Hobart windmills mean for ugly big time

So I'm sitting here with a cold, trying not to think about work and how useless I am to the place when I am unwell, ideas and opinions are starting to fall out of my head at pace. My letter to the Mercury's editor and whoever else I decide to flick it to. Probably a little long-winded for the Merc, but we'll see.

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The windmills on the Marine Board building are set to start spinning once again. It seems folks are at extremes of this debate. Either you are all for them - right on, save the trees and all that - or else you live in fear of it raining gigantic steak knives the next time you are out to dinner or a drink on a windy Hobart night.

It's interesting too, to hear the view of the proponent (Mr Kirke) in last Monday's Mercury, viz. more windmills on more buildings, with perhaps the Hydro building next on the list. Get off it, how much uglier do you want to make the most beautiful city in Australia? I'd love to see Alderman Sexton enter this debate with a little more vision and vigour.

Hobart could surely lead the world in small scale renewables, but destroying roof-lines and vistas is in my opinion, not the way to do it. Retrofitting wind turbines, solar panels and the like to existing structures for marginal power generation is a really inefficient use of resources. Such installations tend to be less than ideal no matter how good the hardware. The only thing making them viable (speaking as a rebate recipient myself) is the government handouts. Which were, as I recall, about giving a new industry a leg up as much as they were about greenwash.

To put forward an alternative. Perhaps if land could be set aside by the council for community alternative energy parks, with small plots tied to ratepayers' existing residential land titles. Such a place, surely, could generate more electricity for less money in a concentrated and ideal spot. My one kilowatt system could have become two or three just through the economies of scale of big grid-tie inverters, bulk purchases and a good location.

HCC has already shown its willingness to think forward and invest, as an example, just look at the pilot methane recovery plant at the Hobart tip. I ask them and in particular Ald Sexton, to lead the community again now. Those of us concerned about where power is being generated and how, will contribute to such a project and either offset our rates or power bills with what is generated.

To me, it seems a way to get the warm fuzzy feeling of green orthodoxy without inciting the neighbors to violence through shade. As for the Marine board building wind mills? Keep them, we're getting used to them now, they can be our reminder of the evils of tokenism.

Sincerely
Ian Mackintosh, Deep Bay

Calling the Tasmanian Election

The chase 10 - 9 - 6

As I type this on the final evening of campaigning by parties for the 2010 lower house election, I am in thought. By the end of this post I'll put in my two cents as to who I believe will be picking up the 10 (Labor or liberal).

The John Dowling Soliloquy

What a muppet this man must be. To send that pamphlet to all and sundry quoting Hansard out of context in a debate where the Greens sided with government. Backed up with robocalls from a Labor party hack. That isn't scrutiny that's just fuckwitted.

John Dowling comes onto ABC radio (936) after folk had started calling in regarding the unsolicited robocalls with no authorisation message. John's response was along the lines of yeah it was us, no it isn't a requirement for Labor to carry an authorisation message and other Australian Governments have done it. Oh yeah and Obama did it so it must be cool.

Ok lets break this down:

• No authorisation is required. You are dead right John, you don't have to carry the message when telemarketing, but when resorting to such shit campaigning having the guts to tack on to the end of it who you are is in the spirit fairness. Most people will have hung up long before they got to it anyway.
  
  Anyway, people don't like telemarketers much less automated ones.
   
• Robocalls by Australian Government have happened in the past. Right again John. I think the one you were referring to was John Howard... A liberal... In an election he lost... massively... after the Labor campaigned against such ugliness.
   
• Robocalls were used by Obama. But the US Democrats were peddling a message of hope, that was positive and about what they stood for and carried an authorisation. It was also still contentious.
   

Websites

So if one goes to the website's of the major parties what does one find. Anyone passingly interested in the outcome of an election should do this rather than suck it through the Mercury, Advocate or TV.

I have included extracts from an exhaustive and as yet unpublished book on political website creation in Australia. It's called www.jeff.gone

www.liberal.org

• Rule 2 - Don't carry graphical content with words like 'Labor Budget Bombshell'. FAIL Shit like that just reminds us all what we don't like about you.
  
  
• Rule 7 - Don't carry photos of every person that is vaguely important in your party as your banner. FAIL
  You must be aware that you look like a bunch of politicians.
  
  
• Rule in every book on web publishing since IBM and the 'flaming logo' - Have whitespace. Fail Seriously guys it's a shit site, I know you are all pro-nepotism, but getting someone's 14 year old daughter to design the site because she did a really colourful job with her myspace page... Not good.
  
  
• Rule 1 - Have an obvious front page link to policy. SUCCESS!
  Well done
  
  
• Rule 1.5 - Have the policy link lead to a policy page somewhere. FAIL
  
  

  For information about the State Liberal Team's policies, please go to http://tasliberal.com.au/policy or phone 03 6224 1015 or email policy@tas.liberal.org.au *Sigh*   Rule 2087 - Be clear and don't suggest anything involving magnets. FAIL Make Tasmania a magnet is not a clear heading for a policy. What are you thinking Wil? 70,000 kilometres of copper wire, all the hydroelectricity, a larger than average nail and we attract all the world's tin pot dictators. Yes I am aware tin is non-ferrous. Don't ruin it for me.

www.alp.org

• Rule 16 - Don't have a site that is clearly labelled 'beta'. FAIL Labor in government federally for 2.5 years in the state for 12 and their site is running in beta, explains heaps. Ummm, I'd like to report a bug.
  
  
• Rule 23 - Don't have graphics of things you've stuffed up. FAIL
  You are in the process of making a mess of the renewable market. Pictures of wind turbines at sunset is suggestive. Of failure.
   
• Rule 438 - Don't have a thing called LaborTV. FAIL
  We have the ABC that's enough.
   
• Rule 11 - Link to state sites from the federal site. FAIL Two elections on tomorrow in the states and not a link to the TAS or SA ALPs to be seen, I had to Google them, thank god for corporations I say.
  
  
• Rule 12 - If the State websites are terrible Rule 11 doesn't apply. SUCCESS This Terrible ... clearly the work of John Dowling who sacked after the disaster of an election result he has engineered for the comrades.
  
  
• Rule 1 - Have an obvious front page link to policy. FAIL FAIL FAIL
  After pecking around a whole bunch of garbage on the state Labor site, saying how awful the Libs/Greens are I found the policies, in PDF (an awful format), under multiple tabs (awful formatting) with none of them under 500Kb each. Christ no wonder you want us to have broadband rolled out, compression or HTML are clearly too high tech. They are under 'what we stand for' not to be confused with what Labor stand in.
  
  
• Rule 200 - If you are stupid enough to use PDF at least get the graphic design right. FAIL
  This is shit and makes me rage out something savage. It is also a shit policy. It also bolds the word Labor too much.

www.greens.org.au

• Rule 71,234 - Do not offer to send all of your supporters names, addresses and photos to the incumbent government. FAIL
  Admittedly an obscure rule but this is stupid. 'Please send my identifying details and a helpful photo to people that don't agree with my politics, have a poor history of holding onto identifying personal information, have been known to invent names on their party roles and are incumbents in government. Ummmm.
  
  
• Rule 758 - It's not a Green website unless there is a photo of an earnest yet slightly appealing looking hippie chick tied to a tree. FAIL
  Oh wait, found one, widthdrawn

In short, vote for anyone you like. But kudos to the Greens on a good campaign, a good website and not being either Labor or Liberal. We are almost pissed off enough to swallow your unwashed tree hugging nonsense.

Labor 9, Liberal 10, Green 6