Wer doin it rong.
An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
40 Responses to “Saturday Salon”
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Laura still wins.
Daylight savings again?
I’m going to do that every week. Mwahahahaha
[Comment deleted]
Pearl. Puhleese. There are swine about.
I actually came over to say something, timely, current, relevant to some other discussion. An interesting snippet I just heard on the radio. But Pearl’s comment kinda floored me and seems to have literally knocked out a few brains cells and taken my observation with it. Dang. Maybe that’s what unexpected vulgarity will do for you. If I remember I’ll come back.
Don’t feed it, Caroline, attention is what they are after.
I’ve made a comment on the Matthew Johns issue on the other Saturday Salon thread. If you want to say something that is both civil and sensible, please do it there.
Any activity involving uniforms and which only men are allowed to participate in, is, as Virginia Woolf pointed out, both barbarous and ridiculous.
I liked Nannygoat Hill’s suggestion for dealing the footballer problem: pay football no attention and it will quietly fade away. Or, if people honestly like it enough to keep it, make a rule that women have to be included on the teams.
Loved the Howard interview. Reminds me why he got a big nasty boot…twice.
Laura, it’s not tennis or even AFL or Rugby Union. It’s a full-on body contact sport with the head off-limits. If you’ve seen a 110kg forward running flat out and then suffer a shoulder charge to end up in the next instant flat on his back, there’s no room for the fair sex, sorry.
Yes Brian. My cousin got a brain injury playing rugby league in the 1980s. The violence of it is all the more reason Woolf’s remarks are worth taking seriously.
Alternatively, women who want to play can simply take the same steroids the male players take.
I’m going to let that reference to the ‘fair sex’ pass without comment.
There’s a huge stink in the UK about MPs’ expenses. I mention it on my blog. I love the one about the bald MPP claiming shampoo expenses. Or the MP who claimed her constituency home as her second home for expenses purposes but as her primary home for tax purposes.
But there is a serious side. Mainstream politicians are on the nose big time. The fascists in the UK, the British National Party, are running big on this and may get a hearing for their racist filth.
The Left is organising demonstrations against the British Nazis.
I wonder if, metaphorically speaking, we in Australia could have bald MPS claiming for shampoo?
Sorry everyone, Laura’s 79 on last week’s thread threw me. Perhaps you should just try to be first on the new thread each week, Laura.
Look, I didn’t mean to start a bloody and no win controversy here, merely to say that I was troubled by my own response to the Matthew Johns issue. There is no way I could condone his behaviour or that of the other players, nor have I.
I’m a long term campaigner for women’s rights and sexual equality and liberation.
I am genuinely concerned that I found this issue so hard to deal with. I think my reservations are about privacy and exploitation of the issue by the media. Yes, I did think many, not all, of the official comments were simply an attempt to be “politically correct.” My reference to it being a “great story” was meant to be ironic. And I do feel for the young woman – she is not in a good or safe space at the moment any more than she was in that hotel years ago.
Just shows you how even LP bloggers can’t see these things objectively.
John @ 13, I think my favourite is the politician who used the money to drain a moat. Now who the hell has a moat?
Laura @ 12, I’m truly sorry about your cousin. In the 1980s it was still common for Rugby League players to attack an opponents head and get away with it. Now if they touch an opponents head they concede a penalty. In time other aspects will probably change also. I understand a shoulder charge is not allowed in Rugby Union. And someday boxing will be banned. Whether the Rugby League of the future will be worth watching or not we’ll have to wait and see. There is certainly plenty of skill and athleticism in it.
As a partially reconstucted male chauvinist who grew up in the 1940s and 50s and who really does not wish to offend, I wondered whether my use of the term “fair” would pass muster. To make myself clear I meant the sixth meaning given in the Australian Oxford Dictionary, that is, “beautiful, attractive”. I asked my wife whether she has a problem with it. She said no, but then named a couple of my relatives who probably would. Anyway, I’ll ban it from my vocab here.
Or was “sex” the problem? Or does the phrase have connotations that are problematic?
Are you sure that male players take steroids? Do you mean some, all, typically or something else? I don’t see on them the usual telltale signs.
The pride of Australian journalism. All class.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/covering_up_rudds_indecency/
Just loving the robust debate in this country. Where environmental ideals are subcontracted to a state Labor government in QLD who is owned by developers and not one person here has the fortitude to address an interview from a former Prime Minister who was not only thrown out but lost his seat due to an environmental issue.
Nah, that wasn’t it either. What I had in mind is that women are less robust in their frames than men.
The Greens have won the Fremantle by-election comfortably.
hannah’s dad, did they go aboveand beyond with that and sell out for a destructive damn on that one or did they just do the normal sell out?
The revised Waxman-Markey bill — “H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act” is now available online.
“JOHN HOWARD: To start with I wouldn’t have changed the industrial relations laws to make it dearer to employ people and to push up unemployment. And right at the moment we’re having a rationalisation of awards which is going to make it dearer to employ restaurant and catering staff in many parts of Australia. Now that is lunacy in the present economic circumstance. That’s the first thing.”
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2572380.htm
Isn’t John a compassionate kind of guy? And he’s quietly worried that he and his mates might need to pay more for their short flat whites.
Those single mothers who he forced into the workforce whether they wanted to or not, and the rest of the casualised slaves, are in danger of a “rational” award system. Quel horror!
Is there a transcript of the John Howard interview? Watching him talk for 40 minutes is too painful to contemplate..
Peter, I do not think there is one. The vid is below. You might spend your time more wisely rearranging that sock draw. Otherwise, Mogadon is advised.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=57448963
Thanks joe2, I think I’ll stick to reading the Waxman-Markey legislation — but I don’t intend to read all 932 pages!
To start with I wouldn’t have changed the industrial relations laws to make it dearer to employ people and to push up unemployment.
That is a valid point tho’ isn’t it. On the other hand this country has twice thrown out a govt and deprived a PM of his seat for attempting to scrap the industrial system that runs here.
.
But of course stiff upper lip never apologize and all that.
Just waiting for Tracy Grimshaw to get started on rock (and other musical genre) groups.
Wasn’t it in the music ‘industry’ that the word ‘groupies’ was coined?
Fertile fields for lots more ’smacking people over the heads in indignation’ over.
I’m posting this link to my blog again caused it got lost amidst the football controversy on the old Saturday Salon thread. Hope youse don’t mind.
http://beingahistoryheadandotherthings.blogspot.com/2009/05/on-going-to-book-sales-and-stuff.html
Black Saturday
Bush Bunker
http://www.gizmag.com/the-bushbunker-last-resort-wildfire-protection/11736/picture/80077/
and, for a fast getaway but illegal in Australia
1000 watt folding bicycle
http://www.gizmag.com/the-highly-desirable-1000-watt-limited-edition-tidalforce-m-750-x20-electric-fold-up-bike/11674/
For the lovers of the art,
I present this link
http://13.media.tumblr.com/GZbqLZ3AXjukb4n6IYrha3Olo1_500.jpg
Reasons to love Miranda No. 2456
“As the mother of two junior rugby forwards, the wife of a former prop and daughter of a one-time flanker, it is time for me to come to the defence of violent sports and the men who play them.”
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/natural-men-scolded-into-timidity-20090520-bfn3.html
Campari, Devid Drink. Campari.
I mean Devil.
I just love the way Miranda misses the point completely.
Re my comment #12 where the observation that women could play rugby league by taking the same drugs the men take was later challenged, I guess this poor man is an isolated case….
Actually, Laura, he probably is, but who’s to know? The press I’ve read suggests his career is probably over. You’d have to be particularly stupid to go down that road.
But he doesn’t appear to be blessed with a lot of sense. A few years ago he was convicted of occasioning actual bodily harm for kicking a policeman in the head. When at the Bulldogs, according to the Courier mail, he “continually blew it, either turning up to training intoxicated – or not turning up at all.”
He was said to be a particularly gifted and versatile footballer. He suffered significant ankle ligament damage in his one test for NZ in 2006. At age 27, he was probably on a last chance to rebuild his career. Assuming the sample B is positive, who is going to give him a run in two years time with the public focus on RL player behaviour and sponsors demanding a cleanup?
He started out as an apprentice plumber. Maybe he can revive that career.
He probably isn’t Brian.
Yes, I’d agree with Laura. Steroid use is far from unusual where sport is concerned.
…I would have loved to have been the subeditor who got away with that headline, though. “Bras’ support” indeed.
Maybe, maybe not. All I’m saying is that we need evidence of widespread drug use before we label the NRL players that way. Catching Maitua leaves us none the wiser.
He was caught by a routine test conducted by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority. What I’d like to know is the pattern of tests that currently applies. In 2007 David Gallop was interviewed by Tony Eastley about Andrew Johns’ drug taking. We are led to believe that Johns was tested 17 times, he knew he was playing Russian roulette but slipped through, that there is now a uniform policy across the clubs and the chances of being caught are greater.
Catching one bloke might mean there was only one miscreant and he was caught. It could mean that the testing regime is still too loose and he was unlucky to be caught.
I’ve heard tennis players complaining about the whereabouts notification procedures. I’d be surprised if the NRL players are similarly inconvenienced, but I just don’t know what the regime is. Until I do I don’t need to make guesses about it so I won’t.