No Sympathy for Matthew Johns
I have no sympathy for Cronulla Rugby League footballer Matthew Johns for him being sacked from his positions in the Australian Rugby League and his Channel 9 Media Role role on the Footy Show after it coming to light about his “gangbang” with a New Zealand woman “Clare” whilst he and his rugby team mates were on tour in New Zealnd.
No matter whether or not it was consensual sex or rape, a person in his role should know that the chances of it being leaked to the media in the future as it finally has, should know better.
The only people I feel sorry for is obviously the victim, but also his wife and his family, can you imagine how his wife must of felt being on A Current Affair as his voiced his shameful apology to millions of people across Australia.
At the moment John’s is stating that he fears for his safety, well of course he would, at the moment Matthew Johns would be one of the most hated people in Australia, and no-one will ever forget what the past antics hae has put upon himself.
I don’t think his relationship with his wife will last too long, unless she is truly a strong woman.
Apparenly the victim showed off about the incident, well maybe she did, but whatever happened, it is news across Australia now, and poor Matthew Johns has lost his job, his reputation and alot more.
I wonder where Matthew Johns will be in a year from now? Waterboy for the Cronulla Sharks maybe?
Or will he have a breakdown and do something stupid?
Let’s wait and see.
Matthew Johns Confession Interview 1
Swine Flu Pandemic – Should We Panic?
Swine Flu Masks! Have you got Your Swine Flu?
Well at the moment this Swine Flu Influenza Epidemic is causing global concern and no doubt alot of mass panic! The World Health Authority has raised the official alert level to phase 5, the last step before a pandemic. Something the world has not seen since the the Hong Kong Flu in 1968 – 1968 which resulted in 1 Million Deaths worldwide.
So the question is should we Panic?
Well to tell you the trust I am quite concerned, at the moment my Mother is in a Western Australian Regional Nursing Home, so I am definately worried about her, and winter is only just a couple of months away. I feel like I just want to bring her home for her to be safe and sound … we all know Nursing Homes are a haven for contagious flu’s and disease.
I must admit, I do feel alot safer living in Country Western Australia, than what I would feel if I was living in a capital city, such as Perth, Sydney or Melbourne. Thank God I’m a Country Boy …. as the saying goes…. lets hope that saying rings true!
The thing that also really concerns me is at the moment there is no way of stopping the spread of Swine Influenza, there is no current Vaccinne, and to make a vacinne for the worlds population of 6 billion plus people would take years! I just heard on ABC 7.30 Report that it will take a year just to make 350 Million Vacinations for the Swine Flu…. now thats a reason to consider panicking!
Read the following 7.30 Report Interview Excerpt about the Swine Flu
KERRY O’BRIEN: There’s a lot of talk about the rush to produce a vaccine for this strain of virus, and you’ve talked about the limitations of those vaccines that exist now. But even if an effective vaccine is produced in, say, three or four months, it’s still a massive task, isn’t it, to pump out the vaccine in sufficient volume to circulate to hospitals around the world.
LAURIE GARRETT: Well, with current technology it can’t be done period, full stop. It’s not possible. We’ve never – using the current method, which is actually a very, very old method of producing vaccine on chicken eggs – we’ve never managed to produce more than about 300 million to 350 million doses per year for the entire world.
So to get up to 6.5 billion doses is going to be quite a feat. There are attempts now to create vaccine using different vehicles than chicken eggs for creating it. Growing them on various kinds of cells, and having different methods and biotechnology for producing vaccine. A lot of interesting things in the pipeline, but it’s going to be tricky to get a totally new technology up and running in time for – to address this effort, and then to come up with ways of demonstrating safety in advance.
KERRY O’BRIEN: On the balance of probabilities, what are your biggest fears right now?
LAURIE GARRETT: What happens in the next few days will tell us whether what we’re dealing with here is a garden variety flu that just happened to have gone through pigs, but is no more likely to produce death and devastation than a normal flu; or whether we’re dealing with something that, indeed, is a significant killer flu.
And I would just remind you that we’re heading in the northern hemisphere towards the end of our flu season. Actually, typically we’ve already passed the end of our flu season, so this is already a strange outlier event.
It’s only the beginning of the flu season for folks in the southern hemisphere, and if this virus does indeed circulate down into the southern hemisphere, then all eyes will turn south to see what happens below the equator with this virus in circulation, and what we’ll be preparing for and bracing for in the northern hemisphere is October.
Source: Interview tonight on 7.30 Report ABC <- Read More
Right now if this flu reaches Australia’s Shores, I honestly feel like taking off to the Outback for the winter! But doing that is pretty stupid isn’t it, but I guarantee you, that many Australian people will be thinking the same, and no doubt alot of people will.
Looking at Google there is already rumours of a Swine Flu Conspiracy going on obviously carried out by the United States Government … what a laugh that is!
And already people are profiting of the Swine Flu, just looking at the Ebay Swine Flu Face Masks
In anycase, I am not going to waste my money on any Swine Flu facial masks, I just made a $5 bid on a Swine Flu Survival Kit on ebay, so I reckon I’ll be safe from the Swine Flu … touch wood!
All jokes aside, please do not let the Swine Flu turn you off from eating Pork, this is going to have a huge detrimental effect on Australian Pig Farmers and their income, so please continue to buy Pork from your local Country or City Butcher, just like I did today, we need to support these farmers, eating pork will not give you Swine Flu!
Swine Flu Victim!
The Dying Earth – Salinty in Australia
A Once healthy landscape - now Salinity affected
I have spent most of my life in Rural Australia, apart from the time I spent in the Australian Defence Force, and now I am back in the country for the rest of my life.
When I was a child, I remember playing out the bush, like all country kids did back in my younger days, there was no computer games, no dvd movies, no foxtel.
We had to entertain ourselves, by going out to the bush exploring, riding our chopper bicycles for miles and miles, taking packed lunches, going on picnics, catching frogs and tadpoles and so much more, just like you did if your were a born and bred country kid before the video game generation arrived.
And don’t get me wrong alot of kids still do this, but most kids these days would rather hibernate in their bedrooms, playing X-Box and playstation games.
The bush in my day was such a beautiful place, full of nature, birds, kangaroos, reptiles, frogs, beautiful wildflowers, everything that you would expect from a healthy eco system.
But now things have change dramatically, our land is dying, not from drought, but from Salinty , the bush playground where my friends and I would spend weekends and after school exploring has is quickly dying, the once rich brown healthy and fertile soil, is now has layers crusty white salt on the top soil, when you walk on it, it sounds like crunching snow beneath your feet.
Layers of Salty Crust
The once beautiful tall eucalyptus trees have died, and turned a ghosty grey colour, with the insides being eating away by termites, and what remaining surving trees and slowly following the same path.
There still are alot of healthy trees remaining, in patches of soil, not yet affected by the salinity which is rising just below the surface of the topsoil.
I remember seeing beautiful Mallee Fowls in that patch of bushland when I was a small child, I had no clue what they were at the time, my friends and I thought they were some kind of wild chicken and we always tried to catch them, but to know avail.
The salinity has killed off many native species in my district, there are no more mallee fowls, many bird species, frogs species and marsupial species have disappeared.
I go on my drives in my trusty old holden ute around the distric, and I see the land changing, the erosion of soil, the once fresh water rivers which no longer exist.
The are no fresh water rivers in this district any more, or in any parts of the Upper Great South Southern in Western Australia anymore.
It is so sad, the once fresh water rivers are now white with layers of salt and when it rains, the rivers do not flow like they did so many years ago. This is because of all of the silt which has built up over time, or because farmers unknowingly stopped the flow of rivers due to the clearing of their land, or because the river beds were used as rubbish dumps.
The chemicals used by farmers also poison the soil, and when it rains, the chemicals on the cropped paddocks leach into the rivers, killing off many species. obviously once one species has died off, then it affects the whole food chain and eco system.
100 years ago my district was founded by early Settlers looking for the promise of a new life, a life of farming and prosperity, millions upon millions of trees and species of flora was torn away from the land, so the farmers could sow their crops. Little did they no what damage that would do to the land in 100 years.
Because so many trees where removed from the land and that land was rapidly turned into millions upon millions of acres of cleared land for the purpose of growing wheat and barley crops, the native earth could not cope with what damage was being done.
It only took around 50 years for the signs of salinty to apprear, 50 years from a healthy eco system to a state of no return.
This is a basic explanation of how Salinty occurs:
In a healthy bush land some taller trees have roots so deep that they get a lot of the water they need from that groundwater and these trees pump this water into the atmosphere. Groundwater also flows out, often very slowly, through springs, streams and rivers.
But what do you think might happen if too many trees and shrubs have been cleared? Where will the water that soaks into the soil go? It just keeps going down. But what if the groundwater can’t flow away fast enough? What might happen to this groundwater?
Well, the groundwater just collects where it is. This means that after a while, there is too much groundwater, so it starts rising towards the surface because there is nowhere else for it to go.
But it isn’t just a case of too much water. As the groundwater rises, it also dissolves the salts in the soil, and that salt comes to the surface too. The result? – topsoil that gets saltier and saltier and saltier. Source: http://environment.gov.au/education/publications/salinity.html
Some farmers do take the salinty problem seriously by planting trees on their land near where the salinty in affecting their land, but there are many farmers out there who just ignore it, and think it of it as a problem which might suddenly go away.
You can see the farmers who care, you drive on the main roads past their farms, and you can see where they have planted thousands of trees to try and stop the salinity from spreading and then you drive past other farms which are saltinity affected and nothing has been done to try and curb the onset of salinity.
Can this Salinity problem ever be solved? Personally I don’t think so, the damage is done and it is irrepairable.
New generation technoloy Gene Scientists are funded by the Australian Goverment with tens of millions dollars to research ways with Gene Technology to make various types of wheat and barley that will grow in salt affected soil. And once the right gene is found that will enable wheat or barley to grow in salt affected soil, that means that the soil will once again be ploughed, filled with chemicals and more damage done.
Instead of doing this, why don’t they research ways of re-planting native plants and trees in the salt affected soil, so the land can once again be rich and healthy and filled with the flora and fauna which once inhabitated the area.
This is a crisis which has risen to the point of no-return in my opinion.
It saddens me, it angers me and it embarrasses me, I feel ashamed to see the damage which is being done to our once beautiful land.
Salinity Affected Dead Trees - A Common Western Australian Site
Cruel Puppy Farms & Puppy Mills
Next time you visit a Pet Shop, ask yourself ... Is that Cute Puppy in the Pet Shop Window from a Puppy Farm?
I would like to warn people about being very careful when buying Puppies from Registered and Unregistered Dog Breeders, have you ever heard of the term called “Puppy Farms”
A puppy farm is basically where a beautiful Female Dog is mated with or inseminated with continuously, so she can have as many Pups as possible over a lifetime, so the owners can make alot of money via selling them to Pet Shops.
These Mother Dogs live a horrible and miserable life, even soon are giving birth to a new litter of pups, she is made pregnant again and the horrible cycle for the mother continues again. So as you could imagine she pregnant for most of her life, likely to deliver up to 100 or more pups in her horrendeous caged life …. that is until the mother dog is of no use anymore to the dog breeders… why? Because of the damage been done to her body from many pregnancies, she dies in pup birth, or gets sick or even dies due to the disgusting mistreatment she is given by her so called Professional Dog Breeders, or if she does survive she is then likely put down with a bullet in the head, thown in a dam in a plastic bag, put in a Gas Chamber or just abandoned somewhere.
And then her role is given to one of her betting looking pups, and that pup becomes the breeder for the next how many years she can do it or until it dies from mistreatment.
These “Breeder Dogs” spend most of their time in a small cage, in cramped in absolutely terrible conditions. Unbeknown to alot of people, those little cute pups which are born at a Puppy Farm end up in alot of Pet Shop windows, or in classifieds such as Qthose in Western Australia, The Quokka, The Sunday Times Readers Mart, Community Newspapers Classifieds, The Western Australian Classifieds or they are for sale on the internet looking so cute to the people walking by and being sucked in to buying one of these little PuppyFarmed Dogs.
Dogs are beautiful animals, but unfortunately there are many breeders out there who don’t care about the treatment of there Breeders, all they want is money and more money.
I urge you to please consider buying Puppies from Pet Shops, and do your research, if you go to a Dog Breeders house to buy a Puppie, ask to look at the other Puppies they might have, and the other mothers.
If the Dog Breeders property is very untidy, smelly, looks unhygienic, or you see small empty cages, or even small cramped cages with dogs in them, say your not interested.
I made a huge mistake once, because I was so nieve to buying dogs.
My Aunty had just lost her little Fox Terrier to old age and she was devastated, so I organised to buy her a new Foxy, so I rang around and found a place that had a pup for sale, when we got there, the place was very untidy, I walked around the back to see if anyone was home, and I saw this poor little Australian Silky Terrier locked in a small cage, not even big enough for her to stretch or turned around, nothing on the bottom except for the steel cage bottom.
Cruel Puppy Mill
This was a few years ago, and still I just wish I had of rang up the RSPCA and reported the owner. Maybe they are still breeding today, I could always find out I suppose and pretend I am interested in buying a pup and check out the place again.
Recently, PETA found dogs at one puppy mill living on hard wire with no bedding, little protection from the searing hot summers or the frigid winters, and little to no veterinary care. Crusted, oozing eyes, raging ear infections, mange that turned skin into a mass of red scabs, abscessed feet from the unforgiving wire floors—all were ignored or inadequately treated. Some dogs injured their feet by catching them in the wire of their cages, and they hobbled painfully around their small space, trying to keep their balance. The collar on one Labrador retriever had not been adjusted as the dog grew and had become embedded in his flesh. Even though the gangrenous skin fell away as the collar was removed, his neck was treated with nothing but a worm-repellant spray.
Timid dogs were terrorized by their more aggressive cagemates, who often prevented them from eating and drinking. Sadly, many of the old mother dogs had gone mad from confinement and loneliness. They circled frantically in their small cages and paced ceaselessly back and forth—their only way of coping with their despair. Quoted Source: Say No To Animals in Pet Shops
I myself am not an animal activist, but I hate cruelty to animals, it disgusts me and breaks my heart, so maybe if you read this, please don’t buy from a Pet Shops, do your research, why not adopt a dog from the RSPCA or an organisation which I donate money to is K9 Dog Rescue in Mandurah Western Australia
Same goes for Cats, I adopted a Cat from The Cat Haven in Shenton Park, Perth… she is one of my best friends now, her name is Beauty.
Just think about this…
A female dogs average Gestation period is 63 days … two months, can you imagine how many puppies a female dog can’t give birth too over a 2 year period …. it’s sad isn’t it!
Please Adopt a Puppy or a grown dog, don’t buy one from the Puppy Farmers!
I hope by me writing this will save at least one Puppy, if it does, and it is you, well done!
What the YouTube Video Below please, it will shock you, but you need to watch it!
Running from Bush Fires
A phone call this morning from my boyfriend Billy’s, best friend that he is facing the uncertainty of knowing whether or not his house has been burnt down in the hell-blazing fires sweeping across Country Victoria. Amidst all of the devastation for the poor families who have lost their loved ones and homes, our brave friend stands comforted that he and his girlfriend were able to get away from the fire zone fairly early on and with the knowledge that his house stands fully insured. I hope they were not only able to take with them enough belongings to see them through this anxious time but also those items of sentimental value.
Sky News speculation of offers to redirect the $950 promise from Kevin Rudd to the victims of this devastation would undoubtedly be welcomed and should be taken up by our PM. If we really sit down and think about the shock and loss that must now be endured into the immediate future it is an area of experience for which I have none.
So I wonder how long will it take to ensure the underlying infrastructure is restored and houses can be built? Common to many rural and small country towns are those who have no relatives to provide essential support for the interim. Yes, we all have acquaintences and friends but often these are not the close associations we’d like to call upon in time of need but still, this is the time when communities rally together and when the strength of our relationships show their true colours. From what Ive seen on tele there has been phoenominal courage shown in Country Victoria.
What would you take with you if you had the chance to get out? Well I would grab for life.. my family and friends and pets. Next I’d grab the essential valuables, the treasured family photos, my DSLR camera, jewellery of sentimental value, personal papers (but even copies of those can be obtained), and if I had a bit more time, my favourite teddy bear and my favourite clothes (a few items). But would I really have time for all this? Maybe. Maybe not. Can we live without our material belongings, of course yes. But it would be so much easier if we could take with us just a few things to remind us of who we are. As humans we can’t help but use material things to express who we are, it’s all an important part of our identities.
How lucky am I, on this Sunday morning to be able to sit under our Peace Tree at home in our quiet little country town with lovely weather and no looming danger. All is well and my loved ones, Billy and his Mum are safe and happy inside and our dogs Toto and Georgie happily sunbathing in the garden and our cat Beauty, tucked up asleep. I wonder if there is one thing we can do for ourselves for a little personal insurance in case of bush fire tragedy. I’m not talking about taking out house and contents insurance though.
There is a saying, “hope for the best and prepare for the worst”. In addition to any emergency plans you may have, my suggestion is about keeping our essentials in one place in the house so we can always just grab and run. Perhaps we can buy an Australian standard approved fire-proof safe. Put all the treasured items in there and keep it locked. That way if there is fire, you don’t have to risk your life making a grab for the stuff because they’d all be safe within? Failing that, get a briefcase or bag or box or trunk, put it in the wardrobe free of clutter so that it’s always accessible.
I tend to keep all of my essential personal papers in one filing cabinet and my favourite teddy bears and clothes in one area of the bedroom (at the moment this is just to help me find stuff to wear in a hurry, and the collection of fav teddies makes me happy whenever I look at them.) I’d have to grab Billy’s 30 year old guitar too. I heard one person from Country Vic on the tele yesterday say how they had time to take their laptop with them as it contained all of their family photos on it. After hearing that, I am going to ensure I collect up all of my photos into one folder on one laptop instead of the two I have now.
For country folks with home businesses and farmer’s offices at home, keeping digital copies of your business accounts and files, scanning in copies of all paper invoices and receipts etc, and keeping copies of essential software in a digital format will act as a priceless backup. Take a copy of everything essential and keep a copy offsite, ie in a safety desposit box at the local bank.
It is undescribable what one goes through when there is the feeling of total loss and devastation and I hope that everyone caught up in this weekend’s fires will have the continual support they need to see them through.
