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Showing posts from December, 2013

The $6 Co-Payment - Why The Liberals Just Don't Get It

There's no denying health care costs in Australia are very high - and will continue to increase as the baby boomers enter retirement age - but the government has flagged a terrible (and hitherto unannounced) solution: charging  a $5 copayment  for people to visit the GP. After warnings that people will instead go to hospital emergency departments, a charge to attend there has been suggested as well. Whilst some are disavowing the idea, many Liberals are digging their heels in. $5 isn't that much after all, and poor people shouldn't expect everything for free. Now, it may be hard for someone on a skiing holiday in France to understand just how much difference $5 can make to someone who's barely getting by. (The adviser who recommended the charge condescendingly, and inaccurately, compared it to "the cost of a burger and fries" - because that's what they imagine poor people eat). The dole, for instance, is $35 a day to live on - that has to cover everything;

So, You Don't Believe In Global Warming

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You don't believe in man made global warming. You think the whole idea is rubbish. In other words, you believe that the vast majority of scientists, universities, governments, international insurance corporations, international banking, and the media are all in on an massive global scam to just make shit up. And there is more money to be made from this, apparently, than by telling the truth that fossil fuel burning has no ill environmental effects and we can carry on using them. And only you and a few other brave souls are brave enough to see through this. And they call the Greens fringe dwellers... Anyway, if you're struggling with the concept of how there can be global warming when you remember very hot days from your youth, and we still have cold days now, this handy simple chart sums it up: Although I do notice those who say "so much for global warming LOL, it's snowing in Egypt" never say "well, maybe I was wrong" when we have yet another record-bre

The ABC Isn't Lefty Indoctrination - This Is Lefty Indoctrination

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Ah, the poor old ABC . Seems like no matter what they do, people aren't happy. From the anguish of the left that Howard era hawk Peter Reith features so prominently on political panel show The Drum, to the eternal accusations that the national broadcaster has a leftist bias. Now they're in power, Rupert Murdoch and his cronies will stop at nothing to crush the ABC, culminating in the bizarre accusation this week by that frothing love child of Andrew Bolt and a particularly ravishing cane toad, Piers Akerman, that the harmless darling of preschool programming, Peppa Pig, pushes a weird feminist agenda . Accusations that the ABC has a secret plot to indoctrinate kids with a socialist line are nothing new. We all know Jemima from Playschool is a lesbian - she wears overalls, after all -  and what about the Bananas in Pyjamas? Obviously an unemployed homosexual couple; they never get out of the pyjamas and go to work. And let's not even think about all the coming down the stai

Feminism on the Maternity Ward - The Right To Choose A Caesarian

As we hear of yet another instance of a pregnant woman apparently forced to give birth via c-section , I'm thinking of how many others there must be like me - women forced to give birth vaginally, denied their right to bodily autonomy by being denied the right to give birth by c-section as they desired. For those not familiar with my story, I requested a c-section late in my pregnancy due to psychological reasons at the public hospital I was due to give birth at, and was turned down. I ended up delivering by caesarian, but only after reaching 12 day post dates and a failed 48 hour attempt to induce labour. The full story is  here . A hospital, seeking to keep it's caesarian rates down, deemed my reasons for avoiding vaginal birth unworthy. A woman's right to bodily autonomy is not trumped by a hospital's policy to keep c-section rates down. There may be all sorts of reasons a woman wishes to deliver by c-section, very few of them being because she's "too posh t

Sleep School: What Really Goes On At Tresillian

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Sleep training is one of those emotive parenting topics (and what parenting topics are not emotive?). Should we attempt to get our babies into some sort of sleeping schedule, or leave them to sort themselves out? In the early days of parenting, I firmly came down on the sleep-training-is-cruel side. I left my online mothers group after being supportive came to involve mothers swapping tips on how to stay strong when leaving their six week olds to cry for up to twenty minutes. None of that for us, I thought. We co-slept till BabyG was old enough to go in his cot, which we kept next to the bed, and he was a dream sleeper. I don't know what other women go on about, with the lack of sleep, I thought; this is too easy. Then the dreaded four month sleep regression hit, pretty much down to the day. BabyG went from waking up maybe twice a night, to waking up every hour - one horror night every forty five minutes - and being bloody impossible to get back to sleep. Naps went all out to hell,

Shoot Your Love All Over Me

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In this era of divorce, family breakdown and uncertainty, it can be easy to beocme cynical about the prospect of ever finding true love. So thank goodness that News Limited still knows when to share a story of heartwarming romance with its readers, bringing us the tearjerking tale of Matthew Webb and Audrey Mayo . He accidentally shot her in the leg whilst taking shots at deer - now they're a couple. Aww. As the article says, love can blossom in the most unlikely circumstances. Can you imagine a more perfect start to a relationship? He's a keeper. Photo via  Gawker Audrey Mayo and Matthew Webb officially became a couple on November 21. But that date is also significant for another reason. It's the day Matthew accidentally shot Audrey. The pair were hanging out on the roof of Matthew's mother's house in the small town of LaFayette, Georgia. He spotted some deer across the road and decided to try and shoot one. Ms Mayo stayed on the roof, but soon thought she heard Ma

Summer Fun With The HCCC

Received a letter in the mail this week informing me the Health Care Complaints Commission will not be proceeding with my complaint over  events leading up to the birth of Baby G . The HCCC has come to this conclusion after a rigorous investigative process which consisted of asking the hospital, and specifically the nurse who initially refused the c-section, if they'd done anything wrong. Both the hospital and nurse have replied that they don't feel they didn't do anything wrong. Well that's okay then! Case closed. Be on your way. I especially like the part of the letter that says "the nurse denies being rude or condescending to you, stating that this is not part of her normal practice". Well of course she's going to say that isn't she. "Are you ever rude to patients?" "All the damn time, you bet I am! You've got to let them know their place". Sigh. I have asked for a review, based on the one thing I seem to have on my side righ

Do We Really Just Hate Kids?

More of the "trouble with kids these days" from an acquaintance on Facebook, and whilst I've blamed the problems of kids these days on economic rationalism , this  thread on Reddit  made me wonder if the problem with kids these days is that we hate them. For a society that claims to venerate children so much, we sure show in so many ways that we don't actually like them. Children and parenting are the other; to be kept marginalised and out of sight until the messy, unpleasant business of being a kid is done. It starts early, with complaints about pregnant TV presenters and public breastfeeding; graphic depictions of motherhood should be kept out of the public eye. Then there's the rise of the parent-shaming websites, attacking people for oversharing their parenting experiences. Whilst I wouldn't post about my child's poop myself, early parenthood does involve a great deal of the stuff and you do get a little obsessed (and that's me, who prior to having

STFU Parents Should Know When To STFU

The media image of today's parents is as demanding, overindulgent creatures convinced that what they're doing in raising children is a rare and delicate work of genius. There's a tiny nugget of truth in there, and the blog  STFU Parents  is there to dig it up, as they hilariously lampoon self-righteous parents who throw hissy fits at strangers not being sufficiently attentive to their child, or share with their Facebook audience their children's bowel movements. Sometimes parents can be irritating jerks, just like real people. And sometimes blogs that poke fun at parents' foibles can be irritating jerks, too. Sometimes STFU Parents ventures so far into "gosh, parents are so awful" territory they become self righteous and irritating themselves. I'm still shaking my head at the post which made fun of the mother of a special needs child for taking pride in her son's achievements, but the latest sanctimonious missive on how parents should behave is t