Atomic fear is a chicken game unfit for Aussies
Cowardice is probably too strong a word. Let’s just say instead that a significant number of Australians have in recent times obviously converted to a chicken-based neurological threat assessment system.
This isn’t merely a local issue. Rather, what we are looking at here is a matter of global realignment.
It should concern us deeply that we have become more panic prone than even the French – who, fairly or otherwise, have long been held up as an international symbol of spinelessness.
The Simpsons mocked the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”. Formerly funny satire site The Onion once referred to Paris’s celebrated Arc de Capitulation, a monument that will stand forever – or “at least until it is hammered into rubble by a foreign conqueror”.
Such slurs should now be rightfully directed at us, for unlike the French, we Australians are spooked by even the basic idea of nuclear energy.
Lord only knows how we’d cope with the reality. Picture half the nation’s workforce staffing red-hot help lines in between suffering trauma meltdowns themselves.
By comparison, the French – allegedly so timid and meek – have absolutely blitzed the entire nuclear issue. They aren’t alarmed by nuclear energy today and they weren’t alarmed decades earlier.
Back in 1998, British-born, USbased journalist Jon Palfreman visited France to see how the country’s latest nuclear facility was coming along.
“Civaux in southwestern France is a stereotypical rural French village with a square, a church and a small school,” Palfreman reported for the American PBS network.
early 2020 was catastrophic. Easy for people like Bob to now say we should have let the virus rip. All I can say is that I am glad he wasn’t a decision maker at the time. Pedro
The Liberals and Labor are as bad as each other. Neither represents the will of the Australian people. Neither deserve to be in charge of our governments. We deserve so much better. JS
I would have thought the reader demographic of the Bulletin would be maybe 45+ most people under 40 would not know what a newspaper was so why feature on a Monday photos of a group of young women each trying to be closer to naked than the other women I am sure parents and grandparents would be so proud of pictures of their near naked children
“On a typical day, Monsieur Rambault, the baker, is up before dawn turning out baguettes and croissants. Shortly after, teacher Rene Barc opens the small school.
“There is a blacksmith, a hairdresser, a post office, a general store and a couple of bars.”
It all sounds lovely. Until we hit the next line, which is certain to distress nervous Australians. Trigger warning.
“But overlooking the picturesque hamlet are two giant cooling towers from a nuclear plant, still under construction, a half-mile away … the Civaux nuclear power plant comes on line some time in the next 12 months.”
Oh no! Surely everybody was irradiated and killed! Or else they bunged on such a hissy fit that the plant was stopped on account of it endangering local baguette farms or mimes hanging out at the escargot hatchery.
Nope. Possibly to Palfreman’s surprise, the locals adored it.
“In France,” he wrote, “nuclear energy is accepted, even popular. Everybody I spoke to in Civaux loves the fact their region was chosen.
“The nuclear plant has brought jobs and prosperity to the area. Nobody I spoke to, nobody, expressed any fear.
“From the village schoolteacher, Rene Barc, to the patron of the Cafe de Sport bar, Valerie Turbeau, any traces of doubt they might have had have faded as they have come to know plant workers, visited the reactor site and thought about the benefits of being part of France’s nuclear energy effort.”
That was 26 years ago. The Civaux
AFL commentators last weekend suggested it was a “master stroke move” when Hawthorn’s coach moved a player into the forward line who went on to kick multiple goals in the final quarter. Considering the player was known for his goal-scoring ability during his rise to the AFL it would have been a “masterstroke” to put him into the forward line from the start of the game.
Upgrading Cavill Mall in Surfers Paradise won’t improve the area unless urinals are installed in every doorway. Seriously though, underground toilets with on-site cleaners like they had in the good old days might be worth considering. Back then they used to charge a penny to enter and I recall seeing the following message scrawled on a wall, “Here I sit broken-hearted, paid a penny and only f .... ed”. plant presently employs some 1300 people and churns out loads of delicious high-grade zero-carbon non-lame sparkles every single day.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, by the way, the plant is “flexible in operation according to the needs of the grid operator” and can ramp up “from 30 per cent to 95 per cent of full power in only 30 minutes”.
Well, how about that. It recharges faster than your average EV.
Keep in mind that line about nobody in Civaux expressing any fear about a nuclear facility in their backyard. A report in The Sunday Telegraph noted the opposite when it came to NSW and Victoria.
“Coalition sources said focus group research carried out in the Hunter Valley in NSW and the Latrobe Valley in Victoria in recent weeks found hostility to the proposed polices,” the piece revealed.
“It found that while voters were aware of the general arguments for
Light rail northbound from Broadbeach, an embuggerance, but was up & running in good time. So how come it’s taking so many bloody long years of mayhem & traffic disruption for light rail to head south from Broadbeach to the Airport which makes absolute TOTAL bloody sense that it does! So what’s the bloody “go slow hold-up?” No bloody wonder travellers & businesses along the way are totally pissed off with the prolonged delays!!! FIX IT!!! Hmph!
Look after the locals & the tourists will come to our great place in hoards. Simple.L.W.
As I sit on my lovely little balcony overlooking the beach at Surfers I worry about all the aircraft. In a space of 30 mins I see an airforce fighter of some sort, 4 helicopters, 3 fixed wing aircraft and 2 small private drones. All seeming to fly in the same airspace. nuclear power, they were hostile to plans for reactors in their own areas.”
Dear God. Just consider for a moment how far we have fallen.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the Hunter Valley, and am not unfamiliar with Victoria’s Latrobe region. Fine people. Honest people. Strong and straightforward people.
But, now they reject something not only useful but also completely harmless. They don’t want their area spoiled by something that won’t spoil their area at all.
Perhaps a study tour is required. Perhaps we should send a delicate delegation from the Hunter to Civaux, so they could meet and be consoled by croissant jockeys, beret babies, truffle wranglers and other rugged French bruisers.
It would be quite the spectacle, wouldn’t it, planting some fearful Australians in a Civaux cafe with a couple of nuclear cooling towers just 800m away.
I am available for hand-holding.
The drones in particular are a worry! Is this an accident waiting to happen? Pedro
Good to see the ‘sugar hit’ is wearing off these southerners that came up during covid. It’s no holiday anymore!
Well, just heard about an “unusual “G C bonus for developers today. More people buying into hi rises and secure apartments. Apparently it is because of the Gold Coast s high crime rate! Who would ever have thought of that being a reason for living here! Sad , isn’t it
5 yrs or more ago it was realised idiot youth are using social media platforms to brag about crimes,it takes govt to long to act, using DV as an example, rather than put out a grass fire they wait till it’s a raging inferno, the opposition won’t change anything, all rah rah then nah on it goes.
The siege of Tobruk begins, pinning down the Allied “rats’’, including Australia’s 9th Division, in the Libyan town until Australians are relieved from August. 1963
A nuclear submarine, the USS Thresher, sinks during tests off the coast of Massachusseets, claiming 129 lives.
1966
English satirical novelist Evelyn Waugh, 62, dies in Somerset. 1970
Paul McCartney announces the official break-up of the Beatles. 1982
Explorers Ranulph Fiennes and Charles Burton reach the North Pole, the first to circumnavigate Earth via the Poles.
2001
The Netherlands passes a bill permitting euthanasia, the first such national law in the world. 2010
An ageing Russian airliner carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and members of Poland’s military, political and church elites crashes in fog as it takes them to a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the slaughter of thousands of Polish military officers by Soviet secret police. 2019
Astronomers release the first image of a black hole, which is in the centre of the massive M87 galaxy.