Thoughts as I Read Today's News

Everything from new speed limits to criminals wearing ankle bracelets in school and more

Pretty soon it will be faster to walk than drive in Victoria.

The state’s infrastructure advisory body is recommending 30km/h speed limits on all residential streets in order to improve safety.

The advice comes after research found that a pedestrian had an 85 percent chance of dying if hit by a car travelling at 50km/h, but only a 10 percent chance if hit at 30km/h.

Infrastructure Victoria chief executive, Dr Jonathan Spear, said “slower speeds make streets safer”.

Well why not ban cars altogether so that there is zero chance of a pedestrian being hit at all.

Or they could simply ask drivers to slow down before hitting pedestrians.

You see the real problem here though, don’t you?

Before motorists wanting to escape the draconian speed limits could reach the NSW border, they would be too old to drive!

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Just when you thought Government waste couldn’t get any worse, the sun comes up.

Revelations today that 13 public servants were enrolled in a two day acting course so they could learn to show empathy to staff.

The acting classes, provided the National Institute of Dramatic Art, cost ratepayers $25,000.

The senior staff from Services Australia are involved in managing agencies like Centrelink and Medicare.

It begs the question, if you undertake acting classes to show empathy, should there be follow up acting classes so you can learn to pretend sincerity?

Oh, and how do you get to be a senior manager overseeing thousands of people if you lack communication skills?

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A win for Christians!

Ikea has lost a court case in Poland after the company sacking a staff member who criticised an internal memo stating that employees had to be “LGBTQ inclusive”.

Janusz Komenda, a Christian, argued that you should be allowed to sell flat packs without having to undergo ideological indoctrination.

And the court agreed.

Further, the court ruled that “participation in an employer’s social initiatives beyond job-related duties should be voluntary”.

And then there was this …

“The court also stated that IKEA was in effect going against its own ‘rhetoric of inclusivity’ by firing someone due to his religious beliefs and differing worldview.

Bingo!

The Ikea case is just one being played out in Polish courts right now.

A similar case is being heard in Warsaw after an IT specialist was fired from an international corporation for objecting when staff were told they had to attend a so-called “Equality Parade.”

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Formula One broadcasters need to work out whether they want to hear from racing drivers or from saints.

The sport is proposing to fine drivers more than $200,000 dollars if they repeatedly swear over team radios when being broadcast on television.

That’s a pretty big swear jar!

The challenge, of course, is that when you are cut off at 370km/h, you don’t tend to choose your words carefully.

Drivers face a $66,896 fine for a first offence and whopping a $200,687 fine for a third infringement over a two-year period.

Here’s an idea. The broadcasters could stop eves-dropping on private conversations.

Or they could put a delay on the broadcast, giving television stations time to bleep out obscenities.

If you want real time reactions then you need to be adult enough to deal with real time reactions.

So a racing driver swears as he smashed into a wall at high speed. Boohoo.

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Public servants won’t be voting for Peter Dutton at the election. But then, we knew that already didn’t we?

Dutton announced today that he would end work from home arrangements for bureaucrats - a quarter of whom only go into the office one or two days a week.

The Government, predictably, accused the Coalition leader of discriminating against women.

Dutton, cleverly, said there was no discrimination in the policy that applied to all public servants regardless of gender.

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A UK woman has lost an $800,000 injury payout after she was seen playing rugby.

The woman claimed she had severely injured her arm after falling from a horse.

But video was produced in court showing her playing rugby league. Oops.

The woman argued that she was training for football rather than playing, and that was a significant difference since training was non-contact.

The judge wasn’t buying it.

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The Victorian Government really is making it up as they go.

A few weeks ago Premier Jactina Allan announced a review into bail laws, only for her police minister to then front the media saying not only that he didn’t know of any review but that no such review was needed.

Then we had the Victorian treasure’s office asking bureaucrats not to use economic terms in correspondence with her because, still being new at the job, she didn’t understand the lingo.

And now we have the State’s education minister scrapping a plan to put teenage criminals wearing ankle bracelets in mainstream classrooms after he read about it in the newspaper.

The plan was nuts.

Fifty young criminals would be allowed to go to regular schools while wearing electronic monitoring bracelets.

Education Minister Ben Carroll said he learned about the idea - which was “wrong on many levels” - when he picked up Saturday’s newspaper.

He told journalists on Tuesday …

“This should have come to me first.”

I’m amazed that it didn’t.

It was more than an idea. It had been slated to begin in April for a two-year trial.

All, apparently, without the Education Minister’s knowledge.

Premier Jacinta Allan conceded that schools were “not properly consulted”.

Schools, like the education minister, claimed not to have been consulted at all.

The Victorian Labor government is bumping from one stupid idea to another.

And one more thing, this episode highlights one of the big problems in our country.

The public servants who allegedly came up with this idea were clearly focused on the feelings and well being of the tiny cohort of criminals than on the welfare of the overwhelming majority.

That’s pretty much the problem everywhere it seems.