They may have killed the original electric car - but the political and economic landscape has changed a lot since the days of the EV1. The Volt is due out of the factor in 2010 and will be chargable from your household electrical port. The issue is that it will have a range of about 60 kilometres a day - but it also includes a 1.4 litre petrol engine to act as a generator for the batteries when the charge runs low. This will give it a 480km range. At current prices the electricity to cover your 60 kilometre round trip would cost one or two cents a kilometre; compared to eleven cents using petrol. Use green power and you have no carbon from driving your car.

I just hope the Holden takes up the baton and ensures that we get the Volt (or something similar) here.

Plenty of airline news over the last couple of days with plenty of trials and tribulations. Things are looking pretty grim with the International Air Transport Association forecasting that international airlines will lose up to $12bn by the end of next year - as a result of the 'perfect storm' of rising costs and falling demand. Indeed they are tipping losses of $US2bn in India alone! The IATA keeps a watch list of airlines they are worried about and include Alitalia and Zoom in Canada at the moment. Ouch. I wonder if they have Aerolineas Argentinas on the list after the Argentinian government has decided to nationalise the airline because of problems with its Spanish owners Grupo Marsans (who also own Austral). They have decided to do this the airline is responsible for 85% of air travel in Argentina and if the airline failed they would be in big trouble.

On the other side of the coin, Virgin Blue has announced that it is going to expand its network to incorporate Papua New Guinea into its network through Pacific Blue. The plan is for it to take on Air Niugini with 737 services from Brisbane and it has applied to the International Air Services Commission for 900 seats a week. Interesting move.

Also interested to read that the government is considering offering financial incentives for people to switch over to digital TV before the 2013 turn off of analog. Apparently from January 1 next year, Nine, Seven and Ten are going to turn on second digital channels. The incentives are likely to only be available for 'vulnerable' or 'socially isolated' people so I don't know what that is going to take the form of. In the US they gave households $US80 in coupons to help them pay for a digital set top box, but it doesn't appear to have worked that well - with more than 15% of households no having upgraded (and they turn off analog in February 2009).

About to head off to town now to pick up Ruen and we are heading to Dendy to watch Welcome to the Sticks. Will report on it later. Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Speaking of computers, Dell has jumped on the bandwagon to bring out its own netbook. The Inspiron Mini 9 is on sale at only $599 - in an effort to take on the ASUS Eee PC. Its got a 8.9 inch monitor; weighs only one kg and has a 16Gb solid state drive. It comes with a 1.6GHz processor and has 1Gb of memory. Interesting.

So a day of big drama in the ALP with Morris Iemma dumping Treasurer Michael Costa and Health minister Reba Meagher; Costa holding a press conference where he claimed that the governments policies are threatening the NSW AAA credit rating; the Caucus telling Iemma that he no longer had their confidence; Iemma resigns; Nathan Rees and Carmel Tebbutt installed as the new leadership team; Rees dumps the new high profile spin doctor team including the boyfriend of Meagher Adam Walters. Phew. I doubt whether any of the changes made today will have any impact on the electoral changes of Labor in the 2011 election. 

Early this evening I headed off to check out the very cute little flick Son of Rambow. This is a totally sweet coming-of-age story from the UK. Set in the 1980s it is about two schoolboys who set about making thier own Rambo flick. It redeems me for the watching of the film that I saw yesterday!

Confirmation today that Compagnia Aerea Italiana (16 Italian investors) have submitted a preliminary offer to buy a large part of Alitalia. AZ went into bankruptcy last week and already the offers have started to come in. All of this is in a hope to rescue the national airline - but it is likely that AZ will be relaunched as a much smaller carrier with unprofitable assets, businesses and routes liquidated. The CAI is headed up by the CEO of the Piaggio motorcycle company - so interesting tie in. 

The movement continues in NSW politics with Carmel Tebbutt confirming that she will replace John Watkins as the Deputy Premier in NSW. The left faction has agreed to the promotion and now this will be factored into the reshuffle. But I wonder how long this will stave off the criticisms of Morris Iemma nand let him keep his job. 

After work I headed off to check out one worst movie of the year - Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanemo Bay. Sometimes you just need to watch total crap and John Cho is actually quite the cutie (the white pants and paisley shirt yum) - so it was worth the stupidity to check out. I don't think it really stood up the first one - which just ran on a toking smoke energy - but this one seemed to lose its way a little. A great laugh at US National Security though.

It is clear that the NSW government is about to completely implode. The Deputy Premier John Watkins has today announced he is quitting politics to become the head of Alzheimer's Australia. This of course will mean that Morris Iemma will have to have a frontbench reshuffle; but from what I hear on the public service rumour mill it is likely that the Premier himself will be resigning sooner rather than later. The seat of Ryde, which will now require a by-election sometime next year will be almost impossible for the ALP to win and that will be a humiliating foreshadow of the loss that is almost inevitable for Labor in the 2011 poll. Its a pity because Watkins is actually one of the few members of the government that I had any respect for. So what are the expected reshuffles? Frank Sartor into health, Ian Macdonald in planning; Carmel Tebbutt back to the front bench to become Deputy Premier. Ugh.

Confirmation has come through that Apple will be holding a special event on September 9 entitled 'Let's Rock'. So of course the speculation is of new iPods to be announced; but there is also speculation about new MacBooks. All rumours suggest that the price points will be moving down to compensate for the $199 price point on the iPhone. We will have to see.