Why the Citizen's Assembly on Climate Change is a dud

Here's my top six concerns about PM Julie Gillard's proposed "Citizen's Assembly" to investigate Climate Change. Feel free to disagree, or add others!

1. Struth, how many mandates does the Oz public have to give the ALP?
2. What if the assembly decides no action should be taken? This victory for 'deliberative democracy' won't alter the fact that measures needs to be introduced. This alone demonstrates what a complete farce the idea is.
3. Is it just me, or is this a bit like asking the passengers on the Titanic for approve an iceberg report before further action is taken? Its simply delay dressed up as consultation.
4. The other policies announced recently suggest a full retreat from climate change action. New coal-fired stations, wtf? That's soooo 1995. Even the new car rebate business is taken from solar money. The assembly has to be seen in the light of surrounding climate policies: its a distraction and a con.
5. As the Republic issue in 1999 showed, the best way to kill an agenda which enjoys popular support, but which leaders don't want a bar of, is through exactly this sort of mechanism. Pick opposing factions, then you can claim “see, the public cant agree on an actual model” and you’re off the hook, despite the public clearly wanting it.
6. Real leaders build consensus – or least majority support – around an agenda for change. They don't follow focus groups around.

Unimpressed, of Keating Towers.

A brief ode to the $250 I won backing Spain in the World Cup

Ole Ole
Ole Olaaaaaaaaaa
Porque España va a ganar!

Oi oi oi...vey.

I'm in New Zealand, having a holiday with the family, and frankly... I'm outraged.

Everywhere I go, customary title over income-generating tourist sites appears not only to provide economic opportunity and employment for rural Maori, but also generates business opportunities for the general community through site lease arrangements.

Stupid Kiwis: can't they see its better to oppose native title and then whinge interminably about indigenous people on welfare?

The Light on the Hill

Flags at half-mast

This evening, it was my sad duty was to lower the fort flag.

Jose Saramago, Nobel laureate - and for us here at BmL - the greatest author of the last thirty years, has died.

Vale Saramago - para nós, o maior escritor dos ultimos 30 anos. 

Nós voce saúdam.  

Return to us in dreams, companheiro

New Fort Design poll!

Seems Lt Amilcar got on the beetle-nut while was I was out briefly (shoring up allegiances among the Topasses, and looking for Sandlewood). He's redesigned the entire fort.

Check the starboard bow, Marineiros, its a new poll!

Banksy

"Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep the rock someone just threw at your head" - Banksy

Check out more of Banksy's online catalogue here.

West Bank Barrier, Palestine.

Ned Kelly: 'Nobody knows anything about my case except myself'

Sidney Nolan (1945). In my ill-informed opinion, the most evocative of the Ned Kelly series.

A Mãe de todas as Fortalezas - Torre de Belem

As far as we here at BmL are concerned, this is a goddamn holy site. The mother ship. The mother lode.

The mother of all fortalezas.

All BmListas verdadeiras must - at least once - make the pilgrimage.

This is Torre de Belem.

In the pre-dawn gloom, Os Capitãos take early service in the Capella near Mosteiro dos Jerónimos - the final resting place of da Gama and Camões. They then pray to the Virgin of Safe Homecoming on the Torre that these are not their last steps on Portuguese soil, and board the thousand caravels of the great Age of Discovery.

From 1515 on, they will all hoist sail here, by the Torre, on the Tagus, in Lisbon. This Manueline masterpiece was first fort, then prison under the Espanhois *spits*  (who call it "belem", when every true son knows its pronounced "blengggg") - customs house, barracks - but always, always a symbol of Os Navegados.

Built 1515-1521, UNESCO listed in 1983. Take off your tricorn, Lt Amilcar, where do you think you're at?

Welcome to the Jungle (2007)

Well, I don't know about you, but I'd just about watch any film set in Fiji, PNG and West Papua. The fact that this proved to be an absolute cracker was just a bonus. Loosely inspired by the mystery surrounding the disappearance in PNG of Michael Rockefeller in 1961, this 2007 horror-thriller follows two US and two Australian backpackers through the wilds of New Guinea. In a Blair Witch project meets Deliverance style, they film their own progress as things get increasingly remote and freaky.

I won't spoil the ending, though I will note that the encounter with Indonesian guards at the West Papuan border provided a few thrills in itself. I also found the dialogue between the characters - as their own relationships deteriorate - well above average quality, and genuinely amusing. Nice to see the South-West Pacific feature in commercial film at any rate - even if it is through the 'undiscovered tribe' trope. Know any others?