Whinge of the day thread...

Whinge of the day? Hallow-bloody-een!

OMG, the shops are full of kids' witch/zombie/horror costumes and associated rubbish. There's big bins in the supermarkets, filled with giant pumpkins for hollowing out and carving ghoulish faces with a lit candle inside them. People are going hungry every night in Australia and yet there's good cropland, fertiliser, labour and transport being wasted on tonnes of inedible vegetables.

We never had this nonsense back in the day and didn't miss it either. We only knew it as a weird American custom of encouraging children to go out at night, knocking on strangers' doors, asking for treats! Yes, I know it's of Irish origin, but this isn't some Celtic revival, this is just more American consumerism run amuck and foisted on us, like their damned 'Black Friday' pre-Xmas sales.

Just like every year, I won't be answering my door on the evening of 31st October, so don't come a-knockin'!

aussiefarmer said:

I must say , when I re read my post I thought the mods might delete or send me to sin bin, but sorry that's how I feel.

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I thought much of what you said was reasonable. The core of the problem being that people apply standards of today to events of yesterday, and that people tend to be blamed (unreasonably) for the actions of their ancestors despite the fact that they would not consider doing those things themselves today. . I think most people would agree that hunter-gatherer people all around the world suffered terribly during colonization by combinations of direct action, accidental action (e.g. disease) and simple ignoring of the impact of changes that were difficult to adapt to (access to waterholes, fencing restricting movement, disruption of foods that they depended on). Much of that was not planned, but our ancestors (160,000 of them selected by the best judges in England and of dubious character and empathy) were more worried about their own lives in a frontier society than lives of people who had foreign customs and languages (which extended also to the Irish, Chinese, Indians etc). We can be sorry, we can try and re-balance disadvantage that resulted from it, but that does not mean we were personally responsible for it. It is a bit trickier here emotionally, because it was still happening in my lifetime (I saw it).

HOWEVER, what were our standards of treatment of each other in those days? We transported our 10 year olds, hung 14 year olds, only abolished the public stocks ten years after gold discovery, transported people for minor thefts of food required to keep them alive, and executed homosexuals. The Brits starved a million Irish during the potato famine and caused immense hardship during the clearances (the crofters) - and many of us are direct descendants (I knew great grandma who was the daughter of a transported convict, another great grandma was a 16-year old potato-famine immigrant who could only speak Gaelic). We had lifespans of about 40 years, only 3 years longer than hunter-gatherers. Many more recent emigrants to Australia came here to escape similar or worse.

Yes bad things did happen but few of us did them, and I don't tolerate guilt trips - there are some people who we probably not have statures of displayed too publicly (eg particularly from recent history), but people like Julius Caesar were also real bastards. Many of them gave us what we call civilization (albeit we have civilized it more since). And people like Cook resulted in our modern, healthy and reasonably fair and just society

Sands of time, water under the bridge - I'm not going to waste my time hating modern Englishmen (bleddy Saxons!), prefer to have a beer with them (or a Walbiri etc).

grubstake said:

Whinge of the day? Hallow-bloody-een!

OMG, the shops are full of kids' witch/zombie/horror costumes and associated rubbish. There's big bins in the supermarkets, filled with giant pumpkins for hollowing out and carving ghoulish faces with a lit candle inside them. People are going hungry every night in Australia and yet there's good cropland, fertiliser, labour and transport being wasted on tonnes of inedible vegetables.

We never had this nonsense back in the day and didn't miss it either. We only knew it as a weird American custom of encouraging children to go out at night, knocking on strangers' doors, asking for treats! Yes, I know it's of Irish origin, but this isn't some Celtic revival, this is just more American consumerism run amuck and foisted on us, like their damned 'Black Friday' pre-Xmas sales.

Just like every year, I won't be answering my door on the evening of 31st October, so don't come a-knockin'!

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I feel much the same. It used to be so much more fun, set fire to a few houses, burn a few witches, sacrifice some virgins and quake in fear as the skeletons walked around. Bloody consumerism has spoiled it.

I still prefer Guy Fawkes night where the whole neighborhood could burn all the boxes wooden and cardboard etc. set of a few explosions with unfinished spray cans--plus shooting 1 penny skyrockets at each other in a small war games trial.

Jaros said:

I still prefer Guy Fawkes night where the whole neighborhood could burn all the boxes wooden and cardboard etc. set of a few explosions with unfinished spray cans--plus shooting 1 penny skyrockets at each other in a small war games trial.

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Used to be a bit of a game to see who was brave enough to hold a cracker in their hand. Tom thumbs and halfpenny? crackers were easy enough. Penny bungers a bit of a challenge, twopenny bungers for the brave, and threepenny bungers only for the idiots.
One of our lot holding the latter when it went off ripped open the sleeve of his coat up to the elbow and I think I heard later he also broke a bone in his fingers or hand.
Edited predictive text burgers to bungers

Threepenny bungers were great for blowing up letterboxes

On the farm Guy Fawkes night was a huge bonfire built with all the old fruit trees and rubbish around the neighbouring farms. The high light was a baby bath full of home made butter and a bag of spuds that had been thrown in the coals, then when raked out and you sat eating them with the butter running down your arms. Fond memories indeed

Dave's Office said:

Threepenny bungers were great for blowing up letterboxes

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My brother an I blew up our metalwork teacher's letter box. He never said a word but in the following lessons he had each of us building a new letterbox

A halfpenny bunger turned upside down and bunged into a good sized rocket made THE MOST ENORMOUS NOISE on a still, cold and quiet night in Bonbeach, Victoria about 53 years ago!

Hawkear said:

Used to be a bit of a game to see who was brave enough to hold a cracker in their hand. Tom thumbs and halfpenny? crackers were easy enough. Penny bungers a bit of a challenge, twopenny bungers for the brave, and threepenny bungers only for the idiots.
One of our lot holding the latter when it went off ripped open the sleeve of his coat up to the elbow and I think I heard later he also broke a bone in his fingers or hand.
Edited predictive text burgers to bungers

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I had a friend who looked up, copped a rocket in his throat that almost destroyed his voice-box (affected his voice all his subsequent life). Fortunately the nose cone blocked the hole it had made so he could still breathe a bit until treated. It was not all fun....

My dad disliked fireworks - I think it reminded him of the war. My father-in-law hated them for the same reason. We did not have the experience of WW2 in Europe or PNG.

But yes, I loved them.

We had cracker guns, the old bike seat mount was like a 7 block the handle, put a hole in end to pull wick thru and you could wad it and pack it with anything you like

Hawkear said:

Used to be a bit of a game to see who was brave enough to hold a cracker in their hand. Tom thumbs and halfpenny? crackers were easy enough. Penny bungers a bit of a challenge, twopenny bungers for the brave, and threepenny bungers only for the idiots.
One of our lot holding the latter when it went off ripped open the sleeve of his coat up to the elbow and I think I heard later he also broke a bone in his fingers or hand.
Edited predictive text burgers to bungers

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I am sure there are a few Threepence idiots still around here these days with all of their fingers. If you are one of these idiots click the if you are game.

Diginit said:

We had cracker guns, the old bike seat mount was like a 7 block the handle, put a hole in end to pull wick thru and you could wad it and pack it with anything you like

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Ah those were the days!
Anything that you could make go bang or explode.
As teenagers we used to be able to go into Selby Scientific supplies in Melbourne and buy heaps of chemicals and make our own gunpowder, flares and other explosives. No questions asked.
One of our favourite explosives was "touch powder" which used to explode when obviously touched. It was great for very carefully spreading on door handles and toilet seats. It had an added bonus of leaving a brown stain although getting to see the stain it left on a victim had obvious difficulties, but we could imagine.

the old steel bike pump as well diginit ,fuse out the hole and pack what fitted and let it go

Hawkear said:

Ah those were the days!
Anything that you could make go bang or explode.
As teenagers we used to be able to go into Selby Scientific supplies in Melbourne and buy heaps of chemicals and make our own gunpowder, flares and other explosives. No questions asked.
One of our favourite explosives was "touch powder" which used to explode when obviously touched. It was great for very carefully spreading on door handles and toilet seats. It had an added bonus of leaving a brown stain although getting to see the stain it left on a victim had obvious difficulties, but we could imagine.

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There was a kid in our class at Indooroopilly High who used to place a piece of blotting paper with touch powder under chairs at random while they were upside down on the desk. You'd walk into class and as you dragged you chair off the desk to place it on the floor it would explode. No damage done but one hell of a fright.

One day the teacher saw him fiddling under his desk and came for a look, he quickly shoved it in his pocket and it exploded. Very lucky he can still call himself a man today

Moneybox said:

There was a kid in our class at Indooroopilly High who used to place a piece of blotting paper with touch powder under chairs at random while they were upside down on the desk. You'd walk into class and as you dragged you chair off the desk to place it on the floor it would explode. No damage done but one hell of a fright.

One day the teacher saw him fiddling under his desk and came for a look, he quickly shoved it in his pocket and it exploded. Very lucky he can still call himself a man today

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Ammonium iodide painted on doorknobs would explode when touched (no damage but a hell of a fright).

Just read that the Pommies are complaining about the new PM’s shoes because they cost £480. If it was me, which it ain’t, thank God, I would rather have a billionaire as PM than a handyman from Harrods. Who cares what he wears as long as he gets the job done. Rant over.

Mackka said:

Just read that the Pommies are complaining about the new PM’s shoes because they cost £480. If it was me, which it ain’t, thank God, I would rather have a billionaire as PM than a handyman from Harrods. Who cares what he wears as long as he gets the job done. Rant over.

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A week ago they were happy to have him, this week they can't get off his back, He's only had the job for a week and they expect him to fix it all in a day, I would have told em where to Go,

Yes RR, unfortunately it is the way of the World , everybody has a gripe. I sincerely wish him all the very best. Mackka

Mackka said:

Yes RR, unfortunately it is the way of the World , everybody has a gripe. I sincerely wish him all the very best. Mackka

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Yep, To be honest In the future I might not agree a lot with what he does but what ever he does it needs to be done coz someone has got to fix this mess and he will make some Clusters and he will hit a few 6's so it's swings and roundabouts, I think he'll do ok.