Our Greatest National Pastime‏



You have to admit it that our greatest Aussie pastime these days is the good old game of Bank Bashing. Do they deserve it? Maybe or maybe not, but my favourite pastime is and will always be Pollie bashing because I can see the Federal Opposition taking great strides to gain political mileage from this greedy rate rise and certainly Wayne Swan, the worst Federal Treasurer by far in my opinion, loves the attention that the "Big Banks" are getting and the redirection of public anger that should still be focused at a Government that has put this country in a huge fiscal black hole that will take a generation to fill in.

See:

Banks

Deficit

THE BIG CONCERNS‏



I have decided to take some advice and take a new direction regarding my random social comments and observations in writing.
I am a cartoonist, not a journalist and although both professions have very close ties in making social commentary, literally speaking they are worlds apart.

I have had several people comment that my writing was good and informative, also valid at times and I have had just the opposite response also.

The truth is that I do work too hard and sometimes sigh when I have drawn a cartoon and then know that I need to write about it. I just do not enjoy writing about what I have just drawn and really see no need to continue doing this.

Basically, life is to short and one must always focus on what they do best and enjoy best, if they are ever to excel and that is why I will no longer be offering a few paragraphs of my opinion on a subject but rather just let the cartoon tell the story.

I will assist my loyal followers by adding a news report link so as to assist any one out there who has just been to busy to know exactly what the cartoon is referring too ....... and really that is most of us these days......

Big Banks

Hillary Clinton Down Under

Q and A - Question and Attack.

John Howard says Q&A shoe attack 'all in a night's work'



if you haven't heard yet or seen the footage then click on this link for the full story and the update....

I say the full story but really is it? OK here I go again, delving into conspiracy theory but really you can't blame anyone for not thinking that just maybe this was a deliberate stunt that had the full blessing of the national broadcaster. Again I state clearly that this is not fact but just opinion and I base my suspicion on the following observations.

1. I have never seen the camera angle from above and behind the panel used on the show before, I mean really it is almost believable to think that the camera was placed where it was for the maximum effective shot of this clown throwing his shoes at J.W. Howard.

2. This bloke had a virtual front row seat. Coincidence maybe, but still he was in the perfect throwing position to launch his attack. I have never attended an audience of this show before so just maybe someone can answer this question. Do you get directed to a seat by the ABC staff and or are you self seating, first in best dressed?

3. This protester, Peter Gray, is a well known serial pest ( sorry protester ). This left wing radical from the central coast of NSW has performed more than a few public protest stunts before and I am sure that the good folk at Auntie would have recognised him if not his name. Here's another question, do you have to give your name when attending the studio audience, is there any sort of ID checking at the door or screening at all? I mean can I just be walking past the Ultimo studio on the night and walk straight into this audience?

4. The ABC digital moderator who receives the hundreds of text, email messages and twitter comments during a show and who decides to let what go to air, suddenly there's a twit post that appears "Will someone through a shoe at this guy NOW". Within a minute of that comment appearing on our screens at home, we had a man throwing his shoes at the former PM. Was that the prompt that he was waiting for? can someone tell me if the audience can see these on-screen comments as we in TV land can?

Well there you have it, just a few reasons why I think this may be a set up. Not because he is a conservative PM, because we all know that there is a strong leftist bias on this show (I will not even bother to argue that truth), no it is more likely that it would just make very exciting viewing and will certainly (and has) draw attention to the show from foreign media outlets. Oddly too this wouldn't have hurt sales for the new Howard memoir but to suggest Howard , the ABC and Gray were working together on this is even too far out there for me.

After all is said and done, I say no harm was really done, I mean the reputation that Mr Gray already has will not be damaged by what he has done and certainly John Howard was and is not the sort of man to go weak at the knees because a protester decided to emulate a few Iraqi protesters. I am sure he (Howard) has had his share of real scares in public life and this one was water of a duck's back but this does bring me to one real concern and that is, just how safe are the panelists or the host of this show.

I mean what if the man had a gun? is there any airport security type screening before you get in the studio? Probably not, I too would not like to go through that but just think about it. We could have witnessed a live to air assassination of a political leader. Does this mean now that people will be screened? I mean I doubt they (Q&A) could get Salman Rushdie in for a live audience let alone someone who is only slightly disliked for their world views but now who would want to go on the show knowing that from the darkness of the audience a projectile with their name on it may just come hurtling at them, prime time.

Hmmmmmmm a bit of head scratcher really but I can envisage the next conservative heavyweight appearing on the panel (sic) wearing a Kevlar Vest and a riot helmet!?!

Moore Madness



Everyone has their little pet peeves and I for one have quite a few. From Big Government, High Taxation, Massive Debt to the fall of our Australian Sovereignty. So you might think that this next gripe is really quite small in the scheme of things!?!

If you live in any other city of this great land of ours you would not be aware of the massive daily grind of the local Sydneyite, as they struggle for HOURS a day to get to work and to get home.

Congestion on the roads is not an unexpected side effect to living in a metropolis such as Sydney but then again you would expect that the local government bodies and the State government to be doing all that they can to relieve the pressure of driving in this over populated town and to ensure that future generations will see the benefit of their infrastructural vision.

Alas we are taking about the NSW Labor Government, just one in a string of governments in this state that have not come close to the vision of a better future for Sydney and surrounding areas since the days of Bradfield and his Harbour Bridge and Highway.

Locally we have a Lord Mayor. Her name is Clover Moore and as many commentariats have commented for years now, she does lives in a leftist/Marxist world of big government and wet ideological dreams of a Utopian Sydney that to her own design will resemble something of the Garden of Eden with bicycles for all and no reminders of our past colonial or British heritage.

She would like to impose a new congestion tax on us all, just because we have the nerve to live here and drive a motor car.
From her 200 or more kilometres of bike only lanes now throughout the CBD causing even more traffic mayhem and business closure, to her great "Artistic endeavour" called "Art and About" ... where she has commissioned like minded "artists" to basically deface and decry the memory and statuesque beauty of the likes of Governor Macquarie, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, just to name a few of the iconic statues that now bear a resemblance to the characters from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, throughout our once great city.

When will we be able to vote as an entire city or state for a Lord Mayor who is actually not about stamping his or her ideology in the pages of history but more about fixing the many neglected local and state infrastructure and business issues of Sydney?

"Clover NO Moore!" I say.

Time to Feed the Beast‏



Well, it hasn't been more than a week since the new "paradigm" Parliament has commenced and already the Greens are clearly showing us all, including the so called leader of the country, Julia Gillard, that they are calling in the shots and setting the agenda. How has this minor party of radical Marxist warriors achieved so much power in such a short time? Clearly the answer is because of the stupidity, hubris and arrogance of Independents such as Wilkie, Oakeshott and Windsor combined with the "whatever it takes" to hold on to power ideology of the Australian Labor Party.

The debts are being called in and already the secret deals that were done prior to the election that Tony Abbott should never have lost, are being exposed and the biggest lie ever told to the Australian people outed. Along with the deal done with the certain Mining Magnates, aka Dr Marius Kloppers ( the only one to put his hand up so far) and Bob Brown's ideological wet dream to tax us all back to the stone age.

The newly formed Climate Change Committee, which will meet every month is no more a committee of ideas, real science and free thought than a polite politburo meeting during Brezhnev's Kremlin days. In fact the speed at which the Green wish list.....read this ABC report ..... is being rolled out, would make the march of Hitler's Brown Shirts and Armies through Europe in 1939, look nothing less than a casual doddle.

Oakeshott has now joined the coalition of the criminally insane by becoming a card carrying member of this Ponzi Scheme Sham Committee, a committee that will never allow any dissenting voice to be heard. Remember, even though the science is still far from accurate or proven, in fact it is being decried louder and louder as laughable rubbish every day by real scientists, we are being told now that the debate ( which never happened) is over and the time for action is upon us.

So what I would like you to do prior to any coming election is every time you look at your ever increasing power and utility bills and then go to the shop to buy the ever increasingly expensive groceries in a car that you can no longer afford to run, stop for a moment, get angry and remember who put the Greens in power and who betrayed your Australian and your children's Australian way of life. Remember who wants you to live in the third world and remember that they are not Conservatives.

I would also like to draw your attention to a brilliantly humorous piece of satire which is strangely very close to just what may be!. Enjoy the following:

The Future of Climate Change: Tim Humphries takes a satirical look at the future in a post-climate change debate world.

THE VULTURES OF WAR



Having served in an Australian Army Regiment myself for nine years, there is one thing that I know that is inherent in the minds of all Australian soldiers, from combat veterans to weekend warriors, and that is that you must always look after your mate! This simple Aussie philosophy is why we have one of the most successful and respected Defence Forces in the world.

No doubt you have heard the story from the media: Commandos face court over civilian deaths in Afghanistan

And understandably, like most, you are probably fuming because you cannot stand the thought of Australian combat soldiers who are risking all for our and others greater good, being prosecuted for doing what 99.9 percent of us could only imagine doing.

War is hell and in that hell we can only imagine that there would be split second decisions needed to be made in order to not only get the job done successfully but to simply survive the battle. We are all human, including diggers and Generals and because of that we can make errors.

Was there an error made here and if so was there any other option but to fight to save your mates and yourself? Although I was not there and have no idea of exactly what happened and the circumstances leading to the TRAGEDY (only what I have read of course), the ins and outs of the tactical details and the minds of the soldiers under fire and the danger that made up this terrible event, I can count on this simple fact and that is there will always be casualties in a physical conflict such as this the war against the Taliban and Al-Al Quaida in Afghanistan and to the greatest regret of any Australian involved or not, there may well be civilian casualties.

These casualties are never an seen by decent human beings as an acceptable event or "collateral damage" and are not seen this way by our diggers (and I believe those concerned especially) or the ADF.

The one important thing that is being overlooked here, in my opinion, is that if wrong doing was done then it will be exposed by our military legal code and always justly dealt with. This cannot be said for this enemy, who take no pain in using children and woman as human shields (knowing that we are civilised soldiers and follow the civilised conventions of warfare) and it is the enemy that will always profit from any negative propaganda that can be stirred up by such western media attention.

I will stick my neck out and say here now that I believe the soldiers will be acquitted and that this will be seen for what I believe it is, a tragedy of war. I just hope that the issue does not stir up or give ammunition to the enemy without (the Taliban) and or the other front line and that is the enemy within: The usual "peacenik" activists and fools who cannot see that their way of life, including their right to be fools and side with the enemy's cause, is itself in jeopardy if we lose this war.

The effect that this will have and always has had on troops currently in the field is not only sobering for them but also just as concerning and destructive to the successful outcome of our military endeavours, This is a matter that needs to be dealt with "in house" and should not be a matter of such public debate until the facts are known and the the verdict is in. Even then, should it not be the right of a fighting army, fighting a war to win, to be able to keep that information to itself at least until the war is over? Or are newspaper sales just that much more important?

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!



As I type this rant, the so called independent minister, Rob Oakeshott, is in a meeting with his new overlord, and the PM will no doubt be making him an offer he probably couldn't refuse, even if he wanted to.

As a back bencher he would be earning approximately $132,000.00 a year and if he takes up the offer of a front bencher in the Gillard/Brown government then he stands to make an extra $102,900.00 extra per annum.

As a family man, with young children and as a man who faces electoral suicide due to his anti-conservative vote for the ALP last week, can I be excused for believing that he may well cash in his chips this way and take either a ministerial posting and maybe a cabinet position.

Hmmmmm a cabinet position, well that would certainly oblige him to confidentiality with the ALP and thus turns his claim as an "Independent" into nothing more than a joke.

I believe that if Rob Oakeshott really does want a future in politics then he should follow his leftist heart, take an ALP/Greens appointment and do it sooner than later as well as joining the ALP. Not sure what union he would need to sign up for but I am sure there would be a few looking for another paying member.

I say sooner than later because I agree with the likes of former ALP power broker Graham Richardson and former Liberal Leader, John Hewson who both stated today that this minority ALP/Greens government has no more than 18 months left to live:

Now that is certainly something worth hanging out for, another election, you beauty! and I am sure Oakeshott has considered this eventuality.