">My Big World Of Crap

The local economy is getting a boost this weekend over in Perth.  2 US warships, aircraft carrier USS George Washington and guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens docked off Fremantle yesterday.  Between them there are more than 5,000 sailors in town. Business groups estimate they will contribute some $5m to the local economy over the weekend.

The local sex industry expects their fair share of this boost.  One Perth brothel madam says she has put on 5 extra girls, including some from the eastern states, to cope with the expected demand.

When a similar number of sailors appeared in Perth in 2002, the brothel was overwhelmed with the demand and was forced to shut its doors. The brothel madam said her staff and workers at other brothels had become exhausted and that she would rather stop business than offer customers an inferior service.

There’s been much reporting in the news today about the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Darwin and in particular its focus on closing the gap in relation to the disadvantage experienced by indigenous Australians compared to the community in general.  The Productivity Commission produces a biannual report on various indicators intended to measure indigenous disadvantage and whether the gap is closing, widening or not changing at all.  The latest report has been issued, and has attracted considerable media attention and comment, as well as attention and comment from politicians of all parties.

Among the key issues noted in the report:

• the gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous people is 12 years for men and 10 years for women. Two years ago those numbers were 18 and 17 years respectively
• substantiated child abuse cases in the indigenous community more than doubled from 16 per 1000 children in 19990-2000 to 35 per 1000 children in 2007-08. Indigenous children are six times more likely to be abused or neglected than non-indigenous children
• no significant improvement over the past two years in reading, writing and numeracy standards among indigenous children, who remain well behind non-indigenous children in all year levels.
• Half as many indigenous students finish Year 12 as non-indigenous students
• while 48 per cent in indigenous people were employed in 2006, this was 24 percentage points behind the rate for non-indigenous people.
• Indigenous people are 13 times more likely to be in jail than non-indigenous people
• Indigenous people earn less, are sicker and are born lighter than non-indigenous people.
• immunisation rates were also lower and suicide and obesity rates higher.
• In 2006, 29 per cent of indigenous people owned or were buying their own homes _ up three percentage points over five years but far lower that the rate of non-indigenous people,  72 per cent.

This is extremely tragic and a sad comment on the treatment of indigenous people in this country over a long period.

However, I thought some of the reporting of these statistics was very misleading.  For example “Billions ‘wasted on close the gap projects” which is suggesting that billions of dollars spent on the indigenous intervention by the Australian government has been wasted and most indicators show the gap is not changing and even widening.  This is an interesting leap of logic, especially considering that the intervention didn’t commence until mid 2007, and most of the data in the current report is for the period up to 2007.  Somehow, data from before the intervention even started is meant to support a claim that money is being wasted on it.  Interesting?

But Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (sensibly) says the gains made from the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into initiatives like the Northern Territory intervention may not be clear for some time.  Maybe lets wait till we have, say, 2009 data before jumping to conclusions.   In a step forward, COAG has agreed to reporting even more regularly on the success of programs nationally and in the states and provided greater accountability. Some shortfalls in the data collected by the Productivity Commission have been noted, with over $40 million being allocated to improve the process.

Despite the ongoing poor data, Mr Rudd is confident programs like the intervention and the $642 million housing program for Indigenous communities will eventually see statistical improvements.

"We’re committed to this because everything we’ve tried in the past hasn’t worked,"

That is a very pertinent comment.  Everyone knows shitloads of money have been thrown at indigenous problems, generally with little success.  I doubt its a question of not enough money, but more likely poorly targeted, and poorly managed, so its been squandered on useless crap.  Hopefully if the current policy is producing no discernible results in a year or two, governments will be willing to accept failure and try other approaches.

Opposition spokesman Tony Abbott is also pretty much on the money with his comments today.  He says ultimately today’s results are a blight on all governments from all sides of politics in their efforts to quickly redress Indigenous disadvantage.

"This is a very disappointing report and it does reflect ill on all governments of both political persuasion. But the essential problem here is the doctrine of exceptionalism, which has been far too prevalent for far too long,"

Mr Abbott says governments have had many reports detailing the extent of the problems over the years and more action on the ground is needed.

"Rather than having more partnerships and endless consultations, I think what we really need to do is to try and ensure that the same reasonable expectations are adhered to in respect of Aboriginal communities as applied to the general Australian population, and we could start by trying to ensure that 100 per cent of Aboriginal kids are enrolled at school."

While undoubtedly some of Abbott’s remarks are deflections intended to share the blame for indigenous policy failures of the previous government he was part of for over a decade, there is much truth in them.

Suck shit to this scumbag.  His name is Gregory McCalium.

His mistake.  Apart from being a thieving, almost certainly drug fucked loser?

He broke into the house of 71 year old Frank Corti, in Oxford, in the UK, armed with a knife.  Mr Corti said he was woken in the middle of the night by noises in his house and was confronted by the knife-wielding McCalium when he went to investigate. McCalium took a swipe at him with his knife, but Mr Corti ducked and threw two big right hooks at him, almost knocking him out.  Mr Corti was then able to make a citizen’s arrest on him, and hand him over to the police.

McCalium’s lawyer told the court his client “looked like a car accident”.  He didn’t get any sympathy from the judge, who sentenced him to 4 1/2 years jail.

His big mistake?  Not knowing his victim was a former boxer in the British army.

How’s this for obsessive fandom?

It is claimed that at least a dozen people have committed suicide over the death of Michael Jackson. London man Gary Taylor, who owns the biggest Michael Jackson online fan club, said he was aware of about 12 suicides following the performer’s death.  In Australia, Lifeline CEO Dawn O’Neil said that while there has not been "a dramatic increase" in calls to counsellors since Friday, people have spoken about how Jackson’s death has affected them.

In other Jackson news, it is looking exceedingly likely that his death will be just as much a circus as his life.

So I believe from the news yesterday and today.  There has just been a little bit of coverage of his death.

Now I will admit to being no fan of Michael Jackson.  Indeed I hated his music and mocked him as a freak and a paedophile.  (Indeed for years I had my wife convinced that among his various cosmetic surgeries he’d had his balls cut off to enable him to sing higher notes.)

However, even I’ve found the coverage of his death a tad on the morbid side.  It started out yesterday when pictures of his dead body on a stretcher being taken to an ambulance were all over the news.  Today has topped that with the news on the radio playing the tape of the 911 call from his house.  I really fail to see the news value in both of these.  Yes we know he died, yes we know there would have been a medical emergency, but do we really need to hear it in detail and see pictures of him dead?

Jackson’s death does not really surprise me.  I’ve long thought he would die early and quite likely by his own hand.  Whether the latter is the case remains to be seen, but speculation is already that prescription drugs played a part.  Accident or deliberate?

I was saying to someone last night that in many ways, Michael Jackson should have died 15 years or so ago, before he turned into a somewhat sad figure of ridicule, and before his troubles with accusations of inappropriate conduct with young boys.  I don’t think I’m alone in this view.  Consider all the tributes and obituaries in the media about him yesterday and today and you’ll see much more like this:

which is clearly how people would prefer to remember him, rather than this:

the bizarre weirdo he became.

On the subject of the morbid fascination with Jackson’s health I found this amusing.  In particular the promise of updates on the state of his health.

Well I’ve got news, his current health status will not be changing any time soon!

Meanwhile, in other, clearly far less important news, 11 people were killed in a bombing in Baghdad yesterday, which follows 78 people being killed on Wednesday and another 73 a few days earlier.

Remember the little girl at Hawk’s Nest in NSW who died of starvation.  Her parents were charged with various things including murder.

Well, mum got convicted for her murder, and dad for manslaughter.  Sad, pathetic, evil swine and all that, but thats not really what I wanted to post about.

Its this interesting ad placement:

Mmmm, starving child, eat Subway!

I went to Sydney for a couple of days for work Monday and Tuesday.  Getting there, absolutely regulation – takes about 45 minutes flight time, about 3 hours from home to office.  Sydney was good too.  The Shangri-La Hotel in The Rocks is very nice, and the pizza at the Australian Hotel just down the road from it is pretty good too, as is their beer.

Coming home was however a bit of an ordeal.  My 7.45 pm flight should have seen me back in Canberra just after 8.30 and home about 9pm.  No such luck!

We took off on time, flew to Canberra, commenced descent, then suddenly the plane started going up again.  WTF?  After a few minutes the pilot announced over the PA system that we couldn’t land safely in Canberra due to fog, so would be returning to Sydney, and that it was not likely that Canberra would be clear for landings till late next morning.  Anyway, we got back to Sydney around 9.15 pm.  Fronting up to the Qantas service desk to find out what was happening, and found the staff there hadn’t actually figured out what was happening.  First, we were going to be rebooked onto flights today and put up in hotels – however, this fell through … barely any hotel beds available in Sydney (due to State of Origin football game on tonight).  So it was plan B, buses, to depart at 10.30 pm.

These turned up closer to 11, and we were on our way, for a 3 and a 1/2 hour drive.  Got into Canberra just after 2.30 am and home about 3.

After the initial confusion on Qantas’ part about what was supposed to be happening, they actually did a halfway decent job of getting us home.  Organised the buses, gave us some food and drink, and called the cab company in Canberra to tell them 3 buses would be arriving at the airport early in the morning – and the taxis actually turned up in reasonable numbers which was a pleasant surprise … my driver told me that normally at that time on a Tuesday night there’d only be about 5 cabs on duty for the whole of Canberra.

A couple of bad things, apart from my one hour trip ending up taking 7 hours.  I’ve been on coaches in places like Korea and Malaysia, where the people aren’t exactly giants, and found them very comfortable with plenty of leg room.  Not last night, the seats on this bus must have been built for midgets – Eagle Tours was the coach company Qantas hired to drive us to Canberra.  Second, we had a toilet stop at BP Marulan.  Having not eaten anything of substance since lunch time, by 1 am-ish I was fairly hungry.  One look at the food on offer at the diner at the service station cured that.  There was just nothing that looked even vaguely edible.  Crappy overheated pies (at $4.50!!!!), some sort of meat dishes covered in congealed gravy in a bain marie, frozen vegetables sitting forlornly in discoloured water in the same bain marie.   Back to the back old days, like it was prior to McDonalds and the like setting up at service centres along the highway – and its a sad commentary on the food on offer when Maccas is a vast improvement.

Brian Myerson was caught out when his wife discovered he was leading a double life - with a mistress installed around the corner from the couple’s London home.  Not surprisingly they got divorced.

He took his share of his $53m fortune in the form of shares in his investment fund, Principle Capital Investment Trust.  She got her share in cash and properties.

Enter the global financial crisis, and his shares have declined in value by 90%. 

Mr Myerson has so far failed in attempts to compel his former wife to return the $20 odd million she had already been paid and to be released of his legal obligation to pay her maintenance.

Haha!  Karma is what I call what has happened to Mr Myerson.

Animal rights group, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is upset at US President Barack Obama because he swatted a fly during a TV interview.

They are sending him a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

For fucks sake, it was a fly.  Who gives a shit about them?  They are pests.

Hands up who finds this attractive?

Her name is Kimberley Vlaeminck, an 18 year old Belgian who is suing a tattoo artist, claiming he gave her 56 stars on her face when she only asked for 3.

She claims the Romanian tattoo artist misunderstood her French and English.  She claims she fell asleep while he was doing his work.  The tattooist, Rouslan Toumaniantz, denies this, and claims she absolutely agreed to the work he did on her face. He told a local newspaper:

‘I maintain that she absolutely agreed that I tattoo those 56 stars on the left side of her face,’

‘A witness, a woman who was present, has already been questioned by police, and she confirms it.”

But then, to show he has a good customer service ethic, he goes on to offer recompense:

‘But be that as it may: Kimberley is unhappy and it is not my wish to have an unsatisfied client. There is a way to remove the tattoos with the help of a laser. I accept to pay for half the cost.’

He said Kimberley was awake and actually looked in the mirror several times during the procedure to see how it was going. He said she knew ‘exactly what she wanted’.  He claims she left the shop happy and her regrets started when she went home and her father and boyfriend cracked a mental.

I laughed at this oh-so sensitive comment by a Belgian psychologist:

‘The trauma this girl must be feeling is indescribable.  She feels like a circus freak - and no wonder, because she looks like one.’

Too right, but cop a closer look at the tattoo artist.

Why would anyone do that to themself? Does anyone think its attractive?  Anyone?  Hello?

A man walked into a McDonalds in Port Macquarie, NSW this morning, pulled out a pistol and fired a number of shots in the air.

There were 20 to 30 people in the restaurant when the armed man first entered the building.  It seems most if not all of them escaped quickly, but the man held police at bay for a number of hours, before surrendering this afternoon.

I have it on good authority that the reason for his attack on Maccas was that they fucked up, once again, his order at the drive through last night, and gave him extra pickles rather than no pickles, on his Quarter Pounder.

A 58 year old man found lying naked on top of a 5 year old girl has claimed that he was just trying to keep her warm

The Supreme Court in Hobart heard today the man was hosting a family of five when the incident occurred on February 5 this year.  The 3 kids went to sleep in a tent in the back yard.  Mum became suspicious something was happening and went to investigate.  As she approached the tent they heard their daughter cry: "I want mummy."  They heard the offender reply: "Don’t worry about mummy, I will keep you warm."

They opened the tent flap and found him lying naked on top of the girl, whose pants and underpants had been removed. The offender had an erection.

An altercation followed, and the family upped camp and reported the matter to police. 

In sentencing the man to 9 months jail, the judge said to him:

"One disturbing aspect of this is that you don’t seem to acknowledge there is anything wrong with what you did,"

"Nobody else thinks like that and that’s why you’re going to jail today."

He was also ordered to have his name placed on the sex offenders register for 7 years after he is released.

I’m surprised he actually got off so lightly with the sentence he got.  I find it strange how judges talk tough then squib it on the sentencing.   I’d have thought something like this deserved at least a few years jail rather than months.

And notice how I’ve resisted the temptation to throw in a Tasmanian joke.