Move to Lockout Pubs at 3am
There is a National Push to create a lockout for all Pubs and Clubs at 3AM to prevent 'drunken louts going from pub to pub'.
Personally I think the idea sucks right royally!
We live virtually in the middle of the night club district of Oxford Street in Sydney.
We have the unenviable pleasure of having a back lane and a side lane which are both used by drunken straight guys and girls to piss in, throw up in, have fights in, shoot up and even shit in sometimes.
If these people are locked out of the pub or clubs at three am or get ejected and can't get back in where the hell do the politicians think they will go?
They will roam the streets looking for trouble!
As it is in this area the violence happens way before 3am and then again after 5am, it's quite often packs of straight louts who get drunk out in the suburbs and then come into the city and pick fights before getting into the clubs or because they don't get in in the first place.
If the politicians want to do something constructive they should stop approving so many clubs so close to each other and put far harsher penalties for licensees and club owners.
And of course there should be that visible police presence on the street, Thursday - Monday nights instead of not police presence unless they are arresting someone with a pill or a joint on them. (Why they need ten police to arrest one poor idiot is beyond me).
But yeah, I reckon that this is just a short sighted bullshit way for the wowsers in our society to control things and it's misguided!
Bloody annoying pricks!
Labels: rants
Something I hate!
If there is one thing I hate it is walking the gauntlet of backpackers seeking donations at the corner of Hyde Park every afternoon.
Almost consistently there is the AIDS Trust person with their red bucket always asking for money, and then quite often the Greenpeace guys too.
Now I have no problems with supporting charities and I often do support charities in both monetary and non monetary ways. However I do not like being harassed every afternoon by some grotty back packer who earning money by soliciting donations.
The AIDS trust is a good charity but I don't give money to the guys on the street, if I donate it would be at an event or direct to the organisation. Most of the people soliciting are fine and you can say no, smile and continue walking.
About two weeks ago I was walking by and I shook my head when asked to donate and quite loudly as I walked by (there was no one else around mind you) he said "asshole"
Now let me get this straight (pardon the pun) you are some Euro trash backpacker calling me an asshole because I don't want 40% of any money I give going to you. More so I doubt you have ever met anyone with HIV/ AIDS, but yet you assume that just because I didn't donate I'm an asshole.
The Greenpeace Guys
The other ones that only turn up every now and then are the Greenpeace mob, they are a mob because there is always a few of them and they always follow the same pattern. I love it when I say no and these guys have the gall to tell me I don't care about the environment, I do care, but not about the organisation for which they are trying to raise money.
Greenpeace and I have a very very long history spanning back about 16 or so years when I worked for them for nearly five years on and off. I even sailed on the Rainbow Warrior for a short period of time when it sailed around Australia.
Unfortunately I ended up with a very warped view of this organisation and what it became, the view I have it is not a particularly flattering either.
I'm not the most environmentally conscious person, but I am environmentally minded if you will. But Greenpeace like so many community based organisations lost its way seriously in about the mid nineties onwards.
Around this time there were two main factions within the environmental movement. On the one hand you had the die hard greenies who were anti globalisation, anti development, hated corporations and basically believed that all progress should be stopped.
On the other side you had the Solutions Based campaigners, these people understood that businesses were not going to simply stop doing something, they needed solutions or best practices that were moving towards better environment sustainability.
To this end the Solutions people did all sorts of really cool stuff including investing in companies that made CFC free refrigerators and then giving away the technology to the rest of the world. In Australia the Greenpeace Solutions based people worked with the NSW Government to design the 'Green Olympics'.
As you might guess the two factions basically shook each other to death, the in fighting within the organisation was horrendous, as were the egos.
In the end that and a lot of other fundamental arguments pretty much wrenched the organisation apart and it has become an also ran in today's environmental fight.
I hate being asked for money every day it's insulting!
Labels: rants
I am a thirty something married gay boy living in Sydney, almost on top of the gay scene but not in it!
Why Sometimes blue?, because I love blue, but also I am sometimes blue :)
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