That Lambie Woman

Churn out the blog posts, day after day. I seem to come up with something everyday. Let me be serious and attempt some serious writing and, god forbid, put some thought into a post.

Jackie Lambie is a Senator in Australia's Federal Parliament. She was elected as a Senator from the State of Tasmania as a member of Clive Palmer's, Palmer United Party. Four PUP Senators were elected. It has all now gone terribly wrong, with Jackie striking out on her own, possibly in association with Ricky Muir who was originally from the Motorists Enthusiast Party but later sided with Clive Palmer. Muir is best known for throwing kangaroo dung at his mates at a barbeque, and clearly he likes cars. He may well come into his own in time. He obviously lacks confidence in front of the media.

Jackie Lambie is also very new to public life. Some may describe her as quite common. Some may describe her as down to earth. Some may describe her as a loose cannon. Some may describe her as a breath of fresh air into parliament.

On talk back radio, she gave a fabulously 'honest'  response to a question about partner material. The national media picked up on her off the cuff remark, that he needed to have money and needed to have a good package. I am not so familiar with female sexuality, but I am pretty sure that went over a treat with gay men, who would at least find it amusing. Her advisors must have told her to apologise for her remark, a mistake in my view.

There is no doubt she is complex person but at the age of forty three, as the Australian expression goes, she has been around the bush.

Her scarves have made a trademark for her as has her heavy foundation and eye make-up. Gay men adore heavy make up. More is better. You can never slap on enough. She has some indigenous blood from her mother's side and so I should think an indigenous support base too.  Oh, except apparently, we killed all her ancestors in Tasmania. She is a strong supporter of the armed forces, the people rather than the institutions and was once a soldier. She seems to have a strong sense of social justice in the old Australian manner.

All very mysterious to my foreign type readers, but what do you local people make of Lambie? For me, it is too early to judge but I am inclined to like her and thing she may well do good things for Tasmania and for Australia.

NB Before the str8 acting gay mafia attack me with their stilettos, yes, not all gay men are fans of Kylie and Dolly and not all approve of heavy make-up.

Traffic

This was sent to me by River and what a crazy intersection it is. It seems the larger the size of vehicle means more of a right of way.



Is it worse than this one I have showed you previously? There do seem to be some rules in force in HCM, aka Saigon, even if not all obey them. They imported their driving style from French colonial times.



I can't imagine I will ever drive in either Addis Abeba or Ho Chi Minh City. I won't even add driving around the Arc de Triomphe to any sort of bucket list. I have officially declared myself too old to drive on the wrong side of the road. Now what are the rules for Arc de Triomphe? It appears that cars within the roundabout must give was to cars entering. Or is like it was here years ago, give way to the right? The coach driver seems somewhat hesitant.



Later edit: Insurance companies judge an accident on this Paris roundabout as being equal fault and split the costs.

A Quickie

Little Jo was talking about witches while we waited for a tram. I asked her what is the male version of witches, and before she couldn't immediately answer and I chipped in with warlock. The school play ground speech came into play and once again, Uncle Andrew, you are so dumb. It is a wizard.

Wizard or warlock, I don't actually know. Better take a peek. Ah, Little Jo is as dumb as I am. The male equivalent of witch is witch.

NYE, party like it is 1980

It is New Year's Eve, party time, except I am at work now. If you are home alone, turn up the volume, pour yourself a large glass of something with a kick and party with the Leningrad Cowboys and the Russian Red Army Choir.



Not to your taste. This one is magic.



Something a little more modern, and yes, I have posted it before. Cute guy alert.



Best wishes to you all for 2015.

The extremely homophobic Salvation Army

The Salvation Army does some terrific work in the community, but it is a very homophobic institution. Maybe like so often the workers on the ground, like with the Catholic Church, don't agree with hierarchy. I think it was blogmate Mitchell, an American in Spain, who wondered about the Salvation Army in Australia when I mentioned the organisation in the past. It is amazing what I find out about Australia from English press.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/06/23/audio-australian-salvation-army-chief-gay-people-should-be-put-to-death/

I am indebted to the straight but ever so gay friendly Lord Sedgwick for drawing my attention to the interview publicised in Europe's largest gay press, Pink News. A senior official within the Salvation Army was interviewed by Melbourne's gay and lesbian radio station, Joy. It is to his merit that at least he was prepared to be interviewed but oh, the answers. You may not want to read the whole thing, so here is a snip.

In the interview, Ryan (the interviewer) told Major Craibe that she had read the Salvation Story: Salvationist Handbook of Doctrine, published in London. She went on to point out several parts which she found disturbing including “The problem of evil” (page 28) which cites Romans 1:18-32 and its vitriolic condemnation of homosexuality.
“For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. . .
“They know God’s decree, that those who practise such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practise them.”
Asked whether the Salvation Army took the wording literally, i.e. that practising homosexuals should be put to death, the Major Craibe replied in the affirmative.

A snip from the radio programme transcript.

RYAN: Honestly, Andrew, tell me — as a human being, how can you qualify that?

CRAIBE: Well, I qualify by way of, that’s where my belief system is structured, you know? It’s what it comes to, that salvation story, and that we can be redeemed from that. That’s my belief.
While the Major did say when asked that if his children came out as gay, that he would continue to love them, he argued that being gay was a “choice” like consuming alcohol. 

I choose to drink alcohol. I never chose to be gay. It is simply how I am. Major Craibe is a tosser and should not be in such a position within the hierarchy of the Salvation Army .

Booze a la Espana

One Christmas gift was four bottles of left over wine from a Christmas office party. One bottle was a common Australian wine, rather ordinaire, and two are Spanish. Fortunately the common Australian wine was only one third full, but the Spanish ones were just over half full. The Spanish wines are superb. I've tried similarly priced Chilean wine, New Zealand wine, Argentinean wine, French wine and after a little googling for the price of the Spanish wines we have drunk, they are terrific value.  There is one more nearly full bottle of the wine but given how many spelling corrections I have had to make in one paragraph, I think we will save the origin and tasting of the last bottle for another time.

A visit to the Bellarine Pt 2

Sunday morning at Sister's on the Bellarine after cereal and toast saw us off to pick fruit at a blueberry farm. The berries had matured a little early and the farm does not normally open until the new year. Collectively we picked about 3/4 of a kilo, and so cheap at $15 a kilo.

Other fruits were being grown, but we were only allowed to pick the blueberries.

Only pick the dark ones, we were told, not the pale ones or the red ones. Do not eat any picked blueberries. Of course we did sample some. The immature berry is quite pretty.

It was hot and a refreshing drink was need at the blueberry farm cafe.

Trees need to grow a bit, but quite a nice setting.

We drove from the farm to Portarlington in Bone Doctor's monster and then along the coast back to Queenscliff but stopped at winery first.

It was a gorgeous place. Wineries where you buy directly from the grower/wine maker often serve food too, as does Kiltynane Winery. My cunning plan is to go back with R one day, drink lots of wine and eat lovely food and then call Sister or Bone Doctor to come and pick us up.

Swan Bay with Queenscliff in the background.

Little Jo was a bit bored with our wine tasting, so she and R can be seen behind the trees in the children's sand pit.

Sister once found a table tennis table left out for road side collection. It served them well for many years but did eventually collapse. They bought a new table and R and myself assisted Bone Doctor with the assembly. I expect you can guess whose footprints they are.
 

Where Sister lives is quite an expensive place to buy or to rent. There are not too many houses that still have traditional grass driveway strip. I love them. Maybe they are only found in Australia. This is a typical rural beach side house, for permanent living. We were walking down to the beach. R and myself only paddled. R had left his contacts in and I hate cold water, but Sister, BD and Little Jo had great fun in the water.

Sister and Bone Doctor had this outdoor shower installed and placed some paving with the help of a friend. Bone Doctor built the timber platform. It is private enough to shower naked as long as no one pops their head over the fence. I used it to wash the sand off Little Jo's surfing board.

Sister cooked us a lovely meal, local mussels in a nice sauce and Bone Doctor barbequed some lamb, accompanied by a salad. While R and myself arose about the same time Sunday morning, Sister and Bone Doctor were already out walking and cycling respectively. Sister her taken her dog on the walk but the dog went into the water and had wet feet, so banned from coming inside, She plaintively looked inside through the kitchen window. Yes, that is my notebook out on the table.

So it is now Monday morning and Bone Doctor had gone to work. Sister asked if we would like to walk to the local village for coffee. It is quite a walk, about 2 km. Fortunately she drove us to the beach and the walk was a bit shorter. Little Jo wasn't keen on breakfast before we left. Sister told her in no uncertain terms that there would not be breakfast in a cafe. We ordered our coffee and Little Jo wanted food. Sister relented (even she gets conned by Little Jo) and ordered a bacon sandwich. It arrived at the table and there was enough bacon etc for the four of us. We had sipped our coffee in the cafe to the left. Where Sister lives is a place for holiday makers, many of whom own houses there they use for holidays. There is little that can be bought for less than $500,000, so some quite rich people are visiting the town. The cafe we were in was mostly Malvern types. The one next door, as Bone Doctor later pointed out, was more Ivanhoe. The town is certainly a place to observe the inequality of Australian society in general. People who can live and holiday here are very fortunate members of society.

What a hoot. A lad had draped himeself in seaweed as we walked back to the car. He looked like Cousin Itt. They were having great fun. Btw, I noted Pugsley recently died.

On the horizon we noticed a big non cargo boat about to exit the rip of Port Phillip Bay. I knew, and to my surprise R also knew, there were no cruise ships in port. What could it be? Mid morning, it was quite discombobulating to see it was the Spirit of Tasmania. We then recalled there is a twice daily service during the summer period and the sailing times are different. On the far side of the ferry is Point Nepean. Once back at Sister's we packed up the car and were home by early afternoon.

Competition between Collins Street and New Bond Street

Fun60 has posted many photos in three or four posts showing her readers the Christmas decoration in London. I walked from the top of Collins Street in Melbourne to Swanston Street passing by many expensive designer shops to have a look at their decorations.

Here is a copy of a list of some of the shops to be found in Collins Street.

Perhaps the most famous Melbourne shopping street is Collins Street, home to high end jewellery (including Georg Jensen, Makers Mark, Bvlgari, Jan Logan, Rutherford and Tiffany & Co), high end fashion (Cose Ipanema, Husk, Herringbone, Hugo Boss and the legendary appointment-only boutique Le Louvre), shoes and luxury goods (such as Ralph Lauren, Hermes, Chanel, Gucci, Bally, Salvatore Ferragamo and Louis Vuitton).

It was very disappointing to say the least. Apart from a couple of Christmas trees, very little effort had been made by retailers. Maybe part of the problem is our long hours of daylight. By the time it is dark at 9pm, most families are home. Here are a couple of photos.

Things were more interesting in Swanston Street with this group of lads performing. Thank goodness our two large department stores and our arcades go to some effort. Now do yourself a service and have a look at Fun60's photos taken in New Bond Street, London. Simply wonderful. In subsequent posts on her blog, there are more London Christmas photos.