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Bet your boots politicians here will be watching this development closely. When will one of them be brave enough to advocate an across-the-board reduction in government spending as a means of balancing the budget? A 5pc cut in all government-funded salaries would be a good start. They’d still be well ahead of the private sector.

Cheek-clenching fear was trumps yesterday when cycling the Bellarine Peninsula.
I set off about 12.30pm intending to ride via the rail trail and back roads to Portarlington to join friends for a dinner of freshly-snared mussels and whiting.
About two hours into the ride I was south-east of Drysdale on an unmade road when grey skies turned as black as a cow’s guts at midnight. Thunder crashed overhead and bolts of lighting sizzled into surrounding paddocks. Big, soaking drops of rain dribbled down the back of my neck.
The storm centre was to my north, rushing up the bay to swamp Melbourne with hail and floods and definitely qualify for disaster status by forcing cancellation of the races and the footy.
Fortunately, I’d crested the peninsula’s ridge and was heading downhill to the bay. Cringing beneath the rolling thunder and mumbling the lyrics to Riders on the Storm, I hurtled along the gravel track, trying to keep ahead of the tempest.
About 200 metres from the Portarlington-Queenscliff road, the rough surface took on an ominous intensity and I realised the back tyre was punctured.
So there I was, in the middle of nowhere with a crippled sickle, rain pelting down and thunder and lightning churning chaos all round.
Yes, I know what “they” say about trees and thunderstorms but my only hope of shelter was a roadside plantation of sheoaks.
Thus, I kept relatively dry and thanking the gods for my latter-day surrender to mobile telephony, called my hosts who drove out and collected me and the stricken cycle.
As arranged, the beloved joined us later and we enjoyed a marvellous evening watching the rain tumble down and the storm sweep around the bay.
The mussels, in a sweet chilli sauce, were exquisite. And the fried, freshly landed whiting – it just doesn’t come any better. Especially when hours earlier, you feared you’d be found as a smoking cadaver glued to a metal bike frame.

To a liberal rationalist this is an understandable, yet troubling, development.

More than half of voters in four other major European states back a push by France’s Nicolas Sarkozy to ban women from wearing the burka, according to an opinion poll for the Financial Times.

Of course, it would be totally unnecessary if the normally loudmouth Left in politics, academia and the media directed some of the spleen they reserve for the conservative mainstream at proponents of death and subjugation.
But no, that would run against the Left’s weird nihilist interpretation of multiculturalism.
An interpretation that would ironically see the Left first against the wall should that seventh century strand of religious fanaticism prevail.

In many ways Texans are admirable folk. But for a people with such a gregarious image their affection for pickles – sour, bitter pickles – is mystifying.

Pickle juice, whose main ingredient is vinegar, with added water, salt, sugar and spices like dill, garlic, onion, coriander seeds and cloves, has ardent and inventive fans. They put it in tuna and potato salads, add it to sauces and dips, and blend it with oil for homemade salad dressing. They marinate soft cheeses and hard-boiled eggs in it. They braise, steam and poach with it. They swear it cures hangovers.

It’s not their fault. They’ve been hoodwinked and brainwashed by the most nefarious of conmen into scoffing pickled confections at every opportunity. Yes, blame it on John Howard.

The script is not supposed to go this way:

Somehow a flock of four birds managed to kill a fox that had slunk into their pen hoping to gobble them up.
Their owner Michelle Cordell, 43, had the shock of her life when she went to collect the eggs on the weekend and instead found a heavily pecked pile of fur lying dead in the corner.

This should kill off any remote chance of Britain’s Labour government getting re-elected. That the party has degenerated to this level is further proof the Old Dart is stuffed.

A Labour minister says his party has been infiltrated by a fundamentalist Muslim group that wants to create an “Islamic social and political order” in Britain.
The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) — which believes in jihad and sharia law, and wants to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state — has placed sympathisers in elected office and claims, correctly, to be able to achieve “mass mobilisation” of voters.

How long before they try it on here?

This scorching criticism from such an eminently reputable organisation as the Institute of Physics represents the most devastating attack yet on the increasingly discredited IPCC:

5. The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.

Lifted from Andrew Bolt’s blog.

The Rudd government left little doubt earlier this month where they stood on a sensible proposal by Tony Abbott:

Mr Abbott yesterday foreshadowed a Northern Territory-style “emergency intervention” for public hospitals under the plan to install local management boards in Queensland and NSW within six months if the Coalition won the next election.
The boards would be government-appointed, have control over hospital budgets and discretion to raise money from private patients.
The Rudd Government savaged the plan as “half-baked”, while Queensland Health Minister Paul Lucas predicted a disaster.

But two weeks is an eternity in politics as revealed by Rudd on Insiders this morning and noted by Bolta.

Rudd’s response? He’s backpedalling now on that bold threat to take over hospitals by this year. Now he stresses that he really wants local control of hospitals.

It’s a fat chance the cold hand of authority has of getting between surfers and the chance to ride a once-in-a-lifetime whopper.

BEACHGOERS have ignored official warnings of a tsunami hitting Australia’s east coast after a devastating underwater earthquake struck Chile.

Boy, has the tide turned politically.

An exclusive Sun-Herald/Taverner poll shows Labor is now level-pegging with the Coalition.
On a two-party preferred basis, both sides have 50 per cent of the vote – a drop of almost 3 percentage points on Labor’s election-winning 52.7 per cent in 2007.

The momentum appears to be all one way.

LABOR is in deep trouble in the marginal suburban Hills seat of Morialta, according to a Sunday Mail poll showing a dramatic 10 per cent swing to the Liberal Party on a two-party preferred basis.

Looks like we’ve got a heavyweight contest on our hands.

The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven criminal conduct by climate scientists in refusing to honor Freedom of Information law (FOIA) requests.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy must have been too young to take notice when Malcolm Fraser reminded us there was no such thing as a free lunch.

According to the parliamentary documents, some of the freebies enjoyed by Senator Conroy include:
Tickets to the Melbourne Cup last year as a guest of the Seven Network.
Tickets to watch his AFL team, Collingwood, take on Essendon and Carlton in separate matches last year as a guest of the Nine Network.
Tickets to last year’s formula one grand prix in Melbourne as a guest of the Ten Network.
At the grand prix and several spring racing events, Senator Conroy enjoyed the hospitality of multiple hosts on the same day.
Other events he attended include three AFL finals last year (including the grand final), Australian soccer internationals against Uzbekistan, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, and the Australian Open tennis.
Apart from the TV networks, Senator Conroy was also hosted by Ericsson, Optus, Vodafone, Service Stream and Australia Post.
He was also hosted by sports bodies including the AFL and Football Federation Australia, which are awaiting a decision over new rules for sport on TV that could have a major effect on the value of broadcast rights.
Senator Conroy also received an autographed and framed Chelsea soccer jersey last May from Foxtel, which has been critical of the fee rebate given to its free-to-air rivals.

Name and shame took on a new dimension in Geelong Court yesterday:

LEADING Senior Constable Rob Allen discovered truth was indeed stranger than fiction when he yesterday found himself prosecuting his namesake for impersonating a police officer.
Robert Allen, 56, of Denver Drive, Portarlington, pleaded guilty in Geelong Magistrates’ Court to charges of impersonating a police officer, exceeding the speed limit, failing to stop on request and dangerous driving.
Sen-Constable Allen said Allen, no relation to the police prosecutor, was driving a 4WD fast in Portarlington Rd towards Drysdale about 10.20pm on May 29 last year.

We may not be collecting too much gold in Vancouver, but we’ve got a world-beater here in Victoria.

A COUNTRY burglar could be Australia’s dumbest crook after leaving a trail of extraordinary clues along his crime spree route.
Within an hour of being charged and bailed over other break-ins, Bendigo man Andrew Bawden, 36, was back in business, busting into cars and houses and robbing offices and a cathedral.
But his one-man crime wave came unstuck when he dropped his police charge sheet at one crime scene.
Two hours later he dropped the DVD of his police interview at another.

A couple of brave – or foolish – souls have criticised AC/DC on the Herald Sun’s website.
Whose concerts do you think the Acca/Dacca fans have suggested the critics would be better off attending?
Well, the Wiggles got a mention, likewise Culture Club and the Seekers.
This comment tickled:
There, there ladies, leave AC/DC and it’s millions of fans alone. Go back to listening to Abba or Andre Rieu or whoever.

As Rex Hunt would say, the fat lady is flexing her tonsils:
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
By Jonathan Petre
* Data for vital ‘hockey stick graph’ has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before – but NOT due to man-made changes

No one does thoughtful funny like Mark Steyn. Here, he elaborates on conformo-radicalism

It was reported last week that as many as a dozen men have been killed in disputes arising from karaoke performances of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Surely, bellowing out “I did it my way” to Frank’s backing track in a karaoke bar is the very definition of not doing it your way, but it’s marginally less pathetic than the song’s emergence in post-Christian Britain as a favorite funeral anthem: “For what is a man? What has he got? If not himself, then he has naught.” Nothing sums up your iconoclastic individualism than someone else’s signature song — right?

For gawdzake, don’t tell ‘em about dancing.

Muslim leaders in Indonesia have told the faithful not to celebrate Valentine’s Day because it is sinful and leads to “free sex”.

Sorry to be repetitive but it’s a new week and surprise, there’s another dirty big blowie discovered in the IPCC’s reports.
One of the many dire forecasts from the panel was that by 2020 global warming would shrink African agricultural production by 50 per cent.
Er, not so.

The origin of this claim was a report written for a Canadian advocacy group by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan academic who draws part of his current income from advising on how to make applications for “carbon credits”. As his primary sources he cited reports for three North African governments. But none of these remotely supported what he wrote. The nearest any got to providing evidence for his claim was one for the Moroccan government, which said that in serious drought years, cereal yields might be reduced by 50 per cent. The report for the Algerian government, on the other hand, predicted that, on current projections, “agricultural production will more than double by 2020″. Yet it was Agoumi’s claim that climate change could cut yields by 50 per cent that was headlined in the IPCC’s Working Group II report in 2007.

UPDATE:
This has long been suspected. Now it’s been scientifically verified.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

Straw and camel’s back, anyone?

The Australian’s Peter Van Onselen is chanting a familiar mantra from the Canberra press gallery:
Let’s be realistic. The opposition is not likely to win the next election . . .

He may well be correct. But the government will be hoping that Van Onselen and other gallery lefties stay onside.
Look what can get revealed despite media protection:

FEDERAL Liberals have called for Stephen Conroy to explain his skiing rendezvous with TV chief Kerry Stokes.

Electricians formally warned Environment Minister Peter Garrett that metal roof insulation could cost lives months before he banned it.

ANNA Bligh’s former chief adviser, Mike Kaiser, lobbied the Prime Minister’s office to locate the NBN headquarters in Brisbane only months before he was given a plum $450,000 a year job with the national broadband network late last year without a formal selection process.

But the tide is turning and focus on the gallery’s ineptitude and bias may prompt belated attempts to appear objective. And that’s a worry for Rudd and his rabble.