Be Responsible – Be Free!

Down - now out: teary watermelon Rudd will not be missed. Now PISS OFF!

Kevin Rudd has just this minute been rolled, unopposed as Australia’s Prime Minister. Former Socialist Forum Secretary Julia Gillard has been installed as Australia’s 27th PM.

Rudd’s personal popularity has plummeted since his back-flip on the Emissions Trading Scheme earlier this year. Rudd, watching public belief in AGW steadily dropping in the lead-up to Copenhagen and in free-fall since, could not bring himself to bow to the will of the people and relinquish the religion he so fervently embraced. Instead, like a good little Fabian he… delayed. He announced that any further re-introduction of ETS legislation would not occur until 2013, well after the next election and—in all probability—the one after that. Continue reading →

Someone help me out here: I read with great interest Walt O’Brien’s analysis of WWII oil tanker losses off the U.S. Atlantic coast. They equate to double the current spill in the Gulf of Mexico, every day for six years! And yet, having tried today, I have failed to locate any scientific report detailing the ongoing environmental effects of those spills, sixty-five years after the event.

So how does this become, as a certain Mr. Brucker Bummer puts it, the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history? To be sure, it’s disastrous for those American businessmen on the Gulf Coast whose livelihoods depend on the fisheries, tourism and such trades; but surely U.S. tort law will cover compensation to them, in addition to immediate Federal relief? How is this current environmental disaster (for such it surely is) the worst? Or is this simply a case of a cynical administration in Washington “not letting a good crisis go to waste”?

(Declaration: thirty years ago, as a geology undergraduate, I was for a brief period a trainee—yanks would call me an intern—attached to the Coal Division of—you guessed it… BP. Does this make me an oil shill?)

P.S. If you haven’t heard already, the Express Your Disqust LibertyGibbert writing competition is now open. Keyboards at the ready!

G’day all. Having seen so much dissatisfaction expressed at the new blogging software at the UK Daily Telegraph, I thought I’d give you all the opportunity to vent your anguish/outrage/disqust/insert-your-own-emotion-here, by casting it into verse.

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Allow me to indulge myself for a moment. The world has been graced by the arrival of a beautiful new Ozgirl, born by caesarian section @9:15 am local time, 3.2 kilograms or 7 pounds in the old money. Bubs and Mrs Ozboy both doing fine.

I have a new AGW thread to post on as the current one is getting a bit too long.

Thank you all so much for your wonderful posts and best wishes from around the world. Right now though, the rest of the world could go to hell in a handbasket—I couldn’t care less.

I’m walking on air.

Just a quick post for those of you who have come over here from James Delingpole’s blog at the UK Daily Telegraph, where I post as ozboy. The new blog software has been universally hailed as an unmitigated disaster, snafu, stuff-up, clusterf$^k, you name it. Some are hinting darkly at a conspiracy; I suspect that the more likely, albeit prosaic explanation was it was a case of a long-planned “upgrade” being rushed prematurely into production, owing to a hacking attack last week.

Whatever the reason, all the Delingpole gang are most welcome here on my blog. Semper fi troops, semper fi…