Car-bans

Do you drive a car in Queensland? Be afraid:

DRIVERS in Queensland will be slugged with heavier fines and penalties from March 1 in an effort to reduce the state’s road toll.

[...]

The measures – announced after a state Cabinet meeting in the north Queensland town of Atherton – are aimed at cutting inattention, aggressive driving and distraction on the state’s roads.

Oh goody.

“The new penalties being announced today are the next step of measures designed to deter people from the silly and dangerous behaviour that puts lives at risk,” Mr Beattie said.

Key changes to about 120 offences include a jump in the fine for failing to stop at a red light, from $135 and three demerit points to $225 and three demerit points.

A driver convicted of failing to keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front will have to pay $175 and lose one point, instead of the current fine of only $30 and one lost point.

I say that the Government just ban cars. Nobody will die on the road if there are no cars.

Community service announcement

I’d blog more, but a new job and not having a permanent internet connection at home (yet) prohibits it. So for the time being new posts will be very irregular.

Just so you know.

What do they stand for again?

Pamela Bone, not necessarily a person I agree with all the time, but still one of the sole remaining sensible voices of the Left, in today’s Australian:

WHY is it, asks British journalist Nick Cohen, that apologies for a militant Islam, which stands for everything the liberal Left is against, come from the liberal Left? Why are you as likely to read about the alleged conspiracy of Jews controlling American foreign policy in a literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet? Why, after the bomb attacks in the London underground, did left-leaning British newspapers run pieces excusing the suicide bombers, these same young men who were motivated by “a psychopathic theology from the ultra-Right”?

Questions like that have been asked for quite a while now. Dismissed, of course, mostly due to vocal lefties believing anybody who asked such a question had to be a warmongering Zionist. Still, it is worth reading all of Bone’s column. She concludes:

So the Left now is about resistance to material progress, to globalisation, and most of all to American power. There is plenty to criticise about Western lifestyles. Still, it should be obvious to all but the most blinkered that the system the US wants to impose on the Middle East is far better than the system the Islamists want to impose on us.

Of course. But try telling one of today’s wannabe revolutionaries that.

Letters read

Meandering through the letters section of The Age is a dangerous exercise. But hey, I’ll do it anyway.

Seemingly referring to a story The Age ran bemoaning David Hicks’ situation, Brian Haill from Frankston writes:

I HOLD my breath as to what the future might hold for Osama bin Laden if he’s ever caught — and he’s actually confronting, threatening and killing elements of the entire “coalition of the willing”!

Short of being shot on sight, I hope if Bin Laden is caught, he’s thrown into Guantanamo. If only because wankers like this will start holding up signs saying “Bring Osama home!”

Gregory Serong from Heidelberg writes:

NOW that the Country Liberal Party leader, Jodeen Carney, former Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett, current federal Liberal MPs Judith Troeth, Bruce Baird, Petro Georgiou, Judi Moylan, and Dana Vale, and the Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce have added their voices to the growing chorus of criticism of the Howard Government’s compliance in the continued incarceration of David Hicks by the US authorities, this issue can no longer be denigrated as the domain of the “loony left”. Conversely, this means that anyone who continues to support the Federal Government’s untenable position must, in fact, hail from the far right.

Firstly, Barnaby Joyce is not a Nationals MP. He’s a Senator. And a nutbag. Secondly, Hicks was caught fighting against Western forces — allies of Australia — in a time of war. I’m sure if he weren’t caught, he’d still be looking to destroy the Jews and the United States of Infidels. Still, a fair trial may be in order. Even Saddam Hussein had a trial.

The other letters in The Age are generally pointless dribble. I survived an Age letters page and I’m still alive!

Question posed

The Green Left Weekly asks:

Venezuela – an ecologically sustainable revolution?

No. Just… no.

At a meeting in Brazil on April 26, 2006, plans moved ahead between Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil for a major transcontinental oil pipeline. The pipeline would be 10,000 kilometres long and would link the four countries plus Paraguay and Uruguay.

It’s all about the oil!! Wait, where have I heard that before?

On the one hand, the Chavez government needs to keep revenue flowing into its coffers to fund its massive array of social programs in Venezuela. On the other hand, the government’s major source of revenue is from the export of oil – Venezuela’s principal natural resource – by the state oil company PDVSA.

What, so the Venezuelan government needs to export to other countries stuff that they will buy, in order to make a profit. That’s a pretty neat system. Wonder what they call it?

This whole socialism thing is arse-about. In Australia, how many people on the Left would moan if the Australian Government profited from an operation? It’s okay if a socialist government does it, obviously. All you need to do is kill off all private enterprise and you’re set. It’s a recipe for success!

Anyway, back to the Great Oil Pipeline of Chavez:

This export income often comes at the expense of the environment. In a stark example of the environmental degradation caused by the oil industry, the December 18, 2000, US Business Week described the impact of the industry on Lake Maracaibo, located in the northern state of Zulia (where the bulk of Venezuela’s oil has come from). Once a pristine habitat for mangroves and flamingoes, the lake is now crowded with tankers, polluted with toxic industrial waste and is the repository for raw sewage from the surrounding area’s 5 million inhabitants.

So not only is Chavez destroying the environment, he’s starving the people of Venezuela and also pissing off the rest of the world. That’s what happens when you get a commie nutbag for a leader. Even the Green Left Weekly is casting the evil eye on Chavez. How telling.