Yes, I also find Forrest's posts amusing, although the relationship to the topic at hand is sometimes not obvious, as I am sure Forrest himself would agree.

Forrest, I think you would do everyone a great favour, if would consider copying your posts to a blog site and adding tags which indicate the subject which the posts relate to and find other ways to structure them.

Just leaving them in often inaccessible parts of OLO is a bit of a waste.

(I have been intending to do the same with my OLO posts for years.)

---

Anyhow, I have written an article which analyses the grotesque newsmedia misreporting of the electricity privatisation issue which may be of interest. It is called:

"Media contempt for facts in NSW electricity privatisation debate"

... and can be found at http://candobetter.org/node/765

The teaser is:

Analysis of the reporting of electricity privatisation initiatives
in New South Wales brings disturbing confirmation that the major
Australian newsmedia does not accurately report essential facts on
issues of vital concern to us. Indeed, it often acts as a conduit
for propaganda against our best interest.

---

Comments either there or here are welcome.

Forrest had, in recent days, been going over some old Constitutional ground: the 1973 challenges to the constitutional validity of the Senate (Representation of Territories) Act 1973. He had read the decisions of the several High Court Justices in that case.

Forrest had found, hiding in plain sight, a seemingly unrecognised necessary implication of the Constitution!

One which, moreover, had seemed to have escaped the notice of all the learned Justices of that day sitting in judgement on that matter (although Murphy J. came very, very close to recognising it), if their several published decisions and reasons therefore were anything to go by.

In all the judgements no recognition had been seemingly given to the necessary implication of the words of the fifth paragraph of Section 128 of the Constitution that "No alteration diminishing the proportionate representation of any State in either House of the Parliament ..........., shall become law unless the majority of the electors voting in that State approve the proposed law.". So, by necessary implication, there were at least TWO types of referendum provided for by Section 128, one being express in connection with proposed ALTERATION to the Constitution, the other being necessarily implied as being required at any time the Parliament EXERCISED ITS POWERS UNDER SECTION 122 with respect to the representation of territories in either House of the Parliament.

Given that the validity of the 1973 legislation was upheld, there should then have been a referendum held in every State, in two parts, as to whether a majority of the electors voting thereat approved of the necessarily diminished proportionate representation of their respective State in the respective Houses thereby proposed. It would have to have been approved in every State for the territory representation legislation to have taken effect. This, however, had never been done!

Forrest marveled greatly.

Of course, this discovery had little to do with power, be it the temporal or electrical sort. Forrest certainly had none of the former sort. It did have a little to do with pride, or more correctly, credibility, however. Forrest's, that is.

'Nil Bastardum Carborundum', Forrest thought.

OOHHH,

Its all a grand conspiracy in which even our supposed guardians of the fourth estate have been co-opted. All those free thinkers out there who can see through the capitalist conspiracy will be glad that you, Dagget, are out there exposing the lies and deception. Maybe you should start your own newspaper, or would that just arouse the ire of the military-industrial complex.

They could be watching you, right now.

DOH!!

Daggett,

You are quite right in saying, in relation to some of my posts, that "..... the relationship to the topic at hand is sometimes not obvious, .....". Where a thread like this one has seemingly run its course with respect to topicality, it can perhaps reasonably be used, without disrespect to the opening poster or the hogging of the discussion, as a vehicle for the provocation of further thought in relation to the subject so opened up. Or as a means of putting something on public record that may not presently be recognised as accurate or relevant, but which one strongly suspects will in future become so, and can then be linked to from within (or outside) OLO.

As an example of this, see the link contained within this recent post of mine to the Macolm (sic) Turnbull topic: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2144#45459 .

Seldom can a new perspective be introduced in just 350 words. So I must post serially. If the serial has to be read in its totality to get the point across, its component parts desirably need to be entertaining in themselves. I strive to make them so. Now I have no way of knowing what proportion of OLO viewers use the index page settings to display more than the default 5 topics per discussion area in order of recency of posting, which would seem to be one of the ways in which viewers could monitor a particular thread (like this one) as it otherwise gets pushed down the sequential list of topics.

I suppose the other way of monitoring would be for a viewer to use the 'Find out more about this user' icon, and follow my (or any others') posting history in the users index area. Do many users do this? I have no idea.

Interesting, the claim on this site: http://www.beyondlogic.org/southaustraliapower/#Economics , under the heading "Australia’s Greenhouse Future ‘lies’ in the hands of Roam Consulting - or does it?", that Geodynamics Ltd (Hot Dry Rock) has Hunter Valley prospects!

Why go to Innamincka in such circumstances?

FG I would not miss your posts for quids, sorry old term for real money.
A great man from unions NSW has a great end to his latest mail outs I can not remember the words, but it amounts to we beat the buggers.
I looking back on the thread can not but revel in the stack of lost heads from post one till now, and nothing beats the sweet smell of revenge.
My hurt is gone my joy at the fall of those heads each one of them is endless.
My hopes for my party restored, after our impending flogging in the by elections we just may stabilize.

Forrest seemed to need less sleep these days. He had been awake since long before dawn. He had been thinking thoughts.

Forrest's 'thinking room' in the very extensive penthouse had a northeast aspect. Magnificent harbour views. The room itself was far too big to be called an office: it had some of the characteristics of a boardroom, yet at the same time some of those of an intimate restaurant or private corporate dining room. Definitely not a smoke-filled backroom!

There was no doubt about it, Forrest was reaping where he had not sown, and drinking from wells he had not dug. This penthouse was the very antithesis of any ante-bellum sesquicentenial plantation mansion. It had the most stylish and elegant of mod cons. Real Finnish. How he had fallen into it, well, frankly, Forrest didn't give a damn. It had come with the wind! And this morning was another day!

Forrest awoke from his little reverie, and looked up.

The east was red!

The sun was about to rise.

The realization suddenly came upon Forrest, like the first rays of the rising sun, that Peak Oil could be real good for Oz, if Oz played its hand right.

What needed to happen was to get stuck right in to phasing a mixture of Hot Dry Rock and Solar Pondage energy storage into base load electricity co-generation with a mammoth coal-to-liquid fuel conversion project. NSW could concurrently use market forces to relatively quickly take over the NEM, perhaps driving some ill-advisedly privatised operations in other States to the wall in the process.

Oz could hugely exceed the internationally desired targets for conversion to renewable energy sources, saluting the global warmist flag in best, most sincere, Aussie 'three bags full' style. All the while making lots of exportable refined liquid petroleum products to a desperately short-supplied world. Oz wouldn't need no 'free trade agreements'. Oz would set its own terms of trade with the rest of the world. Oz wasn't Gert-by-Sea for nothing.

And no oil company involved anywhere!