The precis being that with exquisite timing, given the impending election, Australia’s top trade official in the Middle East at the time is claiming the government knew all about the AWB scandal.

Oh, and by the way, he’s since quit that post and become the CEO of Firepower.

And there’s that small matter of the child sex charges.

So, good work all round, Mr Finnin!

(Suggestions about why this Institute’s handing out their 2008 awards in 2007 are invited.)

This Award appears to have been given to something called “DiesoLiFT”, made by a company that calls itself International Fuel Technology, which does not obviously actually have anything to do with FirePower.

I suppose the press-release claim from Firepower means that International Fuel Technology is another of their brands. The claims being made for the DiesoLiFT (and “GasoLiFT”, and “KeroLiFT”) products certainly do seem to echo the claims made for the fuel conditioners that first brought Firepower to my attention.

All of those claims may, of course, actually make these substances worthy of an Award or three, if the claims are true. Countless dodgy awards have been given to people at trade shows in the past, though; heck, sometimes they become TV stars! Little-known awards by themselves don’t mean anything.

Were I a dark and cynical soul, I might wonder whether International Fuel Technology is what Firepower will call themselves next, when their current incarnation, like their past ones, sinks beneath the waves.

Looking a little deeper at their site you find that their awards appear to be presented “bi-anuually” by which I suspect, due to the complete lack of any awards for over a year now, they meant to say biennially - as in once every 2 years instead of twice per year. If this is indeed the case, as the evidence suggets, then there is not even going to be a 2007 award as the awards were last presented on 10 November of 2006.

So… pretty typical for Firepower I’d say.

The real reasons ECUs do this is so you don’t damage your engine if you use substandard fuel.

In forced induction engine, you may also be able to run more boost, which again can be controlled by the ECU.

None of this negates the fact that firepower is a load of crap of course.