As an NZ resident, I am morally obliged to point out that Australia is a horrible place populated by criminals and terrible rugby teams, but I did live there for two years and in reality, it's not actually that bad.

Yes, their government are a shower of complete dickheads both in their own right and in the fact that they have their collective head shoved so far up Americas arse they can practically see the back of uncle sams tonsils. The immigration policy is pretty much barbaric and they seem hellbent on ruining the country as fast as humanly possible. And I haven't even gotten started on how unbelievably racist the country as a whole is (this is a country that only got rid of it's "White Australia Policy" in the 70s).

Border security, while they can be complete arseholes are not nearly as bad as they're portrayed on those TV shows. They do have a lot of idiots flouting the biosecurity laws (Johnny Depp is the least of their problems), but in general as long as you don't make the mistake of not being white, they're far more interested in any fruit you might have than any bills with coke on them. (side note: don't bring cash to Australia, almost every transaction is electronic there).

But the country itself has some great things going for it. Some of the scenery is amazing, the parts of the reef that aren't bleached are stunning, the food in the cities is amazing (as is the coffee, especially in Melbourne and Sydney).

I'm pretty sure everyone on the planet knows when you add "Australian" to something, it will usually involve pain, death, and/or extreme fear.

Australian Rules Football.
Australian (Sydney) Funnel Web Spider
Margot Robbie
Australian Eastern Brown Snake

@vil

The idea that quote unquote Europeans will ever be a minority in Europe is far-fetched. Certainly not from migration while higher birth rates for migrants tend to subside as they assimilate. People get this impression when migrants are overwhelmingly settled in small towns. By it's nature they form a larger portion of the population. In big cities, naturally they want to at least at first settle within their own ethnic communities. It gives people the impression there are more migrants than there actually are.

There's no doubt that many Muslims are culturally very different to Europeans. They come from poorer countries, with different cultural and historical backgorunds, different value systems etc. I don't have a good answer to how this can be improved but I think it's wrong to think they uniqely do not want to integrate. The incentive is always there to assimilate into working culture and earn what is surely much more than the basic social welfare net the governments provide. But it's unrealistic to expect ethnic neighbourhoods & communities not to develop. Here in Sydney we have separate suburbs known for Indian, Korean, Chinese immigrants respectively. I live in a suburb dominated by Lebanese immigrants (FYI I am a Russian immigrant).

Schengen or not, I still don't see a workable way to actually control the vastness of Europe/M-E borders. Kicking out a country like Greece for letting immigrants through would also have immediate costs. A realistic plan similar to that proposed by Merkel is to more equitably share immigrants so no individual country is overburdened. Kicking members out is hardly going to help that.

Again though, the main point is - you can't feasibly prevent migration or control borders without turning Europe into a police state. While I sympathize with the issues raised, as I said it's about finding the best solution of a difficult and unavoidable situation.

Right wing European politician who tell you otherwise are simply lying and misleading people into believing what they want to hear.

There's a difference between public and private speech. If you're talking to someone you know, well, by definition you know them and you know where to draw the line. My friends throw all kinds of anti-Irish racist slurs at me that I would take serious offence at coming from someone else.

As for the idea that PC "hides" racism/sexism/homophobia, fantastic! The more it's hidden away, the less people are exposed to it, until it becomes more and more socially unacceptable to be a racist, sexist, homophobic asshole.

Again re the opera: first, it was Perth not Sydney, and second, I agree it's stupid. But it was the opera companies stupid decision to make. No-one forced them to do this.

Here's the importance point: PC is not censorship. Censorship is saying you CAN'T say this, PC is saying "maybe you SHOULDN'T".

Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences of speech. If someone says something racist or sexist or whatever, I have the right to express my opinion that they shouldn't have said those things. If that's PC, so be it.

I think I can see where he's coming from with this, and the more open forms of racism there is an honesty that does seem less insidious. Open racism, like a fire in your house is not something you want, but at least you can see the problem right away and begin to address it (get the fuck out of the house!). But that more subtle form of racism is more like radon gas, can't see it, can't smell it, but it's slowly killing your ass (I feel terrible, I think I'll lie down and take a nap).

In America I think we've been living under the delusion that racism is a thing of the past, especially after electing a black President, but then we see how most of the racism has simply gone underground. And so, all that outwardly PC behavior is just for show, you can change how people act on the outside, but they're still the same on the inside and quietly act on those impulses, the rot is still there.

His examples of dirty jokes weren't even really genuine racism, amongst certain groups (guys in particular) razzing, busting your balls and such is usually a sign of acceptance and sometimes it takes on racial or ethnic tones, but with no real malice.

The decision not to show Carmen at the Sydney Opera House sounds like a classic case of PC overreach, how does not showing Carmen actually serve the anti-smoking cause? Let's ask how many kids started smoking because they saw that scene in Carmen? It's an absolutely useless and pointless gesture.

Yeah, it's a bit misleading in the Australian comparison too. That particular car addicted rich area of Sydney doesn't necessarily reflect the rest of the country (or even the rest of Sydney).

A few of the 10-12 year olds at my kids school walk to school by themselves or in small groups (or take the bus a few stops to school). The vast majority are accompanied by their parents, but not all.

Even so, although slightly exaggerated by picking extremes in both Japan and Australia, the cultural difference they point out is real and interesting.

Times Like These (Foo Fighters) - Ryan Adams - Sydney Opera has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash on that post.

Interesting comment on Bill Mitchell's MMT blog:

"You cannot take away hope of decent living from young people. Pushing harder won’t make them entrepreneurs. It will make them literally explode with hatred – directed against the West and the Western civilisation as a whole. One cannot defeat poisonous ideology by dropping more and more bombs on Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya etc. Dropping bombs makes the ideology of hatred only stronger. The only way to defeat IS is to restore hope to people here – including the South-Western suburbs of Sydney."

Tags for this video have been changed from 'anecdote, Jim Jeffries, Star Wars, George Lucas, Scott, lizzard, Sydney, contract' to 'anecdote, Jim Jefferies, Star Wars, George Lucas, Scott, lizzard, Sydney, contract' - edited by eric3579

I actually got almost all of it (missed 2-3 words to a combination of crowd noise and the accent) without subtitles. But I've got several UK friends and coworkers, English and Irish, plus having English friends of the family that visited often when I was growing up.

A lot of the folks in my small hometown in Kansas are the type that have never been out of the state, and who need the TV subtitles even for accents that seem really easy to me like BBC English, New Zealand, Sydney (not broad Australian), etc. Just hopeless with accents.


But actually, the best thing about the video was her story -- which was actually quite funny assuming I got the "IRA" implication correct.

Looks like a Sydney ferry, so *downunder.

That boat was not under control at all. The jib is starting to rip and god only knows why they had the spinnaker pole attached.

Sydney Syndrome.

Meh, you really don't. It's tough and not very tasty. Crocodile OTOH is delicious.

And he's not kidding about driving at night. Years ago, I drove from Sydney to Perth. I was always told not to drive at night, but one day the engine overheated a few hours from the nearest town. Got it going again, but had to drive in the dark for a few hours. Was lucky to miss a large desert red kangaroo, but unfortunately hit a wallaby. Pretty gruesome trying to extract it from the bullbars.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/SEO-Sydney-Australia

SEO Sydney (Australia) has been added as a related post - related requested by chicchorea.