Not only but also...

#13 - Their gut-churning, head-spinning, hand-wringing, downright stupidity.

This, while seeming quite a broad category, actually isn't. I'm referring to those people who, following the collision between a four year old and a car outside a child-care centre, are now calling for the 40km/h School Zone to be applied outside all child care centres and kindergartens.

Apparently this child 'ran away' from his mother, and managed to throw himself in front of a car in the process. This is the Speed Limit (and ipso facto, the Driver's) fault. NOT the parent's fault...

Why don't we just go the whole hog and make ALL roads 40km/h, because you never can be too sure when a kamikaze toddler isn't going to do his dash???? I mean, he could sneakily wait until he was passed the 'School Zone' before making a break for it... and then what would we do? Hmmm? Better to be safe than sorry...

This has got me as cranky as when they changed the speed limit on the Highway at Heathcote to 50k/h...

GRRRRRRR.....

Reds under Every Bed

Am so cranky, as always...

Lets just do an exercise in compare and contrast shall we:

John McDonald doing his little rant on a building site.

and

from the transcript of 4 Corners broadcast 18/06/07

GREG WINN, TELSTRA CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER (voice only, 30 May 2007):
We're not running a democracy. We don't manage by consensus. We're criticised for it but the fact of the matter is we run an absolute dictatorship and that's what's going to drive this transformation and deliver results.
It's a cultural issue. If you can't get the people to go there, and you try once and you try twice, which is sometimes hard for me but I do believe in a second chance, then you just shoot 'em and get them out of the way you know and put people in that you can teach the new business process to and drive on.
And that's the kind of thing that you have to do if you're serious about changing things and we are obviously changing.

Now apparently the difference between the first and and second incidents are that the first is an example of union bully-boy tactics and proof that the Unions are under the bed and going to ruin the economy (even if that means their members losing their jobs and living on the street obvs). The second is merely 'colourful' language and in no way having any bearing on the type of workplace that gives employees no choice but to accept AWAs and exerts the kind of pressure that can drive some to suicide...

Why is Rudd scrambling to hose this down is beyond me. Well not really, he's reacting to concerns in the community. I just don't know why he isn't just pointing to the quote above and saying "Listen, I know McDonald is an idiot, and his behaviour is unacceptable, but can we look at the bigger issue here people: Big Business considers you little worker bees to be worthless, below contempt, and here's the proof"

And the media is very happy to play along with this - further entrenching the public's hate and distrust of the Union Ogre.

Not happy.

The Shame

I am in rather a dilemma.*

I have a shameful secret to confess...

I actually read, and more extraordinarily agreed with, an column by Miranda Devine.


I know, I know... I'm so ashamed. I'm worried that this may be a consequence of 'getting older'. It is an unsettling feeling that perhaps I am slowly morphing into Mary Whitehouse or Gerard Henderson or other fearsome conservative muppet. Could this be why I can't handle Dom Knight's pathetic 'blog posts' anymore? Is it bracket creep? Oh, the angst...

The column decries the slipping of standards in film classifications, allowing 'moderate swearing' and 'implied sexual scenes' in PG and M movies. Although she was hysterical about the blatant pedophilia and homoeroticism apparently depicted in 'The History Boys' recently, this time she was more rational and cited more evidence that indeed, it's not my imagination, they are allowing more previously unacceptable words, scenes, themes etc through the classification process.

...We are witnessing the acceleration of "ratings creep", the steady erosion of film classification standards, as more and more adult content seeps down into PG and M ratings, leaving parents powerless and confused about what to allow their children to watch.
Even G ratings are not what they used to be. A 2003 revision of movie classification guidelines allowed drug use and nudity "in context". Mild coarse language has always been allowed, as has "mild and very discreetly implied" sexual activity and drug use...

...The Sydney film reviewer Kevin Sadlier is one of the few who openly rails against the trend, on radio 2GB. He says he has noticed a "disturbing change" over the past 18 months in the work of the federal Office of Film and Literature Classification, which is responsible for movie ratings.
Movies that once would have been rated M, he says, are being released as PG - Marie Antoinette, with a nude love scene, for example.
The F-word, once restricted to MA movies, is now commonplace in M movies with a note from the censor warning of "moderate language"...

I agree with pretty much all of this - since when is 'mild drug use' ever going appropriate in a G rated movie? Although I guess it depends on the 'drug' in question...
However I disagree with this comment:

Ratings creep also applies to television, where the F-word is so liberally sprinkled through prime time it has lost its ability to shock, which is a pity. A program such as Supernatural shows graphic scenes of werewolves ripping people's hearts out of their chests.

Firstly: Pah! Supernatural SO does not show that much graphic violence. You saw the werewolf attack. And then you saw a chest cavity that had been shredded. You didn't see the shredding! Geez! Get it right Miranda!

Secondly: I'm not sure that the argument necessarily extends to TV. It is much easier to exercise parental control in regards to the TV - much easier to switch off and switch channels - than it is to up and leave a cinema. Also - I don't allow my children to watch prime-time TV, unless I'm absolutely positive that it'll be OK, and I would NEVER allow them to watch Supernatural, so that is such a pathetic straw man argument, and makes it easier for me to continue my Miranda H8ing**.

I guess my response is that surely it's easier to err on the side of caution in regards to film classification. I don't understand how 'society' could have changed so drastically in the last generation, that these aspects need to be reflected in G and PG movies. It's so hard to exercise the much-vaunted 'parental control' when the goal-posts keep moving! I'm not the type of parent who rants and raves about the rubbish on TV, and the possibility that my children might be exposed to sex and violence at 11pm, as it's my responsibility to ensure that they're not watching TV then... However I'm quite happy to rant if they're exposed to what I consider 'unsuitable' material if it's being broadcast through a medium I would normally considered 'safe' - eg G movies.

I'm lucky though, that I have a relationship with my children in which they are welcome to, and feel comfortable, discussing things they have seen or heard which left them puzzled, intrigued or uncomfortable. And for a parent that's more important than any film classification system.

* I would really appreciate discussion on this topic! People don't seem to 'discuss' things anymore - they either leave a comment saying 'yes I agree' or nothing. I would love C&C to be a place where we're happy to exchange ideas, and disagree with each other, yet still bask in the BlogLove!

** Stay tuned for more H8ing in the not-too-distant future!

Well Trollied

A quick rant:

Why, oh why, have supermarkets not cottoned on to the fact that the incidence of twins in our population is increasing...? And why, therefore, do they not provide twin trolleys for the poor mothers (or indeed fathers) of said twins??? Or parents of more than one child under the age of 3????

So cranky!

Usually I put one child in the the seat, and one child in the actual trolley, but if (like me) you don't like your bread sat upon, then this method can be risky. Especially if you're doing a Big Shop, in which case there seriously isn't room for children...

I guess it's my own fault for taking the twins shopping with me yesterday, but our family is so damn time-poor at the moment, that it's the only chance I've got to get out to the shopping centre in over a week... There was important Mothers Day and birthday presents to be purchased for my in-laws, so it had to be done. But let me tell you, grocery shopping with toddlers in NO FUN! Especially when they're running loose, and Coles waxed the floors yesterday... I was *this* close to leaving my half-full trolley full of perishables in the middle of the aisle and storming off!

But I persevered...

Mainly because the pantry was seriously empty...

I just don't get why Coles and Woolies haven't done some polling on this. I mean, they've been doing some intense 'study-trips' over to the UK in recent years, and brought back a lot of ideas from Tesco and Sainsbury's and the like - Tesco's Finest silver packaging anyone? - so why haven't they implemented Tesco's brilliant 'a trolley for every type of person' plan??? It was fabtastic! Single Baby, Twin Baby, single toddler, twin toddler, baby/toddler combo... and funky trolleys that hooked onto wheel chairs or Zimmer frames (or maybe that was just Eastbourne!)

And it meant that shopping wasn't such a chore. Still a chore, but without the added frustrations...

At the moment it means my only alternatives are a) waiting for MrB to get home and go shopping of an evening. But that would eat into my 'watching BB' time, and that's never going to happen... or b) shopping online - but let me tell you this Mr Coles - that ain't going to work in your favour as I've done it before and you get NO spontaneous purchases... None whatsoever...

So: If you want to sell more chocolate or 'oh look! a new flavour TimTam! I'll try that even though Arnotts is evil and American and of Satan etc etc' type purchases, then get me a twin trolley and I'll be happy to oblige....

Some monday thoughts.

Drain the wetlands????

Dayam! Now why didn't we think of that earlier????

This from the man who thought showering with a bucket to save an excess water, was a 'little extreme'...

This from the man who says a dam on the Clarence River is a Good Idea, as it's not NSW's water, but Australia's water, and therefore we can pump it o those people in SE Queensland who last year voted against the introduction of recycled effluent into their water system.
[Mr B says, sure, dam the river, then we can all stand there and wee in the river and then they won't want it anyway...]

Question: If it's 'Australia's' water, then how come Cubby Station gets to keep the million gazillion mega litres (how many Sydney Harbours is that???) as 'their' water, and not share it with, say, the entire Murray Darling system?????

*Mutter mutter mutter, snurgle snurgle snurgle, rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb*

And in other news...

The dreaded football season is on us again, and the day I feared has come to pass - Misses M and H no longer play at the same time. They still play at the same venue (Thank you Thank you Illawarra AFL Assoc!) but now the U-10s play at 9am, and the Auskicks (U-8s) play at 10am.
Which means we were at the ground from 8:30am until 11:30am. The twins were going stir-crazy!
But: Miss M is the only girl in her team, and on Saturday was the only girl on the field, and she played a blinder! She's got a good boot on her, and is *almost* getting marks. Which is a start. And she's taken to tackling with gusto - took down a boy twice her size and then set up a perfect goal! Yay! to Miss M!
Final score: 72 to 1 (and that one behind was scored by one of our boys playing for the other side, so really it was 73 - nil)
Miss H did some kicking. And some pole-dancing. And demonstrated some impressive debating skillz - no, indeed, Wollongong is NOT part of Sydney. Yay! to Miss H!

same same but different

I'm wondering...

Wondering why these unfortunate people are more special and deserving of our sympathy than the 190+ people killed in car bombs in Iraq overnight.

Wondering why their photos need to be on the front page of a paper in Sydney, Australia...

I mean, it's a tragedy. It really is. Thirty-odd lives snuffed out in a hail of bullets and bewilderment...

But no more than any other needless loss of life.

I know that it's all over the blogosphere today - Chesty's posted as well. But I was really quite disturbed when I unrolled the SMH this morning, disturbed by the need to dissect this event, to dwell on it. I mean, why weren't photos posted of each of the victims of the flash flooding in Thailand the other day? They too were in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time...

Yesterday the Telegraph had a massive picture of Cho Seung-Hui on the frontpage with the headline: The Face of Evil.

Evil? Alienated and angry and mentally unstable, maybe... but Evil? That's a big call.

Personally I think the real face of Evil here is represented by the NRA - by their insistence that such weaponry be available to all and sundry, regardless of their dubious mental state... yes I know, guns don't kill people: people's sense of isolation, infallibility and ignorance kill people.

The only constant here is that people end up dead.

It's wrong. But it's always wrong. Whether the dead people are carefree college students, Iraqi housewives, or Thai tourists. They all demand the same respect.

Point-less

I was wending my way to church last night when I was overcome with grumpiness. And a tiny amount of scorn and contempt, with just a dash of snobbery.


You see, I was walking along the cycleway, past Bulli and McCauley's beaches en route to Austinmer. It's a new commitment of mine, this walk to church. It takes me about an hour, I get to walk past lovely beaches, past DH Lawrence's house (where he wrote Kangaroo), up and down steep-ish hills, and it gives me time to think. The thinking is usually a Good Thing, seeing as how I have very little time to myself normally. Except for yesterday, when I turned my gaze from this:

(heh - that's not me jogging to church, but IS the cycleway)

to this:

with an emphasis on this:

Yes, I was stupid enough to look upon The Point, and it (almost) ruined my walk. Apparently all these houses are the result of

"Design guidelines (which) have led to attractive, complimentary, contemporary housing designs with a distinctive coastal character."

Bahhhhhaaaaaha. Yeah, bullshit. They're boxes. With bits added on. And one particular example, billed as 'award-winning architectural design' (or somesuch tarramadiddle, I can't quote verbatim) looked exactly like a shoe box which had been oh so gently squished forward. Like a Rhombus. Now I know architects, I even have friends who are architects, and even they think The Point is the essence of ugliness. It just beggars belief... One of the houses even has an entertainment area on the roof. Full sun all day long and no protection at all. And most of them have managed to squish a pool onto their 20m² block. Even though they are seriously metres away from the beach...

And another thing: They're all windows.... massive panes of window. With no shading (unless you call a piece of timber stuck out at a bizarre angle covering an exact 14% of the window shading...). And they're about 50m from a beach. Facing the beach no less. And as I have mentioned before, beach-facing windows tend to get very filthy, very quickly. Even as I walked along, with the wind blowing but a very light breeze, I could feel the salt and sand sticking to my glowing* skin...And in these water-conscious times, is it very Green to be washing your windows every second day???? No, I don't believe it is.

Oh! It gets me foot-stamping cranky so it does!

*well ok, I was just slightly sweaty. I blame the humidity. And luckily it was only MrB sitting next to me at church...

water, water, everywhere

Open letter to David Campbell, NSW Minister for Water Utilities.

Dear David,

I am a Concerned NSW resident, who also happens to reside in your electorate. There are some things I would like to discuss with you, knowing what a friendly and accessible kinda guy you are...

Why does your government insist on referring to recycled, or reclaimed, water as 'recycled sewage'??? That phrase, as you would be perfectly aware, has connotations of sludge coloured water gushing from our taps... but that's not true is it? In fact 'recycled water', having gone through an intricate filtration system, is actually purer than the water we get from our dams. And I bet you know this. Even better than I (and the rest of the 702 listening public) do. I'm not stupid, and most of the electorate isn't stupid, and yet Iemma was on the radio this morning, still insisting that the voters of NSW won't accept recycled water. Even though a sizable number of people in the Northwest of Sydney have been drinking recycled water for years with no ill effects. Even though the water than runs through pristine wilderness into the water catchments and thence into our water pipes, must have collected along the way an incalculable amount of wombat poo, and hence could be reasonably referred to as 'recycled sewage'.

This is not a time to be playing semantics. It's a time for definitive action. And you and Mr Iemma have let Mr Debnam steal a march on you. He's read the electorate and promised to spend the same amount as your desal plant, on recyling water back into the system.

I have been a Labor voter all my life. It would break my heart to vote Liberal, it really would. Even if it means the loss of the car import business at Port Kembla, even if it means the loss of those 20000 public service jobs, I might just have to do it. Because Water means so much more to me than ephemeral loyalty and principles.

Please, before it's too late, have a whisper in Iemma's ear before the debate on the ABC tonight, and get him to see that this is what the State wants and needs...

yours etc,

actonb.

I am about to email this to david@campbell.minister.nsw.gov.au and would like all of you to do the same.

And if he's nice, and emails something back along the lines of 'oh actonb! How could I have been so wrong! Of course, I will do what you ask immediately!' then I promise to refrain from referring to him as 'Tha Walrus' from now on...

UPDATE: Ha! He must have listened! New announcement on water recycling last night! I'm feeling all empowered....

Obviousness

... and in breaking news Gerard Henderson reckons Howard's done nuffin wrong...



Well!

Knock me down with a feather!



Is it just me (and MrB), or is he losing it? His famous ability to read the electorate slowly unravelling..?

Or is it just wishful thinking?????

Angry Monday

Gentle Reader, I beg your indulgence as I subject you to a spot of ranting and raving.

*****

To the stupid bloody scooter rider on the freeway on Friday evening - even though it must be most gratifying to know that your BMW motor scooter travels at speeds up to 150kph, you still look like a twat ducking and weaving through peakhour traffic which is traveling at an average speed of 120kph.
And if, perchance you happen to come a cropper, that gorgeous soft suede jacket (half-zipped), and spiffy black jeans ain't going to afford you much protection when hitting the ground at a rapid rate of knots. In fact, it makes you look like a bigger twat, albeit one with perfect posture.
And I suspect you probably don't need quite that many paniers and bike-boot-bits. If you need to cart around a tonne of stuff, get a bloody car. The you can dress like a pansy to your heart's content, and won't have to worry about being a skin graft waiting to happen.

*****

To Eric Roozendaal, Paul McLeay, and other assorted f**knuts - changing the speed limit on the Princes Highway though Heathcote to 50K is bloody ridiculous. It is beyond ridiculous. It had made me so very very cranky. Just because inbreds from Heathcote have a congenital inability to understand the basic rules of the road, does not mean that the wider motoring community has to suffer. Look, I know that 8 people have been killed there in the last (insert number) years, but they were killed when they ran in front of cars. They ran in front of cars when the cars had the right of way. They ran in front of cars where there was no crossing. It is not the drivers' fault. It is not the commuting populations fault. And just because you, Mr McLeay, have bowed to pressure from pushy Heathcote lobbyists, you fail to realise that most of the drivers who you have just pissed of to the extreme, actually now, due to the redistribution of the electoral boundaries, live in your electorate. Oh yes! All the northern suburbs of Wollongong are now your concern too. And it does NOT add 22 fucking seconds to our journey. You condescending bureaucratic f**knuts.
Because really, all those accidents are a Good Thing - they took a tiny degree of Stupidity out of the gene pool. Harsh, but true.

*****

Peter f**king Debnam. You're a f**knut. Really. No, really.
You're going to have a ripping good time if you win the election aren't you: ripping up the designs for East Darling Harbour, ripping up the plans to relocate the car import terminal to Port Kembla...
"Opposition planning spokesman Chris Hartcher said yesterday Port Kembla would be the "winner" by scrapping a plan expected to provide 1000 jobs and $200million in economic benefits to the region. He said that, if elected, the Opposition would keep car imports at Glebe Island as it was committed to retaining Sydney Harbour as a working harbour."

Right. Winner how exactly?

Paul Keating got it so right this morning on 702 with Virginia Trioli. Debnam, you're a nong.

*****

Let's hope that I get some coffee into me soon, or the ranting will never end.

Update: I've had to censor myself because I've been BANNED from Shroom's workplace. Lil old inoffensive me couldn't get through the filters... OMG!!!!

Here be dragons!

A difficult story in the news at the moment: the appalling child abuse occurring in the town camps in the Territory. When I hear about this, and similar stories, my mind slides around the topic, never actually touching it, never wanting to dwell on it. It's like on the mediaeval maps "Here be dragons...". As a mother of young daughters, I don't want to confront the inevitable pain these stories bring. I still haven't been able to bring myself to watch 'Rabbit Proof Fence'
I have decided I'm dealing with this one.
The crux of the matter seems to be that there is an all-pervading sense of despair, guilt, and neglect in regards to children in the remote aboriginal communities. There doesn't seem to be any concerted efforts to deal with the problems of substance-abuse, of education, of the lack of 'community'. And casually dismissing concerns about systematic, horrific child abuse as being 'culturally inherent' is outrageous. The media went mad when Colleen McCullough excused the sex abuse of minors on Pitcairn as being a cultural tradition. Yet they seem quite happy to ignore the abuse of children as young as 2, simply because it's only what can be expected of the Aborigines. It reminds me of the acceptance within the media of Pauline Hanson's comments about aborigines being cannibals. And interestingly, the same charges have been leveled against the Native Americans - lots of reports about child abuse stemming from substance abuse and neglect... We are all too happy to accept that they are the worst of the worst, the most primitive of people, especially if that gives us leave to ignore them, to abrogate our responsibility as a society to protect the most helpless...
Now, the relevant Federal minister is talking about Paedophile rings operating within the town camps, and talking tough about stamping out 'Mafia-style' crime rings. Which is all well and good, and more power to him etc... But the unscrupulous will always prey on the helpless, and there seems to be an awful lot of helplessness up there...

The Perennial HSC Debate

Last week Howard, in his usual approach to dealing with adverse publicity (the AWB scandal), took aim at teachers, schools and the 'gobbledygook' they are now learning for HSC English. Being the rabid Howard-hater that I am, I chose to ignore all his pronouncements on the issue, as I figure: He really has no idea. The media however, again as usual, took up his crusade with gusto, and I heard a very interesting interview on 702 Sydney between Adam Spencer and Dame Leonie Kramer, Emeritus Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney. The SMH also had an interesting article by Adele Horin in Saturday's edition.
I found it quite surprising that Dame Kramer and Howard actually agreed with each other - the crux of her argument was that studying Shakespeare through the filter of every-day relevance, subtracted from the intrinsic value of his plays. The example that has been nominated as being the pinnacle of politically-correctness in English education, is the students at SCEGGS having to analyse King Lear from both a Marxist and Feminist perspective. The nay-sayers also dislike the use of other media, such as film and blogs, as an alternative to traditional written texts.
Now as someone who loves and adores books, and devours the written word in all it's myriad forms, I actually don't have a problem with the new English curriculum. As I see it, the purpose of the HSC English course is to enable students to both understand and apply the English language to their lives... It is not just an exercise in Literature Appreciation. And that seems to be the focus of the Kramer, Howard et al. They want English to be studied as it was in the 50s - when Shakespeare was God - but how much did the kids then HATE Shakespeare? Did they ever read him again? I doubt it. Learning to appreciate the intricacies of English as a language improves the appreciation of literature, not vice versa.
And as a result of not exercising my own knowledge of our beautiful language enough recently, I'm having real trouble expressing myself articulately... And no amount of Shakespeare's going to fix it...