The current violence against women campaign is a good thing. There is nothing I hate more than a wife beater. It is also good that they are teaching people to get involved and prevent this type of domestic violence. The underlying message that violence is not acceptable by either sex should be underlined. The message is purely directed to men about women. It is important that both sexes not just men accept the message.

There is also something that is not covered by these messages, is violence acceptable in defence of oneself? I would say yes. If the only way to prevent a more serious assault were to resort to violence, I’d say it is ok. What if it is the woman who is committing the violent act?

The only time I have seen male verses female violence is at primary school and early high school. A close friend of mine “Fred”, would frequently be beaten up by “Carol” during lunch time. After one particularly nasty incident I said to Fred, “why don’t you hit her back?”
“Don’t you know you can’t hit girls” was his reply.
“But she is twice your size!”

I’m sure a few swift upper cuts would have quickly stopped Carol from beating Fred senseless. Out of concern for my own wellbeing I let Carol know that I would not stick to the rules if she laid a hand on me. My bluff worked. (I couldn?t really do anything. A year later I was driving around in an electric wheelchair.)

During the years girls were bigger than boys this was a continuing pattern. In year seven “Jeff” would get beaten up by “Carly” the largest girl. When Jeff finally got beaten up for about the fourth time, he’d had enough. And the next time Carly approached him he threw a chair. He didn’t hit her, but she ran away screaming her head off. Jeff was the only one who got in trouble. Carly got away with the numerous incidents with nothing, not even a warning. She didn’t do it again though.

In both these incidents young boys were unable to defend themselves from people who were bigger and stronger than they were. This is almost an exact mirror of many domestic violence situations.

Maybe this campaign should recognise the small minority of males who are the victims of female violence. The people who commit violence against people who are weaker than they are are cowardly. If they know that there will be serious repercussions for their actions they will not do it. That means get involved, if you see a women getting the shit beaten out of her, give the guy a few, in my case that may be spitting on him or maybe running him over.

Instigating violence against anyone is also unacceptable I think this is also an important next step in Government anti-violence advertising.

It makes me ashamed to be a member of the human species that violence like this even needs to be talked about. The fact is that any violent confrontation should not occur no matter what the reasons. The problem is we do live in a violent world and sometimes we do resort to violence. Violence is only acceptable to me when it is used to defend yourself and others.

Melbourne’s Rialto Tower has recently lost first place as Melbourne’s tallest building to the 92 storey 300 metre Eureka Tower.

This tower is billed as the tallest apartment building in the world. Its spiky modern appearance brings something new to Melbourne’s skyline. This tower stands 300 metres nearly 50 metres taller than the Rialto. It cost $500 million to build and has 556 apartments of varying sizes.

Recently a friend of mine went on a tour of the Eureka Tower. What struck him the most is the size of the apartments they are tiny. Forget about getting your lounge suite in there or your king size water bed, you wont even get it down the hallway.

You can check out the floor plans on the Eureka Tower site. The only thing that Eureka Tower has going for it is the view, which is spectacular, but it could have been better if they had bothered making the tower taller.

Lets face it 300 metres is piss weak. With modern technology and composite materials we should be able to make towers at least a kilometre high. Due to the developers lack of fore sight the Eureka Tower will only be the tallest residential tower in the world for a short time, then it will be overtaken by the Q1 Tower on the Gold Coast.

There is one amazing thing about the Eureka Tower, and it’s not the architecture. It’s the speed of the lifts. They travel at 9 metres per second reaching the observation deck on floor 88 in 30 seconds. Major ear popping!

So if you work in the city, or you’re a yuppie with $500,000 to spare, or you’re a bachelor or spinster or you just love really fast lifts think about Eureka Tower.

What has a witch doctor curse got to do with Australia’s victory over Uruguay? A curse placed on the Australian team in 1970 is the real reason Australian football has been such a dismal failure over the past 30 years.

Thankfully the great Australian filmmaker John Safran with a little help from the now deceased Johnny Warren, a witch doctor and a sacrificed chicken, removed this curse.

William Mollers explains: “…Good old John Safran and Johnny Warren (now deceased, RIP Mr Football) eliminated the Witch Doctor curse on Australian Football, which occurred, for those who are unaware, when the Australian team used a witch doctor to make sure they beat Rhodesia in a WCQ for the 1970 World Cup ? but then didn?t pay him, so he reversed the curse. This reversal has allegedly caused all of the suffering and pain that has wrecked all of the potential of Australian Football throughout the last 30-odd years…”

The removal of this curse allowed the Socceroos to beat Uruguay and win a place in the World Cup.

Thankyou John Safran. (Remember to watch his new show Speaking in Tongues 9:00pm Monday.)

There several things about the terror raids that worry me. Did John Howard’s warning to the Australian public tip off the terrorism suspects? Did Howard try to juice the maximum political gain out of these terror raids?

The way Bracks, Iemma and Howard jumped all over the terrorism raids and held their own massive press conferences. You see these arrests prove to the public that Howard and Co are doing an amazing job protecting the Australian community. But how do they know that it wasn?t the terrorists that were incompetent and not the Australian police that were shit hot?

While the police commissioners, the Premiers and Howard are sipping on their after press conference champagne, grinning from ear to ear and slapping each other on the back, for all they know another terror cell may be preparing an attack.

It’s the terrorist cells we don’t know about that worry me.

The police commissioners, the Premiers and Howard need to stop their political games and get back to work. The fact is they are not doing their jobs when they are in front of the camera.