Ban parking - not cars - on inner city streets

Melbourne's inner-city is in virtual gridlock on most weekdays and increasingly for most of Saturday as a result of an explosive combination of a growing population, more cars, a 19th century roads network and a totally insane proliferation of unco-ordinated traffic lights. So any idea to make traffic flow smoother in the inner city should welcomed with open arms.

Sure traders will complain, and some of them will be affected by increased clearway times. But the overall positive impact on traffic flow and savings of both time and petrol for drivers will eventually provide all traders with benefits. And making roads more efficient may actually encourage more people to travel to our inner city shopping strips because, at the moment, drivers think twice about battling inner city traffic and choose to head to the outer suburban shopping malls instead.

But this decision to extend operating hours for clearways is only a small first step in relieving our inner city of traffic gridlock. Our main inner city thoroughfares were designed before the car or even the tram became a preferred mode of transport. They hark back to a bygone era. What we are left with is a series of main arterial roads - roads like Toorak Road, High Street, Malvern Road, Chapel Street, Brunswick Street, Victoria Street, Bridge Road, Swan Street, Glenferrie Road, the list goes on and on - that have two lanes going in each direction.

But outside of clearway times, one of those lanes is permanently taken up by parked cars and the other is often taken up by our huge and slow moving trams. This combination of parked cars and trams turns our main inner city roads into mass car parks for the majority of the day. When the clearways operate - at peak times - the roads move so much smoother despite the volume of traffic on those roads increasing significantly.

The long term solution is as obvious as it is difficult to implement. Melburnians will soon have to choose between trams and parked cars on their main two-lane inner city roads.

Getting rid of the trams seems silly given their role in providing public transport and their iconic status in Melbourne. So parked cars will have to go in places where there are only two lanes available in each direction. This will make driving on these roads much easier on a permanent basis. It will save time and it will save money - not to mention reducing pollution and assisting trams and buses to move more freely as well.

Traders will protest even louder than they are doing right now. But what they should focus on is seeking assistance to provide more off-street car parking in their local shopping strips. After all, shopping malls don't offer on-street parking. It is the convenience of off-street parking, with no parking meters and no fines, that attracts shoppers to the outer suburban malls.

The sooner we permanently remove parked cars from our congested and narrow inner-city arterial roads the better off we will be. Bring it on!

Of rights and wrongs

FFWF's brief encounters with NSW Attorney General, John Hatzistergos, have given us the impression that when he is not playing factional headkicker or apologist for a flawed and failed government, he is a person with a strong moral compass and moderate values.

His direct comments condemning the moves to establish charters and "bills" of rights across the nation reinforce this view that he is not a person who sheepishly moves with the fashion of the day but who acts with consideration and usually makes the right call. He is correct to condemn the academics, jurists and fellow travellers of the "rights" movement as a danger to parliamentary sovereignty and to democracy itself. These charters and bills are espoused by those who simply don't like or don't trust the democratic process. People who think that the public and their elected politicians can't be trusted to get things right and need a "higher power" to guide them to the correct (meaning their preferred) position.

It is refreshing to see at least one Labor politician come out and publicly attack these attempts to abrogate power from democractically elected parliaments and place it in the hands of unelected and unaccountable judges, commissions and committees. As Hatzistergos points out, such moves are not just fadish folly - they threaten the entire basis of our democractic process.

But he may be a solitary voice as this salient reminder from James Allen, a professor of law at the University of Queensland, points out. There appears to be a whole line of "professional lobbyists and law school elites" (to use Hatzistergos' term) drafted to next weekend's Kruddfest that would like nothing more than to do exactly what Hatzistergos warns us to avoid if we want to avoid destroying our open, democractic system of government.

As we warned all of last year in the lead up to the Federal election: caveat emptor.

Camouflaging the inconvenient truth

What is missing from all of these reports (and many others like them) about the criminal charges recently laid against Detroit mayor, Kwarme Kilpatrick?

None of these reports contain any mention whatsoever of Kilpatrick's political party affiliation, which makes him appear as some sort of maverick independent.

But Kilpatrick is a member of a political party - he is a Democrat.

Mind you, he is not just any Democrat. Kilpatrick is the vice president of the National Conference of Democratic Mayors and a member of the Democratic National Committee. He was once described as a rising star in the Democrats, his mother is a member of the US Congress and he addressed the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

What's more, Kilpatrick is a super delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention where he will be voting to decide between Hillary Clinton or Barrack Obama as that party's candidate for US President. Which of course begs the question whether a person facing such serious criminal charges should be given this sort of responsibility by any political party.

But what we know for sure is that if Kilpatrick was a Republican, his party affiliation would be paraded in lights in every single media report about his indiscretions and the criminal charges laid against him. So why is the"inconvenient truth" about another Democrat being camouflaged by sections of the mass media?

Take the challenge - can you beat 48 tonnes?

Planet Mars has launched an inspired new challenge to us all - the Great Carbon Footprint Competition. Make sure you enter and calculate how big your footprint really is. The bigger the better.

FFWF is actually in the lead at the moment with a score of 48 tonnes a year but we are sure there are plenty of Carbon Dudes out there who are much, much bigger and better than us. Have a go and see if you can be Carbon Dude Global.

And don't you just love the Carbon Dude caricature!

Sick to denounce truth as evil

You know the world is a sick place when decisions to teach children the accurate and unadulterated truth about evil historical events stir up mass hysteria.

The Holocaust is a sad stain on humanity but unless the lessons of that terrible past are handed down through the generations, there is a risk that the world will forget how monsters can grow to devour entire continents. More power to Nicolas Sarkozy and shame on the denialists, relativists and other apologists who want to turn a blind eye to the atrocities of the recent past in some bizarre ritual of appeasement where truth is surrendered for some vague, amorphous other "good".

Hopefully this sort of straight talking from the new French President will herald a new beginning for France in international affairs more generally, because over the years they have become experts at weasel words and obfuscation that only provides cover for oppressive regimes and murderous despots.

Time for Ted to show some real leadership

Despite Ted Baillieu hosting a forum for state Liberal leaders to promote unity and create some momentum to halt a spate of 23 consecutive losses for the Liberal Party in state and territory elections across Australia, his leadership continues to be questioned from inside and outside the party.

Earlier this week some of his colleagues were openly but anonymously attacking him, with one predicting he would not see out the year as leader. Yesterday, Baillieu's upper house leader, Phil Davis, quit and headed to the backbench - something he had also done in 2001 before the challenge to Denis Napthine's leadership in 2002. And in the aftermath Baillieu himself did not help to stabilise matters or to dispell the sense of a dysfunctional leadership team when he refused to back Andrea Coote as deputy upper house leader, stating only that "She is the deputy, so that's a matter for her". (reported at page 4 of today's Australian Financial Review - available online only to subscribers)

Now the media is crying out for some leadership from Baillieu to stop the ship from sinking any further and to help position the Liberal Party as an alternative government for Victoria between now and the election scheduled for November 2010. One can only speculate what the general public think of all this, with the Liberals continuing to display all the hallmarks of the division and unrest that has engulfed the state parliamentary party since Jeff Kennett was booted out of office in 1999.

At FFWF we agree that the resignation of Phil Davis gives Baillieu an unprecedented opportunity to help his party out of the rut they are stuck in. But he won't do it by sticking with the status quo and he won't do it by simply replacing his departed upper house leader with another of his MPs. That would just shuffle some deckchairs before the inevitable challenge to Baillieu's leadership comes from the disaffected members of his team.

What Baillieu needs to do is to grab the bull by the horns and declare all leadership positions vacant at next week's party meeting, allowing all comers to nominate for each of the four leadership positions in the parliamentary party. He needs to show some real leadership by publicly asking his detractors to "put up or shut up".

It is a high risk strategy but with the Liberals floundering in the polls, he can hardly lose. Simply by calling a spill of all positions he will show the sort of leadership and confidence he has failed to display since he became party leader. He will get the electorate to notice him and he will earn some respect as a person who won't run away and hide from difficult battles but is prepared to confront them head on.

If he gets re-elected as leader he will assert his authority over the parliamentary party and will be able to dismiss any internal critics as a small minority of nay-sayers. He will gain credibility with the general public, will kill off all leadership speculation and buy some "clean air" to relaunch himself and the Liberal Party between now and the next election. He will be able to direct his focus at Premier Brumby and the Labor Party who are selling this state short and squandering the chance to fully develop Victoria's future.

If the party room gets the balls to dump Baillieu rather than simply snipe from the sidelines and the backrooms, then Baillieu's action in calling for a spill will save his party from months and possibly years of further destabilisation. It will give his successor almost 3 years to rebuild and take the fight up to Labor and it will allow Baillieu to leave the leadership with dignity and grace.

Does Ted have the ticker to face up to his opponents and finalise this matter once and for all or will he just let his party slide into further unrest and division? This is one time where Ted can't simply run away and let things take their course. He must display some real leadership otherwise he will simply be a sitting duck. And the Liberals in Victoria will continue to flounder.

Marcos' Flame of Justice should be admired not condemned

Still on tennis, sort of.

A tennis player holds a view about the presence of Turkish troops in Cyprus and the local media goes wild, accusing him of being racist and "ranting".

Funnily enough, the United Nations has passed a series of resolutions since 1974 condemning the illegal occupation of around one-third of the island of Cyprus by Turkish forces and calling for the removal of those forces. Marcos Baghdatis was filmed at a private gathering expressing similar views, in fact you could say almost identical views, to all of those United Nations resolutions calling on Turkey to withdraw its occupying forces and to respect the sovereignty of Cyprus. He didn't do it by resolution but in a singalong with his friends at a barbecue.

By all means, criticise him for the company he keeps but why condemn him for holding a view that even the Australian government fully endorses through its regular support of the UN resolutions over the past 34 years since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus?

At this rate, I expect the media to accuse Richard Gere and his fellow travellers of anti-Chinese racism next time they make any mention about autonomy for Tibet. Or perhaps all those high profile actors who want to end the genocide in Darfur will be accused of ranting against the Sudanese government next time they try to help the blameless victims of that ongoing disaster?

Baghdatis has every right to express his views on this subject openly and freely. As a well-known and internationally admired Cypriot he might even help highlight the oft-forgotten plight of his land and its people who have remained hopelessly divided by a UN-patrolled "Green Line" for far too long. Good on him for sticking to his guns and refusing to buckle to the ill informed media hype. Despite defeating one of FFWF's favourite tennis players (Marat Safin) last night in a highly entertaining match, we wish Baghdatis well for the rest of the tournament and hope he keeps flying the flame for freedom and justice in the world.

Still outraged

A front page article in The Age yesterday expanded on our encounter with capsicum spray at the Australian Open tennis on Tuesday night.

Plenty of other local, national and international media covered the incident as well, including this report in the Los Angeles Times.

Thanks for all the emails, texts and calls enquiring about our health. Happy to report that all is well at the FFWF bunker and from our experience we can agree with the police that the effects of capsicum spray are temporary. However, we are still counting our blessings that the panic created by the use of the capsicum spray in such a confined environment, around innocent families enjoying a supposedly genteel game of tennis, did not cause any serious injury.

FFWF certainly supports police endeavours to remove troublemakers from these sorts of events. But we hope this incident will lead to a new policy about use of capsicum spray by Victoria Police if it is likely to cause panic, and possibly serious injury, to innocent bystanders. Especially in a tiered sporting stadium with exits blocked. Hopefully John Brumby will deliver on his promise to investigate this matter and change the policy to ensure the safety of law abiding Victorians is never again put at risk in these situations.

All the best, Tim!

Super blogger Tim Blair has run into some medical problems.

At this time, all of our thoughts and prayers are with Tim and his family as he fights this battle with the amazing spirit he possesses.

These sorts of things help put life into some sort of perspective. Our own brief encounter last night with some "secondary impact" capsicum spray pales into insignificance when you consider what others are going through.

All the best, Tim. We know you will beat this thing and keep blogging for decades to come!

Hypocrite Pete's carbon fuelled flight

Newly minted Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, is quickly make hypocrisy an art form. He has been a long time green evangelist who just the other day was decrying the evils contained in humble plastic bags.

But today the greener than thou hypocrite was travelling first class all the way celebrating the first passenger flight from Australia to the Antarctic. We're sure his flight was carbon neutral and used organically produced jet fuel. NOT!

The witch does a Lazarus and makes Aussie media looks stupid

Over the past week since the Iowa caucus results became known, the Australian media has been proclaiming the arrival of the new Saint Obama, patron saint of new-age leftism. In their haste to embrace this "new force", the Aussie media effectively pronounced their former earth-mother goddess, Hillary Clinton, to be dead and buried. The ABC and SBS have been falling over themselves to run new angles on Saint Obama and to pillory Clinton (who by the way is not a favourite of FFWF in any way).

This morning, The Age newspaper effectively proclaimed Clinton's chances in New Hampshire to be worse than the chance of old Steve Bucknor ever again umpiring a Test match involving India. She was in a "state of despair" according to the headline and the first line of the article declared her heading for a "resounding loss". This followed on from yesterday's news that she was on a "political precipice". The Australian, a far more respected paper and usually more accurate, has been little better with an pronouncement this morning that Clinton was sinking.

What an amazing surprise then to read just a few hours that Clinton has actually now won the New Hampshire primary! A result that the Aussie media had denounced and rejected as a complete impossibility given the Obama tide allegedly sweeping the USA.

Surprise, surprise. The witch is not dead. Or maybe she was, as our newspapers and TV news broadcasts kept telling us she was. Maybe we have just witnessed a miracle. Maybe old battle-axe Hillary has just had a Lazarus-like resurrection.

Or maybe, just maybe, our mainstream news organisations need to stop being barrackers (no pun intended - for non Aussie reads this term is used in Australia to define supporters, just like Americans "root" for their team) and stop presenting partisan political commentary as fact. Otherwise, we may as well treat everything they write as a combination of fiction and opinion. Because right now they are looking very, very, very foolish indeed with their coverage of the New Hampshire primaries.

UPDATE
Although the actual story has a more subdued headline, The Age is now proclaiming on its home page "Hillary triumphs in New Hampshire". Not a bad effort by a woman in a state of despair who was facing a resounding loss just a few short hours ago.

Why the US economy does matter

Happy New Year to all FFWF readers. Let's hope 2008 is a good one for all.

Over summer, our newspapers and TV news screens have been full of commentators telling us that a possible US recession will have little impact on Australia because we are "focused on Asia now" and because "China will continue to grow" and continue to demand an even bigger share of resources to fuel that growth.

But those who believe that must also believe in Santa Claus. Despite the growth of China's domestic market over the past few years, the Chinese economy still depends greatly on exports. And its leading export market? The voracious consumers of America.

Any protracted economic downturn in the USA will have a massive impact on China and its ferocious growth. If US consumers contract their spending, the factories of China won't grind to a halt but production will decrease and investment in new and expanded plants will cease quickly. Like many emerging markets, expansion and contraction in China can be "clumpy", increasing the risk of a slow down if sales in their largest market decline for a significant period of time.

So, a potential US recession does matter for Australians because even if the direct consequences are minimised, the indirect impact of a slowing of growth and development in China will be felt strongly in this country. For reasons we won't bore you with right now, we don't believe that the US will lapse into long term or even medium term recession but if it does then Australians should batten down the hatches for a flow-on effect on our economy that the "experts" have not warned you about!

They're back!

Hate to say we told you so but just days after the election of a Federal Labor government, Dean Mighell is out there promoting the fact that members of the Labor Party want him. The ALP powerbrokers are denying it will happen but as we pointed out back in May they have form on this issue.

Mighell might not return tomorrow, but he will be back.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Graffiti supporters do not deserve your support

If anyone is considering voting for the Greens at Saturday'e election, they should consider what this party of fringe dwellers and radical leftists really stands for. Thankfully one of the Greens in the Victorian Parliament has reminded us of the loopy views of these foolish simpletons.

Graffiti is not art - it is illegal destruction of other people's property. It is a blight on our local environment and it highlights the lack of discipline and lack of respect for private property and individual liberty of the graffiti vandals who commit these vile crimes. To suggest otherwise is to condone the wanton destruction of other people's property and the trampling of their rights to enjoy their life and their assets without interruption.

There is no point supporting a political party who puts the rights of graffiti criminals ahead of the rights of law abiding citizens. Caveat emptor.

* Every time FFWF comments on graffiti crime we are innundated by vile and banal emails, comments and calls from those who support these criminals. But rest easy - we will not be silenced.

Can we stay friends, Mr Howard?

FFWF clearly votes Liberal and in this election we see it as more imperative than ever to vote for a party that will ensure continued economic prosperity. We also view Kevin Rudd as a flim-flam man who will say anything to get elected but has little experience and will flounder in the challenging global economic times that lie ahead in the next few years.

But at FFWF we also pride ourselves on being in tune with what the general public is thinking. And we sense a sea-change about to occur on Saturday. We don't want it to happen and we don't like it - but we won't stick our heads in the sand and pretend that it is not happening as many in the Liberal Party are currently doing.

This Federal election campaign has been bland and boring. The Liberals have done nothing to peg back Labor's early lead and their focus on union links is as close to an admission as you will get in an election campaign that they are fighting to hold onto the "faithful" rather than trying to win the swinging voters . John Howard has looked old and grumpy. On many days he has appeared irritated as if he is angry at the public for turning on him. At best, the Liberal campaign can be described as lacklustre. At worst, it has been tired, unimaginative and reflective of a long term government that has run out of ideas and also run out of tricks.

On the other hand, Labor as a political party and as a brand has been almost non-existent. The ALP have focusing solely on Rudd as if he is a partyless and factionless independent candidate. Kruddy has spoken in sound bites and stayed on message - a very tightly scripted "nothing message" that masks the extremes hiding within his party ranks and attempts to paint him as a younger, trendier version of Howard who will not change things drastically.

The general public could not care less about either party and have displayed a disdainful cynicism to the entire process that is an expression of a deluded belief that the gravy train of these benign and indolent times will chug on forever, irrespective of political or global factors. These people are in for a shock in the next 18 months, especially if we see a residential property crash in some cities, but by then it will all be too late.

The punters switched off on Howard over the last Christmas break. They began to see Kruddy a new, younger face but was otherwise a safe and boring carbon copy of Howard. He was seen as a new flavour of a well-known and trusted product. Liberal strategists were describing the switch to Krudd even 6 months ago as a classic example of a person walking out of a long relationship whilst mouth platitudes like "I still respect you .. it's not you, it's me ... but I want to stay friends in the future". They were bemoaning the fact that the public had made up their mind to change and then switched off. They were not for turning back.

When the election campaign was called , Howard managed to get people to listen momentarily and the tax cuts announced early in the campaign gave the Liberals some momentum and a fighting chance of holding onto government. But then came the early November interest rate rise that sealed the fate of Howard and his government. Labor successfully tagged Howard as a liar for promising to keep interest rates low in 2004 and the interest rise simply reinforced their message. Even if the public realised that Howard cannot control such things, the broken promise message hit the mark. From that day, the only question was how big the Labor margin would be. Candidates continued to campaign and their party bosses kept giving them positive messages, but it was much like a footy coach addressing his troops at 3/4 time when facing a 100 point deficit. "Forget the scoreboard and let's try and win the last quarter lads. You are all playing for spots in the side next week". But unlike footy, there is no next week in elections and 3 years is a long, long time away.

So with a heavy heart, we at FFWF urge you to vote for the Liberals but fear that all your vote will do is reduce the final winning margin for Labor.