Ideology wins out

In the USA members of their government met to decided if there would be a seven hundred thousand million dollar bail out of their financial system. without the bail out things look as though they may just end up in the shit heap.

And so they are.

Government members decided that it is better for market forces to have sway rather than tempt re-approaching Keynesian economics. Freedman has won out but at what cost?

Financial markets, stock exchanges, all around the world have gone into free fall after the announcement of the vote. Another vote tonight (Australian time) may reverse this, but the damage has already been done.

The biggest problem was seen to be handing golden parachutes to the multi-millionaire CEOs (chief executive officers) of those companies in financial trouble. Why should the ordinary taxpayer bail out someone on such a huge, enormous, gigantuan salary? Especially someone who fucked up so badly in letting their companies dive into oblivion.

Market forces. What a laugh. Because of the greed and the need to have growth at all costs, there won't be a market for much longer.

Pregnancy as a profession seems to be over

The government has realised that their baby bonus scheme - where new mums get a $5000 cash handout, isn't really working the way everyone wanted it to work.

Too many plasma TVs, second cars, overseas holidays and new kitchens were on the statistics books for the government not too notice that the baby bonus was being squandered on throw aways.

And then there's the full time mothers - those who get pregnant at 16 or 18 and live on the single mothers benefit until their bub or bubs are approaching the cut off time (it used to be 16 but is being lowered regularly) when, hey ho, they get into another deep and meaningful relationship with a functional penis and get pregnant again, extending their professional pregnancy for another decade. With IV technology they could stay on the single mums benefit until the aged pension kicked in. The baby bonus was a real bonus to these people. The cash in hand paid for things that actually were needed such as replacing the dead fridge or buying a new non-plasma TV.

Or those who got pregnant on the advice of their accountant to get a free $5000.

The first signs of trouble came when the government said it would stop a lump sum and start a fortnightly payment of a couple of hundred bucks up to the value of $5000. And for junkies this was the norm - no chance of five grand to put up the arm.

So the government has decided to bring in a new system where working mums will get the basic wage ($544 a week - wish I was on that) for 18 weeks instead of a lump sum baby bonus.

There's big talk on telly and in the paper about the povliners and those who aren't working won't get anything. Can't have the underclass breeding, now can we?

The baby bonus was a good idea to boost the birth rate. Though it was an idea introduced by the Liberal party which is notorious for hanging on to the white Australia policy for so long and for trying to reintroduce it during Jack Boot Johnnie Howard's reign. An idea which relied on white Australians hitting the sack and copulating. It worked. The birth rate increased for the first time in decades.

And now it looks as though its gone.

my favourite job

The thing I like doing most in my garden is pollinating the granadilla flowers.

They are a magic display.

We have a vine growing on the western side of the house - creating a cool, green arbour that is dotted with these most amazing of flowers. It can be seen in the background of the second picture - behind our fence of seedlings.

In Ecuador and Central America where the granadilla is native, a bee called the carpenter bee is responsible for all of the pollination. We don't have them. The European bee isn't interested, too much easy pollen to be got from everything else and the blue barred bees have only been seen at the flowers once. So hand pollination is the only way to get fruit.

When you first grow granadilla it is very frustrating in not being able to set fruit. Be patient and be methodical.

When you have several flowers on the vine - pollinate one at 7am, one at 8am, one at 9am etc etc and label each flower with the time you pollinated them. When you get a fruit set you have a rough idea of the time you need to hand pollinate.

It's easier with ours now because all of the flowers are above my head, so when I get pollen in my eye I know the pollen is free and ready to be transferred. It's then all about sex and birds and the bees. And a bit of luck. And to make sure you could always pollinate at the precise time and then a bit later - to be sure to be sure LOL.

The fruit is worth it. Let them go as golden coloured as you dare. That's when the pulp is the sweetest.

Even some of the pith is edible and in the really ripe fruit tastes like rock melon.

It's holiday time in paradise

And now for something competely different.

This country has more than 100,000 homeless people. People without a regular roof over their head. People who would gladly pay rent for somewhere to live if there was somewhere to pay rent for. And we've got holiday homes next to us. The one immediate to us sleeps 11 people, the one next to that sleeps 9, the one next to that is slowly becoming permanently inhabited - the people there have been in it for a couple of months now.

As a suburb we have more than 10% of the dwellings unoccupied on census night and it's pretty much the same all over the beach suburbs of the Sunshine Coast. Thousands of houses empty for 40-46 weeks a year just in our little area of the world. And 100,000 homeless.

I'll repeat for those of you who didn't catch it first time - thousands of houses empty for 40-46 weeks a year just in our little area of the world. And 100,000 homeless.

So here's a radical thought along the lines of what the British and USA governments are doing to banks - nationalise. Or tell the owners to use it or lose it. With so many houses returned to the government housing stocks there need never be a homeless person in Australia again. There need never be a rental crisis where people can't rent no matter how much money they have got.

And those who own the holiday houses needent despair - they'll get a fair price for their houses paid for by the billions of dollars our government isn't returning to the people. After all it's we the people who paid taxes to let the government have billions of dollars to do nothing with.

its a bloody ford

Step daughter and her other half (can't call him better half LOL) have an oldish ford and it died the other day.

I have tried to hint to them that because its a Ford you need to do regular maintenance and to walk around and look under the car at least once a week. And keeping an eye on where you park is the first place to pick up problems - and the nuts and bolts that fall off fords so regularly.

When I had a Ford - you either couldn't tighten up any of the nuts and bolts so that they would do their job and stay there, or you could tighten them up so much you could never get them off again.

I had told them there was a lot of oil in our drive after each of their visits and that I regularly find nuts in the drive when they go home.

This problem is the gearbox seizing up - no oil, most was in their drive and our drive. And we've had at least two nuts of the size on the gearbox housing.

So just like my citrus - you have to walk around and look at your Ford very regularly. Instead of ants there'll be oil leaks and stains on the concrete.

And so the saga continues

I wrote earlier in this blog about the problems that occur when a private forum becomes so big or important or popular that it should be considered a public forum.

And so it was with ausgarden. A thousand or more people wanted and used that place to get ideas, discuss events, to meet new people. That forum, like so many others, had become the information ages' back fence. People talked over the fence, they leaned over the fence, they chatted, they gossiped, they were like an electronic village.

And then control, power, personality became a major part of it. Taffyman had the shits with me because of his verbal masturbation on another site and thought he was getting at me by deleting stuff from ausgarden. He then laid into "Spock" presumably he thought I was Spock. Spock took it very personally because his wife was bad mouthed by Taffyman. Presumably Taffyman was trying to bad mouth my wife. Fool Taffyman, if my Sandie ever gets to meet you, you'll know what its like to be verbally and very probably physically castrated.

I'm sorry Spock got verballed and appalled that his wife was - even if there was a mistaken identity. Even if there wasn't and Taffyman knew the difference between Spock and me, you are one sick puppy Taffyman.

If ausgarden resumes I'll help if I'm wanted to help. If not I'll use the site as an ordinary gardener very interested in chatting over the Internets' version of a back fence.

Until then I'll blog and let the world know what an opinionated bastard I am (spelt it properly this time).

Funnily enough Taffyman was involved in the aussies living simply site that so spectacularly showed how hypocritical people can be when they are protected by the anonymity of web forums.

Ausgarden latest - where is it, what's going on

I've just emailed rimuhosting - the site that hosts the actual data on ausgarden and have explained that the site was deleted and that ausgarden is worth keeping and I'm the registered owner of the name.

If we can get it up and running there'll be a need to get someone with up to date computing skills on side - - my last serious computing was writing COBOL and FORTRAN so I'm a bit out of date - and if we can get it running again - there should be a few "owners" so that just one person can't decide to stop everything.

Does anyone know that bloke on Whirlpool who offered to help with setting things up?? I can't use whirlpool under my own name - they've banned me (they don't like my sense of humour LOL) I use a works account on there that I can't name which makes contacting people there a bit difficult for me.

And then there are the costs - not sure how much it is to get things going with rimuhosting, but as I am a pauper povlining at the moment, that side of things will be hard for me.

I'll use my blog to keep everyone up to date until something happens.


And now I'm a pathetic maggot and a festering pox ridden idiot. ROFLMAO


Taffyman sent me a message on another site -

Up yours as well you pathetic maggot. I never deleted anyone elses posts or topics on AG. I deleted all my photos - NOTHING ELSE. If there were any other deletions then someone else did them NOT ME! It's because of people like you and the other harpies that continually picked on real people that brought the downfall of AG.
Write what you like - wherever you like, you stupid festering pox ridden idiot.
Now piss off and go somewhere else to get your 'jollies'. I told you once before to 'pull your pants up and go away'.
You're just another of the oxygen thieves that infest the internet.

I think the words speak for themselves.

Dream on

Dreaming about dreaming last night and I decided to put up a bit of a blog.

Dreams are wonderful. They invigorate the body, the mind and the soul. Most of the dreams we don't remember, but heck, they do so much for us even if they are forgotten as soon as they happen.

According to researchers and scientists the dream can reboot, restore, repair, defrag, and playstation3 our brains.

And if you can learn how to control your dreams they can become so much more. Control happens in two ways: controlling what you will dream that night and controlling how your dreams unfold during the night.

It takes time, it takes practice and I am not sure how it actually happens but you can teach yourself to dream what you want to dream.

And then in those dreams you should be able to realise you are dreaming and partially waken yourself so that you can direct what happens in the dream.

Excellent fun and it can solve problems that are worrying you. I have gone to bed at times with something worrying me and decided I would dream a solution and it happens.

And then there are the dream readers. I read once of a mystical cult from the Caucasus area who would read the dreams of those who could not remember them. They could also enter the dreams and help direct the dreamer in finding the solution to their problems or to help fight off the monsters that inhabit all of our dreams if we let them.

I can't find the scribbled quote I took from the book, nor can I trace the book through Google or abebooks or biblioz. If anyone reading this has an idea of the books name please post a comment.

Another way to intensify your dreaming experience is to do it hot. Try going to bed with an extra blanket or a second doona - the dreams become much more vibrant, real, in your face and enjoyable.

what happened at ausgarden

Ausgarden is dead and there more than a thousand users wondering why.

TAFFYMAN did it.

The site closed because of what taffyman did. Other garden sites should be very careful about Taffyman he/she is dangerous to web sites.

Taffyman was given temporary moderator status to cleanup some stuff on the Bonsai board. Next thing the site has gone down. Taffy had deleted all of a certain persons articles and posts and then posted a pretty inflammatory email on the forum directed at the owner basically venting his spleen over being taken off moderator status. No one is sure of who the owner was over there - I was accused of being SPOCK because I own the domain name. I'm not Spock. And I don't like taffy.

Spock email me. There are quite a lot of people out there who care about you and your family and also can't put up with fuckwits like Taffyman.

Taffyman comes from Maryborough and specialises in Bonsai. If he/she is on your forum be very careful. An old fashioned Romany curse has been put on all the plants he/she touches.

A bountiful garden

Things are going well in the garden at the moment - the chooks are laying, the ducks are laying, the vegies are producing and the fruit are fruiting.

Here's a list of what we are eating out of the garden:

chicken eggs
duck eggs
bananas
nectarines
lettuce (half a dozen types)
silver beet
bok choy
choy sum
mizuna
cherry tomatoes
grosse lisse
Black Russians
onion greens
chives
parsley - curly and Italian
oregano
nasturtium
Ceylon spinach
snow peas
green beans
baby carrots
sweet potato leaves
pawpaw
jap pumpkin
capsicum
two types of chilli

and the things that have just started to flower: lemon, Buddhas hand citrus, feijoa, grapes, grumichama

and the things which are in and will produce later in the year
gramma pumpkin, Queensland blue, cucumber, egg plant, watermelon, luffa, more bananas,

and aren't the nectarines delicious - so sweet and juicy and warm from the sun. The lace curtains may look ridiculous but they keep the fruit fly off them.

I was told by a mate who runs an organic fruit and vegie shop that organic nectarines at this time of the season and the size we have are selling for $40 a kilo - and we are getting about a kilo a day. Very bountiful.

ausgarden where are you

spock --- the site is off line

are you aware of this?

can you do anything to fix this?

Living in the USA

The USA is the super power of our times. The one country that is so far ahead of everyone else in power, money, learning, spending, culture etc etc etc

And this happens. I love the automatically generated internet advertising.

The link to Planetizen and the story.

Pussy cat pussy cat

Haven't seen a cat on any of our dog walks since the letter to the editor was published.

Not even in any of the yards where people don't give a stuff about their cats being out and the liars cat is noticed by not being there. Even at night all has been quiet so there aren't any feral cats around here, unless they are extremely quiet at the moment.

I've even seen cat traps in peoples' yards - there's one about 6 houses from us. And then last night a howling carry on - maybe a cat was caught in a trap or someone let their dear little moggy out.

Surprising to hear one after weeks without any cats in the neighbourhood.

Youtube

Youtube

Youtube is busily pulling down hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of videos because they transgress the unwritten law about who owns what etc etc.

Very disappointed with this when I tried to show She Who Must Be Obeyed a clip from Young Frankenstein this one shortly after Peter Boyle died and it was taken down by I think Rupert Murdoch's companies.

Thankfully its back up there. Have a click on the link and enjoy Peter Boyle at his comedic best.

And its almost as annoying to have one google part - blogspot - have a spell checker that doesn't recognise the name of another google part - youtube.

mia culpa

Great idea starting off a blog.

Even better that the blog has a spell checker in it, even if it is Americanised.

Too bad I didn't check my finger work before I created the blog spot account though.

OPINONATED

Such embarrassment.

Woolworths Currimundi

And the fun continues.

Went to the chemists today to pick up a script and got a couple of litres of milk. At Woolworths.

Got in the line for the 12 items or less with about half a dozen others. And then the shielas at the self service counters started trying to get people to go over there. Bloke in front of me said no way you're just cutting out jobs. I piped up and asked if I would get a 10% discount for doing their job for them.

And then they spotted me. Heard someone say oh jeesus it's him. And straight away another checkout opened. When they tried to get me to go over there I said politely no thanks. These people were here before me.

Why do they bother with the self serve? All of the people in front of me weren't interested. They wanted service.

Give it up Woollies. No one wants them and having four checkout chicks making sure no one steals anything from the self serve sort of defeats the purpose don't you think?

A prediction about electricty use

Power companies world wide are finding it is costing more to make electricity. The oil "crisis" brought on by speculation in world stock exchanges and the impending "doom" of carbon trading means the big companies are looking at ways to make us use electricity when they want us to use it and in ways to cut their costs - and quickly.

Coming to your home soon will be a neat little box that will attach to your electricity meter and your major appliances and your computer so that you or your electricity provider can control how much electricity you use and when.

You will get a discount for the 'privilege" of having an electricity company's' computer telling your air conditioner when it can turn on, and more importantly - when the electricity company can turn the thing off. Your heating will be controlled by a computer in Brisbane or Sydney or London or New York. You will get a rebate if you do your housework in the very early morning (and probably a rock through the window from irate neighbours) or if you do it in the off peak daylight hours. Your pool filtration system will turn on when the electricity load is beneficial to the company and not so beneficial to the neighbours and yourself.

No more will electricity companies have to panic about major football games in England when 20 million electric kettles are turned on at half time. No more will electricity companies have to generate more power in the middle of the night because Australia is playing the Spring Boks in Joh'burg. No more panic about hot spells or cold spells because the electricity company will have control of your electrical appliances and they can control the comfort of your home. If you think 30 degrees is too hot the lekkie company's' computer may think its just right to not have to turn on another generator and to keep your air-con off line. Or if 10 degrees at night is when the bar heater comes out you may have to reach for a jumper or a doona instead if the lekkie company thinks it may cause a surge in power use.

And then there's the other side of the coin, you may find you come home to a house cooled to 20 degrees because the company isn't using enough electricity and has turned on your air-con just to use up a bit - no point in wasting the stuff if they can force someone to pay for it.

Frightening isn't it. But coming to an electric company near you and soon. With Australia introducing carbon trading in the very near future, the big wigs of the electricity industry have done some radical thinking and come up with this scheme.

And these are the same big wigs in Australia who designed a national grid - where diesel powered generators in Broome can sell electricty to Macdonalds in Sydney - even though there's no wires connecting Broome with the rest of Australia. Sort of like the water system in the Murray Darling - an irrigator on the Darling can buy the water licence from a farmer on the Murrumbidee - even though the actual water would have to flow up hill to be used. its paper shuffling of a product and we the end consumers are the ones who cop the paper cuts.

Peter Costello

courier mail article


Good onya Mr Costello. 11 years as Jack Boot Johnnies right hand man and now you finally decide that he was doing things wrong with the kids over board, chasing the Hansonite vote, not saying sorry, the Pacific solution even the republic.

11 years is a long time to have laryngitis. Why didn't you say something at the time? It was your responsibility as a public servant, and that's all politicians are, highly paid elected public servants, you had to say something. You had to say whoa little fella. You had to complain. You had to back away from the racists. You didn't. You condoned everything, you voted for everything and now you want to rewrite history to show you really were a nice guy even though Mr Howards proctologist would tell you otherwise.

Any criminal will tell you he does his time for his crime and then society forgives and forgets. With politicians they write a book. You aren't forgiven and just like Juan Antonio Samaranches pronunciation of Sydney, no one will forget.

Smoking or another way to upset people

With Queensland beaches now being smoke free a couple of strange things have happened.

The fat chicks and skinny blokes no longer go to the beaches. True, most of the people you see at Queensland beaches are young, gorgeous, well tanned, fit as a fiddles, but until the smoking ban the skinny weeds and fat chicks were there too.

Is it because all the fat chicks smoke? And the skinny weeds all smoke?

The fat chicks smoke because they think smoking will make them thin. The weedy blokes smoke because they think it makes them look cool. The fat chicks don't get onto the beach because they'd have to do without a smoke, but if they gave up smoking they could breath again, exercise again, loose the weight and save themselves a fortune in the process.

shopping day woolworths whinge

All over Australia small businesses cry foul because Woolworths and Coles under cut them price wise and do strange things to try and put people out of business.

My local Woolworths, that's Woollies Currimundi for those googling at state head quarters, recently did an overhaul of the inside of the shop. And the entrances.

In the wet season there's only one door that you can or could enter Woollies by and stay dry. The door next to the newsagent.

Since the refurbishment Woollies have started pushing newspapers and magazines in their store and have blocked off the 'dry' door because it lets you out at the front of the newsagents.

Just coincidence or a devious plant to stop people buying their papers at the newsagents?

Seeing people, knowing people

When I was travelling the UK and Ireland and especially when I lived in Inverness, seeing faces and recognising people you know who have the same "look" about them was at times spooky and intriguing. The number of times I'd stop to speak to someone thinking they were an Aussie acquaintance or at least related to the person I knew in Aus was amazing. Especially when that person would come back with the broadest Scottish or Irish or Mancurian accent.

Though it did happen. In Inverness I lived in the Haugh a small part of the city right next to the castle walls. We had three pubs within spitting distance of my house. In one of them - the Harlequin - I met a bloke I'd first met 12 years before in Darwin. Spooky - because I'd just walked in and ordered a Guinness and up pops an Aussie accent saying G'day mate. Have you ever been to Darwin?

Or the time I was wandering the suburbs of Inverness, miles from the nearest main road, and a car pulls up beside me. An Aussie and his wife ask for directions to Aberdeen. Got talking - where you from etc etc - - we used to live two streets apart in Canberra.

Or the Canberra mates wife - walking in the city centre of Inverness, we recognised each other instantly. She was in Norway for a conference and "popped over" to Inverness for a look at the Loch.

Recently there have been people showing up around home - Doug is still doing what he always did - helping - this time with Legacy. And Jim - surprised you were still alive. Knew your son was a real estate agent up here and know him. You weren't supposed to live past your late 50's because of the cigars you smoked and that was 25 years ago. Kirky was catching a bus to Maroochydore. You haven't changed a bit.

Saturday morning, September 6th, 2008

Nothing really special. A normal day. Up at 6.30. made coffee, read the papers. She Who Must Be Obeyed fed the aviary birds and changed their water. Collected eggs, two hen, one duck, should have more later. Baby quail started hatching this morning. 3 out before I went to Bunnings. Went there to buy some plants, bought a grevillea called strawberry sundae, a curry leaf plant and some bean seeds. Came home, had a boiled egg, mayo and lettuce sandwich and more coffee. Walked the dog with She Who Must Be Obeyed and found a couple of gardens starting to take food seriously. There was always us and mamber, and Doug, and Victoria, now there are more growing food as part of the show in their garden. One had about 50 tom thumb tomatoes used as a ground cover. I totally ignored it until it was pointed out that there were toms everywhere and to watch where I was walking. More bananas going in. More vegie patches being created. It's good to see. And again I seem to have forgotten how to punctuate. I'm reading a bio of William Shakespeare by Bill Bryson. Nothing much about old Bill himself, because there is nothing much known about him, but a good historical talk about how life was in the 1600's. And so the morning is over. 12 noon and time to stop this bit of the blog.

Public forums in private hands

The Internet is flooded with privately run forums that pretend to be public.

So when do the private forums really become a public resource?

The Australian National Library tries to keep a record of the forums (fora, though the correct plural, seems too pretentious even for me) in use in Australia. Their policy is to capture as much of what is available as possible.
This becomes difficult if not impossible when forums such as Whirlpool have their secret sect sections. The Pool Room, even In The News, both on Whirlpool, are limited in membership and don't allow programmes such as the the National Librarys' Pandora to enter let alone record.

And then the problems created by censoring evident in the recent cat discussions. A lot of valuable historical discussion has been censored, deleted and thrown away by forum owners determined to have their own views prevail. aussieslivingsimply.com.au, gardenexpress.com, whirlpool again, even the ABC are guilty of this. I think it would be invaluable to historians in the future to have the complete discussion available to determine society's views on an innocuous subject that has become notorious in the noughties.

The historians of the future aren't going to be able to see what happened except through blogs such as this and that must be construed as a very one sided argument.

Another to throw open the question of private forums in the public lime light is ausgarden.com.au. I don't know why but the discussion part of the site has been closed completely. Everything else seems to be working OK but the owner of the site seems to have decided that he will close the forum until he can sort out the pettiness. He had a big beef about the politics side of the site being taken over by cats when there was so many other important political discussions that could have taken place and a bigger beef about the cattiness of some of the moderators.

So when a site becomes successful and has a wealth of knowledge and history tied up in its databases should it be allowed to just close up shop? Should it be allowed to censor willy-nilly? Should it be allowed to force the owners point of view down the throats of historians to be?

Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn are two famous diarists who kept "blogs" in the 17th century. How would their works have been viewed if they could only write on a forum owned by someone else and edited and censored by someone else?
The scribblers and scrawlers and abusers of the English language who populate Australia's forums may never reach the heights of Pepys and Evelyn, but then again we will never know. When historians of the future reach for something from the early 21st century to try and determine what life was like these censored and arbitrarily closed forums may be the only documents available to them.

I love you

No special day,
no special reason,
I just want to tell you I love you.

Living the sterotype

It's not just Junky Jim who lives the stereotype, it's the junkies next door.

Junky Jims latest fiasco was to put the grocery money down the throat of a poker machine. Sad loser Jimmy boy. I had a mate years ago used to put $40,000 a year into pokies (2/3 of his salary). His marriage didn't last long. Nor did the next attempt at matrimony. Haven't heard from him for years. Wonder if he ever got a win? You will never win enough Junky Jim. You will never live long enough. The fool has now been diagnosed with Hep C.

And the junkies next door. LOL. Escapees from Jerry Springer. Had one of the dozen or so kids that belong to the mother sneaking out the front of our place to check the "honesty box" I have out there for plant sales. He shit himself when he saw me coming down the street.

And watching these people trying to live. All on the dole. All desperately poor. Some getting meals on wheels. All getting free food from Sally Army, St Vinnies and goodness knows who else. Yet they can all afford to smoke. They can afford drugs for the regular Friday night stoush. They can afford cars until they sell it for more drugs. They can afford to run a car which amazes me, though they probably do Junky Jims trick and fill up then shoot through.

Such a waste of people. They are probably very nice people once they escape the drugs, but they chose not to. The chose to lose themselves in the chemicals rather than face what life has to offer. They chose to inject chemcials and diseases for what? The massive buzz on Friday night that always ends in one of them being put in hospital, one of them in a jail cell, the rest cowering in a drug induced stupour in some corner of the broken house.

And the mothers' daughter is six months pregnant. Uses drugs, drinks, smokes, doesn't eat proper food. What hope has her baby got of coming into the world as an undamaged human being let alone as one that will survive?

Gymnorhina tibicen

The local newspaper has done a very Australian thing. Published a story in which people whinge about being swooped by magpies.

Magpies swoop as part of their natural behaviour. The last thing they want to do is have something as tender as their beak or as fragile as their wings come in contact with someones head. They swoop to scare. and they usually do a pretty good job.

I don't get attacked by magpies. Nor does my beloved. Even my mother and step father are immune from magpie attacks. Why/ I hear you crying out.

Because we all have gardens that are bird friendly. No cats. And a dog that won't chase magpies. And water. And lots of insects and skinks. And magpies have come to know us. Even our family of magpies' relatives don't swoop. We walk the dog through several magpie territories and even the furthest won't swoop. Word has got around about this strange group of humans being magpie friendly.

Things get so bad that I've been dithering in the garden out the front and had magpies walking around my legs or sitting on the fence next to me and watched as they attacked a nasty old bugger on the other side of the street and well away from the nest. I've seen this nasty old bugger bring a lump of wood up the street, not to just wave at the magpies but to kill them. I asked why he was so intent on hurting the magpies and he told me where to go. And then "fucking magpies always attack me". I asked how many wounds he'd had from their attacks. Doesn't matter, they;ll get me one day but they'll be dead before then.

He gets swooped every time he walks anywhere within cooee of the local magpies. All of them know him as a danger and swoop.

So if you are getting swooped, stop attacking the magpies. Start providing for them with a magpie friendly garden. Even a pinch of minced beef will make them sing and the word will get out that you are alright and the swooping will stop.

The rat run

We live in a small sea side suburb. Dicky Beach. Beaches to the left of us, beaches to the right and we have to run.

Whenever we want to go to the beach we have to cross a short cut rat run for people in their cars to save about 28 seconds on their trip into the centre of town.

More than 17,000 cars, trucks and buses use this rat run each day.

I tried to set it up so that you could click on the link and a Google map comes up showing the suburb. It doesn't work. Copying the URL into the blog doesn't work. Creating a tinyURL to click on doesn't work. So I have to ask you to open Google Maps and type in Dicky Beach. The rat run is the yellow road. The yellow brick road?? LOL The Google maps is good to use, but I still prefer Google Earth. Wish I could figure out how to link to something in Google Earth in a page such as this.

From the school, at the roundabout under the name Battery Hill, to Roderick Street, a distance of about 1.7km, there's one place for locals to cross. Anywhere else and the locals risk death by automobile.

The speed limit at the school is 40kph, along the rest of the rat run, 60kph. I wish people would realise that the speed limit is the maximum speed allowable and not the recommended speed. It really is so dangerous trying to cross those roads. The federal government has named several areas on the rat race as federal road black spots - places where there are just too many accidents and all of these involve pedestrians.

I don't know why the local council allows the rat run. I don't know why they don't lower the speed limit to 20kph so that locals have a chance of living when they cross the road. I don't know why more crossing points aren't installed.

The majority of the suburbs of Dicky Beach and Battery Hill live on the wrong side of the road for the beaches. And most of us live here because of the beaches. All of the old people who live in the retirement homes (jails for the aged) live on the wrong side of the track and have to face death by automobile to get to the only doctor in the suburb, the post office, one of the stores, one of the bakeries, one of the restaurants, three of the cafes, one of the newsagents. Most of the suburbs infrastructure is cut off from people by this black spot of a killer road. All to let car drivers get to the next red light a little quicker.

Mothers with prams are another frightening sight to see. A couple I know have one or two as toddlers and a pram full of baby and they have to try and cross this death trap to get to the doctors or the post office or just to the beach where there's a kids playground.

And kids. Anything from 5 to 15. You know the ones, those that are the next best thing to superman, faster than a speeding bullet, water proof, dint proof but definitely not car proof. It is terrifying to watch as they scramble across the road to get to the beach. Usually with boogie board or surf board in hand and only interested in one thing - how the surf is.

If anyone on the council reads this please get in touch and I'll take you for a walk across the road so that you can see what the old Caloundra Council created.

I saved a life once. I'm happy.

A long time ago I worked at the British Telecom telephone exchange in Inverness. I was the only one there with an Aussie accent and was loved by the old dears around the north of Scotland who would ring the 999 emergency number to try and get to speak with me. I was the only one in the exchange who would take time out to have a chat. As operators we had quotas to meet with our phone calls and private calls were frowned upon, but my quota was always met, I was always one of the top five operators and so the management tended to look the other way when I'd make an old dear happy for five minutes. I had half a dozen or more regular old chooks who would ring up each day to find out what's happening in the world. From what I could gather they were mostly in their 90's, house bound, some of them blind and all of them desperately lonely because their friends were all dead and the families cared but didn't call or visit.
~
I know I have a drop dead sexy phone voice. I've been told it too many times by so many people for it to be anything other than true. Pity the rest of me doesn't match up LOL. And it wasn't just the old dears who would ring up and chat. I had a couple of women who would ring and talk for hours. One Scot I went out with for a while, one was in Jamaica trying to get to the UK, one was a college girl in California. Part of the job was to take the call home phone calls from Poms overseas who wanted to ring home. There was a service where they could ring an international operator - me - and I'd connect to their pre-arranged number. The connection call to the operator was free from anywhere in the world and that's why the Jamaican and COTUSA rang so regularly.

And now the life I saved. The 999 phone call is the same as the Aussie 000 or the American 911 or the international 112. It gets you linked to an operator and then the operator forwards the call to the fire, police or ambulance. Sometimes you get prank calls, young kids who think it's the biggest prank in the world to ring the Polis and then run away. Or the Welsh yahoos who stole a car and a mobile phone and spent four or five hours driving around Wales and ringing the emergency number from the phone. Mobile phone calls to 999 would go to two or three telephone exchanges in Britain, so in Inverness we could get calls from all over the country.

When London flooded the mobile phone system went down because of the number of emergency calls. When a German was autobahning up an English motorway on the wrong side of the road at German speeds there was a major mobile phone emergency call lock up. That bloke had got off the ferry in Dover after recieving a phone call on his mobile from his son who had had an accident in England and was in hospital. So he drove the only way he knew following the signs to Manchester. I think he realised things were a bit strange when the signs to Manchester were on the other side of the autobahn and all the cars coming towards him were flashing their lights and blowing their horns, on his side of the road. I can imagine him cursing at these bloody crazy English before he realised he was a bloody crazy Kraut. The yuppies loved this one, they'd finally got an excuse for using their mobile phone for an emergency and half the country seemed to be doing the same thing.

When 999 calls come through and there isn't anyone on the other end we had to go through a procedure asking if you need an emergency service and can't speak, please tap the phone.

And she tapped. Not once, frantically. Again and again and again. I got her to stop and said to her are you serious, if you need an emergency service please tap once for yes and twice for no.

One tap.

Can you speak
Two taps.

OK. I'm going to connect us to the police, hang on don't go.

tap, tap, tap, tap, tap

Hello police, this is emergency at Inverness. I have a caller on the line who can't speak. Can you help? We have a communication thingy with one tap for yes two taps for no. It's here that I had to turn the call over to the Police but listen in until a name and an address was given. Part of the procedure and something that had to be stuck to to stop British Telecom being sued.

Police - can you hear me caller?
One tap.

OK caller we are going to get to you, but we need to know where you are and who you are.

Are you male
tap tap

OK good. A girl. Girls are usually smarter. (PC woman laughs)
tap, tap, tap, tap, tap

I'll start reading the alphabet and when we get to the first letter of your name tap.

A.B.C.D.E.F.
tap

I'll try and get the first few letters of your name and then guess the rest.

OK A.
tap

FA caller. Is that right FA
tap

Fanny?
tap tap
Faith Fay Farrah

tap tap to each of these

I butt in - I'm not supposed to once the police are on line. Fatimah

tap, tap, tap, tap, tap

Is your name Fatimah? Asks PC woman.
tap

Wonderful Fatimah. How old are you. Can you tap once for each of the first ten years of your life so I can get a rough idea.

One tap.

Oh dear. Can you tap again, once for each of the other years.

Six taps.

Sixteen. Sixteen year old Fatimah.

And so the call went on for four hours. I had to pop in and out of the call for all of that time and continue with my other emergency calls and the call home calls and the lost 10p in the phone box calls. I couldn't legally disconnect my connection between the police and the caller until an address was found and when the address was found I didn't disconnect because I was a part of this story now.

Fatimah was a disabled girl, stuck in a wheel chair and unable to speak. But her brain was as sharp as a knife. Daddy was a Pakistani business man who'd emigrated to England with his parents and had set out to create a successful company to cater for his own family. Except for Fatimah - she was an embarrassment to him.

The successful business man had taken the rest of his family to Euro Disney for the weekend and locked Fatimah in the secret room behind his office. The room with a bed, a TV and a shower. And his spare, untraceable mobile phone he used for special business deals.

The police found the office just as the battery on the mobile phone began to run out. The last thing PC woman and I heard was the sledge hammers breaking every wall in the place looking for Fatimah.

PC woman cried and I did too.

Miss Congeniality

I think COTUSA politics (COTUSAS is an acronym for Citizen of the USA) should stay in the United States of America, but I had to laugh about the woman appointed as the republican vice president nominee - Sarah Palin.


Time Magazine on line name her as the winner of the Miss Wasilla pageant and named Miss Congeniality in 1984.

For those who don't know it, I laugh because of the Sandra Bullock movie.

What an amazing story that woman has - eloped with her high school boyfriend who is a Yup'ik Eskimo. He's won the Tesoro Iron Dog, a 2,000-mile snowmobile race. He's known in Alaska as "The first dude".

They have five kids, the eldest in the USA military on his way to Iraq (he'll be a Prince Henry type target over there) and their youngest is a Down syndrome kid a few months old.

There's scuttlebutt about her using her power as Governor to get her former brother in law fired from his job because of a bitter divorce and custody battle her sister had to go through.

She admitted she inhaled too. I like this woman. Not sure I like her politics, but I reckon she will get the old fogey elected as president and he'll die in office and she becomes the president in his stead. There we go. My first prediction published.

I definitely don't like her politics. She is very vocal in wanting the Alaskan wilderness opened up to drilling for gas and oil.