Too Close?

Well it looks like 'middle Australia' ( Rowan Callick this isn't America, you little twat) is comfortable enough with Mao's red hand fondling Rupert's wrinkly wallet to keep buying the Australian. It's good to see that the Libs have given up entirely on winning any Chinese Australian votes.

What the Federal Opposition really thinks of Chinese Australians

I've heard an awful lot of xenophobic twaddle and insinuation coming from members of Malcolm Turnbull's federal opposition over the last two days, particularly on ABC Newsradio, who seem to enjoy giving the opposition a daily free-hit on their breakfast programme. It's all over the issue of defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon accepting two free trips to China courtesy of a long-standing family friend, businesswoman Helen Liu. Which, of course, is pretty crook on his part. He would have known the rules, and he violated them. Though I do think this seems likely to be a revenge on the part of certain members of the Defence Forces who Fitzgibbon upset when he revealed that Australian taxpayers were paying for these army fatcats to have butlers and other luxurious accoutrements.

Anyhow, as I said, much of the Xenophobia emanating from the Opposition is in the form of insinuation. Lots of comment on how Kevin Rudd happens to speak Chinese, how the Chinese are trying to 'steal' our national resources (like Australian mining companies don't own overseas interests), etc etc. 'China is scary, and Joel Fitzgibbon's friendship with a 'Chinese businesswoman' means that China is controlling our government' seems to be their message.

Just a few minutes, on ABC Newsradio, the presenter deviated from the free-hit format and stuck opposition defence spokesman David Johnston with the following:

ABC: The businesswoman, Helen Liu, is actually an Australian citizen...

Johnston: [Scornfully] Yeah. Look, the fact is she's a Chinese person...

Getting a grip on the female body in politics

Josephine Tovey is spot on that naked pictures shouldn’t ruin any woman’s political career, but she’s wrong about the following:

In its editorial apology, The Sunday Telegraph said it became wise to the con when it learned that the photographer Jack Johnson had also been offering bogus pictures of Therese Rein in lingerie. Apparently, when a woman of Rein's standing is implicated, it's a fanciful suggestion. But not so for a single mother, Hanson, despite abundant holes in Johnson's account of their tryst.

No, Josephine, it has nothing to do with the fact that Therese Rein is more respectable than Pauline Hanson- and, let’s leave political correctness aside for a second and face it, she is. Not being a moron and not being renowned for holding racist opinions means that Therese Rein’s standing is deservedly higher. No, it has to do with the fact that the chance of someone having naked photos of both Hanson and Rein is so infinitesimally small that in all probability the person who claims to have them is either a crank or a liar- or both. I mean, come on, are you honestly claiming that the Daily Telegraph wouldn’t jump at even the sniff of a story regarding nude photos of the Prime Minister’s wife because they’d automatically assume they were fakes? That’s giving them a level of credibility that they have never, ever deserved. As if the fact that they published the ‘Hanson’ photos on such dubious grounds wasn’t proof enough.

Moreover, the following complaint by Tovey is simply ridiculous:

In its incisive exploration of the affair on Monday night ABC TV's Media Watch chose not to name Rein as the other woman Johnson claimed to have photographed and bedded.

"There's no need to for us to drag her name into it further," said the presenter, Jonathan Holmes. Yet no such courtesy was extended by the show to Hanson. She has as little to do with Johnson and his photos as the Prime Minister's wife, but her name was used throughout.

This whole episode was about Hanson. Her name was splashed across the front page of the Daily Telegraph and every Australian news media website, including the SMH. She countered by engaging in legal action because the photos were fake and should never have been published. And Media Watch was supposed to report this whole incident without even mentioning Hanson? Sure, being coy over even bringing up Therese Rein's name was unnecessary and silly, but it didn't detract from the substance of the story. Rein was completely peripheral to the whole event, while Hanson was front and centre.

You're a journalist, Tovey, you shouldn't need this kind of thing pointed out to you.

Perfume rant

There’s a middle-aged woman who works in the office next to mine who drenches herself in strong, sickly-smelling perfume on a daily basis. When she walks through my office to get to hers, the smell lingers for a good 10-15 minutes before dissipating; of course, if she walks out and back in for whatever reason- a trip to the toilet, lunch, whatever, we’re all hit with a double dose of her stench. And sometimes the smell just wafts through her door to ours simply because of the fact that she’s wearing way too bloody much of the stuff. I can take her yapping, overhearing conversations about her damn kids or whatever, but I am SO FUCKING SICK of smelling her damn stinky perfume. It makes me feel nauseous and makes my hayfever even worse- it’s a wonder she doesn’t pass out from the fumes that follow her around. The only saving grace is that I get to the office at 7am and she typically gets here around 11am, so I have 4 hours or so where my nostrils aren’t being assaulted. And of course it’s impossible to suggest to someone that maybe they should wear a little less perfume because it’s such a personal thing that it’s like you’re attacking them… The minute she walks in the door I start to despise being in this place.

/rant

Queensland wants more of this...

Holy crap. I was hoping Anna Bligh would cop enough of a flogging at this election to realise that a lot of the shit she has pulled was a bad idea. Queensland has just vindicated everything she has done by allowing her to pull off a massive election victory. It's like Queenslanders are too stupid to realise that they don't have to vote for a major party. I mean, according to the ABC's election coverage there was a 4-and-a-bit percent swing against Labor, 3.5% of which went to the LNP, and only 1% went to independents and the Greens (0.2% went to the Greens). Polls suggested that the vote was split 50-50, the election was too close to call and that while Anna Bligh's personal popularity was high (god knows why), her government's popularity was at all-time lows.

So, essentially because voters were quite rightly not convinced of the LNP's suitability to govern the state, people went with what they saw as the least-worst option, failing to even register their disapproval of the ALP's worst policies with a vote for the Greens or another minor party or independent candidate. I'm sure Anna Bligh is going to claim a 'mandate' for carrying out the closing of the Royal Childrens Hospital, for more piss-poor infrastructure projects like the Kurilpa pedestrian bridge (a.k.a. the Tank St bridge), to the neglect of actual necessary infrastructure, and more attempts to flog off the state's interests to big developers in the same manner as she tried to flog Northbank to Multiplex. Not to mention the fact that she has steadfastly refused to sack underperforming ministers who fail to own responsibility for anything that happens on their watch- case in point, health minister Stephen Robertson. Shit.

In Indooroopilly, the ABC's election analysis has given the seat to LNP candidate Scott Emerson, with 69% of the vote counted. When I looked, he was at just over 8000 votes, with Ronan Lee running third by around 100 votes to the Labor candidate Sarah Warner- both were on ~5000 votes each. In an ideal preference situation, Lee would pull through... I suppose I'm still hoping for that miracle, despite the fact that I considered him to be inadequate as a Greens candidate. To be honest, I'm at least glad the seat isn't going to Warner- Labor needed to lose a hell of a lot more seats to be taught a lesson, but at least there's some minimal amount of satisfaction to be derived from the fact that the mocassin-wearing 'riche' here didn't reward Bligh for her incompetence.

I suppose Anna Bligh's election victory does represent a tiny step forward for Queensland, with regard to the fact that we've elected a woman as premier- the first state in Australia to do so. I just wish she wasn't such a thoroughly reptilian, untrustworthy politician like any other, regardless of whether she has one X chromosome or two.

Eric Abetz spruiks alcopops

"Trust me, this stuff is like vitamin water for young girls! Hehehe"

I sent a link home from work so I could post about this, but CosmicJester beat me to it with a fine post on the story- our nation's slimiest senator, Eric Abetz, has been touting the benefits of alcopops. Yup, those poor-quality, sickly-sweet alcoholic beverages cure everything from hangovers to rape!

Lots of butts, little evidence: mental health advocates oppose smoking ban

Some people in mental health groups are jumping up and down about the smoking ban in psychiatric facilities just imposed by NSW Health. They claim that being deprived of cigarettes, even though nicotine replacement therapy is being offered free of charge, will lead mentally ill smokers to turn violent.

A spokesman for the Mental Health Council of Australia, Simon Tatz, said forcing a nicotine addict to endure withdrawal symptoms while battling an acute episode of mental illness may impose a disproportionate level of suffering on people who were already suffering enough.

Yeah, never mind the fact that the two thirds of mentally ill people who don't smoke are being forced to breathe in the smokers' carcinogens. If these people were addicted to an illegal drug would Tatz being yapping about how 'destabilising' it is to give them treatment/replacement therapy rather than allowing them to continue their habit? Smoking, however, is one of the few drug habits where the health impact arising from use of the drug is inflicted on unwilling victims. Why should anyone, mentally ill or not, be allowed to do that?

Besides, despite the bleatings of smokers in the system, there is apparently no evidence whatsoever to suggest that there is any increase in violence when a smoking ban is implemented in a mental health care setting:

A review of 26 bans in psychiatric settings worldwide published in the Australian And New Zealand Journal Of Psychiatry in 2005 found there was "no increase in aggression, discharge against medical advice or increased use of as needed medication" linked to smoke-free policies.

Froggy, the lizard eater?

I'm starting to suspect that Froggy is making a meal of more than just the cockroaches, slugs etc in our garden... I'm starting to suspect, given his favourite haunts, that Froggy is eating geckos, though I have yet to catch him in the act. That would explain why he seems to be getting so fat so quickly! As long as he also dines out on big, nasty American cockroaches I don't mind what he does... besides, he has a cute smiley face. He could get away with anything, being so cute.

Bat slaughter inhumane: bring it on, says Borg.

So... NSW is currently the only state in Australia to allow the wholesale slaughter of fruit bats. A new study has shown that on these killing rampages, the bats die slow, extremely painful deaths. What's more, because a large number of them are lactating females, baby bats are left to starve to death.

Concurrently, Queensland's wannabe-Premier, Lawrence Springborg, announces that he's going to change the law to allow the shooting of fruit bats in Queensland.

Yee-hah! Bring on the killing! Way to go to ruin your carefully cultivated non-redneck image, 'Borg.

Refugees no longer charged $125 a day to be jailed

The Rudd government, thankfully, has finally introduced legislation that will scrap the inhumane and downright scummy practice of billing detainees $125 a day for their involuntary incarceration in detention centres. Bear in mind that this practice applied even to those detainees who were found to be in the country legitimately as refugees, leaving some of our nation's most vulnerable people with debts of over $100000.

Does the legislation scrap existing debts and pay back any money taken from people who came to Australia and were later found to be genuine refugees? No. So no recompense for the scumminess that was inflicted upon them, but some comfort in the fact it won't happen to anyone else.

The debts had impeded spouses seeking permanent visas, prevented former detainees from being reunited with family members, even on occasions when the former detainee had been found to be a refugee.

Just lovely. The legislation has been in place for nearly two decades (since 1992) and no Australian government has seen fit to scrap it. They were all happy to let that policy stand. It says a lot about the calibre of people who hold power in this country.

Courier Mail revels in performer's pain

The Courier Mail has outdone itself again. A performer with the Moscow Circus, performing in Ipswich, fell from the high-wire and suffered serious injuries.

What did the CM do? They stuck a note at the end of their article, begging for video or pictures of the poor bastard getting injured.

Next thing you know they'll be flogging snuff films... ugh.

Daylight saving sucks- proof!

Here's one for all the supporters of daylight saving in Queensland:

Daylight saving is bad for your sleep and probably your health.

I knew Queensland had the right idea and the rest of the country had it wrong on this one!

Please let it end

It doesn't matter who you vote for, you still get a free cane toad.

Why is it that come time for an election the only jobs that exist are 1) nurses and 2) anything involving a hard hat and fluro work gear? The QLD state election is no different. In the last hour an angry man in a hard hat has demanded that Lawrence Springborg explain his hereto unannounced opposition to spending on building bridges to nowhere to keep QLD jobs. This is the best Anna Bligh can do? The only way QLD can stave off recession is to pay one guy to dig a hole and another guy to fill it in. how about keeping jobs going by designing and building the infrastructure network of the future? The Labor ads are all negative, trying to make me scared of Springborg. Hello! Labor campaign HQ Springborg isn't scary, at worst he's dumb. The rest of the LNP filled with people like Clive Palmer and his oily offspring, rednecks and woolly headed dingbats daydreaming about the zombie corpse of Joh running the place again. The LNP ads on the other hand tend to be focussing on happy happy change with the occasional negative ad.

I'm thinking that if Labor win, it'll be the shattered remnants of a once seemingly unbeatable party that just manage to stagger accross the line, and deservedly so. Not that it would teach them anything. My hope is for a hung parliament with the Greens having the balance of power, but this is Queensland, redneck capital of Australia so I won't hold my breath.

Speaking of the Greens, Sarah told me that Green HQ had done a deal with Labor where Labor would give them preferences in our electorate but that they would give Labor preferences in the electorate where the Traveston Crossing dam is being built. Justifiably feeling betrayed, the local party workers sent back their how to vote cards back to Brisbane and told party HQ to get fucked. Good on them. Every other party would have clicked their heels and quickly gotten to work contradicting themselves.

Resident pink-tongued lizard

Well, after seeing the tail of our newest resident disappearing into the bushes a couple of weeks ago, he/she deigned to make an appearance. In the evening, oddly. I was correct in my tentative identification of it as a pink-tongued lizard, however the snooty little blighter steadfastly refused to poke its tongue out for a photo. Maybe pink-tongues don't do that? That leaves the mystery of how a small, non-climbing lizard was able to make its way up the high back wall to our garden...

Fraternite Phlegm Liberte!!!

John Lethlean and Necia Wilden, brave enough to call for restaurant workers to earn less money and keep eating out.

EVER felt aggrieved that so many restaurants close on Sundays? Resented that fine print at the bottom of a menu advising of a 15 per cent surcharge on Sundays and public holidays, a practice becoming more widespread? Or perhaps even wondered why a lot of Australian restaurants just don't seem such good value any more?

Could it be because as soon as a place gets half decent some tosser like yourself swans in, 'reviews' it and leads a flock of idiotic sheep who would eat cat food and not know the difference there, thus raising the prices the restaurant charges?

Get used to it. These are some of the less palatable aspects of dining out coming to more and more tables soon as an industry populated by thousands of small businesses responds to industrial reform aimed at removing state-federal anomalies and bringing restaurants into line, industrially speaking, with hotels.

As a diner, you can't have your tiramisu and eat it too. You're either in favour of a pay rise for hospitality workers that will make them among the highest paid in the world -- and therefore in favour of paying much more for your restaurant thrills than you have in the past -- or you are in favour of a thriving, relatively good-value dining-out culture that can compete in quality and diversity with the great restaurant cultures of the world. You can't have it both ways.

I agree! I think we should extend the same courtesy to these two twats. Why should they be among 'the highest paid in the world'? I say they should get the same 17,000 rupees per month ($500) that Indian journos earn. Personally I think it would be $500 more than their banal twaddle is worth but no one would actually pay to read about two pathetic, bourgeois wankers whinging about the wine list at a curry restaurant. That's why their crap has to be sandwiched in the Weekend Australian.

This so-called award modernisation (read standardisation) will wreak havoc with a restaurant industry already suffering from all-time low levels of profit. Figures on restaurant industry profitability are getting a little stale (they're based on ABS data collected in 2007) but they suggest your average restaurant business runs on a margin of 3.8 per cent or less.

Restaurateurs are NOTORIOUS for taking piles of money out of their business. This statistic is crap and would be obviously crap for anyone who knows anything about the restaurant industry. Not only is this the case but most restaurants are simply sheds where people eat, with the food being made elsewhere and catered in, like several notorious places in the CBD. That definitely affects profit margins.

Many are doing it harder. For every celebrity chef-restaurateur, there are 1000 operators for whom the line between opening the doors or not is a fine one indeed. For a country still trying to forge its culinary identity, regulations that discourage creativity, innovation and risk-taking will only lead to a safe-is-best mentality among those restaurants still standing in a year.

There is a coffee place in Beenleigh that serves your basic, generic coffee and catered in pastries. Every morning I drive past either the owner's BMW M3 or their ML63 AMG. Combined value somewhere around $300,000. I never go there, and neither do any of my workmates, because he treats his staff like crap. I'm having trouble seeing how paying your employees (you know the people who make your business profitable?) a living wage will stop creativity and innovation, in anything other than screwing employees that is. This is an industry that is infamous for fucking over its workers and it is no bloody coincidence than in the same day these two sock puppets write this garbage there's another article in the Australian by a restaurant industry body also aiming to provide cover for the inevitable whinging about how they can't have Workchoices back. Big surprise the Australian prints this, advertising dollars talk after all.

Predictable bistros and pizza joints are all very well, but do we really want a country full of them?

We already have a country full of them because of wankers like you two who keep reviewing them and telling everyone how awesome they are. "eeeeeeee a bistro!!!! It has a wanky name and wine!!!!"

But never mind the restaurant industry. What about the blow to Australia's tourism appeal? All tourism research, whether state or federal, points to dining out as a key lure for overseas visitors. So we're going to introduce laws that stymie our restaurant industry at a time when our popularity with overseas visitors is in serious decline? We're going to introduce laws that suggest that the hospitality business is a nine-to-five job and therefore any work performed outside those hours should attract significant loading?

Wow! that sounds horrible! So how much is this increase? Brace yourselves, in South Australia the rate will jump from 20% to.... 25%. That's the biggest jump in the country. 5%. The people who bring you your food, who make it possible for ticks like John Lethlean and Necia Wilden to have jobs, they aren't worth 5 lousy percent. This is on top of getting no leave, no super and shitty conditions. Assholes.

The restaurant industry is largely, by its very nature, both weekend-based and -- ever since its birth in France in the lead-up to the French Revolution -- largely about dinnertime. The Industrial Relations Commission's definition of what constitutes normal hours is at best inflexible, at worst nonsensical.

And somehow it seems to work just fine for the French, who seem to still be making great food despite some of the best worker protection in the world. I'm still not clear why we need a Cambodian slave camp to produce a decent restaurant meal.

Do we really want to live in a country where the standing joke among overseas tourists is "I went to Australia but it was closed"?

Yes, all restaurants will close because no one will want to make money anymore.

It may be hard to swallow, but if this legislation goes ahead it could be the beginning of the death of Australian hospitality. Or to put it another way -- welcome to Australian restaurants, 9am-5pm, weekdays only.

Doooooom!!! We're DOOOOOMED!!! no one will want to make money on weekends. Why does this sound exactly like all the rubbish arguments about why we needed Workchoices? Oh, because it is the same rubbish argument. Assholes. Watch for more of this crap to try and shore up the Liberal party as they try and bring back Workchoices. It's un-fucking-believeable. An attack on wages in the middle of a recession! Don't these cretins know that our economy runs on disposable income? Cutting wages will result in less spending, then job losses, then even less spending and more job losses. I just can't believe there are people out there so colossally, incredibly, unspeakably moronic that they would quite happily put the entire economy into a death spiral just so they can keep buying BMWs.

Restaurant workers of Australia, rise up and hock a loogie for freedom, right into John Lethlean and Necia Wilden's miso soup.

'Froggy'

This is the frog that has been visiting us on an almost nightly basis, pictured here on his equal-favourite perch, the compost bin (his other favourite is the wall). 'He' seems more used to us now and didn't seem to mind me taking the photo, however I only took the one as I didn't want to dazzle him with the flash and interrupt his hunting. In the last week or so he has developed a kind of golden/russet sheen on his skin, which is a bit strange... I'm hoping it's not some kind of froggy skin condition. It seems plausible that 'Froggy' could be this frog that I brought home once after finding him in the road, however seeing as we've spotted him in various areas of the complex gardens at night it seems he's perfectly capable of climbing our high back wall. I'm pretty sure he hasn't been living with us for the entire year or we would have seen more of him!

Catholic Church values foetus' life above that of raped 9-year-old. Media unwittingly plays along.

Now, I think everyone- except the world's nuttiest Catholics- can agree that the Vatican's response to the rape and impregnation of a 9 year old Brazilian girl is heinous in the extreme. To sum up, this 9 year old girl was raped and made pregnant with twins, allegedly by her stepfather. Because any pregnancy (let alone a twin pregnancy) poses a threat to the physical wellbeing, even the life, of such a young girl, the girl's mother and doctors decided to carry out an abortion. Clearly the main consideration for any sane, rational human being would be the life and wellbeing of a very young girl who had been raped, not the foetuses she was carrying.

For the insane and irrational, for those least interested in the wellbeing of children- namely the Catholic church, however, the idea of a physically underdeveloped 9-year-old girl being forced to give birth in the interests of potentially preserving the two 'souls', whatever the risk to the girl's own life, is perfectly acceptable. So the Catholic church excommunicated the girl's mother and the doctors who carried out the abortion. Who would want to count themselves among the membership of a church that holds beliefs like that I don't know, but we do know that being a child rapist is just fine in the eyes of the Catholic church; after all, not only have countless paedophile priests found 'forgiveness' in the eyes of the church, so has the girl's alleged rapist, her stepfather.

The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the fetuses to term.

"God's law is above any human law. So when a human law ... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value," Cardoso had said.

He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed "a heinous crime ... the abortion - the elimination of an innocent life - was more serious".

Coming from the Catholic church, none of this really poses any surprise to anyone familiar with its actions over the years.

What I was surprised at was the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald:



Yes, they put the word 'raped' in inverted commas. And kept it there.

Now, it appears to be common practice in the media to put things like that in inverted commas when there is an allegation that has not yet been substantiated in court. It's the media covering their arses, legally speaking, and fair enough that they do so. But when a 9-year-old girl is made pregnant there is absolutely no question of consent, whether a case is yet to be tried in court or not. She was raped. Inverted commas in this case are completely inappropriate and serve no purpose other than to make it look like there is a possibility that the 9-year-old was asking for it.

It wasn't just a single slip-up, however:



See, once again: if a 9-year-old girl is made pregnant, she was raped. She was not 'allegedly raped'. She was raped, allegedly by her stepfather. Using language that is ambiguous enough to imply anything else is disgusting and irresponsible. I'd expect it from the Catholic church, but I'm not yet seasoned enough to expect it from the Australian media.

Playboy enters the internet age

Roughly 3 months ago I had this exchange with a 'helpful' member of Playboy magazine's admin regarding my subscription renewal.

Subsequent to that, I emailed their letters department with details of the exchange and told them I didn't plan on renewing my subscription if they were going to make me send them a 'check' instead of renewing online. I received no acknowledgement that anyone had received, let alone read, that last email. A couple of weeks ago I found what I figured would be my final copy of Playboy in the mailbox.

Today, in my email, I received this:

Dear SARAH,

Your subscription is expiring soon. To prevent interruption in service, we must hear from you now.

Don’t let this happen. Don’t miss out on interviews with celebrities, award winning journalism, fiction, and everything else you can only find in America’s best-selling magazine for men.

The FASTEST, most CONVENIENT way to keep PLAYBOY coming is to use this form.

You'll continue to have PLAYBOY delivered to your home free of charge.

Find out how to renew now. If we don't hear from you soon, service will end and you'll stop receiving issues of PLAYBOY. There’s nothing to mail. Pay with your credit card to renew PLAYBOY today!

The form is the one pictured above. Months after going to great lengths to find out whether I could renew my subscription online and being met with a strident "NO YOU CANNOT!", all of a sudden they send me an online renewal form. I mean, that's great and everything, but online renewal is not exactly a new invention... why was this too damn hard for them 3 months ago?

Of course I filled in the form straight away and clicked 'submit', only to be confronted with the 'ERROR' message that has plagued my every exchange with Playboy via their website over the years- even though the message/whatever has been successfully submitted every time. You'd think they'd have ironed out a bug like that years ago... anyway, hopefully I'm now not an ex Playboy-subscriber!

Hypocrisy and Fallacy

What is hypocrisy? Hypocrisy is acting an a manner contrary to the beliefs one professes. This would include things like:

1) Condemning the UN Oil for food programme while failing to lift a finger to hinder, stop or prosecute a govt. run business that was the single biggest violator of the oil for food programme.

2) Enacting a certain regressive tax immediately after professing to never ever do it and to not believe in regressive taxation in general.

3) professing to 'keep Australia strong' while letting in criminals because they paid bribes to your party.

4) Claiming to protect jobs and the economy while championing legislation that you know will lead to job losses and put our economy into a death spiral.

Hypocrisy is not telling someone else that something you have done is bad and they shouldn't do it. That is a common fallacy. So it's entirely consistent for Kevin Rudd, me, you, everyone else to condemn neo-liberal economics and endeavour to reform the system we have despite benefiting from it. When people condemn the Indigenous genocide in this country, this is not inconsistent with the fact that most of us benefited from it. Similarly you can condemn WWII and be greatful for penicillin, airliners and computers.

The inability to realise this is a hallmark of a small mind, bound by ideology. Malcolm Turnbull, being largely defined by his insatiable personal greed, enormous ego and insurmountable arrogance, cannot conceive of a situation where someone can benefit from something, and find that thing should be improved to benefit others. Turnbull's recent article about how Rudd is a hypocrite for opposing the neo-liberalism that he and his wife benefited from is an essay on why he should never, ever become prime minister of this country. I think we've had enough of leaders who are always right no matter what.

Would you give a favourite book to a stranger?

What a silly idea! I'm only too happy to give away dodgy-arsed or happily mediocre books that aren't worth reading more than once, but the idea of lugging a good book to a speed dating event and handing it to a stranger you're hoping to hit it off with- no thankyou! No doubt if I attended such an event I'd be palming off dodgy books that would make snooty people who fancy themselves as literary types view me as relationship potential to the same degree they would a lawn army grub. Giving a treasured copy of a great book to someone you know and love is one thing, but handing it out in the hope of finding Prince Charming/Cinderella is just asking for your heart to be broken... by the fact that you gave your favourite book to someone who turned out to be a right douchebag. Ugh.

Anyway, the main reason I enjoyed reading the piece in the Guardian was for this:

According to a survey by ReadItSwapIt, a third of women would be "actually physically repulsed" by a man seen reading The World According to Clarkson.

Now, I read pretty much everything. Anything with words that gets put in front of me will be read- even if it doesn't interest me, I compulsively read while eating or drinking and will read any old crap rather than being bored just shovelling food into my gob. As a kid I even used to practice the piano with an Enid Blyton book stuck up on the music stand instead of music. So I'm not one to pass judgment on other people for reading crap. They might be bored and prefer it to sitting around doing nothing. They might have the same experience I have had with books in that you have to wade through a lot of crap before you eventually find a good one.

But anyone who picks up anything written by Jeremy Clarkson- well judge away, because they're bloody well asking for it. Pass the bucket, please.

Plug for Jogger's World, half a plug for new Frees

My first Frees, pre-holey days.

On Monday I finally got some new Frees. Nike Frees are a running shoe. The best running shoe. I tried one on for the first time maybe 3 or 4 years ago- whenever they were first introduced- in the Nike Zelus store in Brisbane. We were shopping for shoes for Gam; I walked out with a pair of men's Frees for me. Love at first step: those odd-looking (ugly?) bland-grey shoes with the bright yellow sole felt as comfortable as if I were walking around in a pair of socks. Miraculous, they seemed to me, as up until that point I'd never owned a pair of shoes (save for ugg-boots) that hadn't needed 'wearing in' (i.e. given me blisters until I got used to them). It wasn't long before we bought some for Gam. I was convinced that this was the future of footwear, that through word of mouth people would realise that these comfortable shoes were ones they could really move in and would buy them in droves. After all, comfort is really more important than looks, right?

Heh. I tried a couple of times to get new ones over the years. The range seemed to get smaller rather than bigger, less available rather than more available, and rather than evolving to become more and more natural, Frees devolved to become more and more like conventional shoes. They even introduced a '7.0', two up from my 5.0, that was pretty much indistinguishable from any other jogger. Meh. I resolved to wear my trusty grey Frees to their grave. I wore them on walks, to uni, to the gym, everywhere except to work (when I started my honours year at a proper civilised 'workplace'). Then, a few months ago when I was asked to fill in on a netball team, they literally fell to pieces a minute after I stepped on the court.

I checked out the Zelus website to see if they were stocking a new range of Frees for the season, and they didn't have anything. Not a single model. I checked out Rebel Sport's website and apparently they weren't stocking them either. I resorted to random Googling and came up with some place called Jogger's World.

Jogger's World aren't a proper online retailer. Rather, they're a retailer with two stores in South Australia and one in Perth. You express your interest in a particular type of shoe on a form on their website and they get back to you with regard to making an order. The Frees on their site were only $140, $29 cheaper than the going price for buying them anywhere in Brisbane (if they'd been available), so I filled out the form. In my case, the response was very prompt and they included a photo of the shoe- not that I cared, given that no-one wears Frees for their looks. I was asked whether I would like to go ahead with the order and I responded in the affirmative. Shortly afterwards a pleasant young woman rang me, took my credit card details and then emailed me confirmation of the order. The total cost, including the cost of Registered Post, was $153, still $16 cheaper than I could have bought them in Brisbane anyway. They arrived a few days later.

New Frees: note the reinforced upper- less comfortable than the sock-like original.

My new 5.0 Frees are nowhere near as good as that first pair of 5.0s I bought. They have more reinforcement of the weak points (where the fabric is most likely to tear) and feel more like a very light shoe than a sock with a nice bouncy sole. But despite not being as comfortable they are still really good- probably the most comfortable running shoe out there. I would have bought men's Frees again because they're available for men in a 3.0 (a less 'built' style), but Jogger's World didn't stock men's size 7, only size 8 and up (I'm a 9-9.5 in women's).

Given that Frees don't appear to be particularly popular nor particularly supported by Nike, I am tempted to buy up a whole heap and stockpile them in case Nike stop making them... I never want to go back to horrid, uncomfortable regular joggers ever again. And from now on, Jogger's World will be my first resort when it comes to looking for running shoes- they have solid customer service and low prices.

Now it's up to Gam and I to slowly unravel the effects of months and months of being fairly sedentary by actually getting out there and using our shoes!

Which Bank?

Gam and I are in the process of extricating ourselves from the clutches of Commonwealth Bank. I'm still eligible for fee-free accounts, but when my 12 months' fee-free period was due for renewal they once again didn't bother to notify me (they've only ever bothered once) and just started charging fees again, sticking them right down the bottom of my transaction history so that even though I was checking it regularly online I didn't see, because it appeared amidst transactions I had already checked. It's happened a couple of times before, and we always intended to get rid of Commonwealth once our fee-free days were over, so Commonwealth really just hastened the inevitable.

We cancelled our credit card first, a few months ago now. We switched to some low-rate St George card, but once we'd decided to cancel our Commonwealth transaction accounts too we settled on Bank of Queensland, who charge a $4 per month fee, as opposed to St George's $6 per month (Commonwealth charge $5, plus additional fees for 'excess' eftpos transactions, the bastards). In addition, dealing with the St George phone banking/enquiries system was excruciatingly annoying and I never want to do it again. So, BOQ. We were not only impressed with the service we received when we set up our accounts at the Toowong branch, but with subsequent service too. Get this- just a few minutes ago I called their contact number to ask about a balance transfer (which I'll bitch about in a minute) and was so shocked when the phone was answered by a real person instead of being transferred to one of those awful hold music/machines that issue fake apologies for there being a 'higher than usual volume of calls' that I almost forgot what I wanted to say! I actually called 5 times (for different issues, including having locked myself out of internet banking because I'd forgotten the password), and was never on hold for more than a minute before I got to speak to someone. More like a couple of seconds. So refreshing.

Anyway... balance transfer. We arranged for BOQ to transfer the balance from our St George card so we could close down the St George account. I checked St George online this afternoon and nothing had gone through even though we arranged the transfer ages ago. Now, I hadn't arranged for internet banking for the BOQ credit account- I didn't know I needed to and assumed it would happen automatically because I'd already set it up for the transaction account. So I just assumed, stupidly, that the transfer wasn't happening and so I should pay off the St George credit card, which I proceeded to do via BPay. Then I discovered that BOQ have in fact done the balance transfer- they did it on the 18th of February, and the money has been taken from their account, meaning St George have happily taken their money- and St George simply haven't shown it on our transactions or even reflected it in the balance on our credit card, meaning they're enjoying free money for a little while instead of putting it on the balance of our card, where it belongs.

So now our St George credit card, when they finally get their act together, is going to have an extra $700 on it, which is impossible to transfer using online banking, which I have to get back before we close it down. Which means I'll have to use their fucking annoying phone system again to try and get a mistake sorted out that arose solely from them being a pack of slackarses. ("Say what you want!" the stupid St George answering machine commands... I want to speak to a fucking human being, you morons!). Oh and I can't call St George right now because not only have they not processed the balance transfer at their end, but the BPay I just made to pay it off won't be processed for a couple of days either so I won't be able to sort it out until at least Monday. GRRRR.

So, yeah. Commonwealth suck, St George possibly suck even worse, and Bank of Queensland are surely as good as any Aussie bank gets... I am super-impressed with BOQ so far.

Who'd have thought? Best shampoo ever!

Sometime last year, when shopping in Mrs Flannery's, we were approached by some hippy-looking woman dressed in head-to-toe purple who offered us some free shampoo. Lavender shampoo. At that stage I was so fed up with supermarket shampoo- even Head and Shoulders gave me a constantly itchy head- I was actually considering checking out the hippy shampoo section at Flannery's anyway. So I happily accepted a free sample- two, actually, because the lady gave one to Gam as well.

Anyway, while the shampoo looks quite scary with its 'herbacraft' and peace and love and wiccan-type symbols all over it, not to mention its runny consistency and lack of homogeneity (you have to shake it before use because it doesn't contain emulsifiers), I really have to give it a plug. It is, quite simply, frigging awesome. Plus it is far and away the best-smelling shampoo I have ever tried. The small sample, which the lady said would last two weeks, actually lasted a little longer (contrary to my expectations, given how runny it was). It took a few weeks for my head to stop itching completely; I had already stopped using supermarket conditioner in favour of a dab of macadamia oil post-shower, and continued to use it once I'd switched to the 'two in one' hippy shampoo because my hair maintained its tendency to go 'fluffy' after a wash. As an aside, I've also tried Bio Oil (which I use on my face) in my hair and I think it works better than macadamia oil.

I bought a big 500mL bottle of the stuff just prior to Christmas and we're getting to the end of it now (Gam reluctantly adopted the hippy shampoo too, because I stopped buying supermarket crap!)... unfortunately Mrs Flannery's don't seem to have been too good about restocking it, because the last big bottle disappeared off the shelf ages ago and they hadn't replaced it by the time I decided to buy more last Saturday. I bought a small one instead but thankfully 'Herbacraft'/'Gypsy Rose' sells their products via their website, so I can buy it there if Mrs Flannery's don't restock in future.

Verdict: Don't be scared by all the hippy stuff- this shampoo beats the pants off anything you can buy in the supermarket, plus it contains no unidentifiable nasties. Despite the price I think it winds up cheaper than Pantene or Head and Shoulders (both of which I used to buy) because it lasts so long. I highly recommend this HerbaCraft/Gypsy Rose/whatever the hell its name is... to the point where I'm actually going to buy some for various members of my family because I've gotten a little bit evangelical about it!

My family...

I just love how my family seem to have a knack of getting my Grandma to pose for classic photos... this is my brother and my cousin with Grandma at my brother's engagement party last year!

- She's 92!