Tuesday 7th January 1997
Search news archive by day | Search archive by text (NB - News Index) |
Definitive Guide to Aussie webs | Global Web Builders Gold |
The Kid's Locker Room | World Wide Websters |
Crazy because the rescue missions to the sailors thousands of kilometres off our shoreline is costing Australian tax payers millions of dollars and these super-rich super-stoopid yachtsmen made their own decision to embark on the race and none of those being saved or currently being sought will pay one red cent towards the costs of their rescue.
|
Race rule 12.7 states: Boats shall be designed and built so as to be self dependent out at sea. The crew has no right to expect the organising committee of the race to set up rescue operations from land. Rescue and assistance at sea are ruled by current international legislation. |
It's about time those rules were changed. Right now the HMAS Adelaide is on its way from Perth to the location of the latest two shipwrecked yachtsmen Thierry Dubois (French) and Tony Bullimore (English) to try and save them.
Yesterday an RAAF Orion dropped a survival kit to Terry Dubois who was standing on the upturned hull of his boat in massive seas. 20 minutes after setting out in the life raft Dubois was washed overboard and is now presumed drowned.
The Australian taxpayer has already funded the rescue of other competitors, like Frenchman Raphael Dinelli, who has already said that he will try again (hero stuff) while not contributing one cent to his own rescue. Belgian competitor Patrick de Radigues was earlier towed into West Australia's Fremantle harbour - again a costly exercise for the Australian taxpayer.
In 1994 it cost the Australian taxpayer Au$5.4 million to rescue French solo yachtsman Isabel Autissier - and neither he nor the French Government contributed one cent back to the Australian government.
The cost involved this time round would remove the backlog to elective surgery here in Australia and save dozens of Australian tax payer lives...
Its about time that the international yacht racing fraternity got real and these "heros" named above realised that they are nothing better than leaches bleeding the coffers of government funds that should be spent on Australian citizens.... they aren't heros they are anything but that - of the worst kind - but in this crazy world they will probably write a book, do a TV show etc... when they get home and paid a squillion... with no reimbursement or thought to those who saved their skin in the first place.
The Northern Territory euthanasia laws allowed another terminally ill patient to take her life on Thursday. Janet Mills suffering from a rare form of skin cancer, mycosis fungoides, took her own life after securing the signature of a third doctor as required by legislation. The delay in getting the third signature was only overcome when she made a public appeal on an Australian TV Current Affairs programme late last year.
Dr Philip Nitschke was once agin the doctor at hand to assist Janet Mills in answering the questions on the computer - a selection which led to a lethal cocktail being pumped automatically into her veins.
Mills' last words were, "Peace at last!"
He went on to say, "It is dangerous because we already have one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world.
"The biggest users of the Internet are teenagers, and if you put something on the Internet which encourages suicide - that's just inappropriate.
"It is one thing to say that you disagree with me and to say that euthanasia should be available and provide it the way Dr Nitschke has been in Darwin. It is another thing altogether to start promoting it on the Internet. I think its appalling."
It is believed that Alan Bond's Dallhold liquidators have been approached to release the documents they have gathered to the Australian Federal Police. To date they have refused to do so - only saying that if the information got into the public sector some very highly placed and respected citizense would have their reputations severely damaged.
Sounds like a piece out of the book Animal Farm to me.
The consulate-general in Houston, Texas and the consulate in Berne, Switzerland are those facing the chop. In other embassies there is talk of the Australian embassy merging with that of Canada to cut costs in locations like Denmark. Embassy sharing by Australia and Canada already takes place in Cambodia and the Barbados Islands.
Staff numbers within Australia have fallen from 1929 to 1718 since the middle of 1995 and more than 60 overseas positions have been withdrawn already this year.
And here we go rescuing ill-fated yachtsmen at the cost of millions of dollars to the nation!
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 12:33:26 +1000
The Editor,
Your posting for the 6th January 1997 included an assessment of the TV program, "Mouthing Off".
I am not surprised that you found that show obnoxious, especially when they categorised the 71% who supported Pauline Hanson's views as "lower educated Australians" who have to be taught what was right and proper by those who had only recently arrived in Australia.
However you must remember who you are dealing with ... both these people and their sycophantic media. They have invented their own religion or system of right and wrong, if you will. They are the ones with the enlightenment ... the pure ones. Anyone who dares to disagree and especially stand up on their hind legs and refuse to be cowered is to them either a fool, mislead or evil. In this they are fanatics, for there is no humility in them. They cannot even concede that they may just possibly be slightly wrong. Hence their response ... re-education, punishment, censorship, suppression.
This, of course, means that they are sanctimonious, self-righteous, intolerant, narrow-minded, hypocritical and bigoted. I hope you're not surprised. I'm not, but I am disappointed, especially of those who would claim to be well educated and intelligent. I would have hoped for better.
Unfortunately a good education or high intelligence has never guaranteed rational, let alone right and moral, thinking and behaviour.
The rest of us can only persist in opposing this nonsense and its adherents. In a supposedly democratic society there is at least some chance that this opposition can right the nonsense. You never know, if the nonsense is opposed often enough, its adherents might even regain their senses or at least leave for more congenial company overseas.
Jon Kehrer
Return to Australian National News of the Day