I’m a Hawthorn Football Club faithful. I was born that way and these days I’m a proud, passionate and paid-up member of the club.

I used to love Dermott Brereton so much. The 1989 Grand Final is one of the all time greats and Dermott’s effort that day (playing with a broken rib) galvanised the fighting spirit of Hawthorn.

But please Dermott, shut up. You haven’t said anything constructive for some time.

First there was the insider account of the Brendan Fevola/Lara Bingle affair where he felt compelled to let the media know that Bingle knew Fev was married during their affair (something Bingle denied knowing). The woman had just had some pretty compromising photos splashed all over the papers that she was obviously pretty upset about, and comments like this only added to her humiliation.

Then, just when the Hawks are looking like their season couldn’t get any worse and are obviously suffering from a serious lack of morale, he comes out with some shit about how Hodge should be captain, not Mitchell and that there is a big rift in the club.

Is that in anyway helpful?

Honestly Dermy, are you just a bit upset because no one listens to you anymore?

So for blurting out far too much meaningless crap of late, you are: Jerk of the Week.

It’s back. Jerk of the Week has come out of premature retirement because of the incredible jerkiness of Sam Newman.

How is Sam Newman still employed (I’ve a long list of people on this list)? How is he liked? He’s racist, sexist and homophobic (all matters of the public record as I understand) and clearly has no ability to get his rather thick skull around these issues.

Doesn’t someone ask questions in the editorial meeting where Sam says “I think it would be hilarious if I groped a lingerie-clad mannequin with a picture of Caroline Wilson stapled to it.” Sam, it was also pretty unfunny when you did your ‘black-face’ skit too – you should have been sacked then.

I’m pleased that Susan Alberti pursued the matter, it should not be allowed to stand and an example needs to be made of this sort of behaviour, not that it will have any effect on Newman:

”If you read the transcript of our show very carefully you’ll find I have nothing to apologise for. And if you read the apology [issued by Nine] you’ll find that was a very carefully worded document,” he said.

”Channel Nine can do as they wish but I have no intention of apologising.”

I’m also pretty disappointed that Gary Lyon hasn’t felt the need to apologise. I thought he would at least acknowledge it was a mistake in hindsight.

*sigh*

So for that, you Sam Newman are: Jerk of the Week.

So Melbourne city council think that cycling through a small handful of parks (Fitzroy, Carlton, Treasury and Flagstaff gardens, and most of Fawkner Park) is a terrible thing to do. So bad, that it warrants a $250 fine and requires the use of our Police Force.

$250. Let’s think about that. The fine for speeding in a car between 15 km/h and 25 km/h is $234. The fine for passing a stopped tram (which all too often has fatal consequences): $193.

If you are using a mobile phone while driving you are 4 times more likely to be involved in an accident and twice as likely to be involved in a fatal accident. Yet the fine for that is $234.

But I’m surely missing something here. The Age notes “The council was unable to provide evidence that pedestrians in the city’s parks were being endangered by cyclists, although 20 park users have complained to the council in the past six months about cyclists.”

And the article goes on:

“Pedestrian groups backed hefty fines, saying cyclists had to realise there were serious consequences if they hit someone. ”If you are a 70-year-old man or a child and you get hit by a bike travelling at 30 km/h, you’ll spend the rest of your life in hospital,” said Pedestrian Council of Australia chairman Harold Scruby.”

The fucking who? The biggest bunch of kill joys on the face of the planet it would seem. I’m all in favour of road safety – it’s at the forefront of any cyclist’s mind – but that’s the thing isn’t it, it’s safer to cycle through the parks.

Do I need to go on?

I don’t think so. Melbourne City Council, I though you were all about encouraging cycling. Victoria Police, I’d like to see you out there catching bad guys, you know rapists, murders etc, rather than wasting your resources because someone is cycling through a park. Harold Scruby, shut up.

So for being ridiculous, Melbourne City Council you are: Jerk of the Week

I’m a bit stumped by this one. I struggle to think of a group of people more universally like and respected than Paramedics. They save your life. Pretty cool right?

In their previous bargaining round, as I understand it, Ambos and Paramedics got a pretty raw deal. They are getting stiffed again.

You see the ambulance service relies on a hell of a lot of good will from it’s staff. They work excessive hours, because they actually care about their job and realise that response times will be dramatically affected if they don’t take on the overtime and additional shifts. Slower response times means more people die – that’s some serious emotional blackmail.

As a result, they work back-to-back shifts, suffer severe fatigue and put people’s lives at risk when they mis-medicate due to exhaustion.

The solution? 10 hr breaks. So that they have time to sleep between finishing a shift and starting the next one. Even in the most draconian workplace I have had the misfortune of being employed at, we had 10 hour breaks. You couldn’t sign on until 10 hours after you’d signed off. Moreover, surely this means people work less which means it will cost you less. So why can’t we write 10 hours breaks in the the agreement that governs the wages and conditions of Paramedics?

To make matters worse, they aren’t allowed to take industrial action. That’s right, the so called ‘Fair Work Australia’ have rejected their industrial action appeal on the grounds that it might endanger lives. I’d have thought that they are fighting to ensure that they don’t endanger lives because of horrendous work conditions. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

There campaign website is: http://responsetime.org.au/.

So for failing to meet the most basic demands of people that will probably save your life at some stage, you Minister for Health Daniel Andrews are: Jerk of the Week!

This one is a no brainer. By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard about the recent ‘gaff’ on 2Day FM where a 14 year old girl, connected to a lie detector machine live on air, admitted to being raped two years prior while being questioned by her mother about her sexual experiences.

It belies belief.

Surely it is apparent to even a casual observer that you don’t hook a 14 year old girl up to a lie detector machine live on air and ask her about her sexual experiences. The only real question here is why it’s Kyle, not Jackie O that is jerk of the week. That is easily summed up with this quote:

“Right … And is that the only experience you have had?”

Jerkness (Jerkiness?) have never been more pronounced.

You can read Defamer’s Comments here and Crikey’s comments here.

I have an overwhelming urge to use the phrase ‘fucktard’.

It had to happen sooner or later. Kyle Sandilands you are: Jerk of the Week.

Needless to say, there has been no shortage of ‘Jerk’ behavior since we last met. PG has approved a Uranum mine with little-to-no consultation with the traditional owners of the land.

Regular reader MB asked that Apple be Jerk of the week after they blocked the palm pre from itunes – very Jerky.

But the winner is (in case you hadn’t guessed) is the Ed mister.

No doubt many of you have heard about the increasing violence on Melbourne’s streets. I have long since suspected that this is simply a media beat-up. Yes the number of assaults is increasing but on a per-capita basis it is pretty steady. This is the trend with crime in general. It is extraordinarily rare for crime rates to move dramatically and they will usually correct themselves with time.

So I was pretty unimpressed when I read an opinion piece written by Eddie McGuire in the people’s paper a couple of days ago:

Maybe if knuckleheads thought about that before they allegedly whacked into defenceless people, maybe if there were real ramifications like being sent off to work farms, facing real penalties, or maybe if they realised we all hate their guts and have had enough of them they might start realising the game is over.

Otherwise forget it, it will just happen and the violence will continue and escalate.

Maybe it’s time for the young baby boomers and Generation X to fire up.

Those who have children under 12, because it will take a decade to kick in, need to start the fight for our streets for our kids.

We missed Vietnam and, other than a few poor economic cycles, it’s been pretty good for us.

Maybe instead of going to real wars to defend our children’s futures it’s time to go to war in our backyard and reclaim the streets.

In his tirade he advocates vigilantes, blames the ‘yoof’ and wears extraordinarily rose coloured glasses about his generation. It’s lies, fed by lies, advocating very dangerous behaviour and ‘work farms’.

What! Is this, Communist Russia? I’m pretty sure prison sentences and criminal records are serious ramifications for this sort of behaviour not to mention proportional. Yes, those committing the violence are dickheads, but they aren’t a national threat (they could be scholars, teachers and other educated people needing re-eduction though, Eddie ‘Pol Pot’ McGuire).

Thankfully, yesterday provided me with the figures I needed thanks to Guy Rundle in Crikey:

From 1973 to 1993, assaults per 100,000 of the population rose from 20 to 120, a 500% increase… By contrast, the subsequent [recent] rise in assault crimes has been insignificant. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology figures there were around 144,000 assaults in 1997, and around 176,000 in 2007 — most of that 20% rise accounted for by population increase.

Of course… no-one really believes that the assault rate went up by 500% over two decades. Since the figures are based on police reports, it seems quite likely that changing ideas about what demands a police intervention has shaped the figures — i.e. in the 70s, a suburban pub fight would take place in the car park and no-one would think of calling the cops. Now it takes place in the city, outside a nightclub, and there’s no choice but for the police to be involved. Same fight, same sort of participants — aggro young men — different locale.

However, that does not change one significant fact — in the twentieth century there was a rise in social violence, from a low in the 1940s … with a steady rise through the 50s, and then — throughout the western world — a sharper uprise beginning in the mid-60s and levelling off in the mid-90s.

Is that statistical shape starting to ring any bells? Yes, crime rise follows the passage of the baby-boomers almost exactly — from the time they hit the age (15-16) when violent crime begins, to the age (mid-40s), when it finally starts to level off. Far from being a more violent generation, Gen Y, has contributed far less to the increase in social violence than their parents.

Thank you Guy. Eddie, shut up and do some research before adding to the alarmist rhetoric that doesn’t help anyone. Am I the only one that gets tired of hearing about how terrible today’s youth is and how it was so much better ‘in my day’?

…and then, a bit of poetry from this article in today’s Hun.

EXCLUSIVE: COLLINGWOOD Football Club is not fit to hold a liquor licence to run a beachside hotel, according to a police inquiry.

The liquor licensing unit has alleged serious breaches at The Beach, in Albert Park, in an application for an inquiry before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

VCAT wrote to Collingwood late last month informing it of the action.

Ouch, I’ve long argued that Collingwood supporters should have a different set of laws applied to them (Go Hawks!!).

And for that, you Mr McGuire are: Jerk of the Week.

(credit does need to go to the RRR Breakfasters here who pointed out the two Herald Sun articles on the radio this morning).

Sorry about the lack of post – no time of apologies though, not when it’s the Australian Taxation Office that is about to feel my wrath.

You see, I hate Microsoft and pretty much everything they have ever done ever. They have made the world dependent on their poor performing software that was forced into our living rooms through breaches of anti-trust laws. I hate them because building a website means building one for the lowest common denominator because of Internet Explorer, because of the way they have successfully lobbied for an expansion of copyright and intellectual property law, because they are a huge multinational corporation and so on and so forth.

What has this got to do with those bean-counters at the ATO? Well a few years ago, the ATO realised that, you know, technology had happened since rum was the Australian currency *gasp* and they created E-Tax so you could do your tax online, at home, quickly and easily meaning less work for everyone (including the ATO).

However, that was before I discovered just how spectacularly amazing and easy to use Linux is. I made the switch and have never looked back, easily managing all my media – usually better than Microsoft does (every tried playing an OGG file on Media Player? It’s the standard media format for both Wikipedia and HTML5). So I happily potter along without the compatibility issues that everyone assumes I’d be having. Until I come across what you would expect to be a piece of software that was interoperable: E-Tax. But no, it’s built on the .net framework which, you guessed it, only works on Windows.

Now I understand that the majority of people use Windows and that’s why they have done this. But why use a Microsoft proprietary language/framework? Java works on ALL operating systems, why not use that.

So I started a facebook group. It’s about the level of protest that I feel it deserves – it doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off though.

And for that you, ATO are: Jerk of the Week.

# please note that I may be wrong about a few of the technical things in here, don’t hate me but feel free to set the record straight in the comments field.

It’s simple, the Australia Building and Construction Commission is an abomination. It victimises a group of workers unfairly. You can’t have one set of Industrial Laws for the construction industry, and another set for everyone else. Surely, we should all be afforded the same rights in our respective workplaces and be free from the coercive powers of this Commission.

It’s like saying all Business Consultants can only receive 5 day annual leave a year. That wouldn’t wash and neither should it, but that’s effectively what it is doing.

Rudd, et al, you still rely on Unions for your power base. Without the Union movement you would not have been elected. The Union movement also remains your last connection to any form of community engagement.

In the name of the legions of Your Rights at Work volunteers that made sure Rudd el at was elected, abolish the ABCC and don’t put in place a watered down replacement.

For being an oppressive tool of the Howard Government, and showing just how close together the Rudd and Howard Governments are, the ABCC is: Jerk of the Week!