What happened to katie barrk

[Jethro]

Ok have been away a few weeks...doing my time touring the products...and suddenly the sites all different and katie has disappeared into the ether.

What is going on?

Just think the site now looks like it always did to John, after his second bottle of red.

[Benjamin]

Ummm... I think Katie might be hit by the rolling blackouts in Ca...


the sites different because we are the vBulletin V.2 Beta Guinnee pigs....

[barrk]

I'm here.....We're trying to save energy so I can't be on as much....maybe after the "crisis" passes.

[JPRoy392]

gotta love California!

So what's the problem with California. Why the energy conservation thing? I thought ideas of environmental protection were as foreign to seppos as they are to our current much loved government.

[barrk]

Our beloved government in their infinite wisdon deregulated the utility companies.....they said that owning the power plants and selling the power was a monopoly and they forced them to sell the power plants. This meant that the utilities had to buy their power to sell us...the government also mandated that the utilities were not allowed to pass any of the increased cost of buying the power on to the consumer(us). Not all the power plants owned by the utilities were bought and ended up being moth balled. No new power plants were built...this left us reliant upon companies outside our state. Well....the utility companies have not been paying their bills to the outside companies....they say they are broke. The alternative power sources...solar, wind etc. did not grow enough to take up the slack of the moth balled power plants as expected....in short..we are up a creek without a paddle. The utilities have asked our current Governor...not the one who got us in this mess to begin with...to allow them to increase our utility bill by 33% in 2002 and 76% in 2003. Of course, we don't want that to happen and legislation needs to be passed to do this. In short...we want the power but don't want to pay for the state's mistakes...we pay exhorbitant state taxes already....what good is it doing us????

Bush forced the outside power sources to sell the power to California for two more weeks without any of them getting paid or even having hopes of getting paid in the future...so we have power for a little while...but then what???...no one knows.

Fun, isn't it?

We defeated the same attempt in NSW. The Coalition opposition made it a platform in the last State election, and got creamed, losing 30 or so seats to a non-popular sitting government.

In NZ they privatised the power companies and have had power failures in Auckland and Christchurh since. Basically if you privatised the companies then services and support drop off completely.

In Victoria they privatised the local Ambulance service, which apparently has caused mayhem and death.


Bottom line economic rationalism works real well......not.

Feeling sorry for you guys, but at least Dennis will be able to keep the familuy arsenal. That should be some consolation to you guys as the power goes out again.

Did l mention renewable energy sources. We have this great scientest who has radically improved the life time and energy output of solar power battaries. So of course she gets no funding from either government or private industry and has left to work for Sony. Look forward to buying their battaries in the near future.

Ah yes, right wing governments...they seem to run under the false assumption that they know what they are doing and can improve on existing conditions.


Bring on the federal election, already have a dozenn bottles of Janz to put on ice for that night, when Jack boot Johnny gets booted into political oblivion.

[Ianpbaker]

oh my lord look what the cat dragged in, they managed to release Jethro from the assylum then.

How's it going mate

Ian

[barrk]

Well...I was thinking of fleeing the country but from what I read and hear....there's no place on Earth that uses their brains instead of their ledgers to make decisions.

Truly as sad state of affairs.

Yo Ian am back after a brief tour with new products. And no it wasn't a junket even though each destination mysteriously had a one dayer on at the time l was there.

Barrk

Tibet may not use a ledger......well.....until the Chinese invaders force one on them.


Hey nice policy on deploying missiles by Bush. Damned if those people aren't missing the cold war. Hmmmm....we have a few submarines he could buy at a reduced price...probably inable the surface fleet to work out the bugs in their sonar.

[barrk]

Don't even get me started on that whole mess, Jethro!