Sydney train wreck

Four people were taken to hospital after a train rolled over in Sydney at the weekend.

It was the tourist train at the Botanic Gardens.

Not sure how you roll one of these? Hurtling around the park at 5 km/h, doing burnouts, donuts or something I suppose.

Corey, Meet Gemma

Corey Worthington/Delaney has a rival in the partying stakes. Fifteen-year-old Gemma Anscomb told her parents she was having a few friends around for a video night. But instead she had advertised a party on social networking site Bebo and invited everyone she knew.

When her parents got home the next day, they found:

• their dog Bailey unconscious - he had overdosed on ecstasy tablets
• the dining room floor was covered in four inches of beer
• their lap-tops, iPods and jewellery had been stolen
• handcuffs and underwear in their eight-year-old daughter’s bedroom
• in Gemma’s bedroom, the walls were covered in black marks and there was evidence of group sex.
• traces of cocaine, marijuana and alcohol bottles littered the house
• their brand new luxury fridge vandalised with a knife
• the loungeroom carpet covered in stains
• the upstarirs carpet has now become “dull brown”
• the canopy above the eight-year-old daughter’s bed has been ripped off
• that 57 calls were made using the house phone.

But it gets worse.

As for what happened to the washing machine (or, to be more accurate, on top of it), Gemma’s mother, could barely bring herself to say; she has been told it was where “group sex” had taken place. Pointing to her own kingsize bed in the master bedroom, she declared: “There were six people in there having sex at one time. We feel totally violated.”

But Gemma herself didn’t get to see much of her party. It’s a miracle Gemma even knew whether it was a “well good” party or not. Friends say she passed out at 7.30pm - after drinking to excess - and had to be carried to her bedroom where she remained “comatose until the next morning.

Like Corey, Gemma is full of regrets. Not likely, as she posted on her internet page:

“Yeahh it [the party] went wrong but it was well good. . . I mean it was f****** good.”

She’s moved out of home, initially hiding at a friend’s house, but now living with her father.

Corey, meet Gemma … she sounds like your type of girl. Oh, and yes, lift your game, we can’t have the Poms beating us at anything including wild partying!

As for Bailey, he’s ok.

“He did eventually wake up, but for days he was very quiet, hardly moved and wouldn’t eat his food,”

revealed Mrs Anscomb..

Lesbian vampire killers

The murder of Stacey Mitchell in Perth in 2006 was a shocking crime. Her 2 killers this week got what they deserved … life in jail, with a minimum 24-year non-parole period.

What was particularly interesting was the angle taken in reporting this case. The main feature was of course, that Jessica Ellen Stasinowsky, 21, and Valerie Paige Parashumti, 19, were lesbian lovers. Oooh, shock, horror!!!! Add to the the terrible violence inflicted on their victim a bit of girl-on-girl titillation to spice the story up! Yep, apparently they kissed over the body of the dead or dying Stacey after they beat her over the head with a concrete block and strangled her with a dog chain.

These 2 women are evil swine. According to the judge:

“You have each had more than a year in custody to reflect upon the evilness of your crime, yet you still lack remorse and obviously place no value on the sanctity of human life,” he said.

“There is also the added problem that you each enjoy being sexually aroused by the infliction of violence.”

But not only does killing get them horny, there’s more.

Parashumti, who drank blood as part of a vampire subculture, had very strong sadistic tendencies. Combined with a severe personality disorder, a murder like Stacey’s was “almost inevitable”, according to a psychologist giving evidence in court.

So, there you have it …. lesbian vampire killers, sounds like the name of some bad porn, but it actually happened in Perth. Seems like Perth is challenging Adelaide for the title of Australia’s weird murder capital.

Goose

Well, India beat Australia in the one day international cricket last night. Congratulations, India, but who really cares? The big news of the night wasn’t cricket but Andrew Symond’s crash tackle on a streaker who invaded the field while Symonds was batting. This has made the news around the world.

Here’s the streaker, one Robert Ogilvie, aged 26 of the Brisbane suburb, Parkridge South, running towards Symonds.

Then Symonds puts the shoulder into him as he runs past, and absolutely decks him.

Ogilvie scored a $1,500 fine today after pleading guilty to charges of interfering with a person engaged in sport and wilful exposure. The court did not enter a conviction after hearing that he took to the field after getting drunk with his friends and that he was now remorseful. Police prosecutor Tina Green told magistrate John Costello that Ogilvie had explained to the arresting officers that “it was just something he had to do”.

My favourite photo of the incident is this one of the police attempting a cover-up.

I had to have a laugh with senior commentator and cricket doyen Richie Benaud when he said when on the wide shot “at the moment we don’t know if it is a boy streaker or a girl streaker”. Ha! Ha! Suck eggs, Robert Ogilvie, goose!

The most versatile word in the English language

I think this explains it all. I’ve always thought “fuck” is the most versatile word going around.

Warning - don’t listen if you are offended by swearing.

Bali bombers screwed up

One of the convicted Bali bombers, Imam Samudra, has claimed the bombers had never meant to kill so many people. What happened at Paddy’s Bar and the Sari Club was “unacceptable”, he said. The second explosion was much bigger than they had expected, he said.

There were 202 people killed on the night of Saturday, October 12, 2002, when the crime planned by these men was carried out on the peaceful, mainly Hindu holiday island of Bali.

The first suicide bomber walked into Paddy’s Bar and set off a bomb in the middle of a crowd of customers. The second bomber waited for people to flee into the street then detonated the Mitsubishi, packed with more than a ton of explosives, outside the Sari Club.

I don’t know if Imam Samudra expects any sympathy over his admission that they hadn’t intended there to be so many people killed. Maybe if he was going to have second thoughts he should have had them before the attack …. perhaps testing their bombs in the Jemaah Islamiah’s own training camps first.

Apart from his reservations about the number of people killed, Imam Samudra seems unrepentant about his crimes. Of course he wasn’t to blame for the bomb being too powerful - the only explanation, he suggested, was that “the CIA or KGB or Mossad” had somehow tampered with the bomb. “It is very possible,” he claimed.

His targets, he said, were “anti Muslims, especially people from the USA, Australia, members of Nato, elements of what people call the alliance because they know it’s a crusader army”.

What would he say to the families of his victims?

“To Muslim people I would say pardon - but Muslims only. While the unbelievers - they must be entering into hell. Allah says to all unbelievers that this road will bring you to hell,”

One day soon, Imam Samudra and his fellow terrorists, Mukhlas and Amrozi, will get what they deserve ….the last words they will hear “ready, aim, fire”.

Bed made, now to lie in it

The fallout from the dodgy and sleazy dealings in Wollongong, involving developers and council staff seems to be as follows.

Wollongong City Council

The ICAC today recommended that the Wollongong City Council be sacked.

“I am of the opinion that systemic corruption exists,”

ICAC Commissioner Jerrold Cripps, QC, said. The inquiry has revealed a web of sexual and business connections among workers and executives at the council and Wollongong developers.

The counsel assisting the inquiry made interesting submissions today, suggesting that caucusing by councillors was a corrupt activity. He argued that when councillors of one political persuasion decided before council meetings what the decision of council should be “regardless of the debate, that squarely comes within the terms ‘corrupt conduct’.” He went on to say that making decisions before a debate affected the honest exercise of their official function as councillors. In Wollongong, there are seven Labor councillors out of a total of 13 councillors.Therefore, to gain control of the ALP bloc, a developer needed to obtain the sway of only four Labor councillors, which he believed is is what had happened in the Wollongong Council. He named the four as Frank Gigliotti, Zeki Esen, Kiril Jonovski and Val Zanotto.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma said he was waiting on formal advice before acting on the recommendation. Fair enough I suppose, but Morris has shown an itchier trigger finger than that on many occasions, sacking people before trial let alone conviction. Strange that he holds back when the dodgy ones are Labor mates and the council is a Labor stronghold ….I can’t help but think a Liberal or independent dominated council would have been sacked weeks ago.

From what I’ve read, not only the council should be sacked, there was/is obviously a sick culture in the council bureaucracy and it seems like a good cleanout at various levels of management would also be worthwhile. It seems plenty of people knew stuff was going on but chose to turn a blind eye to it. For example, threatening messages from Joe Scimone to Beth Morgan were known by senior management but not acted on, as were rumours that Ms Morgan had holidayed in China with developer Frank Vellar.

The 2 Joes

NSW Ports Minister Joe Tripodi has been cleared of wrongdoing over the appointment of his friend, Joe Scimone, to a senior position in an agency in the Minister’s portfolio. Last week Mr Tripodi said NSW Maritime, which appointed Mr Scimone to the job, had confirmed that he had played no role in the appointment, even though NSW Maritime falls under his portfolio. Mr Tripodi said he had been unaware of the ICAC investigation affecting Mr Scimone at the time he was appointed.

Deputy ICAC Commissioner Theresa Hamilton said in her formal response:

“The ICAC’s Assessment Panel has decided that the ICAC will not be conducting a formal investigation.

“The panel took into account that, based on the information obtained during interviews and an assessment of the files mentioned above, there was nothing to substantiate an allegation that minister Tripodi interfered with merit selection procedures.”

Maybe, but did they actually expect to uncover anything in writing or obviously connected to the Minister? This sort of influence would have been exerted through mates and mates of mates dropping hints, rather than anything like direct approaches.

And how did NSW Maritime actually elect to recruit Joe Scimone given the sexual harassment allegations that led to him resigning from Wollongong Council, let alone the allegations of bribery - eg a $5,000 watch from a developer was just a “gift between friends” …. sure, pull the other one, it plays Jingle Bells. Amazing coincidence that this gift happened at a time when Council was processing a development application.

Developer donations

Supposedly there will be a tightening of rules about poltical donations. I’ll believe it when I see it - I’m sure this has all been said and promised before but when it comes to the crunch the politicians like donations and will water down any reforms as much as they can get away with. The pervasiveness of the donations has been an eye opener for me, and the closeness of the relationships between developers and others and politicians. How someone can take tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from a developer and then claim it was an act of altruism rather than an attempt to buy influence is beyond belief.

As for the developers involved in the shonky business with the council, I await with interest whether there will be any legal consequences for any of them. In my view, people shown to have engaged in such corrupt conduct should be blackbanned from future business with the council (and others) … ie corrupt business people should be put out of business completely.

Beth Morgan

The town planner who’s made for the most scandalous headlines in this story, which have turned it from a fairly mundane dodgy money episode to a full on titillating sex scandal, is said to be lonely and teary. Wow, what a surprise. She’s basically fucked up her career, marriage, reputation and all for a bunch of sleazebags who didn’t give a rat’s arse about her apart from when they were screwing her or getting favours from council through her. No wonder she’s not exactly feeling on top of the world and surrounded by friends.

Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

Time for some musical goodness. I’ve been listening to the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds CD “Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!” since yesterday ….I think I’ve listened to it completely at least 4 times. I’m impressed - while I’ve enjoyed the last few of the band’s CD’s such as “No More Shall We Part”, “Nocturama” and “Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus”, this one is more straightforward and rock-ish.

My favourite song: “Albert Goes West”.

Here is a video for the title track. Enjoy!