Be afraid.......

Tony Abbott takes us back to the future in his 2010 Budget Reply.

Foreshadowing a return to Work Choices in a Mark III version.

Ever the reckless political gambler he starts his final para with the line
"The die is cast."

So who works for McDonald's in Australia?

Fair Work Australia in its 23 April 2010 decision stated in part that:

The Agreement not only fails to satisfy the no disadvantage test, on various levels it significantly compromises industrial standards that would be expected for agreement-reliant employees.....
I do not believe the employees could be considered to have genuinely agreed to the Agreement. I would dismiss the application for that reason alone....
I propose also to direct that a copy of this decision be forwarded to the Fair Work Ombudsman, given the evidence suggesting the applicant or its licensees, or both, may have been underpaying some employees.

So who exactly are McDonald's 80,000 employees Australia-wide?
They are predominately under 21 years of age, female with an English speaking background, work as casuals in the multinational's 780 fast food stores and most are paid the percentage rates for juniors.
McDonald's opened its first Australian store in 1971.

McDonald's workforce taken from the Fair Work Australia decision:

Male employees: 37,200 (46.5%)

Female employees: 42,800 (53.5%)

Employees from non-English speaking backgrounds: 28,800 (36%)

Employees who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: 2,400 (3%)

Employees with disabilities: 2,400 (3%)

Employees who are not otherwise categorised: 46,400 (58%)

Full-time employees: 7,888 (9.86%)

Part-time employees: 7,656 (9.57%)

Casual employees: 64,456 (80.57%)

Employees under 21 years of age: 65,600 (82%)

Employees aged 21-45 years: 11,200 (14%)

Employees over 45 years of age: 3,200 (4%)

Slug Boy disappears leaving no trail, but a few red faces in his wake?

Those old enough to remember when evening newspapers were still part of the social fabric will fondly recall those rather improbable fillers in the righthand column of the page.

These snippets often recycled urban myths as news for Australian readers, who were still many decades away from the 24 hour news cycle and Internet access which hopefully has led to an increasing sophistication when assessing what the mainstream media has on offer.

However, it seems that urban myths and hoaxes continue to find their way into print.

The latest media report to exhibit signs that journalists have been the victims of a classic Australian leg pull was a report which ran last Wednesday that; The ABC has been told that a 21-year-old caught rat lungworm disease after he ate a slug as a dare some time ago.

On the basis of the original media reports the NSW Health media unit issued this media release on Thursday:

NSW Health is warning people of the dangers of eating raw slugs, which although extremely rare, can cause meningitis.
Animals, including slugs and snails, can carry a range of infections, including bacteria, virus and parasites that may infect people. One parasite (or worm) carried by slugs and snails is Angiostrongylus (also called rat lung worm). The adult form of the worm is found only in rodents, and infected rodents pass larvae in their faeces which snails and slugs can eat, getting infected.
NSW Health understands that there may be a suspected case in NSW of rat lung worm, however as this is not a notifiable disease and for privacy reasons is unable to provide further details.

A spokesperson was also on radio talking about this rare condition which had allegedly seen the young man hospitalised for a month.

By then media was also online asking for more details from the general public; Do you know more? Text 0424 SMS SMH (+61 424 767 764), email us at scoop@smh.com.au or direct message on Twitter @smh_news.

The story was posted on Digg and by Friday was up on Twitter with b3ta_links repeating that: Some Australians Aren't Terribly Bright: Man eats slug for a dare. Now critically ill in hospital.

On Saturday morning it was starting to unravel, as Caroline Overington writing in The Australian suggested that all may not be as it seems because no-one could find the man who was the subject of the original story and NSW Health apparently admitted that it knew nothing more than what journalists had told it; We got calls about it from the media and we responded to that," a spokeswoman said.

If this story is a hoax, I wonder if the mischief maker got his or her inspiration from the ABC's News In Science webpage on 20 October 2003 which also reported a man eating two slugs for a dare and developing the very same medical condition in Man's brain infected by eating slugs:

Whatever the case this story is off and running - Google's search engine had man eats slug indexed over 2,000 times and by Saturday morning most of these references were to the Australian story.

Image from TNT Magazine

Demanding, arrogant, out of touch, superficial, narrow-minded. How many Australians see federal political leaders

Image from ABC's The Drum

With a curious dissonance developing between general support for the policies Labor is taking to the 2010 election and level of support shown for the Prime Minister in recent opinion polls, perhaps it isn't really about policy at this point but more about personality as seen filtered through a media lens.

According to the Essential Research weekly report on 10 May 2010:

There was majority approval of all recent changes to Australia’s taxation.
The most popular proposal was to increase superannuation contributions from 9% to 12% ‐ 74% approved and 17% disapproved.
63% approved increasing taxes on cigarettes and alcohol.
More than half approved cutting company tax rates (54%) and higher taxes on the profits of large mining companies (52%).
78% of Labor voters approved higher taxes on mining company profits (11% disapprove) and 56% of Liberal/National voters disapproved (35% approve).
Increasing superannuation contributions received high support from both Labor (85%) and Liberal/National voters (72%).
61% of both Labor and Liberal/National voters supported cutting company tax rates.
63% of Labor voters and 69% of Liberal/National voters approved increasing taxes on cigarettes and alcohol.

However Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott are not so clearly differentiated on personal attributes in the table below:

Kevin Rudd has only slightly better ratings than Tony Abbott across key positive attributes such as hard‐working (+5%), a capable leader (+5%) and trustworthy (+2%).
The main differences were that Kevin Rudd is perceived as more demanding (69%/52%), less narrow‐minded (43%/53%), more superficial (52%/44%)and more complacent (38%/30%).

Comparison of Leader Attributes

Click on image to enlarge

Next question: Where's Harold Holt?

A couple of correspondents in letters to the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald (Saturday, 15 May) neatly summed up the shocker the Australian Federal Police put in when they contacted Dutch police about the whereabouts of accused war criminal Dragan Vasiljkovic, only to be told the fugitive was still in Australia.

In fact, "Captain Dragan", also known as Daniel Snedden, was wiling away his time at down-town Harwood Island, a satellite suburb of Yamba, "the best town in Australia", in Big River Country (aka Clarence River territory).

Dutch courage

A suspected Serbian war criminal goes AWOL under the very noses of the Australian Federal Police ('' 'Captain Dragan' tried to make a deal'', May 14). What does it do? It asks the Dutch authorities to check its end. Lo and behold they were able to tell our people not only that he was not holed up somewhere in Holland but supplied the address where he was hiding here. Good to know the AFP is on the ball.

Eddie Raggett Mosman

Is it too late for the Australian Federal Police to ask the Dutch police to find Harold Holt?

Glen op den Brouw Liverpool

Source: SMH letters

Young drivers ... victims on our roads

Friday's Daily Examiner (Grafton) carried the following piece which was written in 1967 by John Berrio of Rochester, New Hampshire after a friend of his son died in a motor vehicle accident. It later appeared in the advice column Dear Abby.

Please, God, I'm only 17

The day I died was an ordinary school day. How I wish I had taken the bus! But I was too cool for the bus. I remember how I wheedled the car out of Mom. "Special favor," I pleaded. "All the kids drive." When the 2:50 p.m. bell rang, I threw my books in the locker ... free until tomorrow morning! I ran to the parking lot, excited at the thought of driving a car and being my own boss.

It doesn't matter how the accident happened. I was goofing off ‑ going too fast, taking crazy chances. But I was enjoying my freedom and having fun. The last thing I remember was passing an old lady who seemed to be going awfully slow. I heard a crash and felt a terrific jolt. Glass and steel flew everywhere. My whole body seemed to be turning inside out. I heard myself scream.

Suddenly, I awakened. It was very quiet. A police officer was standing over me. I saw a doctor. My body was mangled. I was saturated with blood. Pieces of jagged glass were sticking out all over. Strange that I couldn't feel anything. Hey, don't pull that sheet over my head. I can't be dead. I'm only 17. I've got a date tonight. I'm supposed to have a wonderful life ahead of me. I haven't lived yet. I can't be dead.

Later I was placed in a drawer. My folks came to identify me. Why did they have to see me like this? Why did I have to look at Mom's eyes when she faced the most terrible ordeal of her life? Dad suddenly looked very old. He told the man in charge, "Yes, he's our son."

The funeral was weird. I saw all my relatives and friends walk toward the casket. They looked at me with the saddest eyes I've ever seen. Some of my buddies were crying. A few of the girls touched my hand and sobbed as they walked by.

Please, somebody ‑ wake me up! Get me out of here. I can't bear to see Mom and Dad in such pain. My grandparents are so weak from grief they can barely walk. My brother and sister are like zombies, yhey move like robots. In a daze. Everybody. No one can believe this. I can't believe it, either.Please, don’t bury me! I'm not dead! I have a lot of living to do! I want to laugh and run again. I want to sing and dance. Please‑don't put me in the ground! I promise if you give me just one more chance, God, I'll be the most careful driver in the whole world. All I want is one more chance. Please, God, I'm only 17.

Read more about the piece here

Australian Censor-In-Chief Conroy wimps out?

Conroy is awesome. He's gone from last minute cancellations on #openinternet debates, to actually stopping the OTHER PARTY from debating.
11:09 PM May 12th via web [from Geordie Guy's tweets]