Used Cars

John Clarke, Bryan Dawes skit [Scene: A car yard. BRYAN is perusing the stock. He is approached by JOHN] John: Morning! Looking for a new car? Bryan : Nope. New Prime Minister, actually. John: You're the third one this morning. Anything in mind? Bryan : You know...... nothing fancy, reliable, economical family model. Something to get the country from A to B. John: You mean like a Howard? Bryan : Yeah...a little Johnny. Nothing flash, does the job. Low maintenance, economical, sensible. Runs for years, no troubles. John: So.... you used to have one? Bryan : Yeah. About 10 years. Great little model - don't know why I got rid of him -- biggest mistake I've ever made. John: What happened? Bryan : Traded him in for a Kevin 07. John: Big mistake. Bryan : Lot of people bought it. Good political mileage. John: How was the Kevin 07? Bryan : Came with a $900 factory rebate - that was good. John: Anything else? Bryan : Not much. Sounded nice but nothing under the bonnet. It was a lemon. John: Didn't stick around for long did it? Bryan : Nah - had a factory recall. Shipped overseas and was never seen again. John: What was the problem? Bryan : Lots. But the final straw was the navigation system. Plug it in and it automatically loses its own way. John: Whatcha got now? Bryan : It's a Gillard-Brown John: The hybrid? Bryan : Yeah. The Eco-drive system - not a good idea. An engine that can't deliver hooked up to a transmission stuck in permanent reverse. John: Green paintwork with a red interior. And steering that always lurches to the left for no apparent reason - that's the one? Bryan : The Fustercluck model. John: The only one they made, Bryan . Not the vehicle of choice for the road to recovery - but did they finish up fixing the navigation system? Bryan : Made it worse. Turn it on and it does a press release, heads off in all directions and goes nowhere. John: So that's why you're here? Bryan : That's right. I'm stuck with a car that's wasteful, expensive, ineffective and past its use by date. I don't suppose you've heard of the "Cash for Clunkers" scheme? John: Join the queue brother.

Fugitive Malcolm Naden

Just outside Gloucester NSW where the NSW Police team searching for Malcolm Naden have set up its  headquarters, a helpful local has made a contribution.

Toorale Money Waste and Community Economic Damage

Just in case the telling point is lost in too many words-see below. The Darling River flow past Louth for the 2010/11 year was 7,910,553 megalitres. The Government claim of "water returned to the river" in 2010/11 as a consequence of the Toorale close down, was 7,672 megalitres-0.01% of the flow.

Toorale Ramifications

The Sydney Morning Herald (David Wroe) has written a well balanced article on the waste of money in buying Toorale (pronounced Too-rally) Station at Bourke.http://www.smh.com.au/environment/station-buyout-a-waste-of-money-20111223-1p8ln.html.
 I attempted to leverage this with a letter to the Editor which failed to make the final cut-

"Congratulations to the SMH (Station buyout a waste of money- 23rd December) for "outing" the Commonwealth and former NSW State Government for the total waste of $23.75m in purchasing Toorale Station. Not only was this a waste of taxpayer's funds for negligible environmental benefit, it also took out of production the hard hit Bourke community's most productive enterprise. How downstream grazier Justin Mc Clure can argue that a 0.01% increase in flow can generate downstream environmental benefits is a real mystery.

The episode has wider ramifications in terms of the Draft Murray Darling Basin Plan. The Commonwealth Water Act 2007 and the approach of the Murray Darling Basin Authority is deeply flawed and the Toorale outcomes represent a good example of the likely consequences-negligible environmental benefit, but significant negative economic consequences. When flows are low, license conditions prevent extractions and diversions, when flows are significant the impacts of extractions and diversions are minimal. Dorothea Mackellar was absolutely right in describing inland Australia as a land of "droughts and flooding rains", she could have added and "not much in the middle".

In using absolute numbers as the MDBA has done, to prescribe acceptable extractions/diversions limits without gearing these to actual flows (availability) is really nonsense. To argue that these numbers are "averages" doesn't help, given the enormous spreads around the averages. Our current water bureaucrats could do worse than studying how the existing control system operates. It works rather well.
J.D.O.(David) Boyd

7A Eastern Arterial Road,

St Ives NSW 2075
Tel:   02 9449 7501
Mob: 0429 999 444
(Former Chairman and CEO of Clyde Agriculture, the previous owner of Toorale Station)"

Global non-Warming

Hitting the Nail on the Head!

Durban failed to explain why models were not achieved (Letter published in The Australian, 16 December 2011)

Your editorial (15/12) discussing Canada’s withdrawal from the binding  Kyoto agreement also states your continued acceptance of “the strong evidence of anthropogenic climate change and support (for) limits on greenhouse gas emissions as a precautionary and remedial measure”.

But surely questions must be raised by the failure at Durban to hold any serious discussion of the now obvious failures of the supposed consensual climate science.

Most  astonishing is the failure to explain at Durban why predictions based on scientific (sic) models are not being achieved.

Why do we need even to take precautionary action when there has been no real warming for almost two decades, no recent sea-level rise, no Arctic ice-melt, fewer hurricanes than at almost any time in 30 years and no Pacific atolls disappearing beneath the waves?

And, going back further, how do the modellers explain why over the past century temperatures did not rise for about 40 per cent of the time even when CO2 concentrations were increasing?

As the barman said to excessive imbibers, time’s up mate. Your precautionary action is to recognise you can’t get away with believing models.

Des Moore, South Yarra, Vic

Entitlements and Allocations

The following letter was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 9th. December, 2011:
"The focus on the 2750 gigalitre (GLS) figure of claimed water "returned to the rivers" is highly misleading. This number refers to extraction entitlements.  Irrigation entitlements grant the right to extract water only when when seasonal allocations are made and this depends on water availability. When water is short there are no, or very limited, allocations. Water entitlements without allocations amount to phantom water. During the Millennium Drought extraction entitlements were cut by over 4,000 GLS by the allocation system-it works rather well." (Buying irrigation entitlements will do nothing for our rivers and will only limit agricultural production when water is plentiful.)
(  ) Omitted by Letters Editor

Matt Ridley on Climate Change

My favourite author of the moment ("The Rational Optimist") Matt Ridley has given a highly acclaimed speech on Climate Change. I commend it to you_
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/ridley_rsa.pdf