Minimalism???

OK – I’m not sure if this is the real term for what people are calling it, but it shits me. And it shits my Fiance, too.

This is the thing that it seems bogans are using to justify their inability to spell or display correct grammar. In one of my first posts, I talked about how I blame this kind of crap for the downfall of society. If you can’t write, you can’t speak. And that turns you into an inbred bogan.

This is what the above paragraph would look like if written by one of these inbreds:

this is the thing that it seems bogans are using to justify their inability to spell or display correct grammer. in one of my first posts i talked about how i blame this kind of crap for the downfall of society. if you can’t write you can’t speak. and that turns you into an inbred bogan.

Do you want to know the sad thing? That pathetic display of English is a GOOD example. Some blogs don’t bother with full stops, commas or apostrophes either. That would turn the above paragraph into nothing more than a jumble of words.

What it screams to me is: I’m lazy. I’m uneducated. I really couldn’t be f**ked taking pride in myself or my work.

The PROBLEM is that if people keep doing this crap, then young people will start to get used to it (as if they aren’t already), and before you know it, they start writing like that all the time. Pretty soon, those young people grow into adults, but they don’t change, because “they’ve always done it that way”, and then THEIR kids grow up not knowing any better. Before you know it, we all write and speak like we grew up in Bumfuck, Eygpt (sorry Tater).

If you can’t even manage to spell “I” correctly, how f**king lazy are you? When I come across a website or blog with text that bad, I close it immediately. I refuse to waste MY time working with a company or individual who can’t even be arsed to show me that they are professional and/or take pride in themselves.

So grow the F up Australia. Start learning to spell. Learn how to use commas – and more importantly, apostrophes, correctly. Know the difference between “your and you’re”, between “there, their and they’re” and definately between “then and than”. Here’s a quick lesson for some of you:

If one thing is big and another is small, you would say that one is bigger THAN the other. If you went to the movies and the shops on the weekend, you would say you went shopping THEN to the movies. GET IT RIGHT! It really isn’t that hard.

 

Police

Usually, I like cops. Almost from the day I was born, my mother worked for the state police department, so I grew up around Police – until I joined the Army.

Sure, there’s bad apples out there. There are in every job, aren’t there? But in general, I think cops are trying to do the right thing with what they’ve got.

There are two things that shit me about our Police force. One is the restrictions they have to operate under and the other is when civilians get away with treating our cops like shit.

The restrictions are ridiculous. One of my Army Reserve mates is a Police Sergeant, and the stories he tells me are amazing. Things like cops are not exempt from speed cameras when they’re working. Even if they’re responding to a call. Isn’t that stupid? How do they get to where they’re needed if they can’t rush?

What about the need for cops to carry a voice recorder – or even a video camera because of bogans? This friend of mine used to spend up to a week each month in court as a witness, from when people he had booked lodged an appeal. Generally, he won all his cases, but that was because he started recording every interaction when he pulled people over. If you ask me, he shouldn’t have to do that.

And it’s not like people were appealing getting stopped while going down a hill or anything like that. It was just about how the individual cop was rude, abusive, or gave them a ticket even though they hadn’t broken any laws. Enter the tape recording. Case closed.

But what all that meant was that every time he was in court – and every case is a whole day (because the cases run quickly, so there’s no timetable) – he’s not out there being a cop. So on average, he was spending almost two days each week in court. If you do the crime, do the time. If you speed and get a ticket, just pay the f**king thing and stop tying up our Police in frivilous cases.

I also get a little sick of cops having to defend their actions every other day. Two big cases always stick in my mind. The first one is Macquarie Fields. If you don’t know about it, it happened a few years back now. Basically, two no-hoper teenagers (on the dole, smoking drugs, etc, etc) stole a car.

They were seen by Police and a chase ensued. The young driver who had little experience behind the wheel, was driving too fast, and from memory was effected by alcohol or drugs. Anyway, the driver took a corner too fast, lost control and hit a tree, killing himself and I think his mate.

The problem here is that the locals (bogans) blamed the cops. They say the Police should have stopped the chase because they were exceeding the speed limit. They demanded an inquest into the whole thing, wasting tax payers money, only to discover that it was driver error. Why should the cops, who were doing the right thing and trying to apprehend criminals, have to defend their actions?

The second case was a seige in country Victoria. A man had taken his family hostage and was threatening to kill them. Police turned up and courdened off the street, trying to get the man to give up. A few hours in, one cop was sitting in his car, which was parked on the lawn of the house next door to the seige.

The guy comes out of his house, waving a knife around and threatening to kill his family and the cops. And then he made a mistake. He stepped off his porch and onto the front lawn.

Our mate in the Police car slipped it into Drive and aimed his car at the guy. He clipped the guy’s leg and knocked him on his arse. The other cops ran in, removed the knife and arrested the perp – saving the family without killing anyone. I think the guy had a sprained or broken leg, but IMHO, so what.

Civil Liberty groups were calling for the cop to be charged for using his car as a weapon. They were even calling for Attempted Murder. I say – give the cop a f**king medal. Sure, if the guy waved a knife at me, I’d probably be inclined to bring the whole thing to an end for the cost of a single 9mm round instead of hours of police time, followed by a lengthy trial, where the guy would probably be found mentally unstable and get medical treatment at tax payers expense.

There’s lots of these stories out there, and it shits me that cops can’t just go about their job, catching the bad guys and making us all safe, because they have to spend their time defending themselves.

Kind of along these lines, is when cops are trying to do the right thing, people respond badly, and cops get a bad rap. Classic example is coming to a noisy party. Neighbours deserve to get some sleep at 2am, and not be kept awake by drunken f**kheads who have no self control. When the cops are called and they drop by, they’re often met by these drunken yobs who swear and spit at the cops.

If I was a cop, I’d lock them up – but then I’d be doing more paperwork explaining myself. Bottom line is, if you’re being a wanker and the cops tell you to stop – then f**king stop.

There was a case about two years ago, when a cop was patrolling a train station. A young bloke jumped over a safety barrier and walked across the tracks while a train was coming.

The cop followed the guy, intending to give him a lecture about safety, but the guy told him to “Fuck off”. The cop charged him and the guy appealed. The whole thing ended up in court, where the judge basically told the cop – and the entire Police force – to harden up. He claimed that the language was fairly common, and Police should have thicker skin and be able to deal with it. The guy got off the charge.

What is the world coming to, when that’s acceptable? I’m sure you don’t have to have been brought up around Police to understand that when they step in to uphold the law, you do as you’re told.

And how recently have you seen a cop doing traffic control? For me, it was today. We drove past a farmer’s market, for f**k’s sake, and there were two cops controlling access to the carpark. And I’ve lost count of how many times I drive past roadworks and they’re using marked cars to encourage drivers to slow down.

Why aren’t the companies who are effecting the traffic responsible for safety? Those cops should be out there stopping seiges or chasing drunken bogans. And they can’t do that when they have to play nurse-maid to markets.

No wonder the Police are always under-manned. No wonder that when you ring at 2am because your f**khead neighbours (are you listening, 89 Clarke St?) are yelling and screaming their heads off, that it takes two hours for them to arrive. Because all the cops who SHOULD be on patrol, are sitting at roadworks in case someone does 50kph in a 40kph zone.

I support our cops. I think they do a great job and they should be left alone to do it properly.