What Will It Take?

Will Banning Guns Work?

Today when word got out there had been a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School parents rushed to the school to get their children….of these parents, twenty were taken into a separate room and told their child had been killed. Their child would have been aged between 5 and 10 years old. Just think about that for a moment…five….year…olds!

Today, Adam Lanza made a decision to kill. He forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed 20 children and 7 adults.

In total at the time of writing this, 28 people have died with others seriously injured. Would stricter gun laws have stopped this from happening? In any society if someone WANTS to get a gun then they will. Does the easy access to these weapons make these occurrences far too easy? Why are semi/fully automatic weapons even allowed?

It should be remembered that the USA is not alone in this. Australian Martin Bryant‘s rampage stole the lives of 35 people. Anders Breivik killed 75 people in Norway.

The saying goes….guns don’t kill people…..people kill people. Do gun laws only keep people who want them for recreation or protection from getting them.?….but what if those people couldn’t have such ready access to the weapons they killed with?

To the families including those of Adam Lanza I offer you small comfort and condolences as nothing can be said or done right now to ease your pain. I hope that some changes will come of this….for the sake of the children.

What If?

Dec10

Recently a local girl known to me was killed in a single car crash. The cause of the crash was texting whilst driving. Personally, I don’t own a mobile phone so that’s one thing I am not guilty of but does this mean we should ban phones from all cars? or indeed ban them entirely?

You see, blame is a very easy thing to do as long as you are laying it and not expected to take it.

Mel Greig and Michael Christian managed to do something previously unheard of…..they managed to call a hospital and trick staff into giving out information on Princess Katherine’s medical condition. Did they think it through? Probably not. Did the station executives and lawyers see this a coupe sure to get ratings? Of course they did.

You see, the entire focus of the prank was the Princess. Not the nursing staff.

When Jacintha Saladanha committed suicide over the weekend it was a terrible tragic thing but no one could have known this would be the outcome of this prank so I don’t believe any blame should be given to the radio show hosts or indeed that station.

For example, if a person defaults on their mortgage then eventually the mortgage holder will come and seize the property Under certain circumstances this may be the final straw and the mortgage holder commits suicide. Is this the fault of the bank?

Was it the fault of phone company who created the phone that the young girl I mentioned earlier? If she didn’t have a phone she would still be alive.

What if …….the world is full of them……What if the station had successfully obtained permission, what if Prince Katherine didn’t have extreme morning sickness, what if someone other than Jacintha had answered the phone.

But it didn’t. There are no what if’s in this case….all these things happened.

As another example, Kyle Sandilands whilst on air called a woman a “fat slag” What if this was HER final straw and she had taken her life? Compare this to the actions and reactions of Greig and Christian. I am not making them the victims. Clearly we ALL need to stop playing the blame game in this tragic event. Chances are they won’t work in their chosen profession again. Punishing them will achieve nothing just be thankful it’s not you how will have to live with it for the rest of your life.

When It All Goes Wrong….Horribly

Dec8

Princess Katherine leaving the hospital with Prince William

Most of us were overjoyed to hear of the pregnancy of Princess Katherine and Prince William. The news itself was released earlier than the couple initially wanted after Kate’s admission into London’s exclusive King Edward VII Hospital for extreme morning sickness. The couple realised it would only be a matter of time before this information was leaked to the media.

This situation set up a perfect storm and during the whirlwind of media frenzy a young woman died.

I am sure that you have often been driving in your car listening to the radio and heard a prank call the DJ’s have played on an unsuspecting victim. In the past I’ve heard of the husband who requested flowers be sent to his girlfriend for Valentine’s Day (unfortunately his wife was listening in as part of the prank) or the young woman in tears because she thought they had failed the immigration test and they were going to be deported….all this pales in comparison to the most recent prank to go horribly wrong.

Greig and Christan

On Monday, 2Day FM jocks Mel Greig and Michael Christian thought they would give the hospital a call and pretend to be the Queen and ask how Kate was doing. It was 5:30am in the morning and only nursing staff were on to answer the phone. That fateful day Jacintha Saldanha answered and was advise it was the Queen checking up on her grand-daughter. Jacintha put the call through to the ward where the nurse on duty advised “the Queen” at length of Princess Kate’s condition.

It was seen as a cheeky prank…..Prince Charles himself joked later that day “How do you know I’m not a radio station” when asked Kate’s condition. Unfortunately, no one thought of the impact this would have on the staff who were duped by the pranksters.

Jacintha was found dead today in an apparent suicide just a few blocks away from where she put the fateful call through to Kate’s ward. In the aftermath the radio jocks have removed themselves from the air, the station has posted a heartfelt apology to her husband and two children, the Palace and Hospital stated they were deeply shocked and people are outraged.

But really, who could have predicted this would happen? Did the DJ’s go too far or was it just a prank gone horribly wrong? Regardless of your thoughts I am certain we will be hearing a lot more of this situation in the coming days. My sincere condolences go out to those affected the death of this beautiful angel of mercy.

Jacintha Saldanha committed suicide over a prank gone wrong

A Matter of Pride

Dec7

Occasionally we have to make tough decisions…..for me recently it was ending a business relationship I have been involved with for over 9 years.

One of the reasons for this was because I felt I had become isolated from the direction the company was taking. In previous years I was always involved in all aspects of the company including writing promotional material and copy for their website. I began to feel like the ugly sister at the Cinderella ball.

Have you ever been in a position where you had to make a tough decision? It may be to end a relationship or leave a long term job on a chance for something better. How did it work out for you?

I am a believer of one thing….if we were meant to look back we would have eyes in the back of our head so I will continue to look forward to what the future holds.

Perhaps it was pride as one major change was something I could not accept. It meant a loss of income I in all honesty can’t really afford….but I’ve got my pride…..so excuse me while I go fall on my sword…….proudly

Binder Woman To The Rescue!

Oct20

Totally Bound Women!

Poor Mitt Romney….it seems every time he opens his mouth its to change feet. Who can forget classics like suggesting aircraft come with opening windows so in the event of a crash people can escape through them….unless you are fat….because there is NO WAY you are gonna get through that porthole baby!

And he gets an honourable mention when asked to comment on the plight of the very poor. He said there was no need to worry because there is a safety net for those people. PHEW! Thank goodness for that Mitt! See in his eyes what we really have to worry about is the very rich because they are earning all that money every day…without a net!

His latest and perhaps most funny gaffe was when commenting at a President debate on Oct. 16, 2012 where he said “”I went to a number of women’s groups and said ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.” I’m pretty sure he actually meant “I went to a number of organisations that support women and asked them to send me their best and finest and I got so many names because women are FABULOUS! But Binders full of women? Really Mitt?

This left me wondering what other groups he could approach and what he would receive back.

Perhaps a trolley cart full of disabled people or a rigid folder of men or maybe we could even get a storage organiser of children? I think all Mitt really needs is a label maker….or maybe some duct tape

Meanwhile I’m off the save the planet……..BinderWoman to the rescue!!!!!!

The Judgement of Solomon

Oct4

Some of you may not be aware of the biblical story of King Solomon and how he dealt with a child custody issue.

The Judgement Of Solomon

The story is about two young women who lived in the same house and who both had an infant son. One of the women claimed that the other, after accidentally smothering her own son while sleeping, had exchanged the two children to make it appear that the living child was hers. The other woman denied this and so both women claimed to be the mother of the living son and said that the dead boy belonged to the other.

After some deliberation, King Solomon called for a sword to be brought before him. He declared that there is only one fair solution: the live son must be split in two, each woman receiving half of the child. The liar, in her bitter jealousy, exclaimed, “It shall be neither mine nor yours—divide it!” However, Upon hearing this terrible verdict, the boy’s true mother cried out, “Please, My Lord, give her the live child—do not kill him!” Solomon instantly gave the live baby to the real mother, realising that the true mother’s instincts were to protect her child, while the liar revealed that she did not truly love the child.

In Australia we have heard a lot recently of four young girls who were brought to Australia by their mother from Italy in 2010. The mother and father were going through a rather acrimonious divorce and in an Italian Family Law Court they were awarded joint custody of the four girls.

The mother had permission to bring the girls to Australia for a one month vacation to see the maternal relatives. That was the last time the father saw his children until 2012 when the mother petitioned the Family Law Court in Australia to allow her girls to stay in Australia. The case has dragged on for several months and ended today with horrendous scenes of four beautiful girls being dragged kicking and screaming and begging to stay while their mother wailed and cried and climbed onto the bonnets of Australian Federal Police vehicles to try and stop their deportation back to Italy.

There are several issues these events raise. It should be remembered it was the mother who kidnapped the children from Italy (all the girls were born there but hold dual citizenship) and joint custody had been awarded. It was the maternal great grandmother who hid the girls until the Family Court ordered her to produce them…It was the mother who contacted the Press to tell the girls story and how they wanted to stay here. It was the mother who rather than booking her own ticket back to Italy decided that pulling the AFP off her traumatised girls would be a better solution.

One the other side of this debate we have a father who has always maintained all he wanted was his girls to be returned to Florence where they can again share joint custody. He has offered the mother eight thousand dollars to return to Italy with her girls. He has maintained that, should the mother return to Italy, he will not press any charges against her.

So, who’s right in this matter? Like any mother, this mother fought like a lioness to keep her girls. But what about the rights of the father? Would we feel different about this situation if say a father had taken the girls back to Lebanon or Iraq?

One thing to me is very clear…there are only losers in this battle and today it was those four beautiful girls.

Ever Been Bitten By A Vampire?

Sep29

Vampires are ready to drain you

Ok, perhaps there is no such thing as vampires no matter how much you wish Edward from Twilight or Eric from True Blood were real but there is a vampire you may know quite well that is draining you every day of your emotions and your energy….That person is the emotional vampire.

Emotional vampires NEED you, they are experts at making you feel guilty if you aren’t there for them. Their life is one big drama which can only be fixed by you. You constantly hear of their daily battles with life, love, work, family etc. It’s a never-ending list. Often the worse thing about an emotional vampire is you may be related to them…whether it be a parent or a sibling or sometimes even a child. They exhaust you!

Some are referred to as drama queens….they will call you at all hours of the night telling you how unhappy they are (and you were just in SUCH a good mood before they called) You find yourself sighing when you look at the calling number and realise it’s them…again. You are tempted to not answer…but then you don’t want to hear ”I tried to call you 20 times earlier…where were you?”

Emotional vampires relish in the victim role. Everything is about them and along with that so is control. The emotional vampire loves to control the conversation, situation and worst of all YOU! They often start sentences with “You know what you should do?” and then proceed to tell you for the next 2 hours in 75 different ways exactly what you should do!

Lastly, the emotional vampire seeks to divide and conquer…they are often threatened by others in your life. They know how to sow the seeds of doubt into your head about your own relationships and friendships. Often they will be passive aggressive in their comments saying things like “Your friend Jane seems very nice….it’s a shame no man seems interested in her….though she seems to have a lot of female friends…she’s not a lesbian is she?” Now obviously Jane is your friend and you know she’s not a lesbian but you find yourself watching her interactions with other woman and that hug you always used to give her doesn’t happen as much anymore.

So how do you rid yourself of an emotional vampire…..sometimes it’s not easy, often they suffer from low self-esteem and are easily hurt and once hurt have a tendency to lash out….probably at you! The thing you need to remember is that this person is toxic and poisons every other relationship you may have.

First…determine how important that person is in your life…if it is possible to end this relationship – remove them off from your life…..yes, it’s a hard thing to do but for the sake of your own physical and mental health you need to do it and the sooner the better. If you can’t completely remove them from your life try to limit your interactions with them as much as possible. Do not encourage them.

If they offer you advice tell them “Thanks for the advice but I really need to make this decision on my own” Be Firm and very clear about your limits and boundaries. If they are constantly telling you their problems, tell them you are genuinely sorry for their situation but hearing about it over and over again is exhausting to listen to and that they need to make their own decisions on what actions to take.

Lastly, try to surround yourself with positive, upbeat people. That way you won’t be the one who constantly feels like it’s your job to be the “fun maker”. Trying to be upbeat and positive ALL the time can be damn tiring so let others lead the way sometimes.

Eric from True Blood…probably NOT an emotional vampire but placed here for your viewing enjoyment

For Whom The Post Trolls

Sep10

Once again the great troll debate airs it’s ugly head as an NRL footballer who recently lost his mother was sent derogatory comments about her. This follows quickly behind the recent troll war which left celebrity Charlotte Dawson in hospital and cries from many quarters for “accountability” for the actions many faceless people take when they subject not only celebrities and sporting people but the average Joe to harassment and abuse.

The Troll Mentality

Firstly, let’s dissect exactly what a troll is……a troll is a person who either doesn’t like something you say, doesn’t like your achievements or simply wants to get noticed so says something totally stupid to get a reaction….generally they will have a faceless account on either twitter or facebook and use that account to post hurtful and hateful messages to people for no apparent reason other than “because they can” Other titles include keyboard warriors, faceless people, gutless wonders.

So how do you STOP trolls? Here’s a few tips which will help.

1. Do not feed the trolls…..the purpose of a troll is to get attention and illicit a response…when you don’t give one they stop…(yes it’s that simple)

2. Report and block the troll….don’t argue with them…don’t tell them…I’m going to block you! Just do it. Announcing you are going to do it only infuriates the troll more.

3. If you are on twitter and one of your followers leaps to your defense send them a DM telling them “I’ve got this” having multiple people arguing only creates a mob mentality.

4. Step away from the computer…have a nice cup of tea and watch a bit of telly. It’s amazing how quickly things cool down when you aren’t there to keep them going.

Another thing people do with trolls is they name and shame….for example retweeting the comment for all their followers to see (eg.Charlotte Dawson) in the hope it will shame the person into shutting up….this rarely works as it’s a bit like poking a beehive and hoping the bees will stay inside and just let the honey pour out. Plus it’s exactly the reaction the troll wants.

Charlotte for instance, went from being told to go hang herself to having photos of pills, dismembered bodies and nooses sent to her…all because she went on TV and exposed the trolls. This went on for over 48 hours and it was RELENTLESS . The more TV appearances she made the more trolls who came out to play. It was a lose-lose situation.

So what accountability is there….are there are “real” laws to protect us from text on a computer screen? When nameless people attack us by insulting our mother or our children or our lifestyle does that warrant legal action? In my opinion No. See, I believe as adults we have the choice of how we deal with trolls. The bottom line is don’t feed them. Don’t give them the oxygen they need to fuel the flames.

Consider the alternative….where someone else decides what is acceptable for you to say and see and type and read. Where is the line in the sand drawn? Who decides what’s acceptable and what’s not. I’m thinking death threats would be a good line to draw. But then again I’m thick skinned

When I started using the internet we didn’t even have web browsers….we used something called Fido Net and it was more message board based, the arguments back then were called flame wars…because people fanned the flames by giving their two cents worth. I learnt long ago to not fan the flames.

Final piece of advise

Let the Blames Begin!

Aug13

And The Loser Is….

Phew! That’s it then….the cauldron is out….the flags folded and packed away until Rio and thousands of athletes, officials and supporters make their way back home… but for Australian athletes their homecoming may not be as wonderful as their expectations were before they got on the plane.

You see some of them had the hide to “Only manage to get a Silver Medal” and some didn’t even do that! They only got a bronze! and others well others got nothing at all! How dare they dash our hopes and dreams like that! But really who’s hopes and dreams were the ones dashed?

James Magnussen arrived it London as the heir apparent to the “Thorpedo” legacy. In fact we even called him “The Missile” just because that’s as close to Thorpedo as we could get….but he “only managed to get Silver”….albeit by 0.01 of a second or about the thickness of a butterfly wing but it was still second dammit! It appears our “Missile” was (according to our media) about as successful as North Korea when they tried to launch a similar device.

Then of course there was the Hockey, the Diving, the Cycling and BMX (is that really an Olympic sport!?) again close but no golden banana.

It was left to “lesser” none glamour sports to make us feel good about ourselves….Sailing answered the call and brought home 3 Gold medals…Sally Pearson and Anna Meares did not suffer death by Tall Poppy Syndrome and despite the pressure scored Gold in their specific fields of expertise and our Canoe Sprint team sprinted as required for yet another Gold medal giving us a total of 7 gold medals…but we only managed 16 Silver and 12 Bronze.

Forget that Jared Tallent walked 50kms achieving a personal best or that little Brittany Broben at the age of 16 managed to pull out all stops and put several more seasoned competitors into lower positions. Let’s not mention that Stephen Solomon qualified in the Men’s 400m final and was the first Australian man to do so in 27 years I mean he came dead last in the final but as he said “Someone has to come last and today was my turn”

I mean we are still in the top 10 of sporting nations in the World. We even managed to beat Kazakhstan and New Zealand to name a few. Jamaica may have Usain Bolt but we got more medals so there!

So John Coates of the Australian Olympic Committee has blamed the presidents and chief executives our sporting bodies….and in an Olivertwistic fashion screams “Please Sir I want some more!”…money that is.

Someone else blamed the Government…though I don’t get that one as I have yet to see any of our Ministers win a Gold Medal at any Olympic event. One of the athlete’s even blamed Twitter because it kept them up half the night (presumably by the sound of tweeting)

So, I ask you this….why do we NEED to lay “blame” why can’t we say well we didn’t do as good as we did in Sydney but we kicked arse compared to Montreal….that’s if you are medal and statistically focused. Alternatively, you may want to look at as another Olympics finished and all our athletes did the best they could do on the day……after all…I haven’t met an athelete yet who aims to do their worse….unless of course you are in the Chinese Badminton team!…..but that’s another story

The End Of Summer

May18

This morning I awoke to the sad news that Donna Summer had passed away. In a weird way this lady and her music is interwoven into so many stages of my life.

Donna Summer

I remember when we were in the disco in the 80”s if you heard “Last Dance” come on you knew you had to get up for one last dance as the DJ always played that song at the end of the night.

“She works Hard For The Money” was the song in your head when you got up at 6am to catch the 7am bus to work. ”Love to Love You Baby” had sounds in it that you had never heard before in your life but gave you an inkling of what good sex sounded like….even it if was with yourself!

Then there was the classic “MacArthur Park” Richard Harris originally sang it but Donna knocked it out of the park literally with her own rendition.

“Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls” taught us how to strut our stuff and give attitude and of course when in love you could play “I Love You” at full volume whilst scribbling down Mrs. <Insert lastname of boy you are hopelessly in love with here> on the inside cover of a school book. Of course, when the eventual break up happened you could sit with a box of tissues listening to “Can’t We Just Sit Down (and talk it over) or if you were angry you could listen to “No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” and listen to Barbra and Donna tell you that breaking up was the for the best.

It was a much more innocent time back then. I was so much younger and wide eyed and a lot less cynical than I am now. My first true love and I danced cross the room while the glitterball span over our heads and we enjoyed young love and just the fun of being together.

So, thank you Donna Summer for being such a memory in my life and whenever I hear your music it will still transport me back to an era where cork platform shoes ruled and satin pants with huge flares were stylish and having a bad perm was actually cool. I will never forget you.

Below is my favourite song mainly because of the words. Sorry about the quality but it’s the only one I could find

Rambling Love

Be Sure To Wear A Flower In Your Hair

Archives