&%$^*$! air-conditioning

It's a beautiful night, but unfortunately our new American neighbours upstairs have returned from their holiday and have put on the air conditioning (the evil, sleep-depriving air-conditioning). It's a nice night! It's not too hot, not too cold. Obviously too hot for the Americans, who like almost every other American that comes to Brisbane, seemingly bake themselves silly in the hot sun every day but can't handle an evening temperature in the low 20's!

It's not their fault the damn thing is so noisy, and the managers have had so many different technicians in to try and fix it... but every time it gets better (a bit better, but still annoyingly loud) and then a few weeks later it's back to roaring like a leaf-blower. God dammit. I'm working on a big assignment right now and the noise is incredibly distracting... and I'm dreading going to bed... the noise makes me want to tear my head off already. And this means we have to keep our own door shut and not get any fresh air just so we can get a tiny bit of sleep. I hate air-conditioning, and I especially hate our neighbours' air-conditioning. Having to put up with other peoples' noise is one of the worst things about living in high density housing :(

One Farmer, One Senator

The federal government's drought aid package to farmers is a survival mechanism not a get rich mechanism, Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile said today.

The government last week announced a major drought assistance package including a $150,000 exit grants for those wanting to leave the land and a cut off $20,000 in off farm earnings before losing welfare entitlements.

The announcement has led to complaints the government is being exceptionally generous to its own constituency as an election approaches.

Mr Vaile said the government also provided support to other sectors.

"Has anybody complained about the levels of support that we as a government, that we as a nation, have provided to the automotive industry and the textiles, clothing and footwear industry since 1997. No, nobody has complained,'' he told the Ten Network.

The Govt. Gazette

Right, so every time a car plant goes out of business or a textile plant closes each worker gets $150,000 to stop being a car or textile worker? WTF, farming is a business why the hell should we pay taxes to pay Vaile's mates, the idiots too dumb to vote in their own interests or to listen to sustainable agriculture advice, to stop hitting themselves in the head? I bet small business owners would love that. I'll stop setting up takeaway burger shops 50m from McDonalds if you pay me $150,000 to stop doing it. Nevermind the fact that it would take the average Australian three years to even EARN $150,000.

I love the $20,000 a year of extra earnings too. If you're on youth allowance you can earn $6,000, no, not per year, per the course of your stint on youth allowance, before they claw back your allowance. Hell, yearly income from youth allowance is barely even $8,000 a year. If you're a young person trying to earn a living or improve your earning potential (which means more tax for the govt.) you're entitled to $8,000 a year in help. If you're a farmer and your special business has failed, despite costing the taxpayer more than you ever earned in terms of subsidies, free advice and support etc. you're entitled to yet more money to maintain your lifestyle. Also in the eyes of the media you are a rugged individualist, doing it tough and using your flinty stare and lantern jaw to plough your sun baked soil. Everyone else is a dole bludger.

Also there are plenty of farms that are doing it tough and staying successful with little govt. assistance. For instance most of NSW's vegetables come from a few farms not far from Sydney. They've gotten it right, how about rewarding them instead of prolonging the inevitable with pointless vote grubbing pork barreling?

Go Fiji!

Beat Wales to secure their first place in a Rugby World Cup quarter-final in 20 years. Of course, given the crappy free-to-air coverage of the Rugby World Cup this time, it probably wasn't broadcast. Australian broadcasters don't seem to understand that it's not really a World Cup if only Australian matches are shown. Grrrr.

3 restaurants in 3 days

Two down, one to go.

I probably won't put up a full post reviewing our experiences for a couple of days, but let's just say last night's dinner and particularly tonight's dinner are ones I'd like to forget. Great company, really poor quality food. Would have been better off staying home and eating a bowl of cereal- and in the case of Jazzy Cat Cafe tonight I pretty much need a bowl of cereal to fill me up after paying $23 for what pretty much amounted to 2 small slices of eggplant, a couple of cubes of really overcooked potato and half a carrot. Incredible. Do yourself a favour and don't go there.

At least we're guaranteed of a good feed at the Black Forest Cafe Restaurant tomorrow night- we've been there before. I paid $23 for my main meal there too, and it was not only delicious but so enormous I couldn't finish it. In that sense I suppose it's good that the Jazzy Cat has left me starving. Maybe I'll be able to polish off an entire meal at the Black Forest tomorrow!

Death Penalty For Schapelle

Australians who lost relatives and mates in the 2002 Bali bombings say they're disgusted by an Amnesty International campaign to save three of the bombers from execution.

The Australian arm of the human rights group is urging people to lobby Indonesian authorities to stop the executions as part of Amnesty's ongoing campaign against capital punishment.

SMH

I agree, kill the bombers, then kill Corby and the Bali 9. I'm disgusted by Amnesty International's attempts to stop justice being done.

Burma

	In response to calls from Burma’s democracy movement, the Burma Campaign UK and other campaign groups around the world have been pressuring companies to sever business ties with Burma. Please contact one or more of the companies on the Dirty List and ask them to cut their ties with Burma’s military government. If appropriate, tell them you will not purchase their products as long as they continue to support the regime in Burma. Letters written in your own words are most effective. If you don’t have much time, don’t worry - just one or two paragraphs will do. Please be polite! We would be grateful if you could send us a copy of any responses you receive. The Burma Campaign UK

Go here for news on what's happening in Burma. While Burmese are fighting for freedom from an oppressive government in our own back yard our media is running typically navel gazing rubbish like:

"Move over WAGS, here come the Scrummies World Cup rugby wives are shunning the WAGS tag that's given to partners of their football cousins."

Howard and cronies have been quick to fall in behind the protesters. Of course this is the same John Howard who happily shared a podium with them at APEC. To their credit, Labor and Greens MPs joined a rally outside the buffoonish Downer's office pushing for sanctions. Two days ago Rudd called for sanctions against the regime. Today the Howard government confirmed they'd be doing just that, proving the saying that whenever you wake up is your morning.

Here are the Australian businesses from the site. We'll let you know if we get any responses.

Andaman Teak Supplies Pty Ltd
Andaman is an Australia teak supplier to the marine sector, which only uses Burmese teak. The Burmese regime owns all teak plantations in Burma and teak sales earn the regime millions of pounds every year.

Andaman Teak Supplies Pty Ltd
59 Magnesium Drive
Crestmead Qld 4132
Australia
Fax: +61 (0)7 3803 1118
Email: andamanteak@bigpond.com

Gecko’s Adventures
Gecko’s describes itself as a travel company for ‘grassroots adventures’. It is a sister company of Peregrine Adventures, which has offices in Australia and the UK. Gecko’s organises tours to Burma.

Managing Director
Gecko’s Adventures
First Floor, 8 Clerewater Place,
Lower Way, Thatcham, Berkshire
RG19 3RF
Email: sales@peregrineadventures.com

Managing Director
Gecko’s Adventures
258 Lonsdale St
Melbourne VIC 3000

Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet is an Australian multinational publishing company specialising in travel guides. Lonely Planet publishes a guide to Burma which encourages tourists to visit the country. Lonely Planet also vigorously defends tourism to Burma, attempting to undermine calls by Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s democracy movement for tourists to stay away.

Judy Slatyer
Chief Executive
Lonely Planet
90 Maribyrnong Street
Footscray, Victoria 3011
AUSTRALIA
Fax: 00 61 3 8379 8111
Email: talk2us@lonelyplanet.com.au

Peregrine Adventures
Peregrine Adventures is an Australian travel company with an office in London. Peregrine offers 12 day tours of Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Peregrine Tours
First Floor, 8 Clerewater Place,
Lower Way, Thatcham
Berkshire RG19 3RF
Email: sales@peregrineadventures.com

Managing Director
Peregrine Adventures
258 Lonsdale St
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia
Email: websales@peregrineadventures.com

posted by gam. accidentally logged in as sarah

Killing Australia

SECURITY agencies would be able to secretly track people via their mobile phones and monitor their internet browsing for up to three months without obtaining a warrant under new laws due to go before the Senate this week.

The powers could be used in a range of even relatively minor criminal investigations, not just terrorism cases.

They would allow ASIO and federal and state police forces to demand that phone companies and internet service providers stream information to them in "near real-time" - just a few minutes after calls are made or websites visited. The information would have to be provided for up to 90 days for ASIO investigations, and 45 days if state or federal police are involved.

Justified as a counter-terrorism measure, the legislation has already been passed by government and Labor members of the lower house. But it remains deeply unpopular with legal experts and privacy advocates.

As well as not requiring a warrant signed by a judicial officer, the powers could be used in any criminal investigation into a suspected offence that carries a jail term of three years or more.

The regime applies to all "telecommunications data", including the time and destination of phone calls made and received, the duration of the calls and the location of the callers.

For computers, security agencies would be told what website addresses and chat rooms the user has visited and what files have been downloaded. The laws would also enable authorities to track internet conversations.

Security agencies would still need a judicial warrant to listen in on phone calls, or peruse emails.

The Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the powers would allow authorities to glean huge amounts of information. Every mobile phone could potentially become a tracking device for police and ASIO.

The bill "is more like something from East Germany than a party claiming to support liberal principles", she said. "There is no judicial oversight. Police and ASIO should have to get a warrant to track and tap people's mobile phones or web browsing."

The Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, was unavailable for comment yesterday. He has previously said the laws do not constitute new powers for security agencies, but a "more systematic and appropriate controls over the existing access framework".

But the legislation's own explanatory memorandum says the regime for "prospective" telecommunications data - the streaming of near real-time information for up to 90 days - is new.

The Law Council of Australia argues that technological advances mean the powers pose new dangers to privacy. Tracking someone with a mobile phone was far easier than secretly affixing a listening device without breaking and entering, it said. Therefore the proposed powers were "far more amenable to misuse or over-use by law enforcement agencies".

SMH

We've already seen what the government has done with the powers it already has. For example using information gathered under those powers to slander and libel an innocent man, selectively 'leaking' information to a compliant media to destroy an innocent person's life and career out of spite. After the government's disgusting performance with regard to Mohamed Haneef, is there anyone out there stupid enough to trust Kevin fucking Andrews with essentially unlimited, unrestrained, unaccountable powers to spy on every single Australian at will? Is there anyone dumb enough to trust this, or any government with power like that? You might note from the article that Labor, probably wetting their pants over 'security' theater becoming an election issue, supported it through the lower house. They deserve to be punished for that but I reserve my rage for the little bastard in the government who hatched this perverted piece of legislation. Clearly driven by an insane lust for power and a need to dominate the lives of the citizens who pay their salary. My money's on Ruddock, the evil bastard.

It certainly seems we've become a nation of cowards, quivering at the thought of an attack that's less likely to occur than being hit by lightning or dying in one of our nation's underfunded hospitals. Looks like the terrorists have already won. Who knows, maybe one day inside a small room, someone will be asking me what I meant by that.

posted by gam. accidentally logged in as sarah

Centrelink income reporting

Every fortnight when I report my employment income to Centrelink I am compelled to answer the question

Are you reporting these changes as a result of seeing the Support the System that Supports You advertisement?

Every week I have to answer 'no'. Fuck the government and their stupid advertisement. Do they really think that after I've reported my income X amount of times all of a sudden I'll change my mind and go "Oh this week I'm reporting because of that scary ad I saw on TV, even though it hasn't influenced me up until now!". Fuckers.

Feel the spittle when the media froths

Funny, isn't it, how people like Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Robert Mugabe 'launch a diatribe' or a 'spray' when they criticise American foreign policy (or even the practice of giving breast implants to barely-pubescent 15-year-olds, in Chavez' case), but when George Bush makes one of his afactual speeches (which we are usually forced to listen to in full, thanks to ABC Newsradio's notion that is somehow part of the US Empire's broadcasting arm), he makes 'strident criticism', or an 'attack'. The way the media reports these things is designed to make anyone who doesn't agree with the US look desperate and crazy, while anyone on the side of the US (or with their tongue firmly planted up the arse of the US, in John Howard's case) is made to look stronger and more resolute (one of GB's favourite words, no doubt spelled out phonetically on his teleprompter) simply by virtue of the language in which the media couches their actions.

Funny how you never hear about George Bush 'making a spray' or 'launching a diatribe', hmm? And this is from our free, independent and 'unbiased' media. It pays to listen critically.

We Are Too Relevant!

Our constituents are too dumb to ask us about this.

THE Nationals have unleashed a negative campaign against Kevin Rudd, with federal election candidates sent party research alleging the Opposition Leader lacks "the balls" to be honest with voters.

The candidates have been told that when Mr Rudd worked for former Queensland premier Wayne Goss in 1989, he isolated a number of senior public servants in a "gulag" because he was too weak to provide them with leadership - a claim denied by Mr Rudd last night. The attack strategy is detailed in a briefing sent to Nationals candidates, obtained yesterday by The Australian.

...

It said that after Labor took power, Mr Rudd quarantined a group of senior bureaucrats with links to the previous National Party government by putting them in a room known as "the gulag" and not giving them any work to do.

The Government Gazette

Those would be bureaucrats who worked for this man. Of course John Howard is renowned for having the balls to be honest with voters. Still I suppose they're only aiming their message at the twelve or so voters in QLD who they need to maintain their current level of representation in our hopelessly gerrymandered rural electorates.

Joe Hockey, Man Of The People

Joe Hockey, MP, Pies

Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey says young people are perfectly capable of negotiating pay and conditions with their employers.

Unions have argued the federal government's Work Choices laws give the upper hand to employers, particularly when dealing with young, inexperienced workers.

But Mr Hockey said young people were more used to negotiating these days areas.

"The kids are negotiating mobile phone contracts worth literally thousands of dollars a year," Mr Hockey told ABC Radio.

"In some cases, they are borrowing money for cars, they are going and borrowing money for overseas trips - yet they can't negotiate a contract?"

He said that in any case workers under the age of 18 needed parental consent before they could sign an Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA).

Mr Hockey said he would "love to be on AWA".

"But that is for other people," he said.

"I'd love to have a bonus scheme and I'd love to have arrangements that rewarded on the basis of hours of work.

"I'd happily trade off everything."

But he said politicians did not have the opportunity to do so because their pay was set by the independent Remuneration Tribunal.

SMH

Wait... So the fact that young people are the most at risk for unmanageable debt, the most likely to default on that debt and are being increasingly targeted by debt collection agencies is proof of how capable they are of negotiating with people like this?

And poor Joe! He'd just LOVE to go on an AWA, except his pay is set by an independent tribunal which ALWAYS raises his pay past the rate of inflation and ALWAYS makes sure he keeps the best super in the country, the best pension plan in the country, best medical, subsidised accommodation, 'study trips' et cetera. Joe would trade all that away in a heartbeat for an AWA. If only he could. We could have a special opinion poll just for him, from his employers, us. When it drops below 50% we vote on firing him. At which point he's terminated, effective immediately, escorted out of parliament house by security. No pension, no super etc.

Feel free to speculate on the terms of Joe Hockey's AWA in the comments. Having to keep a minimum wage job on an AWA while parliament isn't sitting comes to mind.

It's a tough one...

It sounds like fun, planning a holiday, but in this case it kind of sucks!

Gam's parents are coming out here in January for our wedding, and we have approximately 9 days after the wedding to fill with travel and sightseeing. My parents will be coming along too and said they'd pay. Only Gam and I have to decide on where to go and what to see, and come up with an itinerary. I'm totally lost. I asked Gam what sort of things his parents might like to do, and he's not all that sure (Daddy is a bit of a workaholic and never takes holidays). I sort of felt like we should take them to Kempsey- or rather stay at South West Rocks and give Kempsey a flying visit (it's not a nice place to stay), but because Kempsey has no airport it entails a whole day's travel there and a whole day's travel back in a car, which really sucks. So I've pretty much left that idea for dead.

What next? There's all sorts of parts of Australia I'd like to see. I'd love to visit the top end, but I don't think dragging our parents up there in the middle of the wet season would be their idea of fun. I'd love to visit Broome, but airfares alone are a bit prohibitive considering there'll be 8 of us if both Gam's brother and sister come too (maybe I could borrow an RAAF jet like John Howard did for his Broome holiday?). Virgin Blue has cheap flights to Hamilton Island, but I don't know if it's a tacky and overly tourist-y island or a nice one like Heron Island. And I don't know if Gam's parents would be up for spending 4 days or so on an island. Particularly if the transfers happen to be on rough seas (one of my vivid memories of the trip to Heron Island was being literally surrounded by puking people, and desperately trying not to myself). There's also tourist-y things like 'Rock and Reef' packages, where you get a couple of nights at an Uluru resort and another couple of nights at one of the island resorts. That entails a fair bit of travel in between, of course, and only Qantass flies to Alice Springs, which means I'd have to welch on my anti-Qantass policy. That's the least of my concerns, mind.

I know Gam's parents will want to see around Brisbane, because they lived here for a while in the late 70s/early 80s. We can probably handle that. There's also some nice spots not too far out of Brisbane, as we found when we tagged along with my brother and his girlfriend for their Sunshine Coast holiday in February last year. For something like that we'd not only require a car- my parents are willing to hire one for us to drive Gam's parents around in- but either Gam would have to switch over his licence (he's a competent, confident driver) or I'd have to take a few driving lessons because I haven't driven for a good 4 years or so (I'm competent but not confident, and I'd definitely need practice).

Then of course there's Tasmania, the arse end of Australia. What's their slogan again? "See the trees before they've all gone!". I know my parents are keen to visit Tassie, but unless Gam's parents are into bushwalking or something I don't know what we'd do there. Daddy owns a farm in Ghana, so maybe we could do tours of organic farms or something where he could pick up ideas... he also likes fishing, which I suppose is possible almost anywhere except Uluru. Mummy is like my Mum, happy so long as there's a drink to be had in the evening!

Has anyone got any places in Australia they'd recommend visiting at the height of an Australian summer? Has anyone ever been on holiday to the top end during the wet season? Any suggestions are most welcome... I'm totally lost!

When I said 'our' I meant 'my'

"When I referred to the 'Australian way of life' I was talking about my cushiony taxpayer-funded existence at Kirribilli, not your right not to work 14 hour days for shitty pay in an insecure job with no rights while struggling to get on top of your overpriced mortgage!"

While I can't watch the Australian Democrats' new YouTube video picking apart the Howard government's ridiculous new 'Australian values' bullshit citizenship test (currently I don't have sound because Gam has frogmarched me to Ubuntu from SUSE linux), I do agree with the points they've made. I seem to recall a fair few bloggers making the same ones (Mikey, for one, had a bit to say about it).

One sample test question asks: "Which one of these is a responsibility of every Australian citizen?"

The possible responses are (1) Renounce their citizenship of any other country; (2) Serve in Australian diplomatic missions overseas; or (3) Join with Australians to defend Australia and its way of life, should the need arise.

The correct answer is (3).

"What if I was elderly, or the mother of young children?" Senator Allison says.

"It sounds to me as if the Government wants to reintroduce compulsory military conscription.

"Or perhaps it's just designed to make us feel as though we're under attack, because we all know that when we're afraid, the Government can get away with just about anything."

She disputes the correct answer to another question - that everyone has equality of opportunity.

This was not correct when Australia locked up refugees and its indigenous people had a life expectancy 17 years younger than other Australians, she said.

Attacking another of the potential test questions, she said it was ludicrous to deny someone citizenship just because they did not know that the golden wattle was the nation's floral emblem, or that Sir Donald Bradman was a great cricketer.

What the hell does "Join with Australians to defend Australia and its way of life, should the need arise" even mean? To my mind, a great example of people who joined together to defend the 'Australian way of life' were the people who protested at APEC and the way its massively overblown (and embarrassingly ineffectual) security interfered with the lives of people who live in Sydney. Who opposed those people? John Howard and co., the very people who introduced this wankfest of a citizenship test.

I hope that another great example of Australians joining together to defend our way of life will be when we turf John Howard out on his arse at the next election for creating WorkChoices, a system that allows employers to take away rights such as penalty rates for working obscenely unsociable hours. Bring on the election.

Unemployed again...

Never mind, I still have a full-time job as Feifei's slave...

I got a phonecall while I was at work yesterday from someone from the company who employs me, telling me there wouldn't be any work for me over the entire month of October and it was uncertain as to whether there'd be any thereafter. I sort of gathered that the company (which is a start-up and has only in the last few weeks launched the part of it that's actually going to earn money, i.e. memberships to ordinary consumers for their online database of nutrition and food product information) may be having cashflow problems. Certainly their database is nowhere near complete. And I was surprised to learn last week that I was the only data collector left working for them.

Anyway, after further prodding today while I was trying to scope out whether it was worthwhile to go out of my way to find an IGA to find certain products they wanted me to collect (I usually collect at Toowong Woolworths), or just pack it in now (rather than working for the remainder of the week while trying to churn out a 40% assignment at the same time) I got confirmation that there's no more work in the pipeline until further notification, i.e. probably never, and they'll keep my resume on hand in case any ever comes up. In a way it's a bit of a relief- just getting into the part of semester where all my assignments are coming due, and me not being much of a multitasker, it's nice not to have work as a distraction so I can really knuckle down. On the other hand, I'll miss the extra hundred-odd dollars a week.

I've got to say, though, it's nothing like the time I was sacked from a job I'd been working at for a year and actually liked. I only liked my data collecting job because I could go and work whenever I felt like it rather than having to stick to a roster. It's definitely not the same feeling as when I felt I'd built up relationships with the people I worked with, only to be told with a phonecall I wasn't required any longer. Sure, the method of sacking was almost exactly the same this time, but it feels like more of a relief than anything, and having this job has actually built up my confidence in applying for another one... after I'm done with uni for the semester, that is.

Wondering

Where Larry, aka Mr Watermelon Rant, might be. He hasn't posted for ages. Don't tell me he has a real life? Hope everything's ok, Larry!

While I'm at it I want to give a shout out to Anthony, who quit blogging some months back. Hope everything's going well for you, Anthony, wherever you are :)

Sorry everyone...

I just want to apologise to our readers for the travesty in the blog header (a giant Halo 3 sign). Nerdboy is a bit excited about the midnight launch tomorrow, which we may be going to... The blog is not actually owned by microsoft- he's whoring it out for free!

Update: we're not going to the midnight launch... because even though Gam's super excited about it he doesn't want to drag me all the way to Toowong and back at midnight. He's not so much of a nerd that he would leave me alone while he went and queued up for release of a new X-box game, and for that I'm eternally grateful. Love you Gam :)

Food Review

Haven't done one of these for a while, but I've tried a few new products lately. Nothing out of the ordinary, just new versions of things I'm used to eating.


Kellogg's mini wheats 5 grain: I was so excited when I saw these that I (uncharacteristically) didn't even bother to read the ingredients panel. I just assumed they would be like my old favourite whole wheat mini wheats which disappeared off the shelves some months ago. I thought people who wanted sugary mini wheats would buy the 'honey burst' flavour on the shelves right next to them. Wrong! You get sugar whether you want it or not- they're 8% sugar. I'm not sure how much sugar the whole wheat mini wheats had, but it wasn't 8%. I hate sweet cereal- I hate the way it leaves the milk in my bowl all sickly sweet and if I have milk left and I want more cereal it's doubly sweet because of all the sugar in the milk from the last lot of cereal. Bitches. If I want sugar on my cereal I'll bloody well add it like I did to my weet-bix when I was a kid. Incidentally, I hate weetbix- they go soggy. I hate soggy cereal, which is one reason I like mini-wheats- they stay nice and crunchy for a relatively long time. But I don't like the sugar content. However, they're not so bad that I didn't buy a second box

... and I've been having them with real milk, not soy. I've given soy the flick for the time being. I feel practically dead without a couple of coffees in me, and drinking coffee with soy milk is so detestable that I have to admit my caffeine habit is a drug problem- otherwise, why would I drink something that tasted so gross? Good coffee + good, creamy organic milk, on the other hand, is pure bliss, plus I feel HUMAN all day, not like a sack of sand.

Gippsland Dairy Organic Yoghurt: Once I've given up on soy milk, why not go the whole hog and let other dairy products back into my diet too? The no-dairy diet was only effective for my acne when I stuck to it stringently, which meant that having a couple of slices of pizza on the weekend would result in me having pimples for the week no matter how 'good' i was for the other 5 or 6 days. Besides, I love yoghurt. I was wondering when I'd finally see some organic yoghurt products on the shelves of mainstream supermarkets, and this Gippsland Dairy organic peach, mango and passionfruit yoghurt was the first I'd seen. Yummy, too. Fairly sour (in a refreshing rather than a mouth-puckering way). Can I just mention how much I hate the way Jalna spell yoghurt as 'yoghourt'? Give it up, guys. I know because it's an appropriated word and not an english word that there's loads of spellings for it, but please... go with the mainstream, save the wanky spellings for the hippy stores. It's not lost on me, mind, that the Gippsland one is spelled 'yogurt'- I think that's the predominant American spelling. I don't like that either, but it doesn't bother me so much as adding unnecessary letters into the word like Jalna do!

Wrigley's Eclipse Ice Lemon Burst flavour: bought this on an impulse when I went in to Coles today to pick up some milk. It's sort of lolly-lemon flavoured, not tart at all. It has a slight initial cool, menthol-y feel in the mouth upon first chew (I think it's the sugar alcohols used as sweeteners that produce that cool feeling in the mouth), but it's not as good to chew for ages, and not as refreshing after a meal. I suppose it's good if you have a lolly craving but no lollies- it does have a nice sweet taste.






UPDATE: I forgot to add Newman's Ginger Treat to the list. These aren't 'new' because we've been buying them ever since we first spotted them (for a few years, I think, but they recently underwent a packaging makeover). These are delicious. I love the combination of chocolate and ginger, and although these don't have chunks of glace ginger like I was used to with all the other chocolate/ginger products I have tried, the 'truffle' centre is deliciously gingery- made with Buderim ginger, too, so Australians can feel patriotic while eating it! I was impressed with the straightforward ingredients list, too. It's not often you see 'junk food' that doesn't have a list of ingredients that sound like things that should never be eaten by humans. I even kept the wrapper so I could write down the ingredients:

Ginger truffle centre (70%)[ginger pulp, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, milk fat, sugar, thickened cream (cream, gelatine, vegetable gum (407)), citrus peel, sultanas, ginger powder, emulsified (soy lecithin)]. Dark chocolate (30%) [Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, milk fat, emulsifiers (soy lecithin, 476), flavour].

I must say I was surprised to learn it contained citrus peel and sultanas- the balance of flavours is so good that it's difficult to discern their flavours in the truffle even after learning of their presence. 10 out of 10 for this particular product- I think I would go so far as to say it's my favourite chocolate bar. I haven't seen it at any of the supermarkets we go to- we buy ours at the chinese convenience store on Sir Fred Schonell Drive, but ginger lovers should keep an eye out.

Feifei's weed habit

The other day on the way home from one of our walks I picked some grass for Keith Richards. Problem is, grass is Feifei's second-favourite food (the first being fresh water- you can practically make him drool by drinking a fresh, cold glass of water in front of him). So when I went to give Feifei pats before heading out to give Keith Richards his grass, Feifei decided he wanted first go...

Queensland Roar vs Sydney FC

We went to see the Roar vs Sydney match at the Suncorp stadium yesterday. I predicted that the rain forecast would hold off for the evening until we lost and were trudging out of the stadium in defeat, then it would piss down on our heads. That didn't quite happen- the rain held off apart from a sprinkle until we were about 10 minutes from home and thought we were safe... then it pissed down on our heads.

Our first mistake was walking to Toowong at 6pm and deciding to catch the 6:17pm train. 6:17pm came and went, and then at around 6:25pm a single message was broadcast, so quietly most people didn't catch it, saying that the train would be arriving on a different platform. So a few of us started walking and the herd effect caught on, and the mass of people traipsed up the stairs and down another lot of stairs onto platform 4. The train didn't arrive for another 10 minutes after that, and when it did it was so full people were almost spilling out the door. The people at the door were nice enough to invite us to squeeze on.



The train emptied at Milton, and when we arrived at the stadium, a good 20-30 minutes later than planned (and later than we would have been if we'd walked) we had to queue for quite a while to buy tickets. We'd only brought along $40 cash for the cheapo 'maroon' seats ($18 each), but Niall suggested we fork out for the $24 'orange' seats, so Sophie lent us the extra (thanks Sophie!) . The view was much, much better than the 'ant' views we normally get, and that, combined with the prowess of our new camera, really made for much better photos than usual. It's a pity the Roar couldn't reward our faith with a win. Grrrr. As usual we had some great shots on target, with nothing going in. And Sydney's lone goal was a shithouse goal that wouldn't have happened if our defensive players had been doing their job.









Some time after half-time, Sophie started trying to grab Niall's attention. Niall and Gam were sitting to my left, and Sophie to my right, and there was some random guy sitting to her right with 2 empty seats in between him and the next lot of people. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, he had started sitting with his legs spread far apart and leaning over further and further toward Sophie's seat, eventually putting his hand on her seat right next to her knee! We thought we'd fix him by letting Sophie swap seats with Gam, and although Gam was big enough to take up the entire seat so the guy couldn't put his hand there, he still kept sitting inappropriately and leaning so his shoulder was practically touching Gam's.

Gam's leg is visible in the right-hand corner of the photo...

Sophie also said he'd sworn at some kids sitting behind him and told them to shut up [Update/Correction- this was after the kids had been teasing him- Gam and Sophie mentioned he had some sort of facial tic- I hadn't noticed]... Gam thought maybe his inappropriate behaviour could be the result of a TBI (traumatic brain injury- injuries to the frontal lobe can sometimes prevent people from inhibiting inappropriate behaviour), and I suppose that could be right- if he'd been a garden-variety perve he probably would have freaked out when Gam sat down next to him. I don't blame Sophie for freaking out though, TBI or not.

On top of it all, some bratty 11 year old Sydney supporters gave us cheek on the way out after the game. And of course we arrived home soaking wet after having to sprint up the hill to our place in the pouring rain.

Queensland Roar, I blame you!


Except Seo Hyuk Su... he's always fantastic!

I Has Plan

John Howard, Global Warming Skeptic

Prime Minister John Howard has released plans for a new national clean energy target aimed at reducing energy use by a conservative 15 per cent.

The target, released today in Sydney, requires that 30,000 gigawatt hours each year come from low emission sources by the year 2020.

"What this initiative will do is gather up all of the different state schemes, many of which are contradictory or at the very least dissimilar," Mr Howard said.

"What in essence we want is to consolidate all of the states' schemes into a single national scheme.

"This will reduce costs for business, and ultimately for households."

The target plans to use renewable energy sources including solar, wind and wave generation.

Mr Howard said he hoped the targets would come into effect no later than January 2010.

SMH

Presumably we can power our nation by harnessing the sun that shines out of his arse. What bullshit. The coconut has spent nearly no money on renewables, preferring to shuttle truck loads of money to his mates in the coal industry. Meanwhile other nations are stealing a march on us, and all our knowledge capital, in solar energy.

DoucheBags

"Yes bending over and spreading your cheeks is part of the contract, why do you ask?"

A Melbourne painter who acted as a concerned father in a government-funded workplace ad is being prosecuted for underpaying two of his young employees by more than $13,000.

The Workplace Ombudsman today said it would prosecute Damien Richardson, who featured in the government's Know Where You Stand Work Choices advertisements.

Ombudsman Nicholas Wilson alleges the two "young and vulnerable" employees, Erin Gebert and Phillip Graham, were underpaid $12,238 and $1792, respectively, while working for Mr Richardson's painting business.

Mr Gebert, who worked for Mr Richardson when he was aged 17 to 19, and Mr Graham when he was 18, had complained about non-payment of wages, intimidation and other workplace problems.

Mr Richardson strenuously denied the claims, saying he had employed the young men as subcontractors and they had failed to invoice him for their work.

Mr Wilson said Mr Richardson had consistently refused to acknowledge the underpayments, accept responsibility to rectify them, or express any remorse.

"We therefore felt it important to send a clear message of deterrence to Mr Richardson and other employers," he in a statement.

"The alleged underpayments are huge amounts for most people but especially for workers of this age."

The government was embarrassed when allegations against Mr Richardson were made public in August and quickly pulled the ads.

In the campaign, Mr Richardson calls himself D O'Connor and plays a father with his son, saying: "I'm being told employers can rip off young kids." A note from the Workplace Authority beside the image reads: "No They Can't!".

SMH

The 'Workplace Ombudsman', where investigations consist of waiting till violations are printed on the front of newspapers. I'm starting to think they just can't find any real people willing to act in the ads who aren't criminals, liberal party apparatchiks or bloodsuckers trying to screw people over.

Whoops, wrong thugs.

That idiotic anti-workchoices advertisement by the Business Council of Australia has been pulled from broadcast because it turns out two of the people they hired to play 'union thugs' were in fact real-life thugs who have served jail time for serious drug and violence offences.

Piper, the man with the shaven head, pictured on the left, has served several prison sentences for drug trafficking and possession and crimes of violence and dishonesty. Mark "Porky" Lesser, pictured on the right, has served time for drug offences committed with his brother, Ian Lesser, well-known to police as a St Kilda drug dealer.

You know how you get 'ad fatigue' when an ad plays so often it starts to get annoying? Well, I had ad fatigue from this damn ad being played every single damn ad break on SBS (and I mean literally every single ad break- there must be an incredible amount of money behind those ads), and I hated the ad to begin with!

Lesson from this little episode?

Business Council of Australia: will employ serious, violent thugs to make a point.

Unions: protecting you from the people who employ serious violent thugs to scare you into voting for Howard...

Oops.

Pondering the future of Today's (apathetic) Youth

Gam asked me the other day what we're going to do about the title of this blog when we're no longer 'youf'. I've got to say, it is something I've thought of, but I haven't come up with an answer yet. "Today's Apathetic Middle-Aged" doesn't have quite the same ring, does it? Although we'll be set once we're past 60- I quite like the sound of "Today's Apathetic Old Farts".

Clearly, the sky is blue.

In other news, the Howard government's public dental coverage is shithouse.

Tony Abbott earlier this week on the Howard government's decision to finally spend money on tackling some of the shocking health problems facing Aboriginal communities:

"Clearly, there is a real problem with ear, nose and throat, chest infections, tummy bugs and dental treatment, and that's what this money is going to provide," he told ABC radio.

"Some of the work that is needed can't be done in the communities with the existing resources...

... and clearly people have haven't been telling them this for the past 11 years. It's like the Howard government have only just realised that Aboriginal people exist. Except they haven't- they came to power in part thanks to their 'The Abos will steal all your backyards' scare campaign in 1996. So fuck off, Tony. You're 11 years too late. Labor couldn't possibly do a worse job of Aboriginal health than the Howard government has.

Restaurant case leaves a sour taste

What's the point of a restaurant review if you can't criticise the establishment for its 'misses' as well as praise it for the 'hits'? Anything else is just a frigging advertorial, so it really boggles my mind that the jury have handed down a verdict that found Fairfax guilty of defamation for the publication of a pretty awful review of 'Coco Roco', an overpriced wanky restaurant owned by Aleksandra and Ljiljana Gacic and Branislav Ciric whose food didn't live up to the prices it charged.

Sure, I think a lot of restaurant reviewers (both the self-important bigwigs and the wanky wannabes) do a pretty piss-poor job. The constant inclusion of a special star rating just for an establishment's wine list and the imputation that you 'need' wine in order to enjoy good food (if you think so you're either a wanker or an alcoholic) is one of my pet hates. But they have their place, and people look to them for unbiased advice. They may not be unbiased, sure, but they're generally more honest than advertisements, which is the very reason for their existence.

I think the jury's decision in this case is stupid, and I think it's damaging to free speech (which we in Australia don't have a right to, given we don't have a bill of rights). If I visit an awful restaurant, I plan on telling people about it. Buying a meal in a restaurant is not tantamount to signing a contract saying you won't criticise it, or tell your friends if you think it's bad (or good). Any restaurant who want to muzzle critics should front up with a contract presented along with their menus. See how many customers don't run a mile then! Restaurant reviewers should be able to do their job without worrying about sucking up to the owners of the restaurant for fear of getting sued.

Eggheads: Idiots, liars, criminals

John Marinovic, the boy who copped a rock in the head for egging a party.

Speaking of wankers, this bunch of idiots have to have been frontrunners for this week's WoW award as well.

What happened: they were hooning around and throwing eggs at people from a car. Not surprisingly, this led to an altercation with someone, who threw a rock at their car, striking one of the boys on the head and leading to an injury so serious he had to have surgery. His friends lied to police and said they were victims of a random attack. Cue massive media sympathy. Then the truth came out.

I find it hard to express just how much I despise people who go 'egging' other people. These people arrange an outing for which the express purpose is assaulting someone- most often someone they've never met. I know a couple of people who've been 'egged' from cars, both girls. One was left with a nasty 5cm scar on her chest after the eggshell somehow gashed her skin (the scar looked serious and I asked what it was from- we're not talking a scratch here). Just imagine what might happen if someone was hit in the eye, or the face.

So I find myself without any sympathy for any of these boys, not even the one who was hit in the head with a rock. They're dickheads. I'm glad no-one died, but really, they had it coming. The person who retaliated by throwing a rock committed a crime, but so did they. It's practically impossible for police to track down offenders for 'egging' assaults, so when something like this comes the way of someone who engages in behaviour like that, it's best seen as karma, I think.

Wanker of the week

There's hot competition from certain people in politics, as always, but the winner of this week's WoW award is the person whose vehicle I walked past on the way to uni on Wednesday:




To think I thought that this guy (in the police compound in Kempsey over Christmas) was as stupid as a person could get. Wrong! The person whose vehicle bears the sticker pictured above is literally saying that his right to have a bullbar bears more weight than a pedestrian's right to life. That's reaching unheard of levels of fuckwittery, that one. This person should not have a licence. God knows what they were doing parked near a university. Maybe they were there as an exhibit, or got lost...

Magpie visitor

Just after Gam left for uni today, a rather gawky and innocent-looking magpie showed up on our balcony. I told it to stay put (and it did!) and hurried off to get it something to eat- there were some cheese scraps on a chopping board, so I hurriedly collected them and took them out to offer the magpie. It clearly liked the cheese, but when I offered it some multigrain bread it wasn't interested, so I got it a bit more cheese. Then, worried about its sodium intake, I thought I'd better offer it something healthier like cat biscuits, so I pinched Feifei's biscuit bowl and took it out, along with some strawberry scraps. The magpie ignored the strawberry pieces and liked the biscuits, but preferred cheese- it collected a bunch of cheese crumbs in its beak and flew off, before returning a minute later. I had my mobile phone handy (even if I had the 'real' camera handy I figured the flash would scare it) and I managed to snap a few pictures.



When it returned I remembered we'd bought some lamb mince yesterday, so I left the door open and called it inside- it hopped through the door and around the living room while I undid the bag containing the mince (I was a bit worried it might freak out at being inside, but it didn't). I offered it some mince on a teaspoon, and it collected a bunch of the mince in its beak before trotting out through the door and flying off again. It returned again and came inside (this time stalked by a couple of crows), but instead of trotting out the door it took off and flew into the glass to the right of the door! I thought for sure it would freak out, but luckily it hadn't hurt itself, only dropped some of the mince. I picked up the mince and it happily took it from me and left- through the door this time! It came back three or four times in all, but the final time I saw one of the crows following it back to wherever it was going, so I hope the crow didn't mug it!

Guess which idiot managed to put her finger over the lens?

Pauline Makes Her Mortgage Payments

Pauline Hanson's new political party has been registered in time for the federal election, boosting her chances of winning a Senate seat in Queensland.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) today confirmed the registration of Pauline's United Australia Party, said party treasurer Graham MacDonald.

As a result, the controversial former Queensland MP will be able to have the party's name printed "above the line" on ballot papers and supporters can simply to put a "1" in its box.

SMH

I hear they'll also accept drool, cigarette ash, tomato sauce or a longneck bottle cap, so long as they're in the box.

Godwin's Law

A colonel of the ADF

An SS concentration camp guard

A massive fuckwit

Special Minister of State Gary Nairn is standing by his chief of staff Peter Phelps amid controversy over comments made about the war record of Mr Nairn's political opponent.

Dr Phelps compared the Iraq service of Labor candidate Colonel Mike Kelly to those of Nazi concentration camp guards during World War II.

RSL national president Major General Bill Crews said the RSL objected to anyone denigrating those who had served in the Australian Defence Force with honour and dignity.

At a public forum in Mr Nairn's Eden-Monaro electorate, Dr Phelps took Colonel Kelly to task over his service in Iraq, suggesting it was incompatible with Labor's policy to withdraw troops from the war zone.

"You took part in it willingly because you weren't sent over there, you volunteered, didn't you?" Dr Phelps asked during the forum.

Colonel Kelly responded that he was a soldier and had done what he was ordered to do.

"Oh, like the guards at Belsen perhaps? Are you using the Nuremberg Defence?" Dr Phelps said.

SMH

Moron. Of course proving by the he who smelt it dealt it law of public life, the real Nazis are in the Liberal party.

Liberals, Still Obsessed With Porn

Pay television providers will be banned from screening R-rated shows and movies in remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities under changes to the federal government's radical takeover laws.

The government last month outlawed the possession, control and supply of X-rated films and hardcore magazines in 73 remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities as part of its intervention to "normalise" Aboriginal communities.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough today said the new amendment, which he introduced into parliament today, would address concerns raised by the Northern Territory government and Aboriginal people themselves.

The amendment effectively bans the adult channel in prescribed communities.

It bypasses racial discrimination laws by labelling the move a "special measure" designed to help Aboriginal people, not harm them.

Mr Brough today signalled the government was still working towards similar laws to apply to free-to-air stations, particularly SBS.

"[Aboriginal people I spoke to] confused me, to be honest - they said 'are you going to get rid of the pornography channel?'

"And I thought they were talking about subscription television, but they were talking about SBS," Mr Brough said today.

SMH "ask me about kevin's heart, go on, ask me!"

Brough is a liar. I can't remember the last time I saw a hint of French nipple on SBS and we watch SBS all the time. SBS 'the pornography channel'? yeah right. How about the commercial channels who actually hawk porn in late night ads. As for pay TV, well Foxtel is too expensive for us and we're probably better off than most people in remote Indigenous communities. I can only imagine how much it would cost to get cable/satellite out there. Of course we aren't talking about shutting down porn to pubs and hotels, they need to make money and everyone knows child abuse is a phenomenon restricted to Indigenous Australians.

Future generations will add the government's curious reasoning that porn causes the Indigenous Australian mind to rape kids to the towering edifice of ingrained racism that some pretend doesn't exist. They should be maintaining job programs in rural areas, subsidising fruit and vegetables and making Indigenous languages the medium of instruction in some schools. Instead they send army units in to do nothing and health personnel to perform sex abuse 'tests' that were blatantly impossible to do legally. I think their obsession about restricting porn to people who don't get as much of it as other Australians and their casual throwing away of anti-discrimination legislation tells us a lot about the minds of govt. ministers.

The New York Times makes a good decision

The New York Times have scrapped their two year old 'Times Select' model that charged its net-based readers to view certain articles and opinion pieces, and have allowed readers free access to archived articles from 1987 onwards. While charging for access to opinion pieces never bothered me (mainly because I have plenty of my own opinions and can do without those of a paid pundit who is just as uninformed as I am, if not more), the archiving of NYTimes articles after only 7 days has really been a thorn in my side. It's the reason I created the separate VTAY 'Long Article Posting' blog, so readers could actually see the articles I was referring to in my posts without my having to copy and paste the whole thing here.

So, yeah. Great decision!

Spending up is hard to do

Looks like the Liberal Party have hoarded up all the money they should have been spending on the problems in aboriginal communities over the last 11 years and are spending it all at once in what just happens to be an election year. At this rate they've announced almost as much funding targeted at aboriginal health as they've spent on self-promoting, taxpayer-funded advertising over the past 11 years. Pity about the small matter of stealing back the progress won on landrights over the past decade or two...

I think the idea behind scrapping the CDEP, which was a sort of local 'work for the dole' scheme that enabled people to continue to live in their communities and do work there, the government's move to make people to look for real jobs in order to receive welfare is designed to force them out of smaller communities so the government won't have to spend money in them.

Indigenous leaders continue to doubt the money spent as part of the intervention will make any long-term positive changes.

Olga Havnen, a co-ordinator of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory, said the group had not been consulted about the spending, despite producing its own policy paper after the intervention was announced in June.

"[The Government] is not interested in talking to us because there's a view we either know nothing or that we have a fixed agenda," Ms Havnen said.

It's hard to criticise the federal government for finally announcing spending in this area instead of stroking its huge pile of taxpayers' money and speaking of 'my precious' 'my surplus', but there's no getting away from the fact they've ignored the problems in aboriginal communities as they worsened over the past decade of neglect and they're only doing this now because it's an election year. God knows we have every right to be cynical about Howard's motives at this point in time.

Back From The Dead?

Miranda treads water as the baleful glare of hindsight falls on her decision to jump ship

THE Coalition has fought back after John Howard's dramatic undertaking to retire as prime minister during the next term and can now make a fight of the election.

The Prime Minister's personal standing is virtually unchanged after he pledged last week to hand over to Peter Costello next term if the Government was re-elected.

But the Coalition is in its best position for eight months.

The Government's primary support among voters has risen four percentage points to 41 per cent, according to the latest Newspoll survey, conducted exclusively for The Australian last weekend, with Labor's support falling four points to 47 per cent.

Labor still has a clear election-winning lead on a two-party-preferred basis of 55 per cent to the Coalition's 45, and Kevin Rudd is well clear of Mr Howard as preferred prime minister.

But an eight-point narrowing in Labor's primary vote lead during the APEC meeting, and despite the Liberal Party's devastating leadership instability, will boost Coalition morale at this morning's crucial party meeting in Canberra.

Instead of losing support because of leadership instability created by the previous poor Newspoll, calls for Mr Howard to resign and a loss of nerve among the cabinet, the Coalition's standing has risen to the same position as the Keating Labor government in 1993, only eight weeks before the Liberals' John Hewson lost the "unloseable election".

The Newspoll survey also showed that Mr Howard is still clearly preferred as the Liberal leader to take the Coalition to the election, finishing with almost three times the support of the Treasurer and more than four times the backing of Malcolm Turnbull. About 52 per cent of voters believe Mr Howard gives the Government the best chance of winning the election, compared with 18 per cent for Mr Costello and 12 per cent for Mr Turnbull.

The Cage-liner

I wonder if they'll turn the boat around to pick Miranda Devine up.

Flashy But Lacking Substance

It's a federal election, not a gorilla fight

FEDERAL Labor is demanding a series of three debates between the leaders during the election campaign - including one using YouTube and one on the ABC - as it tries to goad the Government into naming an election date.

[silly speculation and beat-ups about leadership changes removed]

Yesterday Labor continued to tease the Government with its eagerness for an election campaign. Labor's national secretary, Tim Gartrell, emailed the federal director of the Liberal Party, Brian Loughnane, outlining requests for at least three debates between the leaders during the campaign.

Mr Gartrell wants one to be on the ABC, one to involve online participation via YouTube, and one to have a live "in the round" audience - with all webcast live.

"Given the impending 2007 federal election, I have been asked to commence immediate discussions with you over the televised leaders' debates," Mr Gartrell said in a letter to Mr Loughnane.

SMH

What's the point of debates if we can't ask the questions? They'll just do what they did last time. You'll get two candidates, because there aren't any other parties or candidates, and some washed up has-been from daytime TV will ask them soft questions on ridiculous issues that have no relationship with actual peoples' lives. At the end, one of them will be declared maximum winner and the country will go and vote for someone else anyway. All completely pointless. Also, why throw in YouTube? Who wants to watch that for 2 hours?

It smacks of a US style presidential campaign with all the inherent faults. Our system isn't about a supreme leader, nor is the next election about exchanging one maximum leader for another. If someone complains about one man being an overly powerful extremist how does it follow that the solution must be to hand someone else the same corrupting total power the other bloke had? That's something that worries me and it's something that is a consequence of the past few years. It's sort of aussie style personality cult revolving around our leaders when our political system isn't designed like that. Of course the media love this silly mano a mano stuff that cheapens political discourse and gets them ratings. Personally I don't want to wind up living in a country where whoever bangs a stick on the ground loudest gets to lead.

election2007: Flashy But Lacking Substance

The Brewhouse, Brisbane, for Roar vs Glory

View to the bar and entrance (the 'hole' in the floor)

Gam and I went to The Brewhouse on Albert St in the city tonight with some friends to watch the Queensland Roar play this week's away game against Perth Glory. We showed up at 5pm for the earlier screening of the game between Melbourne Victory and the Central Coast Mariners. Sophie had emailed the place a couple of days earlier asking to book a screen, but The Brewhouse emailed back to tell her it was unnecessary. That turned out to be totally untrue- there was a Rugby League final showing on nearly every screen in the place and they refused to switch any of the decent screens over, offering us the dingiest screen in the dingiest corner of the venue. So we picked up our stuff and moved to the opposite corner. There were hardly any people present, but I suppose the possibility of upsetting any of them by switching over a single screen must have been more important than the possibility of upsetting some fans of real football. I suppose anyone who's seen a drunk bogan with a bee in their bonnet about something would have to agree.

The dingy corner...

The venue itself was attractive- large, with lots of wood- wooden floors, stools ceiling, which I always like. It was large enough that despite the presence of a few other small groups of people it seemed like we had the place to ourselves (aside from the fact that we at first couldn't get a decent spot to watch the game). One bonus of our 'dingy corner' was it was prime viewing area for the actual brewery, where we watched some guy doing what looked like some sort of routine maintenance in one of the vats. It was rather hard to tell, as he was standing in it! I think I weirded him out by watching him through the window like it was TV. After a game of pool, Sophie noticed that the people who'd been 'occupying' two of the screens (but apparently not watching either of them) had left, so we picked up our jugs of beer and moved back to our initial spot.

The brewery, complete with man in vat.

Playing pool.

Speaking of beer, we bought (or rather Niall and Sophie bought- thanks guys!) a couple of jugs of two of the six 'house brews'- the Star Lager pilsner and a Scottish ale (I can't determine which one from the list on their website). They were both pretty good- I'm not much of a pilsner drinker, so I found the Scottish ale eminently more drinkable, but both went down pretty well.

More pool...

The Central Coast vs Melbourne game was really quite a boring one- a nil all draw. There was other entertainment in the form of a guy with a guitar playing a nice enough selection of pop-rock pieces. According to the Brewhouse' website, the guy was Adam Power- the blonde dude in the photo on this website (which appears to be the site for him and his band). Guy could hold a tune very well and I liked his covers of everything except something by The Killers. When we first got there the sound seemed to be up a bit loud, but that was probably because it was set at levels designed for a venue with a few more people. His sets were interspersed with generic pop (dear god, won't Madonna just retire or something? And Beyonce put some clothes on, hey?), complete with video on one screen.

The view from the front of The Brewhouse.

While we were waiting for Victor and Amelia to return from their indoor football game we ordered 'entree' of german (proper soft) pretzels with kranskies and cheese ($11) from the 'All Day' menu section. I don't think I'd ever tried soft pretzels before- the hard snack-y ones are nice enough, but I've always felt I was missing out not having tried the soft ones, and I was right! These were great. My only complaint was that there wasn't enough pretzel to go with the generous serve of cheese kranskies. There was also a small side dish of herb or parsley butter and a sort of mild, creamy cheese and 'mustard' dip made with seed mustard but not really enough of it to taste. Just enough to see that it had seeds, really.

Tasty soft pretzels and cheese kranskies.

Just as I started eating I felt something land on my head, and thought something had dripped from the ceiling. It turned out that Sophie had bitten into a kransky and hit a spot of melted cheese, which somehow shot across the booth and landed on me! I think the dish could be improved with a better pretzel:kransky ratio- if they had to charge a dollar or two more to do that it would still be fairly good value.

When we realised that some people in a booth right in front of one of the smaller screens had left, we moved from our end booth (which didn't have a very good view of any screen). The Queensland Roar match proved exciting, at first for all the wrong reasons when they conceded a goal early in the first half. They managed to scrape one back later, and then another, but it still looked pretty hairy for them right up until the end. They dominated the match on paper, as usual, but it's not usual for them to dominate on the actual scoreline. At least three times as many shots on goal for the Roar, but even on the score until almost the end of the game. To this day Gam and I haven't seen those bitches win at home (we still love them, mind)- there is some weird hoodoo on them winning at home. They actually do better at their away games.

A blurry photo of the footlong 'dog.

Sophie's DIY chicken burritos.

Anyway, during the game our main meals arrived (ordered and paid for at the bar). Gam ordered the bbq pork ribs ($22) and I ordered another serve of pretzel & cheese kranskies. Other dishes at the table included the footlong bratwurst hotdog ($12- it really was a foot long!), DIY chicken burritos ($18) with all the components in separate little dishes, sausages and mash (with a choice of sausages, I think, and I don't remember how much they cost), and an avocado salad. I forgot to ask how the avocado salad was, but everyone else seemed to enjoy their meals. Sophie said her chicken burritos were nicely spicy. Gam's bbq ribs looked good but I didn't try- they weren't all fatty and gristly, but he said the sauce could be improved (Gam makes a mean bbq ribs dish and is a bit of a ribs connoisseur, so I assume he's comparing to his own).

Gam's bbq ribs.

The ribs arrived with some roasted potatoes and also a separate side of salad. When all the grease from the kranskies started to get to me I had a pick at Gam's salad. There was some icky looking unidentifiable pink goo sitting on top, which meant I didn't try the salad at all until I got desperate. Amelia was braver than I and tasted it first. She said it tasted like nothing ("condensed water", she described it as), and it really did. It didn't really leave any aftertaste or anything. It wasn't oily in texture, more foamy. Victor tried it and said he could taste some lemon and lime flavours in there, but I'm not convinced. It just didn't look like something that should be sitting atop a salad.

The Pink Goo.

I'm slightly biased against salad dressings in general, but I think for a side salad it's best to go 'nude' rather than scare your customers. I carefully lifted the top layer of salad to pick at the unadulterated mung bean and snow pea sprouts underneath. There were also a couple of refreshing slices of cucumber and some baby beetroot leaves. Some of the lettuce leaves in the salad looked wilted and dry- could it have been pre-chopped and stored, perhaps?

Last but not least, the bathrooms! These were in fairly good condition, nothing of any real note other than the soap had nearly run out. There was a choice of paper or blow-dryer for drying of hands. In fact, I learned something today- when I asked Gam about the condition of the men's toilets he mentioned that there was a vending machine for 'pheromones'. Yes, a pheromone vending machine. Weird or what? Apparently this isn't the first time he's seen one in a men's toilet. Apparently this toilet, and just about every other men's toilet also has a condom vending machine. That's great. That's wonderful. I'm all for condoms. But why the hell are they never or almost never present in women's toilets? I think that's really sexist. Women need to be able to take responsibility for safe sex too! Although I suspect we can do without pheromone vending machines...

Overall, we got a good feed and some good beer for little more than the price of a couple of footy tickets. The only thing I'd change is a little more consistency with their promises regarding the availability of screens. I would recommend that anyone thinking of booking in order to view a particular match for any sport (particularly if it's not one of the 'big 3' of NRL, AFL or Rugby Union) insist that they reserve a screen for you so you don't encounter any problems when you show up. Thanks to Niall and Sophie for inviting us along :)

Gam the poolshark...

Pulp, not jobs!

The controversial proposed pulp mill in Tasmania's Tamar Valley has attracted an unlikely activist from Australia's business sector.

Wotif.com chief executive officer Graeme Wood has denounced the mill proposed by timber giant Gunns Limited.

"Tasmania needs a viable forest industry but not at industrial scale," Mr Wood said.

He said the 1,600 jobs that were expected to be created by the mill's establishment were insignificant.

"I could add 100,000 inbound tourists to Tasmania and that would grow jobs by anywhere between three and four thousand."

Mr Wood said Tasmania was a special asset on the world stage of tourism.

"There really aren't any other Tasmania's around," he said.

"If you really want to focus on a future in tourism, then you can't destroy the forests which are the basis of that.

"The government is paying lip service to tourism but nothing more."

The proposed $2 billion mill has been earmarked for development in the valley north of Launceston.

The region attracted visitors for the remoteness and tranquillity of its wooded valleys, small hamlets and isolated farms.

SMH

That's something I don't understand about the whole Tassie pulp mill thing. Why are some jobs more important than others? Presumably Tasmania's tourist industry, which earns more than forestry and is more sustainable, can just go get stuffed. When the trees run out, because Tasmanian soils are too poor to support economically viable wood plantations, they'll be holding out their hands to Canberra.

Also is Paul Lennon the most crooked looking politician in Australia or what?

election2007: Pulp, not jobs!

Backflip

The Federal Government has promised no further industrial relations upheaval if it wins the upcoming election, admitting employees already have a poor understanding of its sweeping workplace reforms.

Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey last week flagged further tweaking of the unpopular laws before the election.

But today he ruled out any major changes to the laws, which took unfair dismissal protection away from millions of workers and allowed employees to bargain away penalty rates and other award conditions in return for more pay or flexible hours.

"We are committed absolutely to the fundamentals of our workplace relations laws," Mr Hockey told the Ten Network.

"We're not going to change them.

"Obviously, it has been a challenge in the face of the fear campaign to bed them down.

"I have no desire to undertake further structural reform to the workplace relations system for the next three years."

SMH

Over the last few months, the issues that the Coalition had good positioning on have been eroded. Interest rate rises would have diminished to some extent their lead on the Interest Rate issue (or at least its significance and positioning), Rudds APEC activity would have pushed the international issues more favourably toward the ALP, and the leadership fiasco would have shunted their Strong Team and Strong Leadership issues.

I’m starting to believe that because the strategy is failing, it will be junked.It will be junked because keeping it will lead to oblivion.

Doing more of the same just means receiving more of the same kinds of polling. The Coalition vote cannot get much lower anyway, the strategy has failed them all the way down to the bottom few percent of their electoral support level.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a complete strategy reversal.

Look for big tax cuts, a few Workchoices backflips, a billion dollar health system injection and something large on education. The public seems to have shifted and the Coalition was caught with its pants down. Minimising their losses by focusing on their existing strong points is failing dismally through both Rudds actions and a large dose of self inflicted wounds.

A strategy reversal might minimise some of the ALPs leadership on issues like health, education and IR for a small chunk of ex-coalition voters while pushing ALP ownership of the issues for continuing ALP voters out further, while big tax cuts would play to their own strengths and might perhaps lure some of that same ex-coalition voting group back.It might be the best opportunity they have to grab a small chunk of their deserted voter base back to minimise their loss.

Possums Pollytics

Well we know that Nick Minchin doesn't think that Workchoices go far enough. We know that the BCA agree with him. So, are they lying to the BCA, who have spent millions of dollars that could have been reinvested in their members' businesses, supporting the govt. or are they lying to us, the mugs who hand over our taxes to pay for millions of dollars on Workchoices ads?

election2007: Backflip

Howard Commits to Full Term

"If I'm returned and the government's returned at the coming election I will serve my full term at the member for Bennelong, the full three years, and I won't be inflicting a by-election on the people of my electorate," he told reporters in Sydney. Mr Howard spent this morning shoring up votes at Carlingford in his electorate which polling has shown to be on a knife-edge, thanks in part to the high profile Labor candidate Maxine McKew.

SMH

So that means Howard's going to serve a full term and step down, or lose and serve a full term on the back bench. Didn't he say he was going to hand over to Costello though? I wouldn't start buying any champagne if I were you, Peter.

Crossposted

election2007 Launches!

Seeing as how everyone except JH is kicking off the election this weekend we thought we'd better not get left behind. So we've set up a special election blog. Practically anyone can contribute, actual posts, not just comments, yes even you Liberal supporters out there! The idea is to create the opposite of newspaper blogs so you can write about stuff and people will (haha) read it.

It's in a completely different vein to this (our personal blog) in that we want to make it so anyone, even people we don't agree with, can write posts for other to see instead of having to put up with just what we write. You can cross post your stuff on that and your regular blog too.

We're sending out the first emails to people we'd particularly like to see write a post every now and then but this is a general invitation as well. We're also hoping, probably pointlessly, to get real live politicians to write stuff too. Or at least have some junior flunky send us a form email in between cleaning out the coffee machine and feeding Bronwyn Bishop's cats.

So go have a look and give us feedback.

Cool Stuff

Miro, The Future of TV

Sick of Channel 7 dicking you around and hiding your fave shows? Got an inexplicable need to watch the Dr Who Xmas special?

Go here and follow the instructions. We were watching yesterday's episode of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart inside of 20 mins.

Also, after much dallying, I've switched to Ubuntu. Sarah will be making the change during our next hols because she's tetchy about having to transfer settings etc. I've tried previous iterations of Ubuntu but 7.04 is the best yet. Simple and very well intergrated.

The definition of Idiocy

I thought I'd finished blogging for the day but I just can't let this go by without comment.

I couldn't believe my eyes just a minute ago when I was in the kitchen getting some ice-cream and saw a new ALP ad on TV.

Were they attacking John Howard's record on climate change? His new $23 million campaign of lies touting the government's fantastic lack of climate change policies? Were they highlighting the new evidence that shows how Workchoices is harming Australia's most vulnerable workers even more than previously thought?

No. None of the above. They were spending the ALP's valuable advertising budget on yet another 'Costello prime-ministership' scare campaign. Will they never learn?

Seriously, with the Howard government's ability to spend millions of dollars of taxpayers' money promoting itself in the lead-up to the election, the ALP needs to target their own campaigns very wisely. And Costello is not the issue. Never has been. Nor is he the reason that John Howard is currently on the nose with voters. This is just more evidence that the nincompoops in charge of Mark Latham's campaign have been allowed to keep their jobs and run Rudd's campaign this time around- jobs that clearly don't involve much rational thinking, or they wouldn't go banging their head against a brick wall, given the headache it resulted in at the last election. They're even recycling the same damn footage!

No doubt if Kevin Rudd wins because the election is irretrievable for the Libs no matter how much the ALP cocks up, the morons who came up with the brilliant idea of targeting Peter Costello again will get a pat on the back and a raise when really they should have immediately lost their jobs following the 2004 election loss.

Grrrrrr. Idiots.

Media = Dumb

US President George W. Bush announced Thursday he will pull some 21,500 combat troops from Iraq by mid-2008, but ruled out a full withdrawal and promised an "enduring" US presence there.

"Because of the measure of success we are seeing in Iraq, we can begin seeing troops come home," he said in a prime-time televised speech. "The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home."

BT

Nowhere in the article does it mention:

1) The 21,500 troops are subtracted from the 38,000 he sent in in the 'surge'.

2) There's no way, politically or logistically he could keep them there anyway.

So the media plays its part in spinning a complete disaster into a sign of success. Bush gets to hand yet another soiled diaper to whichever luckless bastard comes after him to play Nixon to Bush's LBJ.

The media in Playboy

There was something in last month's Playboy on the issue of so-called 'balance' in the media that I've been meaning to quote, and a nice line by Keith Olbermann in this month's issue in the same vein.

The first was in the Marginalia on p45:

From an explanation of the problems with current news reporting, by Martin Kaplan, an associate dean at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, in an American Journalism Review piece on the subject of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart:

"Straight news is not what it used to be. It has fallen into a bizarre notion that substitutes something called 'balance' for what used to be called 'accuracy' or 'truth', or 'objectivity.' That may be because of a postmodern malaise in society, in which the notion of a truth doesn't have the same reputation as it used to, but as a consequence, straight journalists, both in print and in broadcast media can be played like a piccolo by people who know how to exploit that weakness."

The second, from the interview with Olbermann in the October issue, provides a picturesque analogy to the prevailing notion of 'balance' in today's media:

There's a false concept of balance that Rupert Murdoch and Fox News have successfully pushed: Everybody has to be left or right; every argument has to be countered. That's "fair and balanced." It's really the moral relativism they always complain about, applied to journalism. If you say a falling coffee cup will shatter on the floor, that must be "balanced" by someone saying no, it will fly upward into the hand of God. Nonsense! But if you put this nonsense on television, it gains credibility."

Lara Bingle is old news

Lara Bingle has been knocked off her perch as number one keyword for entry to this blog for the first time since 'that post' went up! Searches for 'Lara Bingle nude', for which there have been 85 visits this month (usually it numbers well over 100) have been outnumbered by searches for 'Playboy jokes' at 106 visits. Of course that ignores the fact that there have been 69 visits for 'Lara Bingle' 67 visits for 'Lara Bingle pics', 31 for 'Lara Bingle nude pics' and 25 for 'Lara Bingle photos'. And that's just in the top 10 keyword searches- there have been 76 variations of Lara Bingle searches this month, the latest and weirdest of which is 'lara bingle smelly box'. I mean, really, people. It's like a single nude photo turns on some bizarre chain of chinese whispers and all of a sudden someone thinks she's a pornstar or that she has smelly private parts. Geez.

Interestingly, visitors who arrive via a search for nude photos of Lara Bingle are more likely to look at other pages on the site than people who arrive via the 'Little Children are Sacred' post I made in June (and has been one of the only non-porny items consistently in the top 10 since that time).

And yes, while Barley Legal ranks outside the top 10, at number 12 she's right up there. Another variation on the barley legal/barley leagal searches that have been appearing is "18 and barlry leagal'. Well.

Also in the searches have been a couple of people wanting to investigate Alexander Downer's claim to be a fluent french speaker after only 2 months of studying the subject, and a couple of searches for Kevin Rudd's 'mandarin OPEC speech'- who would have guessed that George Bush visited this blog? Maybe he has someone to read it to him...

"Why do they hate us?"

"Bugger the kids, I'm about to lose my seat!"

The Howard government is just about to launch yet another taxpayer-funded advertising campaign promoting its response (huh? What response?) to climate change. Government funded ads on Workchoices are appearing every goddamned ad break on SBS, along with those doom-filled ads funded by big and small businesses- to the extent where I wonder whether there'll be any room left for any ads not spruiking the Howard government by the time the election is called.

But what the fuck do they think they're doing splashing $23 million of taxpayers' money on another Howard-promoting ad when they could be spending it on, oh I don't know, eradicating entirely preventable ear infections in small children living in aboriginal communities?

The incidence of ear infections in Aboriginal communities was the worst in the world and a national shame, he said.

"What we have found in all Aboriginal communities is that close to 100 per cent of Aboriginal children have ear infections by three months of age and in Caucasian children you almost never see them starting so young.

"This is heart breaking for us as it can be easily addressed but we don't have the funds nor a commitment from either the federal Labor or Liberal parties, and that just isn't good enough in the 21st century."

Ear infections could lead to deafness, meaning that child sufferers would be slow learners and this could lead to significant behavioural problems, such as truancy, unemployment, idleness and substance abuse, Dr Perry said.

"It also, through poverty, leads to other long-term and serious health problems such as diabetes and heart disease."

One of the main reasons for the spread of ear infections in Aboriginal communities was the significant overcrowding in living conditions, with an average of 9.5 people living in one house, compared with 3.5 in Caucasian communities.

The cost of treating the problem was about 10 million a year in the Northern Territory alone - to provide upgraded primary health care facilities, preventing skin and eye disease, and supplying adequate fresh food and water.

Let's see... Howard government spends $2 billion of taxpayers' money on ads during its decade in office... that's 200 years' worth of funding for ear health. So... we could spend taxpayer dollars on an important child health problem or... ah fuck em, let's blow the lot on another advertising campaign in a last-ditch attempt to tell the Australian public just how fantastic John Howard is and how he's totally not a climate change sceptic.

Kevin07 t-shirts unveiled!

Our new Kevin07 shirts got their first outing today. I wore mine to work, but needed to wear a jumper and long-sleeved top over it in the store because it's bloody freezing, then afterward I did some grocery shopping and Gam walked in to meet me at the Coles checkout where I was paying for the groceries and being complimented on the shirt by the checkout chick, who asked where she could get one! She was especially pleased to learn they're only $7 each.


Meanwhile, a billboard went up last week for sitting Liberal Michael Johnson. This billboard was a rather accurate barometer of when the Queensland state election was about to be called (it went up a week or two prior), so it seems a safe bet that Howard is set to call the election within the next 10 days or so.

Remember how in the 2004 election campaign John Howard's face was bloody well everywhere? In campaign leaflets, on billboards... well. Neither hide nor hair to be seen of the unpopular bastard this time, and while I'm thankful not to be continually confronted with his perennially smug mug I sort of wish that the Libs were plastering his face everywhere and reminding voters of who they shouldn't be voting for.

Purple carrot

Saw a pile of these at Fruity Capers in Toowong the other day. I had no need for carrots, but I had to get one to try. None of my close-up photos were in focus, but you can still see what the carrot looked like- pretty cool! It didn't lose its colour after being cooked in the microwave for 40 seconds (although the surface dried out a little because I cooked it in an open plate). It tasted just like regular carrot- I didn't notice any difference in flavour at all, but it did make my lunch of red salmon, potato, sauerkraut and mustard quite a bit more colourful.

I liked the colour of the carrot juice and water left in my plate after the cooking- like a purple water colour. The colour of the juice of the raw carrot is quite intense so I imagine there's the possibility it could stain.

I wonder what kind of pigment gives the carrot its colour, too, as some red/purple pigments behave as antioxidants in the body and may be beneficial... must try and find out more.

Mumcard

My Mum has been taking a craft course run by a couple of ladies from the church- one is a friend of Mum and Dad's and used to run a craft store with her husband. Predictably, being in Kempsey, no-one but Mum is showing up. One other lady showed up the first week. I suggested they try and get a mention in one of the local papers...

Anyway, Mum has clearly put her skills to good use- she sent me the above card that she made in one class. Here's what she said about it:

This type is called iris folding- the iris is the bit in the middle. The card is a piece of manilla folder & the blue pieces are the insides of envelopes. I have been twice so far. The first day I had to stitch my name badge... doing stitches I learnt in primary school & hadn't done since- blanket stitch & chain.

I wouldn't even know what a blanket stitch was if it ran over my foot, but I can honestly say I have never seen the inside of an envelope look so good. Go Mum :)

Workchoices And Scabs

Anyone seen the new Workchoices ads? The one where a couple of blokes aren't sure about their new AWA, only to be reassured by a lovely girl from the ANZ ads, complete with headphones, ready to answer their every question. In case that's not enough to convince you, the ad closes with one of the blokes disclosing that his AWA nets him a bit more money that he used to get, so his mate gets him to shout the next round. Reality of course is much less charming.

SOME of Australia's 1.7 million retail and hospitality workers have lost up to a third of their incomes since the introduction of Work Choices laws, a new study has found.

The University of Sydney's Workplace Research Centre found that some liquor store employees had lost between 12 and 31 per cent of their incomes, while many who work in bakeries and fast food outlets had seen wages fall between 12 and 25 per cent.

The study, Lowering the Standards, was commissioned by the NSW, Victorian and Queensland governments, and looked at the wages and working conditions of the nation's 1.5 million sales assistants and 160,000 bar staff. Twenty researchers scrutinised every collective agreement in the hospitality and retail industries which were registered between March and December 2006 - the first nine months of Work Choices. They found that about 70 per cent reflected the five basic "protected" employment standards - the $484 full-time minimum wage, the 38-hour week, four weeks holiday, 10 sick or personal days and unpaid maternity leave.

Predictably Joe Hockey, whose AWA should probably include fewer pies, counters with the 'fairness test'. Of course that's another lie. The test doesn't cover AWAs from before it was introduced this year, nor does it cover you if this is your first AWA. You're only covered if you go from AWA to AWA. It preserves conditions you already have, but if you don't have any conditions... well lets just say you should start buying lube in economy sizes.



So the government is using our money to show ads which lie to you, suggesting you'll be richer if you'd just bend over and let Howard's mates have their way with you. Remember, these are the guys who've been paying for scary ads about union domination and how we'll all be eating rats if you aren't working 18 hours a day for a dollar fifty an hour. Well, looks like reality hasn't been kind to them either.

The big losers were workers on non-union collective agreements. The researchers found 80 per cent of these agreements removed annual leave loadings, 79 per cent dropped laundry allowances, 76 per cent no longer contained Saturday penalty rates and 71 per cent removed Sunday penalty rates. Others stripped away overtime rates, public holiday loadings and paid meal or rest breaks.

But the 10 per cent of retail and hospitality agreements negotiated by unions, and the remaining 20 per cent of non-union agreements, went "above and beyond the statutory standard and provide most the protected award provisions".

Better yet:

Two-thirds of the agreements that strip away award provisions are based on templates for non-union collective contracts, provided by lawyers, consultants and employer groups.

SMH

The Norma Khouri fraud continues under Howard's hand

Excerpt from article by Malcolm Knox in the SMH:

In 2004, the best that the then minister, Amanda Vanstone, could say was that "literary fraud is not criminal fraud". She then ran away from the Khouri case as if her hair was on fire. No wonder. Her department's conduct was, if not corrupt, then so tangled up in its own contradictions that it is more the stuff of comedy than scandal.

Yet it is no joke when we think of the department's actions against other people who would like to live here. We know about SIEV-X, the Pacific Solution, children overboard and Mohamed Haneef. Vanstone's successor, Kevin Andrews, reacts to lethal abuses of 457 visa conditions as if they are a political problem, not something that leaves real families destitute.

The department has said it won't reopen the Khouri-Toliopoulos file, despite - or because of? - the overwhelming evidence that it stuffed up. Its attitude is one of secrecy, or, as it calls it at its own convenience, respect for privacy. But then, as we're often told, another Orwellian joke, if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide.

The problems with the Immigration Department didn't start with Kevin Andrews and his transparently political handling of the case against defamed doctor Mohamed Haneef, but nonetheless you have to wonder how he still has a job and Amanda Vanstone is living it up in Italy while the blameless Mohamed Haneef's career has been destroyed, the bodies of the SIEV-X refugees have scarcely gone cold and thousands upon thousands of refugees have been mistreated and left scarred by the punishments our government metes out just because they ask for freedom. It's not just a lack of competence, it's a lack of conscience.

Fuck the Howard government. I want to see them chewed up and spat out at the upcoming election.

Campbell Newman pretends to care

Moron-in-chief at the Brisbane City Council, Campbell Newman, has failed in his bid to force Victoria Newton, chair of the public transport committee, to resign her position. Now, there's no denying that there's a massive problem with Brisbane's buses (see here and here for examples), but Campbell Newman is only making a fuss over Ms Newton's failure to fix the system to divert blame that could be headed his way at the local government elections due to be held early next year. Here's how Campbell Newman thinks public transport users need to be treated.

If Campbell Newman could get over his tunnel fixation (and there's a hole whole heap of dodgy Freudian analysis that could go on there) and instead poured the $5 billion planned for tunnels into the public transport budget I'm sure we could have a world-class public transport system instead of a barely adequate one.

Brisbane voters who give a damn should vote Green for decent public transport in Brisbane at the local government elections. Every other party is a joke.

TSI studies 'diary entry'

Koiki Mabo

Thought I'd better do this post now rather than stewing over today's lecture for a while, as I have an assignment for food microbiology to work on and I'll likely forget to do this week's entry if I put it off.

We didn't have a guest lecturer today. Instead, we watched an old ABC documentary from the late 1990's (this might be it) on Eddie Koiki Mabo and how he won the first Native Title. The doco was made after he died, and included interviews with some of his family members.

I guess I 'knew' about a lot of the racist system that aboriginal and TSI people lived under (that's not to say they don't now, but the system is somewhat different), but it's always confronting to be reminded of them. Some notes I made after the doco:

- Mabo was exiled to the mainland when he was 16 years old for having a romantic relationship with a girl. Such contact was forbidden, and the sexes were generally segregated. People needed permission from the 'protector' in order to marry [A book I've been reading by Jeremy Beckett states that people could even be jailed or given corporal punishmen for extramarital relationships].

- His wife, Bonita Mabo, related how when they travelled anywhere they would be refused accommodation at hotels etc because they were black, and were forced to camp out at train stations and other outdoors locations. I couldn't help thinking that whites who saw them doing that probably had the hide to tut tut about how uncivilised it was to sleep rough at a train station.

- This has been a recurring theme in this course so far- the importance of organised labour. The history of workers' rights in the TSI is worth a whole post in itself, but I noted from the video that the unions and the communist party in Australia were the first 'mainstream' groups to demand equal pay and equal rights for aboriginal and TSI people. Of course, Mabo was immediately pegged as a dreaded Commie for having anything to do with people who wanted equal rights and fair pay, so he was spied upon and stalked by the Queensland government's 'Special Branch'.

- After he had been on the mainland for 15 years and raised a family, Mabo's (adoptive) father on Mer became ill. Because the old man had never met his grandchildren, Mabo wanted to take his family back to meet him. Because they weren't white, they had to apply for the Protector's permission to travel to Mer. Permission was refused, probably because they thought he was a dirty commie come to put ideas of equal rights into TS Islanders' heads. Mabo's father died without having seen his son again, or meeting his grandchildren.

- As you might expect, this little episode of government-sanctioned cruelty fired him up just a bit.

- The rest, with regard to Native Title, is history (and still evolving, thanks to John Howard's recent move to abolish Native Title in areas of the Northern Territory). One more bit of the documentary I found interesting was Mabo's role in setting up Australia's first black community school in Racistville Townsville, where Islander kids got taught language and culture as well as the usual stuff. I think that sounds like a great idea- I tried googling to find out if the school still exists, but I doubt it does, which is a shame. I suppose white kids could have gone to the school if they'd wanted (like other community/foreign language schools in Australia), but given that it was in Townsville I suppose no white person would have sent their kids there.

Bonita Mabo

UPDATE: Here's an excerpt from an interview I found with the late Bonita Mabo, not pertaining so much to land rights, but it's still relevant, especially considering the Howard government's plan to make 'history' compulsory in schools. Whose history?

The main thing is to go around and talk to people and educate them on our people and how they were treated when they were brought out here. They're saying Captain Cook was a good guy. Bull! That's not what our grandparents told us and that's what a lot of our people are against.

I actually remember learning in Aboriginal Studies in high school about the way Australia kidnapped people from the South Sea Islands to bring to Australia to slave in the cane fields. What I didn't learn was that many were forcibly repatriated upon the advent of the White Australia policy. Also note that it wasn't history in which I learned that first fact. 'History' as it was taught at my high school involved learning about Gallipoli and how many sheep some eggheaded englishman called John MacArthur owned.

And another quote from Bonita Mabo on why she enjoyed her visit to Vanuatu (where her ancestors were from):

The people are so friendly and you feel part of it. [They are] all happy faces over there and more welcoming, especially to us. It makes you sad because people don't want to get close to black people [in Australia].

Got a Gripe?

Try calling yourself a virgin after this!

So says the button inviting Virgin Mobile customers to share their complaints with an automated email address. Upon receiving our bills for the month, I knocked one out:

Dear Virgin,

I've got a gripe for you-

My Motorola, new with one of the Virgin $15 a month plans I signed up for along with my partner in April, suddenly lost the ability to send messages last month. The phone could receive messages, but wouldn't send. I tried calling your 'customer service' number (service? Ha!) and was forced to wait 20 minutes and 6 seconds (the time appeared on the bill I just received) to speak to a human. During this time I was treated to numerous 'We are experiencing a higher than usual volume of calls...' messages. As an aside- why lie? It's the same message every time- 'normal' is having to wait 20 minutes. Just treat your customers to a 'we can't be arsed to hire as many people as needed to take your calls, so you'll be forced to wait an inordinate amount of time' message. At the very least the honesty will be a refreshing change from other companies who do the same thing.

When I was finally allowed to talk to one of your 'customer service' people, the line was incredibly bad- it crackled and kept dropping out, and this person had a very strong accent. I can handle an accent, but not when the line is so bad- and it was equally bad for your 'customer service' operative, who kept having to ask me to repeat myself. I followed the instructions she gave me, but they didn't work. I was already running late for a class by this time so I gave up and resolved to try and find a Virgin Mobile store in Brisbane. Apparently there's only one, in the City. Not only that, Virgin makes it nigh impossible to find the phone numbers for these stores to ensure that people wanting real customer service can't get it. They want people to become customers, but only that part of the customer/company relationship that involves taking the customer's money, not the part that involves providing the services the customer believes they are paying for.

The City happens to be a bit out of my way, so I made do with short phonecalls in place of my usual SMSes to let my partner know where I was, to arrange to meet after class or work etc. He had to do likewise quite often, as I could not reply to his SMSes. This went on for 10 days, upon which time my phone suddenly regained the ability to send messages, and sent over 20 pent up messages that I had been sending daily to test whether it had started working again. I expected our phone bills to be a bit over the usual $15 minimum that we each pay, considering the higher than usual volume of calls we'd been forced to make.

I was not expecting our combined phone bills to be in the vicinity of $90- roughly $40 for me and roughly $50 for him. That's a heck of a lot more than our usual combined monthly total of $30. Making calls on most mobiles is a total financial rape-fest, I'm aware, but given that we each made around 30 calls (3 a day), most under 1 minute, out of necessity in part because of Virgin's crappy service, I feel I've got a right to a rant.

I know the poor, underpaid sod who has to send off a form-response to emails like this doesn't need to feel blamed for Virgin's crappy service, so to them I apologise. But to the company at fault, I just want to say that for a virgin you screw your customers pretty vigourously. Most companies are aware that for every customer who writes to complain there's at least 50 more who don't write who are busy badmouthing the business to everyone they know. I'm doing both.

Thanks for your time, 'team',

Sarah

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Sam Neill.

"Eat your rye bread, kids, it's evolution food!"

Turns out that starch is the real 'fuel of human evolution', not red meat. Of course we can now expect that whore Sam Neill to be spruiking for the potato farming industry and renouncing his crappy ads for red meat (which I eat occasionally, but the ads are objectionably stupid). Right, Sam?

EvilWombatQueen already beat me to it and posted on this- she has the YouTube of the Sam Neill advert.

Where's Mary?

Roughly a week ago, SBS sent us a form response to our email in which they claimed

SBS continues to value Mary's considerable contribution to the network and at this time are continuing to work with her to resolve any issues that may exist with her contract and continuing employment.


So, SBS, where is she? The story has died down in the media (whose coverage you pretty much claimed was the only reason your viewers were complaining). Where's Mary?

Think It Can Only Happen To Haneef?

More of The Australian's Fine Produce

We wrote about what happened to Greg McLeay last week, pointing out how the idea of human rights has become almost valueless in our society of fear. Looks like the case has become even more similar to that of Mohammed Haneef. David King 'journalist' writing for The Australian has a piece smearing McLeay, based on... things he was charged with but never convicted for. Also he once refused to leave a place when asked and went to court for that too. He writes:

SYDNEY accountant Greg McLeay said he wanted his children to learn respect for the police and claimed his scuffle with cops during APEC would teach them otherwise.

But the 52-year-old's court record suggests he has, in the past, struggled to find respect for the law himself.

The implication is clear, the police were beating him because he had been convicted of a crime in the past, so he deserved it. And even if he didn't, well he did something wrong so maybe he started it. We're not even in court and the hit pieces on another victim of our nascent state terror apparatus have begun. From now on the only people who can complain about being beaten by cops while going about their lawful business are nuns and only if they were virgins at the time.

September 11 In Numbers

1 man



2 terms



3 wires



6 years



16 words



100 lies



558 detainees



3000 Americans



3774 soldiers



500,000 Iraqis



2,000,000 refugees



an eternity of suffering

Thumbsucker

The highlight of my time at work today was the little girl of about 4 I was chatting to while her mum picked out some ice cream to buy. She asked "what are those things on your teeth?", meaning my braces, and after I explained she told me all about her various trips to the dentist and how she's supposed to stop sucking her thumb because it's affecting the growth of her teeth (they looked like this). When it came time to go, she waved goodbye and as she left her mother said to her "If you don't stop sucking your thumb, you'll need braces too".

There was a short pause, and this little girl ran back and poked her head around the corner of the aisle and shouted at the top of her lungs "Did you suck your thumb?"! I had to reply in the negative, but I did call back that her mother was right- but I suspect she heard only the first part of my answer and her mother's entreaties will go unheeded.

Cute kid.

Update on my annoyances with Australia Post: some money went in my account last Tuesday for the templates I'd posted roughly 2 weeks earlier, then work phoned me on Friday to tell me that the previous week's templates (posted that Monday) had arrived. 'Next day' my arse, Australia Post.

Pedestrian Paradise

A man from a civilised country (Denmark) where car drivers don't rule every inch of ground has been to Sydney to offer his advice on how to improve the city for pedestrians. Come to Brisbane, Jan Gehl, see if you can talk some sense to the car-loving morons on the Brisbane City Council...

Politics, Possums!

He just might be this time...

You must read this. An explanation of the govt.'s current woes and, I think, a devastating body of evidence against a 'small target' strategy.

Thanks to the good people over at Crikey, the internal Liberal polling and analysis that the Murdoch tabloids were banging on about a few months back has been released to all. It’s a pity the journos didn’t seem to understand a word of it when it was delivered into their hot little hands, but now we can have a squiz at “Oz Track 33” the Cosby-Textor document and do what they couldn’t…. like, er…. actually understand it.

This document fills in the missing links to our regular polling analysis. We already know where the swings are happening, but this gives us the ‘why’ – it tells us the demographic composition of the swings and the issues that are driving voter change.

And it’s bleak for the Coalition – so bleak that…. Well, we’ll get to that shortly.

Possums Pollytics


Go read the rest.

Pissbolt

Don't worry John, you've still got Piers, Miranda and Tim Bliar.

Andrew Bolt

Sunday, September 09, 2007 at 07:24pm

Gee, APEC worked wonders - for Kevin Rudd:

Labor has extended its lead over the Coalition according to the latest Herald/Nielsen poll to be published in The Sydney Morning Herald tomorrow.

Labor’s two-party preferred vote rose two points to 57 per cent. The Coalition fell 2 points to 43 per cent.

That APEC would be no vote winner was obvious from months ago. It’s a measure of the tin ear of John Howard right now - after so long getting it right - that he:

A. Didn’t realise APEC would either bore or anger voters.

B. Still thinks selling the APEC Clayton’s declaration on global warming could give him a circuit breaker.

It’s over, and I don’t know how much more proof the Liberals need that they must change leaders right now, and not let Howard rush off to the Governor-General until that deed is done.

Howard has been a great leader, but his time is up. The party faces annihilation, and the loyalty of the Liberals must be not to Howard but the party he is leading to utter ruin.

Just filthy

Tonight's episode of Californication filthy porno was a bit heavier on plot but disappointingly light on sex. Loved the spanking scene though. There were only two spanks, but I'm sure a lot more spanking went on as Andrew Bolt continued his research into the program filthy porno.

I wonder if he's learned where the clitoris is located yet?

Peter Beattie has called it quits

Peter Beattie has resigned after 9 years as Queensland premier.

There's one good thing to say about Peter Beattie, and that's that he was a hell of a lot better than the alternative. He was also a massive populist, which had its good points, but was probably mostly bad.

Let's just hope one of his actions not motivated by populism, the forced council amalgamations, don't fuck up the ALP's chances of picking up the Queensland seats it need to win the Federal election. What a legacy that would be- Peter Beattie: the man responsible for keeping John Howard in power. He'd never live it down.

Kevin07 t-shirts have arrived!

Our Kevin07 shirts arrived this morning, we'll post pics tomorrow. Haven't even tried them on yet- I don't know how we managed to restrain ourselves...

A walk from St Lucia to Woolloongabba

View of the UQ CityCat terminal from the Eleanor Schonell bridge.

Gam and I yesterday took advantage of the first fine weather all week and went for a walk across the Eleanor Schonell bridge to the Mrs Flannery's organic supermarket in Woolloongabba (Gam will do the google map thingy so anyone who wants to find it can!).

There's always some idiot who ignores the 'buses only' signs for the bridge and has to chuck a U-turn.

Usually it's a 4WD, but not today.

The watchtower of the old Boggo Road jail.

Some giant instrument-y looking thing that was asking to be bashed with a stick- good fun!

On our way to the store we passed a massive hedge of rosemary- it must have been about 150cm high, and lush. We pinched a sprig of it on our way home to grow as a cutting, and filled our lemonade bottle with water from a bubbler to keep the rosemary from wilting.

We've been meaning to go to Mrs Flannery's again since our 'discovery' visit over a month ago, but what with the awful weather and being sick we didn't manage to find the time. We wanted to pick up some more of the tasty free trade ethiopian arabica beans that we bought last time (been subsisting on horrid pre-ground free trade coffee from Coles in the mean time), plus some spices (for last night's samoosas). I couldn't resist the carob-coated dried bananas (two of my favourite foods in one- and they were delicious!) from the bulk section, and we also picked up some Phoenix brand organic lemonade from the fridge. The lemonade was from New Zealand, so it's not like we were doing the environment any favours by drinking it, but it was delicious- just the right amount of tartness and sweetness with a nice clean finish, and very refreshing for our walk home in the sun.

We also passed a couple of Lifeline clothing bins at a school (Dutton Park primary or something). Every time I see a clothing bin there is a sign like this:


Followed by a scene like this:
Why are people so stupid/selfish? Lifeline volunteers have to pick that crap up!


On a nicer note, here are some cute lizards that we saw popping their heads out from a crack in an old log:




All photos by Gam.

Australia Rising

Special unconstitutional laws, not just for Muslims anymore

A FATHER of three wept yesterday as he revealed how crossing the road ahead of an APEC motorcade led to his violent arrest in front of his young son and a traumatic 22 hours in jail.

Greg McLeay was released on bail yesterday after his wife, Sophie, and children spent a sleepless Friday night worrying about him.

"Because of APEC I was not allowed to speak to him - even the lawyer couldn't," Mrs McLeay said.

"The children are traumatised. We spent the night sleeping together on the sofa. How does walking to yum cha with your 11-year-old son end up with 22-hours in jail and no access to a lawyer?"

Footage available on ninemsn showed Mr McLeay, a 52-year-old accountant from Sydney's North Shore, speaking to police in Pitt Street before four officers pushed him to the ground.

He could be clearly heard trying to explain that he was simply attempting to protect his glasses. He has a condition called astigmatism, which means he can barely see without them.

Mr McLeay was arrested under sweeping powers given to police for the APEC period that allows officers to arrest and hold people without bail until APEC ends.

Mr McLeay said he and his son, George, cycled into the city on Friday - the APEC public holiday - and met a friend, Stephen Carter, 40, to work on his accounts at Mr McLeay's Pitt Street office.

They walked out at lunchtime to go to Chinatown for yum cha. They were crossing the street to avoid a police cordon outside the Westin hotel when a police officer started shouting at them.

"I didn't know what was going on," Mr McLeay said.

"I asked which way to go and he directed me around the block. I started to walk away and he suddenly started yelling at me. It was like a fool's comedy.

"He threatened me with arrest and demanded my ID. Then this character pushed me and told me that I had assaulted a police officer.

"I was pushed up against the wall and then I was thrown to the ground and they kept telling me to put my hands behind my back. There must have been four of them pinning me to the ground.

"I was frogmarched down to the hotel's underground car park and then they tried to put another pair of cuffs on me. I was just crossing the road. Never have I felt so mortified, embarrassed and invaded. I feel violated."

Mr McLeay, who has three children - George, Cordelia, 6, and Isadora, 3 - began to cry as he added: "The worst thing is that this happened in front of my young son. You want your children to grow up respecting the police but how can they when they see this kind of thing?"

George stayed with Mr Carter and watched the arrest.

"I was really upset when I saw them take my dad. I'm going to throw away all my police videos now and go and buy Ocean's Thirteen," he said.

SMH

Smart kid. We've talked about the direction that Howard and his fetish for authoritarian power have taken the nation before. This is exactly what we were talking about. A bunch of government thugs assaulting a citizen for no reason other than they have the power and no one will hold them accountable. Even now Howard continues to insist the reason he and the pathetic state government had to turn Sydney into Pyongyang on the harbour was because of violent protesters and legions of terrorists which never eventuated.

I don't want to live in a country where 52 year old accountants are thrown against walls, beaten to the ground and arrested without bail for god knows how long for no reason other than the cops are bored. Maybe it's time we followed George's example and throw out all our police videos as well.

Samosas

Right now I'm busy trying to decide whether the samosas Gam cooked me for dinner are the best I've ever had...

The first time I ever tried samosas was in 1996 when I was in grade 7 and went with my friend Laura to a birthday party of a boy she knew in grade 8, Dylan. We hardly knew anyone there, so we just stood around talking and perving on boys we were too shy to talk to, when Dylan's mum put a plate of fried things on the table. They were so delicious I think we polished off the whole plate between us, then asked her what they were - she told us they were samosas.

I didn't even know Dylan was South African (or African of some description) until we went to his house and saw the massive green, yellow and black (and maybe red) flag with 'freedom' written across it and a face on it- I don't know whose face, but I assume an anti-apartheid figurehead like Mandela. I remember Dylan looked different, being so dark (and tiny- he was short!), but I guess up until then the only black people I knew were aboriginal so I didn't think twice about it. I also had no idea about the ethnic makeup of South Africa, i.e. that it has a massive Indian community, and consequently a far more diverse cuisine than Australia. Anyway, I have Dylan's Mum to thank for introducing me to samosas- I learned as best I could to cook them from a recipe in a Community Aid Abroad (now Oxfam) cookbook my parents bought me, but they were never up to scratch. I didn't taste proper samosas again until 2003 when I first went to Botswana with Gam!

In Botswana, many (if not all) the supermarkets have a hot food cabinet for takeaway style food, and the Broadhurst Spar happens to have really tasty vegetable samosas (although 'samoosa' seems to be the predominant spelling used in Botswana), and the only good ones I'd ever had since I first tried them at Dylan's birthday party- up until Gam's fine effort tonight, that is!

Samosa-licious.



Picture from this blog.

Stay the course, John

I'm not going to beg, but I want to echo Magic Bellybutton's sentiments by saying I will be bitterly disappointed if John Howard steps down prior to the next election. I will be bitterly, bitterly disappointed. I want to see him thrashed, torn to little pieces and thoroughly humiliated. It won't be for the right reasons- most of Australia is too stupid to condemn the man for his policy of human rights abuses of refugees, of allowing aboriginal people to rot in impoverished communities except when it's politically expedient and presents an opportunity to steal back Native Title land. But Australia appears willing to punish Howard's policy of screwing ordinary workers at every opportunity, and so long as he gets what's coming to him, that's alright with me.

I want Labor to thrash a Liberal Party led by Howard, not by a cowardly Costello who's been handed a poisoned chalice.

I want John Howard to lose his seat to the awesome Maxine McKew. I want him gone. I want finality.

Downer pouts over Rudd's popularity.

"Well... I'm the foreign minister and you're not. So there!"

Alexander just can't let go of his jealousy over Kevin Rudd's fluency in mandarin impressing the Chinese delegation at APEC:

Asked if he was impressed by Mr Rudd's language skills, Mr Downer, a French speaker, said he was not one to flaunt his talent with foreign tongues.

"Remember I am the foreign minister so whether I can speak French or not seems to be reasonably immaterial.

"It's not something that I can speak French that I have paraded in all of my years in politics, though it's been quite useful to me as the foreign minister from time to time.

[...]

"I did the French language course and Mr Rudd did the Chinese language course. I did mine in two months and he did his in two years, that could say something him and me or something about the two languages. I think the former but that sounds a tad partisan."

I've studied French in year 8 at highschool for the 12 compulsory months, and got 98% for the year. I studied Mandarin for 2 and a half years full time at uni, got credits and distinctions (65-85%) and I'm nowhere near being fluent in either language. Not even close.

Either Alexander Downer is lying about being 'a French speaker', or he studied for a lot longer than 2 months.

Besides, French is dead easy compared with Mandarin. I should know.

Ladies And Gentlemen, We Got Him!

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Members of an Australian TV comedy show, one of them dressed as Osama bin Laden, drove through two security checkpoints Thursday before being stopped near the Sydney hotel where U.S. President George W. Bush is staying.

The stunt embarrassed Sydney police who have imposed the tightest security measures in city history for a summit of leaders from Pacific Rim countries, including Bush.

CNN, with pic

A protest to get behind

Bums not bombs- a mooning with a message.

"Sign Kyoto you wankers!"

Now this is a fine example of a great Aussie protest- one that involves mooning the motorcades of foreign dignitaries and giving a '21 bum salute' to the 21 nations of APEC.

Nice going, guys.

Facebook disapproves of breastfeeding

You can meet a President while breastfeeding,
but you can't post your photo on Facebook...

I just read in the SMH that Facebook has been removing pictures that feature breastfeeding from women's profiles, and has even banned some women who resisted its actions. You don't need to be a breastfeeding mother to know how idiotic Facebook's decision, presumably aimed at catering to a tiny minority of perverted prudes who think that breastfeeding is some kind of sex act, is.

I wrote them an email and joined up to the group 'Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!', and invited all 72 people in our friends list to join (some of them may no doubt be bemused, but Gam and I are both in fields where we've learned a lot about the importance of breast milk to a baby's health). I urge anyone who is a member of Facebook to join this group, and if you can be bothered, write them an email too.

Dear Facebook,

What on earth is wrong with you people, banning women from facebook who
post pictures of themselves breastfeeding? Breastfeeding is legal, it's
natural -it's not 'obscene'. Your decision is also massively sexist-
Facebook doesn't seem to have a problem where pictures of shirtless guys
at the beach are posted, yet it has a problem with women showing a bit
of areola while in the act of feeding their babies. If anything pictures
of people bottle-feeding their baby with formula are more obscene
because they're promoting a method of feeding babies that is detrimental
to their health. I haven't heard about Facebook getting its knickers in
a knot over that- I wonder why?

Facebook is catering to a tiny minority of morons who don't realise that
if they think there is something sexy or obscene about a woman
breastfeeding they have problems and should be seeking psychological
help. Grow a brain, guys.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah

Details of the exchanges between Facebook and some of the 'lactivists' (great word, isn't it?) are available on the blog 'One small step for breastfeeding...'

The Good News Is That The Rat Problem Is Solved...

The Howard factor made it cool to be conservative and delivered success; now it presages defeat

THIS is one of the hardest columns I will write. John Howard has been the finest prime minister Australia has had. He has overseen extraordinary economic success, created the conditions for a whole new class of aspirational Australians to prosper from the inevitable forces of globalisation, confronted the scourge of terrorism and has fundamentally realigned the political landscape in this country on so many fronts.

Under Howard it became cool to be a conservative. He rebuilt a political philosophy of individual responsibility for a new generation. His legacy is profound. From workplace reform to welfare to indigenous politics, to our sense of national identity, Howard has changed the nation in a way very few leaders ever do. Each step rankled his opponents as they clung to old orthodoxies. Yet Howard, through sheer dint of character and intellectual fortitude, prevailed.

But now he must go.

The Australian

First. BAHAHAHAHA! Now that we've gotten that out of the way, you can almost hear the skittering of her little claws on the deck as she takes a running leap off the SS Howard. Luck for Janet, rats are excellent swimmers.

Best comment:

Dinsdale Piranha
Fri 07 Sep 07 (02:43am)

Good lord. It’s just Piers and Dennis left in the bunker now.

The Chimperor Speaks

Even for someone as gaffe-prone as US President George W Bush, he was in rare form today, confusing APEC with OPEC and transforming Australian troops into Austrians.

Mr Bush's tongue started slipping almost as soon as he began talking at a business forum on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney.

"Mr prime minister, thank you for your introduction," he told Prime Minister John Howard. "Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit."

As the audience of several hundred people erupted in laughter, Mr Bush corrected himself and joked: "He invited me to the OPEC summit next year." Australia has never been a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Later in his speech, Mr Bush recounted how Mr Howard had gone to visit "Austrian troops" last year in Iraq. There are, in fact, no Austrian troops there. But Australia has about 1,500 military personnel in and around the country.

Upon finishing his speech, Mr Bush took the wrong way off-stage and, looking slightly perplexed, had to be redirected by Mr Howard to a centre-stage exit.

But not before a veteran White House correspondent seized the opportunity to ask Mr Bush whether there had been any new message in his speech. Apparently misunderstanding the question, he bristled and asked, "Haven't you been listening to my past speeches?" before turning away.

Brisbane Times

This the man Howard has wet dreams over. They guy who didn't invite him to the Azores when they decided to go to war. A moron who doesn't even know who we are or where he is.
The Liberal party are pathetic, fawning lickspittles. If you're going to bend over and spread your cheeks in such a public way, at least insist on payment. As we say in Austrian, get fucked. I hope they do more joint press conferences, it's hilarious, just think if they combined their poll numbers they might be able to make a majority.

Disgusting

When the police crashed through her door one night in 1996, they left Corinna Horvath senseless and with a horribly shattered nose. In a lasting piece of collateral damage, the lawyer who took on — and won — her case was left with a bill of nearly $500,000, a contempt of court charge and a possible jail sentence.

In what may have been a rush of blood during a successful 38-day trial, solicitor Mark Morgan agreed to underwrite Ms Horvath's case in which she was awarded $150,000 damages for assault. But more than a decade after she was bashed, Ms Horvath is yet to receive a cent of that money. Mr Morgan is to front another court after failing to pay $436,877 in legal costs.

Mr Morgan is listed to appear in the County Court next month on contempt of court charges. The four police who used what the original trial judge described as "unnecessary and grossly excessive violence" during a raid on Ms Horvath's home have never been charged and three are still in the force.

The long, confusing legal saga and its possible personal ramifications have left the northern suburbs solicitor unapologetic but subdued.

"It's becoming a bit of a drama," he said. "What's happened is me, being overly exuberant about civil liberties, getting myself into a bit of a predicament."

Two years ago, when informed of the contempt proceedings, Mr Morgan used a more colourful term: "I had this thing called a social conscience and, as a result,

I am in more shit than a Werribee duck."

Mr Morgan said that under the Police Regulation Act the State Government was able to say it was not responsible for the misconduct of police who "miscarry in their discretion".

"What it all boils down to is that if cops go on a bashing spree, the individual police are liable," he said. "It's all very well for the Government to distance itself from rogue officers. But when rogue officers can keep working as policeman, face no charges, face no financial penalty and they come after me, saying 'You owe us 500 grand', something's rotten."

The episode began in March 1996 when two police officers, senior constables David Jenkin and Stephen Davison, stopped Ms Horvath, then 21, and her partner, Craig Love, and declared her car unroadworthy. Believing the couple were ignoring the roadworthy sticker, the next day the officers illegally entered their Somerville home.

Knowing they did not have a warrant, Ms Horvath ordered them off her property. The officers called for reinforcements. When six others arrived a decision was made to raid the house, breaking down the door if necessary, and arrest Ms Horvath and Mr Love.

"They kicked the door down and I remember trying to run," Ms Horvath recalled this week. "I heard the smashing of the glass and then I just felt like I had done a somersault and when I woke up I was in the divvy van."

Mr Love was beaten on the back with a police baton. Another couple, David and Colleen Kniese, the parents of two children inside the home at the time, were also injured. Ms Horvath's jaw was broken and her nose so badly shattered that she spent five days in Frankston Hospital.

The Age

We need a Bill of Rights. We need it yesterday. You can't trust roaches like Victoria's Police Minister, Tim Holding to do the right thing. He's evidently quite happy to sit back and not worry about the fact that the pigs who committed this disgusting crime against a citizen they are paid to protect are still working as 'policemen'. Tim Holding, you are a pathetic, miserable, cowardly excuse for a human being. I have no idea how, or if, you sleep at night. Victorians, know that it is LEGAL for your exemplary police force to assault, unlawfully arrest, falsely imprison and maliciously prosecute you. If you're lucky enough to get a civil judgement, the state, in the form of the weaselly Holding will absolve itself of any responsibility for it's bestial employees.

You Cannot Be Serious...

The American media turned on Serena Williams on Wednesday, labelling the former world number one as "classless" and "graceless" after her sullen reaction to her US Open exit at the hands of Justine Henin.

Top seed Henin beat the American 7-6 6-1 in the quarter-finals for the third consecutive grand-slam event on Tuesday but a despondent Williams gave the Belgian scant praise.

"I just think she made a lot of lucky shots and I made a lot of errors," Williams said at her news conference.

"I really don't feel like talking about it. It's like I don't want to get fined. That's the only reason I came. I can't afford to pay the fines because I keep losing."

Players who fail to appear for post-match news conferences face fines from tennis officials.

Williams's words and manner were greeted with widespread disdain.

"(Williams) met the media afterward like a rattlesnake meets a ground squirrel," wrote Bill Dwyer, in the Los Angeles Times.

"If anybody was expecting perspective afterward, or maybe a gracious nod to a better effort by an opponent, forget it. We had sullen Serena. Snippy Serena. Snarly Serena."

In the New York Times, under the headline, "Williams needs a lesson in etiquette", Selena Roberts wrote: "Who's classless now?

"The grumpy, borderline nasty disposition that Williams displayed after her loss was a little jarring considering she had her own lack of preparation to blame for giving in so easily to Henin.

"Serena was bitter, angry and upset. She directed some of that at Henin. Who could use charm school now?"

SMH

Maybe she should have said:

"I am not having points taken off me by an incompetent old fool. You are the pits of the world."

"My greatest strength is that I have no weaknesses."

"When I said, 'You're a disgrace to mankind,' I was talking to myself, not the umpire."

Or even:

"You got an appointment to get to? What the fuck do you care, asshole?"

Now when John McEnroe says that, he's 'colourful'. I guess Serena's problem must be too much colour.

Bolt Defamed

The Clitoris, it's not just an imaginary place your mates joke about.

Looks like Defamer have come to the same conclusions that we have about Andrew "clitoris in a vagina" Bolt

Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt certainly loathed the show, labelling Ten executives Grant Blackley and Peter Falloon "pornographers" in his own thoroughly dramatic, new paragraph-happy way.

(Neither of) these two dignified men appear in any of Californication's sex scenes.

It wasn't them you saw on Monday getting oral sex from a nun, giving it to someone else's wife or romping with any of the several women, who appeared pumping and moaning, buck naked, in the show's first half-hour.

Nor was that Falloon you saw mimicking a clitoris in a vagina with his fingers, or Blackley playing a little girl, prattling about the shaven vagina he/she just saw.

It does seem appalling that Australian television would broadcast images of women "pumping and moaning" during sex, a response you begin to suspect Andrew Bolt has never quite managed to elicit from a lady friend the further down the column you read. His description of the clitoris being in the vagina leads us to believe that perhaps the show, in its attempt to enlighten through sight gags, has simply confused the conservative fellow. Still, he uses the word "vagina" not once but twice in his missive, which makes it a rollicking and traumatic enjoyable Bolt column by anyone's standards.

Defamer

Andrew Bolt and a lady friend... I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. Seriously dude, just ask your wife. I'm sure she'll let you watch it. Otherwise you'll have to crank out a column every week so you can say you're 'researching' it and the vaseline and kleenex are in case you punch the TV again to stop the sin.

The Chaser's War On Fascism

NSW's Finest

The Chaser team's arrest after driving a fake motorcade into Sydney's restricted zone - with one member dressed as Osama bin Laden - proves APEC security is a success, the NSW Police Minister says.

An angry David Campbell denied he was embarrassed by the comedians' ability to penetrate APEC's restricted zone - rather, he was pleased the "multi-layered'' security had worked.

He said the prank was inappropriate and he "did not see the funny side at all''.

SMH

Oh come on David, there are plenty of funny sides.

After millions of dollars; thousands of coppers; a massive wall; spying on student groups for months' lists of 'excluded persons'; special laws and veiled threats about water cannon, a bunch of jokers were able to drive what could have been a massive truck bomb within range of an actual worthwhile target. It's hilarious! I mean come on, you look like an idiot. They got past two check points pretending to be Canadians with one of them dressed as Osama bin Laden, a man who looks like this:



It's great, you're obviously completely incompetent when it comes to anything other than beating non violent protesters and harassing anyone who photographs your useless wall. Look on the brightside though, because we live in a free country, no thanks to your current efforts, you won't be dragged outside and shot for your failure. It's something of an irony I think. Like I've said before, thank your sweet Jesus no terrorists are actually seriously after Australian targets because if they were, our governments are far too incompetent to stop them.

Currently the boys from the Chaser are being held by Campbell's goons until they decide what to charge them with, or they hand over their tapes, whichever happens first.

Like a contraceptive, only concrete.

Spurred by an item on SBS news just now (and I only switched on because it wasn't time for ABC news yet- are you listening, SBS?):

I am so sick of hearing Israel's anti-Palestinian wall referred to by the media in the propaganda jargon of the Israeli government. It's not a 'barrier', it's a fucking wall. Just like the Berlin wall, except it is built partly with the aim of stealing more Palestinian land.

Our media shouldn't be pandering to Israel's wishes by playing along. Israel built the wall, they should be able to handle having it called exactly what it is.

A is for Arse-kisser

In pictures, just for Erez Sharabani

Erez Sharabani maaaaate, welcome to 'Straya.

Being new here, there's a few things you'll have to learn. First you'll have to pass some stupid test introduced by a set of puffed-up little men who pride themselves on having the appearance of hating funny swarthy-looking people such as yourself as much as the bogans who make up a significant part of the 'Strayan community do. Just because you're from Israel doesn't mean that you won't get called a 'fucken Leb' or told to 'go back where you came from' on a regular basis.

Next, you'll have to learn a healthy sense of disrespect for our chief wankers elected leaders. No-one trusts a politician, let alone sucks up to them. Which brings me to my next point: no-one likes an arse-kisser. Except the person having their rosebud smooched- your homework is to learn about John Howard's relationship with George W Bush over the last 5 years or so.

The lesson you should be drawing from this is that if your 'citizenship' teacher goes a little crazy from the stifling Howard-loving act she's forced to put on in order to get by in her job and writes 'dick' on the board where John Howard's name should be, the proper response is not to email the Prime Minister, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews or the NSW Board of studies and have the teacher suspended from her job. You're 40, not 4- having a tanty over not getting picked for frantically waving your hand in the air "Miss! Miss!" to proudly spout the right answer is enough to get you a big fat 'F' in Australian society. Instead, you should be carefully observing your teacher and picking up clues as to how Australians engage with politics in this country. The reason there's a healthy lack of respect for our political leaders is because they're generally a bunch of liars and cheats who fail to respect really important things like human rights.

Besides, Erez, if sucking up is something you feel you really have to do, at least be smart about it. Suck up to Kevin Rudd- it looks like John Howard is on the way out.

TSI Studies diary- assessments, a sense of place

Tozer St, Kempsey

We had our first assessment today- I mentioned at the beginning of Semester that the Torres Strait Islander studies subject I'm doing has a rather non-traditional assessment format, and even now I have no idea how I went. Basically, the assessment is of how well we communicate and share ideas within a small group. My two fellow group members are Americans, but one has lived in Australia long enough to pick up a hybrid Aussie-US accent, which is rather charming. She's an anthropology student, while the other is a chemistry student- when we were introducing ourselves I said how our areas of study were all related- I'm not sure if they understood, but nutrition has both anthropological and chemistry-related facets. We get on well, anyway. The assessment consists of a 'free write' on a particular question (today's was 'what is identity?') followed by a discussion with fellow group members, during which we agree on 5 key points. I'm not sure if our 5 key points were all gleaned from what we'd written, because we thought of some more things during our conversation. Or maybe we just came up with some more coherent ways to say what we'd written in our free-writes. Either way, I don't really know how this thing is marked.

Something I've been trying to do since the beginning of semester is guess the age of our main lecturer, Georgina. I had her pegged as 'middle aged' because she's a mother of 4, including a 21 year old daughter, and is lecturing a class at uni but she has a face that sometimes looks so young I can hardly believe she's much older than I am (23). Today she made my jaw drop (not literally, thankfully) with the revelation that she's a grandmother! She also has a 3 year old, so she's definitely not an old grandma, but I tell you, no-one would believe it to look at her.

She told us a bit about her life- how her father worked on a pearling boat and would come home once a year with supplies of food, not having been paid (the money was put into a 'special account' that he could supposedly access from Thursday Island (TI). I don't know if he was someone whose wages were stolen by the government, but apparently that practice went on right up until the 1970s, so I suppose that might have been the case.

When she was 9 her family moved to Thursday Island because that was the only place where the serious medical care that her father needed on a regular basis was available. On TI she finished school before getting 'rebellious' and moving to Adelaide for university studies. She had a lot of good things to say about Adelaide's urban planning, but said she found it difficult learning to get around the city, look after herself and cope with the changeable weather (later I'll share an excerpt I jotted down from an issue of the Torres News on the 'coldest July on record' in the Torres Strait... I can dream). So she transferred to Brisbane before giving up and going home.

As an aside, one of the things I've noticed (and mentioned before) is the incredibly strong connection that all the TSI people we've had speak to us have with the Islands. The Islands are always 'home'. They were 'home' for Auntie Matilda, who's lived in Brisbane for 20 years, and home for Uncle Steve, who's lived here even longer (I think). More on that in a bit.

After going home to the TSI, Georgina got a job (in some government or council department) for a few years before going for a promotion to a position that she knew she was capable of fulfilling. She was told that she didn't get the job because she didn't have qualifications- a uni degree. So she went back to uni and, now with two degrees, is having trouble getting a job in the TSI again because, she said, she is seen as 'too educated' and a bit of an outsider by virtue of her education and having lived outside the TSI for some time.

She said her husband, a crayfisherman, tells her every day that Brisbane is 'killing him' and that he wants to go back home. She also said that whenever they can they'll drive to the beach at Wynnum just so they can be near the salt water and breathe the salt air. Given some similarities I've noted before and also the fact that Gam's parents both come from places with a dependence upon the sea for living I mean to ask Gam's dad sometime about his sense of attachment to 'his' place. I guess that's one of the things this class has done in addition to teaching me a bit more about the Torres Strait Islands and the people- it's taught me a bit more about how important culture and place can be. When we went to Anloga (where Daddy was born), Daddy showed us the spot near the beach where he planned to build the house he would retire to. I get the impression he and Mummy go back whenever they can, but they do have family and business interests there so I never wondered about any sort of deeper attachment. It's that connection that 'Gina and everyone else has spoken about that really impresses me- I've certainly never felt attached to a place even though I spent all but 6 months of the first 18 years of my life in Kempsey. Rather, I felt the place where I grew up would kill me if I couldn't escape.

Georgina told us she's going to Kempsey in a couple of weeks for something called Crocfest. It was all I could do not to tell her to rescue everyone she could and bring them to Brisbane...

A park near Kempsey High School

Note: because this post is so long I altered the time to read 24 hours earlier than I actually posted it so it didn't obscure all today's posts. Blog fraud committed in the name of aesthetics- guilty...

Still waiting, Kevin...

We still haven't got our Kevin07 t-shirts *insert impatient foot-tapping noises here* so I emailed yesterday to find out when we can expect them- we were told in a follow-up email shortly after our purchase that delivery could take 'up to 2 weeks'. Well, 'up to' has been and gone, and so has our credit card statement for that month *tap tap tap*.

Oh well, it's not like I can threaten to vote for John Howard if Kev and his team don't get us our t-shirts on time...

UPDATE: just received a reply with just enough grovelling to put me in a forgiving frame of mind:

Dear Sarah

Thank you for your enquiry regarding your KEVIN07 gear
order. We do apologise again for the late delivery of your
order. The problem has been the fact that we have had to
both make and print new t shirts, not having anticipated the
demand. The worst affected were the women's small and medium
sizes, and the male XL size; we still don't have these
reprinted and are expecting to start dispatching the backlog
early next week. There were also delays on the male large
sizes but these have now all been dispatched.

If you have not received your order by the end of next week,
please do email us at info@kevin07.com.au.

Again, we value your support and we are very sorry for this
delay. We are fulfillling the orders as fast as we can.

Kind regards

KEVIN07 team

Playboy Jokes of the Month

My Playboy magazine was delivered so late this month I was beginning to wonder if it had again been mistakenly delivered to St Lucia the Caribbean island instead of St Lucia the suburb. So, it's late, but this month there are some good jokes (and some real boobs- a rarity in Playboy these days).
==========================

Q: Why are women like pianos?
A: If they're not upright, they're grand.


Have you heard of the new deodorant spray called Umpire?
It's for foul balls.


A woman went to her doctor and complained that every time she sneezed she had an orgasm, The doctor in amazement said,
"My goodness, that's terrible. Have you been taking anything for it?"
"Yes," she replied, "pepper."


The final one I'll dedicate to our friend Niall...


Q: Why do Scotsmen wear kilts?
A: Because the sound of zippers scares the sheep away

&$%*#! Australia Post

I'm a bit annoyed...

I contacted my employers last week to find out why I hadn't been paid for my work the week before, and they said they hadn't received my completed templates: basically I do 10 hours work and post in the templates. When the templates arrive, they transfer money to my account. It sounds fair enough, except if I put in the 10 hours and the templates never arrive at their office, I don't get paid. I've already posted off my templates for last week, which should arrive at their office today. I know Australia post sometimes gets it really wrong (I once posted an 'express' satchel within Brisbane on a Monday that never even got to its destination until that Friday), but over a week to post within Brisbane? I know it's not my employer's fault, but if I'm going to be giving up 10 hours a week that I could be spending studying or even practicing piano or doing housework- two things that I've been doing very little of since I started working, I want to be compensated for my time. If those templates don't turn up at their office this week I'm either going to quit or not do any more hours until the templates show up at their office and I get paid. I'm certainly not going to put in another week's work and risk being down 20 hours without pay before I finally decide to quit. I've already declared the gross income for that week to Centrelink, too, seeing as I'm compelled to declare it even if I haven't yet received it.

Grrr.

Channel 7 bow to Bush, Howard interests

The admirable Mr Melrose.

Businessman Ian Melrose is funding a $500 000 advertising campaign during APEC to highlight abuses by the Indonesian military in West Papua and East Timor. Ads will be running on SBS, Channel 9 and in the SMH. Melrose also paid for advertising time on Channel 7, who then turned cowardly and refused to run the ads, calling them 'repetitive'. Like Howard's $60 million WorkChoices workplace relations (or whatever they're calling it now) ads aren't repetitive. Like Harvey Norman and Super A-mart ads aren't repetitive (and loud!). All ads are repetitive if they're run more than once. Why are Channel 7 weeing their pants over a single $500 000 advertising campaign? Are they hoping to curry favour with the Howard government so they'll be blessed with more of the billions of taxpayers' dollars in advertising that Howard feels are his to throw around? Are they hoping to be number one choice for Liberal party advertising during the election campaign?

Pathetic.

Also pathetic are all the TV stations who refuse to run lines that are entirely, if uncomfortably, truthful, featuring scenarios such as the following:

Spurred by reading about the death of a young Timorese girl from worm infestation, he has run ad campaigns against the Howard Government's tough negotiations with East Timor over seabed oil and gas resources.

Commercial TV stations and even SBS have baulked at stark lines such as: "When you steal from Third World countries, you kill their kids."

Cowardly. If the TV stations don't like the truth, maybe they should devote themselves to doing something about it, rather than refusing to acknowledge the consequences of Australia's actions.

Your country needs YOU

To vote!

John Howard has revealed that he plans to cling on, limpet-like, living in luxury at Kirribilli and bringing down the country on the heads of its most vulnerable people in the same way he has been for the last decade.

In an interview to mark the 40th anniversary of ABC radio's AM program, the 68-year-old prime minister said he hoped to continue his regular appearances on the agenda-setting show.

[...]

"I'm still planning to appear on it for some years yet, so I look forward to the next interview."

There's only one sure-fire way to make sure Australia gets rid of Howard for good, and that's for him to suffer a humiliating dual defeat at the hands of Maxine McKew in Bennelong at the federal election later this year and for Kevin Rudd to win government.

Go Maxine!

On TV

Speaking of TV shows (of which we've been watching next to none lately), I'm really looking forward to the return of The Chaser on Wednesday at 9pm, and the new Summer Heights High by Chris Lilley at 9.30pm, both on ABC. The only thing that annoys me is that all the good TV is on during the busiest part of semester, without fail.

Kyleifornication

Gam and I watched Californication on Ten tonight (how could we miss it, after a ringing endorsement by Andrew Bolt?), and during the numerous ad breaks, switched to Andrew Denton's interview with Kyle Sandilands.

I think the only time I've mentioned Kyle Sandilands on this blog previously is here, but I'm generally in accordance with MB and Dave Hughes: the man is a massive dickhead. Hearing the story of how his mother and stepfather kicked him out of home at 15 for holding a party in their absence (Australia would have an awful lot of homeless teenagers if every parent behaved like this), at least in part explained how the man can be insecure enough to have this kind of mindset:

Sandilands admitted to targeting listeners who left negative comments about him on his radio station's website.

"I'd ring them up from the office ... a few hours before we'd go on air and I'd think 'I'm going to get this Tim' " said the Australian Idol judge. "'I'm going to tell this Tim what I think, who does he think he is?'

Now, I don't earn millions of dollars a year, and yet if someone said nasty stuff about me in the comments on this blog I couldn't give a rat's arse. I might delete the comments, but I wouldn't go out of my way to find out where they came from and give them a piece of my mind. I wouldn't waste a minute of my day on someone like that. But Sandilands, who has a personal (financial) net worth several million times my own, is insecure enough to waste some of his allotted 24 hours a day trying to get back at nobodies -people like me who bag him out for being a dickhead. As it turned out, Kyle's story was a bit of an anticlimax:

And some lady would answer the phone and I'd say, 'I want to speak to Tim' and this 10-year-old kid would come on and go, 'hello it's Tim'. And I would think, 'oh my God! This is a 10-year-old freckly little kid'.

But the fact he felt he needed to ring in the first place really speaks volumes.

lolhoward goes to APEC

Howard put up a lame vid, trying to look like a statesman against an APEC backdrop. I love the soundtrack, probably Lesbian Seagull or some shit. It's meant to be inspirational but it just looks like an ad for a retirement home.

Liberal HQ has realised you can approve comments on YouTube. I'm sure Agnes from the bowls club figured it out.

Thanks for apec paul keating!

What was howard doing at the time?

In August, 1988, Howard created controversy with the following comment about Asian immigration into Australia:

"I do believe that if it is - in the eyes of some in the community - that it's too great, it would be in our immediate-term interest and supporting of social cohesion if it were slowed down a little, so the capacity of the community to absorb it was greater."

"I don't think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say 'we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else'."

Riverfestival and a giant bloody headcold

A 'your rights at work' sticker on the way back from Indooroopilly. Come to think of it, we may have actually put it there on a previous walk!

On Saturday we walked to Indooroopilly to get a Medicare refund and then back home. I felt abnormally tired and sore after the walk and had a nasty feeling in my throat that I hoped was the result of not having enough water to drink on the walk. Feeling didn't go away, but around 5pm we hiked from our place, over the Eleanor Schonell bridge to Highgate Hill to a crowded park (with a very good view) to see the River festival fireworks, and by the time I'd sat for an hour and a half being smoked all over by a bunch of bitches who were at the park mainly to swill loads of drinks and chain smoke (not just over us, but over the numerous families, counting at least 4 toddlers, who were seated immediately behind us), I was damn sure it was a real sore throat.

The view

The chain smoking morons.

No complaining now, because I'm pretty sure I haven't got Teh Killer Flu, and my sore throat's gone, but you know when you have a cold and you feel fine everywhere except for your head? I always wish I had a spare head so I could just remove the diseased, sinusy one that's sneezing and snotting everywhere and replace it with a healthy one. Goddammit.

Gam's crazy 'apeture priority' shot taken without a tripod!

Fireworks.

More fireworks.

Ms Snotty and handsome, healthy Gam

Yet more fireworks (they had about 15 minutes worth of fireworks stretched over a good half hour... could have done better, really).

F111 dump-and-burn, with all the smog from the fireworks visible.

Was disappointed to read on the Brisbane Times website the next day that an 'extensive cleanup' of the Southbank area was required after the fireworks for continuation of the festival the next day. What sort of idiots go along to a festival to celebrate their river and then dump all their rubbish right next to it? Fuckwits.

Dreamer

Between Australians and the Irish there has always been a special bond. From the Irish convicts we have inherited an irreverent humour, and a big-drinking culture along with a particular brand of Catholicism. In more recent times, the two countries have enjoyed upbeat economies and falling unemployment. But there the similarities end.

Unlike Australia, the Irish Government has acknowledged that entrenched poverty can exist in the midst of affluence. No matter how glowing the economic indicators, the Irish understood that a rising tide of prosperity, for one reason or another, failed to lift all boats, and it resolved to tackle the conundrum head-on.

Ireland introduced a national anti-poverty plan in 1997 and success has been dramatic. In 10 years it has slashed what it calls its "consistent poverty" rate from 15 per cent to less than 5 per cent. Now it aims to cut that to below 2 per cent.

Ireland is among 22 of 30 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries to implement a specific national strategy to reduce disadvantage. The Australian Government is one of the hold-outs. It has steadfastly resisted all entreaties to adopt a similar, concerted, whole-of-government assault on poverty. It is time to reconsider that stance.

SMH

Bob Hawke had a similar idea. "By 1990 no Australian child need live in poverty." He spent the rest of his life being mocked for setting an ambitious but worthwhile goal. With that in mind, where is the capital for visions like that? If someone shows up, promises the stars and voters and venal politicians mock them for only reaching the moon, where will ideas like that come from? Hawke got nailed on semantic grounds. Of course you can't keep every single child out of poverty, it's the bloody idea that's important. It's impossible to save every heart attack patient but you don't see emergency wards aiming to save "a number of cardiac arrests that falls within a public level of comfort". It's pathetic and it's why we'll only get grubby, self serving politicians in power.

Suicide Pact

Prime Minister John Howard has promised to stand by the United States in terms of Australia's presence in Iraq on the eve of an American reassessment of the recent military surge in the troubled nation.

US President George W Bush will return home early next week from the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-Operation forum in Sydney to hear a report from General David Petraeus, the US commander in Baghdad.

Mr Howard said Australia should stand by its ally in difficult times.

"It's very difficult times for the US," Mr Howard told reporters in Sydney.

"One of the things that influenced my thinking is the belief that in the difficult time for your major ally, you should deliver as much international support and display as much international solidarity with your most important ally as is most appropriate.

SMH

Hypocrisy

THE breathtaking extent of corruption perpetrated by the family of the former Kenyan leader, Daniel arap Moi, has been exposed in a secret report that uncovered a web of shell companies, secret trusts and frontmen that his entourage used to funnel hundreds of millions of pounds into about 30 countries.

The 110-page report by the international risk consultancy Kroll, and seen by The Guardian, alleges that relatives and associates of Mr Moi siphoned off perhaps as much as £2 billion ($5 billion) of government money. If true, it would put the Mois on a par with Africa's other great kleptocrats, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nigeria's Sani Abacha.

The assets included multimillion-pound properties in London, New York and South Africa, as well as a 10,000-hectare property in Australia and bank accounts containing hundreds of millions of pounds.

SMH

Remember this?

The Federal Government will seek to revoke student visas held by eight children of senior members of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwean regime.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer today announced the measure as part of a strengthening of Australia's sanctions against the African nation.

SMH

Daniel Arap Moi's work:

Persecution of ethnic groups associated with the political opposition. Since 1991 the Government has been responsible for unleashing terror and expelling certain ethnic groups from the Rift Valley Province. Around 300,000 people have been internally displaced and cannot resettle on their land because of the threat of violence. Around 1,500 people have died in ‘tribal clashes’, most of them belonging to ethnic groups associated with the opposition.

Silencing independent organizations and the media. In February 1995 two independent organizations were banned: Clarion, a research group which had just published a study detailing widespread government corruption; and the Mwaganza Trust, which has campaigned for constitutional and legal reform. A critical Catholic magazine, Inooro, was also banned.

Harassment and persecution of opposition politicians. This has been a hallmark of Moi’s presidency throughout but has been particularly bad in the last year. In February Moi ordered that anyone who insulted him be arrested. In June he blocked registration of a new political party, Safina, and denounced one of its leaders, white conservationist Richard Leakey, as a racist colonialist; shortly after, 100 armed vigilantes stormed Leakey’s home demanding the departure of ‘the colonialist’.

NI

We don't have any trouble taking Moi's stolen money but we get high and mighty enough to punish the children of people who are elected officials in Mugabe's government. You can bet that if Mugabe has investments in Australia they're of sufficient value to be off limits to the govt.

Another excerpt

From the same paper quoted in the previous post.

Section 51 (xxvi) of the Australian Constitution is commonly known as the ‘races power’. It enabled the federal parliament to make laws with respect to: ‘The people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws’. It was this power which was changed by the success of the 1967 referendum giving the Commonwealth power over ‘the aboriginal race’ as well as all other races by deleting the specifying phrase. This does not mean that the races power has been abolished. Australia has no Bill of Rights to protect its citizens and to ensure that all are treated equally regardless, in this case, of race.

For some recent context on Australia's non-existant Bill of Rights, see Mikey's post.

Does Beaconsfield ring a bell?

The Tabo family.

This relates to an incident last year about which I posted a link to Lisa's blog, given that she was the first (only?) blogger I read that picked up on the subject. I followed up with a short post a week later.

One of the lecturers for my Torres Strait Islander Studies subject recently sent the students two papers. Here is an excerpt from the first- it makes some very interesting points:

On 19 May 2006, Prime Minister John Howard held a reception for Russell and Webb at Parliament House in Canberra. It should go without saying that no reception was held for the Tabos. Howard gave a speech in which he held up the two miners as a mirror for the nation.
They embody, he said:

All of the things that we pride ourselves on as distinctively Australian characteristics at work- we saw guts, we saw resilience, we saw courage, we saw strength, enormous endurance.

(ABC News Online, 2006b)

Almost three weeks earlier, on 10 May, Inspector Russell Rhodes of the Queensland police, paid tribute to the Tabos:

‘They have tremendous resilience, these people’, Insp. Rhodes said. ‘They’re experienced sea people and they have a tremendous determination to survive’.
(Age, 2006)

Certainly Rhodes is a lowly police inspector and Howard is Australia’s prime minister but Howard has never commented publicly on the Tabos’ story so it has been left to Rhodes to present Australia’s tribute. Howard uses the inclusive ‘we’; we Australians. Who are ‘we’ here? Rhodes gives ‘them’ the same qualities that Howard suggests typify Australians, most obviously both Howard and Rhodes use resilience as a descriptor, but for Rhodes ‘they’ are not a part of ‘us’.

We, it seems, are suspicious of them and their stories. On 10 May, under the headline, ’22 days at sea’, the Brisbane Courier Mail published the first of three reports on the Tabos’ rescue. The account begins by telling readers that the three Torres Strait Islanders were ‘purportedly missing at sea for 22 days’. In spite of the fact that we know from other reports that the men went missing on 17 April and that a search was instituted and called off after a week, the Courier Mail suggests a lack of credibility in the men’s story by writing that they ‘told police last night they had been at sea since April 17’. Later, the article becomes more forthright saying that, ‘it’s believed some authorities doubt the claims of the men’. While making this aspersion the article carefully hedges by not identifying which ‘authorities’, which means that the claim cannot be checked, and by implying a degree of doubt in the claim.

From Jon Stratton's 'Two rescues, one history: Everyday racism in Australia', Social Identities, Vol. 12, No. 6, November 2006, pp. 657-681.