Shame New Idea

I think I’ll buy a copy of New Idea wipe my backside with it and send it back to the publisher.

Prince Harry decides to do the right thing, serve his country in Afghanistan, and what happens, sleazy gossip rag New Idea decides to reveal this to the world. They not only put his life at risk but also the lives the other British soldiers around him.

Claiming no knowledge of the embargo is no excuse, they should have known. It says something about their journalistic skills if they missed something so important. They would rather have a playboy prince, an eternal adolescent who wastes his life partying , then a prince who’s a responsible adult.

All I can say is good on you Prince Harry and I hope you get to serve your full tour.

95 Worlds and Counting

Take an exciting voyage to some of the most exotic worlds in our solar system – the moons of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn Uranus and Neptune, each a world in its own right in this exciting documentary which first aired on the Discovery channel in the year 2000.

Gale blows out

above Megan Gale at DJ’s winter collection launch

David Jones’s top clothes horse , Megan Gale, has decided to quite modeling to seek an acting career.

MEGAN Gale’s swan song last night drew a deafening round of applause as she bid a tearful farewell to the catwalk at Melbourne Town Hall.

The 32-year-old model opened the David Jones winter launch to a standing ovation, in a Sass & Bide sequinned robe and star-spangled shift.

The label’s designers Heidi Middelton and Sarah-Jane Clarke watched admiringly from the front row.

Embodying the collection’s Japanese Story theme, Gale closed the show in a finale fit for an emperor: a one-off Akira Isogawa cream creation hand-crafted from antique Kimono fabric…..

I look forward to seeing her as Wonder Woman.

Nelson’s change

Dr Nelson, do you really think playing me-too on climate change with the government is really a good idea? Its true that people are concerned about water restrictions, but I sceptical climate change has much to do with it. Have a look at the graph below from the Bureau of Meteorology.

I don’t see anything unusual there. Maybe the water restrictions have to do with something else. Like state Labor governments poor planning and general incompetence. You might want to have a chat with some of your state Liberal leaders like Mr O’Farrell about it. I really think some healthy skepticism would be useful, especially if it allows you and your state leaders to attack Labor.

No turbans at Ormiston

I expect public schools to have enough range in their school’s uniform wardrobe to allow children of all faiths to attend. However private schools are different they have every right to restrict entrance by whatever requirement they want. So if the private Ormiston College wants to ban turban wearing Sikhs so be it.

THE Sikh community is outraged at what it says is a lack of cultural awareness after two incidents involving the wearing of turbans.

A Sikh family is fighting a landmark case after Ormiston College in Brisbane told them their 12-year-old son could only be enrolled if he complied with its uniform rules by cutting his hair and not wearing a turban.

The family, who cannot be named, has lodged a claim with the Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland…..

No Raptors for us

At last, a journalist who hasn’t fallen for the wannabe top gun F-22 Raptor nonsense. Greg Sheridan had enough sense to ask someone who knows what he’s talking about, US Secretary of defense Robert Gates.

HERE’S a hot tip. There is not the slightest chance Australia will buy any F-22 Raptor aircraft, and there is almost no chance that we will ditch the F/A-18 Super Hornets that the previous government was going to buy. US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates was yesterday polite but dismissive of the possibility of the US selling us the Raptors. We won’t buy the Raptors because the Americans don’t sell them to foreign countries, we haven’t asked them to sell us Raptors and nor are we likely to, they’re too expensive, they don’t do the jobs we need them to do and we are committed to an alternative path of phasing out the F1-11s, using F/A-18 Super Hornets as an interim measure and ultimately moving to a fleet made up predominantly, if not entirely, of F-35 joint strike fighters….

I have been saying as much for months. In years to come Brendan Nelson will be seen as having been an effective Defence Minister.

Fitzgibbon congratulates shooter

I’ll bet Defence Minister Fitzgibbon will be trying to get the SM 3 for our destroyers:

Mr Fitzgibbon confirmed missile defence was discussed but declined to reveal details. The former coalition government expressed an interest in acquiring a missile defence capability through fitting advanced Standard SM-3 missiles to new air warfare destroyers.

But Mr Fitzgibbon said the government had observed this week’s US shootdown of a rogue satellite with a SM-3 with great interest.

“Can I say Bob, nice shot,” he said.

Centrelink cuts

As a former Centrelink employee I’m sure most of those 2000 will be happy to take their redundancies and get out.

However I wish the Opposition would get more guts. They should be demanding Centrelink be privatised not complaining about the cuts. If the government really wanted to save money they would out source Centrelink’s business to a competitive market. Centrelink is just a government administration organisation. Theres no reason most of the functions could not be done by the private sector.

CENTRELINK will make about 2000 workers redundant to achieve budget savings demanded by the Rudd Government’s razor gang. Centrelink chief executive Jeff Whalan said his budget would be cut by at least $150 million next financial year. The vice-president of the Community and Public Sector Union, Lisa Newman, last week called for a guarantee there would be no forced redundancies. “I wouldn’t have been able to have given and cannot now give a guarantee of no redundancies,” Mr Whalan said. “We will have to pull down our staff significantly. My best estimate at the moment is some 2000 staff.”

Mars Ocean Oddessy: Soanya leaves

As a sufferer from sea sickness myself (I usually stick to shore dives and avoid boats. Theres lots of great shore dive sites around Sydney) I understand how she feels.

Australian Associated Press Story

Thursday, 21 February 2008

Seasickness ends marathon ocean voyage

February 22, 2008

Nearly a year into a three-year voyage around the globe, seasickness has finally got the better of American sailor Soanya Ahmad. The 25-year-old rookie sailor was being rescued off Perth after becoming too ill to continue her bid to circumnavigate the globe four times without stopping.

Ms. Ahmad set off on the 1,000-day voyage with 56-year-old American adventurer Reid Stowe on April 21 last year aboard his 21-metre gaff-rigged schooner, the Anne…

Mr. Stowe will now sail on alone “since this is my life at sea”. But Ms Ahmad was to leave the boat on Friday, after 306 days at sea, because she has suffered recurrent and debilitating seasickness since entering the stormy Southern Ocean in November. “At times the nausea was enough to lay me flat and incapable of doing anything,” she wrote on their website. “While I’ve adjusted to the environment a little more this past month, I am still prone to feeling horrible on and off. “I feel two more years of this would not be good for me and so I have decided to leave the boat.”….

More here.

Satellite disinformation

This is just such an obvious case of disinformation by DOD that I’m surprised no one has commented on it yet.

MISSILE fired from a US Navy warship has hit a dying spy satellite 247km above the Pacific Ocean but it is not yet known whether the strike has nullified the threat of a toxic fuel landing in a populated area, the Pentagon says.

Australia is one of the countries that has been placed on alert because of the risk.

The SM-3 missile was fired from the USS Lake Erie in the Pacific at about 10.26 EST (2.26pm AEDT) and scored a direct hit on the bus-sized satellite, the Pentagon said.

Theres nothing unusual about a satellite re-entering the atmosphere, it’s a common event. The “toxic fuel” was hydrazine, dangerous yes, but it would have burnt up well before reaching Earth. There was never a threat to anyone. The real reason for this little bit of target practice is that the Chinese tested there own killer sat system last year. The Americans are demonstrating what they can do in return. As well it’s a test of the US Navy’s Aegis Combat System which has been upgraded to take down ballistic missiles so it would have been a good test of the Navy’s new hardware. The exercise will bound to give pause to any missile happy Iranians or North Koreans. The success is a good sign for Australia too as our new destroyers will be getting the Aegis system.