Author: bobmcgee

It ain’t the money …

The Gonski reforms are just one of the “spend the future” schemes that Labor is desperate to shackle Australia to before the ALP gets its arse kicked out of government.

This is Greg Sheridan writing in the Australian …

Education more generally demonstrates our almost complete divorce from our Asian neighbours. We are about to waste a colossal amount of money on this Gonski madness. This money will have no measurable effect on our educational quality…

I have spent a lot of time in schoolrooms in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Almost without exception, these schoolrooms are physically less well endowed than their Australian counterparts. The class sizes are bigger, the grounds smaller, the buildings tackier. But the instruction is traditional, the teacher is boss, the school day and year are much longer, kids have to learn and remember a huge amount of content.

The result? The outcomes are vastly better than Australia’s. This is a lesson official Australia never wants to learn. Asian migrants are now bringing this wisdom to Australia, which is why Asian kids do so disproportionately well in our schools. Our society is well engaged with Asia, but at most policy levels our government hasn’t a clue.

More on Ms Ogyny …

Miss Gillard’s failure to connect is all the fault of the media. Recent days have seen attention given to the insulting tendency to call Miss Gillard by her first name. That the left is happy to call the late Mrs Thatcher a witch or worse isn’t misogyny, its just the usual foaming at the mouth rudeness expected of the left.

And this first name business is it really new? What do Kevni or Little Johnny think about all of this?

Why … ?

I awoke this morning and turned on the TV for the news.

The Boston Marathon, horror and confusion, casts yet another shadow over our notion of civilisation. How could anyone think this an appropriate thing to do?

A few hours later and some of the confusion has been replaced with the early assessment of the damage. Three dead, including an eight year old boy, at least 141 people injured, limbs lost, shrapnel wounds from ball bearings, packed into the bombs to do maximum damage to soft bodies. The Boston Marathon crowd, a soft target …  was the eight year old there to cheer his mum or dad at the finish of the race? My mind rails against the injustice, my sympathy goes to those who suffer.

How could anyone do it? What is wrong in their sick heads to justify it? There will be people celebrating this travesty. Sick.

Having an absolute certainty of your cause, an absolute belief in your religion, an absolute loyalty to some dogma must make it easier. Thinking of the people you aim to bombard with shrapnel as something other than human must make it easier, as well. I feel sorry for the victims, but I also feel sorry for people whose brains are so distorted that they think wounding and killing will do some good for them or their cause.

Sorry, but not so sorry that I would excuse them a punishment that makes them feel very sorry for themselves.

Understanding why such things happen defies me, but clues may be found in such phrases as “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. In 1984, seven tons of arms, ammunition and explosives were seized by the Irish Navy. They had been shipped from Boston. Men went to prison on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1986 the FBI foiled a plot to fly rifles, missiles and bullet proof vests from Boston to Ireland. In 1990 a group of IRA supporters were jailed in Boston for trying to smuggle a home-made missile system to Ireland. The group is also believed to have supplied detonators from 1982-88. How many Bostonians dropped a few coins into the can for the IRA?

No eight year old kid deserves to be blown up, anywhere, any time.

How long before it happens in Australia?

Another pearl …

And since golf has made the news today let me remind the world of Mr Twain’s verdict on it …

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Perhaps the best things to come out of the stupid game are the jokes …

A man and his secretary decide to have an affair, so they rent a hotel and go have strenuous sex all afternoon. He’s not used to the pace, so he falls asleep afterwards and doesn’t wake up until about 8:30 at night.

They have sex again, and then the man realizes it’s time to go home. He says to his secretary, “Take my shoes outside while I get dressed and drag them through the grass and mud.” Puzzled, the secretary complies.

When the man gets home about 9:30pm his wife confronts him and asks where he’s been. The man says, “I cannot lie to you, I have spent the day making love to my secretary, fell asleep, just woke up and came right home.” The woman looks down at his shoes and says, “You lying SOB, you’ve been out playing golf again!”

You can find an assortment at robinsweb, which is where I pinched that one. That particular joke reminds me of another Mark Twain aphorism …

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.

Green Jacket …

Whilst travelling in the car at lunch time I was listening to the ABC’s News Radio.

The big news was that Miss Gillard, please take note of the newly found respect, Miss Gillard congratulated Adam Scott on his success in the US Masters.

Isn’t she fabulous, well at least the ABC think so. Expect them to find a way to inject her into every good news story between now and the election.

Thankfully, attention had shifted to Adam Scott, himself by the time I drove home.

Depressed …

The news this week hasn’t been good. It’s depressing.

I felt so bad this morning I called a suicide hotline.

I was greeted by “Press 1 for English”, I pressed 1.

Then I was connected … to a call centre in Pakistan.

I told them I was suicidal, they asked if I could drive a truck …