What pisses you off?

[John Wren]

[stui magpie]

^

Actually, coffee doesn't dehydrate you.

The water in the mix more than compensates for the diuretic effect of the caffiene.

But yeah, water is good. I drink around 2 litres per day during the week at work.

Best thing for the smokes is a lollie. Get the sugar free barley sugars or the werther original toffees. Using nuts is a no-no, too many kilojoules.

[The Prototype]

[stui magpie]

Seriously one step closer to just putting a bullet in my temple. People suck.

[think positive]

[think positive]

[stui magpie]

[think positive]

[1061]

The other half's work *uc*ed up the pays and put them the through too late for them to go through last night. The banks cut off for pay transfers is around 5pm and they put them through around 7pm so looks like we'll have a tight weekend.

[Jezza]

http://www.smh.com.au/queensland/brisbane-g20/g20-protesters-burn-australian-flag-20141116-11noxu.html

What a disgrace and the silence about this is deafening. If this was an Aboriginal flag instead of an Australian flag people would be hysterically outraged.

Talk about double standards

[Tannin]

^ It's some cheap cloth with stripes and stuff on it. Honestly, WGAF?

[Jezza]

Assuming it was an Aboriginal flag, would you also have the same opinion on this?

I understand that burning a flag is seen as a 'form of expression' but the lack of outrage isn't evident here in contrast to the other alternative that could occur if someone went too far towards the Aboriginal flag and burnt it in the same nature.

[David]

The two situations aren't really equivalent. It's difficult to imagine an instance in which the Aboriginal flag would be burned unless the perpetrators were trying to express racial hatred. Whether or not they should still be permitted to do so is another question—it'd probably depend on the context (though I'd be inclined to say yes anyway; it's a pretty harmless act as these things go). I'm not aware of this actually ever happening, but if it did, the Twitter hand-wringing would relate to the perceived offence committed against an oppressed minority, not the act of setting fire to a piece of fabric.

Burning the Australian flag, though, has nothing to do with attempting to intimidate an already disadvantaged social group. It's a legitimate, if slightly juvenile form of political protest. I'd be surprised if it hasn't sent the real-life Hisses of the world and Herald Sun readership into a tizzy, but I'll take your word for it that it hasn't. Perhaps they have better things to do than being annoyed that somebody else doesn't feel as patriotic as they do at this moment in time.

I have to confess that my own affection for the Australian flag has diminished slightly over the course of the past twelve months. Seeing it in the same photograph as Scott Morrison can have that effect.

[Tannin]

An excellent answer, David, spot on in all regards bar one. First, it is an egregious error to equate the current sad excuse for an Australian flag with patriotism. Show me a genuine patriot who cares in the least about that dated symbol of the defunct British Empire. Second, the current flag has been appropriated - hijacked really - by minority interests and has come to stand for a blinkered and discredited vision of Australia circa 1950 top-dressed with lashings of loathsome Americanisms, all driven at the heart by the same ignorant bogan attitudes that appear on redneck racist t-shirts.

By adopting the current flag so publicly, the rednecks and the bogans have made it their own. No civilised person can respect it now. (A very similar thing happened to the Eureka Flag in the 1970s or 80s when it was very prominently adopted by the militant and corrupt fringe of the union movement, and in consequence it was indelibly tainted by the association.)

Any genuine patriot, any fair-dinkum Australian, has little or no respect for the current flag. Indeed, you could make a pretty good argument that disrespect for our current unfortunate flag (not to mention our appallingly bad national dirge) should be seen as prima facie evidence that the person having trhat disrespect is a fair-dinkum patriotic Australian.

PS: To my knowledge, the Aboriginal flag has not yet been tainted or degraded by any such unfortunate association. However, I freely grant that I do not follow Aboriginal affairs closely, so take that last statement for what it is worth.

PPS: Personally, I don't bother disrespecting the flag, or respecting it for that matter. I generally give it only the attention it deserves: which is to say none to speak of. That dreadful dirge we call our "national anthem" is a different matter. The lyrics are amongst the worst I have ever had the misfortune to hear - and as a one-time rock musician I've hear a lot of very bad lyrics in my time - and the tune is worse - for sheer banal lack of inspiration, it stands unchallenged in a class of its own. Even as a life-long republican, I'd swap it for the ridiculously inappropriate God Save the Queen in a heartbeat. Perhaps that isn't saying a lot seeing as I'd also swap it for a ring tone, a Coca-Cola ad, or the sound of a dunny flushing. Anything would be an improvement. I have never in my life stood up for Advance Australia Fair and I never will, not while I have ears to hear a tune and eyes to recognise the hopelessly banal absurdity of it.

Hell, look at the first verse: "for we are young" - wrong: we are part of the oldest continuously occupied continent on the planet - "and free" - doubtful - "with golden soil" - hopelessly wrong: Australia has the least fertile soils of any continent on Earth - "and wealth for toil" - most of our wealth these days comes not from toil but from letting foreign companies hire foreigners on 457 visas to dig the place up and send it to China and Japan - "our home is girt by sea" - this is the 21st Century, I don't think we do girting anymore. Still, given the rubbish served up in the rest of the verse, poor old Girt looks like a star. Perhaps she will be remembered for a while after the rest of the dirge is deservedly consigned to the cesspit.

[pietillidie]

^Post of the week goes to the Tannic one, appropriately read whilst sipping a rather tannic glass of red