It really was an absolutely capital wind farm empire that Forrest had sort of fallen into the ownership of.

Deliberately ending his sentence with a preposition, Forrest gloated over his new discovery.

Forrest, in reading over the planning and legislative background that had established his little empire of wind farms of the dispossessed (in a DEUS document titled 'NSW Renewable Energy Target Explanatory Paper', see: http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:qlBArXX7umwJ:www.deus.nsw.gov.au/Publications/NRET%2520Explanatory%2520Paper%2520FINAL.pdf+Renewable+energy+certificate+market&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=au), realised that he had acquired a double whammy along the way!

Forrest's windmills didn't just crank out electricity with or without pride. They also cranked out paper money, in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). Ridgy didge, totally legit, lucre!

Every time one of the windmills made a megawatt hour of electricity that fact was duly recorded on a meter, and a certificate was issued. These certificates had a market value: not a volatile market value such as shares on the world-wide stockmarket were currently displaying, but a very stable, almost predictable, market value. Forrest was collecting lots and lots of these RECs. A 1 MwH REC was currently worth around $45, Forrest thought. By 2020, Forrest's vision, via WHIRLYGIG, saw a price of around $70 per REC (expressed in 2008 dollar terms).

The thing was, Forrest had realised, his 20 year government contract customer, the Kurnell Desalinator, looked like it fell within a very special category with respect to the NSW Renewable Energy Target (NRET) legislation: the category of an 'energy intensive, trade exposed consumer'. That meant that Forrest, when he resold electricity he bought from other sources to the Desalinator, would not be liable for the NRET levy! That would give him a virtually permanent marketing edge!

'Energy intensive, trade exposed, consumer': what a clever way of saying 'aluminium smelter', thought Forrest. The authors of the NRET Explanatory Paper were definitely Forrest's kind of people.

DEUS. Ex machina? Forrest wondered.

Forrest was very particular about his acronyms. There seemed to be such a lot of them in the world of privatised power provision. Deep down, Forrest just knew nobody believed him about the future-viewer, WHIRLYGIG. Viewers probably thought he had made it up. That just wasn't true. Why were people so unkind, so unbelieving?

Reference to Frontier Economics' long term investment model, WHIRLYGIG, was first made on page 12 of the NRET Explanatory Paper linked to in Forrest's previous post. It was for real. People should really read the links before they dismissed what Forrest wrote, thought Forrest as he corrected the grammar in the pasted text he had just copied from the DEUS document.

They probably don't even believe DEUS is for real, either. Forrest knew that acronym stood for the NSW Department of Energy, Utilities and Sustainability. It was a real government department. True!

Forrest had even adopted an acronym-like trademark for his own electricity trading business, Intrastate Energy Marketing Management Associates. (There weren't actually any associates, but it made the name look impressive.) Because the trademark was just an acronym, Forrest had commissioned the design of a customized copyrighted font, Goodtimes Neo-Roman Privatised, just to ensure a truly unique look for the 'IEMMA' proudly displayed in the corporate letterhead, and elsewhere.

The State government might have thrown in the towel so far as pride in power went, but Forrest saw no reason to.

Forrest thought the State government actually deserved to be proud of how well it had provided for his absolutely capital wind farms. One of the better jobs of privatisation ever done: something for the 'little' man at long last. It had legislated for an extended renewable energy target, both over time and as a proportion of demand, well in excess of the provisions made by the Federal government in its MRET. Forrest even had his own acronym for this provision that underpinned his business, the Market Offset Renewables Reinforcement Intrastate Supplement (MORRIS).

There was no point being acrimonious. Forrest handled capitals every bit as well as windmills.

Gday Forest I have been watching you here.
Enjoyed it too.
Saw a recent post in another thread about my ALP and privatization.
Not going to see me post in that thread, some just do not need reality to slander.
Interesting that you truly would not have to stray far from the truth to get a stick on the back of my party.
This thread has come a long way from the day I started it.
Back to the very first post, selling the arms and legs, then bit by bit the rest, every bit of it.
I would be telling lies if I said anything else.
Only thing is given the financial crisis and near destruction of my proud party, survival instinct have seen some soften their views on the sale.
Jobs? protected for 3 years.
In effect three years notice of job loss.
Two strange things of interest, we get read here in this forum by many.
A bloke I worship, head of a union other than mine, front line fighter in the anti sale team, not the very great man Robo.
Gave me the cold shoulder, see I totally honestly refused to shut up! my party needed the kick in the ring it was my duty as one who cares to give it.
Second?well no taint of the lost in space teams devisions exist, rat bag news Medea may convince themselves we are gone but it is not true , this team is worth a closer look.
Much better than the last one who hide them from us? why?

OLO is strange! I just tried to post the following on the 'Forum features and quality of discourse' thread. The 'new post' button was active, but the discussion archived. Dayumm ayund blahst!

There only being around another 24 hours that this topic will remain up on the default OLO index display, I suppose I had better post the summary that david f has asked be made of features mentioned. Just as a courtesy.

Mentioned, not necessarily favoured by users in every case, were:

background shaded and/or iconic linkage quote authentication

hard numbering of posts

an optional to user gender box

post indelibility

online appeal process in respect to moderation decisions arising from user complaints

a default return to last comment rather than first

email notification box to be adjacent to new comment button

a time-limited edit function

sticky-for-user display preferences

one email alert only per thread, reset only after a visitation by user

provision for indented sub-threads (ie. comments on comments)

private messaging

posting of Forum rule violation notices for all to see

publication of suspensions

a chat window

I have listed features or suggestions in sequential order as mentioned in the thread. I hope in summarizing I have described them accurately, and have not overlooked anything that could be effected by modification of the forum software. In respect of some suggestions, some posters expressed disagreement with the original suggestion: this seemed to be particularly so in the case of a gender indicator. Want the details? Read the thread.

If there is anything else, users can still post to this topic after tomorrow. All that needs to be done to see it anytime is to select 'one quarter back' from the drop-down menu obtainable by clicking on the button beside the 'having been started' box at the top of the General Discussions index page, and then clicking the 'display' button adjacent to it. At the certain risk of repeating myself and others, I will mention that this is not a sticky preference: a user has to repeat it every time the Forum is visited.

FG, you didn't post the link to the discussion you were referring to.

The suggestions all look very good.

The OLO software is extremely primitive. A host of other commercial and open source packages leave it for dead. However, changing it over would be a huge expense which may not be affordable with the business model(1).

I guess the reason that we put up with OLO's technical limitations, not to mention arbitrary censorship and capricious refusal to undertake the simplest of tasks requested by users, is because of the momentum it has built up.

However, a good many out there don't bother with OLO because of its shortcomings and a good many other current users of OLO may not bother for much longer either.

---

1. Wouldn't it be some much easier if forums could simply be funded directly through all our taxes? Competent administrators, manager and editors could be hired through open and transparent procedures and they wouldn't have to spend their days chasing advertising dollars and the pages would not be cluttered with advertisements. As all of the BBC website costs each British taxpayer only 50p each year (I heard about 3 or 5 years ago), it would cost us very little.

Hang on Daggett, it is privately owned, and equal to the best if not the best I ever used.
Funny but the only one I could compare it with was run by a Labor party member.
This by a Conservative.
I have fallen foul of the censor and copped it sweet.
No way we need governments ANY of them in control of forums.
Look in the last 3 theads for FG go for last 3 months search all you will find the thread.
Power without pride?
I feel like a cow that has been striped of every last drop of milk.
We will see power sold, all of it, bit after bit, by my side of politics if they win the next election.
The other if we do not.
Not happy yet not even near as angry as I was, the blood letting helped.