“Ginx said she was taking her bat and ball and going home - but she has returned before, so we can hope that her quirky humour will again grace these pages.”

Oh well I missed something, did something upset her Fractelle? I didn’t miss her absence though and I want her back now. Gosh that sounded terribly grown up. The more hysterical side of my nature decides quite often that if a user disappears it is because they have died. I hope everyone has instructed family members to make it clear online if there is a userdeath.

Years ago now a young fella who ran a busy social site killed himself. His sister did an amazing job of tracking through his user list and letting people know.

“We have all mis-posted at some stage - very easy to do. But feeling like a dork is much harder and takes practise.”

I’m a bit special; it comes naturally to me as well as all too frequently. I completely missed at the start of this thread that Sancho was in fact mocking Anti. I felt more like an idiot at that stage though.

Hey where did Anti go? Oh gawd, he’s dead isn’t he.

Piper

Ginx said she had had a gutful. I know I often feel that way and take little breaks to preserve what sanity I have left.

Assuming people who haven't posted for a while are dead is a common response. Although in your case you have good reason. However, I haven't heard of rising suicide rates of OLO contributors - maybe Graham could tell us. I would like to know where Boaz David aka Polycarp has disappeared to; he was virtually an institution around OLO. Col Rouge used to meet him for coffee, now Col seems to have dropped off the perch...... oops, very tactless of me, I mean has been absent for a while.

All I am saying is that if the absence of posters to forums was always caused by death, then I would propose that posting is a health hazard.

The Pied Piper wrote [elsewhere]:
"Hey Whistler, I view it as an Act of attempted cultural genocide I think. Nah I don’t, I’m an immigrant and they could train me about the aboriginal heritage and basic culture so the children keep their family identity intact. But then they could teach all school children here that one.

I don’t know how successful the drive is for aboriginal carers or how much aboriginal blood one is required to have. Even little kids in foster care with a smidgeon have to be viewed a different way in the department and a different act or a different part of the act followed.

What advantage did it give the government to create legislation that furthers a segregation of the aboriginal peoples?

Now one of my maybe stupid questions… is Rudd better – will he do better for the aboriginals?"

The Pied Piper,

the first Parliament of Australia
enacted the White Australia Policy
in the form of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901
with the intention the nation would become populated
exclusively by people with white skin.

coloured people were prohibited citizenship
and it was assumed Aborigines would die out.
Aborigines didn't die out and by the late 1950s
the policy was abandoned to allow coloured immigration
as labour for nation building
since anglo-saxon sources were drying up.

[the Forgotten Australians were probably a last resort
of anglo-saxon immigration and treated as such]

following a Referendum in 1967,
Aborigines were granted Australian citizenship.
the First Australians had survived racial genocide.

the modern, government imposed definition of Aboriginality
is threefold, comprising a component of Aboriginal ancestry,
self-identification as Aboriginal
and acceptance by an Aboriginal community as Aboriginal.

most communities emphasise identification and acceptance
and may be embarrassed by the ancestry component
when confronted with the discrepancy between
competent culturally sensitive non-Aboriginal carers and government policy.

Aboriginal communities are segregated by dispossession.
government policies which support Aborigines
support Aboriginal integration through self-determination.

the apology is a start even if it seems evident
many Australians aren't quite sure
how or for what the apology was received.

I haven't posted as much as of late.

I'm not dead though. Life's just busier sometimes.

Well crikey. For starters, the notion that the sex-scandal was an attempt by women to infiltrate NRL seems rather preposterous.

Without commenting on gender issues, most elaborate conspiracy theories tend to be crap, because elaborate plans are the ones that are the most prone to failing.

Same goes for the 9-11, grassy knoll and freemason conspiracy theorists.

Actually, in relation to the group sex scandal, I was one of the few feminist-ish men to play the event down, especially when other feminists were making the point that the woman couldn't have given consent in that situation.

See, that's the thing about feminism. There's a wide variety of views. Yes, the woman could give consent. That's the responsibility of being an adult.

Frankly, my issues with NRL are in the situations where A) there has been violence committed by players and B) the glorification of people who play sport.
I don't like seeing sanctions against players when they do actions such as this as I'm a freedom-of-choice kinda guy.

I just wish more people would see them as the boofheads they are when they do these things.

As for the other comments and so forth that seem to have arisen on this thread, I can't seem to take it all too seriously.
By and large, men and women get on pretty well. Sometimes they don't. As with other things, it ain't a conspiracy or a gender war, it's just life and the sooner we deal with that, the sooner we get back to living it.

Well, i waited to see if anyone was going to have an independent thought and read what I wrote.

124 posts have gone by and only belly has worked out that I was being facetious, just as I said at the start of the third paragraph in my first post. The serious part of the post was what Foxy and I discussed, which was whether women in management would have a good or bad effect on the game. All the rest of you, including the freshly-minted sock-puppet (hubby still a fat bastard, Hon?), the Pomeranian (hump hump hump little fella), Sancho, who revels in the thought that my wife may have bashed me (she didn't, just yelled a lot) and the rest of the "conga line of suckholes" have been overcome by a severe and strangely comunal case of jerking knee. Must be all that leg-humping...

You've convinced me: any reporter getting a high approval from you lot can't possibly be smart enough to think far enough ahead to plan a Feminist coup in the NRL. As you were...

So Antiwomen was really "being facetious", eh? Riiiiigghhht.

Just like he obviously was with his claim about corporate high flyers, which is why he hasn't been able to name any. I do, however take Fractelle's and Piper's points.

There is a joke here, and it goes by the pseudonym of 'Antiseptic'.