I agree though that if we had a community debate that we would probably agree to keep our public parks and gardens alive while letting our own private gardens die. Good luck with that community debate though. What's your neighbour's name?
And Ted Baillieu can shut the hell up. There is absolutely nothing stopping him or his party introducing a bill into parliament demanding Stage 4 restrictions, or whatever configuration he chooses.
Big dry breaks record [The Age]:
The 40-year record was broken at 9am today with a measly 316.4mm of rainfall recorded in the past 365 days.Melbourne's average annual rainfall is 638.8mm, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
... and the part that always gets me worried ...
"Melbourne will need to experience significantly higher than average rainfall for sustained periods for water catchments to return to near-normal levels," Dr Jones said.
We should be looking at our rate of usage vs. our rate of replenishment. If one is larger than the other we should do something to stop that. Now.
All I see when I look at the water level now is, "we have no backup".
The government doesn't want to introduce Stage 4 because they think it won't save much water so why bother, and because it could destroy non-essential businesses that rely on water, like nurseries, turf growers and sporting grounds.
But that 1% or 0.1% we save from Stage 4 could mean the difference between trucking in water and not.
The details of Stage 4 have been known for a long time. The trigger point (which we passed yesterday) and our current water level has been well published for years. Any business that faced losing their water supply should have been putting in place plans years ago. They only have themselves to blame.
Of course, it isn't unreasonable to expect the government to have been putting in place plans to ensure it never got this bad.
But for the moment we're on Stage 3a, and every day I hear people complain about having to get up early to water their plants.
You know, you don't actually HAVE to water your plants two days a week and you don't have to water for the whole two hours.
Seems obvious but perhaps these days with the "nanny state" we need to be told.
If we let it go the way it is and waiting until August and we only have 20% of our water left and suddenly they decide we actually have to go to Stage 10 where we can only use water to drink, I'll be more than a little irritated.
He spends six hours a day communicating with his fans!
Normally, a new Brooklyn-based artist like him would trek around the Northeast in grim circles, visiting and revisiting cities like Boston and New York and Chicago in order to slowly build an audience — playing for 3 people the first time, then 10, then (if he got lucky) 50. But Coulton realized he could simply poll his existing online audience members, find out where they lived and stage a tactical strike on any town with more than 100 fans, the point at which he’d be likely to make $1,000 for a concert. It is a flash-mob approach to touring: he parachutes into out-of-the-way towns like Ardmore, Pa., where he recently played to a sold-out club of 140.
JC is my favourite example of how a musician can do everything at home, give away their music, allow people to record and distribute his shows and still make money.
Of course, the catch is he works very long hours communicating with his promotional workforce (his fans), writing and playing music and he's exceptionally talented. Let's not forget that.
And Code Monkey.