Crossing the Gulf on the Matilda Highway
Travelling solo with few vehicles on the road it was a lonely drive. Thank God nothing went wrong with the Rangie
Camped at Eagle Nest near Sharks Bay WA
You can just see the glow of my laptop where I was working on a clients web sIte in Tassie hosted through Rumcorps.net servers in Dallas Texas. As good an office as any!
Whales off the NW Coast
A pod of about 20 whales come fast from astern and passed either side of the yacht, frightening hell out of us.
Fire on the road
No flames apparent so I hardly slowed down until I had travelled a hundred odd meters with no visibility. About the time I started to panic I came out the other side.
Bloody ABC!
Errol Simper in todays Media section of The Australian says the current litany of accusations about bias in the ABC have nothing to do with the politics of left or right, as the ABC is all about the underdog and if that is seen as left journalism then so be it.
Well, your ancient correspondent obviously can’t speak for everyone. But he’d suggest a favoured journalistic position, whether you work for the ABC or somewhere else, is one broadly in sympathy with the deserving, honourable underdog. If that’s perceived as a variation on the Left-Right conundrum, perhaps it is. Either way, it coalesces with another journalistic responsibility: inclusiveness.
He goes on to quote the chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, Cassandra Goldie:
I agree the ABC has a special responsibility (to be accurate and fair). But it (also) has a special responsibility to make sure people who are not that powerful get their voices out there and heard.
Well she would say that, wouldn’t she – it’s her job? But does the ABC have this “special responsibility”?
No, it doesn’t
(1) The functions of the Corporation are:
(a) to provide within Australia innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard as part of the Australian broadcasting system consisting of national, commercial and community sectors and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, to provide:
(i) broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community; and
(ii) broadcasting programs of an educational nature;
(b) to transmit to countries outside Australia broadcasting programs of news, current affairs, entertainment and cultural enrichment that will:
(i) encourage awareness of Australia and an international understanding of Australian attitudes on world affairs; and
(ii) enable Australian citizens living or travelling outside Australia to obtain information about Australian affairs and Australian attitudes on world affairs; and
(c) to encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia.
Simper, and Goldie are simply ignoring the issue. Looking after the underdog has nothing to do with Left -Right ABC bias. Just look at the media scramble over a bogan druggie being paroled in Bali.
The issue is blatant bias when dealing with centre or right-of -centre journalists, or, for that matter, anyone that criticises the ABC.
Remember Chris Kenny?
Lawyers for Chris Kenny, a journalist and commentator with The Australian and Sky News, have lodged a statement of claim in the NSW Supreme Court against the ABC, Chaser presenter Andrew Hansen and production company Giant Dwarf for images and words broadcast on September 11 that referred to Kenny as “a dog f . . ker”.
The statement of claim also alleges the imputation the plaintiff’s “attacks on the ABC were so dishonorable . . . that he deserved to be compared to . . . a person who has sexual intercourse with a dog”.
The ABC thinks it’s OK to call a journalist a dog f**ker;
In an interview on Melbourne radio station 774, ABC managing director Mark Scott said an internal review found the program, made by The Chaser team, did not breach the corporation’s editorial policies.
But when Piers Akerman responds to Barrie Cassidy raising the issue of Perth shock-jock Sattler talking about Julia Gillard’s boyfriend being gay it’s a different story.
Akerman didn’t raise the issue, stated he disagreed with Sattler’s comments and apologised if anything he said could be construed as insulting.
However;
It has emerged in an email sent to a member of the public by the ABC that the public broadcaster undertook a review of the broadcast on Sunday, June 16, 2013, which concluded that the comments made by Akerman were “inappropriate”.
The ABC sacked him.
One could be forgiven for thinking that because the ABC supports open borders for foreign Centrelink applicants arriving by boat that they are rooting for the underdog. What they are doing, in fact, is rooting for the Left Green factions that conveniently ignore the thousands of “underdogs” drowned during the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd debacle but instead spend weeks denigrating the poor sailors who are trying to save their lives.
If it could possibly derail Abbott’s attempts to stop the boats, they will flog it to death even to the point of damaging diplomatic relationships with Indonesia. Witness the traitor Snowdon’s revelations of Australia spying on Indonesia – no mention that it occurred during Rudd’s time – just keep on saying it and people will forget when it happened and blame the current incumbent, Abbott.
Anything to make it harder for Abbott to achieve one of his election pledges – stop the boats.
Even the ABC news broadcasts show their bias. Almost any item will cause them to hit their speed-dail for the relevant Greens Senator to give us the benefit of their wisdom…to give us theLeft/Green view of the subject.
When Q & A, 7:30, Insiders and News 24 have equal representation of the left-right factions of politics I’ll stop harping on the subject but I can’t see that happening any time soon.
If Errol Simper is really worried about the underdog, he should be barracking for everyone central or right of centre.
We are the underdogs on the ABC.
Go away Rudd
FORMER prime minister Kevin Rudd is creating a foundation to honour the principles of his historic 2008 apology to the indigenous stolen generation.
Mr Rudd today announced he would establish the National Apology Foundation, which he will chair.
The narcisist, who is also suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder, says that because he is creating this foundation;
“We are not condemned to a future which sees a continuing division between the lives of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.”
While you continue to remind us of your one and only claim to fame, and it is a doubtful claim, then you are condemning us to continuing divisions.
It simply perpetuates the ‘Sorry Industry’ and that helps no one.
Go away Rudd, you totally fucked up Australia and the ALP and you still have the temerity to make sound waves. A lesser narcistic individual would be so humiliated by the damage they did, they would be silent for decades.
Lee Rhiannon doesn’t like donations!
The Australian Electoral Commission has today released its data on political donations for the last financial year, and they show that the Coalition far outstripped the Labor Party in the fundraising stakes.
Gee! I wonder why?
Naturally the ABC turn to a Green for comment;
Lee Rhiannon
……. this does turn people off the political process. I find when these large amounts of money are handed over by corporate Australia, the public often become very cynical; they don’t think that they have much influence, and a lot of people then become quite angry about this.
From 2011;
THE founder of travel website wotif.com donated a record $1.6 million to the Australian Greens election campaign.
It is the largest single political donation in Australian history.
The generous donation by Brisbane-based businessman Graeme Wood, who has an estimated wealth of $378.5m, formed the bulk of the Greens election campaign spending, according to an article in the Fairfax press.
Lee Rhiannon didn’t agree with the donation then which is obviously why the ABC called her for comment but the Greens themselves were ecstatic.
The Greens need to get their act together – it’s good or it’s no good. Either way if another corporation visits from another planet and thinks the Greens are worth donating money to, I doubt they’ll knock it back and Lee will again say how she disagrees with corporation donations.
Hypocrit!
Now they want an inquiry!
The Australian Human Rights Commission says a national inquiry is needed into the handling of children in detention because the immigration department has refused to cooperate with it.
Professor Triggs said the human rights body wanted to know more about the mental health impacts of detention, how children are being treated “when they’re manifesting conditions of extreme anxiety”, and why some are transferred offshore to Nauru and other are not.
Which is fine but I question why the Human Rights Commission never felt the need for a national inquiry whilst Rudd and Gillard were in power. It’s not as if there weren’t any kids in detention over those six years – there were hundreds – but somehow that was different. I further note they didn’t feel the need for an inquiry about the hundreds of kids drowned over these six years.
What am I missing?
Their ABC
It started with the Navy being accused of using profane language, then kicking and punching, then shooting at the boats and then finally torture by burning.
ABC MD Scott
“I don’t think there should be any attempt to somehow suggest that because the ABC raises those allegations, the ABC are advocates for those allegations — that the ABC has acted as judge and jury on those allegations. We have raised them because they are serious, they are important and they raise questions that need to be answered, and we have put those questions.”
So, as I understand Scott, the ABC can cite as news any allegation and present it in such a manner as to be truth. Later, when it becomes clear it isn’t true then the ABC thinks it’s reasonable to ignore facts and keep on citing the allegations as if they were still true.
Not surprisingly, this approach is only applied if the allegations reflect poorly on the Abbott government and it’s three aspects of normalizing Australia. Boat people, Carbon Tax and relations with Indonesia.
Paul Sheehan in The Age;
But the ABC has been worse than dull. It chose to knowingly damage Australia’s relationship with Indonesia by publishing Edward Snowden’s leaks of Australian spying in Indonesia. It then chose to knowingly damage Australia’s reputation in Asia by running for an entire week with accusations of torture by Australian navy personnel, despite not having a shred of corroborating evidence, and despite a super-abundant pattern of false claims made by asylum seekers who have destroyed documents, scuttled ships and claimed abuse…
Allegations by desperate boat people are run for a whole week without corroboration but harking back to allegations against Gillard by Union officials and lawyers, corroborated by affadavits, stat decs and police investigations, the ABC chose to not cover them.
EXPECT astonishment from the ABC’s vast national audience when the federal government places trade-union slush funds front-and-centre of a major inquiry in the New Year.
The rusted-on viewers and listeners will be bewildered because the taxpayer-funded state-owned broadcaster has imposed a regimen of strict censorship on the key element in the inquiry – the misuse of money from the AWU association which was established with the assistance of legal advice from former Prime Minister Julia Gillard when she was a partner in the Victorian Labor law firm Slater & Gordon.
Those who don’t take their news solely from the ABC would be well aware that the Victorian police are conducting a major inquiry into Ms Gillard’s role in the establishment of the Australian Workers’ Union Workplace Reform Association by her then boyfriend, Bruce Wilson and his AWU mate Ralph Blewitt in 1992.
Early last week, The Australian newspaper revealed that Fair Work Commissioner and former AWU boss Ian Cambridge has given sworn evidence of “gross irregularities” in the union slush fund that Ms Gillard advised on.
Not good enough Scott and it’s not good enough to blame News Corp, they are just doing what you should be doing, verifying whether there is any truth in the allegations, and they have found the entire beat up very questionable.
Thomson the grub
THE act of paying for prostitutes, adult films or other items on a Health Services Union credit card did not mean that Craig Thomson had defrauded either the card issuer or his employer, Mr Thomson’s defence counsel argued yesterday as the sexually charged and lurid case against the former Labor MP drew to a close.
How can he say that? How can anyone justify spending members funds on personal sexual gratification?
Maybe the Health Services Union don’t have written clause that says “HSU Credit Cards are not to be used for any purpose other than those that are of benefit to the Union” or, more specifically, to cover grubs like Thomson “…are not to be used for prostitutes”.
If they dont, they should. If the HSU Board hasn’t discussed and approved inserting clauses in their management protocols as a result of Thomson’s nefarious activities then one must ask why not?
It could be construed that they are simply maintaining the gravy chain for future office holders
If Thomson gets off this then it is another reason to have a Royal Commission into Union thuggery, rorting of members monies and standover tactics in the building industry.
I don’t have a problem with unions per se, just union officials rorting members funds (HSU), and/or committing every crime against civilization (CFMEU)
Cosgrove next GG
GENERAL Peter Cosgrove has been named by Tony Abbott as Australia’s next governor-general.
The former chief of defence will replace Kevin Rudd appointee Quentin Bryce in late March.
Standing alongside his wife Lynne in Canberra, General Cosgrove, 66, said he was “truly humbled” by the appointment.
A General,a conservative and a man – the Left will hate it but Australia can now relax as we have a GG who will be for all the people in a non-ideological and pragmatic manner. I doubt very much he’ll rattle on about a Republic as Bryce did whilst drawing the Queen’s money, nor would I expect him to be an activist for every feminist and gay group in the country.
Good call, Abbott!
I’m moving into drones
Gary, my mate in South Australia is a Radio Controll model plane nutter and I’ve long been interested myself. I have small chopper that I practice on but I found it too difficult. Like…start up….lift off…crash into ground…start up….lift off…crash into ground…repeat several times…go to hobby shop and buy more blades then start up….lift off…crash into ground…repeat several more times.
Monotonous…Frustrating.
I felt I needed to have a real flying licence endorsed for Blackhawk to be able to fly but technology has stepped in, in the form of a pocket drone.
Start up…fly! Much better – I can now concentrate on photos and videos of my bush 4WD expeditions rather than the actual flying. Take your hand off the stick and it hovers; battery almost flat and it returns to base. With a “Follow Me” mode it will be easy to film driving the old Rangie up steep inclines and across rivers. Great videos to further bore my kids and friends.
It’s all about software.
Advanced software and systems with autopilot and “follow me” mode
- State of the art flight controls, algorithms and connectivity
- APM compatible flight controller 6-axis accelerometers, 3 axis gyroscopes, barometric sensor (altitude)
- Integrated onboard autopilot Flight planning with Google Maps
- Fly by GPS waypoints
- “Follow Me” mode (requires mobile device with GPS)
- Altitude Hold
- Return to home (RTH)
- Headfree mode (orientation independent flying)
- Load/Save and repeat/replay flight missions
- Real-time flight data
- Artificial Horizon
- Altitude Heading indicator
- GPS signal strength
- PC, Mac and Linux compatible
- Mission Planner or QGroundControl Compatible
- Android compatible (tablet and phone)
- iOS compatibility coming soon
Available in late April in the US I look forward to another great challenge – controlling drones.
More here if you are interested
Filthy bastards
I don’t have many historical heroes but Capt James Cook is one of them so the news that Filth in Victoria have vandalised his cottage gets my Irish up. I would seriously go ballistic if I come across them as they did their evil work and believe me 186cm 112 kilo frame would be a ballistic nightmare – there would be no ricochet or deflection with that mass.
VANDALS got in ahead of extra security planned for Captain Cook’s cottage over the Australia Day weekend.
The Melbourne monument was sprayed with anti-Australia graffiti for the second year in a row early Friday morning, with slogans reading “26th Jan Australia’s shame” and “F*** Australia Day”.
Smashed light bulbs were used as makeshift paint bombs, breaking one window and littering the building’s surroundings with glass.
Bastards!
ABC/Media bias
The ABC maintain their bias as they do their best to denigrate the Abbott government. Their mode of attack this week has been to acuse our sailors of torturing boat people with scurrilous statements by “they would say that” type boat people being presented as fact.
The asylum-seekers claimed the burns were a result of being forced to hold hot engine pipes by navy personnel. They also alleged they were badly beaten by navy personnel before their boat was turned back to Rote Island on New Year’s Day.
The pic offers proof that the hands have been burned, not that the burns were inflicted by a sailor, although the ABC presents it as fact.
The Australian heads their coverage with “ABC sticking to its story as ‘abuse’ doubts mount” while the Abbott hating Fairfax guys at The Age, totally in step with the ABC , says “Secrecy on boat policy leaves navy vulnerable”
The anti Conservative media are on a campaign to denigrate the government and this is just another battle in their campaign. To quote assylum seekers without question, when it is obviously in the seekers interests to claim “they beat me up etc”, is unproffessional and needs calling to order. The ABC is the voice of Australia throughout the Pacific region courtesy of the Gillard governments handing them the contract without going to tender, so you can imagine how our reputation suffers. In their attempts to make Abbott look bad they are making Australia look bad. Millions of uneducated Moslims in the region still believe that Bush was responsible for 9/11 so they are very susceptable to believing the fact-deprived propaganda of the ABC.
Week after week the ABC are being called to order over their bias and yet the government have done nothing to address the inbalance. Where are you Malcom?
From The Age;
Allegations of orchestrated abuse occasioning actual bodily harm have been made by asylum seekers against this country’s Navy. The allegations are extremely serious and appear to be backed up by photographic evidence.
If proved, they would constitute torture by our military and would shred Australia’s international standing.
A picture of someones burnt hand does not constitute ‘a serious allegation backed up by photographic eveidence‘ In the absence of something like a pic of a Aussie sailor forcing the hand of a asylum seeker onto a hot exhaust pipe then the media need to shut up.
It ain’t evidence that our sailors did anything but Mark Kenny, the Age’s Chief political correspondent, somehow or other believes it does – based on what Mark?
With a general election due in Indonesia later this year, election rhetoric in Jakarta is simply grandstanding by would-be politicians going for re-election or election and will have little input on the whole picture. Indonesia doesn’t need 10,000 foreigners camping in their backyard while they wait for passage to the land of the big handout so saner heads in Jakarta are keeping quiet and letting it run its natural course.
Abbott will win out in the end.
Facebook
Twitter
