The Price

Vigilantism

Reported at Nine MSN

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=450018

Trip wire to stop bike hoons condemned

Saturday Apr 19 08:44 AEST
Trip wire strung at head height in an Adelaide Park to deter hoons on motorised minibikes could have hurt children and other park users, a local official said.

Playford deputy mayor Glenn Docherty said minibike riders had been a constant problem in Cambridge Terrace Linear Reserve in Adelaide's north, and their "hoon" behaviour had angered local residents.

But the use of trip wire - which had been placed across a walking track - was not the way to solve the problem, he said.

"My biggest concern is for people who use the park legitimately," Mr Docherty said. "You have kids who ride their mountain bikes, and people who walk their dogs."

Although the minibikes were illegal in the park, Mr Docherty said he did not want to see the riders get hurt.

He urged residents to contact police if they saw minibike riders in the park, and not to take the law into their own hands.

"Vigilantism is not what we want in the community," Mr Docherty said.

Mr Docherty said police had removed the wire.

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Vigilantism is not wanted but I have a feeling there’ll be more of it to come, there was an incident on the NSW Central Coast where after someone drove into a crowd people attacked the driver screaming “kill him”.

If you ask why they would do that and why would they string trip wires in Adelaide and why I think there’ll be more vigilantism, the answer is because of the breakdown of law and order that’s happening everywhere.

The lack of law enforcement as in people not being arrested and gaoled for any real period of time when they break the law has many people disillusioned. If the law isn’t going to take action then people will do it themselves.

Goodbye to a Real Friend

22 years is a long time to have a pet and after 22 years my pet was more than just a pet.

He was my friend, my precious friend.

So when looking into how I may pay my proper respects to my friend I considered a few options, I wanted to be realistic and also I wanted to properly honour my friend,

So I chose cremation. My precious friend was cremated and I scattered his ashes in one of his favourite places to sit.

Of course I had to find someone to do this for me.

And the people I found where perfectly suited for this task. I wanted my precious friend to be treated with the respect he deserved and I wanted the appropriate level of respect towards my feelings in this sad time. Pets Eternal Peace, http://www.petseternalpeace.com.au , provided that. They came for my pet, cremated him and bought him home to me, they were happy to hear a few anecdotes about my friend and see a few pictures as well.

I could have had him placed in an urn but I wanted to symbolically set him free by scattering his ashes so my friend came home in a scatter box affixed with a white rose and a plaque with a few details about him.

Very respectful and more than I expected, I was very pleased with the care my friend received on his last journey.

I scattered his ashes, farewell my friend.

The scatter box is still here though; it’s quite useful for holding the pictures of my friend.

Thank you Pets Eternal Peace, my friend deserved the best and I’m happy to say you exceeded my expectations.

And thank you to my friend.

Syphilis Rising

It’s an old fashioned disease but like many other retro things it’s making a comeback with a vengeance.

It’s actually a little worrying. More than a little in fact.

It means more sexually active people aren’t using condoms when they have one night stands etc or being blood tested before having unprotected sex.

If you are with the one partner and you are both not sleeping around then all you’ll both need is blood test to confirm you are disease free. Then you can go for it with each other to your hearts content. You may even find time to make children.

In the one night stand arena there are a few ideas about unprotected sex and when it’s OK. For example some will say because they have regular blood tests, say every three months, they should be OK for one night stands every weekend with various partners because the tests prove they are not spreading any diseases around.

The flaw there is the blood tests don’t actually prevent diseases being spread. You can have your blood test and be all clear and then the first person you have sex with can have a disease which you catch and spread to everyone else until you have your next blood test.

You and your partner need to have a blood test before you engage in unprotected sex and the function of the test is to prove you don’t have any diseases.

Some will say because they just finished a relationship they should be OK to hook up with someone else who just finished a relationship because the people in the relationship were disease free.

Trouble is you don’t know if all the people in the relationship were unfaithful or not and they probably wouldn’t admit it if they were.

Some will say they only had unprotected once so it should be OK.

Um no, that’s wrong. Once is all it takes to catch something.

Some will just say anything they fancy at the time since they don’t like condoms and somehow disliking condoms will protect them.

Some believe it’s someone else’s responsibility and they shouldn’t have to do anything.

None of these approaches are actually legitimate methods of protecting yourself and you’d have to be pretty delusional to think they will.

If you can’t wait for a blood test, use condoms. Too bad if you really don’t like them, I think it’s fair to say that you’d like the diseases even less.

Drugs Did What??

Speaking at an anti drug forum former football star Ben Cousins is claiming he didn’t choose drugs, they chose him.

Is he suggesting drugs are some sort of living creature and they chose you out of a line of people?

An anti drug forum was not the best place for him to make his comments, what people need to hear is that drugs can be beaten, how they can be beaten and there is help out there.

And even more so the message needs to be put across that the best way to avoid being an addict is don’t start with drugs to begin with

Ben Cousins was a high profile football player who ended up with a drug habit that ended up putting him in rehab before eventually ending up sacked from the club he played for.

Cousins claimed his problems weren’t his fault and then cried on about he is someone who has lost a livelihood and the thing he loves most.

He wouldn’t be the first person that has happened to.

However with many others it’s totally beyond their control.

Drugs don’t choose or not choose or anything. And they don’t do anything unless you take them.

Ben Cousins took drugs

His choice.

His fault.

And when he finally grows up he may realise that.

And then there may be hope for him.

I don’t think there is hope for him right now though. With the comment that drugs chose him I would suggest there are still a few narcotic items in his brain distorting reality.

Super Theft?

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Superannuation (Super) was started to free Australia from the ever rising costs of pensions.

Instead of someone existing on a tiny little pension after retirement they'd become a member of a super fund and when they retire they have more money available to them.

Before they retire they regularly contribute money to the fund and their money is invested by the fund where there is likely to be a high return providing the fund member with more money upon retirement.

There are calls to force super funds to be invested in building the infrastructure.

If the economy was booming then the super funds would invest more in the country.

Super funds exist solely for the benefit of workers to fund their retirement and must have the freedom to invest where the return is the highest, not be stifled by the someones ambitions of looking good at someone else's expense.
And that's the key point, the funds are solely there for the fund members, superannuation has no obligations outside of those members, it certainly isn't a special reserve fund that someone just has to work out the secret for getting their hands on it.

I don't want less of a return on my future security just because someone wanted something built to make themselves look good.
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The Road Toll

I could ask myself why we even have a high road toll to begin with. After all there are better roads always being built, more traffic lights and roundabouts, safer cars and the peachy wonderful caring times we live in.

I didn't ask myself because I believe I already know the answer and that is no matter how good the infrastructure is bad drivers will undermine the best of efforts and cause carnage. Often I will see bad driving and I wonder how it is that the road toll isn't higher. Someone of my former acquaintance would always tailgate other vehicles, sms while driving, drive too fast through car parks, ignore the signs in the car park such as the no entry signs and ignore you when you shouted warnings.

This person once crashed into the back of some one that they were tailgating and apparently blamed the other driver for stopping suddenly. When it was mentioned to the tailgater that they were supposed to leave sufficient space for such a situation the tailgater just ignored it and continued with their same driving habits.

A colleague of mine told me that when they were recently driving long distance they were nearly hit by a careless driver, they were on a winding stretch of two lane terrace highway. He noticed some headlights briefly appear behind a semi trailer coming the other way. Although there was an unbroken line between the lanes and there wasn't much room for him to pull over due to the guard rail at the edge of the road he got out of his lane as much as he could just in time to see the semi coming around the blind curve and the headlights from behind the semi now overtaking the semi on the blind curve. If my colleague hadn't noticed the headlights up ahead and moved over he could have been wiped out all because someone couldn't be bothered to obey the road rules.

And really, just everybody obeying the road rules is all it would take to reduce the road toll.

Halloween And Beyond

"In recent years, there have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison in taffy apples and Halloween candy. It is no longer safe to let your child eat treats that come from strangers." –Ann Landers

It’s never safe to let your children eat anything given to them by a stranger, I decided to do some research to see if children have been victims of confectionary tampering at Halloween. Apart from some people using Halloween poisonings to cover their own crimes and schemes it looks like “only” 5 children have died from eating tampered Halloween lollies.

That’s 5 children too many.

In one case reported on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_scare a father used Halloween as a cover to murder his child for the life insurance by giving him cyanide laced lollies. The father then gave out poisoned lollies to other children to try and cover his crime so there’s an example of children being endangered by tainted lollies.

Whatever the motivation behind the poisonings it’s still the child on the receiving end of the poisoning, not a nice place to be. Saying its all someone else’s fault for giving out poisoned lollies doesn’t help the affected child.

And even if there were no or very few Halloween poisonings there can still be other potential consequences such as children accepting lollies from strangers at other times of the year, given children’s logic and simple desire for lollies, if it’s ok at Halloween there must be other times it’s ok.

That it’s never ok and there are no exceptions is what we need to teach.

Halloween

Halloween is over and done with for another year, this American tradition has been working its way into Australia for at least the last 10 years, maybe more and it now has a solid foothold in this country.

I have a problem with it.

When I say that some of the people that I’ve spoken to interrupt to say I don’t like it because it’s an American tradition and it has no place in this country.

Thankfully though most people let me finish speaking before adding their opinions.

Whether you interrupt me or you don’t, either way you find out my objections to Halloween lie in the fact it encourages children to do the very thing we should be teaching them not to do. We should be teaching them not to accept lollies from strangers, we should be teaching them to stay away from strangers to begin with.

Halloween teaches children to approach strangers then it teaches them to accept lollies from strangers.

We used to be taught at school to stay away from strangers and parents should be teaching it as well. It is not a rule of convenience that you can ignore whenever it suits you.

Some parents accompany their children but that doesn’t actually prevent people from tampering with lollies before they give them out and as good as forensic science is once a child has eaten something its origin is difficult to trace especially if they’ve been to a few houses.

It’s better if they aren’t put in that position to begin with.

And one good way to avoid that is by keeping children away from strangers all year round.

Choice

There’s a law in place that essentially lets you get away with murder so long as you have an excuse. It doesn’t have to be a good excuse, any excuse will do.

People lose their temper and attack someone and get away with it, people attack someone and state they didn’t know striking their victim would kill them. People take drugs and attack people and claim it’s not their fault because they were under the influence of the drugs that they chose to take. People get drunk and attack people and claim it’s not their fault because they were under the influence of alcohol that they chose to drink.

Then they are let off without punishment or the charge is downgraded and they serve less time.

Meanwhile their victims are dead and they are dead because someone has taken their life. Families lose a member because someone else didn’t want to control themself.

If you can’t control your temper get some help.

You don’t need to know that striking someone may kill them because you are not supposed to be striking people in the first place.

If drugs affect your behaviour and prevent you from controlling yourself then don’t take drugs. It is not your right to take drugs if your drug taking will adversely affect others. Many drugs are also illegal.

If alcohol affects your behaviour and prevent you from controlling yourself then don’t drink. It is not your right to drink if your drinking will adversely affect others

Other people are not there to suffer the adverse affects of actions that were the result your choices.

There are plenty of avenues of help available to people if they have problems.

You do not have the right to take your problems out on other people.

Self-Defence

Hot on the heels of the corporal punishment debate are some stories of other perceptions regarding punishment and how with other perceptions the boundaries of punishment, violence, right and wrong etc are blurred and how some see punishment as violence and therefore wrong and how self-defence can also be seen by some in the same way.

Where the boundaries are blurred the possible consequences of not punishing wrong doers are often overlooked followed by an outright denial of any actual consequences that occur.

One of these consequences is bullying, someone told me about their son who was attacked by a bully at school and in turn fought back which stopped the bully in his tracks and prevented further attacks. This parent then received a call from a teacher condemning the sons self defence from the bully by saying in a self-righteous manner that violence is never an answer. The parent countered by asking was her son supposed to just stand there and let the bully attack him and when confronted with this question the teacher hung up.

Some people like the teacher will get a self righteous attitude and feel they don’t have to justify their position because they feel they are on the higher moral ground and don’t have answer to anyone as what they are saying is the be all and end all of the argument.

It’s very easy for that teacher and others of that mindset to take that stance because they are not the ones being attacked, feeling pain and humiliation and they are not the ones whose education suffers. They are too busy feeling morally superior while allowing others to suffer from bullying just so they can cling to the flawed reasoning that self-defence is violence and therefore wrong.

Self-defence is not violence; it is a response to being attacked. The bully is the violent one and the other person is the victim. Stop the bully and you stop the violence.

Bullying can have long-term effects on the lives of their victims. If you make someone feel bad all the time they often won’t reach their potential because they can’t see it themselves anymore. Someone who may have made anywhere from a modest to an outstanding living can find themselves going nowhere, all because they were bullied and didn’t stand up for themselves or weren’t allowed to.

And yes, there are all sorts of support/therapy services available for victims but not everyone can find them and the reality is people would be better off if they weren’t put in a position where they need these services.