Religion: Is it safe for the kiddies?

Adam and Eve, where all the trouble started. 

When I pass through the Westfield at Bondi Junction, I realise that, like the migrating birds at Macquarie Marshes, sometimes it is full of kids and sometimes it isn’t. For parts of the year they must go somewhere during the day. I think that place is school. I don't think much about school children these days, so the debate about ethics classes and religious teaching in state schools all but passed me by.
I am not sure whose bright idea it was to legislate to make it mandatory for religious education to be part of the primary school curriculum in NSW but I suspect the dead hand of Henry Parkes. He is often named as one of the fathers of federation but he is also one of the architects of the White Australia Policy, being a man very much opposed to the Chinese.
As well, he saw Fenian plots around every corner and generally dumped the Micks, especially Irish Micks, into the same boat as the Chinese. The rise of systemic Catholic schools is attributed to his anti-Catholic views.
NSW sits strangely, when one looks at the Constitution (every day, now that you ask). It is an appalling document when it comes to setting out basic human rights and is really only a mercantile contract drawn up by warring colonies to manage trade between them. Many of the big arguments about federation centred on ensuring all these fancy ideas of human rights would not be in the final document. But it does have a clause which makes state-sponsored religion unconstitutional. I am sure this was to ensure the Micks (they breed like bloody rabbits) didn’t suddenly end up in the majority and started imposing Papist law on everyone. Bit like the idiot arguments run by the gibberers in the Liberal Party about Sharia law.
Plus ça change.

Hairspray and curling wands are not policies

Which brings us to NSW.
Is it enough to run for election as Premier of NSW relying on a can of hairspray and a curling wand? Probably not. Jeff Kennett won a few elections in Victoria using industrial-strength hairspray (superglue?) but I’m not sure Kristina Keneally will be as lucky. Nor should she be.
I am mystified by the soft-shoe shuffle she gets from most of the press (male). It is the Sarah Palin factor: a whiff of perfume, a tight skirt and a well-turned calf and they lose all reason. The Australian’s Imre Salusinszky is positively tumescent and needs to get a room (by himself). Here's a few from the lovestruck fool http://goo.gl/jgXuw in which he stands up for Kristina against big bad bully Rudd and on March 10 last year he wrote in The Australian: “Kristina Keneally — the Premier of NSW and my future second wife — wrote to Rudd last week …”. Creepy
If Kristina were a bloke, she would be getting a kicking.
She is one of the magic NSW Right who thinks that just turning up is enough. Bob Carr did it for 10 years. When he realised people had sussed out that he was a totally useless phoney, he slid easily into a job at Macquarie Bank. What he does there is a mystery. He never did anything as premier. Why would he change the habits of a lifetime? I expect he is just on the door as a meeter and greeter, occasionally bringing the chairman’s car up from the car park.
No, that can’t be right. I just remembered he can’t drive. Helena has to cart him around, taking time out from her real job − running a printing company, I think it is.
It was amusing to see Bob was a member of the panel looking into where Labor went wrong last year. The answer that never surfaced is that the Labor Party is dominated by people like Carr who think just being in office is enough.
Whether you like it or not, the big issue for NSW during Bob’s reign was power privatisation but he powdered at the first whiff of grapeshot from the unions and retired to his Gore Vidal novels, convinced that he was right: don’t try to do anything; people might notice.`
So we have a state that is down the dunny. The only things that seem to have been introduced in the 10 years of Bob the Builder are toll roads and trains to the airport that are more expensive than a Tiger Air ticket to Melbourne.

The only place Kristina will be outrunning the voters 

Anyway, back to Kristina. We all know why she is there. The uglies of the NSW Right began to apprehend that maybe people didn’t like ’em and hoped they would be distracted by the sheila.
She has good set of pins, dresses well and has managed to get rid of the seppo accent – well, mostly. She is a bit like Westpac’s Gail Kelly who wrestles with her Jaapie accent in times of stress.
So Kristina “I’m nobody’s girl” wanders in, playing her best dress-up role yet: NSW Premier.

Julia, haven't the billionaires suffered enough?

The latest public opinion poll for Julia was not good. For some reason Australians like the Libs more than Labor.
Paradoxically they like Julia better than Tony Abbott. Don't they realise that a vote for the Libs gets you the set of steak knives as well? You can't have Libs without Tony, or Christopher Pyne for that matter. Why isn't that enough to turn most people's stomach?
But what it all means I don't know. And as there is nearly three years before we have to think about this I couldn't care less. Although having said that, I do enjoy seeing Tony Abbott in opposition all the time thinking he should be head prefect instead of that stupid ranga girl. `
The polls also showed we favor the flood levy. Not by a big margin and possibly only by the margin between those who have to pay it and those who don't.
Most of us are in favor of someone else paying instead of us.
It's called democracy, I think.
Down in the cheap seats it's hard not to feel for the poor dears being asked to stump up the $5 dollars a week max most will have to pay. And that's even though we know that it's the equivalent of Amanda Vantsone's famous hamburger and a milk shake. Although one wonders if that is all Amanda spends on hamburgers and milk shakes but let's not go down that road.

Verity I say unto you

The NSW education minister Verity Firth seems like a personable egg.
She is a member of that endangered Labor party species, the NSW Labor left. They enjoy no real power and perform the role of a pinata for the spivs and urgers who run the NSW Labor Party, hereafter known as Sussex Street.
This mob ritually slaughter the left once a year at the annual conference. They also run party hit squads who go out to put down any sign of a leftist uprisings in the branches.
Bob Carr, Stephen Loosley, Richo are all members of this bunch. Carr and Loosley are a tedious pair. Carr acted as Premier of NSW for years and managed to do very little except brush up on his German and bore people spitless with his knowledge of obscure facts about American politics. Improving the lot of the common man, aka traditional Labor supporters, is seen as an affectation of the left.

Shades of self importance

( A letter to the Wentworth Courier in response to calls on council to build a shelter.)
One can sympathise with Uri Butnaru with the call for a shaded structure at Bondi Beach. Our correspondent relates how pleas for such a structure have fallen on deaf ears at Waverley Council.
I know the feeling. Only last year my suggestion for shade cloth to be extended over the whole of the beach and well out to sea to protect us from the sun's rays even while swimming, also fell on deaf ears at the unfeeling council.
All power to you Uri. But I am a little puzzled by what you want. You say when "council is approached to build a measly little shelter costing only a few thousand dollars
, what reply do we get from the council?" "Oh, maybe we'll place one in the children's playground.".
Uri claims there are hundreds if not thousands of people wanting a shaded area and have petitioned the council. Now my worry is that these thousands of people will find it very cramped and indeed hot and humid under a such "measly little structure" .The idea of crowding people into a small hot place was tried in 1756 by the Nawab of Bengal with unfortunate results for those taking advantage of his hospitality.