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| Hard at work | |
Intellectual elites know that the word 'dumb' is nothing to do with
intelligence, but is actually about the ability to speak. Yours truly ise
writing this in the middle of a child Party Land center, and the thought that
that children should be seen and not heard is a pretty attractive one at the
moment. [Note to self: next time bring an MP3 with recordings of small animals being
slaughtered with blunt objects - it will drown out the sound of the children,
and actually be marginally more pleasant]. But most people use dumb to mean unintelligent, and 'dumbness' is something we
are supposed to lose in our estimed child educational institutions, which are
of course goverened and controlled by
the Intellectual
Elite. For any school teachers who happen to have read this far, and reject the notion
that they label themselves 'Intellectual Elite', consider the fact that
The Government has
authorized you to dictate to a totally captive and non-consensual audience what
to think, and consider that Yours Truly has no such authorization. Bu we
digress .. A recent survey conducted by some other Intellectual Elites has confirmed
what many of us have known for quite some time - that literacy levels in
Australian children have actually fallen over the last thirty years. This generation of Australians are first generation who are dumber than their
parents. Dear Reader, indulge me for a minute. Take a look at your
parents. Isn't that a terrifying thought? Can you imagine an entire generation
desperate to control the lives of those around them via the ballot box, and
making worse decisions than the Baby Boomers? Of course given that the socialist Baby Boomer generation are now mostly
grandparents, the previous generation (Gen-X) didn't have a very high bar to jump. But
the current generation (Gen-Y) must be playing The Limbo. In spite of all the advances in technology over the last thirty years, all the
extra educational funding per child, all the computer assisted learning
techniques, the advances in pedagogical understanding and the reduced class
sizes (giving more teacher time for each student), literacy levels have
actually decresed. Of course some of the squishy readers may protest about education being about
more than readin', writin' and 'rithmetic. Modern education, we are told, must
be about 'life skills': the ability to cope with the rapidly changing world,
and installing 'societal values' in children like 'compassion', 'social
justice', 'Land rights for gay whales raped in nuclear war', and a hundred other
non-outcomes which are totally immeasurable. 'Political awarness' used to be a complusory university subject in the People's
Paradise Republic of China, but there is no such subject in Australian schools:
mostly because subjects aren't really taught any more. They just move from
issue to
issue. One politically
correct indoctrination session slides into another seamlessly in today's
highly efficient streamlined goal oriented educational system. And the result?
Something vague, squishy, and immeasurable. The teachers (assisted by
their unions) have managed
to put themselves in a posision where they have no measurable goals. Even
politicians have to put themselves to a vote every three of four
years. Teachers don't even have to do that. So yours truly thought to have a dig at a friend of the wife who recently
joined the Intellectual Elite class as a school teacher - one who is still
pumped up about her new found importance, and not yet cynical enough to take it
a bit less seriously. hClearly this is a subject which has come up in the staff-room recently because
her response was instantaneous. There was no denial that the reduction in
literacy was a bad thing - just a denial that the educational system was to
blame. In spite of the fact that The Teachers have total control of the students for 6
hours a day, five days a week, 35 weeks a year for over ten years, child
literacy was apparently beyond their control. It was the fact that students didn't read any more. The fact that they watched
television. The fact that they played video games. The fact that they used
computers. The fact that they surfed the internet. The list went on and
on. Parents were to blame. The media was to blame. Capitalism was to
blame. Society was to blame. Everyone was to blame, apparently, except The
Teachers, and The Government Educational System. It's good to see the teachers picked up one skill in their time at university:
sophistry. And the victims are our children.
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| Building character in the playground | |
Yours truly was recently the recipient of a newsletter on School Bullying.
As a parent who last year removed his child from a class because of consistent
bullying which the teacher refused to control, I read it with some interest. The teachers must take lessons specifically to deal with parents who complain
about bullying, because the response was flawless. First she denied it was happening, then when should could no longer deny it, she
assured us should would stop it immediately, then when it clearly didn't she met
further complaints with statements like 'there are family issues with that
child that I am unable to discuss'. Apparently the needs of the bully were
greater than the needs of those being bullied. I guess he came from a 'more
needy' family than ours, so it was okay. Clearly we were unable to stop it happening, but we could do the next best thing -
make it some other child's problem by moving my own child elsewhere. And we did. Bullying has been in the news more and more because of the advent of mobile
phone cameras. More and more bullying episodes have been filmed and found their
way onto youtube.com or even onto the
TrashMedia like ACA. The DoE, the unions and the teachers closed ranks to stop this trend of course:
they banned mobile phones at many schools - making it harder for people to show
what happens, and thereby concealing the amount of bullying that was happening
under school care. But, prisons and schools are always somewhat porus. Phones get smuggled in
and videos smuggled out. So the DoE was shamed into actually looking like it
was concerned about the problem, and commissioned a little booklet to send to
caring parents. And it was full of great information. It said what a bad thing bullying was. It
said that bullies were victims. It said that bullies often had emotional
problems. And it gave parents advice on how to counsel a child who was being
bullied at school. But there was something missing. There was absolutely nothing in the book about the responsibilities of the
teachers to ensure that a child was not being bullied. In spite of the fact
that the children are under total control of the teachers for six hours a day,
in spite of the fact that parents who refuse to send their children to school
are threatened with goal sentences, in spite of fact that parents are powerless
to stop bullying themselves, in spite of the fact that the only people who can
protect children from being bullied are the teachers themselves, it said
nothing about teachers having a responsibility to prevent bullying. And it said
nothing about a parent's recourse if the teachers refused to prevent the
bullying. All care but no responsibility? Well .. no responsibility anyway.
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| A few of the Rudds' favorite things - your money | |
Baby sitting is not really very complex thing. It basically involves changing
the occasional nappy, introducing the children to the delights of late night
horror movies, and then pretending they were in bed at 8:30, while helping
yourself to the contents of your host's liquor cabinet. Seriously, a child could to it. And in fact children do. The majority of 14
year-olds seem to do it to earn a few dollars an hour to top up their phone
cards so they can flirt via SMS. But not in the Rudd household. In the Rudd household, the 14 year-old son needs
a baby sitter of his own. Huh? Whether 14 year old Marcus is still breast fed hasn't actually been made clear,
and nor should it be. It's really none of our business what goes on behind
other people's closed doors and it really shouldn't concern us. Except of course if we are forced to pay for it. Yes gentle reader, the baby sitter was being paid for by you - the tax payer. While the rest of us have to pay for our own babysitters, the multi-millionaire
Rudds put their baby-sitter on the staff payroll for The Lodge, and the
tax-payer was expected to foot the bill. This is Uncle Kev's idea of implementing spending cuts, and sticking up for the
working class. 'Onya, Kev! But we shouldn't be too quick to label the man a hypocrite. After all, Kevin
Rudd has always been a big proponent of the Nanny State. It's good to see that
he inflicts it on his own children. Even the true believers might need a spoon full of sugar to swallow this little
indiscretion.
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| Spare the lash, spoil the teddy | |
Every statist knows that inciting religious hatred and insulting religions is a
dreadful thing. So dreadful that responsible governments must lock up their
citizens for doing so. It might have taken Australia some time to catch up with the trend, but the
various Australian governments have followed in the footsteps of great nations
like Sudan, which have had such laws for centuries - as demonstrated by the
recent jailing of school teacher Gillian Gibbons. She was charged with
'insulting Islam' after she allowed her students to name a teddy to be called
Mohammed. They were going to publicly flog her and jail her for a year, but in an
uncharacteristic moment of compassion, they sentenced her to 15 days, followed
by deportation. Uncharacteristic presumably because of the hordes of angry
machete-wielding protesters demanding her immediate execution. One local quoted as saying "She is a teacher and should be teaching her pupils
to be respectful and have morals but instead she is doing the opposite."
Morality is truly in the eyes of beholder. While it's easy to foam at the mouth at the latest excesses from the members of
the Religion of Peace, one has to question the motives of 56 year old Gillian
Gibbons. What would possess someone of sound mind and (rather overweight) body
to go to Sudan to teach? Any intelligent person would either avoid the world's garbage dumps entirely,
on at least minimise their time there to a few shonky arms deals before flying
out to somewhere more civilized. But it takes all kinds. Some people feel the
need to educate the Muslims. Perhaps she thought that familiarity would breed
consideration? Perhaps she thought that she could make them more tolerant by
letting them know about western feminist theory? Or (if the nature of school
teachers in Australia is any indication) perhaps she is just stupid. Teachers are fond of saying that you're never to old to continue your 'learning
journey'. Now she is about to enjoy a few weeks of 'learning journey' herself.
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| This part went to the Wong person | |
Peter Garrett is accident prone. One only has to watch his uncoordinated
onstage antics from his rock-star days to see this. Frankly, it's surprising
that he didn't fall off the stage sometime during a Midnight Oil gig and
experience Human Frailty first hand - and break his neck. But, one only has to consider Keith Richards to realize that some rock stars do
defy the odds to live to an age which challenges actuarial predictions as
well as common sense. And common sense wasn't in great supply when Mark (Maddog) Latham took in the
washed up rock star and appointed him to be ALP Lap Dog. And Peter has been
messing on the carpet ever since. He took the dunce's cap in an almost flawless campaign conducted by Kevin
(Pixie) Rudd, in which everyone in the ALP was told to just say 'me too' after John Howard said anything. For some reason
Garrett felt a need to strong to contain - and said that they would 'just
change everything' when they were elected. Oops. You belong to the ALP now
Peter. And the company takes what the company wants. Now Peter is paying the price. He is going to keep the title of 'Environment
Minister', but he will actually spend his time opening local fetes dedicated to
retarded immigrant Aborigines raped in nuclear war or something. He might call
himself King of the Mountain, but any environment duties requiring a Real Man
have been handed to someone with real balls - the Asian Lesbian: Penny Wong. We'll just change everything? Well, some of us are enjoying the changes
already, Peter.
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| Statists still expecting bundle of joy | |
Statists and true
believers were shocked recently to learn of an expectant mother miscarrying
in the toilet in the emergency ward of a major hospital after her cries for
help were ignored by hospital staff for two hours. Apparently Ms Casey was classified as 'level 4' by RPA triage staff, and relegated
to the back of the queue. Where she stayed, until it occurred to hospital staff
that a still-living fetus on the toilet floor was likely to get them unwanted
publicity. Not that hospital staff are averse to publicity, of course. Nurses seem to run
endless ads threatening to leave the profession because it's all John Howard's
fault. The fact that they are almost exclusively employed by state Labour
governments is not actually mentioned of course - apparently John Howard is
failing in his duty to force the state Labour governments to ignore market
forces. But clearly Kevin Rudd will. Because .. umm? As state and federal pollies finger pointed at
each other and ducked for cover, more and more people started coming of the
wood work and relaying their horror stories at the hands (or more likely not at
the hands) of emergency room staff in our glorious socialist health system. But it's not really clear what people expect from a socialist health
system. It's easy to simply retort with 'Guys, you wanted a socialist health
system, and you got one. What did you expect? Efficiency?' But the truth is a
little more complicated. If a woman is about to miscarry, there is little which can be done about it.
Usually miscarriages occur because of trauma (like a fall or a road accident),
or because there is something wrong with the fetus or the mother. The human
body is really pretty smart. If the mother's body decides that the fetus is
not viable it miscarries. It sounds horrible, but it's simply the truth.
The best you can do for a woman about to miscarry is to make her comfortable
and (if appropriate) give her counseling. But comfort and counseling are not the jobs of triage staff in an emergency room. They are there to
save lives. In fact, lives may have been saved by ignoring her, and helping
those who could actually be saved by the resources available. Exactly what do
people expect from a hospital emergency room? Understanding? Sympathy? Apparently so. But why would they expect this from a socialist health system?
Socialist systems are not exactly known for their humanity or compassion. Why
would they expect socialism to work differently in Australia? Apparently they are true believers. A few days later, The Telegraph showed a picture of the emergency room after
the publicity. It was empty. Sick people were either traveling further afield
to find better care, or taking their chances simply staying at home. This sounds
suspiciously like market forces kicking in. Imagine for a moment if RPA were a hospital in an all-private health
system. The publicity would have cost them millions as people chose to take
their illnesses (and spend their money) elsewhere. But our socialist health
system will simply waste a few million dollars of taxes having inquiries, finger
pointing, writing reports and shuffling deck-chairs, before returning to
business as usual. There can be few better arguments for a privatized health system.
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| Leaving the meat out | |
Those of us concerned with the future of humanity sometimes take comfort in
the Darwin Awards. Darwin Awards are
granted to people who, by acts of their own stupidity, prune themselves off the
evolutionary tree,
thereby improving the quality of the human gene pool. The ultimate sacrifice to
the collective good. While not technically qualifying, surely an honorable mention should go to the
couple who fed their baby to their pet dog. On the 28th of August, the Daily
Telegraph's readers were titillated by the news that a couple were watching
tele as their pet Siberian Husky ate their two week old baby. Apparently the
couple thought Fido was outside eating his doggie biscuits, when he was
actually inside munching into something a bit more tender. Technically these couple could have another baby, thus allowing their obviously
defective genes to survive another generation, so they don't qualify for the
Darwin Awards. One can only hope that responsible friends and family will
discourage them from doing so. While not a great fan of state intervention,
there are few stronger arguments for compulsory sterilization. While also not a great fan of The Religion of Peace, yours truly
can't help but think that these people would have done a little better
attending Sheik Hilali's sermons about leaving the meat out. It seems that it's
not just cats and Muslims that are unable to resist unguarded meat - it applies
to dogs as well. And really really stupid people do seem to need guidance from
their elites. Astonishingly, the following day, a family member was quoted as saying there
couple were 'unable to understand how or why this happened'. Guys,
it's not complicated: The. Dog. Ate. The. Baby. Is there some part of that which is hard to understand? Apparently so. The paper went on to report that:
Canine Association of WA president Phil Thompson said Siberian huskies were
generally agreeable companions.
normally they just eat each other?
It just seems to be a one-off freak accident,
Apparently he has never heard of any previous dog attacks. He mustn't get out much.
Dogs can show possessive natures.
Yeah, I get that way around my big juicy steak too.
Siberian huskies are not that sort of dog.
All evidence to the contrary. Moron.
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| I take full responsibility. It's not my fault. | |
Every redneck knows that saying 'I was drunk' is an excuse that will get
you out of some hot spots. It won't exactly get you off Scot free, but it will
deflect some well deserved wrath from those around you. Much like 'society is
to blame', it may confuse the issue for long enough for you draw attention to
someone else's short comings. Yours truly has used this excuse on numerous occasions. Yours truly even
used the excuse that 'she was drunk' on one occasion. [For the record,
this strategy had only limited success]. Kevin 'Pixie' Rudd wouldn't make that mistake - under pressure he'll stick
to the tried and true version. Like for instance when he is accused of
'inappropriately touching' a New York strip club. The Pixie does admit to going to a 'nightclub', which is a bit strange. A
'nightclub' is a bar where couples and groups go to dance, and where singles go
to pick up. The idea is not usually to get drunk, but to get a potential
partner drunk, to maximize your chances of getting lucky. In fact, The Pixie and two mates went to a 'strip club'. For the
uninitiated - that's a place where women take money for performing
services. Exactly what services they provide is left to the reader as a
research exercise, but at the lower end of the scale, the touching only goes
one way. Just because you have paid money doesn't mean that you get to touch
them - they just touch you. It seems that The Pixie, a mere Australian Politician, and clearly naive in
the ways of the big wide world, didn't know this, and got himself into a bit of
strife. Lefties have always been regarded as a bit 'touchie-feelie', but the
Pixie might have taken this trend a bit literally. Oops. Nothing naive about his damage control strategy though. He admits to being
there, but claims to not remember much about it because he was drunk. Very
clever - no-one can prove he is lying, and if more damning evidence comes to
light, then the story doesn't have to change. And to be fair, he has taken full responsibility for his actions. Of
course, he won't actually say what those actions are. Just that he takes full
responsibility for them. The Pixie's complex
relationship with 'responsibility', truth and alcohol has been noted before in this
column, but let's not get distracted. The truly appalling thing here is not that The Pixie went to a strip
club. He said his mistake was 'going into the club', but it's not. It was the unwanted
touching. Here is a man who doesn't understand the moral difference between
paying someone to dance, and violating them through unwanted touching. The
distinction between consensual and non-consensual acts is blurred in the
collectivist left-wing mindset. If personal sovereignty does not exist, then
what's the problem helping yourself to someone else's body without their
consent? To complete the age-old pattern, he just had to find someone else to
blame. And who better than Alex 'Gumby' Downer? It was a bit like Jimmy
Swaggart and his 'The Devil made me do it' excuse. 'It's all Alex Downer's fault' mightn't have the same memorability, but it is confusing
enough to keep the blinkers on the true believers until after the election. And this man seems likely to be our next Prime Minister. If he does, then I
for one refuse to take responsibility for it. But I will need to drown my
sorrows. Could someone get me a drink?
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| Absolutely Bereft of Credibility | |
Suppose that you could do something that would cost your worst enemy
$10,000, would you do it? Of course. But what if doing it would cost you
$5,000? Would you still do it? Would it be worth it? You'd have to hate them an
awful lot wouldn't you? Hold that thought for a minute. The distinction between a liar and a promise breaker has been explored
before in this column. And politics has no shortage of either. Hatred is a
strong part of politics too. Especially when the ABC is involved with the
Coalition. And even more so when grubby little ABC journalists try to make
themselves part of the story. Like Michael Bissenden. In case you missed the story:
- Peter 'Smirky' Costello is asked whether he ever made certain unflattering
remarks about his boss, Little Johnny.
- Smirky denies making the comments.
- Three grubby Journalists, led by Michael Bissenden contradict him and say
that yes, he did say those things 'off the record' over dinner two years ago.
- The credibility of all four people is called into question. Smirky is
accused of lying. The journalists are accused of violating a trust.
The details over exactly what Smirky is accused of saying, or the fact that
the journalists got the month wrong are merely a distracting detail here. And as for the fact that all politicians tell
lies, well, don't bother to alert the media. Clearly Bissenden saw the opportunity to damage the much hated Liberal
party. He could damage the Treasurer's credibility. But there was a price to be
paid - he had to give up his own credibility. It will be interesting to watch Bissenden's career after this. His ABC
cronies may be anxious to reward him for his efforts, but will any politicians
be willing to feed him stories 'off the record' after his little stunt? And
will he be able to compete with other journalists who can get those scoops? This hasn't affected the credibility of the ABC of course - the ABC had no
credibility anyway. But it has highlighted the depth of the hatred that the
organization has of the Coalition. You have to hate someone an awful lot to pay
that price to hurt them. That's your ABC.
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| Good News everybody .. | |
A long standing debate is whether plumbing or science saved more lives last
century. Doctors may have fussed over antibiotics, vaccines and other
concoctions but plumbers did a whole lot more to actually keep the diseases at
bay. Mostly by flushing it out of mind and out of sight. As someone who spent
much of their childhood without a flush toilet I can say that I am a big fan of
modern plumbing. And plumbers too - when you can get them to turn up. Of course the jury is back on what actually killed the most people last
century: socialism. But let's actually talk about science in this article. Many years ago I attended to a science graduation ceremony at one of our more
esteemed universities. A famous scientist (famous in Australia anyway) gave the
keynote address, and spent pretty much the entirety of his 20 minutes bagging
the discipline of Economics. All the usual half-truths, cliches and
anti-economics jokes came out and I have to say the about-to-graduate science
students loved it. I'm not sure how the combined economics-science graduates
took it, but no-one seemed to care. It could just have been nervous laughter of course. Perhaps the science
graduates were concerned about spending their time filling in unemployment
benefit forms, and knowing that their more economically minded colleagues would
earn $60K in their first year. For many of those new scientists, it was the last lecture they ever
attended. And the message they took from it is that in order to be good
scientists they must ignore (and preferably belittle) the tools offered by the
discipline of Economics. The message I took from it was that scientists can be ignorant stupid
people. Of course everyone has a preference for their own field of study
(that's why they chose it). But why would an intelligent person belittle (or
even ignore) the models, the tools and the offerings of another discipline? Many years later, that generation of scientists now comprise the body which the
government is going to in order to advise on our water crisis. Naively, one might think that economics (the study of the allocation of scarce
resources) might be useful giving insights into the allocation of a scarce
resource (like water), but our scientists seem to have been educated out of
taking that approach. The scientists will presumably look for a solution in their test tubes. A
solution in the Bernoulli or Navier-Stokes equations and publish papers about
the relationship between Choas Theory and Climate Change, or whatever topic is
hot in the world of science and will get more publications, and hence the
funding which follows them. Yet there are still calls to take water rights away from mere private owners,
and hand over the control of the river system to scientists. Muslims might call
for their ordained Mullahs to make their decisions for them. Many Australians
call for the high priests of the Religion of Science to do it for them. Worshipping God went out of favor with the rise of communism. Worshiping
The State went out of favor with the collapse of communism. But we can still
worship science. And cuius regio, eius religio.
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>> Please Sir, I want some more
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Always remember:
Progressive taxes are good taxes.
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Copyright © 2002,2003. All rights Reserved. |
Strawman
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