Red Rag

  

    

  

Great spot. More details here.

Have a nice Easter break, everyone. I’m off to Moore River for rest, relaxation and iPod battles.

In a recent post, Manas pointed out the dismal performance of employers in the hospitality industry, who display a total disregard for their employees on the Restarurant, Tearoom and Catering Award:

[O]ver 90% of employers surveyed breached the award in some way, with more than 65% of those employers failing to pay even the correct hourly rate, and 12 % failing to pay proper weekend work entitlements.

It’s not surprising, then, that a television competition involving restaurants would show the same contempt for its workers.

Sydney’s Pink Salt restaurant thinks it’s okay to vary its staff’s pay without informing them, cutting their wages by $300 a week and failing to give them pay slips. Apparently $10 an hour is an acceptable rate for a qualified sous chef.

The wannabe restaurateur says it was merely a “misunderstanding” and that he was “naive,” but as he’s an accountant by trade I expect him to be on top of these very basic issues.

Feel free to let Pink Salt know that they’ve lost your vote.

Just hypothetically, if I was to participate in some kind of mix-CD swap, this is what I’d choose:

1. Ben Folds Five — Kate
2. Magic Dirt — All my Crushes
3. The Reigning Sound — You Got Me Humming
4. Propagandhi — I Want U 2 Want Me
5. Frente — Bizarre Love Triangle
6. The Lucksmiths — Punchlines
7. Cherry Poppin’ Daddies — When I Change Your Mind
8. The Distillers — Beat Your Heart Out
9. Fabulous Disaster — GIA
10. The Stray Cats — Fishnet Stockings
11. Missy Higgins — Good in Bed
12. Tim Rogers — Makin’ Toast
13. Dan Brodie & the Broken Arrows — Highway Lovin’ Man
14. Jebediah — Harpoon
15. The Cruel Sea — The Honeymoon is Over
16. The Salt Flat Trio — Moanin’ the Blues
17. Billie Holiday — Without Your Love
18. Ween — Baby Bitch

Hypothetically, of course.

Flickr: making ransom notes fun.

(Via Craftapalooza.)

It appears that Daniel’s bout of swearing was for nought. What a relief!

Where a negligently-performed sterilisation operation results in the conception and birth of a healthy child, the parents ought be entitled to sue for the cost of raising the child. Discuss.

Ramsey on Matt Birney: “He is his father’s son.“

Jess tells us that US teenagers who take an “abstinence pledge” to stay virgins until marriage are just as likely as non-pledgers to catch an STD, but less likely to see a doctor about it. Meanwhile, Grant points out that teenagers in a NSW town whose chemist doesn’t sell condoms “for personal ethical reasons” are three times as likely to fall pregnant as their peers elsewhere in the state.

Guns, smugglers, freedom fighters, children’s hospitals, accusations, denials, media scrums — hasn’t Senator Ross Lightfoot’s Murky Mesopotamian Mystery provided us with an entertaining couple of days?

I don’t particularly care whether Lightfoot carried a gun without doing the paperwork, or whether he left it in the car. And I’m not bothered about whether he physically carried the money out of the country, either. To my mind, the real story here is a senator who has consistently used his parliamentary office to push his own financial barrow.

Read the rest of this entry…

For the benefit of Tim Blair, I think it’s fantastic that the McCartney sisters are standing up for their murdered brother against the Rafia. There is no longer a place for paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, and they should be disbanded.

Unfortunately, the cries of scandal and calls for disarmament seem to head in one direction only. People who want to score cheap points will dwell on the crimes of one side, but will ignore those of the other:

Raymond McCord launched a blistering attack on the two major unionist parties, accusing them of condemning the IRA killing yet ignoring the pain within their own community. Mr McCord, whose son Raymond Jnr, 22, was beaten to death and his body dumped in a north Belfast quarry in 1997, believes the Special Branch blocked the police inquiry into the murder to protect a high-ranking Ulster Volunteer Force informer.

[...]

Mr McCord, who has spoken out against the UVF men he insists were behind the merciless attack, praised the McCartney family’s tireless campaign. “I totally support what the sisters are doing. I went to visit them at their house, I’ve been on the phone to them, and I hope they get justice,” he insisted.

“But why have people within unionism stayed silent on the murders of our sons[?] The UVF has murdered something like 30 Protestant people since their so-called ceasefire.” Even Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has publicly called for the McCartney killers to come forward and give statements to Mrs O’Loan’s office, he added.

“It seems to me that nationalist MPs have no qualms about fighting for their community but within unionism it’s the complete opposite. The stance they have taken, and their hypocrisy, is staggering.”

Why no mention of Mr McCord on Tim’s blog? He’s great.

He was going to hold off until Easter, but Mark Bahnisch is addicted to blogging. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Larvatus Prodeo.

Jess suggested that we should all take some time out to thank and congratulate bloggers and commenters who make us smile. Not a bad idea.

I’d like to thank everyone who has started a blog in the last twelve months. There’s been an explosion of top quality Australian blogging recently, which poses a slight problem (it’s hard to read everything regularly) but that’s far outweighed by the entertainment and debate they contribute. Give yourselves a pat on the back.

And now the specifics. Lately I’ve been enjoying Spiceblog, Catallaxy Files, Le Driver, and Mark Bahnisch. Keep up the good work.

You might remember that I was quite angry over a recent discussion about the treatment of a lesbian student teacher. The subject of that discussion, Jane, has commented at Troppo Armadillo. Unfortunately, the homophobes won:

[I]f I were ever in the same position again, I would never set foot in a school attended by a student who had knowledge of my sexuality. I have already turned down CRT work in a school near my home for that reason.

And furthermore:

I do believe that gay teachers ought to able to be out in their school communities without it causing any fuss — but I think we’re a very long way from that position. … But for now, when I’m at a school, I am firmly in the closet. I don’t like being in there, but that’s how it has to be.

This is exactly what I was talking about when I complained that the requirement for “discretion” bears more heavily on gay people than on straight people in the same situation. Jane has been forced to turn down work near her home for fear that a child might see her with her partner on the weekend. Straight teachers do not have that fear, and indeed would typically prefer to work as close to home as possible.

Certain people were content to slag Jane off behind her back, but then sheepishly admitted they were wrong when she turned up to confront them. Those half-hearted apologies don’t mean a damn thing — you wouldn’t have to apologise if you didn’t make stupid, unjustified and offensive assumptions in the first place.

(I wasn’t going to post about this except that Ken apparently deleted a comment critical of his “arrogant and condescending” apology and closed the comments thread. For shame.)

Update: The comments thread is open again.

Scott Fitzsimmons, who is running for the Perth City Council in the election this May, has a campaign blog.