How sweet it is watching Howard bark his shins

How sweet it is watching former Oz prime minister John Howard bark his shins against the reality of his personal and political reputation.

L'l Johnnie wonders aloud about the unfairness of being refused the vice presidency of the International Cricket Council - he doesn't for the life of him understand why he has been rejected.

"The 70-year-old said yesterday the most "disappointing" aspect of the decision was that he was given no explanation for the knockback."

Gar'n John!

Even in your own country you have a dodgy reputation as a closet racist.

And remember this from 2003? "Prime Minister John Howard was yesterday censured by the Senate for misleading the public in his justification for sending Australia to war with Iraq. It was only the fourth time in more than three decades a sitting prime minister has been censured and the second in Mr Howard's seven-and-a-half years in office."

Some of your fellow countrymen even laid complaints at The Hague alleging that you're a war criminal {first was by a Melbourne-based academic and in 2008 by a group}.

Besides which mate - you're a fair dinkum pie chucker.

Cartoon displayed at Google Images

Telstra's telephonic logic

 

During the telephone outage that hit the Clarence Valley last week I used my mobile phone to contact the faults number and report the problem.

 

When I finally got to talk to a human I gave them my mobile number and warned them that since reception on that phone is intermittent the conversation could be cut off at any point.

They suggested that I could use a computer to fault register; not very convenient when the only connection you have is dial-up.

 

I managed to report the fault but half way through confirming my identity the phone cut out. Since they did not ring back I thought that the fault was registered.

 

It was mid-day the next day before the landline worked and it surprised me to find a message on the phone that I reported faulty asking me to call back so Telstra could confirm the fault report.

 

All this made me question the intelligence of people who work for Telstra.

I think I may invest in some homing pigeons - much less complicated, more reliable and if the worst happens at least I can make pigeon pie.

Gillard sucks all the air out of the political debate and Abbott panics.....

One of the most amusing things to observe over the last week has been how Julia Gillard becoming Australia's first female prime minister sucked all the air out of the political debate and left Opposition Leader Tony Abbott beached az 'n' gasping.
Desperate for some positive air time poor Tones has had to resort to an outright gimmick and then tweet about it in case some missed his silly stunt with old bathers and a bonfire on the Matt & Jo Show:
TonyAbbottMHR Burning speedos with Matt and Jo in Melbourne this morning. http://twitpic.com/215vt

















However even panic driven stunts fall flat:

ern_malleyscrub

Yes, but won't people ask why you're not in them while they're burning?

But the best bit has to be the camera jockey caught in frame - snapping away at a pair of flaming budgie smugglers. Yep, sophisticated political coverage at its best!

At last! A reason why Territorians see so many UFOs?

On any day you can go to The Northern Territory News online and this is a slice of what you'll bring up from the archives concerning Unidentified Flying Objects:

Cops investigate NT UFO invasion Northern Territory News ...

27 May 2010 ... A FULL-SCALE alien invasion of the Northern Territory has begun.

"But highly-qualified UFO-ologists said they believed the bright lights were space ships on a pre-attack scouting mission.
Darwin-based UFO expert Alan Ferguson said the flares were obviously aliens. "This all sounds like UFO activity," he said."

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2010/05/27/150751_ntnews.html

So are Territorians the darlings of the intergalactic set or is something else at work here?
Well, at last we have an answer - the area around News Ltd's most northern Oz newspaper headquarters in Darwin is affected by gravity to a different degree than most of the nation.
A few little brains reacting to a difference in pressure perhaps? ;-D



Pic from BBC

Original BBC article here