Ok I can't keep my nose out of this one, The Smacking Debate,a referendum on the smacking of children has just been held in New Zealand - and 88 per cent of Kiwis who took part voted to re-legalise it. Two years ago, the Labor Government made it illegal for parents to smack their children as a form of discipline and the law generated emotional debate. I think Jessica Watson ( the single hand teenage sailor) and her parents should be smacked, I think the silly sod that came up with the idea that kids don't need discipline, should be smacked and gagged, and the lady at my poker tournament yesterday who wouldn't let me play with my iphone poker game should be smacked, sorry I mean sacked, what an attitude she had, spoilt my whole day.

Theres a scout jamboree in the park this weekend, if any of them misbehave I think they should be smacked and that includes Akela. 

A Victorian woman has been questioned by police and threatened to be charged with assault after hitting her 9-year-old daughter with a wooden spoon. Claire Davidson was warned by police that she risked an assault-with-a-weapon charge after her child revealed in a classroom discussion that her mother hit her with the spoon "We only use the wooden spoon and that is only when she is being naughty and we give her fair chance to rectify the situation and we talk her through it," She said her daughters gets three warnings and, then, "it is spoon time." Her nine year old is apparently going to be bad again so her mum gets the jail then she is heading off round the wolrd in a bath tub sponsered by Apple and Pedigree dog food.
Jessica is surrounded by security cameras and newspaper folks this morning as she gets ready to set sail, good luck to her, but I really think she should have done some long haul sailing before heading out on this venture.

Readers says Hey Hey's Jackson Jive skit 'not racist'

Well I didn't grow up in Australia and maybe my sense of humour is a bit different to the average Aussie, but I dont find Hey Hey its Saturday very funny at the best of times, I do think the Jackson Jive skit would is offensive and is tasteless.
However an overwhelming 69 per cent of readers who voted in online polls across Australia said the skit – which featured four men with blackened faces wearing afro wigs miming to the Jackson Five’s Can You Feel It – was neither racist nor tasteless. My question is were the people voting coloured? surely if you want to find out if something is offensive you ask the people that may be offended and in that case that would be coloured people.

I went to primary school on a tiny wee island off the west coast of Scotland and secondary school in a wee town called Oban, the population on the island was 100% caucasian and 99.5% caucasian in Oban so I suppose I never experienced racism until moving to Australia, we did have Religious bigotry between Prodestants and Catholics but in the Highlands it didnt seem as pronounced as in Glasgow where the first question wee kids ask is "are ye a Proddy or a Pape"

I have a pal here Ray who is an Aborigional and was my deckhand when I worked on the tugs, I was horrified when other crew would call him a "coon" and "wee black whatever" but it seemed not to bother him and in retrospect I think it was because he grew up with it, I don't like it at all.

Anyway, my blog so far hasn't been very amusing so the photo above has the caption "We just love cats here so much we just want to squeeze them and hug them and love them forever"

Ohh as well  the mystery of crop circles in poppy fields in Australia's southern island state of Tasmania has been solved -- stoned wallabies are eating the poppy heads and hopping around in circles.  Of course, it's not like they are smoking it - but they certainly are hard at work.
"We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," the state's top lawmaker Lara Giddings told local media on Thursday.
"Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high," she said.
For a long time people have believed that crop circles were created by aliens from other planets but it has actually been tweaked out wallabies.
Poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids said livestock which ate the poppies were known to "act weird" -- including deer and sheep in the state's highlands.
"There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles," said field operations manager Rick Rockliff.
Australia produces about 50 percent of the world's raw material for morphine and related opiates.

Grumpy and other fun names

I have a fishing boat called Gumpy, she has the name in big letters on her sides and lots of people recognise the boat when I'm out fishing and give me a call on the radio.
I wonder what the reasoning is behind naming your kids weird names like "Dweezil", thats one of Frank Zappa's childrens names, he has two other kids "Moon Unit" and "Diva Thin Muffin Pigeon". He isnt alone with this craze either, "Sparrow Midnight" is Nicole Richies wee girl, "Sunday Rose"is Nicole Kidman and Keith Urbans offering," Bronx Mowgli" is Ashley Simpson Pete Wentz's effort," Princess Tiaamii "has parents Jordan and Peter Andre, "Audio Science's" mother is Shannyn Sossaman, "Fifi Trixibell" can thank  Bob Geldof and Paula Yates, "Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily" has parents: Michael Hutchence, Paula Yates "Poppy Honey" and "Daisy Boo" have  Jamie and Jules Oliver to blame and "Pilot Inspektor" can thank father: Jason Lee. The only thing I see in common here are the Parents  mundane first names so therefore if you dont want a grandchild called Bronx Mowgli it may be a good idea to name your kids Bronx Mowgli or try and keep them off drugs and away from Paula Yates.

The Hoff was rushed to hospital yesterday after he  reportedly called  911.

He's had a very public battle with the bottle over the past few years, but he reckons this time it wasn't the beer - it was his ear!
Word is, he was on drugs for his bung ear, along with other medication to stop him from drinking.
Those powers combined reportedly made him sick.

Hasselhoff  crossed over to a music career during the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s which is what may have started him off drinking heavy if he ever listened to any of his music.

Silvio Berlusconi

"What are your vital statistics my dear?" 36 26 34, "Great would you like a job as education minister" "ohh you are illiterate, would you like a job as Chancellor of the Exchequer "? oops sorry I thought I was the Italian Prime Minister there for a second. 

Silvio is the deserved focus of my blog today less than a year after his first remark about US President Barack Obama having a great 'tan', Berlusconi goes a step further. He says First Lady Michelle must sunbathe with her husband as she too has a great tan. Everyone should be allowed one great blooper but the Italian Stalion goes from blooper to blooper like a fly on crumbs. The Italian premier caused a huge upset after he said while he was considering deploying nearly 30,000 troops to Italy's cities, there would never be enough soldiers to protect the country's many 'beautiful girls' from rape. He maintains his comment was a compliment towards Italian women. Ok heres another few quotes and at the end you can guess who from

"Read The Black Book of Communism and you will discover that in the China of Mao, they did not eat children, but had them boiled to fertilise the fields."

"I trust the intelligence of the Italian people too much to think that there are so many pricks around who would vote against their own best interests." 

"An Aids patient asks his doctor whether the sand treatment prescribed him will do any good. 'No', the doctor replies, 'but you will get accustomed to living under the earth'."
His response to critics who said the joke was offensive:
"They have lost their minds; they really have come to the end of the line, indeed they have gone beyond it. I would advise them, too, to undergo sand treatment..."

Gawdafi

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi did not cease to amaze as he gave his first ever address to the UN, taking the opportunity to slam the global body for being ineffective. His colorful speech, which was supposed to last 15 minutes, went on for an hour and 36 minutes,
At one point, Gaddafi grabbed hold of the UN charter and threw it over his shoulder.
After struggling to turn Khadafy’s insane ramblings at the UN into English for 75 minutes, the Libyan dictator’s personal interpreter got lost in translation.
"I just can’t take it any more," Khadafy’s interpreter shouted into the live microphone – in Arabic.
At that point, the U.N.’s Arabic section chief, Rasha Ajalyaqeen, took over and translated the final 20 minutes of the speech.
Gadhafi was dressed in flowing brown robe, and a black beret that he patted at times. As he listened to speeches before he took the stage, aides huddled around him; he kept his glasses, a red handkerchief and a rumpled yellow folder in front of him on the desk. The black beret patting thing probably reminded him of spanking of which he must have had a lot as a kid. That was in reference to yesterdays blog observation about spanked kids IQ's.

John Cleese and Greg Norman are getting divorced, not from each other, from their respective wives, John will have to fork out £8 million in cash and assets.
Ms Eichelberger, an American psychotherapist, will also receive £600,000 a year for seven years. Greg Norman was married to Chris Evert for 15 months so I'm not sure what thats worth. Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep the clubs and the fresh air Golf is a good way to ruin a nice walk.

chirac

I loved this story. Former French President Jacques Chirac has announced that he has given away his beloved dog after it attacked him for a third time.

Sumo, a Maltese terrier, is reported to have bitten him in the stomach in their apartment in the capital, Paris.

Mr Chirac's wife, Bernadette, said the dog had been treated for depression after finding it difficult to come to terms with leaving the Elysee Palace.

In January this year, Mr Chirac had to be hospitalised after the dog sank his teeth into an unnamed body part.

In this latest attack, Mrs Chirac said that Sumo had been lying quietly at her feet but flew into a violent rage on the approach of her husband.

The dog leapt up and nipped the former French leader in the stomach.

"I was very scared because there was blood. It's terrible, the small teeth like that. He was going wild. He wanted to jump up and bite again," she said. There are some factions and one country (Australia) that recons Sumo should be awarded the Maltese Cross.

I also see in the news that

A towering Turk was officially crowned the world's tallest man on Thursday after his Ukrainian rival dropped out of the running by refusing to be measured.

Guinness World Records said that 8 foot 1 inch (2.47 meter) Sultan Kosen, from the town of Mardin in eastern Turkey, is now officially the tallest man walking the planet. Although the previous record holder, Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk, reportedly measured 8 feet 5.5 inches (2.57 meters), Guinness said he was stripped of his title when he declined to let anyone confirm his height. Probably as he is 4ft 10 with a good imagination.

A new university study says that children who are spanked end up with lower IQ’s than children who aren’t spanked. You know what this means? When you think you're beating some sense into your kid, you're actually beating them senseless. Personally I think that Mrs Chirac may have been spanked a bit.

Another study shows the ice cap is melting faster than previously thought. Global warming deniers cite the positives. Polar bears are becoming better and better swimmers.

 I am going to save the blogs now onto a podcast "woohoo" I hear you cry and then silence as you google "podcast" It can be found at

http://robshairp.podbean.co/

Canadian astronaut

The man who plans on being "the first clown in space" said Thursday he's got some surprises planned for the crew of the international space station.Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte told reporters he plans to tickle the professional astronauts while they're sleeping, and is also bringing red clown noses to try to lighten things up on the orbiting station.I cant think of anything worse when I was trying to sleep than to have some bloke in a red nose trying to tickle me, I will be supprised if the Russian doesnt stick him with a fork or Mars probe or something. There was another Clown astronaut before him too that was that Lisa Marie Nowak  the diaper clown.

At the height of the space race in the 1960's, NASA decided it needed a ball point pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules.
After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of $ 1 million. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on earth.
The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil.

China displayed a spectacular show on Thursday as it celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the republic, but punctuated this with commitment to world peace. The show consisted of displaying its military might, Spectators witnessed the high technological level of China's military equipment and the completeness of its armed forces, I'm lost how this commited to world peace apart from maybe scaring everyone else into not slagging China about its deplorable human rights acts.