Tim Blair

If Claire of Eltham thinks that not enough Australian taxpayers' money is being given to Iran, there is no-one stoppping her from taking up voluntary collections and forwarding the cash to a Mullah of her choice.

However, she should check the donors' political attitudes to make sure that no money from Zionists or their sympathisers is included.

People who are ashamed of their own nationality should do the right thing.
Emigrate and renounce their citizenship.

Anyone who is not proud to be an Aussie can piss off IMHO, we don't need you.
Sorry, but thats the Digger in me talking.

i'm so ashamed, I don't know whether to shit or go blind.
Shame, Jesus- I don't know how I can front up to the bingo hall.
I was so stupid, I thought Pube-Head could win World idol, even though I was aware he was a genetically modified Shubunkin;
I stole Woomera maps and threw them all over a crappy park next to where I live;
I was whooping it up with Arche', and fucking Jughead wanted to show how grouse he was with crackers.

Yup...New Year's...it's the traditional Whinging Season in the Letters To The Editor sections of most newspapers. What better time for the "Shame Australia shame..." crowd to lecture us about our "orgy of joy" as we celebrated the dawn of 2004?

How desperate are they? They hate the (current) Government, but the majority of Australians seem quite happy. So they then try to pin the misfortune of people from other countries onto our shoulders and our Government?!

Still, while these people are unquestionably entitled to their opinion/s, there's no reason to be concerned. The majority of Australians see such baseless moral grandstanding for what it is.

I feel ashamed to be a resident of Eltham. Unfortunately people like Claire seem to be the rule around here, not the exception.

Every council owned building has a plaque on it recognising the traditional owners, even though the Abos never built a building in 30,000 years.

You know, it's horribly chronist of people like Claire to only care about the miseries that happened in their own time. 200,000 people died in the Gansu earthquake in China in 1920. Was their suffering not real, simply because they weren't lucky enough to live at the same time in history as when Claire thinks it's not right to have a party? When will this shocking disregard for other historical epochs end?

The Fucikng Cunts were right fucking here!

I haven't been able to read Letters to the Editor since reading the one from a local twat who complained about the town's annual "Get Rid of Poison Ivy" campaign as being ethnocentric and speciesist--after all, the poison ivy was here first; only we late-coming humans suffer from it; the Native Americans, she was sure, must have cultivated it for cultural reasons or there would not be so much of it.

In the time it took for you to write these inane posts, thousands more have died in the Middle East due to the earthquake and the illegal war for oil. You could have been helping. Don't you care? Don't you have any shame? Or is the only thing you care about your long, expensive lunches???

How can you post to your blog while my people are in bondage?

Long lunches with EXPENSIVE WINE?

The neat thing about letters to the editor is that instead of merely being irritating to those around you, you can expose your stupidity to thousands, and by Tim's blog potentially millions.

Just think. Without that letter and Tim's blog I would never have known the depths of the insipidousness (insipidity?) of Ms. Nailer (what a name!). Just knowing that there are people like her in Ozzieland makes me tingle all over. I can hardlyl wait for her next missive, in which she reveals her chagrin at the fact that men and women come with different plumbing, that some people are smarter than others, and that rain falls down.

Exactly what can anyone in the West do about a terrible tragedy in Iran that is almost entirely the fault of its corrupt, dogmatic and insane government? (I live in California, take my word for it. A 6.6 on the Richter is NOTHING in my neck of the woods. That's because we have earthquake building standards and semi-honest government officials who enforce them, unlike the Iranians.)

We could work to overthrow that same government. . .no, that would be cultural imperialism and warmongering and "blood for oil". . .

On second thought, I'll just have another New Year's Mimosa.

Anyone who is not proud to be an Aussie

Well, I'm not. Though I have the excuse that I'm not an Aussie.

We could work to overthrow that same government. . .no, that would be [...] warmongering.

And what's wrong with that?

Lunatic, I was satirizing the viewpoints of the Western huggy-bunny crowd who want everyone to wring hands over the situation in Iran but are quite short on practical solutions for same.

IMHO, the mullahocracy is not long for this world. Too bad the ill effects of their misrule will still be felt in Iran many moons from now though.

You're STILL at it? Didn't you read my last missive? Where's the shame?!!?! Damn, do you people eat LUNCH 24-7?

Professor Bunyip suggested a while ago that the best way to deal with the I'm-so-ashamed crowd etc., is to write anonymous letters to the ATO accusing them of tax fraud. This stops the revenuers bothering the rest of us and is also a crash course in why government is nobody's friend. The letters columns are full of people just begging for a full audit. Get to work

The Croc Hunter is going to cause a lot of letters to the editor. Don't take away his Australian of the Year award, because it goes without saying he's a little bit wild and crazy.

Maybe she should move to Iran. Then she wouldn't have all those people dancing around her, keeping her from thinking.

Damn whingers. Anyway, how does stopping and thinking on New Years help those Iranians?

*stops and thinks*

Yep, living in a corrupt theocracy certainly sucks.

Ah well.

At the very least, if Ms Nailer emigrated to Iran, at least we wouldn't have to hear from her again.

Obviously she's at the coalface of international relations and the humanitarian efforts in the middle eastern region at her home in Eltham.

Mike Hunt, I'm another Eltham resident who doesn't follow a Clairite bleeding heart leftism. Maybe there's more of us roundabout here (and who knows what Claire will think when she's grown up).

A year or so ago the actress Jessica Lange, while in Spain, stated that because of George Bush she was ashamed to be an American and some American pundit, I can't remember who, replied, "Well that makes two of us, I'm ashamed she is an American too." Priceless.

I was interested to read another letter in the same column from a gentleman, apparently from New Zealand and visiting Woodend.

He writes that as a New Zealander travelling in Australia, he would suggest that no New Zealand government that adopted the Howard Government's policy on refugees would last for long.

He also writes that a certain populist politician has been attacking current government policy on immigration and refugees but, apart from his niche audience, his views have been widely condemned.

Finally he adds that the Tampa refugees have settled successfully and there have been some very positive stories in the media about them.

Surely this is the solution - the remaining would-be illegal immigrants, who have been found not to be refugees, on Nauru can be settled in New Zealand. There apparently, the taxpayers are happy to feed, clothe, house, educate and otherwise sustain all those currently in detention on Nauru.

This will make the peoples of Australia, New Zealand and Nauru (both residents and detainees) happy. Why isn't the NZ Government following this up?

Actually I'm fully in agreement with Claire from
Eltham. She feels utter shame in being
called Australian. I'm ashamed that she's called
Australian also.

Because...and here's the rub...the people of New Zealand actually feel pretty much the same about illegal immigrants.

The Nz govt doesn't want to admit this because then how could they take a moral high ground and really show how superior they are to the giant but boorish neighbour to the west.

Kinda like Canada's masturbatory fantasy about being a "soft power"

Problem is that New Zealand's immigration policy is defacto our immigration policy.

Spend a few years there, become a citizen, then move here. Our open door policy should be open to those born in new Zealand only.

If I have read this site correctly,
NZ accepted 3,500 refugees in the last 5 years. Australia took 60,500.

Australia has a population of 20 million, NZ has 4 million.

So, to be as 'humane' as Australia, NZ should have taken an additional 8,500 refugees over the last 5 years.

In the 2001 census, 355,765 residents of Australia were NZ born.