PERSONAL SAFETY MANAGEMENT

Archive for the ‘Avenues of Harm’ Category

A snapshot of his daughter and her two friends caught the last image of a man killed just seconds later. He was standing near a blow hole in Hawaii when a large wave knocked him into the hole. He has not been found and is presumed dead. Tragic as this is it shows how people simply don’t think. Do we need a large fence and huge sign to warn us of the dangers of getting close to these natural wonders? Think about it. A blow hole occurs when water is forced up it from the sea. So that usually means the sea is channeled through a small opening to build up force and it would not be smart to get trapped in there, you can’t fight nature. So since he is on the seaward side of the hole, any wave breaking over the rocks behind him would push him into the hole. So why stand there? Why not on the other side where the chance of a freak wave would push you away from the hole?

Most people don’t think this way as they have never been taught to do so. We live in a society that thinks everything is either safe or should be and if it isn’t then we can make a law and fine whoever and it will be ok because now rules and money is involved. Real life is still a one way trip to the grave. It is just a question of how long before you reach it and how what will put you there. We spend so much time learning to drive safely, going to self defence classes and learning to cross the road safely as a kid yet we forget to take time to learn how to assess everyday situations for risk instinctively and maybe not doing the dumb things that do us in. I could teach that course, but who would pay for it?

A poor child in Florida is dead, strangled by a large Burmese python. Her mother and mother’s boyfriend are charged with her death as they were responsible for the family pet, and the fact it hadn’t been fed for a month. Under the usual overkill that passes for law in the USA, they face up to 35 years in a, no doubt  private profit center, prison for their stupidity. When you can buy shares in prisons it makes sense to have lots of people in them for long periods of time, that’s capitalism at work. It also lets you get tough on crime and as most crime is done by dumb people without the income to hire a proper lawyer, it is a remote risk to the well off right that vote for any judge, sheriff or politician who advocates more of this ‘justice’.

But what justice does the poor toddler get? She is dead. The snake has a better chance of being saved by animal rights activists than she ever had of being able to graduate high school. The dumb people who were responsible for her well being, and the snake’s are now looking down the barrel of life behind bars. And the winner is…?

The simple precaution of counting heads before leaving a venue would have prevented a 5 year old boy being left in the toilets of a restaurant while on a school excursion last month. Fortunately the little lad had the presence of mind to find his way to his grandparents home fairly nearby. What if he hadn’t been able to do that? What if he had been injured crossing the several roads and the rail crossing he needed to navigate to get there? No wonder he feels he was not important enough to be missed…

No teacher does this on purpose, but then that is the meaning of the word negligence. Whoever was in charge of the trip neglected to make sure they had all the students with them when they left to head back to school. How? How could this happen? Who was in charge? Are they still in their job?

It is simply not good enough. I accept teachers have considerable responsibility yet to be fair, they do earn a good wicket so they are compensated and if they are not happy they can take their education and experience elsewhere. Children deserve our very best efforts at all times, even the naughty ones. This has not been the case here. It is, in a word, a disgrace.

Imagine being eaten alive by tiny worms with sharp teeth, crawling under your skin and living as long as 15 years until they get to your brain? This is not the plot of a science-fiction novel but what actually happened to a couple after eating fish they caught in a river in Western Australia.

We face the threat of harm from nature in many ways, not just the big, sharp toothed predators we can see, but also those we can’t see. Just 1-3mm long, these worms get the job done and in the days before anti-biotics were just another of the many myriad ways man could meet his maker.

A tragic stabbing death of a 44 year old mother in Melbourne after she confronted the three teenagers that threw eggs at her house has rocked her community. Haled as a ‘lovely lady’, apparently this last egging took her over the edge and she got stuck in when her and her husband chased the three that did the deed. One, a 14 year old turned and stabbed her. She died there in the street, in front of her 11 year old daughter and with her husband trying desperately to resuscitate her.

One could say it was not worth getting killed over, why not just clean off the eggs? The holders of this view miss the point. True, it was not worth getting stabbed over, but the criminals should not have egged her house, or broken any of our laws. Yet they do and they hold these laws and the rest of us in utter contempt. We are here to amuse them, to feed and house and entertain them. They are special and deserve everything society can offer, for nothing. They got this attitude from their parents, obviously, mixed in with messages from the authorities at school who are powerless to deal with them. All because some over educated idiot with no kids and a fairyland world in their heads of how it should all be perfect pushed for the rights of the punks, without worrying that maybe they lacked the IQ, the upbringing and the common decency to understand about responsibilities.

There is no point parliament jumping up and down and promising tougher laws. The laws are already there and tough enough. If anyone had the will to enforce them. Courts seem reluctant to do this and too eager to accept social workers and psych reports and so on, anything to give an excuse not to hammer the swine. If the criminals are a minority, be they muslim, indigenous or whatever, then all the more reason not to leave oneself open to allegations of racism no matter how unfounded. The police know the offenders nearly everytime but they have to prove it. If the punk is under 14, they also have to prove the criminal knew what they were doing was wrong. Yes, even as they stab a woman in the guts with a knife, if they claim they didn’t realize that was wrong, they stand a good chance of getting off. Sometimes so called advances in psychology have gone too far and we haven’t caught up with methods of instilling decency and discipline in the offspring of society’s dross.

Bottom line, these punks should not have egged the woman’s house. They are the criminal swine and their parents need to accept part of the blame also. Even if the woman ‘over reacted’ it will never excuse murder. I would not be surprised if some do-gooder called for a ban on the sale of eggs to minors. So next time they throw tomatoes and before we know it, the Fruit and Dairy (Restricted Sale) Act 2012 as Ammended will be law!

I was sent this by a colleague and I have to say it might just save someone’s life one day. We have all seen those TV cop shows where the prisoner is interrogated behind a two way mirror, or is that a one way piece of glass? I can never be sure but you know what I mean. You can see in the room but the prisoner can’t see out.

Genuine Mirror

Two Way Mirror

Well it seems that there are cases (mostly in the USA, where else!) of perverts fitting two way mirrors in the rest rooms of gas stations and even their private homes. You go in and do your business,but not in private as the sicko is watching, or filming, through the two way mirror. So how can you tell if it is a real one way mirror or a two way? Simple (aren’t most things?) Put your finger against the glass and if the mirror image touches with no gap between them, it is a real mirror.If there is a gap, then it is a two way mirror. The gap equates to the thickness of the glass. Go on, try it. I know you are dieing to. Just remember, next time you go into a public restroom, to the test and say to yourself, “No space? Leave the Place!”

Lately I have been busy with other matters, all the while the world has kept turning and one disaster after another has struck. I wonder how many people in Tsunami struck parts of Japan had an Emergency Food Supply they could rely on for the days, sometimes weeks after the disaster strikes? Living where I do the worst we have suffered this year so far has been a five hour blackout one Saturday night. Fortunately we had candles and a BBQ and made it fun for the kids. If it had gone on for 24 hours though we would have lost food in the freezer if I hadn’t been able to get the camping fridge going on the LPG bottle. Luckily frozen will stay that way for some time and chest freezers more so than uprights, so long as you don’t keep opening the door.

I have been writing eBooks for a US client covering finance, credit, mortgages and investments for Australia and it has been an education. Doing the research and writing the books has made me a fan of calculators like the Mortgage Payment Calculator and another one that calculates compound interest, how much you need to save to reach a set target and so on. These are important tools for your financial safety management. We often think of natural disasters and wild animals, car wrecks and robbery, but who considers the risk and harm of losing your job?

It pays to be financially safe as well as in all the other ways. I’ll write more on that soon.

The simple things in life are often the best, so the slogan for a cereal brand used to go. The old K.I.S.S. or ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’ theory does hold water. When things get complicated there is more chance some part will fail and the whole thing will fall apart. The old ‘for want of a nail…’ thing. I have just watched a video clip, allegedly from a car park security camera, of a clever yet simple way to steal someone’s car without breaking in and with the key in the ignition. Given how sophisticated car security is becoming today, this is a good method for anyone not willing to step over the line and physically threaten the owner or harm them. In fact, it has the benefit of most likely never even being seen by the owner and risking identification.

The thief ties three or four tin cans to the back of the car and lurks nearby. The owner returns, gets in and drives off. The scraping of the tin cans alerts them to a possible problem, so they stop the car and get out to investigate. Most people will leave the car running and the door open. As they walk to the rear of the car, the thief jumps in and drives off. In the video clip I saw, the driver was a woman who had placed her handbag int he car and of course that went with the vehicle. The thief has her purse, her car, her keys, her cellphone, her wallet, everything. The could check if anyone is home by calling via her cellphone (most of us have our home phone in there somewhere) then drive there after getting the address from her license in her purse. He has the keys to the place, can load up her car with some valuables and be away, probably before she has had time to find a phone and call the police.

Currently, the police require you to attend the station and fill out a report, get a crime number for your insurance and so on. I doubt they would attend the empty carpark and no doubt very upset car owner. Unless there was a spate of these carjackings not much effort would be put in if only because the owner has no description of the thief, they were at the back of their car looking at a couple of tin cans tied to their bumper bar when the thief struck. They saw nothing. What have the police to go on as the car is no longer there?

it is not a perfect crime but it is a clever one and a simple one. It reminds us all how easily we can be distracted and off guard in everyday circumstances. Who would think to take the key with you when just checking for the source of the noise? Or to lock the door? Yet it is these split second decisions and moments of unguarded reaction that give the thief a chance. When he sets up the opportunity it is even easier but there are still plenty out there always on the look out for opportunities. opportunities such as when you fill your car with petrol, then leave it at the pump and walk in to pay. How many people leave it open and begging to be stolen or your possessions redistributed?

It only takes a second to lock the car. If I have my kids with me,  I drive away from the pump and park close to the shop. That way someone else can use the pump, my kids are not left trapped next to a potential bomb and I figure I have deterred most thieves simply because they see I have made it more difficult for them. Most of us refuel our cars at least once a week, but we park them and walk away more than once a day. Sometimes it might pay to walk around the car if you have left it for the day and gone into work. Do a quick visual check just like pilots do of their aircraft before they take off.

Yesterday when I finished my regular swim session I noticed the tail lights on my car were on. I must have accidentally switched on the headlights when I got out.  looked at the front of the car and yes, the headlights were on. Hoping the battery wasn’t too flat to start the car, I reached for the door lock with the key and wondered who put that back rest thing on my driver’s seat? Then it dawned on me this was not my car. Two spaces further up was my car. Same make, model, colour and all, just without the lights on. My point is, if I had been thinking more about the approach to my car and drive off, rather than the swim session and new lap record I had set for myself, I would have noticed there were two cars like mine parked pretty close together and not made the mistake of thinking one was mine when it wasn’t. No harm done this time but who knows for next time?

You can’t be on Code Red 100% of the time and there is no reason to be. But it does make sense to be a little switched on and taking account of what’s going on around you at all times.

In the UK a 17 year old ‘ladette’ on a binge drinking session pushed a 34 year old woman to the floor and stamped on her face twice with her stiletto heel. She caused the woman’s optic nerve to snap, leaving her blinded for life in one eye and suffering anxiety and panic attacks. The attacker, jailed for 33 months, will have her baby behind bars in a month or so’s time.

This is yet another example of how vicious and dangerous the female of the species, particularly the 15 to 25 group, can be. Do not underestimate the danger of these vicious sluts. The large amounts of alcohol consumed by young people in the UK and elsewhere is a serious social problem, but not a new one. In the mid 18th century the alcoholism among the poor in London was a major factor in shaping the policy of transportation which led to the founding of the colony at Port Jackson (Sydney).

Here in Sydney we have a similar problem but not to the extent it is in England. The message is clear: Stay away from the places that serve alcohol until dawn unless you wish to risk becoming involved in violence and potentially lethal arguments over nothing. It reminds me of the ephibephobia (fear of youth) that was engendered by Anthony Burgess’s novel, ‘A Clockwork Orange’. (1963) While Kubrick’s movie a decade or so later missed out on the final chapter where the protagonist realised the error of his ways and renounced violence, it was nonetheless a damning indictment of how young adults and teens can become lethal savages.

William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ was another literary example of how we humans can resort to very primal beasts if the circumstances allow the breakdown of the thin facade of civilized behaviour we normally present. Why we think girls are any less savage than boys I don’t know. It is wishful thinking that may have held some veracity at one time, but women have always been the crueller of the species.

While a man will often feel some compassion for his opponent once he has neutralized the risk he presents, not so the woman. The native North Americans would hand the prisoners over to the women for torture as they were far better at keeping them in agony for as long as possible. No pity and a quick death from them, they wrought their revenge and I can understand this. After all, the women were the ones that suffered the most when the men fought, especially if their men lost. Payback is a very base human instinct.

But they had a reason behind their cruelty. Not so these vicious, spiteful spoilt bitches or their equally waste of space boyfriends. Is it a generational thing? Do we blame the parents? Is it the fault of society and consumerism and instant gratification at light speed thanks to technology outpacing cultural change? What do you think?

A Sicilian couple attempted to commit the perfect murder and use butter to suffocate the woman’s ex-husband. The theory being they would choke him with the butter, which would then dissolve and leave no trace. Unfortunately for them, the traces of butter remaining in the aesophagus gave the game away. While somewhat in the realm of the infamous knife made of ice that kills then melts, this is a very real and tragic story. A man has been brutally murdered, his terror during his struggle for life would churn the stomach of the most hardened Vegan. His story needs to be spread so that others can avoid such a fate. Personally, I’m switching to low fat, no salt. That full cream dairy spread stuff will kill you one way or another!