Home » Popular Culture » Tourism
Category Archives: Tourism
Home is where the heart is and calling Australia home
While Ray and Jeff want to play down any instance of Islamic maleficence we just keep hearing reports about the most extreme followers of that faith who have been welcomed into this country taking up the gun and the bomb in the name of Allah, Like the Brisbane woman arrested and charged yesterday:
Lets be real here the base of the problem with the local would be Jihadis is multifaceted, firstly under the credo of multiculturalism immigrants are encouraged to maintain the strongest ties with their originating culture and homeland, secondly they are discouraged from making any critique of that culture, finally modern communication means that its hard to truly separate and distance oneself from the dysfunction and conflicts in your homeland. What this boils down to is that most recent immigrants may be here, in Australia in body but in spirit they well and truly remain in their country of origin. This is especially so when you come from a language and culture tradition that is so different from that which is current in Australia.
Home is where the heart is the aphorism tells us, and if you are committed to fighting and possibly dying for a country other than Australia do you really have the right to “call Australia home”? The report tells us that upwards of 100 Australian citizens are fighting in the Syrian civil war and I can'[t help thinking that those who are doing so should be stripped of their Australian citizenship and prohibited from ever re-entering this country.
Cheers Comrades
Hell in the shadow of the high rise
Yesterday I visited the bowels of hell and it is actually a rather dull and dreary place that is far from being as glamorous as its public image would suggest.
You see I had to go to Surfer’s Paradise so that my daughter could spend some time with her friend from Tasmania who was on holiday with her family there. The drive there and back was nice for the conversation with my daughter , terrible for my back ( I am likely to be bed bound all day today as a consequence of the journey) but as it has been many years since I have spent any time on the Gold-Coast I spent some of my time there at looking at just what sort of place it has become in that interregnum.
The overwhelming impression one gets is of squalor with a veneer of tat and pretence. The footpaths are an unending patchwork of different surfaces and pose a great risk to anyone, like yours truly, who walks with a cane. Once you raise your eyes to the many people on the streets its hard to see much real joy among them. It seemed to me that most were trying very hard to “have fun” with a rather grim determination.
To give my daughter the most time with her friend I spent most of my day reading ” Dexter is Delicious” I finished the book as it happens and in many ways it was a most apt read for the day because the Miami setting Of Jeff Lindsey’s novels are so very similar to the place were I was reading his clever prose. I also could not help but wonder about the lives of those people who serve the tourists because I did not see even one person in the shops and Cafes who looked even vaguely happy or even marginally cheerful .
By my calculation it must be more than thirty years since I have been to Surfers Paradise and if I manage to go another thirty years before I again visit I will consider that to be too soon for this old codger.
Cheers Comrades
You can bet on it, but advertising gambling is bad for us
I’m not a gambling man by any stretch of the imagination, heck I don’t even buy lottery tickets but I am no wowser either I don’t care if other people want to have a flutter on the ponies or any other competition. On top of that I am lightning fast on the channel change button if I find sport on the TV. None the less I do have an opinion about the current issue of advertising by bookies during sports broadcasts. I just think that the infusion of gambling to be utterly pernicious and that makes me in agreement with Julia Gillard (oh the humanity!) but I am inclined to think that a total ban on the broadcast advertising of bookmaking would be the most socially beneficial regulation.
Cheers Comrades
Feeding the animals
This story tickled my fancy this morning because it has a great deal to say about the silliness of European governments and it suggests a new and environmentally friendly way to promote suicide euthanasia tourism.
Really could anyone think of a cleaner or greener way to end the suffering of the terminally ill? All that has to be done is to throw them off the same cliff, a thousand foot drop will be enough to end their lives very quickly and disposal of the mortal remains will be assured as well as being a great way of helping the survival of an endangered species… Its a win win win idea whose time has surely come.
Levity aside though this story does highlight the unintended consequences of government decisions because if the long traditional practice of disposing of dead live stock by leaving them for the vultures has made what was a benefit to the farmers a liability which is itself symbolic of the way that the whole European experiment is failing because while the European union may have heralded an era of unprecedented peace it has replaced the cycle of war with the false hope of unity and the petty minded stupidity of an unloved bureaucratic hierarchy.
Cheers Comrades
Autumn in Bright, Victoria
(by Ray Dixon)
Just to ‘Brighten’ up the day (and because I don’t think Iain gets a real Autumn up there in Queensland), here are some photos I took yesterday around our property, Grevillea Gardens holiday accommodation in Bright (Vic) .
It might be due to the milder weather we’ve had but, for some reason, the Autumn colours have come out much later this year – and spectacularly so. It’s been great for business too with plenty of tourists coming up to see why Bright is regarded as Australia’s most beautiful inland town.
Okay, this is a shameless plug (I hope Iain doesn’t mind), so I might as well go the whole hog and mention that the units are also for individual sale. We’ve sold three, so far.
Here are some more pics- click on images to enlarge: (more…)
Boston Marathon Bombing

‘‘There are a lot of people down,’’ said one man, whose bib No.17528 identified him as Frank Deruyter of North Carolina.
He was not injured, but marathon workers were carrying one woman, who did not appear to be a runner, to the medical area as blood gushed from her leg.
Phil Kirkpatrick, a 59-year-old from Nashville with blood on his jeans and shoes, said he was watching his girlfriend race when the explosions went off.
‘‘I was standing just there and something blew up on the street,’’ he said. ‘‘There was a large explosion and a white flash. It blew us all back onto each other. It was so loud, I still can’t hear out of my right ear. I was crawling on the sidewalk, and my cell phone blew out of my hand. There were some really hurt people.’’
He was taken a medical tent, and saw a man with his foot blown off.
(click for source)
Either its Gun rights nutters or its people killing in the name of you know who.
Shocked Comrades
Distance
Air travel, the blessing of modernity if you ask the general population who dream of exotic places to spend their holidays, tools for terror to those who take the Islamists at their word but this morning I am trying to be an optimist about air safety because I have to for the sake of my children.
Cheers Comrades
Geert Wilders’ speaking tour
My friends form the left seem to be utterly terrified that this man will shatter their delusions about the nature of Islam and I just can’t help thinking that this fear is an example of a the sort of intestinal fortitude deficit that saw Neville Chamberlain declare that there would be “peace in our time” just prior to WW2. If a man receives death threats and requires substantial and constant protective efforts to ensure he remains alive isn’t that an indictment of the faith that he criticises and proof that it is no religion of peace?
I expect that the marriage of convenience between minions of the left and Islam will manifest itself in the form of claims the Geert is a “racist” and an Islamophobe (cue: Damian Doyle)but I can’t see such claims as anything other than those same minions being willing butt boys for a religion that is antithetical to all of their claimed belief in the rights of the individual to the inalienable right to autonomy of thought and a right to criticise all religious dogma. The left are total quislings when it comes to any criticism of the ideology of Islam they have been utterly cowered by the threats of violence, both explicit but more from the implicit threats that the promised violence that has been focused upon Wilders will be visited upon any here who speak up against the “religion of peace”.
Its all well and good to be tolerant of all of the many ways that people seek to personify the deity but in my view our obligation to be tolerant ends the moment that followers of any faith threaten or visit violence upon their critics.
Cheers Comrades
I also note that there will be no Brisbane appearance, which is very disappointing to me personally…
Related articles
- Ha Ha Islamophobia (iainhall.wordpress.com)
- Is Islam a Religion of Peace? No. [Part 2] (thegreatantagonizer.wordpress.com)
- Guess how many Islamic terror attacks since 9/11 (wnd.com)
- News From The “Religion of Peace” (mundabor.wordpress.com)
- “Islam the Religion of Peace” (jpfinn7.wordpress.com)
- Why Islam means peace? (abdulruff.wordpress.com)
- Neville Chamberlain Did the Right Thing? June 5th Debate at Intelligence Squared (winningreview.co.uk)
- Obama’s Indifference to Aggression (bokertov.typepad.com)