You then go back to your village in the West Bank and two weeks later you arrange an attack on Israelis. Three Israelis are ambushed. One who was about to be married is killed while the other two are wounded.

No doubt you think that you are a hero, but in reality you are the lowest of the low.

There is no honour in your actions. You, who are prepared to accept help from Israeli doctors and at the same time stab them in the back.

FOR SHAME!

Source for this article.

The answer is quite simple. Because the South Africans want to maintain the pretence that theirs is a peaceful country, especially during the World Cup.

However, my experience of that country is quite negative and very distressing.

We were invited to visit the place to discuss doing business a decade ago. I was so horrified by what I saw that it has left an indelible impression on me. Nothing on television had prepared me for the poverty which I witnessed.

While my husband held discussions with some librarians in Johannesburg I announced that I was going to take a stroll around the town. The librarians were horrified and suggested I stay indoors.

Well, I disregarded their advice and decided to leave the confines of the Library. I stepped outside only to be greeted by jeering blacks and menacing gestures. It was truly a heart of darkness that I had ventured into. I was back in a flash.

The librarians who were partaking of afternoon tiffin smiled smugly in an “I told you so” manner. All I could think of is how can two such opposite worlds not collide in an armageddon conflict? To this day, I still don’t understand how South Africa will drag itself out of the terror of violence and poverty.

Soccer may be fun for a little while but when the party’s over, the misery will still be there. No amount of chanting and vuvuzelas can drown out the cry of despair.

Below is a quote from the Department of Foreign Affair’s advice to Aussie travellers:-

DFAT has urged Australians to exercise a high degree of caution in South Africa as “muggings, rape, armed robbery and other forms of theft are common”.

“Murders and carjackings involving foreign tourists have also been reported. Travelers have been robbed and assaulted after having their food or drinks spiked,” DFAT said in a statement.

p.s

Well, Well, Well, the Aussie media has finally reported the attack tonight. It appears that the attackers were armed and robbed the fans in a hotel. It also appears that the crooks were Nigerians. Why does the fact that they were Nigerians not surprise me? If it’s not Somali pirates it’s Nigerian scammers or South African muggers. What a continent!

p.p.s 27th June

Apparently the lodge where the attacks on the Aussies took place has been involved in several such incidents. It was probably an inside job. I realise that FIFA gave the World Cup venue to South Africa to give it a boost but it was a mistake to do so when S.A could not provide adequate security to its visitors. This is an example of political correctness gone wrong again.

It’s as if someone has to timetable their total lives in case they have some free time to do what they want or, heaven forbid, spare time in which to get bored.

Mankind needs to get bored occasionally so that creative juices spill forth to dispel that boredom. In the same way, children need to invent ways to amuse themselves without having to be constantly entertained by someone else.

I can hear complaints from mothers right now. “We can’t let our children get bored cause they’ll get into mischief. We have to monitor them all day. It’s a crazy world out there.”

The truth is that it’s always been a crazy world and it ain’t going to get less crazy. The best thing you can do for your children is to allow them to develop some self-reliance skills. If they get bored then there’s a good chance they’ll make up some games, do some drawing or even read a book because they feel like it.

Or they may just sit there and reflect. Dream a little. Let their imagination take over.

To have most of your day organised for you is like living in an institution. It is stifling and robs a person of autonomy. I’m suggesting that this is true for children as well.

In an age when imagination has been stifled by force feeding from computers, in byte size pieces of information rather than ideas, I believe that it is more important than ever to allow children to develop their own creative skills. Not all the time. Just some of the time.

So what were we doing there, I ask myself in the manner of our soliloquising Prime Minister? Well, we had put my husband’s philately collection up for sale, seeing that our children were not the least bit interested in it. And no, we did not need to hire a Chubb armoured van to bring home the loot, but that’s another story.

What I want to write about is that stamp collectors are an amazingly impressive group of collectors. They are very considerate, dignified and an ethical bunch of men who could teach society a thing or two about civilised behaviour. By the way, I have been to two such auctions and most of the stamp collectors are men. I wonder why but have no explanation as yet.

There is a viewing of the stamps first and this lasts exactly half an hour. This is followed by the auction itself which is run by the most wonderful nonagenarian. He proceeds in a quiet yet authoritative manner to go through almost 800 lots of stamps. He does it with humour (“seems as if Germany is not the flavour of the day”, he says, whence, sadly many of our stamps came. Did I really just use the term “whence”?) Bidders just raise their hands and the auction proceeds fluidly.

I look around at the bidders and they come from all walks of life. Some are quite smartly dressed, others are in shorts and crazy T-shirts. They sit patiently and wait for their selection. I am impressed by the calm in the room. With the exception of dealers, most of the collectors are senior citizens and I wonder if stamp collecting will die out when stamps are no longer in use. Will it die out after this generation?

And then a young girl comes into the hall with her mother. She can only be about ten or eleven. She buys some stamps and the other bidders direct her to the annex where payments are made. Can this be a glimpse of the future for stamp collecting? I hope so.

I know nothing about stamps except that you lick them and that you never have one in your purse when you need it. But they are truly fascinating archives of historical events. We had some that were sent in 1895 from Germany to Melbourne. Who would have thought that anybody in our family would be doing business with a fledgling colony?

I particularly enjoyed reading the postcards which were sent from Germany at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. They were written in sepia ink, the colour I like to use in my fountain pen.

The auction was sprinting along at a great pace and then the storm struck. You could hardly hear the auctioneer because of the sound of hailstones hitting the slate roof, but somehow he persevered to a glorious finish. Nothing seemed to faze him. He’s seen it all before.

We had to hang around the former church which was the home of the Brighton Philatelic Society until the storm passed. Somehow it was very fitting that the society owned a church. I can’t think of a better use for it than to be the meeting place for such impressive and courteous gentlemen .

There is something other worldly about the place. Everything works on trust. You hand over your collection to be appraised. The club gets 10% for all the hard work it has put in and that is a reasonable price.

Did we do well out of the auction? It was okay except for Germany not being the flavour of the day. From a philosophical point of view, however, I did very well indeed. I, the biggest cynic in the world, have discovered a place where people behave like noble souls. They are kind to one another. Is it stamp collecting that makes you so dignified? Or is it the case that stamp collecting attracts dignified people?

Better not plumb the depths of that one. Just appreciate the knowledge that there are still places in the world where people don’t behave as if they are in the jungle. These are refuges from the real world and we certainly need them now.

It took us a couple of bemused minutes to work out why the empty envelope. Apparently, we were supposed to fill it with a bit of green Christmas cheer. 0/10 for finesse…

This reminded me of what used to happen to us when we first arrived in Australia in the Fifties. During the week before Xmas the garbage collectors or “garbos” as they are known in Oz would wake up the entire neighbourhood with their hootin’ and a hollerin’ at daybreak. The first time this happened we asked our neighbour what it was all about. She said it was to remind us that Xmas is coming and we should leave some cans of beer on the footpath for the garbos. We had to do it or else our garbage would be strewn all over the road… “an offer we couldn’t refuse.”

It was a kind of traditional protection racket and if you questioned its ethics, then you weren’t a good sport. This was then and this is now. That sort of pollution would be frowned on today and I hadn’t thought of it in years until our newspaper delivery guy reminded me of the good old days. lol

According to a report on the Fox Channel modesty also obliges Muslim men to be covered from the naval downwards. I think they meant “navel” but you never know with these ticker tape announcements as they usually don’t make sense.

Muslim women are meant to be covered from the neck to the ankles and I’m all for that, but not for religious reasons and I think many people who aren’t even Muslims should follow suit.

One observes such revolting bodies exposed on the beach that for aesthetic reasons they should refrain from revealing themselves in public. I would go further and suggest that some of them should wear a paper bag over their heads as well and stop polluting the panorama.

However, we in the West live in free and democratic societies and I suppose if we want to parade our imperfections and spoil the scenery then we are free to do so. More’s the pity.

We have the university students from India to thank for this improvement.

In my opinion, they are much more courteous than our Aussies because they are willing to put themselves out to find a product. Also, they are highly intelligent since this is only their temporary occupation while they study in Australia.

Our supermarkets benefit from their marvellous work ethic. The customers are delighted and I hope that the Indian students receive a good salary because they certainly deserve it.

When they graduate and become doctors and lawyers they will know that they did it the hard way, supporting themselves while they studied. That is a great start to any career and a motivation for studying seriously. Quite frankly, they could teach our young Aussie students some manners!

The attackers are racists. Simple as that. And I hope that Indians in the subcontinent will not think that all Australians are like these violent animals who attack in groups.

I am certain that if these scumbags had to fight one on one they would run a mile. Their behaviour is typical of gang mentality which picks on a solitary defenceless person who is simply trying to get home after a hard day’s work.

If I had my way I would send some tough Indians to Australia to teach these racist animals a lesson.

if Indians feel endangered and don’t want to come to Australia to study it would be a pity because Indians are very assiduous students. But I wouldn’t blame them if they decided not to risk coming here. That would be such a loss for us and for them. I sincerely hope that Indians will continue to grace this country with their presence.

We must not allow a bunch of animals to get away with these racists attacks. There should be more vigilance from Police here and when the attackers are arrested they should be imprisonned for many, many years.

These depraved bullies have brought shame to our country and I want to shout “Not in my name!”

It will have all the comforts of home. In fact, it will be home, since I have no intention of queuing along some crowded highway or at a busy airport.

I have no intention of sitting in a smelly aeroplane for hours on end feeling all my muscles screaming for release. I have no intention of arriving at another airport and waiting for a taxi or hiring some car to take me to a resort which will be crowded with holiday makers and their obnoxious children.

I will not go ooh! and aah! when I’m shown our accommodation which will consist of a bedroom and perhaps a lounge room and a bathroom with those tiny bottles of shampoo, body lotion and bath gel. And I definitely will not be impressed by the sign that says ‘We have cable TV” when what they really mean is “We have one thousand boring sports channels and a dirty movie channel”.

I will not appreciate the fact that I can’t have a cup of coffee or tea whenever I feel like it because the hotel offers room service at a ridiculous price. Anyhow, I prefer my coffee in a mug.

I most certainly won’t like the one large armchair in the room which is never as comfortable as our armchairs at home. The other smaller chair will usually be a tiny tubchair with rather suspicious stains on it. If these chairs could talk they would beg for a bath and the same goes for the bedspread. Yuk!!

Instead, we will eat out every day, go to the movies and take long walks, explore Melbourne at leisure, read books and newspapers and even enjoy easy access to the internet.

As for seeing another part of the world, been there, done that, and believe me the best part of travelling is when you unlock the front door and come home again. So now we leave out the tedious part and just enjoy being home and coming home at the end of the day’s outing. It really is bliss.

She has been away in England most of the time busily expanding her multi-million dollar business which grew and grew with the support of the government outsourcing scheme. She didn’t even make it back to Australia when the terrible bushfires were devastating the country. So much for compassion, Therese…

But she’s in the public eye once again because a free trip to meet the American president and Mrs Obama was not an occasion to miss. So there she was, boarding the plane to the U.S. This time she decided to wear a black sheath. OK so far, but unfortunately she couldn’t resist the tight belt which is a No!No!

On top of that Therese wore a white parachute and her footwear was a pair of black knee-high boots. This accentuated her ample knees and did nothing for the rather summery outfit she was wearing. Her parachute coat had the usual huge lapels our Therese loves.

As for that hair. For Kevin’s sake get a style! It looks cheap and disheveled.

I have often commented on the First Lady’s taste in clothes because she is representing Australia when she bounces on the world stage. Her fashion tastes are extremely shonky and lacking in style. We know that she can afford the best advice but she probably wouldn’t take it. Must be that she’s a person who says “like it or lump it” and so we and the media have decided to lump it.

A bit like her hubby actually, who’s not known for taking advice. In a way, they match one another. He always looks as if he outgrew his suits and mummy won’t fork out for a new one until he has stopped growing. His ties are schoolboyish and crooked and he always looks as if he shops at the local outlet.

How embarrassing that even the media avoid photographing Mrs Rudd as much as they can. When she’s around she’s hard to miss and we feel that cultural cringe that took years to dispel.