Updates: Saturday April 26

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Supermarket petrol coupons 10c this weekend

The petrol discount coupons at both the two big supermarket chains are worth 10c a litre this weekend on grocery spends of $70 or more. New World fell in at this rate yesterday after Woolworths/Foodtown advertised the deal on Thursday.

Meanwhile, as at 10am today, Shell and Mobil had not yet followed BP and Caltex and put up pump prices. BP and Caltex put petrol up by 3c a litre on Tuesday, taking 91 Octane to a record 188.9c a litre. This is the first time I have seen the petrol giants with prices this far apart for so many days at a time.

With world oil prices over $US 118 a barrel today and our dollar slipping as a result of the Reserve Bank indicating on Thursday it will drop interest rates later this year, don’t expect a big drop in pump prices any day soon.

Listener makes statement on departed columnist Dave Hansford

Listener editor Pamela Stirling has at last made a public statement, of sorts, about the row over the departure of the magazine’s Ecologic columnist, Dave Hansford, which was widely discussed in the blogosphere last week.

In a statement posted on the Listener’s website, Stirling says there were assertions that Hansford’s departure was linked to an alleged “settlement of a lawsuit” brought by climate change skeptic Bryan Leyland and to pressure from the Climate Science Coalition and the US Heartland Institute.

“These allegations are false,” Stirling says in her statement. “Dave Hansford acknowledges that his arrangement with the Listener to write the Ecologic column was temporary and was completed on an agreed basis. Far from suppressing his opinions, the Listener has, in fact, facilitated the airing of his views and has had discussions with Hansford about future projects on environmental issues.”

Stirling does not address the issue of her getting corporate law firm Bell Gully to have an article about Hansford’s departure removed from the Hot Topic blog.

Media law expert Steven Price, in an article last Sunday on his own blog, described the magazine’s use of the law firm as bullying Hot Topic into retracting some moderate and reasonable criticisms of the Listener.

Stirling, obviously, did not find Hot Topic’s criticisms either moderate or reasonable. Personally, I found it disturbing, and astonishing, that a fellow journalist would use a law firm against a blogger who criticised, even unfairly, something the magazine did.

— Radio New Zealand National’s Media Watch programme is set to discuss this issue tomorrow, according to a promo being run by the station that suggests it will have an interview with Pamela Stirling. Media Watch airs on Chris Laidlaw’s Sunday show just after the 9am news. Media Watch is also going to interview former BBC environment reporter Alex Kirby about climate change, sad that it’s not Roger Harrabin, with whom I exchanged emails and wrote about several times recently after changes were made to a story he did that revealed there had been no global warming since 1998.

BA38 crash-landing at Heathrow airport

I know from looking at the search terms used to find this blog that I get lots of people here seeking updates on the cause of the crash-landing of the British Airways Boeing 777, flight BA 38, at London Heathrow on January 17, which I wrote about in an extended article on aviation safety soon after.

But since my February 19 update about the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch issuing an interim report saying the cause had not yet been found, the branch has made no further public comments. I check its site each day, so as not to miss any development.

As I wrote on February 19, it is very unusual for the basic cause of a major jet aircraft accident not to be found quite quickly, which makes the already puzzling incident even more so.

The initial examination of the plane and its data recorders found that the engines and fuel systems were operating normally when thrust was lost in both engines just as the big jet approached Heathrow on finals, causing it to slam into the ground short of the runway, suffering extensive damage but, fortunately, causing only minor injuries among the 152 passengers and crew.

Given the interest of so many people in this crash, I will continue to watch for developments closely.

Saudi blogger still in jail

Nor have I forgotten Saudi Arabia’s best-known blogger, Fouad al-Farhan, who has now been detained, disgracefully and without charge or trial, since December 10 because, in his own pre-arrest words, “I wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia and they think I’m running an online campaign promoting their issue.” In one of his last posts before his detention, Fouad also sharply criticised 10 influential Saudi business, religious, and media figures. His blogsite, which is being maintained by friends, sadly notes he has now been imprisoned for 137 days.

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Filed under Aviation, Blogosphere, Consumer issues, Human rights, Journalism, Justice and Law, Science, Skeptical

Tags: BA38, climate change, Dave Hansford, Fouad al-Farhan, Listener, Petrol price, Roger Harrabin, Saudi Arabia