'' levels.

At this stage the authority anticipates the first temporary desalination plant on Budgewoi Beach will need to be working by July.

But the authority won't have to give the go-ahead until February.

Authority guidelines state the trigger point for Level 5 restrictions will move to 10 per cent in March in anticipation of autumn rainfall.

Are our policy makers, at local, state and federal level, ever going to realise the seriousness of the situation?

This kind of crap infuriates me!

2006-11-21T21:39:00.000+11:00

Here's a story from the Central Coast Express Advocate:

Look after post box or lose it

16Nov06

Australia Post will remove post boxes that are repeatedly attacked by vandals.

Look after your nearest post box or you will lose it, warned Australia Post after one at Umina Beach was destroyed by fire for the second time this year.

Australia Post spokeswoman Sheridan Beattie said in extreme cases they would relocate or remove boxes repeatedly targeted by vandals.

"Obviously it is an inconvenience to the community if a post box is out of service due to vandalism,'' Ms Beattie said. "But clearly it is not in the community's interests for Australia Post to maintain a box in which mail may not be safe or the public's safety is at risk.''

People who posted mail in the box outside the Umina Beach Post Office between Friday and Sunday are urged to check it arrived.

Post boxes cost $1000 to replace and this box was also attacked in June.

Ms Beattie said it was important people called police if they noticed any unusual activity around a post box.

With the rise of identity fraud, Ms Beattie said the situation was a concern.

"Although most of the damage inflicted on post boxes can be attributed to petty vandalism, the damage can sometimes be from would-be thieves attempting to access the mail inside,'' she said.

"Look after your nearest post box." How the hell are people supposed to do that? With round-the-clock vigilante patrols? By posting a sentry at the box? It's not the public's responsibility to protect post boxes or to act as law enforcement officers.

How about some policing? These morons vandalise much more around the area than just the odd postbox. How about the courts giving appropriate sentences to the brainless cretins whose level of intelligence is such that they think vandalising a post box is entertainment? How about Australia Post building post boxes into Post Office walls instead of as free-standing units? How about fixing the problem, for Christ's sake!

No, not to the bureaucratic mind. To them it's much simpler. If their paying customers are inconvenienced because their post box has been destroyed, the answer is to remove the box and inconvenience them permanently.

Save us from politicians!

2006-11-17T00:41:00.000+11:00

The obvious first steps to solving long-term water problems are recycling what we use and storing what we currently pipe out to sea.

We have to be given alternatives to using pure drinking water to clean our cars, our footpaths, to water our gardens. And we have to store the rainwater that doesn't fall in the cachement area, which we already harvest but channel to the wrong place.

So what does our Premier come up with?

Here's what the Express Advocate reports:

Pipedream or saviour?
14Nov06

An artist's impression of what the new Tillegra dam will look like when completed. **

A BOLD and far-sighted rescue plan or gigantic political stunt?

Opinion was divided after Premier Morris Iemma's pledge on Monday to build a $342 million dam to help secure the Central Coast's water supplies.

Mr Iemma said the giant 450billion-litre Tillegra Dam, near Dungog, would service the Lower Hunter and Central Coast.

He also announced the expansion of the Hunter pipeline to the Central Coast. The Hunter pipeline will be finished early next month and capable of pumping 27 megalitres a day.
Monday's announcement will mean the allocation will jump to 35 megalitres or half the coast's daily needs by next December.

The Premier's long-term solution, however, will see water flowing from Tillegra Dam by 2013.
The cost of the ambitious project for Central Coast residents remains unclear.

Mr Campbell said funding for the project would come from new development and developer contributions. A quarter of the projects funding will come from a $20 levy to be paid by Hunter residents from 2009.

The remainder will be recouped by Hunter Water's sale of water to the Central Coast or through commercial arrangements with the Central Coast water authority.

Construction on the dam is expected to start by mid next year, with planning approval taking up to five years and another three to five years for the dam to fill.

"This will not only secure supply for Hunter families, but will ensure the crisis on the Central Coast will not happen again,'' Mr Iemma said. "With the Central Coast's dams standing at only 15 per cent full, and no long-term recovery in sight, now is the time for bold and far-sighted action.''

Brilliant! If it rains, we'll have enough pure drinking water to wash our cars, clean our footpaths, water our gardens...

** My asterisks. Two words Mr Iemma.

Global.

Warming.

Suppose it doesn't rain as you would like it to? The dam isn't going to look like the artist's impression is it.