Still ANOTHER reason to love Australia

[Porsche-O-Phile]

This place just keeps sounding better and better. . . If this had happened here, the robbers would be filing a lawsuit today and probably would win in our pussified "victims first" society. Gotta' love this!


http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/02/28/biker.meeting/index.html


Hapless robbers target biker meeting

By CNN's Saeed Ahmed

(CNN) -- Two masked and machete-wielding men who barged into a club in Sydney, Australia, couldn't have picked a worse night for their robbery -- a monthly meeting of bikers.

The robbers chose the wrong night to burst into the club where the Southern Cross Cruiser Club have their monthly meeting.

About 50 burly bikers fought back with tables and chairs -- pretty much anything that wasn't bolted down. One would-be robber was tied up; the other in the hospital.

Police arrested both.

"These guys were absolutely dumb as bricks," Jerry Vancornewal, leader of the bikers, told CNN Thursday. "I can't believe they saw all the bikes parked up front and they were so stupid that they walked past in."

Vancornewal and his buddies were at the Regents Park Sporting and Community Club in Sydney when the two men wearing ski masks stormed in Wednesday night. They yelled at patrons to drop to the floor as they emptied cash registers at the bar.

Hearing the commotion from an adjacent room, Vancornewal and his pals with the Southern Cross Cruiser motorcycle club stomped through to the bar area to intervene.

"They (the robbers) thought they had the upper advantage with their knives and their machetes," Jim Webb, night supervisor of the club, told CNN. "They didn't expect to run into a bunch of guys carrying chairs and tables."

One of the would-be robbers crashed through a plate-glass door and jumped off a balcony.

"All he had to do was push the button and it automatically opened," Webb quipped.

New South Wales police said they arrested the 20-year-old man a short distance away.

The second man made a break for it through the club's service entrance, but the bikers tackled him near a neighbor's fence.

"We just grabbed him, crash-tackled him to the ground, hogtied him with electrical wire and left him for the cops," Vancornewal said.

Police confirmed in a statement that club patrons subdued the second man until officers arrived, but did not provide additional details. The suspect turned out to be a 16-year-old boy.

Both would-be robbers were charged with attempted armed robbery and "face disguised with intent to commit indictable offense," police said.

A third person, who was waiting in a getaway car, took off when the bikers threw pieces of furniture at him, Webb said. Police have not located him.

The Regents Park Sporting and Community Club is a place where locals come to enjoy drinks and take part in various games: cricket, soccer, lawn bowling. The biking enthusiasts meet there once a month to plan rides and other club activities.

In the last year or so, criminals have struck the club about 10 times, Webb said. And Wednesday night's incident, while unusual, wasn't the most memorable.

"We have these old bingo players and they are really serious about their games," Webb explained. "They do not like to be interrupted."

When robbers barged in one evening and announced that they were holding up the place, the players turned around and testily told them to be quiet.

"They were making it difficult for the players to hear the numbers being called," Webb said.

[Rick Lee]

In the U.S. those bikers would have been sued, if not prosecuted. We only ever reward the wrong people. Idicocracy is coming.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

It's already here, just more entrenched/evolved in some areas than other.

If things really do go to hell in the U.S., Australia is one of the places I'm looking. I've already started preliminary inquiries into it and run it by the wife for her blessing. It's not a LIKELY scenario (it's about "Plan J" or "Plan K" on the list, but it's there).

In talking to folks (both from there and who have spent time there) it sounds a lot like what the U.S. was like 40 or 50 years ago - before we became a nation of wussified, politically correct, "I'm-a-victim" playing, hand-wringing ninnies with "sensitivity training" credentials.

[Rick Lee]

Yup, it would be a great place for me to also abscond to, if not for their gun laws.

[onewhippedpuppy]

They have cool accents, Fosters is a decent beer, and they don't seem very PC. Where do I sign up?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Most of the Aussie girls I've met are towards the "hot" side of the scale too.

[Tobra]

and they like Yanks, or every single one I have met does

[onewhippedpuppy]

Good point Jeff, the Foster's girls are pretty damn hot. I'll leave that part out of justifying my move to the wife.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

Good point Jeff, the Foster's girls are pretty damn hot. I'll leave that part out of justifying my move to the wife.

I did too. Just sayin'. Something I've observed. Between us guys you know.

[WI wide body]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

It's already here, just more entrenched/evolved in some areas than other.

If things really do go to hell in the U.S., Australia is one of the places I'm looking. I've already started preliminary inquiries into it and run it by the wife for her blessing. It's not a LIKELY scenario (it's about "Plan J" or "Plan K" on the list, but it's there).

In talking to folks (both from there and who have spent time there) it sounds a lot like what the U.S. was like 40 or 50 years ago - before we became a nation of wussified, politically correct, "I'm-a-victim" playing, hand-wringing ninnies with "sensitivity training" credentials.

Yeah Jeff, not sure what it's like now but back in the '80's Auzzieland was great. I had 3 week assignment in Sydney and then a shorter one in Melbourne. Best trips that I ever had anywhere. But except for all the great little Italian restaurants in Melbourne it cannot come close to Sydney.

All kinds of different nationaliities in the factory but I never had a problem with anyone that I met or had to deal with. Just a great bunch of guys who naturally were a little apprehensive at first but when they finally come to accept you and open up it's like a non-stop party. They DO know how to have a good time!

I would go back there in a heartbeat.

[dewolf]

Originally Posted by Tobra

and they like Yanks, or every single one I have met does

Yes we do. We have a great affinity for you guy's. Your all welcome!!. Drinks and bbq are on me.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

There is that whole "driving upside down and on the wrong side of the road" thing though.

I also think that in most of the states there you can't even own LHD vehicles, which would be rather depressing. I don't want to have to give up my 911!

[gassy]

I can't imagine seeing my poop flush down the other direction though.

[cairns]

I go there for holiday every chance I can- at least fourteen times now. We're considering retiring there and at one point I even had a job offer but had to turn it down. I love the place and the people- and even the food (meat pies). One of my favorite columns says a lot more than I can:

Why I Love Australia

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 23, 2006; Page A25

In the Australian House of Representatives last month, opposition member Julia Gillard interrupted a speech by the minister of health thusly: "I move that that sniveling grub over there be not further heard."

For that, the good woman was ordered removed from the House, if only for a day. She might have escaped that little time-out if she had responded to the speaker's demand for an apology with something other than "If I have offended grubs, I withdraw unconditionally."

God, I love Australia. Where else do you have a shadow health minister with such, er, starch? Of course I'm prejudiced, having married an Australian, but how not to like a country, in this age of sniveling grubs worldwide, whose treasurer suggests to any person who "wants to live under sharia law" to try Saudi Arabia and Iran, "but not Australia." He was elaborating on an earlier suggestion that "people who . . . don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off." Contrast this with Canada, historically and culturally Australia's commonwealth twin, where last year Ontario actually gave serious consideration to allowing its Muslims to live under sharia.

Such things don't happen in Australia. This is a place where, when the remains of a fallen soldier are accidentally switched with those of a Bosnian, the enraged widow picks up the phone late at night, calls the prime minister at home in bed and delivers a furious, unedited rant -- which he publicly and graciously accepts as fully deserved. Where Americans today sue, Australians slash and skewer.

For Americans, Australia engenders nostalgia for our own past, which we gauzily remember as infused with John Wayne plain-spokenness and vigor. Australia evokes an echo of our own frontier, which is why Australia is the only place you can unironically still shoot a Western.

It is surely the only place where you hear officials speaking plainly in defense of action. What other foreign minister but Australia's would see through "multilateralism," the fetish of every sniveling foreign policy grub from the Quai d'Orsay to Foggy Bottom, calling it correctly "a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator"?

And with action comes bravery, from the transcendent courage of the doomed at Gallipoli to the playful insanity of Australian-rules football. How can you not like a country whose trademark sport has Attila-the-Hun rules, short pants and no padding -- a national passion that makes American football look positively pastoral?

That bravery breeds affection in America for another reason as well. Australia is the only country that has fought with the United States in every one of its major conflicts since 1914, the good and the bad, the winning and the losing.

Why? Because Australia's geographic and historical isolation has bred a wisdom about the structure of peace -- a wisdom that eludes most other countries. Australia has no illusions about the "international community" and its feckless institutions. An island of tranquility in a roiling region, Australia understands that peace and prosperity do not come with the air we breathe but are maintained by power -- once the power of the British Empire, now the power of the United States.

Australia joined the faraway wars of early-20th-century Europe not out of imperial nostalgia but out of a deep understanding that its fate and the fate of liberty were intimately bound with that of the British Empire as principal underwriter of the international system. Today the underwriter is America, and Australia understands that an American retreat or defeat -- a chastening consummation devoutly, if secretly, wished by many a Western ally -- would be catastrophic for Australia and for the world.

When Australian ambassadors in Washington express support for the United States, it is heartfelt and unalloyed, never the "yes, but" of the other allies, perfunctory support followed by a list of complaints, slights and sage finger-wagging. Australia understands America's role and is sympathetic to its predicament as reluctant hegemon. That understanding has led it to share foxholes with Americans from Korea to Kabul. They fought with us at Tet and now in Baghdad. Not every engagement has ended well. But every one was strenuous, and many quite friendless. Which is why America has such affection for a country whose prime minister said after Sept. 11, "This is no time to be an 80 percent ally" and actually meant it.

[Porsche]

Yes, we Aussies love our country. Good to see others appreciating it too.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Can we borrow some of your politicians? We're having trouble finding any with a spine here in the states.

[David]

In Texas they would have shot the robbers dead and gone back inside for a beer

[Porsche-O-Phile]

If that's true, I may actually consider moving to Texas. Just grow some mountains first. I like having mountains around. Or at least terrain that isn't perfectly flat for 500 miles in every direction.

[gr8fl4porsche]

Originally Posted by gassy

I can't imagine seeing my poop flush down the other direction though.

I believe Mythbusters proved this was just a myth. The water spins according to the design of the toilet.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

At the equator, it should just glug straight down (right?)

What if there's no angle to the jets on the toilet (i.e. they just point straight down towards the hole?) Then it'd be solely up to Coriolis force I'd think.