Anyone up for a chat thread?

[seeking.IAM]

Silver in the hair doesn't have to be a drawback. Beards, though..

I stopped shaving for a bit when I could not go anywhere during COVID. Since then, my wife makes a point of letting me know she doesn't want me shave off my beard. It's working for me. Looks like I am stuck with it!

 

[Paidiske]

There must be plenty of conversation stoppers in a supermarket when some strange bloke tries to make a meaningful connection when you're picking up what you need for dinner.

"What do you think of PAL dog food as an entree for a party of six? .... Got a church function on Sunday morning, confessions free if you want to cook for a hundred.... If your wife's been talking too much, i can add another 20 minutes with a sermon, or longer if you want...in my job I scare the hell out of people..."

Well, you know, it's purely hypothetical, in my case. It's a long time since anyone tried picking me up anywhere. I don't know if it's the wedding ring, the clerical collar, or the fact that I'm now 45 and not exactly model material. Maybe I'll salve my ego by telling myself that I obviously give off a don't-mess-with-me energy that puts off some of the bad behaviour one had to deal with when younger.

Look, if one likes one's beard, and one's wife likes one's beard, all is well with the world. I have clear opinions on beards, but they only matter in my household!

 

[seeking.IAM]

my wife makes a point of letting me know she doesn't want me shave off my beard. It's working for me. Looks like I am stuck with it!

Look, if one likes one's beard, and one's wife likes one's beard, all is well with the world. I have clear opinions on beards, but they only matter in my household!

She also thinks the beard lends me a certain amount of credibility like the near equivalent of a clerical collar. It is almost expected for a male psychotherapist -- an accouterment to pensively stroke during a session. Thanks, Dr. Freud.

 

[Shane R]

I'm in fact quite an introvert. As I've aged and ministered and talked to folks, I find a lot of us were aggressively pursued by our woman. That was certainly the case with me 11 years ago. In such cases we're surprised, kind of swept up in it, and it strokes our ego at the same time.

 

[Shane R]

To have a woman choose you, forcefully, out of all the many men out there is a wonderful thing.

 

[Paidiske]

I haven't had many relationships, but the majority were with people I'd already known in some way for years; a co-worker, someone who'd been part of a wider group of friends. We already knew one another well enough to have some idea of whether there was potential worth exploring. The exception was someone a friend set me up with, and that didn't work out.

 

[Shane R]

And I think for the most men she does not have to look like Melania Trump or Sydney Sweeyney; just her saying, "I choose you guy" is enough. We're a bit flummoxed and like "Okay, this woman chose me!" There's some good counseling insight in there somewhere.

 

[Bob Crowley]

The last post reminds me of a quip one of the other postmen made years ago when I was working as a postman (circa 1980).

One of the blokes asked another postie "How did you know she was the one for you?"

The post office comic gaffed, with a bit of a stutter "When she pr...pr... proposed!"

 

[Shane R]

I have tickets to a country music festival today. I've forgotten exactly how many performers were booked but it's supposed to last about 5 and a half hours. I was joking with my daughters that I would wear overalls with no shirt, like a hillbilly caricature, and they told me I would embarrass all of us. Well, the farm supply store was out of overalls in my size and they are much relieved.

 

[Shane R]

I was out doing visitations to the elderly and home-bound. My sidekick and I had finished up our communion schedule when he said, "We could stop at this old folks home on the corner. My high school English teacher was recently placed there." (Jim is 72; I don't want to guess how old this lady is.) So I pulled the car in and they were having an end of summer party at this old folks home. Cookout menu, music, they had many of them outside in the sunshine. And all of the staff were genuinely happy to have us stop by -which is not always the case at old folks homes.

 

[Paidiske]

Heck, here they want to see a police check before they let you in the door.

 

[Bob Crowley]

Heck, here they want to see a police check before they let you in the door.

The irony is that most of the pedophile priests and others whose offences caused this pervasive ID checking would have passed police checks with flying colours, until they got caught.

 

[Paidiske]

Oh, the system's not about actually protecting potential victims. It's about protecting organisations from law suits.

(Cynical, moi?)

 

[Bob Crowley]

Toi, oui ?

 

[Paidiske]

Are you going to tell me I'm wrong, though?

 

[Bob Crowley]

Are you going to tell me I'm wrong, though?

To be honest I haven't given it that much thought.

Due to your formal position in an institutional church, and more than likely first hand acquaintance with some of the victims, you are no doubt more aware of the legal ramifications of the system than I am.

The only bloke I know personally who was affected by institutional abuse lived in the Enoggera Boys Home in Brisbane (which was Anglican incidentally). He mentioned a bloke called Graham Noyes who had been there in the 1960's. He didn't say much about it, but he did mention him.

Abuse victim was told prosecutors didn't have funds to pursue case

It is "inconceivable" that a survivor of child sexual abuse was told by the Queensland Department of Public Prosecutions it could not afford to pursue a trial against a convicted sex offender, the organisation's director tells a royal commission.

www.abc.net.au

He's only person I met who had been living in the same institution as a pedophile. His twin brother was also in the same venue.

I don't know if he received compensation, an apology or whatever. I haven't seen him for a long time and we never discussed it in any depth.

 

[Paidiske]

I've supported a lot of victims. I've also had some contact with perpetrators. And I've seen how a lot of the decisions are made behind the scenes, now, that even the average person in the pew wouldn't be aware of.

You want to know who really decides what can and can't happen in churches, it's insurance companies. Their decisions about what will or will not violate their policies end up governing so many areas of our lives.

 

[Bob Crowley]

I've long been cynical about Workplace Cover claims. The ones who seem to benefit the most are the lawyers. Ditto about class actions.

There was a case recently where one class action lawyer was charging $5000 a day and the payout most plaintiffs received was about $5000 to $10,000 in total.

But since lawyers make up a fair swack of parliamentarians, the system isn't going to change much.

There's a graph in this link of Australian parliamentarian vocations before they were elected. If you take out the lawyers, ministerial and party hacks, and unions, there isn't much left.

The most common jobs MPs had before they were elected

Anthony Albanese was a party official and Peter Dutton was a police officer, but neither are from the most popular vocational backgrounds in federal parliament.

www.afr.com

 

[Bob Crowley]

There is one example here.

Barrister charged $5k-an-hour for class action that got workers as little as $10k

They are meant to deliver justice for ordinary Australians, but class actions are being used by law firms to profit at the expense of some of the most vulnerable members of society.

www.abc.net.au

Instead, some Aboriginal workers and their families will end up with payouts as little as $10,000, while the law firm and its financial backers have pocketed tens of millions.

Shine Lawyers will receive more than $41 million in approved costs for its work in both cases, while Litigation Lending Services will take a commission of up to $57 million.

The exact amount that Aboriginal workers will receive is unclear because the final number of eligible recipients is not known.

Based on court documents, Four Corners estimates the workers will get between $10,000 and $14,000. If those workers have died, the amount will be divided among their families.

 

[Paidiske]

Far out, that's appalling.