MK’s Views - Down under on the right side

WordPress seems buggered folks, they upgraded it earlier today and since then, it takes around 30 minutes just to open a page and another 30 to just post something. So posting will be light, sorry, but hopefully it won’t be for long.

Brisbane Times - The Queensland Government will rethink its road safety advertising campaign after more than 14,000 drivers were caught speeding over the first three days of Easter and nearly 500 charged with drink driving, Premier Anna Bligh said yesterday. Last year, just over 10,000 drivers were caught speeding over the full four days. “As a result of the continued speeding on our roads and the continued drink driving on our roads, I will be talking to the Queensland Police Service and the Minister for Transport about what else we can look at,” Ms Bligh said.

“I think it is time to revisit some of our advertising to get that message home,” she said. “People become very complacent, unfortunately. “It doesn’t matter how many times we see on our roads that people are dying unnecessarily, young children being killed, the safety message for some people is just not getting through.” Queensland Transport’s main road safety campaign through 2007-08 is its “Enough is Enough” campaign, designed for a general target audience. Ms Bligh applauded the efforts of police in trying to control the road toll, but said the responsibility had to be sheeted home to drivers. Continue reading Time to wake up and take responsibility…

National Review Online, Feb 11, 2008 Edition, The Week - A new study says that mandatory diversity training backfires: After looking at data from 830 workplaces, researchers discovered that sensitivity seminars and their ilk led to declines in the number of women and minorities in management. Black men seemed to suffer the most. When their colleagues attended mandatory sessions on just how hard it is for different kinds of folks to get along, their ranks thinned by 12 percent. The worst offenders, according to the study, are corporations that parrot a politically correct mantra for the sake of fending off discrimination lawsuits. It raises the prospect of a delicious irony, if women and minorities start to sue employers that make everyone suffer through workshops on color consciousness. Continue reading Some Reading I Thought I should Share…

Who is currently consigned to the spam bin, bon apetit toilet-boy. Image thanks to Flickr.

What makes me angry is this culture of no responsibility, these sacks of waste go out to have a good time and take drugs even though we are saturated will bloody messages of “Drugs are bad”, “Drugs are bad”, “Drugs are bad”, “Drugs are bad”, “Drugs are bad”. Fine, take them, knock yourselves out, do whatever the hell you want to then, but it doesn’t stop there, when they turn up at the emergency room half dead, they’re saved which is real swell, but who pays for it?

Continue reading Hospitals Inundated with Drug Overdoses…

The Australian - MALCOLM Fraser has reopened his long-running feud with John Howard, accusing Mr Howard of opposing Australia’s large intake of refugees after the Vietnam War. Mr Fraser claims Mr Howard approached him in a corridor following a cabinet meeting in May 1977 and said: “We don’t want too many of these people. We’re doing this just for show, aren’t we?” Mr Fraser, who was prime minister at the time, told The Australian that he had rebuffed his junior minister, telling Mr Howard: “You could have spoken in the cabinet room. You didn’t, and what you say to me I didn’t hear.”

What is it with old leaders and letting go once they’ve had their chance, usually it’s Leftist ones [Keating, Carter, Clinton] who just can’t stop meddling and making irritating comments from the peanut gallery. It’s over, you’ve had your shot, if you didn’t make the best of it, well that’s really sad and all that but for the sake of everyone, just butt out and focus on gardening or golf or something. To his credit John Howard doesn’t seem interested in taking the bait and having a petty squabble over the past, good on him for that.

Mr Howard denied through a spokesman having made the comment, and said he did not recall any conversation with Mr Fraser on the issue. After checking with The Australian on the date of the cabinet decision on refugees - May 23 - the spokesman added that Mr Howard was minister for business and consumer affairs at the time and was not a member of the cabinet. “He would only have been called into cabinet usually on economic matters,” he said.

There, just go away now Mal, have some chocolate or cocoa and go to sleep or something, we don’t want to hear the whining and carping from the old days.

Washington Times - Forty percent of Americans say they would vote to keep Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton from winning the presidency, more than twice the total for their No. 2 “anti-” pick, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. In a new Fox 5-The Washington Times-Rasmussen Reports survey, 64 percent of Republicans, 42 percent of third-party or independent voters, and 17 percent of Democrats said the candidate they most want to keep from the White House is Mrs. Clinton. “Hillary Clinton is better known than any [other] presidential candidate on either side. She has a lot of people who love her and a lot of people who hate her,” said Scott Rasmussen, who conducted the poll.