Putting in the Slipper

Peter Slipper is the most recent in a list of Queensland pollies who has demonstrated an eye for the main chance.

He follows in the time-honoured tradition of such notables as Vince Gair, Mal Colston and Pat Field to name a few.

The outrage of his Coalition colleagues is a bit lame (and hypocritical) when this history is considered. Such indignation obviously has a great deal to do with whether or not the coup has been engineered by someone on your side and who ultimately benefits, rather than the morality or otherwise of the activity.

Put simply, the belief seems to be that if we did it, it’s OK, but if the other side carried it off it’s mean and nasty.

It could be argued that this situation would not have eventuated if Abbott hadn’t refused to pair the Speaker and Deputy Speaker. Refusing the pair as an act of petty political spite put the ALP one vote down. It's come back to bite him on the bum.

Having said that, the fact that Peter Slipper is involved, comes as no surprise, based on what I know of him.

I first met him in 1984 as the newly-elected National Party member for Longman. There have been some boundary changes and renaming of electorates since then, but Slipper had been a constant in this part of the world.

At that time I was principal of a special school to the North of Brisbane which was on the border of four electorates, two state and two federal. Consequently, I saw a great deal of Slipper (and the other pollies, two Labor, and two National Party) at school functions such as fetes and award nights.

One of these pollies, a state Labor member and an ex-wrestler named Joe Kruger, actually made an official complaint against me to the then Regional Director because I didn’t acknowledge him from the podium at a school function.

Silly bugger phoned me the morning before and told me he couldn’t make it because he had a prior commitment. He then turned up late and didn’t let me know he was there, so I didn’t mention him. He actually mistook me for my predecessor as principal who was a Liberal supporter with political ambitions of his own.

I was young and innocent back then.

Slipper was visibly uneasy in the presence of kids with disabilities, but worked hard at making a name for himself as a supporter of the school. My bride, who has a knack with accurate assessments of character, intimated that she found him “flakey”. You’d have to ask her exactly what that means.

He’s actually High Church Anglican, which goes some of the way towards explaining his friendship with Rudd, who is of similar persuasion.

One thing that this situation reinforces is that federal pollies from south of the border completely misunderstand the way Queensland works. Abbott’s attempts to have the Queensland LNP machine go easy on Slipper obviously cut no ice at all.

Queenslanders have a knack of listening to advice from Sydney, Melbourne or Canberra (take your pick) and then doing exactly the opposite.

People from the south are called BFCs, BFSs or BFMs* here.

The collective term is “Mexicans”.

*Bastards from…….

Sad and Shocking

The news this morning that the fire in the Quakers Hill nursing home was deliberately lit is both sad and shocking.

It’s alleged that an individual who worked there as a nurse has set the building alight in two places in the early hours of yesterday morning. He has been charged and is in police custody.

If he is indeed the culprit – and he is innocent until proved guilty, we have the ghastly phenomenon of a person employed to care for helpless vulnerable people responsible for burning them to death in their beds. It doesn’t bear thinking about…..

This tragedy reminded me of time spent in similar institutions for vulnerable people.

For eighteen years as a special school principal in various places across the state, I had the responsibility of ensuring safety for the children in these schools, who were also generally speaking, helpless and vulnerable. It was a responsibility I took very seriously, and I remember feeling a sense of relief when, upon retirement, I handed the keys of my last school to my successor. These days I still work in schools, but am not burdened with that overall responsibility. It feels great to be on the campus of a school without that consideration.

During those eighteen years, only once did a fire start during school. This was at my last school in Toowoomba, and fortunately it happened on a Pupil-Free Day when only staff and visitors were present.

One of these visitors was a parent, a mum, whom I was interviewing as she enrolled her daughter at the beginning of the school year.

During this interview (at about 10.30am), a face appeared at the door of my office. It belonged to a new teacher who had started only the day before. She looked a bit tense, and I straightaway interrupted to interview and excused myself to see what she was on about.

This teacher blurted out “There’s a fire in my classroom!”

I told my Registrar (who had also appeared at the door of my office with a fearsome look directed at the teacher who had broken the cardinal rule of interrupting the Principal when interviewing a parent) to sound the fire alarm.

The half dozen buildings on the campus were quickly evacuated, and when it was clear everyone was safe, and the firies had been notified, with the Janitor I carefully approached the classroom in question with extinguisher in hand. I was later given a severe talking to by the firies by the way, for doing this.

There was no obvious fire, but a strong electrical burning smell was everywhere, and there were wisps of black smoke coming from the ceiling.

The firies arrived, and quickly discovered that a transformer had lunched itself in the ceiling. The electrics in this building were always dodgy.

Subsequently, the whole building was rewired to avoid a reoccurrence, and things got back to normal.

Fire drills were always an issue in a school were a large proportion of the enrolment lacked the capacity to get themselves out of harm’s way, so we had to come up with novel solutions to develop a drill that would work.

Every able-bodied person available (Janitor, office staff, Cleaners, Guidance Officer, Therapists etc) had designated classrooms to which they headed ASAP to assist in evacuating kids in wheelchairs and walking frames. Essentially these were the classes were the kids were unable physically to get out by themselves.

We got it down to 1 minute 30 seconds as I remember.

I’m glad we never had to do it in the dark as was the case in Sydney. My heart goes out to both victims and rescuers.   

Sleight of Hand

I'd like a dollar for every time Bolt (for example) breathlessly tells us that it "hasn't been warming for a decade".

He does this so often that you're left wondering whether he really doesn't understand the difference between a trend and an anomaly, or whether he reasons (like Goebbels) that if you tell a lie often enough, people will begin to regard it as the truth.

This graphic from Sceptical Science nails it pretty well.

To see how it works, you'll need to click on the graphic and then watch it marching across your screen.

"Going down the up excalator" is apt.

Who do we like?

Given the current visit of the POTUS down under, and the non-stop commentary about our relationship with China, I thought it might be interesting to discover what Australians think about our relationship with the USA and China.

Right on cue, Essential polling did some work on this just the other day.

It shows that Aussies polled rank the relationship with the USA and China in the same ball park.

If you are unfortunate or misguided enough to read one of the more ratbag right wing blogs (and there are a few) you might get an entirely different impression.

IPad Again

                                                                    

This mural is part of what makes Cunnamulla different. 

It's also my first successful attempt at blogging with the iPad.

I've discovered that it's a simple exercise to blog text - other media (photos and videos) is a challenge.
I have an attachment that it supposed to allow me to download photos from my camera to the iPad, but can't get it to work.

It looks as if I'll have to read the destructions....

Alternatively, I could take photos on my iPhone and with the benefit of iCloud, they will stream to the iPad. It works, because all the photos I took with the phone in Cunnamulla have mysteriously appeared on the iPad.

Neat.

I don't know anything about the mural, by the way.

Cunnamulla’s a bit different

The Cunnamulla Fella - enhanced by Luminance

I love this place – or to put it less ambiguously, I love visiting this place.

I’m not sure I could live there. Weeks on end of 40+ might be a little hard to take.

Last Tuesday I went for a walk before having breakfast at the excellent Boulders Café, and took a few shots with my iPhone.

I scarcely bother using any other camera these days. There is an iPhone App called Luminance, so I had a play with that.

Puddles

There had been a storm through last evening.

Another Luminance effect

Commodes are hot in Cunnamulla

The light is intense.

This memorial has an interesting (and somewhat bizarre) history. Back at the beginning of WW2, the original memorial was adorned with three WW1 cannons. With the onset of the War in the Pacific and the government's plans to institute a Brisbane Line, the citizens of Cunnamulla removed the cannons and buried them in the sandhills that surround the town so that they wouldn't fall into enemy hands in the event of an invasion.

Unfortunately, the location of the burial site was lost in the euphoria of the Victory in the Pacific. Some say those who buried the cannon did so after a long session at the RSL.

The original cannon were then replaced with what you see here - it could only happen in Cunnamulla.

I drove the 200km across to Charleville in mid afternoon. It was bloody hot - 40 degrees at Wyandra.

It ain't half hot mum.

Bloody Motels

Don't take a shower in this establishment

By the time the year is over, I’ll have spent about 60 nights in motels through my itinerant work.

As a result, I’ve built up a pretty fair list of irritants that go with this nomadic lifestyle.

Sometimes I wonder who designs motel rooms - and whether the people who do ever stay overnight in one of their creations.

In the first place, generally people who stay in motels have luggage. Why is it then, that many motel rooms don’t have anywhere to put suitcases (or in my case folding clothes hangers)? Often, the floor is the only space available.

Why are important bits of kit like mini-refrigerators and microwaves often hidden in cupboards? Why is it that one establishment I’m forced to inhabit has the clothes hanging space taken up with a fridge large enough for a family of six?

Why is there little or no bench space for a laptop, a box of files, or breakfast? 

Why do some air-conditioners make as much noise as an F-105 on a strafing run? Why does the wall vibrate when the guest next door turns his shower on?

Speaking of showers – why don’t hot and cold taps conform to any standard pattern? I don’t as a rule wear my specs in the shower, so have learned the habit of checking the shower out first with glasses on to make sure I don’t end up with serious scalding. There are some places I stay where the shower feeds directly from an artesian bore, and comes out at very high temperature that needs to be cooled by the cold tap before you can safely shower in it.

On the subject of changing eyesight – why do those dinky little packs of toiletries all look the same and have labels such as shampoo, conditioner and body wash printed in 8 point font or smaller?

Why am I always given a room next to a squad of people working for Santos or somesuch who get noisily on the booze until the wee hours and then start their diesels up and idle them for ten minutes at 5am? I too drive a diesel, but it has no desperate need for lengthy 5am warmups.

These days I travel with chargers for iPad and iPhone, as well as the Bluetooth attachment for the car. Rare indeed are the rooms that have sufficient power points to charge all at once.

Then there’s the Wi-Fi. Most motels advertise it, but it usually works only ten metres from the transmitter. It almost never works after all guests are in. I’ve noticed a phenomenon whereby I’ll be writing reports on my work website, only to have the Wi-Fi metaphorically shrug its shoulders and boot me off after additional guests log on.

Most of next week I’ll be in motels. Maybe I should buy a swag and set up under the stars. It’s warm enough these days and I’d save a dollar or two.

Mind you – the grey nomads are an occupational hazard for campers out where I travel. I’d probably end up getting an ear-bashing from some Vietnam Vet from 2RAR in a Jayco Discovery towed by a Falcon ute…..