Pedophile Dennis Ferguson

The thing about the protesters in Ryde worrying about pedophile Dennis Ferguson is that they’re completely right to be worried. Or any pedophile.

How do I know this? Because years ago, I worked for the Perth CIB for three months (temporary job) and spent all day microfiching criminal records. Zillions of pages. The thing was, we were given the major responsibility of selecting what to record and what to throw out – though the “throw out” bins were examined and thoroughly checked to make sure we didn’t do anything wrong.

So we’d have to quickly read through the records – some had hundreds of pages – and pick out the key pages and put them on a photocopier-type machine that microfiched them. I can tell you, the ones that had done sex offences did them all through their lives. An offence at 18; still doing it at 90. Long breaks between offences, maybe cause they got married or didn’t get caught for a while. But if I found a major sex offence in old age, there were usually ones earlier in about 98 per cent of cases.

That’s anecdotal from the thousands of pages I copied. If someone wants to do a study, I bet they’d get the same results.

The SMH recently published about elderly people still having a sex drive, it doesn’t wane for everyone: “About 40 per cent of men aged 75 to 79 who replied to the survey said they were sexually active, and almost 30 per cent of men aged 80 to 84 had had sex in the past 12 months.”

Also, last year, I was at a community event where I wasn’t allowed on the same huge bus as children because I “didn’t have sex offender clearance”. I’d just wanted to get a bus ride to the next venue. And I couldn’t interact with the children playing in a park or at lunchtime – there were hundreds of people there. A 14-yr-old girl had been forced to come along to the event because “she was young enough to not need to get a clearance” and they’d desperately needed extra people to help look after the children.

It staggers me that people who don’t have a criminal record and are not recorded on any sex offender’s list are not allowed anywhere near children – to help out where there’s a shortage of child minders. I’d have to walk around with a permanent and up-to-date ”clearance” to ever volunteer to help out.

Foreign Correspondent, Dateline

It’s easier to cry during that doco on the pets being inbred or Scooby being rescued from the cave  than for the angry faced poor featured on foreign affairs programs. It’s difficult to feel appropriate empathy when they’re eyeing up the TV crew like they want to machete them. It’s not doing their cause any favours.

I remember donating to the tsunami appeal, and then reports got back that Aceh didn’t want our filthy money cause they’re radical Muslims. Bad PR. They need Max Markson.

This week’s Foreign Correspondent filled its usual quota of gruesomeness but Eric Campbell (reporter) seemed very disappointed at being unable to show  workers slaving away in a treeless coltan mine. It seems the problem had been mostly cleared up before Campbell got there, though he managed to find a blackmarket seller. The tone was very heavy-handed. Like this: coltan is used by us selfish Westerners for our hedonistic PlayStations and mobile phones. Sorry – but I didn’t see that on the label when I bought it.

And reporters showing off that they know French cheeses me off – it’s so Jana Wendt. Why? Cause I think there should always be a local interpreter shown onscreen just in case there are local idioms and coloquiallisms. Native tonguesters aren’t going to speak in Language Laboratory French.

I preferred Campbell’s reports, with a touch of wry humour, on The Investigators (1987), with Helen Wellings.

The carpet in the NSW lower house

It hurts my eyes every time it’s shown on TV. I don’t like how they have to squish together on those benches, either. Maybe it was designed in earlier times when there weren’t so many MPs.

Fr Bob Macguire forced to retire

“The rich and powerful catholic neo-cons have had enough of my style, valued as it may be by secular society.”

He’s about to reach 75, “the age of statutory senility”, and has been told to vacate the premises and retire to an old priests’ home.

“[The archibishop] gave me two dates for compliance. One was my birthday. He expects a letter of resignation. The other is a month later. He expects me to vacate the premises.”

Fr Bob’s blog. The Age story. Fr Bob on FB. Fr Bob on Twitter. Look at all that Fr Bob does on Twitter – it’s heartbreaking that he’s getting a “pink slip”.