My Neighbourhood Stands Together.

What a unique Street we live in.

On Girral, we had a very pleasant evening at the local celebrating a rather gratifying week and a bit preparing, erecting, judging, stewarding, exhibiting, and winning, then dismantling everything we constructed.

We, I say we all helped each other in exhibits such as school work, art, the inaugural honey exhibition, bonsais, horticulture, photography, and general supervision of all of the above.

Not bad for a dead end street and a bunch of possibly the most diverse people from diverse backgrounds one could imagine all coming together for a Rosewood Show commitment.

We all live on acreage, yet our commitment to each other and families quality of life goes without saying. Even those who don’t participate in everything still are not left out. We all communicate, we all care.

Unique no not really to me, as my upbringing was exactly this. Care about your neighbour, communicate and be understanding of diverse opinions, cultures, and habits. It does not come naturally and it has to be worked on but so does life.

I like to think we are similar to the Football Club I follow who has the motto Mia SAN Mia, which translates plural and singular “We Are Who We Are, and I Am Who I Am.”

The Vegan Dilemma

Many of us in our youth took to the streets if we felt civil protest was the only way to change governments or  Legislative powers for the good of living conditions of our fellow workers or democratic rights were challenged. 
The vegan protest philosophies  however, do not fall into that category in my view and are based on core beliefs on how humans should exist today compared on how we got here over evolution. 
To be clear from the onset I am not and never will accept animal cruelty, but we have to accept the fact  the food chain exists and right down to the basic kitchen gecko chasing mosquitos to lions chasing gazelle we humans come from  carnivores and changing that will never happen, but like all beliefs be it spiritual,  political, or society changing we are entitled to have them, even live by them , but we are not entitled to force them upon others in their own homes. 
I feel invaded when people turn up wanting to convert me to their beliefs as do many, but that does not stop the right of those people holding them but forcing them by invasion is not the way to go. 
I feel deeply in  todays world animal experiments should be a thing of the past, our science should have expanded past that age, but we cannot change the way we evolved, agreed not pretty in places but to be brutally honest we as humans do much more damage to each other in daily life physically and mentally on this planet than we do to when we take to survive and maybe that’s where our own back yard would be a good place to start to clean up first. 

Invisible People with Invisible Disabilities with Invisible Support.

I wish to raise a subject on behalf of people beligned by our present society by the broad term of dole bludgers.

I agree some people use the system out of pure laziness often stretching back generations however there are some very desperate people caught up in broad perception projected by our politicians that are living a life in abject poverty and can do nothing to break out.

They are the physically disabled, the mentally ill, the ones that just can’t work and do not transition to a disability pension or are in transition or cannot get through the NDS mazes alone.

Support Services for these people has been cut or does not exist so they are left in their houses or rooms if they are fortunate enough struggling to pay rent, food and usually medication last.

Suicide rates among these people is high unfortunately but suits the government data on unemployment hence low on the priority list.

Luckily some medics are sympathetic to this group but the social stigma stays when they have to venture into main stream population to get medications not on the PBS and struggle to pay at the counter.

This issue is not about raising the New Start allowance, although that would help greatly it’s about defining the people who are invisible in the present system.

This issue is in the too hard basket for many politicians regardless of allegiance.

The real issue is getting classification, getting approved or rejected then getting them into care be it NDS or Disability options, not letting them slowly fade into natural attrition.

We are supposed to have a surplus if we listen to the spin so let’s give the least able bodied people some life saving support.

Sporting Costs disqualify Struggle Street.

At a kid in the 60’s in a war service /housing camp area kids had to make their own entertainment but when the word got around the local Football Club ( Wog Ball as it was known then ) were looking for players a few of us fronted up with absolutely nothing and the rest is history.

After reading the costs involved in the QT report I wonder who will look after those kids from real struggle street who’s parents are the living poor. The odds are those kids will be the problems of the future and never given a chance.

We all know sport is better than any lecture to teach the real lessons of life. Respect, humility, integrity and it goes on and it’s not always parents that can be trusted to impart those standards, so are we as a society prepared to accept those who are priced out in childhood will become tomorrow’s problem generations?

Sport and it’s infrastructure particularly in the lower demographic should be critical, and maybe across the board should be regarded as essential service or we can to play the risk management game and hope the pluses outweigh the minuses?

I appreciate all the government grants to existing and emerging organisations but looking at the data in the qt report sport should never be for the have and the have nots, it is the best classroom in the world regardless of how rich or poor your country is and that applies to parents as well.

Time for a Life Rethink I think.

As I sit here listening to my wife laughing and talking at a garage sale next door selling crap we just don’t need at our age or we have grown out of the habit or been outdated I do reflect on why I am here this morning and not at my beloved golf course as I have done in various tracks like Rosewood’s and Laidley every Saturday morning for about 30 years.

Yep off to golf, home and review the day, it’s ups and downs my performance and others, what to improve and what to do to improve. All in a bid to lower my handicap and give me some sense of pride in my ability to compete at the highest level I can.

Today I am asking that question about weather I have outdated the lifestyle of golf and all its glory and if golf now should be a pastime instead of the lifestyle it has been for decades.

I look at myself as a sportsman. A fair and honest sportsman. A person who wants to perform at the game highest level on my ability, a person who played off single figures for a short time but mainly hung around 10-13 for decades and shook cages in both B and A grades.

Now as I age, 69 this year and a bit of a lung issue, I find myself drifting out and not enjoying the fact that age and health are slowing me down. I don’t enjoy coming home shagged for two days. I don’t enjoy not performing and knowing I can do better but ….. I have challenged myself with equipment that probably does not suit my age group but I love the personal challenge fo dealing with something tough on the competition field and winning in some way even if it’s only self esteem.

I cannot except the fact it’s fun to have more shots on holes than anyone else. It’s not fun to underperform and be rewarded for it by letting your handicap slide out. That’s not how I play now or ever.

Old mans game and old mans thinking is not what I enjoy and I know the game caters for the majority of people at all levels, it’s my standards, my personal standards I respect more.

Maybe that attitude has been in my blood since I first started playing sport in football competitions back at 10 years old and have carried that in my playing and coaching career, later my trade and business career and now my ageing career.

I guess I’m looking for a new challenge. I think.. I love sport, I love the people who play sport, I love my fellow club members and their company but with time on this place getting shorter by the day I feel it’s time for rethink for what I can challenge myself to.

I have considered re entering the Football Coaching field as a advisory, a caddy for some youngster, a manager for a sportsperson, just to name a few and as you are aware I love writing and politics, which I might add gets me into a bit of strife at the club some times but is talked under hands when I leave.

We have bought a new Subaru Forrester Sport, the most challenging vehicle I have ever driven, and that’s saying a bit as I have driven heavy vehicles, 4x4s, buses and some sporty Mercedes Benz, all with different personalities but this one is special. I reminds you you are the driver and your expected habits compared to your actual habits.

It will upset those who know it all but embarrassing them might just save their life if they choose to take notice. It’s all about choice and ego I suppose.

Any way this is not solving my issues but I am enjoying the off-road trips and visiting places where wildlife is a little more natural. Both of us enjoy that freedom of just stop and listening to the silence and song of nature, and change from living on a main road drag trip at times.

Anyway I’ll still keep playing golf and with this drought going on that too is a pain as tee up takes another level of skill away from my toolkit and I get no jollies from teeing up driver on fairways at all. It’s embarrassing to the integrity of the golf course and inflates faulted egos.

In my football career which extended in semi pro coaching , when you beat a player and he has time to get up and bite your legs it time to consider retiring, you’ve proved you point but the game is catching you up and you will be only remembered by your last game… and I don’t want to be remembered as a old man who played who manipulated a system.

It’s a pastime now nothing more and let the battle for honour boards begin.. without me.

Grumpy old fart aren’t I? And proud of it too. 🖕🖕🖕🖕

PS Hope the garage sale is going well, if not she will be as pissed Ruby the dog is looking over the fence at them….

Our Women Set the Standard

Tis the time of the year to review 2018 and in sport no one could deny womens sport and sportswomen have carried the banner for our youth to follow.

The male contribution across most codes has been less than admirable and although the press may choose to overlook the facts but our papers and reports are littered with cheating, domestic violence, drug abuse, corporate deception,  and general grubby behaviour from our so called professional athletes and clubs  and yet not one life ban imposed. 

The fact is, compared with professional players worldwide our lot has far too much time on their hands. Overpaid and overrated compared with players who compete overseas where 3 games in 11 days and sometimes less times is common. Imagine the cry’s of our prima donnas if their schedules similar, and just maybe they would not have the time to misbehave as they would be under constant scrutiny publicly and privately. 

Secondly of greater concern is the influence of betting organisations are having on our sporting culture. Codes are selling their souls to these parasites with scant regard to what message they are sending to our future  sportsmen and women inviting corruption into the sanctity of developing minds.

We have a lot of work to do to tidy up the shop in 2019 if we want to meet standards our women have set on the world stage don’t we? 

 

Gay Bashing Reignited by the Good Christians.

This nation and our LGBTQ’s community was dragged through the mire of hate and recriminations, with the referendum to appease the what turned out to be a distinct minority of people who wanted SSM to be outlawed in this country.

Not satisfied with that result that all should be treated as equal the LNP immediately commissioned Ruddick to deliver a slanted outcome to compensate the proportion that voted NO, then proceeded to hide it for It’s political reasoning.

Well Zannits cartoon in today’s QT has regenerated the non acceptance of those have no control over who they are and is a total disgrace. We as responsible adults should have a obligation to teach and live acceptance, but obviously some of the good church going hypocrites feel kids and teachers will infect their pristine views on who and who isn’t fit to be educated in private schools.

It’s gays this time, then will it be blacks, asians, if they don’t fit the pristine model?

In a culture that has hidden, supported, criminals who destroyed children’s lives for decades world wide and still ongoing have the audacity to point the finger and discriminate at those who through no fault of their own are dealt a hand that is different leaves me breathless, and surely the QT should make it clear on its stance on such a toxic ,unfunny and divisive piece of trash disguised as a cartoon

See below

Is Amberley playing Games with our Weather?

I try to look at the facts, then look for reasons why when things are outside what I regard as normal occurrences.

Yesterday 15/02/2018 a series of storms appeared on the BOM radar around Warwick, Toowoomba and slowly progressed towards the IPSWICH. While that was progressing individual cells appeared in the Harrisville area all heading towards Rosewood Thagoona as the warnings were issued by relevant authorities.

As I watched intently on my device I witnessed entire fronts disappear the closer they got to Amberley Base, then reappear somewhere else. ( please check BOM history if in doubt if it’s available).

My question is “is Amberley Base using a device or system that deflects incoming weather for operational purposes?”

I’m sure many residents who have lived in the area for some are seeing this occurrence more frequently and questions need to be asked.

I don’t expect the military to confirm or deny as protocol, nor do I expect any politician to respond, and I expect to regarded as a conspiracy peddler but when a occurrence continually occurs someone has to ask.

We all knew when we moved here Amberley is what it is, and we are privileged to have it to boost our economy and bringing families and mates to our towns, but I’m not sure I know enough about side effects as we didn’t in the fire retardant cover up but I do know my bit of dirt around Thagoona is in some sort of shadow and maybe the pioneers that placed the base where it is knew that but when you see dramatic inconsistencies we must question.

Check our the times on the screen shots..

Edited version

Basic Voice a Essential Service to the Elderley 

The NBN debacle delivered by the Turnbull government is leaving many elderly and incapacitated people totally stranded in the whirlpool of competition for their basic telephone service. With exchanges shutting down, voice only services will be delivered by the NBN by VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) changing the way the basic service is delivered.

These people who only need the basic service, the service they have paid for and serviced them will be forced to decide which provider and the cheapest to select to maintain basic communication to their families and support teams. 

To provide that basic service will cost NBN less than the cost of cup of coffee as the switching will be done automatically as part of the cutover. Their business is data not voice, so that basic voice service should be standard across the nation and take the profiteer provider level out of the equation. 

It goes back to the question “is a basic telephone a essential service”? 

That Communication Act Clause should be reinstated as governments encourage the elderly and in-firmed treated at home rather than clogging the hospital systems. 

 

Trumps Kitchen Treat. 

As a avid reader of news/politics/history over my lifetime and being involved I dare to say the world is looking at a uncontrollable train crash when it comes to America and it’s society.Day by day it’s social structure is being dismantled not because it’s broken but by the pure spite of political ideology, and in Trumps case the hate of a Afro American even being allowed through the door let alone the White House. 

With over 85% of the country’s wealth being in the hands of the top 10% 

https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/ the protection of that 10% is manipulated politically on both sides of politics, however the divide is extended more as the Right has assumed a position of keeper of the keys to patriotic vitriol and if your not with us you must be against us, a position Bush adopted when going to war in Iraq. 

That strategy failed and will fail again only this time the war will be within. 

America is armed to the hilt, that industry dominates the political agendas so no party will have the guts to change that position but unfortunately it will be their own cancer when the poor, the black, the sick, the immigrants and the ones with social conscience will say enough is enough and rise up. 

Attacks on the press, book banning, social profiling, racial preferences in regards to welfare, tragedy response, health care, based on political voting patterns all fuelling the hate that will eventually erupt on the streets across the country. 

With about 320 million population the bean counters will make a calculation of collateral damage of the masses while the rich will look on and profit accordingly. 

That’s how the beast worked in the past, wealth wins as the peasants kids are given a flag and sons and daughters sacrificed physically and mentally without thought or challenge. 

Undoubtedly I will be criticised for these observations as I have been before of being  ignorant  of the real America and in no way am I comparing Australian culture , but what I am comparing is human response over history and the ingredients it takes to motivate a person to rebel. 

Donald Trump is creating a mixture maybe in ignorance or planned, that will rise up, and all the red herrings he may create to divert attention externally the pot is boiling in his kitchen, his creation and the sad thing is I doubt if he knows how to lay the table let alone cook. 

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