Wednesday, 20 February 2002

Up late or up early - regular readers of Jonathon Delacour will note that most of his posts are written after 10pm at night. Today there is an entry postmarked "7:02:25 am" 8:04:21 AM    Comments ()

Letters - my favourite section of the paper is the letters column. It's great either agreeing with, or heckling another reader! Liz Curran is right on the money when she writes of ministerial accountability. And then there is Steve Rose, writing from his fortress in Woronora Heights, when he whines "Get over it" suggesting that having your Prime Minister and two ministers of the crown lying to [or at the very least deciving] the Australian Public "a storm in a tea cup." To the webmaster at The Australian - can you please ad anchors to your letters page! 8:02:14 AM    Comments ()

Short sighted - "The fears of Ansett's 2.7 million Global Rewards members were confirmed yesterday when the airline's prospective owner declared their 70 billion frequent-flyer points officially dead." So reads the lead paragraph in The Australian's coverage of the Fox/Lew consortium's decision, as the new purchasers of Ansett, to decline to honour the billions of points owed to passengers. If I could be so bold as to offer these gentlemen a little advise it would be this - give the people their points - with a deadline perhaps for their usage, or a clause that makes them redeemable only for national travel - but give them their points. You have all these planes flying around empty at the moment. Generate some good will for yourself and fill the seats! All of the Ansett customers would flood back to your fold! 7:58:11 AM    Comments ()

Tadpole news - Sydney men are as fertile as ever - possibly more so - according to research that should allay fears of sperm counts being hit by exposure to female hormones. Hmmm five children... Globally, sperm concentration fell more than 40 per cent between 1940 and 1990, a 1992 study found. Almost half of 700 Danish army recruits in the late 1990s had sperm counts low enough to make them sub-fertile. Sperm counts declined 33 per cent in 20 years among men in Paris. But a study in Toulouse found no change. Scottish men born in the 1970s had 25 per cent fewer good quality sperm than men born in the 1950s On average, the men produced 180 million sperm per ejaculation. The highest was 700 million. Anything above 60 million is considered normal. 7:48:32 AM    Comments ()

They ain't makin' any more - Sydney's median house price jumped 11 per cent to $350,000 in the December quarter, thwarting Melbourne's challenge to the priciest residential capital city. 7:45:48 AM    Comments ()

And now - Defence Department public affairs officers were allegedly ordered by former defence minister Peter Reith's office not only to remove captions from the 'children-overboard' photographs released to the media in October, but to ditch all identifying information. A Defence source said yesterday that the direction was given "in no uncertain terms" to delete the material, including a crucial data field with the date the pictures were taken. "It had to come from the minister's office because it is standard procedure to include all information - there is never not enough info provided," he said. The disclosure from within the Defence Department adds weight to the allegation that Mr Reith's office was involved in a deliberate distortion followed by a cover-up. [SMH]   7:17:22 AM    Comments ()

Closer and closer - "'I knew they were doubtful, PM admits.' The Prime Minister admitted yesterday for the first time that he was told by the then defence minister, Peter Reith, three days before the election that there were doubts about whether photographs released by the Government and supposedly of children thrown overboard were genuine." "Instead of investigating further, Mr Howard on November 8 released what he was told was an "inconclusive" video to support the assertion that children had been thrown overboard." [SMH] 7:13:28 AM    Comments ()