Friday, April 29, 2011

News Items and comments

Just had a wake up call! "Drugs caught by the freeze on approvals treat such conditions as lung disease, chronic pain, schizophrenia and enlarged prostates.Cabinet has over-ruled the recommendations of the independent body set up to advise on drug subsidies, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee." This Govt is certifiable!
www.news.com.au
A Government cost-cutting decision to suspend subsidies for vital, expensive medicines has sparked a political campaign by doctors, health groups, patients and drug makers.
32 minutes ago · · ·
    • David Daniel Ball I think health reform could work. The chief problem, imho is that much of the health dollar is diverted to ALP pork. People are not the problem, bad management is. It is true that health care is getting more expensive, but the problem is that bad management is making it worse. Poor people are not the problem, but poverty is.
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At the moment NSW doesn't know how good government works.
ELECTION night, wrote the winner, was "a riot of celebration, exhilaration and expectation ...

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UN usually struggles with reality as it strives to represent the left.
SRI Lanka has denounced a UN-commissioned report on allegations of war crimes as malicious "fiction".

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I am sure there are more reliable people out there.
TREASURY boss Michael Schur resigned yesterday after Treasurer Mike Baird told him he was going to advertise his position and Mr Schur would have to reapply.
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I remember Linnel as the guy who lost my emails and couldn't return a call
THE Daily Telegraph has a new editor. Paul Whittaker, formerly editor of The Australian, takes over as leader of Sydney's best-selling daily newspaper from today.
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Do it right. Get the ALP links
MORE than one million emails and 11,000 phone calls are being analysed by police as they compile their case for murder against wealthy property developer Ron Medich and four other men.
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ALP are bad managers.
MARRIAGE celebrant Margaret Long reckons she had no chance the night she drove her sports car into the pothole from hell.
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ALP Feds are insane.
NSW police are ready and willing to break up the Villawood protests but the Federal Government won't let them into the detention centre.
    • David Daniel Ball ‎"Yesterday the protesters' negotiator pulled out of talks with Immigration after the department and the UNHCR representative "failed to give him any assurances about the cases of the three detainees". Dr Mohamed Al-Jabiri had been seeking a guarantee the men would not be prosecuted."
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Old age?
IT will be a filleting job to beat all others. The 12-tonne sperm whale corpse which washed ashore under cliffs at Newport Beach will be chopped into pieces this morning with chainsaws.
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My kindle books should be cheaper .. But aren't.
AUSSIE shoppers, jet-setters and households will get the most out of the dollar's ongoing meteoric rise.

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Hospitals fail under the ALP
JUST 4100 new hospital beds have been added across the country in the past five years. In the same period admissions rose by 400,000.
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The crew applied common sense in an unusual situation. Something the defense minister couldn't.
ARMY helicopter crews were forced to use their personal mobile phones to save lives during January's Queensland flood disaster.
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It isn't about being effective. The feds just want to be blameless.
CHANGES to the Family Law Act will lead to a rise in the number of children at risk of being killed or injured by their parents, fathers groups claimed yesterday.
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Space stuff
conservativeweasel.blogspot.com
While humans have been a spacefaring species for more than 50 years, it's quite possible we have yet to perform that most basic of acts - sex - beyond terra firma. Yet.
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But the baby bonus you get multiple times .. and the newlywed bonus might have to be returned ..
www.news.com.au
WHILE countries like Japan, Canada and Australia hand out "baby bonuses" to encourage people to have children, couples in one part of India are getting cash to do just the opposite.
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I do lots of volunteer work, respect the law and spend a lot of time on the 'net. But maybe I am not an average person, I am not of the radical left either.
www.news.com.au
FREQUENT internet users are less likely to respect the law, serve on a jury or do volunteer work, a study has found.
David Daniel Ball They probably asked those who responded to an an ABC Digg questionaire or some such. I just saw on Bolt a list of comparisons between the political parties and I could not recognise what people said about the Libs ..
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Not a good or necessary decision.
www.news.com.au
A Government cost-cutting decision to suspend subsidies for vital, expensive medicines has sparked a political campaign by doctors, health groups, patients and drug makers.
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431 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S FOLKSY-PREDICTABLE TAX

Tim Blair – Friday, April 29, 11 (03:49 am)

The carbon tax has made our beloved independents revert to type! Just as during post-election negotiations, Tony Windsor is once again acting tough:

Independent Tony Windsor has challenged the world’s biggest miner, BHP Billiton, to declare where it stands on the carbon tax and has publicly thrown down the gauntlet to industry critics to offer up an alternative plan to cut emissions …

“I’ve actually challenged BHP on this particular issue,” Mr Windsor told Sky News after meeting a BHP delegation in his Tamworth office yesterday.

He’s actually challenged a company! Maybe next he’ll challenge a government. And over in Port Macquarie:

Independent federal MP Rob Oakeshott has pledged to base his final decision on whether to support Labor’s carbon tax on evidence, rather than the views of his constituents, saying to do the latter would be nothing more than populism.

This means another four-hour Oakeshott speech, canvassing each and every possible outcome before eventually signing on to Labor’s fatal agenda. Mate, just give us the doom tax and move on.

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NEW BOSS

Tim Blair – Friday, April 29, 11 (03:11 am)

Garry Linnell, a very close friend and brilliant journalist, has stepped down as editor of the Daily Telegraph. His replacement is Paul Whittaker, formerly editor of The Australian.

Profound professional abilities aside, Garry’s fondness for and alertness to those around him is remarkable.

When I was ill in 2008, Garry – then a Telegraph writer – visited my hospital room and noticed a lack of video entertainment. The next day he returned with a DVD player and several exceptionally violent movies. One night I awoke to see several young nurses gathered at my bedside, watching a serial killer at work.

So besides being an award-winning writer and editor, Garry is also a nurse-gatherer. These are crucial life skills. A few weeks later, when I was recovering at home, Garry heard that I’d become bored. Annoyed, he drove by and took me on a half-day tour of Sydney criminal hangouts.

He probably won’t remember this, because to him it was simply a reflexive act of basic assistance, but at one point I couldn’t lift myself free of the car. Garry just reached in and hauled me out. “Look at the fence over there,” he said, as I was still struggling to stand up. “Three security cameras taping us.”

He misses nothing. We’ll miss him a great deal.

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FIVE YEARS IS A GOOD DEAL

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 28, 11 (12:27 pm)

According to Canberra rumours, a certain former Prime Minister employed in the diplomatic field now refers to The Lodge as “Boganville”. Perhaps he might like to forward this job opportunity …

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(Via Maurie)

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TOFU OUT, GUNS IN

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 28, 11 (12:26 pm)

Wal-Mart’s profit-slashing experiment with political correctness continues to be reversed:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is quietly bringing back rifles, shotguns and ammunition to hundreds of U.S. stores as the hurting retail giant seeks to reinvigorate its one-stop shopping appeal and attract more male customers.

The world’s largest retailer stopped selling hunting rifles and bullets at all but a third of its U.S. stores five years ago, citing diminishing sales. It is now restoring them to hundreds of locations, bringing the total to nearly half of its more than 3,600 U.S. namesake stores …

Imagine all the profits they avoided during the great firearms surge of 2008.

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The Black Knight now runs Gillard’s boat people policy

Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (07:05 am)

Utter, utter farce… In how many ways must East Timor say no before the Gillard Government accepts it?:

JULIA GILLARD’S proposal to build a refugee centre in East Timor has been rejected by the country’s President, Jose Ramos-Horta, the only senior political figure in the tiny nation who had left the door open to the plan.

“Timor-Leste [East Timor] says that we will not agree to set up an asylum-seeker processing centre in the country,” Dr Ramos-Horta told Timorese journalists.

The declaration will embarrass the Prime Minister, who insisted that talks with Timorese leaders were continuing at the highest levels despite an earlier rejection of the plan by the country’s Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao, the Deputy Prime Minister, Jose Luis Guterres, and senior ministers.

Yesterday a spokesman for the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, was still insisting East Timor’s council of ministers - the equivalent of the Australian cabinet - had not rejected the plan.

And so a famous comedy turn actually becomes the policy of this most colossally inept government:

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Oakeshott decides he won’t represent his electorate any more

Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (06:37 am)

A perfect snapshot of the arrogance of the warmist and the indifference to the opinions of everyone else - factors that also explain Labor’s disastrous fall in the polls:

INDEPENDENT federal MP Rob Oakeshott has pledged to base his final decision on whether to support Labor’s carbon tax on evidence, rather than the views of his constituents, saying to do the latter would be nothing more than populism.

Mr Oakeshott made his comments last night after a Climate Commission forum in Port Macquarie, in the heart of his notionally conservative electorate of Lyne on the NSW north coast....

Brian Pope and Julie Patterson from Taree said they thought the majority of those who attended the forum had, like them, been involved in climate-change action groups of some form.

They agreed most locals were either undecided or sceptical on climate change, and said the debate could not be advanced if the public was not interested.

Memo: “not interested” is not the same as “not convinced”.

UPDATE

If this is the best argument that the country’s most militantly Left-wing union can make for the carbon dioxide tax, then kill it now. And doesn’t CFMEU head Tony Maher think it a bit yesterday to still be preaching an anti-capitalist, Marxism-inspired rant?

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It’s Sudanese vs the Islanders in multicultural Melbourne

Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (06:28 am)

This time a Sudanese man is a victim, but the issue still is how well some immigrant groups fit in:

A MAN stabbed in Dandenong early this morning staggered 100 metres searching for help before collapsing at a library.

Det Sen-Constable Ron Killeen from Transit CIU confirmed the victim was a Sudanese man believed to be about 20 years old.

He said police are now searching the Dandenong area for a group of eight to 10 thugs, who used at least one knife in the attack, aged in their teens or early 20s…

The victim described his attackers as of Maori or Islander appearance...

On April 10, vice versa:

THREE men were stabbed and another knocked unconscious during a brutal attack in Melbourne’s south east overnight....

Police said a group of about 15 men were walking home from a party along Springvale Rd, near the intersection of Balmoral Ave, just before 1.30am when they got into an argument with another group of 15 men.

The second group of men, who were armed with knives, proceeded to assault members of the other group.

Three men, aged in their early 20s and of Pacific Islander appearance, received stab wounds to their arms and hands.... The second group of men who assaulted these men are perceived to be of African appearance.

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Panasonic Professor has flag lowered

Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (06:08 am)

Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery announces:

I have been carrying the flag for Panasonic in everything else I do, the books I publish, in the television series that I’m making at the moment, and of course in the new position as the chief of the Climate Commission.

Panasonic now announces

Panasonic Corp., Japan’s biggest home appliance maker, is cutting about 17,000 jobs worldwide ...

This seems to conform to a recent and unfortunate pattern. Flannery invested in Geodynamics, whose geothermal project in Innamincka has been plagued by technical trouble and floods Flannery didn’t predict, which has had a cooling effect on the share price:

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He was also appointed Climate Commissioner to “educate” us on global warming, only to see scepticism rise:

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Sheer coincidence

Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (06:03 am)

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The Zelig of the Gillard Government pops up at the Royal Wedding:

KEVIN RUDD has beaten Julia Gillard to the punch by getting to London before the Prime Minister to revel in the atmosphere of today’s royal wedding.

Before Ms Gillard left Beijing for London, Mr Rudd was already in the Old Dart mixing it with his old mate from Channel Seven’s Sunrise program, David Koch, on Wednesday night for a bit of light-hearted but high-rating banter.

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Least there, soonest connected

Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (05:55 am)

Nothing about this $36 billion scheme seems to make sense:

BUSINESS has attacked the latest National Broadband Network rollout—to seven new Tasmanian communities—as akin to ”building hospitals where there are no patients” because it shuns the state’s main cities.

The federal government yesterday announced “stage two” of the nation-first NBN rollout in Tasmania, to take fibre-optic services offering high-speed internet to a further 11,150 properties in seven sites.

Most are either small rural or regional towns, such as Deloraine, St Helens and Triabunna, or fringes of Hobart, such as Kingston Beach and Sorell....

Peak business group the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has been scathing of the “stage one” rollout—to two small timber towns and one Hobart fringe area—where the take-up has been less than 15 per cent of premises.

TCCI chairman Troy Harper yesterday said ,,, “Why, then, would you put it in areas where it’s going to cost you most for your cable run and you’re going to get the least number of people to sign up?”

Federal Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy ... was unable to explain the reasons behind the site selections.

“I’m not a local Tasmanian. I have no idea at a ministerial level where these sites were located, other than being given the information at the beginning of the process,” Senator Conroy said.

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Hitler would approve

Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 28, 11 (04:07 pm)

I thought Australia was now dangerous for those with an opinion, but Britain may well be even worse:

At least four officers are said to have visited residents in the hamlet of Pitcombe, Somerset, after a poster of the Conservative councillor Mike Beech had a Hitler-like moustache drawn on it.

After seeing the poster, Mr Beech reported it to the police. Officers began an inquiry under the Public Order Act, saying that the poster could be deemed to cause “harassment, alarm and distress” to the councillor.

Officers even conducted house-to-house inquiries, visiting homeowners at each of the hamlet’s 20 houses.

(Thanks to reader Owen.)

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Labor dragged down by the policies of the elite

Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 28, 11 (02:52 pm)

Essential Research confirms that Labor is heading for a hiding:

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What is crippling Labor is that it’s no longer seen the clear choice of even the working people it could once count on for its firmest support. The Coalition is seen a far more in touch,and I suspect Labor’s ludicrous commitment to the global warming politics of the inner-urban elite just makes that contrast stronger:

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(Thanks to reader Mick.)

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It seems the police fooled us about Sudanese crime

Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 28, 11 (02:31 pm)

Victoria’s new police leadership seems less shy about releasing data linking crime to birthplace, thus identifying problems that need fixing:

SUDANESE-born Victorians are the most violent ethnic group in the state, police figures show. More than 330 Sudanese immigrants and visitors were accused of assault in Victoria in 2009-10, according to police records…

The figures come as police investigate violent clashes between Sudanese community members after a national Sudanese beauty pageant on Saturday…

There were 693 assaults by foreign-born residents in Dandenong—114 by Sudanese-born people—compared with 702 in the City of Melbourne and 444 in the City of Casey.

What is disgraceful is that this data should come as a shock to even Sudanese community leaders, who claim the police used to tell them another story:

Sudanese community leader Saturnino Onyala said the data seemed at odds with police assurances their young people were involved in fewer assaults than other groups.

Here is a possible example from four years ago of this peddling of deceptive assurances:

Just before (the 2007) federal election, (Chief Commissioner Christine) Nixon embarrassed the Howard government’s immigration minister, Kevin Andrews, by contradicting his warnings that the crime rates among Somali and Sudanese refugees were high.

Not so, said Nixon: ”Those Sudanese refugees are actually under-represented in the crime statistics.”

She was silent on the crime rate among Somalis, but repeated: “The young Sudanese who actually come into custody or dealt with us, only really make up about 1 per cent of the people we deal with . . . (W)hat we’re actually seeing is that they’re not, in a sense, represented more than the proportion of them in the population.”

I wrote here on Wednesday how police and census figures showed Nixon had said something untrue - and had helped to (unfairly) damn Andrews as racist.

The crime rate among these refugees was in fact anywhere between four and eight times higher than that for the rest of us, despite VicPol’s apparent attempts to have fewer Africans charged or prosecuted.

Did hiding the truth help or hurt? And what’s Nixon’s excuse now for misleading us - and quite probably the Sudanese?

UPDATE

The rise in overall street violence in Victoria, is unmistakable and dramatic:

The overall assault rate per 100,000 people increased almost 7 per cent from 2007-08 to 2009-10.

That is a huge rise in just two years, and evidence that the Australian-born are increasingly feral, too.

UPDATE

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The alleged attack by Sudanese immigrants on three Darwin youths on the weekend has another racial complication:

THE victim of a vicious machete attack said his injuries are the result of a gang war which had been brewing in Darwin’s northern suburbs for two years.

The 16-year-old apprentice, who wished not to be named, said there had been tensions between a group of African boys called Hoodstarz and his friends since the two groups had a fight involving baseball bats and bricks at Leanyer Recreation Park two years ago.

The Malak boy said he was attacked by three car loads of boys while walking home through Wulagi with four friends from a party early Sunday morning.

“One of them said; ‘You remember me, we are going to kill you,” he said.

One of his attackers struck him with such force with the machete that it cleaved into the bone of his left arm. His head was also split open when he was hit with a metal pole and he sustained two long welts to his back…

The boy denied it was a racial fight, but said racist taunts had been exchanged. “There has been times when they have said to me f*** off back to your own country but I am Larrakia this is Larrakia country ... they should go home,” he said.

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All the more reason to heed the wise words of Peter Run (above), a Queensland academic and former Sudanese refugee:

Over the past three days, young Sudanese immigrants in Melbourne engaged in deplorable acts of violence including the use of machetes – a weapon still associated with the horrific scenes of the Rwandan genocide – after a beauty pageant held in Springvale, southeast of that city…

Put Miss South Sudan Australia aside, and you still have several episodes of Sudanese youth killing (or at least attempting to kill) each other with knives, crowbars and gearboxes

In all of these incidents nothing whatsoever involves white people or their institutions until violence erupts. So why has the imminent University of Melbourne academic and Head of African Think Tank, Dr Berhan Ahmed linked this to the oft-preached white Australia’s penchant to mistreat people of darker skin?

According to him Africans in Australia experience racism daily and this stops them from participating in society. I don’t know, this may be a fair point, but why would that make them attack each other? Shouldn’t they attack people who represent the system that “has a problem accepting their blackness” as Dr Ahmed so phrases?

(Thanks to reader Grant.)

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