Let’s keep it simple.

Over a year ago Rudd gave Toyota a stack of money they didn’t know what to do with or need, to build Camry hybrids in Australia, because Kevin’s wife once complained the existing hybrids were not Australian made. True story.

Sales of the vehicles have been very slow with the Victorian government the only ones buying the cars. Probably because they make no financial sense for buyers. The average person would have to drive something like 200,000 km before they get their money back on the fuel savings. Not including when the battery inevitably fries when the warranty runs out. That is a $10,000 replacement.

Anyway, in order to boost sales Gillard is giving away $2000 to people with worthless cars to go into debt to buy one of these government funded hybrids. These are cars that cost in excess of $40k.

So let me get this straight. If a person can only afford to drive around in a car worth less than $2000, how are they going to be able to afford a car worth $40,000 – $2,000 = $38,000?

Has the ALP completely lost its mind?!?!? So much for Ford and Holden. According to Gillard you guys better start looking for a new job. Hopefully people in Adelaide are awake to the way Gillard has stabbed her own home town in the back.

There are also a range of balance of payment issues and the impact this initiative could have in creating a boom and bust industry, aka the home insulation industry right now.

…..a spokesperson has confirmed that the Canadian Humanitarian Appeal for Relief of Tamils known as Canadian HART sent a delegation to Venezuela, requesting that the government consider accepting Tamil refugees, currently located in Indonesia.

Paradise awaits.

And the after effects:

Probably a deliberate tactic to demonise the Japanese and garner sympathy from Surry Hills types - people that either don’t eat meat or don’t know where it comes from.

Predictably, the anti-whaling pirates have run home to mummy – the ABC – claiming that the Japanese deliberately rammed their vessel. The reality is that the larger vessel has the right of the way and it is up to the quicker and smaller more nimble vessel to get out of the way. The pirates are at fault.

The opposition environment spokesman – the biggest bed wetter in the opposition front ranks – has said the following:

“It is a time for a immediate dispatch of a non-military observer vessel to protect and also to capture and chronicle the slaughter of Australian whales in Australian waters.”

Oh boy. I didn’t know we owned those whales. Are they micro-chipped? And ever since we agreed to suspend our claim to 40 per cent of Antarctica, the surrounding waters stopped being enforceable.

LARA Bingle’s $250,000 Aston Martin has been stolen in what appears to be a targeted attack.

The dark blue James Bond-style 2008 Vantage Coupe disappeared from a secure carpark at the base of the couple’s luxurious Bondi apartment block.

The luxury vehicle was bought for the model by her partner, cricketer Michael Clarke.

My only question is, what exactly was Aston Martin thinking when they sold her the car to begin with? Maybe they saw the error of their way and decided they should get it back, along with any semblance of respectability.

…reduce Australia’s carbon emissions by five per cent…

Okkkayyyy. And this number comes from where? Rudd mentioned the figure as part of his address to the UNSW, in which actually said:

…it has been estimated that broadband can help reduce Australia’s annual emissions of greenhouse gases by five per cent.

Is it greenhouse or carbon emissions? Don’t know because there is no citation, no indication of where the savings will be and it is not clear if it is a net figure. So basically a meaningless reference.

5 per cent of Australia’s annual net emissions (about 550 million tonnes) represents about 30 million tonnes. According to the US EPA, this equates to taking 5 million cars off the road for a whole year or nearly 8 coal fired power stations. Is Rudd seriously suggesting that such an increase in internet speed – apparently not subject to the laws of diminishing returns – will save us that much in emissions from transportation and power? Presumably this is where the saving will be in. And of course the mainstream media dutifully and uncritically report Rudd’s ramblings.

9.18am: Greg Combet argues we’ve just had the hottest November on record in Sydney so the Liberals should pass the emissions trading bill.

So, will the emissions trading bill stop Sydney experiencing a record hot November again? Will it do anything to stop record hot temperatures? No and no. I wonder if Combet is willing to make his statement an election promise?

…(it) would have irreversible consequences, rendering large parts of the globe uninhabitable and destroying much of life on earth.

And what if the Earth collided with another planet? That wouldn’t be good either.

The study by Professor Corinne Le Quere, from the British Antarctic Survey and East Anglia University, is the most comprehensive so far of how economic changes and shifts in the way people used land over the past 50 years have affected CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

Who says it is the most comprehensive, bestest, most awesome study ever in the entire history of the world? The East Anglia University press release, so dutifully repeated without question by the Daily Telegraph. Scared yet? Well get ready to burnrnrnrn!

The temperature rise was made public by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, when it was then only a worst-case scenario.

But according to Professor Le Quere it is now all but inevitable.

Great, so why waste valuable resources on an ETS when we could use those resources to adapt to the impending and inevitable burning? Funny how the study comes out right before the meeting in Copenhagen. Geee, I wonder if these lobbyists come scientists are trying to pressure anyone, or was it just by coincidence that study was completed at this time?

Get ready for national collapse:

Staff at the federal government’s arts funding and advisory body will walk off the job on Tuesday as they continue a campaign to win a new agreement on pay and conditions.

It is the first time Australia Council staff have taken strike action.

The Community and Public Sector Union says its members are deeply frustrated by management’s agenda of cuts to jobs, pay and working conditions.

In the three months to April, they used 1384 kilowatt hours and produced 388 kilowatt hours of excess power, for which they received the princely sum of $12.96 after taxes.

“Governments are not being serious about reducing energy consumption with lousy amounts of money like that,” Ms Bragg said….

Ms Bragg said she hoped the carbon permits scheme would be flexible enough to allow households with renewable energy to be paid for the gross amount of power produced — not just the excess — as happened in Germany and some other countries.

So that’s 2160 months or 180 years before they break even, ignoring depreciation costs on the solar panels, the roof and hook-ups. These people clearly have too much money too spend and not enough sense to justify what could be the first of many environmental bailouts for a government solar panel scheme that clearly does not work.