The Mumblings of an Observer

Mr Schrempp is working for The Woman

2008-03-06T22:03:00.002+10:30

Having a female boss in the real world has been a new experience. The last female boss I had was an absolute train wreck of a human being, back in The Corporation.

My current boss has so far been a great human being. My housemate thinks she's a bitch, having met her for about thirty seconds, but I am scarcely losing sleep over this.

We get along well personally because we find things in each other that we like about ourselves. I like that she is socially honest. She did not know my housemate and had not yet learned to feel comfortable with her when I introduced them yesterday. She made absolutely no attempt to hide this.

Other people I know will pretend to be interested in what another person is saying in order to make conversation. Both me and my boss lack this capability.

She likes that I listen and think about what I'm saying before I say it.

We share things with each other, we raise issues with each other that a pair of extroverts could never match. I have seen pairs of extroverts move their mouths and make noise without communicating anything of significance.

I've seen pairs of people who did not know how to shut the fuck up, but still couldn't talk to each other.

Our comfort thresholds operate in a similar way. The first week I was working there I could barely encourage a smile from her face. In all the weeks afterwards, she has been showing me pictures of everything that happens in her life.

Canberra, welcome to graduate politics. An observation rather than a whinge.

2008-02-23T18:27:00.005+10:30

There's an interesting social dynamic here, and two distinct and in many cases mutually exclusive cliques have emerged. This became obvious in the beer garden at Old Parliament House last night, where the two groups sat entirely independently of each other and made no attempt at even basic civility.

In one corner was the group made up exclusively of 2007 entry grads, specifically those who were in Canberra on the last rotation. The other group, to which I belong is of people who have just moved up here. It is a mixture of 2007/2008 entry people.

I've been informed by the incumbent Canberra grad who I live with that their team isn't interested in the new people. They have their own thing going and don't want new players. It's a typical old school/new school divide.

The divide is exacerbated by one one of the girls in my group being specifically disliked by a lot of the girls in the other group. Mind you, one of the girls in the other group was on probation in high school for bullying, so I'm happy to back my own people.

Canberra. It doesn't matter how much you think you're paying in rent. You're still in country NSW.

2008-02-06T19:56:00.000+10:30

Or so it would appear, judging by the fellow in the pub last night, who looked as if he was on the way to some kind of rodeo type gathering. The Lee Kernaghan playing in the background and god forsaken people caring about rugby completed the picture.

I still have not found a decent reference point from which to assess Canberra. If I think of it as Adelaide, but one third the size, I miss the point. Canberra has nothing like the puritanical laws and pov that Adelaide has.

Canberra has the highest average income of any capital city in Australia. This is not because there is immense wealth here, there isn't. It is because nobody has any reason to come here unless they've got a job. Even so, I have seen a few people struggling, the odd lady pushing a shopping trolley full of her belongings, a fellow washing people's windscreens at intersections.

This is a bad place to be poor. Accommodation is expensive and hard to find, and sleeping outside during a Canberra winter is lethal. The local policing here is performed by the AFP, who don't seem that concerned about most things that aren't Arabic. Hence there is no kind of hobo cleansing that has obviously been performed in Melbourne.

Various other things are unsurprising. The toy section of Myers in Burke St. Melbourne is almost as large as the whole Myers at Canberra Central. I went shopping for a new suit today and difficulty finding my size in my preferred colour. This is unthinkable in Melbourne, or even in Adelaide. In the end I found a charming sub-continental homosexual chap who sold me a fine suit.

For some reason, I still quite like the place.

For example:

Hell if there ain't the caucasian tang in The Man's home town. Indeed, the entire city looks to have been built to Anglo-Saxon specifications, although not the kind you find in Elizabeth, more the kind you find in Burnside.

In other news: Sharing a house with a lady means various things. When I lived by myself it was normal to step out of the bathroom bollock naked. I should not do this now.

Mr Schrempp is a friend of The Man

2008-01-22T21:06:00.000+10:30

I was about to leave work early today. A false fire alarm had been ringing in the building next door for about half an hour already and I was was getting a remorseless headache. Seconds away from clocking off, Mr Boss stepped on up and called me over for my final performance review in Melbourne.

In the following minutes he explained that he considered my service to The Man "Outstanding". While I uttered words and felt feelings along the lines of appreciation, nothing could conceal mine and his short temper at that iredeemable fucking fire alarm, which continued to ring for a further 45 minutes. This is the only time I have seen both genuine praise and genuine appreciation uttered through gritted teeth, although those who know me would know that it was never going to go down any other way.

I consider that all I did was what I was told and anything else that seemed obvious while trying to economise my use of the word "Cunt".

This is apparently enough to see my name forwarded to Mr CEO.

Goodbye Melbourne. It's been real.

2007-12-20T18:50:00.000+10:30

The time has come for my relationship with Melbourne to come to an end. The Man has sent my arse to Canberra to work on some kind of Project.

This blog documents my intitial struggle with the finer points of the rainy city. I spent my first six months here wanting to do nothing but return to Adelaide. I suspect that this would have been the case in any city that was not Adelaide. This homesickness caused me to shove my head up my arse and refrain from making any kind of effort to reconcile with Melbourne.

It wasn't just about leaving Adelaide either. I had just spent an unbroken 24 years living with conservative protestants who were probably insured against bad breath. My household in Adelaide works like The Incredible Machine. Between the hours of 6am and 8am everything from shower usage to newspaper reading follows an unwritten, but still mechanical pattern. That's no accident, it was designed by people who get shit done.

Leaving this to share a house with Luke and Alfie was a much ruder shock than I had imagined. Questions like "What is that shit in the fridge and how old is it?" were posed quite frequently. I didn't leave my family to live like a fucken gypsy.

When Alfie left that place, some kind of routine emerged. This improved things somewhat, but after two weeks I could tell that my new job and new city were both going to disappoint me. A fast car with all leather cow interior and wrist bling made in Switzerland cannot correct such a fundamental level of unhappiness.

Things didn't improve much until I started looking forward to a new position where the people took me more seriously and a new house that wasn't a god forsaken concrete block in Kensington.

It was around this time that I became close friends with Erin. In the space of a few hours, she propelled herself into the top half a dozen most important people in my life.

From that point on everything was looking good. I'm only really looking forward to Canberra now to see how the place ticks, but when I'm done over there I'd be happy enough to move back here.

I'm still happy every time I go home to Adelaide, like tomorrow. I just don't feel like it's a security blanket anymore.

After 11 years I'm finally relaxed and comfortable.

2007-11-27T17:23:00.000+10:30

I awoke a half hour early this morning, without the usual AAARGH, FUCK YOU!!! that normally accompanies a work related interruption of my beauty sleep.

The morning air smells better than it did last week.

The morning coffee tastes better than it did last week.

That son of a bitch is gone.

Just writing that line, just thinking it isn't enough. That slimy, short arsed, mean spirited cunt who has been the Prime Minister for my entire adult life and that of my friends is finally out of the picture. This will take weeks to set in.

Not that I think Labor is particularly good, but that's still better then inexplicably, irreconcilably reprehensible.

Howard could have been a responsible economic manager without obviously hating the poor. He could have been strong on national security without being George Bush's pathetic, clingy schoolyard patsy.

His was a government of fear. Fear of aboriginals getting too many rights, fear of the poofters getting married, fear of unions. It worked for long enough, but eventually people figure out that the bogey man isn't coming and that they've been lied to.

Howard did nothing to contribute to the resources boom, but he did squander the prosperity. This a time where Australia is in a better position than ever to invest big in solving problems like climate change, a skills shortage shameful living conditions for indigenous people. Instead all we have to show for such a collosal cash loaf is a few plasma TVs and a housing affordability crisis.

We're supposed to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world and enjoying unprecedented economic growth, yet it is now harder for a middle income family to have kids at uni now than it has been for almost 40 years.

I think this is where we're supposed to start applauding the old bastard.

Indeed I am applauding, because he suffered a humiliation on Saturday that he so richly deserved.

Have fun on the golf course, cuntface.

I suppose there is some sort of election type business afoot.

2007-11-05T18:33:00.000+10:30

I don't recall ever having been so disinterested in the outcome of a federal election.

This is odd. Three years ago I desperately wanted Labor to win. That was with that lard arsed loose cannon at the helm. Rudd is better than Latham. Howard has been in for another three years and done even worse things than I had expected. My first preference should be irretrievably drawn to Kevin '07, but it isn't for some reason.

I do not like John Howard. I think he's a mean spirited cunt and I don't trust him. John Howard's response to every moral challenge that has landed at his door in the last eleven years has been to make hollow promises about interest rates and to bask in the success of Paul Keating's economic reforms.

His contribution to the war on terror has been to remove troops from Afghanistan (where terrorists were) and put them in Iraq (where there were no terrorists until we invited them).

It is nothing but luck that he was sitting on an ore mine when China decided to get out of bed, take a slash and go shopping.

Kevin Rudd has different problems. I like him, but I think his front bench is weak and incompetent. It is in the back of my mind that despite their good intentions, they will end up hurting more people by accident than the Coalition hurt on purpose.

A Rudd government would have its arse handed to it in question time by the likes of Tony Abbott and Peter Costello.

I will put Labor ahead of Liberal, but I was hoping to put them both so far down that it doesn't matter.

That plan has been thwarted, as the arse end of my ballot paper is reserved for the Democrats, Family First and the Socialist Alliance respectively.

I suppose I will vote for the Greens and give Labor my second preference.
I'm now watching something on Mythbusters about yawning. How appropriate.

Mission

2007-11-03T17:11:00.001+10:30

I spent last night in Manchuria.

This is the best place to go in Melbourne for any non beer alcoholic drink. It is also a highly suitable place to go for a beer.

Last night I perused the cocktail menu thinking "What's the hardest thing they've got?'. A drink called the Zombie leapt out from the pages advertising itself as the hardest thing they've got. It showed plenty of promise, being a mix of several types of rum. The house limits consumption of this drink to two per person per night. It had a lot of things to live up to, not least of which was the $25 price tag.

I can say that while it was a pleasant drink, it failed miserably to be the bullet that would do me in. The first sip makes you think something's about to happen, but before too long the bottom of the glass is reached without anything at all happening.

The proof that this drink is a pussy cat can be seen in my feminine company nailing two without raising a sweat.

We can do better. We must do better.

I have made stronger stuff before, a drink called the French Pirate.

This is no component of this mixture that is not alcoholic.

The active ingredient is dark rum. Orange Curocua takes the edge off the rum taste and brut champagne makes it all go straight to your head. If I could find a way to improve the fucking horrible taste, I could be onto a winner. Replacing Captain Morgan with something a hobo couldn't afford would be a good start.

The coolest thing to do ever.

2007-10-22T21:42:00.001+09:30

This is why Ferrari and Paris are in the world. For added amusement, read the comments from the 15 year olds who think it's tame. Gran Turismo has spoiled them for real driving.

Why Virgin Blue is better than Qantas

2007-10-11T18:46:00.000+09:30

I have had many opportunities to reflect on this in the past eight months, given the interstate nature of my residence.

1. Qantas was an airline in the 1980's. They still have a lot of legacy agreements with the Transport Workers Union that date back to a time when unions and Equal Opportunity were taken seriously. This means that they hire ugly flight attendants. There are still some lookers among 'em, but no more as a percentage than you would find if you looked out the window. In another nod to a not so golden age, the occasionally hot flight attendants are often spoiled by those wretched dot painting uniforms.

2. The meal that is served on Qantas flights ties up the staff so badly that a man just can't get drink service often enough to embark on an airborn bender.

And the only full strength beer you can get is VB. For pity's sake.

3. The last time I flew out from Melbourne at peak hour Qantas had a total of two people working the entire domestic check in situation. The line was fucking long.

4. Qantas have seen fit to only board the plane through the front door. Virgin board through both front and rear doors, so you don't have to wait on the tarmac for twenty minutes before the plane even starts taxiing.

5. I've waited a while for Virgin Blue luggage before, but never as badly as the last time I was dumped at the arse end of Tullamarine by Qantas. I was standing at the carousel for thirty bloody minutes when the PA announced "Baggage from flight QF696 from Adelaide is NOW being loaded onto the carousel" I can only imagine the baggage handlers were out there looking for the weed their colleagues in Adelaide had stuffed in my gear.

6. Qantas flys from Melbourne to Canberra on those dreadful little DC-8 things. The sound the propeller made right next to my ear played havoc with what had started as only a very moderate hangover.

Slack.

2007-09-27T22:21:00.000+09:30

Weekends are great, annual leave is dandy, public holidays are splendid.

But nothing is better than not being at work when you are supposed to be.

I enjoyed such a moment this week, as I was released for a full day to attend a training course that only took half a day.

I promptly got the hell out of there and wheeled the Tennessee Stud into a subcontinental car washing emporium. Reading the Financial Review while supervising others washing my car is a truly delightful experience.

At the end of this I went home to smoke frop and drink Ones on what was to be the only glorious spring day of this week.

Slack.

Occurences in Sydney

2007-09-12T18:04:00.000+09:30

The Man has sent me to Sydney this week to attend a quite good course on communication skills.

My presentation on The Tennessee Stud was a crowd pleaser and introduced some of the more culturally deprived participants to Johnny Cash for the first time.

I think I performed particularly well, considering that amount of alcohol I poured down my no-longer-teenage gullet last night.

I had planned to talk about the APEC and the new arsehole that it tore Sydney last week, but by the time I had collected articles I was far too sick of it to say anything interesting about it.

Another highlight of this course was a joint venture negotiation exercise, where despite representing the smallest company I was able to play the two other companies off against each other in order to extract maximum cash monies.

This involved keeping a straight face while encouraging my fellow man to make utterly foolish decisions.

The new flat that I now call home is tempting me to quit non-smoking, as I now have a superb private yard providing the perfect place to have a puff. I now take full advantage of the rare moments in Melbourne where we have glorious sunshine without crippling wind.

One of the flat's more perverted and disturbing features is the remote control light dimmer in the bedroom. It makes the place feel like Quagmire has lived here. (And done completely unspeakable things to the carpet.

The Man has seen fit to populate Melbourne with 90% male employees and 10% anti-social or spoken for females. Disappointing.

That is all.

I pulled my gun and he fell with a thud and I rode away on The Tennessee Stud.

2007-08-04T10:55:00.000+09:30

A lady proposed the other day that she name her car 'The Tennessee Mare'. I smacked down the suggestion on two counts.

1. Only my sweetheart's car can be called 'The Tennessee Mare'. This lady's current engagement prohibits such an arrangement.

(I pulled my gun and he fell with a thud and I rode away on the Tennessee Stud)

2. Her car is a Ford Festiva. The Tennessee Stud has standards.

If you like the taste of a lobster stew, served by a window with an ocean view.....

2007-07-15T09:47:00.000+09:30

I've found a part of Melbourne that I like, situated only a short drive from a part of Melbourne that I can afford to live and a slightly longer drive from a part of Melbourne where I earn my cash money.

The place is Williamstown, a relaxed seaside community not 10 km from the Rialto tower. When a place just feels right, it's not always easy to list objective truths about it that make it so special. Let's just say that it feels right, in the same way that struggling through traffic on Lygon Street last night didn't feel right.

The place nearby that I can afford to live is Altona. This too seems like a relaxed place, although it isn't maintained to the same standard as Williamstown. The equivalent of Altona in Adelaide would be Semaphore.

In any capital city of Australia, a hungry traveller can find some kind of fine dining experience. This is becoming more and more common. What is becoming less and less common is the ability to get an order of fish and chips and scoff it by the beach in relative peace. Altona offers this.

I live in a flat right now where Luke has elected to place a fucking pretentious painting of a chick smoking with a self important look on her face.

Looking at this everyday has helped fuel my total system rejection of that kind of thing.

Armed with this attitude, I expect my next six months in Melbourne to be better than my first. This will be helped by moving on to another office where I get to order things that keep planes in the air, and bring them safely back to earth when required.

The Melbourne-Reloaded.

2007-06-29T21:45:00.000+09:30

It has been decreed today that I am to stay in Melbourne for another six months.

This was not my preference, but it could have been worse. My arse could have been sent to Sydney.

So far I've been immune to Melbourne's charms. I could have had the absolute monolith of fucking excellence around the corner from my house and I wouldn't have given a shit because it isn't my home. If I'm to stay sane there for another six months, this attitude clearly has to change.

I've been living in the place for 5 months and last weekend was the first time I took a good walk around my neighbourhood- in the opposite direction of the eateries and caffiene emporiums. It's quite an acceptable place.

I'd still like to move into a house with a backyard and am looking a places further from the city and closer to work where I can afford such things. Living in a flat, particularly with another person gets irritating.

And it's a flat, not a fucking apartment. Do we think we're super new school and hip just because we call it what Americans and property developers call it. It's a fucking flat.

I'm looking to move to Newport, Williamstown or Point Cook, all places sufficiently distant from the city and close to the water. Of these three Point Cook seems like a pleasant locality. As I have no allergy to the suburbs, nor any white guilt to speak of the move should present little by the way of obstacles.

Adelaide Version 2.0

2007-03-28T21:36:00.000+09:30

I have the following notes to make about Melbourne

1. It is an armpit.
2. Safeway is an absurd name for a supemarket
3. It is much easier to be an affluent man in Adelaide without being a complete penis.
4. I parked my car in pissing rain for half an hour and it still didn't get a wash. In Adelaide rain
cleans your car. In Melbourne rain makes it dirtier.
5. The coolest thing I have seen in Victoria is a winery. South Australia has these.
6. The whitest taxi driver I have seen in Melbourne was Greek.
7. I know nobody in Melbourne who can teach me about proper furniture.
8. The bling swiss watch place that I was sent to in Melbourne did not known how to adjust my watch to run on Melbourne time, so they told me it was broken and directed me to an old Jewish gentleman to have it fixed. Luckily I found the instruction manual before spending $100 to get nothing done. They couldn't figure it out because the watch was 23 years old. People from Adelaide have more respect for old things.

My brain is still running on Adelaide software, so I see an $800,000 house in Melbourne and think "I'd buy that for $400,000 in Adelaide, gut the interior and start again." Or, "That looks like my parents place did before they spent 15 consecutive years wailing cash on it."

If you remember that Crown Lager is what Victorians call premium beer, you will understand this.

Filing from east of the border

2007-03-18T11:55:00.000+10:30

I've been in Melbourne working for The Man for about six weeks now. Having money is a pretty new experience. I can now afford to drink like a Catholic AND be insured like a Protestant.

I've bought a new used car. It is a 1995 Volvo 960.

This car traces its basic engineering back to the white 'Volvo of despair' I used to drive in Adelaide, but has a lot of modern comforts and bling strapped on with gaffer tape. By 1995 they started to get cute with the colour schemes, so mine is the colour of red wine.

Navigating around Melbourne can be difficult at times, as there are parts of the city that are too post-modern to erect street signs. I mean how do we know that 'Victoria Street' is an absolute truth, isn't it just some white male colonial oppressor's hegemonistic perspective?

We should all sit around looking serious until the Centrelink office opens.

Pauline Hanson's always been a tool. Now she can be a political one.

2006-12-07T21:33:00.000+10:30

Following on from last week's post about the intelligence spectrum, this week has produced publicity of two politicians from opposite ends of it.

From the smart end is Kevin Rudd. Mr Rudd is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and is highly articulate. One need only listen to him speak to know that he does not watch Big Brother. He has been one of my favourites for a few years and will make a very good Labor leader.

As a leader and representative of Australia he would be a liar. He would represent Australians as intelligent, thoughtful people who know things that are not on Sixty Minutes. No football, meat pies, domestic violence or thuggish behaviour overseas in the Rudd camp.

Kevin Rudd is in no way representative of the brain-dead outer suburbs clog who decide elections.

Part of Bush's success is that he connects with ordinary (Nothing special) Americans who say in a kind of slack jawed drawl that he's "A regular guy just like us". In other words, he is a dolt. Heaven forbid the most powerful person in the world would actually be a clever guy.

And heaven forbid that the leader of a country in the Asia Pacific might actually be fluent in an Asian language.

Much more representative of Kath and Kim is Pauline Hanson, who fights the good fight in the dumb corner. (Actually smart is more of a corner, dumb is more like the whole rest of the room.)

It isn't dumb that she raises concerns about multiculturalism, Mark Steyn does that and he's an intelligent man. I do it, and I manage to tie my shoe-laces most days.

What is dumb is that she will not present any strong, well thought out arguments. She doesn't like Africans because they're diseased? I understand health checks are performed on new arrivals. Why doesn't she just say that they smell bad and make irritating "Eep, Eep" noises like monkeys?

I like Africans. The ones that have moved to the north eastern suburbs appear to be fitting in as well as they're allowed to. I applaud the marked drop of white homeboys on the o-bahn. They can't compete against the real Black travelling with us now and they have generally stopped trying. I also like the perspective they bring, as many are refugees. They have horror stories that make the general suburban bitch about not having the latest Commodore look as small as it is.

The comments she makes about Muslims are harder to criticise, I'd just sooner hear them from Mark Steyn. I've at least got the confidence that Steyn has done his homework.

Hanson means trouble because the media will make her the face of any sentiment that questions any kind of racial policy, or anybody who takes less than a totally permissive attitude with Aboriginal affairs.

Kevin Rudd is a smart guy. If there is a Hanson factor to be used he will use it to strip votes away from Howard. (Why should Joe Prole vote for a clever man who pretends to be dumb when he can have the real thing?).

If he wants their second preference though, he will need to exercise the kind of cunning that Labor hasn't seen since the days of Keating. He needs to quell the urge of the Left to mock Pauline Hanson's lack of education and poor elocution. There are a lot of traditional Labor voters with those traits.

He may need to give the occasional nod to working-class racism, as Beazley did with his opposition to 457 visas. Already Rudd has said he doesn't want Australia to become "Japan's beach". There is nothing wrong with Japanese tourists other than the colour of their skin, so we know who that comment was meant for.

Nice.

A different way to look at things

2006-11-29T22:00:00.000+10:30

Recently Injustice Gilganixon moved from the centre of politics, back to the centre-left. This moved occurred before the repulsive behaviour of anarchists at the g20 summit, and was reversed immediately afterwards.

I'm attempting a shift of my own. I don't mean changing my position from what could vaguely be described as Labor Right, I mean ceasing to divide people into such categories to begin with. I think most of the people one would meet on the street only give a crap about politics during an election year, or when something is going on the directly affects them, like Industrial Relations. The rest of the time, they go to work, spend time with their families and generally try to have a nice life.

They cannot be accurately slotted anywhere into the left-right spectrum, and leaving them out altogether makes the whole categorisation process rather pointless.

I am changing to a different spectrum, with smart at one end and dumb at the other.

Even this is flawed as there are people who are simultaneously capable of staggering genius and shocking stupidity. Ideas and policies, rather than people, tend to fit in with this spectrum better.

From the left:

Devotion to public education and hospitals is smart. A sick, slack jawed population is of little use for any purpose.

Multiculturalism is dumb, but first a disclaimer:

Accepting migrants from all corners of the globe is great. It is not multiculturalism. Having an Indian restaurant across the road from a Chinese resturant in the outer suburbs is awesome. It is not multiculturalism. Having my corner store run by Russians, who took over from Chinese, who took over from Germans is magnificent. They were all hard working, decent people. It is not multiculturalism. Having Chinese New Year festivals, Greeks diving into the ocean to recover a crucifix and Germans getting tore up in the parklands makes our community a more interesting place. It is not multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism means allowing people in your society to follow mutually exclusive sets of values and principles, side by side. In practice, it requires the country to have no culture of its own, and to be no greater than the sum of its parts. Any national culture that develops (against all odds) must be subservient to any new arrivals. We have socially progressive people who lose their shit over Christmas decorations in shopping centres. They say it is culturally insensitive.

Leaders of non Christian groups- to their credit- say that it doesn't bother them. I appreciate that but it really doesn't matter, we don't just turf our own traditions to satisfy new people. Any disagreement they might have should be considered unfortunate, but ultimately immaterial.

Enough about multiculturalism and the Left

From the Right.

I like very much that the budget is in surplus. I am impressed that the Commonwealth Government has finally dragged itself out of debt. Prudent economic management is smart because it leaves us with enough cash to satisfy our needs, and minimises our exposure to risk. It also puts us in a good position to borrow if we really have to (Think long term infrastructure loans, rather than short term overdrafts to fund Centrelink.)

Not investing enough in Higher Education, research and development and trade skills is dumb. This is not Right generally, just Howard Government specifically. They're not encouraging Australia to be intelligent or innovative. For example, nobody overseas is saying

"Hey do you know how Australia generates power? They burn heaps of coal, how cool is that? How did they ever think of that?. That's just awesome." or

"Do you know how they earn foreign exchange? They pull shit out of the ground and export it, losing it forever, they rip up old growth forest and sell it to Japanese paper mills. God damn it must have taken a genius to think of that. It must be all the reality TV they watch."

I like to talk to intelligent people of all kinds, I don't like to encourage others to be fools, like the Labor's anti GST campaign did, or Howard's interest rates scare in 2004.

Stupidity is the new enemy, and it must be fought on all fronts.

Bling.

2006-11-24T20:47:00.000+10:30

I done gots me a new kind of time keeping device.

As a reward for finishing my degrees, my folks got me an Omega Seamaster. It is 22 years old and was bought for far below replacement cost, its replacement cost being enough to feed a lot of people for a long time.

It doesn't really bling very much though, being understated, subtle and elegant. With a stainless steel case and black leather band it looks a bit like a Samsonite briefcase.

It is otherwise very similar to the one my dad bought for half price in the mid '80s when a container load of them was black-balled by customs in Argentina and sent to Australia to be dumped for salvage price.

The other benefits of finshing uni are starting to sink in. Dreams I had of livin' large only a few years ago are a reality now. My employment with The Man makes a serious fucken career much less hypothetical than it used to be. I look at the employment section of the Financial Review with a lot less longing and a lot more "Damn, I'll be having that within the next ten or so"

I'm preparing a list of things I don't give two shits about anymore

1) Going to a Northern suburbs public school that produces so few uni students that Adelaide Uni will give any of us 8 points on top of our TER for affirmative action.

2) Having such a pitiful TER that the affirmative action still wouldn't have been enough to get into AU

3) Taking six years to finish a four year degree, partly because of involvement in some kind of Corporation

4) Everything else that happened in this Corporation

5) Suffering repeated age discrimination when looking for casual employment (Getting a real job often has that kind of cleansing effect)

6) Leaving my home ridiculously early to attend exams at Wayville, having arrived home ridiculously late from those exams the previous evening.

7) All other 45 minute bus trips, performed twice daily.

8) All other things that have failed to stop me

Mistake T. Schrempp

Degree in Land Raping
Degree in Finding Loopholes in Business Law

Legacy member of the commercial class.

Changes to uni support

2006-11-23T19:06:00.000+10:30

I have a suggestion that would change the higher education system.

It would increase the status of university students in the eyes of the public and it would improve the lives of students who are serious about their degrees. It is a plan to give Commonwealth support to students based on performance.

Higher education is something well worth funding with tax payers’ money. There is no better investment than to help somebody become a professional at something that benefits our economy or society. The investment is repaid in monetary terms by big tax bills. Many of us will end up paying the top marginal rate and therefore be members of the top 25% of income earners that finance 65% of the public spending. Those that do not will contribute in other ways, by being teachers, social workers and nurses. Even the students whose degrees don’t relate to any specific occupation will learn how to research and critique ideas and will learn the terms of civilised debate.

Despite the clear benefits of having a society full of highly educated people, university students are perceived by the community to be one small step above heroin addicts- and that’s only on the days when a distinction can be made.

Part of this is due to bad press that we get whenever a student in a white jumpsuit smashes up a police van, or when some lunatic in a Corolla mows down a fence at a detention centre.

Understandably, people who pay tax (like working families on ultra tight budgets) do not like to see their cash being spent subsidising this shit. Accordingly, whenever a politician wants to come along and cut money out of higher education, he is greeted largely by either indifference or praise.

This makes life harder for students who put the work in, only to be sneered at by proles who lump them in with anarchist retards. Every time this motivates them to bugger off overseas, Australia is poorer by one smart person.

Performance based support would turn this around. The students who make a genuine effort and achieve results would be rewarded. Those who choose university as a “Lifestyle” and could not be bothered turning up to class or doing assignments would get nothing.

Hey presto- everybody who thinks smashing the state is more important than coming to class is cut off. Any Young Liberals who get too carried away with their meetings and figure their pappys are going to set them up anyway would suffer a similar fate.

Everybody has freedom of political opinion and expression, but that doesn’t mean the community should have to subsidise it.

There are two basic ways that performance related support could be administered

Through a Centrelink allowance that is universally paid above a P2 Grade Point Average, but falls to zero below this. This would be in addition to current entitlements for those with P2 or above GPA but students with a fail average would lose all education related Centrelink entitlements

and/or:

Each subject would be charged in arrears at

- The full fee paying rate for a failed subject
- The current Commonwealth supported rate for a P2 score
- Half the Commonwealth rate for a credit score
- A quarter of this rate for a distinction or high distinction

The change is designed to make people on a P2 average no worse off than before. A P2 average is deliberately chosen as a soft target for anybody who puts at least a minimal effort into all assessment pieces. Allowances would need to be made for people whose poor performance was a result of illness or family trouble. Those who study part time due to other commitments would be supported in proportion to their study load and performance.

The objective of the change is not to make life difficult for people who work hard, but struggle.

The objective is to stop paying for people who don’t give a damn about studying, and to start rewarding people who do.

If people want to do good in society, that is commendable. They should pick a degree that would get them in a position to do this and study like hell. This change should only encourage them to keep their mind on the job.

Spooking horses is easy. Doing something useful is hard.

2006-11-18T21:35:00.000+10:30

OK the London bombing didn't stop G8 last year, so I'm not sure that some assaulted horses and broken police windows will give the G20 much trouble.

I don't think a lot of the people who went there expected they would really stop the G20 either. Many of them probably didn't really even know what the hell it was, beyond what they'd heard from the fetid cake-holes of their anarchist masters. The G20 was set up in the wake of the asian crisis to be a more inclusive and representative collection of the world's finance ministers. As well as the obvious players, (The EU only counts for 1 of 20) there is India, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa.

Stopg20.org talks about India's GDP per capita being $700 odd when America's is $40,000 odd. Fair enough, and I think the Indian representative might have something to say about that this weekend because INDIA IS A PLAYER, NIMROD!

If something big is going to be done about global poverty, the solution is likely to be talked about here.

I think this is immaterial to a lot of protestors. For them, protesting is as much a social activity as it is anything else, it's like going to the cricket.

There are people who will say that at least they're doing something about poverty. Wrong. Something would be what's happening inside the G20, or on aid projects. Something is not some sanctimonious, marxist half wit causing a McDonald's to be shut down on McHappy day near the epicentre of the protest.

I've made a few posts about this sort of shit on this blog, so there's little point in repeating the stuff. "People who actually do good are rarely referred to as do-gooders" from January 2005 remains accurate.

I will add this. Worldvision think the G20 will be productive. These are people who, I'm told not only know and care a bit about poverty and equality, but from time to time actually do something about it.

Their approval says all about the the validity of the G20 that really needs to be said.

A Rabbit

2006-11-03T13:12:00.000+10:30

John Kerry has either done something very stupid, or something totally brilliant.

His remarks about a lack of education and forward vision leading to invading Iraq were directed at Bush, not America's men and women in uniform.

Even if John Kerry believed military personnel to be rubes (As some progressives no doubt do) he would not be stupid enough to say so in public.

It's also hard to imagine that he can fuck up the delivery of a fairly simple joke about Bush. (Bush not being a particularly difficult guy to take the piss out of).

So what's happened?

Republicans, who have been infamous for their smear are now focusing it on some guy who isn't even running for congress.

Look at it this way. They're going to smear Democrats anyway. Most of the smear will be lies, as the Swift Boat for Truth thing was in 2004- but they're going run a nasty, oversimplified disgrace of a smear campaign anyway, so why not offer up some rabbit for them to chase?

Hillary gets to go on TV and say how much she supports the troops, every other Democrat gets a chance to distance themselves from this spent presidential candidate. Everybody's happy.

If he did this on purpose he's a fucking. genius

A society that everybody needs to protect.

2006-09-17T19:23:00.000+09:30

If our western societies become more like Islamic ones, it will be conservative heterosexual men who have the least to lose.

Think about it; We'd be the head of the house and the missus would do what she was told, petrol would be cheap and we could own as many guns as we like.

Yee ha!

If some bastard tried to steal my lowered Range Rover I could have his hands cut off.

Awesome!

The no alcohol rule would suck cold hard dick, but you can't have everything.

Accordingly, it should be conservative white guys who are the most 'sensitive' to Islamic extremists, but it isn't. Why not?

I don't know, maybe I'm just not that crazy about any movement whose stated aim is to wipe out any trace of my present and rewrite my history. Maybe progessives don't mind it as much, don't denounce it as loudly and won't do what it takes to beat it because they're ashamed of who we are.

Nobody attends public school in Australia without learning the worst possible interpretation of Australian history, and without learning what a pack of cunts we currently are. My experience of the New Humanities at University is that they continue this theme.

This really is inadequate. By all means people need to learn an honest account of where they're from, but this should not take the form of a heavily biased curriculum propogated by post-modernists, many of whom are still resentful about having lost the Cold War.

Our society's fucked unless enough people believe two fundamental things:

1) The Western way of life is worth protecting
2) Westerners have the right to protect it in their own countries.

Socially progressive people should want to protect it. They have fought (correctly) for secular schools, women's rights, homosexual rights, religious freedom and many other things. These will all be harder to advance in a society whose Islamic communities are larger, more conservative and have more power.

I understand that it feels bad to criticise and offend people you've tought yourself to appease, and that part of a progressive ideal is that you don't do such things, but sooner or later you have to make a choice:

Cultural acquiescence, or a woman's right to get an abortion?

The handbrake has been let off multiculturalism, and it's gathering momentum. At some point cultural sensitivity to conservative Islam will kill every other progressive issue. I guess my question to socially progressive people is this:

Is cultural acquiescence worth it?

It's not imaginary, it's happening in Europe. Decades of fighting to get gay teachers accepted into Dutch public schools is at risk of being flushed down the toilet by Holland's Islamic community. A gentleman named Pim Fortuyn got himself killed for highlighting this danger.

Another gentleman by the name of Theo van Gogh was assassinated for making a film which highlighted the objectionable treatment women receive at the hands of Islam.

There are some wackos out there for sure, and I think it's inevitable that Australia will have a terrorist attack on its soil in the future. The funny thing is that's not what I'm afraid of. I mean having something blow up and kill 200 people every few years would cold suck, but that can't kill Australia. The likelihood of being a victim of a terrorist attack on any given day in any given place is negligible.

Which will be the same likelihood of finding a decent pub in 2030 when a party called The Islamic Alliance of Australia holds the balance of power in the Senate.

I'm not afraid of terrorists blowing things up. That won't work. I'm afraid of fundamentalist, or even conservative Muslims running the show.

Whenever somebody on the right expresses concern about people coming to Australia and changing things, it's isn't long before somebody on the left starts talking about what the white man did to the Aborigine.

Let's have that discussion. Let's talk about what happended to the Aborigines in explicit detail. Let's make sure everybody knows.

And then, when everybody has their heads around that let's ask:

Do we really want that done to us?

Happenings at Uni SA

2006-07-28T14:22:00.000+09:30

This semester my wallet is heavier than it might otherwise be. To the tune of 160 Australian Pesos.

For this splendid occurance I have to thank John W. Howard. In an exceptional case of good policy, he and his posse have made it illegal for a Student Association to extort cash from students.

The association can still exist by all means, and can still charge fees for service and for voluntary membership. This is as it should be.

My student association was not confident that anybody would consider its services worthy of gigantic wads of mad cash, so it has scrapped fees altogether- even for people who become voluntary members.

One of the consequences is that a cash strapped student Association has 'no choice' but to shut down an enterprise that brings in money. I'm talking about the Uni Bar. To encourage us to spend money in this establishment, we were told that the profits would support the Students Association.

In other words, the enterprise could have stood on its own two feet. When the VSU bill became more and more likely to succeed, the story was reversed. Without the Amenities fee, we wouldn't have the bar- or at least we wouldn't have the discount prices.

This makes sense on a superficial level. The fee supposedly subsidised cheap drink prices.

There are a couple of problems with this. First, not too many people knew what the drink prices were. Most students chose the obscene, big bad private enterprise run Worldsend over the happy, warm and cuddly communal Uni Bar in any case.

Second, I suspect that discounts were possible because Uni SA didn't charge the Student Association market rent to occupy the bar. Less overheads = lower prices. I doubt the amenities fee had a damned thing to do with it.

Nevertheless, I will be generous and say that VSU threatened the bar's existence. A challenge was presented by the external environment.

This sounds like a job for a management consultant, or better still, a university full of them.

Reversing the fortunes of the Uni bar could have been broken up into assignments for about half a dozen subjects. Hey presto, about 200 opinions on how to fix the place, 20 of which would have been outstanding.

I have a few observations.

- The bar didn't sell tobacco on a campus full of foreigners who smoke like trains. This doesn't have to be stretched very far to be considered culturally insensitive.

- The bar shut at 6pm. In other words, the bar shut when you were thirsty.

- The bar was never promoted as a place to get tore up.

If this was worth 20% of my grade I think I'd come up with a few more.

The coffee facilities have been replaced by a new ground floor coffee emporium that displays a distinct lack of the requisite skills to produce coffee. The stuff tastes like warm milk that doesn't have coffee in it.

This situation was entirely avoidable, not by the mafia style protection racket we had before, but by the good business sense we were never short of.

If Student Associations run all their affairs with this kind of incompetence, they deserve to be ground into the dirt.

For every action, there's a reaction, and an Israeli reaction is quite a fucking thing.

2006-07-17T20:31:00.000+09:30

It occurs to me that Israel is the most ruthless, irritable, ballsy and capable country in the world.

It is incomprehensible that a bunch of nimrods could kidnap two of its soldiers without expecting a massive incendiary response.

My perspective is that Hezbollah has essentially sent Israel a written request to start bombing. Israel has merely honoured the request.

Perhaps Hezbollah is hoping Israel will blow up a bus load of Syrians by mistake. Such an attack may bring Iran into the conflict and give us a substantial war to see out the decade.

I bags sacking Iran when its troops aren't home.

Morality.

2006-07-02T20:10:00.000+09:30

Morality

"n 1: concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct [ant: immorality] 2: motivation based on ideas of right and wrong [syn: ethical motive, ethics, morals]"
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

A hornet's nest packed with subjective terms if ever there was one.

Yet there would be few people on earth who would be completely without morals.

Let's hold as self evident that both Donald Rumsfeld and Osama bin Laden both have some pretty well developed ideas about what they think is right and wrong. If they perform acts consistent with those beliefs then - by definition - those acts must be moral.

This won't be the first time you've read something like this, although when you've read it before it was probably from the mouth of some cultural relativist pinko bending over backwards to get Al Quaeda off the hook for 9/11.

This is not my intention.

It appears that my morals crusading local MP (Trish Draper) has succeeded in getting the adults only edition of Big Brother off the air. I won't miss it, as usually at that time of night I am either sleeping or doing financial mathematic nerding in Excel.

It didn't cause any harm to me, or any real and provable harm to anybody else, and accordingly probably should have stayed on as long as Channel 10 wished it to.

Trish Draper and the pentacostal church that lives in her constituency felt differently about this, and so now Big Brother Adults Only is history.

Their version of morality is a rather over simplified one. It seems to think that if there was no tits, arse, or foul language on TV the world would be a much better place. Considering this as the key variable determining the quality of people's lives, Ms. Draper waddles off to Canberra to vote for things like WorkChoices.

That nasty piece of legislation has been condemned by the Catholic and Anglican church, but largely ignored by pentacostals. I mean who needs a real moral crime when you've got shit like weed and television to worry about?

So morality is subjective, I guess we already knew that.

There have been calls to introduce morality into the duties of company directors, and ammend the Corporations Act to crystalise this into law. Currently company directors are only required to return the heaviest possible wad of mad cash to shareholders without breaking any important laws.

Corporate Social Responsiblity (for those that do not believe it is simply a cynical marketing ploy) is the intended vehicle for this morality. Corporate Social Resonsibility (CSR) and its brother 'Triple bottom line accounting' aim to raise the conduct of a company beyond that which is legally required. A company employing these priciples does the right thing, not the legally mandated thing.

OK.

The problem here is that not everybody shares the same educated, socially progressive moral framework that produces things like CSR.

What if a company's shareholders and directors share a predominantly Christian right moral framework?

Corporate resonsibility for them may include not hiring heathen scum, or homosexuals, or women who've had abortions, or women who haven't had abortions (their place is in the kitchen, remember)

What if the company is to be run along a white supremicist moral framework? A community participation initiative may be to sponsor cross burnings and lobby the government to increase the tax benefits that flow to jew hating organisations.

We avoid these problems by codifying in law not that a corporation should be responsible, but that it should not involve itself in racist and otherwise discriminatory behaviour.

Clear and direct rules are established and company directors are asked not to use their imagination about 'Morality' in the same way that Stalin and Pol Pot used theirs.

Directors are asked just to produce the cash, and the shareholders will look after their own cross burnings thank you very much.

Morality can be used to justify heaps of stuff. For example, I think it's right and proper to recover my HECS (and then some) from the Commonwealth Government through barely legitimate tax deductions.

What it cannot do is persuade people who abide by different moral rules.

As organisations such as Al Quaeda cannot be persuaded through moral appeals to stop their dirty business ,we need the next best thing.

Million. Dollar. Bombs.

Long live the crusade. Huzzah.

"BOOM" indeed.

2006-05-18T15:12:00.000+09:30

Now is as good a time as any to break a 3 month posting drought.

I'm trying to do an assignment in relation to residential real estate and I need respite. I recently inspected a home that I thought might be worth a quarter of a million, but I've now had to put on a value of close to $300,000.

This is for a not particularly special house, on a not very large block, in a northern suburb that isn't particularly pleasant.

The same house may have sold five years ago for $150,000.

This isn't really news to anybody. It's common knowledge that the last five years have seen a residential real estate boom.

Incidentally, "Real estate boom" is the terminology you use when you don't want to say "Hyper-inflation in the housing sector". Of course when prices double over five years without an improvement in quality, hyper-inflation is exactly what you've got.

Much of what happens in real estate takes a while to make its presence known. Right now my parents' house may be worth $350,000, but that matters not because they bought it for $110,000. Accordingly, the hyper-inflation hasn't increased our cost of living.

The housing element of the Consumer Price Index does not consider house valuations, but the average of what people actually part with every week. This amount increases with every first home that is bought.

Interest rates are rising and hyper-inflation makes interest rates rise further. This is coming at a time when one could throw a dart out of the window and hit an Australian who is in thumping, elephantine debt.

BOOM.

I predict that there will be bankruptcies. I'm not talking about a few written off credit card bills.

I foresee the kind of bankruptcy that Jesus talked about.

There's a part of me that wants the Liberals to win the next federal election. That way, the cruel and unusual punishment of recession can occur on their watch, with no previous government to blame.

Should children be taught to be competitive?

2006-02-14T21:26:00.000+10:30

This was the subject of debate in my living room earlier this evening.

I was in the affirmative, blue corner.

In the red corner was my mother, a public school teacher.

Now common sense should dictate you don't challenge a teacher on education (just like you don't challenge a feminist on abortion), but I've been challenged on business and economics often enough to make it a free for all.

I believe that children should learn to be competitive because the world is competitive and they need to be prepared for it. The proposition that this is not the ideal situation is irrelevant. What is relevant is that an army of social workers, teachers and child psychologists can't change it.

Life continually presents things that people want. Sometimes there's not enough to go around and to teach children that they shouldn't compete for life's goodies is to set them up for failure.

By competing, I don't mean bullying or using force. I mean playing the game by the rules- and doing it better than your opponent.

The opposing argument is that there is already so much competition in a child's life, and that a classroom should be a sanctuary from it. This sounds reasonable, but can be counter productive.

If a child is stressed out about having to compete, it may be because they are not very good at it.

No shame in that, school's there to make kids better at things.

It is argued that children need to learn how to be collaborative and mindful of others. This is true, and it is complimentary to the need to be competitive. The US/UK could never have won every single war they have jointly entered if they could not work together. The Adelaide Crows would never have won two AFL premierships if they couldn't work as a team and weren't mindful of what their teammates were doing.

Indeed, in sport the debate is not being had. In sporting situations, the talented children are encouraged to soar as high as they can, and to lead teams that can win. They are punished for cheating and anti-competitive behaviour as they should be.

Works fine if sport's your thing.

If it's not, you may have a problem because the mass culture of this country does not encourage competition in other fields. Schools, to be fair, only reflect that.

I have an idea about why this might be.

In adult life it's not a big deal if you can't kick straight, so people who can kick straight don't intimidate Joe Punter. He's pleased at their success.

In adult life it is a big deal if you are unable to negotiate with your employer, perhaps because you're not articulate or perhaps because you don't possess skills that are valuable enough.

People who are better at this are intimidating. They can often provide their kids with things others can't. This upsets people and it's hard to admire somebody who makes you feel inadequate.

This is the very reason why kids should be taught to be competitive in the class room. They'll be more able to stick up for themselves as adults and they'll be able to look after themselves and others.

We need strong people, not weak people and the strength needs to be developed at childhood.

A time to refresh Labor

2006-01-29T20:47:00.000+10:30

"There she sits, buttered, used to gleamin' in the sun
There to greet a workin' man when his day is done
I'm gonna pack my Pa and I'm gonna pack my aunt
And take 'em on down to the Cadillac Ranch"

The song "Cadillac Ranch" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band sheds daylight on a little secret.

The common folk don't work overtime at the factory so that they can afford a shiny new hybrid car.

I don't blame them, the cheapest hybrid car available on the Australian market is the Honda Civic Hybrid at $30,000. 30 grand is heaps of money for a car, and even with all I know about global warming I wouldn't bust my arse to make the payments on something that dull.

The hybrid car services what is known as a "Niche market" and is therefore a suitable representation of where the Greens are and where Labor is going.

The Greens seem happy to be a boutique political party and are quite successful in that context. They service a charming little demographic consisting of hippies, homosexuals and doctor's wives. I may even vote for them in the coming SA election (despite not being part of the aforementioned demographic).

Labor is faced with a different situation entirely, they are the alternative federal government and they need to hit the mass market.

They are supposed to be the Ford to the Liberal Holden.

At this time the only mass market card Labour has is industrial relations. That is the only election issue where Labor have a popular position.

It isn't good enough, union membership has been in decline for decades.

Gough Whitlam saw this coming. By the 1970's unionised workers were enjoying unprecedented standards of living. Whitlam knew that worker satisfaction and general prosperity directly threatened the health of unions and with them, the ALP.

Gough, brilliantly saved Labor's bacon with his free tertiary education programme. Because degrees didn't cost anything anymore, no return on investment was required. More people studied unprofitable things like Arts, Education and Social Sciences.

These areas of study had a strong left wing bias and people with degrees in things that aren't profitable soon found a home in Labor's bosom.

Throughout the 1980's Labor did an admirable job of balancing the interests of smart, broke people against those of the blue collars. The two put together were enough to give Labor government in 1983. The Soviet Union hadn't had its arse handed to it yet, so smug academics could still get into bed with the enemy. The anti-success, tall poppy butchering principles of socialism were reasonably in tune with what Aussie common folk were thinking. It was a good time to be a Lefty

In 1989 the Berlin wall came down. There was not, surprisingly, a stampede to get into East Germany. The Socialist experiment was crumbling, and by 1991 it had been stabbed in its heart.

The academic Left had to find a new cause. Fast.

The Earth Summit in Rio occured in 1992, just a year after the Soviet Union got it's arse whupped. That's fast.

Environmental protection, together with multiculturalism became the new political fashion and the unprofitable graduates began their divergence from the working class. It wasn't too bad for a while. The blue collars didn't actively hate the environment, they just weren't interested in saving it.

The fissure became a canyon when unskilled labourers lost their jobs in economic restructing and promptly blamed it on Asians. Paul Keating took sides with the multi-cultis and Labor lost the 1996 election.

And so in 2006 we have the common people not particularly interested in a Civic Hybrid and pounding Lebos in Sydney.

It's crucial for Labor to purge the intelligenstia. These folk represent a tiny segment of the population and have a ready made party with few compromises. Its called The Greens.

Labor can't win on the environment, they need to leave that to the Greens. Heaping shit on the US like Latham did probably won't help as Australian people generally have a positive attitude towards our American cousins.

Labor can rebuild itself but it needs a more complete understanding of its electorate; who they are and what they want.

They probably need to keep the ethnic minorities in the fold to swing a few marginal seats.
They should maintain their position on industrial relations and prey that the common people like their 4 weeks annual leave more than they dislike darkies.

The Left have no business in a mosque.

2006-01-05T22:08:00.000+10:30

"I'm a conservative-- I'm not entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses like a slut: I'm with Mullah Omar on that one."

The above links to an outstanding article by Mark Steyn. In it he raises several issues, focused on the Islamification of Western Europe. The jist of it is that they're having not nearly enough babies and admitting entirely too many North Africans to cover the shortfall.

Also, their social welfare systems will crumble as they have too many people drawing on them with not enough tax payers to finance it.

This is all familiar as conservative sentiment and it's generally true.

Elsewhere in the article Mr Steyn highlights something that's both fascinating and immediately obvious: Muslims are socially conservative.

In Holland there has been a call from within Islamic communities to ban homosexuals from teaching in public schools. Pim Fortuyn criticised this among other things and was rubbed out for his trouble. I'll wager that social progressives lobbied for decades to get gay teachers into public schools, yet a gay sociology lecturer who wants to protect these gains from conservative Islam is considered "Right wing", or even "Far right".

Cultural sensitivity has been taken too far. It's been taken to the point where the social progressives who normally promote it end up apologising for cultures and for people who are not their friends.

You name the issue, and I'll bet that Muslims and the western Left lock horns on it;

The only time you see fundamentalist Islam advocating abortion is when unborn babies are killed by suicide bombs.

No middle Eastern countries that I'm aware of have a cradle-to-grave welfare system (Except maybe Israel, and you know why Israel doesn't count)

The Palestinians I've seen on TV seem very much in favour of universal firearms ownership.

If the two are so fundamentally opposed, why then does the Left like to snuggle up to the camel riding fellows?

It's because they are allies of convenience. They both hate the US.

Every single issue that social progressives have pursued in their history - from civil rights to environmental protection - suddenly takes a back seat to their sour grapes at the world's most powerful nation.

It doesn't matter that the US has given its own progressive citizens more or less everything they have asked for, because that's not how political fashion works. Progressive taxation is so last century.

The Left are acting like spoiled children: Spiteful, rebellious and ungrateful.

It's time they grew up.

Such as Workplace Relations

2005-12-02T17:28:00.000+10:30

I'm in two minds abut this WorkChoices business.

I think that blue-collars who voted for Howard because they don't like darkies are about to get what they deserve.

Tasmanian timber workers (Who spurned Mark Lathams offer of an $800 million bailout to stop destroying old growth) will also not be candidates for my sympathy if they lose their piss break.

I want to believe that there are enough educated, confident and individually minded people out there to make this work. It pisses me off that this is not the case. I'm disgusted with the reality that most of the country's workforce cannot bargain on their own merits, but this remains the reality nonetheless.

The first thing that will go will be paid vacation, as an individual worker will never be able to justify why the boss should pay him for doing nothing. Paid sick leave will go along similar lines.

I'd be happy to take a half hour lunch break instead of an hour if it meant that I got to leave earlier, but I can see that if enough people do this it will become the standard lunch break and there won't be any choice.

It's important to note that self employed people don't have this problem. They can work as much or as little as they want with one small catch.

The clock's ticking.

Any time that they are not working is reflected in their bottom line. They can make their own decisions, but nobody will be looking after them.

Sadly, the dependance mentality is real. The corporate right want you to keep it because it means assymetrical loyalty. The socialist left want you to keep it because it stops individuals from being truly powerful and keeps them under state control.

If you've got it, you're about to get pumped.

'Intelligent Design" sounds like something Ikea would do.

2005-10-17T14:39:00.000+09:30

This is an interesting article concerning the most dangerous and frightening part of conservatism- the religious Right.

It used to be the case that parents who wanted their child to have a religious education would have to shell out for a private school. Indeed, as most private schools catered to this market, giving your kids better resources and smaller class sizes usually came at the cost of filling their heads with creationist garbage.

In the US this may be reversed. The public schools teach creationism, enough parents will hate this to make secular private schools a profitable niche market.

This has advantages for well-to-do families who believe in evolution. They may now be able to send their kids to private school to launch them higher up the food chain without the worry of having to re-educate them when they got home.

Actually the particularly interesting part of the above linked article is the relation to political correctness and cultural sensitivity. Teaching kids that there was no absolute truth may well have laid the foundations for teaching them something that was absolutely not true.

It's a fight, and if you want to bring up your kids in the secular style you'd better stand by your principles and go into battle for them.

Abnormal behaviour

2005-10-01T20:24:00.000+09:30

What we did on that day was not normal.

When most normal, healthy people are informed that a corpse lies deep in the bushland, they will promptly about face and clear the area.

In our case, the fact that a dead man lay beyond the horizon was the very reason we had turned up. We'd come there to bash through scrub looking for him.

We were advised to keep this as impersonal as possible. We were advised not the read the many notes his family had left for him while there was still hope he may be alive. Some of us gave into the voyeuristic temptation and it did none of us any good.

We scoured one section of forest after another to no avail. By the end of the day we were worn out, overheated and thirsty so we decided to take a shortcut back to the command post.

He was no more than twenty metres from the trail, suspended from a tree branch with a noose around his neck.

With no radio communication, the two more experienced crew stood guard over the body while myself and another young 'un headed back to the base to alert others and lead them back. Adrenaline saw us march much faster than we had all day and we had to stop periodically so the cops we had in tow could catch up.

Another crew cut him down from the tree and brought him back to the command post. The man's brother was brought there to identify him. The dozen cops and SES guys standing together, silent and with heads bowed may have prepared him for what he was about to see.

It isn't normal to see this and not be affected by it. One of my team had a weekend without sleep, picturing every other tree he saw with a man in it. Another had been to East Timor in 1999 after the pro-Jakarta Militia had been through, and had seen much worse. I lost a bit of sleep over it and was on edge for the next day.

It isn't normal to see all this and willingly return to the job and the organisation that put us there, and will put us there again in the future. For no money.

That's what we've all done though, and some some of us have been toughened up from the experience.

Why I quit Labor and the left in general.

2005-09-20T20:57:00.000+09:30

A non exhaustive list, in no particular order:

It doesn't have anything to do with that repulsive Latham character

The stuff they say about social equity is bullshit. The biggest disservice that's been done to the South Australian poor and downtrodden in recent history was the State Bank disaster. This cost every man, woman and child in South Australia $2,500*, and that ended up being taken out of things like public health and education. Mike Rann has the hide to a) Rip into the Liberals for getting their hands dirty fixing the problem and b) Claim responsibility for the "Triple A" credit rating that has only just been restored, 15 odd years later.

When the economy goes pear shaped, rich fat cats consider it part of the investment cycle and the poor catch it in the face.

The mental health system has degenerated further in South Australia since Labor took office. As a police officer I expect to come into contact with a heap of preventable crime that relates to mental disease. I won't always have the discretion to turn a blind eye, especially in serious circumstances, so some people will enter the criminal justice system who never had to.

We elect Labor governments because we're willing to pay a bit more tax on the basis that they will at least take care of social justice. When they can't even do that they are as good as a cunt full of cold water. The Liberals do the same shit job for less money.

If wealthy people vote Liberal and impoverished people vote Labor, wouldn't it logically be in the interests of the Labor party to make sure there are as many impoverished people as possible? General prosperity and economic comfort work for the Liberals, which is why
they're winning seats other than Alexander Downer's ultra rich one in the hills.

The stuff they say about egalitarianism is also bullshit. Refer to a previous post about how they generally have contempt for the common man. Don't expect to find one having a beer with a manual labourer unless it's a photo op. Working class men nowadays bust their arses every day of the week, and sometimes weekends when there's a deadline to meet. I don't think they appreciate their tax dollars going to people who have no plan to work at all.

Labor start unnecessary and ulitimately ridiculous class wars. Paul Keating started one with John Hewson, who pointed out that they both grew up in the same poor neighbourhood and now both live in the same rich one. Not too many brickie's labourers wear $2000 Zegna suits.

It was Labor who put a stop to free tertiary education. The coalition under Malcolm Fraser maintained it for 8 years, including a period of time where Fraser had total control of the senate and could have done anything he wanted.

Mandatory detention for unauthorised immigrants was intoduced by the Keating Labor government in 1993

For a political philosophy that had its roots in 60's anti-authoritarianism, the new academic left have an alarming tendency to tell people what to do:

The left have a zero tolerance attitude towards SUVs, but are willing to bend over backwards to find mitigating circumstances for terrorism. This makes no sense.

People who condemn veal but advocate abortion must believe that a baby cow has more rights than a baby human. (My own position is that veal is awesome and abortion is a necessary evil).

Finally, as a white male in the developed world I had three left wing positions against me on the day I was born.

* Edit. The amount the State Bank disaster cost each South Australian was orginally written here as $25,000. My bad, one too many zeros it seems. It has since been adjusted to the correct $2500. This still puts it on par with the Savings and Loan scandal that rocked the US in the late '80s, and ahead of the Victorian State Bank disaster of the same time (Both on a per capita basis).

I have thought that when my car registration was due I would just ask to take it off the debt that Mike Rann owes me, but I doubt this would be successful.

You should read these, yes you should.

2005-09-08T14:08:00.000+09:30

1. The Rum Diary, by Hunter S. Thompson

A rare book by Hunter S that doesn't make you scream at a teddy bear for several hours. Set in Puerto Rico in the late 50's it is a story of a young journalist at a god-awful tabloid lurching from one alcohol soaked day to the next. Where "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is little more than a story about a weekend of concentrated drug fuelled depravity, "The Rum Diary" is written at a pace that allows some thought and reflection about what's going on. After reading it I wanted to have a rum sundowner in some place where people spoke Spanish.

2. Guts: 8 Laws of Business, by Bob Lutz

This a management book not written from the CoMBI (Collective Masturbation Based Initiative) School.

You might not not like the man's obvious corporate right wing style, but that's OK because very little of the book has anything to do with politics.

He doesn't have any tolerance for bullshit or buzz words, nor for people who act like robots.

It is written by a human, for humans.

Holden means a shaky deal to Elizabeth

2005-08-29T12:33:00.000+09:30

Last week Holden announced that it would sack 1400 workers from its Elizabeth factory.

Most of these come from the third shift that was added a couple of years ago. I remember seeing that story on TV a while back, and a newly recruited 18 year old said that he wouldn't mind if he worked there for his whole life.

Sorry.

Positions at Holden are good things to have in a place like Elizabeth that is otherwise pretty crappy. They are full time, quite highly paid and have all sorts of conditions, allowances and god knows what else that have been won by decades of beligerant industrial action. Next to Opel employees in Germany (Who have also had some quite alarming cutbacks), the Elizabeth workforce is said to be the most expensive GM workforce in the world.

This announcement is obviously quite horrible for the 1400, who have played all the games and done all that was asked of them while they were there only to be sent packing. On the other hand it is logically untenable to keep employing people to build large cars that will sit unsold due to rising fuel prices.

As this partcular oil crisis was caused by fairly predictable Chinese demand, not by arabs and Americans taking turns in being cunts, I would say that whoever is doing the forecasting at Holden needs to be given the boot as well.

Either way, our generation hit the workforce after the mass layoffs and restructuring that tore the guts out of the manufacturing industry in the '80s. Some of the people laid off then were told twenty years prior that they would have jobs for life and they had reason to believe it. They (Quite justifiably) felt betrayed.

Nobody today should believe that they will be working in the same place for their whole career. While even a job in a precarious vehicle manufacturing sector is a good thing to have in the short term, setting anchor there is not a wise thing to do. Holden makes this easy, as very little is learned there that is transferable outside of a heavily unionised mass production environment.

Self reliance is a great thing to have in theory, but very few people encourage this in practice.

Left out in the cold.

2005-08-12T17:46:00.000+09:30

I was surprised last year when both John Howard and George Bush were re-elected. I wanted to know why the intellectually superior left couldn't beat them and I think I do now.

The Left doesn't have any friends.

In theory, Left wing politics does not sympathise with the rich and the powerful- preferring to focus on the common man (Or common person- to be gender neutral.) The problem with this is that they don't seem to know how to deal with this common human when they find him/her.

In the 1996 federal election that saw Labor lose government, a woman by the name of Pauline Hanson won the Queensland seat of Oxley. Her controversial, and at times simplistic views on immigration made her an enemy of the left from day one. Pauline Hanson's views were simplistic and she didn't articulate them very well either. Much of what she said could be killed by logically picking at it on its merits.

This was not the strategy used by left wing commentators at the time. Instead they sneered at her for being a fish and chip shop owner. They made fun of her nervousness and slip ups in interviews. In one move they hurt and antagonised small business operators, factory workers and people who had not finished high school. She may have been expressing bigoted and incendiary sentiment, but she was expressing their bigoted and incendiary sentiment.

Anyone still in doubt about who Pauline Hanson represented should consider this: The CEO of Coles-Myer was not worried about Asians taking his job. Nor, for that matter were journalists and academics in fear of losing theirs. That fear was irrational, but there are people who had it and people who didn't. Those who had it weren't going to be won over by having their advocate dismissed as an idiot.

Leftists do need to be honest with themselves. They only like the common man when Marx is talking about him. They don't like him when he's at the Clipsal 500.

When he thinks Schapelle Corby is "Innosent", when he watches Big Brother and when he does burnouts in his Commodore he is considered a barely upright oaf. Which, of course he is.

The common man reciprocates this contempt. It's usually somebody from the Left stepping to him about his appetite for meat, or his racist jokes. It will be somebody from the Left who scoffs at his fear of crime and somebody from the Left who wants to fuck with the gender relations in his household.

By comparison he's got an instant talking point with George W. Bush- they both own firearms for a start.

Both the ALP and the US Democrats tailored their policies towards highly educated people who didn't have very much money. That's teachers, students and artists.

Not a wide demographic.

Others, like my father might have put Liberals last because the local Liberal candidate was a thieving harlot. The wonderful, non partisan morality that we shared on that occasion was not enough the lose Liberals the seat, let alone the election.

If the Left wants to get back into government in Australia and the US, it will have to bite its tongue.

It will have to advertise in magazines like New Idea, and it will have to subsidise SMS voting.

Above all, though it will have to remind itself who the commonfolk really are, and it will have to learn how to communicate its agenda without pissing them off.

If it doesn't learn how to make friends it will have to take its bat and ball and go home.

"How was your weekend, sir?" Better than yours, I'd wager.

2005-08-05T20:32:00.000+09:30

When a homeless gentleman selling "The Big Issue" asked me about my weekend on Monday, I didn't know quite the right thing to say.

Last Friday I engaged in a horrific drinking binge, during which time I spent more money than that man probably earns in a week of magazine peddling. As a result, most of the weekend was spent feeling like crap. I think I mumbled "I've had better" and he said that he knew the feeling.

Well, of course he does. I'd rather have a (Self inflicted) bad day of educated middle class than a good day of horrible poverty. It's a bit difficult to find a balance between complaining about my good fortune and rubbing his face in it. That said, he was visibly brighter and more enthusiastic than I was. I bought a copy and we said our goodbyes. I think I even said "Have a good day" when I was pretty sure that he wouldn't.

I have a great deal of admiration for the people who sell "The Big Issue" on the street. They stand outdoors all day trying to make a living, in a city where you're either being rained on or burned alive by the sun. They're more polite than I would be if I had to put up with passers by who try their darndest not to make eye contact. See, if you make eye contact with one of these fellows and don't buy what they're selling you feel guilty. Better just to engage the tunnel vision and proceed directly to Gloria Jean's.

I've done that before, it's easier that way. The more you know about the way people live on the street, the harder it is to neatly explain the problem in a conscience saving way.

On the other hand, merely feeling guilty and telling everybody how much you care does not achieve anything more. Compassion is a weakness when it immobilises you with grief. When this happens, you're no use to anybody because you can't act on the thing you supposedly care about.

Buying a copy of "The Big Issue" every fortnight isn't going to save even the dude that you regularly buy it from, but it at least gives you an opportunity to talk to him. You might be the only person that day who has taken an interest in him as a human being. Sleeping rough for the foreseeable future must be a miserable experience that can't be made any better when people treat you like scum.

More material goodness

2005-08-04T22:40:00.000+09:30

Marketers don't sell products, they sell solutions.

When I was in training for that godawful job selling security systems they taught me that a nobody buys an 8mm drill bit because they want an 8mm drill bit, they buy one because they want an 8mm hole.

I guess that's fair enough, I don't want a twin-cab ute as much as I want the ability to carry human beings and gas cylinders without the gas meeting the human beings. The product is a means to an end.

This takes on a rather more sinister nature when marketers can divorce the actual product from the whole deal. You don't want Starbuck's, you want "The coffee house experience". You don't want a Porsche 911, you want "The getting laid with gold diggers experience"

Consumer laws in this country, and most other developed countries are tough. Marketers can't get away with lying about what the product is. If they say the car has a 65 litre fuel tank, it had better damn well have a 65 litre tank or else they'll get boned in the ear.

But what if you could find a way around this? What if you could make the consumer no longer care about any practical aspects of the product? Why, you could peddle any ill concieved crap that you choose, just by attaching whatever image takes your fancy on that particular afternoon.

Pay a TV network some cash to have your poorly designed automobile driven by the coolest guy in the TV show- the one who gets all the chicks, doesn't ever have bad days and makes more money than god besides. Advertise this automobile in the ad breaks, get the TV actor to visit dealerships.

This guy has got it all, and the success the car didn't give him was provided in a joint venture between his clothing, his mobile phone and the electrical appliances in his apartment.

I know that if I arrived at a gathering with the latest cool accessory I would be the centre of attention for precisely 1 minute and 55 seconds. Almost 2 minutes of that attention would consist of derogatory comments regarding my sexuality, intelligence and genitalia.

I guess this works for some people if they are idiots and associate with idiots, but even then the image presented might give them expectations of life that could never, ever be met by a consumer durable.

Some credit goes to Gilganixon for a similar blog he wrote 2 years ago.

"Do you...like...stuff?" Yes, I certainly do!

2005-08-02T18:48:00.000+09:30

I like my new phone, because it is smaller than my old one, doesn't dick me around and doesn't have anything it doesn't need (Like one of those irritating, superfluous and fragile joystick things).

What it does have is CDMA coverage and a single point battery charger that makes a solid connection every time.

I like trees, because they look nice and perform several useful functions for free. Many humans have trouble performing even one useful function, and usually charge through the nose for it.

Other things:

Old furniture. If we can't have old growth in a forest anymore, I 'd at least like some in my living room.

Gospel music, coffee and a greasy breakfast the morning after a night on the sauce.

Books, specifically those not written by entreprenuers.

Chainsaws.

Toyota Landcruisers with lights and sirens on the roof.

Really. Expensive. Suits.

Driving in wet weather.

Firearms, and the environmental good that can be achieved with same.

...and many other things besides.

Material Gain?

2005-07-29T19:50:00.000+09:30

I like wealth.

I like the free market system.

I like the ability to accumulate as many material possessions as I see fit.

What I don't like is the mentality that one must "Keep up with the Joneses"

Fuck the Jones, solidly and truly.

There are people among us who would lose their shit if their neighbour had a 2005 Commodore when they only had the 2004 model.

When I say I don't like the mentality, I mean that I don't want to personally adopt it. The best source of well priced, nearly new cars is from dipshits who feel that they must update every year.

They can continue on their merry way with my blessing, I will succeed under capitalism because when somebody does something stupid, I will be waiting.

" He who dies with the most toys wins"

Bollocks. And you'll realise that when you're on your death bed and you see that the greatest achievement of your life was to stay one model year ahead of everybody else.

I do not for one second want to be mistaken for some sort of pants-wetting minimalist, who wants to curl his life into the smallest ball possible, and who thinks it's some sort of competition to see who can be deprived of the most and stay standing.

But neither do I believe that owning stuff is an end initself. I like material things only when they help me achieve the things I want to achieve.

For example, the car of my dreams is a twin-cab utility vehicle with a canopy over the tray and four wheel drive. A car like this would do everything I've ever required a motor vehicle to do, and then some.

I couldn't give a toss if it isn't the newest, snazziest or shiniest car in the street because I'm independently minded and set my own standards.

The general population is not like this. They were socialised in high school to look over their shoulder every 10 minutes to make sure that they met and maintained the approval of their peers. Maybe they impressed, but considering that their peers were unlikely to be anything special, how much is their opinion worth?

The man who is able to extricate himself from the congealed mass of the great unwashed and go on his own path will have a more satisfied mind than others could imagine.

Nothing to do? How about washing my floors, coolie!

2005-07-10T20:51:00.000+09:30

Gilganixon has posted some rather splendid pro Adelaide material on his blog.

Like him I adore the place, and like him I also hear that Adelaide is "Boring" and that there's nothing to do.

What, other than honest work, education and socialising with intelligent people? The "Nothing" that is referred to is a lack of venues with pounding music and flashing lights. Trust me, you don't want flashing lights - they'll aggravate your ADD.

Our culture has generated humans who do not take personal responsibility for their own happiness.

Slothful little arseholes do graffiti and taunt police in their VL Commodores because they've been given "Nothing to do". What about school, numb nuts? Your community will stay disadvantaged if you don't go to school and get a bloody job.

I don't have a problem with boredom. Last night when I had nothing to do, some jokers from the CFS got their fire trucks bogged and we had to come pull them out. Fun for all, and pulling a fire truck out of a mud pile with a hand operated winch will make a man out of anybody it doesn't kill.

If I didn't get that call out I would have studied a chapter of Mandarin, which I will do shortly after completing this.

If you're bored, do something. If you're smart, don't hang around idiots. If you're an idiot, you'll probably end up where you belong.

An even more disgraceful way to achieve nothing.

2005-07-08T17:41:00.000+09:30

Yesterday several bombs exploded in London, interrupting the public transport system, killing 50 humans and injuring 700.

That much shouldn't be news to anybody at this point, except to people who watch four hours of Big Brother a day and probably can't read in order to read this.

My previous post about the futility of Live 8 seems a little churlish today. That concert happened to at least generate some positive sentiment towards economic reforms that might give developing countries a fairer deal. The worst that could possibly be said about it was that it was naive and sanctimonious.

A post has been brewing for a few days about the behaviour of activists outside Gleneagles, where the G8 Summit is taking place. We saw images of people acting like pricks for the sake of acting like pricks. It was a reminder of scenes such as the late 90's "Battle for Seattle", where activists were trying to put on the agenda that which is on the agenda this week. I guess some people are never satisfied.

Today, that behaviour looks like the juvenile irresponsibility it is. It cannot possibly compete with the repugnance of yesterday's events.

The bombings are being widely attributed to Al-Qaeda, although this hasn't been confirmed at any official level. Without knowing who did it, it is hard to say what is meant to be achieved. It seems plausible that there is a connection with the Al-Qaeda network and they want the British to be scared out of Iraq, just like the Spanish were.

Blowing up a train in Madrid worked, and that's positive reinforcement.

The Spanish pulled out of Iraq because the Madrid bombing coincided with elections, and the frightened public voted for a candidate who would give in. Maybe the same could have worked for Britain if the London bombings had been better timed.

Blair has another four years before he faces the electorate again and he is not indicating any intention to allow thuggish intimidation to become a legitimate means of influencing British foreign policy.

My prediction is that this will affect the British in the same way as the attacks on the World Trade Centre affected Americans. The 2002 Cadillac Escalade was in the showrooms on time, Americans kept acting like Americans (Only more so), the US government became even more "Pro-active" with its foreign policy.

The best David could do on September 11th, 2001 was give Goliath a bloodied nose and a bad temper.

The Brits probably won't refer to this as "7-7", but they're hardly likely to pussy out either. The kind of "Resolve" Tony Blair is referring to will be the kind that tells the attackers and the people they represent to go fuck themselves.

A country with win/loss stats like Great Britain doesn't scare easy.

How else can two billion people be encouraged to sit idle simultaneously?

2005-06-30T23:06:00.000+09:30

That is the estimated TV audience for this weekend's Live 8 concert, which is tipped to be the biggest thing to hit Africa since AIDS.

The very idea that one can "Make poverty history" just by watching a televised concert is seductive. Finally your sedentary lifestyle can save the world. Isn't that fantastic?, don't you feel proud?.

You shouldn't. A lot of people are sacrificing income to perform for free, but you are not one of them.

If watching TV isn't enough, would wearing a white band help? Maybe a little. The ones bought from Oxfam at least support some free enterprise in the developing world. You don't have to buy one, though. Mr Geldof says you can make your own to show that you care.

How about having your mug shot posted up among many others on railings in Edinburgh? Sorry.

This project aims to raise awareness, not money.

Awareness of what exactly? We know that abject poverty exists. I don't know anybody who thinks it's swell.

Perhaps it's to prod the G8 into action, like dropping the debt?. Too late, it was dropped a few weeks ago.

So what exactly is all this supposed to achieve other than to provide an outlet for human emotion? I think global poverty is horrible too, put my name down.

You don't help by showing that you care. Nobody cares how much you care, except people who care about caring more than you do.

A charitable spirit is commendable, so use it and give some money to Oxfam, or to the Grameen Bank, or some other place that reduces dependance instead of fuelling it.

But don't think that you're saving the world by continuing the sloth that fucks up your corner of it.

"Big Brother", the TV show is bad. Big Brother for real is worse.

2005-06-22T23:10:00.000+09:30

Big Brother is a truly awful programme combining some of the worst bleach blonde slatterns with some equally horrible surfie/stoner types, or worse- brickie's labourers who think they're cool because they've got frosted tips. I despise everything it stands for.

So I don't watch it.

I decide that I don't like, it, so I avoid it. The same can't be said for a group of Liberal politicians who want it off the air. Among them is my Local member, Trish Draper- who was recently caught grafting taxpayer funds to take her "Partner" for a dirty weekend in Paris. She is in no position to step to anybody as far as morals are concerned. The people in the Big Brother house may be common, but at least they're not common thieves.

What these MPs have managed to do is quite amazing. They have managed to view the show and isolate specific parts of it that they don't like- rather than exhibiting a healthy disgust for the entire concept. The parts that they don't like are: Coarse language, full frontal nudity and sexual references.

They say this is inappropriate for children-as it might well be, but where does the responsibility of the parents come into this? Take, "I don't like it, I therefore don't watch it" and substitute "I don't want my children watching it, therefore I don't let them" I like to think that children of mine would be raised better than to find such drivel appealing in the first place.

My mother's a teacher, and she concurs that parents are less and less able to make decisions that are unpopular with their children, less likely to lay down the law. They want the things that aren't taught at school to be legislated into (Or out of) existence. They want the government to raise their children for them.

The social contract used to involve giving up a small amount of freedom in return for peace, safety and order. The government collected taxes for things people couldn't do themselves, like run traffic lights.

It has mutated in character to an arrangement where the citizen allows the government to interfere with absolutely every corner of his life, and in return the citizen gets to blame every little problem of his on the government.

Liberalism shouldn't be like this. It should be about the individual's right to do whatever he pleases and have nobody step to him unless he does real and provable harm.

Liberals in Australia are socially conservative prudes. Liberals in the US would like to tell you what you can and can't drive and where you can and can't drive it. They wear sandals and have halitosis.

People who really believe in individual liberty in either country have had to reinvent themselves as Libertarians.

Libertarians, if they are true to their name shouldn't oppose stuff like gay marriage. After all, it's nobody's business except Bob's and Fred's. (And maybe Bob's wife, who doesn't know yet.)

Libertarians match individual liberty with individual responsibility. An unemployed, single woman may have as many different babies with as many different men as she pleases, as long as she doesn't expect the taxpayer to foot the bill. You fathers had better step up and present your monthly cheques though- you concieved it, you bought it.

Liberals want a society where all the sharp edges have been ground down, and anything that could possibly hurt anybody is banned. They want us all in straight jackets, and in padded cells. They want a world as boring as they are, so they don't get anxiety attacks about standing out.

Libertarians like a world that's interesting, with noise and colour, and the occasional sharp edge.

Tobacco, hard liquor and red meat. There are still a few of us left.

Gilganixon and myself may be forming a political party.

I didn't see any hippies in Karoonda.

2005-06-12T19:34:00.000+09:30

I've just returned home from the scene of a fatal motorcycle accident.

The SES were called there to set up some sort of marquee, for which purposes I am unaware.

Proceeding to the scene was an event -as this was a "Category A" call-out, we had lights and sirens going and were running red lights at intersections. When we arrived, there was a large object covered in a tarpaulin - with a trail of blood on the road suggesting what it might be.

On Friday night I had already attended a couple of minor jobs before news broke of a town near Murray Bridge that had been torn a new arsehole by gale force winds.

That SES units were called from all over metropolitan Adelaide was an indication of the scope of the task at hand.

When we arrived just after midnight it was difficult to see just how much damage had been done. The CFS headquarters in Karoonda had one of its sides blown out, but still served as the emergency response headquarters for all agencies.

My team was immediately dispatched to a house , which had four pine trees fallen on its roof. By the time they had been cut away at was 6:30 am.

We returned to the CFS headquarters in Karoonda, which was by now crawling with uniformed personnel.

Not a single one of them had dread-locks.

This weekend, hippies were cycling naked in Belgium, and blocking access to a military base in Queensland. As far as I'm aware, hippies in South Australia were totally unencumbered. The news report of the destruction in Karoonda didn't seem to prod any of them into action.

Something close to you.

Something you can do something about.

Something you don't have the luxury of planning six months in advance.

As it turns out there were only minor injuries, which was a matter of luck, with iron roofing sheets flying around and a matter of "Thank fuck" because both the hospital and the ambulance station were damaged. So most of the damage was property only, but should that matter?

I'm sure some beatniks could go on a rant about personal property not being that important or whatever, but that doesn't wash when we live in a day and age where even communists are house-broken.

As Karoonda is not a wealthy place, 60 percent of house holds were uninsured. People who can't even afford insurance are being lumbered with the lion's chare of a $2million (And rising) damage bill. Where's your chant now? Where's your banner? WHERE'S YOUR FUCKING LAPEL PIN?

I'm simultaneously furious at this scum and proud that I do something that actually helps people. I know that I'm in the right place and I know that I want to stay there.

Straight eye for the "Open minded" guy.

2005-06-06T15:36:00.000+09:30

Shop Assistant: Can I help you?

Me: Yes, I'm looking for an article of men's clothing that doesn't cast aspersions over my sexuality. Do you carry such a garment in this fine establishment?

Metrosexuality has not withered away, its powers have multiplied and it has transformed from a trendy alternative, to the prevailing norm.

It is becoming more and more difficult for the openly straight, tall white man to dress himself.

After finding a pair of jeans that did not contain any kind of queer pattern or silly "Dirty" effect* I rushed to try them on, watching my back as I entered the changeroom.

I had taken all reasonable steps and had managed to avoid an actual physical violation. Unfortunately I could not avoid the mental one that arose from having my retinas pierced by rack upon rack of pink shirts, pawed over by men who have haircuts like Luke Reid.

That sight caused initial screaming pain, as my eyeballs felt like they were burning up into nothingness. As vision slowly returned and the pain numbed I knew it was the right thing to complete the transaction and leave discreetly.

*The "Dirty" effect refers to a dye put through the jeans at time of manufacture that makes them look like they have been worn during manual labour. It is meant for people who would squeal in horror if their jeans ever got some actual dirt on them, and also for people who would have a similar reaction to the prospect of doing manual labour itself.

Something to liven up a quiet afternoon.

2005-05-30T13:50:00.000+09:30

Materials required:

-A printer
-A video camera or some sort of recording device
-Thick skin

Everything that is posted anywhere on a UniSA campus must either originate from the university administration, or be approved by the student association.

Why not draw up some posters in support of VSU and try to get them stamped by USASA?

Make sure you read their guidelines regarding promotion before you do this, so they can't create reasons on the spot why it's not allowed.

From what I understand, anything from political advertising to car ads is quite OK provided it does not contain offensive/abusive language and is not sexist or racist.

Stick within these guidelines and promote VSU on its merits

-It's consistent with freedom of association
-It would make the student union earn their money and improve accountability
-It would enhance social equity as obligatory student unionism hurts disadvantaged students by compelling them to part with cash they can ill afford.

Present this to the front desk with a smirk and while wearing neat attire. Watch their faces, take note of any socialist hippy rant.

Repeat at other universities.

The requirement for this kind of material to be approved by a far from impartial body is actually quite a serious matter. USASA, and quite probably the other student unions effectively control dissent by controlling the messages that reach students' eyes.

This is yet another reason why I believe these things are a crooked protection racket and am glad (In this particular case) that Howard will have total control of the senate come July 1.

Rau speaks for herself.

2005-05-24T13:07:00.000+09:30

It is very clear that detaining and deporting Australian citizens in the mistaken belief that they are here illegally is truly unacceptable. The federal government has an impressive capacity for incompetence indeed.

It is equally clear that Cornelia Rau should be entitled to compensation of some sort, although the amount is still in question. It depends on her ability to explain why she used two aliases when dealing with authorities. "I had my reasons" isn't quite good enough.

Anything that she did, which made it harder for authorities to spot their mistake, or indeed made it easier for them to make one in the first place can be considered contributory. If her contribution was the result of a mental illness, then it's back on the government.

Ms Rau claims that she was "At no stage mentally ill", although her sister seems to disagree.

She believes that Queensland police took her into custody for no particular reason. No ma'am, they may not have had a very good reason, they may have been mistaken, but it is not the policy of any police department in the land to lock up white people indiscriminately.

While Cornelia Rau is certainly a worthy candidate for compassion and sympathy, the truth needs to come out and the ranting she engaged in yesterday did not help matters.

Budgetary and other matters.

2005-05-14T21:04:00.000+09:30

I contemplated a few things as I smoked my pipe this afternoon, while watching my dogs fighting in the drizzle. The single most important concern I had at that time was that I had no brandy.

I did start thinking about some other things though.

Tax cuts are not welfare. They are an apology for extorting so much tax in the first place. They are also are a way of refunding a very small fraction of the surplus to the people who paid for it. It is a curiosity that instead of thanking their lucky stars that low income earners don't have to contribute their fair share of tax, Labor and welfare groups argue that people who have tax liabilities higher than the average wage are ripping everybody off by getting a pitiful little rebate.

It is very clear that low income earners aren't getting a lot out of this. Two thirds of fuck all, to be precise. This is because there simply isn't a lot of potential for tax cuts at the lower end of the scale, as not a lot of tax is paid to begin with. Welfare is (Justifiably on the most part) done via Centrelink.
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A small note on East Timor. Arguments can be made about the fairness and morality of Australia's extraction of gas from the Timor Gap, and those are for another time. It is being said that Australia's position on this is a violation of International Law.

This is not misleading, this is not a half truth. This is a no-frills, card carrying, blatant lie.

International law recognises that Australia's northern border extends as far as its continental shelf into the Timor Sea. This continental shelf carries all the way to an ocean trench just short of East Timor's southern coast. The gas is ours. The continental shelf principle is just one of a number of ways that ocean borders can be determined. If East Timor (A sovereign nation) lay inside Australia's continental shelf, then the border might be drawn at an equidistant point. In that case, the gas might be theirs.

Once again, using a technicality to deprive a poor nation of natual resources they can almost see from their beach seems to be a fairly underhanded thing to do, but it isn't illegal. (There is also a dark corner of international law that can compell nations to contract out resources that they can't exploit on their own, although this compulsion would be diffilcult to achieve in practice.)

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Regarding blood/breath testing in the Eugene McGee case. The arresting officer was reported to have smelt alcohol on McGee but "Didn't think of testing him". This is because McGee was arested six and half hours after the accident, and police aren't allowed to test suspects more than two hours afterwards. The cop who "Didn't think of testing him" actually never considered flouting the rules and risking the entire case being thrown out.

There has been talk about lifting this two hour limit, and really this is another thing that Mike Rann does when he thinks the end (Him getting re-elected) justifies the means (Him totally fucking with the legal system). The two hour limit exists for a very good reason . Police have to determine if the driver was intoxicated at the time of the collision. Tests more than two hours afterwards- even if permitted- would be unreliable. It would be very easy for McGee to say that he hadn't been drinking at the time of the crash, but when he got home and understood the gravity of the shit he was in, he opened a bottle. It might have even been true, I mean it's what I would do.

Well, actually what I would do is not flee from the scene in the first place, but that's another matter.

Anti VSU position hard to sell.

2005-04-28T14:58:00.000+09:30

Yesterday I came upon some fellows who would like my support so they can keep compelling me to part with a huge wad of cash twice a year. They were the University of South Australia Students Association.

I thought "Well hell's bells, if the services these folks are providing were so indispensable, then surely people would pay for them voluntarily, would they not?"

Well obviously not. I mean, not everybody can afford childcare and stuff, and having gone to kindergarten at UniSA while my mum was studying education I can confirm that.

Wouldn't it then be fair to charge union fees based on the person's ability to pay? Then it would be more like the tax system and government spending. The less you pay, the more you receive- that's a fun game.

And like public spending It would be nice if every dollar was spent knowing that the only reason they had the money in the first place was because they extorted it out of people.

Considering governments don't think that way, I don't think there's much hope that student associations will.

With both there's an issue of accountability. We don't get a refund if we're unhappy with the job they're doing. Their revenue stream is guaranteed, so why should they bother working for it?

Jenny Macklin of the Labor opposition believes that this is merely an extension of Howard's ideology. Maybe so, particulary if Howard's ideology involves freedom of choice and association.

What she really means, however is that Labor ideology is threatened. Any prospective member of the Labor party must be a member of a union. No ifs, no buts. Unions once had an unburstable stranglehold on Australian workplaces. You wouldn't be getting on a building site, onto a waterfront or into a factory without a union ticket. Over the last couple of decades this has been stripped away so that obligatory student unionism is the last bastion.

If VSU does become a way of life, I think we'll see a similar shake up to one that happened with the trade unions. That is, they might have to actually do something for their members, rather than spend resources on political activity that has nothing to do with their brief. (Witness Student Union funded buses to easter protests recently and the Transport Workers's Union boycott of the Springboks in the 1980's).

So after much consideration, my answer is "No, you funny little unwashed men. I won't sign your petition."

It is not age that has wearied her, but motherhood.

2005-04-09T22:28:00.000+09:30

There she is at the opposite table in this northern suburbs family feedbag. Can't be more than 18, but she looks like a harrassed and destitute 18 year old. She's tending to small children, but they're not that small. My brain refuses to do the math regarding conception dates.

The father is there. She's lucky.

What surprises me here is the extent to which I'm not surprised. What surprises me is that more of these people don't do themselves in. With nothing to look forward to but decades of hand-to-mouth existence and zero measurable achievement, why on earth would these people want to go on?

No. The whole world is not watching, you spiral -dancing, dread- locked welfare dependant.

2005-04-05T21:27:00.000+09:30

But that's what they chant, nonetheless at the police barricade at Baxter detention centre.

Consider this. The people of Australia were so appaled at Howard's refugee policy that they voted him right back into office with an increased margin. With this in mind, how much do you think a Frenchman, or a Pole cares about the internal policy of a tiny western outpost half way around the world?

None.

This is not to say that the policy is actually any good, but for fuck's sake please stop telling blatant lies.

It was hard to side with either the protesters or the police over the easter weekend scuffle. On one hand, there are the protesters, under the illusion that the Left all share some kind of unity and that yelling and acting like ferals will actually cause a change to government policy. The place was teeming with people who I would neither have in my house, nor to whom would I lend money.

On the other, you have the police, getting upset about a bundle of balloons and totally losing their shit. The (I think) Deputy Commissioner of SAPOL said they were provoked. This is true, protesters were told not to fly kites or bring balloons because it might fuck with the airspace around the detention centre. They did it anyway, I believe to test the limits of police tolerance. Police took the bait, and made some lovely authoritarian footage for the evening news.

This reminds me of when me and my older brother were kids. I'd act like a little shit, my brother would chase me around, my dad would lay into him because he should have been old enough to know better.

And there's nothing more big brother-like than a column of STARforce officers caked in shields, flak jackets and batons.

I think I'm drifting into conservatism. In South Australia'a next state election I might very well vote Liberal. Our Labor government is pissing me off, Mike Rann's PR team is probably the largest employer in SA. Of course all politicians in a democracy like to floss the proles, but Rann takes this to extremes. He has totally reversed a principle of good policy, and that is to do whatever you think is a fair thing under the circumstances THEN try to sell it to The People. Rann takes Public Opinion (Summarised flawlessly by the editorial of "The Advertiser"), and tries to figure a way to put it into practice without doing too much damage.

Witness the home defence laws, which actually contribute nothing to an already towering pile of legal precedent stating pretty clearly that folks have a right to use deadly force to protect their homes.

We dodged a bullet with that one, he didn't actually fuck anything up.

We were a little less lucky when a young gentleman by the name of Paul Nemer was convicted of shooting a dude in the eye, only to be sentenced to a $100 good behaviour bond and no custodial time.

It seemed pretty lenient and the cunt probably should be in prison. The Advertiser was baying for blood.

In order to throw this public dog a bone, the Rann government pulled some pretty crafty shit. It has led to the Attorney General now having the power to order the DPP the appeal a judicial decision. Not just the ones involving rich kids getting away with light sentences, but any case, anywhere in the land.

Say hello to your new friend "Politically motivated judicial outcome"

A more recent move that has thankfully been put on the backburner is one that would allow police to enter parliament and arrest dudes for exercising parliamentary privilege. The reason for this law?

"We've done some polling, Mike and we reckon that Joe Prole doesn't like Peter Lewis too much. If you wrote a law that would shut up guys like him, you could gain maybe 5 points."

Peter Lewis seems like a bit of a tool, but hell. Parliamentary privilege has been part of the Westminster system forever, and has probably prevailed through much worse than this.

It just isn't possible to support somebody who fucks with some fairly major bedrock shit like judicial independance and freedom of speech just for a short term opinion poll boost.

I'd like to see Rob Kerin whup his arse in the coming election, but I believe it unlikely. The only issue I think the Liberals are strong on now is Labor's land tax grab, and that only applies to investors. Otherwise I don't think I've ever seen an opposition win an election by saying "The Premier's been listening to you fools too much, and he's willing to pull all sorts of strings to keep you happy"

Let's hope I'm wrong.

Bored

2005-02-26T21:33:00.000+10:30

The Labor party looks set to hang onto Western Australia.

I do not know why I care about this, I can't justify making a special trip to the computer to be updated. All I know is that the Liberal candidate wants to funnel water from the Kimberlys, presumably to fill up the water cannons he wants to use against youth.

While I'm here I might run off some things of a positive nature, to balance things out a little.

More simple pleasures:

-I've never found a bad word to say against whiskey, nor will I hear a word against it. It is magical stuff.

-I like the sound of pnuematic drills echoing off garage walls. It denotes that the operator of the drill is doing something useful and industrious, and is therefore contributing to our great society.
-I've just found a new book store I like, if only for the wood panelled old timey atmosphere. Imprints on Hindley Street. It is partly owned by the pillow biting Greg Mackie who once ran for mayor of Adelaide and had his promotional material in the window of Resistance. Needless to say I'm pleased he got a whuppin' in the mayor's race, but I do commend him for running a capital book store.

That will do for now.

Pictures of this could sell SUVs

2005-02-22T14:47:00.000+10:30

A camping trip provides a rich source of fodder for advertising copy.

Many photographs of beautiful, wild nature; many flowery descriptions of same.

I contemplated this as I sat in my own filth, trying to prevent bees from flying into my beer.

"Lexus RX330, now standard with parasitic stinging insects"

Pictures of glorious sunlight bouncing off the sandy beach and playfully consorting with the caps of little rockpool ripples are highly appealing. Pictures of the peeling skin on my back are less so.

I took a morning trip to the beach on a day when the ocean was angry. The bottle of Jack Daniel's in my hand was admirably fulfilling the sole purpose for which it had been bought. I wanted to drink whiskey on a rock while facing the waves and braving the wind and I did so. This was exactly how I imagined, with no disappointment whatsoever.

Camping is a supremely enjoyable activity, and is well worth the the irritation and discomfort.

I wish Osama bin Laden was materialistic

2005-02-01T20:29:00.000+10:30

Osama bin Laden was a very, very wealthy man. A very wealthy criminal man. These are not uncommon; many people get rich from illegal activity, then they spend their cash chilling out. Osama is different. The bin Laden family amassed their fortune through relatively legitimate construction contracts with the Saudi Government. Doubtless the odd sum changed hands to guarantee winning tenders from the royal family, but nothing to worry too much about. After inheriting this cash, Osama then went to work financing acts of murder.

Wouldn't it have been better if he had done what Colombian drug lords did? Find a nice little island in the Carribean, buy it from a banana republic and turn it into a paradise of cocaine, cock-fighting and hookers.

Just imagine, little bearded man- a one stop shop for drug abuse, gambling and fornication. That's better than living in a cave with a bunch of pungent, illiterate goat herders now isn't it?

The reason why Mr bin Laden elected not to take this path is ideology. His particular brand being a rather repellant variety of religious fundamentalism. This leads me to the belief that ideology in general may be flawed.

Ideology

n 1: an orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nation [syn: political orientation, political theory] 2: imaginary or visionary theorization

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

This definition taken to its full conclusion implies a belief system that visualises a perfect society.
Lets hold self evident the fact that visions of perfection differ from one person to the next, from one country to the next and so on, thus creating massive and frequently realised potential for blood letting.

Consider instead the affect this has on the way people form opinions and conduct themselves. All people have points of view that are naturally skewed, as a result of education, upbringing, etc. What ideology does is take this naturally skewed point of view and supplements it with a deliberate and artificial dogma. The more idealistic a person is, the more their opinion is skewed, the less they are able to see things as they are.

I was recently discussing abortion with a feminist who believed that the arguments against abortion are driven by misogyny. She believed that the entire "No" position was supported by men who did not want to surrender their control of a woman's body, e.g "I put it there, you're going to keep it there, bitch"

I said that- while I was sure those opinions did exist, I believed that the "No" position was about the preservation of life at any cost. While I disagreed with this position, I did not believe it to have a sinister motivation.

She was about as receptive as a block of concrete.

The worst cases of ideology occur when a young person starts to build inflexible political or religious beliefs. Either philosphical direction comes with a pre packaged set of morals. Neither set is based on personal experience.

"You're a member of the Labor party now. You must be anti war, a member of a union and pro gay marriage!... What did you say? Foreign poilcy has nothing to do with industrial relations, which in turn has nothing to do with sexuality? You are not a true believer! Get out!"

When a person has such an inflexible outlook; to which they are passionately committed, they will try to butcher, bash and bend everything they see for the rest of their lives to fit this narrow pattern.

Poverty in Tanzania? Global capitalism.

Tsunami in the Indian Ocean? Must be climate change, cause by CO2 emisssions spurred along by global capitalism.

Beer warm and flat? That fucking capitalist publican is trying to stiff the proletariat!

There is probably a reason that most (Not all) annoying activists tend to be young. Over the years they will see conflict. Bus drivers will go on strike and this will hurt the poor working man who uses public transport to get to work. They will see that the middle eastern country the US is most friendly with has an untouched tradition of conservative Islam. They will realise that the world is made up of countless opposing forces and cannot be explained by an army of philisophers.

At this point they will abandon their Grand Plan (Whatever that may be), come off their high horse and begin to function as human beings.

"Holden means a lot to Australia" -Fuck off and die.

2005-01-26T18:44:00.000+10:30

This arsehole- I don't know his name, but I believe he has something to do with "Rove Live"- is being paid to tap into my immense well of patriotism in order to pry cash from my already bare wallet.

I don't think I have much to fear from the charms of a 3rd rate comedian doing advertisements for a car company, but it raises an interesting point.

Is it possible to be a patriotic Australian without subscribing to "Football, meat pies, domestic violence and thuggish behaviour overseas"? I believe it is.

This year the trend has been bucked and the Australian of the year is not an athlete of any kind, but rather a person of actual worth. A woman who has pioneered spray on skin for burns victims (See: "People who do good are rarely referred to as do gooders") is a more deserving winner than we've seen in a while.

There is much to make a citizen of this country proud, and not all of it is familiar to people who watch "A Current Affair" Indeed some of the crap being fed to that kind is nothing to be proud of at all. Consider the Diggers in World War One, and specifically Gallipolli. The British treated us with the kind of ambivalent disdain normally reserved for cockroaches, and we took it. We accepted it. It was a shameful page of our national history.

A much more note worthy incident was in the second world war, when our prime minister told Winston Churchill to go and fuck himself, and pulled our battleships out of Europe to concentrate on the more immediate Japanese threat. That's ballsy, and should be celebrated but it isn't.

Many more lesser known events exist, and may be chronicled here as information comes to hand.

The simple pleasures still exist

2005-01-25T23:57:00.000+10:30

Upon finishing this day's work I indulged in a sundowner- at 3pm, when the sun still had a good six hours of retribution to administer. The fan, the airconditioning and the ice in my Bacardi formed an alliance to extinguish the fury of the 38 degree day. With some ultra smooth beats in the background, total satiation was the word.

This is what the whole world would be doing on a Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war.

2005-01-16T14:14:00.000+10:30

To the very few absolute truths in the world, I add another.

People who sell plastic mugs for seven dollars are cunts.

I'm referring to the obscenely tacky practice of taking the sort of thing you'd piss in at the doctor's surgery, restyling it, slapping a sticker on it and unloading it on a sap "Celebrating his connection with the fatherland"

There were more wretched goings on at yesterday's annual salute to the dour Hun and the efficient Teuton.

Most readily coming to mind is the boorish behaviour exhibited by TJ Crom and Mr Contamination. On a quest for "Loose women", this pair managed to alienate a great proportion of the female patronage, and- considering the size of some of the square-jawed security guards- are lucky to be alive.

There is a special kind of repellance attached to two yelling drunk men all too willing to play "Girl, you'll be a woman soon" with an ever younger and uglier stream of the fairer sex. "When there's grass on the wicket, it's time to play cricket."

Indeed.

Apart from the occasional nod to the Germanic premise of the event (Notably shooting and oompah music) , it was hard to see the appeal of paying an entry fee for the privilege of being overcharged for food and beverage. This is particularly so when the oompah is drowned out by Greenday, and the shooting was diluted to the point where even a lunatic with a fat gut, mullet and waving US flag was allowed to take part.

All the above suggests that an awful time was had, which is not the case. A man doesn't allow his wallet to be hoovered for nine hours if he's having a bad time. The only explanation I can find is that I was attracted with car -wreck fascination to the unfolding drama and could only be pried away when my wallet was well and truly barren.

If such an experience normally makes for a good time, then next year I may give the Schutzenfest a miss, bring a deck chair to Yatala prison and watch brutality instead.

People who do good are rarely referred to as "Do gooders"

2005-01-15T12:37:00.000+10:30

A few thousand people died in the attacks on the World Trade Centre. A few hundered of them were Police, Paramedics and Firefighters who went into the inferno willingly to save lives.

Michael Moore subsequently publishes at least 4 books and releases two movies, making cubic dollars with each venture.

Australian and American soldiers (Way ahead of the UN) land in Aceh, Phuket and Sri Lanka- purifying water, distributing food and providing makeshift shelter.

A French trade union official whinges about debt relief and encourages developing countries to file for bankrupcy.

There's a pretty clear difference. Michael Moore and his ilk are pussies. They rarely get their hands dirty, preferring to bitch from positions of total safety.

Onto the list of do gooders I add people who boycott things. There seems to be a belief out there that a simple checklist is to be followed - a bleeding heart checklist.

Boycott Nike (Buy alternative shoes made under the same conditions)= Check

Boycott Nescafe and Shell (Ditto the above, with different subject matter) = Check

Boycott McDonald's (For reasons other than the synthetic nature of the food) = Check

Of course, in a market economy people can choose to buy or not buy things and their reasons are their own. What gets me is that the people who boycott things believe that it puts them in a position of moral superiority, as if making no real sacrifice and performing no real service to anybody qualifies an individual for such a position.

These people are feeding their conscience, as they consider their conscience to be like an emaciated dog: Barely able to whimper, and silenced by the occasional morsel from the table.

The way I see it, there are three options:

Be the kind of bed wetter mentioned above (Michael Moore, Generic Activist)
Show no regard for the consequences of your actions; Not measurably worse than option one, but more fun (Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein)
Accept that even the most righteous existence you could possibly live hurts people. Devote energy to something you can actually do something about. (Disaster relief worker, those redneck farm boys who piled into their pick ups and headed for Ground Zero with food and drink for the New York Fire Department)

Real good involves some sort of sacrifice, is not done merely to keep the conscience from biting and is not done with the intent of lording it over others.

Mr Schrempp