PERSONAL SAFETY MANAGEMENT

Archive for the ‘Dumb Citizens’ Category

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.

There is a report of a Sikh being asked to leave a Brisbane pub because he refused to remove his turban, despite the pub having rules against the wearing of headgear such as hats, caps etc. Now the owners of the pub (part of the Coles Group) are trying to find him to apologise. Not that he has complained but we must be seen to be taking action, heaven forbid we are accused of racism. Ignorance and stupidity is fine, but racism, never. It shouldn’t be hard to find him, just ask for Mr Singh. Oh, they are all called Mr Singh. Nevermind, these muzzi’s are all in the one spot. Muslim? Sorry, Sikhs are a very different kettle of fish, a totally different religion despite what the redneck idiots might claim on the Yahoo forum.

The turban is worn to maintain the hair in a manageable fashion. The Sikh never cut their hair on religious grounds. They keep it in a turban because they tend to find it gets in the way when soldiering or policing, two roles they have traditionally held for centuries. In the service of the British Commonwealth, Sikh troops fought bravely alongside our own in two world wars and won 14 Victoria Crosses. Lest We Forget. The turban is not a hat, although one could argue it is headwear and as such, it would be counter to the pub’s dress rules to wear it indoors. However, surely common sense would dictate that it is quite acceptable and very appropriate to make an exception in the case of a Sikh. That the gentleman apparently left without making a fuss tells us something of this race and their maturity, at least for this man on this occasion. Can you imagine if it were a yobbo with a baseball cap on sideways?

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!

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!

Actually, it wasn’t a dog but the owner of a fighting rooster that died when he tried to force his bird back into the ring after a match in India. The fighting cocks have razor sharp knives tied to their legs and the struggling bird succeeded in slashing the throat of the owner, causing him to bleed to death. The bird is on the run and is yet to be found and have the blades removed.

Cock fighting is a major gambling activity in many parts of the world and in the Philippines is the national sport, vying with basketball for the attention  of the local men. It is bloody and brutal and very lucrative with huge sums of money wagered as well as invested in breeding stock and scientific feed development.

We in  the west might see this tragic death as poetic justice but that is to judge these people by our standards in a western societal context. Is that fair given they are neither westerners nor have the same society as we in which to try their fortune? In the 18th century, an Irishman named Oliver Goldsmith, once described as an ‘inspired idiot’, wrote an elegy to a mad dog.  The mad dog bit a man but in the end, ‘It was the dog that died.’ Here we have a case of the man forcing the rooster to risk its life fighting in the arena with razor blades tied to its legs and yet it was the man that died.

Irony aside, the man no doubt fed, clothed, housed and educated his wife and children from the winnings of that rooster, not to forget amused himself as he went from cradle to grave with less to look forward to as far as opportunity goes than the average western man.  While some among us will cheer for the rooster, what does that say about those in our society that have so little to challenge their daily existence they need to root for the rooster and mock the man?

A Western Australian woman who lost $600,000 to an online scammer has told how he wooed her and made her believe she would be starting a new, exciting life. She lost her home, her investment property, all her savings and her friends and family except for one of her two children who still talks to her. As sorry as I feel for her I have to ask how anyone could be so gullible as to ignore the warnings she says she heard in her head and still sent off hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone she had never met before.

You can blame the internet for many things and it does speed up the ‘falling in love’ process in some ways I guess. But please. How naive, read that stupid, must you be? They say Australians lose millions to these (often Nigerian) online scammers every year. How can that happen? How can someone supposedly smart enough to amass a small fortune be dumb enough to lose it like this?

I know they prey on vulnerable people but please, get a bleeding grip of yourself! Don’t make excuses for greed, laziness, apathy, arrogance, ignorance and lethargy. I can’t begin to fathom how anyone can be so loose with their wealth, they really don’t deserve to have it but of course they certainly don’t deserve to lose it to scammers.

Make no mistake the criminal is the scammer, not the sucker who gets scammed. We can all suffer a scam to a certain degree because they are expert at identifying our weaknesses and hot buttons. The simple solution is never send money to someone you have never met and never meet anyone who asks you for money online. Nigerian 419 scams are so well known today there is no excuse for not knowing about them. If you are reading this then you probably have an email account and have received these scam letters and can read all about them by doing a search or two.

Con artists work on your greed so if it seems too good to be true it is. Always, every time. I am saddened this woman has lost everything but I feel pity for her, not sympathy and certainly not empathy.

Today a Sydney court sentenced a woman to six months imprisonment for swearing a false suit against a police office. She claimed he was racist and tried to remove her niqab (veil) after pulling her over. Unfortunately for her the whole thing was recorded on the video camera installed in the police car. She had almost immediately played the cliched ‘you’re a racist’ card, accusing the officer of being threatened by her wearing of the burqa. He was polite and calm the entire time and wanted her to show her face for ID purposes, which is completely reasonable, while she rips into him in a tirade of abuse and invective.

The officer could have been in serious trouble if he had not the video evidence to back up his denials of her complaint. Her defence barrister actually tried to say there was no way the police could prove it was his client who had sworn the complaint against the officer as she didn’t reveal her face under the veil then, either. Fortunately the judge found against her and gave her six months in gaol. Some members of the Islamic community said that was to make an example of her and I would agree. I also agree it is an example that must be made. While some now ask for compassion for  her and her seven children, she offered absolutely zero compassion to the police officer, his family or any consideration to his career when she smugly made her false claims.

The burqa is alien to our culture and way of life and I personally find it offensive when I see women dressed so on our streets. However, our society is a tolerant one and we tolerate these things but we can never show  any weakness to anyone, regardless of cultural group, religious persuasion or any other difference, attempting to pervert our justice system and make a mockery of our tolerance.

The woman’s surname, Mathews, and her Australian accent suggests to me she is a native born Muslim which begs the question of why she is choosing such a mode of dress which is cultural and not religious? She comes across as no different in attitude and demeanor than any other Australian woman despite the veil, so I would hesitate to stereotype her or any other burqa wearer as repressed or under the thumb of a male. So why the veil and why the anger at identifying herself to a police officer?

What really made me laugh was when she left court and was chased to a car by the media. Despite wearing a full burqa she bent at the waist and kept her head well down just like every other fugitive from the media one sees on TV, usually hiding under a blanket or coat. Why bother?

A passer by in Paris caught a baby boy after he bounced off an awning following a fall from an 8th floor window. The 18 mon th old boy was left in the care of his 3 year old sister while his parents went for a stroll. Police are questioning the parents and rightly so. Apart from the amazing good fortune and sheer luck this boy enjoyed, what does this say about his parents and their total lack of common sense?

I could never leave my 3 year old and 18month old children alone and I never have. Even now their 12 year old sister is left in charge for very brief periods with backup form her 7 year old sister and we live in a single storey house with lockable doors, secured external gates and so on.

How old should kids be when they are left to look after themselves and each other? I recall at 5 with a 6 year old sister being left on our own as both parents had to work and so during the holidays we would get up after they had left. Breakfast would be waiting for us and then we would take the bus to mum’s workplace and spend the day there, bored stiff. That was in the mid-sixties. There were bad people around in those days too but somehow we managed. But a 3 year old in charge of a 1.5 year old? In an 8th floor flat?

What do you think?

Ever since the movie ‘The Bucket List’ written by Justin Zackham and starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson hit the screens the phrase ‘bucket list’ has been tossed around. It has made it into the lexicon, pretty much like ’24/7′ and to have ‘closure’. One of the big ticks on a lot of bucket lists is to climb Mount Everest. In fact, with a spare fifty grand and two months of your life, you too can add to the growing number of ‘Summiteers’ or frozen bodies the tick has created in the past couple of decades.

I always wonder how much a claim to something like this is done for one’s own personal development, to prove to yourself you can push your boundaries… and how much is about showing off. Don’t get me wrong, showing off is a genuine human trait we have all shared a sometime in our lives and not restricted to toddlers or teens. However one should consider the risks involved and despite a 13 year old and a 76 year old on the list of Summiteers, getting to the top is still no walk in the park. Is it worth it? Only those who try and fail or succeed can answer that question. The rest of us can only answer the question ‘is it worth it for me?’

Not for this little black duck. Even if I had the money and time I don’t have the health and fitness anymore. Life deals you your hand and shuffles the cards now and then and while once you were young and fit and healthy you can easily become older, overweight and ill. You have to be honest and to an extent accept your situation and limitations while always looking to stretch those boundaries and achieve more. You can do this sensibly or stupidly. For me, even thinking of Everest is stupid. Sensible is perhaps something a little more within my capabilities and experience, like sailing around Cape Horn.

I’m 50 next year and I plan to round the Horn as one of the events on my own ‘bucket list’. I call it the ‘Faking It At Fifty’ list because I don’t feel any pressure to get it ticked up before I kick the bucket, rather just within the year I turn 50 and the year I am 50. So I have 24 months to work with. If I don’t get it all done in time… I’ll add it to my ‘From 50 to 60′ List. There’s nothing like being a little flexible when it comes to ticking off things on lists… or life itself for that matter. Few things we ever contemplate, attempt or achieve are truly, ‘life or death’ after all.