Liberals providing a reason for the flood tax. The arguing within the Liberal Party over what programs should be cut to finance the cost of Queensland’s flood damage repairs proves again that politicians find it easier to spend money than save it.

A sensible debate about alternatives has quickly degenerated into talk of leadership changes of one kind or another. Perhaps it is no wonder that Labor is choosing to find at least some of the billions required from a new tax rather than from budget cuts.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard looks like having trouble enough getting approval for those savings measures she has already proposed.

Helping the cows. Russia is about to make daylight saving a year round thing. From next autumn, the country will stop putting its clocks back in winter with the aim of sparing Russians the stress of the annual time change.

Explaining that prolonged daylight would be be healthy for his country, President Dmitry Medvedev referred to: “Unhappy cows or other animals who don’t understand the time change and don’t understand that the milkmaid is going to milk them at a different time.” The man would almost qualify as an honorary Queenslander.

Getting a bit precious. Being called the land of ground spiced chickpeas shaped into balls and fried is hardly the greatest insult imaginable so for once I’m on the side of Eddie McGuire. The TV and radio star cum Collingwood football club president is getting a bit of flak for this morning after having a little dig at the Greater Western Sydney football club for attempting to lure the AFL competition’s best young players and suggesting that two could play the poaching game.

“I’ve just put a team together of your 17-year-olds who’ll be sick of living up in the land of the falafel in western Sydney playing in front of a 12,000-seat stadium that’s still not put up,” Eddie told his radio audience this morning.

Which sent the ABC scurrying for a comment to suggest there was something terribly racist about the comment and found Forum on Islamic Relations executive director Kuranda Seyit who obliged with the comment that Mr McGuire should reflect on his behaviour.

“He’s a mature man, a leader of a sporting club and a TV personality,” Mr Seyit said.

“He has a lot more weight and what he says influences a lot of people.

“I think that for him to flippantly throw around such a comment is actually quite irresponsible.”

Nearly as bad, perhaps, as referring to Collingwood as pies!

Tibet’s glaciers fading away. I need a better translation than my instant Google version to get the whole picture but it is clear enough that something strange is happening to the Tibetan glaciers.

The climate change page of the Weather China website carries a report by the China Geological Survey that environmental remote sensing monitoring results show that over nearly 30 years, Tibetan glaciers have been reducing at an average annual rate of 131.4 square kilometers, and that reduction trend has sped up in recent years.

The continuing Euro crisis. Just when all seemed quiet on the Euro front along comes another little run on Portuguese 10 year bonds. In early trading last night, yields on the bonds rose to almost 7.6%, their highest since the introduction of the euro.

The European Central Bank acted swiftly to prevent yields moving higher by buying up bonds in the secondary market. As a result of its actions, yields fell to below 7.2%.