This is a copy of a letter sent to employees of a small, but moderately successful, Sydney company earlier this year. This is indicative of the damage the Australian Government is doing to small and medium businesses in Australia. Having run my own small business at one stage, I can see where the guy is coming from.
This is not only the situation in Australia, of course, but also in the US, UK and many other supposedly “developed” countries.
This Ad Was Placed in the Personal column of a newspaper in Georgia.
To the Guy Who Tried to Mug Me in Downtown Savannah night before last.
Date: 05-27-09, 1:43 AM EST.
I was the guy wearing the black Burberry jacket that you demanded that I hand over, shortly after you pulled the knife on my girlfriend, threatening our lives and me.
You also asked for my girlfriend’s purse and earrings.
I can only hope that you somehow come across this rather important message.
First, I’d like to apologize for your embarrassment when I drew my pistol after you took my jacket. The evening was not that cold, and I was wearing the jacket for a reason.
My girlfriend had just bought me that Kimber Model 1911 .45 A CP pistol for my birthday, and we had picked up a shoulder holster for it that very evening.
Obviously you agree that it is a very intimidating weapon when pointed at your head wasn’t it?
I know it probably wasn’t fun walking back to wherever you’d come from bare footed since I made you leave your shoes, cell phone, and wallet with me. That prevented you from calling or running to your buddies to come help mug us again.
After I called your mother, or “Momma” as you had her listed in your cell, I explained the entire episode of what you’d done. Then I went and filled up my gas tank as well as four other people’s in the gas station on your credit card. The guy with the big motor home took 150 gallons and was extremely grateful!
I gave your shoes to a homeless guy outside Long’s Drugstore, along with all the cash in your wallet. That made his day!
I then threw your wallet into the big pink “pimp mobile” that was parked at the curb … after I broke the windshield and side window and keyed the entire driver’s side of the car.
Later, I called a bunch of phone sex numbers from your cell phone. AT&T just now shut down the line, although I only used the phone for a little over a day now, so what’s going on with that?
Earlier, I managed to get in two threatening phone calls to the DA’s office and one to the FBI, while mentioning President Obama as my possible target. The FBI guy seemed really intense and we had a nice long chat – I guess
while he traced your number etc.
In a way, perhaps I should apologize for not killing you … but I feel this type of retribution is a far more appropriate punishment for your threatened crime. I wish you well as you try to sort through some of these rather immediate pressing issues, and can only hope that you have the opportunity to reflect upon, and perhaps reconsider the career path you’ve chosen to pursue in life.
Remember, next time you might not be so lucky.
Have a good day!
Thoughtfully yours,
Alex
Recently, large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that parliament is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration. Certain people are angry that Australia might actually want to protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, make it harder (as an illegal immigrant) to stay indefinitely. Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.
Let’s say I break into your house. Then, when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave. But I say,
”ve made all the beds and washed the dishes and done the laundry and swept the floors. I’ve done all the things you don’t like to do. I’m hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).
According to the protesters, not only must you let me stay, you must add me to your family’s insurance plan, educate my kids and provide other benefits to me and to my family (my wife will do your yard work) because she too is hard-working and honest, except for that breaking-in part.
If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my illegal right to be there. It’s only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I’m just trying to better myself. I’m hard-working and honest, um, except for well, you know.
And what a deal it is for me!! I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of selfishness, prejudice and being an anti-housebreaker. Oh yeah, and I want you to learn my language so you can communicate with me! English is too hard for me to learn. You should also allow me to vote – in my own language, since I live in your house!
Why can’t people see how ridiculous this is?
Only in Australia.
Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to, doesn’t mean they don’t love you with
all they have.
Ralph and Edna were both patients in a mental hospital. One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool. Ralph suddenly jumped into the deep end. He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there. Edna promptly jumped in to save him. She swam to the bottom and pulled him out.
When the Head Nurse Director became aware of Edna’s heroic act she immediately ordered her to be discharged from the hospital, as she now considered her to be mentally stable. When she went to tell Edna the news she said, ‘Edna, I have good news and bad news.’
The good news is you’re being discharged, since you were able to rationally respond to a crisis by jumping in and saving the life of the person you love. I have concluded that your act displays sound mindedness. The bad
news is, Ralph hung himself in the bathroom with his bathrobe belt right after you saved him. I am so sorry, but he’s dead.’
Edna replied, ‘He didn’t hang himself, I put him there to dry. How soon can I go home?’
Read this article and then read it again, substituting “Australia” for “USA” and understand that we are doing exactly the same as the Americans, having already created a situation where Australian manufacturing is virtually non-existent. Unless Australia reverses its policy of globalisation and stops our jobs being exported to places like China, then we are doomed. The only jobs that our children will be able to get will be as waiters, housemaids, cleaners and bartenders, kowtowing to the Chinese because they will own us, lock, stock and barrel.
Do you remember the 1950s and 1960s, when we manufactured TVs, radios, washing machines, fridges, toasters and a million other goods?
Remember Aussie-made TVs such as Admiral, HMV, AWA, Astor, Ferris, Kreisler, even HG Palmer? Guess what – not one television manufacturer exists in Australia. The same goes for all those other goods. Nobody makes radios,
toasters, washing machines and beater-mixes here. Australia does not manufacture anything of note and all those people that worked at companies making Aussie goods for Aussie people – they don’t have those jobs any more.
Those manufacturing plants are closed. We have exported all those jobs to China. Australia used to have a huge textile industry, but virtually all the clothing manufacturers have either gone out of business, or closed their factories here and are getting the Chinese to make their garments.
This nation could literally be self-sufficient. We have the raw material to make literally anything. We have a workforce that is capable of manning factories to make anything we need locally. We have researchers, designers and scientists at the forefront of technology. We can acquire knowhow from anywhere. But is Australia doing this? No, of course not. We are making the Chinese wealthy and leaving our kids the legacy of being waiters and cleaners.
And what do you think will happen when the Chinese see that Australian industry is non-existent and they’ve got us by the goolies? They will stop selling us cheap stuff and they will hike up the prices and gouge us until they bleed us dry. And while they are doing that, we will tug our forelocks like medieval serfs and bow and scrape to them, because THEY WILL OWN US.
Read this article and weep – it’s long, but if you understand anything, you will become as enraged as I did when I read it and the implications sunk in.
Remember to substitute “Australia” for “USA” and see the catastrophe that Australia has made for itself.
Wearing what can only be describes as rags, carrying every worldly possession in two plastic bags, my heart was touched by this persons condition.
Some people turned to stare. Others quickly looked away as if the sight would somehow contaminate them.
Recalling some long ago priest who made an admonition to “care for the sick, feed the hungry and clothe the naked,”? I was moved by some powerful inner urge to reach out to this unfortunate person.
Yes, where some people saw only rags, I saw a hidden beauty.
A small voice inside my head called out, “Reach out, reach out!”
So? I did……….
For those who think that mankind is devastating the planet by causing global warming, it’s a myth, but it keeps the greenies and tree-huggers in business, otherwise they would become redundant. For instance, one day’s emission of sulphur dioxide and other gases from the volcanic eruption of Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines a few years ago put more ozone-destroying elements into the atmosphere than the combined pollution caused by man in the past 40 million years.
Mankind can’t compete with nature when it comes to pollution, as there are thousands of active volcanoes throughout the planet, all spewing out greenhouse gases. Go to Rotorua in New Zealand and you can smell it all day and night, 365 days of the year. If you think we are suffering from global warming because of something that mankind is doing, ask yourself why the polar icecaps on Mars are melting? Maybe there’s a secret colony of humans on Mars, polluting whatever vestige of atmosphere is on the Red Planet. Or could it just be the sun going through its usual cycle of increasing and decreasing energy? That’s the real reason, but let’s not get in the way of the greenies and their agendas.
The truth is that global warming, ozone layer breakdown and other so-called man-created worldwide changer to the environment is a gigantic load of crap, driven by people who have made a profession out of being environmentalists. The following article by journalist Tim Blair really says it how it is.
————————————–
The Vanity of Global Warming
By Tim Blair
December 02, 2006
Human beings are vain creatures, given to imagining we are able to influence events far beyond our control.
An aunt of mine believes, for example, she can cause English wickets to fall during Test matches by doing her ironing.
Her family was looking pretty sharp last week. Even their socks were ironed.
As superstitions go, hers is a mild one. By contrast, Queensland University student Sarah Bishop believes she can influence the weather.
The 22-year-old will walk 1000km from Brisbane to Sydney next month in a bold bid to adjust the planet’s temperature.
“I just figure it’s really easy to sit around and complain that other people aren’t doing anything about it,” the young environmentalist told reporters.
“But if I’m not doing anything I’m exactly the same as everybody.”
Can’t have that. So Sarah’s trek – she aims to collect Kyoto-supporting signatures along the way, which she’ll deliver to Kirribilli House once in Sydney – will demonstrate the power of an environmentalist over the environment.
As her website www.globaldawning.org says: “One committed young Australian can make a difference.”
Sorry, Sarah. Nothing you do will make any difference at all to the climate. (Also, there is no Santa Claus.) Check the stats. Australia contributes just 1.4 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Let’s assume, just for fun, that each of us generates an equal amount of that overall figure. Sarah’s contribution comes to just 0.00000007%.
Sarah could become completely carbon neutral (ie, cease to exist) tomorrow, and the Great Greenhouse Gods wouldn’t even notice. Forget raising awareness of global warming; global warming needs to be made aware of Sarah.
But let’s leave Sarah alone. She’s well-intentioned, if not particularly aware of humanity’s scale relative to the whole planet.
Let’s look instead at the effect an entire nation has on global warming. Here’s the Calgary Sun’s Licia Corbella: “What would happen if Canada were never to produce another man-made CO2 molecule ever again?
“If every man, woman and child never exhaled again and therefore never produced anymore hated CO2, what would be the effect?
“What would happen if all Canadians just disappeared and therefore all that hated machinery and technology that makes survival through a Canadian winter possible, just sat idle? No cars driving around, no need to heat homes or turn on lights. No more plants and factories. What would the effect on the global climate be?
“Absolutely nothing at all.”
That’s because Canada produces just 2 per cent of global warming gases – just a fraction more than Australia.
These amounts are miniscule. They are practically immeasurable in the overall context of global emissions.
Think on this awhile: if a vengeful Gaia were to smite both Canada AND Australia out of existence, that would reduce by only 3.4 per cent of these warming gases some believe are killing the planet.
We’re talking about a combined total of 53 million people, millions of houses, millions of cars, millions of factories and dams and computers and televisions and everything else that makes for modern, affluent, civilised nations.
Completely removing them would make next to no difference at all, global-warming wise. So imagine how little effect a council recycling scheme has, for example. Or how pointless would be the purchase of a hybrid electric car.
Let’s add New Zealand to the list of nations to be scrubbed out under my Appease the Environment policy.
Suddenly, our gas amount of 3.4 per cent leaps to 3.6 per cent (New Zealand’s contribution of global warming gases to the world’s total is, by one estimate, only 0.2 per cent). Sarah Bishop’s happy stroll to Sydney begins to look kind of pointless, does it not? Especially when you consider that her primary aim is to convince the government to sign up for magical Kyoto goodness.
You’d think New Zealand’s pitiful greenhouse output (c’mon, Kiwis! Get working! This planet isn’t going to warm itself, you know!) would make it a winner under the Kyoto Protocol, but no; that’s not how Kyoto works.
The protocol measures a nation’s greenhouse output against it OWN output in 1990. So we end up with a situation whereby clean little non-polluting New Zealand – which produces more greenhouse gases than it did 16 years ago – is penalised, possibly by as much as $1.5 billion.
Which could end up, via Kyoto logic, going to Russia. You remember Russia; they’re the guys who brought us such environmental triumphs as Chernobyl.
Little wonder that some in New Zealand regret ever signing on to this accursed Protocol of the Damned. Even our Canadian pals, who were among the first to embrace Kyoto, are having second thoughts.
In September the Canadian environment minister Rona Ambrose admitted her nation couldn’t meet its Kyoto emissions-reduction target. In fact, Canadian emissions are now running at 27 per cent higher than in 1990.
Run these lines past the likes of earnest Sarah and the usual response will include claims that we’ve got to do something about the climate because last year or last summer or last Tuesday was the “hottest in recorded history”.
Here’s another perspective-building figure: “recorded history” (the last 200 years or so) represents just 0.000004 per cent of the planet’s entire 4.6 billion year existence. This joint’s been around a long time. We’ll barely make a dent in it.
In honor of Australia Day, I dug this out of the email archives – the original actually came from a Government department, a PDF of which can be viewed here.
All I can say is this makes as much, if not MORE sense than the one that the Government introduced, and far easier for Bogans to pass… which may, on second thought, not be a desirable outcome.
Application for Grant of Australian Citizenship
You must answer 75% (28 or more out of 37) of these questions correctly in order to qualify for Australian Citizenship
1. How many slabs can you fit in the back of a Falcon Ute while also allowing room for your cattle dog?
2. When packing an Esky do you put the ice, or the beer, in first?
3. Is the traditional Aussie Christmas dinner:
a) At least two roasted meats with roast vegetables, followed by a pudding yo ucould use as a cannonball. Also ham. In 40C heat.
b) A seafood buffet followed by a barbie, with rather a lot of booze. And ham. In 40C heat.
c) Both of the above, one at lunchtime and one at dinnertime. Weather continues fine.
4. How many beers in a slab?
5. You call that a knife, this is a knife.
True or False?
6. Does “yeah-nah” mean
a) ”Yes and no”
b) “Maybe”
c) “Yes I understand but No I don’t agree”?
7. The phrases “strewth” and “flamin’ dingo” can be attributed to which TV character?
a) Toadie from Neighbours
b) Alf from Home & Away
c) Agro from Agro’s Cartoon Connection
d) Sgt. Tom Croydon from Blue Heelers?
8. When cooking a barbecue do you turn the sausages
a) Once or twice
b) As often as necessary to cook
c) After each stubby
d) Until charcoal?
9. Name three of the Daddo brothers.
10. Who was the original lead singer of AC/DC?
11. Which option describes your ideal summer afternoon:
a) Drinking beer at a mate’s place
b) Drinking beer at the beach
c) Drinking beer watching the cricket/footy
d) Drinking beer at a mate’s place while watching the cricket before going to the beach?
12. Would you eat pineapple on pizza? Would you eat egg on a pizza?
13. How many cans of beer did David Boon consume on a plane trip from Australia to England?
14. How many stubbies is it from Brissy to the Gold Coast in a Torana travelling at 120km/h?
15. Who are Scott and Charlene?
16. How do you apply your tomato sauce to a pie?
a) Squirt and spread with finger
b) Sauce injection straight into the middle?
17. If the police raided your home would you:
a) Allow them to rummage through your personal items
b) Phone up the nearest talkback radio shock jock and complain
c) Put a written complaint in to John Howard and hope that he answers it personally?
18. Which Australian Prime Minister held the world record for drinking a yardie full of beer the fastest?
19. Have you ever had/do you have a mullet?
20. Thongs are:
a) Skimpy underwear
b) Casual footwear
c) They’re called jandals, bro?
21. On which Ashes tour did Warney’s hair look the best?
a) 1993
b) 1997
c) 2001
d) 2005
22. What is someone more likely to die of:
a) Red Back Spider
b) Great White Shark
c) Victorian Police Officer
d) King Brown Snake
e) Your missus after a big night
f) Dropbear?
23. How many times must a steak be turned on a conventional four-burner barbie?
24. Can you sing along to Cold Chisel’s Khe Sanh?
25. Explain both the “follow-on” and “LBW” rules in cricket and discuss the pros and cons for the third umpire decisions in the latter….
26. Name at least 5 items that must be taken to a BBQ.
27. Who is current Australian test cricket captain:
a) Ricky Ponting
b) Don Bradman
c) John Howard
d) Makybe Diva?
28. Is it best to take a sick day on:
a) When the cricket’s on
b) When the cricket’s on
c) When the cricket’s on
29. What animal is on the Bundaberg Rum bottle?
30. What is the difference between a pot and a middy of beer?
31. What are Budgie smugglers?
32. What brand and size of Esky will you be purchasing?
33. Did you cry when Molly died on a Country Practice?
34. A “Hoppoate” is:
a) A breed of kangaroo
b) A kind of Australian “wedgie”
c) A disgraced Rugby League player?
35. What does having a ‘chunder’ mean?
36. When you were young did you prefer the Hills Hoist over any swing set?
37. What does the terminology ‘True Blue’ mean?
My bank account was compromised the other day – more importantly, the EFTPOS card used to access my EveryDay Account at Bendigo Bank was compromised.
Bendigo Bank, to their credit, locked my accounts immediately they realised that the account, along with about 100 others, had been compromised. Yeah, my fault that they couldn’t contact me on Friday to notify me (wrong phone number), which meant that when we tried to get groceries, train tickets and petrol on Sunday evening it was somewhat “embarassing”.
After much sleuthing and speaking to the nice people at Bendigo, we determined that it wasn’t the result of my last few transactions at Coles North Richmond, as I had first surmised, but at the only other place the card has been used in recent memory, McDonalds Drive-Thru (Panthers, Claremont Meadows, St Marys, North Parramatta or Northmead) over the past 6 months.
Not that I “dine” regularly at Maccas, just that sometimes on the way to work an attack of the munchies must be satisfied with a Sausage McMuffin & Hash Brown – and to be fair, their McCafe coffee isn’t all that bad when it’s made properly !
This article, in WA Today will explain more about the method used, but here’s my take on it:
With probably every Maccas in Australia offering Free WiFi in their stores, one of the only reasons I still buy my coffee there occasionally, there will be plenty of people with their laptops, iPhones or other smartphones doing absolutely nothing more than checking their email, but there may be one Bad Guy in the bunch that is receiving YOUR card data.
Let me emphasise this though – thus far this scam has only concerned the DRIVE-THRU terminals. It would be almost impossible to get a skimming device on the FIXED counter machines. Although they do have the hand-held ones on the counter as well, and I SUPPOSE they could be replaced using the same method – although much more difficult as they are in sight at all times (then again, Maccas staff and not known for their looming intellects !!)
