NEVER SAY NEVER

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Those who decry modern technology today will maybe live to forever regret having made the statement. We for one, one day might regret even publishing The Astonisher but progress we have got and we are going to have to embrace it. Of course we will resist it every step of the way, why change things just for change sake?

Back when a Hansom Cab used to take me to school, that’s if I wasn’t walking both ways uphill, and barefoot in snow, I blabbered and blustered over allowing children to have calculators in the classroom but the sky didn’t fall in, they can’t read an analogue clock but that’s a petty matter, we wandered what they would ever do if their batteries ran flat. Now many of them are now solar powered.

We tut-tutted about computers being allowed into schools even before you could put them in your back pocket. Technology has advanced even now to the point where a standard mobile phone has more capacity than Australia’s first big computer which took up an entire room.

RDJ-FM community radio was once offered a free multi-monitor computer system that a law firm was disposing of. But you’re going to need a separate room to put it in. It’s really big it has the capacity to work ten terminals and has a massive 2 Gigabyte Tape Drive. We declined the offer, not because it was old but because we didn’t have the space for it and it had to have its own air-conditioning system to cool it.

Even earlier when working at AGL in Sydney I always admired the fellows in their white coats, fiddling about in their air-conditioned glass-paneled room changes big reels of tape from one machine to the next like projectionists in a theater. Upstairs about 50 women typed out punch-card manually received from the meter readers for the computer to send your bill. It was a huge leap forward technologically from when little metal capsules used to be sucked along tubes to the accounting department or even before that fired like a tethered rocket across the room to the cashier who would then rocket it back to your counter.

Yes we have come a long way from those heady days of advancing modernity. We now know that we are part way along that journey. From listening to transistor radios and Walkman tape machines, to carefully centering vinyl discs of varying sizes and revolutions to the mobile phone that does everything today and will possibly even wipe your arse next month.

Lets face it, Nobody wants to return to the good old days of homophobia or xenophobia, sexism or racism even though our religious and political leaders would like us to. But here, before we end we would like to issue a word of warning. Just because it exists doesn’t mean we have to have it. Life is for living not shopping.

Yes we must progress but for heavens sake only progress as far as we want to and not where we are told to. Don’t get caught up in the hype of bigger houses on smaller blocks of land, changing your mobile phone every year, signing up to lifetime contracts we will never need and gift card we will never use. We have a policy, even when going crazy at auctions. There are two states of mind when considering a purchase. Do we need it, will it make our life easier, better, more productive? Or do we want it, just so we can say we have one, use one or just want to flash it around.

EXPERIMENTATION

The government seems to have a vested interest in keeping our society on legal drugs otherwise our G.S.T or P.A.Y.E tax burden would be so high the fermenting of revolution could outstrip the same process with alcohol. It is a hypocritical stance for any government to profit from drugs whilst at the same time attempting to reduce costs attributable to their use, but then those we elect are supposedly a reflection of ourselves.

I find it very hard to accept that the local Publican is the legal distributor of one drug whilst one of his patrons may be the illegal distributor of another. Both drugs cause anger, abuse, accidents, assault, robbery, misery, anguish, sadness, poverty and death yet there remains this gulf between legal and illegal.

I worry about the double standards of our community, that one accepts the drunk falling in the gutter as someone whose just had a little too much to drink and we might laugh at his mistake, but the guy falling into the gutter with a joint in his hand is someone who should be shunned, ostracised and imprisoned for having smoked old rope and we ‘tut tut’ about our neighbours faults all the way home.

I can quite happily smoke and go to a Christmas Party and drink that’s OK but what would happen if anyone came to my office and found a needle hanging out of my arm? Am I still not the same Warwick? Now I’m not suggesting that the bosses suddenly get the idea of raiding my little corner of the world, I keep it too well guarded, but merely point out that we all, myself included, seem to find some drug use acceptable and others an abomination and need to watch ourselves as workers that we don’t get caught up in the same double standards when taking young people into our care.

What has this anarchical stance to do with the price of eggs? Who actually determines at what age we can do or not do certain things? Why do we keep engaged with such double standards?

It is quite legal for a girl to have sex at 16 but a boy has to wait until he’s 18. In this day and age, from what I know, the age at which this activity is taking place is going down even though the age of marriage seems to be accelerating in the other direction.

With adolescence comes experimentation with adulthood and while we might dread the thought that they are becoming young adults.

With information and support we should be allowing our young people to experiment and make mistakes provided that their emotional and chronological age is sufficient to absorb what is being learned by the experience.

While our society is crying out to allow children to be children the market economy is encouraging them to become adult as quickly as possible. That market economy includes the legal and illegal drug businesses.

Establishing trust with the people we work with, and children in our care whether genetically connected or not, is paramount to building relationships that can withstand the stress and strain of their daily lives. I am a supporter of experimentation. Perhaps this is why I have unbounded patience with children and adolescents yet the opposite when working with supposedly mature adults.

We should feel that we are doing our job well when young people can rely on us to be there when the shit hits the fan. It certainly places great stress upon us all at times but then we should not have signed up if we were not prepared to sacrifice some of our time.

It is sometimes my downfall when I allow young people to be free thinkers, that I imbue my clients with intelligence automatically, and certainly make some errors when I believe that what they are telling me is the truth. But in my line of work, where I am employed to give young people the right to decide for themselves what they need, a consequence of that is becoming merely a vassal or facilitator in achieving those goals.

To this day and into the foreseeable future I will continue to avoid determining a young persons ability to succeed based on some chronological measure or educational level and rely on the fact that by making mistakes we learn how not to make them again. From the time of ‘self-realisation’ children are experimenting and learning and I would like to be keep apace with that part of their experience.

EVER-LASTING KNOB STOPPERS

At the rate that medical science is advancing and keeping us healthier for longer it will not be too far-fetched to say that we may be able to live twice as long as we do now. In your opinion is this a good thing or should we just let nature take its course.

The advantages will be the possibility that we will spend, proportionately, less time in school and further education which means a lesser part of our life will be spent in indoctrination, learning ancient Greek and the complete meaninglessness of Algebra which I last used half a century ago.

The disadvantages will be that having learnt ancient Greek and not used Algebra that we didn’t have to in the first place. We talk to computers these days and they refuse to follow instructions in ancient Greek and if we have a mathematical problem even involving the most complicated maths imaginable we just do it on our computer in a more than hundredth of the time of doing it manually.

By then we will have driverless cars, with the exception of those born before 2019 who will still insist on having a steering wheel so they look like they are in still in charge. By then we will also have 60 years old hoons tearing up the tarmac by over-riding the autopilot and actually controlling the car.

By being twice as old and wrinkly and ornery there is much less of a chance of you being kidnapped, or worse being held hostage by either Terrorists or Centrelink you will be more likely to be released first.

Another distinct advantage will be that our children could possibly hang around twice as long, hanging off our wallets while gathering together the 10% deposit for their own new home and the average $250,000 won’t be that much by then anyway. Come to think of it if they do move out you’ll have grandchildren, great grandchildren, great-great grandchildren and possibly great-great-great-great grandchildren too. By this time if they all visit just once a year for your Birthday you will be able to enjoy at least 250 people in your lounge room. That might bring about function centres that just cater for relatively large relative parties.

So we will be able to spend twice the amount of time working, most of us will be able to work for at least 112 years and that will result in us having more superannuation for the possible 70 years we can live in comfortable retirement.

Depending on our level of skills our extended working life will see us earning more and thus able to buy houses with seven bedrooms and his and hers personal rooms, rather than the present five with three-car garages, indoor and outdoor spas. The house will still take up 95% of the block its on which means no mowing and gardening to worry about, so we can throw away the extended arm impliments that take away our need to bend over to smell the roses.

Our pills everyday will help us work, rest and play and we can forget that friggin’ apple our dentures won’t handle. With possibly 70 years up our sleeves, more if we retire early, to enjoy the advantages of old age, our health professionals will have more time to medicate us, we can speed around in our mobility scooters or hobble around on zimmer frames for twice as long, double our leisure time playing Bridge or Bowling or emptying our Colostomy Bags.The ultimate joy of course will come in the form of Alzheimers when we will be able to enjoy twice the amount of time forgetting who we are and pooping our pants. Forgetting where your genitals are may also have the advantage of not knowing where your hard-earned retirement funds are as well.

“Oh! Grandpa what a big house you have. All the better to leave to you my son”

“Oh! Grandma what a large amount of super you have. All the better to leave to you my pretty.”

Oh! I nearly forgot sex. Getting old means you spend less time deciding who is going to be on top tonight after your libido has retired so you can look forward to many more nights pretending to play with yourself because all you have left is the softwood. There will be the added bonus if you are still working that it will be much harder for sexual harassment charges to stick.

When the end finally does come you can go peacefully with the thought that you spent a lot more time contemplating Judgement Day and depending on your joints will probably feel better in the warmth of Hell anyway.

EACH ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN

One of the most disturbing thing about political correctness and gender equality is the fact it is sometimes confusing when to use it and how to define or recognise it. When does one use plain courtesy and do others know what the hell your doing and why?

As an instance I was at the bank the other day and I opened the door for a lady and was still there five customers later feeling like both a doorman and a dork and not a word of thanks or even recognition. Next time a girl with firetruck red hair walks up to a door she can fucking open it herself.

Gone are the days when a man opened the door for a woman, took her coat, held her chair, directed her to go first and walked on the traffic side of a footpath. Yes, maybe we could drop tipping the hat or not swearing in front of them as hats are rare and women are the worst swearers.

I believe that everyone should treat each other according to their generation, or as the evangelists would say, each to their own kind. If your an old male chauvinist like myself you instinctively treat women as the weaker sex, if your young and virile then treat women as your equal. Can we be any fairer to all genders? So if your a young person or trying to be one with Botox and Boobs then maybe one should learn the old habits and respond accordingly and If your an old person then treat young people as they would treat you and just tell them to fuck off.

In regard to working women as leaders I also have no problem. Over my career I've had a lot of female superiors and I have not had any problems. It's not the gender it's the mindset. Do you really have to have a dick to be superior? June Dally-Watkins where are you?

DOMESTIC BLISS-TERS?

Like father like son and like mother like daughter rings all too true. Our natural instinct is to follow what we have seen before, this is why boys who beat up on women have usually seen other men beat up on women, predominantly common law partners and step-parents, who incidentally are also the predominant kiddy-fiddlers. The latest fashionable bru-ha-ha centers around domestic violence but as usual it is a knee jerk reaction to an age old problem. It seems that the media is always looking for a new hobby horse to blow out of proportion. Unfortunately due to a whole host of circumstances from financial to emotional it's hard for men and women to escape from domestic violence within the family home.

Rather than continue to publicise the problem the media should be putting pressure on authorities  to make ways for victims to remove themselves from the situation and be counselled or at least have perpetrators face harsh non-custodial sentences. 

Naturally the experts blame everything else for the problem and not genetic pre-disposition and parental example. Alcohol and drugs are always at the center of blame, but they are not, they are the triggers, they set off the brains desire to knock seven days out of anyone who argues with them. Plates hurl themselves against walls, fists accidentally hit faces and knives sometimes carve up more than a slice of bread its all a very spiritual experience, the spirit of evil within some of us.

But violence doesn’t always stay at home, bullying doesn’t always stay in the playground. It spills out into the general community and if we see it and do nothing we may as well just go over their and join in. I’m not advocating violence, in reality I have great difficulty even setting traps for invading mice, in probability don’t even carry the violence gene and I’m not alone. So if you see violence, even verbal don’t stand back and think this is none of my business, let them know you know and you want their vile behavior to stop.

Another argument may suggest that Social Media and the resultant lack of face-to-face contact, hence distance and untouchability, prevents face-to-face positive socialising but that is more about the definiton of bullying not why it exists.

WHERE HAS CAPITALISM GONE?

As a committed Socialist and a firm believer in balance and fairness for all I am often referred to by the disparaging description of 'red ragger'. On the contrary I am surprisingly a keen supporter not only of true democracy (representing the electors not the party) and true capitalism (the free market opportunity).

Capitalism:

I buy something from your shop which you buy from a manufacturer, who pays workers to make the product I buy. They, the employees in turn, with their wages, buy my product which I pay someone else to deliver from a factory of workers making my whatnots. That is a manufacturing economy.

I walk into a Sandwich shop which makes me a salad roll. They made up the roll from ingredients, hopefully, sourced locally, grown by small farmers producing high quality fruit and vegetables which they sell to the roll-maker. The grower then buys my product and the cycle starts again. This is an agricultural economy.

My car breaks down and I take it to a garage and engage, hopefully a skilled mechanic, to make the necessary repairs they identify. I pay the mechanic either with my product (bartering) or with the money you gave me when you bought my whatnot. This is called a service economy.

In a way all of these different activities interact with each other and an advanced economy produces everything its population needs and sells the surplus overseas.

Communism:

If you take all three examples given above and change that free choice to ownership by the state, where the government controls how much is made, when it is made, where it is sold and at what price. They determine how much workers will be paid, the hours they work, the holidays they don't get and set the rate for bribes. It's like Animal Farm everyone is equal, some are more equal than others and we will determine how equal you are.

The only good side to Communism is the governments ability to direct entire economies and populations, see also China, unlike the exciting mess of capitalism, in to producing things faster to the detriment of the quality that competition creates.

Socialism:

This is where I stand. Socialism is really Capitalism with the exception that the investors, the shareholders, the management and the future of the company are all determined by the members or employees. In a sense we already have a form of socialism with the RACV or Credit Unions, members joining together for a common cause, or Dairy Farmers who, as individuals cannot provide both supply and distribution themselves so join together as a group to market their product.

Socialism is NOT Communism. Socialism is those who create the economy should share in the economy, reward for hard work and dare I say it, nothing for the slackers and some social help for those who can neither work nor malinger.

Look at our planet peoples. We all stuck on this rock together so we should work together. The rich are getting richer through corporate tribalism and as we see, tribalism (Corporations) destroy everything in their path and entire economies for the sake of a few Boardroom Emirs.

‘DON’T LEAVE EXPERIMENTAL PAPERS LYING AROUND FREE-THINKERS’

The Astonisher has always had an unwritten policy that when making decisions that they should, as often as possible, be either left to sheer chance or never made at all. A decision delayed keeps ones mind busy and can’t hurt anybody unless you’re a surgeon.

I came to this conclusion a dozen or so years back when I was accidentally browsing through some papers that my ex-partner was reading then about ‘Conformity, Compliance and Acceptance.’ What caught my eye was some experimental data from tests applied to a different range of people to record their reactions under certain circumstances.

One of the tests showed that when giving electric shocks to a subject, the more distant or detached the subject the more severe the shocks could become before the person applying the treatment refused to go any further. The voltage applied was less severe when the subject was in the same room than if they were out of sight. So it was that the idea that our public servants, including politicians, don’t give a fuck about you or me is that they don’t have to come face-to-face with us and can apply as much pain as they want without consequence.

Obedience to instruction also varied depending on whether the person applying the shocks were on their own or in the presence of a ‘perceived’ superior authority. There was less compliance to instruction when it was received over a telephone. So if the Town Clerk is standing in front of you, with the power to make your life a fucking misery, then you are bound to do exactly as you are told.

Another test showed that people tend to conform to those around them, adopt the same corrupt and unethical practices and will even follow orders that under normal circumstances they would find morally repulsive. This might explain why large bureaucratic structures, with volumes of instructions on how one should act under different circumstances, will inevitably, and sometimes inadvertently force employees to follow certain procedures that may be an anathema to an individual acting alone. And so it in confrontations with local councils they will act immorally in favour of a council contractor regardless of the best interests of the ratepayers.

Other experiments showed that some people assisted in the consensus process of decision making either ‘because they didn’t want to upset their peers’ or ‘ wanted to be liked’. Extreme examples of this same phenomena can be applied to Hitler in WW2 Pol Pot in Cambodia and Australia on Nauru.

What breeds ‘obedience’? Physical and emotional distance from the ratepayer, closeness and legitimacy of authority, institutional authority by way of Acts and other instruments of control, the way the group is packaged and who is supporting who, and the liberating effect of group influence emanating from the Lunchroom all effect a persons responses.

Several experiments reveal that someone who punctures unanimity deflates its social power and observing someone else’s dissent, even if it is wrong, increases our own independence. So the Astonisher has become, in a small way, that instrument to debunk the bullshit that comes out of local council offices and other concrete-minded entities. As a result of this we hope that the readership will be more likely to make the right self-determining decisions if they feel someone is on their side.

Add to this the fact that people once publicly committed to a position, seldom yield to social pressure. Umpires and referees rarely reverse their initial judgments in footy matches, and neither do we. People conform based on desires to fulfill others’ expectations and often to gain acceptance. Conformity is greater when people respond before they can reflect. Conformity results from acceptance of evidence about reality. We conform because we want to be liked and approved, or we want to be right.

So I recommend, as I am often pulling myself up for not doing it, that if we want good things to happen or to give honest answers we need to consider who is around at the time, who holds the authority and is the balance of power between us and them equal?

Each of these tests showed, as it is applied against good practices in management, that real face-to-face involvement in decision making was most likely to create a more honest environment, more likely to happen, and thus lead to more positive outcomes.

If people don’t want to participate then we are at fault not them.

DARWINS THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION

I recently became aware of the ‘Darwin Prize’. In the same vein as the Nobel or Eureka Prizes it consists of giving awards to those people who voluntarily remove themselves from the nations gene pool either by running their cars into trees at twice the speed limit, blowing themselves up for a fictional Supergod or joining a monastry/convent although not adhereing to those rules of celibacy has caused some to leak into our gene pool.

How do we know someone is in line for the award? Here we suggest ten:-

1. Women who feed Coca Cola and Macca’s to their one year old.

2. Cyclists who wear lycra and ride more than three abreast.

3. They who believe the Kardashians are Superstars instead of the big-arsed morons they really are.

4. Geoffrey Edelston who thinks teenage models are attracted to the size of his prize and not the thickness of his wallet.

5. Executives of the Linton and Happy Valley Progress Associations.

6. Reverands who think boys are attractive little beasts.

7. Australian citizens who race off to star in ‘Mission Impossible: The Caliphate’

8. Artists who paint with their won excreta

9. Voters who believe politicians don’t lie

10. Customers who want to get carpet burn from the bar-room floor

Darwins Theory ‘that only the fittest survive’ is far more plausible than Noah’s Ark ‘where only those who were welcomed aboard will survive’. It was long ago that I woke up to the mathematical impossibility that 40,000 pairs of creatures great and small were able to fit into a wooden boat half the size of the QE2 and the impossible task of preventing them from eating each other.

No, I prefer to believe that numbnuts will begat idiots, geeks will begat psychopaths and private boarding schools will begat politicians.

COST OF VIGILANCE IS GOING GANGBUSTERS

Police are complaining about having to hold each others hands when responding to a crime and then having to complete a risk assessment before they get out of the car. Halving their response times and putting others at risk. Regardless of whether there is one policeman, two policemen or twenty-two policemen any crazy jihardist is going to plan for that event. When you give in to fear and intimidation you have lost the battle.

All this unnecessary interference in other people countries, all the belligerence of a world power after 9/11 set out with the aim of destroying one regime whilst destabilising a dozen others. Sometimes its better to deal with the devil you know than try to install and angel.

Saddam Hussein may have been right when he said Iraq would be the Mother Of All Wars, maybe he could see the chaos and bloodshed of the future, his war was but the fuse attached to the much larger bomb spreading conflict from Persia to include the entire middle-east and beyond.

The United States is right at the heart of Mother Of All Wars and it has no idea how it will ever end, or even if it wants the conflicts to end. Like Palestine and Israel are we now headed for conflicts that are going to kill millions over the next hundred years and still have no end in sight.

The animosity created in Syria by a ruthless Dictator has now set the scene for a century of conflict there too. The U.S supply to Saudi Arabia of the means to kill millions could only be seen as a war crime.

It’s victory for the War Industry and maybe the final demise of World Peace.

IT’S NOT OUR MONEY

The Linton Astonisher once had a thought that we should get rid of all political parties. That turned out to be a bit pie in the sky as political parties are the only ones that can form a government after an election. One can imagine the problem with 156 individuals all wanting to be the Prime Minister. I still believe it would, and should, apply to the Senate so that politicians would begin to represent their state and not their party very few Ministers and no Prime Ministers have ever come from this Upper Chamber anyway.

Individual members could coalesce around the laws and poilicies and vote in favour for only those policies they believe are best for their electorate, their state and not hjave to worry about the threats from Whips and other party leeches that ‘you’ll never get power if you don’t toe the party’s line’. They don’t seem to realise there is more power in the hands of a few crazies like Palmer and One Nation than ever being in government itself. You can be a pretty small tail and still wag the dog pretty vigourously as so ably demonstrated by the tree-hugging Greens.

Now you might be astonished to read that I believe we could also save a lot of taxpayers money by not allowing government employees to throw our cash to the wind in frivolous spending sprees. It is common knowledge, and I experienced it year after year when I was unproductively employed, that an attitude of use it or lose it becomes a common practice at the end of year civil servants sale.

This entails getting rid of any money you haven’t spent by the end of the financial year in the fanciful fear that you won’t get as much money next year. This is a furphy of course but is bandied around all government departments at all levels. Stupidity would reign if budgets were cut and then had to be increased again six months later, but then again stupidity is almost the exclusive domain of civil servants and pollies and in all three tiers of goverment, or as Golden Pains calls it  ‘community leadership’.

As a genetically programmed tight-wad I always treated my budget as almost my money and did not just spend it in a cavalier fashion. By the end of each financial year I might have had about $500 left over and I had mandatory instructions to spend it. As a result my office had enough stationary to last the next decade and every year I had to buy more productive items, it stretched my imagination to the limit.

What I did need was a new computer but there was never enough in the kitty to buy one. My pleas to put the money aside for the next year fell on deaf ears of course, funding from Community Services to N.G.O’s had to be spent without arguement and apparently on their part without conscience. It ended up by my applying for a special grant to buy a computer which could well have been funded from existing money and not yet another drain on the taxpayers purse.

‘Jesus! It’s only taxpayers money …. not yours’ was one response from my funding body.
So there we have it. The taxpayer around the end of June every year helps to pay for bonding exercises (see also wankers games), staff picnics and movie nights to develop relationships between the wage-earners (a.k.a dinner, movies and a free booze-up) or even paying for sessions called ‘personal development’ (including palm reading and star-sign interpretation) and in extreme cases large amounts can be exhausted on entire week-ends at a spa or other health resort (in my case it was a long-weekend at a Mount Victoria Boutique Hotel) and given such names as Peak Organisation Conferences (in my case the Office of the Catholic Archdiocese of Parramatta) where we learnt more about celibacy and family counselling, or Advanced Community Development where we learnt how to sway the system towards giving us more money to spend on frivoulous personal pursuits disguised as work.

The ultimate answer is to freeze the budget at a certain level for four years (a much favoured number for governments) and enable departments and individuals in the community sector to earmark the money that is left for use the next year. It would have the effect of making civil servants more accountable and economical when spending our money.

Over the next four years the Auditor-General could check the frugality of departments, their ability to use our money wisely and ensure that tenders for building works or provision of expendable supplies are within the same playing field as the private sector. When a normal house can be built for $150,000 why should the government pay $350,000 for the same project. When a good set of bookshelves cost around $3,000 why should Senator Brandis spend $14,000 on the same thing let alone a previous Prime Minister spending $5,000 on a desk which was priced at $2299.00 on the showroom floor. You would have heard about Gillard’s $100,000 School Tuck Shop about the size of a standard single garage.

Now its up to us, after all its our money, to start asking those ‘born to rule’ what they might do about this blatant waste of money. Little wander we are going further into debt at government level, they just don’t know when to stop spending.

FREE HISTORY LESSONS

Australia has much to thank Captain James Cook for. Even though he was an illegal boat person landing upon the shores of Terra Australis, denying the aboriginal population the right to say who comes to their country and under what circumstances they come, he did introduce the concept that if the land was Terra Nullius, in that there was nothing here, a whole lot of people in chains could arrive bringing with them their family pets, dogs, cats, foxes and rabbits.

His foresight in positioning Australia to take advantage of this Asian Century, he believed that the West, Sydney with its pure Anglo bloodlines, would eventually move towards the East, Kathmandu as the economic center of the world and take it over as well. Historians of the day told us that the Chinese were too backward and that the Japanese had poor eyesight and thus no foresight, our future would lay somewhere between here and London via Seth Efrica. Of course it was proven some time later that what lay between us and the Mother country via Seth Efrica would see us pouring all our treasure into those fractious, tribal states to keep them from committing Genocide on each other and Australia prostituting itself to pay for it.

Of course Captain Cook believed that America at that time, a rambunctious adolescent nation, desperate to rid themselves of the English language and King …….. , would never amount to anything if they didn’t have a Monarchy to lord it over them. This was well before the Trump reign.

His mistake was corrected geographically when the Japanese who couldn’t see straight decided to re-arrange the Eastern World. They failed but drew our attention to the fact that the fertile crescent would be a nightmare and the Far East - China (so called because of the hegemony of the West) would eventually dictate to us what we had tried for decades to dictate to them.

Another huge error was to not harness the environmental power of our original inhabitants, or even the physical power for that matter, as Terra Nullius denied their very existence. The idea that a nation, a culture, a civilisation could exist without landholders, streets, shops and civic centerers was pure fantasy. A parcel of land, regardless of its size, could not call itself a country unless it had a flagpole to show the world that it was civilized.

Of course without vegetarian environmentalists, later to be called the Greens, Cook envisaged Botany Bay to be the place to put Oil Refineries and Chemical Works while further North in Sydney Harbour subsequent wandering seafarers would put a city, with its bridges and tunnels and houses built right down to the waters edge occupied by the twin evils Prime Ministers, Catholic Archbishops and Drug Lords.. The whole idea of reserving the harbour for the rich and powerful, was to keep anything dirty and smelly as far away as possible while the stench of industry was good for the healthy development of the working classes to the West of the city it offended the sensitivities of the political class.

Nothing was thought wrong with the concept of placing several of the countries tanning works, rubbish dumps and heavy industry at Mascot, which, years later would prove to be a nose destroying entry to Sydney if you arrived by flying machine. The rich those days traveled by ’Liner’ via Aden for cheap shit on the way.

It would be half a century or more later when John Batman (Great-uncle of Bruce Wayne) saw the potential of digging holes all around Ballarat but living in the unpolluted atmosphere of Melbourne. His attraction to Gold was only to be superseded by that of Brown Coal an equivalent distance to the East of Melbourne as Ballarat, again to keep as much soot as possible from the clothes lines of the aristocracy. This brown coal, cheap, nasty and highly polluted could be used to power the boilers of the era of steam, heralding the use of railways to get more people into Myers Department store and the products of industry out to the country. This tradition of bringing the countries wealth to Melbourne and shipping its rubbish back out to the country would go on for a long time, but now the rubbish comes from China via Port Melbourne.

The City Planners of Melbourne and Sydney saw no need to design anything further than there eyes could see, a tradition dating back to the time of the Pharoahs, this land would always just be a suburb for Mother England, a place to strip away its wealth, and like shit to the countryside, a place to dump its boat people, crooks and vagabonds housed in rotting hulks on the Thames River.

Who would guess two centuries later that Australia would treat its new boat people the same way shifting them from rotting hulks from Indonesia onto the shores of New Guinea, Port Moresby being seen by the rulers of Australia as Sydney had been to the rulers of Great Britain. A good place to send your rubbish and bring back much plunder.

Anyway, the planners only laid out a city for a few hundred thousand people, not that many Britain's would want to come to this God-forsaken land unless it was to vandalise it. Here it was thought that, like the aboriginals, the crooks would eventually breed themselves out by being absorbed in the advanced civilisation of the West. The explosive growth of Australia after 1945 put paid to the fact that we would remain a British backwater nation, great for cattle, sheep and minerals. Since we had cut the apron strings of Britain they could not hold us back any longer, and, following the war would begin to tie ourselves closer to those rebellious Americans and leave Britain to sink under the weight of it’s faux-supremacy and Margaret Thatcher.

It is little known that William Solander once wandered around the fields of Kingsford-Smith and would foresee thousands of great birds landing there, nor that Joseph of the Banks Family would establish a repository (aka suppository) for the whole nation called the Bank of New South Wales to lock away the riches for safekeeping until they could be eliminated through the London Stock Exchange by computers that just said ‘No”. Nor is it known that Queen Victoria, originally pleased to have a state named after her, was not amused when it turned out to be a gigantic mine site.

Long live Victoria the drug-ridden slut that she was and the state that sells itself to any sleeze in a fancy car.

HOW TO WIN WARS BY LOSING MONEY

Society is constantly in a state of confusion over what is best for its future. From the earliest begining the law has been based initially on the Ten Commandments, and not withstanding the 18 million different interpretations of those laws are still essentially the basis of a functional community.

Part of that function has been to hurt those who are naughty and punish those who cannot afford to break the laws.

But where after 40,000 years has it got us. Even the most severe punishments, the taking of a life by the State, has never deterred miscreants from breaking the law.

Data will show in general that for every $20 Billion a year lost by society through the committal of various crimes it costs society $80 Billion a year in control, detection, justice and punishment. One might ask the question is it worth paying out $4 to save $1? Statistics says it doesn’t but our community has to be protected and there must be a better way.

Switzerland has four more times the guns per person than in the United States yet less than 1% of crime is committed with such a a weapon in that country. It does not compute, so there must be another explanation.

In the Northern European countries the prison system would appear to us to be a joke, group homes, minimal security and only those who are the most violent are locked up. Crimes where there are no victims are generally punished in what Australian would describe as an unpaid holiday. Yet the recidivism rate is only a quarter of what it is in this country.

Where are they going right or where are we going wrong?

Data in the United States would suggest that with their imprisonment rate increasing by around 15% every year that by the end of the next century every American man, woman and child will be locked up in prison. Maybe that’s good - crime will cease to exist except within the controlled environment of a penitentiary. And think of the court costs that will save.

The cave man tore peoples tongues out, the Pharaohs crushed criminals under heavy rocks but people were still naughty. The Romans threw them to the lions, Kings and Queens used hanging as a punishment and then added drawing and quartering to the mix finally sticking their head on a pike and propping it up on the nearest bridge as a final flourish but the prison hulks kept filling up. Vlad tuned people into kebabs, while boiling in oil was popular in the Otterrman Empire. After the reign of Henry VIII the axe became less popular and hanging people in a cage from a gibbet by the roadside until their bones fell through the bars was thought to be a more modern day deterrent. Dogs and pigs were well fed but crime went on un-abated.
The British in the 1770’s even despatched criminals across the seas, exhiled them to the hell of the antipodies hoping to never see or hear of them again so what happened to that experiment? It evolved into people smuggling.

Exiling people and sending them off to Gulags didn’t get Russia anywhere. Their criminals became the ruling class. Concentration camps either in Poland or in the Pacific has not deterred anyone from continuing anti-social activities, Asylum Seekers made out to be those most heinous of criminals can’t even be stopped from tramping all over the garden beds of Europe and we can’t even stop them from tramping all over Christmas Island.

Why are we not looking at what ideas are working and ignore the Queen of Hearts screaming “Off with their heads”. We must devise ways not to violently fuck up other peoples countries so they all want to rush over here in a peaceful invasion. We’ve got to spend those $1’s on young people through proper education and training, support and encouragement to save the $4 they’ll cost us when they get older.

We’ve got to stop subsidizing the rich and close the tax loopholes so that every citizen pays their fair share towards the combating of crime through the human improvement to our community. Make make everyone pay their fair share so that some bastard doesn’t decide to take it from us illegally.
Make the punishment fit the crime for rich, poor, elite and even ruling classes alike but make it a punishment that works.

BARNABY JOYCE HAS NEVER CONCEIVED ANYTHING

Fresh doubts have been cast over whether Barnaby Joyce has actually conceived anything at all during his 15 years in Parliament.

As speculation intensified in Canberra this morning, Mr Joyce said he had no choice but to confront the rumours, after weeks of conjecture. “The truth is, it’s possible I haven’t conceived of a single useful idea since 2013. If you look at the dates, you’ll see what I mean”.

Colleagues of the former Deputy PM said they were yet to see any evidence of a fresh idea. One went as far to speculate that Mr Joyce’s entire parliamentary career may not even be his. “It’s a grey area,” the colleague said.

Barnaby Joyce’s 13-year political career may actually belong to someone else, it has emerged.

As speculation intensified in Canberra, some sources suggested the true owner of Mr Joyce’s career his been an open secret for years.

“It’s pretty obvious that Barnaby has had nothing to do with this,” one source said. “The career belongs to Gina Rinehart. She conceived it; and she’s the one who’s supported it through it’s whole life”.

Mr Joyce said he would consider the career his, even if it turned out it wasn’t.

FOR EVIL TO FLOURISH IT TAKES GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING

In a sense this is why the bureaucracy get away with so much. If there were to be a Royal Commission into every government entity we would have a revolution on our hands within months.
Winston Churchill once said that 'never has so much been done by so few' and, in a different context he was right.

Governments can never be seen to make mistakes, they fear retribution from the people. How many times have we been told that it is better not to know, that keeping secrets is important to the security of the nation.

Well they are wrong. As children we are constantly told not to lie, what the consequences of lying could be, that lying is a sin, and so on and so on.

How can we be such hypocrites when lying becomes the norm, where Teachers lie to our children by feeding them all the rubbish our governments want them to learn. They bullshit about democracy and the rule of law yet democracy in this country means what is good for the rich and the rule of law changes depending on who you are.

A person robs a service station of $3000 he could spend years in prison, an executive can steel $3 million and all that happens is he loses his job.

A footballer might bite another player and can't play the game for a few weeks, if you or I did that to someone we would be up on serious assault charges. What is the difference with biffo on the sporting field and biffo between two business moguls.

Where the crowd stands and either cheers or jeers while the businessmen suffer extraordinary media exposure and are condemned for their behavior.

What I am trying to say here is that despite the fact we are all supposedly equal in the eyes of the law, it is the very lawmakers who abuse the law and get away with it with impunity.
Golden Plains Shire is no different. It suffers from the same bureaucratic inequality, where to challenge them means they close ranks and will tell blatant lies even to other government authorities to make themselves look faultless.

In my case I believe it borders on corruption.
I have tried by several different means to find justice, I believe their is direct collusion between council, it;s employees and its contractors to feather their own nests at the expense of we ratepayers.
Every excuse to adopt a new regulation means the possibility of extra staffing. In government circles the more staff you have the bigger your salary package. So we possibly have several executives in council receiving 6 figure salaries for doing virtually nothing.

The bigger the salary the more sway you have, the more power you have to direct others to break the laws that don't suit.

Where an old boy network still tells our elected officials what to do and our elected officials go along with all this corruption because they don't want to make waves.

Our dilemma is that we are too comfortable with the ways things are and do not want to see what is possible, we don't want to rock the boat, stir the shit up from the bottom of the barrel or throw a spanner in the works. We are happy to work and play blinkered by our desire to just enjoy a happy life.
To come back to where I started and perhaps say it in another way.

FOR CORRUPTION TO EXIST IT TAKES COUNCILLORS TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY

FAVOURING THE UNDESERVING

There are at least two hundred ex-servicemen wondering the street homeless while charities try to pick up the tab for what Veterans Affairs are failing to provide. At the same time 2,000 asylum seekers are filling hotel and motel rooms around the country at taxpayers expense. Fight for your country and get fuck all, flee your country and we’ll look after you. Little wonder we are seeing more and more advertisements failing to con young people into joining the military, uniforms are about as popular as a busted fly.

Universities are failing to attract the best and brightest except for those who have the money to bribe their way through the course. Our higher education system at every level is becoming totally dependent on foreign students with plenty of cash to the detriment of our intelligent young people who end up selling technology rather than researching it.

On the matter of homelessness, what about the 15,000 kids sleeping on our streets every night, or the abused women escaping domestic violence hunkering down in over-crowded refuges except those with boys over the age of twelve who are excluded from womens refuges.

Why are we not spending money on housing our own citizens so that they can contribute positively to the economy instead of being a drain on our resources through charities and social security.

If you are a young, educated, crime-free, drug-free but underpaid worker you cannot get assistance to be housed but be an ice-addled mother with seven kids by five fathers we bend over backwards to give them all the basic necessities of life. Is there not something wrong with this scenario?

ELIMINATE THE PROBLEM?

According to my television set, and the little people inside it called documentary makers, the information I get from it is unerringly accurate down to the last detail as it is not in the interest of the professional film-maker to lie, maybe with the exception of Leni Reifenstahl, and maybe some gifted editors as well, just for balance you understand.

There have been several documentaries lately pointing out the vast array of electronic surveillance gadgets available to American spies. Put a word into a special computer in Langley, Virginia and without fail it will pick that word out from all the radio and TV broadcasts, emails and telephone calls in the United States and in countries it wants to keep an eye on (i.e planet earth). It can monitor social pages, twitter and internet messaging. There is not one corner of the electronic world it can’t stick its nose into. Or so they tell us.

I’m wondering if this is really true. If it were true then criminals would be unable to operate, drug traffickers would fail every smuggling attempt, there would be no illegals crossing the Mexican Border or drowning in leaky boats from Indonesia and they would be able to track down every ‘troll, stalker and cyber bully’ with great ease. The internet, telephony and not even morse code would be safe from American scrutiny.

The reality is that more innocent civilians locate thieves, drug dealers, illegals, terrorists and other naughty people than the almost 1 million security personelle on the United States payroll. True. There are more Muslims dobbing in Islamic Radicals than Christians. You are more likely to foil a plot to grow marijuana in Linton than all the sophisticated equipment available to our local police and that extends out to the rest of the world as well. But marijuana still gets grown, so where has it all gone wrong, why are we paying people not to find things?

When it comes to looking after our community we can do more for ourselves than the professionals. We don’t need to create a law to make people behave, we only need people to be aware of what is going on around them and, yes, sometimes diplomatically stick our nose in where it doesn’t belong.

But the real problem these days is ‘cyber-creepies’’ the bullies and not terrorists. It’s ‘hackers’ and irresponsible twits who ‘twitter’ not Muslims. Most terrorists have some ill-guided intention to actually do good things for their community. A crazy community to be sure but still a community. Most of them are totally illiterate and cannot fight with the pen so they fight with the gun, most of them brainwashed from childhood to believe Mullah’s and Imams were pure, honest and sincere just as we were taught that our religious representatives were honest, sincere and pure, Hey Cardinal Pell, get the hint?

Nothing compares to ‘cyber-bullies’ these anonymous creeps, the most disgusting low-life on the planet. But the internet can be controlled, despite the fact that you don’t have to be 18 to click on ‘I am over 18’. We do not need anyone to censor what we can access on the internet. It is up parents to monitor their children. They might see what’s going on with the laptop at home, but how do they know what their children are looking up on their tablets and smart phones on the way to or even when they are at school? Censorship has become a thing of the past, we no longer need old people watching every foot of image to tell us whether we should see it or not. We can download it at our leisure without any censorship these days.

The other day I wanted to create a cartoon with a fat guy in it, with few or no clothes on, so in Google images I searched for ‘Naked Fat Men’. Jesus Christ, there they all were fat men playing with their dicks, big ones, small ones some as big as your head. Some of them were even putting the left one in and shaking it all about.

Internet Service Providers here and overseas should be held liable if they permit, under any circumstances, there service being used for cyber-abuse or any other crime. They should have enough identity on record to be able to assist in the prosecution of offences. It would not be impeding free speech on the internet, although some forms of censorship should be imposed on some sites intended to create havoc and not peaceful pursuits. There are ways we can defend ourselves against cyber-bullies and other cyber-crimes.

‘Trolls’ those who deliberately set out to abuse others on the net can be stopped through correct registration of their account/s. Google, Yahoo and all the other major companies have so much information on us that could be used to stop these people in their tracks. It would be wrong to hand all this information over to just anybody which they sometimes do with law enforcement authorities but the handing over of any information should be through the instrument of a court order and not just to kow-tow to bullying governments.

As was said previously we have ways and means to solve our own problems and to not rely on incompetent protective services. ‘Bullies’ need a response so don’t give them one. Ignoring them is the more successful strategy. You can block some sites to these offenders anyway. There are programs to block all manner of unwanted material if they are used correctly.

Of course you could take the other tack and call their bluff. Decide to meet them but don’t tell them it will be in the presence of your parents or a Policeman. Most likely these gutless slugs, to use a nicer term than I was thinking of, will most likely not show themselves but crawl back under the rock that they slithered from.

I would suggest that a law be introduced that would make bully’s liable if it can be proved that their actions led directly to the death of another person. Manslaughter at the very least. It is easy to take a ‘screen grab’ to the Police so that they have evidence to start proceedings against cyber-bullies.

In summary the person who pays the Internet Account should be held responsible for how that account is used, regardless of whether they are aware of the abuse or not. Financial penalties are usually the best deterrent.

THE YOUTH IN ASIA COLUMN

‘for old people planning to go somewhere else’

Working in conjunction with ‘Vegans ‘R’ Us’ a startling new ’crazy’ cigarette plan has been devised by the Medical Lobby to foist upon us yet again another unworkable solution which the Department of Stupidity is about to introduce into State Parliament.

Historically prior to 1965 this Department was responsible to ensure that anyone who successfully committed suicide could face up to 2 years imprisonment, and as recently as 1900 was actually considered so serious that you could face the Death Penalty. In the United States you even had to be proven healthy before you could be put to death.

Since the creation of Solicitors and the Black Death whenever a law has been invented to protect one person it has caused disadvantage to ten others. As a result we have Law Books so convoluted and complicated to sort the mess out that it can take teams of lawyers years just to interpret them. For example the unravelling and interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls was done in half the time it took to work out what the Magna Carta really stood for.

Biofuels are a perfect example of one disadvantaging another. Metal-studded, dreadlocked Vegans who look like they’ve been dressed by austistic Chimpanzees have been developing alternative fuels from Corn. The result has been huge price increases and shortages in the supply of corn and maize products. So that one ’environmentally conscious wanker’ can run his car ten kilometres on creamed corn it has meant the potential starvation of ten African children. Like the myth that electric cars don’t pollute, the reality of alternative fuels results in the poor getting poorer as the clawing of fossil fuels from the ground with bare hands provides less and less income. Gina Reinhardt even wants more bare hands to claw her ores from our soil at the rate of ten Caraway seeds to the ton. (I’m not sure that Rich Fat Sluts even know what a Caraway seed is?)

But we were meant to be chiselling about cigarettes. One reason why the tax rate for everyone has risen over the last two decades has been because of the falling revenue from fags. When the government speaks of widening the tax base what they really mean is that revenues from Cigarette Taxes are falling away and they have to raise their salary from somewhere So my argument is that by creating a law that reduces the tax being paid by smokers around ten other Australians who don’t smoke have to take up the slack. Even though the health system may be over-burdened by cancer patients it is those same cancer patients who funded the hospitals in the first place.

And what about the promoters of democracy and freedom, the right to choose and God’s gift of free willy. Democracy means government by the people, not the non-smokers, by the electorate not the religious fanatics, but by the good and the bad, the sane and the mad, the smokers and drinkers and even the fornicators. We all want the right to live and in the future also the right to die. So if we want to live by smoking we should be allowed to die by cancer.

And what about the bans. If we ban smoking we unleash another Al Capone. If we can’t get smokes we will enrich the blackmarket and the Mafia. The cigarette manufactures have al;eady said that they want prohibiton of cigarettes brought on and admitted their profits would double within the year. Prohibition in the United States brought on organised crime with a vengeance, the United States involvement in Vietnam brought on massive drug addiction with even greater vengeance. Are we not all just latent adolescents waiting for someone to say something is bad to unleash that desire in all of us to be ‘naughty’.

What about tourism, the government wants it, but how many smokers will visit when their smokes are confiscated at the airport. At least 75% of Asians smoke and they are our tourist future, or will we like Crown Casino, permit visitors to smoke but not our own citizens. A Smoking Visa?

Like sport and drugs where there is money there is corruption. NSW has a 200 year history of being naughty

Premier Bob Askin or Judge Murray Farquar or entrepreneur Alan Bond all got caught with their fingers in the till.The cost of maintaining law, already more than the cost of crime, will escalate even further and the general taxpayer, you and I, will cop the entire bill for all this stupidity.

Banning cigarettes will lead to a bad case of cancer for the whole country. Will all states agree, like gun laws, like railway lines, like computerised ticket devices.

We already have a cancer in our governments at all levels what about banning them to save our own health? Our health experts seem to have forgotten that smoking raw marijuana is seven times more like to cause cancer?

Tobacco will be illegal but soon marijuana will be legal you can’t smoke a pipe but you can smoke a toke? Something tells me there is going to be a surge in sales for tweezers and cigarette cases.

Earl Grey

CHRISTIANS CANNOT COMMIT CRIMES.

One of the principal reasons why I thank God that I’m an atheist is based on the idea that those who believe in Jesus, and tell everyone about how Jesus came into their life, and believe Jesus will come back and heap praise and glory upon the righteous, who found Him in Jail, in a piece of burnt toast or peering over his back fence, who believe that to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and spread his good word, who know the Gospels both forward and backward, and who praise the Lord at every opportunity can still, regularly attend church and then, without any fear of punishment for their sins go out and rob banks, rape women or become politicians.

OH! Lordy! Lordy! Praise the Lord and keep the Ten Commandments. Maybe with the exception of ‘thou shalt not steal’ and then while I think of it forget about ‘coveting my neighbours arse, or his house or his manservant’ I can’t see anything wrong with admiring his new car, or fiddling with his Butler in the pantry and he does have a nice arse. There’s no harm in that these days is there? I can’t ‘honour my Father and Mother’ because I don’t know who they are so lets erase that one. ‘Do no murder’ Yeah? what about that one? As long as they don’t believe in my God I think that’s alright. Lets believe that really says ‘thou shalt not kill unless they’re Muslims or Jews’.

What does that leave us with? ‘Keeping the Sabbath’ Scrub that one, banks are closed on Sundays and who doesn’’t want a nice piece of ass on Sunday. ‘Gods before me?’ I think I can keep that one unless I fall prey to the worship of money or put instructions by my employer before those of God. That’s a bit grey that one. Let’s not leave that one in as it could be confused with ‘making yourself an idol’ and that would mean giving up on my worship of Don Bradman.

‘Thou shalt not use my name.’ Jesus Christ that’s a tough one. Skip that page. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’. Kids are not adults are they, and it must be alright if a few of our religious leaders set the example for us. You aren't committing adultery in a brothel, that’s just sex and if you are not married then its not adultery either. The one whose married is the adulterer. ‘False testimony against a neighbour’. Decorating the truth or forgetfulness can’t be false testimony. I’m telling it as how I see it. I can ignore that commandment.

That just leave the one commandment about ‘‘vengeance being in the hands of the Lord’. I must tell by Defence Barrister about that one. I’ll get a Good Behaviour Bond and that’s easy-peasy. But Jail time? I’ll leave that one with Him.

Malcolm Turnbull and his five friends

THE EFFECT OF LEGALISED ABORTION ON CRIME AND THE COMMUNITY

Sometimes referred to as the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis is the theory that legal abortion reduces crime. Those who promote this theory generally argue that children who are unwanted or whose parents cannot, or are incapable, of caring for them are more likely to become criminals and that it is theorised that the availablity of abortion has supposedly an observable effect on crime.

The counter arguement of the anti-abortion lobby is that the termination of a faetus is in itself a crime, especially in those states that believe that God is the only decision maker. There is an arguement that in countries where abortion is legal has reduced crime but opponets argue that data is data is date and proves nothing and that reduced crime comes about in other ways.

There have been no studies in Australia to argue either way and generally we accept that women have the right to make decisions about their own body wether it be tits, tattoos or terminations.

There was a study in 1972 in the United States (that’s more than a generation ago) that was able to prove that the children of women denied an abortion turned out to have been, with a control group, registered more often with psychiatric services, engaged in more anti-social and criminal behaviour and more likely to be on ‘public assistance’ for much of their life.This study argued that the social cost to society economically far outweighed the cost of allowing termination even if paid for from the public purse.

Even earlier studies in Sweden in1966 which looked at the long term data from 188 women denied abortions between 1939 and 1941. They compared these unwanted children to another group, the next child born after each of the unwanted babies, as a control group.

What they found was the unwanted children were more likely to grow up in adverse conditions, such as having divorced parents or being raised in alternate care, including extended family and in the worst case scenarios as a Ward of the State. Their liklihood of becoming delinquent, drug dependent and engaged in crime was about double that of the control group brought up under normal societal conditions of that time
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In the Roe vs Wade case, which is still a highly charged arguement in the America, where abortion was made legal federally but then subject to the laws of individual states, has resulted in a hodge-podge of laws either side of imaginary geographical lines. Their arguement was ‘too many social and private problems occured bringing a child into a family already unable to, financially or psychologically, care for it.’

The on-the-run decision making by Trump that women who have abortions should be punished is absolutely mysogenistic, one hopes he doesn’t get to the Whitehouse even as an aide.