Month: October 2011

Bravo to Qantas CEO Alan Joyce

liligans totally absurd

For months now the unions have been playing games with Qantas. The national airline was subjected to ‘on again off again flights’. Workers would turn up to work and announce that they were going on strike for an hour or so. This sort of mucking around and disruption by the employees caused many delays and inconveniences for Qantas. And it certainly was causing problems for passengers.

An airline must be able to provide a consistent timetable for connecting flights. But the employees of Qantas did not care about that. They kept on pushing the company to the limit.

Could this go on indefinitely? No company can survive with such blackmailing tactics. Whatever their demands, the employees should have have been prepared to either go on strike totally until Fair Work Australia got involved or continue to work on the days they drew a salary.

Sick of this screwing around by the unions, Qantas called their bluff. Yes, many passengers were inconvenienced yesterday and will be today as well, but the action by CEO Alan Joyce got results. Let’s hope that now they can sort the problem out in a mature fashion.

Times change and with it come changes. Employees in the airline industry has to accept change or more jobs will be lost. It’s called adapting to the present.

As for criticism that Qantas should have given notice that it will ground its fleet, there was a legitimate reason for not doing so. Just as in businesses which have to make certain that a disgruntled or dismissed employee does not interfere with computers etc. Qantas had to ensure that in the heat of the moment some mischief could not be done to its planes. It only takes one hothead to do that sort of damage. That is why Joyce is talking about safety in euphemistic terms.

Occupy Melbourne see sense for now

liligans Politics, Society

When one holds a protest one really does not want to alienate the rest of the public. The people of Melbourne had put up with the protesters for a whole week and became fed up with their abuse of democratic freedom.

There were so many different agendas among the protesters that they had become a collective farce.

Some were against this, some were against that, so they all got together to disturb life downtown. No doubt there were some legitimate grievances among them. Not many as I said in my last post, since Australia is a lucky country when compared with the rest of the world.

The problem with the protesters is that they had been highjacked by formal advisers to the Green Party who saw this collection of copycats as an opportunity to disrupt the status quo. There were the usual suspects who wanted to demonise Israel as well, but there’s nothing new in that.

But mainly they wanted to take a stand against stuff. It was happening elsewhere in the world and this generation wanted to become part of something.

Well, it’s not hard to rouse naive folk by telling them that there failings are due to someone else. A protest sounded good. Sitting on your bum and shouting slogans is easier than going to work, isn’t it?

Anyhow, yesterday, they decided that since the rest of Melbourne was so much against their disruption of the Royal visit they would postpone their venture into destroying the evil monarchy. The vote was close, though.

They will continue their agitating on the weekend or whenever, but for the time being let’s hope that Melbourne can enjoy a pleasant day today.

By the way I’m not a monarchist, but that’s another story.

Occupy Melbourne. Just a bunch of puerile copycats!

liligans Politics, Society, totally absurd

About 100 policemen have just been brought into the city of Melbourne for a rehearsal. The Queen is coming to town tomorrow and so the protesters have decided to demonstrate against the “evil woman”, big business, small business, medium-sized business, the banking system, the weather, the price of petrol, Qantas, Israel (of course) and anything else they can think of. You name it, they’re against it.

Of course these people are not against the dole which supports them while they demonstrate. They are not against students’ allowances which support them while they lie around in the street chanting. They are not against making promises to the police that they will move on when they are asked to and then refusing to move.

So why are these stupid, stupid, spoiled brats throwing a tantrum on public property and causing problems for ordinary Melbournians downtown?

Well, they envy the uprising in the Arab countries. They envy the Wall St protesters who decided to take a stand against the government’s bail-out of big companies.

These Occupy Melbourne, Sydney, Perth etc groups of brats have very little to gripe about and this is the problem. Things are too good for them here in Australia.

If they don’t want to work, then either mummy and daddy will support them or they will get the dole. If they want to study then this will be free and they will also get paid to do so. Out of the public purse!

This sort of bludging is a shameful abuse of democracy. They throw around the term, “democracy” as if they know what it means. For them it means they want rights. The right to TAKE rather than the right to contribute. You can’t talk to these people about responsibility.

It costs a fortune to police these silly circuses, money that could be spent on the genuinely needy members of our society. But try telling that to these excrescences who will turn up tomorrow to mar the visit of the Queen.

Let’s face it, she won’t be perturbed by their carrying-on. She’s seen all sorts of spectacles in her life and had to keep a straight face when confronted by them. This won’t faze her. The police will cope too. They behaved admirably last week after the squatters broke their promise to move on when asked.

So go ahead you silly buggers, make nuisances of yourselves. You have absolutely no idea how lucky you all are to be living in Australia where the police won’t turn hoses on you, even when you deserve it.

I’ve changed my mind about the ransom of Gilad Shalit

liligans What Pisses me off

I just received an email from Jerusalem. It contained a photo of the Welcome Home flags for Gilad Shalit. It’s good to have the kidnapped soldier home again and I am happy for his family who waited a long five years for his return.

Shalit was kidnapped in Israel not Gaza while two of his fellow soldiers were killed by Hamas during the capture. He is very thin like a concentration camp survivor. He will never get over those horrid five years as a hostage.

Originally, I was one of those who was against the exchange of 1000 Palestinian criminals for Gilad. It seemed to be a disproportionate response, a heavy price to pay, and I believed that it would lead to more hostage-taking. But I have now changed my mind because it really won’t make any difference to Hamas. Hamas are determined to wreak havoc on Israel anyway whether it be through missiles or suicide bombers or hostage-taking.

I also believe that the Israelis have resigned themselves to living with the status quo after so many failed attempts to find a peaceful outcome with the Palestinians. That is why they decided to return those murderers to Gaza. What’s 1000 murderers more or less? If it’s not those 1000 wretches then there are plenty more being trained right now by their horrid instigators to commit more and more atrocities against Israelis.

While Israel welcomes home one of its own in a dignified and humane manner, there are scenes of hysterical ulutating in Gaza. The terrorists and murderers who were returned to Hamas in the ransom exchange are being hailed as heroes. One of them is a woman, Amana Muna, who chatted up a sixteen-year old Israeli boy in an internet chat room. She lured him to his death.

Some heroine!

And then there was Nasser Yataima who planned the bombing in the Park Hotel in Israel (30 victims killed).

The list goes on and it will go on, because, in my opinion, there will never be peace between Israel and the Palestinians as long as Hamas and its like are determined to destroy Israeli lives.

So let’s save our own. Our Gilad. If we don’t, who will?

Perhaps the mistake that Israel made was in taking those terrorists as prisoners. It costs a lot to house and feed and give medical treatment to prisoners. One only has to compare the emaciated Gilad with the well-nourished Hamas ex-prisoners who are now performing wild victory dances in Gaza. They look fine, don’t they? That’s because Israel treats its prisoners well. Some would say too well, especially when they held a protest not long ago because they couldn’t get cable TV.

I’m not joking. That’s what the protest was about.

It will be interesting to hear how Gilad Shalit was treated. By the look of him, cable TV was not uppermost on his mind.