A new Start-Up web site for Moyhu
With the help of Moyhu Primary School, the gateway to King Valley in north-eastern Victoria is launching its community website this week at www.moyhu.vic.au.
The rural community, nestled between the Black Range and Warby Ranges (Ned Kelly Country) is best known for its fertile plains used for crop growing, grazing and viticulture; generating some of the best food and wine in the district.
According to Vicki Robinson of the Moyhu Action Group, “The Moyhu community website was born with the hope to enhance community awareness about pertinent local issues such as environmental sustainability, economics and an ageing population.
“The Moyhu site aims to increase communication, develop lasting networks, promote community workshops, engage volunteers from diverse backgrounds and promote community services in the district.”
To find out anything and everything about Moyhu including community events, facilities, projects, community groups and local business information, log onto www.moyhu.vic.au.
Reposted from Jim Child – Council Watch Warburton
Dandenong Ranges Community Bushfire Group
Last night I went along to the Dandenong Ranges Community Bushfire Group meeting held at the Mt Dandenong Hotel. The meeting was facilitated by Mel Gajdek and Jo Hirst the originators of the group.
2) To assemble and process relevant information, be functional and a facilitator for addressing attendees concerns.
2) To assess attendees level of commitment and decide future structure and projects for DRCBG.
3) To form a core group of people who will collectively show leadership to brainstorm for information and solutions for a subgroup, and report back at monthly DRCBG meetings.
Top priority list:
1) Fuel Reduction Private/Public
2) Early/ Emergency Warning System
3) Fuel Reduction Public
4) Safety, Refuges and Bunkers
5) Communication
6) Education
7) BF Safety related environmental issuesPriority sub groups were formed to: Scope, issues to tackle, ideas via short brainstorming session
Delegate a leader (must be able to attend monthly meetings).
Plan forward to report back to DRCBG at next meetingIam very pleased to be involved with the Early/ Emergency Warning System priority sub group.Please take time to have a look at the Dandenong Ranges Community Bushfire Group web site, this group is a great example of a community taking on a issue head on and is facilitated by two very inspired and competent ladies. Well done Mel & Jo.
My fightThe eyes have it
Click image for Border Mail background story ...
Weekly update letter
Dear family and friends
Back in May, I had a caratarct removed from my eft eye and, at the time I wrote about how spectacular it was watching the surgeon do his thing from my side of the eyeball – the spectacular swirls of colour as the incision is made – the removal of r the lens and the replacemen of the new one. It really was something different, beautiful and much appreciated as the results are instant the following morninh when they remove the dressing. Well, last Thursday, I fronted up to have the right cataract removed. Now you must understaand that my right eye was not as healthy as the left because of astigmatism – that’s where the sight is at about a 30degree angle – you know the coke bittle glasses deal. Dr Nick from Wangaratta cautioned me that there was a risk of permanent damage to which I gave due consideration. After all, I am 67 years old, and my left eye no longer needs corrective lenses after the cateract job he did three weeks ago, and I am at the back end of my career and I was prepared to take on the odds in an effort to eexperience relatively normal vision simply for once in my life. Due to my deteriorating situation, I am not in control of my bodily functiond until nearly lunchtime. The operation was scheduled for 8.45am which meant leaving Whitfrld an hour earlier – which meant getting up aout ranother hour earlier to get the morphine functioning and all that. The last time, I had to do that all over again to be in Wangaratta to have the dressing removred by 8.30 am. This time around, I booked into the Wangaratta Private Hospital for the Thursday night to avoid the follow up trauma of the first time and that worked out well. It is now a week since the operation and it had proved to be such a success that I will not need glasses for day to day use. I ban use a keyboard all day without eye strain and, for the first time in my life, I can read the labek on a shampoo bottle in the shower. That may noy sound a big deal to you folk with good sight but, believe me, it is exciting when you have never been able to do it. If any of you are having sight problems – particularly with cataracts – please take my advice and go see Dr Nick from Hume Laser Viaion in Wangaratta. Without question, he is ‘The Man’, he has the skills, the equipment and the steadiness of hand to get it right.
Regards Greg
New website is an instant success
Less than a week ago, my other site South of the Border crashed and I had to rebuild it from scratch. With another two country blogs signing on, the name was no longer descriptive so it is now called Rural Victorian News.
It now has two distinct Blogs – the primary one syndicates posts from the rural Victorian blogs and is supplemented with opinion posts from the left and right of politics.
The second blog is called the Seniors Weblog and syndicates posts from sites catering to our ageing population, senior citizens and retirement. Both blogs invite contributions from readers using an inline editor which has already been used.
We have a page accessing Victorian rural newspapers and another dealing with Human Rights and Sustainability. There is also a Discussion Forum and a page titled My Fight.com indexing my writings about prostate cancer.
Overall, I believe Rural Victorian News offers a great resource for everyone living in rural Victoria, I hope you make good use of it. Come on over and take a look.
The construction of a website
Last month I built a new web site called South of the Border. A self hosted WordPress site, it offered a greater potential to build a content management system alongside a traditional Blog. Anyhow, the server I was using collapse and went off the air and so too did all my work. Being the positive type, I have welcomed the opportunity to start again from scratch.
The New version is being hosted by Dreamhost where I have my own domain titled www.gregsweb.info . To get started, I installed WordPress 2.8 which has only been around for a week or so.
Then I installed the ‘Atahualpa’ theme which offers more than 200 configuration options. It allows for 0ne, two or three columns with a different format for every page if you want. The rest of the day will be spent configuring the theme to meet my requirememnts.
The front blog page and all search pages (categories, tags, archives, authors} will be a three column format with blog access (posts, comments, etc.) along with a tag cloud and site access details on the left. The posts will be featured in the centre whilst the right column will offer an events calendar and a daily editorial.
Take a look and add it to your favourites/bookmarks and watch it grow into something special.
Wasting more money on Glenrowan
Written by STEVEN BURKE. – Source: Wangaratta Chronicle
PLANS are under way to re-visit the idea of building a Ned Kelly interpretive centre in Glenrowan.
The Rural City of Wangaratta has set aside $20,000 in this year’s draft budget for a re-scoping of the concept, which has failed to get off the ground in recent years.
But the timing could be right to re-visit the idea, according to council’s economic development and tourism portfolio holder, Councillor Lisa McInerney.
“It is the same idea (as in the past), but we are trying to find a different way to go about it,” she said.
“With the creation of the Winton Wetlands and Warby National Park, there may be some possibilities in the future to involve a few different stakeholders.
“But it won’t be the tens of millions of dollars idea it was in the past.”
Cr McInerney said Tourism Victoria had thrown its support behind the idea.
“It has been mentioned in the Tourism Victoria strategic plan as something they see as a priority for the region,” she said.
In terms of what the centre would actually do, Cr McInerney said that would depend on the outcome of the scoping study.
“It may look at the history of Ned Kelly, as well as the history of the region, and also have an educational facility,” she said.
“But that’s what the study is for.“
Greg’s Comment:
In the 10 years I have lived in the district, I have seen project after project being funded by the Rural City of Wangaratta to capitalise on the Ned Kelly heritage of Glenrowan and I reckon it has all been wasted. It must amount to more than $1,000,000 and what have we got for it.
Tourist buses stop there for a meal/toilet break. I am not aware of specialist “Ned Kelly” tours that make Glenrowan their destination.
If it wasn’t for the giant fibreglass statue of Ned Kelly – not funded by council – tourists could drive throught the township and not notice anything different to hundreds of similar freeway by-passed towns accross Auacross.
Council set to abuse Human Rights
The following post was made on Coldstream 3770 blog and sparked my attention.
TO BE DISCUSSED AT THE NEXT COUNCIL MEETINGYarra Ranges Shire Council is committed to the protection and preservation of the Human Rights of its residents and ratepayers, employees and visitors to the Shire. All Council decisions, policies and actions will take into consideration and assess whether, and the extent to which they may limit, restrict or impede the Human Rights of any person.Council undertakes that in all its decisions, actions and policies it will only limit, restrict or impede the Human Rights of any person or group to the extent that is reasonable, taking into consideration the benefits for the majority of residents, ratepayers and employees of and visitors to the Shire of Yarra Ranges.
Further, Council, in all its actions, decisions and policies, will not deliberately unreasonably limit, restrict or impinge on the Human Rights of any individual or group.
I responded with the following comment on Mario’s blog:-
The Yarra Ranges Shire Council is completely out of order – and certainly outside of International law on Human Rights – by undertaking that “in all its decisions, actions and policies it will only limit, restrict or impede the Human Rights of any person or group to the extent that is reasonable”.
If they were talking about civil liberties, it might be fair warning that they may be curbed (as in terrorism threats or something), but they are not! They are talking human rights … as in the right to food, the right to clean air, and the right of free passage.
If your council thinks it can take away human rights – in any form – you need a new council and we need to complain to the human rights commission.
Am I missing something or has the Yarra Ranges Council overstepped its authority
Sophie’s staffer goes the grab
MP’s staffer quits over Ball boob grab claims
A staff member of Federal Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella has resigned over his behaviour at last night’s Press Gallery Ball.
According to witnesses, Tony Scrinis, who had been working in Ms Mirabella’s office for three days, approached a number of women and tried, or asked, to touch their breasts.
Ms Mirabella said the staffer admitted that “some of his behaviour was inappropriate but he doesn’t accept the allegations.”
Ms Mirabella is the Opposition spokeswoman for childcare, youth and the status of women.
Wasn’t there a similar problem with one of Sophie’s staffers a couple of years ago?
Once is unfortunate. Twice is unacceptable!
What goes around, comes around
The following story appeared on South of the Border (syndicated from Thoughts on Freedom) and is a pretty good description of the Global Economic crisis. I guess I am guilty of the same thing in using the story as a blog post.
I read this on a trading blog which I thought was really amusing. Some parts seem wrong but it does get the essence of what’s going on, particularly in the bailout and other government actions.
It is a slow day in the East Texas town of Madisonville. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich tourist from the East is driving through town. He enters the only hotel in the sleepy town and lays a hundred dollar bill on the desk stating he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. As soon as the man walks up the stairs, the hotel proprietor takes the hundred-dollar bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.
The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to pay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer then takes the $100 and heads off to pay his debt to the supplier of feed and fuel.
The guy at the Farmer’s Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has lately had to offer her “services” on credit.The hooker runs to the hotel and pays off her debt with the $100 to the hotel proprietor, paying for the rooms that she had rented when she brought clients to that establishment.
The hotel proprietor then lays the $100 bill back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.
At that moment the traveler from the East walks back down the stairs, after inspecting the rooms. He picks up the $100 bill and states that the rooms are not satisfactory…… Pockets the money and walks out the door and leaves town.
No one earned anything. However the whole town is now out of debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today. If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, then I don’t know what will.
