Australia has a first class emergency management system but any emergency puts strain on that system.  The more that we as individuals can do to prepare ourselves, the more effectively the emergency services can direct their resources. I'm in Australia next week and will be talking to various people who work in the resilience field. Will report my findings here.

About Australia, the convicts and so on. Although I find myself forced to point out that I’m descended from someone who a) went there voluntarily and b) then left. According to gg grandma, Australia was a place to visit, not a place to go to.

An important debate is taking place in Australia, one of the few "western" (you know what I mean) countries in which mainstream politicians are (to some extent) able to question the gospel of climate change. Here is the relevant report...

This should cripple our Security Services. It seems that the EU is planning to force MI5 & MI6 to share the information it obtains with all other security services in Europe; rather than on the ad-hoc agreements it currently has in place. There’s a reason Documents are stamped UK, US, Australia, Canada eyes only; it’s because these nations can be trusted. Frankly most European agencies can...

Even in an irrigation district, conditions in Australia can be dry Australia is re-thinking its subsidy to drought hit farmers. This has a wider relevance, both in terms of how one adapts agricultural policy to climate change and how a subsidy can grow almost unnoticed. Australia has pursued a policy of eliminating agricultural subsidies, other than in investment in knowledge and R and D which mos...

Wrong system So the ultimate Man of System blames The System. According to Gordo, The System governing MPs' pay and rations is a failed system. It is A System that has failed to prevent MPs systematically fleecing us for their own personal profit. So his solution is - yes - A New System. And the key element of his new system is that MPs' pay and rations will henceforth be determined and ...

I am in Australia visiting my sister and her family, and the effect of climate change is evident all around. In Bendigo, Victoria, where she lives, there has been a full-on drought for over a decade. When I first visited over 20 years ago, Victoria was as green as South East England. Now, it is...

That atheist bus-ads initiative has been getting about. But it has hit a snag in one place - Australia. Catherine Deveny has something to say on the subject: My second-best laugh recently was at the news that Australia's largest outdoor...

From guess who? But profit is not waht itn used to be. Under IFRS profit is the change in the net worth of your balance sheet on a mark to market basis: it is not the result of your trading in the quarter. So if you made incredibly harsh provisions (and most banks did) and then some

Security issues with cloud computing - identified by a US military science professor at the Defcon security convention late last week - have been confirmed by ISACA – formerly known as Information Systems Audit and Control Association - although the 30-year-old not-for-profit governance and security association says that technology can come to the rescue.