Let’s face it, it’s been a tough week. What we need now is an issue that will unify the nation. Happily we have one at hand, Australia’s pathological obsession with Schapelle Corby.
Corby is set to be deported from Indonesia in the coming days. She will be put on a burner and returned to the only place she would regard as worse than Bali’s Kerobokan Prison — Australia.
Ultimately Corby served nine years in Kerobokan and after being released in February 2014 has served a closely watched period of parole in Bali for the last three years.
Back in March 2005 when Corby was first convicted and sentenced, it was akin to the lunar landing, people crowding around televisions watching the verdict, the media going the full three ring circus routine. While some of the hysteria has subsided, it is set to ratchet up again as Corby prepares to set foot in Australia for the first time in almost 14 years.
Full column here.
A mild but exceedingly smug piece by Clive James today, a sample from the IPA’s forthcoming publication “Climate Change – The Facts” (lawdy). The natives are giving him a standing ovation. To be sure it’s well-written, but it’s arrogant tosh. I had three goes at a comment before it was accepted. It’s nothing special, but I submit it beow just to spite them!:
Preaching to the converted here Clive. I agree with you that when the media gets a hold of an idea, all sorts of people jump on the wagon, the basic ideas become dogma and opinion is very hard to shift. This doesn’t alter the fact that what you have written is an Unreliable Memoir. You’ve always been a smart arse, you’ve acknowledged that and made a living out of it. Much of what you’ve written here is arrant bullshit delivered smugly, devoid of fact and quoting the most simplistic interpretations of events. You admit that you have no understanding of the science but you ‘know’ that it’s all crap. I have news for you. No-one knows for sure at this time, but the effects, if the theories of the actual scientists are true (and Einstein and Feynman may well have agreed with it all, we don’t know do we?) then the effects, such as sea-level rise, which *is* occurring, will be gradual. Very. You won’t live to see this proved or disproved. But your certitude is unwarranted.
One thing about Greenpeace. They are a bunch of clowns who actually don’t help their cause much at all.
You may recall that during the plague there was no end of advice of how to avoid it and this ranged from keeping the house as filthy as possible to the opposite. Everything in between and on other tangents was postulated. One or two of them was correct but no-one knew at the time. It’s a bit like that now. You’d keep a dirty house.
A brikliant writer and one I admire greatly but that was just a bunch of tired, old crap.
JTI I can’t comment at all on the blog. Am I in spam still or have I been blocked?
Apologies, Bella, Milton, HK Jack, Tracy and Dwight and one or two others. Your comments had once gone into spam and I would recover them and post. One by one your comments started going into normal comments. This also coincided with a period where I was receiving a lot of real spam. So I stopped looking at spam altogether. It was only when Tracy let me know there was a problem that I saw all these comments in spam. I have posted them now and will keep an eye on it. Apologies again.