Well they certainly can. A manager in Railcorp was among a group of 6 being investigated following sexual harassment complaints - 4 of them were sacked this week. One of the men, project officer Steven Slade, also used the office to run an escort agency in Gosford – even using a RailCorp fax machine to place advertisements for the service in the local paper.

Obviously RailCorp has plenty of room for some slash and burn cost cutting through its management ranks, given their employees had plenty of time for their non-work activities.

It would have been better had they worked at Sydney Buses ….could have advertised the agency as having the best roots (routes?) in the city.

Next trick for Railcorp - organising a pissup in a brewery.

Technorati Tags: NSW Railcorp, sexual harassment, escort agency, brothel

Thats what the proposed citizenship tests look like to me …. White Australia, lite.

What exactly is the point of these tests? What are these Australian values the government talks of? What does completing a multiple choice test on them actually prove …. that someone has the capacity to study a bit of history and general knowledge? How does it make them a better citizen?

The other part of the proposal, an English language test, I have less of a problem with. I think all immigrants should be strongly pushed to learn a reasonable level of English. Not having decent English in Australia is an inhibitor to participating fully in our society, and is a barrier that can be removed relatively easily. Of course, having said migrants should have good English, the acquisition of these skills is something that should be funded by government to a substantial degree. I’d think that the payoffs from such spending would be very positive in terms of fast tracking migrants participation in mainstream Australia.

In other throwbacks to the 50’s, the Democratic Labor Party is back in town, having members recently elected to the Victorian Legislative Council. Brings back memories of B.A. Santamaria, who I remember from TV when I was a kid (about the same time as Joe the Gadget Man, and the wrestling from the Hordern Pavilion and Festival Hall at lunchtime on the weekend with Mario Milano, Killer Karl Cox, Spiros Arion, King Curtis and others).

Next challenge for the Federal Government …. bring back pounds, shillings and pence.

Technorati Tags: White Australia Policy, citizenship, Australian values. English language, DLP, Democratic Labor Party, BA Santamaria

Much of the time I think animal rights activists such as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) go over the top, but the banning of fur clothing is one cause I do support. The way animals are farmed and harvested, then killed for their fur is just barbaric. And it is totally unnecessary, serving only to satisfy some people’s vanity.

Two women in Sydney today protested against Burberry’s use of animal fur in their clothing range. They were a bit unlucky in that they chose a fairly cold day to do their nude protest, given that its been a bit of a heatwave lately.

As the women said:

“God creates an animal with fur on its back so that it can stay warm in cold climates - we take that animal from the wild, we put them in traps to catch them, we put them in wire cages where they go absolutely crazy because they don’t know what’s going on,”

“Then we put them in freezers so that they remain cold and then we electrocute them to try and kill them and then skin them alive so that we can put their trimmings on our coats.

“What part of that makes sense to you?”

Exactly!

Technorati Tags: fur, animal rights, cruelty, fashion

Comes with 100% market share in its location, outback Australian icon, etc. Why not buy the Birdsville Hotel?

I thought about it, but decided having to sell XXXX (why do Queenslanders call their beer XXXX? Because they can’t spell “shit”.) is lowering myself just too far. Also, while Birdsville might be ok to visit (is it? I’ve never been there) I think Canberra is enough of a backwater for me … couldn’t imagine living in a town of 100 and 1,600 km from the nearest major cities.

Never mind the slight problem of lack of the capital to buy the pub - I wonder what it will go for?

Technorati Tags: Birdsville pub, outback, Australia, beer, hotel, Queensland, XXXX

A study just published has found hangovers account for more than 2.6m working days lost per year at a cost to business of $430m annually. Wow!



And its not the hardcore drinkers who are the problem. The study found more than half of all alcohol-related sick leave, is taken by low-risk, infrequent drinkers. Mind you - what percentage of the workforce is contributing the rest? That 50% or whatever it is probably comes from 10% of the employees.



What a bunch of weaklings Australians are? Taking sick days with a hangover ….terrible, and pissweak. Never done it myself - always made a point of turning up the day after, regardless of how I felt. Especially if the drinking was at a work function … you don’t want to be absent and allow your co-workers to embellish your drunken deeds without being around to defend yourself.





Technorati Tags: alcohol, hangover

I’ve been phished. Pity the scammer used a bank I don’t actually have an account with … might have been a tad more credible if they had.

I can see how some people might fall for this shit. Not like the Nigerian scams …. anyone gullible enough to fall for one of those deserves what they get.





Technorati Tags: phishing, scams, Nigerian mail frauds, internet fraud, spam

Gary and Leslie Murphy, 2 of the killers convicted of the 1986 murder of Anita Cobby, have applied to have their “never to be released” sentences redetermined, meaning they would be given a release date.

I would think this should take no time to rule on, the answer being a year starting with 21xx, and conditional on them leaving jail in a box.

Technorati Tags: Anita Cobby, murder, never to be released sentence

Had to laugh at this story of a woman who caused a flight to make an emergency landing. The reason - she had been lighting matches to mask the smell of her farts. She was brought undone by other passengers who reported the smell of burnt matches.

Technorati Tags: flatulence, farts, aircraft

I’ve always found it difficult to swallow Schapelle Corby’s claims of innocence over her drug smuggling conviction in Bali. This report about a slanging match between her (via her book) and a member of her legal defence team, I take with a grain of salt, but what I thought really interesting was this:

Quoting sources close the family, the ABC also reported it had new information about Corby’s movements before she entered Brisbane airport on October 8, 2004, the day she left Australia for Bali.

She met an Adelaide man, in the pre-dawn darkness, on her way to Brisbane’s international airport that day, causing her to almost miss her 6am flight, the report said.

Very suspicious! I struggle to think of a non-dodgy explanation of why she would have done this, it seems very clandestine … probably something to do with taking delivery of a boogie board bag sized bag of marijuana. My gut feeling from this case is that it was a family enterprise, Schapelle takes the fall if they are caught, with an expectation of getting a more sympathetic hearing in court than her brother/s. That pretty much explains the media circus that has been run in her defence, rather than anything resembling a legally based defence with any actual evidence.

Technorati Tags: Schapelle Corby, Indonesia, Bali, drug smuggling, marijuana

Life has administered some justice to the K family of gang rapists. The father of 4 sons convicted of rape, and another a violent criminal, died last month of a heart attack. Hopefully his last years were full of strain and guilt, and the stress caused by perjuring himself to defend his sons led to his death.

Despite the serious crimes this band of brothers committed, the learned judges considered that the youngest, MRK, had such good rehabilitation prospects that even though he helped entrap four young women who were raped, he was recorded on a home video (found by police) shoving his fist into the vagina of a fifth girl while she was comatose, and he assaulted a sixth young woman, stealing her purse and giving her two black eyes, he will probably be free next year, aged 20 and having had his identity suppressed. So what does a thug like him have to do exactly to get serious time in jail?

Why is this whole family having their identities protected? I’d say they forfeited their right to privacy when they elected to commit their crimes, so why shouldn’t their name and reputation be dragged down into the sewers where it deservedly belongs? Let me guess at their identities, surname K, and lots of M first names, and from Pakistan …. Khan and Mohammed no doubt feature there somewhere.

And the fact that these people were allowed into Australia as immigrants doesn’t say much for the standards applied by the Immigration Department. Isn’t there some requirement for people to be of good character, or something like that?

Technorati Tags: gang rapes, K brothers, perjury, immigration