Shaggy Dog Comments...
One of the supporters of keeping Lismore Lake for birds was out collecting signatures for a petition when she swears, a member of the public came up and said "You'll keep the birds on the lake if you get rid of the galahs on the Council."
Our Heartless Bastard Award this week goes to the Allianze Australia Insurance Group who sent a demand for damages to a 15-year-old Melbourne girl who had been killed after being hit by a car. Three weeks after she died, Alliance wrote to the late teenager, Fiona Herbst, saying that the accident was her fault, and therefore she was liable for damages to the car. If that's the case, we think she's paid a heavy price already. After the whole incident became public, the insurance company announced it would drop the claim and send a letter of apology to the family. An Allianze spindoctor said they would investigate how such a mistake could be made and pledged to train staff to deal more sensitively with fatalities. Right now, it'd be nice if they could deal with anyone at all.
Something's afoot at Lismore Council (read the article), and we're hoping the mayor will reveal all at a meeting next Tuesday. At last week's Council meeting, he was being very coy about what's on his mind in calling for a review of council's Section 94 plans - which outline how developer contributions will be spent on infrastructure projects. Other councillors wanted to know what was going on, which led to the following exchange over why they were having the workshop:
Cr Gates: So we'll know how much money is available.
Cr Swientek: But we know how much there is.
Cr Gates: Well I don't know.
Council's finance manager: About $1 million.
Cr Swientek: So what would we gain from the workshop?
Finance manager: We could relay that information to council again.
Magistrate Jeff Linden, who finishes his stint at Lismore Local Court later this year, has been enjoying a touch of celebrity in the last week. He was mentioned in dispatches on ABC radio's 15 minute statewide news bulletin on Wednesday morning following a recent incident in which one of his... err... customers threw a boot at him during a court hearing in March. The man, Paul Robert Bergin, appeared in court again yesterday, charged with assault (the boot hit Mr Linden) and two charges of injuring a judicial officer. He pleaded guilty, but was kept in the cells below the court during the hearing.
The civic-minded magistrate was out supporting Byron Bay's new community centre at a fundraiser this week. Our spies tell us he's now the proud owner of comedian Mandy Nolan's left breast, having paid $110 for a chocolate version of it at the auction. Having been lucky enough to be given one of her nipples (in chocolate) as a present by one of the other keen bidders, we feel duty bound to report it was delicious. We're thinking that Shaggy could make a major contribution to this kind of fundraiser. After all, dogs have 10-12 teats.
Among the statistics to emerge from the 8.6 million census forms filled out last year was that Australians claim over 200 different ancestries. Surprisingly, only 35.9% (around 6.7 million people) have Australian parents, while the next most popular heritage was Pom at 33.9%, followed by Irish (10.2%), Italian (4.3%), German (4%) and Chinese (3%). More than a fifth (22%) of people were born overseas - in the UK (5.5%), New Zealand (1.9%) and Italy (1.2%). Italian, with 353,605 speakers, is the most popular language other than English spoken at home, followed by Greek and Cantonese. In the 100 years since Federation, the Australian population has grown from 3.7 million in 1901, to almost 19 million in 2001. The population has increased by 6% since the last census five years ago. If you're a bloke, your luck's in - females make up 50.7% of the population.
If you want to be the average Aussie, then you need to be an Australian-born woman living in Sydney, aged 35 and married, with 1.7 kids (we're not sure if that means one kid plus about 6 months pregnant), Catholic, making $375 a week (no we can't figure out how you'd survive on that money in Sydney either), and paying off a mortgage at $875 a month (no we can't figure out how you'd get a mortgage that low in Sydney either). So much for statistics. As a wag once pointed out, on average, every person in Australia has one testicle.
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Most councils and local villages have signs welcoming visitors to the area, but we're dead impressed by the efforts of Goolmangar residents, obviously proud of their diary heritage. If the cows come first, perhaps we should put a few in the Australian soccer team next time it tries to qualify for the world cup.
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