Category: General Musings

Listening and watching the media it would appear Rudd is fixing some of the problems of Australia.  The fact that he is fixing the problems that he himself caused doesn’t appear to be clear in the mind of a lot of commentators. He offers sympathy for the families of the drowned boaties without mentioning the fact that he caused the circumstances whereby their lives were put in peril in the first place. On Sunday the tabloid papers were all screaming “Carbon tax scrapped” but of course he hasn’t scrapped it, he has just brought the change over to an ETS on sooner than previously planned. No, hang on, he is talking about doing that.  As I understand it he has to take that to the House. Correct me if I’m wrong but it will need a vote and neither the Greens or the Libs would be onside for that one. I hear Wong on the radio touting that bringing forward the change to an ETS will take pressure off family budgets.  I wonder how that can be when the ALP have been talking up how the Carbon Tax wasn’t placing pressures on family budgets.  Seems you can have it both ways if you ignore one or more truths. As Abbott says;

Just ask yourself what an emissions trading scheme is all about. It’s a so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no-one.

Carbon Credits is also questionable with nothing sold to someone mostly using government funds.

THE great experiment with foreign sporting coaches is coming to an end and the Kiwis can go back to being our arch enemies. Just weeks after South African Mickey Arthur was replaced by Australian Darren Lehmann as the nation’s cricket coach, Victorian-born Queensland Reds boss Ewen McKenzie is poised to take over from New Zealander Robbie Deans as the Wallabies coach. It never sat easy with me that we would have an All Black coaching the Wallabies – a bit like Ho Chi Minh teaching me how to soldier. Brett Harris, the journo, must be young when he says ‘the Kiwis can go back to being our arch enemies’. They always were and always will be Brett.

THE man who killed Jill Meagher was a serial rapist on parole for previous offences when he raped and murdered the young ABC employee. Chief Crown prosecutor Gavin Silbert SC said Bayley was a “sexual predator” who showed a modus operandi of exerting physical power over his victims and threatening to kill his victims. The details of Bayley’s history have previously been suppressed, but can now be published after Justice Nettle today revoked his earlier suppression order. Mr Silbert said Bayley knew as he raped Meagher that he was likely to serve the maximum rape penalty of 25 years in prison if he was caught.

“Accordingly, he had no option but to kill her,” Mr Silbert said.

That’s like about 20 cases of rape – I wonder if the Parole Board members have any trouble sleeping at night?  

Nothing wrong with letting boat people into the country without papers. How many more are there and how long will it take for ASIO to identify the problems as the government cut their funding , human rights lawyers block every move to sort it out and the Greens and other useful idiots agitate against secure borders. Our borders are totally infiltrated and the government does nothing!

Interested in the boat people debate?  Do you wonder why the Left support the boat people and the Conservatives don’t? Do you remember the Vietnamese boat people and the ALP’s hatred of them? Gough Whitlam said

 I’m not having hundreds of fucking Vietnamese Balts coming into this country with their political and religious hatreds against us” 

It should be noted that the Vietnamese didn’t hate us, as in ordinary Australians but they did hate communism (for very good reasons) and that is where Whitlam and the unions were coming from.  Those that couldn’t flee the retribution in South Vietnam died in their millions as the communists did what they do best – slaughter and/or send to reeducation camps those who had the temerity to fight for freedom. The Vietnamese were fleeing a communist state and the ALP of the time and the union leaders were very clearly pro-communists or anti-US which is the same thing.   The same people today reason that Iraqis and Afghans are fleeing US influenced regions and are therefore welcome.  The left wing Tamils, inventors of the suicide bomber’s vests are likewise welcomed for the same reason – their left wing politics I lived through those days when Australia was governed by a socialist government with very clear connections with the communists of the world. Our service in South Vietnam was denigrated by the Left, Communists Generals were dined out by Jim Cairns, one-time Deputy PM and life under Whitlam reminded us every day of how the world had changed.  Communism was the new ‘way to go’ and wearing the uniform of your country was frowned upon. It was humiliating and it looked like we had lost the Cold War which I enthusiastically contributed to for 13 months of my life but within a decade reason had prevailed.  Whitlam was a nightmare memory and President Reagan correctly identified the ‘Evil Empire’ and proceeded to flog them until the collapse of the Berlin Wall. If you are interested at all in the truth then you do need to read this report by Hal G.P. Colebatch   

AN Australian man has been arrested by officers from a taskforce investigating possible widespread abuse following the Jimmy Savile sex scandal. The 82-year-old man from Berkshire in south England was arrested on Thursday in Britain and bailed until May pending further police inquiries. This report in The Australian doesn’t name the man but according to this link it is Rolf Harris I then  Googled “Rolf Harris arrested” and got a mob of hits. I’m devastated – I grew up in West Australia when Rolf was starting out there and thought of him as a quaint old fashioned entertainer.  Now I might be forced to accept that I was wrong. I hope not but it doesn’t look good.  

Staff at BHP were outraged when the company under Mr Kloppers issued an incredible 11-page missive banning office staff from eating smelly lunches at their desks, sticking post-it notes on their monitors and keyboards and placing jackets on chairs.

Many employees were outraged by the elaborate dossier, which stated:

• Food must not be eaten at workstations
• No food emitting strong odours are allowed
• Mobile phone ring tones must be kept at low volumes
• Post-it notes are to be removed from monitors and keyboards at the end of the day
• Workers are warned to watch the tone and volume of their voices
• In meeting rooms, all whiteboards are to be cleaned, equipment turned off, cables put away, chairs pushed in and cups and bottles thrown away
• iPods and MP3 players must not be brought into work
• Small bags must be stored under work stations during the day
• Clothes must be put in “designated storage areas”

Can’t see the problem – I’d have to agree with all those points.  Every company has rules, or should have, that allow people to work together in harmony and in the interests of the company. Outraged?  Go work for someone who doesn’t have standards. If it’s true that Kloppers’  demise is partly due to this memo then I fear for BHP Billiton.        

Wind is making the palms dance and the pool overflowed two days ago. Since then we’ve had 235 mm of rain and the winds apparently exceeded a 100 km/hr. At high tide today Brisbane CBD will once again flood although not as badly as in 2011. Telstra stars; Hundreds of thousands in communication blackout as Telstra outage leaves everything north of Gladstone without phone, internet or Triple Zero access leaving half of state in the dark. I have a daughter at a retreat near Maleny just north of Brisbane and a long way south of Gladestone who had to use her Optus work phone to contact us as her personal Telstra is out of service. The high winds are unusual as cyclones seldom get this far south but Oswald still had some punch as it hit Brisbane.  Trees blown across power lines has put thousands in the dark including my son who has just arrived to recharge his phone. Another daughter with a premie baby is getting out of hospital and taking her new son home today. Access to her suburb will be difficult but possible as the Ipswich area starts to go under with a peak expected at midnight. All in all, just another January in Brisbane.

    What’s with China this month – should I be worried? The stats above indicate about 25,000 Chinese read my ramblings every week. Ni hao you guys – leave a comment so I know your not a machine.