Author: liligans

Children deserve the right to be bored

liligans Society

I believe that children’s lives are too structured nowadays. They go to school, where they are organised. After school they have organised after-school activities which consist of extra courses, organised sport or even structured playing with a selected “play date”.

It’s as if someone has to timetable their total lives in case they have some free time to do what they want or, heaven forbid, spare time in which to get bored.

Mankind needs to get bored occasionally so that creative juices spill forth to dispel that boredom. In the same way, children need to invent ways to amuse themselves without having to be constantly entertained by someone else.

I can hear complaints from mothers right now. “We can’t let our children get bored cause they’ll get into mischief. We have to monitor them all day. It’s a crazy world out there.”

The truth is that it’s always been a crazy world and it ain’t going to get less crazy. The best thing you can do for your children is to allow them to develop some self-reliance skills. If they get bored then there’s a good chance they’ll make up some games, do some drawing or even read a book because they feel like it.

Or they may just sit there and reflect. Dream a little. Let their imagination take over.

To have most of your day organised for you is like living in an institution. It is stifling and robs a person of autonomy. I’m suggesting that this is true for children as well.

In an age when imagination has been stifled by force feeding from computers, in byte size pieces of information rather than ideas, I believe that it is more important than ever to allow children to develop their own creative skills. Not all the time. Just some of the time.

Prime Minister Rudd reveals his true self

liligans Politics, So you think you're cultured?

We are used to seeing the Prime Minister of Australia looking calm and composed. He struts around the place with a benign expression on his face. He joins hospital patients on their beds and promises to cure the sickly Health System.

He puts on a hard hat and inspects all kinds of factories and nods away as if he really understands what the workers are complaining about. He hugs babies and reads primers to school children. All this in front of the media who trudge along behind him hoping to get a glimpse of the real Rudd.

We have been told that he is unpopular with his staff because he screams at them. We are told he puts on a tantrum if he can’t get a blow dryer for his windswept hairdo. We are told that he does a Naomi Campbell impersonation when he can’t get the food he likes on a plane trip.

Until now, this was all hearsay. Last night, however, Rudd showed his true colours on The 7.30 Report on television.

He had been asked by interviewer, Kerry O’Brien, why he had deferred the ETS or Emissions Trading Scheme. Now according to Rudd, climate change is the greatest moral challenge facing this planet. Nothing is more important than climate change and Rudd was going to show the world how to tackle it.

He would be the Pied Piper of Climate Change and the rest of the world would follow!

But then in a shocking about turn that stunned the people of Australia Rudd decided to put off the legislation…for a while.

Well, things heated up as Rudd went on the defensive with O’Brien. All O’Brien had asked was why Rudd had not called for a double dissolution instead of deferring the ETS legislation. Rudd bristled, gave no answer and then called O’Brien “mate” in the same way that Americans call someone “buddy” when they mean the opposite.

I always suspected that Rudd had a Dorian Gray portrait stashed away in the cellar. Last night, our Prime Minister gave his inner self a proper airing. I predict that as the polls continue to go south and Rudd becomes more desperate, we will become intimately acquainted with that portrait.

Chinese-Australian hero portrayed by director’s own white son

liligans So you think you're cultured?

Apparently, there is a shortage of Chinese people in the world. That’s according to Geoff Davis who has created a film, “The Legend of Billy Sing”, which is about a Chinese-Australian Gallipoli hero.

Unfortunately, Davis has resorted to casting a white man in the role of Billy Sing’s Chinese father. He then went on to cast his own son, Josh, in the role of Billy himself. Why did he do that? Well, it’s because he couldn’t find a 60 year old Chinese actor for the role of the father and if the father wasn’t Chinese it was okay for the son to be Caucasian as well.

Here we are, Downunder, with a substantial Chinese community in Australia, not to mention the substantial choice of Chinese actors to the North of us. Hasn’t Davis heard of make-up? Of course, that shouldn’t even be necessary!

No wonder the Australian Chinese community is upset that one of theirs has been wrongly depicted. Former Senator Bill O’Chee has commented that he is “deeply disappointed” by the production. “We’ll now have people growing up thinking that Billy Sing was white.”

The Chinese community have every right to complain about this misrepresentation. Anyhow, if Davis can’t get the heritage right how can we believe anything else about the mini-series?

This misrepresentation reminds me of the early film depictions of Jesus who was usually played by some Swedish-looking actor. He certainly stood out when he walked among his Semitic people. I thought we had moved on from that sort of thing.

Rudd’s 25% tax hike on cigarettes.

liligans Politics, So you think you're cultured?

After copping a ton of criticism from yours truly, Prime Minister Rudd is to be commended for his new tax hike on cigarettes. It would be great if people could be persuaded to stop smoking altogether since it’s such a nasty habit. But smokers already know this so stronger action had to be taken. This increase in the cost of smokes should make smokers think twice before lighting up.

If they continue to smoke then the tax hike should help pay for their medical costs when they succumb to the health problems caused by cigarettes.

What really annoys me, however, is Tony Abbott’s stupid comment that the extra excise is all about raising taxes. I am disappointed in this comment and would have preferred to hear Abbott applauding Rudd for his initiative. As a fitness fanatic, Abbott should have supported this decision.

My advice to the Leader of the Opposition who is not performing as well as I thought he would, is to get OFF his bike and start thinking without the aerobic high that is obviously clouding his intellect.

Abbott is an intelligent man but I am waiting for him to demonstrate his acumen. There is no time to lose or someone else will challenge him for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

Prime Minister Rudd lacks the courage of his convictions

liligans So you think you're cultured?

I’m assuming, of course, that he has any and that is a huge assumption.

He told us that he would lead the world in climate change control.

He told us that he would revolutionise childcare by providing over three hundred new childcare centres.

He told us that he would save the environment by insulating our roofs.

He told us that he would build more educational facilities in thousands of schools.

He told us that he would ensure that our borders would be secure.

He told us that he would personally apologise to the indigenous population for the suffering they had endured in the past.

Which one of the above did he keep? The only one Rudd kept is an apology to the indigenous population. This was an easy one because it didn’t involve any action on his part. Rudd has no problem with speeches. Talk is cheap and that’s all the apology required.

So many promises to gullible supporters who must now be wondering how they allowed themselves to be misled by a man without a conscience.

I have been claiming all along that the Prime Minister has no mettle. He is a hollow man with a great ambition to make a name for himself on the world stage. He will do anything and say anything to gain power and he truly doesn’t give a damn about the people of Australia because we are small fry in his scheme of things.

To be fair he did throw money at us to stimulate the economy. Perhaps that helped but there’s not enough money to cover up his mistakes now and I doubt that he will really revolutionise the Health System. We can see already that the mentally ill will be set aside. If we judge future behaviour by past actions Rudd will change his mind about it all anyway.

What we can be certain of is that he will blame everyone else but himself for his failure and he will make himself scarce when the entire thing collapses. When Rudd says he is making the hard decisions what he really means is that making decisions is hard and sticking to them is impossible.

Prime Minister Rudd thanks Melbourne Storm

liligans So you think you're cultured?

We are truly blessed here in Australia. Volcanic eruptions brought most of the world to a standstill. Apart from a few people who were put out because they couldn’t come home from Europe, we were basically unscathed.

But imagine if a foreign cricket team or football team could not make it to our shores for some important match because of the volcanic ash problem. There would be never-ending headlines about this sacrilege against everything Australians hold dear.

It would be tragic. There would be constant interviews with people who had knitted a scarf and matching beanie just for the occasion and now they would be walking around draped in their colours and looking devastatingly bereft. There would be counselling sessions for those fans whose life had lost all its meaning. Worse still, how would they be able to explain this disaster to their children?

Now you may think this is an overreaction. But Australia has been shattered by the revelation that all is not above board in the football world. Apparently, there has been some fraud going on regarding the secret overpayment to desirable players. It sounds pretty bad. This is much worse than footballers raping women and taking drugs. So I guess, it must be pretty bad.

However, if you look over your shoulder, you may see one person who’s counting his lucky stars and that person is our Prime Minister. He has decided that it would be too disastrous to proceed with the insulation revolution. It’s been scrapped because ONE BILLION DOLLARS has to be spent checking and removing faulty insulation. It’s the equivalent of digging a big hole and then filling it up again. Nothing good has been achieved and in fact there have been several deaths and many fires as a result of Rudd’s irresponsible scheme.

So did Rudd have the guts to announce this bit of news in person? No way. He has appointed himself as the bearer of “good news.” When something bad has to be announced Rudd goes into hiding while one of his underlings faces the public. And this time it was Greg Combet who informed us of the demise of the insulation revolution. And when did he do this? Yep, during the furore over footballers being paid in secret.

For the next few days we will endure the fuss about football while Rudd discloses more broken promises such as the 250 childcare centres which will not be built. And there’s more bad news to come about the education revolution frauds as well. All these revolutions are making me dizzy!

It’s all in the timing, isn’t it? If you have something bad to announce you do it while the public is occupied with something else. The football scandal is a boon to a sly politician.

Will anyone ask how many hospital beds could have been funded by the ONE BILLION DOLLARS Rudd is now going to waste?