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Weekend Punch: Sit back for a bit, and recap

Tory Maguire

by Tory Maguire

04 Aug 05:00am

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Filed under: London Olympics, Open Thread, Weekend Punch

31 comments

You know the Olympics are on when the two biggest political yarns of the week were Wayne Swan’s Bruce Springsteen obsession and Bill Shorten’s piegate incident.

New Punch mascot, Sunday Dinner…

Instead we were all focused on the Games. Ant Sharwood started each day this week before dawn in his back shed (chickens and all) bringing us the best of the Olympics. If you haven’t had time to catch up with it, here’s a retrospective.

Sunday: A golden day for Kazakhstan and Qld. Britain, not so much
Monday: Misfiring missile leads weapons of mass deflation
Tuesday: Green and gold tears have a beautiful silver lining
Wednesday: Random Olympic stuff which is becoming quite annoying
Thursday: It’s beginning to look like these aren’t our games
Friday: At the end of the day, we’ll go for gold in the Clichélympics

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31 comments

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    • Daylight robbery says:

      05:48am | 04/08/12

      *turns on the fairy floss machine*

      Australia should rid compulsory education in Australia.  Its not working.

      Its not the buildings. Its not the teachers.

      Its high time parents and students realise an education is a privilege like in many other countries where parents save money for their childs education.

      Time for pull rather than push. If they don’t want to be there, rack off! ; like they do in private schools

      Other countries produce better students with a fraction of the money.

      Reply

    • M says:

      06:36am | 04/08/12

      Uh huh, and have a permanent un educated underclass on centerlink? Way to save money Einstein.

    • Gregg says:

      06:55am | 04/08/12

      Unfortunately, our society already has enough people that do not know what’s good for them or when they’re on a good thing and do need to be led by the nose some.
      We could end up with a lot worse situations if we do not keep tugging on the bull rings and if you do not like it, you can always rack off too.

    • Fiddler says:

      08:49am | 04/08/12

      I agree with this. I want illiterate serfs to tend to my needs.

      back to the 12th Century we go

    • sunny says:

      10:38am | 04/08/12

      Education is an obligation. The previous generation paid for our infrastructure, we in turn pay for the next generation’s infrastructure. If a generation of people decides they’re over it, then before long it will all turn into Beyond Thunderdome

    • Daylight robbery says:

      10:51am | 04/08/12

      Itll take a little while but with current communications once the clowns realise you now need a basic education to function in any job others will want to listen to a teacher instead of consuming the teachers time with narcissistic stunts

      We could run parallel a large fear campaign the result of poor truancy

      Dont we have a large wave of under educated class on centrelink now?

    • vox says:

      01:27pm | 04/08/12

      Gregg, do you vote Liberal?

    • Kat says:

      04:07pm | 04/08/12

      Its not about going to school, its that you don’t have to do well in school to succeed in life.

      In America and Asian countries, you need to do well in school to get into a good University to get a well paying job. In Australia, you can leave school at the end of grade 10 and get a job and be fine for the rest of your life. If you did that in America you would be working in McDonalds on minimum wage for the rest of your life.

      Its our culture that is the problem.

    • Shane From Melbourne says:

      05:40pm | 05/08/12

      I agree with Daylight Robbery- Let’s get rid of compulsory education and go with a complete user pays system. Yay, no more subsidizing private schools or public schools. Singles and Childless couples will be over the moon…..

    • Daylight Robbery says:

      10:44am | 06/08/12

      @Shane From Melbourne Just the compulsory education not the privatisation, mind you, rebate me my childs education money to the school of my choice might work. I get to choose where my education money is rebated not a pork barrel hand outs by government.

      I bet you institutions like the Catholic one would cry foul as families left for a non religious private education. Remember Catholicism was given free land by the Crown a long time ago so they had a head start by already owning the land schools are built on.

      Compulsary education puts the onus on government to get/police children to school.  Its not working.

      Kat says “Its not about going to school, its that you don’t have to do well in school to succeed in life” + ” If you did that in America you would be working in McDonalds on minimum wage for the rest of your life.”

      I don’t think its quite like that - many entrepreneurs have no 11 and 12 education.  Basic Maths and literacy are core requirements.
      Some students that don’t have truancy in this country don’t even have that.

      Many Asian countries are rife with nepotism and cronyism in companies and government. 

      There is a horrid culture that life is you go to Uni, get a degree, then you guaranteed a great job for life. 
      For the protected degrees like doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers you are given some entitlement but until any of these graduates have their own business with employees they wont achieve a higher level of income.
      I have a friend that cant read or write that has an earth moving business making half a million a year.
      You need more than a higher education. You need drive, you need to rid a wages mentality; that someone will give you money for turning up.
      Look at some of the wealthiest people in Australia, some don’t even have a year 10 certificates.
      If you have an employer, your there to make them money and rightly so, they took the risk, not you.
      We have the onus on government to get children to school, its not working. We even pay some students for truancy in schools.
      Remember the morning milk in schools. Maybe we should be handing out breakfast of some form as this appears one of the biggest issues in schools with students, breakfast

    • Gratuitous Adviser says:

      07:00am | 04/08/12

      I do not think that these are our games, but so what.  That’s life.  Move on.  The kid’s did the best they can. 

      I am glad that they have sent Josh Nobody home for his disgraceful drunken acts.  His wimpish and gutless apology was indicative of, unfortunately, an ever growing yobbo young where, “It’s not my fault; it was because we were beaten in a rowing race”, is considered an excuse. 

      He would fit in well in a normal Kings Cross Saturday night.

      One of the greatest periods in his life has been destroyed by his stupidity and drunken bullying.  He should never represent Australia again and his parents would be so very proud (not).

      He has broken the trust.

      Reply

    • Gregg says:

      07:02am | 04/08/12

      Chickens and Roosters, started with Ant and so does that mean he and a few others are buying shares in Steggles and KFC?

      What those pics did get me to thinking though was Mascots and what were the mascots for this game as can’t really recall anything being heavily promoted as such other than Boris boofhead stuck on a flying fox.

      I suppose they could have had foxes and hounds and horses what with all the royalty associations but then there could have been a few foxers feeling as though their nose was being rubbed some.

      Or was it all the petals to form an English rose?

      Talking of foxes, wasn’t it refreshing to see 18 YO Jessica Fox continue the family affair with no great fanfare.

      Reply

    • Gregg says:

      07:09am | 04/08/12

      And what a win from behind and a loss from in front from one that looked as though it had been ripped from a seemingly given and then a win clawed back from the loss that looked all but impossible earlier on.

      Yes, those Cats and Hawks, the latter putting on an amazing comeback from a nine goal to two drubbing in the first quarter.
      I switched to watch Silent Witness and came back for the last quarter and a half the third and what a match with the Tommahawk Tommy Hawkins standing tall and booting the winning goal on the siren.

      Reply

    • M says:

      08:39am | 04/08/12

      Um, duh?

    • AdamC says:

      10:10am | 04/08/12

      Clearly, nihonin, it is about both.

      Lemme guess, Christmas is too commercial as well?

    • nihonin says:

      12:42pm | 04/08/12

      What does Christmas have to do with the story AdamC?  I don’t see people running around making sure people who don’t attend church aren’t celebrating.  Nice segue way though for Is Christmas too commercial or is it still a time of peace to all men?

    • AdamC says:

      10:09pm | 04/08/12

      Do I really have to explain it, nihonin?

      BTW, again, Christmas is both of those things. Are you seeing a theme?

    • iansand says:

      07:31am | 04/08/12

      Things are getting serious.  New Zealand is ahead of Australia.

      Reply

    • acotrel says:

      09:39am | 04/08/12

      And they treat their natives right too ! ‘Winners are grinners’ !

    • AdamC says:

      10:12am | 04/08/12

      Montreal redux.

    • Daylight Robbery says:

      11:10am | 04/08/12

      Yay team ANZAC!!

      How is it we don’t have companies putting athletes in sexy outfits selling wares in the adverts while the olympics are on?

      These guys should be our childrens idols, even if there was a hint of yobo in the kebab window smashing session.

    • SamO says:

      11:11am | 04/08/12

      I say we should rank countries by total medals instead of just gold, or a 3 2 1 points system or something. It seems as if you could have 99 silver and 99 bronze but only 1 gold and you would be listed down the rankings at the top of the 1 gold section.

      Why do we bother listing the other medals if they don’t count for anything?

    • Richard says:

      11:25am | 04/08/12

      Andrew Bolt has a good comment over on his blog that he speculates the Stilnox ban just a week before the games started caused the poor performances of the Aussies. Even Magnussen said it himself about the men’s relay loss “I couldn’t sleep the night before”.

      It was suggested when the AOC made this kneejerk decision so close to the games that it could impact performances, but the AOC didn’t listen. My god the AOC have been a bunch of boneheads of late.

    • Richard Dobson says:

      11:55am | 04/08/12

      Usually I’m here on this site whinging and complaining about too much government spending, and demanding that the government quit so much spending, sack thousands of public servants, pay back all the debt and then lower taxes. But you know this time I’m going to have to put on my other hat and complain about the way the government has slashed defence spending down to 1.5% of GDP.

      Let me tell you, this is an irresponsible course of action our government is pursuing. I know peace-loving lefties hate the idea of defence spending, but it is very necessary for one very good reason: the human race is violent.

      Don’t let the last 67 odd years of relative peace fool you. The people of Europe enjoyed 99 odd years of relative peace post the Napoleonic period. But eventually, what happened? War broke out. And it was total war on a scale never before even comprehensible by the average people.

      War will come to this world again, it is guaranteeable, because humanity is a warlike species. Its in our nature, brah, its going to happen whether we like it or not, so lets be prepared for it.

      Now I’ll tell you specifically why I think world war will break out within the next 20 years: the Chinese economy is on a precipice, it has exhausted the full potential for growth inherent in its current model. So now, the dictatorial, totalitarian governing class of China have two options in order to continue the economic growth of 8%+ P.A. that is required to keep such a huge society stable: they can open up their political system to full, free, transparent, liberal democracy (like Tony Abbott recently encouraged them to do, and unbelievably, was criticised for it!) or else they can go to war.

      Now, which one do you think is more likely, bearing in mind the Byzantine culture of entitlement that drives these Chinese Communist Party Tyrants currently in power?

      I would hope the former eventuates, and I’m really glad we have a Prime Minister-in-waiting who is prepared to push for this outcome. But realistically, I think the latter option has a greater likelihood of coming to pass; which means a massive, belligerent, hostile power, pushing down through the South China sea, exerting territorial claims on the Paracel and Spratly Islands, looking with jealousy at all our mineral resource wealth which they will need to acquire in order to prosecute a military effort against the Americans, they already have designs on mining our Sovereign Antarctic Territories once Global Warming makes such endeavours feasible.

      In this context, I really think the sensible thing we need to be doing is looking to DOUBLE our military spending, up to a level of 3% of GDP. We can’t shirk our responsibility, and we can’t neglect to protect ourselves. Anyone here who’s ever played the computer game “Civilization” by Sid Meier knows how fatal it can be to an otherwise advanced and prosperous society to leave themselves under-protected.

      Lets ensure that we in Australia place the first and foremost emphasis on defending our current possessions and standards of living, instead of chasing foolish and pointless programs like this Gonski nonsense now being touted by the current desperate, reckless, and irresponsible government.

      Reply

    • Mickey T says:

      03:11pm | 05/08/12

      Way to go Richard, open up by telling us how you’re all for reductions in government spending then spend the rest of your rant saying how disgraceful the defence spending cuts are. I reckon there’s a fair chance you’re a conservative voter with one eye closed and in your one eyed opinion, it wouldn’t make a damn difference what this current government did, it wouldn’t change your conservative views.

    • Richard says:

      09:51am | 06/08/12

      What, I’m not allowed to have an ideology? FYI I’m not a conservative, I’m a Libertarian, and I’m also a student of history. If you would like to engage in my argument and find flaws in it, please go ahead. Otherwise your contribution lacks value.

    • pa_kelvin says:

      12:54pm | 04/08/12

      When our swimmers fail to perform to “expectations”,you know our gold medal tally will be lower than normal…Still we chances in the field events, cycling and more rowing to come. I havn’t really seen to much of them , but there is some talent there….

      Reply

    • pa_kelvin says:

      01:12pm | 04/08/12

      And sailing…

      Reply

    • Ross says:

      05:00pm | 05/08/12

      At least the Olympics are over for Nick Darcy an all round looser..Its nice when a bankrupt can get an early start on his tour of Europe vacation .

      Reply

    • Last man standing says:

      12:04pm | 06/08/12

      Should Australia have a do not knock list? 

      I have had one visit a week from religious people knocking on my front door handing out leaflets on the end of the world.

      As someone who works from home this is an unwarranted breach of privacy.  An intrusion to my home as they stare through the door collecting data on the demographics in the area.

      What do I do?

      What can I do?

      Reply
 
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