More NBN Bullshit

Bloody hell it is hard to dispel the bullshit sprouted by the NBN haters/Neanderthals.

You all would have read the newspapers and news broadcasts about the NBN costing $190 per month.

The Australian

SMH

Polls in newspapers asking would you pay this. Bullshit printed by newspapers about the NBN being too expensive.

Well, at the moment I pay $69.95 per month for Bigpond cable internet. This gives me 25GB allowance per month at a top speed that I can never attain of 30Mbps. I usually get between 23 to 27Mbps. No phone service with that.

If you go to this site http://www.exetel.com.au/residential-fibre-pricing-mainland.php and have a geek at the prices.

If I look at what I can get in trying to compare my current plan.

On the Exetel site I can get 100Mbps with a 50GB allowance per month for $59.50.

As you can see three times faster with doubling of my GB limit and saving $10 per month.

You can also get a VOIP phone service over the NBN see their charges here http://www.exetel.com.au/voip_planA.php

Treat anything you hear about the NBN particularly on radio station 2GB or The Australian newspaper or Daily Telegraph with a great big dose of salt.

Labor V Liberal Carbon Abatement Policies

The CO2 abatement discussion has been very one sided. All it has done is concentrate on one side of the argument, The labor parties Carbon Tax.
The Liberal's CO2 abatement method, Direct Action has had little in the way of conversation.
If, as a lot of noisy people (maybe the majority in Australia) are asking is to have another election on the carbon tax, what is the alternative policy if there is another election and the Libs. under Tony Abbott get in. Well it is "Direct Action".
Lenore Taylor a journalist with the SMH has an article/opinion piece today Saturday on the differences between the two policies. I cannot link to it because it is not on the SMH website, not sure why.
The differences are:
Target The same for both parties, 5% reduction in CO2 emissions based on 2000 levels.
Cost to Budget Labor $3.9b over 4 years, Liberal $3.2b over 4 years and $10.5b over 10 years.
Claimed cost to Industry Labor $23 per tonne of emissions from top 500 polluters, Liberal nothing yes $0
Ease of scaling up Labor high, Liberal low.
Ease of scaling down Labor low, Liberal high.
According to Abbott there will be no cost to the taxpayers because it will be paid for by savings in the budget.
Direct action proposes that about 60% (85 million tonnes) of Australia's emissions reduction will be from soil carbon. But it has some detractors, Farmers.
Another 15 million tonnes from long rotation tree plantations. But the timber industry are allegedly saying that up to 600,000 hectares of cleared agricultural land will be needed, but the National party are allegedly saying it has a guarantee that no viable farmland will be converted to plantation.
There is a lot more in this article, but to finish.
Direct action is designed to take 5% of emissions by 2020 in a painless way, with industry possibly unchanged. What their plan is for after 2020 who knows. Abbott was allegedly asked at a Brisbane community forum on Thursday about the future of coal and electricity generation. He allegedly said, "do you really want to transform society"? Did he mean no or yes. But then again with Tony you cannot believe anything he says, according to himself, except if it is written down.
And of course don't forget that no Australian economist or climate scientist endorse Tony's direct action plan.

Why Abbott dislikes most Economists

        Found this on a new online newspaper "The Conversation".  I can now see why Tony Abbott thinks that Australian Economists are daft.
       A survey of 145 economists released today found that 60% believe the Gillard government’s carbon tax is good economic policy. The survey was conducted on Monday at a meeting hosted by the Economic Society of Australia at the Australian National University (ANU). The results were fairly clear cut. Something like 60% were in favour of the governments approach and 25% were against and 15% had no opinion.
       The survey coincided with the release of another poll of 500 members of the Economic Society of Australia on a range of policies, including the mining tax and middle-class welfare.
Around 70% of respondents to that survey said they support a national excess profits tax on miners and two-thirds of want middle-class welfare cut so that more assistance can be given to the disabled and severely disadvantaged.
       The bulk of the economists favour abolition of the Baby Bonus and the First Home Owners Grant, and are in favour of introducing the indexation of tax thresholds and for the introduction of congestion charges.
       Yes, they are against a lot of the oppositions policies. I thought the Liberals were better economic managers?

Tony Abbott, carbon tax antics.

Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott has repeated a call for a plebiscite on the carbon tax despite the move being sunk last month as a stunt.
I am not too sure who he is trying to impress, or how he is going to change the vote in parliament, but this is baffling stuff. His call is not rational, considering the numbers in both houses of Federal parliament are stacked against him. It is even more irrational when he said he was not bound by the result if it goes against him.
He has also slammed the majority of economists in Australia for agreeing with Labor that a price on carbon is the way to go. Saul Eslake a director and economist of the Grattan Institute, said that Mr. Abbott was attacking economists because he was frustrated.  I would have thought more likely irrational. He has not got over the defeat on the floor of parliament that gave Julia Gillard the government. I say, get over it Tony, become a real leader with real policies and then maybe rational people may start to think a bit differently of you.
Gillard's carbon plan wins growing business support according to the Australian 
Yes, you heard it right. This is from the Murdoch press, the biggest Labor government bashing newspaper there is.
No economist it seems is backing Abbotts "Direct action" on carbon abatement. He will be paying the big polluters with tax payers money to the tune of at least 1 billion dollars a year. The economists feel that this will do nothing to reduce carbon by 5% by 2020.
Tony Abbott seems to becoming more irrational as this Gillard government goes on.
He feels that climate change is all crap. This is against the overwhelming majority of climate scientists saying that climate change is real, it will affect this planet adversely, and it is due to human induced pollution.
So every serious climate scientist on the planet and economists in Australia is wrong and only Tony Abbott is right.
His words and actions are ones of an irrational person. I think a change in leader is what the Liberals need. I think going back to Malcolm Turnbull is the way to go for the Liberals. Malcolm is a much more lucid and rational person. I would hate to see Abbott as our Prime Minister.

School chaplain program

The school chaplaincy program is now coming under fire from the Anglican church.
The head of Sydney's Anglican Education Commission, Bryan Cowling, the executive director of the peak body for the Anglican Diocese of Sydney.
He has said that, "The legitimate place of religion in NSW government schools might be put at risk by the misuse of the National School Chaplaincy Program, the head of Sydney's Anglican Education Commission has warned."
He goes further and says, "chaplains - with the term's religious connotations - might blur the distinction between faith and welfare, increasing the chance of misuse by proselytising, which might call into question access granted to schools for special religious education, also known as scripture."
He continues, ''If it's a welfare position and a welfare role, why not call it that rather than call it a chaplain?'' he said. ''I just think it's a clumsy way to do things."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/anglican-church-queries-school-chaplain-program-20110701-1gv6l.html#ixzz1Qv7eTljO

SMH Article
I think it is astounding that a secular government would continue to fund these programs in school.
To me it is another poorly funded program from a government scared of offending a small section of the electorate. This government is running scared like a rabbit in the headlights of a car.