Blogcritics Author: the silver surfer

Soldier of The Queen: Prince Harry's Top-Secret (and Very Bloody Dangerous) Tour of Duty

the silver surfer — Sat, 1 Mar 2008 12:52:57 EST

News of Prince Harry's tour in Afghanistan has led to his recall over security fears, but at least the tabloids are seeing him in a new light
It wasn't so much the blowing of his cover that was the problem, but the prospect that it might actually have led to the blowing up of Prince Harry and his mates or at the least marked them out as prime targets for the Taliban.That was the thinking behind the tacit agreement between the British Ministry of Defence and various UK and US media...

Bang Bang, You're Dead

the silver surfer — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:44:36 EST

The rich vein of Australia's criminal past is never too far from the surface, even in the 21st century. A new show documents a decade of bloody gangland killings.
Back in the 1800s, Australia was a continent that ran on violence. Indeed, that was its raison d'etre. It was here, as far away from the British Isles as it's possible to get without lobbing up on the ice floes of Antarctica, that the dregs, the scum, the cutthroats, the poor, the unfortunate and the rebels of the British Empire were sent...

The Day We Toppled A Government

the silver surfer — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:38:48 EST

There are ways to bring down governments that have outlived their usefulness or betrayed their people, and there are ways. Here's the best way.
Last weekend, I took part in a revolution of sorts led by angry people that brought a government crashing to Earth....

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

The Man Tipped as Next Aussie Prime Minister 'asked to leave NY strip club'

the silver surfer — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:56:20 EDT

I know what the headline says, but bear with me. Some background: with a federal election looming Down Under, and the once upon a time way too cunning Aussie PM John Winston Howard lagging so far behind in the polls they're now holding a lantern out for him, the man who would be king is Labor leader Kevin Rudd: a bookish, nerdy-looking bloke who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Tin-Tin character from the famous French comic strip of the same name (indeed, so close is it, political cartoonist Bill Leak of The Australian newspaper never draws Rudd as anything but). Howard's Liberal Party (that's a misnomer and would be a gross underestimation of political leanings that are marginally to the right of Genghis Khan if you were to use American liberalism as the yardstick) appears a lost cause after a decade in power.So with the electorate facing a choice between a rock and a hard place with Rudd and Howard - who despite being hilariously called "The man of steel" by George W.Bush for sending troops to Iraq actually more closely resembles one of those plaster garden gnome characters with protruding teeth and a single facial expression - the poll (now tipped for November 6) was in grave danger of turning into the political equivalent of Mogadon and was widely regarded until this week as something approaching a snore-a-thon.The concensus among voters -- and in compulsory-voting Australia, that means everyone -- is that it's time for Howard to go, in no small part the result of his killing off in one fell swoop Australia's generous and popular industrial relations and workplace laws at a time of great economic prosperity, and returning most of the cards to employers with his Orwellian-sounding "WorkChoices" -- lampooned in Australia as "no choices".Australians have also had enough of the general arrogance of the Government and the litany of lies, half-truths (the best and most original of which were Howard's breaking of previous election promises because they were "non-core") and just too-far-to-the-right views in relation to human issues like immigrants and refugees. Howard now faces the prospect of being only the second sitting Australian PM to lose his own seat in an election, and the fact that the seemingly equally boring Rudd, who trades on his Christian, family values, is tipped as the next PM, is probably a mark of how frustrated Aussies are with Howard.Previous Aussie PMs have included men like Labor's Paul Keating, who turned the art of political insult into a living masterpiece on the blood-soaked floor of Parliament House, once famously suggesting that an attack by the Libs was akin to being flogged with a piece of warm lettuce. He also suggested Howard was a carcass swinging in the breeze, and that no one had the guts to cut him down. We like our PMs to strut the world stage, but without losing their Aussie larrikinism. Problem: Howard and Rudd weren't larrikins in the first place, and certainly couldn't hold their own in the public bar of a bush pub if push came to shove. Howard's regarded as the sort of bloke that in the real world, you wouldn't speak to at a party even if the beer had run out and you knew he was holding a few sly cans. Rudd, meanwhile, who loves to tell the story of how he was forced to sleep in the family car as a kid, has been regarded a thin-skinned intellectual bore with a glass jaw who can't take the heat that comes with the tough turf of brawling Aussie politics. Still with us? Good. Well, at least that's what we all thought about boring Rudd until last weekend. That was when Australians woke up to newspaper headlines (Sunday's RUDD'S STRIP CLUB NIGHT and yesterday's cracker, POLL DANCER) informing them, gleefully, that Rudd had been booted out of the New York "gentleman's" club Scores in 2003 while on a trip to NYC representing Australia as an observer at the UN.The story, roughly, goes something like this: Rudd and a Northern Territory Labor MP, Warren Snowdon, had dinner with New York Post editor Col Allan, a former editor of Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, at a Manhattan restaurant.At the dinner, Rudd and Snowdon had a bit too much to drink (no one mentioned whether this was also the case with Allan, no slouch on the high stool himself and who presumably would have matched them glass for glass). Then as you do, Allan suggested they go out for a drink after their meal, and somehow -- like at least 40 million other men since Adam -- the trio ended up at a strip club. If my own experience is anything to go by, it probably only happened by osmosis and can be blamed entirely on the cab driver.Still, Scores, hardly one of New York's top cultural attractions, is said to be a pretty wild joint. According to those who've been there, you can discreetly and without leaving your comfy lap-dancing seat tip by credit card using "Diamond Dollars", and it's probably a good thing Rudd is claiming he has little memory of the night as Diamond Dollars are certain to be discussed in Parliament at some point during debate on Australia's economy.Allan, for his part, freely admitted the trio had ended up at a "gentlemen's club" and that Rudd had behaved like a ... well, like, "a gentleman". Snowdon, meanwhile, whose electorate encompasses a part of Australia's rugged outback better known for big guns and crocodiles than metrosexual leanings and reconstructed males, managed to maintain a dignified silence until yesterday, when he said he wasn't as under the weather on the night as Rudd, felt intimidated at the club and that nothing untoward had taken place in the short time they'd been there. Right ...That runs counter to the good version being touted around the traps: that Rudd, who claims to have been goat-faced drunk on only one other occasion (a knees-up on the night of his 35th birthday), was also asked to leave the club allegedly for misbehaving, and the tittering suggestion is that this might have involved a laying on of hands, although that remains unsubstantiated. Still, even if it were more than a wink, wink, nod, nod suggestion, you wouldn't think it was much of a reason for being hoiked out of a club that would seem to encourage such niceties for a price. Perhaps that was the problem: at the time, the exchange rate on the Aussie dollar was way down on the green back.Somehow, the drama was swept under the carpet and managed to stay there for four years, only to be produced -- lo and behold -- a few months out from a federal election the Government seemingly can't win. But if it WAS leaked by Howard's insiders, it's running the risk of seriously backfiring as online comment to newspapers seems to be giving the Labor leader a big thumbs up. Everyone seems to be looking at Kev with different eyes.Indeed, most people I spoke to over the weekend thought that whilst hilarious, it made Rudd, with his "it seemed like a good idea at the time" defence, for once look more human. A few even said he'd gone up in their estimation.And therein lies the rub: for what might be regarded as political suicide elsewhere, and in the US in particular, seems to have had the opposite effect on Rudd's chances Down Under (and if people think that's bad, they should consider the antics of Britain's Conservative Party, where such things as being busted nude and alone with a tennis ball in your mouth and a whip tied around your neck is regarded as a normal night out).When it comes to Aussie politics, it's worth noting here that former Labor PM Bob Hawke was renowned for being a knockabout man-about-town and is said to have once asked feminist author Germaine Greer to hand him a beer while he was showering; that former Liberal leader Billy Snedden died in a highly compromising situation with his much-younger lover in a Sydney hotel room in the mid '80s, and that former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser, who was once regarded as a prim and proper conservative toff but remains a loved character in Australia because of his work for genuine humanitarian causes around the world, once turned up allegedly wrapped in a towel at the front desk of the run-down Admiral Benbow motel in Memphis, Tennessee (where he'd somehow found himself), complaining that his money, pants and particulars had been stolen. And those are only a few of the ones we know about. As for Rudd, it's doubtful it will have much of an impact on his chances despite his having puckered up to the evangelical happyclappers of the Christian Right in Australia - mainly because Australians still think the alternative is no longer the answer. That was brought home last week after an uproar over Howard's promise at the last election that he would keep mortgage interest rates low because he was the only one with the economic credentials. That found its way into the rubbish bin of political history as a red-faced PM watched them rise for the fifth time since 2004.Perhaps the last word on this affair should go to a women's lobby group, the National Foundation for Australian Women, whose spokeswoman Marie Coleman told The Daily Telegraph: "If we hanged every bloke who was stupid, there wouldn't be many left.'' It's a sentiment apparently shared by Rudd's multimillionaire wife Therese Rein, who is said to have forgiven him -- although you'd have loved to have been a fy on the wall when the Sunday papers lobbed on the kitchen table at brekkie.The one other bizarre thing about this story is that it was written by respected Canberra political correspondent Glenn Milne. Milne got into a bit of strife himself last year for getting totally maggotted at Australian journalism's prestigious Walkley Awards ceremony and leaping onto the stage to clobber another journalist after giving him a drunken gobful of ripe Aussie invective. That escapade, captured on national TV, lives on, now immortalised on YouTube, and tellingly, Milne - who blamed a combination of booze and medication - is still well liked and perhaps more importantly (for Milne at least), still gainfully employed.But it's out there and probably the best story in Australia this year, and we've all had a really good giggle over our cornflakes right across this big continent. Which means we can all get back to what's important: deciding who'll run the country and the economy the way we - the people of Australia - would like to see it run, unfortunate nights out at lap-dancing clubs and Diamond Dollars notwithstanding.Perhaps the real reason for all this and why it's not likely to affect Rudd's election hopes is that the apple, as they say, never falls far from the tree - bearing in mind that Australia was settled by the party people of the British Empire: thieves, drunks, rogues, forgers, prostitutes, women of ill repute, and Irishmen.A hell of a lot different from Puritan America, although -- digressing a bit -- what excuse Britain's politicians have for their own kinky excesses and their sniggering acceptance by the Poms is anyone's bloody guess. Good job they never sent those buggers out here, though.

The silver surfer lives in Sydney, rides longboards and shortboards, likes making waves and has an opinion on just about everything. His friends, family and employers wish he didn't

Hitting Mugabe's Murderous Regime for Six

the silver surfer — Tue, 15 May 2007 10:16:15 EDT

Sekai Holland is a grandmother. At 64, and at first glance (and ignoring the walking frame), you'd think she'd be most comfortable playing with the grandkids, chinwagging with the neighbours over the back fence or settling down in front of the telly with a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake.Well, not this grandma. Her forte is taking on the "secret police" of one of the world's greatest despots: Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. It was a decision that almost cost her life. After a prayer meeting and pro-democracy rally in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare on March 11, Mrs Holland, the courageous policy secretary for Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change, was dragged away with some of her compatriots for questioning by Mugabe's thugs.What followed was a travesty made all the worse by her age: she was tortured for seven hours, flogged at least 81 times with a rhinocerous hide whip, and bashed so hard with an iron bar her abusers shattered one of her knees, broke her left arm, her left leg, and three ribs. She was accused of being "a lover of white men" (her husband, Jim, is Australian) and "Tony Blair's whore". But the best was yet to come.A female member of the secret police stomped on Mrs Holland with spiked boots. The mauling from this was so severe, she required skin grafts to repair the damage. She didn't get them straight away, though. Despite her agony, the Zimbabwean government refused to allow any of those arrested and bashed at the rally to receive medical treatment. Only diplomatic representation by the Australian Government secured her release, likely only granted because the Australian cricket team had a tour scheduled there for later this year.The Hollands fled to neighbouring South Africa, where her story had elicited much concern, and Mrs Holland finally received her skin grafts. Last week, the couple flew back to Australia and Mrs Holland - who says she will nevertheless return to Harare to continue the fight - now remains in hospital undergoing rehabilitation for her injuries.The upshot: this week, the Australian Government held up her plight as a classic example of why it decided over the weekend to stop Cricket Australia, flush with success and with dollar signs seemingly clouding its vision after Australia's recent victory at the World Cup, from going ahead with the planned tour to Zimbabwe.The government had been urging CA to pull out, but under the terms of their International Cricket Council contract, they would be liable to a heavy fine if they did. But under the agreed code of the game, if a government decided to ban its players from a tour the fine would be waived by the ICC. The Government duly came to the party. CA got their out, and the right-wing Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard, who is staring down the barrel of a federal election defeat at the hands of Labor's Kevin Rudd later this year on the back of his unpopular and draconian industrial relations policies, for once did the right thing.Despite the usual whining about the need to separate sport and politics (remember apartheid?) and the predictable counter-claim by Mugabe that the Australian government was racist for cancelling the tour, the decision to abandon it was widely seen around the world as a victory against a murderous thug who is somehow hanging onto power by the skin of teeth after destroying Zimbabwe's economy and ruining its capacity to produce food in any quantity after forcibly removing farmers (white and black) from their properties and handing them over to his cronies.Zimbabwe was once the food bowl of Africa. It fed and employed millions across the continent. Today, it is can barely feed itself. Inflation now runs at nearly 1700 percent, and nine out of 10 Zimbabweans are unemployed. Mugabe and his thugs haven't suffered, though. They live nicely in their barbed-wire compounds, while a quarter of the country's children are AIDS orphans. Violence is commomplace on the streets of Harare, and for many Zimbabweans, it's become the only way to put food on the table. A subsequent proposed deal by CA to play the matches at a neutral venue was rejected by Zimbabwe, and for her part, Mrs Holland is pleased with the outcome. She told Sydney's The Daily Telegraph this week: "It's the right decision, and Mr Howard and Mr Downer (the Australian Foreign Minister who led the push to cancel the tour) should be congratulated ... they have consistently supported democracy in Zimbabwe and Mugabe will suffer for it. Did you hear Mugabe going on about Australia being racist? It might only be a game of cricket but it is the sort of action that hurts him.''The decision didn't go unnoticed in Britain, either, where the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair has shown a marked reluctance to criticise too harshly the regime of Mugabe's brutal Zanu-PF party. Absurdly, Blair has even suggested that Zimbabwe's government should be represented at the coming EU-Africa summit in Portugal later this year.No doubt Blair's thinking is on humanitarian lines, but there is also no doubt Britain's guilt over its colonial role in Rhodesia plays a part in British thinking and stops it sometimes from acknowledging the truth about Zimbabwe. Even more absurd is that Mugabe is only there because the British government went out of its way to bring an end to white post-colonial rule in Rhodesia and install Mugabe as Zimbabwe's president. His promise to bring the country an inclusive, multi-cultural/multi-racial style of government like that of South Africa's never enventuated, and in latter years the violence against his own people has grown steadily worse. Of late, it's been so bad, there have been calls within South Africa - even among prominent blacks who at one time supported him - to intervene.Melanie Phillips, of London's The Daily Mail, suggesting that Howard and Australians generally are not encumbered by such needless notions of colonial guilt, wrote this week: "In such a morally degraded world, John Howard's initiative is so rare as to be absolutely startling ... this confident outspokeness derives from a quality that is rare in Western leaders - being entirely comfortable in his own cultural skin." ... he believes in Australia and its Western values. He thinks these values are superior to any alternatives and it is this total absence of equivocation in upholding the national interest which explains his robust defence of both Australian identity and Western civilisation against attack.''Whatever anyone thinks of Howard's divisive politics at home, his thinking on this, without doubt, is to deny what he has called the "appalling regime" of Mugabe a propaganda victory by having the world's top cricket team touring his country. It is confrontation with purpose, and he has not minced words in the past about Zimbabwe's litany of internal terror.And for those who think cancelling a cricket tour is a bizarre way of expressing displeasure, there's another twist: Howard, a short, bespectacled and unlikely looking politician once described by George W.Bush as a "man of steel" (to much tittering in Australia), is also a self-confessed "cricket tragic". So much so, he once suggested that part of a test for Australian citizenship should be a set of Aussie-values questions that included the legendary Sir Donald Bradman's batting average (an answer most born-and-bred Aussies don't know off the top of their heads).As a result, Howard is well aware that the path he's on with this is well-trodden. Andy Flower and Henry Olonga, two of Zimbabwe's top cricketers, had their team wear black armbands at the 2003 World Cup to "mourn the death of democracy" in their country, a move that took a ton of courage. This year, after the suspicious hotel-room death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer, all World Cup teams were asked to wear them, which probably gave the Zimbabweans the best excuse they've ever had to stick on an armband. In the past few years, the national selection policy in Zimbabwe has been of a racist character, with many of its top white players - and black players who opposed Mugabe's policies - excluded from the side.So it must irk Mugabe that once again, it's cricket, the country's second national sport after soccer, that has propelled the horror of life in in his country back into international headlines - and even worse, that it was Howard once again who hit him for six and completed the humiliation by raising a finger to send him skulking red-faced back to the sheds for another well-deserved duck - and all while the world watched.

The silver surfer lives in Sydney, rides longboards and shortboards, likes making waves and has an opinion on just about everything. His friends, family and employers wish he didn't

A Clash of Civilisations, Lest We Forget

the silver surfer — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:36:49 EDT

A half-mile up the street from my place, there's a busy bus interchange and railway station, a hub for three rail lines, bordered by a huge shopping mall complex on one side, and on the other by a few dozen shops that run each side of the old two-lane Pacific Highway, now a secondary road bypassed years ago by drivers preferring the freeway between Sydney and the northern coastal port town of Newcastle.There, on a beautifully maintained grassy square, sits a stone war memorial, a cenotaph, engraved with the names of hundreds of men long since dead. It's always there, sometimes with flowers left at the base, in all its silent, imperial-looking splendour, right opposite the traffic lights where I turn each day onto the old highway for the trip into town after dropping off my youngest daughter in her very prim and proper English-looking school uniform.Underneath the engraved bronze plaques, on the side that you can see, are the names of a dozen or so battlefields from WWI and WWII - now fallen deadly quiet, and peaceful resting places for the Australians who lost their lives so far from home. Apart from the WWI human meat-grinder battles at Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles peninsula of modern-day Turkey, the slaughterhouses of the Western Front (France and Belgium), and the WWII jungle battles in New Guinea, the names of the campaigns are only vaguely familiar even to me, and would be unknown to most Americans, except for the history buffs: Salonika, Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia (Iraq), etc ... On the weekend, with Anzac Day approaching, and noticing that wreaths had been left in the rain at its base, I decided to wander up there and look at the other three sides of the memorial. Here, add Korea and Vietnam and a couple of little-known British wars of the post-war modern era, too, in Malaya and Borneo. Another side simply says "Other conflicts'', and would doubtless include The Sudan and The Boer War (Britain's 19th-century Vietnam) and those in which we're currently embroiled. Those honoured are all men from the local Shire. Many were just boys. The sandstone structure itself is unremarkable, and probably looks like the many thousands of other memorials you'd see across towns, cities and villages all over Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Britain, Africa, even Ireland, the Caribbean, parts of south-east Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.Mostly, too, they'd be listing many of the same conflicts. I know for a fact there are memorials at villages across India to the many hundreds of Indian Army soldiers who died fighting a British war in Iraq (sadly, much like that of America's today) in the 1920s and 30s. Which is also what got me thinking a while back: why are these all "foreign'' wars, and is it just this and a common language that binds us, and keeps us close? Are we really all just engaged in one seemingly never-ending, blundering imperialistic adventure, Marks I and II, as our enemies would have us believe? So, is it just that and if not, then what is it that, despite all our obvious differences, makes us all so remarkably similar?That little memorial near the railway station, and the thousands of others around the country, provides part of the answer but not all of it. In the the case of Australia, at first glance, it might indicate that a loyal but genetically recalcitrant former colony (I'm sure the stiff Germans and fanatical Japanese would have been mortified to know they were copping it up the backside from the unruly descendents of the unwanted, exiled convict dregs of the British Empire) suddenly switched allegience somewhere along the line as one master handed over the baton to another.The battle lists on these memorials tell the story: they go abruptly from El Alamein, the last great battle waged by the British against the Germans and Italians in north Africa, to New Guinea, literally on our doorstep, where the divisions of Australian desert-war veterans were rushed home to reinforce the civilian Militia battalions fighting the Japanese along the Kokoda jungle track in New Guinea. Soon, they were to be joined by the Americans, and the whole thing came under the command of the prickly General Douglas MacArthur, and our new (neo) colonial masters in Washington.You could say that except for New Guinea and the south-west Pacific, when the Japanese really did present a threat to Australia, all those wars were not ours at all. Even the naval and air force memorials are silent reminders of battles waged in sea and sky many thousands of miles from home, in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and over Europe in WWII. But the truth is, when you think about it, they really weren't foreign wars at all. Nor should the fighting of them be regarded with nostalgia or fond but jingoistic notions of the ultimate triumph of imperial grandeur - old-style, neo-, corporate or otherwise.For what they really signify is the willingness of men and women to give up peaceful lives (reluctantly too, one would suspect, for who wants to throw away a life barely lived?) to fight for a common and shared belief. Read: mostly for a good cause, even if sometimes flawed, imperfect, or arrogantly and naively executed.That common and shared belief has as its foundation the concept of a civil society (in the most literal sense) that values the personal freedoms of its peoples above all else, and has made that possible through tolerance of opposing viewpoints and the evolution of grand institutions of democracy and law that makes governments answerable not to Kings, Queens or Presidents but to the people who elect them.It's about societies that have a shared hatred of real tyranny. And these notions have nothing to do with race, either. It is not about some blind, Nazi-like belief in the racial superiority of one over another, for people of many races have come to share the same beliefs that continue to grow along that same, common thread. For example, there is room in my country, and many of the others I've mentioned above, for people from many different backgrounds. The reason they come here is to live a life of hope and opportunity, rather than of fear and hopelessness. They are not all anglo-saxon, or anglo-celtic, or European or North American. They come from all over the world and now they, too, are bound with us in this wonderful shared belief.It's what makes Anzac Day nothing like a celebration of useless war and senseless slaughter. Of course, I didn't really understand any of those things as a young Air Force cadet in the 1970s, the first time I marched along George Street on Anzac Day, or even why I was marching - although I felt I knew. In preparation for the event, all our parade time for weeks before was spent drilling and marching around town, much to the annoyance of motorists, some of whom helped us on our way with a gobful of Aussie invective. We polished our boots for hours the night before, so you could shave in them; our collars were starched stiff and our dark RAAF Blues pressed with knife-edge creases, even the shirts underneath that no one would see _ in honour, of course, of the fallen Anzacs who stormed ashore at Gallipoli at dawn on April 25, 1915, and for the veterans dead and alive of all those battles before and since. Or so we thought, anyway.In marching order, brass and steel shined up and glinting under the bright southern sun, chests puffed out and heads held high, stiff leather and metal soles crunching loudly in perfect time on the asphalt as we wheeled through Sydney like the Brigade of Guards at Buckingham Palace, I thought I'd like to be like the old Diggers marching with their battle flags and medals.I thought the "Anzac Spirit'' and its notions of "mateship'' were just about being brave, being a hero, and winning the Victoria Cross, but none of those ideas lasted long. The Vietnam War was still on, and to say it was unpopular would be an understatement, and it could have gone on for another 50 years for all we knew. At a certain age, I had no desire to be packed off there, or anywhere else for that matter, and left because I wanted to go surfing, not flying, and became a journalist instead. I certainly wasn't ready to die for Her Majesty when the beach seemed like a much better option.And that's really what this is all about. Because, as I came to understand later, for my grandfathers' generation, and my father's generation, and for me, it wasn't about any of that bullshit hero stuff in the final wash-up. It all came down to being given the opportunity that allowed me to make that choice. It really boils down to a clash of civilisations, or even clashes of sub-civilisations, and of ideas.That's where my thoughts will be when I go to the Dawn Service tomorrow (Wednesday). No doubt too I'll shed a quiet tear as the bugler plays out the last mournful and haunting notes of the Last Post.It won't be about glorifying war, because there's nothing glorious about war or killing or dying and anyone who thinks so is a fool. No - just silent thanks to all those who were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, even when they'd rather have been doing something else. I will also understand that in spite of our many imperfections, it's not just a matter of good luck that's made it that way, but the result of collective good management going back 10 or more centuries that has given us all the wherewithal to stand up to tyrants, mass murderers and modern-day barbarians.I will also be reminded that these grand institutions and the contract between people and government that give us these freedoms also come with certain responsibilities, even if we have to take them up with sad reluctance and weary resignation.

The silver surfer lives in Sydney, rides longboards and shortboards, likes making waves and has an opinion on just about everything. His friends, family and employers wish he didn't

Crazy Notions About The British Naval Party Drama

the silver surfer — Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:11:40 EDT

Conspiracy theorists are coming up with the standard mad ideas about the capture of the 15 British Royal Navy sailors and Marines, nabbed by Iran in the Persian Gulf while doing ordinary stop-and-search naval work. Though released and returned to Britain over the weekend, rumors are more rife than ever.So here are the facts – you be the final judge.Two weeks ago a small group of very lightly armed sailors and marines in two small rigids were routinely inspecting an Indian-flagged vessel a few nautical miles from shore. It was so routine that the patrolling helicopter providing nominal cover for the naval party had already headed back to their frigate, HMS Cornwall. It was situated some kilometres away and thus was unable to render any assistance.The Cornwall had lost radio contact with the party, but was apparently told by the helicopter pilot that two Iranian gunboats were in the vicinity - still, not an unusual event in the Gulf and probably no real cause for concern at that stage.Once they arrived on the scene, the Iranian crews (since revealed to have been members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard) were reportedly quite pleasant to the members of the Naval Party.The gunboats were very heavily armed. They had RPGs and heavy-calibre weapons that could have blown the two small British boats to bits within seconds. Soon, they became quite menacing and aggressive, and were then joined by another FOUR gunboats… so six in all (and about 50 crewmen), who then corralled boats into a circle before turning about to head up the disputed Shatt-al-Arab to Iranian territory nearby.It's worth noting here that the Royal Navy and other coalition ships, including those of the US Navy, are under orders not to engage the Shi'ite Iranians, partly because of the tensions in neighbouring Iraq, where the British area of control is in the mainly Shia south. The marines and sailors were only armed with a few SA80s, the standard assault rifle for the British military, and a few sidearms.They had no choice but to do what the Iranians wanted. Any other action would have been suicidal and put the lives of all 15 at grave risk given the firepower ranged against them. The British didn't take action later either, and for good reason. It’s not the retaking of the Falkland Islands, but simply a waterborne peace-keeping and security mission.Some conspiracy theorists thought it unusual that the British had their "green beret" special forces "commandos" on the rigids (and who obviously knew exactly what they were doing in going with the Iranians and were specially set up to do so to raise tensions that would serve as an excuse for an attack on Iran). That’s a lot of bunkum.While the Royal Marines are certainly an elite force, nearly all except for band members also wear the "commando" patch. Their basic training includes commando training and is acknowledged to be the longest and most intense infantry training course in the world: a total of 32 weeks. Once they have completed it, they are entitled to wear the patch and the marines' green beret. So they are not really special forces soldiers at all in today's parlance. My guess about the whole thing: the officer in charge of the Marines realised the party was massively outgunned and took the sensible course of action. That they are alive today is testimony to his clear-headedness.As for the British claim that they were in Iraqi territorial waters, no doubt they were spot on, and the co-ordinates publicly given were accurate and did indicate they weren't in Iranian territory. It's interesting too, that the first set of co-ordinates given by Iran, and quickly changed a few days later, also put the British in Iraqi waters. The problem here is, according to whom? Iran and Iraq have long disputed the border in this stretch of water, and agreements between the two thrashed out in the past have been ripped up by both parties.Perhaps the final word on that issue should go to Commodore Peter Lockwood of the Royal Australian Navy. He is the leader of Task Force 158, the Coalition's fleet in the north Gulf. And, as he has succinctly pointed out, there is no agreed maritime border ...And there's also nothing new about Iranians capturing sailors on routine stop and search duties, either. In 2004, six Royal Navy personnel were taken and paraded before the cameras in Tehran in similar circumstances. What no-one watching the drama on TV knew at the time was that they had also been subjected to a number of mock executions. You know, the ones where you only know it's mock when you hear the empty click and it doesn't blow your brains out.Time will tell as to whether we learn that the party released this week was subjected to the same kind of treatment, and given that they appeared to be reading scripted statements, you'd have to say they were at least mistreated by their captors.Rather than trying to find excuses to attack Iran, the truth is the U.S.-led coalition is looking for reasons not to - despite the kinds of provocations from Iran that we've seen these past few weeks, and others that include the training and arming of terrorists throughout the Middle East, including Iraq.That's why British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood his ground and refused to be conciliatory. There is nothing to be conciliatory about: British personnel were taken, and if everyone subsequently refused to call them hostages, I say that's just semantics.There's a bit more to it all, though. In January, six Iranian "diplomats" were captured by U.S. forces in northern Iraq, and one other held in southern Iraq was released last week just before the release of the British sailors. The U.S. has also announced that consular access would be given to the six held up north.Perhaps that's the real reason for the whole sorry incident: a cynical decision by Iran to use the lives of the 15 as bargaining chips.It seems to have worked, though, and with Iranian President Ahmadinejad saying he was "pardoning" the naval party and freeing them as a gift to the British people, he's certainly scored a PR coup of sorts. But what I don't notice in the aftermath is a build-up of coalition forces spoiling for a strike on Tehran. Anyone who believes that will happen, given the current debacle the coalition is embroiled in right now in Iraq, is living in la-la land.Yes, the Iranians are like blow flies and are annoying the U.S. no end by getting up the noses of the current administration. But they do have a history, and the coalition is looking for ways to leave the region rather than blow the living shit out of Iran as well.

The silver surfer lives in Sydney, rides longboards and shortboards, likes making waves and has an opinion on just about everything. His friends, family and employers wish he didn't

Britain Commemorates Abolition of Slave Trade 200 Years Ago

the silver surfer — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 04:10:56 EDT

King Edward III of England got it right. Back in 1354 he issued a famous statute forever enshrined in English law: "...no man of what estate or condition that he be, shall be put out of land or tenement, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without being brought in answer by due process of law.''Well, the statute sounded great in theory and to its credit, it managed to stand up for centuries to find its way, albeit in slightly rewritten form, into due process amendments in the Constitution of the United States. But as all of us know, nothing's ever cut and dried. And despite its good intent, the reality was somewhat different when push came to shove in British colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries, and particularly the brutal institution of slavery.However, that little-known statute of Edward III and the better-known provision for the Writ of Habeus Corpus contained in the Great Charter, or Magna Carta, of 1215, would later come to play a pivotal role in the abolition of slavery ... due process indeed being the key issue here.Many Americans will be surprised to learn that among the nations involved in the slave trade, their British cousins were the prime movers of the abolitionist movement, both in relation to the trade in slaves and of slavery itself - which were virtually treated as two separate issues by legislators.Paradoxically, among the colonising nations of Europe, Britain was among those to have benefited most from the cruel and barbarous practice, the legacy of which was to be felt in the United States until the mid-1800s. Be that as it may, Britons this week are commemorating the 200th anniversary of The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, passed by Parliament on March 25, 1807. Yesterday a commemorative service was staged in Westminster Abbey, attended by Prime Minister Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II. Later, the monarch lay flowers at a memorial to those affected by slavery.Although intended to abolish slavery by denying slavers the opportunity to ply their trade, the Act did not deal directly with the issue but tasked the Royal Navy - then the world's largest and most powerful - with stopping and searching ships wherever they might be on the high seas to look for slaves. A 100 pound sterling fine was to be imposed for each slave found aboard a British ship, a not inconsiderable sum in those days. There is no doubt the Admiralty pursued its orders with the usual diligence, and it certainly led to a huge reduction in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But there is also no doubt there was a degree of pragmatism involved, and another 30 years would elapse before Parliament passed a law outlawing slavery entirely.The background to the beginnings of the abolitionist movement in Britain and its ultimate success is fascinating stuff, particularly given the times, but too lengthy to detail here in its entirety. Briefly, British lawmakers were driven to action from the mid-to-late 1700s onwards by the courts and by high-ranking and influential legislators amid grumblings from a populace that had come to view the slave trade and slavery as inhumane and contrary to everything they thought their nation stood for.While abolition remains a classic example of democracy at work, and a veritable triumph of good over evil, the abolitionists did have some legal precedents: a number of cases involving slaves in England where it was ruled illegal. The first instance was in 1102, when a church council ruled that a person could not be held in servitude. The Great Charter, meanwhile, forced upon the wicked King John by England's Barons in 1215, laid down certain inalienable rights in regard to this and other situations peculiar to the people of England regarding their lives and liberties. The statute of King Edward added the all-important rider: "due process of law'".And so the most important test of English law in regard to slavery revolved around these very statutes and the practice in 18th century Britain of employing black slaves, usually from overseas, often from the Americas, as personal servants, mostly to work in well-to-do homes in London. Although in theory outlawed centuries earlier, it had never been tested at law in regard to black slaves originally brought from overseas. Because they were not bought or sold in England, their legal status was uncertain at best. The law proved it wasn't an ass in this case, however, when runaway slave James Somersett became the victim of an attempted abduction by his "owner", Charles Stuart of Virginia, who wanted to ship him off to work on a plantation. Somersett had resided in London with his godparents, and had been baptised.This is where, in my view, a confluence of what might be considered an Englishman's natural rights and a man's rights under English Common Law came to his rescue: Somersett sought a writ of Habeus Corpus, which meant that due process of the law had to be followed and the issue was quickly sent before the courts. He'd been held in chains aboard a ship embarking for Jamaica and was removed and freed.It was a landmark case because there was no legislation on the issue, despite those earlier and ancient edicts, and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, had to decide whether Somersett's abduction was in fact legal under English Common Law. Luckily, and not just for Somersett, he decided it wasn't.But he went much further. In his decision of June 22, 1772, and branding slavery "odious'", he told the court: "...Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England and therefore [Somersett] must be discharged.''Thus, in one fell swoop, a judgement of the court established the illegality of slavery under English Common Law, and many thousands of slaves working in England were emancipated almost immediately. The spirit of the law then spread to Scotland (which was under a separate jurisdiction, and there many black slaves had been employed to work in the homes of the upper classes, notably in Edinburgh), after a similar case inspired by Somersett's victory. Moreover, it remains as testament to the great institution of an independent judiciary and the power it has to positively frame the nuts and bolts of a fair and just society. It's a classic example, because, according to the judgement, slavery was never legal in England, and today there is no law banning slavery in England. Yet it remains illegal because of Mansfield's decision.While slavery was to remain a fact of life for the time being in the colonies of the West Indies and America, the judgement at least set the ball rolling for the 1807 Act, the subsequent 1827 decision by the British Government to declare slave trading an act of piracy that carried the death sentence, and the later Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which emancipated all slaves in the British Empire - and this at great financial cost to London in terms of compensation for slave owners. In the West Indies alone, the figure was a truly staggering (for that time) 20 million pounds sterling or $US40m in today's money but probably closer to a billion in terms of what it was worth then.While some American colonies also began to dismantle some aspects of slavery at around the same time (and in some cases earlier), it was to stagger on, mainly in the south of the fledgling Republic, its status legally uncertain, for another 80 odd years after Mansfield's judgement until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the 13th Amendment two years later that officially ended slavery in the United States.Though Abraham Lincoln was more interested in preserving the Union during the Civil War than ending slavery, the very fact of the secessionist South insisted it had the right to keep slaves meant that the war was indeed fought over the issue of slavery – as well as other issues.Whatever the views of historians, it heralded the end of slavery as an institution in the U.S. It testifies to the ultimate triumph of good in an age where the lines were blurred, and of the good intent and the common thread of thought shared by good people in Britain and those of her offspring, including the U.S. - which today results in the freedoms they enjoy as citizens of some of the world's great democracies.The end of slavery is a victory worth celebrating by people of all races, colours and creeds, but it shouldn't be celebrated without remembering the terrible cost to the victims of the slave trade, whose descendents remain today spread across the globe. Commemorative ceremonies in Britain this week serve to remind us that words on pieces of paper, and statutes, or judgements at common law, or Acts of parliaments, or for that matter amendments to constitutions, no matter how noble they might appear, mean nothing at all, unless they are acted upon in a spirit of inclusion and made tangible in terms of the granting of real rights, true freedoms and genuine liberties. To wait another 200 years for that would be a crime more heinous than the first.And it’s incumbent on us all to ensure that the collective intent of any of our great institutions of law is never watered down, starting with the fact that no one is above the law, not even a King or Queen of England - or a President of the United States.

The silver surfer lives in Sydney, rides longboards and shortboards, likes making waves and has an opinion on just about everything. His friends, family and employers wish he didn't

Big Ask For Super 14 Opener as Waratahs Trek to High Veldt and Lions' Den

the silver surfer — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:42:30 EST

The national coaches of the three Southern Hemisphere superpowers will be looking on eagerly this weekend in the hope of unearthing some new talent as the Super 14 rugby season kicks off in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in the countdown to the Tri-Nations tournament and September's 2007 Rugby World Cup in France.The Waratahs (Sydney, Australia), perennial underperformers of Super Rugby, have been given the toughest task of the competition for their opening rounds of the 2007 Super 14: three away matches in South Africa, starting with the reformed Lions outfit at parochial Ellis Park in Johannesburg, South Africa on Friday night.With the High Veldt traditionally proving a graveyard for many visiting sides, the 'Tahs will be forced to blood some uncapped newcomers in the rarefied atmosphere of the Johannesburg cauldron, with seven rookies included in the tour squad. And with the Johannesburg franchise now reborn after The Cats debacle of previous seasons, the clash might also prove something of an eye opener for the Wallabies and Springboks selectors.'Tahs Coach Ewan McKenzie dealing with player losses that include rugby-league convert utility back and Australia star Mat Rogers - who has quit rugby and returned to the 13-man game after signing with Australian National Rugby League newcomers Gold Coast Titans - expects a tough hit-out at altitude, where on paper the Lions will have the double advantage.As part of his new squad McKenzie has decided to take schoolboy sensation Kurtley Beale, who a bit over six months ago was running around in the First XV for St Joseph's College in the Sydney GPS competition. He is joined by another promising schoolboy newcomer, speedster Lachlan Turner who captained the Newington College 1st XV in the same competition the previous season. Both can expect the level of football to go up a few gears in intensity from what they're used to, even though both have already shown their credentials in international junior representative rugby.Beale gave a clue to his potential at top-level when he was slotted in at five-eighth in the second half of last week's Rotomahana Challenge trial game against the champion Crusaders (Canterbury, New Zealand) at the Sydney Football Stadium. Beale sliced through the Crusaders' thin red line, splitting the defence like a can opener before off-loading to Josh Holmes for the match-winning try. Brett Sheehan and Josh Valentine will share the half-back duties in the Republic and while they will be up to the task, McKenzie will certainly miss the services of his veteran half Chris Whitaker, who is now playing in Ireland for Leinster.Meanwhile star fullback Peter Hewat, who finished as second-highest points scorer in last season's Super 14 on 191 just behind Crusaders centre Dan Carter, is also likely to be fit after recovering from an ankle injury suffered in a trial game the previous week. Hewat, a kicker with a radar-like boot and the the unchallenged master of the intercept try in Super Rugby, will also be hoping to impress Australia coach John Connolly in the lead-up to both the Tri-Nations and the World Cup after being ignored by the Wallabies selectors since making his debut in the old Super 12 in 2004. If Hewat's to get the nod for the national side, this is his chance with incumbent Wallabies fullback Chris Latham (The Reds, Brisbane, Australia) ruled out of the Super 14 season with a knee injury.In the forwards the Waratahs will also miss the service of big second-rower and lineout specialist Dan Vickerman, and the bullocking charges from the back of the ruck by Wallaby No.8 David Lyons, both of whom are injured. While Lyons' stock in trade has been no-holds-barred physical exploitation of the chaos on the fringes, he has battled injury and underperformed recently with ball in hand so will be looking to impress when he returns to the paddock.After their opener against the Lions, the Waratahs return to sea level to take on the Sharks (Durban, South Africa) at Kings Park before returning to the High Veldt again for their clash with the Cheetahs (Bloemfontein, Sth Africa) in Kimberley. Points from the three away games will be crucial for the 'Tahs in the latter stages of the competition. McKenzie's men get a two-week break after their South Africa leg and a round-four bye before they put in their first appearance on home soil at Aussie Stadium in Sydney against the Western Force (Perth, Australia). McKenzie will also be hoping to pick up some vital additional bonus points on the away leg.Meanwhile, the Lions will look to regain some credibility in front of their partisan home crowd after previous seasons of inept performances had them labeled as the easybeats of the competition. Coach Eugene Eloff will be buoyed by the imminent return of injury-prone winger Ashwin Willemse and new talent Jannie Boshoff, a former Natal Schools player and a product of Maritzburg College, South Africa's rugby nursery equivalent of St Joseph's.The Lions depend heavily on the prodigious boot of five-eighth Andre Pretorius, but in general play it won't be enough to simply keep turning the Waratahs around on Friday night. The Lions will need to employ their big forwards and their traditional pick-and-drive game to batter away at their more mobile opposition in the hope of setting the platform for Pretorius to release his backs. If he can make space for talented Springbok centres Jaques Fourie and namesake Jaco Pretorius, the Waratahs will need to concentrate on shoring up their defensive line.While the 'Tahs should pick up the points on Friday, jet-lag and altitude will probably take their toll on the Sydneysiders late in the second half and the Lions will have to match them early and exploit their tiredness as the game draws to a close to have any genuine hope of a win.The other Friday night openers see the Blues (Auckland, New Zealand) take on the Crusaders in their traditional grudge match at home at Eden Park, while wooden-spooners the Western Force, hoping for a better second season of Super Rugby, get the home-turf advantage against the Highlanders (Dunedin, New Zealand) at Perth's Subiaco Oval.That clash will be notable for the debut outing for the Force of Wallaby star Matt Giteau, who was a revelation in the Australia No.9 jersey during the Wallabies' unhappy 2006 Northern Hemisphere Spring Tests tour. Giteau, one of the world's most dangerous players, filled in nicely at halfback for George Gregan, his former veteran teammate at the Brumbies (Canberra, Australia). Gregan, the incumbent Wallabies skipper, is still one of the best and wiliest organisers in world rugby and he arguably possesses the best short-passing game of any halfback at top level. However, he was rested from the tour by Connolly, who had hoped to uncover some new options.Giteau, who excels in more space at inside centre and can open up gaps as succinctly as he slices through them, was probably wasted at the scrumbase in Europe given his other talents and reportedly says he wants to play five-eighth this season for the Force. The Wallabies star has a slick set of hands and would easily handle the move inside to pivot, so Force coach John Mitchell will probably oblige him to give the West Australians more attacking options through a formidable backline back line that now includes Sydney Roosters rugby-league convert Ryan Cross.Opening round full draw:Friday:Blues (Auckland NZ) vs Crusaders (Canterbury NZ) at Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand.Western Force (Perth Aust) vs Highlanders (Dunedin NZ) at Subiaco Oval, Perth, Australia.Lions (Johannesburg SA) vs Waratahs (Sydney Aust) at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, South Africa.Saturday:Chiefs (Waikato NZ) vs Brumbies (Canberra Aust) at Waikato Stadium, Hamilton, New Zealand.Queensland Reds (Brisbane Aust) vs Hurricanes (Wellington, NZ) at Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane, Australia.Sharks (Durban SA) vs Bulls (Pretoria SA) at Kings Park (ABSA Stadium), Durban, South Africa.Cheetahs (Bloemfontein SA) vs Stormers (Cape Town SA) at Free State Stadium (Vodacom Park), Bloemfontein, South Africa.

The silver surfer lives in Sydney, rides longboards and shortboards, likes making waves and has an opinion on just about everything. His friends, family and employers wish he didn't

Flying the Flag: Sanity Prevails for Australia Day

the silver surfer — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 03:12:24 EST

Today I drove to work over the Harbour Bridge while everyone else was out celebrating the birth of our nation. For those who don't know, Australia was a penal colony - and January 26 is celebrated as Australia Day, to mark the day in 1788 when a fleet of convict transports from England dropped anchor in Port Jackson, now Sydney Harbour.It's come a long way in those 200-odd years, and it'd be a revelation to see what the marines, the Royal Navy crews, those first settlers in chains and the bemused local aboriginal people who greeted them as they planted the flag would think if they could see it now: freeways and double-decker trains heading onto the Harbour Bridge, the skyline broken by skyscrapers north and south and miles and miles of harbourside real estate or residential high-rise climbing towards a bright sun in every direction you look.Helicopters buzzed overhead, and crowds lined the bridge walkway, hundreds of metres above the water, to look back up the blue expanse of the main harbour dotted with boats big and small and past the Opera House waiting for the start of one of the annual Australia Day attractions: the ferry boat race, which begins at Fort Denison, an old island garrison fort sitting in the middle of the harbour, and finishes under the bridge.Everywhere you looked, someone was flying the southern cross, our blue national flag, with its big white stars and the Union Jack in the corner, symbol of our past and a genuine part of our heritage. Others carried boxing kangaroo flags in the national sporting colours of green and gold. I saw half a dozen red, black and gold Aboriginal flags in amongst the crowds as well, and this morning's activities on the harbour were kicked off by the annual woggan ma-gule spirit cleansing ceremony at Farm Cove in the Royal Botanic Gardens, sacred land of the Gadigal people, which honours our collective past here - whether it reaches back just a few years, a few hundred years or many thousands - and celebrates the hope of the future.My contribution to the day was to wear a pair of patriotic boardshorts to work, tastefully accessorised with a red, white and blue T-shirt and pair of Brazilian Haviaianas thongs (flip-flops, to those outside Australia) in Aussie green and gold with little Australian flags stuck on them. When you take them off and put them together, the writing on the inner sole spells "Aust-ralia". Beauty. So tacky, I love 'em - even though they're not made here (like most things in Australia today).And yesterday, despite fears that the flying of the flag would promote racial tensions, worried organisers of the Big Day Out rock concert, which had already been moved back a day from its traditional Australia Day date, backed down and allowed it inside the grounds of Sydney Showground. Co-promoter Vivian Lees, who had at one stage helped organise a rendition of I Still Call Australia Home, admitted that earlier calls not to fly the flag might have been a bit misguided. As it was, more than 55,000 young people turned out peacefully to enjoy the concert. Aussies, of course, who have a very strong Irish heritage, have a traditional dislike of people telling them what to do and love to thumb their noses at authority: so many at the event wore the flag painted on their faces or temporarily stuck on their bodies, or had it on their T-shirts, hats, shorts or bikinis. Others flew it in the stadium. Only two people had to be taken to hospital - one with a wrist injury, the other with stomach pain, and neither because of crowd violence.When I finally got to work today, someone was complaining that the schedule must have changed and the only cricket on TV was an England-New Zealand clash in the current One-Day international tri-series being played Down Under ... and it just didn't seem right that on Australia Day, the two teams running around the Adelaide Oval were wearing the red, white and blue of England and the black of New Zealand."Nah, come on,'' yelled Holly, a work colleague who comes from a mostly female family (five sisters) and knows more about cricket and footy than most blokes because her father loved dragging his daughters around to sporting events."It's bloody Australia Day, mate - of course they're playing. Look.'' Then she made us look like idiots by pointing out that it WAS Australia - just in their dark-green outfits. At the time of writing, the hapless Poms, who haven't won a game here against Australia over what must by now for them be feeling like a really, long hot summer, were on their way to another absolute tonking. It's always good to get the last laugh on them, and so much for all their old, well-worn broken-record convict gags ("When I arrived at Sydney airport, they asked if I had a criminal record. I said, Oh, I didn't realise you still needed one." Yawn. Yeah. Ho ho, boys, and cop this, as another ball gets cracked hard and flies towards the boundary for one more six). Holly's right, of course, about celebrating Australia Day ... which makes it all the harder sitting in the office on a day like today. We all agreed that like the parking cops who were given some nice Aussie invective as they tried to book cars in the area yesterday, it seemed really un-Australian not to be at a barbecue, or the beach, or on the harbour today, or even just sitting in a pub having a nice cold beer. But then any day here's a good day for the high stool, so there's plenty of catch-up time.My hope for the day is that it helps ALL the people who live on this continent to put aside their differences and work for a brighter future that includes us all. Otherwise, we really haven't shed our shackles.

The silver surfer lives in Sydney, rides longboards and shortboards, likes making waves and has an opinion on just about everything. His friends, family and employers wish he didn't