Robyn Dunphy
Stage 1 is DONE! Plus Frightbats, World Refugee Day and High Court wins!
Even the #frightbat saga didn’t manage to pull me away from my stepping. My apologies to our regular readers: I’ve been exercising. That chart doesn’t have today on it yet – but my reading will be 4,200 for cycling, 2,375 for swimming (I only did 500 metres in the pool today) and 7,000 plus a […]
Blood spurted from the ripped flesh
Continued from Destination Madagascar. If you have just joined this story and wish to start from the beginning, go to What goes around comes around. Jones didn’t sleep. No-one slept. Sometime tomorrow they would see land, yet none of them knew what sort of welcome they would receive. A silence had enveloped the boat, save for the throbbing […]
Where are the adults, again?
I really am over it. Totally. Over. It. Neither of these t-shirts are appropriate in a civilised society. In my view, they mean totally different things, which I will come to, but let me re-iterate: NEITHER are appropriate! The first word on each of these t-shirts has several meanings in modern language. It can mean […]
What humans do to children
Today a headline drew my gaze. Bodies of 800 children found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers Most of the media, main and social, is awash with either the federal budget or the Victorian political “crisis”. Yet here is a story to break anyone’s heart. The fate of unwed mothers and […]
Upcoming documentary: Bloody UnAustralian
Many Australians will know the name Eva Orner. She is an Academy award winning filmmaker. Although Eva has lived in the USA for some years now, she is coming home because she feels so strongly about Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. Her project is a documentary titled “Bloody UnAustralian”. Eva is a first generation Australia […]
Economies of scale or a deterrence measure?
I am definitely late to the party on this one but I have an excuse – the Abbott government are providing so much chaff to munch on, I’m overindulging. Yesterday I was alerted to an already three day old article by Michael Safi in The Guardian. Essentially Michael’s article concentrates on changes to the Refugee […]
Education: who will get some?
Commenting on the 2014 federal budget is something I keep trying to stop doing, but every time I look at a newspaper, I get irritated and feel like wrangling these op-ed writers. Today it was Amanda Vanstone that set my fingers itching for the keyboard. I have periodically agreed, to varying degrees, with Amanda. I […]
Taxes versus benefits and other observations
The first Abbott/Hockey budget certainly stirred up a storm of controversy. Not just in the mainstream media, but everywhere. There is a very interesting stream of comments on “Benefit scrounging scum in the news again. Disability is fake, right?” The same author wrote a little flash fiction worth considering on “For The Good Of The […]
Where is Australia heading?
If one is to believe the Sydney Morning Herald articles today, Abbott is deep doodoo. Very deep doodoo. The question for many is where is Abbott and his band of merry men, robbing from the poor to pay the rich, leading Australia? Austerity hasn’t worked too well in more than a few economies around the […]
How much does it cost to COMPLETELY collect and process that $7?
A little background information for overseas readers added after receiving comments. The situation here is all taxpayers pay a 1.5% levy to fund Medicare. Medicare provides a rebate to the patient for medical consultations and other health related services such as blood tests and x-rays. So let’s say the GP charges $65 for a consultation, […]
Random Observations of Life 