I hate the media

They sensationalise every f**king thing. God forbid they wrote an article praising emergency services or the military. There is a story on www.news.com.au this morning about a South American man who “allegedly” stole a packet of biscuits, got tasered three times by police – and then died. You can read the story here.

But as always, I ask my standard question: What was this guy doing, that saw police need to taser him? The answer in this case is that he resisted arrest, then ran from police. They tasered him, but he recovered and was able to fight off up to five policemen before running away again. So, he was tasered again.

I see this as completely legitimate reasons for tasering. Police are empowered with catching criminals and seeing that charges are laid. And that’s exactly what they’ve tried to do in this case. If we were in any number of other countries, the guy would have been shot. But because of all our civil libertarians, the cops have to use tasers. And when they do – they get interogated by beaurocrats.

There’s a line in the article that asks why the man wasn’t just crash-tackled or over-powered. If Mark Morri (the author) read his own work, he’d see that the cops TRIED that. But despite being tasered already, the crim was able to fight these guys off.

And there was a story on the same website a few days ago where police tasered another guy – who subsequently died. There was a call from civil liberties groups to put a suspension on tasering. But you know what? It’s because of these groups that we have tasers in the first place! THEY are the ones that wanted a “less than lethal” alternative. But it seems that if someone with a bad heart dies from a taser – that’s the police’s fault.

It’s all well and good for the public, or these groups, or politicians to sit back after the fact and analyse every second of the incident and seek explanations as to why police followed the course of action that they did. But when you’re THERE, and shit is going down – you don’t have that luxury.

If a guy is able to fight off FIVE cops, he deserves every f**king thing he gets. If a crim continues to resist, the cops need to put them down. I don’t mean that in the euthanasia way, but in the sense that they need to bring the struggling to an end. Thanks to the civil liberties groups, they can’t just draw their weapon and shoot – they have to use a taser. And if the crim is uneffected by the taser, then the cop needs to decide AGAIN – do we taser or shoot?

In my opinion, regardless of who you are, where you’re from or what your background is: if a cop draws a gun or taser and tells you to stop – YOU STOP. And if you don’t – then face the consequences of your actions, champ. I have no problem with cops tasering anyone until they comply. If death comes as a result of bad choices by the criminal, then so be it.

Really, that means one less person we taxpayers have to pay to keep in jail. I am behind the police 100% on this. I think these guys (and gals!) do an amazing job in a world that is going mad. We want the police to do a better job, but the government cuts their funding, gives them bullshit payrises, continues to impose tougher and tougher restrictions, and then complains when things go wrong.

It’s the same in the military – our budgets get cut, our training gets cut, our powers get taken away. But the government expects us to do a better job than before – and then hangs us out to dry when things go bad.

I think the media should be singing the praises of these guys and girls. It wouldn’t have been hard to write that article, stating that police had to defend themselves to bring the guy down, or to state that they were being overpowered and potentially had their lives in danger. But no, it has to be negative about the police, doesn’t it.

Arseholes.

Truckies

For all of you out there who just went “Hell, yeah!” after reading the title, shame on you. I want to start this post by saying that I’m talking about Semi trailer drivers here, not the drivers of what the Brits call a “lorry”. For me, lorry drivers fall into one of two categories: Semi driver wannabes, or frustrated race drivers who don’t know their own skills.

And secondly, this post isn’t AGAINST the truckies. I have a lot of respect for truckies. They work their arses off against ridiculous deadlines, and they have to deal with f**kheads on the road. It’s these drivers that I would like to discuss now.

I have enough trouble trying to drive my little Mazda around the city, and so I feel for the guys driving 22 wheelers (or bigger), dealing with the same shitheads as me. It’s hard enough to change lanes in MY car. But what about a 30 metre long truck?

What I see on the roads makes me shudder. Have you ever been cut-off in traffic? Well imagine being behind the wheel of a 40 tonne bohemoth that takes a good 150 metres to stop, only to have a 19 year old P plater pull in front of you and then brake. I see this about once a week.

The thing is, if the P plater pulls in front of the truck and slams on the brakes. By the time the truckie even realises what has happened, they have turned that little Suzuki Swift or Nissan Micra into a floor mat. But then the truckie gets charged by the police, and needs counselling to deal with what has happened.

People out there need to know what it’s like to drive a truck through traffic. If you’re man enough (or woman enough), get a car with a 750kg trailer and give it a whirl. In Australia, 750kg is the maximum weight a trailer can be without needing it’s own brakes. Even behind an SUV, a 750kg trailer will completely change the way you drive.

No longer can you drag off someone at the lights. No longer can you stop on a dime. And no longer can you just change lanes whenever you feel like it. All of a sudden, all these seemingly easy tasks take planning and forethought. Not to mention the need to second guess what every other driver is doing. I speak from experience here, being the owner of a camper trailer, and needing to maneuvre through the city to get into the wilderness.

I have the utmost respect for truckies. 95% of them are the most professional, experienced drivers you’ll find on the roads. Sure, there are some that will pull out in front of you, but even those guys (who infuriate me, too) will argue that sometimes you just need to put your foot down. When you’re 30m long and weigh 40T, you could wait all day to find a big enough gap in traffic.

And if you happen to be on the highway, here’s a couple of tips for YOU to help out these guys. And they’re so simple, that to ignore them, you could be accused of deliberately making life difficult for the truckies.

1 – If a truck comes up behind you and intends to overtake, DON’T SLOW DOWN. Keep a constant speed. This will allow the truckie (who can see OVER your car) to plan ahead. When the truck pulls out and is completely in the next lane, THEN you can slow down if you want. This will allow the truck to pass you as quickly as possible.

2 – Once the rear end of the trailer passes your car, flash your headlights. Once again, when you’re vehicle is 30m long, it’s a little hard to judge just when you’ve made it past someone. A few flashes of your lights will let the truckie know he’s good to change lanes again.

Point 1 is particularly relevant to caravaners. Many of them seem to slow down when there’s a truck up their bum, in the mistaken belief they’re doing the right thing. If they could hear the string of frustrated expletives coming from the truckie, they’d realise what a problem they’re being.

You should also try to make life easy for these guys whenever you’re on the road. When you see a semi trailer cruising along, be a bit sympathetic and be prepared to let them in if they indicate. If they’re behind you, try to avoid sudden braking. If you’re approaching lights, gently touch your brake so your lights come on, and brake gradually. The more space you can give the truck to slow down or stop, the less chance the police will have to scrape you up with a pizza shovel.

Something else I try to do is pre-empt green traffice lights. Alot of truckies do this too. It takes a long time to get a semi up to speed, and believe me, they KNOW people hate them taking forever to reach the speed limit. You’ll often see them start creeping forward when the light is about to turn green. This is to get the wheels moving, and make things a little easier to speed up. So if you know the light sequence, stop a little short of the line. When you know the lights are about to turn green, take your foot off the brake and start moving forward. You won’t just make life easier for the truckie, but for all the cars behind him, too.

What other tips do you have to help out these road warriors? And if you’re a truckie, let me know what else we can do to help you guys out.

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.

The problem with society

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but just what the hell is going on with the law in our society? I have always believed in the concept that the law is supposed to represent the values that a society expects. And the law is supposed to support those people trying to meet those expectations.

But over time, we’ve all seen that concept wither away so that innocent people are put at the disadvantage. I’m sure if I tried hard enough, I could find a way to blame this on Gen Y, but I’m not 100% sure that would be fair. I do believe that their “The world owes me a living” and “Whatever I have done wrong, it’s someone else’s fault” attitude and way of life is a major contributing factor, though.

The latest in stupid laws that SHOULD protect the innocent, but instead helps the guilty, is the humble “Beware of dog” sign. No, I am NOT shitting you. This sign apparently began in the Roman times. It read CAVE CANUM (pronounced Kah-way, not Cave). The Romans loved their little lap dogs, so the sign was actually designed to warn visitors that there were small dogs in the area, so that they would be stepped on. Over time, the sign has developed into a warning to visitors that if you come into the yard, you may very well get bitten.

As it happens, police in various Australian states have verified that if you put up a “Beware of dog” sign, or in fact any sign warning people that by venturing into your yard they may experience unwelcome attention by your dog, you are admitting the fact that your dog is dangerous. So what does this mean to you?

What it means is any from your admission of guilt that your dog is dangerous, which means that if someone jumps your fence with the intent of breaking into your home, and your dogs bites them……you have admitted liability. The burglar can sue you. In extreme cases (I believe this is the case in Victoria), the RSPCA can actually seize your dog and “euthenase” it. Without your permission. Because you have accepted that it’s dangerous.

WHY does this sign NOT work in favour of the tenant? WHYcan’t it simply mean “If you come into my yard, you will be bitten”? And then, if some genius decides to ignore your sign an jump your fence, they deserve everything – and every stitch – they get as a result.

You’ve heard me say this before – stupid doesn’t hurt anymore. If you’re dumb enough to walk up to a fence, behind which is one pissed off German Shepherd barking at you, and there’s a sign saying “Beware of dog”, and you are stupid, and you go in the yard. That should be YOUR fault. End of story.

Give me a break!

Today’s whinge is quite specific. I’m an amateur photographer, and the most important thing about my hobby is knowing my rights.

Despite how things work overseas, in Australia we have no privacy laws. If you’re in a public place, someone has the right to take your photo without your knowledge or permission. So basically, if you don’t want someone photographing your bad or lewd behaviour, don’t do it.

The issue people like me face is that we get lumped in with people who are, effectively, criminals. If I go to my son’s soccer game, I have the right to photograph him, his team mates, the parents, the coach, the people on the next field, etc, etc. Providing of course, the oval is on Public Property. If it’s private, only the owner has the authority to make me stop.

The same applies at the shops, in the street or even on the beach. If you turn up to the beach in a micro bikini, I can photograph you. If you are happy to be seen in public like that, you can’t decide that you don’t want to be photographed like that. In Australia, you have no authority to make that call.

However, if I want to use that photo to sell my shampoo, I DO need your permission, because that is Commercial Use.

Where MY rights start to be challenged is when the authorities think they are trying to stop paedophiles. For some reason, a male with a large camera and large lens seems to equal criminal. When I – and others like me – take photos, we usually stand out a mile away.

Do you think that if I wanted to take photos of a 6 year old girl in bathers for my own disgusting use, that I would turn up with that kind of gear? Or would I sneakily use my mobile phone?

Authorities, and society, need to wake the hell up. Stop punishing people like me who want to take photos of sunsets, classic cars, surfers, or people having fun. If you want to stop criminals from plying their trade, increase police patrols or ban mobile phones. Don’t stop the bloke with a DSLR and big lens from participating in a hobby.

What are they thinking

My second biggest bugbear – after bad drivers – is the state of our legal system. I’m not quite sure at what point criminals started being entitled to better protection and having more rights than innocent citizens, all I know is, it shits me to tears.

There are times when the law is overly excessive and some times when it just fails completely. And sadly, there seems to be no correlation between the two. Allow me to explain.

Just recently, a woman in Australia was charged for making a false accusation against a police officer. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think cops have the hardest job on the planet, but listen to this. A cop pulled over a P Plater, and breathalized her. The big issue is that she was wearing a Burkha. Obviously, the cop told her she would need to remove the face part so she could complete the breathalizer test.

Naturally, she refused. I guess she figured she didn’t need to comply with the law because of her religion – who knows. At some point during this incident, the young girl let fly with a tirade against the cop, screamed that all cops are racist, and then filed a complaint against him, stating that he physically tried to remove the head piece of her Burkha.

The young girl ended up being charged, because she’d made a false accusation, and lied in a sworn statement. In Australia, that can get you up to 2 years in prison, but it pretty much never happens – except here. The young girl was sentenced to 6 months behind bars. The Judge explained that these types of accusations against police are VERY serious, and can end their career, hence the steep penalty.

I’m all for this girl being punished for using her religion to attack a policeman, but where is the common sense in the sentence? Earlier this year, a caucasion P Plater (again, female) was pulled over for speeding. Another driver saw her speed past and called the cops. He stated on the phone that the car was going so fast, the only description he could give was “White”.

The cops tracked her down and pulled her over. She was clocked at 180 kph in a 100 kph zone, blew almost 4 times the legal limit, had an open bottle of vodka beside her, had a passenger in the car, and was pregnant. Naturally, she was charged and went to court.

The magistrate admitted that this was the single worst case of P Plater drink driving he had ever seen. So what do you think her punishment was? She had to pay $76 in court costs. Yep, that’s it. You see the problem was, she was on medication for depression. So how is this case any “less” illegal than the Burkha incident?

This is the kind of crap that results in citizens taking the law into their own hands. If a shop keeper is constantly robbed, so decides to keep a golf club under the counter just in case, and then uses it while being held up, who do you think gets charged? The guy who decided to rob the store, or the honest, hard-worker who wanted to stop his small business being robbed?

The answer is B, the shop keeper. This is another case that happened in the city where I live. He beat a robber over the head and fractured his skull. The store had been robbed once a month for almost a year, and the guy had had enough. So he went to court for causing grievous bodily harm.

When will our courts and our legal system start to enforce laws that reflect society’s standards? After all, isn’t that what it’s there for, and why we ask trained officers to protect us? If they’re not able to uphold the standards that our society holds dear, let’s f**k them off and do it ourselves.

There’s a town in the USA, in Kentucky I think, where the law states that every resident over the age of 10 MUST carry a firearm when in public. Care to guess what their crime rate is?