Old King Coal was a merry old liar and cheat
A friend of mine had a job once at a grain silo in western NSW, testing wheat for its gluten content. Farmers were paid according to the gluten content of the grain, so the results he got from grinding and analysing his test portion were very important to them. Some farmers, my friend said, offered him bribes of alcohol and other presents to falsify his test results. Needless to say, he refused. Not unlike a story that resurfaced this week, when independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the multinational corporations that run Australia’s export coal industry of…