Culturazi

Is anyone feeling sorry for Amanda Vanstone? Stop it. Right now. Vanstone ought to have been sacked years ago and in any other period of Australia’s political history she would have been.

The manner of her departure does strike one as another case of John Howard emulating his hero, George W Bush, who has a wonderful way with praising his colleagues’ prowess to the hilt, despite all evidence to the contrary, before summarily dismissing them. Cushy jobs follow.

Vanstone has presided over one of the great scandals of the era and, in the manner of her esteemed leader, has never accepted any responsibility for it. In this she has relied on the previously unyielding support of Howard.

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Tags: Politics by admin
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Here we are in the new Loadedog premises (temporarily located at newloveobject.com). We have barely begun moving the site over, still grappling, as we are, with some issues with the look and functionality of the site (if anyone can make sense of these ‘how to install the Category Icons Plugin for WordPress’ instructions, let us know).

Please have a little look around and let us know what you think.

Cheers

Loadedog

Tags: Site Biz by loadedog
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“Ow! Ouch! Ow! I give up, I give up!” Yes, gentle reader, that is the sound of me leaving the Public Service after 2.5 years in the Department of Evil and Worker Repression. I share my experience with you as a cautionary tale for anyone else who might be contemplating employment with the APS.

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Tags: Gertrude by loadedog
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Click above to see large scale pics.

People of the long-toothed variety will recall the giant dud that was Halley’s Comet, which created a massive sense of underwhelment in 1986, cruelling astrology as a popular science for decades, and being the single most common excuse people cite for the telescope in their cupboard to this day.

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Tags: Images by loadedog
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Tags: Misc. Pics by loadedog
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The disco under the Sphinx within the Golden Triangle for the black-eyed people, ‘Children of the Golden Dawn’ etc.. anyway the nightclub is really quite something but has a panic room installed for those watching 2006 and the unfolding of the 666 dimension. Who was asking which dimension EA was existing in? How about – DI_702-95617 (old AGS number). EA is not meant to be in 2006 – her double has taken her place in Year 6040.

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Tags: Evil Alisandra by loadedog
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Having laid waste the world of the happy smoker, it was only a matter of time before the nannies in the various health authrocities turned their awful gaze on fat people. With talk of a fatty-food tax driving the debate, the agenda is clear. Fat people are either to give up fatty food or face poverty. Except for rich fat people, who will just have to give up one of their Lamborghinis..

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Tags: Humour, Politics, The Media by loadedog
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It’s pretty much accepted that standards of journalism in Australia have fallen in recent decades. A prime example is the proliferation of advertorial in all areas of the media, much of it undisclosed. Witness the morning news shows whose weather segments are almost always brought to you from and by a tourist destination, interspersed with ads announcing cheap deals to those same destinations.

The economics of publishing and broadcasting in Australia are the same at all levels of the media (except for little old web sites like this one). There are big costs involved in manufacturing and distributing content and it appears the whole industry has accepted that content should be pre-bought and paid for by advertisers.

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Tags: The Media by admin
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Regular readers will be pleased on my behalf that there has been some relief from the drought. Not from the government, but from the discovery of some hitherto unknown arteries in Canberra’s clandestine distribution networks. ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ they say, but in the pot-dealing business it’s more ‘who you have to know’.

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Tags: Drugs by loadedog
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Prisons have almost always been awful places. There is, I believe, a pervasive view among Australians that prisons ought to be awful places. People are sent there for punishment after all, not for a ‘holiday camp’ as ‘A Current Affair’ might describe any half-civil accommodation for prisoners.

But what are prisons really like? What are they really supposed to achieve and what do they actually achieve? The vast majority of Australians are largely ignorant of the conditions in jails here, preferring it that way and behaving in a manner that will never see them enjoy their discomforts.

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Tags: Letters from Prison by loadedog
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The Sydney Morning Herald reports that UTS, Sydney’s University of Technology, has introduced a lower entry score for applicants who are able to pay full fees up-front. Coincidentally, I had an interesting chat with an older feller last night at the local.

It seems he used to be Press Secretary for John Dawkins (Education Minister in the Labor Government (1987-91) amongst other posts). Dawkins, if you recall, introduced the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) as well as disposing of an entire tier of tertiary education, amalgamating College’s of Advanced Education into tin-pot universities.

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Tags: Politics by loadedog
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Johnboy thoughtfully forwarded me this story about Tasmania having problems with back yard pubs. Not that there have been any problems as such, other than a few licensed pubs losing clientele, but the Australian Hotels Association (AHA) is ever vigilant and disaster, according to them, is just around the corner. They might be right.Tasmania has banned smoking in pubs for about a year and, not surprisingly, a proportion of smoking punters have elected to drink elsewhere. According to anecdotal reports allegedly received by the AHA from publicans across the State, back yard pubs, of which there are supposedly two or three in every town, are becoming ‘semi-organised’, installing pool tables, plasma screens and other pub-like facilities and out-competing hotels with their lower overheads, not to mention allowing punters to smoke inside.

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Tags: Drugs, Politics by loadedog
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Introducing…

…Tony Farrell, long-time Canberran, musician and independent candidate for the Legislative Assembly. Apparently he holds a bit of a grudge against Andrew Barr, minister for something-or-other in the Labor Government. Either that or he actually suffers from delusional sexual fantasies about Barr’s curvaceous glutes.

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Tags: Canberra, Humour, People by loadedog
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Bunny alerted me to this, sourced from here. It’s possibly made up, but don’t let that spoil your enjoyment of it.

Tags: Humour by loadedog
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Never in history has the fate of so many rested in the hands of one so ill-equipped. George Bush’s speech on Wednesday, thoughtfully annotated here, lays to rest the argument over whether Bush is the worst President ever for good.

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Tags: Politics by loadedog
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