Australia's DUTCH DISEASE is worse than Canada's Tar Sands: ANDREW BOLT

      None of Andrew Bolt's former lovers and colleagues who have gone on the record, seem to believe he really is the "foaming at the mouth" rightie-denier that he chooses to portray himself  as --- in public ----  for fame & money.
    They think he saw a way to move up from being a relatively unknown Labour-Party-supporting hackette to become Australia's FOX NEWS' Bill 'Oh Really?' --- if he moved quickly, before some genuine Aussie right-winger did so.

    So it was a pure free enterprise move - the traditional nimble jump-in to fill a hole in the market, before something bigger and richer does it for you.
   I am in Canada miles away and what can I make of these claims?
   Only this in support of their views: in my experience, most righties have at least one unpredictable leftie flag to wave --- say opposition to the death penalty in an otherwise down the line old cold warrior.
    Andrew Bolt's (public) positions ( I mean who knows what he really thinks in the privacy of his bank vault?) are always so predictably popular with his intended audience one would think his minders test-market them before he emits them like so much leaking radiation.
   Like most of Australia's Dutch, and thus rather different than many Dutch in Canada (perhaps because of the spillover effect of the Canadian liberation of the Netherlands) his family upon arriving in the Australia of the 1950s dropped their Dutchness and their Dutch names,to 'fit in'.
        Instantly, they re-birthed themselves as typical Aussie/Brits, with typical Aussie/Brit names.
    So re-invention is in the very bath and drinking water of the average Dutch Australian---- so perhaps what Bolt has done seems like nothing particularly new for his Dutch kinfolk.
    Though it may be noteworthy to point out his bro is a leading climate change advocate.
    Perhaps even among the Dutch of Australia, petty sibling rivalry can never be ruled out for a motivating force among supposedly grown up adults.
   Psychologists , more than political scientists or theologians, might have more to say about this particular Saul's conversion on the road to TV stardom.
   Canada's DUTCH DISEASE, caused by the Oily Tar Sands, is thus not unique: excessive oiliness can cause problems anywhere.
   At least in Australia the solution is probably quite simple: offer Bolt the GG's job, in exchange for spouting views in public, while GG, that are well within the bounds of traditional Aussie right wing cant.
   ' Tone it down , a little, Andrew and we will throw in this nice uniform with a lot of gold trim and a good bit of kit to retire on '.
   I know he's up for it ----- he's an employee-controversalist for Christ's sake ! Only as controversial as his employers think profitable.
   If Bolt, by contrast, was a self employed/self funded controversalist, like myself, I would definitely believe that his public stances matched his private beliefs.
   But right now, 'employee Bolt the free-thinking, free-speaking controversalist'    (??!!)
    Give me a break - he's nothing more than a trained seal : throw him a fish and watch him snap.
    But at least the real trained seal is in a Twelve Step Program and now admits he's for sale, to the highest bidder, with the biggest and fattest fish ----in all cases, admitting you have a problem is a good first step ....

ALISON REDFORD alive , CAYDEN WOURMS dead, as DUTCH DISEASE claims new victims

      A Roman Catholic priest, Father Richard Doll, has told The Regina Leader-Post that Darren Wourms's family members had urged him not to return to his job in Fort McMurray, where his job had been taking a toll on him.
    But Darren was determined to get his engineering certificate and did return to "The Fort".
   Police had been called to his home in Airdrie, Alberta in April where his behavior had concerned his family and he was sent to hospital for a psychiatric examination and later returned home.
    This weekend, Darren 26, his wife Hayley 23, and his son Cayden 2, returned to St Walburg Saskatchewan to help plan the wedding of Darren's brother.
   Hours after attending mass, the bodies of the family of three was found in a nearby ditch, a .22 rifle near by.

   Police are not going on the record to call it a murder suicide (this is Canada after all !) but do say "they believe no one else was involved".*
    (* They have been taught in police academy to end this statement with a "pause, half turn, significant shrug of left shoulder, downward glance of eye, sincere expression of deep emotion, exit room" routine.)
   These deaths could not have come at a worst time for struggling Alberta premier Alison Redford, who has failed to overwhelmingly convince the rest of Canada that the future of Fort McMurray is so bright, that the rest of Canada should take up wearing shades.
    Some Canadians, not originally from Alberta, have been to Fort McMurray and returned, without seeing it in quite the same Panglossian glow that Mrs Redford sees it in, at least in public.
    True, jobs there pay a lot of money, but things and services also cost a lot of money: in fact, at "The Fort" , everything revolves around the mantra of : "money, money, money" .
    Some love it, some just wish they could find any sort of decent work back home in Antigonish.
   We know - all too well via TWITTER - what Alison Redford thinks of "The Fort", thanks to her responses to concerns raised by NDP Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair  about the DUTCH DISEASE.
     But as to what young Cayden Wourms ultimately would have made of it, I guess we will never know ...

Libertarian DENIERS to get physical over buses and bikes?

     HALIFAX - There has been quite an outcry among the libertarian majority in the Halifax public.
   (These libertarians are DENIERS of any limits to their freedom to do what they want).
    Their current whine is over the extension of bus and bike lanes in Halifax, because it reduces their absolute rights to see that their big SUVs (usually with just as single person in them) have ample curb space, whenever wherever.
    Agricola Street seems the current flashpoint but there has been other signs of ill-temper from car owners.
     In Ottawa ,a city famous around the world for being seen as health-conscious and bike-friendly, a similar big backlash has emerged against bike lanes from among the opponents to good health (again the unhealthy Medicare-addicted SUV-driving libertarian denier types).
     Laurier Street is the site of the latest Ottawa protest against bikes.
    Ultimately, SVE believes it is really a battle over TAX DOLLARS : between the healthy and frugal who saves them and the unhealthy libertarian deniers who wastes them.

    One side sees bike-riding as a way for both the planet and the rider to enjoy better health and reduce the cost to the hard-pressed taxpayer of paying to improve the health of citizens and the Earth.
     The other side, deniers of any restrictions on their rights to do anything they want, including among those rights their right to abuse their bodies and the planet and then expect the long-suffering healthy/responsible taxpayer to pay to repair the damage.
    Fat,lazy SUV drivers in Ottawa who never want to have to walk more than a few feet are highly incensed they may have to park their vehicle a block away when they to go to a shop for some smokes.
    Just as they feel they have a right to park close to the front door of the hospital , en route for their weekly (taxpayer-funded) 'chemo', for their 'lungs'. They aren't 'handicapped' you understand , just 'sick'.
   Yes, they certainly are.
    Sick,sick, sick. 
    And selfish,selfish,selfish.
    One can compare them to the non-renewable industries that feel they have a right to raise their profits (big shout out to the Tar Sands !) by off-loading all the clean-up costs onto the long suffering
taxpayer 30 years from now.
    Bravo to Thomas Mulcair for making this issue front and centre in the Canadian Parliament: why should future taxpayers have to pay to inflate the dubious profitability of the Tar Sand projects- when these same artificially-inflated projects drive up the value of the Canadian dollar and kill Canadian home manufacturing?
     The Dutch Disease: kill the planet and kill your national economy, all in one easy step.
   Bike-riding, healthy, environmentally taxpayers are getting fed-up having to pay damage caused by 'TAR', be it from the cigarettes smoked by SUV drivers or from the oil sands that fuel those SUVs.
   "Make the TAR-PEOPLE Pay" sounds like a pretty good slogan for a future taxpayer rebellion among Canada's health-conscious, environmental responsible citizens : cigarette tar in their's and our lungs and also tar sand pollution, again in their's and our lungs --- and in the lungs of this planet.
     TEA-party protests only in America, you say ? Pity.
   There haven't yet been fisticuffs in the bike-friendly streets where the SUVers and the cyclists duke it out physically - as yet "The News Story of the Century" remains merely an uncivil war of words - but it could get very ugly indeed....