Recent years have seen an increase in bad press for the Japanese research whaling fleet, and indeed, harrassment of their vessels, from those maritime vandals, Greenpeace. I would like to contribute a more balanced argument in their defence. Japan has always insisted that their whaling operations are strictly for scientific purposes, and yet there are [...]
Transcript for those with limited bandwidth. Gidday fellow VOXERS, I have always been impressed by xmangerm’s short video clips so I thought I should embrace the technology and have a crack at posting a video blog. Of course I’m not packing the latest tech like exman so you will have to put up [...]
Every so often Julie Bishop surprises with her ineptitude so I have never understood why she has the 2 IC job for the Libs. It could be that she is part of the West Aussie faction and they need to be kept on-side but other than that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. [...]
The General Election result in the UK might just be the best outcome for British soldiers with a coalition between the Conservatives and the (frighteningly named) Social Democrats. Clearly Labour was stuck on the pro war path started by Blair and incapable of thinking their way out of the mire. Those with a moral compass [...]
Today we saw an interesting contribution from David Buckingham an ex-head of the Minerals Council in the mid 90’s as he stepped in to provide a little sanity in the tax on extraordinary profits debate. He has effectively destroyed some of the more ludicrous comments especially the efforts by Tony Sage with his claim it [...]
Bad timing guys. This morning AM ran a story on safety concerns at Australia’s only nuclear facility at Lucas Heights. It involved dropping of a vial that exposed one of their workers to a very high dose of radiation. A dose so high their instruments couldn’t measure it. This is worrying in itself on a [...]
The new tax on abnormally high profits in the resources industry has, as expected, bought out some hysterical reactions from within the industry and predictably had folk jumping on the bandwagon as a knee jerk reaction. Considering the tax is only meant for times of extraordinary profit levels and that it was suggested by folk [...]
This last week has seen some interesting commentary about weather the current Pope can be put on trial for covering up child abuse when he was Cardinal Ratzinger as late as November 2002. This report from St Oswald Foundation is one of the better ones for covering the options. It’s an interesting question that has [...]
I have just finished reading an excellent book giving accounts from Afghanistan as experienced by British service personal both male and female. And I can’t help but notice how little distance we have come since Gallipoli. The book is called Spoken from The Front and is a collection of the experiences of 16 participants edited [...]
In a sudden flash of brilliance, Tony Abbott has finally caught up with Big Business and The Voters and used the Minchin departure to rid Her Majesty’s Opposition of the financially inept Barnaby Joyce. At least from being a spokesman for financial matters. He is now off to a portfolio looking after Regional Development (Pork [...]