Hardcore vegans - absolute fucking nutters

I was told on Facebook yesterday that milk is all about "murder" and "rape" by a hardcore vegan. I then tried to engage in some rational debate with this horrible excuse for a human being. My bad. Turns out me pointing out how insensitive calling a cow being milked "rape" might be to actual victims of sexual assault only meant more shrieks of rape.

Fortunately a friend emailed saying she'd had run ins with these some extreme vegans and pointed out the bleedingly obvious I hadn't thought about - they're fundamentalists. Just like the religious variety, no amount of rational debate will make any difference whatsoever.

Part of being a progressive is trying to take people with you. If they disagree you communicate and find points of similarity. You can't use terms like "rape" and "murder" in the context of cows being milked and expect people to come along with you. You're just going to ostracise yourself and turn people off who were thinking of changing their ways.

I'm all about building progressive alliances - but the fundamentalist vegans won't be a part of it - they can go fuck themselves.

'Living hell' over for quadriplegic who won right to refuse treatment

Why did this man have to go through so much pain to choose what to do with his own body and mind? Yet another issue where the religious nutters want to control our lives - our own lives. Piss off!

when a family member is a scab...

I've been having an argument with my sister lately over the fact she won't join her union, the New South Wales Nurses' Association. Sure, she'll take all the benefits they have achieved but will she join? Of course not. Instead she complains and says things such as

"...it is a piss weak union, look at what teachers get!!"

Of course, I explained to her that teachers achieve so much because they're willing to fight. They organise themselves well through their union and are highly unionised. They don't get anything. They fight for it.

Her chief excuse is that they did a dud deal last time. Admittedly it wasn't the best deal but to not have done anything or gone through arbitration would've meant two years before a pay rise and she works for the NSW government, the one going bankrupt rapidly. Any pay rise above their pathetic 2.5% offer was a good outcome.

So instead of fighting for a better outcome next time, she'll complain and moan and let her colleagues do her fighting for her. I think she uses the outcome as an excuse - she wouldn't join anyway, as I said

"Frankly, I don't think you'd be a member even if the union didn't trade off RDO accumulation. It's just your excuse to not pay up."

Now, my question is, do I call her a "scab"? She is one, after all.

Turnbull reopens door on individual contracts

Oh dear, the Torries sure do have a short term memory. Turnbull has just said, on bringing back individual contracts, that he is "...not ruling it in or out." Well if he wants to keep the Torries in the political wilderness for elections to come then bring back the policy platform of individual contracts that rip off the most vulnerable in society Mr Turnbull. I'll enjoy watching the show as the conservative forces in Australia have their vote destroyed. Sweet!

“I contend also that when the labor movement ceases to be a Cause and becomes a business, the end product can hardly be called progress.”

Those words were spoken by the writer of Solidarity Forever, Ralph Chaplin. He has a point and it makes me think about the labour movement in Australia and throughout the world - sometimes it definitely feels like a business here. I work for a union because I believe in the cause. Most of my comrades feel the same.

You can tell those that are only in it for the bucks. They end up leaving, like one former colleague, and working for the bosses. He is now dirt to me, well more dirt. Never liked him in the first place. If the union movement gets taken over by the business types, then it ceases to be a movement or a cause and is nothing but a hollow shell with no soul - just like a corporation.