Save The Mexican Wave!

As a lifelong cricket fan, nothing annoys me more than the cricketing traditionalists. You know the sort - still disappointed that Test cricket has to end after five days; appalled that the TV stations no longer cover every ball bowled; and unhappy about the amount of fun had by a cricketing crowd, which ought to studiously watch each ball bowled in concentrated silence.

However, cricket is a form of entertainment that must compete in a very saturated market. If it doesn't entertain, the punters will stop coming. And that is exactly what has happened. The only game capable of delivering a packed crowd is The Ashes series - and after this summer's debacle, even that may be in danger of playing to half-empty stadiums.

So what does Cricket Australia do when faced with declining support? It bans fun.

This year,

i) The Barmy Army bugler was ejected
ii) Inflatables were confiscated and
iii) The Mexican Wave was banned and on the spot fines of $210 introduced

In response to this onslaught from the nanny state, outraged cricket fan Matthew Newton has set up the website Save The Mexican Wave.

"The ban is just absolutely ridiculous. It's as if Cricket Australia doesn't want people to enjoy going to the cricket any more. It's stripping the atmosphere out of the game. The Mexican wave is something that Australian fans do value."

Liberty Victoria president Brian Walters made the following observation,

"What I think is interesting in this is that Cricket Australia, which is not a government body, should be able to effectively make laws and have the police enforce them. I think that is very troubling."

Quite.

But Cricket Australia meant business. Just 20 minutes into yesterday's match between Australia and New Zealand, Stevo was swiftly ejected for starting a wave, along with 121 others.

From Steve's website,

While the toffs and whingers sitting up in glass boxes swilling Chardonnay in their suits and ties, the fans below are trying to have a good time.Cricket Australia has declared war on the average fan: they screwed up the ticketing for The Ashes. They banned the Bugler from the cricket. Now they're banning the Mexican Wave. I think that Cricket Australia should be the first to take our new citizenship test as they obviously have no idea what it means to be Australian. This isn't Great Britain, Land of Hope and Glory and Stuffed Shirts. This is Australia, land of the larrikin, land of the fair go! From today, let's see the Mexican Wave back in its rightful place at the People's Ground, the MCG. That's right, Cricket Australia. The People's Ground. Stand up to them! Tell them what you think! Save the Mexican Wave!

SIGN THE PETITION

We, Australian cricket fans, call on Cricket Australia to:

1. Lift their ban on the Mexican Wave.

2. Institute security measures to guarantee the safety of spectators during Mexican Waves.

3. Ban spectators who throw harmful objects during Mexican Waves for life.

In this form of cricket, the Mexican Wave is virtually compulsory.

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Where our taxes go

In fiscal year 05/06, the Australian government spent $208 billion of your taxes.

Where did it all go?

Here's a sample

Welfare $88.3bn
Healthcare $37.6bn
Defence $15.8bn
Schools $10.4bn
Universities $5.19bn
Transport $3.1bn
Foreign Aid $2.9bn
Police $2.8bn
Govt pensions $2.4bn

Value for money?

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Thought for the weekend

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The Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim

How great a story is this. This has just made my weekend.

'The King David School, in Birmingham, is a state primary where the children learn Hebrew, recite Jewish prayers, eat kosher food and wave Israeli flags. So how come the majority of pupils are followers of Islam?

King David has a claim to be one of the most extraordinary schools in the country: King David is a strictly Jewish school. Judaism is the only religion taught. There's a synagogue on site. The children learn modern Hebrew - Ivrit - the language of Israel. And they celebrate Israeli independence day.

But half the 247 pupils at the 40-year-old local authority-supported school are Muslim, and apparently the Muslim parents go through all sorts of hoops, including moving into the school's catchment area, to get their children into King David to learn Hebrew, wave Israeli flags on independence day and hang out with the people some would have us believe that they hate more than anyone in the world.

The Muslim parents, mostly devout and many of the women wearing the hijab, say they love the ethos of the school, and even the kosher school lunches, which are suitable because halal and kosher dietary rules are virtually identical. The school is also respectful to Islam, setting aside a prayer room for the children and supplying Muslim teachers during Ramadan. At Eid, the Muslim children are wished Eid Mubarak in assembly, and all year round, if they wish, can wear a kufi (hat). Amazingly, dozens of the Muslim children choose instead to wear the Jewish kipah.
At the prize morning Carol Cooper, the RE teacher, says: "Boker tov," (Ivrit for "Good morning").

"Good morning Mrs Cooper," the children chant in reply. The entire school, Muslims, Jews, plus the handful of Christians and Sikhs then say the Shema, the holiest Jewish prayer, all together.
The Year Four violin club (five Muslims, two Jews) play "Little Bird, I Have Heard". Just as many prizes are being distributed to Hussains and Hassans and Shabinas as there are to Sauls and Rebeccas and Ruths. In fact, if anything, the Muslim children have beaten the Jewish ones. Thus does the Elsie Davis Prize for Progress go to a beaming little lad called Walid, the religious studies prize to a boy called Imran wearing a kipah and the progress prizes for Hebrew, to a boy called Habib and a girl called Alia.

Times being as they are, King David doesn't advertise its presence in a city where its pioneering multiculturalism could raise all kinds of unwelcome attention. There's a discreet signboard outside that reveals little about the school's unique nature. There are watchful video cameras high up on the walls, plus two electronic gates to pass through. Sadly, it is, to a significant extent, says Laurence Sharman, the (Christian) chairman of the PTA, "an undercover school".
The Muslim parents, however, are only too keen to talk in the playground about what might be seen by some in their communities as a controversial schooling decision.

"We actually bought a flat in the catchment area for the children to come here," says Nahid Shafiq, the mother of Zainah, four, and Hamza, nine, and wife of Mohammed, a taxi driver. "We were attracted by the high moral values of the school, and that's what we wanted our kids to have. None of us has any problem with it being a Jewish school. Why on earth should we? Our similarities as religions and cultures are far greater and more important than our differences. It's not even an issue.

"At the mosque, occasionally, people ask why we send the children here, but there is no antagonism whatsoever, and neither is there from anyone in our family. In fact, it was a big family decision to try and get them into King David. This is the real world. This is the way real people do things in the real world. All the violence and prejudice and problems - that's not real, that's just what you see on the news."

Fawzia Ismail (the mother of Aly-Raza, nine, and Aliah, six) is equally positive. "My nephew came here and my brother showed me the school, so it's a bit of a family tradition now. We're very, very pleased with the school. It's so friendly. All the kids mix and go to one another's parties and are in and out of each other's houses. They teach a bit about Israel, but we don't have any problem with that. There are such similarities between our people and our societies."

The Jewish parents and teachers I speak to are just as enthusiastic. "You know, in these difficult times in the world, I think we show how things should be done. It's really a bit of a beacon," says one teacher, whose three children all went to King David and ended up at Oxford University.
Parent Trevor Aremband is from South Africa. "In Johannesburg, we have Jewish schools, but they're 100 per cent Jewish, so we were a bit shocked when we first came here. But the integration works so well. It's clearly the way to go in today's world. My son is eight and has loads of Muslim friends."

King David was not designed to be such a beacon of inter-faith cooperation and friendship. Founded in 1865 as The Hebrew School, it was 100% Jewish until the late 1950s.
Then two things began to happen: there was a growth in the Muslim population in middle-income areas such as Moseley, and a shrinking of Britain's Jewish community, especially outside the main centres of London and Manchester. Muslim children started coming to the school in the early 1960s, but the current position, in which they are in the majority (Jewish children comprise 35 per cent, Muslims 50 per cent, Christians, Sikhs and other, 15 per cent) is very new.
"One of the things that surprises people about this school," says Langford, "is that it's not an especially privileged intake. Half of our kids have English as an additional language. But the amazing thing is how well it all works. We have a new little boy here from China, whose only English a few weeks ago was to ask for the toilet. He now speaks English - and can say the Shema perfectly.

"If you gauge success, for instance, by racial incidents, which schools always have to report to the LEA, we have at the most one a term. And that can just mean some harsh words with a racial slant used in the playground. At multicultural inner city schools where I've taught, there will be far, far more than that, possibly one or more a week."

In terms of SATs and Ofsted inspections, King David has also shone. It is rated as good - the second highest possible ranking - in all areas, and Ofsted made a special mention at the last inspection of the integration between children of different faiths and races. In the recent SATs results, the school also came in well above the national average in all subjects.
Headmaster, Steve Langford, a Warwick University economics graduate, is himself a bit of a paradox. He is Church of England on both parental sides and only became interested in Judaism when he worked in a Jewish summer camp in Massachusetts in his gap year. His interest paid off when he got a teaching job a King David. Now he is learning Ivrit at evening classes and goes to Israel for holidays.'

via Harry's Place

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Singing Tooral liooral liaddity

Are the Pommie convicts bound for Botany Bay, once again?

Earlier this year, Derek Williams of Blenau, North Wales, admitted to downloading nearly 200 pornographic images of children on to his computer. John Rogers QC, the senior judge on the North Wales circuit, said a jail sentence was necessary as a deterrent to others. But he added,

"As of yesterday, I have to bear in mind a communication from the Home Secretary."

Communication?

Earlier this week, Mr Reid, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, and Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, wrote to judges and magistrates urging them to use prison as a last resort as the UK has simply run out of prison places.

The Australian reports that a plane-load of prisoners from British jails could be headed Down Under more than 200 years after Britain first sent boats full of convicts to Australia. Australia's High Commissioner to the UK Richard Alston joked of the the prospect of convicts again landing on Aussie soil at a recent function.

Reid's options are limited. They include the "nuclear option" of releasing some prisoners early; sending 11,000 foreign nationals to finish their sentences at home; and creating a waiting list for jail spaces. Other emergency proposals include renting prison ships to house criminals offshore and converting an RAF camp to house prisoners.

Why has it come to this? Well, it's really very simple. In their infinite wisdom and desire to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", Labour stopped building new prisons about five years ago. The (unsurprising) result - Britain has nowhere left to house its growing inmate population.

Welcome once again to Oz!

Farewell to old England forever
Farewell to my rum culls as well
Farewell to the well known Old Bailey
Where I used for to cut such a swell

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How to reign in soaring CEO pay

Colourful commeter at Harry's Place, Benji Mackie, reports on another example of corporate largesse. Albeit on a smaller scale than Robert Nardelli, but more hypocritically, Guardian Editor, Alan Rusbridger, has been awarded a 14.7% increase in his annual salary to £312,000 plus a £175,000 bonus. Guardian Media Group CEO, Carolyn McCall, received a 9% salary increase to £280,000 plus a £215,000 bonus. At the same time Guardian sales are flat, despite the relaunch, and the Guardian and Observer lost £49.9m. Many Guardian staff got only a 3% pay rise.

The Guardian newspaper has this to say about executive pay,

"The problem is getting worse. Every year top executives vote themselves rewards totally out of kilter both with what their employees earn and the success they achieve."

Before capitalism is tarnished for good, how should Boards reward their CEOs? Here are six suggestions.

i) Charge CEOs for using capital.
It's all well and good going out and borrowing money at say, 6% and then earning 8% on that, but CEOs should only be paid if they invest in projects that exceed a firm's economic cost of capital (10% is a good guide).

ii) Replace restricted stock with options.
Options used to be the preferred measure of payment but since the accounting treatment of options has changed, companies have reverted back to paying in stock. Hence, CEOs can still earn huge money even if their stock price drifts up slowly with the market. Options struck at higher than current share prices, require serious outperformance.

iii) Force CEOs to hold stock for up to ten years
This will mean long-term planning is favoured over a quick short-term fix. Insist on CEOs maintaining their shareholdings until retirement. (If they need the money for that third house in Aspen, they can always borrow against their stockholdings).

iv) Pay CEOs almost entirely in stock and options
Their fortunes must be tied into the share price

v) Pay CEOs on the share price performance versus a basket of similar companies.
Even a great CEO will see his or her stock price fall in a bear market, but if they have outperformed their peers they should be rewarded. Similarly, anyone running a commodities business that hasn't seen their share price double over the past three years, should be fired.

vi) Pay CEOs on staff turnover numbers
All CEOs talk about the 'war for talent' but how many are actually rewarded for retaining good staff. Make it a a part of the annual bonus.

Noone minds seeing quality people receive large sums of money, but there has to be a restoration of the link between risk and reward. And there has to be a penalty for failure.

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Wrong Girl or Wrong Movie?

In 2000, a teenage girl was raped 25 times by a gang of 14 men in Western Sydney. The rapists, including Bilal Skaf, were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Now a film-maker, Nicholas Hammond, has applied and received government funding of $51,000 to make a film of the rape, called Wrong Girl.

Anita Quigley at the Daily Telegraph asks what new worthy message can such a film send us that we don’t already know? We know the Lebanese Muslim rapists called their victims “sluts” and “Aussie pigs”, telling one,

“you deserve it because you’re an Australian”

Mr Hammond said the film would be

“provocative and highlight the misunderstandings between Muslims and non-Muslims”

Mis-understandings? Gang rape? Not exactly a grey area is it?

“We’re trying to make something that has more global ramifications – particularly between the Muslim and non-Muslim world – and explore the fact there’s a lack of understanding there, which creates conflict”

Anita Quigley believes the film has 'all the hallmarks of absolving the attackers of any responsibility because of religion and/or cultural differences. '

Let's wait and see.

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Erosion of personal responsibility - Part II

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, — often the surfeit of our own behavior, — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc'd obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.

This quote from Shakespeare's King Lear (via the Mises Institute) finds a description of those who, throughout human history, have denied free will and personal responsibility, instead blaming their wrongdoings on interventions divine and planetary.

Western criminal law is based on the premise of free will but as neuroscience develops further it is beginning to challenge this basic tenet that glues free societies together.

The British government is seeking to change the law in order to lock up people with personality disorders that are thought to make them likely to commit crimes, before any crime is committed. The national DNA database being built up allows identification of such people. How long, ask the Economist, before those people are subject to surveillance.

In the late 1990s a previously law-abiding American began collecting child pornography. The day before his sentencing, his brain was scanned and he was found to have a brain tumour. When it had been removed, his paedophilic tendencies disappeared. When it started growing back, they returned.

Was he responsible? Should he be locked up?

Scientists have now found a higher concentration of certain molecules in people prone to anger and violence. Are they too blameless for their violent actions?

The old French proverb, "to understand all, is to forgive all" may about to become true.

This would be a huge mistake.

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Affluenza by Oliver James

'World-renowned' psychologist, Oliver James , believes there is an epidemic of 'affluenza' throughout the world - an obsessive, envious, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses - that has resulted in huge increases in depression and anxiety among millions.'

There's even a website for this latest middle-class disease.

'Over a nine-month period, 'bestselling author' Oliver James travelled around the world to try and find out why. He discovered how, despite very different cultures and levels of wealth, affluenza is spreading. Cities he visited include Sydney, Singapore, Moscow, Budapest, Copenhagen, Delhi and Shanghai, and in each place he interviewed several groups of people in the hope of finding out not only why this is happening, but also how one can increase the strength of one's emotional immune system. '

He wasn't very kind to Sydney.

"The most vacuous of cities. The Dolly Parton of cities in Australia."

Ouch.

'Sydney's culture of the relentless pursuit of property, perfect bodies and status has British psychologist and author Oliver James worried. He found the obsessive pursuit of money and possessions was not buying happiness. He had not been to Sydney before and expected a

"philistine nation of jolly, uncomplicated fun-seekers"

Does he mean simple shire-folk that he can condescend?

'Instead, he found a city in thrall to American values and a puritan work ethic (how awful!) that robbed life of joy and meaning. Middle-class Sydney, he writes, is'

"packed with career-obsessed workaholics, people who place a high value on money, professional status and appearance"

The British, James concludes, are a cut above their convict cousins.

"The British elite have been around for an awfully long time and there is not the crassness of the Australian rich."

In other words James is a fan of the landed aristocracy, those who inherited their money from Dad. As opposed to those who earned it via a meritocracy.

Well, Olly, i have lived in both cities and i can 100% assure you that you are talking utter bollocks. That should suffice for my book review of Affluenza. I'll submit it to Amazon.

Scott Burgess draws slightly different conclusions

via Tim Blair

Update (via dub kitty); during a Dave Lee Roth interview for Rolling Stone in the 1980s, producer Ted Templeman admonished DLR that money can’t buy happiness, to which DLR replied

“well, maybe not, Ted, but it can buy me a boat big enough to sail right the fuck up next to it.”

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Hizb-ut-Tahrir - To Ban or Not To Ban

Hizb-ut-Tahrir should not be banned says Attorney General, Philip Ruddock

"Yes they should!" screams Morris Iemma, Premier of NSW

The case for the prosecution,

The main speaker at their latest Bankstown shindig where they once again called for the restoration of the Caliphate (Khulifah), was one Ismail Yusano, leader of Hizb in Indonesia and firebrand extraordinaire (makes Hilali seem warm and cuddly). His pearls of wisdom include,

Exhibit 1; "US President George Bush and British Premier Tony Blair must both be labelled as terrorists and warmongers"

Well if that were the criteria, then half of Iemma's Labour Party would have to be expelled.

He has also called for the severing of all ties between Indonesia and Australia, the introduction of Sharia Law (i.e stoning for adulterers and homosexuals) and a ban on, err, discos.

Exhibit 2; "This is an organisation that is basically saying that it wants to declare war on Australia, our values and our people"

says Iemma...without citing or explaining. No blogger he.

Exhibit 3; Chair of the Community Relations Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian, says Hizb ut Tahrir is overstepping the mark. "If people are going to hold public meetings calling for a way of life and our institutions to be replaced by some other system, then they are definitely crossing the line. It's not acceptable in our society and it's tantamount to calling for a revolution."

It isn't very nice to to our liberal ears but it is isn't tantamount to calling for a revolution, Stepan. And not acceptable? I find people who don't pooper scoop their dogs unacceptable but i wouldn't ban them.

The case for the defence;

Exhibit 1; Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia spokesman, Wassim Doureihi, said calls for the group to be banned were misplaced as the group was opposed to terrorism.

Yes, maybe. But Hizb are good at spinning and their website is pretty clear.

Exhibit 2; Hizb ut-Tahrir says it is non-violent but it has been proscribed in many Middle Eastern, European and central Asian countries after being deemed a threat to national security.

Yes. But Tony Blair tried to ban it and also found evidence to be lacking.

Exhibit 3; Mr Ruddock said Hizb ut-Tahrir had been closely monitored by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation but had been found to have done nothing in Australia to warrant it being banned.

I'm assuming his info is better than mine. Or at least i'm hoping.

Exhibit 4; Former chairman of the Federal Government's Muslim Community Reference Group, Dr Ameer Ali, says banning the group and its controversial teachings could do more harm than good.

However, Dr Ali is concerned the conference held by the group may further damage the community's perceptions of the faith.

He is absolutely right.

"The best way to deal with the group is to engage moderate Muslims to counter its views."

Yes. Spot on again. Smart guy this Dr. Ali.

"And I think the law enforcement authorities must monitor them."

Yes. Yes. Yes.

For the moment, Ruddock has the last line,

"Just because people have messages that I don't regard as broadly in keeping with Australian values doesn't mean they can be proscribed as terrorist organisations,"

But Dr. Ali comes out best.

Verdict; hung jury.

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