What Pisses me off

Here we go again with Australia’s lenient judiciary

Lili Gans What Pisses me off

A fourteen year old girl was abducted and gang raped in Geelong for over one hour by a group of men whose surname is Wild.  Yep, Wild by name and Wild by nature. One of them,  twenty-seven year old Rowan Gavin Wild, has been granted bail by a female magistrate called Jelena Popovic.  Rowan  Wild  had been uncooperative with the police who opposed bail and had even disguised himself to avoid detection.

But Popovic let him go.

This gang rape was so violent and cruel that the mind boggles at how a magistrate could grant bail to such an animal, but there you are,  it’s another case of the judiciary having no guts.

This sort of thing happens far too often in Australian courts which seem to be on the side of the perpetrators of crime. The victim’s plight appears to be incidental and all effort is devoted to how the alleged criminal is treated.

The worst culprits by far are female magistrates who find it difficult to sympathise with the rape victim.

It’s a woman thing.

As I have often said and written,  if I’m ever accused of any crime I hope that I do not have a female jury and a female judge at my trial.

The sisterhood is a myth.

p.s  The latest news this morning is that all four charged rapists of that poor child of fourteen may get bail.   Jelena Popovic is certainly a model magistrate, is she not?

I wonder if this would even be considered  possible  had the rapists been women in their twenties charged with raping a boy of fourteen.

Climate Change? Yes, No, Maybe or Whatever….

Lili Gans totally absurd, Uncategorized, What Pisses me off

Hardly a day goes by that somebody somewhere does not reiterate that climate change is a scientific reality. The research has been done and 120% of scientists say it is a fact.

We cannot argue against a scientific fact,  I guess,  but I am led to believe that not everybody is convinced it’s the fault of homo sapiens. We must change our ways,  however,  even if it’s not our fault warn the prophets of doom.

The planet will dry out or it will get flooded and islands will hit rock bottom, so to speak.

It’s a grim outlook, is it not?

Heaven help us if we question this apocalyptic prediction.  Look what happened to the witches of Salem!

So I’m not going to do that.

What I will say is that I don’t know,  but it’s hard to be convinced by any prophesy about climate when one considers how inexact a science weather forecasting is in general.

In any case I have lost interest in the topic because it’s possible,  just a suggestion mind,  that this world is not really worth saving and perhaps it’s time to start all over again.

Why our Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, doesn’t understand Melbourne people

Lili Gans totally absurd, Uncategorized, What Pisses me off

The Prime Minister of Australia has criticised the Premier of Victoria because a public holiday was declared for The Day Before,  I repeat,  The Day Before, the Grand Final of a football match.

Daniel Andrews, who is the Premier of Victoria said it would put Melbourne on the map. Shoppers will flock to the city and the economy will boom.  People will come from all over to spend their cash.

Well,  the grand parade took place yesterday and Melbourne is not rolling in gold coins as Andrews promised.  There was the little problem of overtime pay etc. etc. so businesses could not afford to stay open.

Nevertheless,  there was a parade yesterday of footballers and thousands came to watch. Now that was for free, of course. So much for the economic boost.

So when the Prime Minister of Australia lamented the loss of productivity,  and its cost to the nation,   Andrews retorted that Turnbull obviously doesn’t understand football and Melbourne.

Well, neither do I.

There is something nasty about Melbourne which causes crime to flourish here.  So if you are into crime and drugs Melbourne is the place to be. In the rest of Australia  smoking is not allowed  in outdoor venues where food is served.

But here in Melbourne, you can smoke all you want because the liquor lobby is too powerful.

You cannot walk the streets on Friday and Saturdays nights because the druggies and the drunks are out in force.

And as for aesthetics,  Melbourne is ugly. It’s full of alleys desecrated with grafitti. The public transport system is unreliable and archaic.

And yes, everyone agrees something should be done about it,  so let’s have a discussion about it, shall we?  What hypocrisy!

Now for some more distressing facts about the effect of this Holy Football event.  Surgery has had to be postponed because the doctors and other staff have escaped from Melbourne for the long weekend. Those people who are in hospital and ready to go home cannot leave because there aren’t enough doctors to release them. So they are crammed into rooms all because of this special holiday.

Would you believe that 690 surgical operations have had to be postponed because of this footy fiasco?

By the way,  it is the entire state of Victoria that has an extra holiday today.  Just to watch a bunch of footballers in a parade in Melbourne.

And for some mysterious reason our Prime Minister cannot understand why people on full pay have the day off so that they can wave at a bunch of footballers prior to the actual day of the match.

I know one thing for sure. If the Melbournians weren’t allowed to get drunk and gamble there would be no interest in “sport.”

But perhaps that’s the case with all of Australia. What surprises me is that they feel they need an extra pretext to drink.

Surely living in Melbourne is reason enough to reach for the bottle.

 

 

 

Who needs these Isis collaborators back in Australia?

Lili Gans Politics, Society, What Pisses me off

So the young men who left Australia and joined Isis have asked to be allowed back into the country they abandoned.  Well whoopee!

Do we welcome them back? Do we believe that they will now turn their backs on the most violent and unscrupulous murderers in the Middle East?

Perhaps these traitors have discovered that joining a group of terrorists who want to destroy everything that is good in our world is not a picnic, after all.  It’s not an adventure for the bored sons and daughters of the Muslim community in Australia.

Pardon my scepticism, but if I were a member of Isis and I wanted to return to Australia to cause more trouble here, then I would pretend that I am disenchanted with the Isis credo. I would pretend that I regret having left my comfortable home here in Australia for a cause that is the work of the devil.

I would offer to betray Isis by blabbing all the secrets that I had  learned during my adventure with them.

But could I be trusted?

After all, a person who has been a traitor once, which these men have been, could easily become a traitor twice or three times over.

So do we want these men back here to cause havoc in Australia?

No way. Let them stay in the Middle East where they belong.

Melbourne’s alcohol problem

liligans Society, What Pisses me off

There is something wrong in a society which demands that you explain why you don’t drink alcohol. This is the case in Australia, unfortunately.

It has been the case ever since we came to Australia in 1951. If you didn’t drink then you had better explain yourself. Are you ill, or are you an alcoholic, perhaps? Do you follow some strange religion which forbids you from touching a drop?

You were made to feel uncomfortable and unsociable if you said, “I don’t drink.”

Every occasion was accompanied by drinking alcohol. In fact, if you weren’t allowed to drink then you wouldn’t be able to enjoy watching sport or weddings or graduations or births or even wakes. Shades of Ireland really.

It was and still is the Aussie way of life. Friday night is for “getting pissed” as it is called and a hangover is proof that you had a good time, even if you hardly remember it yourself.

What has struck me since arriving in Melbourne is the number of liquor outlets in every suburb here. There are people drinking in the morning by themselves in many coffee lounges. The solitary drinkers ore often lonely women of a certain age.

What exacerbates the problem is that many of these people are driving after they drink. And to make matters worse, we have a big drug problem in Melbourne. It is cause for concern when you don’t know who is driving in front of you. We have been advised not to look at drivers if we drive alongside them on the road. Who knows what they are on?

The drivers here are very aggressive, competitive and rather frightening. They are obsessed with playing with their phones as they drive and even women have been caught under the influence when they try to park outside a school to pick up their children.

I did comment once in a previous blog that the most polite drivers I have ever encountered are Texans.

I really cannot understand why Melbourne is supposed to be “the most livable city in the world”. For druggies and alcoholics, maybe…

Bagelicious Melbourne-be sure to read the fine print

liligans What Pisses me off

I like to get good value for money, no matter what I buy. It’s not pleasant when you feel you have been taken for a ride and that’s how we felt when we went to Bagelicious this morning.

We only went for a snack, a bagel and coffee, and I was pleased that they were advertising in large letters a morning special of coffee and a bagel for $5.

This sounded pretty reasonable since many eateries have morning specials. These special offers usually end around 11 am so we assumed this place was doing the same. To our surprise we were charged an exorbitant price for a bagel and coffee. Apparently, the special offer ended at 10 am and we were there about 11 am.

So I asked the staff why we were not warned about the time the special ended. “It’s there” they said. I peered at the picture of a bagel and coffee and the special offer of $5. “There” they repeated as they pointed to a tiny disclaimer-size line at the very bottom of the ad. It was almost invisible and was obviously in need of magnification.

We paid quite a lot for our measly snack. The seats are uncomfortable and there is no atmosphere in the place, but I could see that when we entered. After all, we only wanted a quick snack and that would have been okay if we didn’t feel so cheated.

So be careful if you go to Bagelicious and please read the very fine print before ordering.

Melbourne Australia’s solution to insufficent public transport

liligans Society, totally absurd, What Pisses me off

It is hard to believe that the public servants in charge of Melbourne’s transport system are allowed to run free to ruin our lives.

Since The Intergenerational Report has been released by our government we have been informed that our population is aging.

This is an important report because it will help provide for the needs of a changing demographic.

One assumes, therefore, that the Victorian government is going to encourage the use of public transport which will inevitably be more in demand as the population ages.

So what have the brightsparks announced to ease the overcrowding on our trains and trams?

Those who run “the world’s most livable city” are going to remove seats from our trains and trams so that there will be more standing room. In other words, the result will be “cattle trucks”.

How that should prepare the city for an aging population who already find it hard enough to locate an empty seat in one of those contraptions is a mystery to me.

Melbourne, the world’s most liveable city, my foot!

liligans Society, What Pisses me off

I have resisted expressing my disappointment in “the world’s most liveable city” but today was the catalyst for writing the truth about how I honestly feel about Melbourne.

First of all, let me emphasise that I came to Melbourne full of hope and I have no intention of leaving it, but I am sadly disillusioned about the place.

Let me tell you why. Continue reading →

You get what you pay for in perfumes at Chemist Warehouse.

liligans So you think you're cultured?, What Pisses me off

This week I bought a bottle of Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew Eau de Parfum in David Jones. I sprayed it on and smiled. This perfume was exactly as I remembered Youth Dew to be.

Quite a different result from the one a fortnight earlier when I bought a bottle of Youth Dew in Chemist Warehouse, a discount pharmacy with many stores. They are especially noted for selling perfumes at incredibly discounted prices of up to 85% off big brand fragrances.

The perfume I bought from them had little fragrance and was nothing like the Youth Dew that I had always loved.

This was not the first time that I had been disappointed with a perfume from Chemist Warehouse and thought it was about time that I questioned the quality of their product. So I decided to return the perfume to the Chemist Warehouse store which had sold it to me.

Little did I expect to have so much trouble returning a product! The salesgirl told me she had no authority to refund my money and so the manager was called. He assured me that the perfume was genuine; that his company was the biggest perfume retailer in Australia and that it sources its supplies directly from Estee Lauder.

I asked him if it could be old stock etc. and he said “definitely not” and that he would phone Estee Lauder directly for some confirmation if I was prepared to wait.

I told him to go ahead.

He returned after a while and repeated the mantra. By now, I remained unconvinced and so he finally agreed that he would refund the money.

It was quite an uncomfortable experience which left a bad taste in my mouth and a niggling suspicion.

Following my subsequent purchase of Youth Dew from David Jones my suspicions became stronger.

My next step was to phone the Head Office of Estee Lauder in Sydney and ask them if they supplied Chemist Warehouse.

Unsurprisingly, they said “No” and that Chemist Warehouses’ suppliers are resellers of recycled stock or remainder. This means that the stock could be old or fake, or, if you are very lucky, still good.

But according to Estee Lauder, Chemist Warehouse are not an authorised retailer for them and therefore the perfumes sold there cannot be guaranteed to be genuine.

In my opinion, it is not only the customer who may become a victim of such unethical practice but Estee Lauder and other reputable perfume manufacturers who would be unfairly blamed for producing inferior products.

So if you shop at Chemist Warehouse for your perfumes it’s a lottery. You may get a bargain or you may get a dud. Good luck but caveat emptor!