It's that Day Again

Hannah got up early to make this for my 48th Birthday. Thanks Hannah. I love you too.

West Coast Eagles Showbag Special

Goodbye Ben Show Bag Special

6 x Needles (clean)
1g Ice
15 x Ecstasy Pills
Scooner of Unknown Drug Cocktail
1 oz Cannabis
Choice of 2 Eagles themed bongs
15% Rehab Discount Voucher

Real Ben Cousins Gossip Here

10 Questions Meme

The Actors Studio 10 Questions Meme -

1. What is your favorite word?

Discombobulation

2. What is your least favorite word?

John Howard (cheating I know)

3. What turns you on [creatively, spiritually or emotionally]?

Seeing my kids excited about something.

4. What turns you off?

Hypocrisy

5. What sound or noise do you love?

Heavy Rain.

6. What sound or noise do you hate?

Children screaming when I have a hangover.

7. What is your favorite curse word? *

Bugger, but there is a time and place for each one.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Gardening, Cooking, Nomad,

9. What profession would you not like to do?

Politician

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

I had you fooled for a long time.

Thanks Snoskred

Must Win for Scotland in Georgia Tonight

More Wordless Wednesday

Who Me?

Just Charge the Fine to my Visy Old Boy

Richard Pratt (appropriate name don't you think?) and his company Visy got a little financial wrist slap for their cardboard cartel arrangements with rival Amcor, dreamed up in suburban hotels, bars and parks and communication on prepaid mobil phones to carve up the cardboard packaging market. Pretty sleazy and presented in faux innocence during the trial.

It is about time that Australia had racketeering legislation. There appears to be a culture of anti competitive behaviour in some of the highest levels of Australian Business. Price fixing and other corporate crimes should have jail terms available, not just financial penalties. Not only that but Mr Pratt still owns the company and the CEO who faces a massive fine is still in his job.

What is the message here? If you are rich and powerful, carry on corrupting?

Update: Seems I am in touch with Aussie Values.

At the beginning of the month the PR campaign kicked off with front page coverage in the Weekend Australian and a comprehensive profile in the paper's color magazine. Richard Pratt would cop it on the chin and make admissions in the case that alleged price fixing between his Visy empire and competitors Amcor.

The result, pending the deliberations of the Federal Court, will probably be a fine nudging $40 million, for an offence tipped to have netted the cardboard billionaire something like $700 million. So a good day's work all round.

ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel argued that offences of this type should attract a criminal penalty, being a "form of theft and little different from classes of corporate crime that already attract criminal sentences".

It seems that the majority of Australian agree.

A special Roy Morgan Poll conducted on the evenings of Wednesday and Thursday this week found that 66% of all Australians consider that ''price fixing should be a criminal offence with jail penalties''. It only gets worse from there for Mr Pratt.

''If price fixing were a criminal offence, should Mr Pratt be sent to jail or not?'', the 690 respondents were asked. 71% said yes.

The PR campaign has been shredded as comprehensively as one of Mr Pratt's own recycled products.

After The Australian 's package other commentators rounded. Malcolm Maiden pulled no punches in Fairfax:

Visy is guilty of stupidity as well as breaches of the law. And the laws that were broken are not inconsequential: cartels are a cancer in the capitalist system, which stands or falls on the concept of fair competition.

Terry McCrann was blunt in News Limited tabloids:

The public Amcor company and the very private Dick Pratt Visy company conspired to rip-off every single Australian. All 21 million of us, year after year. To the tune of some hundreds of millions of very real dollars.

All of which leaves Prime Minister John Howard and an increasingly lone voice.

I have found Mr Pratt to be a generous Australian. He's been very successful in business and my own dealings with him have always been very positive. And I like him.

One that it now seems is out of step with 70% of his fellow, box buying (beer packaging buying???), Australians.

Go Straight To Jail. Do Not Pass Go Captain Scum Bag.

The Two Johnnies

It's a Tax Bribe from Him and a Tax Bribe from Him.

Thanks Crikey

Goooooooooooooaaaallll!!

Ola Mr Eugenides

Do It Yourself Dentistry Makes a Comeback

Warning Squeamishness Inducing Post


DIY Dentistry is making a comeback in the UK, where some people cannot get access to basic dental services. People are resorting to pliers, chewing gum, superglue and emergency dental kits to manage their rotting teeth and gums. Apparently you cannot enroll an accomplice as they would be deemed to be practising dentistry. It seems that it is OK to practice on yourself.

Pretty sad for such a rich country. We have the same issues here in Australia, where most dental services are private and getting access to dental services can be very challenging. The Labor Party is considering reintroducing some dental services and I imagine demand will significantly exceed supply.

Very scary stuff. No teeth fairies for these guys.

Australian Business Not So Green

Australian businesses are significantly behind the eight ball in adjusting to an eco friendly future of carbon trading, emissions management and environmental controls. If you cannot measure your impacts, you cannot manage them or trade emissions.

A recently published report finds that most companies are struggling to measure greenhouse gases that come from a variety of sources, from factory emissions to waste and vehicle exhausts.

This is a problem because companies emitting large amounts of carbon-dioxide equivalent annually are required to begin reporting next year and for the rest, it will be phased over the following two years. And they're not ready yet!

Add to that another study, reported here, which has found that New Zealand businesses are almost five times greener than their Australian counterparts. The study found that more than half of Australian businesses surveyed don't monitor energy improvement targets.

Working in this field I can agree with this. There is a very large divide between these requirements and the awareness and preparation of business to comply. This is true across a wide range of environmental programmes related to business.

Australia Sells Out on Solar Power

Living in the sunniest country in the world, it always surprised me that there wasn't a solar cell on every house.

Now I know part of the reason why. Those climate change denying, coal loving politicians who run this country just didn't believe in one of the leading technologies underpinning solar power, developed here in Australia and sold to a German company, which has exploited it and is now exporting it back to Australia. This kind of short sighted thinking is very typical of this mob, where Big Coal is King.

Slow Down Micro Penis

The New South Wales Department of Transportation has successfully implemented a speed driving is not cool campaign focussed on young drivers. Featuring people waving their pinkies as a symbol of a small penis, statistics show that the message has hit home.

"Wiggling your pinkie has cut through to that crucial age group of young drivers - they're using it as a way to slow their mates down and stop them acting recklessly on our roads," he said.

Sixty-one per cent of young males surveyed for the research believed the campaign had the power to make them think about their own driving behaviour, he said.

"This campaign is about saving lives - not pride. If it dents a few egos but helps save a life, then it's worth it,"

The reality is that we are all pretty vain.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald.

How Slim Whitman killed the Martians

And the Martians killed a lot of A Grade Actors.

Mars Attacks is currently one of Ryan's favourite movies. It is a fantastic spoof science fiction movie with the Martians eventually meeting their match with Slim Whitman yodelling Indian Love Call, which blows up their brains. What the Army and all their technology could not achieve that master Country Music saved the day. It is a B Grade Movie made with an A Grade Cast and associated budget, most of whom are killed by associated ray guns, shrink rays and flying saucers.

The full list of expensive casualties includes.

1. General Casey (Paul Winfield): Incinerated by Red Martian ray gun
2. Dr Ziegler (Jerzy Skolimowski): Incinerated by Martian ray gun off-screen
3. Billy Glenn Norris (Jack Black): Incinerated by Red Martian ray gun
4. Jason Stone (Michael J Fox): Incinerated by Green Martian ray gun off-screen
5. Jerry Ross (Martin Short): Hit in the head with paper weight
6. Martian Girl (Lisa Marie): Shot in the head by Mitch
7. Marsha Dale (Glenn Close): Crushed by falling chandelier
8. Art Land (Jack Nicholson): Killed in building destruction by Martian spaceship
9. Maurice, the French President (Barbet Schroeder): Incinerated by Red Martian ray gun
10. Mr. and Mrs. Norris (Joe Don Baker & O-Lan Jones): Trailer smashed into Sharona's trailer by Martian in a robot.
11. Sharona and Boyfriend (Christina Applegate): Trailer smashed into the Norris' trailer by Martian in a robot.
12. Rude Gambler (Danny DeVito): Incinerated Green by Martian ray gun
13. General Deckner (Rod Steiger): Shrunk by shrink-ray and squished
14. Mitch (Brian Haley): Incinerated by Green Martian ray gun
15. President James Dale (Jack Nicholson): Impaled in the back with robotic Martian arm which ended up being the Martian Flag.
16. Natalie (Sarah Jessica Parker): Killed in flying saucer crash
17. Professor Donald Kessler (Pierce Brosnan): Killed in flying saucer crash

I love the irony of the Americans wanting to make friends with the Martians and the Martians returning the favour by massacring everyone including the US President (twice), the US Congress and the French Parliament. No bad thing I say.

The film was not a commercial success because of the budget for all that high priced talent of $70 million. And if you need to repel some Martians, you could do worse than play this at high decibel.



Go On, You Know You Want To.

Kerb Crawling Outlawed in Scotland

I thought that this is what you did to get home after an especially heavy night in the pub.

I am shocked that there are people with enough money to do this in Scotland.

Tough to Hide in an Identity Parade

You can run but you can't hide. There has to be some benefit to tattoos??

Blog Action Day - The Environment

Sue Blimey put me on to this. She has an excellent informative post on the environment and things that we can do or learn about to make a difference. I work in the environmental management field, advising clients how to do the right thing. I get just as much satisfaction working with kids, planting trees, designing water conservation measures and overall environmental awareness through my work at my kids school.

Listening to Tim Flannery I liked his approach of doing something to make a difference. We can all collectively make a big difference by doing a little such as conserving power, water and other resources, not driving so much, taking public transport.

Here in South Australia, where Tim used to be Head of the SA Museum and had a big impact on the State Government in terms of practical implementation of energy saving, water conserving and solar power technologies, the drought is very real and we are living with the dramatic consequences of changing climate.

We are all obliged to do something or absolutely nothing. Now that would make a difference if we all did nothing for a few days.



Sue also has this commercial from the UK, that I liked. Not too preachy and fairly practical.

Reconciling Howards Reconciliation Revelation Pitch

Howards cynical empty gesture last week to state the bleeding obvious and to place the fact that native Australians were here before whitey on the Australian Constitution after a referendum in which he would be the only person in the universe, capable of leading to a yes vote, is a reflection of just how desperate he has become (apologies for the long sentance). He is now appealling to Toorack Tractor driving affluent types with the not so subtle Here is another great reason not to vote for Kevvie. This fake insincerity makes me want to vomit (virtually), given that he has been leading the government for almost 12 years and not a chirp until 2 days before the election is called. Afterwards he clarified that this is his own personal revelation, no doubt dreamed up in his back yard smoke house in Kirribilli.

No doubt we will be seeing Howard in the Aboriginal Lands campaigning for a fair go for them. More likely it is aimed at his own seat of Bennelong than the Northern Territory. No apology however. We'll have to leave that to somebody else.

Much more reasoned analysis here from Possum.

Staving off defeat in Iraq

A retired American General, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez has blasted the Bushistas for their lame political strategies in Iraq.

The Bush administration has been attacked for its handling of the Iraq war by a top former US general, who said Iraq was a "nightmare with no end in sight".

"The administration, Congress and the entire inter-agency, especially the State Department, must shoulder responsibility for this catastrophic failure, and the American people must hold them accountable" the retired General Sanchez told US military reporters.

"There has been a glaring unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders."

General Sanchez focused on the political and military failures in Iraq that helped foment the insurgency - noting, for instance, the disbanding of Saddam Hussein's military forces after the invasion, the US failure to establish rapport with tribal leaders and other critical lapses.

And despite indications that the 30,000-strong surge in forces that George W. Bush ordered in January has shown signs of success in quelling violence, General Sanchez described the effort as a "desperate attempt" to make up for years of misguided policies in Iraq.

"There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight," General Sanchez said.

Nothing new here, just very refreshing.

Two Horse Race - Punters Back Rudd

The Australian Election is almost certain to be called today, finally. The most likely date is November 24. Unlike Gordon Brown, Howard has no choice now and must face the music, though clearly he would not if it was an option, with 70 consecutive polls forecasting gloom and doom for the government.

Not Happy John seem likely to win the 6 week endurance race, with polls out today showing a massive 70 - 30 split in favour of Labor for those under 30 and findings that the fantastically unpopular Workchoices Legislation is especially electorally poisonous. No big surprises. Just bring it on and get it over with. Howard is going to need a lot more than ugly race politics, aboriginal reconciliation promises and threats of scary Union Bosses running the country to win this one.

Russian Cosmonauts Give Up Space Pistol

I usually glaze over gun love stories favoured by a niche market in the blogosphere, but this one caught my interest.

Russian Cosmonauts will go into space for the first time in 20 years without a space pistol. Apparently it was not designed to repel marauding Martians seeking to gain access to space rations, but for self defence if they landed in god forbid, Kansas. The guns are now outdated and have less value than a pop gun in the deadly department. I can imagine that I would back down if had a spaceman wielding a pistol and shouting loudly in Russian however, so perhaps that is enough.

It is understood that instead of the gun, they will be armed with Uranium 232 pellet firing umbrellas favoured by the KGB, a large wooden cudgel, the sound track from Dr Zhivago and pictures of Paris Hilton to deter would be intruders.

Thanks for the Gun Story Mr Englishman

Bash Broon Time

This is an excellent time waster. Look out for the Bay City Rollers.

Making fun of the Scots is always a good source of humour.

Thanks Shades