An after election comment from Bob Brown was “we want to put a Carbon Tax on the polluters and not on the Australian taxpayer”.
What an moronic economic statement!
Place an tax on business in any shape or form and the costs are immediately passed on to the consumers – the Australian taxpayers.
With Brown’s total lack of basic commercial comprehension, no responsible Australian should take his advice on running a chook raffle let alone take his advice on running the Australian economy.
→ No CommentsTags: Climate Change · Federal election · Government & political
Watching Abbott and Gillard in what must be the worst, most boring and most negative Federal election campaign ever, has again highlighted the insulting and dismissive behaviour of politicians who treat us like brainless idiots. Maybe we get treated this way by them because, on the whole, we are brainless idiots.
Watching Abbott this morning he was asked a simple question similar to this. “If you lose the election do you want to remain as Leader of the Opposition”? He was asked the same question three or four times and not once did he answer it.
The answers he gave were along the lines of ‘I am working to win the election’, I will be the Member for my electorate seat of Misinformation (don’t know the Electorate name, but this seems appropriate)’, ‘I have a contribution to make to Australia’. Maybe he just doesn’t have the comprehension level to understand a grade 4 question. Maybe his memory is so bad that by the time he came to answer the question, he had forgotten what the question was. Maybe he is incapable of making statements without having been coached like a cockatoo to simply repeat the same phrases over and over again without understanding what the phrases mean.
Surely all he had to say was something like “I hope to win today and to lead Australia forward (or backward as the case may be) but should we not win the election, that decision is for my colleagues. I would like to remain as leader and use my time to help to improve Australia for all Australians”. Maybe he doesn’t say that because he doesn’t think about moving Australia forward like Julia wants to do. Maybe he thinks that if he loses he would want to be as destructive as possible to cause grief for the Labor Party and it’s leader, and Australians don’t matter.
Gillard is no better. Ask her a question and again, like cockatoo Tony, we have the shrieking response, “Work choices! Work choices! Work Choices!”
Put them both in a cocky cage outside a small rural petrol station and they may prove to be a tourism winner.
Probably the worst in all of this are the so-called political commentators, journalists and political experts.
They are so stupid that they accept an answer which has no relationship to the question. Presumably, in their minds. the question which they ask is irrelevant and inconsequential or they can’t think of anything better to ask. They don’t care about an answer they just need to ask any question so that they can fill up the allocated time slot so that they can complete their contract and get paid.
One thing is certain.
Both the politician and interviewers think we are so stupid that they can dish up the same rubbish day after day and we will soak it up like sponges and admire them for their incompetence. All politicians look for is the opportunity to say what they want and not to give us the answers to the questions we want answered.
Wouldn’t it be great if we had a few interviewers who just sat there as and said, thank you but you haven’t answered the question. I will just sit here and wait until you do. Either the politician would answer the question, say ‘I won’t answer that question’, get up and leave or sit in totally embarrassing silence.
Who to vote for?
Because she knows everything that is going on and because she always lets you know what she thinks, my vote this year goes to ———
my horse – Bindi.
→ 1 CommentTags: Federal election
Have you emailed a constructive comment to a politician in this Federal election?
What happens is that you will receive an automated reply thanking you and will also receive directions to their web site, or to their views or recorded comments.
They really don’t get it.
You are not asking them for their opinion. You are giving them your opinion.
But these fatuous, pompous, aloof and generally not terrible smart or intelligent individuals, have concluded that because they are members of Parliament, pushing their opinions down your throat is more important than actually listening to voter’s views and taking notice of voters comments.
It would be nice to have a system where you could vote in candidates who were acceptable and vote out all candidates who were unacceptable and that those seats remain vacant until an acceptable candidate was offered for election. That way we could ensure we got rid of the useless, incompetent and ineffective and only had elected representatives who worked for us as our servants with only our well being in mind.
Whilst Mark Latham’s suggestion may not have been the right way to go about it, he was on the right track.
→ 1 CommentTags: Federal election
Last year and again last month, I spent time flying through North & West Queensland up to Cape York Peninsula.
Winton is my favorite country town in Australia and the area around Winton, Richmond, Cloncurry and Hughenden is characterised by the quantity and quality of dinosaur and pliosaur fossils. These fossils date back to 150,000,000 years when these carnivorous and herbivores roamed the earth.
What are they doing in the middle of the desert?
The answer is that it wasn’t always desert. It was forest, with fresh flowing streams.
Why did it change? Climate Change of course! Was it because Dinosaurs burnt too much fossil fuel?
At the Kronosaurus Centre in Richmond you can see the almost complete fossilised skeletal remains of the massive Richmond Pliosaur which swam in the Oceans about 90,000,000 years ago.
If these fish swam in the ocean, why are their remains in the desert in the middle of Australia?
The answer is that they swam there when western Queensland was part of the world’s oceans and the present deserts were 65 metres below the sea level.
Why did it change? Climate Change of course! Or was it that the fish drank too much water and the oceans dried up and they died of thirst?
Go to Lake Mungo in the Willandra Lakes area of South West NSW where the 40,000 year old remains of Mungo woman were found and surprisingly you will note that the Willandra Lakes are now totally dry. They contained fresh water for about 30,000 years and dried up about 15,000 years ago. “Why did the lakes dry up”?
The answer is Climate change.
Or was it? Maybe we should blame those naughty aboriginals who lived in the Willandra Lakes area 40,000 years ago. There is undeniable evidence that they lit fires to cook their fish and mussels. Maybe they also burnt the surrounding grassland and spewed carbon dioxide into the air and destroyed the world’s pristine climate, condemning us to global warming as a result of their contempt for the environment.
Which group of humans caused the coming and going of the ice ages and the rising and falling of the seas? The answer of course is that there were no humans on earth to have done this. So how did it happen?
The answer is Climate change.
Around 1985, on behalf of the Victorian Heating and Cooling Association, I wrote to the Bureau of Meteorology and commented that we had noticed that the temperatures seemed to be slowly increasing throughout Australia. They wrote back and said that there was no major change and that the changes we were observing were cyclical and just part of – you guessed it – normal cyclical Climate change - which has been happening ever since the beginning of time. Variations, fluctuations, rising and falling temperatures, rising and falling oceans, ice ages and dry periods.
Throughout the history of the world, creatures have learned to adapt to climate change or have perished. Humans have learned to survive in the frozen Arctic and in the deserts of Africa. No doubt we will learn to adapt to the slow changes in climate over the next 500 years.
If humans are the cause then why are we encouraging people to have more children, take more immigrants and increase our population for the perceived economic benefits it will bring?
Our governments give handouts to people just to have more children. We provide financial support for child care and the more children you have, the more money you get.
Then we tell the poor and the impoverished nations that while we cleared land and burnt coal and used petroleum, to allow us to live our lifestyle they can’t do the same. They must live in poverty while we enjoy all the benefits of a consumer world.
We tell China and India that we are alright and we built our prosperity on the industrial revolution and by burning fossil fuels, but they shouldn’t allow their people the same opportunities. Our extremist environmental ’saviours’ are happy in their air conditioned homes and buildings made from manufactured products, driving their cars, using electricity and all the while telling the rest of us that we are causing the problem. Is Al Gore the perfect hypocrite? Or does the titles belong to Penny Wong or Kevin Rudd or Bob Brown?
The promoters of ‘man made climate change’ use all of the emotive or vague general terms such ‘the evidence is overwhelming’, ‘the scientists all agree’ etc to promote their extremist cause. People who use these lines in argument or debate, usually have no substantive facts upon which to rely and their whole purpose is to make people feel guilty rather than decide on merit.
We are usually presented with worst case outcomes, based on worst case evidence which results in a worst case scenario which multiplies the potential problem.
All of the doom sayers are happy to predict sea level rises and temperature increases for 50 to 90 years time, when they will be long dead and unaccountable for their predictions.
None of them have sufficient confidence in their own analysis to provide their predictions in a graphic or matrix form showing emission reduction vs temperature and sea level rise on an annual basis over the next 90 years.
Why would they, when they could be judged and criticised if found to be incorrect.
→ 1 CommentTags: Climate Change
Quick note with more to come.
Not technically perfect but good enough for the moment
East Gippsland Shire Council decided to grant a permit for a multi level building at Lakes Entrance.
One objector, Ms L Taip, took the matter to appeal at VCAT.
East Gippsland Management Authority then obtained leave to object on the basis of flooding and sea level rising due to climate change.
Slightly revised plans submitted and objector, Ms L Taip withdrew her objection.
EGCMA later withdrew the objection based on climate change and rising sea levels but continued to object on the basis of flooding.
VCAT Member, Ian Potts made the decision to refuse the permit.
Without telling anyone and although no one was objecting on the basis of climate change or rising sea levels, Ian Potts decided he would include these factors in making his decision.
Reasons for the decision shown below:
CONCLUSIONS
What was John Brumby’s response to the complaints it would have a detrimental effect on development in coastal areas.
John Brumby said the decision had nothing to do with rising sea levels but was based on flooding.
Is John Brumby stupid or simply attempting to mislead the Victoria voters before an election.
If John Brumby can’t count, for his benefit we advise that in the above conclusion of Ian Potts the words rising sea level and climate change are mentioned as the factors on SIX occasions and the word flooding is not mentioned once.
→ No CommentsTags: Climate Change · East Gippsland Shire Council
When the Bushfires Royal Commission releases its report, the focus of the media will be on who gets the blame, and journalists will be intent on providing the most sensational headlines to sell the most newspapers or TV and radio advertising.
Christine Nixon has already been branded as a villain as has CFA Chief Russell Rees. Both have their reputations severely tarnished if not destroyed as a result of the efforts of many individuals including the media.
Whilst everyone was/is shocked by the tragic deaths of so many people and the destruction of so many livestock and so much property, as usual in the case of disaster, the next objective is to look for scapegoats to blame rather than focus on the basic reasons.
Simply put, most of the losses were due to people living in an environment of their choosing, where with climatic conditions as has been experience many times in the past, the results were inevitable. On many occasions, the coming together of persistent dry weather, fire prone vegetation, an exceptionally hot day and strong winds has lead to catastrophic conditions with the resultant loss of life and property.
In 1926 in Gippsland, the 1939 fires, Mt Dandenong around 1962, 1968, 1983 and 1997, Tasmania 1967, Lara fire in 1969, Ash Wednesday 1983, Canberra 2003 and Eyre Peninsula 2005 are but some such events where many lives and property were lost. In 2003 and 2007 there were major bush fires which burnt for days and in each of those years burnt approximately 1,100,000 ha of bush.
Isn’t the past, warning enough?
Why choose to live in an environment where , in the event of extreme conditions, death becomes a distinct possibility?
Guess what? It will happen again.
When are we going to take responsibility for our own decisions and actions?
People who decide to build in an environment where they are vulnerable, have the responsibility to themselves and their families to plan for the worst and be prepared to act appropriately.
Now I may have an advantage, having been in the CFA from 1955 to 1958 (aged 16-19) and fighting as a volunteer in the 1962 Mt Dandenong fires. Those were the days when we had an army disposal fire truck with maybe 1000 gallons and a small pump. We also has sticks or broom handles with bags nailed on the end. And of course the back mounted knapsack spray, better suited for killing blackberries. We never saved a house or a haystack, nor did we do anything other than mop up the dying embers that the bush fires left behind. Not a lot has changed, simply because nothing can stop a raging bushfire and most of the efforts are token in nature. When nature chooses to take the foot off the accelerator, only then can humans put out the remains.
On Black Saturday, no one could have prevented the fires from sweeping through the areas which they did. The best that could have been hoped for was the earliest possible warning. We all knew the forecast the day before. The forecasts were particularly accurate. We all had opportunity to plan.
Every time we have a flood, the houses which get flooded are the same houses which were flooded last time and the time before that and the time before that. If people choose to live on a flood prone property, that’s their choice and their responsibility.
Rather than look for scapegoats, the basic answer lies in individual personal responsibility for our own decisions and actions or inaction.
It is time for the political parties of both persuasions to move away from the ‘granny state’ philosophy and concentrate on educating the community that they are responsible for their own decisions and shouldn’t look for someone else to blame when they get it wrong.
→ 1 CommentTags: Bushfires & the environment
Over the past couple of months, a number of articles have been drafted for this site but not edited, completed and published.
They range from Fruit Bats, through Christine Nixon and Black Saturday on to ‘S’ plates for senior citizens, airports in East Gippsland & their reliance on General Aviation airports in Capital cities.
Lots of your money will be thrown at you, to get your vote in both State and Federal elections with a lot of that money to be wasted. At the same time politicians and would-be politicians of all political persuasions will be making promises that they know they cannot keep and which they will later tell you was not a ‘core’ promise. Broken promises, whether ‘core’ or non core promises are also known as blatant lies.
There have been emails from residents in relation to the Council development at Tambo Bluff, increases in fees and charges at the Paynesville Marina and lack of progress and accountability at Paynesville Community Centre. Did you know that the Supreme Court case initiated by the Shire against the parties is rumoured to have been settled with all but one of the defendants and that the Council still hasn’t got any of the $1,100,000 the CEO, Steve Kozlowski, promised he would get? It is reasonably certain that he hasn’t even recovered the Shires’ legal costs – our money – to date.
We have articles on opportunities for East Gippsland and about the methods used by senior council staff to protect their positions when they are wrong using bluff and deceit to cover their incompetence and ‘prove’ that you are wrong. We will expose some of them.
How East Gippsland can take advantage of Australia’s increasing population, Planning Department bungles & a belting at VCAT; the real estate ‘boom’ now heading for bust in Eagle Point/Paynesville.
The move by bureaucrats and politicians to reduce us as individuals to the lowest common denominator.
Is the world made up of people who are black and white and other colours, who are also fat and skinny, tall and short, bald and hairy with blond or black or red hair or are we just all similar and nondescript, out of the one mould, an amalgam of humanity stirred into a mix like a stew, where we are no longer individual and where it is incorrect to be described by our colour, shape, size or race? Has political correctness gone too far and have we become far too precious and sensitive? As one of the most racially mixed and integrated countries in the world, why are we so sensitive about race and supposed ‘racial’ issues?
Climate change may be as real as it was when fish swam in what is now the central Queensland deserts or when the Willandra Lakes were full of water and only the aboriginal people inhabited Australia. Did the aboriginal fires cause the oceans to become deserts like we are supposed to be doing now, or are we simply witnessing nature and evolution in action where species, including humans, adapt to the changing environment or perish?
We are being told that the seas will rise by 800 mm by 2100? That’s 90 years away and yet East Gippsland Shire Council is forming yet another committee with no powers, to investigate and and make recommendations which will probably suggest that we be prohibited from building homes near the projected 2100 high water mark. The homes we build today are not designed to last for 90 years. One of the messages for smart investors is to buy the land one street back from today’s waterfront (at the 900 mm level) and leave it to your great grandchildren so that they will own the waterfront properties in 2100 when those homes now on the waterfront topple into the sea.
With the elections within a few months, we will take a look at the visible and invisible local members of State and Federal Parliament and take a look at whether any or all of them are people of action or simply people who tell you what you want to hear.
→ 1 CommentTags: Uncategorized
Have you sold a property and been asked to sign an exclusive sales contract?
If you did, then you probably signed a contract which gave the Real Estate selling agent sole rights to sell YOUR property, and gave you no benefit at all. In fact it is probably detrimental to your interests.
So, why would you do that? Where is the logic or business sense in doing that? What are you getting in return?
What you are really doing is giving a Real Estate Sales company the right to list your property without any guarantee they will sell it in the period of the exclusivity. Nor is there any guarantee they will sell it for the price they tell you that it will sell for. Nor is there any guarantee they will even try to sell your property. The most likely reason they want an exclusive sales contract with you, is to avoid having to compete with any other Real Estate Agent and more likely it is being used to prevent the other agents from getting properties to sell.
You have lost the benefit of having two or more agents competing to sell YOUR property in the fastest possible time.
Another reason an agent will ask or demand exclusivity, is because they don’t think they are as good as their opposition. Any company or person who is confident in their ability is not only willing to compete, but also enjoys the challenge.
What has the Real Estate agent gained and how does exclusivity cost you.
To get your property, the Real Estate Agent who wants an exclusive will probably give you the highest estimated selling price for your property, just to get your listing to the exclusion of all other agents. That means that no one else can sell it for you. That Real Estate Agent now has your property locked up and the more listings it gets that way, the less listing are available for the other agents. By giving inflated prices to gain exclusive listings that Real Estate agent hopes to stop their opposition from getting properties to sell.
Having given you a high selling price to start with, they come back with lower ‘offers’ and after a few of these they will tell you that your property is a bit high for the market and then get you to drop your price. They knew or should have known the price they told you was too high in the first place.
IT IS NOT ABOUT ACTING IN YOUR INTEREST, IT IS ABOUT ACTING IN THEIR INTEREST.
If asked to sign an exclusive selling contract, keep asking yourself ‘Why should I do this?’ and ‘What’s in this for me’? Ask the agent to tell you what additional benefits YOU will get if you sign an exclusive agreement. If there is no major benefit in it for you, then don’t sign it. Go to Agents who are prepared to compete vigorously to sell your property.
Do Agents work harder if they have an exclusive? If they tell you that they will, then they obviously pick and chose which ones they will work hard for and which not. Don’t be fooled. They will sell the one that is easiest, not the one with the exclusive sales contract.
What are the benefits of giving your listing to two or more agents?
You get competition. You don’t have your property locked up with one sales person or organisation. You avoid missing a sale because the potential purchaser doesn’t like your exclusive agent.
A couple of years ago, selling a Child Care Centre, the building was exclusively with a ‘respected’ and well established agent for six months. For five of those months, the best they could do was 4 enquiries without further interest. After getting annoyed, we put a small creative single column advertisement in the Saturday Age and we received 45 enquiries, 3 super genuine and we sold the property by the Thursday at the listed price without the involvement or knowledge of the agent. Unfortunately the agent still had the ‘exclusive’ for a month, so we paid them their $20,000 commission and we were glad to see the back of them. However they did send us a nice letter, pointing to the successful outcome and offered to sell any other properties we had for sale in the future. Fat chance.
Today, I approached a broker to sell an aircraft for me. He said that he wanted an exclusive sales agreement. I asked him what was the benefit to me in giving him exclusive rights for 180 days. He told me that he didn’t want to spend any advertising money and have someone else sell the aircraft before him. That’s the benefit I get? He didn’t get the listing.
Positive, successful and competent sales organisations would spend the advertising money. If another agent sold it and they got a subsequent enquiry from their advertisement, they now have a potential buyer for a property and would try to sell another of their listings. They haven’t wasted their advertising dollar.
Eagle Bay Village development at Paynesville does not have exclusive selling contracts. Any agent can sell a block of land. The prices are non negotiable so all agents sell the same land at the same price. One agent has risen head and shoulders above the rest on this estate. Maybe a different agent would be more successful on a different estate. No doubt those who want exclusives would say they would have sold more if they had exclusive contracts. Pigs might fly.
Approach at least three agents to give you the estimated selling price for your property. They should all come in around the same figure. Don’t get caught by the agent giving you the highest price. They will tell you that they always get higher prices. Get them all to justify the price they give you. Get them to show you similar properties they have sold. Get them to tell you how long it will take to sell at that price. If that is longer than you want, get them to give you a price at which it will sell in your time frame. Hold them to their commitement.
If you put too high a price, you may have the property sitting there for a lot longer than you want, and genuine buyers at a realistic price will have moved on. Choose what you think is the realistic price you can get in the time you want to sell the property.
Keep asking ‘What’s in it for me’ and don’t get caught by what’s in it for the agent.
→ 1 CommentTags: Uncategorized
Been on mental vacation and catching up with other matters.
Received a few emails and comments and I apologise if I was a little slow in responding. There have been a couple of comments about Council’s Tambo Bluff re-development, so there apppear to be on-going issues there which we may look at.
Thanks to those who have advised they were waiting for me to get started again.
There were some emails which I have responded to and in the process I started to set up an email address which will allow people to make longer comments, directly to me, rather than going through the comment section of one of the posted articles. This will enable people to more easily introduce topics which are of interest or to provide me with a lot more information than is allowed for in the comment sections.
Whilst in the process of doing this I found a separate email section in c-panel (on which this site is based) in which there are 177 emails. I apologise to those to whom I have not responded.
A lot of people tell me that they read the articles. However, not a lot make comments. It would be good if people would give me their input so that the web site can be broader than it is now and so that it covers the whole of East Gippsland rather than being primarily focused around Bairnsdale.
In the coming weeks, I will try to make it easier for you to do that.
It is obvious that elections are coming soon because all of the politicians are making themselves visible and appear to have an opinion on many things which didn’t seem to interest them over the past couple of years. It is amazing that many of them expect us to think that they really care about us, when their primary focus is on being re-elected so they can safely return to their comfort zone of telling you what you want to hear so that you go away and they don’t have deliver meaningful results.
It is interesting to note that Darren Chester seems to be catching Craig Ingram’s affliction of “Calling on the Government” to do something. They both appear to be oblivious to the fact that they were elected to DO SOMETHING and not “Call on the Government” to do it.
→ No CommentsTags: About this web site. · Uncategorized
Arrived back a couple of weeks ago and have been catching up with personal matters.
After the adventure of flying over the Pacific, getting back to ‘normal’ seems really mundane and boring. Really would just like to get in the aircraft and go touring, and I suspect there are a number who would like me to do that.
This being election year for both Federal and State the intention is to broaden the range of topics and commentary.