NSW police still lying

They are doing their best to protect one of their incompetent dickless tracys. See here for what actually happened. All witnesses dispute the police story

An interim report shows a Sydney police officer "acted appropriately" when she shot a woman twice, leaving her with serious injuries. The NSW Police critical investigation team is looking into the December 21 incident, during which a 48-year-old woman was shot by the officer at Iron Street in North Parramatta at about 1.30am. A short time after the shooting, police said officers had responded to calls that a woman armed with a knife was threatening a man. When they arrived, the officers were themselves allegedly threatened by the woman, who ran at them making threats. Police failed to subdue the woman with capsicum spray and when she attacked them again a junior female officer fired a number of gunshots, police said. The 48-year-old woman was taken to Westmead Hospital.

Professional boxer Sonny Michael Angelo, 23, the man allegedly threatened by the woman, has since said the shooting was unnecessary, and that the woman was armed with a fork, not a knife. "It was not necessary. There were 10 police officers outside. Why would the police shoot at the old lady?" Mr Angelo told the Nine Network. He also contradicted police claims the woman had threatened the officers. "The lady was trying to stand up and run away and that's when I hear a shot. They shoot her two times," he said.

The woman, named by media outlets as mother-of-two Susie Bandera, was taken to Westmead Hospital with a gunshot wound to her chest. A second bullet was lodged in her spine after passing through her liver. She remains in hospital recovering from her injuries.

Preliminary findings showed the shooting was justified, Acting Deputy Commissioner Denis Clifford said in a statement on Friday. "I'm satisfied from my briefing by the officers who investigated this case that actions of police were appropriate and justified in the circumstances," Mr Clifford said. "It has since been confirmed the alleged weapon was a fork.

"It's important to note that this interim report centred only on the actions of the police officer in the discharge of her firearm. The exact circumstances of the earlier confrontation are still being investigated and will be the subject of a further report."

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Imported toilet paper will now cost more

What an absurdity! Australia needs to make its own bum paper?? There must be lots of better things to do

Imported toilet paper will cost Australians more following a 12-month Customs Service investigation which found local manufacturers were harmed. Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus has accepted a report from the Customs service that found the imports were keeping toilet paper prices as much as 40 per cent below normal prices and hurting local manufacturers, Fairfax newspapers reported. The imports came from China and India and were sold largely under the Select home brand at Woolworths and Safeway supermarkets.

Local makers Kimberley-Clark Australia and SCA Hygiene Australasia had claimed that after Woolies awarded a tender to Australian-based importer Paper Force in May 2006, prices on supermarket shelves were undercut by up to 20 per cent and unfairly damaged their businesses. Woolworths declined to give Customs full details of the contracts but said the success of Select showed consumers were getting a superior product for less. The contract arrangements ended in August last year, a spokesman said.

The investigation found one of Woolworths toilet paper suppliers was dumping their goods in Australia at 33 to 38 per cent below normal prices, and another was undercutting the market by five to 10 per cent. Both companies have a month to appeal against the findings. Penalties for dumping will increase the supply cost to Woolworths and force up shelf prices.

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NSW public hospitals not coping with emergencies

Almost one in three people are waiting more than eight hours in emergency departments for a bed, the highest in 18 months, but doctors say the true figures are much worse as hospitals struggle with a surge in the number of patients and a lack of staff, beds and funding. NSW Health figures, released yesterday after the Opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, submitted a freedom of information request, show that 29 per cent of people are waiting more than eight hours for a bed, known as access block, up from 19 per cent six months ago, but the figures failed to reveal that some patients could wait up to five days, the president of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, Sally McCarthy, said yesterday.

"A patient is only counted when they have been waiting for eight hours or more for a bed, but you can have people waiting for days and days in the emergency department," she said. "There are plenty of cases where management will move a person out of the department when they have been waiting for 7« hours to avoid them being counted as an access block statistic, while someone who has been waiting more than eight hours could be overlooked and left for days because they have already been counted anyway."

About 17 per cent of people who present with imminently life-threatening conditions (triage 2 category) are not being seen within the required 10 minutes and 32 per cent of those with potentially life-threatening conditions (category 3) are not being seen within the necessary 30 minutes, up from 15 per cent and 30 per cent 18 months ago. The number of patients not being seen on time in categories four and five remain the same. There were 153,897 people seen in emergency departments between June and September, up from 137,117 in June 2007, with most of the increase in the middle and lower triage categories.

"Bed numbers have not changed in 10 years but we are seeing about 40 per cent more patients through our emergency departments," Dr McCarthy said. "It is very bad for the proper functioning of any emergency department because once we have 10 per cent of patients not being moved out to a bed, it starts to create problems. We have no space to see new cases, ambulances are delayed, patients get poor treatment and it has been well documented that mortality rates go up."

Mrs Skinner said: "They are the worst emergency department figures I have seen in my 13 years in the job. No wonder the Government tried to hide them. The Garling inquiry was told that stressed ED staff need more doctors, experienced nurses and beds in wards but nothing has been done."

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Cool 2008 warms climate debate

The fact that the article below is from Australia's national daily is an encouraging sign. Can you imagine the NYT printing the news that 2008 was an unusually cold year and giving perspectives on it from skeptics?

While the official figures are not yet in, 2008 is widely tipped to be declared the coolest year of the century. Whether this is a serious blow to global warming alarmists depends entirely on who you talk to. Anyone looking for a knockout blow in the global warming debate in 2008 were sorely disappointed. The weather refused to co-operate, offering mixed messages from record cold temperatures across North America to heatwaves across Europe and the Middle East earlier in the year. Even in Australia yesterday [midsumnmer] there were flurries of snow on the highest peaks of a shivering Tasmania, while the north of the country sweltered in above-average temperatures.

A cool 2008 may not fit in with doomsday scenarios of some of the more extreme alarmists. But nor, meteorologists point out, does it prove the contrary, that global warming is a myth. In Australia this year, on the most recent figures, the average temperature was 22.18C. Last year it was 22.48C. In 2006 it was 22.28C, and in 2005 22.99C. Senior meteorologist with the National Meteorological Centre Rod Dickson said that based on data from January to November, 2008 might be the coolest this century but it was still Australia's 15th warmest year in the past 100 years. "Since 1990, the Australian annual mean temperature has been warmer than the 1961-1990 average [Hey! That is not the 100 year average. It is the average of a generally cool period] for all but two years, 2008 being one of those years," he said. In Australia overall, 2008 on the most recent date, was 0.37C higher than for the 30-year average to 1990 of 21.81C. Worldwide, 2008 was expected to be about 0.31C higher than the 30-year average to 1990, of 14C.

One of Australia's best-known sceptics of man-made global warming, former head of the National Climate Centre William Kininmonth, said the cool year did not fit in with the greenhouse gas theory that suggests the globe should be continuing to warm. "All the reports from the northern hemisphere of record snows and freezing temperatures would suggest that 2008 will follow the predictions and officially be declared the coolest of the century," he said. "But the only thing we can really deduce is that the warming trend from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s appears to have halted."

Another well-known sceptic, geologist Bob Carter, said critics were jumping on the cold northern hemisphere winter to dismiss global warming, but climate was a long-term phenomenon and there was nothing particularly unusual about present circumstances.

But Don White, of consultancy firm Weatherwatch, said while last year was likely to end up the coolest year this century, this needed to be put into perspective. "If the same temperatures had occurred in the early 1990s it would have been the warmest ever," he said. "The year 2008 may have been colder than the previous seven years, but it was still warmer than most years prior to 1993." Mr White said Melbourne, Hobart and Adelaide had well below average rainfall for the calendar year 2008, with just 449mm in Melbourne, compared with an average annual rainfall of 652mm. Hobart received 407mm in 2008 compared with an average of 618mm. Sydney was also slightly below average at 1083 mm, compared with an average of 1213mm. Brisbane, Perth and Darwin were all wetter than normal.

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