APEC and crap reporting

According to the SMH today:

"A massive police presence contained the largely good-natured crowd that had included families and children."

Included families and children? What utter rot. I had a good look at the march and I spotted a handful of kids. I saw one young kid on the back of a bike (ie, aged about 4) and a couple of kids maybe around the 10 year old mark. That was it. There might have been one pram, but I could be mistaken. It's more likely there were zero prams.

In a crowd that was supposed to have reached 10,000, that is not a lot of families.

It's like saying "the Collingwood football club includes supporters who are human". Yes, there is the odd human in there, but not many. It's just not worth mentioning. It is a great way to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling about the march though. "Families" sounds so homely and peaceful. Goebbels would be proud. You can just imagine the flower be-decked children frolicking in the park and uttering foolish but beautiful, childish thoughts like "Is Gaia real?"

As for "families", can you call a married couple with no kids a family? Or does a family have to include children? Am I being a bit old fashioned here? Does it count if say a grandmother turns up with her daughter? Is that a family?

I live in an area that is undergoing a major baby boom, so I know what "families" look like. You can't navigate your way around our local supermarket at any time of the day or night without colliding with a pram, a youngster surfing on a shopping trolley or a mum carrying a baby in one of those wrap around shawl things.

"Families" means going to the park and seeing the grass covered in picnic rugs, and every picnic rug having one or more prams parked next to it.

"Families" means taking the little monkey up to the local park on a sunny morning and running into 6 or 7 mums who have also taken their little monsters out to work off some energy on the monkey bars. It means having to take your turn at the swings.

"Families" means walking down the street and noticing that every male over the age of 30, even if he has no kids in tow, has vomit/yoghurt/spilt milk/vegemite/peanut paste/chocolate/tomato sauce/baked beans/banana smeared over one or more items of clothing. Blobs of food or drink on the shoulder are a dead give away.

I didn't see anything like that in Hyde Park today.

Of course the definition of family has to be adjusted for the inner city, so the lesbian couple with the poodle have to count as one family. The trans gender sculptor with a goldfish has to qualify as another.

Who wants to take kids to something like this anyway? If they are two years old, all they want to do is run around and cause mischief. If they are older, they'll get all pouty and repeat endlessly "I'm bored. Can we go home and watch 'The Simpsons'?"

The best way to find kids is to look for people hunched over a mobile phone, manically playing a game of some sort, or texting their friends with "I'm bored stupid. Let's go hang out at the mall after this crap is over."

Anyone insane enough to take kids to an event where there is a threat of violence, and where they are going to be bored stupid by shrill, puffed-up windbags, deserves to receive a knock on the door from DOCS and the removal of their offspring due to child abuse.