rain

When it comes, they run and hide their heads - that's what the song says. I suspect that here in Brisbane we'll be all out dancing in the streets. Especially if it lasts more than a few hours.

I ran across a former colleague during the week and it reminded me of an occasion where he and I went to meeting of coal mining representatives. He had been working on general energy policy issues and, in a quieter moment, injected the word 'nuclear' into the conversation. Regrettably he was inexperienced in the nuances and politics of how you actually influence a debate and his intervention came out as - and was interpreted as - a direct forecast that Australia would one day be using nuclear-fuelled power generation, and therefore a threat to the investments of all those in the room. Needless to say he was shut down in fairly peremptory fashion. Had he handled it a bit more sensitively, it could have been a useful contribution. He now interprets it as "being ahead of his time" and in a sense he was - but it made no difference at the time, apart from raising more than a few eyebrows about why we were fiddling about with the possibility of nuclear power generation.

Most of the commentariat, MSM, amateur and bloggish, are down on the nuclear inquiry as a predetermined outcome in search of some jobs for the boys. I found it interesting that Greg Bourne turned down an (apparently) very short notice invitation to participate. He is the pin-up boy for environmental awareness in big industry and I hope that a few MSM outlets pick up on his decision and get a bit of detail from him. I think that it would - rightly -reflect poorly on the government and its handling of the issue. I don't know what sort of following Mr Bourne has in industry but if he is a force, his decision not to play along with the inquiry may prove useful.

It's been a biggish day in many ways so while I'd like to ruminate for a while, I think I'll watch the footy instead. Something I've been thinking about recently is how some projects get political backing while some others, which be as much if not more worthwhile, just linger and die. It goes to how the bureaucracy, or rather how all big organisations, go about their work as well as the nature of representative bureaucracy and where the decisions get made. I think I'll need to spend some time getting my thoughts in order before I post. It's probably time for another model car post but in the meantime Christmas came early to me this week - this beauty (the one on the far right***) is almost exactly the same as one I owned some years ago but which suffered a terminal accident. I was having an e-mail conversation with an old friend about guitars and I reminisced about this one. On a whim I thought I'd look in eBay and guess what I found? And now I got one again! I love it.

***That was unfortunate, wasn't it?