The reason I have my cranky pants on is because I was woken up at 02:00 this morning.

While I accept the noises of the city in my stride after all, it is a trade off for living where I do, today was a little different.

Usually the noises of the city don’t bother me, and if they do happen to wake me up, I can just roll over and shuffle off back to the land of nod without too much of a hassle.

Not this morning.

Today, it was a 02:00 fire alarm coming from the building next door. You know that annoying bell that once it gets inside your head, it just keeps going and going and going. Then came the evacuation tone. As soon as I heard that I didn’t even try going back to sleep because I knew that it wouldn’t be too long before the lights and sirens from the BRT’s that belong to the QFRS came screaming down the street.

Sure enough, they weren’t too far away, and I could hear the sirens in the distance getting closer. The funny thing is that once the two BRT’s got into the street, they turned the sirens off, so all I was left with was the flashing lights. Those of you that know me, know I am always distracted and mesmerised by flashing lights and shiny things, and even though it was a little after 2AM, today was no different…

Anyway, thankfully it was a false alarm, and they trundled off on their way, once they had the issue sorted.

I breathed a sigh of relief and thought I would be able to get back to sleep again. So I fluffed up my pillow, grabbed by Humprey B Bear teddy and closed my eyes…

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His tweet complained about the behaviour of a bicycle rider that hit his car twice whilst on the way home from a training session, though the rider and an unnamed witness seem to have a different version of events, with his rant calling for cyclists to be registered.

First things first though, to the best of my knowledge, no matter how many times a person hits a car, they cannot hurt it. Even if it is a Mercedes Coupe, as the precious dear was driving at the time. Whereas even a gentle tap from the said vehicle has the potential to cause serious injury to any bike rider.

As a bike rider myself, and not knowing who was to blame for the altercation, I’d like to suggest that this particular individual get out from behind the steering wheel of his car and spend a week ride around town himself, and see what even law abiding cyclists have to put up with. Who knows, he may even change his tune and his driving behaviour…

What is amusing about the whole media circus surrounding the tweet is that there are some groups that are talking his calls for the registration of cyclists seriously. Every motorised vehicle on the road is registered, yet what has that done to stop bad behaviour of other drivers?

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Which brings us to the next question that is anyone’s guess, when will we be heading off to the polls?

I’d be willing to make the prediction that it won’t be held until after the council elections at the end of March. By doing this, she is handing everyone else a free kick as they can claim that this is a premier that is desperate to hold on to power for as long as she can.

An April or May election will give the spin doctors and number crunchers time to judge how much anti-Labor sentiment there is by using the SEQ Council elections as a litmus test for the battle that lays ahead. This will also allow enough time to settle with the report into the 2011 flood due to be handed down in Feb, along with her planned ‘carve up’ of Queensland Health.

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Regardless of what side of the fence you are on with regards to the whole whaling issue, you would have to agree that the behaviour of the ALP Australian Government has been deplorable.

Here they are on one hand professing that they are against whaling and that they are in the process of taking Japan to the International Court about the legality of whaling, yet on the other are doing nothing to enforce the laws of Australia in territorial waters. (Whilst the court case being launched in 2010, it will be years before a decision is reached).

As Paul Watson has said a number of times, this matter highlights the hypocrisy of the Australian government. They will send the navy out after poachers in our Northern waters and detain those involved. Yet when it comes to Japan whaling in Australia’s Antartic Territorial Waters, all they do is wave a finger at them, and make a few phone calls.

Whether you think the boarding of the Shonan Maru No.2 was legal or not is beside the point. The fact of the matter is that this happened within the internationally recognised Contiguous zone of Australia, where Australia may exercise the control necessary to prevent or punish infringements of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations.

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