Saturday, May 21, 2016

Uber driver sacked without explanation


Muhammad Qureshi




It's obvious that customer service is very important to Uber, they have a rating system their drivers must meet or they're out.

Muhammad Qureshi, an ex taxi driver with almost 30 years experience, decided to become an Uber driver and bought a nice new car.  But last month he was sacked and he's pleading for an explanation.

He asked Uber if he had done something wrong and they said no, it's because his customer rating was low.  Not true, he claims that out of 800 jobs, people gave him a rating of between 4-5 stars.

Mr Qureshi said he was warned his rating had slipped to 4 stars in April and was told that if he paid $68 for a one-hour training course, he would go back to a 5 star rating.  He agreed, but  two weeks after attending the course, his rating dropped back to 4 stars again and he was "deactivated."

A Perth driver is suing Uber for terminating his contract in November without telling him why, and he's left with an $80,000 car loan.  He said the company deactivated him due to complaints he was driving while tired and "almost fell asleep at the wheel twice" - claims he said are untrue.

Uber maintains the right to "deactivate" a driver at any time and it's in the contract a driver must sign.

There seems to be multiple complaints about tired drivers almost nodding off while driving and it makes you wonder why.

I think the star rating by customers is a good idea but with so many complaints from drivers, it's clear that all is not well.

Under fare changes in recent months, many drivers say they are struggling to earn a minimum wage. Uber classifies its drivers as 'driver partners' and considers them contractors under employment law.







Uber is looking to expand its pool of female drivers, and we know why.  What woman wouldn't be happy to pay for a ride with this
charming young woman?

Friday, May 20, 2016

Homeless protest ruined by thieves and drug addicts

Stuart Polden




Stuart Polden 40, thought it was a good idea to stage a protest in the Melbourne central business district to highlight the plight of the homeless, but it didn't work out the way he had hoped.







He woke on Tuesday night when a group of drug addicts and "blow ins" arrived at the camp and tried to hide stolen bicycles.  He called police and returned to his regular camp under the rail viaduct at Enterprise Park.







The homeless have a bad reputation and don't receive a lot of sympathy from the public. There's a perception that they would rather save their pension money to buy drugs and alcohol, rather than pay rent.   







It all comes down to cheap accommodation for the poor - there isn't any.

Boarding houses used to fill the void for needy people in the past - a cheap room was available for displaced men and women down on their luck at a reasonable rent they could afford, but not any more, they went out of fashion and no longer exist, replaced with flats and units that cost the earth.

So who are the homeless?



Thursday, May 19, 2016

Erdogan is bad news for Europe




By Daniel Pipes 
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the president of the Middle East Forum, and publisher of its Middle East Quarterly journal. His writing focuses on the American foreign policy and the Middle East. 
The Republic of Turkey, long a democratising Muslim country solidly in the Western camp, now finds itself internally racked and at the centre of two external crises: the civil war in next-door Syria and the illegal immigration that is changing European politics. The prospects for Turkey and its neighbours are worrisome, if not ominous.
The key development was the coming to power of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2002, when a fluke election outcome gave him total control of the government, which he parlayed into a personal dominion. After years of restraint and modesty, his real personality — grandiloquent, Islamist and aggressive — came out. Now he seeks to rule as a despot, an ambition that causes his country incessant, avoidable problems.
Initially, Erdogan’s disciplined approach to finance permitted the Turkish economy to achieve China-like economic growth and won him increasing electoral support while making Ankara a new player in regional affairs. But then conspiracy theories, corruption, short-sightedness, and incompetence cut into the growth, making Turkey economically vulnerable.
Initially, Erdogan took unprecedented steps to resolve his country’s Kurdish problem, acknowledging that this ethnic minority making up roughly 20 per cent of the country’s population has its own culture and allowing it to express itself in its own language. But then, for electoral reasons, he abruptly reversed himself last year, resulting in a more determined and violent Kurdish insurgency, to the point that civil war has become a real prospect.
Initially, Erdogan accepted the traditional autonomy of the major institutions in Turkish life: law courts, the military, the press, banks, schools. No longer; now he seeks to control everything. Take the case of two prominent journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul: because their newspaper, Cumhuriyet, exposed the government’s clandestine support for Islamic State, Erdogan had them imprisoned on the surreal charges of espionage and terrorism. Worse, when the Constitutional Court (Turkey’s highest) reversed this sentence, Erdogan accused the court of ruling “against the country and its people” and indicated he would ignore its decision.
Initially, Erdogan maintained cautious and correct relations with Moscow, benefiting economically and using Russia as a balance against the US. But since the reckless Turkish shoot-down of a Russian warplane last November, followed by a defiant lack of apology, the little bully (Erdogan) has more than met his match with the big bully (Russia’s Vladimir Putin) and Turkey is paying the price. French President Francois Hollande has warned of “a risk of war” between Turkey and Russia.
Initially, Erdogan’s accommodating policies translated into a calming of domestic politics; now, his bellicosity has led to a string of acts of violence. To make matters worse, many of them are murky in origin and purpose, building paranoia. For example, before Kurdish militant group TAK claimed responsibility for the bombing last Sunday that killed 37 people near the Prime Minister’s office in Ankara, groups blamed included, variously, the Kurds, Islamic State and the Turkish government. It was interpreted as intending to justify a more forceful campaign against domestic Kurds or punish the government for attacking the Kurds; to encourage a Turkish military invasion of Syria or to frame Erdogan’s political enemy, the Gulen movement.
Initially, Turkey became a plausible candidate for membership in the EU thanks to Erdogan’s muted behaviour. Now, his slide towards despotism and Islamism means the Europeans merely go through the motions of pretending to negotiate with Ankara while counting on the Republic of Cyprus to blackball its application; as Turkish journalist Burak Bekdil says, “modern Turkey has never been this galactically distant from the core values enshrined by the European civilisation and its institutions”.
In the early months of the Syrian uprising, Erdogan offered sage advice to the dictator in Damascus, Bashar al-Assad, about relaxing his grip and allowing political participation. Things have gone so awry that, as Dundar and Gul reported, Erdogan now supports Islamic State, the most fanatical and Islamist organisation today, perhaps ever. That support has taken many forms: permitting foreigners to cross Turkey to reach Syria, allowing recruitment in Turkey, providing medical care and provisioning money and arms. Despite this, Islamic State, fearful of betrayal by Ankara, threatens and attacks Turks.
Erdogan’s error of backing Islamic State and other Sunni Islamist organisations in Syria has hurt him in another way, leading to a huge influx of Syrian refugees to Turkey where, increasingly unwelcomed by the indigenous population, they cause social and economic strains.
Which brings us to Erdogan’s latest gambit. Syrian refugees wanting to go on to northwestern Europe provide him with a handy mechanism to blackmail the EU: pay me huge amounts of money (€6 billion at latest count) and permit 80 million Turks to travel visa-free to your countries or I will dump more unwelcome Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Somalis and others on you.
So far the ploy has worked and the Europeans are succumbing to Erdogan’s demands. But this may well be a Pyrrhic victory, hurting Erdogan’s long-term interests. In the first place, forcing Europeans to pretend they are not being blackmailed and to welcome Turkey with clenched teeth creates a foul mood, further reducing, if not killing off, Turkish chances for membership.
Second, Erdogan’s game has prompted a profound and probably lasting shift in mood in Europe against accepting more immigrants from the Middle East — including Turks.
In combination, these errors by Erdogan point to more crises ahead. Gokhan Bacik, a professor at Ipek University in Ankara, says “Turkey is facing a multifaceted catastrophe”, the scale of which “is beyond Turkey’s capacity for digestion”. If Iran is today the Middle East’s greatest danger, Turkey is tomorrow’s.
Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum.
DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes


Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Nim Murphy's dilemma




Nim Murphy has large 12HH size breasts which are causing her so much pain, she had to quit work and go on the dole.  She needs a breast reduction but can't afford it.

Because breast reduction is considered 'elective surgery' - in other words, it's not life-threatening and therefore not urgent - in Australia you need private health insurance if you want to have elective surgery immediately.  If you don't have private health insurance, you will go on a long waiting list which could take many months.

And that is Ms Murphy's dilemma.  "I can't work, I can't exercise properly, I can't do most things" she said.




She suffers from the reversal of the lordotic curvature, leaving her spine bending backward and discs protruding from her neck. She said that although her 12HH breasts do not cause the curvature, their weight exacerbates the symptoms.

Other popular 'elective' surgeries include cataracts, hips and knees which all have lengthy waiting lists and affect elderly pensioners who have no health insurance.

But on the other hand, if you are privately insured, you can see your doctor today, and have the surgery next week.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

James Holmes mother speaks






The mother of James Holmes, the man who walked into a movie theatre, opened fire and killed 12 innocents and injured 70 others in Colorado has spoken to the media for the first time.  She said she had no idea her son was schizophrenic until it was revealed at his trial.

Really?  How can a mother not know there is something seriously wrong with her child?  Surely there must have been plenty of warning signs?  And as a registered nurse, wouldn't she have the knowledge to recognise someone with a serious mental illness?

Arlene Holmes is taking no responsibility for not addressing her son's mental problems and getting him help.  Instead, she is asking for more education on mental health to prevent this horrific crime from happening again.

"I talked to other people about signs and symptoms of people who have problems with mental health and they told me it's been helpful so I want to share the lessons I've learned...at the same time I want to acknowledge that my son did indeed do something very terrible and it was a tragedy......many people were killed, many people were harmed and I want to focus, not on him, but on education."

She said James was a 'happy child' and 'had lots of kids over to the house.'  But when he reached his teens, he became withdrawn and irritable.  They took him to a therapist who suggested he was upset about the family move from northern California to San Diego. "Over the course of a decade, he got quieter and quieter" she said.

She hoped he'd grow out of it.

But there was an admission of sorts.  "Don't try to do like he did and I did, which is to try and just keep going or solve everything yourself" she said.  "Get some professional help, I failed to be educated and I want to offer up that failure as advice to other people."

She wrote a book about her thoughts and feelings titled When the Focus Shifts: The Prayer Book of Arlene Holmes 2013-2014.

In her foreword, she says she will donate the proceeds of her book to mental health services. "This book is being published to raise awareness of the immorality of the death penalty - severely mentally ill people need treatment, not execution."

She also takes aim at the District Attorney's office.  "Prosecutors, I don't know what you have been through in your life" she writes.  "I do not know why you want to pursue execution of a mentally ill man.  But I pray for you, so that you will find peace in your life."

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Another original Rembrandt found





Relatives were cleaning out the basement of a recently departed member of the family when they came across a small, dirty painting. They took it with other items to an auction house who said it would probably sell for between $600 and $800.

But two French art dealers recognised it immediately and put in an opening bid of $250.  The pair went on to buy the painting for $870,000 after competing with another two European dealers who also knew its worth.  They could tell by comparing the exotic costumes of the subjects of other Rembrandt paintings.

It's tiny, just 9 inches square and he named it The Unconscious Patient, painted around 1624.  It's part of  a set of five works depicting the five senses and shows two men trying to revive a young man with smelling salts. 

It will be on display at J. Paul Getty Museum in California from today, 11 May 2016.

After restoration, the monogram 'RF' in the upper left corner was revealed which stands for 'Rembrandt Fecit' or 'Made by Rembrandt'.  He would have been around 18 years of age when he painted it.

It was later sold to billionaire collector Thomas Caplan for an undisclosed amount.

In 2009, a Rembrandt sold at auction for a record breaking $43 million.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Waleed Aly wins gold Logie

Waleed Aly






Amanda Divine



Amanda Divine, journalist for the Daily Telegraph writes:

KUDOS to Waleed Aly. Not only did the most ­famous Muslim in Australia win the Gold Logie, he also ridiculed Australia’s entertainment establishment so subtly in his acceptance speech that they gave him a standing ovation. Wonderful Waleed. Hit me again!
“Do not adjust your sets … there’s nothing wrong with the picture,” he told the assembled luvvies at the Logies awards in Melbourne on Sunday night. “I’m sure there’s an Instagram filter you can use to return things to normal.”
Yuck Yuk. Get it? Because Waleed’s skin is a shade or two darker than his The Project co-hosts’, racists should look through a filter that turns him white. Inspired! The audience laughed and clapped in appreciation at his joke.
Wonderful Waleed, political ­activist, human rights lawyer, academic, newspaper columnist, TV host, GQ cover star, darling of the Left, poster boy of Muslim victimhood, now crowned the king of Australian television, up there with Ray Martin and Bert Newton.
And Waleed did not disappoint. He dedicated his Logie to “Mustafa” and anyone else who can’t get a job in TV with an “unpronounceable” name like Waleed.
“It matters to them for a particular reason. That reason was brought home shudderingly not so long ago when someone who is in this room … came up to me and said: ‘I really hope you win. My name is Mustafa. But I can’t use that name because I won’t get a job’.” At this point, the camera cut to actress Noni Hazlehurst, crying tears of joy, or perhaps sadness. It was hard to tell.
“To Dimitri and Mustafa and everyone else with unpronounceable names like, I don’t know, Waleed, I want to say one thing: that I am incredibly humbled ... But I’m also incredibly saddened because the truth is you deserve more numerous and more worthy avatars than that.
“And I don’t know if and when that’s going to happen but if ­tonight means anything … it’s that the Australian public, our audience, as far as they’re concerned there is absolutely no reason why that can’t change.”
The audience loved his speech. There were whistles and cheers. What a guy.
But it wasn’t long ­before the Mustafa sob story unravelled. Poor Mustafa, who couldn’t get a job in racist Australian TV unless he changed his name, turned out to be Tyler De Nawi, star of Here Come The ­Habibs. In other words, he got the job precisely because he was a Mus-tafa. Who else could credibly act in a sitcom about a Lebanese Australian family who win the lottery and move from Lakemba to Vaucluse?
The irony is that leftists tried to close down the show because it alienated “non-white Australians by using cheap racist jokes,” as the Change.org petition put it.
Despite their efforts, the show went on and Mustafa, aka Tyler, kept his job.
So why did Waleed have to concoct a tale of Muslim victimhood on Logies night?
Why couldn’t he just say thanks? Why couldn’t he graciously acknowledge that the audience, or whoever votes for the Logies, anointed him Australia’s best TV personality and doesn’t that show all the fearmongering about racism and Islamophobia is wrong. Instead he gave a sermon about how the TV industry needs to “change”.
A Muslim just won the Gold Logie. The system he rails against gave a plum, prime-time hosting gig to a bloke named Waleed. What has to change?
Perhaps he wants a diversity quota on TV. Muslims make up 2.2 per cent of Australia’s population. Waleed is the first Muslim in 56 years to win a Gold Logie, which means Muslims are now slightly under-represented at 1.8 per cent.
If he does a Ray Martin and wins again next year, the quota will be exceeded, at 3.5 per cent. We should expect Waleed to apologise to the Lee Lins and Luigis and ­Imeldas for hogging the category, and that’s not even taking into ­account the other ethnic and gender fluid identities that make up this great nation.
He could always wait a few years. To reach the diversity target of 2.2 per cent, a Gold Logie would need to be delivered to Waleed or another Muslim entertainer by 2060, assuming the Muslim population remains constant. It could get complicated.
But that’s OK, because diversity isn’t really Waleed’s goal. He was just playing to type.
His extraordinary success is in large part due to the self-loathing of the Left and their relentless need to elevate themselves above the mob, those suburban rednecks who lack their multiculti sophistication.
This virtue-signalling reached its zenith during the Lindt siege when social justice warriors were busy tweeting “I’ll ride with you” hashtags to combat imaginary Islamophobia while the poor hostages were being menaced at gunpoint by an Islamist ordering up ISIS flags for decorations.
Waleed taps into this leftist status anxiety so skilfully. So when the most ­famous Muslim in Australia is feted non-stop in every media outlet and crowned king of Australian TV, that is evidence of Islamophobia. Just another opportunity for leftist self-flagellation.
Waleed couldn’t just say “ thanks”, because that would erode his product.


Waleed Aly and his Australian wife Susan Carland


Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Tony Abbott's fight to stay alive






It must take a lot of courage to come to grips with being Prime Minister of the country one day and a lowly back-bencher the next.

Up until now, Tony Abbott's electorate of Warringah was rock solid, he didn't need to drum up votes because he already had them in spades.   But with the election looming after the Double Dissolution, he was spotted greeting voters on their way to work at the Manly ferry wharf, hoping they will send him back to Canberra.

He could have resigned and earned twice the salary in the private sector but he's decided to stay and it will be the fight of his life.

And the hardest thing of all must be to praise the man who stabbed him in the back - Malcolm Turnbull - but he did it anyway, for the good of the party when he said "It's a difficult job, as I know only too well, but Malcolm certainly has the intellect and the experience to do it very well."



Campaigning at Manly ferry wharf




But I didn't vote for Malcolm Turnbull - I voted for Tony Abbott - and I don't like Malcolm one bit.

Yes Tony did some stupid things like knighting Prince Phillip and allowing his chief of staff Peta Credlin to sour his relationship with his colleagues by denying them private access to him, but since he took over, Turnbull's popularity has nose dived and both he and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten are now level in the polls.

What the smarties did by throwing Tony Abbott out of the top job not only split the party, it upset and split conservative voters right around the country.

Malcolm Turnbull's performance as Prime Minister has been so disappointing, it would serve them right if the Labor Party win office at the upcoming election. 

Friday, May 6, 2016

Christine Jiaxin Lee's spending spree








Westpac Bank made a terrible mistake when they gave Christine Lee $4.6 million by mistake four years ago.  She went on a spending spree that most young girls could only dream about - she went on a designer binge.

She was arrested on Wednesday night while trying to board a flight to Malaysia and charged with dishonesty, obtaining financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime.



Ms Lee's penthouse apartment with harbour views rented for $750/week



However, Magistrate Lisa Stapleton approved her bail application and said it appeared that Westpac inadvertently gave her an unlimited overdraw facility and so she used it.  "It isn't proceeds of crime, it's money we all dream of" she said.

The magistrate thinks it will be difficult to prove the spending was illegal.  "She didn't take it from them - they gave it to her" she said. And if this is proved to be the case, she would owe the bank the money but she wouldn't have  broken the law.

Westpac apparently gave her credit on the account in the form of an unlimited overdraft.

Between July 2014 and April 2015, Ms Lee allegedly overdrew on numerous occasions, totalling $4,653,333.02 and about $3 million remains outstanding.

Prosecutor Marc Turner strongly opposed bail because Ms Lee was a flight risk and all attempts to contact her by police and Westpac bank had been ignored.

But Magistrate Stapleton approved her bail application on condition she surrender her passport, attend Ryde police station twice a day and live with her boyfriend Vincent King in Rhodes. 

Her boyfriend paid the $1000 bond but there was a problem verifying his identity and she had to spend the night in police custody.  She will appear again today before Waverly court to re-submit accurate bail information.


Vincent King


Her boyfriend, Vincent King, said he was shocked at the allegations and had "no idea" his girlfriend was living the high life.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Derek Barrett arrested for Michelle Leng's murder

Derek Barrett and Michelle Leng




Michelle Leng's naked body was spotted by a tourist, floating face down, in the Snapper Point Blowhole at 10.30 am on Sunday morning two weeks ago.  It took some time for police to identify the body.

On Friday afternoon, police arrested her uncle Derek Barrett and charged him with her murder.  He was refused bail.

Police will allege she was stabbed at least 20 times by her Australian uncle Derek Barrett, bundled into a car, driven 100 kilometers and dumped in the ocean. 

Michelle Leng was living with her 48 year old aunt and her Australian husband Derek Barrett at the couple's home in Sydney. She moved to Australia five years ago from China to study business at the University of Technology in Sydney.

CCTV footage captures a car entering Lake Munmorah National Park, almost two hours drive from campsie, about 7am on Sunday morning and inside that car, police will allege, was Michelle Leng's body.

Police will also allege Mr Barrett's mobile phone was intercepted at Doyalson - 10 kms away - just 25 minutes before the body was discovered.

Today, accompanied by family and friends, Ms Leng's mother who flew in from China over the weekend arrived at Burwood court, packed with members of the Chinese community and Chinese media.

Mr Barrett did not appear and the magistrate quickly adjourned the matter until 29 June.

Outside the court, a representative for the Leng family said they were devastated by the young woman's death and would strongly oppose any attempts by Mr Barrett to seek bail.  "We loved this lady, she was like an angel" he said.


Michelle Leng



Outside court, Mr Barrett's lawyer told the media his client is pleading not guilty and he will be making a bail application at a later date because his client was not coping well.  

"Obviously he is very upset and shocked, he's not finding the Sydney Police Centre particularly attractive.,...it's a terrible place to be incarcerated and I hope he will be moved in the near future" he said.

Mr Barrett is originally from Gwandalan, 9 kms from where the body was found.