A dream come true

If you have seen as much of this as I have over the last few years, you'd understand.....

SMH trolls new lows in stupidity

I am somewhat amazed at the ludicrous trash that the SMH will print from time to time. Take this letter from John Vigours, who clearly has a dislike of firearms:

The more guns there are, the more people will die The logic underpinning the Shooters Party appears to be that there are ''good'' shooters who are licensed and ''bad'' shooters who are not, with all weapons being neutral (Letters, September 8). From this we reach the inescapable conclusion that in the United States, where the gun lobby controls government policy, the average citizen is so violent that he is 25 times more likely to kill somebody with a gun than those of England and Wales, and 200 times more violent than those of Japan. Australia falls somewhere in between, with about 50 per cent more gun homicides than England. John Vigours Neutral Bay

I wonder if anyone at the SMH bothered to fact check these assertions before running this letter? I doubt it.

According to Wikipedia, which in the case of this article, gets its info from the FBI, the homicide rate in the US at present is about 5.5 per 100,000 people.

This quote is rather telling, but it is not often told:

It is quite common for crime in American cities to be highly concentrated in a few, often economically disadvantaged areas. For example, San Mateo County, California had a population of approximately 624,000 and 17 homicides in 2001. 6 of these 17 homicides took place in poor, largely African and Hispanic American East Palo Alto, which had a population of roughly 30,000. So, while East Palo Alto accounted for 4.8% of the population, about one-third of the homicides took place there.

I think it was Mark Steyn who pointed out that if you took out the black-on-black homicides from the statistics, white Americans are less homicidal than their neighbours in Canada!

Anyway, England has a homicide rate of 1.4 per 100,000, compared to 5.5 in the US. That means the US rate is 3.9 times higher - not 25 times higher, as asserted by John Vigours. He's only out by a factor of 963 - oops, I mean 6.4. I started to use the Vigours method of hyperbole there for a moment.

It is worth mentioning though that Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, had a homicide rate of 5.5 only a decade ago - the same as the US.

Ponder this as well:

But murder rates for both countries are now changing. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and by last year it was 3.5 times. With American rates described as "in startling free-fall" and British rates as of October 2002 the highest for 100 years the two are on a path to converge.

And:

In fact, the most common weapon used in a violent crime in England and Wales is not a gun - but a knife. There are four times more knife-related killings as firearms-related killings.

Also worthy of mention is that the New England region of the US has the lowest crime rate in the country. New England states, like New Hampshire, have "open carry" laws, allowing citizens to openly carry weapons in public.

Baltimore has a shocking crime rate - the homicide rate there is 43.5 per 100,000, compared to the nationwide average of 5.5. Maybe Mr Vigours got his factor of 25 by cherry-picking a number like that. What Mr Vigours missed is that Baltimore is also 64.8% black. If Mr Vigours was being honest, his headline would read, "The more blacks there are, the more people will die".

Yes, that's a shockingly non-PC thing to write, but look at the numbers and tell me that I am wrong. 52.1% of those committing homicide between 1974 and 2004 were black. I guess most of those were gang-bangers shooting other gang-bangers over drugs, women, petty disputes in nightclub queues and so on; not middle class black accountants shooting other middle class black businessmen for instance. The usual feral mix of gangs, drugs, piss poor education, ghettos and the "respect" mentality may be to blame.

Speaking of guns, the SMH reported back in 2006 that the guns buyback had no impact on the murder rate. Here is our murder rate over time by the way (damn, forgot to save the link).


And who can forget the old precaution about lies, lies and statistics:

The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also affected by differences in the way each counts homicides. The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn't subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making the English numbers as low as possible.

As to Mr Vigours assertion about Japan, the homicide rate there is 1.1 per 100,000. Hmm, so the yanks are only 5 times more violent than the Japs, not 200 times as Mr Vigours states. Japans low crime rate is often described as a result of the society being very homogeneous - ie, they don't have all those pesky minorities that murder each other with such frequency in the US, and more often, in the UK.

And as usual, it is worth looking at where the worst rates of homicide are in Australia:

Paul Wilson (1982), for example, found that across seventeen Queensland Aboriginal settlements between late 1978 and mid–1981, the homicide rate was 39.6 per 100,000—more than twelve times the Queensland average. The author’s own figures for one remote settlement indicated a rate at one stage of over 400 per 100,000 (Martin 1988).

In many cases, this is a result of drunken Aboriginal males killing their female partner.

That puts our worst settlements on par with the most violent cities in the US. Funnily enough, I doubt many of those Aboriginal women are shot - I bet most are stabbed, strangled or beaten to death. So Mr Vigours assertion that "The more guns there are, the more people will die" is just so plain wrong. If anything, arming Aboriginal women with handguns may do more to reduce the homicide rate than any other measure. Sure, they might have to shoot quite a few drunken males, but after a while, the lesson might sink in.

Wednesday weapons grade cock end

I came within a squirrel's scrotum hair of finishing my trip in an ambulance this morning. I was toodling down Barnstaple Rd, which has a marked bike lane down both sides from end to end, when I spied a car on my right - and I mean on my right. We were approaching a side street, and the weapons grade cock end behind the driving wheel decided to turn left - right into me. I managed to brake and turn inside her and made it into the side street without metal meeting flesh, but it was a bloody close run thing.


Here she is, the stupid barmy cow. Rego BIP 36K. It's not like she zoomed in front of me and then turned in, causing me to crash into her fat rear end. No, she decided to turn whilst I was alongside her - she half overtook me, so that her front wheel was about aligned with my leg, and then turned. What a completely dozey fuckstick. I don't know if she was talking on her phone, or off with the moonbeams or what, but she clearly had no fucking clue.


I stopped in front of her and gave her about 15 seconds of commentary on her heritage, driving performance and mental processing power, all in slightly salty language, and all she could do was shrug in a "It's not my fault" kind of way. I yelled at her something like, "You almost fucking killed me, and all you can do is shrug?", at which she shrugged again. When I pulled the camera out to take a photo, she clearly started getting agitated as I was holding her up. I think her problem was that she was in a screaming hurry. I must get some pliers - next time something like this happens, I can simply cut the tops off two tyre valves and let them ponder the error of their speeding ways.

It's not like I am invisible - I was wearing a hi-viz shirt like this bloke, and it was after 8am, so the sun was well and truly up and not shining in our eyes. She really had no excuses at all for what she did, apart from being a brainless, fat-headed moron without a clue. Funnily enough, the manufacturer of these shirts describes this colour as "yellow".


As an aside, I overtook this bloke, then took the long way, and then bumped into him again on the outskirts of town - and I was taking it slow because I am still gummed up with snot, and the stress of the near miss made me want to vomit.


Back on the bright side of things, here is a bloke I spotted a bit later. Again, I was taking it easy - my speed was down about 20% because I was rotten enough to spend all Monday in bed, and I didn't want to overdo things. This guy represents all that is wrong with fat tyres on road going bikes. There I was, shaking a bit with shock, coughing my lungs out, yet I still went past him like I was 19 years old.


I finally managed to snap a dopey pedestrian. This one was reading a book as she crossed the Pyrmont Bridge. The arrogance of this sort of thing always annoys me, as these people never look where they are going, and they expect others to get out of their way. Fuckers.


Then I made it into town, and sedately motored up behind this bloke, who I will call Captain Speedypants. From behind, he certainly looks dashing. I had the feeling that he would take off like a rocket, and I thought "Screw this taking it easy", so when the lights went green, I went with him. Or more accurately, I went behind him, because once he got going, I could not catch him. We zipped down Hickson Rd at a bit over 40km/h, and he hardly flagged at all. By the time we got to my turn off, he was still going strong, and I was stuffed. I didn't even get close enough to draught off him - I had to make my own way in the world as I whipped along in his wake.


And then we finish with Mr Cool on the way home. Just before I got this shot, he was riding up the street doing a wheelie. How I'd like to be able to do that again - haven't done that since I had a 3 speed chopper as a kid with a big sissy bar on the back. Note that his back wheel has lifted off the ground - he's dropped the front wheel on the ground and braked, and his back wheel has taken off.

Mucous Monday

Mucous. What a great way to start the week. I was feeling a bit flat over the weekend, then failed to wake up at my usual time on Monday. I have a very accurate alarm clock in my brain - if I tell it to wake me at 0615, I will wake +/- 2 minutes at most. The only reason to have a clock by my bed is to double check that I have not been woken by one of the kids at 0500, thus preventing me from climbing out of bed at an inappropriate time.

I can tell the internal alarm clock to wake me at 0630 one day, 0500 the next and 0615 the day after, and it will be almost bang on the money each time. It's usually a bit early - if I set the physical alarm clock just to be sure, I usually find I wake up 1-2 minutes before it goes off, giving me time to cancel it before waking up the household.

The clock failed on Monday. It usually only does that when I am sick and stuffed - and that was the case. I crawled out of bed, had the morning coffee, and then decided that the day was a write off. I went back to bed for the rest of the day, feeling like lukewarm crap. I slept pretty solidly until about 1600 - whatever ailed me, it laid me out nicely. I was coughing up stuff that looked like thick pea soup, and each cough produced enough goo to almost fill a squash ball.

Proving it was not just a case of Man Flu or Mondayitis, I felt like crap again today, and took the motorised option into work.

That said, it seems to have passed just as quickly as it arrived.

The nice thing about the internal alarm clock is that it usually synchronises my body or sleep rhythms with the time that I want to get up. Instead of waking at a time when the brain or body is at its lowest ebb, I usually wake up feeling pretty fresh - as fresh as you can feel when the knees are wearing out and the lungs and legs are pounded and abused terribly on a daily basis. The body might feel worn out and ragged, and sometimes the eyes are full of puss and grit from a windy day on the road, but the brain is always sharp at wake up time. I don't stagger around the house bumping into furniture and forgetting what day it is.

In short, I'm about as awake as can be expected after a twice daily thrashing of the body and six hours of sleep that will generally be interrupted 3-4 times by kids needing feeding, changing or settling down after a monster has emerged from the bedroom cupboard. That means I am buggered but functioning.

The nice thing at the other end of the night is that I almost never suffer from insomnia. I used to get it occasionally when I was growing up, but then I joined the Infantry. It's getting on 20 years since I last slept in a hootchie, but the trick of falling almost instantly asleep is something that has never left me. I have a short film clip that I replay in my head - the scene where the space shuttles take off in Armageddon is a favourite. By the time they are heading for orbit, I am asleep - which is about the same effect the movie had on me the first time I saw it.

The life of a footslogger is generally so physically and mentally exhausting that you fall asleep at every available opportunity after a while. You might be doing something and be told that you have a 15 minute rest. If you are good with the sleep trick, you might be able to cram 13 minutes of sleep into that short break. The ability to take short cat naps like that can be the difference between clear thinking and sanity; and mental breakdown and complete confusion. You adapt or collapse. Or you collapse and then adapt. I adapted, and it's something that has never left me.

It was a bugger of a way to learn a new skill though.

Some rather horrid stats

I don't know where to start with this. OK, let me start with a definition:

offences against the person Crimes that involve the use or threat of physical force against another person. The main offences against the person are *homicide, *infanticide, illegal *abortion, *causing death by dangerous driving, and *causing death by careless driving (fatal offences against the person); and *torture, *rape, *wounding, causing or inflicting *grievous bodily harm, *assault, aggravated assault, *battery, *kidnapping, and offences involving *indecency (nonfatal offences against the person). See also POISON.

Or you can take the Wikipedia version of this list of offences.

Take a good look at this list. Now, if someone committed one of these crimes and they are found guilty, should we lock them up or let them go?

Remember, these crimes include rape, murder, infanticide and battery. They involve one person violently beating another person, perhaps to death, or raping them.

Got that?

Now, we have a couple of groups that are aggrieved that so many Aboriginals are in prison - here we have Creative Spirits, and here we have ActNow. Both tell a good sob story in statistics about how nasty we are to lock up so many blackfellas.

Now consider this report from South Australia from a decade ago - it makes clear that 24.3% of cases studied where Aboriginals came before the courts were for offences against the person. That is rape, murder and assault. For non-Aboriginals, the rate was about half that. White people are much more likely in this country to get locked up for drug offences (yes, I know we always hear that in the US, lots of blacks are locked up for drug offences etc, but in this country, almost none are in prison due to drugs. Nearly 1/3 of charges against whites are for drugs, but only 3% for Aboriginals).

A further 28% of the cases were for offences against good order, which includes things like break and enter, steal etc etc. For whitey, the rate was 20%.

In most cases, both black and white, the most common sentence issued was a fine. Aboriginals are not locked up willy-nilly; most leave court with a fine imposed. To cap it off, a hell of a lot more have legal representation that white people. I think the figure was 89% vs 64%. Thank Legal Aid for that.

Aboriginals also got shorter sentences - 20 weeks, vs 25 weeks for white folk.

Of the 2,895 Aboriginal cases finalised in 1998, 86.9% involved defendants who had at least one prior conviction, while over half had 10 or more priors.

10! And people wonder why after a while, magistrates go, "Fuck it, we've tried fines, we've tried bonds, we've tried suspended sentences - I'm sick of this shit. You are going away. Kindly fuck off for 20 weeks".

Not that white crims are that much better - 70% of white crims had at least one prior conviction, and one quarter had 10 or more priors.

The report is full of graphs, but one glaring one that is missing, perhaps because it is so awful, is this one.

42% of Aboriginals fronting up in court have 10 or more convictions, compared to 25% of whitefellas. An astounding 17% have 50 or more convictions. 50! Fuck me with a nulla-nulla!

If I read the bleeding hearts correctly, we shouldn't be locking up all these blackfellas, because too many of them are in prison. But if 24% of them are inside for murder, rape and bashing their womenfolk senseless with rocks and bottles and frying pans, are the bleeding hearts saying that we should let this lot out? Let's not forget that 99% of those murdered, raped and bashed are Aboriginals, not whites. Are we going to be doing dysfunctional Aboriginal communities any favours by allowing hardened criminals - murderers and rapists and bullies - back onto their streets? Do you think Aboriginal children will be better for having paedophiles out of prison and living next door - or in their homes?

Another big chunk are in prison for breaking into houses and stealing things. Again, they are stealing from fellow Aboriginals. If you have a community where some are working and building up businesses and saving and buying nice things for their homes, and some little fucks come in and trash the place and steal anything not bolted down, how do you think the honest folk are going to feel if the little shits are back on the streets straight away?

I don't want to get into a debate as to why so many Aboriginal men are violent, nasty drunks. It's simply a fact that too many of them are, and they have to be dealt with as we find them. Locking them up is not a fun option, but if they're going to persist in getting pissed and braining their woman with a frying pan, or stabbing her in the face with a broken beer bottle, or holding her face in the fire, or chopping her up with an axe, or molesting the kids, then it's our duty to lock the fuckers up and throw away the key. And if they do it again, we lock them up again.

And if the stats look bad, well, I don't give a bugger. To me, it means some outback town is a little safer tonight because a good number of the lunatics are behind bars. If anything, the shocking conditions of some communities tells me that we aren't locking enough up. Maybe the women of those communities would have a hope in hell of salvaging what they have if they weren't getting their faces stitched up on pension night.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Aboriginals before the courts

I have just read a very interesting document that explains the Fernando Principles. These principles are applied in NSW when sentencing Aboriginals for serious crimes.

I've never seen these principles articulated before, and I found the document to be quite thoughtful. However, the bit that grabbed me was the appendix. Have a look through the 50 or 60 names listed and tell me whether this reads like a list of names that you might find in say the English courts in Essex. Apart from number two (Jabaltjari), this looks more like a list of white men being sentenced.

What do I conclude?

That 98% of these men are Aboriginal in the way that I am Welsh. I have been back to the valleys of Wales, and seen the places like Ffestiniog that we came from many years ago, but that doesn't mean that I have a clue how to pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngll.

APPENDIX I: SELECTED LIST OF CASES DEALING WITH THE SENTENCING OF ABORIGINAL OFFENDERS

E (A Child) (1995) 66 A Crim R 14.

Jabaltjari v Hammersley (1977) 15 ALR 94.

Logan v R [2003] NSWCCA 185.

Neal v R (1982) 149 CLR 305.

R v Abbott [2002] NSWCCA 389.

R v Ah See [1999] NSWCCA 175.

R v Bell [2003] NSWCCA 132.

R v Harold Brown [2000] NSWCCA 548.

R v Burke [2000] NSWSC 356.

R v Campbell [2000] NSWCCA 429.

R v Ceissman [2001] NSWCCA 73.

R v Christian [2002] NSWCCA 264.

R v Cohen [2002] NSWCCA 339.

R v David Cook [1999] NSWCCA 234.

R v Daniel [1998] 1 Qd R 499.

R v Dargin [2000] NSWSC 710.

R v Davidson [2003] NSWCCA 11.

R v Dennis [2003] NSWCCA 137.

R v Drew [2000] NSWCCA 384.

R v Elemes [2000] NSWCCA 235.

R v Stanley Edward Fernando (1992) 72 A Crim R 58.

R v Stanley John Fernando [2002] NSWCCA 28.

R v Gardener [2003] NSWCCA 2.

R v Garvey [2003] NSWCCA 226.

R v Gordon (1994) 71 A Crim R 459.

R v Grant [2001] NSWSC 552.

R v Hickey Unreported, Court of Criminal Appeal, 27 September 1994.

R v Thomas John Hickey; R v Joseph Martin Hickey [2003] NSWCCA 110.

R v Hunt [2003] NSWCCA 301.

R v Kelly [2000] NSWSC 701.

R v Kennedy [2000] NSWSC 109.

R v Kerr [2003] NSWCCA 234.

R v Kirkwood [2001] NSWCCA 184.

R v Lake [2003] NSWCCA 27.

R v Alan Leonard Unreported, Court of Criminal Appeal, 22 November 1996.

R v Cynthia Leonard Unreported, Court of Criminal Appeal, 22 April 1996.

R v Kenneth Leonard [2000] NSWCCA 318.

R v Locke [2000] NSWCCA 19.

R v MLW [2001] NSWCCA 133.

R v MacFarlane [2002] NSWCCA 250.

R v Martin [2002] NSWSC 577.

R v Melrose [2001] NSWSC 847.

R v Darren Morgan [2003] NSWCCA 230.

R v Leonard Morgan [2003] NSWCCA 284.

R v Murray [2003] NSWCCA 209.

R v Patten [2003] NSWCCA 33.

R v Peckham [2003] NSWCCA 293.

R v Petersen [2000] NSWCCA 47.

R v Pheeney Unreported, Court of Criminal Appeal, 3 April 1998.

R v Pitt [2001] NSWCCA 156.

R v Powell [2000] NSWCCA 108.

R v RLS [2000] NSWCCA 175.

R v Randall [2002] NSWCCA 239.

R v Raymond Reid [2001] NSWSC 1084.

R v Ridgeway Unreported, Court of Criminal Appeal, 16 July 1998.

R v Rogers and Murray (1989) 44 A Crim R 301.

R v Russell (1995) 85 A Crim R 386.

R v Keith Ryan [2000] NSWCCA 98.

R v Lana Ryan [2002] NSWCCA 171.

R v Timothy Smith [2000] NSWCCA 148.

R v Stanley [2003] NSWCCA 233.

R v Stone (1995) 84 A Crim R 218.

R v Strong [2003] NSWCCA 123.

R v Thomas [2003] NSWCCA 165.

R v Timbery Unreported, Court of Criminal Appeal, 1 April 1996.

R v Toomey Unreported, Court of Criminal Appeal, 22 July 1998.

R v Walford [2001] NSWCCA 200.

R v Walker Unreported, Court of Criminal Appeal, 20 November 1995.

R v Walkington [2003] NSWSC 517.

R v Webb [2002] NSWSC 618.

R v Weldon [2002] NSWCCA 308.

R v Whitfield [2002] NSWCCA 501.

People to feel sorry for

This week, I really felt sorry for John Della-Bosca. The guy has a prick of a job (sorting out the disaster area that is NSW Health), his wife is a troll, the government is imploding and he has the luck to pull a bird half his age. He then spends six months rooting her in all sorts of places, including his office, and then once it's all over, she spills the beans on him.

My first reaction to this was BFD. Sure, I hate this state government with a passion, and I wish they'd spend their remaining days being dunked ball's first into boiling oil, but I never thought that a bit of rumpy-pumpy on the side was a reason for ditching pineapple face. For goodness sake - take one look at his pog of a wife and tell me the last time he got his end away at home. When he met his mistress, his balls must have been full enough to have been dragging on the carpet behind him.

So what if he skived off a bit of work? And fibbed to the odd security guard? Face it, if the security guards are parliament house can no longer trust our MPs, our civilisation is doomed. If an MP vouches for someone, that should be it, no questions asked. Zooming his root past security without any checks being done should be the perogative of our MPs. We trust the bastards with billions of dollars of our money - the least we can do is trust them not to bring a suicide bomber into the chamber.

All it shows is that he was unfit to be Premier. He didn't have the work ethic for it, and I'm sure he blabbed all sorts of political indiscretions to his bit of pussy. But he was the Minister for Health - who cares if he leaks the minutes of the budget committee for the sanitary disposal of surgical gloves when he's in the sack?

I'm not exactly calling for him to be put back in charge - personally, I'd rather see his head on a pike on display in Hyde Park. But if anyone is to blame, it's the shower of worthless crooks and shysters that he shares government with. Their collective failings have annoyed the public to the point where failure to tie one's shoelaces will soon be seen as a hanging offence for a minister.

Sunday sloth

Last week was a quiet week as far as mileage goes - just over 140km. I'd prefer to be sitting here telling you that I cracked the ton, but things like rain, work and a puncture deflated that ambition. Sadly, the only way I am going to deliver any more than the bare minimum is to get out the door earlier - and that means avoiding my usual half hour of reading blogs in the morning. I have this bad habit of sitting in this spot with a coffee and ploughing through more than I should. It's not like they won't be there when I get home! I simply have to make the mental adjustment to put off my blog gratification for 12 hours or so. If I leave earlier, I can take one of the longer routes into the office, and that will put a few more turns on the odometer.

Today was supposed to be bike cleaning day, but my parents came over for lunch, and two roast chickens and several bottles of wine later, I couldn't be bothered getting out the degreaser and the scrubbing brush. Being filthy for another week won't do it any harm. All I managed to do was fix the puncture in my spare tube, and even that was a dodgy job. I used the last of the glue in my puncture kit, and it was pretty dried out and scabby. I was so lazy, I didn't even get around to putting a bit more air in the tyres. That can wait until tomorrow. Two chickens and a bottle of bubble will do that to you.

The legs seem to have recovered nicely though. They were feeling horribly ropey and knackered by Friday night. This is my eternal problem - they feel great on Monday morning, so I flog it into work. By Thursday, they are shot. If I had an ounce of sense and a gram of moderation, I'd take it easy for a few days, then blast up and down the bike paths at the end of the week.

One last thing - I have noticed that I rarely feel pain any more. One thing about cycling is that if you are doing it hard, it hurts. It really, really hurts. To be good at it, you need to be able to handle nasty amounts of it. I've always wondered how the great champions put up with it, and then this week, I discovered that I can do a tough ride and hardly even feel it. That's not to say there is no pain - the lungs will be getting ready to implode and the legs will be awash with molten lead, but the brain simply disregards most of it. By the time I get home, all memory of the pain has disappeared. It's like I have worked out a way to shut a great deal of it off.

It only works when I'm on the bike though. I trod on a sliver of glass this morning, and J had to dig it out with a needle. The odd tiny prick in the thick and deadened skin of my foot hurt more than all the riding I did last week. The brain works in very odd ways.

Leadville - looks like a good movie

I am not a big fan of mountain biking, but thanks to Frank Chalk, I got to watch this trailer for the Leadville 100.

Looks great. Inspiring too.

Then and now

From a good interview with Nick Cave in The Times:

It marked the end of what had been a happy, if rebellious, Australian childhood. Growing up in rural Victoria, with his teacher father, librarian mother and three siblings, there was “enormous freedom that you can’t even imagine now ... When I was about 12 my friend Eddie’s father used to drive us out into the bush, where we were given a shotgun each and a six-pack of beer. ‘F*** off and enjoy yourselves’. We shot bunnies — blind ones, unfortunately, because myxomatosis was rampant. I’m not sure that it’s the greatest piece of parenting ever, but I did have a really good time.”

It's amazing how the current generation have morphed into Safety Nazis when it comes to dealing with their kids. Junior built himself a ging recently using one of my stuffed inner tubes. He's hopelessly inaccurate with it - I was hoping our local pigeon population would be on some WWF endagered species list by now, but he's not even capable of blasting holes in the back fence with an old bolt or 1/4" ball bearings.

Initially, I was appalled, and hid the thing away. But later I thought, "You idiot. At a year younger than him, you had access to two shotguns and three rifles, and used them regularly to ventilate rabbits".

My ammunition consumption when I was 12 or 13 was fairly prodigious. We had a Ruger 10/22, and if I had the money, I would have upgraded it from a 10 shot magazine to a 50 shot mag. Ten rounds in a mag were never enough for me. I'm sure the fence posts around my Uncle's old farm are all falling down now due to the number of holes and weight of lead in them.

(Dear Grud, the stuff you find of Youtube. Junior is watching Teletubbies on the computer next to me, and a 12 second clip just played of a Teletubbie dancing, followed by a young girl machine gunning the Teletubbie and yelling "Shut the fuck up".)

My Uncle's idea of a hunting trip was to grab one of his drinking mates, load a carton of beer in the ute, and for us to drive out to a nearby property. I'd have 3 or 4 cans, and they'd drink the rest. They'd throw the empties here and there (such as into dams) and I'd shoot them.

Looking back, I guess they were less than ideal role models. At the end of most of these trips, both of them would be too drunk to drive, so I'd drive home. Or I'd drive them to the pub, then drive home, then pick them up later when the pub threw them out.

Fascinating to remember that Druncle's great uncle was a state premier, one of the fathers of Federation, a Lord, Treasurer of Australia and acting Prime Minister at one point.

I guess it just goes to show that regardless of the sort of environment that you are exposed to as a youth, where you end up is a matter of your own decisions and actions.

Politician gets inducted into gang

The local media is such a treat. The name for the story that goes with this photo is "Youth on right track", and it shows a clueless, window licking Labor MP (Viriginia Judge) surrounded by kids who are clearly members of a local gang.

I have difficulty reconciling this idea of kids being in a gang whilst simultaneously being "on the right track". Unless being in a gang around these parts is being on the right track.

My only explanation for this is that Judge is a Real Blonde, and thus utterly clueless.

I love the language used in these articles.

"The days of high school dropouts ending up in dead-end jobs still exists, so tailor-made services for young people are critical..."

Really? High school dropouts get jobs? I thought they just went on the dole and bludged in public housing. The seem to be no consequences to failing these days - the state will suckle you until you die if you can't be arsed being a useful and productive citizen.

"We've got a training centre here, so within our centre we're opening a space that's just for youth".

"Space". I love that. "Space for youth". Why youth need special "spaces" is something I have never figured out. It's all part of our modern pandering to the idea that youths are special and fragile and delicate and different and that they need special help etc etc.

What a load of crap. How are they going to grow up properly and learn to function as a mature adult if they are raised in separate, special enclaves that don't have an adult presence? A special "space for youth" to me means somewhere with minimal adult supervision and no role models. Recipe for disaster. Many of these kids are probably all fucked up because they come from single parent households - no dad around. What they actually need is proper male role models, not to be prevented from having any at all.

This program has a groovy name by the way - "Youth Linx", with an "x". I wonder how much of our tax money was spent on thinking that up?

"Young people leave school for many reasons, including problems with drugs and alcohol, dysfunction within the family, issues with the justice system and disability".

I love the way we chuck euphamisms around, because no one wants to face the ugly truth.

"Problems with drugs and alcohol". What does that mean exactly? What is a "problem with alcohol"? When I was a teenager, my biggest problem was getting enough of it, and then when I did get some of it, my next problem was holding it down. I did some horrible cheap red wine chunders in my teens, and suffered some incredibly brutal hangovers. Is that the sort of problem these kids are having?

For what is the problem with occasionally getting wasted on Saturday night? We did it as often as we could (which was never often enough), yet we turned out pretty normal. But then again, I'd spend Saturday morning playing sport, and Saturday afternoon studying, before getting loaded that night. When the hangover cleared on Sunday, I'd do some more sporty stuff and then start studying again. Getting drunk never interfered with my school work, and I finished very close to the top of the state in a few subjects.

No, their problem is not alcohol. Alcohol gets blamed for a lot of things, but I usually blame it for fuck all. Their problem is that they don't do any work when they are sober. I could have been drunk three nights a week - the thing is, I would have got my work done before I got drunk. These layabouts do nothing, then get drunk. Somehow, alcohol gets blamed, rather than their own personal failings. Hell, at Uni, I sometimes got drunk 7 nights a week. Early morning tutorials were a problem, butI still got the work done. I wouldn't say I got great marks, but somehow, I managed to get drunk a lot and still get a Uni degree in the days when one actually meant something. These clowns can't even manage to complete a watered down high school program. Phooey to alcohol being to blame.

Then we have "dysfunction within the family". Is that supposed to mean that Mum is trying to raise the kids after Dad shot through? Is Dad a wife beater, a life time dole bludger, or freshly out of prison for armed robbery? What exactly is dysfunction? We seem to have plenty of it around our place, but we generally put that down to teenage hormones. Plenty of war widows managed to bring up their kids without most of the problems that kids seem to suffer these days. Sure, not having Dad around is a problem, but it is not the end of the world. Teenagers are a handful, and they are a lot of work. "Dysfunction" is a word that shifts the blame away from useless, lazy, unemployed, drug-addled parents.

I prefer to use the word "selfish". Teenagers are monstrously selfish, because they have not matured into adults. Beating that selfishness out of them is a constant grind. It requires a lot of parental involvement. However, selfish parents can't be bothered doing that, because they are too wrapped up in their own lives to bring up their kids properly. This seems to be especially prevalent amongst barristers, who are completely full of their own self-importance, and tend to be utterly divorced from the workings of their own families.

"Issues with the justice system". Now WTF is that? What's wrong with saying that they've been to Children's Court 93 times for shop lifting, mugging old ladies, stealing cars, bashing kids, dealing drugs and break and enter? Saying "issues" is a great way of softening how bad it really is - a way of covering up their crimes and misdemeanours.

"Disability". The only disability I can see these kids having is that they are fat. They're all teenage porkers.

So, well done to Virginia Judge, for getting down with some thick, fat, useless, drunken underage crims. Yo, Homey!

Mullumbimby - the real tragedy is what they are wearing

It's sad that a kid died in a school punch up, but I just can't get over the photos that have been run in the media since it happened. This is not schooling as I remember it.

For starters, here is what the students are supposed to look like, according to the school web site.

Here is the reality. Note that the girl on the left has no shoes on - I spotted that when this photo ran in the paper. Where are the school uniforms, let alone the shoes? And how nice of the kids to spray a bit of crap on the school wall. Did any teachers think of intervening to stop that? You know what shits me about this?

Confected sorrow.

What I mean by that is there would only be a few kids at the school who would be genuinely feeling grief at the death of a close mate. For the rest, their displays of emotion are confected, part of a group-think that forces conformity in expressing sorrow that is neither real or heartfelt. Some will be play acting for the media, others will be using it as an excuse to wag school for a while ("I feel to sad to go today", and other assorted crap). Some have clearly used their pseudo-grief as an excuse to do a bit of spray painting, firm in the belief that no one would dare charge them in the aftermath of a "school ground tragedy". We're being played like fools. It's like the outpouring of grief over the death of Diana - what a crock of frogshit that was.

Then we have the fag man. Back in my day, smoking at school was a sure way to get expelled. That's the shoeless woman behind him. These kids are supposed to be 15 or so - below the age when you can legally buy fags and spray paint. Is smoking something that they allow in school now, or does he have special dispensation to smoke because he is so "stressed" by the death of Jai?

And then there is this wierdo, who appears in a couple of photos in the Byron News. What a window licker.

Two more chicks without shoes! I'm sure the school dress code would say something about footwear!

I'm sure there is lots more stuff like this out there - this is just what I noticed from flicking through the paper over breakfast this week.

I am sure I spotted Belinda Neal today

I was walking through town, returning to the office from a sweaty meeting in an under air-conditioned room, when I was certain I nearly bumped into Belinda Neal. Now it may be that her itinerary proves that she was elsewhere today, such as in Canberra, but if that is the case, then I ran into her dead ringer on the footpath.

I was so, so tempted to shout, "Do you know who I am?" just to test the waters.

I'm sure it must be her though. She was holding the body of a pigeon in one hand, and was chewing its freshly bitten-off head.

Scanning

Scanning. It's one of the things that keeps me alive and in one piece when on my bike. My eyes are constantly moving like the red dot on the first generation Cylons. Side to side, up and down and even the occasional check in the blind spot behind me to see if some speedy bastard is about to overtake.

It's an art, and one practiced by too few of those that step out their front door each morning for a spot of exercise. When riding on a bit of open road like the one below, I'm looking 50-100 metres ahead in order to get plenty of warning from oncoming problems. I'll also take the odd gander at the pedestrians off to the left - just in case they decide to cut across in front of me (amazing how many people change direction suddenly and step in front of large, fast moving cyclists).

Way too many pedestrians though are lucky to be this observant. Most seem to be closely examining a bit of concrete three feet in front of their toes. The ones I hate the most are those that have a baseball cap pulled down low, thus totally restricting their forward vision. No, actually the ones I hate the most are those that have the low slung baseball cap and then top that off with a hoodie that blocks peripheral vision as well. They might as well visit a race track and steal a set of blinkers from a horse.

I even look at the tree tops when I'm riding or walking - I blame my ancient infantry training for that. We were taught to look everywhere - from down at our feet for mines and booby traps up to snipers in the trees. The logical part of my brain knows that there are no snipers in the trees in Five Wog. If anyone is going to start climbing trees and shooting people from a distance, it's me, so there is definitely no risk of incoming from the upper branches. However, the rest of the brain simply over rides the logical part and forces the eyeballs to scan the upper regions of the trees every few seconds. I find it pretty easy to read people, and often seem to know what they are going to do before they do - as in sensing when they are going to stop or start or turn and walk in a different direction. The signals are all there - you just have to watch for them.

I am now also well acquainted with the walking texter. They are easy to spot from behind - they look like a thalidomide baby, in that their arms appear to end at their elbows. That's because both arms are bent upwards at the elbows as they peer at the screen of their phone. Their head will also be bent forward, resulting in them seeing next to nothing of the world in front of them. I am looking forward to the day when the Pyrmont Bridge swings open, and half a dozen text-dazed fools walk off the end of the bridge and into the cold, deep waters of the harbour. Maybe we can add a few sharks just before opening time, just to liven things up.

Anyway, the point about scanning is that you really miss it when it isn't working. I had a few mornings this week when the scanning engine was on the blink. I'd be zipping along, and then notice that I was failing to look up at the horizon for oncoming cars, dogs, buses, aliens and so on. I had to force myself to look around, which is an odd feeling. I have no idea what caused that, as the eyeballs reverted to their natural wandering state after a few days. It was quite bizarre whilst it lasted though. One reason could be that it was so cold, I had tears constantly running from both eyes. I arrived at work a few times with wet tear tracks down each cheek, which were offset by the sweat dripping off my forehead and nose. It's strange to be so hot, yet so cold at the same time.

Where does a 16 year old get a pistol from?

More on the clean up of a waste of space by the local police this week.

Sydney is not exactly awash with handguns, so one has to ask the question, where does a pair of teenage robbers obtain a pistol and rifle? I doubt they acquired them on the spur of the moment before robbing the pub in question - getting your mitts on a gatt requires a large amount of premeditation. And money - these things aren't cheap.

So where did the pistol come from, and the cash to pay for it?

How did they intend to get away? On pushbikes, or in a stolen car?

Once you start adding up all the bad, bad things that this duo had to do in order to get to the point where the police ventilated one of them, you really have to wonder how the mother of ex-desperado Number One could describe him as a "good boy". They must be handing out packets of delusion with the dole cheques.

Friday flat

I started the day with a bucketful of good intentions. I was out of bed much earlier than usual, and hit the road when the sky and water were the colour of lead. I was happily buzzing into work, thinking that I'd be there extra early, and I'd get through my stuff and leave equally early.

I was so early, there was hardly anyone on the road. I found this guy running along and pushing his bike - not sure what his malfunction was, but he stopped running and looked back just as I took the photo.

It was not long after that I had my own malfunction - a flat. I had all the right gear to fix it, except for a pair of rubber gloves. Changing a tube is a filthy business, and I usually carry a pair of disposable gloves to protect my precious cuticles and all that. I finished the job with grease and crap all over me up to the elbows. Not a single bike went past during that time - I was truly out and about before the fluffing of the sparrows.

A bloke with a dog walked past, and I found after that one of my tyre levers had gone walkabout. Apart from blindness, the only explanation is that the dog took it with him!

I stopped on the Pyrmont Bridge on the way in to buy a Legacy badge from some 3RAR blokes. The bloke I bought the badge from said thanks. I should have said thanks back - as in thanks for his service. Most of them looked like they had a serious collection of medals from serving here, there and everywhere.

On the way home, I spotted this bloke with a very cool set of white walled tyres. The raised structure on the left is the control booth for swinging the bridge. I've only ever seen the bridge open once in all the times I have crossed it.

Speed differentials

I was motoring along at a nice clip today when I caught up with this chap. Catching up with him was unlikely to ever present a problem - a heavy bike with fat tyres - most of these are easy meat for a racer. Although it is terminally embarassing when the odd one riden by a prodigiously fit bastard overtakes you like you are standing still.

This guy was moving at a good rate for one of these truck bikes - about 22km/h. I was slowing down to 32km/h when I caught him, and I decided to brake and tuck in behind him because it was not far to the office at that point, so overtaking would be silly, and I always feel safer riding in a small group - even a group of two. I'd had a bloke hanging on my tail for the last few kms, and he felt the same way as well. He braked and tucked in behind me.

A trio is even better. I guess there will come a day when we say to each other, "You grab his arms, you grab his legs, and I will stuff this phone up the taxi driver's arse" (taxi drivers yammering into phones and not looking where they are going being one of the banes of my life).

Dropping down to Mr Truck's speed was a chore though - it's like doing 110 on the freeway, and having to slow to 70 when stuck behind a lumbering, smoke belching truck overloaded with hay bales. It's hard to remain restrained and to put up with one's journey taking an extra 20 seconds or so.

I shouldn't knock these heavy, overweight bikes though, as I corner like a beer truck.

A simple proposal for better health care

Even after riding into work this morning, I felt flat, tired and drained. You'd think that a sharp-ish cavort in the crisp morning air would inject some enervation into the mind and body, but that was not the case. I was ready to lie down on the floor and nap under my desk when it hit me - we have a fridge full of Coke in the office.

One can later, I was feeling human again.

Who needs expensive medicines when the answer to an improved outlook in life is available in vending machines everywhere?

Not much in the way of photos today. It started raining mid afternoon, and as I was facing a wet ride home, I put all the electronic stuff in my back pack. Sod's law cut in at that point, and it stopped raining as soon as I left the office.

About 1km from home, I considered pulling the camera out, as I had seen a few vaguely interesting things. Sod's Law kicked back into action, and it started raining a few seconds later.

On a side note, how the hell do you pronounce this name:

Stefán Karl Stefánsson currently lives in San Diego with his wife, Icelandic actress, author and former TV-host Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir

Goodbye to another "good boy"

A TEENAGE robber shot dead by police was the brother of two men convicted over the slaying of highway patrol officer Glenn McEnally six years ago.

The identity of Tavita Taufahema, 18, was revealed last night - the day after he was killed having taken a hostage in an armed hold-up at the Canley Heights Hotel in western Sydney.

Two police officers who raced to the pub following a triple-0 call early on Tuesday fired their service weapons when Taufahema refused to drop his gun. There is no suggestion they knew the identity of the young robber, who was with an accomplice. But one relative last night accused police of targeting the family deliberately, as Taufahema's mother Helen said he was "a good boy".

Gee, the two of them went into a pub with a rifle and a pistol, robbed the pub as well as 15 patrons and then held the pistol to the head of the bar manager, and the mum thinks her son was a good boy.

I must be living in an alternate reality.

Well done to the cops involved. Concentrate on the fore sight, centre mass, double tap. Some might feel bad about the death of an 18 year old, but my sympathy goes to those who had to deal with the trauma of being robbed at gunpoint by a couple of idiots.

Della-Bosca spotted!

At least I think it was him. I doubt Belinda is allowing him to sleep under the same roof at the moment. He was a bit whiffy, and his shopping trolley was acting like all shopping trolleys and failing to make progress in a straight line.


Then we have the old "dog in a basket".



The things you see. Is that a wookie?

Wind like the farts of God

Holy mackeral, it was windy yesterday. Riding through town is always a bit hairy on windy days because of the unpredictability of the gusts. You'll be riding head on into a howler one moment, then blasted sideways by a firehose of air when you pass a side street. At the next side street, the gust will come the other way. You spend the entire trip wobbling from side to side like a drunk staggering between bars.

I met this bloke struggling up the ramp onto the ANZAC Bridge. Typical of these bikes with fat tyres, he was making a meal of going up this ascent. Sure, it's fairly steep, and the wind was howling, but I didn't see the need to stand up and grind it out in low gear. What frustrated the hell out of me is that he could not keep a consistent line, so I was unable to pass him until we made it onto the bridge proper.

Once I got past him, he tucked in tight behind me and used me as a wind shield (which was smart).... until he ran out of puff and dropped off my tail. Bugger me with a fire hydrant - that wind was strong. I got home, ate and flaked out on the couch. I was in bed at 2230 - an early hour for me.

I was not the only one suffering from the howling gale - I heard a crashing sound, and noticed a small stack of sheets of that clear corrugated plastic that is used for pergola roofing was lying on the road - a truck had lost part of its load. The car in this photo had collected one of these sheets - it had wrapped itself around the front of the car, and wasn't letting go. The driver was sensible enough to not want to stop on the bridge, but that meant crawling across until it was safe to pull over and remove the sheet. Traffic was starting to bank up as I watched.

I caught up with this lady at a set of lights further down the road. She was huffing and puffing (like me) and exclaimed a short comment about "this wind" before running out of breath. I was unable to respond - I was totally blown by then.

Can you spot our correspondent in this photo?

Monday

Two of the perils of the trip into work - the rising sun blatting in your face, which obscures rat running cars pulling out of side streets, and worse, makes it harder for sleepy, inattentive, texting drivers to see bikes in front of them. The other peril are cars cutting into the left lane directly in front of you in order to turn at the lights.

I always find myself in two minds on Lilyfield Rd when there are other cyclists in front of me. Half the time, I blast past the slower ones, only to find that they overtake me on the hill a kilometre or so down the road (I am such a slug on hills). I find it terminally embarassing to flog past at enormous speed on the downhill, only to be taken out on the next climb.

However, the other half of the time, I stick behind someone, even if it means braking when going uphill, and then find that when we get to the hill in question, they slow down to a crawl and I blast past them on the ascent. Aaarrrgh! It's just so much easier to pass, pass, pass regardless of whether I think they will catch me later on or not.

Here we have a demonstration of how to end up lying on the ground under the spoiler of a car. In order to get onto the bridge that crosses Victoria Rd (voted one of the 10 worst cycling blackspots in Sydney recently), you have to turn right at the end of Lilyfield Rd and go up a pram ramp and across the footpath. That means crossing in front of cars that may be turning left off Victoria Rd. I always go right to the end of the road and do a sharp right (the dotted line), which allows me to see cars coming up Victoria Rd so I know whether to stop or go. This guy has no visibility of cars that may be about to turn left. He got away with it, but this morning, another bloke did the same, and came within a foot of becoming a hood ornament. He was bloody lucky the driver braked.

Rush hour on the bridge. One thing I've noticed is the impact that bike tyres have on speed. I am always overtaking people who have fat, lumpy tyres on their bikes. They're not doing themselves any favours, towing around an enormous amount of extra drag and friction - and weight. I sometimes find myself overtaking a whole line of mountain bikes or hybrids with fat tyres at this point as they struggle up the slope in a very low gear. What's the fun in that? We're climbing a bridge on a concrete path, not a mud track on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

Overtaking on a bike is no different to overtaking in a car - you have to watch for oncoming traffic, and have the herbs to pull out and blast past. No point in overtaking unless you can get past the bike in front in a few seconds of spurt.

Another corner of peril, this time in Pyrmont. Because this is not a proper T-junction, bikes have a tendency to just blast through the cross walk without looking at cars coming from the right. Most of the time, there are no cars in the outside lane - but most of the time is not the same as all the time. Plenty of cyclists also ignore the cross walk, and cut in front of pedestrians that have right of way. Sometimes, we can be our own worst enemies. I expect that I am going to ride up this way one morning, and see a nasty prang.

Getting from A to B

More on my vague and infrequent hints on how to get from out here to in there.... there being the city. So you've made it onto the Bay Run, and figured which way to go in order to get to the city (big hint - do not ride towards the Iron Cove Bridge. Ride the other way).

After you crawl past the rowing club, you'll be presented with an option - to continue on the flat, or go up a small incline. Take the incline. Go up the slope. You can take the low road if you want - I do it sometimes when I am on the road around 0630 in summer, as it takes you up to Leichhardt and extends the ride a bit. However, it involves a bit of road work, and the road in question is best taken before the traffic builds up after 0700. So play it safe, and take the high road.

Once you get over the canal, you have two choices. Bust a gut going straight up the Lilyfield Rd hill, or bust half a gut by taking the long way around. I like the long way, as it is more scenic, and I don't like getting to the top of this hill with no puff left. There are traffic lights at the top, and there is nothing worse than arriving at the crest completely blown, and having them go green just as you stop. The effort required to get moving again, and to cross the intersection (which is also on a slight slope) is quite dreadful. The long way involves none of that.

The long way goes past La Montage, a wog palace of monstrous proportions.

At the end of the car park, take the path. Just watch out for dogs and pedestrians - bikes are not that common on this part of the Bay, and pedestrians and dogs wander this way and that with little regard for fast movers on two wheels. Slow down and have a look at the rowers (if there are any training).

And then we have the slightly less steep hill. It is flatter, but it is much longer. You get to a false crest up at the top of this photo, and then face another two rises. However, they aren't much, and the traffic is very light. Perfect for bludgers like moi.