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.
A letter in Last Post in
The Australian this morning underlines what is wrong with the debate on Gillard and the unions misappropriation of members funds. Until Unions are subject to the same public scrutiny as Company Directors then we are getting no where.
I wonder what those who regularly call for Labor to distance itself from union slush funds and unions in general, think about the Liberal Party’s close ties with big business and lobbyists seeking special treatment?
D. J. Fraser, Mudgeeraba, Qld
I left this reply in comments
Would that be close ties with big business where the Directors are audited and present open books on expenditure and income to public scrutiny? Your point is irrelevant until Unions are also publicly accountable for expenditure of their member’s money. Both sides use lobbyists but only the ALP and their union mates misdirect funds without telling their members.
The ADFA Skype scandal has been good for the ALP. Every time they feel they being treated shabbily by the media they release yet another report into us awful, politically incorrect military types in an attempt to divert attention away from their stuffups. The latest is basically a litany of offences against the Emily List ‘feminize the military’ ideals.
Former senior military investigator Andrew Johnston told The Australian that the Skype scandal, if proven to have taken place, would represent just “the tip of the iceberg”, and the practice went back to the 1990s, when recordings were made using video cameras hidden in shoeboxes
Andrew Johnston was a Warrant Officer Class 1 in the ADF Investigation Service and his comment is conjecture and quoted because it suits the authors intention of making it appear the ADF has a real problem. It also sits well with those who want to feminize a warrior society.
The commission found evidence of a small number of women, potentially in single figures, who had been filmed in this way, but that as many as one in four servicewomen had suffered other sexual abuse or harassment within the past five years.
Oh my God! As many as ten woman out of a strength of 80,000 have been filmed ‘in this way’in the ADF!
But, and it’s a big BUT, as many as one in four have been sexually abused or harassed. I have no time for rape,’groping’ or verbal abuse but I sometimes think that some of these figures represent ‘unwelcomed’ approaches, as in asking for a date more than once and being slow to work out it aint going to happen; swearing in the presence of women; or having a nude pinup in your locker.
Very few groups within the community have such a preponderance of young, fit people at their physical sexual peak as does the military and doing what comes natural is…natural.
I would like to see the Human Rights Commission’s definitions of what constitutes abuse or harassment before I start worrying about the ADF’s sexual problems.
I am, for example, more worried about the ALP’s cutting defence expenditure to such an extent that regiments can no longer train their officers and soldiers to be battle ready. And yes, the ALP statement that line regiments would not be impacted on is like all of the ALP’s defence attitudes – bullshit!
Nearly half of Queensland voters believe Premier Campbell Newman’s cuts have gone too far, with support for the Liberal National Party plunging 12 percentage points since last month,
a new opinion poll suggests.
Well of course the polls are down. Phase One of getting Queensland back in the black entails axing excessive public servants to a level where the state doesn’t have to borrow money to pay their wages. It also involves cut-backs in services and no one, particularly those who accept these services without thought of budgeting, likes this.
It’s par for the course that after taking over from ALP fiscal vandals, Conservative governments lose popularity while they square the books and pay back deficits. After everyone settles and the state starts moving again, increased investment and subsequent jobs brings the voters back. However, after a parliament or two of financial security, the voters get bored and experiment with another ALP government, thus maintaining the loop.
It was ever thus.
See Julia, adopt at least some of the Coalition border protection policies and you get a
lift in the polls. Listening to the ABC she has just won an election with a 20 seat majority but still, two percentage points is a positive. The next polls should reflect the aftermath of the MSM assault on her integrity with Slater & Gordon and her handling and association with AWU theft.
Are the punters paying attention or will the ALP get another rise next poll?
I’m still hoping that if she gets maybe another rise or two then all the talk of insurrection will slow down and she will be leading the ALP at the next election. I want to see her suffer for the damage she has caused to the country.
JULIA Gillard’s new offshore processing regime has effectively locked asylum-seekers out of Australian court appeals,
legal experts declared yesterday, as four boats arrived in 24 hours in a rush to beat the new laws.
Human rights lawyers said the new offshore processing regime had stripped back the capacity for judicial review of government decisions and eliminated many of the grounds for legal challenges by boatpeople.
I’m of the opinion that they only people entitled to legal aid are Australians so I really don’t care if some lawyers used to being on the human rights boatpeople gravy train are worried about their income streams.
I spent yesterday driving up the Newell Highway on the last leg of driving back from Melbourne and a Regimental reunion. I note in today’s The Australian Melbourne claiming the most livable city in Australia status. I might agree if it wasn’t for the abysmal weather we had to endure.
My bride and I had intended to tour the Great Ocean Drive but locals kept on saying “if you don’t like this weather then be aware it comes from the West – it will simply be worse. We compromised and went down to Phillip Island – bad call. A sudden Western Port Bay/Great Southern Ocean combination storm dislodged the tent on the second night and let some rain in. At 0500 the Princess decamped to the car and I packed up vowing to drive north until we reached civilization. It wasn’t so much the zero Celsius, it was the unquantifiable ‘wind chill factor’ that detracted me from my normal chipper demeanour.
Yesterday morning we left Coonabarrabran with another zero on the car readout. Along side the zero was a little icon on the Climate Control display I hadn’t seen before – looked like a crystal snow flake. We had to look up the manual to read that it was a warning of the potential of ice on the road. It comes up whenever the temp hits zero.
Things just got better all day as the temperature on the road climbed while I listened to the ABC scrabbling to get activists on line who still believed that the boat people are actually refugees. They found them abundance and I listened spell-bound as they rattled on about torture, assassinations and deprivations that existed in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and every where from whence our current crop of ‘better life with generous handouts’ mob came from.
Chopper Driver Houston’s recommendations were being picked apart looking for any basis to classify them as being of the ‘cruel Howard’ variety and there was some basis. The chattering class hated the thought of those who abuse our generous nature should be housed in tents in the tropics – oh the inhumanity of it all and then they might be housed in such an inhumane manner for as long as it would take to process a real refugee through UN channels.
I thought it was a great idea but then that’s just me, and I suspect, most of the country.
The debate is not over as the ALP appear not to be taking up all of the Coalition’s policies. We have to be very careful that Gillard’s about turn isn’t quite 180 degrees. Once on Narau or Manus Island the ‘better life with generous handouts’ mob need to be aware that the Government are really trying to stop them or they will reason that they can still achieve a better life by just enduring life on a tropical paradise for a year or two and then they can still win lotto.
The people smugglers and their clients will be very aware of this government’s incompetence in previous dealings with boat people and may well gamble on more of the same and that the government really don’t want to stop the boat people anyway, they just want the country to stop talking about them. Most boat people will vote for the weaker party and I simply don’t trust Gillard’s motives.
Still, it’s a start and gives Abbott something to work on.
Heading down to Melbourne tomorrow to attend a Regimental reunion followed by a run through the Great Ocean Road, Bendigo, Bathurst, Griffith and back home.
See you in two weeks
An interesting link. Enter your Post Code for a snapshot.
I have just listened to Alan Jones and Michael Smith talking about the
Gillard/Thomson/Wilson cover-up
The fact that 30% of the voters are still with her must surely mean they are not aware of the debate.
If you aren’t aware go listen and think.
PUBLIC servants are preparing to unleash
industrial mayhem on the state next month to protest against job cuts by the Newman Government.
A vote taken by public sector union members yesterday backed a “significant industrial campaign” involving more than 30,000 people at 1000 work sites, including hospitals, prisons, schools and transport service centres.
I sympathise with the public servants (I have a daughter worried about her long term prospects) but really, what is Newman to do?
The Beattie/Bligh governments have simply left us with a bloated public service as witnessed by the fact the Anna had to borrow money to pay their salaries.
Newman has to claw back billions of dollars to even approach financially responsible levels and we are going to have to pay. It will hurt us and services will be downgraded until he has a grip on the problem.
If the public servants wan’t to vent their spleen then they should go find Anna Bligh and tell her ‘thanks for screwing us over and having us live in a fools paradise’
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