In this part of Ipswich, there are now three McDonalds within 5 minutes of each other.

Ipswich council should be doing something to STOP large junk food chains from opening more and more stores. We already have an obesity epidemic, and its time we did something to encourage stores that sell natural whole foods instead of the high processed, sugar filled rubbish that outlets like McDonalds are peddling.

Next time you are grabbing a feed, drop into a local Cafe and grab piece of grilled fish or a steak, with a nice healthy side salad. Your arteries will thank you.

Firstly, the landlord of the flooded property needs to be brought to the public and given the chance to explain themselves. Throwing the alley out is more than just a business decision, it affects the Ipswich community and on the face of it, is a very mean spirited thing to do. Plenty of people would love to know why this was done.

Next on the list is Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale. Considering his public trumpeting of Ipswich and his mission to move Ipswich foward and build a greater community, his failure to solve the bowling alley issue leaves questions about how serious he is about Ipswich.

Local council member Paul Tully even tweeted about the New McDonalds opening at Redbank Plains on the same day the news of the permanent closure of the bowling alley was in the paper. This begs the question, what does the local council value? Multi National Billion Dollar businesses who can pay the ever increasing rates, or quality local businesses providing a social outlet? (More on the Macca’s tweet in a minute)

Mayor Pisasale says that a new building would cost $5-$7 million dollars to build. Really? Only if the council builds I would suggest. A bowling alley is a very simple building, and I cannot see how that could run to $7 million dollars, and suspect that figure is for a completed bowling alley. Seeing as the current business owner would have had plans to refit the existing alley post flood, and clearly was able to do that, then all the council needed to provide was an empty building for him to do it in.

Finally, where was the great Anna Bligh? Where was JoAnn Miller? Probably busy wasting more money on School Halls nobody needs.

I suggest Ipswich residents angry at the loss should comment on the Queensland Times article as many already have. Let the powers that be know you aren’t happy.

Floods happen. It doesn’t matter what you do with Wivenhoe, every so often we are going to have a flood. By all means do things to help lessen the impact, but dumping our water supply shouldn’t be one of them.

Improve infrastructure so when released from Wivenhoe are necessary, they can be carried out immediately and quickly. The reason why we don’t flush the excess water out of Wivenhoe in a big hurry when it does overfill is because we wash out vital road links across the Brisbane river. If we simply put a bridge across where the Moggill ferry now is, and raised colleges crossing a few metres, we could let the excess capacity (that is, over 100%) go more quickly, because there would be less consequences down stream.

Educate the public. Too many people didn’t realise they were going to be completely inundated. Leaders kept saying it was another 1974 flood, but plenty of new home owners and business owners are only in their thirties, so have no idea what that means.  You have flood maps, you have computers, why not just send a letter to every home and business once every five years and tell them what the flood risk is at their property? You waste enough money on other things, this would at least be helpful.

Build some sensible infrastructure. Why did we have ferry terminals that ended up destroyed in the flood? Why did we build river walk and then watch it tear free and float out to sea?  We have plenty of great engineers in this state, lets have them draw up plans for riverside developments that are build to accomodate the occasional flood, so we don’t have to spend millions of dollars replacing them.

Okay, I’ve digressed a little, but the point of this post is to draw attention to the knee jerk reaction to flush our drinking water down the river, because the Premier believes there are enough voters who will think this is a good idea to win votes in the early election she is almost certain to call. It’s all very cynical, and one can only hope when the next election does roll around, we end up with a better government that this one.

They trot out the independent bakeries, who all complain they can’t bake a loaf of bread for under $1.50. Somehow Coles and Woolworths are going to put all these guys out of business.

If thats correct, we should expect big bakers like Tip Top and the like to go out of business too, because their bread is usually priced between $3 and $4 a loaf. And yet, they still do okay, even when you have been able to buy bread for a $1.20 a loaf nearly everywhere for as long as I can remember (actually, it wasn’t that long ago you could get it for $1 at the local veggie shop)

Independent bakers will continue to bake a more speciality product, and the people who shop there will continue to pay a premium price for that premium product. People who are buying cheap bread will continue to do so, and save a little.

Personally, I have a problem on the milk side. It would be worth the ACCC looking into the milk market, and seeing how much market power the big supermarkets have. I once talked to a dairy farmer, and I asked him, why don’t dairy farmers simply put their price up to a more equitable level? He said the problem was there were always going to be enough dairy farms who would accept the very low rate paid by the big milk buyers, so if you don’t accept it too, you simply don’t get to sell your milk.

Perhaps that’s just market forces at work too, but I think its worth a look.

There are genuine concerns about getting good teachers to less desirable working locations, but I think that’s pretty easily solved with a higher pay scale for those regions where its hard to get teachers to go. We can also bolster those areas by insisting teaching graduates spend a few years at one of those schools.

The greens are jumping up and down worried that the idea is a secret code for slashing spending on education. While I am sure the Gillard government will have no choice but to start cutting spending soon, I don’t think this idea should be tied to that.

All in all, what’s missing from todays education system is responsibility. The teachers in the classrooms and the principals overseeing them are not held to account for the outcomes they deliver, and they should be.

I think the idea merits further debate, it’s high time we stopped focusing on money, and focus instead on the kids and their future,

But it seems once again our State Government is incapable of delivering the services Queenslanders need at a price Queenslanders can afford;

News in that despite the state government spending 15 million tax payer dollars to recruit new foster carers, 100′s of carers have been quitting because of the poor governance of the Department of Communities.

Child Safety Minister Phil Reeves, needs to get moving on this. Meet with carers who are quitting and get the facts from them directly, then go and fix the department he is running so abused and neglected kids get the best care our society can offer.

http://www.qld.alp.org.au/

Back when it looked like we would run out of water during one of our worst ever droughts, we were promised a new dam would be built to increase our storage, so when it did eventually rain, we’d capture more of it. Great idea, but a completely bungled process eventually led to the Queensland government wasting by their own estimate $265 million tax payer dollars.

From there, the decision was made to Build a desalination plant on the gold cost. With taxpayer dollars burning a hole in their pockets, the state government blows almost 900 million on a plant that will continue to cost big bucks to run year in year out. Despite being told that the energy input cost of desalination made it a poor choice for our region, they pushed ahead.

Then we have recycled water. This one should have been a slam dunk, but again the government bungles it. They knew they could supply power stations with the recycled water without raising concerns, which means they could get the plant built. Surely the obvious way to demonstrate the viability of pumping the recycled water into the drinking supply would simply be to have the plan operating, and then test it’s output?

At this point, any community concerns could be tested for, and the water shown not to contain whatever contaminant that people worried it might.

Instead, the Bligh government pushed ahead building a pipeline to wivenhoe dam, which they now won’t turn on because they have failed to sell the idea to the public. They arranged for water from the plant to be bottled for handing out to people to prove the water was safe, before parliament had even passed laws making it legal to do so, and eventually they quietly destroyed the bottled product.

All in all, the state government has presided over a ton of waste, and it’s time they were held to account for it.

Anna Bligh’s plan to sell Queensland Motorways is just the latest con job our long standing labor leaders will force on us.

Surely a toll road should be publicly owned, with a view to removing the tolls once the cost of the road has been recouped?

Once these important transport links are sold off, we can expect even higher tolls, and to be paying them forever.

It’s high time things changed in Queensland. If we keep running the show this way, selling off all our assets, then we will end up broke. How will they fix the hospitals then?

For a start, you will have to make some effort to find out what kind of family situation is in effect for each truanting child. Are the parents doing their best to put the kids into school, and are they working with the school? There’s a big difference between a kid left to their own at 7am as the parents shoot through, and the kid who is dropped at the front gate by their parents at 8:20.

If the parents are a big part of the problem, then the intervention should be directed at them. After all, they are their kids, their responsibility, and if they aren’t doing everything they can to ensure their kids get an education, shouldn’t they be on the end of the big stick, not the local footy club?

How exactly are you going to ensure that kids who miss school don’t play footy anyway? Are you going to setup a public register of truant kids and legislate for every footy and netball club to check it before letting kids play on Saturday? Really? You must be joking.

And finally; What about the kids who truant, and who do not play sport. They get a free pass do they?

Honestly, this is a half baked and stupid idea, and Julia will eventually have to wake up to it.