A Word of Advice

Don’t make a quick overnight business trip to Sydney when the State of Origin rugby league is on.  I forgot when I organised on Tuesday to be there the next day.

Its not the best time to find a hotel …especially if you want to only pay the good corporate rates.

Speaking of the game, I thought it was pretty ordinary until about the last 20 minutes when Queensland made a big comeback, to draw level at 16-16, only to end up losing 17-16.

Technorati Tags: rugby league, State of Origin, Sydney

The Todd and Brant Show

Despite the corny title, “The Great Escape”, and my normal principle of refusing to watch the products of chequebook journalism, I couldn’t resist watching what Todd Russell and Brant Webb had to say about their experiences trapped in the Beaconsfield gold mine for 14 days.

They had a compelling story to tell, but I don’t think much was revealed on TV last night.  Sure, we learnt a few things that hadn’t come out already, and it is clear that they were in dire trouble the first few hours, and they have suffered more significant injuries than had been reported, but the program was really lacking in photos or video footage from inside the mine - that would have really made it interesting, but I suppose thats all tied up until coronial and other inquiries have run their course.  Pity that, even a teaser to show us what it was like would have made all the difference.

I’ve heard the two miners called “heroes”.  Are they really?  I wouldn’t have said so. They are certainly tough, resourceful and survivors.  It truly was quite an amazing triumph of will to live and mental strength.  I think we bandy the term “hero” around too easily.  At the end of the day, Russell and Webb were damn lucky to survive the initial rockfall, and then showed remarkable resilience and will to last first through the 5 or 6 days until they were found (this would be the toughest time, I would have thought, alone and not knowing if you’d ever get out) and then for the week and a bit until they were then rescued.

Did Channel 9 get their $2.6m worth?  They seem to believe so.

Technorati Tags: Todd Russell, Brant Webb, Beaconsfield mine, The Great Escape, Channel Nine, chequebook journalism

Eurovision 2006

The winner of that highpoint of the international music calendar, the Eurovision song contest, was Finnish band, Lordi. Not your typical Eurovision contestant, Lordi are some sort of monster-rock band.

I don’t know what they sound like, but from the looks of it, they appear to be something like an uglier version of Kiss.

Update (21/05/2006): I had a bit of a listen to the winning song, and while its not my cup of tea, its better than the shit that usually wins Eurovision.

Technorati Tags: Eurovision, Lordi, monster-rock

Must have walked under a ladder

I’m having a bad trot lately.

In the last week:

• lost my wallet in a taxi in Sydney
• my wife broke her foot on Thursday, so is limited to hobbling around the house on crutches for a while
• today, my car wouldn’t start - had to call Mr NRMA … needed a new battery.

This is on top of my camera still being in for repairs, not to mention my footy teams (Brumbies and Raiders) both going like shit.  Plus, at the moment, my brain hurts - I’ve had a headache for the last couple of hours.

On the plus side, I have some thinking to do about a possible new job at work, one which requires a fair bit of travel around Asia.

Technorati Tags: bad luck, camera, wallet, broken foot, NRMA

Da Vinci Code

We saw this today.  I had read the book a year or so ago, and while I wasn’t blown away by it, it was an interesting read, and from about the middle on, quite hard to put down, as I was interested in the story’s premise and wanted to see how it turned out.  Actually, there’s not much of the specifics of the book I remember now - so clearly it was not particularly memorable.

I hadn’t been hanging out to see the movie, just a little interested.  I had second thoughts about going when I saw and heard the bagging it got from most reviewers.  Looked like it was a “tightwad Tuesday” or “wait till it comes out on DVD” sort of thing.  However, decided on an outing to the cinema this morning.

It was nothing fantastic, but wasn’t the pile of crap that reviews had suggested.

Technorati Tags: Da Vinci Code, movie

Who farted?

Someone on a Virgin Blue flight to Melbourne today, apparently.

Police are looking for someone who let off a stink bomb.  Have you ever been around when one of those has gone off?  I have, and it was about the worst thing I’ve ever smelt.

Whoever it was, if busted, should deny it, and just own up to farting.  Yes, offensive and embarassing, but better than getting in the shit (ha ha!) with the police.  And, if anyone is capable of ripping one off that does smell like a stink bomb, and lingers like one, I’d recommend they seek urgent medical help to get their guts fixed.

Technorati Tags: fart, stink, virgin blue

Kovco - Defence screws up again

I feel sorry for the Kovco family. Not only have they lost Jake, killed in Iraq, but then they had to endure the fuckup over his body getting misplaced on the way back to Australia. Now Defence has managed to lose a copy of the draft report into the mixup about the handling of his body. It seems it was left on a CD in a public computer in the Qantas Club lounge at Melbourne airport by the officer who led the investigation.

Now, I’d normally give Defence a spray about incompetence and insensitivity in handling the Kovco matter, and its degeneration into a comedy of errors, but presently I feel its a case of people …glasshouse …stones.

I have to wonder why the officer who lost the CD was using it in one of the lounge’s computers - surely Defence can afford to have provided her with a laptop of her own? I’m also fascinated by the use of a CD as the primary means of getting the report back to Australia - no email in Australia’s base in Baghdad? How surprising too that the report appears to have found no individual responsible - it was a failure of process.

Update (19/05/2006): Don’t think I’d like to be in Brig Liz Cosson’s shoes. She’s the officer who lost the CD. With the Minister for Defence and others desperately looking for a scapegoat, she’s right in the firing line. Makes it easier that she’s not part of the boy’s club at Russell. Plenty of them still thrive despite roles in monumental fuckups over such things as submarines, helicopters, APC’s, not working as intended and overrunning their budgets by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Technorati Tags: Kovco investigation, incompetence, Department of Defence

Boxing = fucking pointless

I just heard that Anthony Mundine beat Danny Green in the apparently significant boxing match tonight in Sydney.

I really fail to see the appeal of boxing. Its brutal, dangerous and generally practiced by buffoons. Its corrupt and totally lacking in credibility. Just can’t see the fun in 2 guys beating the crap out of each other.

In one of the preliminary matches, former footballer John Hopoate, won his professional debut. This is being beat up as some sort of good thing for the sport. Hopoate, you may recall (also known as “Stop-a-fart-e”) is the player who was infamous for sticking his finger up other players’ arseholes, among other acts of thuggery and stupidity. From the brief highlights shown on the news just now, I’d say he was set up deliberately to look good in a match against an opponent about as threatening as a punching bag. Of course, whatever success Hopoate’s win means, it will be blown out of all proportion in the sporting press.

In case you have any doubts about my feelings about boxing ….. it is fucking stupid and not a sport for civilised people.

Update (19/05/2006): My last point proven!

Technorati Tags: boxing, Anthony Mundine, Danny Green, John Hopoate, finger in anus, stupid sport

New toy

Got me a new toy.

Technorati Tags: mobile phone, cellphone, Bluetooth, Samsung

Child abuse and domestic violence in Aboriginal communities

The story on Lateline on Monday night was a real eye-opener.  Cases of child sexual abuse, violence and murder among Aboriginal communities in Central Australia were documented by Crown prosecutor Dr Nannette Rogers … most of them just horrifying.

Some examples:

Yes, the two-year-old was playing outside with some other children. Her
mother was away from the house, drunk in a small town. The offender
woke up, took the small child, carried it out bush, had the child out
bush for some hours. Undressed the child and inserted, simultaneously,
two fingers in her vagina and two fingers in her anus and moved his
fingers up and down a number of times causing injuries. He then - I’m
sorry, he had his trousers off while this was happening. Then he placed
the child on his lap and had his penis next to the child’s vagina and
tried to masturbate and so on. And eventually returned the child back
to his father’s camp. He was carrying the child with its legs on the
side. The child was crying throughout the assault. The child was still
crying and bleeding. He handed the child to his drunken father. He
himself had been drinking. The father then took the child back to the
area that the child had been removed from and when the mother returned
from town, where she’d been drinking, the child was crying and the
other children indicated that the offender had taken her away some time
before and it was then that the bleeding and so on was noticed in her
nappy.

and:

TONY JONES: There are other cases. One of them is almost too depraved
to talk about, but one feels you have to, in a way, get these things
out in the open. But this is of an 18-year-old petrol sniffer who
actually drowns a young girl while he’s raping her?

NANETTE
ROGERS: That happened several years ago. A number of children aged
about four, five, six and eight, or something like that, were playing
in a water hole, maybe a kilometre or more from the community. They
were swimming or paddling and he had followed them, going from tree to
tree as they walked down to the water hole. While she was playing in
the water, he pulled her under and anally penetrated her and drowned
her, probably simultaneously. And the matter proceeded to - first of
all, there was a committal hearing before a magistrate and the children
gave very graphic evidence. Heart-wrenching evidence.

TONY JONES: What was their evidence?

NANETTE
ROGERS: Well, their evidence was that they saw him pulling her in the
water. They saw bubbles coming up. They tried to throw rocks at him in
an effort to get him to desist. And then they ran back to the community
to alert, you know, the grandparents.

TONY JONES: It’s almost incomprehensible. I mean, they were throwing rocks at him, they were yelling at him - he didn’t stop?

NANETTE ROGERS: No, it was awful, absolutely dreadful.

TONY JONES: Is there any way of explaining something like that? I mean apart from the fact he was sniffing petrol?

NANETTE
ROGERS: No, I think that cases like this and the sexual assaults of the
two-year-old and the seven-month-old baby are really beyond the range
of our comprehension. In normal behaviour, we expect people to be, say,
murdered or sexually assaulted or, you know, maybe stabbed, but not on
a constant basis - not in relation to horrible offences committed on
really small children. It’s beyond most people’s comprehension and
range of human experience.

Absolutely depraved!  There are no excuses for these sort of acts, by anyone, no matter how poor their circumstances, no matter what their mental state is, no matter what substances they are affected by.  Absolute zero tolerance of these behaviours, and the attitudes behind them, is required.  Doesn’t matter who is doing it, black, white, rich, poor …. there is simply no excuse and must be no tolerance.

I heard Warren Mundine talking on the radio today …I’m quite impressed with him (saw him on Insight a couple of weeks ago and he had some interesting thoughts on the ALP, of which he is president).  He basically said that child sexual abuse is common, and says authorities need to drop political correctness and get tough and practical in dealing with the problem.  Absolutely … pussyfooting around serves no-one well (just like with the Lebanese criminal gangs).

I would hope that these latest revelations shock the broader community into demanding more positive action in dealing with the disadvantage of aboriginal communities, to strongly police and prevent such crimes, to severely punish those guilty, support and protect those willing to dob them in or who try to stop them, etc.

I’ve spent about an hour in an aboriginal community  (in the NT) and it was a depressing place - dirty, rubbish strewn about, mangy dogs everywhere, houses in various states of disrepair, people hanging around doing nothing.  Other things I noticed were (what I thought) more than a fair share of people who appeared to be disabled, and the only store in the town doing a thriving trade in fried takeaways, coke and cigarettes.  (Yet I then went to another one, only about an hour’s drive away and it was completely different, much cleaner, well maintained, people’s appearance much better, less hanging around, etc).

Gotta say that Australia needs to do much better with bringing aboriginals into the 21st century and enjoying decent health, education and economic opportunity.  Some communities do quite ok for themselves, others desperately need kickstarting, and strong oversight and management to take them forward.  And, it would be completely pointless to repeat the sins of the past, things like ATSIC seemed to have been good only for pissing money down the drain.  With the federal budget awash with cash, it seems a good time to seriously think how we can do something positive, and then do it with strong direction and determination.

Technorati Tags: aboriginals, child abuse, violence. poverty, sexual abuse, disadvantage, political correctness