You Can’t Call That Sport
If you are a sport, you will get government funding to keep your sport on the track to future greatness. This is the reason why we have a list of 'sports' that should be re-branded as hobbies or activities and no more. My first stab is at chess, a 'sport' played on your rear end at a table, on a playing surface no bigger than your average bedside table. There is a bunch of pieces and there isn't even noise, just a lot of clock slapping and the occasional 'check mate', which in chess could be code for 'let's meet in the locker room afterwards to sort this out'. There is a title that all chess players strive for and it's name is just as pathetic as calling this activity a sport, 'Chess Grandmaster'. I'm sorry, were you looking for a title that would make you sound like a Merlin the Magician fan club?
My second gripe is at Dance sport, which is so scared of being called something other than a sport, it decided it would be best to put the word in its name. Which means if you dance normally at a party, that's not a sport, it's only a sport when you call it Dance sport. It's where all the over dressed straight faced pansies come together to dance on a parquet floor with giant numbers on their backs (to better resemble an actual sport). There is lots of rivalry and sweat, but it is dancing, we can't get over that can we?
Anything involving an animal with or without a human is not a sport. Yet there are plenty that are considered sports by whoever makes that decision. Equestrian for example, you ride a horse and get it to jump over fences and into water and around in circles and against the clock, but it involves an animal, that's not a human sport. You are taking out the human impact and there is too much emphasis on the breed of the horse and it's training regime. To make matters worse, you can pretty the horse up with strange looking braids and a dorky looking rider and trot around a yard. How is that a sport may I ask?
Orienteering, don't get me started on this one. You get a bunch of directions or clues and you must use a compass and walk around to find some markers in the bush. That sounds like an activity if you could even call it that. But calling that a sport is a disgrace to the real sports.
Which brings me to my next point, maybe we should use a new set of parameters to discuss which is a sport and which is not. One rule should be if you can have a crowd watching in the stands, complete with music and cheerleaders, that could allow it to be a spectator sport. If it makes high rating television including the increase of alcohol sales on the big days, that's a sport.
Sport is about blood, sweat and tears, it's about pushing yourself or your team to the brink of collapse for the overwhelming feeling of victory. Does that sound like chess, or do you think I could use that description when I talk about orienteering?
Give me my sport, on a TV, with beer and national telecasting or leave it in the hobbies box.
Footnote: When I used the standard spell checker on this document, it flagged the word Dancesport when the words are put together, so I acknowledged that by allowing it to separate them. So even spell checkers don't think it's a sport.
Roadside Workers – Couldn’t do less if they tried
They're everywhere you drive, it seems as though when your in a rush, they'll be there to hold you up. Whether it's paving a new road, or adding some decorative gardens to the roadside. You will encounter a gang of roadside workers causing traffic jams by claiming a spare lane for the benefit of space. They also generally have a few guys standing around drinking coffee and having a smoke, and why? Well why not. They are on the clock with government money and they will take it in turns being the bludger of the hour.
Then there is the Stop/Slow sign person, which quite often these days is filled by a woman, who with pretty hair and make up will enjoy the day getting $30 an hour standing there alerting drivers to slow down. I'm not sure who made the decision to employ a dedicated Stop/Slow sign holder, but I'd like to ask them why? Is it just an excuse to hire someone and lower the un-employed percentage? What's wrong with those electronic signs telling us of the road works?
I don't think I could do that job everyday, but maybe a few shifts a week to give me a few hundred would be nice. Do I need to lower my intelligence or work ethic to get the position?
Taking Out The Trash
Over 200 years ago Mother England was using our Great Southern land as a dumping site for its hardened and petty criminals. This was stopped and Australia was free to move forward as a growing nation. We didn't seem to mind having a few criminals left here, most cleaned up their act upon release and forged our future.
However these days things are different, England keep their criminals and we keep ours, except when they were born there. For a while now we have shipped the paedophiles, rapists and career criminals back to Her Majesty's land because we don't want them released here because we have enough of our own to worry about. Cash poor England is sick of dealing with these comebacks and are calling for Australia to keep them. In most developed countries, if a criminal wasn't born there and the crime was sufficient, then you send them back to the country they were born in. Why should we, as a tax payer, fund the relocation, reeducation and lifestyles of the morally corrupt?
It was deemed OK to pack boats with English criminals and send them here, but it's not ok for us to send them their people. If we were trying to send back Australian born rapists or paedophiles then I could understand their complaint, it's not their problem. However if you bred them and they commit a crime, then take them back and fix their ways (which understandably is never really a viable option).
UK child welfare campaigner Shy Keenan had this to say "It's just not fair, Australia," she said. "In law they do belong here, in essence they are British citizens, but whether they are morally or ethically British is another argument.
What she is trying to say is that Australia turned these British people into the rapists and paedophiles they are today. So therefore they are not the morally sound people who left England for Australia. Yet time and time again it is shown that so many of these tpyes of criminals have these morals embedded in them at the early stages of childhood, usually by being raped by their own family members.
The British MP's are crying out 'unfair' because their laws do not support the sending back of Australians in the same circumstance. Is that our problem? Should we only align our policies with those of the countries we deal with? Maybe we should not let women vote, because in other countries this is still the case, because it's unfair to those who cannot.
The British should change their laws and send them here if it really bothers them and continue to take back the rubbish they gave birth to in the first place.