LtE's 16/5

The Editor
The Townsville Bulletin

There are reasons boards such as TAIHS become subject to accusations relating to “ethics”, “professional standards”, “irresponsible decisions”, and the “ability to be transparent … on financial management”.

Two of my favourite journalists, John O’Sullivan and the late Jerry Pournelle, described those reasons in “O’Sullivan’s first law” and “Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy”.

O’Sullivan: "All organisations that are not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing."

The further left an organisation drifts the more likely it will collapse from corruption: see every communist country ever.

Pournelle: “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”

Leftist boards get taken over by those who use their positions for purposes not within the board’s original mission.

Publicly-funded boards always drift left because they’re not “explicitly right-wing” and get taken over by those “devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy”.

Publicly-funded boards are like nappies: they need changing regularly and for the same reasons.

(182 words)
Peter Campion
Tolga

John O'Sullivan (columnist)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle

The Editor
The Courier Mail

Speaking as a former greenie who noticed that no climate alarm predictions eventuated over the last 35 years, I’m sceptical of predictions of a “super El Niño”, (‘Super Niño’s’ extreme weather warning).

Speaking as a retired fire commander and fire investigator, I reject the assertion that “El Niños … raise the risk of bushfires”.

While less rainfall and hotter daytime temperatures do increase the likelihood of landscape fuels burning, they do not cause spontaneous combustion.

There’s always a reason bushfires ignite. Most commonly it’s due to human activity.

Last US fire season, a number of climate activists were convicted of arson. They were trying to “prove climate change is real”.

A smart country would manage landscape fuel-loads vigorously and proactively all year round, but we don't do that.

Instead we let fuel-loads build to dangerous levels and do too little hazard reduction burning too late.

We let greenies who don’t understand pre-1788 human land management dictate processes.

Indigenous Australians proved that landscape fuel-loads can be managed effectively with almost no technology.

Modern Australians could do so, too – but we’d need to sideline the greenies.

(184 words)
Peter Campion
Tolga