An Onymous Lefty

Website moved

2009-03-22T12:19:00.007+11:00

This light-hearted and informal political blog has moved to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com.

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Queenslander wins Queensland election

2009-03-21T22:50:00.000+11:00

Oh well. Better luck next time, guys.

I'll second that

2009-03-21T10:17:00.005+11:00

The Age editorialises that Lynne Kosky should go. I don't think any Victorian would disagree.

Sure, she's not at the level of a Stephen Conroy, who combines malice, dishonesty and determination to do evil all in one complete package of f*cktardetry - but she's spent almost two and a half years honing her own unique mix of incompetence, laziness* and general responsibility-avoiding bloody mindedness while a matter of great practical importance to Victorians was left to collapse in her unwilling hands.

I mean - increasing numbers of commuters are now collapsing on the service, while Kosky's department plays funny buggers with media and refuses to supply public documents unless they go through the whole time-consuming FoI process.

Seriously, how much worse could a trained circus animal have done? I reckon this elephant with a paintbrush would've actually done better - at least it appears to be able to respond to the people talking to it.

Brumby - please sack her. And permit her replacement to actually fix the mess.

*And how can someone be that lazy when they've got an entire Department to which they can delegate?

Site News - Grrr

2009-03-21T10:05:00.006+11:00

To those who complain that Disqus was a poor replacement for Haloscan - I just spent an unrewarding hour trying to move comments either back to Haloscan (although that's pointless; Haloscan's a few months away from being deleted) or to the company that took it over, JS-Kit. No matter what I do, it absolutely refuses to work. Comments do not appear. Meanwhile, Blogger's comment administration is even more limited than Disqus, and free WordPress neither gives you full control over the template html nor lets you ban IPs. And I can't even get any help uninstalling Disqus - simply deleting the references to disqus in the template doesn't work, and their support forum doesn't even have a search function.

So - I'm sorry. I'd love to move to some kind of competent commenting system, but there don't seem to be any available, and I can't seem to get rid of this one.

(PS Scott: first warning in advance.)

ACMA - Protecting Australians from Linkers

2009-03-20T08:21:00.007+11:00

~~Sad~~ Good news. I am taking this blog offline to avoid being fined and prosecuted under ACMA's ~~ludicrous~~ strong and entirely appropriate new online ~~censorship~~ community protection policy.

You see, I have in the past linked to articles on a site called "Wikipedia". On each of those articles there's a search bar in which someone could type "Wikileaks". Following that link would lead someone - possibly an IMPRESSIONABLE AND VULNERABLE CHILD WHO NEEDS PROTECTING - to ~~wikileaks.org~~ the site in question. Then they'd be able to click on the link to Denmark's or Australia's alleged list of banned sites, and if they then cut and pasted some of those URLs into their web browser then they'd find CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.

In other words, I linked to someone who linked to someone who linked to someone who linked to someone who hosted "prohibited content", and have therefore - under ACMA's new principle of GUILT BY LINKING - ruined the Australian internet.

You're all going to have to take your sites down, too. Sorry.

UPDATE: Oh, to hell with it. Let's do it in one link.

Is that a knock I hear on my door?

According to Conroy's logic, Kevin Bacon's a child pornographer

2009-03-20T08:06:00.006+11:00

Only four degrees of separation, too. Kevin Bacon has used Google, which links to Wikileaks, which links to Denmark's list of banned sites, which includes the URLs of child pornographers. Shame on you, Kevin Bacon.

And to think I used to like his movies.

Hyperlink here while you still can

2009-03-19T11:40:00.004+11:00

I look forward to seeing the first such prosecution appealed all the way to the High Court:

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

Say this were upheld - say the High Court decided it had been wrong to imply a right to "freedom of political communication" in the Constitution - that would get the issue of a Bill of Rights back on the agenda pretty quickly, wouldn't it?

UPDATE: The leaked list of websites that ACMA would block is ridiculous. No wonder they want to block the site that hosts it.

UPDATE #2: Conroy denies that the list is the real one. But of course he hasn't leaked the real list for us to compare because - and he reportedly said this with a straight face - the URLs would somehow threaten "cyber safety".

Moreover, the now notorious bully is issuing heavy-handed threats:

Conroy also took the chance to slam the unknown party which leaked the list of URLs, saying they could be the target of criminal prosecution.

"ACMA is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution," Conroy said.

Conroy is an authoritarian menace. He is a threat to Australians' civil liberties. What a miserable choice we have - we have the Liberals with their extended detention without charge, and we have the ALP with its destruction of free speech. Thank God we can at least vote for the Greens.

Meanwhile, he's threatening to prosecute you for linking to a list he says is fictional anyway. The guy is mad.

Not alone

2009-03-19T08:46:00.000+11:00

You, too?

Why do we recognise child marriages but not gay marriages?

2009-03-19T07:34:00.014+11:00

While we're on the subject of things that should or shouldn't be crimes, who's up to support section 41(4)(c) of the Victorian Crimes Act 1958, which provides the following complete defence to a charge of sexual penetration of a child under 16?

(My emphasis; screenshot of section as at 19/3/2009.)

So - why is someone thinking they're "married" to a child a defence? Why are we (as represented by the State) letting teenagers who (according to this same Act) we don't believe are old enough to have sex, get married? And - since subsections (a) and (b) already cover the alternative - to people more than two years older than them who know that they are younger than 16?

Particularly given that we've made a point of not recognising marriages of, say, gay people married overseas.

Why is 41(4)(c) still in the Crimes Act?

If you have sex outside marriage, you deserve to die

2009-03-18T19:20:00.000+11:00

The Catholic Church can't stone adulterers any more, but it can do everything in its power to kill them anyway:

The Pope today reignited the controversy over the Catholic church's stance on condom use as he made his first trip to Africa.

The pontiff said condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and Aids and could make the problem worse.

Or, as tigtog put it:

Actually, I think I can guess what the ????? replaces in Benedict's brain - "desperate people turn to the Catholic Church to make them feel better (as they suffer and die)". Then: "profit". He might not be a nice bloke, but he's not completely stupid.

When you grow up you'll agree with me

2009-03-18T13:38:00.002+11:00

You know the staggeringly arrogant conservative line that anyone who hasn't joined their ranks by middle age "hasn't a brain"? (Or the line regularly repeated by free market hardliners that anyone who doesn't agree with them "doesn't understand economics".)

You know how these people can say that with a straight face? Because they define maturity and wisdom according to whether you agree with them or not. You can't be a mature leftwinger because being a leftwinger is by definition immature. You want equality of opportunity? You naive child! You think all people, including the poor, should have access to good quality health and education services provided by the state and funded by a progressive taxation system? Aww, how cute! Now shut up and let the adults talk.

Take Andrew Bolt's column today - Garrett grows up - in which he patronisingly applauds Peter Garrett, now that he doesn't really stand for any of the things he used to. The TERRIBLE, by definition infantile things with which Andy disagrees. And now that Garrett has abandoned those principles...

It wasn’t his new views that were dishonest. His old ones were - those fading lies of the adolescent Left about the US, uranium and wicked capitalists...

...Garrett’s grown more since - and until Saturday, I hadn’t realised quite how much. In fact, now that he’s stopped singing, I’m almost a fan. Behold the man.

I think I'm going to be sick.

UPDATE: Some old musings on the subject.

Why does SA A-G Michael Atkinson want to treat fifteen year olds as adults?

2009-03-18T11:44:00.008+11:00

South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson - a man who insists all Australian adults be treated as 15 year olds despite the vast majority of us (who don't live in his electorate) not having any right to vote against him (whither democracy?) - has been having a particularly edifying spat with online gamer websites over the last week. (Presumably hoping to provoke a few unhinged people into sending some abusive emails with which he can smear anyone who plays videogames.) His basic argument is fatuous in the extreme:

It confuses my (sic) why so many gamers are arguing that they should have the right to play games that enable them on-screen to bash, torture, slay, slaughter, rape and take drugs.

No, that's what 15 year olds can do NOW, because you are blocking an R18 rating. If Australia had an R18 rating, Grand Theft Auto IV would've been restricted to adults, and not just given minor edits (that don't prevent the things you describe) and released as MA15+. Atkinson's insistence on treating adults as if they were fifteen year olds has an unavoidable corollary you'd think would disturb even him - it results in fifteen year olds being treated as adults.

The issue boils down to this: should fifteen year olds have access to all the media consumed by adults? Is there no difference between the maturity of an adult and a fifteen year old? If the answer to either of these questions is no, if you think there IS a major difference between yourself and a fifteen year old, then Australia needs an R18 category for videogames and promptly. Please, Mr Atkinson, stop stalling.

For the sake of the impressionable children.

(Cross-posted to When Games Suck.)

UPDATE: I've sent an email along these lines, for all the good it'll do us, to Atkinson on both his electorate and ministerial email addresses.

UPDATE 2: And emailed the other A-Gs. Sent them each an email entitled "R18 category needed to keep adult videogames away from impressionable teenagers" and begging them to "protect children by locking adult content away from them under an R18 category for computer games".

Does your boss own you?

2009-03-18T08:51:00.006+11:00

Telstra management apparently think they own their employees:

A web prankster impersonating Communications Minister Stephen Conroy on Twitter has been outed as a Telstra staff member.

The staffer has now been silenced by the telecommunications giant...

"I've been instructed not to talk to the press, so you'll need to talk to Telstra PR," he said.

But just how much should the company you work for get to restrict your political activities outside work? The staffer was not representing himself as a Telstra employee, or that his views coincided with those of Telstra, and provided he wasn't doing it on work time or from a work email account, what business is it of Telstra's what he does? Telstra management may not agree with the views he expresses - but so what? Do we really want a world in which the person who signs your paycheck gets a say not only in what you do at work, but also what you think or say outside it?

He's something Telstra could've said when they found out:

Provided you do it on your own time, and make it clear that you're not purporting to represent us, IT'S NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. We recognise that you are an independent adult living in a free country, and legal activities in which you engage in your own time are no concern of ours.

The alternative - what they've actually done - is really creepy.

UPDATE: And now their attempt to dishonestly have it both ways (shut him up but pretend they haven't) has blown up in their faces. I hope FSC is okay.

Some things are sacred

2009-03-17T11:35:00.009+11:00

Days after this farce, the Herald Sun asks this morning IS NOTHING SACRED?

PUNTERS will be able to bet with the TAB on Good Friday this year for the first time.

And Tabcorp is right - Good Friday is as good a day for people to be taken advantage of by a betting conglomerate as any other...

Meanwhile, on the subject of holy writ, I'd love to see the Hun editors release a list of the things they consider "sacred", and put it on the second page of each day's print edition by way of fair warning to those who are about to be exposed to their words.

The Articles Of Herald Sun Editorial Faith.

"Criminal sentences are never long enough." "The Greens want to inject your child with gay heroin." "Taxes are always too high." "Paedophiles are EVERYWHERE." "Unions are thugs." "The public have the right to know any titillating detail we can dig up about anyone they've ever heard of."

Other suggestions? What have I left out?

Almost painful to watch

2009-03-16T16:07:00.004+11:00

Ouch. Don't think anyone will make the mistake of thinking Jon Stewart's a soft touch again. (Watch all three parts.)

Pity that Rick Santelli dickhead didn't have the balls to defend his hateful rant... although, having watched the Cramer interview, Santelli wimping out of the one he was booked for was probably the most sensible thing he has ever done.

Moved on

2009-03-16T07:26:00.001+11:00

Why is this still a criminal offence in 2009?

49A. Begging or gathering alms

(1) A person must not beg or gather alms.

Penalty: 12 months imprisonment.

*Looks out window. Checks for smoke from steam trains, the sound of horses' hooves clattering up the street, convicts being marched onto sailing ships, gentlemen in comical hats. Nope - Can't see any evidence of having been transported back to Dickensian London. Apparently it's still 2009.*

How is it that we have made it a crime - and, worse, kept it a crime - for a human being to ask us for money*? How is it that our government considers it a good use of taxpayer dollars to spend money on police, lawyers, courts, judges and prisons, to incarcerate the most miserable and downtrodden in society? It doesn't matter whether it's someone desperately trying to garner enough money to buy their next meal (note: not considered enough for "necessity" and therefore not a defence under this strict liability offence) or someone who wants to get drunk in the park - how is irritating people a crime? Modern life is full of irritation - the idea that we fight back by locking up the sources of mild annoyance least capable of defending themselves is sickening.

If someone is threatening or intimidating people, putting them in fear, that's already a crime that the police can charge - common assault. If someone is stalking your business by constantly sitting in the doorway and blocking customers, you could apply for an intervention order.

But to criminalise - CRIMINALISE - the very act of simply saying "do you have a dollar?" Just because it makes us feel uncomfortable?

That's a very, very sad indictment on our society.

*unless they're a registered charity or are some shonky spiv flogging something at our doorstep or over the telephone.

ELSEWHERE: Some law journal articles from 2004-5 on the retention of the offence here and here, and an ABC Law Report on the subject.

In particular check out the links in the first one to comments by bastards like Robert Doyle who were worried about Melbourne's appearance on the world stage if we didn't get rid of beggars [by locking them up], and comments from actual beggars explaining why they beg. In particular:

‘Begging up money is very embarrassing but I’ve got to live too,’ said Kenny, a 32-year-old homeless man who had often begged. Brian, another homeless man, similarly stated that ‘[i]f you’re living on the street, you don’t have an address, so you can’t get on the dole, and so basically that’s the only way to get money’.

As for the effect of punishing begging in the criminal courts?

As one beggar put it, ‘we end up having to beg just to pay off the begging fine’.

Brilliant.

Oh, and retailers? Guess what beggars are forced to resort to whenever there's a crackdown on begging? Yes, that's right. Are you sure stopping them asking other people for charity is such a good idea?

UPDATE: Ever noticed that when people are defending a law which makes it a crime for someone to sit passively on the footpath with an upturned hat and a sign, they have to add other factors? "He might be being aggressive!" "She might smell of wee!" etc. As if that justifies making it a crime for someone to sit passively on the footpath with an upturned hat and a sign.

UPDATE #2: By the way, if anyone's going to retort "but when was the last time someone actually got jail for this offence" - homeless people get locked up on it all the time, and because they don't have stable accommodation, they're refused bail by a bail justice and have to wait until they can go before a magistrate. Which, if they get picked up on Friday afternoon, won't be until Monday morning, after a weekend in the cells.

Hun asks itself a very good question

2009-03-15T23:11:00.012+11:00

Indeed, Hun. Please do explain - what (apart from selling newspapers) have private photographs of a candidate as a teenager got to do with her election campaign?

"Accountability"? Get your hand off it, Robyn.

ELSEWHERE: Scott at Pure Poison slams Riley's offensively stupid effort, and Keri's got some questions, too.

UPDATE: Jonathan Green asks in Crikey:

Can you imagine a situation where 30-year-old nude photographs, of, let's see, Peter Costello, were presented to a Sunday newspaper editor and that editor, without having actually contacted Costello, saw fit to publish them?

Actually, yes, except for the "without having actually contacted him" part. I think they'd publish them like crazy.

Allowing = "pushing"

2009-03-14T22:38:00.001+11:00

Ah, homophobic bigots - they're amusingly lacking in self-awareness, aren't they?

Microsoft sneakily infects customers' computers overnight

2009-03-14T20:26:00.013+11:00

Um, no, Microsoft. Despite your sudden objectionably relentless "Office Genuine Advantage" harassment (which you won't let me remove), my copy of Office XP Pro is entirely legal and valid. (Isn't that what the shiny hologram stickers all over the disk were meant to ensure?) And guess what? I don't feel any need to jump through extra hoops now, seven years after I bought it, to prove that to you.

The only suggestion your nasty little nag thing will come up with to make the nags go away is that I download ANOTHER piece of your malevolent software to confirm that it's "valid" - to infect my computer with a second nasty piece of your DRM garbage to follow the unwanted malware you installed without permission on my computer yesterday via "automatic update" (now switched off) - and you know what? No. I am not running any more of your crap. I do not trust you. You clearly do not have my interests at heart. More than that, you clearly have nothing but absolute contempt for me as a (now former) customer.

I gather from the internet that if I send you my Office XP disk you might consider sending me a copy of your new, even more bloated office suite. And even if I believed that (I don't) - I DO NOT WANT YOUR NEW SHIT. I just want the software I bought seven years ago to still work. As it did yesterday, until you screwed it up. I do not want threats every time I turn it on. I do not want your garbage "genuine advantage" programs clogging up my computer resources every time it's restarted.

I am now downloading Open Office. I will never buy your software, of any sort, ever again. My next computer will run linux.

Go. To. Hell.

UPDATE: Open Office works brilliantly! Wish I'd dumped Microsoft years earlier.

UPDATE #2: A sweet, sweet sight:

I can't tell you how sure I am.

I can't deal with Lara again

2009-03-14T08:53:00.006+11:00

If the market worked, wouldn't there be a phone company out there that let you talk to a human without screaming at the phone and didn't try to charge you for the privilege of receiving a bill?

On those criteria, Vodafone's out. So far "out" that I am going to take some pleasure in warning customers away from them.

But to where? Do any of the following companies have a system whereby when you call for help you don't have to deal with a frustratingly stupid "voice activated" menu system and can get to a human being? Preferably in Australia?

~~Vodafone~~;
Optus
Telstra
3
Anyone else?

Your tales of phone company related frustration/murderous rage in the comments. Which other ones should future customers strike out?

Public services for the rich

2009-03-12T08:00:00.009+11:00

News.com.au reports on the upcoming Budget:

Among a raft of schemes being targeted is the Medicare safety net, introduced by John Howard to take the pressure off family medical expenses. It costs $300 million a year and the Government is looking to reduce that.

This is likely to see the scheme made off-limits to high earners, while the range of eligible medical procedures could also be wound back.

Whilst I approve in general of the principle of taxing the rich to provide decent public services for the poor, I actually think it's important that we do more than that - I want those decent public services provided TO ALL. Including the rich.

How is it a good idea to tax the rich to pay for Medicare and then send them off to pay for their own much better medical system as well? Not just because it increases their resentment ("Why am I paying for something I'm forbidden to use?") but because it actually works to downgrade the public system. If the powerful don't use the public health system, then they will care less about it, and it will get worse. Likewise public education.

Much better for the government to pay for the health needs of the rich and the education needs of their children just as much as it does for the rest of us. It would pay for this by taxing them significantly more than they're taking back out. The alternative is encouraging and expanding divisive two-tier systems on basic services, which are profoundly unjust. Why should any kid get a lesser education than some other kid simply because his or her parents won't pay for a better school? And why should any human being be pushed down the queue for medical assistance simply because they're not rich? Decent, first-class services should be available - but to everyone.

For example, I'd be more than happy if Melbourne Grammar, which I was once fortunate enough to attend, received more government money - provided that in exchange it didn't charge fees. Meaning that entry wasn't restricted to those children whose parents had not just the inclination but the means to pay. Because then that money is going to educate kids based on ability, and is available to the children of the poor as much as the rich.

If the public health and education systems were as good as they should be in a first world country like ours, then the rich wouldn't even feel the need to have separate doctors and teachers. If they do, then there's something wrong with the public offering.

Now I do object to public money going to things only the rich can afford - like private education and private health insurance. That just reinforces inequalities, and is effectively little more than a tax cut for the rich. But I don't object to public money going to basic, necessary services that everyone - rich and poor alike - can access. And should access.

Because we shouldn't be kicking the rich out of the public health system, or the public school system: we should be encouraging them back in.

Take that, nature

2009-03-12T07:10:00.002+11:00

Other nationalities' spirit, perhaps, but not Aussie spirit.

UPDATE: Some photos by photographer Neil Creek, taken at Kinglake a month and a day after it was destroyed. Heartbreaking stuff. (I'm still not particularly comfortable with the last image, and what has been used by the townsfolk to symbolise "solidarity and determination".)

Seriously, Lord, couldn't you have talked more about the things WE don't like?

2009-03-11T07:41:00.006+11:00

People claiming to represent "Christians" in general are outraged by the Australian government finally overturning the nasty, women-killing "gag rule" that prohibited Australian aid money going to medical clinics in the third world if they dared to also perform (or refer to organisations that would) operations that are entirely legal here - specifically, abortions.

Our accidental Senator (seriously, thanks ALP!) is up in arms about it, and the fundamentalist nutters who call themselves "The Australian Christian Lobby" despite only representing a very limited fraction of people who identify as Christian, are threatening TERRIBLE VENGEANCE upon the government.

There could be serious votes lost, if Malcolm Turnbull cynically keeps his mouth shut and lets the fundamentalists think he's on their side.

Anyway, I was curious as to how abortion came to be considered such a fundamental "Christian" issue - particularly since polls regularly show support for abortion laws at a figure which must include large numbers of people who identify on the census as "Christians". Because I have read much of the Bible, and I've never seen any passages in which this supposedly crucial issue was discussed. Is it like homosexuality, the other big "values" issue for fundamentalists like the ACL people, about which Jesus never spoke a word?

Yes, it is. There's no part of the Bible where abortion is spoken of directly, either in the Old Testament or the New. A fairly major omission for something that apparently defines so many Christians' votes (rather than the things Jesus actually DID speak about).

Writers with more patience than I have gone through each of the passages anti-abortion Christians use to try to back up their shouted claim that GOD HATES ABORTION, and pointed out how much of a reach the conclusion is.

In essence, to be persuaded by what they're shouting, you'd have to accept three not in any way clear propositions:

That God is real.
That the Bible, cobbled together as it is arbitrarily and from disparate materials by the early Christian church hundreds of years after Jesus died, is inerrant and unquestionably represents God's Word exactly as He intended it.
That God is implacably opposed to things He never specifically mentions; that verses on the face of it about entirely different things also OBVIOUSLY mean that God wanted us to view abortion as murder, even though He never says so directly, and there are at the very least equally compelling interpetations of those words that justify no such conclusion.

(And that's just considering their case on its religious merits, and ignoring the dire consequences for women when abortion is illegal, or the immorality of the state telling someone their body, their very being, is nothing more than an incubator over which they no longer have basic rights.)

Seriously, when will these people calling themselves "christians" start concentrating on the stuff that, according to them, Jesus actually did talk about?

By a staff writer

2009-03-11T07:36:00.002+11:00

Curious - what's the justification for newspapers publishing stories without the writer's name, simply referring to them as "by a staff writer"? It seems to be increasingly common, particularly when the paper is going for a smear and no-one really wants to put their name to it. I'd have thought accountability requires someone to put their name to their own words.

Why is this considered acceptable?

Actually, this happened to someone else

2009-03-10T22:40:00.003+11:00

Lady at doctor's, after handing back credit card: Sorry, was that Visa or Mastercard?
Me: Mastercard. (Putting it back in wallet). At least, I think it was a master. When I left home, it was but a learner. (Checks.) Now, it is a master. Card.
Keri: I can't believe I used to go out with you.

Taxpayer dollars wasted

2009-03-10T19:50:00.004+11:00

Honestly, those out of control law-and-order magistrates in NSW, wasting taxpayer dollars with crazy judgments that need to be promptly overturned on appeal, at great public expense:

After all, she had nothing on her criminal record, pleaded guilty straight away and had shown remorse. Judge Hosking took just 10 minutes to overturn the jail term.

"In my view the magistrate was clearly in error in sentencing Ms Back to three months imprisonment and that penalty falls completely outside the range of sentencing options," he said.

As a taxpayer (albeit in another state*), I'm outraged. Why are we* paying for this kind of stupidity?

Bloody conservative judicial activists. I'm sick of 'em.

*You know the rule, a "why am I paying taxes for this outrage" rant should never be held back by minor details like whether the person making the complaint actually is personally paying money to the relevant party or not.

On the one hand, you're a kid, and the crime was petty; on the other, I get a kickback for jailing you

2009-03-10T12:55:00.008+11:00

I've long had a problem with giving the special powers of the state - such as detaining people for punishment - to private companies, such as prisons. This is what you can get when you add the profit motive to sentencing:

Two Pennsylvania judges recently suspended by the state’s Supreme Court have pleaded guilty to federal charges that they took millions of dollars in kickbacks in an ongoing corruption scheme of incarcerating juveniles for a profit.

The disgraced Luzerne County judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan, admitted accepting $2.6 million in exchange for rulings that favored the developers of a local juvenile detention center. The judges regularly violated state and federal laws by sentencing many youths who had committed minor offenses to the residential youth facility, often without benefit of counsel.

Note also the injustices being facilitated by the lack of adequate public defenders: those who regularly complain about having "their taxes" used to "defend criminals" might want to consider what would happen if they weren't.

For example:

Anita Barraud: Marsha Levick says up to 2,000 juveniles were wrongly incarcerated; many of the crimes or misdemeanours were extremely trivial.

Marsha Levick: Things like shoplifting a jar of spice that cost $4; taking change out of a parked car, where the car was open, and there was change visible; putting charges on a grandparent's charge card; a fight in a school, where one girl slaps a girl, and the other girl slaps her back; and the girl who slaps her back is then charged with an assault. So a lot of it is minor infractions, some not atypical adolescent misbehaviour, that resulted in these children being removed from their homes and their communities and their schools and placed in these facilities.

Anita Barraud: And I mean a girl charged with a cheeky drawing on her MySpace site or her assistant principal, gets three months.

Marsha Levick: Correct. Yes, it doesn't make any sense. How many teenagers did that yesterday?

Of course, I can't imagine any in the Australian community putting up with ludicrously harsh sentences for juveniles convicted of petty crimes...

The whole idea of private prisons has long bothered me. We want prisons to rehabilitate - but, if they're making a profit out of inmates, that's directly contrary to the interests of those who run the facilities. Why rehabilitate effectively when an unreformed criminal represents future business?

And just how do you make a profit running a prison anyway? It's not "efficiency" that enables a profit to be carved out of what the government had to pay to run the facility originally - it's cutting corners on the state's basic responsibilities to those it has imprisoned. Prisons are not an open market in which competition could conceivably be said to work: the only point of differentiation they can make to their "customer" - the State - is saving it money without it being investigated for human rights abuses. And no prizes for guessing how they do that.

Private prisons are a bad idea, even before you bring the corruption of the judicial process into it.

LICK MAH PAW

2009-03-09T10:15:00.003+11:00

Well, we were wondering which would be the dominant one of the two cats.

Question answered.

UPDATE: More of the set at Keri's.

Is that the word?

2009-03-08T15:46:00.005+11:00

Found in Oblivion:

Why would anybody employ that spell?

OH NO YOU DON'T

2009-03-07T14:51:00.009+11:00

No, you're not co-opting Firefly.

When Reynold's crew declares that they're going to "misbehave" and "be bad guys", they don't mean they're going to be arseholes.

I think you misunderstood.

PS - apart from calling on conservatives to be obstructionist, guess what Green's one big idea is? His defiant, heroic, why-don't-they-make-a-movie-about-him idea? After eight COMPLETELY SUCCESSFUL years of the Republicans cutting taxes for the rich it's... cut more taxes! Whoever said these conservatives weren't full of new ideas?

Embarrassed cough

2009-03-07T08:56:00.005+11:00

Uh, yes. About last night. Sorry - got a bit carried away. Will try to tone it down in future.

UPDATE: The Age asks:

Yes, yes. Please do.

"I was sitting on the couch and it shook for a few seconds. I wondered what had happened."
"I was feeding the pets and the ground shook for a few seconds. I wondered what had happened."
"I was chatting with friends at the dinner table and it shook for a few seconds. We wondered what had happened."

Thrilling! I can't wait to read more on a newspaper website!

RACV roadside now crap

2009-03-04T23:32:00.003+11:00

In the last twenty four hours or so my car has taken to regularly overheating and dying by the side of the road. The first time it did it, the RACV took an hour to send someone out to look at it, and he put some water in the radiator to replace the volume which the car had poured out all over the freeway, and sent me on my way. I made it two exits before it did it again, and the RACV took an hour to send a tow truck to take me up to the mechanic. (Then the heavens opened, and the wind grew stronger and destroyed my umbrella and I ran back home in the rain.)

The mechanic replaced the water pump today and promised that it was all fixed. Then tonight, on the way to soccer it happened again. This time the RACV took more than an hour and a quarter to send a tow truck.

How does it take an hour and a quarter to send a tow truck on what was, since I was able to get through on their phone line in less than ten minutes for once, apparently a comparatively quiet night?

When the first roadside guy eventually arrived last evening, I asked him about the apparently abnormally busy day he was having. "Busy?" he replied. "Not at all. Very quiet day." So how come it took more than an hour to arrive? "Ah, well, I'm an independent contractor - the RACV prefers to keep the jobs for their own guys."

So it appears that I sat by the side of the road in 32 degree heat for considerably longer than necessary because the RACV wanted to see if there was a way they could save a few bucks by squeezing me in with one of their in-house guys even though there was someone available as part of their service who could've been there much quicker.

Oddly enough, the RACV's new "sod it you can wait an hour each time and we don't give a crap" policy is not advertised when they send out the invoice each year. They pretend that they offer a "24 hour Roadside Assistance" service, but don't point out that the name refers to the amount of time you might have to wait for someone to come and rescue you...

Three callouts in just over a day, and it's taken an hour or more for each one. That's absolutely shithouse service.

Lucky there's no competition in that business, isn't it?

Serious news site fail

2009-03-04T16:10:00.009+11:00

In its desperate plunge to become The Age of the tabloid world, here's the headline story on news.com.au right now:

On a day on which News Ltd reports we're "halfway to recession" and terrorists have shot up a cricket match, failblog is their lead story? They're making The Age's Facebook obsession look dignified.

Oh, and the fact that News Ltd needs to put explanatory text on each of its failblog examples to help readers get them? FAIL.

Lifetime Jeremy Immunity

2009-03-04T08:43:00.006+11:00

This is what you have to do to earn it: not sue me.

In return, I promise never to criticise anyone ever again, certainly not anyone with access to corporate-size deep pockets who can drag proceedings out forever, no matter what they've done, because they might sue me for "defamation" - even if it is a flimsily-conceived suit that they should ultimately lose. (Foolishly, I have not confined my criticism to weaker targets who could never practically fight back. In fact, I've pretty much only gone after bigger ones.)

I am terribly sorry for anything I may ever have said in the past that could conceivably be twisted the wrong way, even if the most damage it could sensibly be said to have done is hurt their feelings, and I resolve never to criticise anyone ever again - at least no-one with access to the aforementioned deep pockets - no matter how much they bloody well deserve it.

No, wait, that would be a completely gutless way of existing. Offer withdrawn.

This is how they report serious financial news?

2009-03-03T15:20:00.003+11:00

News at News:

"Bugger"? On a top-of-site story about interest rates? Really?

Marriage by default

2009-03-03T08:43:00.004+11:00

I'm in two minds about NSW's new de facto laws. On the one hand, it's a good thing that gay defactos are now being treated the same as heterosexual defactos, and gaining some access to the protections of family law - about time. On the other, I have an issue with the law deciding for people when their relationships have become Formal Marriage-Like Relationships, without their actually specifying that intention first.

Marriage is the moment where you and your partner commit to each other, in front of your family and friends, for life. It is not defined by religion, or children, or gender - at its core, it is about two people committing to each other. Deliberately, intentionally, knowing what that means. At a specific, identifiable moment .

It's a definable point where a relationship becomes a lifetime commitment, where two people become one and promise to look after each other. Prior to that there are undoubtedly a whole lot of little steps where the relationship moves towards that stage, where the commitment builds - but who are the lawyers to say that after "two years" it's the same as a marriage? That two years point may pass without either partner even realising it - its legal significance, in particular.

If people want to commit to each other for life, then get married*. If they don't want to make that commitment, then the law shouldn't be telling them that they have anyway just because they've crossed an arbitrary time limit.

The idea that sex gives someone property rights is extremely outdated, and has little to recommend it in the modern world. Independent adults form relationships all the time that are not intended to be equivalent to marriage - and it's incredibly patronising for the law to step in, like a demanding parental figure, and impose marriage upon them.

Of course partners - or friends, or acquaintances, or anyone else - should have rights to property obtained together: but you don't need the family law for that, those rights exist already.

And of course the family law absolutely should kick in when children are involved - because it's no longer just about the two people in the relationship, and it does make sense for the state to step in to protect children's interests.

But when it's just two people, let them get to marriage in their own time, if that's what they want. Let them make their own commitment. The state shouldn't be imposing marriage on them by default.

*When the marriage laws are finally fixed to give gays equal rights to the rest of us, of course; in the meantime I can certainly understand their wanting some protection in their relationships. (This is one reason why the "let's give them almost equal rights as defactos, they should be satisfied with that" line doesn't impress me - forcing gay people who're just in a relationship to be treated as if they were married is just as stupid as not letting gay people who want to make that commitment to each other get married.)

UPDATE: You know what we might need in this argument? Just to settle down for a moment and define what the word "marriage" means insofar as the law cares.

I'd suggest that the following things commonly associated with some marriages are not the essential characteristics of marriage:

religion;
the word "marriage";
the wife taking the husband's name;
the ceremony;
the white dress;
having kids;
the gender of the participants;
the race of the participants;
the culture of the participants;
dowries; etc

Why are none of these essential?

Because they're not common to all marriages, and
Because they don't change the fundamental point of marriage, which is THE BINDING COMMITMENT FOR LIFE BETWEEN TWO CONSENTING ADULTS.

If the law is going to pick a word to describe these formally committed, binding, life-long relationships, then I'd suggest "marriage" fits the bill.

Did you know that?

2009-02-28T08:20:00.007+11:00

...Many cats don't believe in Saturday morning sleep-ins for their owners?

Here're some cute photos of our little feline friends, taken on their last evening alive.

I miss them so much.

PS No, I didn't even bloody yell at them. I am the worst disciplinarian ever.

UPDATE: Keri has uploaded some shots, too.

Still an easy target

2009-02-27T13:46:00.007+11:00

Man, once you draw their attention, they're never letting go...

Culture shock

2009-02-27T13:21:00.004+11:00

This whole "semi-professional blogging" thing over at Crikey has required a bit of an adjustment in approach which I must confess I hadn't anticipated, and which was highlighted by this post the other day.

When you're a blogger, and you're criticising something a journalist has published, you don't email or call them first - partly because you don't think it really matters, but also because you've little confidence they'd reply to you if you did, so why bother? However, when you have a professional organisation to name when you contact the person - when you can say "It's Jeremy from Crikey" - then it seems that you actually have a duty to do so. Because you can.

It didn't immediately click that I suddenly had the ability to do that, and therefore should. I don't think of myself as a journalist - I'm not trained as a journalist, and this blogging thing is merely a hobby. I'm a lawyer, and a blogger, not a journo. But Crikey is a professional media organisation, and the standards required are higher.

The point has been made, and for anything in Crikey I will henceforth play the journalism game - particularly if I could arguably be seen to be drawing implications about what a journalist has done from their piece, rather than simply commenting on the opinion they've expressed. (Historically that hasn't been a problem, since previous subjects have pretty much exclusively been publishing their mere opinions.)

Still, after almost five years of amateur blogging, it's a bit of a culture shock.

Won't you do your bit to help corporate Australia pollute a bit more?

2009-02-27T07:10:00.004+11:00

According to GetUp, the Government's proposed "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme" counts private home emission reductions towards industry targets. In other words, the more you sacrifice at home - the more some corporate polluter can emit instead. End result of any effort you make: zero. Well, to the environment - but you are generously donating to some company's bottom line.

Absolutely bizarre. Clever, sneaky, and prior to GetUp and similar organisations who can make noise about it, probably something they'd have got away with... but bizarre. And shameless.

Wonder how long it'll stand now.

If you want people to look at you

2009-02-25T09:43:00.004+11:00

Available at the Rush Limbaugh store:

I'm trying to imagine the mindset of someone who would wear this. They would have to be pig-ignorant of what "water boarding" actually is, of the fact that Gitmo's main effect on America's security was to increase the motivation for people to attack it, and flat-out indifferent to the notion of the rule of law. To wear this T-shirt, you'd have to not just view extrajudicial detention as not just a necessary evil, but something positive - something to be celebrated.

Either that or be a complete dickhead who just likes infuriating people.

I wonder how well it sold?

Andrew Bolt is a complete and total SNIP

2009-02-25T08:14:00.009+11:00

What kind of newspaper columnist launches attacks on a critical website whilst refusing to name it or link to it and deleting any comments that do? Who directly quotes from it, but deliberately leaves out key parts of the quotes, and then prevents his readers from checking the source and making up their own minds?

A total coward and hypocrite, that's who. Even tim Blair can link to critics.

Andrew Bolt's "SNIP - ERIC BEECHER'S SITE" nonsense deserves to be mocked around the internet today. Mocked, highlighted, reviled, laughed at, deplored and derided.

He really has once and for all revealed what a gutless wonder he is.

On the other hand, Andy has certainly come up with a handy new debating tactic. From now on, whenever you call me on something a lefty has said, I'm going to declare that the lefty in question is actually a right-wing sock puppet set up to make lefties look bad - and lambast you and all right-wingers for sinking so low. Henceforth I shall call this technique "doing a Bolt".

PS: The only people I won't link to are those who've published stalking pieces about my family or private life. Obviously none of the Pure Poison authors have ever done that to Bolt.

UPDATE: Do you think Andy would have ever got the hits he claims if his opponents played his childish game and refused to link to him?

First infrastructure project: manufacture some basic audio equipment for the Premier's office

2009-02-24T15:20:00.004+11:00

Don't they have microphones in Queensland?

You couldn't tell it was satire?

2009-02-24T09:21:00.017+11:00

After Pure Poison launched last week, various well-respected people with their own sites on the internet - from my old mate tim to a guy with an increasingly pretentious and unreadable blog to a hilarious lady with a keen sense of humour (and a love of wacky pranks) to some of the bloggers who know me as well as anyone who's searched for snippets of my private life very, very keenly indeed for a number of years could know me - made a number of positive and constructive suggestions to help our nascent site out. One of the things they suggested was that we try to rise above the bilious spite and bitchiness that apparently infused The Blair/Bolt Watch Project (I'm sure one of them will be able to point me in the direction of some examples).

Maybe they're right - maybe it's time for a clean slate.

So I've got a confession to make. Andrew Bolt and tim Blair suspect that my poisonous comrades and I have been planting nasty comments at their sites in order to make conservatives look bad. Scott has denied any involvement, which is fair enough, because he's entirely innocent. They all are.

Except me.

Yes, it's time to come clean. I admit it. I've been setting up a complicated sting on the online blogs of both Andrew Bolt and tim Blair for coming on four years now. What I've been doing is uploading dozens of racist, stupid, illiterate and offensive comments on each one of their posts - making insupportable claims about lefty groups, taunting lefties about their personal lives, trying to get them sacked, abusing their families, demanding that they be killed, portraying them as worthless scum who need to be eradicated, that sort of thing. You know A Western Heart? That site is one of mine. It's where I practice making the most outrageously stupid attacks - ones carefully crafted to unfairly make fringe conservatives look like a bunch of vicious, ridiculous, hate-filled nutbags - before I send them through to News Ltd. Every one of those embarrassingly nasty and contemptible comments on Blair's, and Bolt's, sites - that's me. The only true conservatives there are the polite and logical ones. The rest are my sock puppets.

If you want to know which ones are me - it's almost everyone. I've been very busy.

And I've been hurting Andrew's and tim's credibility for years with this nonsense.

I am so very, very sorry.

I guess the only thing I can say in my defence is - guys, at least I've boosted your hits. If I wasn't uploading hundreds of comments and refreshing your sites tens of thousands of times each week, how would Andy's hit statistics have got so high? On the back of genuine readers? Sure.

Still, considering the ad revenue I've personally contributed to your sites all those thousands of times I've commented, maybe we can call it even. Can you both forgive me?

Promise I won't do it again.

PS Before we let it go completely, I wouldn't mind you guys posting some of your favourites from my efforts in the comments. If you've seen something ludicrous and deranged on Blair's site, or Andy's site, over the last few years - it was me. I'd love to know which ones you remember.

UPDATE: My confession appears to have made Mr Bolt angry:

I can retire happy. I won't, but I could.

UPDATE #2: The above's a pretty diabolical thing to have done, I admit. I have brought shame upon teh left. Or have I? What if I'm a sock-puppet of a rightwinger set up to make lefties look bad by being so villainous as to set up rightwingers to look bad. Is there a rightwinger out there pretending to be me pretending to be rightwingers being arseholes? Or is that rightwinger really a lefty, intending to make rightwingers look bad?

I think the answer is obvious: whatever makes you feel better about yourself.

Something not quite right

2009-02-20T15:40:00.006+11:00

This story of contemptible post-bushfire profiteering just doesn't make sense:

They both had no idea what to do, or where to turn. But it seemed help had arrived when a car drove up and a man offered to bury their horses.

"We had to bury them, they deserved that," said Mr Pickering on Thursday as he picked through the rubble.

"We were so happy to get the help, but when he was done he presented me with a $650 bill. I couldn't believe it."

Luckily the workers at the local relief centre at Wallan will cover the costs, but they cannot stop the initial profiteering.

What? If someone comes up and does something apparently out of charity, with no indication given that they're going to seek payment, in the circumstances, and then they present you with a bill, you've no obligation to pay it at all. Why would anyone think you did? Why would workers at the local relief centre at Wallan pay this person a cent?

There's either more to this story than what's being reported, or someone needs to have a talk with Mr Pickering and the relief workers, quickly, before they're fast-talked out of more money. I bet it's the former.

You get the suspicion that the journos who file stories like this don't actually care about the details of the tale at all, which is why they often seem to miss the obvious questions. It's as if their attitude is - all I need to do is dig out something that sounds outrageous, and the audience won't care about the details!

Please tell me we do.

PS: Driving up the Hume this morning past Wallan was a sobering experience. It's all black, and brown, and destroyed houses, and burned metal road signs, and it smells - still, almost two full weeks after the fires - like driving through an enormous ashtray.

Virgin Blue represents all companies, even when the're the only ones doing something

2009-02-19T11:37:00.005+11:00

Oh, that's good to see. The executive class agreeing to share workers' pain!

Herald Sun: "EXECUTIVES slashing hundreds of jobs as tough times hit agree to pay themselves one-third less."

Talk about a crushing rebuttal to the lefties' "the executive class is making the poor shoulder the majority of the burden" rhetoric. I mean, look at the detail in the story. Look at the executives from all those companies who are voluntarily... wait a second. The only company whose executives the Herald Sun reports are taking a paycut is Virgin Blue.

No-one else.

Oh.

I wish I hadn't clicked through to the story, now. From the blurb on the main page it seemed so much more widespread, so much more heartwarming.

I suppose the lesson is, never look too closely into what the Herald Sun claims - you'll only be disappointed.

Sigh.

Pure Poison

2009-02-19T11:24:00.001+11:00

Why so little blogging this week, I hear you ask?

Preparing, with Scott, Ant and Tobias, the launch of the replacement for The Blair/Bolt Watch Project - PURE POISON, at Crikey.

For all your Bolt, Blair, Ackerman, Devine, Albrechtson, Marr, Adams... -watching needs. Where deranged rhetoric really does get what's coming to it.

About bloody time

2009-02-16T11:45:00.001+11:00

Finally, the poor won't have to endure agonising pain without treatment just because the cause is dental. If he goes through with a national dental scheme, it'll be one of Rudd's most significant achievements in government.

And he will no longer merely be Nothoward. Bravo.

How does publishing an accused's name help anyone?

2009-02-16T11:41:00.010+11:00

Other than media outlets, obviously. And lazy vigilantes.

A lawyer representing media outlets told the hearing to overturn the suppression order that no evidence had been called to say the man was in danger. He said murderers and pedophiles appeared in court every day and their names were not suppressed.

Good point. Maybe they should be, too.

Publish the names of convicted criminals, by all means, but accused - why? So that courts have an even harder task finding an untainted jury? So that idiots who don't understand the principle "innocent until proven guilty" can get started on their revenge early? What is the benefit in that information being out there?

I mean, apart from the fact that his name being exposed magically causes the fires' victims to come back to life and their homes to reappear exactly as they were and immunises the state from future bushfires, of course.

UPDATE: And the psychotic vigilante crap has started. Check out the entirely rational contributions from citizens who clearly grasp the distinction between someone who's been found guilty of a crime and someone who's merely been ACCUSED of one.

"Firm Friends" (an increasingly accurately-named photo series)

2009-02-15T08:24:00.003+11:00

From this to this:

I luvs you and when you're not looking I am going to steal your food.

PS Bonus plotting cat photo:

What evil deed shall I perform next?

Arson suspect arrested in connection with bushfires

2009-02-14T14:53:00.007+11:00

Disclaimer: someone I know on the internets sent me this, and in the interests of giving the people who obviously love arsonists and hate God and who are entirely insensitive to the suffering of the fires' victims a voice EXPRESSLY SO WE MIGHT JOIN TOGETHER AND CONDEMN THEM, I repost it here. Of course, since I am as incapable of determining who a piece of satire is aimed at as the most hysterical, dishonest polemicist out there, I'm as disgusted by it as you are.

Police have arrested a suspect in connection with last weekend's Victorian bushfires, that claimed more than 180 lives and resulted in the loss of more than 1,800 homes.

The accused, a 5,000 year old deity from the Middle East whose identity was suppressed by the court, had been seen by witnesses using lightning to spark fires as recently as yesterday. There was also speculation that he had been behind the record-breaking heatwave that had increased the severity of the fires.

Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon congratulated detectives on the arrest.

"For a while there we were suspecting that the greenhouse gas emissions of modern economies might have been the cause of the unprecedented conditions on Saturday, including it being Melbourne's hottest day on record," Ms Nixon said.

"But the conditions were only the setting for the disaster. The spark was the real cause, and now we know who was behind it."

Alleged associates of the suspect had recently been promising that he was going to engage in some kind of vigilante activity, including punishing opponents with "fire and brimstone".

His threats of coming "like a thief in the night" appear to have also resulted in looting charges.

The unemployed deity was last night in protective custody at an undisclosed location. He will appear in Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Monday.

UPDATE: Some irresponsible online sites have named the suspect. This is a serious contempt of court - amongst other things, seriously complicating things for prosecutors - and any commenter who tries that here will be permanently banned.

Liam Sheahan's not one of Saturday's heroes

2009-02-13T14:21:00.011+11:00

There were plenty of real heroes on Saturday whose brave deeds deserve celebrating. Who put their lives on the line to save others. Who helped those who needed it most.

So why is Liam Sheahan being treated as one? Hardline "god I hate greenies" types and lazy newspaper and TV journos have been falling all over themselves to praise him. Apparently we're supposed to share his sense of "vindication" after his bloody-minded I OWN THIS PART OF THE FOREST SO I CAN DO WITH IT WHAT I LIKE position, in which he obliterated any of the natural landscape unfortunate enough to be within 100m of where his house had been built, apparently saved it - in much the same way as the house having NOT been built in the middle of the bush would've done.

In Mr Sheahan's worldview, a landowner like him should be able to destroy as much of the natural environment that happens to overlap his property as he likes, regardless of where that happens to be. The local council (referred to henceforth, without much in the way of justification, as "the pinko commie greenie scum") might not agree - they objected to his nuking the local landscape and took him to court, ultimately fining him some $50,000 - but who are they to apply planning restrictions? The ~~democratically elected local government body with responsibility for looking after the area~~ pinko commie greenie scum? Bah!

But Liam is not really a Darryl Kerrigan, who fought for the status quo when an airport wanted to chop down his house. No, Liam is like a man who buys a houseboat and then demands that the lake it floats on be drained because his family might drown. Or some arrogant twat who buys a unit next to a major concert venue and then demands that they stop making noise.

Seriously - if Mr Sheahan wanted to live in a desolate moonscape, why didn't he just move to one of those treeless plains north or west of Melbourne? They don't suffer bushfires, because barely anything grows there. The continent is full of vast, empty, spaces already. It hardly needs Liam to create more.

Imagine if the forests of Victoria really were invaded with an army of Liam Sheahans, determined to live wherever they like, however they like, and destroy whatever gets in the way of that? There'd be no bloody bush left.

UPDATE The fawning coverage of Mr Sheahan appears to have given others ideas. Mr Mitchell lost his home - but he's going to rebuild, in the same place. And he's determined that no unprecedented heat wave and 120km/h wind-driven inferno is going to take his house a second time...

The Blame Game

2009-02-11T14:38:00.008+11:00

Since the embers on the first set of horribly killed bushfire victims are apparently now sufficiently cool for the important task of using them for political point-scoring to begin, it's time to ask ourselves some frankly inexcusable questions. Who can best tastelessly use other people's pain and suffering for their own selfish rhetorical ends? Who should we be blaming for the death and destruction? An Onymous Lefty is proud to present a handy score-card on the targets thus far selected.

Criminals (arsonists)
For: if they did light any of the fires, then they added to the destruction.
Against: the fires would almost certainly have happened anyway, and concentrating attention and blame on the criminals is a distraction from pushing governments to put better strategies in place for next time. (We've deterred future arsonists with some really stiff penalties, so it won't happen again, job done!)
Rating: 4. Sells newspapers, solves little.

The Greens slash (where convenient) greenies
For: some of them, we allege, without much in the way of evidence, oppose fuel-reduction strategies which could have conceivably helped, possibly, although Saturday's conditions were unprecedented so probably not.
Against: Difficult to find any evidence of them opposing forest management strategies that are actually designed to contain fires; difficult to find evidence of any previously-prepared fire-management strategy that would've worked on Saturday.
Rating: 5. Useful with an audience who already believes the Greens want to take us back to the stone age. (IN FLAMES.) Not so useful with an audience who'll go and check with the Greens what their policy actually is.

Pro-choicers (filthy God-angering baby-killing abortionists)
For: Correlation
Against: Causation
Rating: 1. A complete embarrassment that costs you any credibility you ever had.

Global Warming
For: a growing number of increasingly devastating extreme weather events is actually predicted by global warming theory, and this is obviously one of them.
Against: maybe the sun's getting hotter? Until we rule that possibility out, we should make no changes whatsoever to what we do. Let's err on the side of non-caution.
Rating: 5. Should be an 8, but I'm hoping against hope that the denialists turn out against all probability to have pulled off a flukey win. If the climate change scientists are right, then we're all stuffed.

Warmenistas
For: their tasteless pointing out of the above makes the victims' pain more severe.
Against: No, it doesn't.
Rating: 4. Only preaching to the converted.

Lack of decent warning systems
For: they clearly did actually significantly contribute to the number of deaths
Against: None. We can do better.
Rating: 8. Something constructive to work on to save lives next time. Point taken off because it doesn't help you win any political arguments.

Nature
For: it did actually create the conditions for the fires. And was the thing that caught fire.
Against: Difficult to imprison. Doesn't listen to reason. Possibly hates us at the moment.
Rating: 1. Let's not encourage its further wrath.

Any further suggestions? Make them in the comments.

Hint: if you can find some way of linking the tragedy to your enemies, you will win any future political argument with them. But you only get one shot, and if it fails, you'll look like the dickiest dickhead ever. Be careful.

I want someone to blame

2009-02-10T14:25:00.013+11:00

From Kevin Rudd's angry "mass murderers" comment to the Herald Sun's helpful online poll yesterday (result: Victorians are not big fans of fire-lighters at the moment), there's been somewhat of an effort to find human villains behind the weekend's (and ongoing) tragedy.

Obviously when something bad happens people want some confidence that at least it can be avoided in future. And where some concentrate on better methods of managing bushfires once they've started, and on improving communications so that people aren't caught completely unawares when a ridiculously-fast moving inferno attacks them, others want the cause to be humans who can be caught, punished and prevented from ever doing it again. Hence all the headline stories now being updates on the toll with a note as to how well the police are doing CATCHING THE MASS MURDERERS RESPONSIBLE. It's entirely understandable that there's some comfort to be gleaned from being able to blame the devastation on a human being we can get our hands on, since "Nature" as an entity is pretty hard to hate and/or imprison - but that doesn't mean it's a sensible focus.

Because the truth is that the bushfires didn't require any human intervention at all. Catching an idiot with a match and locking him away forever won't stop the next lot of bushfires, because they will happen anyway. Victoria on Saturday was a tinder-box that would have caught fire if someone merely looked at it the wrong way. And, far from any suspected arsonists, that's exactly what it did.

The growing emphasis on "mass murdering" human villains is a distraction from the real issue of how we can better deal with bushfires - however started - in the future. How can we make sure people in affected areas have a real warning? How else can we contain these fires before they run out of control? In the new climate, do firebreaks need to be larger? Does the CFA need better funding for better equipment and training of more volunteers?

That's a lot more constructive than hoping the police will catch some arsehole on whom we can vent all the rage and frustration we're otherwise left shouting at an unfeeling smoky sky.

ELSEWHERE This terrible disaster is all David's political opponents' fault. (Via Luli.)

ELSEWHERE #2 Criminals, greenies and, according to the ironically-named "Catch The Fire" nutbags - abortionists. Who would you like to tastelessly use the unprecedented loss of life to bash? (Via zoot.)

IN A PREVIOUS ELSEWHERE Andrew Blair comments on David Packham's article:

Hear, hear! I also blame my political opponents for everything that happened. All those deaths. If only people had listened to me before the disaster and enacted everything I told them to do, this wouldn't have happened. I hate to say I told you so, but... In closing, everyone who didn't agree with me should be ashamed of themselves.

"Andrew Blair"? Relentlessly obvious sarcasm? Hmm, I wonder...

Help

2009-02-08T22:17:00.006+11:00

The previous post was, of course, not a joke. It was also not about the bushfires.

There is nothing funny about the devastating inferno that tore through Victoria over the weekend and killed so many people. There are also no words even close to adequate to use to describe it - or the absolutely heartbreaking individual tragedies it occasioned.

There's only one constructive thing that can be said on the subject: please donate if you can.

Weather looking pretty pleased with itself

2009-02-08T17:29:00.007+11:00

As a general rule, I prefer weather to fit within the boundaries of previous experience. I just don't think it needs to be trying to surpass its previous efforts: a humble contentment to just muddle along the way it always has, within established parameters, would be fine with me. "Exciting" may be a great word when applied to certain things - but the local climate is not one of them.

Hence me not being so thrilled about Melbourne having just experienced its hottest day on record. Not just because of the massive destruction it wrought, and the tragic loss of life - but because now the local climate has got a taste for over-achievement, who knows what it's going to aim for next? Try for a ludicrously cold or otherwise destructive winter? Work on an even hotter summer next year?

Weather - settle down, old son. You don't have to prove yourself to us. No, really. Please don't.

Cat burglar story cheapened

2009-02-06T14:19:00.005+11:00

It was a fairly normal silly little "cat steals underwear... which makes it a CAT BURGLAR!! And not a PURRVERT!!11!! LOL!!11!" piece in the Daily Telegraph, until suddenly, at the end, something unforgivably awful appeared:

Cat psychic Scott King said the cat is an animal that can teach us to get in touch with our creative self.

"The fact that Mr Hand's cat is stealing possessions, particularly underwear, is a sign that it's time for him to start listening to his dreams."

Is it possible to be demoted from the "Weird True Freaky" section of the Tele? Is there a lower job? If so, Justin Vallejo has earned it.

I can't believe you people can't see how tragic that was

2009-02-05T10:12:00.005+11:00

How many column inches will we have to write on the subject of the four-year old girl who was thrown off the West Gate Bridge before you people understand how absolutely tragic Darcey Freeman's death was?

I'd have thought it was obvious. But it doesn't seem like you appreciate sufficiently the horror of the incident, because your outpouring of grief over someone you never knew hasn't yet reached Diana-esque proportions. I mean, you're getting there, slowly, but you can do better. WE KNOW YOU CAN. How about demanding a Darcey Freeman day from your local politician? Let them PROVE that they're opposed to the throwing from bridges of little girls!

And we're going to keep writing about it, and publishing ever-more maudlin and tragic news and opinion articles on the subject of how terrible and wrong it is for a four year old to be killed by her father, until we know you see it. Or you stop buying newspapers plastered with her image.

We're just not convinced you get it yet. You people should be ashamed of yourselves.

Offend me

2009-02-05T09:14:00.009+11:00

Apropos of nothing in particular*, I wanted to post some thoughts on the matter of "offending" people.

There are opposing schools of thought on the subject. At one extreme, you've got people who think it's a matter of high principle to say whatever the hell they like and if someone else is hurt by it, that's their problem, why should I give a damn? At the other you've got people who appear to think that anything that someone determined to find offence could conceivably find some way of twisting into an attack on an often-maligned group of people should be shouted down immediately and the careless speaker shunned and chastened. (You know, the extreme inaccurately described by rightwingers as "political correctness".)

And obviously most people would have views somewhere between those extremes. But where - if you're someone who values free speech, objects to the notion of whole subjects being taboo, but who doesn't want to carelessly hurt vulnerable people - to draw the line?

Well, I'd have thought it was fairly straightforward: at the point at which a person in the relevant group would reasonably be hurt. If you're using a word that describes that group carelessly as an insult to retort to someone else, for example. If you're reinforcing negative stereotypes about that group that they regularly confront in daily life. If you're treating them as anything less than human beings of equal worth and dignity to yourself. That requires putting yourself in their shoes, taking into account their daily experience as much as a personal with a reasonable amount of empathy could imagine it, and making some concessions for the cumulative effect of regularly-repeated slights.

But it's about harm and hurt, not "offence". People can choose to be "offended" by anything - I know some who are "offended", for example, by the use of occasional coarse language on this blog and elsewhere. And I couldn't care less - they're not hurt, the thing that "offends" them is others not living by the rules they'd like to impose on them. They're "offended" by this evidence of their lack of power over other people. And I don't see why anyone should feel guilty for that.

Of course, if you want to hurt someone with a cruel barb, you're within your rights to do so. There are even some circumstances in which it could be quite defensible; where it might be the lesser of two evils. But be conscious that that's what you're doing - and if you're doing it unfairly or unnecessarily, be prepared to be called on it. Called names.

Which of course you'd understand already, if you weren't a bunch of slack, blog-reading morons.

*Watch those leftists fight! Entertainment for the whole family.

$950 is nice - but how about if we give the poor people less, and the rich people more?

2009-02-04T12:40:00.008+11:00

Hang on - that $950 goes to poor people? We've got to put a stop to this!

Mr Turnbull said the Opposition would vote against the package in Parliament because the huge sum of taxpayers' money would be better spent in other ways...

He said the tax cuts planned for next year should be made effective immediately and backdated to January 1. "It does not put $950 in everybody's pocket today, but that's the point - it increases permanent income and it therefore provides a greater incentive to work and to invest."

Yes, tax cuts - that way, the wealthier you are, the more money you get back. The closest thing to a High Principle the economic conservatives have - that life would somehow be better for all of us, if only the rich had an even bigger slice of the pie.

PS: Why $950? Is there some significance in it being $50 less than a round thousand? Seems like an odd number for them to pick.

OUT OF TOUCH JUDGES SOFT ON CRIME

2009-02-03T14:37:00.012+11:00

As you've no doubt heard, a teenager was just given three months in jail by a magistrate at a local court in NSW for drawing on a cafe wall:

Magistrate Ian McRae sentenced Back, who had no prior convictions, to three months' jail for intentionally or recklessly destroying or damaging property on January 11.

Three months? ONLY THREE MONTHS?

Further evidence of a judiciary soft on crime and out of touch with community sentiments. How would McRae like it if it was his wall? What about all the walls that Back will be free to deface in only a matter of months? Hell, if he was only going to ruin the girl's prospects for rehabilitation by imprisoning her (on her very first, and non-violent, offence) with actual hardcore criminals for a pitiful THREE MONTHS, he might as well have gone the whole hog and given her some sane, constructive sentence like diversion or community work that would have enabled her to repay her debt to the community whilst teaching her to value other people's property.

I don't want to live in a world where children who commit petty crimes are not given ludicrously harsh sentences, any more than I want to live in a world where people who commit genuinely serious crimes are not tortured, slowly run over by steamrollers and then painfully executed in a manner which appeases my bloodlust. Do you?

Oh, and shame on her lawyer for appealing the indefensible sentence and wasting the appeal court's time seeking a decision which at least bears some connection to justice. McRae might have suspected that you'd do that, of course, and that his frankly ludicrous act of judicial bastardry would necessitate the waste of more public money when a non-mad judicial body has to go and fix it - but it's still your fault that you've assisted her in exercising her rights. The taxpayer is very angry with you.

They always have the answer

2009-02-02T12:49:00.006+11:00

The unbridled "free" market stuffed the world over last year - so what should we do this year? I know, the free market types LOVE tax cuts. Let's give 'em more of what they want?

THE chastened experts who manage the world economy have written off this year as a disaster they can do little about.

Not too "chastened" to demand what they always demand, though.

When the market is going well - we need tax cuts! (The poor shouldn't expect public services, they should just go out and get a job!)

When the market is going badly - we need tax cuts! (It's the only way to stimulate the economy!)

When the sun sets at night - we need tax cuts!

And gullible, populist governments that let themselves be lead around by the nose always fall for it. (Even when there's a revenue shortfall.) But it's not the only option they have. Here's an alternative suggestion: spend that money on BUILDING MUCH-NEEDED PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE. Jobs, and the expanded capacity/living standards brought by that infrastructure, and an actual valuable useable asset that the country owns for the future.

Yeah, I know - the decision's been made. Sorry, poor.

"Firm Friends" (a misleadingly-named photo series)

2009-02-01T20:55:00.008+11:00

Well, they're getting better with each other.

Started out with anger (no claws, please note):

Through wary confrontation:

To a cold war:

To "meh".

And some gratuitous cute photos of the new fellow (and his doting mam) to end:

(More chez Keri.)

Entire city of Melbourne "plunged into violence" by "a group of youths"; one man injured

2009-02-01T08:09:00.011+11:00

The Herald Sun trumpets that the city has "erupted"!

MELBOURNE was plunged into violence yet again last night as a group of youths allegedly beat a young man unconscious in front of hundreds of people in the city.

Families and couples looked on in disbelief as the victim was set upon and left fighting for his life on Elizabeth St, outside Flinders St Station.

One man (in a city of more than 3.8 million) was set upon by "a group of youths"! After which the city "erupted" and was "plunged into violence" (when the police chased and arrested the youths)!

And only a few blocks from the Herald Sun building in Southbank. (And just two days after Andrew Bolt was worrying that "Melbourne crumbles, Government to fall", and just a day after it reported by headline that a power outage had forced the hellhole's denizens into prostitution!)

I expect Monday's edition of the tabloid's going to be a little thin, what with all the staff staying barricaded in their homes until the "crisis" is solved.

Meanwhile, I'm moving to somewhere safer - somewhere the Herald Sun hasn't referred to as being "plunged into violence" for ages - Baghdad. I advise you all to come with me. (Wonder if Andy'll lend me his helmet.)

Max

2009-01-31T17:55:00.003+11:00

Photos of Max and Polly together when Polly cheers up.

You may take our lives, but you'll never take our air conditioners!

2009-01-30T15:46:00.002+11:00

Good luck with that one:

Authorities have not ruled out household restrictions to conserve power. Victoria smashed the power usage record on Wednesday, chewing through 10,300 megawatts.

I predict bloody riots if they try.

PS Yes, environment: you make us uncomfortable, and we'll punish you with our air conditioners. YOUR MOVE.

Constitution < punctuality, ties

2009-01-30T15:34:00.004+11:00

For all his many, many, many, many, many faults, I never suspected that the former President was a sartorial fundamentalist:

“I’ll never forget going to work on a Saturday morning, getting called down to the Oval Office because there was something he was mad about,” said Dan Bartlett, who was counselor to Mr. Bush. “I had on khakis and a buttoned-down shirt, and I had to stand by the door and get chewed out for about 15 minutes. He wouldn’t even let me cross the threshold.”

Or a complete dick about punctuality:

Under Mr. Bush, punctuality was a virtue. Meetings started early — the former president once locked Secretary of State Colin L. Powell out of the Cabinet Room when Mr. Powell showed up a few minutes late — and ended on time. In the Obama White House, meetings start on time and often finish late.

Still, it's nice to know there were some rules he thought were sacrosanct.

What innovation? What efficiency?

2009-01-30T14:03:00.005+11:00

For no more money than handing it over to private operators, we could have a public transport system answerable to voters again. So why won't we?

The Brumby Government has admitted it is "no cheaper" having a private operator like Connex run the system, but says it wants the international "innovation and efficiency" of a privatised network.

The international "innovation and efficiency"? Since it doesn't cost us any less, where's the efficiency? What "innovation" suggested by those overseas have we seen since it was privatised? The farce that is Myki? Trains that can't cope with Australian conditions?

No, there's only one conclusion that can be reached as to why the Brumby Government (and the Liberals) are determined to keep the trains privatised: precisely so that we don't have a public transport system answerable to voters. Connex is a useful foil for a Transport Minister - someone else to blame when the lack of investment by the Government in the system leads to a week's worth of major train cancellations because there's a spell of hot weather.

Unless commuters remember that the buck stops with her, of course. God, I hope they do. Who, other than the Minister, has the power to improve the system? The operators aren't going to buy new trains or build new lines - that's infrastructure investment that the government has to do. But it only will if we put pressure on it to do so.

If I had an opportunity to talk to the Minister directly, I'd be asking her:

When is the government going to spend more resources on significantly upgrading the public transport network, both reach and capacity, so that the service for Melbournians is the equivalent or better of when it gained office?
Why hasn't it done it already?
Wouldn't it be more straightforward to undertake this upgrade if the government ran the system itself via departments directly answerable to the Minister, rather than through private companies trying to cut a profit out of the service? and
Could you please resign so someone who actually DOES want to run a train system can have a go?

Lucky for ~~my dignity~~ her that I haven't, really.

It's what you deserve

2009-01-29T13:07:00.006+11:00

The Hun asks its readers if they should get to go home early:

But why should they get all the fun?

For the sake of the poll, imagine that if enough people vote "yes" then employers of readers of this blog will feel honour-bound to give you all a free bonus holiday tomorrow.

Alright sun, that's enough

2009-01-29T12:30:00.003+11:00

You've made your point. Now knock it off.

What's the worst that could happen, anyway?

2009-01-29T10:39:00.004+11:00

Some non-crank physicists do a bit of rethinking about the LHC and the black holes it might create:

Roberto Casadio from the University of Bologna in Italy, along with Sergio Fabi and Benjamin Harms of the University of Alabama have taken another look at the math and don’t like what they are seeing. According to these respected scientists the black hole created by the LHC could last longer than previously predicted, perhaps as long as a full second in duration, which in quantum physics is an eternity, allowing sufficient time for the black hole to gobble up enough energy and matter to remain open and expand. It was originally calculated that the black hole would remain open no longer that a few micro-seconds and quickly dissolve into decay mode. Now, however, that theory is being reexamined.

All three physicists agree that even at one second it is highly unlikely that the black hole could absorb enough energy to maintain itself, but feel it might be prudent to investigate that potential anyway before going full-bore with this summer’s experiments.

Whoa there, Chicken Little! Investigate further? We already had, almost six years ago, some physicists look at the risks of these experiments that no-one has ever conducted before, and they said it was almost certainly safe, so far as they knew. Why should we waste time considering the admittedly fairly disturbing concerns you've just raised?

I mean, hell - it's only the complete obliteration of the Earth that you're talking about. I think we can afford to be a little gung-ho.

Ice storms in US disprove global warming

2009-01-29T08:36:00.009+11:00

Extremes of cold in the US make a mockery of Al Gore's latest presentation on the subject of climate change. If the Earth's warming up, then why's it so cold, eh? Here, look at this photograph of snow:

Stupid warmenistas.

NOTE: We'll emphasise this line of argument more with Australians when the south-eastern corner of the country is not in the grip of a near record-breaking heat wave and readers are not grumpy and bad-tempered from lack of sleep.

Above the law

2009-01-28T14:31:00.006+11:00

What do you think? Should Andrew Bolt be advertising his assassination service so openly on his blog?

Is he immune from prosecution? Are we to let him so openly spit on our cherished values (of not being murdered)? Maybe wiping out five percent of the population every month makes him too big, too terrifying, for the police force to deal with - but there must be someone with the cojones to take him on.

Your reign of terror cannot last forever, Mr Bolt!

F*ck you, Epson

2009-01-28T10:06:00.003+11:00

I need to print a document in black and white.

I have a black ink cartridge.

My Epson CX3900 refuses. Why? No ink in the magenta cartridge. What the hell does that have to do with printing black? Well, we've designed the printer to waste coloured ink even when you're printing black, so that you unnecessarily have to buy more cartridges. And for the same reason we've disabled the ability of the printer to print just from the black cartridge.

Sucker!

Urge to buy a different printer, rising...

Nothing to do with us

2009-01-28T09:29:00.000+11:00

On behalf of News Ltd, I can't see any reason - other than oversensitivity and wowserism - why an art gallery might be paranoid about showing any photographs of children even slightly unclothed. Even obviously innocent ones which aren't in any way weird and arty and which are similar to those any parent might have snapped.

Must be that Bill Henson thing - by forcing us in the tabloid media to go absolutely fricking batshit insane over his photographs, he's ruined it for everyone.

Shame, Bill Henson, for what you made us do. Shame.

Critiques sought

2009-01-28T07:50:00.008+11:00

I thought that 2020 summit was supposed to have been a total waste of time, a pointless gab-fest in which lefties talked crap for a couple of days about CATE BLANCHETT'S BABY or something.

So I look forward to learning what's wrong with this apparently excellent idea that it generated.

UPDATE A ~~facile~~ devastating list of criticisms from Bolt:

Because Rudd speaks Chinese, obviously the volunteers are going to be turned into an army of Mao-esque fanatics!
Anyway, it was the Liberals' idea.
And Labor opposed it. Well, they opposed the 25 percent HECS hike the Liberals were passing at the time and didn't agree that a volunteer scheme would make up for it, which is EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
HECS discounts are "pay" so YOU CAN'T CALL THEM "VOLUNTEERS". Ha, the name is all wrong.
They're not really "giving back to the community" because they're costing the community part of the HECS debt they might never have paid back anyway.
The existence of students doing community work for reductions to their HECS will drive real unpaid volunteers away (although obviously I wouldn't apply the same logic to Work for the Dole).
The jobs the students would be doing already have volunteers, so what are the students going to do? Add to their ranks and enable tasks that are currently undermanned to be completed? Well, okay then.
The kids are being "drafted", even though it's voluntary.
Lefties can't manage shit.

What analysis! It's great to have Andy back, applying his razor-sharp mind to the big issues again, isn't it?

Aussie spirit falters

2009-01-28T07:47:00.002+11:00

But she's still Australian, right?

Waving the Australian flag un-Australian

2009-01-27T17:09:00.009+11:00

You know the Australian national quality to which we claim to aspire that I admire the most? It's the image of us as good-humoured, classless, bullshit-resisting, non-hypocritical, humble folk.

Which is probably the thing which grates the most about the recent pushing by those with something to sell of American-style patriotism. It's far from good-humoured: it has a nasty, contempt for others undercurrent. The attendant jingoism is almost entirely about absorbing bullshit generalisations and misrepresentations. It's often hypocritical. It is very far from humble.

I'm not sure how you can reach any other conclusion - rah rah patriotism itself is un-Australian.

Even - especially (paradoxically) - if you do it with an Australian flag.

PS I am aware that flogging a dead horse is also un-Australian.

Australia, Australia, Australia, we love you, amen

2009-01-27T07:26:00.014+11:00

When I draped my ute/panel van in an oversized Australian flag yesterday and drove around honking obnoxiously, I was expressing pride in my country because -

it's the best country in the world (so far as I know since I've never actually lived in all - or, to be honest, any - of the other countries in the world);
it embodies Australian values that are not shared by any other country in the world (people overseas, for example, don't have "mates", they have "friends" and "buddies" and other words for exactly the same thing);
I am a huge fan of our bicameral parliamentary democracy/federal constitutional monarchy, which I have carefully compared with all alternative systems;
our native animals are the best in the world in terms of kangarooness, emuness, koalaness, platypusness, echidnaness and other globally-accepted criteria of animal quality;
we have barbecues and sausages and lamb, which (if I ignore all the countless photographic evidence to the contrary) are uniquely Australian;
this continent we're on that we created 221 years ago (it didn't exist before the nation of "Australia", obviously), is pretty damned spectacular;
our sports stars win stuff, unlike the sports stars of any other country in the world;
our soldiers sacrifice their lives for freedom, as opposed to those of other countries who are either cowards or fighting for evil;
our charities are more charitable than anyone else's;
by good management I can't in any way specify (but certainly not mere good fortune), we have decent living standards and a reasonable quantity of freedoms, at least compared with the worst countries in the world;
we're not muslims.

And I had the good sense to be born here, which means feeling good about Australia entitles me to feel good about myself - and frankly superior to anyone who foolishly chose to be born somewhere else.

Isn't it great to have one day a year where we can all come together and agree with each other that we're the best?

Works for me

2009-01-26T09:31:00.006+11:00

A warning for the ALP to ignore:

THE ALP faces extinction because of an ageing and declining membership and a destructive culture of personal and factional advancement, one of the party's elder statesmen has warned.

True, but it wouldn't be such a loss.

The ALP has been appropriating and dissipating progressive voices for generations. They figure they own us (that they "created us", even), but they don't really care all that much about actually representing us by advocating progressive policies.

The end of the ALP would not be the end of progressives; it'd just be the end of that particular method of ignoring us.

First good thing done

2009-01-25T10:40:00.007+11:00

Turns out that being a good president of the US in 2009 starts with simply undoing the more horrible things your predecessor did. Closing Guantanamo is more complicated than simply declaring it shut - you've got to determine what to do with the people stuck there (although it's not that difficult - if you haven't commenced a trial against them by now, SEND THEM HOME IMMEDIATELY) - but undoing Bush's horrible policy to shut down clinics which even dare to refer patients who ask to a safe abortion facility, thereby causing countless women's deaths worldwide, is easy - just sign it away. Gone.

Nicely done, Mr Obama.

Of course, the anti-choicers are very angry. They've had their own way forced on the women of the third world for eight years, and (as evidenced by the heartlessness of the rule they demanded) hardly care about what they want. They've really enjoyed inflicting their religious views on everyone else. How dare Obama undo the American religious right's power to take away women's health options if they don't do what the American religious right wants. How dare he give women in third world countries their rights back? How... arrogant!

A senior Vatican official has attacked US President Barack Obama for "arrogance" for overturning a ban on state funding for family-planning groups that carry out or facilitate abortions overseas.

It is "the arrogance of someone who believes they are right, in signing a decree which will open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life," Archbishop Rino Fisichella was quoted as saying by the Corriere della Sera daily.

How dare Obama arrogantly not impose our view on other people!

Sadly, Archbishop Fisichella was killed shortly after making that statement, when the assembled journalists' irony meters all exploded simultaneously.

Before he went, he added one last little gem:

"I do not believe that those who voted for him took into consideration ethical themes, which were astutely left aside during the election debate. The majority of the American population does not take the same position as the president and his team."

Given how hard the anti-abortion movement lobbies against Democrats, and how hard it works to drag out the vote for the Republicans, and how viciously it attacked Obama before the election on that very subject, I'm not sure how the Archbishop came to the conclusion that anti-abortioners voted for Obama not realising that he would undo this piece of Bush-era bastardry. Guys - you tried it to make it about abortion. Americans did not agree with you - let alone the women in the third world your horrible policy caused to die.

Imagine - saving lives over enforcing religious doctrine. No wonder the Vatican is so upset.

This might only be a start - Bush has left many injustices and acts of political bastardry to undo - but it's a good one. Bravo.

PS Rudd - why haven't you ended our version yet?

Holy crap, my cat's a Nazi

2009-01-24T22:03:00.003+11:00

Look at her! She's really getting into it.

She needs the calming influence of a new kitten, stat.

I'm a lefty, get used to it

2009-01-24T11:08:00.001+11:00

It's funny because he didn't mean it the way I wish he did.

No trains for you

2009-01-23T13:48:00.004+11:00

Sorry, Connex is allowed to do this?

Vandals triggered an explosion at Rushall railway station in Melbourne's inner north that caused commuter delays and left a $60,000 damage bill in their wake, police say...

Connex spokesman John Rees said trains were still running on the Epping line, but city-bound trains are not stopping at Rushall, in Fitzroy North.

Uh, what? The explosion was at 3.30am. It must've been cleaned up by the morning peak. Why are trains not stopping there? Because commuters'll have to get their tickets at the other end? Which is so unacceptable they'll just have to get a bus?

That only makes sense if Connex is really just a ticketing company for which the provision of trains on the rail lines the public has leased to it through government is just a secondary issue, an unfortunate part of the business that it'd happily scrap if it could get away with it.

Not that I'm giving it back, of course.

2009-01-22T14:34:00.005+11:00

Un-Australian of the Year nominee Gerry Harvey complains that not enough of that taxpayers' $10.4 billion has found its way into his pockets in January, after he made a killing on it in December:

Harvey Norman's chairman Gerry Harvey has attributed a rise in sales in December to the package.

But he says it looks like the boost may have been temporary...

"In retrospect now you say to yourself: 'was that a real good idea, that was 10.4 billion, that's a lot of money'," he said.

"Did it have just a temporary effect for December and then disappear? Gee - let's maybe learn a lesson from that and not do that again, I don't know."

Talk about rubbing it in.

On behalf of Australian taxpayers, Gerry, I'd kind of prefer you just to say "thank you".

Apropos of nothing

2009-01-22T12:16:00.002+11:00

Chewing iceblocks...

As if it needed a poll.

Conclusion ignored

2009-01-22T10:42:00.006+11:00

Some of our righty friends have been getting very excited by the Herald Sun's enthusiastic unearthing today of a 2003 video by a Melbourne Islamic cleric in which he said some horrendously misogynist things and endorsed rape (by saying that it's okay in marriage).

Oddly enough, the final few paragraphs of that Hun story seem to be missing from much of that online coverage. Specifically:

Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria executive director Joumanah El Matrah said Hamza's interpretation was bigoted.

"Even orthodox practitioners and imams do not consider any form of family violence acceptable," she said.

Islamic Council of Victoria vice-president Sherene Hassan said Islam did not condone domestic violence.

"The Prophet Mohammed stated 'The best of you is he who is kindest to his wife'," Ms Hassan said. "The ICV has made a commitment to address this issue by organising a series of workshops early this year where imams and Muslim women will be invited to discuss topics such as these."

I know those paragraphs completely undermine the "MUZZIES THINK IT'S OKAY TO BASH WOMEN" rhetoric you were enjoying, but you get that some of your readers might actually make it to the end of the Hun article, see the part you've left out, and draw some conclusions about your honesty and credibility based on your suspicious exclusion, don't you?

NOT PRESIDENT

2009-01-21T10:51:00.007+11:00

Well, thank god that's over.

PS I almost feel sorry for Bush in this photograph (he's down in the bottom right behind one of the Obama children): imagine having to stand up on that stage smiling as 2 million people (and that's just the people actually physically present there) cheer that they're finally rid of you. Is there a word for that kind of discomfort?

Wail to the Chief

2009-01-20T19:12:00.009+11:00

Maybe selling it a bit hard:

AS he prepares to take his oath of office and deliver his inaugural address Barack Obama has the words and deeds of giants to live up to.

I'll just be relieved if he's not the last guy.

Seriously, neither of those corrupt old parties is ever going to produce a real reformer for social justice and equity. Who'll clean up the country's thoroughly dodgy and inconsistent electoral system. Who'll dismantle the profoundly corrupt lobby system in Washington. Who'll make sure that no American child is getting a second-class education in a second-tier system, and no American is missing out on decent medical care. Who'll ensure that US aid to the poorest people in the world resumes and is no longer tied to nasty conditions. Who'll ensure that no-one is above the law, and no-one under US control is without the protection of the law. Who'll remember that responsible, good government is accountable government, and that whatever precedents he sets will be followed by the other side when they return to power.* I can't see any of that really happening.

Although I'd love to be wrong.

*Obama has the opportunity to push the balance back the other way: to make government open and accountable again and make it harder for the other side to drag it any further into autocracy. If he blows it, he'll undermine the Democrats' credibility and ability to criticise the Republicans' moves along that path next time, to the detriment of all of us.

UPDATE: A group of Hollywood actors, driven to insanity by a hopeless crush on the new President, produce probably the most awful video I have ever witnessed. The ending is flat-out chilling. Iowahawk's mockery is, for once, almost fair.

Betrayal

2009-01-20T16:04:00.006+11:00

I predict a few job vacancies in local supermarkets this week. I mean, I know that Coles and Woolworths are tolerant employers committed to a good working environment for their ~~cheap~~ employees ~~until they term 18 and promptly lose all their shifts~~, but you've got to draw the line somewhere. These people didn't just treat customers with contempt (that's something management can understand), but treated their company with contempt, too. And that's just not acceptable.

It's not just a strongly-worded internal notice that'll be sent around.

Optimism wanted

2009-01-19T18:40:00.005+11:00

Wandering through Coles this afternoon it was hard not to notice the complete absence of many products I used to buy, now largely replaced with the (hilariously packaged*) Coles "love" range. The non-Coles products that are still sold, are now set at inflated prices to encourage the purchase of the company's own brand. And not in the full range they used to have. You want to buy the larger bottle? Sorry, you'll have to by the Coles one now. Choice? Not so much any more - increasingly, there's the Coles brand product and that's it.

And it'll get worse as the other manufacturers that don't have their own supermarket empire lose money and pull out of the various markets. Then we'll be left with two major supermarket chains, hugely wealthy, hugely corrupt, and with no real competition in many lines of products on their shelves.

That's how the market works.

Which is why I wanted to ask any conservative readers of this blog a question: knowing the tendency for large corporations, bolstered by large sums of money at their disposal to discourage regulation and to crush competitors without similarly deep pockets, to put themselves in effective monopoly positions (or duopoly, with effectively the same results) such that consumers' choice effectively dies and all the protections of the "invisible hand" cease - why are you not bothered by this? Do you simply disagree that this is what large corporations do, despite countless examples of it, or do you think The Market has some other magical way of stopping them getting too far out of line?

Since it's your baby and we're going to have to live with its consequences, I wouldn't mind a bit of solace at this point.

*Are you going to do that post or not? I'm taking snapshots of the sillier "love" labels and doing a post on it if you don't get onto it soon.

Un-Australian Of The Year 2009

2009-01-16T15:19:00.004+11:00

I'm not waiting for those Grods people to make up their minds on the subject of Un-Australian of the Year. While they take their sweet time, and work cautiously and sensibly through a "nomination" process followed by allowing people to "vote" for the candidate of their choosing, there's a whole further week of utter contempt for the worthy winner of the award being wasted.

Accordingly, I'm announcing the Un-Australian Of The Year (which includes the GrodsCorp one, sorry guys) right now, on this blog.

It's Stephen Conroy, Minister For Crippling The Internet.

Yes, I know I previously suggested it might be Gerry Harvey, but I've changed my mind.

Gerry's remarks revealed him to be a horrible human being, yes. But Conroy's status as Un-Australian of the Year isn't just as a result of some hideously expressed Un-Australian values: it's that he's actually going to ruin, for all Australians, something reasonably important and something I quite like - the Internet, obvs, lol - and that he's gone about it in pretty much the most dickish way imaginable. Getting his department to ring an opponent's employer to try to get them fired? Accusing any critic of being in favour of child pornography?

He's gone for the Un-Australian trifecta: he's doing something awful, for hideous reasons, and in an extremely dickish way.

Even Scott Bridges - the man who hates Our Heath - can't compete with that.

Permission granted

2009-01-15T16:36:00.000+11:00

It is now officially okay to use the verb "nom" in conversation with non-nerds.

Likewise "lol", pronounced as a word rather than an acronym.

"Zomg" is not there yet, sorry.

It's all about the polygamy

2009-01-15T11:33:00.003+11:00

Obviously the only reason we've been having the gay marriage debate is because I, like every other perverted, valueless lefty, want to marry three women, two men, a collection of farmyard animals and my stapler. (My consenting stapler.) Let's be honest - all lefties want something similar, and that's the only reason we keep banging on about equality for oppressed groups. Well done, social conservatives, for figuring out our real motives and skipping over the gay marriage debate whenever you were losing to talk about polygamy instead. Nicely spotted. You got us!

So, just this once, let's cut the "gay marriage" crap and talk about the real issue.

Polygamy.

Now, I have to confess that I can't see quite how the law could ever treat a relationship between more than two adults in the same way as it treats a two-person marriage. Gay marriage is easy to legislate - you just remove the discriminatory parts of the relevant legislation that specify gender. Everything else stays the same. But with three or more - what happens when one partner wants to add a new partner and the other doesn't? Or one wants to leave? How do you divide assets? How do you figure out custody of children, if any?

This complete lack of any sensible proposal for how the law could recognise polygamous marriages is what kills the idea for me. Arguments about abuse within some varieties of such relationships are fairly weak - they could just as easily be made about certain marriages now, and the correct approach to dealing with those is the criminal law and campaigns to assist victims of such relationships to escape them. And "God will smite us" continues to be a very silly reason for governments to be discriminatory.

The problem is that the polygamy agenda lobby is doing a piss-poor job of advocating for their cause. In fact, they're pretty much silent - the only people you ever hear even raising the issue are conservatives trying to distract someone from equality for gays.

Hence it falling to this blog to seriously thrash out the idea, so often mentioned, so rarely debated.

Come on, polygamy-obsessed people! Now's your chance. Pro-polygamy sickos: have you any solutions as to how legal polygamy could even work? And "traditional marriage" conservatives: have you a serious criticism of the idea I haven't considered? Let's get them all out on the table.

Note: anyone who raises "polygamy" in a subsequent gay marriage thread will be sent right back here to put their case for or against on the line.

Not self-interested

2009-01-14T23:34:00.001+11:00

A man with investment properties complains:

Investment housing loans slumped a further 6 per cent in response to financial turmoil, sparking talk of a "rent squeeze" because there are fewer landlords.

"This is a real concern for the state of the private rental market," said Housing Industry Association chief executive Chris Lamont.

"Without affordable rental housing the number of households in rent stress could climb by a further 80,000."

Mr Lamont called for incentives to boost investment in affordable housing. He said that without them there would be an increase in the demand for public housing and potentially a further increase in homelessness.

What Mr Lamont is declining to mention is that almost all of these "investment housing loans" were replaced by people buying those homes to live in. As in, so that for each house that is lost to the rental market, one person or family who'd otherwise have to rent is now living in their own house and also withdraws from the rental market. Net impact on "affordable rental housing": zero. Except that now that family has their own house, with all the positive stabilising effects that entails.

"A further increase in homelessness"? Yeah, that's your concern, Chris.

Government policy should be helping renters (people yet to buy their first property, one to live in themselves) buy out landlords (people with more than one, who are already have a home of their own), not the other way around. Remember, the housing market is a competitive one: when landlords buy a house, they're outbidding someone who was actually going to live in it.

Still, if Mr Lamont wants a real review of the area, that wouldn't be a bad thing. How about the fact that capital gains on an investment property - in effect, a form of income - are taxed at a much lower rate than income earned as a result of actual work? Thereby turning the property market not so much into a mechanism for housing people as a mechanism for people who've already got houses to invest cheaply whilst preventing those who don't from getting on the first rung of the ladder? There's something the government could look at.

Although I doubt that's exactly what Chris Lamont had in mind.

Howard mildly damned by some passenger's relative

2009-01-13T07:59:00.007+11:00

The Age reports about a former prime minister who is loved wherever he goes, in a completely reasonable and not in any way pathetically concocted piece of fluff.

After rudely TAKING OBAMA'S SPOT at Blair House, Howard "may also have angered others" on his way home. He's been "blamed for plane delay" by someone. Based on "some passenger's" theory in a text message. A theory which is denied by QANTAS and supported by... nothing.

Okay, fairly thin. But talk about a damning quote -

"It's probably not Mr Howard's fault, but you've got to wonder what image of Australia they're getting," Mr Samson said.

Mr Samson being a "passenger's relative". What a scoop for the Age!

At least you're retaining the broadsheet format, eh?

UPDATE Of course, the tabloid tabloid published a similar piece. (And Mr Samson spoke to them, too! So The Age couldn't even get an exclusive with a passenger's relative. Things are grim at Spencer St.)

Kids returned to drug-addled parents

2009-01-13T07:47:00.010+11:00

Listen to this outrageous story:

A JUDGE says it was a "gross abuse of power" for child welfare staff to forcibly remove two babies from their parents' care when there was no evidence they were at risk of harm...

Although the parents were recreational cannabis users, the judge said there was no evidence that it posed a direct risk of harm to their children - a 15-month-old girl and a month-old boy.

He said there was no evidence the children, who were given the pseudonyms Georgia and Luke, were neglected or physically or emotionally abused.

Given that the parents were not mentally ill and had no relevant criminal history, he questioned why their children were forcibly removed and why DOCS was pursuing a care plan that would keep them in custody until May.

They were returned after only three months? To these sicko pervert cannabis users? How are these kids going to learn of the evils of drugs if they have an example at home of people who are apparently able to raise a family perfectly well despite using them?

These kids needed to be rescued from this den of corruption and placed into state custody, where they would never be exposed to drugs or any other negative influences.

Typically out of touch lefty judges and lawyers, thinking that being raised by loving and competent parents could in any way be more important than something as devastating as their having a RECREATIONAL CANNABIS HABIT THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THEM MISSING A MEETING. Political correctness has gone too far!

Bravo to the Department for trying, anyway.

I must be missing something

2009-01-12T12:03:00.003+11:00

I don't get the point of Twitter - how exactly would it change my life, except to add another site (like Facebook or Gmail) that expects constant updates whenever I go to the kitchen to get a drink?

The Age turned into a tabloid so gradually I didn't even notice

2009-01-12T10:14:00.001+11:00

All the convenience of the broadsheet format, but with the sensationalist story selection and journalistic quality of a tabloid!

Man, I really regret letting that Age subscription go.

Just out of curiosity

2009-01-09T09:44:00.005+11:00

When I come upon memories (like letters or photographs - or old blog posts) of relationships past, I

My view is that they're all part of who you are, and no matter how things ended (and, by definition, they're from relationships that didn't work), you've still got positive memories from that time that are worth preserving. Otherwise, what - you'll have huge gaps in your life you can never really think about? Is that really healthy?

Previously I've been convinced to destroy old photographs and letters, and I regret that now. You only have one opportunity to live each one of those years; things not having worked out with the person you were with then is hardly a reason to obliterate all memory of it.

At least, that's my approach. I know others (mainly older people) who think that the only way to show loyalty to your partner is to pretend as much as possible that you never loved another, but I think that's a fairly sad, dishonest and cowardly way to live out your days.

I'm curious as to what others - those who weren't lucky enough to find the love of their life first up*, that is - think on the subject.

*And you guys have your own issues.

NOTE: Before anyone thinks I'm "having a go" at them - this is an entirely neutral post about various views that I've either held or heard expressed by others, because I'm curious as to how other people feel about the issue. Just because I have certain general impressions about a particular view doesn't mean I have those opinions about people who hold it.


	delete or destroy them and try not to think about them again
	put them in some archive in case I ever want to see them again but where I won't stumble upon them accidentally
	Leave them alongside the other records of that time because they're just as much a part of my life as the non-romantic things

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