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“We’ll risk death – but not if door is closed’, asylum-seekers say” well I say close the door then.
The opening line of this piece from the OZ strikes me as the best evidence yet that changing the way that we treat those who arrive by sea in those infamous leaky boats is the key to the solution.
We’ll risk death – but not if door is closed’, asylum-seekers say
click for source
The answer is clear. We must close the door and if we want to make a better life for these would be immigrants then lets divert some of the the money that we save when the numbers in detention decline to helping to create economic opportunities for those in places like Cisarua.
makes sense to me Comrades
Related articles
- What makes people get on a leaky boat from Indonesia? (thepunch.com.au)
- All at sea (theage.com.au)
- Don’t Come Here By Sea! (cafewhispers.wordpress.com)
- Time to call the asylum seeker ‘impasse’ what it really is (crikey.com.au)
To toast or not to toast that is the question
If you are as aware of energy costs as much as I am have you ever considered just what it costs you to have your bread toasted rather than plain, straight form the loaf? When I was growing up the idea of toasting your bread was all about compensating for the bread being stale or to make your “soldiers” upstanding enough for them to give your soft boiled eggs a good seeing to, the idea of toasting fresh bread was really something akin to sacrilege. Yet for my beautiful wife toast is THE way to eat bread at any time and given the choice she will always choose to toast her bread. yeah I know that we all have our culinary preferences but the recent demise of our pop-up toaster made me dream of a new era in this house where bread was enjoyed as the baker made it …
I sprouted the rather lame suggestion that without a toaster in the house we could save heaps on our energy bills only to have my toast loving spouse suggest that she could use the griller on our gas stove instead something powered form the plug socket…. Hmm maybe this is one that I can’t win as the addiction to toast is just too enduring and long-standing. So maybe my dream of a house no longer dependant on the pop up toaster will have to remain a dream but I can’t help wondering just how many of our friends of the Giaian faith are likewise devoted to toast and how many of them realise that we could all help to “save the planet” by giving up electrically browned bread products?
Ah well there are fights that you can win and fights that you are bound to lose sadly I think that I’m on the losing end of this one…
Cheers Comrades
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When my baby smiles at me I go to Rio…. Another boat sinks with as many as 90 feared drowned
click for source
This is a sad example of just why the Age and Fairfax in general are so biased. I ask you on what planet is a tragedy 200k north “near” to or “off” Christmas island? Its nearer to Indonesia and within its rescue zone but you can bet London to a brick that the usual suspects will be rushing to insist that we should immediately fly all survivors to Australia and put them up at the Hilton before they are all given a fast track to t residency every other economic reason that led them to their foolhardy voyage …
That said who has blood on her hands here?
Hint she is enjoying the delights of Rio at present…
with respect for the dead Comrades
Related articles
- Boat With 200 Aboard Capsizes Off Indonesia
- Boat destined for Australia capsizes with 200 on board
- Ship with about 200 aboard capsizes off Australia
- Asylum seeker boat capsizes
- Boat with 200 aboard capsizes off Indonesia
- Boat capsizes off Indonesia with scores feared drowned
- 90 still missing after boat capsizes off Indonesia – Businessweek
- Refugees clinging to boat hull
- Boat carrying asylum seekers capsizes off Indonesia
- You: Boat carrying 200 asylum seekers capsizes off Christmas Island
Being able to read what is written and the changing nature of the published word.
Less is more especially when the frames weigh just 17 grams
Yesterday I just could not get my head around any topic with enough dedication to tap out some words of wisdom for the sandpit’s readers, I had the shopping to do and some necessary errands like a organising some new spectacles, actaully new lenses for the frames that I bought online from the USA, having failed miserably to find any that I liked in the various stores that I have been visiting for months in a futile search for a style that I could live with. Its the blessing of getting older that finds me needing glasses all of the time these days and finding the perfect frames is really vexing when all of the chains have nothing but those vile letterbox rectangular abominations that are oh so fashionable at present. I was delighted to find that my frames met with such approval from the OPTICIAN who loved them enough to want to take a picture of himself wearing them!
Anyway enough of my excuses for not posting yesterday and onto the Fairfax saga one thing that you can’t say about Gina Reinhardt is that she fails to put the cat among the pigeons. The latte sippers must be choking on the froth this morning as the Age reports that her holding in the company is now more than 18% Talk about going into the belly of the beast ! as a disinterested observer I am just loving the soap opera quality of this little bit of game playing form Gina and frankly I can see a future where there are no print versions of any paper in this country the future is surely online when it comes to news and information and I predict that there will come a time when the Age, the SMH and all other Fairfax titles will be like their Brisbane times entirely an online creature, further I expect that when that happens the next step will be to consolidate all of those individual titles into one national masthead.
I came to this conclusion when I saw that at Westfield’s Strathpine centre the newsagent was closed and signs telling us that it is “temporary” and it would reopen soon were posted on its closed doors. Now besides the fact that shopping malls charge almost extortionate rents for any store front its clear that the business of selling papers, magazines and stationary is not what it used to be, with supermarkets selling those same products and much of the reading public getting their fix online I think that sadly we are going to see more newsagents closing in the future.
Of course from an environmental point of view the decline in the printed newspaper might not be such a bad thing if we value the trees that are cut down to make paper a decline in the demand has to be a good thing right? Of course it is. I don’t think this means an end of the book though because a book is seldom the single use item that newspapers tend to be and there is still a quality of the printed book that E readers seem to lack …
Cheers Comrades
And the condemned man drank lots of water.
Like a lot of politics junkies I watched Craig Thompson’s address to the parliament and I must say that I found his rambling speech anything but convincing and his consumption of water was to say the least extraordinary and clearly a significant tell of just how fearful and nervous he clearly was about delivering his explanation to the house.
Anyway what did everyone else think of this piece of tragic political theatre ?
Cheers Comrades
Related articles
A beautiful morning and a contemplation of just how a fish rots when that fish is the Gillard government.
Ah, its a beautiful l morning up here in my part of the world. There is just the slightest hint of coolness in the dawn air and my coffee is hot and full of the flavour that you have dreamt about in those moments between sleeping and waking. Now as I sit here I just can’t help but be unsurprised that the Labor government is staying in power because Craig Thompson is doing a merry dance with lawyers and judges and other minions of the legal process.
click for source
Its kinda apt that a very bad Government is ably to stay in power only because someone who was allegedly a rather bad secretary for his union who allegedly misused a motza of his unions funds for his own gratification.This is especially so when you consider the sort of misuse of government funds that is about to happen via the so called “clean energy fund” to be administered by the looniest of the loony Christine Milne and he fellow Green religious zealots. Ok, I’m just doing a bit of free association thinking here but I can’t help thinking that in this celebration of the crucifixion of Jesus that the one thing that we can be certain of is that there will be no cure for the canker of Craig Thompson and resurrection for Labor from the pustular death that his membership of the caucus is bringing ever closer.
Craig Thompson discussing his political future on the bus to Parliament house.
Of course the raw numbers in the house is the only reason that Thompson is even still a member of the Gillard governemnt and that he has not done the honourable thing and resigned his seat…
Maybe Ray’s claim that “a fish rots from the head down” is not that true when it comes to this current government because if you think about it having a rotten cloaca like Craig Thompson is certainly not doing anything but rotting the fish from the arse hole up.
Cheers Comrades
Related articles
- Gillard’s political deathbed delusions
- The problems with Labor
- ACTU to consider ditching Health Services Union
- Gillard’s broken promise (clubtroppo.com.au)
- Oppn attacks Gillard integrity over HSU (news.theage.com.au)
Lets thank Campbell Newman for saving us from dreary poetry
As regular readers will have gathered I actaully like the craft of writing, In this craft, like all forms of creative writing, you learn what works to get your message across and you learn that by having a direct interaction with your readers, rather than having what you write filtered through an editor or a publisher. You see what I am circling around is the issue of “literary awards” and their role in the writing landscape. I have been inclined to think about this because Campbell Newman has just announce that he is scrapping the Queensland Premiers awards with an annual saving to the budget of nearly a quarter of a million bucks. Of course the response to this from the literati has been to denounce this as the act of a philistine:
Click for source
Personally I think that poetry per se is very over rated and that apart from aspiring members of the literati nobody reads poetry at all these days. The exception is of course the poetry of songs and songwriters. I bet that if you ask “Jane Bloggs” on the street to recite a poem from memory you will draw a blank but you ask her to tell you the lyric to a popular song and she will be close to word perfect. Of course the cultural elites look down their noses at mere popular music yet that would have to be the only form of poetry that makes any kind of an impression on the people or makes quid these days. So perhaps we should acknowledge that Campbell Newman is doing we Queenslanders a favour by scrapping the awards and allowing a rather useless forms of literary expression slide into the obscurity that it so richly deserves
Cheers Comrades
Related articles
- Writers angry after Newman axes literary awards (abc.net.au)
- New premier scraps literary awards (abc.net.au)
Lefties can set free their inner whinger Ninja
Despite Ray’s long standing “love” of his local federal member for Indy I suspect that even he may agree with her analysis of why disaffected Labor “true believes™” went to Katter rather than the loopy Greens:
While the fact they fled their party is interesting, more interesting perhaps is where those disenchanted dyed-in the-wool Labor folk went.
You might assume that many would head to their allies on the left of the spectrum, and partners in Federal Government, The Greens.
The fact is that, despite the huge disenchantment, “true believers” did not park their vote with The Greens. The Greens couldn’t even manage to hold onto the primary vote they got at the last State election – their vote dropped 1.1 per cent.
That’s quite a telling indictment. When traditional Labor voters were looking to place a protest vote, they did not see the Greens as a party of choice. Even in the inner-urban seat of Mt Coot-Tha, which The Greens were actively targeting, their vote went down by 3.5 per cent.
The Greens ran in 13 more seats across the State than the newly-formed Katter’s Australia Party (KAP), but secured only 7.2 per cent of the statewide Primary vote. Katter’s Party got 11.4 per cent.
Many southern commentators have dismissed the KAP vote as a “rural red neck” phenomenon, drawing conservative voters on the far right. But the fact is, a lot of Labor’s true believers went to the KAP, rather than vote for the “Tories” they’d spent their lives despising. Because of Queensland’s optional preferential system, and the KAP “just vote 1” strategy, most of these votes exhausted.
In suburban traditional Labor strongholds such as Logan (12 per cent), Albert (11 per cent), Ipswich (14.8 per cent) and Ipswich West (18.8 per cent) the KAP vote was in double figures.
Even in potential new ALP Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Brisbane seat of Inala, the KAP got 11.5 per cent of the vote – nearly double the Greens’ 6 per cent.
Blue collar workers no doubt found more to like about Katter’s “smaller government, less regulation” message and social conservatism, than in the Green’s wacky policies and social experimentation. And perhaps some of Labor’s traditional base actually like to hunt, fish and go camping – things that have become increasingly regulated and banned. Just perhaps.
Anyway it is very amusing watching all of the minions of the left going through the grieving process for the spectacular loss of labor in Queensland. They will bounce back of course once they work out that this is a chance for them to set free their inner whinger Ninja and that it easier to find fault with incumbents that you loathe than to constructively defend a governemnt that does not deserve being defended.
Cheers Comrades
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 