Gillard Stops the Boats!

....Australian fishing boats that is.

The Mother-of-all-Marine-Parks is to be created, by turning what seems like just about every square mile of Australian owned ocean from..... er... open ocean into "Marine Park".

Thus for no reason other than an impractical thought bubble that got turned into statute, life has been ruined for people (commercial fishermen) whose contribution has been to work hard all their life, pay tax, and provide food.

On a morning news programme a morbidly overweight middle aged woman, unknown to Mine Host, but likely a minister or lackey thereof (state or federal) announced, through beady piggy eyes, jiggling jowls, & a baleful glare, that this guillotining of their productive life actually presented an "opportunity" to commercial fishermen.

There are many words for the effect on people when their livelihood is being eliminated by statute, but "opportunity" is not among them.

She used the word "opportunity" at least six times.

It is fortunate indeed for Mine Host's TV set that there wasn't a boot or brick handy. This slug of a female was calmly & callously announcing the end of productive people's livelihood (done for no valid reason) as if it were a positive.

(It is not as if the laws were changed to reduce the need for lawyers, accountants, humanities lecturers, or cultural outreach officers, all of whom are a net drain on society - this is the spiking of people who are net contributors to society)

Any criminal defence lawyer worth their salt knows that extremely overweight women are at all costs to be kept off a jury, as they are a particularly harsh & unsympathetic lot. Being on a jury is one thing, one can imagine how much worse it can get by letting people of such unsympathetic character input into nation decision making.

It is disgusting that the members of the government will go on to receive pensions & other comforts, whilst the (former) fishermen go on to penury.

As a noted economist said last week: The only reason Australia has a two-speed economy is that despite its best efforts to do so, the federal government has not yet managed to wreck the mining industry.

He's Working on Your Case Right Now....

Scene: Telephone conversation.

Cast:

Mine Host

Junior who works for Mine Host's Lawyer.

Action:

Mine Host: [answers the phone] Hello.

Law firm junior: This is Junior Lawyer, on the team of Mr. Bigtime Partner, whom you've been repeatedly attempting to contact by telephone. Regretably he's not available today, is it okay if he telephones you on Monday, or is there something I can help you with today?

Mine Host: There is little you can do today, thank you, just so long as Mr. Bigtime Partner took the required action to handle the opposing lawyers before yesterday's 5pm deadline.

Law firm junior: ......[...extended silence...].........[...very extended...]......

Law firm junior: .....I've written into Mr. Bigtime Partner's diary that he should phone you on Monday..

So continues life as a client of one of the nation's leading law firms.

What's for Lunch?

Newshound Mine Host, refers in this post, to the following newspapers:

Melbourne Argus
Queensland Country Life
Daily Telegraph
Sun-Herald
Sydney Morning Herald
Melbourne Age

Beat that! (for diversity)

Mine Host, an occassional visitor to the (very) big smokes of Sydney & Melbourne, has long & deeply loathed Fairfax newspapers The (Melbourne) Age & the Sydney Morning Herald.....

....because...... you can't read 'em on the train!

Printed on very large sized pages, reading them in the confines of a crowded commuter carriage is no easier than would be folding bed linen.

Good news arrives: These two newspapers shall, early next year, be turned from broadsheet into tabloid. The "able to read aboard trains" market, long the sole domain of the Telegraph or the Sun-Herald, shall finally have some diversity.

This change of page size brings to Mine Host's mind a previous occasion when a broadsheet switched to tabloid:

The major newspaper in Qld is the "Queensland Country Life" (excepting a narrow strip down the coast, this newspaper reigns supreme in Qld) These days a part of the Fairfax empire, QCL was at the time printed on second-hand presses purchased from a newspaper in the far south, the "Melbourne Argus".

For a generation or more, the rural folk of Queensland read about their engagements, obituaries, cattle prices, average yield of the mango crop, etc. on pretty much the same pages as those upon which the Argus had brought the news to generations of Melbourne residents. For reasons that shall become apparent below, those broadsheet pages are fondly recalled by rural Queenslanders who handled them.

Occasional reader, fair dinkum newspaperman, and Melbourne local Bernie Slattery may chime in, on comments below, to give a brief report about the Argus - with focus on the printing press of course.

When the Argus presses reached the end of their economic life, the QCL switched to what is now known as "tabloid" size.

Oh Boy! This change of press size brought plenty of negative reader feedback.

The new smaller sized "Country Life" irritated readers, complaints were many in number, vehement in emphasis!

..... for it transpired that in rural Queensland, where they know what they really want in a newspaper, the new tabloid sized pages were "too small" to wrap a cut lunch properly.


Update: Definition of a "Cut Lunch" (prompted by Dave from Tacoma, in comments)

A "Cut Lunch" is a fulfilling & adequate lunch
For which the consumption of requires no cutlery or crockery
Is prepared at the same time as breakfast
Is carried with one to work, school, the factory, office, wherever
Is of a sufficient robustness to withstand knockabout treatment.
Is cut to size so as to fit into one's saddlebag, lunchbox, or other container.

Usually this is sandwiches (& perhaps some fruit and/or cake).

I'm certain the concept, if not the name, is well known to Dave & other Americans.

One Law for Her, Another for the Rest

Cause of much mirth to Mine Host over the past week or so has been the misguided panic of a coterie of journalists, in regard to the ownership of a pair of newspapers in the deep south.

Yep. The buying of shares in Fairfax by one of Australia's smaller scale mining bosses: Western Australian Gina Rinehart.

Newspapers, as in those printed things you read, are going the same way as the horse & carriage.

The Fairfax newspaper company in particular is so ineptly run, that the only thing people are prepared to bet upon is the actual date it will go bust.

Then along comes someone who actually buys shares in the failing company, and who actually believes in newspapers. (Gina Rinehart)

How do journalists at Fairfax greet their saviour?

With screeching panic, that is how. They bray like donkeys about how terrible it is that she is buying shares.

.....this does not assist one to believe that Fairfax journalists are a particularly bright bunch.

But then, anyone who follows circulation & readership figures (& wickedly compares those to copies sold) will have long known that the numbers of readers being shed by the two main Fairfax newspapers is quite an achievement in its own right.

The journalists at Fairfax are objecting to the very person who is likely to save their jobs.

Except of course, they'll be expected to (ugh) work for their money. Gina Rinehart has the look and manner of one who will not be indulgent of staff indolence.

Mine Host's favourite parts (in a mini-saga that downright bristles with instances of dickheadsmanship)?

1/. The insistence by the Fairfax Board of Directors, of whom none have signed a charter of editorial independence that Gina Rinehart must sign such a document as a condition of getting a seat on the board.

This pre-requisite of quill-must-meet-parchment or you don't sit on the board, has never been required of any other board member.

The only directors to ever so sign their name, were already members of the board when they just up & decided to sign.

2/. The insistence by a coterie of journalists that Gina Rinehard sign "the charter". Or else what....?

For there isn't one such document. There are two. One for the Sydney Morning Herald, and a different one for the Melbourne Age.

These really skilled investigative journalist types, could perhaps brush up on their facts before publicly engaging their mouth. Which of the multiple charters are they insisting she sign?

The same (cough) journalists who can't get it right about the number of charters-of-editorial-independence, simultaneously, & without any sense of irony, are screeching about quality journalism.

Fairfax is known as "fewfacts" for a very good reason. These same (cough) journalists who declare they are producing "quality" journalism, more than anything else are cut-&-paste clerks. They get most of their actual, you know, news from an AAP feed. Occasionally they'll camouflage the AAP feed with a bit of a re-write.

One thing is certain: The sooner the sheltered workshop calling itself Fairfax gets a real boss, the more chance that it may be saved, along with the jobs of some (undeserving) journalists.

More Olympic Glory Thwarted!!

Dad in Cleveland Street, Sydney, 3rd of February 1954. This is the first day of Queen Elizabeth II's visit. It is the first time a reigning monarch has set foot in Australia.

By taking this photograph of Dad holding a .303 with fixed bayonet, the unknown friend/relative unwittingly destroyed dad's chances of representing Australia in olympic swimming.

Note: That Lee Enfield is loaded. (Put that in your pipe & smoke it, Olympic Committee pansies!!)

In the nearly 60 years since, dad has never made olympic selection in anything. He now realises that it was due to being photographed with a rifle.

The "Nuremburg defence" seems to have cut no ice with Olympic selectors: "The Sgt. ordered me to do it!" "That's no excuse son, your Olympic swimming career is over!"

Dad wasn't a bad shot. When on the range they were given a magazine each to fire, just to familiarise themselves with the Owen gun. He fired the entire magazine at the steel post beside the 100yd target, hitting it with about half his rounds.

The range officer was speechless.

Dad did even better with the .303, which just happened to be his favourite shooting rifle. The army tested them on the rifle range at 300 yds. Dad, who'd been "Cock of the Walk" the entire year before in his hometown, was accustomed to shooting at 600 yds, thus put in a... .. rather impressive performance, on his ear.

He was a "master marksman" for the rest of his time in the Army.

This is not the first time this event has been written up on this blog.

Another Olympic Career Ruined!

Not the first young woman to unwittingly make a poor decision that would affect the rest of her life;

With "one shot - at 150 yds", my Aunt, by posing thus in 1950, stopped both this rabbit and her chances of making the olympic swimming team.

Update:

The careful observer will have noticed two things:

1/. Aunty is using the same Brno that I am holding in the previous post. Somewhere in the intervening 40 years dad has fitted a telescopic sight, and I'm using a 10-round magazine, whereas Aunty is using a 5-round flush fitting magazine. (She's a far better shot than I)

2/. Lady rabbit shooters wore far more fashionable shoes in 1950 than they do today!

Dog Food

• One of Mine Host's chores as a kid was to gather dog food.
• Here he is posing with some freshly obtained dog food
• It has just been unloaded from the wagon it was collected in.
• This photo is principally of the wallabies.
• The brno is there simply because that was easier than leaning it against something.
• This photo was taken by my Grandmother.
• Mum helped arrange the pose of the wallabies.
• ... thus they both unwittingly conspired to destroy my chances of Olympic selection.
• The angle is quite low, to make me appear taller, as I wanted to seem like a "big kid".
• Should any moisturiser-using pansy from the Australian Olympic Swimming Committee make so much as one crack about this photo being inappropriate for showing to Mine Host's "grandmother or mother"; then....
• .....they'll wish to god they'd stayed at home to select dogs & cats for the annual pet show.
• That is guaranteed!

Nappy Change Time!

Recently two members of Australia's olympic swimming team, in the USA for training (Australia has no swimming pools?) posted to facebook, photographs of themselves holding crossed shotguns or pistols (in a local USA gunshop.)

These off-duty photographs sent members of the following groups bonkers:

• Journalists
• the swimming team hierarchy
• The Australian Olympic Committee

Journalism, an occupation in which the cohort of clueless & chattering types is a considerably larger percentage than for most occupations, declared in print & on air, that the "weapons" the swimmers had posed with were the same as "those used in the Port Arthur massacre".

Well, the scary ballistic stuff does come out the end with the round hole in it, but that is about where the comparison to the port arthur weaponry ends.

... But, gee.... why bother to research actual facts, when you can just make it up? After all.... "guns is guns, right?"

Then some feminised bedwetter in the olympic hierarchy (seemingly a masculinity-free zone) declared that the swimmers should only post photos on facebook that you'd want to "share with your mother or grandmother"

...... which is exactly the sort of photograph the swimmers did post on facebook!

The nadir of this farce occurred a few days later when the swimmers returned to Australia. Confronted at the airport by a phalanx of journalists, one of the swimmers stated that it had just been a "bit of fun" & he said he was sorry if anybody had been offended by the photos.

Actually the swimmer's apology was rather a grovelling one. He didn't apologise for the photos, but only for inadvertantly offending anyone who'd seen the photos.

This got the morning TV wankocracy babbling about the "lack of sincerity" in the "clayton's apology" etc etc etc.

What the "journalists" overlooked was that this apology was a sign of the swimmer's lack of character...
.... for in this instance he had nothing to apologise for, and he should not have apologised at all.

Were Mine Host (who has never represented Australia in swimming) to be confronted in similar circumstances about posting on facebook a photo of himself nursing a firearm, he'd advise the journalists, and especially the Australian Olympic Committee, to go & have their nappy changed.

Life's too Short!

Mine Host asks an opinion of his litigation lawyer:

The result, for which Mine Host was billed circa $900, completely ignored one of the two connected circumstances for which advice was required.

Legal advice is like a 100 metre sprint. Stop halfway & you've got nothing.

Legal advice must be complete.

Mine Host is no ingenue around lawyers (their arrogant belief to the contrary notwithstanding.)

Due to hard & expensive experience, instructions by Mine Host to lawyers are:

• In writing.
• Concise.
• Bullet pointed.

Consequently, lawyers who crank up a dispute with Mine Host over the exact nature of their instructions, discover the dispute is quite brief indeed! (These fellers know all about the power of the written word! Nyeh nyeh nyeh!)

How did this particular lawyer handle Mine Host's ire at being billed for an advice that was not only incomplete, but had gone off on a tangent?

The junior who wrote it was a very young female who had been admitted as a solicitor for only a few months. She bristled up properly. (Most unwise, when one is a greenhorn)

The firm was a national firm. Heavy hitters. One of the nation's leading law firms.

Her written response, when asked why she had ignored half the client instructions:

"I decided that I did not have to adhere to your instructions"

Giving away the Farm

A not insignificant area of high quality rangeland in Australia's north is being made available, or "produced", for intensive agricultural use.

There are many problems facing the developer/s of this land: Distance to markets, fauna pests, remote area logistics & consequent high costs, etc.

Mine Host has a familiarity with this patch of land. In total it is not a big area, as far as releases of agricultural land go. About a hundred thousand acres. But in high rainfall & tropical climate. Irrigated, it will be a food bowl.

There is nothing new in this release, except for journalists, who have come down with a case of "gee whiz" & are writing about it as if they have only just discovered Australia has an undeveloped north. (This will be because those journalists have only just discovered that Australia has a vast undeveloped north)

This patch of land has been earmarked for this release, more than 30 years ago, possibly longer. There are no surprises. The people who owned it, & everybody for at least a thousand mile radius has known of the impending land release, just not when it would happen.

Except journalists in the deep south. You know, the "informed & investigative" class.

The (current) federal government has been in negotiations with the government of Communist China, for "the chinese" to be allocated every last acre of this land release, for "the chinese" to farm as they see fit, and for "the chinese" to do as they wish with the resultant farm produce.

This is an outrage!

Mine Host has, for the past several weeks (long before [cough] journalists) "discovered" the event, been lobbying everybody he can pin down.

Mine Host is not without ears to bend, knowing lots of political heavy hitters from both major parties & also industry representative bodies.

This land must not, under any circumstances or conditions, be farmed by anybody but Australians, using practices approved by the relevant state Department of Primary Industries.

In the manner of all previous agricultural land releases, this land should be balloted to Australian farmers, conditional upon them (a) living on their allocated land, and (b) developing it as productive farmland.

Anything else will be as good as treason.

Camouflage

New Office-in-Charge at the police station.

Without informing anybody else, he orders several police officers (male & female) to dress in mufti and of an evening mingle through the pubs. New OiC then calls a meeting between him and the town's main liquor licencees.

At this meeting he berates us no end, about the sort of stuff that the constables had seen in & around pubs (when out of uniform).

Apparently the constables-in-mufti had observed behaviour that people don't exhibit when there is a uniformed copper around.

Gee Sarge, ya don't reckon?

Anyways, the new O-i-C (at this special meeting) berated us publicans about how men had urinated in the street, right beside undercover police ladies, etc etc etc.

And now he, the new broom, was going to knock this sort of conduct out of the publicans of the town......

... about here Mine Host hit his pins to enquire just which publicans had been observed engaging in such...er.... street activities?

The meaning went right over the head of the really intelligent and brainy new O-i-C. Actually it ran deeper than that.

In his mind publicans knew this was happening, condoned it, and allowed it to happen.

The meeting was to "let you publicans know" that "this stops now!"

I don't know what this dickhead thought he was going to achieve by treating some of the town's leading businessmen like street hooligans (except to convince all of us that he was a dickhead).

Gee, we don't have any power outside our own buildings, and we aren't the ones with the guns & powers of arrest!

The Cardboarders

Buenos Aires, when socialising in neighborhood steakhouses, applauding tango musicians, sleeping in soft beds, tipping cabbies extravagantly, browsing wine shops, and hankering after nubile and alluring Argentine honeys, is fine when one is weighed down with Australian dollars at the current extremely favourable exchange rate.

For some, life in the world's greatest city is one of grinding & hopeless poverty. Poverty such as cannot be imagined in Australia, where what passes for poverty is affluence by Argentine standards.

In Ozziland, those living in "poverty" are apt to die from obesity. In one of those trendy cultural differences, morbid obesity is not as prevalent among those Argentinians who experience chronic poverty.

During a short post-lunch stroll, Mine Host snapped the above photo. Not being crass enough to approach the subject to both destroy their dignity, and confirm their social status, Mine Host has merely deemed the fellow to be possibly a member of what is known as "the cardboarders" (that is the best translation I could get anyway). These chaps, many of them former white collar workers suddenly retrenched years ago, eke out a hopeless existence collecting discarded cardboard and turning it in.

There is dual melancholy in this. That what was one of the world's most developed nations has been so badly mismanaged that so much human talent & skill is wasted in such manner, and that people live in such miserable circumstances.

As the fellow in the photograph is walking all accross town searching for cardboard scraps, countless people in Australia will be, at the exact same moment, (whilst filing their nails, or slacking off for a smoke break) be bitching about how hard done by they are to "have" to front up at their workplace for eight hours.

Makes one ashamed of one's countrymen. I'd like to do a level swap, a planeload of cardboarders exchanged for a planeload of bludgers.

Argentina (again!)

Mine Host's positive opinion of Argentina is well known.
Visiting Buenos Aires on business (as you do), Mine Host has just hoed into the above tucker. (Yes, a rare lapse from Mine Host's usual teetotal regimen!)

Somewhat hindered by his spanish being limited to learnt-on-the-run, suitable-for-instructing-taxi-drivers, Mine Host has yet to master conversing with waiters. A propensity to tip, combined with the obvious respect he holds for professional gentleman waiters, has meant that dining is usually a positive experience.

Don't be fooled by the ...er.. unique Argentine style of plating. Despite the spartan presentation, the food & wine are top grade. The ambience is most pleasant.

In contrast to what one is always told, I've never yet had a waiter in Buenos Aires recommend that beef be cooked well-done.

By the way, that is a large plate. That steak is quite a lot bigger than it looks.

Guilty - unless proven Guilty!

Still astonished at the current federal govt's brassy manner of promulgating their newly discovered concept of "innocent until proven guilty", Mine Host's mind drifts to some more laws that work the opposite way:

Specifically the Qld state worker's compensation laws. Under which an employer is 'obliged' to ensure a worker suffers no injury, either at the workplace, or work related.

Under the state laws, if any injury whatsoever happens to a worker, the employer is to blame, and may be sued for allowing the injury. Such litigation is in addition to the regular worker's compensation scheme.

It should be noted that being sued for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, for minor or fabricated injuries is a regular occurrence for Qld employers. Mine Host has been subject to at least three such lawsuits.

Employers have no defence, as none is allowed under the law. If an injury occurred, the employer was negligent.

Were a meteorite to strike the workplace & injure a worker, the employer can be sued for not preventing this from happening.

You couldn't make this stuff up!

Anyone who is wondering why the newly elected Premier of Qld has pledged to "rip up" at least 18,000 pages of legislation that was created by the previous govt. can now see why.

Hypocrites! (appendix)

Further to the preceding post on the .... er... flexible attitude of the (current) federal government to the somewhat ...er... flexible.... concept known as "presumption of innocence", paraphrased here is the closing paragraph of a post from October last year:

"In the glossary from the Fair Work Ombudsman, the employee is termed "the complainant" and the employer is termed "the wrongdoer".'

Hypocrites!

Through gritted teeth Mine Host has been over past weeks listening to the news.

One of the government politicians has got himself mixed up in a most salacious scandal, involving impropriety on a grand scale. Hookers (platoons of them), missing money (by the wheelbarrow load) etc.

The government has a majority of one vote in the parliament. If the scandal claims their frisky comrade, the government will fall. Thus the government is most anxious to water down any righteous anger from the public.

Thus various members of the (current) federal government have been banging on endlessly and most indignantly, about how it is some sort of natural right to be presumed innocent.

Don't these ... er.. people... read their own laws? The ones they voted into existence only a couple of years ago? The one that was one of their big election promises?

Yep! The "Fair Work Act".

Mine Host has, in his spare time been brushing up on his facts. At least one entire section of the Fair Work Act declares an employer guilty the very second an empoyee (present or past) makes an allegation. To "get off" punishment for the offence, the accused (employer) has to disprove their guilt.

The Federal Budget in One Phrase

"We've run right out of money!"

This in the middle of a mineral boom!

I do my bit for the feds

Wow, the federal government is going to pop $830 into parents' bank account, for every school age child. (Likely this will happen a month or so before a federal election, or something)

This money is to be for *cough*cough* education expenses that the parents may incur.

Riiiiiight!

Mine Host (& every other poker machine operator in the nation) is salivating at this news.

Merry Christmas! (to me!!!)

Will this money be blown on poker machines, grog, tattoos, new TV sets & the like?

You betcha it will!

And that is exactly what the federal government wants people to do with it.

The Notice that Never Was

A recent post on serving notice, by Legal Eagle, at the site she shares with Skepticlawer (she of the minimum two thousand word blog posts!) brings to mind Mine Host's favourite story of having notice served!

************

A fellow seated himself at the bar of the Wayside Tavern.

It was 6 p.m.

The bar was very busy.

The bar staff were flat out.

The stranger asked for Mine Host, & then the manager, both by name & was told that neither was on the premises.

The fellow pondered this for a few moments.

He then said that this abscence presented him with some difficulty. He was there to "serve notice" (at this point he waved an envelope) and had to serve it urgently, as he had been "supposed to serve it last week."

The barmaid was very busy & didn't catch everything he was saying. It was peak hour.

Later she noticed the fellow was gone.

He had left his envelope sitting on the bar, among the scattered newspapers, betting stubs, beer coasters & other detrius of a busy trading day.

This wasn't unusual, people usually leave things, including their money, on the bar while they go next door to buy something, or go outside for a smoke.

The papers/envelope were swept up and thrown into the rubbish bin when the bar was cleaned later on.

We know all this from a review of the security cameras.

For several days later the barmaid hesitantly mentioned that she may have "done something she shouldn't have".

Does just dropping the papers on the bar in a busy pub count as serving notice?

What was the particular legal matter referred to in the papers?

We have no idea whatsoever. It all went out with the rubbish many days ago.

Just Where is he from...?.....!!!!!

Scene: Wayside Tavern Office
Time: Very late at night (11pm+)
Cast:
Mine Host
DJ
2nd Chef (arrived 5 mins ago on the bus - first time he's been out of the big smoke in his life!)

Action:
Mine Host & newly arrived 2nd Chef are engaged in quiet small talk.
DJ appears at the doorway that leads to his office.

DJ: "I'm putting the kettle on, anybody want a cuppa?, I'm having coffee"
Mine Host: "Yair, I'll have a cuppa please."

(then comes the line that he will never live down, that has us still talking a year later, and gets a rollicking laugh from everybody we tell it to.):

2nd Chef: "I'll have a latte please...."


Hmmm.............. his horizons have certainly been very narrow!