Exploring Resilience via Lifes Burning Issues

Tag: journalists

Royal Wedding Madness

insert your name here!

Congratulations

Firstly congratulations to Prince William and Kate Middleton,  enjoy your day I am pleased for each of you as individuals and I hope your lives together are happy and your marriage  lasts your lifetimes.

Congratulations to you too, you are invited to the Royal Wedding.

But now for the RANT

While I am happy for William and Kate as individuals the Royal Wedding is sending me crazy and it’s time for a RANT, because I HATE the crap surrounding the Royal Wedding (and the institution of Royalty…but more of that further below)

You’re invited (whether you like it or not)

Like the caption on the invitation image says… insert your name here, because like it or not you are invited to the spectacle of the Royal Wedding. Sure you might not have a seat at Westminster Abbey and you may not get to rub shoulders with the upper crust, but as a member of the Hoi Polloi you have  front row seat to the circus.

WHAT? you’re not interested in the wedding! Well then you had better turn off your TV, switch off the radio and avoid all newspapers, magazines and newsstands for the next week or so, or you’ll have to endure the circus.

And it is a circus…. how much crap advertising and bullshit media have you seen regarding the wedding already… things like “we’ll be doing live crosses to the Royal Wedding all week” … FFS the wedding is happening on ONE day, ONE day!

Take that Silver Spoon and….

The other thing that really bugs me about this is the concept of Royalty itself…

By an accident of birth someone gets born into the Windsor Family and they are entitled to a life of privilege and public subsidy, all because of a history of bloodshed and inbreeding that resulted in the house of Windsor occupying the palace and historical developments that result in a conservative status quo that means another palace coup is never going to happen…..

I am opposed to any system that rewards someone simply by virtue of the accident of their birth, and particularly a system that imposes that accident of birth on a population in another country half way around the world.

The Royal Family (despite what the  constitution of my country says)  in reality has NOTHING to do with the day to day running of, development of or prosperity of my country and apart from being an anachronistic appendage delivers nothing.

So I guess  it is no secret that I am in favour of a Republic for my sunburnt country.

One bright spot….

At least one bright spot is that a couple of Australian media outlets have decided to give people like me a break and continue to screen other programs like sport and push the wedding off to their alternative digital channels ….THANK YOU!

Will you take up your invitation?

Are you going to insert your name in the space provided, are you going to soak up the saturation media coverage… or are you like me, and over it for a few reasons.

I’d love to know what you think about the wedding and the Royal Institution, so let rip in the comments!

image credit

Mark Hillary

Debating the nanny state…….

The information below is an unashamed cross posting of another of my articles from the blog I run for the Samuel Morris Foundation…….. It’s just that I feel SO DAMN passionate about this issue, that I could not let it go…..

All hail Miranda Devine and her rallying forces against the nanny state…….. after all who needs a nanny state…. not me….and I’m sure not you!

So how dare a government attempt to protect a vulnerable section of our community like 0-5 year olds, especially by reviewing laws which Miranda acknowledges as good…”many lives have been saved and injuries prevented by good laws – the original Swimming Pool Act requiring pools be fenced was one and compulsory seatbelts and random breath tests were two more.”

In her article “Nanny State helps drown us in our own stupidity” (Sydney Morning Herald 21 October 2009) Miranda claims that the proposed changes to the Swimming Pools Act are as a result of a spate of child drownings last year. Sorry Miranda, even a rudimentary amount of research would have revealed that that the review process was underway prior to last “summers spate of drownings”. In fact the review of the Swimming Pools regulation was completed prior to last summers spate of drownings, and the legislative review was already flagged at that point.

Research would also have revealed that there was a reduction in the overall number of toddler drowning across Australia last year, but this was not the case in NSW, where there was an increase, it would also have revealed that the numbers have been trending upwards across Australia over the past few years.

The original Pool Fencing Laws, which it is acknowledged have saved lives, were full of loopholes about which pools did or did not need to be fenced, and contained miserable enforcement provisions.

Why is a pool constructed before 1990 any less of a hazard than a pool constructed after 1990, why is a pool on a small block of land any less of a hazard than a pool on an sized block of land?” The simple answer is that there is NO difference in the hazard regardless of where the domestic swimming pool is located

read the rest of the post here…..http://bit.ly/nanny_state