You are a busy boy. Just thought I would mention the red tag on Tassi Live Exports doesnt seem to work
' dont you get lonely down here?

Hello
Just to let you know I think that was my mistake
It seems fine. Cheers

PALE&IF,

Don't be so sure that the post recency flag is working correctly on the thread of "Live Exports from Tasmania".

A screenshot of the index showed "Live Exports ..." as having 28 posts at 6:23 PM on Sun 16 Sep 2007. The post recency flag was red and showed "35 mins ago".

A subsequent screenshot at 7:08 PM, 45 minutes later, recorded the post recency flag as black and showing "2 hours ago". There were still only 28 posts to the thread.

35+45=80. At 7:08 PM the post recency flag should still have been red, and showing "80 mins ago". The red flag had fallen at least 40 minutes early.

There does not seem to be rhyme or reason to these early flag falls. It appears they may be momentarily corrected on a particular thread, only to be out on some other thread during the same time interval. For example, in my post of Saturday, 15 September 2007 6:50:36 PM, I observed that the flag on "Subtle OLO Censorship? ...." was working properly. A little later it wasn't. At the same time, the flag on "Is there a God?" was not working correctly.

I had not been posting to "Is there a God?" prior to making this observation: it simply just happened that that thread was in the screenshots at the same time as "Subtle OLO Censorship? ....". (I might add that I have since posted to that thread, as the subject of censuses looked as if it could gainfully be brought up.)

As for loneliness on this thread, PALE&IF, my posts here appear merely as a matter of record. They are there for those who may care to think about their implications. They are intended to stimulate thought, rather than opinion.

There are many other threads where a comment made might be off-topic: this thread is really a blog, to which an informative link I think relevant can be posted in other comments without disruption to other posters. This blog aims to operate within the OLO Forum rules.

Cheers.

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 9

1991 was also the year in which, in addition to the inadvertent release of the electoral roll tapes, and the claimed breach of the confidentiality of the census, another strange little event occurred.

Around the middle of 1991, a break-in was reported by a Sydney newspaper at premises located at 1 Francis St, Darlinghurst. The report identified the premises as being that of the Unitarian Church, which was seemingly true enough, as that entity certainly occupied the ground floor of the building.

Police had, when called to the scene of the break-in, found large numbers of empty Australia Post mailbags. Some other mailbags concealed desktop computers. It seems "druggies" had been squatting in unoccupied premises adjacent to 1 Francis St, and that the computers had been at one time in that unoccupied building. Detective Duncan Demol, who was later to 'roll over' to the Inquiry into Police Corruption (the Wood Inquiry, I think), conducted, or at least was involved in, inquiries into this little escapade.

The newspaper report, for what it was worth, quoted one of the office girls employed on the first floor as saying words to the effect of "perhaps this explains where our missing software was going" in relation to the break-in.

The quite extensive article in that Saturday paper never once mentioned the identity of the occupant of the first floor of that building. The first floor was occupied by the NSW Electoral Commission.

I don't suppose a clandestine computer hacking operation with the NSW Electoral Commission as its target could have been occurring, could it? The NSW Electoral Commission was totally dependent upon the AEC for its electoral roll information. If one organisation had been successfully hacked, so may have been the other. Could names derived from the Census have been being emplaced upon NSW Electoral District rolls, at correct addresses for those names, with the NSW rolls later coming to be regarded as an authentic source for the emplacement of those same names upon Commonwealth Divisional rolls?

TBC

It has been found that one of my posts is deflamatory, well suprise suprise suprise the labor party having a cow.

The truth is just what i posted.
Now maybe those will think this is defamatory.
They knew but did nothing.
They knew and let it happen.
They knew but never reported it.

The truth always the victim

… and ain't i a woman?: Code of silence

10 November 1993
Code of silence
On October 28 Keith Wright, ex-honourable member for Capricornia (ALP), was convicted of rape and indecent dealing with a girl under the age of 14, and sentenced to eight years in jail

“We all knew about Keith”, a valiantly anonymous “powerful figure” in the Queensland government told the Sydney Telegraph Mirror on October 30. “We all saw Keith regularly in action ... It didn't surprise me that he slept with her [the then 13-year-old girl with whom Wright had what he called a “sexual relationship” for three years] -- and the thing that makes me feel real bad now is that I thought it was all a joke, the way he chased women.”

It was a joke until it threatened election prospects, and then it became serious enough to take action -- not to take steps to prevent Wright physically and psychologically abusing young women, but to remove him to a position in which his crimes were less likely to be brought to public attention.

It was the abused woman herself who finally brought Keith Wright to some measure of justice, reporting to the police and testifying that she had been unable to stop Wright's sexual advances.

One of Keith Wright's final hobby horses, before he lost his seat following his arrest on these sexual assault charges, was a campaign to have “adult” magazines placed in brown wrappers on special high shelves in newsagents, so that children's minds wouldn't be polluted by them. As a Baptist preacher, he was ever concerned to protect the innocence of young children

Interesting point you raise, tapp, about the "knowing but doing nothing", the "knowing but letting it happen", the "knowing but never reporting".

The matter you raised is, of course, a personal failing of one man. It is not necessarily reasonable to tar, in this case, the ALP and/or the Baptist Church ministry, with the same brush over what was individual criminal conduct.

The wider question is as to whether evidence of double standards existed upon which pre-emptive action could have been taken by associates in either organisation to deprive the perpetrator of the particular advantages that may have been offerred by his public standing in either capacity.

I would suggest, given his lay status, in the absence of substantive evidence against him, there was perhaps little the Baptist ministry should have been expected to do before the event.

Just why political colleagues couldn't or didn't seem to see a need for earlier action is a more pertinent question.

I suggest this sort of experience has come to be the seeming rule as a consequence of the very long term practise throughout Australia of electoral improprieties covering the complete range from 'gaming the system' to plain straight electoral fraud.

Such a system operates to drive out from public life most people who have high standards of ethics and believe in the rule of law. Such a system selects for the very opposite of integrity amongst those entering the ranks of what are now dismissively identified by the public as 'politicians'.

There are undoubtedly people of great ability within politics today, in all parties. Its just that consciously or unconsciously, many of them seem to have confused the heavy responsibility for making the law with being above it.

The answer lies in cleaning out the now scarcely concealed rorting of the electoral process, not changing the process itself. It may well be that the public subliminally recognise the existence of a corruption of the political process, and are ready to endorse corrective action. Not necessarily by revolution: in a constitutional monarchy, correction can come from the top down.