I TOLD THEM SO,YEARS AGO.

Years ago, when the Sydney  Morning Herald used to publish my letters, I commented several times on the absurd situation when the taxpayers had to pay for the training of hundreds if not thousands of sports stars for nothing , while academic “stars” had to enter into a hex scheme so that they could pay for their courses  later.  It struck me as being unfair that many, if not most, of our sporting heroes finished up  living overseas, making enormous sums of money, contributing  nothing, (not even taxes) back to Australia.
Meanwhile our science, medicine, arts, etc graduates, who had to pay for their courses, contributed a great deal of their skills to Australians’, as well as the world’s health and welfare.At last, it appears that the Government has woken up to the fact that most of our sportspersons contribute nothing  except to the needs of the couch potatoes who seem to regard themselves as “sportsmen.”
Sports Minister Kate Ellis has said that “There are questions in the community whether the very top bracket should be contributing back to their sport.”
Good question, Minister, but why only the top bracket? After all, even those who don’t top their university courses, still have to pay for them . The taxpayers spend millions on sport. What do the non participants get back for their money?
After what’s going on within the ranks of some of the Athletes and RL players, they can’t even claim to be “ambassadors” for Australia!

IT WORKED IN THE PAST.

It would appear that, since the banks have chosen to ignore the Reserve Bank’s recommendations for lower interest rates,  and since Malcolm Turnbull’s popularity is fast approaching negative figures, and while Peter Costello would love to be leader but his ticker is advising against it, it would be an ideal opportunity  for the Government to Nationalise the Commonwealth Bank, so that it would give the rest some meaningful competition.  It should be pointed out that the Commonwealth Bank was originally founded by a Labor Government in the 1930′ to protect those unfortunates who had lost their jobs, against the private banks repossessing their houses when they were unable to meet their mortgage repayments.
Of course the Nationalisation of the Commonwealth Bank would elicit the usual howls of  “socialism” from Turnbull and co;   in fact, Malcolm is beginning to slip the word in whenever he can now, but it doesn’t seem to scare the pants of the electorate.  Malcolm has become so negative that he’s lost the electorate.  The PM has the trust of the people despite the efforts of the Australian whose cartoons are becoming more and more offensive, as are the caricatures of Rudd which accompany its articles.
One wonders if the Chifley Government had succeeded in nationalising all the banks as they tried to do in 1949, what the state of the economy would be now.

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AT LEAST HE DIDN’T SAY “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM ?!!!”

There’s no doubt about it,  the Opposition sure is getting desperate!  So the PM did his block when he didn’t get the meal he ordered.  Big deal!  The poor bugger’s been working 24-7 running from one meeting to another.  He finally gets on his plane looking forward to a meal and a rest, and along comes the wrong dinner.  And tired as he was, he was rude to the young lady who brought it to him.  Pretty silly, but hardly important enough for the Opposition to make a ten course dinner out of it, especially since the PM apologized almost immediately and gracefully.

Julie Bishop is hardly a multi-mega brain, but on this morning’s ABC INSIDERS  she excelled herself. By the time she’d finished, she’d made such a goose of herself  thayt  she’d probably increased Rudd’s popularity by another couple of points.  She tried to picture him some sort of as a  Chinese spy and every other type of villain she could think of. It was a pathetic performance which excelled even Malcolm Turnbull’s efforts.
When will the Libs ever realise that the minute they come on the air the public turns off.
Even the talkback crownd on 2GB are beginning to give up!

DID THE COPS REALLY HAVE THE TIME TO WATCH 4 CORNERS?

The case of  Judge Marcus Einfeld seems to have brought out the worst of the “tall poppy syndrome” in the community.
Sure the judge told some awful porkies to evade a few trivial speeding fines.  Sure he compiled an eight page booklet of lies about dead people being at the wheel of his car at the time of the offences, but no one was in any way hurt by all this except Einfeld himself.  In fact the behaviour of the judge was so dumb, that one must ask oneself why a man of such achievements and intelligence should do something so unbelievably stupid.  The obvious answer is that, like so many other public figures, he saw himself as being above the law.  In this he is certainly not alone.  Remember all the  “”DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”, incidents involving politicians trying to stand over lesser beings? The case in a Central Coast restaurant and all the lies that were told by the local MP trying to wriggle out of a nasty insight into her character is one. And then there’s the Federal MP trying to pull rank in the same way over an air hostess trying to persuade her to turn off her mobile while in flight.
No one of those personages  finished up in court.  Yet Einfeld, despite his impressive record in the human rights field and many other good works was sentenced to two years in prison, stripped of his OA and his QC status, and various eager beavers even tried to strip him of his pension!
And now, in an unprecedented piece of sheer maliciousness, the police noticed that, in the ABC’s Four Corners interview on 21st March, Einfeld wasn’t wearing a seat belt while in the backseat of a car. Now they’re looking for another charge to hang on him!
No wonder there was only one copper at Mascot when the bikies were murdering  each other, the rest were watching Four Corners.

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THANK GOD THEY’VE GONE.

Well, thank god they’ve gone.  All those gorgeous clerics with their green and gold and scarlet and white dresses and caps and heavy golden jewelry,  the  motorcades and the ute done up as the pope mobile – all gone. We can have our city back, no more kids screaming prayers and singing pop songs and waving flags from god knows where, no more parsons on TV, trying  weasel word excuses for some of their colleagues caught with their -er – some youngster’s – pants down.
Poor old Jesus hanging around in the cold winds at Barrangaroo in his jockey shorts and crown of thorns surrounded by warmly dressed clerics and thousands of youngsters, tears in their eyes, watching the act as if it was for real.   There’s no doubt about it, the church sure got our money’s worth.

But there was one inaccuracy in the crucifixion of Jesus. He should put down his cross in Hyde Park and turned over the tables selling appalling holy junk for appallingly unholy prices (“it’s the cost of petrol, you know” ) in the marketing section.  A great opportunity for the second coming missed!

There’s one thing that few people seem to comment on though, and that is that Jesus certainly traveled considerably more cheaply than his representatives on earth.  I haven’t seen a donkey fitted out with a bedroom,sitting room, bathroom, kitchen  and lounge, let alone secretaries and chefs, mentioned anywhere in the bible.  Maybe the authors couldn’t spell Boeing or Airbus.  Nor did poor Jesus travel in a motorcade of Mercedes Benz cars with the Pope sitting up in a utility truck (Mercedes. of course) fitted out as a pope mobile, waving signs of the cross at the screaming multitudes.

It’s a sad fact of life that all those who govern us, whether spiritually or on earth, are obviously of the opinion that the things they preach don’t apply to them. (DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??!!)  One wonders, as the Pope preaches compassion for the poor and the importance of caring for the environment,  how many of the starving masses could be fed by just one Mercedes, let alone a motorcade of them.  And how many tons of carbon went into the atmosphere to transport one old man and his entourage half way around the world and then around Sydney.
No practicing what we preach, there.

BRENDAN’S CLIMATIC CONFUSION.

Can anyone tell me what the Coalition’s policy on climate change or carbon trading is?  It seems to be important.  That’s what they all say. The PM seems to understand what it’s all about, although he hasn’t let us into the secret yet.
As for Opposition “leader” Brendan Nelson – Well, various versions of his vies are spattered all over the political landscape.  One thing is for sure, he reckons it’s a great field for shabby political point scoring.  At present  he seems to be sticking to the Howard line (remember Howard?  he lives somewhere in Waverton with his political advisor).  Anyway the Howard line involves doing nothing until we’re all done to a crisp or died of thirst and at last report, Brendan thinks that’s a good idea.  He didn’t the other day.  At that time he and all his mates thought big Kev’s approach was a good one, but then he thought better of it. After all, they WERE the Opposition.
So now the story is, Australia shouldn’t be the first in the pack.  Wait until a few other bestir themselves. After all, we’re not the world’s worst polluters, let’s hasten slowly.  He forgot about all the countries in Europe who are already up and racing…..Oh yes, but the US isn’t!
Neither’s China….neither’s …er….anyway, a lot of others.  Oh, and 2010’s much too soon.  We wouldn’t be able to start until at least 3010,  That’ll give us time to…er…work out the best plan.

Garnaut……Never heard him……have you heard of him, Malcolm?  Eh? Oh you think it’s a restaurant in St Kilda, oh, OK.  Thanks.

HOLY SMOKE!!

I find it amazing that  Sydneysiders aren’t out in their thousands protesting about the inconvenience and damage proposed to be done to our city, let alone the hundred and forty million dollars of taxpayers money  we are expected to pay, for the visit of an aging German cleric, and an Italian corpse in good condition.
Once again the police will be out in force searching for bible bombs. Once again the barricades will be up for days, and citizens who have the misfortune to live in a Randwick suburban street will not be able to drive in or out of their own driveways for a week. A large section of Hyde Park will be reserved for pilgrims, while another will be set aside for merchandising.  Here’s your chance, Jesus! why don’t you celebrate your second coming by dropping in and turning over the tables!

I remember, years ago, when we visited the holy shrine of Fatima in Portugal, where the holy virgin appeared before a couple of kids who naturally fell on their knees and subsequently became nuns. What a way to recruit staff! They didn’t even have to rub a lamp. However, I suspect that some clever marketing man started a firm, probably called  something like “Fatima Solutions”, and bought all the rights to the roadsides within a couple of kilometers  of the  holy place.  On these he erected hundreds of stalls  and leased them to  all his mates who filled them full of the most god almighty religious junk to sell to the gullible and the curious. There were endless cameos and pictures of a bloke who looked exactly like Osama Bin Laden, but who, I was assured, was the Saviour himself. As well as that there were literally hundreds of picture and statuettes of a lady holding a baby.  Both mother and baby wore halos, so I assumed they were both virgins.  And those things were only a small sample of the literally thousands of celestial junk on offer.  I bought a set of rosary beads which glowed in the dark and gave it to some catholic friends in case they were taken short, as it were.
Although we passed quite close to Lourdes I’m sure we could have sampled another lot of holy bric-a-brac, but we decided to give it a miss.

One holy pilgrimage was enough for us.

THE BRINGER OF APATHY AND CRIER OF WOLF.

Why doesn’t my hair stand on end with fright when I read of Federal Police Commissioner Keelty’s latest warning of imminent terrorist activities? I suppose it was because he began to authorise the running of those old TV ads advising us to “dob in a neighbour if you see something suspicious” a couple of weeks before the election. That was a bit too transparently political!
I would have thought that those kinds of warnings should have come from the Government, not the police Commissioner.
Still, I suppose those brilliant Liberal Party strategists also thought it might look a bit transparent, so Keelty did the job for them. The last arrow in an empty quiver, as it were.
I wonder if I’m the only one who thought we were treated to a bit too much of the Commissioner’s bovine features of late. His questionable role in the matter of the persecution of the young Doctor Haneef and the delivery of the Bali nine to the Indonesian police after Scott Rush’s father, in an effort to save his son, warned the Commissioner that the boy was about to deliver a consignment of heroin to Bali and asked him to have him stopped in Australia.
Now neither Scott or any of his associates were shining examples of clean living to their fellow young Australians, but since manslaughter perpetrators often get something like eight years in Australia, and the Mr Bigs in the drug trade get maybe fifteen – being shot for being caught with a quantity of heroin strapped to your groin would seem a little steep, particularly if you’re only eighteen and dumb to boot.

Maybe Commissioner Keelty should keep his head down for a while and curtail his TV and press appearances to less than a minimum while the storm blows over.
If he feels he’d like to make a political career for himself, he might apply to Brendan Nelson for a job.
I believe the Libs are desperate for new talent.

Hope Springs Eternal.

Poor old Peter Costello.  He might have another spell as the bridesmaid if, by some miracle, grandpa gets reelected.  Peter’s waited so long to get into the PM’s slippers and now the old fox is talking about retiring sometime long into the next term.  I suspect that if (God forbid) the Coalition should win the next election, the PM and his favorite housewife will have to be blasted out of Kirribilli House with some kind of nuclear device.
However, since at present the odds are that Kevin Rudd will be the next PM, Peter will no doubt think twice about being the leader of what’s left of the opposition, and slip gracefully back into the law whence he came.  He can console himself with the fact that he is about as about as popular as Paul Keating was, but he’s without Keating’s looks or vision – and, of course, there’s that silly smirk.

Meanwhile, the PM, with his crazy flinging around of cash, against the advice of the Reserve Bank, has proved again, if more proof were needed, that he’s really only interested in clinging to his job, and hang the economy.  This time, though, there’s every chance that the public will see through this transparent  ploy and give the old man the drubbing he so thoroughly deserves.

Here’s hoping!

The ultimate cynicism.

Talk about the ultimate cynicism! The promise to hold a referendum to put our indigenous brothers on the preamble to the constitution sure takes the cake! Imagine the joy, the relief, the dancing and singing as the full implication of the PM’s generous offer sinks in.

Sure we don’t have jobs, or decent houses,or running water. Sure our life expectancy is years less than anyone else’s. Sure we don’t have proper medical services and a lot of us are drunk most days because of the conditions we have to put up with, but what the heck , were on the preamble! Bully for us!