This morning I crawled out of bed, shaking with terror.
This was the day we've been warned about every hour, more or less on the hour, by Tony Abbott; the day when Whyalla would become a ghost town, the guts would be torn from Australian industry, ordinary Australians would be sent broke, jobs would flee across the water as fasts as their little legs would carry them.
With shaking hand, I drew back a corner of the curtain and peeped out the window.
Sky still where it should be? Check.
Birds still singing? Check.
I opened Google Earth. Whyalla still there? Check.
Whew!! It seemed as though nothing had changed.
After a relaxing breakfast, (I had feared that yesterday's might be my last, so dire have been the Opposition's predictions), I checked my mail from Friday.
And there was a letter from my energy supplier telling me about projects they are implementing to reduce their carbon footprint ahead of the Carbon Tax.
So, it seems that, after all, something has changed.
Just not what Abbott and his fellow end-of-the-word-as-we-know-iters expected.
The Carbon Tax has begun to have its intended affect already.
Otherwise, today looks pretty much like yesterday.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

And you'll wonder why so many of us will enjoy seeing you balling into your lentils, after the next election.

That will be fair after many of my neighbours will be eating beans rather than beef as our announced electricity price rises bite.

Oh, no, anything but lentils. Won't I at least be able to have a Macas?
Anthony
Http//:www.observationpoint.com.au

Anthonyve,
You don't really expect anything the ALP does either negative or totally senseless to have an impact in 12 or 14 hours ? Don't be so stupid, wait till next month.

Horror on horror Anthony, the Mackas may cost ten cents more, with built in rip off.
We can enjoy the uninformed rants however.

Give it a month or two, Belly, and you'll be paying a dollar more :)

Anthony,
This is a fascinating way to argue - take someone else's argument way beyond absurdum, take their relatively long-term predictions to idiotic extremes and slag them accordingly. Abbott et al. surely meant that Whyalla - if it is going to wither away at all - would take much longer than a minute, or a day, to do so, a sort of death by a thousand cuts, in labour cuts, in local income cuts, local revenue cuts, local property value cuts, etc.

But that way of arguing is intriguing - attribute to your opponent some dumb-@rse assertion, rubbish it, and thereby prove both how brilliant you are and how moronic your opponent is. And in the process, prove nothing.

If he had nothing better to do, Pericles would have a Latin phrase for it - perhaps 'reductio ultra absurdum' ?

Wait and see.