Compensation for the Stolen Generation?!

Julia Gillard once called John Howard a cunning politician - and that he was. He was smart enough to know the moment you apologize for something - admitting what you did was wrong - that someone will then be holding out their hand for payment in compensation. And sure enough that is what was on the news today - A BILLION dollar payout for the 'stolen' generation is being demanded. Its not enough that a billion dollars a year was given to ATSIC to largely waste until the Liberal government put a halt to the gravy train - the lawyers and their professional salesmen - the professional agitators, see the Labour's government apology as a source of a stream of income for years to come. I can guarantee you it won't stop at a Billion dollars, that will just be the first installment. The Maori Land claims in New Zealand show that once you start throwing money at agitators and their lawyers that it fast becomes an open wound stirred constantly for financial gain. A billion dollars would be about $40 for each and every Australian. That's $160 for my family. I pay enough tax now for the drug users, the scumbags, the social welfare professionals, and the professional baby incubators without adding another special interest group to the mix - particularly when they are already over-represented in the social welfare bill. I worry about having enough to pay the petrol bill let alone paying for events before my birth. Now don't get me wrong - it was a crappy deal to be ripped from your family and thrown into an alien culture - but before we start whinging for all the poor native peoples of the world I would like to remind you of some of my own family history - I've got Scottish peasants who were thrown off their land and forced to emigrate or starve, I've got Irish ancestors who were forced off their land by English landlords, I've got French Protestants who had to leave France thanks to their Catholic neighbors wanting to kill them ala the Saint Bartholomew's day massacre, no doubt they left a lot of property behind as they had to quickly flee and I've got English ancestors who had the joy of the land enclosures that saw the small landholders stuffed by the 'crown' in the interests of the aristocracy. In fact if history teaches anything its that people get screwed over ALL THE TIME. Hell I'd like compensation for being sold a lemon car, over paying for a house, being assaulted and injured or a million other shitty things that life throws up - But it aint happening.

Call me a red neck or if your honest - call me someone to understand history and tells it like it is. If you want to get ahead - stop bitching about the past and get on building a future. That's why I respect the Jews. Despite a history of thousands of years of being murdered, butchered, robbed, etc time and time again they pick themselves up and get on with life and on the whole succeed. I wish some others would take a leaf out of their book. If you want to get ahead - not just in this generation - but for the generations to come - stop looking for a hand out and start fighting to build a legacy.

Now I've had that rave - I'll start on Cricket. The Australian Cricket team - the best in the world, have come up against the biggest cricket nation in the world - India and its been like the irresistible force against the immovable object. The result India has currently suspended its Australian tour. Eventually this was going to happen - Australia seems to have a problem with the Asian teams - I remember fights with Sri Lanka which saw their top spinner refusing to come to Australia for a while. The fact is Cricket is a religion in South Asia - Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh - and that is where the future and money of the game is. Hence despite being the best team in the world Australia should tread carefully unless it wants to run out of countries to play against. Its a shame Clarke's 3 wickets in an over would have gone down in history if it wasn't for the disputes and arguments.

That's my random rabble for today.