Eleven Kiwi Victoria Crosses were amongst medals stolen from a
Museum in NZ
They are going to be very difficult to sell on the market so could well go underground to some collector.
“The fear is there is a very reclusive collector who has had them stolen to order,” Helen Clark told One News’ Breakfast program.
“If that’s the case, they won’t show up on the market”.
Not good, stealing history.
On Sunday middle-child becomes a gym nazi and forces my wife and I to undertake a workout in the pool and on various forms of torture apparatus that in more peaceful times exist as stools – push-ups on a stool, tricep dips…Please, can I go back into the pool? NO!. I erroneously told her of Army PTIs saying do 20 then at 20 saying ‘one for the Queen, ‘one for the regiment’ etc. I was praying we didn’t get down to ‘one for Private Smith”, the Hygiene orderly.
Whilst recovering, old mate O’Reilly phones and through some convoluted conversation, bad reception and the fact that I was suffering the after effects of middle-child administered torture, I ended up volunteering to be Santa to a bunch of Pre-schoolers.
Which explains why I turn up at the Pre-School behind St Mathias at Zillmere on Monday morning dressed like a
Coca Cola ad
.
The teacher said I did great but let’s face it; playing Santa to a bunch of 5 year-olds doesn’t take much talent. Not a lot of critics there
Their utter belief in what I represented took me back to the farm at Pemberton, West Australia where as a young tacker, maybe five myself, I took a walk with my dog Honey through the bush near the farm house. Honey was named for her colour so you can guess the colour of one of her pups we kept and called “Treacle”.
After some time I’m confronted with an apparition of red and white standing in front of me. I was beside myself – Santa had personally come to this small farm in WA to speak to ME and ME only. Not my rotten girly, smartypants and older sisters, but ME.
I took advantage of the situation and plugged for a pedal car and without a touch or irony said I had been a good boy. Santa must already known this otherwise he wouldn’t have taken the time out to visit ME. I would’ve thought though; If Santa talks to Mum or Dad I’m dead but hey, go for the big lie!
What a coupe for a five year-old.
Somewhere there is a picture with me in a pedal car so my lies weren’t detected but the biggest thrill was Santa sounded just like my Mum. True! The bragging rights at school were undeniable – all other kids were impressed that Santa come to see ME and also sounded like my Mother.
This likeness with my Mother was proven at the Town Xmas party in the School Hall that very week when Santa appeared, this time for all the plebs, and sounded just like Mum.
My friends were convinced.
How long this lasted I can’t remember but I feel, when the truth dawned on me; as it does all kids at some time; my crash and burn was louder and hurt more than what other kids suffered. My loss of faith involved my Mum who scammed the hell out of a five year-old naive boy.
The pedal car was cool though, and I eventually forgave my Mum.
I had to, every time it comes up she rolls around laughing as do my smartypants sisters.
What’s your Christmas story?
I’ve been in West Australia celebrating my Mother’s 88th birthday and doing the ground work necessary to facilitate her transfer to nursing care. While there, I stayed with my Sister who has minimal interest in computers or politics so had to be polite and spend time with family and not politics – thus my silence on the issue.
Silence over! Some thoughts…
I’m devastated and worried about Australia.
On Costello. I’d go as well. After dragging the country out of the 96 billion abyss the last ALP govt left us in; after bringing in GST and rewriting Australia’s financial disbursement to state governments; after taking unemployment, jobs, interest rates to the best levels for years the electorate kick him and his boss out.
I’d say “get stuffed” as well.
Costello will do well as everyone knows he did an excellent job running the 15th largest economy in the world. With that on page one of his CV he will be snapped up by commercial enterprise and I hope he earns millions.
He will do so with my blessing and the blessing of every reasonable man and women in the country.
Having said all that I’m not sure if he would have made a great PM and I do think we should move on.
Rudd simply doesn’t inspire me and I have trouble slotting him into the “leaders” I have known category. It isn’t his politics, it his demeanor and bureaucratic background. Until I see evidence to the contrary I will refer to him as the Chief Clerk.
The Chief Clerks biggest problem will be controlling the unions and the Left wing. Julia Gillard, to my mind, is dangerous, recognized by the fact that Rudd kept her out of the limelight during the election lest the media pursue her background. If she had fronted the media every day her left wing socialism would have crept through and frightened the voters. Anyone who hails Jim Cairns as a role model aspires to a different Australia than I or 80-90% of Australians wish for.
If you subscribe to theory that Work Choices cost us the election then what you are actually saying is that the ACTU 30 million dollars worth of lies, omissions, half truths and exaggerations cost us the election. Work Choices could have done with some more fine tuning but as they emphasized and aided the demise of the power base of unions they will be repealed for the wrong reasons. Work Choices empowered workers and Business; the ALP’s answer will empower the unions and the workers. Small and Large business, by far the greater employers in the country, are missing from the formula and that never bodes well for the economy.
I go away for a week to West Australia and when I return my country is totally different. I only hope the difference isn’t too costly.
I think this piece in Cut & Paste is worth quoting in full
Long-time British chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, addressing the New Zealand Business Round Table
AS it is, the temperature projections (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) does come up with in its fourth and latest report range from a rise in the global average temperature by the year 2100 of 1.8C for its lowest emissions scenario to one of 4C for its highest emissions scenario, with a mean increase of slightly under 3C. The average annual temperature in Helsinki is less than 5C. That in Singapore is in excess of 27C, a difference of more than 22C. If man can cope with that, it is not immediately apparent why he should not be able to adapt to a change of 3C when he is given 100 years in which to do so.
Let us look at the gloomiest of the IPCC’s economic development scenarios, according to which living standards … would rise, in the absence of global warming, by 1 per cent a year in the developed world and by 2.3 per cent a year in the developing world. It can readily be calculated – using, to repeat, a cost of global warming (based on the gloomiest IPCC warning) of 3 per cent of GDP in the developed world and as much as 10 per cent in the developing world – that the disaster facing the planet is that our great-grandchildren in the developed world would, in 100 years, be only 2.6 times as well off as we are today, instead of 2.7 times; and that their contemporaries in the developing world would be only 8.5 times as well off as people in the developing world are today, instead of 9.5 times as well off. And this, remember, is the IPCC’s very worst case.
The major cause of ill-health, and the deaths it brings, in the developing world is poverty. Faster economic growth means less poverty but – according to the man-made CO2 warming theory, incorporated in the IPCC’s scenarios – a warmer world. Warmer but richer is in fact healthier than colder but poorer.
The more one examines the current global warming orthodoxy, the more it resembles a Da Vinci code of environmentalism. It is a great story and a phenomenal bestseller. It contains a grain of truth and a mountain of nonsense. And that nonsense could be very damaging indeed.
We appear to have entered a new age of unreason, which threatens to be as economically harmful as it is profoundly disquieting.
I don’t think it’s a new age of unreason; I think unreason has been forced upon society several times by a number of new “We’ll all be doomed” religions over the last century; Climate Change is just the latest manifestation of certain zealots need to change us to their idea of a clever caring society
I see no problems with society changing the way it treats the environment and there are lots of good reasons to pursue cleaner fuel but scaremongering and over reaction will not help at all.
SBS will produce a “
quintessentially Australian” version of the top-rating BBC motoring program Top Gear to hit local screens next year.
BBC Worldwide Australasia’s head of sales Julie Dowding said the deal was very exciting.
“We are very proud that the first global deal for a local version of Top Gear has been done here in Australia,” she said.
Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson added:
“I’m delighted that Top Gear is going to Australia. Maybe the first guest could by Jonny Wilkinson He whose name will never be mentioned in my house, referring to Britain’s rugby player and World Cup hero.
Yeah….right!
Pommy footballers aside, I do look forward to the show.
AUSTRALIA’S doctor shortage has
reached crisis point, with three-quarters of the country’s land area, and more than 12 million people, now deemed as lacking adequate access to primary care.
Nowhere in the article is
adequate access to primary care defined and as Abbott says, and it’s not unreasonable, the figures were based on a “statistical construct”
I’m not suggesting there isn’t a problem but more than half the country lacking adequate access to primary care – I doubt it.
FIVE Australian-based journalists, known as the Balibo Five, were deliberately killed to prevent them from exposing Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor, a
NSW coroner has found.
“The Balibo Five died at Balibo, in Timor Leste on 16 October 1975, from wounds sustained when (they) were shot and or stabbed deliberately, and not in the heat of battle, by members of the Indonesian special forces, including (Commander) Christoforus Da Silva and Captain Yunus Yosfiah on the orders of Captain Yosfiah to prevent (them) from revealing that Indonesian special forces had participated in the attack on Balibo,” Ms Pinch said.
We always knew this but couldn’t say it as it might have embarrassed Gough Whitlam
Mr Whitlam insisted at the inquest he had not known of the shooting until October 21, 1975, and could not recall a number of sensitive radio intercepts suggesting the men had been executed on official Indonesian orders.
Not knowing about the shooting until 21 Oct is reasonable but not recalling radio intercepts flies in the face of procedures. He would have been told about something as dramatic as journalists being murdered.
The inquest also heard a navy linguist, Robin Dix, who translated an intercepted Indonesian military radio communication on the day of the invasion that was subsequently sent to the office of the prime minister and other government officials.
“Five Australian journalists have been killed and all their corpses have been incinerated or burnt to a crisp,” the message read, Mr Dix told the inquest.
“I will never forget it. I remember it word for word.”
Rob Dix is a classmate of mine from the RAAF School of Languages where we both studied Bahasa Indonesia in the 60s. I’m glad he got his 15 minutes of fame although linguistic work, particularly at DSD, is generally kept hush-hush.
Wouldn’t normally want the Indons to know we know, would we?
Uncategorized
A ceremonial handover took place at Robertson Barracks in Darwin today marking the introduction of the fighting vehicle to the army’s 7th Battalion.
The vehicles are not new but are an upgraded and redesigned version of the Vietnam-era M113 personnel carrier.
The old APC with 7RAR on operations in Vietnam-1970
The new APC almost ready for deployment to Iraq and/or Afghanistan – 2007
“The extensive upgrade to the M113s have successfully concluded a long and rigorous testing program and the ADF (Australian Defence Force) will receive a vehicle that delivers increased firepower, protection and mobility,” said 7RAR commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Shane Gabriel.
Lieutenant-Colonel Shane Gabriel emailed me yesterday highlighting the event and in reply I wondered;
I don’t know how many APC fleet upgrades or buys there has been but I wonder whether the APC that we trained on in 1968 in Puckapunyal could be there in it’s second or third life. I recall Normie Rowe (the Pop Star) as the driver of our track and Kevin C*** as the Ops O. Are some of the new fleet that old or is it just us?
It’s a rhetorical question but an answer would be interesting.
More on the upgrade at
Tenix, the contractor responsible and
here for the 7RAR website.
China’s largest mobile phone service provider successfully tested a
transmission station on Mount Everest today, making it possible for climbers and those on next year’s Olympic torch relay to make calls, a state news agency reported.
China Mobile had to hire yaks and porters to help transport equipment up to the station site at 6,500 metres, the Xinhua News Agency said
While Beijing hopes the feat will impress the world, groups critical of China’s often harsh 57 year rule over Tibet have decried the torch route as a stunt meant to lend legitimacy to Chinese control.
Who’s going to be first nation to put a tower on the moon?
Uncategorized
From getup.org;
As this election looks more and more a case of “Don’t mention the war“, two brave young Australian women, both victims of the war on terror, have united to put peace back on the political agenda.
Whereas I have sympathy for both of them, they are fighting an uphill battle as news from the war gets better each day. Even the ALP are silent on the matter and the only people who want to raise a noise are the Getup mob.
The media have just gone quiet about Iraq, haven’t they? Well with their idea about Iraq being,
only bad news is good news, we can see why.
The
BBCare getting the message and The Observer, a long-time opponent to anything George Bush suggested heads an article –
Packed classes hint at peace in battered Iraq in this
piece
I wonder if it ever occurred to the girls to blame the terrorists for their troubles? Nah can’t bash Howard with that.
As usual, getup.org is off the pace but I guess they serve some kind of purpose – I just can’t think what it might be.
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