a bit of rationality will aid rational debate

This is Mr Lincoln Augustus, first second cousin of Holymagiman.

And so we are sitting on the beach again, it just turning close to 6 on a warm jamaican morning. Soon be putting out the boats, and be doing some catching, which is a change from these last few months.

We have been training them three laddies, them been following Uncle Tobias's special exercise regimes, drinking Holymagiman's special tonics and they have done alright, brought back a couple or more medals home to Jamaica.

And now our mind wanders to tales of strange bedfellows who inhabit this earth. Perhaps inhibit should be a better word, but a similar smallness of minds does draw some close companionships, for where else would they find such emphatic friendships. Bright with the bright, rich with the rich and the fools with the foul mouthed, and so the world goes on.

And we have glanced over the ravings and rantings on these Metgasco site and we are truly filled with wonder at what passes as reasoned debate. Facts are distorted, fiction becomes fact and folks that would have done profoundly well in a Germany of yore are able to fill the lines with small minded bigotry, to sway the minds of those who would be swayed. Say something enough times and even the fools will start to believe you, so the principle goes.

But first, let us get some facts straight.

Metgasco is an exploration company. It does not make fancy handkerchiefs for green garden fairies nor does it dabble in foreign currency. All it is is an exploration company looking for gas and that is that.

So why has nothing been done in the last 18 months? Ask the political fat controller who sits at the rudder without any moral fibres in his back or steel in his belly that question. A political fat controller who got the controls by default and who now sits contemplating his toes in wonderment, afraid to act because of the bleetings of a bunch of comics who do not mind the damage they cause as long as they get a few cheap points, ably abetted and aided by a talking galah.

That is why nothing has been done by the very capable Metgasco Board in the last 18 months. Their hands were tied. So were the hands of Santos and Arrow and quite a few others. By political inaptitude and fear. But things are changing now, and will continue to change, for the better.

So now the comics have started talking about the Lions Way Pipeline, as though it is something that is going to happen tomorrow. The family would like to tell anyone witha bit of common sense that this Lions Way Pipeline is planned for the future.

Got it?...in the future. Months and years away. Many elections away.

Elections when the Greens will turn a sickly green as they see themselves disappearing into whichever little hole they initially emergrd from. Gosh, we have lived a live here in Jamaica and we have never ever seen a bunch of people filled with such illusions of grander and self importance.... there must be a medical condition causing it.

In the future, when jobs have been lost, industries shut, people hurt and when rationality and sanity returns to oust paranoid fear and incessant ppropaganda.

And the Lions Way Pipeline will be completed if and when it is needed, to take the gas to where ever it is supposed to go.

But first the gas has to be produced, and that is where the further exploratory wells of Metgasco come in. To get gas, you need gas wells, and we suppose that fact will not be contested by fairies of any colour.

And to get gas wells, the company needs to drill the exploratory wells.

And to drill the wells, the company needs money. Ah, now everyone who is half sensible is awakening up facts at last. So that is where the SPP comes in. Sure, one can buy on market and save a cent or two. Ahem, Mr Buddy boy, ahem, ahem. Seems like a jolly good idea you have there, to starve the company and profit a trader. HPerhaps you will even buy on market even if the share price is above the SPP price, just to drive home the point.

But that does not give the company money to drill, and so your actions are going to be self fulfilling, and the company will then have to bring in a partner who will squeeze the hell out of it, grab control, drill Rozella and make a motza.

But then again, maybe the company needs shareholders made of sterner stuff, because it is an exploratory company, and there are ups and downs.

We feel that the company made the recent placement to ensure that it had the money to get on with things, now that the barriers have been lifted. That is our take on things, and for that, we feel happy. Others may feel that the company neglected them in this placement.

But we feel that there was an urgency with the company's plans, and it could not wait while shareholders fiddled and faddled and sold shares on market to take up the placement to make a few cents arbitrage. those are just our thoughts, nothing more.

The $10 million placement was oversubscribed and we have no doubts that the shares not taken up in the SPP will quickly find a steady home. So whichever way things pan out, we feel that the company wiill make its $20 million in the SPP and have more than enough money to carry on business as usual, sans a few shareholders who have dropped out on the way.

Perhaps you would like the Board of Metgasco to come out and make a statement that they found surface rock chip samples that looked like Sirius material. Together with a couple of pretty pictures of the rock chips to titillate your minds? That was a ride and a half, that was, all the way from 6 cents into the twenties and back again to six in a week. Perhaps you like that. We are older, slow in our ways, pedantic to a fault, and we prefer not to get such excitement. and we know that the Metgasco Board are a bunch of very cautious people. So we accept at face value the "greatest gas discovery in NSW' until proven otherwise.

We prefer to hear the company talking of local gas supplies to build up a cash flow to fund further exploration, that sort of thing. And that would be happening now, if only the fat controller and his bunch of clowns had had the brains to stop listening to a bunch of galahs.

So we hear of a few local councils threating to do great things. Local councils are very interesting places where a few small people who get voted in to a small position suddenly feel that they own the world. And the smaller the council, the bigger the noise.

In fact, Alvin the Idiot remembers a council that even passed a resolution boycotting Israel. Boy, are those councillors important or what, and were there tears and gnashing of teeth in Israel when that resolution was passed or what.

The family is totally overawed by the utterances of profound words by these councillors in their persuance of a few more votes the next time around. When push comes to shove, Councils are very very small cogs in the wheels of Government, and that is a fact that should be understood by all. But we must hasten to add that Councils have more authority than Alvin, at least that is how we understand things to be.

And talking about words, Baboo Runchik the coalman brought to our attention a few words said the other day by James Fazzino, the managing director and chief executive of Incitec Pivot.

We are not sure if he knows more about things than the so well educated on all things Greens, the Lock the Gate don't pollute our lands farmers and the talking galah with the megaphone, but this is what he had to say:

"The result is that Australian manufacturing plants will close, hundreds of workers will lose their jobs and Australian household energy bills will skyrocket.

"To add to these sad outcomes, Australia has a wonderful vision to be the food bowl of Asia. We know that growing food needs fertiliser. But the lack of gas will destroy Australia's fertiliser manufacturing industry because gas is an essential raw material.

"Australia should be building on its strength and using its natural advantage in energy to match our international competitors. China has competitive labour and high-cost energy, so we should have competitive energy and generous working conditions.

"The obvious benefit is the downstream value-add. The export of gas creates a three to four times value-add. If we used some of Australia's gas for high value-added manufacturing we would achieve a return on investment, in the case of Incitec Pivot, of up to 20 times and for some others up to 40 times. In Incitec Pivot's case, this value-add equation does not include the further benefit when our products are used in the agriculture and resources industries in Australia.

"But it is not either/or. We can have our cake and eat it too -- a thriving export gas industry and Australian manufacturing."

And he added:

"Incitec Pivot is taking advantage of the US situation by studying the development of a world-scale gas-supplied ammonia plant in Louisiana but, sadly, is not investing in future back-to-gas plants in Australia.

"We will not be the only Australian company to take the unfortunate, but necessary, decision to invest overseas, not at home. The situation is urgent because these investment decisions, which will heavily affect Australia's future, are being taken now."

But those are only the words of James Fazzino, the managing director and chief executive of Incitec Pivot. And you and I know and we know that his words can never ever be as important as any of the utterances of the Greens, the Lock the Gaters and the talking galah.

So a few more jobs lost, a few more industries gone, a few more people made broke, and a few more industries set back a few years is enough to turn anyone a very dark shade of Green around the gills.

So it appears that the Greens propose to block gas production, resulting in loss of manufacturing, and loss of fertiliser production. Capital stuff, and the scum is coming up to the surface.

So where are the farmers going to get their fertilisers, we wonder. Possibly from the same place that they will finally get their noxious pesticides that they spray with such gay abandon, namely China.

Guess by and byes there will be plenty of jobs in China and no Greens, and there will be lots of Greens in Australia and no jobs, or quid pro quo and all that sort of thing.

Enough said, except perhaps a quiet word for Mr Buddyboy to reconsider his principles. The family will be adding to its small holding in Metgasco in the SPP.