You know Christmas is getting close

….when Christmas lunches and parties start. Today marked my first Christmas lunch for this year - a very nice one at that. The first real pissup of the season is next Friday.

Rabbit rooter gets off

Well known rabbit fucker, Brendan McMahon, has had a charge of bestiality with a rabbit dropped.

However, he’s still up on many charges of aggravated cruelty over the deaths of 17 rabbits and one guinea pig.

Wonder why the bestiality charge was dropped? Lack of evidence - no home made bunny porn for the police to find, unable to get DNA evidence, rabbits unable to testify in court?

Update (25/11/2005): more news on rabbit boy today, including this gem:

“Yesterday, after a psychiatric report was presented to court, a charge of bestiality against the financier was dropped.

The Herald understands it was because prosecutors are unable to prove he used his penis to penetrate the rabbits, a requirement of that charge.”

Tax law reform - success measured by the page

Treasurer Peter Costello (the man who whenever he opens his mouth demonstrates his unsuitability to be PM) is crowing about the 28% reduction in the tax laws he proposes to make next year.

Sounds good, simplicity, more efficient, etc etc. But, his 28% is a calculation based on the number of pages to be removed from the current legislation. It does not reflect anything meaningful like the significance of what is being streamlined, the benefits to taxpayers or similar.

I wonder if Costello measures the value of policy submissions by page count, or perhaps weight. Maybe Treasury pays consultants by the page? Treasury officers performance bonuses could be based on number of documents generated, or pages?

All Blacks in strife with the PC police

There has been some noise from the PC police in England over the throat slitting gesture that features in the NZ All Blacks haka performed before each match. What a load of garbage! Its just a game people, and the haka is a wonderful tradition that is part of the buildup at any All Blacks game.

Rape is woman’s fault - say one-third of Britons

A survey by Amnesty International finds many British people either completely or partly attribute fault to women who are raped. Some of the things that people thought contributed to the woman being at fault included:

• flirtatious behaviour
• wearing sexy or revealing clothing
• being drunk
• being known to have had many sexual partners.

I’d be interested to know whether there has been similar research here in Australia …my guess would be that the attitudes would not be too different.

I’m appalled that such a high percentage of people think being raped is somehow the woman’s fault. It is absolutely not! Men are intelligent beings capable of controlling their own impulses and behaviours - blaming the victim for the crime committed on them is 100% copout.

Employee burnout

A survey conducted by a leading recruitment agency reveals almost 50 % of Australian workers are saying they are feeling burnt out as the end of the year approaches. The survey also finds that 43 per cent of women feel flat and exhausted and say their work productivity is declining, while 32 per cent of men say they feel the same way.

Fewer older workers say they need a break compared to younger workers.

The survey finds 56 per cent of people in the 35-44 year age bracket say they are tired and need a holiday (count me in here), compared to 47 per cent in the 25-34 age group.

This is compared to only 31 per cent of over 55s who say they need to take a break.

Quite interesting this. Is it a reflection of differing work ethics, or perhaps differing expectations of work/life balance in different age groups?

Kim Beazley’s stumbles

I wonder how petty the media can be sometimes. Kim Beazley stumbled over the Michelle Leslie case when interviewed on the radio this morning, and that has become a story in itself.

To quote from the transcript from “The World Today“:

“There is at least one Australian who appears disinterested in hearing the truth behind Ms Leslie’s ordeal.

Speaking to Adelaide’s Radio 5AA this morning, Opposition leader Kim Beazley didn’t even appear to know who Michelle Leslie was.

KIM BEAZLEY: Oh, well I’m glad you … oh, well, Michelle Lee I think, is it?

RADIO ANNOUNCER: Michelle Leslie.

KIM BEAZLEY: Leslie. Ah …

RADIO ANNOUNCER: She’s the girl that was in the news a moment ago.

KIM BEAZLEY: Oh right, um, I wasn’t listening, sorry (laughs). It was um …

RADIO ANNOUNCER: This is the girl that the police in Indonesia found in possession of a couple of ecstasy tablets.

KIM BEAZLEY: Oh, no, sorry, I thought you said Lee, not Leslie. Oh, okay, right, um, well I think she’s um lucky to be out, and I’m glad she is (laughs).”

So fucking what! I don’t have a lot of time for Kim Beazley as a leader but its petty to be picking on him for shit like this …maybe he wasn’t concentrating, or forgot her name or something. Why make a big deal out of it? (Alexander Downer was at him tonight - claiming this showed Beazley was unfit to lead his party let alone ever be PM).

While I’m on my soapbox at the pettiness of the media over this, I’d have to add that the ABC regularly shows itself to be the home of a cadre of sanctimonious, smarmy smartarses who love to nitpick over things like this.

Sporting roundup

In the sporting world over the last few days:

• Australia beat the West Indies in the 2nd cricket test in Hobart by 9 wickets. Mike Hussey (pictured at right) was player of the match - justifying his long overdue test selection.
• Australia beat Ireland in the rugby test in Dublin - 30-14 - their first win after seven straight losses. However, they were pretty unconvincing and I think its stretching things to say they’ve turned the corner.
• Australia beat Great Britain in the rugby league tri-nations series - 26 to 14. They now play in the final against New Zealand next week.

This following on from the great win in the soccer last week.

Plus, its good to see England being put back in their rightful place - their cricket team is on the wrong end of the Tests in Pakistan, and the All Blacks beat them in the rugby.

Kate wins Australian Idol

For those who care, Kate deAraugo has won this year’s Australian Idol TV competition. No doubt we can look forward to being bombarded by it on radio, TV (Channel 10 anyway) and in the press.

My kids watched the final tonight - I could hear what was going on and can’t say anything I heard grabbed me at all. There won’t be a CD sale in our household this year (unlike previous years where some family members with appalling musical tastes have purchased Shannon Noll and Anthony Callea CD’s).

Hopefully the publicists have learnt from last year’s mistake in advertising the website for the winner - instead of this, they omitted the .au and sent people to a gay porn site (which seems to have vanished - so here’s a story about it, and here’s some information about the other Casey Donovan).

Look here, Kate already has a website - an fansite rather than an official one by the looks of it - I suppose the official one will be up later tonight or tomorrow.

Michelle Leslie sham (or is that scam?)

The whole Michelle Leslie case just gets shonkier and shonkier every time new information comes out. According to this story, she tried to bribe her way out of trouble at the outset - offering 200 million rupiah ($A27k), her missing friend Mia is actually Siti Namira Asman, daughter of a prominent Indonesian, that her companions in the car on the night she was arrested were very well connected and some mysterious witnesses who were unable for various reasons to give evidence.

This is not to mention the odd and inconsistent demonstrations of her Islamic faith, changes in excuses why she used ecstacy.

According to a member of Leslie’s defence team, Siti Namira Asman (Mia) planted the tablets, part of a much larger stash allegedly belonging to an Indonesian judge’s son, in Leslie’s bag so that she, the ecstasy’s owner and a prominent politician’s son could walk away. Leslie and the group’s two remaining members were taken to Bali police headquarters, where the other couple, an Italian and an unidentified Asian, possibly Singaporean, were quickly able to pay their way out. That pair have since melted into thin air.

According to the Leslie source, at about midnight just over three months ago, Balinese property developer I Bayu Ada, son of South Jakarta District Court chief judge I Made Karna, had a bulging bag of ecstasy pills in his pocket when the rented silver Toyota he was driving was pulled over by police outside the huge Garuda Wisnu Kencana park.

With him were Leslie, Namira and the two other unnamed tourists, as well as Anindra Ardiansyah Bakrie, the youngest son of Indonesia’s wealthy Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy, Aburizal Bakrie.

Namira, a modelling friend of Leslie’s from Singapore, was not so generous. She visited the frightened young woman in her cell at Bali police headquarters shortly after her arrest and warned she would be killed if she ever revealed who was in the car, the source said. Leslie claimed during her trial that Namira told her “whatever you do, don’t say anything, don’t tell them anything and if anything happens, we’ll fix it”.

This is all along the lines I speculated on in an earlier post.

On top of the strange goings on with the case, now we have the media circus with the chequebooks out to get her story …. some large numbers are being bandied around for rights, up to $200k. I always find it obscene that people can cash in like this on their five minutes of fame (or infamy as the case may be). I would have thought in Leslie’s case, the best advice would be to lie low, say little and get on with her normal life.