Political corruption is not the exclusive territory of US Big Business and their Supreme Court. The Tasmanian Wilderness Society which now operates under the name of The Wilderness Society, is having a bit of trouble with it’s head honcho Alec Marr.
In an interesting comparison with Orwell’s Animal Farm, young Alec has been likened to the pigs who took over from the Farmer. An analogy that should find heads nodding within the protest group. Rumours have been floating around about bullying and with an amazing turnover of 60% in 13 months from a staff of nearly 100, there must be something rotten in the management structure.
For some reason folk like Alec lose touch with their members when they having been living a comfortable life and the ego ends up putting self before any other interests. When he suffered a 9 – 2 no confidence motion, Alec should have had a “good hard look at himself” and thought about the spirit of his organisation. That old fashioned idea of Democracy.
Unfortunately for TWS, he went the other way and started punishing folk by withdrawing funds and (get this one) holding a secret AGM and only inviting his mates along. On the scale of cunning he gets big points for meeting the legal requirements by publishing the notice for the AGM in the least read Tasmanian newspaper the Burnie Advocate (I’ve never heard of it either). But disenfranchising the membership can only lead one way and I’m surprised he hasn’t worked it out yet.
At risk here is a staggering annual $15M worth of donations but it goes even further than that. Once someone thinks they are bigger than the organisation they usually prefer to bring the whole thing tumbling down rather that let someone else take over the reins. With the trickiness displayed so far, young Alec looks far from repentant and more likely to trash an organisation that held it’s head high after the Franklin Dam era of protests.
If I was a kid coming out of Uni full of Green enthusiasm I’d give TWS the big swerve. It’s hard enough to battle big companies like Gunns without having another bitch fight back at Head Office. And if I was kicking in any of that $15M in donations I’d be wondering exactly where it was going and how much bang for the buck I was getting.
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Click on the Tee shirt above to hit the site then have a play.
I’m sad to report that Blackie the chook (the one with the most character and the most imaginative name) has wandered off into the after life or the chook equivalent there of. The recent heat wave may have been a contributing factor but a lack of enthusiasm at meal times had prepared us for a possible problem.
As chooks go, Blackie was the one with the most character. If ever I felt a peck on the back of the leg, it was usually Blackie registering displeasure at a later than expected lunch time, or reminding me I hadn’t turned over a few sods for her to scratch over.
Egg production has dropped by one of late and she did suffer by being egg bound a little while back. She recovered at the time which is quite unusual but only managed a couple of months grace. It would seem that she was the one not able to produce an egg a day but we have had a very good run up till now so no complaints there.
Chooks get a bit bossy if you introduce a new chicken into the pen so we wont be replacing her until another one passes away. Then we will add another pair to share the stress.
Today’s garbage truck carried her away to her final resting place. I’m not into burials and head stones for departed animals like my mother used to do so she had to settle for adding to the land fill at the local tip.
Sunday night I went to see this flick at Horsham Cinema but first a warning. There are some minor spoilers here so come back after you have seen the movie if you want it to retain the surprise elements.
I sometimes struggle with disaster movies. The contrived extra drama is a real show stopper for me. Happily, this flick is much better than the standard fare with all the events sitting nicely within the story. The special effects are very good too. None of that lame gfx as featured in Twister.
Of special note is a number of things that usually accompany disaster movies but are surprisingly missing here.
Firstly, No ones cell phone cuts out at a critical moment. A thousand thankyous for that.
Then there is a Russian aircraft that is technically in good nick.
Thirdly, although a lot of the action happens in the States, the solution is in another country and the final settlement location is not in America either.
Now as much as I enjoyed the above items, there is some stretching of the imagination required and it has the obligatory “The US President stays with his people to the bitter end,” moment, but for all that it is still a very entertaining movie. It’s helped by the strong cast especially John Cusack and Oliver Platt.
It does prompt a bit of thinking too though I suspect while others were concerned about Climate Change I was wondering which ark the telephone sanitizers were going in.
The current negotiations between Labor and the Conservatives over an ETS have made some significant changes to the Government’s plans but also exposed the National party to the harsh glare of farmers in general.
The failing membership of the Nats has been an ongoing problem the consequences of which have led to a declining number of seats in parliament. The problem seems to stem from the party requiring the votes of the farmers but the financial support of the Mining lobby. A more subtle collection of pollies might be able to handle these two groups when they clash but the current crop simply don’t seem to be bright enough to handle the situation.
In December last year Senator Joyce foolishly came out in support of the farmers over a Greens bill to require a water study before an exploration license was issued. One hostile phone call from Mitch Hook, CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia, and Barnaby did a back flip withdrawing support. This was bad enough but he compounded the damage when he went on to candidly reveal the fact that the phone call had occurred. Leaving the farmers with no doubt of where the party’s loyalties’ lie.
Now that an agreement for an ETS has included some serious concessions for farmers, and Barnaby Joyce is trying to hold back the tide, the farmers have to decide if they are going to side with the party who is in lockstep with the Miners or start looking ahead to how they can claim their rightful place as earners of carbon credits under new rules. I can’t see it being that hard a decision for them. Go with the Liberals and aim for a seat at the decision making table, or stick their heads in the sand and hope it all goes away.
If it was my farm and my income and my kids inheriting the property, I’d want to get inside the decision making process as soon as possible.
The Internet is a funny place at times and posting something on the Net can bring fame albeit unintended and probably embarrassing.
Star Wars kid The Star Wars kid started out as a geekish kid taping himself going through some light sabre exercises then posting it to YouTube. It looks pretty funny as he stumbles around the room but then the power of the Net look over.
Someone decided the light sabre would look good if it was actually lit so the video was edited with a nice glow to the ends of his stick. Nice bit of work which then inspired more one-upmanship.
These days you can find any number of variations of Star Wars kid including fighting characters from the Kill Bill movie. Star Wars Kid does Kill Bill
All very entertaining and inventive though probably somewhere the original star doesn’t care to visit. Once it’s out there you can’t get it back.
Check ‘em out and try some searches for yourself. Lord of the Rings is out there and Agent Smith from the Matrix.
One of the nicest things about moving away from the big city is the country living. The pace is slower and the attitude is less aggressive. The toot of a car horn invariably means a friend is driving by not someone offering negative feed back on your driving skills.
We have always entertained the notion of having chickens running around the yard and finally we have the ability. The plans have been modified though. Anyone with a garden using wood chips as a water saving method will know where I’m coming from here.
Chooks live to scratch and have no concept of how a garden should look.
But behind a chook wire fence, they have made a brilliant addition to the yard. Got leftover veggies or indeed the scraps left over from their preparation? Into the chook pen. Pulled out a few weeds and want to turn them into compost? In they go too.
After having the chooks for just on a year, the sandy soil in their yard is looking a lot more healthy. Between the chook poo and the weeds, the soil has really built up. We even have worms in there although it’s risky for them to reveal themselves. Nothing gets the excitement levels soaring like turning over a few shovel loads of dirt and a worm or two turning up.
Egg production is a real eye opener too. The eggs are big. And the yokes so yellow. Nothing like their pale cousins in the supermarket. The laying process is a sociable event too. We have 4 chooks and they take it in turns to produce an egg. After one has laid an egg it comes out of the coup and loudly declares success. Then another will walk up the ramp and lay her egg right beside the first one. Out she comes and the process continues.
The actual chicken coup sits right in the back corner of the yard under a huge gum tree. It’s shaded from about 10 am so the chooks have cool conditions throughout the day. Never the less the current heat wave has dropped production from 4 eggs to 1 per day. I don’t blame them at all. We have had such a mild opening to the warmer weather that the 100 degree Fahrenheit days have been a bit of a shock to the system.
So that’s how chooks have entered our lives. Even more fun than I thought they would be and great little recyclers to boot. A welcome addition to the homestead.
The current unhappiness with uninvited guests refusing to leave an Australian vessel in an Indonesian port has stirred up the old race hate fans like Wilson Tuckey and Barnaby Joyce with a view to scoring some cheap political points.
Notionally it is better news for the Opposition and given them a breather from the damaging infighting but it’s not all beer and skittles for them just yet. The problem stems from firstly not having a policy to follow and secondly a lack of logical thinking on the part of their Leader.
In the first instance. chaps like Iron bar Tuckey have no set rules to follow (assuming he actually would) and he gets a bit excited. In Iron bar’s case it led to the bizarre demand that Aussie soldiers should throw the asylum seekers off the vessel. Now either Tuckey doesn’t have much of a grip of geography or he is running a bit shy of how diplomacy works. Sending troops into another country to throw their weight around is not likely to go down especially well with very many people and in all likelyhood is illegal in the International court. (Policy fail)
Secondly, if you do want to score political points as Turnbull wishes to do, it’s a good idea to try making the statement out loud in front of your advisers but in private. This way you can check your statement for logic without it going on record. Clearly young Malcolm didn’t think it through this time when he claimed the current boat load of asylum seekers having originated from Indonesia “completely destroyed Kevin Rudd’s argument about political pressure in Sri Lanka.”
Interesting logic that. News reports from Sri Lanka make it perfectly clear there is a very unsympathetic Government dealing with the surviving Tamil Tigers. Conciliation is not on the agenda. One boat load can hardly be claimed to be representative of the whole problem.
This really points to Turnbull’s ongoing problem in front of the media. He seems to get over excited and forget to leave himself some wriggle room. Yes, he could make some milage out of the current problem but he has to be a bit more thoughtful. Blowing his credibility at the opening of an attack gets the focus on him instead of the point he wants to make. It’s not the first time he has made a dill of himself and I think it stems from his attitude that he is always right. Some Press conferences seem to show him thinking on his feet rather than being prepared.
Can he fix it? Well yes, but does he know he has a problem? I think his attitude suggests he thinks he is without blame in the current despair gripping the party room and unless he takes a “good hard look at himself” he will probably leave the job feeling he was never given a fair go. He has been given fairly good support but when he drops the easy ball like this you can’t blame the Libs looking for a better player.
In the Good Ol’ Days my Mum remarried when I had reached the dizzy heights of maturity at 12 years of age. They were interesting times because the marriage crossed the dreaded religious boundary between Roman Catholicism and the C of E.
These days it wouldn’t crack a mention because those esteemed bodies have nothing resembling the power they used to exercise in those times, but in those days it was a serious business. For starters my sisters and I had to move from the State primary at Ararat to St. Mary’s Catholic Primary diagonally over the crossroad. Not much of a move in geographical terms but a severe change in the schooling.
The changes took effect even before we entered the school grounds. Instead of joining the other kids singing
“Catholic dogs sitting on logs Eating maggots out of frogs”
we had to learn the opposing childish taunts. Not only that, I felt like I didn’t belong in any case.
Once we entered the class room the next big shock hit. The first period was devoted to learning religion by rote. This was a tough gig because having not been indoctrinated at an early age, the stories just didn’t make sense. Someone living in a whale? A bloke prepared to sacrifice his son to his God was regarded as holy? A God so insecure that he turned a bloke’s wife into a pillar of salt for simply looking back on her home town? All most peculiar.
The loss of lesson time to religion was an interesting question and that was resolved by never having any sport. Somehow I think we were ripped off in this trade.
But for all the shakeup there was always a good measure of positive religious reinforcement in my step Grand mother. Sunday church sessions saw her deeply involved with her God. Where her husband would be looking around doing a head count of family members in attendance, she would be focused on the alter. Oblivious of all that surrounded her.
But to think she wasn’t aware of the real world would be a serious error. Outside the church she was well aware of what was going on and had seen plenty in her life but because of her nature she elected to see the good in the world rather than the bad. Attitude is everything.
My favourite memory of her is her parting words whenever we were leaving. To the girls she would always say “Keep yourself nice.”
Not bad advice even these days.
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