Here in the Cage, I’ve been watching you mob and you’re all so mad out there I’m glad I’m here. Scratching the passing days into a concrete wall in solitary confinement in the cold and dark is exciting and rewarding comparing to watching a certain funeral procession that will not be further mentioned.
I must say, though, Jack Charles has given us plenty to talk about, and I’m not thinking about the $5 note. I mean people on notes come and go, I can’t even be bothered looking half of them up. I’m referring to the coins. Every 500 player knows that when it’s Trumps, Jack beats King, and I’d put Jack Charles on the Australian coins ahead of King Charles any day.
You can chant that.
Jack Charles not King Charles, Jack Charles not King Charles. Who’s head do we want. Jack Charles. Who’ll lose their head, King Charles. Jack Charles not King Charles, etc.
Now King Charles the First lost his head, And King Charles the Second lost the throne so we might be in for a rocky road, and I don’t mean a polly waffle. I guess this Charles has already lost his wife, so maybe things will settle down. Though one son’s run away from home, so there is a trend.
Regular listeners will know that I have been calling for us to replace the Royal Family with First Nations people for yonks. There’s a link on the EcoRadio site and socials to the piece I put on the Cage when it went to air on the ZEDs at midday on Monday.
Jack Trumps King. Jack Charles not King Charles, Jack Charles … NOW.
There’s also been a lot of hot air about hydrogen. We’ve had hot air and helium and hydrogen balloons, now the hydrogen balloon has floated again. About year ago on this show I waxed lyrical about Twiggy Forest’s major Hydrogen production in the Pilbara: He went to COP 21 and signed up Japanese and German companies as customers for his 1.4MW generation plant that is going to power his iron mines with electricity and a huge desalination and electrolysis plant producing hydrogen and ammonia for transport, fertiliser and steel production. This was the first big Green hydrogen play in Australia and it kinda changed the Climate debate for the Australian Resource sector.
This week the Federal and WA Labor governments signed off on a plant almost ten times as big that has German and Japanese owners on board and will leave Twiggy sitting on the branch. It is only one of about four proposed plants of a similar size, so we can expect Australia to be a global supplier of Green hydrogen for centuries to come. The trick is to make sure we bring back the metallurgy and manufacturing instead of shipping the raw materials off shore. As Mr Musk muttered this week ,or was that twittered?, Australia should be producing all the components of electric vehicles here, we have all the metals and materials required.
Speaking of hot air, I was actually allowed out of the cage for two hours last Thursday and was taken to that other famous loonie bin, the Qld Parliament house, for an urban agriculture roundtable hosted by the Ag Minister Mark Furner. Minister Furner did not show, he just stamped the paperwork so we did not have to pay for the room, but we’ve used his name far and wide to let everyone know how important it was and important it is. Food production is responsible for one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions and most of the biodiversity loss, 80% of fresh water consumption and a huge load of nutrient pollution from fertilizers. Growing food in the city can make a big difference to that and it stops governments handing over our food production to feudal corporates who want robots and microbes to produce it all in big shiny vats so we can live on 3D printed steak and burgers. You’ve heard me rave on about that before so I’ll do your ears a favour and move on.
In fact I was going to talk about outdoor clothing company, Patagonia selling all their shares to Mother Nature, so that all future profits can go to environmental causes but I can hear Dave jingling the keys as he comes down the corridor so its back into the Cage for me.
See if you can convince him to play my piece Chime, specifically designed for those rare occasions when historical figures who have major cultural contributions pass on.
Jack Charles not King Charles. Now