Hello Romania, Bulgaria, China, and France and welcome to the blog...and my sense of humour seems to have abandoned me for the moment...(yeah, I'm not feeling it either-Ed)...must be something to do with the extended interview that the ABC Local Radio ran this morning with 'John', the former student of a South East high school now at the centre of 2 separate Child Abuse cases...(nah, it was before that-Ed)...
Maybe it's just the whole 'everybody knows about St Martins Lutheran School and the Child Abuse and the ensuing Cover-up yet does nothing' thing...or maybe it's that and the other Thing...did I mention the Thing...(oh, gord, don't start that again-Ed)...just saying...and all the bullshit from Council just for trying to be involved in my community, Mt Gambier...and all the other unpleasantness I've encountered just trying to do what I still believe and maintain to be true...
I may have any number of problems, but I am not the problem...
Perhaps it's just the stories of synchronised multiple car bombs yet again killing dozens of people in an Iraqi market place and a small village...and a 'roadside bomb' in Afghanistan randomly killing 12 women, a child, and 4 men on their way to a wedding...and the descent into lawlessness of the entire Sinai region of Egypt...and further attacks on unarmed villagers in Northern Nigeria...and on and on...
And the local news lurches from the institutionalised corruption of Eddie Obeid and 'he might face charges'...to the pitiful $50,000 fine for former Gunns Chairman John Gay, convicted of 'Insider Trading' to profit by $3million...I may well have missed it, but I didn't hear one word about 'repaying the $3mill'...and from there straight into the Child Abuse Royal Commission and the case of the YMCA worker Jonathon Lord, recently gaoled for 6years for abusing 12 boys...and a reduced sentence for pleading guilty...6 months for each abused child...
Here's a man who deliberately sought to place himself in a position to abuse children, gained their trust and friendship specifically with a view to betraying them for his own gratification...he is an exact replica for Glyn Dorling at St Martins in 2002 (and previous years)...and the bastard gets 6 years for a guilty plea...
As one mother put it, her child is devastated that his good friend has gone to gaol and he (the child) may well be partly responsible...and the bastard gets 6 years...and the YMCA is still defending itself even though they failed to do fundamental employment checks and let him work with children even before they did those deeply flawed partial checks...and the woman employed to directly address these issues after Lord was charged, was herself sacked after only 4 months for reporting her concerns about systemic problems...sacked for doing what she was employed to do...shrek me...
My cynicism aside: I find it extraordinary that I'm banned off the ABC Local Radio and out of The Border Watch at a time when the issue of Child Abuse is at an almost daily crescendo through the media...(except in TBW...what's going on there?-Ed)...don't know...and this 'banning' from the local media is in a very large part due to my insistence on speaking/writing about St Martins...
I don't resent 'John' for the attention he is getting (and I certainly don't envy him his experience), rather those whom give it to him and yet behave in the manner they do re St Martins...but I digress...
I should explain the Wattle Range Council stuff a bit better...basically one staffer caught another staffer fraudulently filling out their time book, reported it, and was then subject to harassment, bullying, etc, which led to time off, a claim for compensation that was refused, subsequent appeal, some minor disciplinary action against other workers involved, etc...and then a finding against the Council resulting in the worker receiving compensation...(well done comrade-Ed)...
As reported on the InDaily website under A bad day at the office, "A local government employee has won her workers compensation appeal in an embarrassing decision for a local council."
And speaking of bullying and harassment, apparently I'm not the only one who cops it from the ABC...as I understand it, there are internal 'staffing management' issues that are causing all sorts of problems within the Mt Gambier office...I have no personal experience of this, obviously, but I've heard this sort of thing before, and just recently it was 'put to me' again...
Load-shedding: Last night on ABC TV Four Corners there was a story about power lines and their potential for causing bushfires, a potential realised in February 2009 in the Black Saturday fires in Victoria...and the debate is whether to 'turn off' power to certain areas because that will almost certainly cause some deaths...and the example of the Victor Harbour/Pt Elliot 'shut down' last year from the South Australian spokesperson (name?-sorry)...
He made the observation that there were no deaths attributed to last years 'shut-down', but didn't mention the 'load-shedding' that occurred in Adelaide in January 2009 in the middle of a heatwave that overall was proven to be directly responsible for 400 deaths in SA and Victoria...load-shedding is actually a dodgy way of avoiding the truth by carefully re-labelling what is clearly 'Rationing', and done either to protect an inadequate system from overloading and crashing completely...or to distribute an inadequate supply...
The then Premier Mike Rann said there was going to be an Inquiry into the 3 dozen deaths that were directly attributed to the power cuts, eg, people dying of heat exhaustion in their homes when their power was cut off...there is an excellent story about this 'incident' on the Advertiser News website, article dated January 30th 2009...and there's Ministers John Hill and Paul Holloway refuting claims that the cuts and deaths are related...charming...
Check out 'The Fire In The Wire' at ABCiview or the replays on tonight at 23.30 or Sunday at 20:00.
On Ya' Bike Lanes: because the plans presented by City Council for the Penola Rd bike lanes are highly problematic...least the plans I'm looking at are. According to the cross section plan published in The Border Watch newspaper and on display in the Council chambers, there is going to be a bike lane, a traffic lane, then a 2m painted 'island', traffic lane, bike lane...but there is a major problem with that...
Outside of the 4 hours a day that cars can't park there at all, any parked vehicles will be much wider than the bike lane, therefore forcing traffic partly out of the traffic lane, and driving halfway on the painted median 'island', which is not allowed under current Road Rules...this creates a 2m wide 'Zone of Confusion'...(say it with an echo-Ed)...where pedestrians will mill about thinking they're safe and cars will be forced to drive...even in the design stage it's a nasty accident waiting to happen...
Gobsmacked: that the Lonely Planet Travel Guide has rated Adelaide as no 9 in their 'top ten destinations' list because it's "effortlessly chique" and 'doing something different' and 'there's excitement'...and the spokesperson saying that the Adelaide Oval Development was the main decider, and that it changes the way people relate to the city and leads to the uplift of the city...and Adelaide does all these great things like sports and music events and art festivals...apparently it "has a vibe"...
And then he listed off all the development on North Tce and how fantastic it all is...(like he was reading from a Labor government pamphlet-Ed)...indeed...and mention a couple of great cafes...and bingo, Adelaide isn't a decaying backwater sucking the life out of the rest of the state, it's just fantastic...
Cynicism Warning II: how much did this glowing review actually cost?...(wow, that is cynical-Ed)...no, that's the world as I've experienced it...at best, this is the grossly optimistic opinion of someone who appears to have seen North Tce and not much else, and clearly has no idea what that ugly shrekin' monstrosity of an Oval has cost SA, and particularly the South East...who has no idea what it cost the Old Queen to paint herself her shiny new face...and the cracks beneath...
Good on you Lonely Planet for making Adelaide even more self-obsessed and vain than it already was...yay...(wow, bitter much?-Ed)...no...just don't live in Adelaide, and I'm sick of hearing how great it is...it's all just 'Bread and Circuses' and a grossly inflated opinion of itself...and in Mt Gambier we can't even get basic Mental Health services, any Child Protection facilities, vaguely appropriate PATS refunding, public service jobs, proper basic transport services, etc, etc, etc...but so long as Adelaide's right...that's the important thing...
Bitter much?...damn straight...
Tomorrow: Probably Another Diatribe
And some more scintillatingly cynical, short, sharp scrutiny of some seriously super stuff...yay...
I am Nick Fletcher and this is my blog...cheers and laters...
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