Author: Kev

Retired infantry officer. Conservative by nature and politics; Happily married and father and grandfather of eight. Loves V8 powered Range Rovers, Golden Retrievers, good books and technology and think there should be open season on Greenies. Born in the mid forties and overdue for servicing but most parts still work.

Qld MP resigns

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QUEENSLAND Premier Peter Beattie faces the prospect of Labor’s third by-election loss in seven months after his absent backbencher Robert Poole resigned yesterday to live in Thailand. Poole claims he was in Thailand to undergo knee surgery and to be with his family. The Thai hospital says he had an appointment on 14 Feb but hasn’t been seen since and certainly hasn’t had any surgery.
Servants at Mr Poole’s Thai house said yesterday that he had not been seen there for at least two weeks, but had been busy working in the yard in January despite being in the country for a serious knee operation.
Just love the ‘servants’ bit. Beattie gave him three months leave to sort out the problem and appointed another MP to look after his election. The other MP promptly flew off to Thailand and Beattie claims to be surprised.
The MP tendered his resignation in a handwritten letter to Mr Beattie, hand-delivered by Ipswich Labor MP Don Livingstone, who made an unauthorised trip to Thailand last week to visit his friend and colleague.
Does Beattie expect us to believe that there is so little coordination, process and disipline in the Qld Labour Party that MPs can wonder off will-nilly to anywhere in the world? There’s a couple of questions going begging here such as; when talking to the stand-in MP did Beattie state the obvious… ‘I expect you to be in your electorate whilst so appointed’ and if he did why didn’t the MP say ‘well I’m planning a trip to Thailand myself’ Of course questions should have been asked of Poole at preselection. Questions that normally people would not find a need to ask such as; ‘If elected do you intend to represent your electorate or do you plan to leave Australia and live overseas?’ Beattie is being back-footed every week and it doesnt bode well for his chances of re-election. The only fly in that ointment is the standing of the local opposition. It’s a worry.
General Musings, Politics

Someone else celebrates ten years

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Now …what’s his name? Ah yes Bob Brown has also spent ten years as leader of a political party. Suffering from delusions of grandeur he predicts his party could govern the country one day. Yeah…right. As if something like 50% of Australian’s are going to be stupid enought to vote in a party that is strong on saving frogs and has weak to non existant policies on, or simply hate, capitalism, jobs, commerce, the US, defence, security, education and a host of other matters that Australians think important. Nevertheless, he offers advise to the ALP that would benefit Australia;
“I think the Opposition has lost its way and I think it is going to get worse,” Senator Brown said. “The indications are that the Opposition thinks if it moves to the right it will do better,” said Senator Brown. “No, it needs to move back to the humanitarian politics that Labor once stood for and it easily could.”
The more Left the policy, the less chance of being elected. Listen to him ALP…please.
Politics

Sizzler ignores poison

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Police have arrested a woman over the food poisoning scare at two Sizzler restaurants in Brisbane.

The Sizzler chain has closed all of its self-serve salad bars in Australia after rat poison was found in food at two Brisbane restaurants.

That last sentence should read;

The Sizzler chain has closed all of its self-serve salad bars in Australia 37 days after after rat poison was first found in food at two Brisbane restaurants.

The Queensland Health Minister is not happy and I would imagine the thousands of Sizzler customers who visited over the last five weeks would be a little miffed as well.

Apparently Australian labs can’t identify rat poison as Sizzlers sent the sample overseas for testing.

General Musings

The bitch is in Australia

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Jane Fonda is in town. Readers may wonder why a man who is normally reserved would resort to such profanity but I have along memory, and the years to develop it, and remember Jane Fonda more as an agent for the Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War than an actress. In 1968 Jane starred in the sci-fi movie Barbarella where she drove every young male into fantasy overload with her looks, figure and costumes. I too was taken in untill four years later we all saw beyond her looks, figure and costumes and discovered her intelectuall appreciation of all things communist. Dropped her like a red hot coal, I did. No more could she have her way with me as even then I appreciated there was more to woman than looks. Here’s my favourite pin-up picture of Jane. It shows her manning a Communist Anti Aircraft gun during a trip she made to North Vietnam in 1972. She had accepted their offer to star in communist propaganda movies and radio interviews to the detriment of her fellow Americans. As one disgruntled marine pilot said. It’s one thing to protest about the war and the government’s involvement but that gun wasn’t aimed at the government; it was aimed at US pilots. To put her treason in perspective one would have to imagine an Australian actress posing on a Japanese gun emplacement when the Japs were busy shooting down Australian and US pilots during World War 2. Treason, plain and simple, writ huge. Here for more details of her treason. Over at Tim Blairs people are discussing the roll of actors and entertainers in society and the thread settles on the fact that good or bad, actors are just entertainers. A lot of people get confused with a pretty or handsome face and the parts actors play. I swear there are film buffs out in the world who confuse the lines actors ‘read’ with reality and end up thinking an actor is smart when the only smarts are from the script writer. George Clooney is a case in point. In this article in the Age he says;
….he is proud to be denounced as unpatriotic for questioning US policy because he wanted to be on “the right side of history”.
I have enjoyed his acting over the years but I know it’s acting and that the parts he plays are just that, parts in a movie. George, and not a few of his peers in Hollywood, seem to think that being popular translates as being intelligent and that people will vote out a Political party because he doesn’t like them and, don’t you know, he is smarter that us…he is, after all, a popular actor. Whether or not he is on “the right side of history” remains to be seen. Jane Fonda’s communism has been defeated and only remains in a few countries that no-one cares about and I believe George Clooney’s terrorists will eventually go the same way. Life is too short (at least in my time of life it is) to spend valuable time watching movies and supporting actors who think they are always on the right side of history based on their Tinsel Town life experiences. I mean, just how much history has George read?
General Musings

Redfern still a problem

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POLICE in NSW’s top robbery hotspot, Redfern, have demanded 20 more frontline officers be posted to the area or they will consider industrial action.
Robbery rates in Redfern are spiralling, a Police Association branch meeting was told yesterday. Redfern local area command last year experienced a massive 7.4 per cent of all robberies across the state. 
The meeting voted to give NSW Police 30 days to meet the demand or face industrial action. Association president Bob Pritchard said the extra numbers were essential to ensure the community got the service it needed. Maybe we should level the place, turn it into a giant CBD carpark and call it Whitlams Folly but then we would have to number it to account for all of his folleys…maybe “Whitlam’s Folly 3615” or similar.
General Musings

Optus in command

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Landline down Thursday…ADSL down…can’t fix until Monday…Monday…landline fixed….ADSL coding has to be reprogrammed…will take another four to five days.  On the seventh tele call to Optus had a win and spoke to someone whose first language was English. Dialup is so slow I forget what I was looking for by the time I get there so will work on the 150 emails (two-thirds spam) tonight and post tomorrow. You remember the dialup problem…Dad, can I make a phone call?
General Musings

‘Light’ sentence overturned.

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Judge Ian Wylie in the news again
A JUDGE who restructured a jail sentence for a Samoan man after he molested an eight-year-old girl has had his decision overturned by the Attorney-General.
In sentencing the man last month, Brisbane Supreme Court judge Ian Wylie, QC, said if the man, 35, was jailed for 12 months or more he could be deported at the end of his sentence.
The man, who cannot be named, was caught touching and licking the girl’s genitals at a friend’s house in May 2004.
So he promptly awarded him 11 months and three weeks jail. Wylie seems to have some sympathy for child molestors that is definitely out of step with society. In another case he jailed a priest for 3 and a half years after the man was found guilty 34 counts of indecent dealing with girls aged six to 12. Wylie calimed the man had been rehabiltated and hadn’t offended for a long time. Other cases;
A QUEENSLAND judge has ordered a man’s criminal conviction for the carnal knowledge of an underage girl not be recorded so he can join the police force.
The girls was 13 and the judge was Wylie.
A judge has been criticised for “unacceptable indulgence” after allowing a motorist who killed an elderly woman to walk free because he was a sole parent.
The woman was 82 and yep, the judge was Wylie.
She’s drunk…he pinches her bum…they have words…he throws a glass of water in her face…she gouges out his eye with a broken beer glass. He loses 50% of his vision and the judge gives her a suspended sentence.
Wylie again. QUeensland Attorney-Generals must have a weekly briefing on “what Wylie has done this week” and I wonder why he is still on the bench. Is there no mechanism to ensure Judges stay in tune with the society they are representing?
Uncategorized

Guantonamo good news

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The US continue to interrogate inmates in their fight against terrorism and discover a link to the London bombings. While human rights lawyers and activists argue for their release the US gains good intelligence that helps prevent repeats of WTC, London and Bali.
“We have passed the information they have provided about the London bombings to the British authorities. I believe this information has helped to prevent further attacks in the UK.” US officials said the ongoing interrogation of the detainees continued to provide valuable information about al-Qa’ida’s international network. Apart from preventing attacks in London, recent intelligence has led to active al-Qa’ida cells being broken up in Italy and Germany in the past year. In recent weeks, some of the captured al-Qa’ida fighters, who were in charge of Osama bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan, have begun co-operating with US officials and revealing details of the terrorist network they helped set up before the war in Afghanistan in 2001.
Which is one of the reasons why, in a war, enemy PWs are held until ceasation of hostilities.
War on Terror

Bonfire of the inanities

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John Burtis in the Canadian Free Press puts the ‘Dick Cheney shooting a lawyer mate’ press frenzy in perspective.
In their Herculean efforts to lend further “gravitas” to the beleaguered story, the media trundled out grizzled hunting experts, college-trained weather men and women, experts on color recognition and the reasons for the use of international orange on hunting outfits, the problems to be encountered from lead poisoning, ornithologists and the year of the expected Texas quail extinction, medical experts and the grave damage to be expected from the horrors of bird shot, cardiologists, Neil Young and the needles and the damage done, schematic diagrams of shooting victims, savvy attorneys to discourse on the legal ramifications of the expected charges for attempted murder and great bodily harm, pettifoggers to discuss the upcoming civil penalties, constitutional scholars to describe this latest nail in the proverbial coffin of impeachment, pundits to describe in glib detail the replacement of Dick Cheney for this strategic gaffe of immense proportions and experts in finer points of haberdashery to explain the meaning of the pink tie – the full list may never be fully tabulated because of its absolutely daunting size and the fact that it was pounded out in 24 news cycles for nearly a week.
And finishes with this;
And on the world front, as the hunting accident is still being rehashed for inconsistencies, investigated for further nefarious activities and the possible consumption of, gasp, a beer in the woods, the cartoon wars go on, Iran continues its nuclear build up, North Korea remains a menace, Hamas continues its activities to destroy Israel, we have helicopters down off the African coast, the UN remains a rotten borough, Islamist terrorists are still killing people in Iraq and the Philippines and the beat goes on.
But at home the US press burns in its own bonfire of inanities and it won’t step out of the fireplace or look outside its ridiculously small box because there was a hunting accident and somebody’s got to pay.
The story rates with SBS running their 433rd episode of Abu Ghraib prison saga. via LGF
Politics

Brahman bully

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I am involved with a boys college in Brisbane that offer a Cattle Club for extra carricula activities for country and city borders and day boys. The club has an arrangement with ‘Chudley’ a red Brahman cattle stud just north of Gympie, Queensland. I am a member of the club as an adult volunteer and mentor and yes; I do have a blue card. Coming from the land myself I have some understanding of cattle and can generally make myself useful.

This “Showing” cattle is no small deal. We are talking about boys as young as thirteen and cattle as big as 800 kilos. To be able to groom, lead, control and show cattle takes a lot of knowledge and a lot more courage.

This weekend we concentrated on introducing the novice boys and young cattle to each other. With both parties nervous and in unfamiliar circumstances there was ample opportunity for things to go wrong…and they did.

I was standing in the cattle pens trying to soothe a young bull and at about the time when I thought we had developed a meaningful relationship two young calves with small boys in tow skidded past, just behind the flanks of my new friend.

Cattle are lowing, boys are yelling and instructors coaxing. “One Eye’ the cattle dog is trying to direct 20 head in four pens and a yard all at once with the head stockman yelling ‘get in behind, you bitch” and I’m left with no where to go as I’m penned in with a lot of young and not-so young Brahmans.

I turn back from the mele to see the young bull, the same guy I had a meaningful relationship with only minutes ealier, rising up on his hind quarters with evil in his eye.

For a quadraped weighing about 4-500 kilos he showed amazing speed, dexterity and determination and accurately head butted me on the left side of my face. I was stunned and showered with about a litre of saliva and whatever in my hair, on my face and shirt. My reading glasses went flying and landed under the hooves of three other young excited Brahmans giving rise to my first note of alarm. The glasses were only a month old as my previous pair had been eaten by my young black Labradour pup and stirred on by visions of having to spend another $400.00 plus I leapt to save them.

Glasses saved, my superannuant budget secure and my hat back on my head in a matter of seconds I look to my physical needs in response to everyone panicking about how hard I might have been hit. Everone but me had seen that whereas the bull headbutted me, what he was trying to do was rake down my chest, and ……mmmm, lower, with his front hooves.

A sore neck and slight headache was a small price to pay for not controlling my space so the day went on. That night we had a country band in residence and we sang along with Slim Dusty, Johnny Cash and others untill almost midnight. The wife of the guitarist/singer had her own home brewed bourbon and this, along with some 4X helped to relax my stiff body.

Of course the bourbon and beer produced a hangover that pretty well replicates any symptons of concussion so it wasn’t until today that I can say the only thing hurt was my dignity.

The boys have a “bush Poets” society at school and during the evening one young lad recited “Turbulance” If you haven’t heard it or read it, go read it now. Light hearted and very ‘Outback’ ish it’s a story of a Rodeo rough rider handling the turbulence in a aircraft.

The young bull is now living in a fools paradise as he thinks he and I have battled and he won but the last thing I saw before he hit me was his yellow NLIS tag number (2156). I now have a trace in place on this number and the day he is converted to beef, I’m going to the town where it happened and shout myself a bloody big Brahman steak.

Travel
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