Waiting for COAG

None the wiser. Dutifully this morning I read through all the thousands of words in all the newspaper reports I could get my eyes on and I am none the wiser about what is going to happen at the COAG conference on health and hospitals. The only new thought that occurs to me is that failure to convince the Premiers would not really be a failure for Kevin Rudd. Voters do not reward governments for doing things. Some people, however, will vote for a political party that promises to do things if it is elected. A campaign where health and attacking state governments are centre pieces would serve Labor well.

Create an extra job. What a wonderful solution to the problem of keeping jobs for the Labor boys. Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett has simply created an extra place around his Cabinet table for a Green girl. Now the state will have eight Labor ministers, one Green Minister plus one Green Cabinet Secretary who will participate as a full member of the Cabinet. What this compromise does show is the coming of age of the Greens as a party prepared to take part in government rather than just being a parliamentary pressure group.

A price of progress. Thanks to the website of the French Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre based in Toulouse I think I now understand why this current volcano in Iceland is playing such havoc with air travel when previous eruptions in earlier years. It is all to do, it seems, with improvements in jet engines which now operate at about 1400°C at normal thrust. The ash from volcanoes, mainly made up of silicates, melts at about 1100°C and fuses on nozzle guide vanes and turbine blades, in the hot section of the engine which can cause engine flame out. Earlier generations of jet engines had a lower operating temperature, and, therefore, were not so much susceptible to this effect.

While not exactly a white-kuckle flyer I think I would prefer to take a slow boat home from Europe than take the word of airline executives who are proclaiming everything is safe for flying as their companies lose hundreds of millions of dollars a day. Better still I will say at home and look at weirdly beautiful pictures of nature at work like this one by an unknown photographer featured on the Iceland Review website this morning:

The dangerous game. That sport and politics is a dangerous mix was proved by Indian junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor. Tharoor was forced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to resign after a female friend of his was granted a free stake in a 20-20 cricket team from his home state, Kerala, for the Indian Premier League (IPL). The BBC reported that the resignation followed a week of drama involving a public spat between Lalit Modi, the chief of the IPL, and Tharoor over ownership of the new cricket team for Kochi.

Modi sent out  Twitter messages, “disclosing” the owners of the Kochi team and their shareholding stakes. Modi said they included Sunanda Pushkar, a Dubai-based businesswoman and a friend of Tharoor. Tharoor and Pushkar say the stake was awarded as “sweat equity” in return for marketing and professional services to the new franchise — but Pushkar has now offered to surrender the stake. Kochi was sold to Rendezvous Sports World Limited for $333 million at auction. It is one of two new franchises that will join the IPL from 2011, taking the total number of teams to 10.

Advice for Malcolm Turnbull. My Crikey colleague Bernard Keane seems to want Malcolm Turnbull back. My old dad used to tell me that when you get out of the lion’s cage you don’t go back in for your hat.

One warm month a climate change does not make. But it certainly helps punters such as me who took 2010 to be the hottest year on record as a 40% chance on a prediction market earlier in the year.