Craig Johnston is looking at doing time after pleading guilty to a raft of charges including
threatening to kill and causing $42,000 worth of damage at Skilled Engineering in Melbourne.
Johnston, of Parer Road, Airport West, was Australian Manufacturing Workers Union state secretary at the time of the so-called “run-throughs”.
According to the prosecution, Johnston threatened Claude Ceccomancini, a manager of non-union labour at the factory with words to the effect of: “I know who you are, you’re dead.”
He then
leads his thugs on a rampage.
Later that morning, unionists force their way into the offices of Skilled Engineering and took part in what Mr Johnson described as an unbridled rampage. Pictures were torn from the wall, filing cabinets were upturned and computers smashed as part of the wanton destruction that caused $42,000 damage.
Bob Johnson, prosecutor says It is clear that Johnston was the ringleader… of both these invasions.
Mr Johnson said both invasions caused considerable trauma, with some Skilled Engineering employees requiring counselling. He said the use of balaclavas at Johnson Tiles was “sinister and disconcerting”, and had a “terrifying effect” on the workers.
Surprisingly, the Greens who I thought were all about cuddly Koalas, disenfranchised frogs and tree hugging, want us to support thug Johnstone.
They have an article
here calling for support for militant unionism.
I’m all for responsible unionism but not thuggery. Johnstone should be locked up and barred from union appointments for life.
When I was away the news of the North Korea rail disaster broke and I was listening to a junior relative ratting on about how if it happened in the USA we would know all about it.
I mentioned it might be because the US is a free and open society and North Korea isn’t, but the lessons from her exclusive public girl?s school held true and my comment went through to the keeper.
She saw nothing good about the US or Bush and had I questioned her, Howard would have got some stick as well.
What’s my point? Clearly she is picking up this rubbish from her teachers and I for one think that?s an abysmal abrogation of responsibilities on the teacher?s part. She is only a teenager and already biased in her thoughts on world events. Attractive, intelligent and pleasant but none of this will matter if she isn’t taught to look at all the facts before forming an opinion. With everything going for her the teachers have only taught her to parrot their left wing diatribe.
I socialize at a major GPS school in Brisbane and am long use to Howard being held to ridicule at the Staff club. If I point out Liberals responsible fiscal management versus the 23% overdraft I suffered under Labour, they resort to pulling a Howard like face and talking like Gollum from the LOR. Everyone rolls around laughing at their wit and I wonder what they are teaching the kids.
I would like to think they are teaching them to look at the world a little deeper than starting all debate with ‘Bush is evil’ and going on from there.
I would like to think they are teaching them to recognize the natural bias of journalists and commentators (Yes – me too!) and factor that in.
I would like them to think that competition extends people and systems, that no one should be exempt from critical assessment and that the closed shop recommended by the Teachers Union disguises inefficiency.
I would like to think some of these issues will be taken on board by our professional teachers but I’m not holding my breath.
Meanwhile the debate on insufficient male role models in the education departments of Australia waxes and wanes. A Catholic system tried to get scholarships for men only to be countered with ‘No – must have equal amount of scholarships. 12 for men must have 12 for women’
Gender equity should work both ways.
Our male teachers have to sustain continual attacks on their integrity and honour. A disgruntled kid falsely accuses a mate, a male teacher, of touching him inappropriately and his career is ruined. Never made court, kid and Mother confessed – career still ruined. Mud sticks.
Result? Men stay away in droves from teaching.
Just a few things to fix!
Does John Laws expect us to believe that he had inside information that would implicate Howard in ‘Government by Broadcaster’ and then sat on it for four years?
Ask yourself one question.
Why has he released this information now?
More>>
The $4 Billion-a -year Aussie film industry is under attack from the Greenies. In their on going battle against capitalism they have halted the filming of a scene from the movie
Stealth through the Land and Environment Court.
Justice David Lloyd of the Land and Environment Court found the environmental dangers of filming in the “sacrosanct” wilderness area would include “incidental destruction of native vegetation” and unintentional killing of the larvae of a giant dragonfly, known as petalura gigantea.
God help us.
The scene has a woman running through the swamp dodging bullets. As no one actually fies bullets in movies what we have is a woman running near small detonators being set of in the water to simulate bullets. It would be no more traumatic that a person moving through the swamp with a stick.
Mr Carr said he would work with film company AFG Talons Productions to follow “every legal avenue” to appeal because the judgment sent “the worst possible message for overseas film-makers”. “NSW is in the midst of negotiations with two other major film projects and does not want to put those jobs at risk. The decision puts a $4 billion-a-year industry at risk and threatens 50,000 jobs in the NSW film and television industry,” Mr Carr said.
A question for Bob Carr. Who gave the Land and Environment Court powers to put our film industry at risk?
Labour are still insisting they will bring home the troops by
Christmas
I’m relieved. I was worrying about how the 50,000 odd servicemen and thousands of police in Australia at the moment would be able to handle the terror threat without the help of 20 or so Air Traffic Controllers and the few hundred Infantrymen guarding Australian assetts in Iraq.
Latham must have heard of one of the principles of war that argues against splitting forces.
Brisbane City Council, the biggest city council in Australia is now Liberal led with Campbell Newman the new Lord Mayor. That?s the good news. The bad news is Labour still hold a majority in wards and after Jim Soorly’s reign, I can only imagine there is a lot of left wing influence. The Labor councillors, the Labor State Government and the unions are all gearing up to make Campbell’s reign very difficult.
If you didn’t know, Campbell is son of Kevin and Jocelyn Newman. Newman won the Bass by-election in June 1975 with a 13.8% swing, giving the first hint of the unpopularity of the Whitlam government and a portent of its eventual electoral fate in December 1975. Kevin was my Commanding Officer in 1972 and after noticing the difficulty I had walking, arranged for a soft posting for me in Army Recruiting to give me time to recover from patrolling in Vietnam. Jocelyn was a competent Senator for many years but, I think, lost some of her zeal when husband Kevin died.
Breeding is everything and coming from such a good family I can only imagine Campbell will have plenty of fight in him.
He will need it and I wish him well.
Latham, all hat and no cattle, sets himself up for another backflip. Surely by now, voters are getting his measure.
I wonder if Gough had any input into his latest ‘We will bring the troops home by Christmas” line. Gough used just that line in 1972, notwithstanding the fact that troop withdrawal was already set in train by the Libs. Another of the great ALP lies of those days was born as even today there are plenty of ‘Maintain the Rage’ devotees who believe Gough brought the troops home.
With todays hounding by the press Latham will have to think a bit harder about policy on the fly and maybe run his ideas through Caucus first.
Shades of Gough and the punters are starting to notice.
Don’t think the troops aren’t reading the Australian press and wondering what’s the go. They shoudn’t be pawns in any debate but the media are quick to head that way. Watch them find a recalcitrant digger saying ‘I want to be home as well – we shoudn’t be here’ or better still, his wife complaining about his absence whilst holding a stressed toddler to appeal to every mother in Australia.
He is still all show and no substance. Downer made a big call when he said
…Mr Latham’s remarks were made without consulting his shadow cabinet and seemed to be influenced by Greens Senator Bob Brown.
But it is the stupid type of statement Brown would make, but then Brown isn’t a contender for the Prime Ministerial crown. Latham is and it’s a worry.
Must be something in the water in Tasmania. First Bob Brown now this prime idiot
IMAGINE being strapped inside a huge plastic ball and being pushed out of an aircraft. Tasmanian eccentric Steven Whitmore has given the idea a lot of thought.
“It’d hit the ground and you’d just bounce away until you stopped,” Mr Whitmore said.
…bounce away until you stopped! You wouldn’t be stopping. The only thing that would eventually stop would be the ball and some rasberry jam like substance at the bottom of the ball that used to be you.
Another invention he dreamt-up is a huge capsule made of bullet-proof glass.
The thrill-seeker is strapped inside and the capsule is dropped into the ocean, head first.
“Imagine the feeling,” Mr Whitmore said.
There is no feeling in Strawberry jam and why the ‘bullet proof’ glass. It would only mean the strawberry jam wouldn’t be diluted with sea water.
As I recall the laws of physics, once a falling body reaches terminal velocity the fall is terminal.
Mind you, I’d be prepared to reprove the old theories. I mean they are old after all and I’m regularly told old is wrong. If I could get this idiot and Bob Brown in a rubber ball and push them out of a Hercules at 1000 feet I feel I would be contributing to science and society.
Strawberry jam comes from the old paratroopers ditty from my youth that went….
They scraped him off the tarmac like a lump of strawberry jam
And he ain’t going to jump no more.
I’m not making this up although I can’t vouch for the integrity of the author…journalist after all?
More
here>>
From my point of view, you can attack Labor all you like until you mess with us Vietnam Vets. Graham Edwards served in the same Company in 7RAR as I did, he does a hell of a lot for his old mates and any other Vet in strife and that’s exactly what he was doing when Tucky put his foot in it.
Thanks for tip from another ex 7RAR vet, Peter Upton. Thanks mate.
In todays Age
Louise Dodson claims the earth has opened up and swallowed the Coalition as she has always wished. I’m not suggesting the article is wishful thinking but I think it will be interesting to watch developments
The federal Labor Party has won massive support from the electorate and Opposition Leader Mark Latham has a personal approval rating unmatched since Bob Hawke was opposition leader in 1983.
If an election was held now, the Coalition’s 20-seat majority would be transformed into a 28-seat win for Labor, according to an ACNielsen AgePoll.
Now that is a big call. Still it gets coverage in one of Australia’s major newspapers so it must have some basis in truth, mustn’t it?
Yes, I know, the tag AgePoll might have some bearing but I don’t know. I haven’t read the questions put by ACNielsen and I don’t know what the demoraphics were so I’ll reserve my opinion.
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