It’s Friday O’Clock

Fiona Uncategorized

… time to Shake, Raffle, and Roll!

What a week! Some highlights include …

Monday:
This may have slipped under most Pubkateers’ radars, but is very important news. The European Union will impose a two-year ban (starting 1 December) on three pesticides suspected of contributing to the global decline in the number of bees.

Tuesday:
The Netherlands has its first king in 120 years with the abdication of Queen Beatrix and the investiture of her son Willem-Alexander.


(Credit: Reuters – Robin Utrecht)

Wednesday:
Tsk tsk – the Nanny State (this time New Zealand) even controls children’s names.

Thursday:
Awwww! Lion cub triplets …

Friday:
At last – Samoa has been circumnavigated.


(Credit: kayak4youth)

I also understand that something happened about the NDIS, and the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement …

595 thoughts on “It’s Friday O’Clock”

  3. Great commentary and personal stories on disabilities -thanks Fiona and Doyley (special hug, mate, that stutter one doesn’t get the understanding it deserves). Leone and Puff made excellent points about people with disabilities running the full gamut of human traits and tastes.

    We should never pretend that they can’t be selfish, mean, bigoted and inconsiderate – the same as everybody else. They can also have the valued traits of kindness, respect, compassion and joy. And as Puff says, there won’t be any particular advantage to Labor by this action. It’s just the right thing to do.

    I used to squirm at times when I’d hear people from “the industry” complain that someone like Steady Eddy was undermining respect for disability by earning a living through making fun of his plight. Good luck to him, I say. Humor also at times can make it easier to cope. One gag I always liked (he has cerebral palsy) was that he won a prize once for rock dancing when he was only attempting to walk across the crowded dance floor.

    When my daughter was a high school teenager she formed a blue-grass duo with a bloke who had cerebral palsy (his name was Eddy, too). My daughter played the guitar, while Eddy sang and played the harmonica. It worked beautifully because Eddy’s shaking was perfectly in keeping with the blue-grass rhythm.

  4. Gorgeous Dunny,

    Lovely story – and one that should be kept front and centre.

  5. Doyleym

    I also have a stutter. I had an appalling stutter as a child, my first memory is of my first school assembly, on the first day of school, all the children had to say their names aloud when I said mine of course I stuttered and all I remember was the whole school laughing at me.

    I have other horrifying stories which I wont bother you with as I’m sure you have had the same or worse.

    I suffered until my mid 50’s when it just seemed to go away without me noticing, I still stutter on occasion but it is not a fear for me anymore.

    All power to you my fellow stutterer.

  6. I was thinking about Abbott and his new-found interest in disabled kiddies and that led back to that hospital visit video from the other day. I think that hospital set Abbott up.

    Important visitors to hospitals are never sent to visit wards where there are infectious or seriously ill patients. It’s not good publicity to have someone throw up on a politican’s Zegna suit (or Prada frock if it’s Julie Bishop doing the visting. I know, as if…).

    I know this because my son spent a fair bit of time in the old Childrens Hosptial at Camperdown, Sydney, always in the William Stuart ward for orthopedic patients. The kids there were not sick, they were being treated for things like broken bones, scoliosis or maybe hip dysplasia. They were plastered or bandaged or hooked up to traction devices, but were otherwise well and lively. So they got all the important visitors and starred in all the news footage of visits from Easter bunnies and Santa as well.

    So – Abbott should have been visiting patients who were recovering from surgery, or who had just had a baby, or maybe some attractive kids in wheelchairs. Instead he was sent to shake hands with a kid with an infectious condition. It was a set-up and he never realised that.

  7. One of my front teeth broke off at the gum tonight when I bit into a crispy thingmybob at a Thai restaurant.

    I am now literally Holier than Thou.

    I look like an extra from a Hollywood bar fight.

    Does that qualify me for the NDIS?

    And can anyone lend me the several thousand dollars I’m gonna need to get the.. er.. gap fixed?

  8. Oh yes, and I used to stutter when I was a kid, and still do at certain times, but like most people with a (now very) mild speech impediment, I have learnt to cover it up with blarney.

  10. Jacqueline Maley strikes again. Even more blatant this time.

    Tony Abbott is a lousy interviewee, nervous, shifty, evasive, smarmy… but hey who isn’t when they’re across the table from Leigh Sales?

    He’s also a sexist thug, who thinks a woman’s place is anywhere but out front.

    But his PPL scheme is great, because there’s more money in it, and bugger the social equity aspect. Give us our full pay!

    Opposition Leader Tony Abbott may well be a misogynist. He might be plotting to scrap abortion rights. He might truly believe that women are not temperamentally suited to leadership roles. He might, for all we know, have a Virginia Woolf voodoo doll that he jams full of pins when he’s bored.

    All these things may be true, but so is this: Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme is vastly superior to the Labor government’s legislated scheme, and more feminists should come out in favour of it.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/abbott-cares-for-mums-but-why-so-little-support-20130503-2iy87.html#ixzz2SKZ0ISdn

    Oh, and this later on in the piece…

    Putting aside business concerns about the levy, and any awkward feelings dry liberals might have about slugging business for a social benefit, one fact remains: the Coalition plan would deliver more cash to more women.
    The argument that it is somehow a millionaires’ scheme to keep yummy mummies in cashmere and cappuccinos doesn’t wash.

    We get more money from Tony, but it’s not about the money at all. No M’am.

  11. BB

    I actually kissed the Blarney stone.

    after some time I realised the the Blarney stone was over a 60ft pit which could only have been for one purpose.

    That is when I realised the Irish are the only people in the world that can get you to bend over backwards to kiss a toilet and charge you for the privilege.

  13. BB
    Several thousand? Geez. That was an expensive crispy Thai thingamybob then.

  14. I was just really shy.

    So was Julia Gillard, which, according to the Age’s resident “shyness” expert meant:

    EITHER

    If she says she’s not shy now, she’s lying. Shy people (like the Age’s shyness expert know that, once you’re shy, you’re shy for life, so Gillard must be a liar. And do we want a liar for a PM?

    OR…

    She’s still shy, and shy people will tell you that a PM who’s shy can’t possibly cut the mustard.

    Take your pick.

  15. BB
    Several thousand? Geez. That was an expensive crispy Thai thingamybob then.

    Jaw surgery to remove the tooth then X-thousand for either a crown or a bridge, or sell the kids for an implant. Or go around looking like Yosemite Sam’s hillbilly brother for the rest of my life.

    How do I know this? Because it was on the cards it’d break off due to weakness picked up in a recent X-ray (a growing hairline crack across about a third of it from an accident thirty years ago). So tonight I bit into the Thai whatnot and got to chew more than the spicy pork. Clean break, like it’d been snapped off with a pair of pliers.

  16. That Maley article was based on the ridicuous idea that feminists should go for Abbott’s PPL because it meant nurses and teachers and whatever would also get ‘more’. Even the incredibly annoying Eva Coix was dragged in to comment and agreed with it all. Why is Eva always asked for her opinion on womens issues? Why don’t they ever ask me?

  17. Incidentally not one word on the SMH web site’s front page about Napthine’s agreement to join the NDIS. Buried inside.

  18. Not a word at the Daily Telegraph either. Pretty blatant non-reporting of news which, if Napthine had refused to join the NDIS would have been “war” headline material for days.

  19. BB
    Jaw surgery? It just keeps getting better. You can’t go around looking like an extra from Deliverance, I suppose.

  20. Is Tony Abbott having sex with Jacqueline Maley? I can’t explain her increasingly obsequious fawning sycophancy towards him any other way!?!

  22. BB,
    Or, if Abbott had been PM and signed an NDIS deal with Napthine there would have been a Sedan Chair laid on by The Daily Telegraph, with nubile maidens strewing rose petals in his path and a cameraman to take photos they could splash across their spread on it, starting on Page 1 and going though to Page 8-9.

  23. BB
    Jaw surgery? It just keeps getting better. You can’t go around looking like an extra from Deliverance, I suppose.

    Deiverance maybe… or Mad Max. I prefer the local angle myself.

    The jaw surgery is required because the tooth has broken off above the gum line and has had root canal therapy in the past so will probably splinter with a normal extraction.

    At least, because of the root canal therapy, it doesn’t hurt. But by God it’s a weird feeling and looks none to pretty.

    There goes my “Hollywood” smile.

  24. BB,
    Or, if Abbott had been PM and signed an NDIS deal with Napthine there would have been a Sedan Chair laid on by The Daily Telegraph, with nubile maidens strewing rose petals in his path and a cameraman to take photos they could splash across their spread on it, starting on Page 1 and going though to Page 8-9.

    Can’t resist it… click to enlarge…

  25. My stutter story.

    When my Number 1 Son was about 8, he decided that he stuttered one day out of the blue. So it went on for about a week or two.

    His father and I got so sick of hearing it that we said to him, “We know you don’t really have a stutter, you were speaking perfectly normally until last week, so could you put a sock in it please, for our sanity?”

    Taken aback, he stopped again almost immediately. 🙂

  28. BB,
    If it makes you feel any better, I had a Root Canal that became abscessed after it got a hairline crack in it and I didn’t need jaw surgery to have it out. If they can get a grip on what’s left they can usually get it out. Sometimes they can slice the gum open with your normal local anaesthetic injection, just to get a grip, and then take the bit that’s left out. Then, of course, sew it up afterwards. After that, I think a plate is your best, cheapest option to replace it.

  29. Pretty modest coverage in The Age, too. About fourth item down in the Politics heading. No independent heading or lead. You have to wonder about that, with Napthine having such a good human interest story to go with it.

  30. If anyone is interested at this late juncture, and before the Woofle Dust has been sprinkled around, I have a new post up in the top right-hand corner. 🙂

    Over. And. Out!

  31. C@tmomma
    “Maybe Chrissy Boy has been trying to fill a few more test tubes over the Long Break”

    Doing what he does best? :devil:

  34. Jacqueline Maley has no idea about feminism. Her arguments are facile at best, deeply cynical at worst. On past form, I’ll grant her the benefit of the doubt and label her lazy and facile. Idiot!

  35. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
    Absolutely diddly squat to link this morning despite the fact that Dennis Napthine signed up to the NDIS. 0/10 MSM!
    So it’s straight to the Land of the Free –

    A classy contribution from the deranged head of the NRA.
    http://americablog.com/2013/05/nra-uses-boston-marathon-bombing-to-push-more-guns.html
    Some cartoons on the NRA convention.
    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/05/04/cartoons-of-the-day-nra-convention-2013/
    Bill Maher takes on the GOP over guns. Lawrence O’Donnell is there to help him out.
    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/05/03/video-real-time-bill-maher-shouting-match-with-gop-guests-2nd-amendment-will-not-protect-you-532013/

  38. Good morning all.

    Tony’s Fridge,

    As I said the other day when I first heard this reported, I cannot understand the Yanks – to me it beggars belief that anyone with even half a brain would give a rifle to a child.

  41. Interesting that Hockey posed for that photo with a whip – boofhead!

  42. Hello everyone!
    Just a quick reminder, because I’m a technical Luddite, so haven’t done the Comments Closed thing, that I have a new post up, which you can access by going up to the top right hand corner. 🙂

  44. First “Um” from Maley to kick off Insiders.

    Three more “Ums” within 15 seconds!

    And another!

    Two more!

    Anothery!

    It’s “Um” City!

    “Um”… why is this twerp on the show?

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