IN TENTS THAWTS

The Lawn Bowls season has just opened. If you have never tried the game get down to your local club and ask for a go on the greens. Or wander in to one of the many innercity clubs that rent bowls to the public.

Did any of you see the vision of the Danish pylon jetties, just like ours, with the wind power generating fans attached to the sides of the jetties. Looked pretty cool to me and with a coastline like ours I wonder why not?

The ancient Mesopotamian (read Iraq) Code of Hammurabi is still the foundation of Western law. Our numbers are known as Arabic numerals, as it was the Arabs who invented our numeric system. I wonder if this information is still taught in schools. It certainly indicates we owe a lot to those whom we would vilify.

I think most out there in the big wide world recognise our wide, brown land as a last bastion of freedom. We Australians know we are tough, and in past world conflicts when Australians have been held to task we are rarely defeated. If beaten fairly we acknowledge that also. The whole idea of conflict has changed though, and some type of Orwellian swamp has developed. Even our worst conflicts and losses pale into insignificance at the scale and type of brutality in most of the third world. We are accepting refugees, as always, from areas of severe conflict. These people have seen and had horrors perpetrated on them of a type and scale that I don’t think Australians generally can get their heads around. We would be very unwise to be anything but welcoming, while trying to understand the points of view of these people. People come here to escape horror and to have a chance of bringing their children up in peace. Any paranoia on our part could only reflect the same back to us about our int

This whole scarf fiasco cracks me up. Those of us that grew up in Australia during the sixties and before would remember the swathes of scarves and mantillas that adorned the head of every God fearing Catholic woman on Sunday mornings. It was a simple dogmatic way of honouring one’s God. None would walk on hallowed ground without at least a hanky covering one’s scone! The more secular our society has become, the less value has been put on these outward showings of faith. In our free society though no one should have to suffer indignity for following his or her faith in this manner. An interview of a young Muslim man on Today/Tonight showed him explaining that Muslims would never assimilate properly into Australian society. The Jews have operated the same way. Religious Jews keep socially to themselves and have not assimilated, but that does not mean that they don’t contribute to our society in many wonderful ways. The Hijab reminds me of a Catholic nun’s habit, attire designed to provi

There are very few crimes against society that can’t have, after time, redress. Pedophilia is not one of these. Allowing the Mr. Baldys of this world to re enter open society at such great expense only lifts the paranoia levels of the community as a whole, and also creates an element of vigilante revenge. It appears that the Victorian Government though is quite happy to accept these scum in numbers. As a parent of three children under the age of twelve my skin crawls just thinking that any of these recently released scumbags could be placed secretly in their community. I don’t think the electronic surveillance is good enough either, just the knowledge of the presence of these creatures being allowed to live relatively freely is too much for victims and their families. We need an off shore facility to permanently accommodate this type of offender. A cross between Lost, Big Brother and 19th Century House reality TV shows. Make it as hard and uncomfortable life as possible with no communi

It is heartening to hear the Muslim leaders in Australia calling for calm amongst their people. It must be terribly frightening to have to wander around a society that has taken to carefully checking out your every move, even though your only association to the terror being perpetrated overseas is via a religion and a mode of attire.

Listening to the radio the other day, a question was put: Where has common courtesy vapourised to in Australia? It is patently clear to me that women have broken a vital contract of civilisation as we knew it. Although sages like Virginia Hausegger, and a bunch of grumpy old women implore that females can’t have it all, it is the bottom end, baby booming, bra burning, free love muthas of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s that have established a feminist power plurality. I know them. They reckon they want half, PLUS 20% for positive discrimination. Growing up in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, pre the Vietnam War, Australia was still a hokey outpost of the British Commonwealth. Men’s and women’s roles were pretty well laid out in concrete. What changed all this? The timely convergence of The Pill and Germaine Greer in the auspice of time put paid to the historical roles that men and especially women played in our society. One of the mores of society drummed into me as a boy was that I should respect and care fo