Australia was invaded by fire ants in the late 1990s, but not discovered until 2001. They had snuck into the Port of Brisbane and by that time had spread to south-west suburbs between Brisbane and Ipswich. Ever since then there has been an effort to eliminate Solenopsis invicta, also known as the Red imported fire ant (RIFA).
‘Fire ants are one of the world’s worst super pests and, if they are allowed to spread across the continent, their impact will be greater than cane toads, rabbits, feral cats and foxes combined.
I’m late this year, but I’ll start the year again with that Thai new year’s greeting which means means:
May you find compassion, loving kindness and equanimity along your paths over the next year!
2. The adults are back in charge
Last year I said most people felt well rid of 2021, and hope for better in 2022. Unfortunately hope is hard to find. Greta Thunberg and David Spratt have both said that hope has to be earned. Overall I think we come up short, but politically it is good to have the adults back in charge. Continue reading Weekly salon 26/1→
Until I find a better image of our fair city, I’ll continue to use this one.
2022 went so fast I think I may have missed it. Still my camera says a few things happened.
Although Covid was pronounced ‘over’ we continue to take precautions, so our social life is constrained, being aged and vulnerable. I think this is the first year since I was a young child that I have not been to a movie theatre, a concert or a sporting event.
I tried to post a long comment on COP27 this morning, but the system got indigestion, so I’ll do it this way. It’s not finished to my usual standard for published posts.
COP27 is priding itself on setting up a “loss and damage” fund. I’ll just point out that it has no funds yet, and has all the work ahead of it in setting up the mechanisms for getting and distributing funds. So they have actually set up a talkfest. And China is not part of it.
Something of epochal importance happened in Egypt last week – the most significant event since Cheops shoved up his triangular monument, four thousand odd-years ago at the dawn of ‘civilisation’. But the world media, true to form, missed it almost completely.Continue reading COP27 failure (first cut)→
I’ve been meaning to do a new open thread for a while (last Salon was 12 January). When I saw news of the first entry below I thought it was too good to pass up!
1. Morrison’s ultimate gift to the world
His agent described him as “virtuous globalisation mastermind”
“The time between recurrent events is increasingly too short to allow a full recovery of mature coral assemblages, which generally takes from 10 to 15 years for the fastest growing species and far longer for the full complement of life histories and morphologies of older assemblages.”
I’ve taken it back to months before the 2019 election, which was on 18 May 2019, to show that the situation now is not like the situation then. With six days to go, incumbent PM Scott Morrison is looking for a miracle. Simon Benson, Political Editor for the Oz, wrote after the penultimate poll:
According to the latest Newspoll, Labor would not only win government but it would win with a comfortable majority.
Any notion of a hung parliament is extinguished on these numbers, irrespective of whether any Climate 200 independents get elected or not.
Morrison needed the the contest to tighten with only two weeks to run. Newspoll has shown the opposite.
In large part, yes, because they certainly want to talk about each other, and the media do not want to talk about policy, having settled on the notion that neither side has any, although any journalist who is interested can find Labor’s policies here, the Liberal Party’s story book (plan) here. The Nationals’ Plan is much the same, but slightly different. For The Greens, it depends what you click on when you go to their site, but this is headlined as their Election Policy Platform.
Australia was invaded by fire ants in the late 1990s, but not discovered until 2001. They had snuck into the Port of Brisbane and by that time had spread to south-west suburbs between Brisbane and Ipswich. Ever since then there has been an effort to eliminate Solenopsis invicta, also known as the Red imported fire ant (RIFA).
Until I find a better image of our fair city, I’ll continue to use this one.
