Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Tony Abbott:

help.news @ news.com.au to me
show details 09:03 (33 minutes ago)


Your comment has been published:
After listening to Wally Lewis and Mick Slater on TV ... I am not too sure that Tony Abbott will come out any better if he's coached by Marcus West. In fact, it would be disastrous for Abbott to begin speaking like an hysterical clown or a wind-up doll.

To view your comment online go to: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/tony-abbott-heading-for-acting-school/story-e6freuzr-1225848226419

Please note the Editor may have slightly edited your comment to be suitable for publishing.

Letter to Premier

Hon Premier ... We need your intercession please. I am pensioner, ex army, now teacher. My son, Oliver, manages IT store in rural Casino. He has daughter whom he visits fortnightly. He has newly-purchased house in nearby Rappville [20km]. Last Xmas he attended company function in Yamba. After dinner and drinks, Oliver slept over at the Yamba Hotel. Next morning he drove home to Rappville and as he was in his driveway, a police officer approached and applied the breath test. Oliver apparently failed this test. Subsequently Oliver lost his licence for 6 months. Now he can't live in his house, cannot visit his daughter, and has to rent a room in Casino so he can work. The pressure to visit his daughter was irresistible. He was caught driving without a licence. Now he faces further punishment.
All this because an over-zealous police officer booked Oliver in his driveway and after Oliver had slept the night at a hotel because he would not drive under the effects of alcohol. Oliver did the right thing and did not suspect that seven hours later his body still had not rid itself of alcohol.
Now Oliver has to sell his car which he bought last year. He cannot live in his home. He cannot have his daughter with him at Rappville each fortnight. His despair is palpable and depression is drowning him.
Cannot the State of NSW review this calamitous situation, give Oliver a day licence so he can drive to work? After all, he was booked in his driveway after he slept the night at Yamba Hotel? He did not do anything knowingly to break the law and he could not have realised his body's metabolism didn't break down the alcohol consumed the previous night.

Your help is necessary to prevent a woeful miscarriage of justice. Thanks Ms Keneally

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

China is seen to be phobic, insecure and irrational.

China is seen as phobic, insecure and irrational, even though the law is implemented correctly. But what exactly is the law? We are puzzled and not sure if it is worth the trouble to do business with China.

China Daily
30 Mar 2010

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Idiot Australians and their over-stressed Kangaroo

help.news @ news.com.au to me
show details 13:33 (31 minutes ago)


Your comment has been published:

Australians are becoming idiots. Just listen to them on TV or the radio or when they are yelling into their mobile phones. No wonder the poor kangaroo was stressed.

To view your comment online go to: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/travel/tourism-australia-puts-skippy-in-a-cage-on-los-angeles-streets/story-e6frezhr-1225844954325

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Ruby League has failed as a sport

help.news @ news.com.au to me
show details 10:43 (18 minutes ago)


Your comment has been published:
I have ceased to follow Rugby League because Gallop is incompetent and the referees are useless and this betting thing is not conducive to sportsmanship. If referees were intelligent, the game would be a bit better.

To view your comment online go to: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/eric-grothes-last-gasp-try-gives-parramatta-first-nrl-win-of-season-against-manly/story-e6frexnr-1225843408351

Six reasons why China's political system actually works

I have kept a copy of these six arguments that I myself have espoused for many years. The Chinese political model is made for the moment and in true Marxist manner, will further adapt to the moment as societies bend and flex and meander through History. We all can learn from the Chinese model and adapt to our own circumstances, for that is exactly what the Chinese themselves have done.

China Daily
21 Mar 2010

Monday, March 8, 2010

China Daily 8 Mar 2010: China Century by Adrian Keefe

Think again: It may not be China century
Comments on this article For more discussions,please go to the forum
Total 5
Adrian Keefe 2010-03-08 17:07
It is China's century because no where else on Earth do 1.3 billion people pull together in social and national effort. No where else on Earth is there such a national pride among so many people. Even if there are some poor people, they haven't been forgotten by the others. This is what makes this century belong to China. It is unique among nations.

China is unique

It is China's century because no where else on Earth do 1.3 billion people pull together in social and national effort. No where else on Earth is there such a national pride among so many people. Even if there are some poor people, they haven't been forgotten by the others. This is what makes this century belong to China. It is unique among nations.

China Daily
8th Mar 2010

Friday, March 5, 2010

rural life in oz

Adrian Keefe MA [Deakin]
Grafton Street
Tabulam 2469
Engaexperience@gmail.com



Mr Thomas George MP
Lismore


Dear Mr George

Again I write to you for your intercession in a matter that looms as great a social malady as any I can imagine for us rural communities.

It combines suicide with the lack of public facilities such as transport. Tabulam is a focal point and an example of this malady.

Last year we buried young Jacob Staveley. He hanged himself out of despair. Centrelink hounded him. In order to pacify Centrelink he drove everywhere to find work, often in an unregistered vehicle as he had not the means to pay for registration.

The Jubullum community out here have no footpath to connect them with Tabulam. They cannot at will summon the community vehicle to take an individual or family to town or to visit others in other communities. They end up driving, often without a licence, and more often in unregistered vehicles. The seeds of criminality begin this way, from despair.

My son manages a shop in Casino. He has a daughter in Coffs. He is paying off a car so that he can get to work from Rappville to Casino and to bring his daughter up from Coffs to Rappville for alternate weekends.

Last year his employer held a Xmas party at Yamba. My son slept in his car rather than drive home inebriated. However, when breath tested the following day, he was over the limit.

By definition any driver who is DUI and requires a car to get to work and to perform employment duties has lost the ability to be employed. The subsequent pressure from dependants is enormous. Thus drivers break the law by continuing to serve their social and family responsibilities.

It is the legal condition which fails to consider the social condition. It is the foundation for suicide in our rural communities. This is common knowledge and has been academically researched until the proverbial cows come home. My own post graduate studies into the rural condition reveal a growing
sense of anomie among our young people.

I see it every day out here. Yesterday I shook your hand as I alighted from the REX plane; you were standing near my wife with whom you earlier had spoken. You and I often have travelled down and back from Sydney. Our paths had met when you responded so effectively to my letter years ago to prevent the burning of long grass by the SES in Tabulam.

I am 65 years and I have to go to China, Oman and Bangladesh to find employment. No one will employ an educated older person. In order to stave off my own sense of anomie I find an area where I might feel useful. I certainly do not feel useful in our own society. And I share this negativity with many of my fellow rural citizens.

But back to the point: I was shocked to find my son had succumbed to his own dreadful anomie and I fear for his … I dare not say it. He has his degrees from years of self sacrifice and study but all that is open to him is the shop he manages in Casino. And he needs his licence to drive the car which he needs to pay off, and he needs his employment to fulfil his responsibilities to his young daughter in Coffs. And initially he tried to do the right thing by sleeping in his car and not driving it after boozing in Yamba with his workmates.

Young Jacob Staveley, who hanged himself last May at his home near Tabulam, was my son Oliver’s best mate.

I need your perspicacity at its brightest, Mr George, to rectify, if possible, a condition that is itself a paradox. Surely, the legal system is to allow for quirks and vicissitudes in life itself. A reading on a breathalyser need not be indicative of an illegal act and should not necessarily and automatically lead to a result which sets off a chain of events that lead to such awful conclusions as the one that saw young Jacob Staveley take his own life.




With respect



Adrian Keefe
5th March 2010

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Ode to William and Jesse of Globalbridge

William and Jesse,

It is a story that befits many who visit China on trust. They pay their own way, desperate for that niche within some educational institution. They then become servant to that desperate whim, and it is this benumbing ligature that many employers use to rope in their teachers.

When I landed at Xiaoshan I was taken to a section of town that had died many years ago. The EF franchisee didn't quite know into which mausoleum I was to be dumped.

We stumbled up unlit narrow stairs and such was my disappointment, I quickly bade her good night.

It was late, shops were non existent, and I stared at the apple in a plastic bowl. My employer's welcome gift was embellished with a set of chopsticks.

The toilet seat was ugly brown and broken at the front, and it sat there as if it were a plastic lobster. There was no toilet paper. It was as if the weary traveller did not need its utility.

Days later, on a new and merry toilet seat, I was suddenly awash with my own detritus. Now I knew why the toilet seat was always drenched. Each time any of the four loos above my apartment was used, my porcelain belched and sent up its contents in Versuvian chaos.

I could elicit scant concern from my employer and I made up my mind immediately. I arrived back in Australia today.

I had researched the subject matter contained within your recent attachment and I had already drafted my response. But the logistics and the absurdity that is EF Xiaoshan could not allow my being in Beijing on those dates.

That being so, there was no further point to my tolerating the crap that was EF. In the time I was DOS, I initiated structural reforms and lines of communication. As there had not been a DOS since last August, the school was dysfunctional and relied upon reputation and a very eager public to have their children English trained.

But relying on games and pleasant laowai was a bit of a show inasmuch as the progress of students seemed illusory. It was all piss and wind. There was little penetration of the business and adult market. Initiative extended to the colours used to brighten the classrooms.