Why are we so obsessed with sex?  I know of a case where a man was stood down from a management position because he used his office to have sex with a co-worker.  Unfortunately they were seen by someone in a neighbouring office and the incident was reported.  That particular company has a record of tolerating bad management and incompetence, but one whiff of a sexual scandal and they act.  This was consentual sex between adults, out of office hours.  If I were a shareholder of that company I would worry about their shoddy management practices but a bit of sex isn’t going to hurt my profits.  I’m afraid I think the morality of the person who reported it is more in question than the participants.

I hope the human race can get over itself.  After all we are all the result of a sexual liason. 

I wasn’t sure that I really needed to be here this time.  The reason I was there was concern over the fluctuation we have between a motivated, enthusiastic boy who gets himself ready for school and makes his own lunch and the distressed, crying boy who won’t let go of his mother to let her out of the door when he is dropped off.

It makes you realise, as I have ever since his first night on earth when I held his hand in the crib at the hospital, that there is no owners manual with children.

His teacher has no answers either.  He sees a happy boy who is a good student and who is popular with the other kids.  Maybe it’s just the end of term blues, maybe he’s got a bit of a cold, maybe it’s something more serious.  Thoughts like bi-polar, aspergus and worse can’t be stopped from appearing in your head.

Thankfully the teacher and I have formed a little partnership and have agreed to monitor the problem and communicate.  I’m quietly confident we’ll get it right.  We have to, of course, because so much is at stake.

It particularly annoys me at union meetings when they get up and address us as “Brothers and Sisters”.  I mean, come on, this is not a 1930’s communist uprising. 

So why do I stay a member?  I’m not naive enough to think that a large organisation cares particularly for me.  They’re not my family, they are my employer.  I don’t think that we would have anywhere near the offer that we do have were we required to bargain as individuals.  I pay my money to have a professional negotiator sit down with the professional negotiators employed by my boss.  It puts me on a level playing field and ensures my services are sold at a fair price.

Of course, if I wasn’t a member, the unions would still exist and the negotiator would still sit down, and my pay and conditions would still be improved by the same amount at the end of the process.  I retain my membership because I don’t think it’s fair to stand back and let other people fight for benefits that come to me.

Unions have lost touch with their members, but the answer is for employees to join unions, demand reasonable union behaviour and vote no to strikes and industrial action they don’t agree with.  That way we maintain a strong voice to stand up for fair pay and conditions and we reserve the right to industrial action in extreme cases where employers behaviour is genuinely unfair.

I was shocked when he told me that every year he has to prove to the Family Assistance Office that he has no income.  It seems that because he’s a man and his wife has earned a large amount of money he must by definition have earned more.  What hope for the community when the government agencies are sexist in their approach?

These were the same people I used to go away with for drunken weekends at Coolum.  We always stayed at the Coolum pub and regularly swam nude in the pool, late at night.  (It was very dark, so nobody saw anything.)

It’s really very comforting to see that they are facing the same issues we are.  Balancing lifestyle and income.  Working at careers and spending time with kids.  Finding time to spend on their relationships.

We were up there for four days.  It usually takes me just about that long to get sick of people and want to retreat to my introverted normality.  I didn’t get that feeling this time.  I think I could have happily stayed another week.  Bring on next year.

My two little boys are into building shops at the moment.  They get some chairs and form them into shelves and then have elaborate construction games where all sorts of rules are set up about what can be bought or not bought etc.

The Sith Lord decided to give his brother a bit of a present recently.  He found a blank certificate and wrote it out.  Then put a big green star on the side and wrote the award.  Beautiful writing for a not yet eight year old.  It’s a pity that the shop doesn’t actually sell grates.

Listening to him I was reminded of the Doctor who says to the malpractice enquiry.  “The patient was complaining of a pain in his arm.  It was only because I took his arm off that another doctor could diagnose the heart attack and perform the triple by-pass!

The way Australia has treated Asylum seekers over the last few years will remain as a permanent scar on our history.  There is never an argument for inflicting mental torture.  By locking up already traumatised people many of them children, we did just that. 

I understand the benefits of sport.  Sport can be a good way to get exercise.  It can be a good way to learn teamwork.  It can be a great social experience and it can be fun. 

There are also downsides.  It can be a good way to get injured.  It can foster over competitiveness and encourage judgemental sectarianism, with communities split in their fanatical loyalty to one side over another.

It is, of course, an activity in which human beings engage and as such is as flawed as the humans who engage in it. 

My problem with sport in Australia, and it is at its worst during the lead up to and running of the Olympic Games, is that Sport is given a status far in excess of other valid human activities. 

We shall hear over the next few weeks how “We” have done in the medal tally.  We shall see ordinary sometimes very flawed humans lauded and criticised all over their success or otherwise in physical activity.  A success largely dictated by random genetics. 

“But” I hear you cry “These athletes slog their guts out to achieve their medals”.

They do and they should be praised for that and proud of themselves.  My point is that we do not give the same treatment to other people who slog their guts out working for charities, working for their families or even working to achieve greatness in the arts, business, politics or other fields.

I’m not proud that most Australian’s can’t name our VC winners but they can name the captains of the cricket team.  That they speak of Warnie as a hero, but don’t know who Weary Dunlop was.

After the 2000 Olympics in Sydney Gold Medal winners were awarded the order of Australia medal.  People work in charity their whole lives and don’t get an AO.  In my opinion this was a devaluing of the Order of Australia, but it does illustrate my point about where our society’s values lie.

I suspect that part of the obsession with the Medal Talley is that we can see our country’s name on a comparative level with the big guns of the USA and China.  This in itself annoys me.  We are not a world power with those countries, however much we want to be, and Olympic Medals don’t stack up beside economic or military power.

So I wonder if there are any good DVD’s in the shops to get me through the next few weeks!

Did this film really need to be 3 hours long?  There was a lot in it that wasn’t in the book and some stuff from the book that didn’t make the film.  Peter is made out in the film to be a really up himself teenager with anger managment issues. Quite different from the Peter in the book. Why, oh why did we have to have a love interest between Caspian and Susan?  It is said that CS Lewis didn’t like women much.  He certainly writes Susan out of the stories in a rather sad way through the Dawn Treader and Last Battle stories.  I don’t think he would have approved of this.  The whole scene of Caspian riding to Susan’s rescue in the woods is completely out of the nature of the story and made me exclaim out loud “Oh for God’s sake!”  (It was one of those moments of “whoops that came out a little too loud for a public cinema”, but you get the depth of my reaction). 

I loved the effects and the battle scenes.  The acting was good except that William Mosely as Peter is just as wooden as he is in the first one.  Still very happy I went and anyone who likes the genre and isn’t as stuck as me on the story will love it.