">My Big World Of Crap

There is some sort of debate going on among the locals around The Gap in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.  The Gap is a scenic ocean cliff, and a well known suicide spot – some 50 people kill themselves each year by jumping off the cliff onto the rocks below.

The local council is lobbying the Federal Government to support its $3.5 million suicide prevention plan, which includes security cameras, lighting, a safety phone and a new fence stretching for more than 80 metres along the cliff line.  Woollahra Council Mayor Andrew Petrie claims:

“There is evidence that these types of measures we are putting in will have an effect on reducing suicides. There is no doubt about it,”

But others are not convinced.  Some believe the fence will just transfer the problem elsewhere, while others say the plan will compromise The Gap’s natural beauty.  One local resident said:

“It’ll look like a prison if it’s got cameras and a big fence and everything. I don’t think we need it,”

The council has committed $500,000 to the project, but its request for further money was denied in May by the Federal Government, which claimed it had more urgent spending priorities.

I think this debate raises some interesting questions about how far we as a community go in protecting people from themselves.  I’m particularly interested in the things authorities do with places like national parks in terms of making the wild safe.  Do we need fences in front of cliffs to stop people harming themselves, either accidentally or intentionally?  Do we restrict access to places for similar reasons?  Shouldn’t people be trusted to have enough commonsense to think for themselves “there’s a cliff edge there, its dangerous, I must be careful”, without having to have a dirty big fence way back from the edge to keep them safe? Or “don’t stand on these rocks, a big wave might sweep you out to sea”, “the ocean has sharks in it”, “this is a river in Northern Australia so it most likely has crocodiles in it”.  Most of these things should be bleeding obvious to a normal intelligent person, but no, we have to have barriers to stop people, or signs plastered all over things to warn people.  I think we make eyesores out of things to dumb the possible risks down to the lowest level, rather than accepting that people should be taking responsibility for themselves in potentially hazardous places.

I went to the Head of the (Great Australian) Bight many years ago, and stood right on the edge of the cliff to look down.  I haven’t been there since but I’m betting its almost certain that the same places now have paths and fences and these are well back from the edge.

As for The Gap being a favoured suicide spot, a fence isn’t going to change people’s propensity to kill themselves.  They’ll just go elsewhere or do it a different way.

Kraft proudly launched its new Vegemite variant on Saturday, calling it iSnack 2.0.  This name was decided upon following a national competition to pick a name for the new product, which is a mixture of the traditional Vegemite and cream cheese.

Following almost unanimous scoffing by Australians at the stupid name of the product, Kraft announced today they were dumping the name and holding another competition to find a better name. 

Now there’s just the small problem of about 500,000 jars of the stuff that Kraft need to sell.

Here’s a couple of suggestions.  Maybe they could force feed it to the marketing executives who signed off on the stupid name as being a good idea?  Maybe ust give it to the guy who dreamed up the name and won the contest?

Meanwhile, I’ll stick to the normal Vegemite on my toast – spread thinly thanks if anyone wants to make me some toast.

A man called Dalton Chiscolm is apparently unhappy with the service provided by Bank of America.  So what does he do?  Sues them of course – for "1,784 billion, trillion dollars".

There are a couple of fundamental problems with his lawsuit.

First, the judge can’t figure out what Mr Chiscolm’s problem with the bank actually is.   US District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released in Manhattan federal court.

"He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a ‘Spanish woman’. He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers."

Then there is the small matter of the amount of damages he is claiming. Chiscolm’s request is equivalent to a 1 followed by 22 digits. The sum also dwarfs the world’s 2008 gross domestic product of $60 trillion, as estimated by the World Bank.

"These are the kind of numbers you deal with only on a cosmic scale,"

said Sylvain Cappell, New York University’s Silver Professor at the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

"If he thinks Bank of America has branches on every planet in the cosmos, then it might start to make some sense."

Maybe someone should just give him a few Triganic Pu’s or Ningi’s and tell him to piss off?

Callie Rogers won $3.7m in a lottery when she was 16.  At age 22 she is broke and living at home with her mother. She spent the money on booze, two boob jobs and almost $500,000 of cocaine. About $400,000 was spent on a family holiday while a large amount was also spent on a string on boyfriends.

 

She seems to have had appallingly bad taste in men.  One of them got her hooked on cocaine within weeks of her lottery win.  He blew about $1m of the money, on drugs and other goodies for himself.  He then topped it all off by sleeping with her 16 year old sister.  Despite this, she remained with him for 5 years, and has a child with him.  She then started up with a new boyfriend, also a drug dealer.  He got her back onto the cocaine, after she’d been off it for 3 years.  This winner ended up going to jail for 22 months after police found $10,000 worth of cocaine and a stun gun hidden in a cupboard at the couple’s house.

Callie Rogers, lottery winnings, cocaine, loser boyfriends

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.

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.

Its hard to think of much bigger an “oh shit!” moment than an Israeli woman would have had.  She bought a new mattress on Monday and threw out her old one.  Fair enough.  However, on Tuesday, she remembered she had hidden her life savings inside the old mattress – she claims the amount is more than a million dollars.

By the time she realised, the garbage collection had already taken it.  Searches at three separate dumps turned up nothing.  One of the dump managers confirmed she was desperate and his staff were helping her, but said with 2,500 tonnes of rubbish arriving every day, the mattress would be impossible to find.

Oh shit!  Lesson for this lady – while our banks may be bloodsucking leeches with all their fees and charges, it beats doing your money because you had all your money stuffed in the mattress (you know what they say about financial strategy, diversify, don’t put all your eggs in one basket …does stuffing it all in your mattress count the same as that?)

What would you do in this situation?

A New Zealand couple went to their bank, and requested, and were approved for a $10,000 business overdraft.  However, the bank screwed up and deposited $10,000,000 in their account.  So, what did they do?

Well it seems, cleared out the account and did the bolt to somewhere unknown, although it is suspected they are now in China.  The unnamed couple, believed to be Asian man "Leo" Gao, perhaps in his 30s, and his Kiwi girlfriend Kara (or Cara) Young, have not been seen since $NZ10 million was mistakenly deposited into their account on or about May 5.  The couple reportedly left the country after abandoning Mr Gao’s service station in Rotorua – in fact, it closed so suddenly that motorists were still driving in to fill up thinking it was open.  It seems also that other members of Mr Gao’s family are missing.

Now I know banks are generally scum sucking bottom feeders, happy to extract every dollar out of their customers for just about everything you have to do with them, but what would you do if you found yourself in this situation?  Serves the bank for its screwup?  Or do the right thing and give the money back?  Or something else?

My usual response when I’ve had some money I didn’t think was correct is to set it aside in my account and wait for the loser of it to claim it back.  Its never been anything remotely like $10m though.  Hmmm, the interest on that for a few days would be quite a nice little earner.  Is it my job to tell them they screwed up?

Here’s one for the “meaningless declarations of support” box.

Federal MP Craig Thomson has been accused of using his corporate credit card to pay for escort services and his campaign in the marginal federal seat of Dobell and of making more than $100,000 worth of cash advances over a five year period when he was national secretary of the Health Services Union.  He has denied the allegations.

His girlfriend, Zoe Arnold, is standing by him, declaring:

"I stand behind Craig 100 per cent and he will be strenuously denying all allegations,"

Right, as if he’s going to tell her if he was actually going to prostitutes on the union tab, or at all for that matter.  OK, points for loyalty, love and support of her partner, but I’d suggest hardly an unbiased, or fully informed declaration of support.

And what is it with these Labor folk?  Mr Thomson and Ms Arnold met while he was a union official and she a staffer to former NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher.  Ms Arnold is expecting the couple’s first child later this year.  Don’t these people have outside social lives?  How often do you see couples with both partners working inside the ALP and its associated union machinery?  For fuck’s sake, the inbreeding is as bad as with Hollywood celebrities, or Tasmanians.  If they keep all the internal party interbreeding up, the ALP will mutate itself into some sort of genetic mutant freak club.  Cue the banjos.

And in an amazing coincidence, another ALP figure has also been accused of spending union money on prostitutes.  And even more amazingly, at the same brothel as Mr Thomson was alleged to have used his card at.  Maybe they enjoyed a threesome?

The second instance involves Mr Jeff Jackson, also from the Health Services Union and a prominent figure in the Victorian ALP.  As secretary of the Health Services Union’s number 1 branch in Victoria, Mr Jackson has been embroiled in a bitter power struggle with branch president Pauline Fegan. Ms Fegan last night called on him to resign over the emergence of credit card statements showing the payments to ‘Keywed Pty Ltd" - which takes money for clients of the Sydney Outcalls escort agency. There is apparently a nasty battle for power in Mr Jackson’s HSU No1 branch as he fights to win control from union president Pauline Fegan.  Mr Jackson and Ms Fegan have been brawling for weeks, making claim and counter-claim against each other about alleged misuse of union funds.  This brawl has sucked in Mr Thomson and potentially threatens other Labor figures.

Now to reinforce my point above about the weird and wonderful interwoven relationships in the ALP, cop this.  I couldn’t make this up – it is just so bizarre.  The allegations against Mr Thomson were first detailed in a leaked letter written by Kathy Jackson, the HSU’s national secretary and head of the union’s No2 branch. She is Mr Jackson’s ex-wife. But there’s more - her new partner is Michael Lawler, a vice-president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, whose industrial registrar is investigating Mr Thomson.

Sweet isn’t it, these happy family games.

With toilet paper, is the only thing that is acceptable according to a Queensland company, Townsville Engineering Industries.  A Filipino on a working visa employed by the company was sacked this week for not going to the toilet the Australian way.   He cleans himself, as do many Asians, with water rather than toilet paper.

According to the worker,  Amador Bernabe:

"I went to go to the toilet and I took a bottle of water when my foreman saw me and he said, ‘you can’t bring the water in there’,"

The foreman followed Mr Bernabe into the toilet despite his protests.

"I said it’s my personal hygiene. I didn’t break any law, I didn’t break any rules of the company, why can’t I do this, and he said he would report me to the manager.”

He was called into the manager’s office the next day, and in Mr Bernabe’s words:

"He asked me what had happened and I explained to him and he said if I didn’t follow the Australian way I would be immediately terminated and I said ’sir, then you better terminate me’."

So they did.

This has, rightly, attracted criticism from unions and politicians. 

Australian Manufacturing Worker’s Union state organiser Rick Finch said the incident was shocking.

"I think it is atrocious, an invasion of a person’s rights and cultural beliefs," he said.

"The paradox of the toilet and a person’s actions is something that no boss can even think about interfering with and the thought that bosses think they have the control to get involved in the toiletry is a gross invasion of an employee’s privacy.

"If it wasn’t so disgusting it would almost be laughable.”

He also went on to say:

"At the end of the day we are a multicultural society and if they want to import workers then they need to be tolerant of other workers and other cultures," he said.

"They don’t own these workers, they are borrowed and hired to carry out a job.

"The thought these bosses think they can lord it over these workers is insane.

"What it shows is the company’s complete arrogance for workers’ rights."

But the best quote was from the local MP, Craig Wallace:

"Employers should be worried how their business operates rather than what their employees do in the loo,".

Good call!

Not only that, but the company should also be worried about the foreman’s shit fetish and the manager’s encouragement of it.

The economy’s down the toilet, the government is a squillion dollars in deficit, but never mind, can’t let that get in the way of arming the population.

A gun company has made a pistol especially for elderly people.  The company says it has won approval as a medical device for people with arthritis or other disabling conditions who have trouble squeezing the trigger on a normal firearm. 

Matthew Carmel, president of Constitution Arms in Maplewood, New Jersey, said the gun was:

"something that they need to assist them in daily living".

"The justification for this would be no more or less for a (walking aid) or wheelchair, or any number of things that are medical devices,"

Seniors who buy the $US300 ($460) 9mm handgun will be reimbursed by the federal government in the US.

However, a FDA spokeswoman denied the agency had formally labelled the gun a medical device, saying no determinations had been made about the weapon.

I certainly hope common sense prevails and they don’t approve it.

Never mind the fact that millions of Americans don’t have access to decent, affordable health care, but they’ve gotta have their guns, at any cost.  Sick! Stupid! Completely fucked up!