Oh Come All Ye Faithful

*



All the stories have been told
Of kings and days of old,
But there's no England now.
All the wars that were won and lost
Somehow don't seem to matter very much anymore.
All the lies we were told,
All the lies of the people running round,
They're castles have burned.
Now I see change,
But inside we're the same as we ever were.
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Living this way, each day is a dream.
What am I, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Now another century nearly gone,
What are we gonna leave for the young?
What we couldn't do, what we wouldn't do,
It's a crime, but does it matter?
Does it matter much, does it matter much to you?
Does it ever really matter?
Yes, it really, really matters.
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Now another leader says
Break their hearts and break some heads.
Is there nothing we can say or do?
Blame the future on the past,
Always lost in blood and guts.
And when they're gone, it's me and you.
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line.

Dave Davies.



There were moments that came flapping out of the dark past and threw his life sideways, predilections reborn, bad habits re-ignited, soft rhythm and blues not the answer. The television, a screen flickering in the corner of all our lives, chanted the subtext. Our inner cores were no longer centred, but the subject of continuous assault. There was a deliberate dumbing down of the population. Mass advertising campaigns replaced genuine, serious debate. Ordinary people withdrew. They were considered eccentrics, those who sipped their chamomile tea and genuinely talked about the issues of the day.

For no one cared any more. There had been too many betrayals. The worst of our kind had triumphed, repeatedly, while hard work, common sense, decency, all of these things were derided as being nothing but old fashioned ways of life for the fools who could not get into gear. Everything was superficial, but beyond superficial in its unbearable lightness, skin deep and exploiting all the worst aspects of the pack mentality. Witness global warming. Dare to suggest that the case is not in, or that these issues should be properly debated, and you are derided as the spawn of satan, or an old fool, or in the grip of the propagada of big oil.

The same is true of so many other things of fundamental import to the way we live, child support, domestic violence, propaganda, Blind Freddy could tell you all these arenas are full of lies, hysteria, corrupt practice. But does any one reach up and bell the cat, shout out: none of this is true. Think for yourselves, for God sake think for yourselves. Instead the television flickers in the corner, buzzing, a white screen, transmission ceased. What is transmission really did cease? Would they run around like headless chooks, bewildered and hysterical.

Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant. He wanted to reach out and wring their collective necks. He wanted to shout out: it's not true, it's not true, for God's sake think for yourselves. But these things weren't happening. Nothing came close to the field of disturbance, or the level of disturbance that had existed in the past. There was no reasoned debate. There was no educated populace. For all the benefits of the modern world, the masses were as pig ignorant as ever, as profoundly misled. You've had the wool pulled over your eyes, he wanted to say, yanked into darkness, pig ignorant because you've allowed yourselves to be fooled.

If only the paths were less clear, the shows less entertaining. Trash dominates our every breathing hour. The giant yellow signs that have come to dominate Sydney's skyline, Want Longer Lasting Sex, the Sex lettered out in bold letters three times the height of an ordinary person, have finally been banned as breaching the advertising code. The government had been besieged with complaints from parents sick of having to explain to their young children what it all meant, or sitting in what seemed like eternal discomfort, frozen moments when the word SEX seemed to reach into every corner of the car and there was nowhere you could ook without being affronted, confronted, with it.

Banned but they're still there. There seems to have been no diligent effort to pull them down. Where were our politicians when all this appalling visual pollution was taking place. Where was the hapless Morris Iemma. Or his replacement, our latest Premier, Nathan Rees. Ross Nielsen has just been appointed his chief of staff. I knew him when he was a surfer who worked as a cleaner to make ends meet. Now he's one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the state. He has left a trail of dissatisfied staff behind in his other appointments, including police media. Iemma has retired on a tax payer funded pension around $150,000 a year. What will you do now? a journalist asked Iemma. There are four people at home in Lakemba who will be happy to see me, and at the end of the day that will do me. The spoilt only son of Italian immigrants, his father a former communist, he got his position by revitalising the branches by stacking them full of Lebanese muslims, and the state as a whole continues to be mired in fiasco after fiasco. Thirty six-year-old Police Minister Matt Brown has been forced to retire after dancing in his underpants on a green Chesterfield couch, and insanity rules. The left is a mess in this state, the right gormless and gutless.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/26/2346336.htm

Prominent billboards promising longer lasting sex are to be removed from all capital cities across Australia.

The yellow billboards advertise medication for sexual dysfunction.

But the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) says it has received between five to 15 complaints a week over the ads and yesterday announced they will be removed.

The move is a reversal of the Bureau's 2007 decision that the advertisements were acceptable.

The Advanced Medical Institute (AMI) today said it would comply with the ASB's ruling.

"Our ads have been very successful in reaching men with sexual health issues to explain that help is available," AMI CEO Jack Vaisman said in a released statement

"We need to be direct in our advertising because we've found men don't respond to the message otherwise.

"More than 7,000 men call the Advanced Medical Institute every week for assistance. However, we are sensitive to community attitudes and if we're deemed to be out of step, then we'll change.

"What's concerning is that the ASB has done a complete about-face on community standards - last year the word 'sex' was OK, today it's not.

"We're not out to offend anyone, the purpose of our direct advertising approach is to let men know that help is available."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/back-off-warns-costello/2008/09/12/1220857835002.html

Back off, Turnbull warned, as the arguments begin

Phillip Coorey Chief Political Correspondent
September 13, 2008


PETER COSTELLO has warned he has no intention of leaving Parliament any time soon and will fight any push by Malcolm Turnbull to replace Brendan Nelson as Opposition Leader.

As the former treasurer began a round of radio interviews to spruik his memoirs - extracted in today's Herald - the backlash against the book began.

The Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce hit back at Mr Costello's attacks on him, calling the long-term leadership aspirant a disloyal hypocrite who had undermined Dr Nelson with his self-promotion.

With Parliament to resume next week, senior party figures, including supporters of Mr Turnbull, played down the prospect of any move against Dr Nelson in coming weeks.

Mr Turnbull, who returns from a week-long holiday in Italy tomorrow, believes Dr Nelson should be given at least another month, and probably more, to show he can turn the polls round.

But the Turnbull camp believes Dr Nelson will fail. This would make a subsequent challenge less divisive than one launched within the next fortnight.

The other scenario being canvassed is that Dr Nelson could be convinced to stand down if the polls did not improve after several months.

"The only X-factor is someone going off half-cocked and forcing a spill next week," said one powerbroker trying to choreograph events. "We need to make sure it's unambiguous."

Mr Costello left some colleagues nervous yesterday by refusing to rule out categorically ever wanting the leadership and saying he was in no hurry to leave his Melbourne seat of Higgins.

"To be frank with you there's quite a bit to be done. There are still some things I want to do as an MP," he said.

But Mr Costello has confided to some colleagues that he feels he needs to stay on for a few more months because to leave now, so soon after his book was published, would appear opportunistic.

Mr Costello has taken selected swipes at John Howard, Tony Abbott and Mr Turnbull, among others, in The Costello Memoirs. In further revelations published in the Herald today, Mr Costello accuses Mr Howard of downgrading the role of the governor-general over the years and assuming many of the duties himself.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24327383-7582,00.html

RUPERT Murdoch is the last, best hope for quality newspapers, ABC managing director Mark Scott has declared.

Describing the Australian print media industry as a "pageant of distrust, misery and dashed hopes" in a speech to the National Press Club yesterday, Mr Scott said the growth of digital services was placing a bomb under the traditional commercial media business model.

"Through all the turmoil within the Australian media industry, there is only one print mogul who has diversified his portfolio enough to offset the costs of quality journalism against profits made elsewhere in his business," said Mr Scott, a former editorial director at Fairfax.

"And yes -- that last, best hope for newspapers is Rupert Murdoch."

Quoting Vanity Fair media commentator Michael Wolff, he said the head of News Corporation, the publisher of The Australian, "may be the last person to love newspapers". Mr Scott described as "danger all round" a question asking whether "running newspapers is better left to newspaper men and women rather than accountants and ex-rugby halfbacks", a gibe at his beleaguered former employer, Fairfax, and its chief executive David Kirk.

But he said it was clear that the media sector most affected by audience fragmentation as new digital services appeared had been newspapers.

"The newspaper groups that are surviving well internationally are those that have kept some newspaper products and diversified significantly into other areas as well. That's what Rupert Murdoch has done. Rupert Murdoch has diversified significantly away from newspapers.

"That allows his newspapers, particularly in Australia, to operate under a different model and different fiscal pressures than those companies where newspapers dominate the earnings of the company."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24331854-7583,00.html

Stewart Franks | September 12, 2008

IS the ongoing drought in the Murray-Darling Basin affected by climate change? The simple answer is that there is no evidence that CO2 has had any significant role. Like it or not, that is the science.

In fact, the drought was caused by an entirely natural phenomenon: the 2002 El Nino event. This led to particularly low rainfalls across eastern Australia. The subsequent years were either neutral or weak El Nino conditions. Significantly, neutral conditions are not sufficient to break a drought. In 2006, we had a return to El Nino conditions which further exacerbated the drought. What we didn't have was a strong La Nina.

Last year finally brought a La Nina event but it was relatively weak. It produced a number of major storm events in coastal areas and some useful rainfall in the Murray-Darling basin and elsewhere. Approximately half of NSW drought-declared areas were lifted out of drought (albeit into "marginal" status) and Sydney's water supply doubled in the space of a few months.

This was the first rain-bearing La Nina since 1999 but proved insufficient to break the drought. In short, the drought was initiated by El Nino, protracted by further El Nino events and perhaps more importantly, the absence of substantial La Nina events.

Despite the known causes of the drought, many have claimed that CO2 emissions are to blame. There have been arguments put forward to justify this claim, all eagerly adopted by various groups, but none of which have serious merit.

A key claim is that the multiple occurrence of El Nino is a sign of climate change. This is speculative at best. Recent analysis showed the nine-year absence of La Nina was not unusual. In fact long-term records demonstrate alternating periods of 20-40 years where El Nino is dominant, followed by similarly extended periods where La Nina dominates. Ominously, the data demonstrates that it is possible to go 14-15 years without any La Nina events. The consequent drought would be devastating but entirely natural.

The observation that El Nino and La Nina events cluster on 20-40 year, multi-decadal timescales is an important one. It demonstrates that Australia should always expect major changes in climate as a function of natural variability. When viewed in this light, the drought is most likely a recurring feature of the Australian climate.

A more recent claim is that higher temperatures are leading to increased evaporation of moisture. The weather bureau acknowledges that rainfall from September 2001 until now has not been the lowest recorded, however much has been made of the fact that consequent inflows have been the lowest. It has been claimed increased evaporation, driven by climate change, can make up this discrepancy. Indeed, Wendy Craik, the chief executive of the Murray Darling Basin Commission has stated that temperatures were warmer, leading to more evaporation and drier catchments.

This is disturbing to hear from the head of the MDBC, as it is completely at odds with the known physics of evaporation. While it sounds intuitively correct, it is wrong.

When soil contains high moisture content, much of the sun's energy is used in evaporation. Consequently, there is limited heating of the surface. When soil moisture content is low (as occurs during drought) nearly all of that energy is converted into heating the surface, and air temperatures rise significantly. Consequently, higher temperatures are due to the lack of evaporation, not a cause of significantly higher evaporation.

Cloud cover also provides a major control on air temperatures. El Nino delivers less rainfall but also less cloud cover. This has a major impact on the amount of the sun's energy reaching land; far greater than the trivial increase in radiant energy caused by increased CO2. Again, in the absence of soil moisture, air temperatures increase.

These are known and accepted processes of environmental physics and are not contentious. They are ignored because they detract from the simple message that we should sign up to the concept of "dangerous climate change" and an emissions trading scheme. After all, who would pay for carbon emissions if they were not proven to be detrimental? Who would provide extra funds for climate change science if it wasn't a proven significant factor compared to natural climatic variability?



Mural near Redfern sation, Sydney, Australia.