Opinion Australia

The depth of the drought affecting the bush can be seen by the increase in water theft. Many places in the bush depend entirely on rainwater capturing it on roofs and storing it in tanks, or collecting it in dams to use for stock etc.

With so little rainfall in recent months… years even… dams and tanks are drying and water is becoming an even more precious commodity.

Like all commodities, as the price rises… so does the opportunity for crooks to profit from other peoples misery. And so local residents are waking to find their dams and tanks have been siphoned dry and the water sold who knows where.

Added to the problem has been that as their profit margins decrease farmers are having to take on off-farm employment so regularly leave their properties unattended.

The distances between homes and dams etc over here are so great that the police are virtually helpless to catch these crooks so along with the water cattle and sheep are being stolen. No idea what the answer is… but it takes a low sort of person to prey on people already in distress and make their lifes even more miserable.

Over in Wales… the Land of the Free… the Welsh Rugby Union decided it was their turn to ‘display’ their national pride last and asked the All Blacks if they’d mind doing their Haka after the UK national anthem… but before the *Welsh* national anthem so that they could ‘answer the challenge’… which after all is what the Haka is supposed to be all about.

However… in what has been seen as a somewhat petulant display… or non-display… the New Zealand Rugby Union team threw a a hissy fit… stamped their feet… and decided this wasn’t what they wanted and so did the Haka in their *dressing rooms* before going out on the pitch!!

The impact of this was about as effective as sending the Welsh team an SMS and did nothing but deprive the fans of the bizarre and totally pointless display of Maori war dance… as performed by white guys. These days they’re about as threatening as the Telly Tubbies… not that I’d say that to their faces of course

The fact that the All Blacks won the game by a resounding 45 -10 is neither here nor there in the context of the issue and I wonder what sort of message the team thought they were sending their supporters… an ‘up yours’ by the look of it! I don’t care either way… I always found it embarrasing to watch anyway.

Some of the everyday tragedies repeadedly in the headlines around Australia are those reporting the deaths in ‘accidents’ of P-platers.

For those outside Oz, our system has three levels of driver. In the first two the driver has to display a label appropriate to their level of skill. First is the ‘L’ which covers all drivers who are yet to pass their skills test. The other is the ‘P’ which shows they have passed their skills test and so can drive alone. Both are subject to stringent rules to govern some of their behaviour whilst driving.

Schools, police, and media hit home again and again telling these kids… which is what the majority of them still are… about the dangers associated with controlling a vehicle, and the need to be ever aware and careful. Yet they die.

The latest bunch of kids to die smashed head first into a dump truck having just left their year 12 ‘formal’ (the end of school dance). They were all aged between 17 and 18 and the smash left three of them dead and two fighting for life. Currently there is no explanation about what happened.

I spend a lot of time reading the news online… UK, USA, Canadian etc, but I can’t ever recall having seen anywhere near the numbers of fatalities amongst kids as I do here… and in the US the driving age is lower than here. So why is it happening so often?

Are road conditions so much worse? Are cars less well built? Or is it that driver training is so bad the kids just aren’t prepared for the realities of what happens when cars collide?

I’d have said the latter. I don’t claim to be a perfect driver by any means, but even by my own less than perfect standards the standard of driving here is shockingly bad. In all seriousness I think there is a strong case to be made for increasing dramatically the difficulty level for obtaining the P-plate, and that *all* drivers submit to a full driving test every five years.

When I looked at the archives via the calendar… none of the pictures showed up. Obviously needs some investigating or it makes it all a bit weird. In the meantime… well in the meantime what? Does it make that much of a difference?? Dunno yet… be nice if it all worked properly though eh??

Also discovered the header no longer functions to return the user to the current page of the blog. Also somethingthat needs some attention.

Other wise… I still like it.

I was never over-enamoured with the previous theme… over the weeks I’ve tried a few otehrs… including� the Anaconda theme… but this current one which is a ‘3ColumnK2‘ implementation… is far more functional than either the previous one or the Anaconda.

Ok I’ll accept that The colour scheme of the original was better suited to Australia… but this one *does* more. I’ll fiddle with the header over the next few days to make it more identifiable ‘Australian’ in look… but for now… I like this new theme – hope you do too!