...Meanwhile...Back on the farm....!

Malcolm Fraser certainly has a lot to answer for.
Look at the achievments of Zimbabwe since
its independence - inflation, poverty, and a "monarch"
who's ruled for 28 years - Robert Mugabe.

They should have listened to Thatcher.

You can only shake your head in pitying wonder when a journo like Malcolm Colless sings the praises of Malcolm Fraser and his "Zimbabwe" policy. while simultanously attacking Margie Thatcher.

Yoo hoo, mr Colless, Rhodesia was still the breadbasket of Africa even while it was fighting off black terrorists from three sides, as well as having sanctions imposed upon it by European countries, some of the same countries which white Rhodesians died in WW2 to defend.

Black majority rule did exactly that which us "racists" predicted. it turned a viable, white run country into yet another dysfunctional black run society run by another incompentent black "President for Life" who's people are now starving and are a problem to the rest of the world.

Racial equality is a wonderful concept, just like class equality. Unfortunately, both concepts do not seem to work in practice.

Everybody who was around at the time of Margie Thatchers rise to power remembers just how bad the British society had become after years of Socialism. It was so bad, that the Labor Prime Minister (Callahan) , who's every edict which tried to improve the economy of Britain, was being thwarted and frustrated by his own party and its unions. Callahan simply resigned and told the whole lot of them to go and get stuffed.

Margaret got Britain working again, crushed the Communist coal unions, reclaimed the Falklands from invasion, and predicted that the European monetary union could not work. And don't journos like you hate her for being right all along?

So true LEGO. Did Fraser ever have a good idea? If he did, I've not heard of it.

Fraser had a hugely false idea of his own ability, meanwhile sitting on his hands letting Oz sink. As some in power in Oz today, more interested in using Oz as a spring board to somewhere else than in here. Seems to be a characteristic of the more incompetent polly.

Maggy on the other hand, turned a basket case into a successful, prosperous country. Pity about what's happened to it since, just like us.

Both the UK, & OZ would be extremely lucky to find a Maggy in their christmas stocking this year, god knows we booth need someone like her.

Hasbeen says this of Margaret Thatcher;

"Both the UK, & OZ would be extremely lucky to find a Maggy in their christmas stocking this year, god knows we booth need someone like her."

I agree entirely.

Indeed, the conservative PM in 1990 didn't "play" politics like our current (it's 'crap') Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, when she said:

“The danger of global warming is real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices, so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.

Our ability to come together to stop or limit damage to the world's environment will be perhaps the greatest test of how far we can act as a world community. No-one should under-estimate the imagination that will be required, nor the scientific effort, nor the unprecedented co-operation we shall have to show. We shall need statesmanship of a rare order.

For two centuries, since the Age of the Enlightenment, we assumed that whatever the advance of science, whatever the economic development, whatever the increase in human numbers, the world would go on much the same. That was progress. And that was what we wanted.

Now we know that this is no longer true.

The IPCC report is a remarkable achievement. It is almost as difficult to get a large number of distinguished scientists to agree, as it is to get agreement from a group of politicians. As a scientist who became a politician, I am perhaps particularly qualified to make that observation! I know both worlds.

Of course, much more research is needed. We don't yet know all the answers. Some major uncertainties and doubts remain. No-one can yet say with (absolute) certainty that it is human activities which have caused the apparent increase in global average temperatures. The IPCC report is very careful on this point.”

cont'd

Maggie cont’d:

“But the need for more research should not be an excuse for delaying much needed action now. There is already a clear case for precautionary action at an international level. The IPCC tells us that we can't repair the effects of past behaviour on our atmosphere as quickly and as easily as we might cleanse a stream or river. It will take, for example, until the second half of the next century, until the old age of my grandson, to repair the damage to the ozone layer above the Antarctic. And some of the gases we are adding to the global heat trap will endure in the Earth's atmosphere for just as long.

The IPCC tells us that, on present trends, the earth will warm up faster than at any time since the last ice age. Weather patterns could change so that what is now wet would become dry, and what is now dry would become wet. Rising seas could threaten the livelihood of that substantial part of the world's population which lives on or near coasts. The character and behaviour of plants would change, some for the better, some for worse. Some species of animals and plants would migrate to different zones or disappear for ever. Forests would die or move. And deserts would advance as green fields retreated.

And our uncertainties about climate change are not all in one direction. The IPCC report is very honest about the margins of error. Climate change may be less than predicted. But equally it may occur more quickly than the present computer models suggest. Should this happen it would be doubly disastrous were we to shirk the challenge now. I see the adoption of these policies as a sort of premium on insurance against fire, flood or other disaster. It may be cheaper or more cost-effective to take action now than to wait and find we have to pay much more later.”

To accomplish these tasks, we must not waste time and energy disputing the IPCC's report or debating the right machinery for making progress."

Yep, spot on.