Peter Ryan, Please Stop Killing Innocent Victorians

I have started a petition on change.org to try and tell the Victorian Government and Victoria Police that we did not give them a mandate to kill innocent Victorians while attempting to apprehend alleged wrong-doers

And why did I bother? The truth is that I am appalled that 5 Victorians have been killed as a result of high speed chases in the last few weeks. I could only laugh in anger when, yet again, the police press release stated that the fatal crash occurred “just after they called off the chase”. In other words, when it looked like our actions were about to result in another tragedy, “let’s bail, then it won’t be our fault”. How stupid are they to think that we would accept that hogwash?

But the tipping point was reading the words from Commander Trevor Carter reported in The Age (along with what appears to be implicit support from Premier Ted Baillieu). The Commander is reported to have said that he thought that “the current pursuit policy appeared to already strike the right balance”. Perhaps he can tell us how many successful prosecutions resulting from high speed car chases in the last few weeks “balanced” the negative results of 5 deaths and more serious injuries of innocent Victorians.

If you agree, please sign the petition and tell your friends about it.

Why the new look?

Even though we were well overdue for an overhaul here, the new minimalist look has been forced as a result of a hacking attempt on my server. This act of wanton bastardry has meant that, for the last week, all I have been doing is trying to restore sites, domains and email accounts to a working position. Not fun!

An open letter to The Hon Julia Gillard MP

Dear Prime Minister
Detention Centre
I am absolutely disgusted that a person of your obvious intelligence and strength cannot see beyond the inhumanity of completely abrogating our responsibilities to refugees.

The logical extensión of your stance is to say that, if exporting refugees to a country where we can guarantee they will be mistreated doesn’t work, we will have to sink their boats and watch them drown.

The basis of our policy should be how to help the refugees, NOT how to make the outcome of asking for help so much worse than the tyranny they are fleeing that the latter is more fun.

Shame on you, shame on your policy, shame on your Government. In this respect you, your policy and your Government are CRUEL, EMBARRASING and simply UNAUSTRALIAN.

I urge you to find the moral strength to ignore the voices of pathetic spin doctors reacting to the bellowing of illiterate rednecks. It simply cannot be impossible for you to implement a civilised solution to the plight of men, women and children fleeing from barbaric persecution.

Nigel Ball

If you don't like Aussie meat ... Eat vegetables

According to The Age, Ikebal Patel, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said ‘‘I think any individual, whether they’re Muslim or Jewish, should be allowed to have meat on their table that is in accordance with their religious beliefs.’‘ Hey man, we don’t even have the right to swear in public, what on earth makes you think that you have the right to torture innocent creatures?


It seems that without asking our views, our State and Federal governments agree and have sanctioned legalised torture of livestock in many local abattoirs. Don’t these idiots in power understand that civilized Australians do not condone any form of brutality against any living thing?

More importantly, don’t they understand that we do not condone any barbaric behavior based on lunatic, so called religious, beliefs?

Religions which do not even give humans of the female persuasion equal rights have no place in our civilized society and we certainly do not need to make any allowances for the medieval practices of barbarians.

If you don’t like Aussie meat, eat vegetables!

Live cattle exports to Indonesia

We don't condone torturing these creatures

What is depicted in the Four Corners Program A Bloody Business can only appall any civilised human being. It simply is not good enough to make out it isn’t happening, or hide behind some smokescreen of it’s out of our control.

My simple suggestion is “No stunning, No cattle”. If we can send troops to Afganistan to try an effect change against almost insurmountable odds, WE CAN and MUST stop this cruelty right now.

I have just completed sending the following letter to all of the Federal Politicians representing me. Please consider taking similar action. Continue reading

Pathetic Parliaments

Our parliaments, and by implication, our politicians are pathetic!I have just discovered that by the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 our governments have ensured that Australians can only gamble in Australian venues. In other words, the immoral collection of gambling tax has been protected.In Victoria, that’s $1.7 Billion per year. The only other taxation category which raised more money is euphemistically called “Land Transfer Tax“ … in other words, Stamp Duty on property purchases. A tax which governments promised to cease after the introduction of the GST.

Leaders who lie

It’s sad that we no longer have any ability as a community to hold our leaders accountable for their words or promises. Take our current Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd and his current decision to spend $38 million dollars on an advertising campaign supporting his new resources company taxation. Quite apart from the fact that the application of simple logic would tell any thinking human being that the expenditure is immoral …

He was asked in 2007 if he would resign if he had not delivered this system within his first term.

Mr Rudd replied: “In terms of establishing the office of the auditor-general with clear-cut guidelines to whom every television campaign is submitted for approval before that television campaign is implemented, you have my absolute, 100 per cent guarantee that that will occur.

“One hundred per cent guarantee and each one of you here can hold me accountable for that.”

But two months ago the auditor-general was sidelined from the job.

Somehow, when you have achieved power the phrase “one hundred percent guarantee” actually means, well nothing I guess!

Anyone got any idea how we can elect honest persons to be our leaders, and failing that, how do we force them to remain honest, or depart? As far as I am aware Rudd hasn’t even felt the need to explain his change of heart.

Unfortunately, those who aspire to power seem to be the ones who know that those over whom they exercise power are totally apathetic.

Is it unreasonable to expect telco gouging to be stopped?

Verizon gouging victimA colleague, knowing that I had recently fallen foul of yet another telco for thousands of dollars of “excess usage charges”, sent me this link, presumably thinking it might make me feel better.

Instead, it prompted me to recall that this is the fourth time a telco (a different one each time) has gouged, or attempted to, gouge me.

I am unable to use the services of one large Australian Telco because, even though they do not attempt to collect it, they retain a record of a debt in their system. So, if I attempt to sign up for a new service, they accept my application subject to the payment of an eight year old $14,000 debt.

Another luckily collapsed under the weight of its rich and powerful promoters while suing me for thousands in excess usage.

Yet another continued to charge me $500 per month for services which were available from other vendors, and to their new customers, for about $90 per month. In this case I was an early adopter of a new service and ended up paying several thousand dollars more than the provider charged later signups for the same service. They hid behind their “contract” to insist on payment. Continue reading