Ohh dear, Prince Charles is going to be our king?

I'm a proud monarchist, but if Charles keeps this up I might jump ship. Have a read of his lefty rant. Here are a few highlights:

The first is urgency. There is now only a mercifully small (if vociferous) number of people who do not accept the science of climate change and who should know better, but there are still a great many who fail to recognise the urgency of the situation........

In our human-centred world, with its emphasis on economics, and following decades of apparently unending material "progress", it has become all too easy for us to believe that we can continue to take what we wish from natural systems on the assumption they will indefinitely replenish themselves. As we are discovering, in the real world it doesn't quite work like that.....

Thanks to twitter James Patterson for the news.

Wise Latina woman

President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor had this to say in 2001: : "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Which is a good excuse as any for me to post a picture of famous Latina woman, Salma Hayek:

Cheaper broadband on the way

Great! Looks like we are going to get cheaper broadband and done through competition not government action:

INTERNET costs could be halved thanks to a massive cable linking Australia's eastern seaboard to the rest of the world.

Pipe Networks’ first international broadband cable, dubbed PPC-1, landed in Sydney last week.

The $200 million cable, stretching 4787km, runs from Collaroy on Sydney's north shore to Guam and then branches off into other major countries.

The PPC-1 is the first international internet cable to be owned independently of the country's big telcos.

Once completed, the pipe is set to increase the size of Australia's international link by almost 50 per cent, and send internet prices tumbling....

Might finally get off dial up.

The beginning of a social disaster

Lured by home grants and low interest rates young families have been getting into homes they wouldn't other wise afford. When interest go up or the recession really hits we can expect this to get a lot worse:

THEY'RE the nouveau poor - thousands of ordinary families who have lost their jobs and their homes as the recession begins to bite. Just a year ago they were living middle class lives with good jobs and in comfortable neighbourhoods.

Now, thousands of families in Sydney are jobless and have nowhere to go - and charities say thousands more are just "two pay cheques" away from a similar fate.

St Vincent de Paul has recorded a six-fold increase in homeless families looking for help, the biggest increase in 120 years....

Liberal hotties too hot for some

The other day Young Liberal identity, Tim Andrews, decided to illustrate the ‘Babe Theory of Politics’ by blogging pictures of some of his girl friends (since taken down) . It all seemed harmless fun to me but Pru Goward does not approve:

Ms Lauren McKenzie from Tim's blog post

But NSW Liberal MP and former Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward is unimpressed by Andrews’s efforts.

"I'm disappointed that he's misjudged the importance of a political party like ours that for so long has defended the dignity of men and women," she said.

"We do need to recruit young people...and I commend Tim for having a go, but I think that we have to remember that people join political parties because of the facts, not the figures."

Which has lead to a press release from Logan LNP Councilor Hajnal Ban( picture below) who does not agree:

"I respect Pru as a senior member of our party and for her previous work as a Sex Discrimination Commissioner. However Pru is way off mark here, "Our generation wants to engage politically using the media in various ways. Talking about who's hot and who's not on a blog is one way 'Gen Y' talks, " Being over zealous about political correctness has put our generation on the outer, "This is an example of overreaction. The website should have been taken in the context it was intended, "The notion that politicians should be androgenous grey suited fogies is old fashioned and sets feminism and conservatives back 100 years,...

Political correctness can be so amusing.

Scammers after our super

Two stories today. First, a bunch of crooks are robbing people of their superannuation with an identity theft scam:

A GANG of fraudsters are robbing victims of their superannuation savings in an alarming new identity scam.

Police believe the process begins with the theft of a super statement from private mailboxes.

After replicating the victim's identity onto counterfeit ID cards, the thieves create a Self Managed Superannuation Fund online with a linked bank account.

They then contact the victim's superannuation provider and, assuming their identity, request the money be "rolled over" into the fraudulent account.

Secondly theres an even bigger rip off brewing:

THE Government plans to tap Australia's $1 trillion pool of superannuation savings to help plug a $58 billion hole in its nation-building program.

The funding shortfall for approved infrastructure projects has raised concerns that unless a greater portion of national savings can be accessed, some of the 15 rail, road and ports projects announced by Wayne Swan as Tuesday night's Budget centrepiece may never be built.

Silly me, I went ahead and increased my super contribution last year.

Good sense from John Howard

John Howard gave an interview last night and as was spot on:

Asked what he would have done to combat the global economic crisis, Mr Howard immediately pointed to the abolition of Work Choices, saying that by overturning the controversial industrial legislation the Rudd Government had added to unemployment.

"Work Choices helped give us the lowest unemployment rate in 33 years," Mr Howard said.

"The biggest challenge that the Government now faces is stopping unemployment going too high and they are now, by dismantling our industrial relations reforms, they are adding to unemployment.

"If the name of the game is to protect jobs, why do you follow policies that destroy jobs?"

And as to what he would do to get us out of the recession:

The former PM, who lost the top job in 2007 to Kevin Rudd, said the Rudd Government's multi-billion-dollar stimulus packages had worsened the economic situation in Australia by increasing debt.

Instead, they should have followed policies such as a "payroll holiday", which would have encouraged business to retain jobs, Mr Howard said.

"I wouldn't have thrown money around and given cheques to people," he said.

"I would have actually said to the states, 'We'll give you, I think it is $16 billion collected throughout Australia for payroll tax', give them payroll tax relief for a year in order to lift the burden of payroll tax, and that would have helped firms to keep staff.

A great Australian has died

Bud Tingwell is gone:

VETERAN Australian actor Bud Tingwell died this morning with his son and daughter by his side.

Tingwell passed away in a Melbourne hospital at 8.30am, his spokesperson told news.com.au.

The spokesperson said while his health had been pretty good in recent years, he passed away from complications with prostate cancer.

Tingwell had been diagnosed with the disease a couple of years ago.

Best known for his roles in the film Breaker Morant, mini-series All The Rivers Run and more recently, The Castle, Tingwell was still acting in films and on the stage until recent years.

I'm old enough to remember him in Homicide:

Up and down

Just because I felt like it.

Joe's response to Swan

Joe Hockey managed to produce the following response to Treasurer's Swan's budget in record time. Worth seeing.

Treasurer Ralph's second budget

Here is my second attempt at the Federal budget. This time I ended up with $67.25 billion dollar surplus. Beat that Mr Swan!

I decided to abolish the 15% tax rate completely and reduced income tax rates and company tax to a 25% single rate. Reducing tax allowed me to cut middle class welfare and I substantially reduced spending on health and education.

The reason I ran such a big surplus was so I could go to the States and offer the deal: They would get a slice of the income tax base, a defacto state income tax, but they would have to abolish one major state tax, payroll tax or stamp duty , and take full responsibility for hospitals and schools. They are supposed to be state responsibilities anyway.

As the resulting economic boom will make us the envy of the world I gave a modest increase to defense. Unfortunately not everyone will be pleased with my radical plan to improve the nation so I doubled police and security spending.

If you don't like my budget then do your own and tell be the result!

legalise marijuana and tax it

Thats what the cash strapped Californians are thinking. :

CALIFORNIA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he welcomes a public debate on proposals to legalise and tax marijuana, which some suggest could provide a lucrative new revenue source for the cash-strapped state.

The Republican governor, whose term in office expires at the end of next year, was asked about the idea of treating pot like alcohol at an appearance in northern California to promote wildfire preparedness.

"No, I don't think it's time for that, but I think it's time for a debate," he said. "And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalised marijuana and other drugs, what affect it had on those countries, and are they happy with that decision."

In my view it deserves serious consideration here too and will properly get some if California goes ahead with the idea.

A smoke or be fined

The Chinese have found an interesting way to stimulate their economy- smoke or be fined.

OFFICIALS in a county in central China have been told to smoke nearly a quarter million packs of locally made cigarettes annually or risk being fined, state media reports.

The Gong'an county government in Hubei province has ordered its staff to puff their way through 230,000 packs of Hubei-produced cigarette brands a year, the Global Times said.

Condoleezza Rice tells it like it is

Andrew Bolt has already run this video but its so good it deserves a large audience. Notice how quiet the room soon became.

Rudd's youth camps

This shows the desperation of the government. Their IR laws price young people out of the job market so they are now considering "boot camps":

THE Federal Government wants military-style "boot camp" training overseen by the Department of Defence for Australia's unemployed youth, Cabinet sources confirmed last night.

The Sunday Telegraph has learned Canberra is keen on the move to stop the loss of a generation to welfare as a result of the recession.

It would also instill self discipline and structure into the lives of problem young job seekers. Cabinet sources confirmed to The Sunday Telegraph yesterday the plan had been promoted at "the highest levels", but it's unclear whether it will make the final cut for the Budget on Tuesday week.

Unsurprisingly the military is not please with their new role:

Key figures in Defence are fiercely resisting the idea of being responsible for training the unemployed and sources said the "unworkable" program could include weapons training.

They said the idea was being pushed amid growing concerns within the Government that youth unemployment was likely to hit politically unacceptable levels by the end of the year.

While ministers are broadly supportive of the initiative, some in Defence see it as a cynical exercise to artificially cut the official number of young jobless.

End stamp duties

I was very pleased to read today that the Victorian government is proposing something I have been promoting for some time. Replace State stamp duties by a giving the states a percentage of Commonwealth income tax- a defacto state tax.

THE states would scrap all stamp duties in exchange for a $20 billion a year share of income tax revenue under a radical revamp of fiscal relations put to the Rudd Government's tax review.

The Victorian Government has proposed that the states scrap stamp duty on property, cars and other items in what it acknowledges would be the most significant tax reform since the GST.

It claims the abolition of stamp duties would stimulate investment and generate billions of dollars of additional company tax revenue for the Commonwealth to help pay for the change, The Australian reports.

Lets have some competitive federalism. Competition keeps prices down, competion can keep taxes down too.