Cranky Queenslander

The release this week of the game “Modern Warfare 2” has once again shown how poor the system of classification for such things is in Australia;

At the mature end of the spectrum, the Office of Film & Literature Classification has only two options; Stamp the game suitable for 15+, or ban it completely.

Obviously, games like Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead, while full of gore and adult themes, are not so bad that they need banning altogether.

The ABC’s Sarah Collerton has a good piece on the topic, hitting the nail right on the head; We need an R 18+ classification. As far back as 2005, Bond University released a study showing that 88% of Australians supported the introduction of such a classification for games. With all that support, you’d wonder why it hasn’t happened;

The Problem

Turns out this guy is the problem. South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson. His theory is by not having an R rating, anything that might have been rated R gets banned and the kids are safe. WRONG! Turns out anything that should have been rated R gets a fresh coat of paint (or in the case of MW2, gets nothing at all), and is slapped with a M15+ rating, and the kids ALL GET TO PLAY IT.

I would suggest everyone click on Michael’s smiling face, which will lead you to his parliamentary website, from which you should bombard his inbox with requests to pull his finger out and fix this!

Everyone by now has read about the terrible treatment dealt out to a 14 year old girl on public radio by her mother and radio host Kyle Sandilands. I don’t need to repeat the details here, but I wanted to briefly register my continued disgust with this grub, and suggest we as a community should not tolerate this garbage.

I think this piece at the Herald Sun sums it up for me, and I cannot believe there are enough Victorians that are prepared to listen to the tripe that Sandilands is serving up as entertainment to keep him employed.

Come on Victoria, Stand up for whats right and stop listening!

With the recent death of Antonio Galeano, the mainstream press are once again promoting the idea that tasers are bad and should not be carried by Queensland Police.

The facts of this most recent case are yet to be fully confirmed, but there are suggestions that in this case the offender was subdued, handcuffed and had been talking to police before his health deteriorated and he passed away;

There is also the suggestion that the man was suicidal, had failed within 48 hours of the incident to kill himself and was in fact attempting to have the police end his life by confronting them.

As far as this case goes, I hope the police involved are cleared of any wrong doing; They have a tough job, and the sad fact is that from time to time, things are going to go pear shaped, and we shouldn’t be blaming the police for doing their best to deal with these things.

As for tasers, it is my firm belief that if we are better off giving our police the choice of using them; Lets be realistic, if a madman is weilding a weapon, and the police shoot him, he’s likely to be dead; If they can taser him, he’s likely to be alive.

Perhaps I’m missing something, feel free to leave a comment if you feel differently about tasers.

I can’t help but think that drawing attention to the pre election talk of Kevin Rudd’s communist leanings and love for communist China would make me seem like a bit of a sensationalist, but I can’t help myself.

Word through this past week that Kevin and his crack team of legislators are going to force all Australian ISP’s to censor the internet, blocking permanently web sites that they deem inappropriate.

They are using the word “illegal” to determine what sites will not be visible to Australian eye’s, but that is just a nice way to make most people feel like this is not a problem.

Take a look at China. They use the same rhetoric about their censorship efforts. They block stuff that they say is illegal, but we all know their definition leaves a great deal to be desired, at least by freedom loving western standards.

The fact is that Australia is supposedly a free country, and we should not be subjected to mandatory censorship. We all have it within our power to perform our own censorship on our own internet connections, decided what is best for ourselves.

It’s time to get in touch with Minister Conroy and voice your disapproval now!

Suggested Reading;

Ars Technica | Crikey

Four children allegedly barged into a 47 year old womans Beenleigh home recently, pinned her to the floor and stole a variety of items before fleeing, and later being arrested.

Reporting in such cases is always a bit thin, as they are children, but even so, I’d like to know how old these children were. Then I’d like to have their parents asked how it came to be that their children were out robbing and bashing people at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon.

I don’t think it’s too much for the Department of Children’s services to look into the families of these children and see what else is rotten there. As a society we need to try and stamp out this kind of evil before it infects more family and friends of these low lifes.

Now I’m reading that the wicked camper folks (who most people would know send out dilapidated looking graffiti emblazoned combi vans into the world) are in trouble with Premier Bligh; Apparently one of their campers has "Save a whale, harpoon a jap" on it.

Big deal. Its a joke. It’s mildly amusing, and generally meaningless, until a bunch of politicians with nothing better to do weigh in and make a fuss, then its front page news.

If Anna is so worried about this comment, she better get down the nearest intersection and start flagging down cars with bumper stickers, because I can assure Anna if she lived in the real world she’d see a hell of a lot more offensive stuff on cars than this wicked camper.

Come on, get a life and get on with important things!

I was asked to post their reply, so here it is. Short and sweet, it seems there is no political will anywhere to investigate and prosecute those responsible.

Despite the fact that Seven News clearly pointed out tonight that the suspected perpetrator of the murder of Sarah Elston was her ex boyfriend, I’m sure there are plenty of Queenslanders tonight deleted their facebook profiles and demanding their kids do the same.

What a crock. Why is it that the media needs to find weird angles on stories? How about just reporting the facts, which in this case, having virtually nothing to do with Facebook at all.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of foolish young people who’s personal information is freely available on Facebook, My Space, Bebo and the like. A quick google search of the name of your local high school will usually turn up one or more. That doesn’t make these sites bad, though, it makes their users stupid.

So if you haven’t already got on the Facebook bandwagon, go sign up, but for goodness sake, understand how to protect your privacy BEFORE you do! Remember, if someone wants to do you harm, they have to physically find you first!

No, of course they don’t, but that’s the incredible statement found in a news.com.au article of a couple of days ago. Here’s the quote;

….the case of an elder who had asked him if rape was illegal.

"When I said yes, he told me `none of our young people know that’.

Someone is clearly gilding the lily here. Just think about what this guy is trying to say; That a young aboriginal man can grab a woman, forcibly have intercourse with her while she screams, crys and begs him to leave her alone, and NOT think there is anything wrong?

Seriously?

The article mostly deals with the fact that there is a problem with aboriginals understanding the legal process they end up being brought into, and I can see that as being pretty on the money, but the above statement is just bizzare.

The actual problem seems to be that when people in the communities canvasses for the story are brought to court, they don’t understand the meaning of a variety of words, and end up getting convicted in some cases of things they didn’t actually do because they didn’t understand.

Who’s fault is that? Don’t we have a legal system where accused people are represented? Isn’t it the job of ones legal counsel to make sure you understand what you are being charged with, what the consequences of a guilty verdict would be, and to help prepare a proper defence?

How is it that after figuring this out, nobody is investigating those that are representing these alleged criminals, and why are we not ensuring that all citizens are provided a proper level of representation when they are accused of a crime?

It was one of Derryn Hinch’s favourite one liners, "Who’s looking after the children". It’s also one I might be adopting over the coming months and years, as I start to see a pattern of failure to care for our kids across society.

The latest evidence comes from Forest Lake, where a five year old girl was hit by a car. Its a pretty tragic thing to happen to anyone, let alone such a young child. Plenty of people are upset about it, but as you can see from this courier mail article, they are all upset with the driver of the car.

This week the local paper has a call to lower the speed limit 10k’s an hour on the road, citing the incident as the latest in a string of pedestrian accidents that demonstrate the speed limit needs lowering.

Really?

I would have thought it shows that either we have drivers failing to obey road rules such as stopping at red lights, giving way, and what not, or it shows that we have raised a generation of stupid people who can’t cross a street.

In the case of the 5 year old, she was (as would be expected), with her mother, but her mother was not, as far as I can tell, hit by the car. I hope the girl pulls through, and I hope her mother realises that you can’t let five years cross the road by themselves!

From what I gather, the pedestrian light was green, so the mother and child were following the rules to cross the road; That means that the drive failed to obey a traffic signal, and should be charged with that offence, plus something like grievous bodily harm for the damage this failure caused to the girl.

Once we stop worrying about a few k’s over the limit, and start worrying about how badly some people drive, things will improve. At the same time, we should perhaps start fining people for jaywalking again. I had two people wander out onto Ipswich road at Annerley just yesterday as I was approaching. It wouldn’t have taken much to go wrong for me to have hit one of them. Should we drop the speed limit to 40 on Ipswich road to allow for people to wander about it like a shopping mall?

In closing, let me make this wake up call to parents. You need to teach your kids how to cross a road. You need to set an example on how to do it safely, and you need to hold their hands while you do it!