Crime and Punishment

Well, soon the Government will have control of the Senate, and we will crawl back into the days without unfair dismissal laws. Yes, after July first if you work in Australia, you can be sacked just because the employer wants to sack you. Imagine what that is going to be like. It's funny that I saw someone on the TV claiming that our industrial relation laws come from the horse and buggy days, but the proposed changes are returning us to the dark ages. I know from the last place that I worked, that an incident happened from which I was threatened with being sacked if I didn't do something illegal. Basically, to go into more details, I was asked to set it up so that the company could send scanned checks (including peoples bank details) across the internet unencrypted. Both illegal, immoral and stupid. When I refused to do it, I was told the company had the right to tell me to do illegal things and I had no choice. This of course was 100% wrong and I told the manager so. (Make note, this was NOT my manager. My manager at the time backed me to the hilt). Anyway, with the new laws, the company would have sacked me. As it happened, the whole thing ended in a big meeting with HR, the company Lawyer and Management. Guess what. We won! (I include my network team buddies who all backed me up). I was the one the managers had chosen to target, and evenutally when I did leave the company, I was told I was never allowed to work for them again. I find this funny, as I've spoken to other people, and I am the only one who was ever told this. I guess I am special. :-) As I todl them, I wouldn't want to work for them anyway. I used to do long hours, get phone calls on the weekend and at all times of the morning and night when I wasn't on call. My health suffered badly because of the stress, and my Doctor kept telling me to quit! In fact, my Doctor spent six years telling me to quit, as my stomach was vomitting blood and stuff. Somethig I still haven't recovered from. Of course, with the new laws coming in, what would have happened to me in that same situation. Well, if I refused to do it, I would have been sacked with no way to appeal and get my job back! If I had of done it, te thing which came out of the meeting, was I would have gone to jail (and in theory so would the managers!) Only, I know the managers wouldn't have, because at that company previously, I'd been ordered to do things, and after I'd done them the managers had denied any involvement. So, what would have happened. I would have gone to jail, and the managers would have been there saying, "Oh, we never knew anything about it." This is the reason why I think the laws are going to cause all sorts of havoc in Australian Industry and will probably send a lot of them down the gurgler! After all, the ones making the illegal decisions are the ones who will be covering their arses and NOT going to jail. The poor workers who are in a "do it or get sacked" position are the ones going to jail. That means the idiots are left free and in charge of making other stupid decisions. Mayeb it's fitting that I am in the middle of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment". A very large book which takes a lot of reading. I can say this though, I am enjoying it immensely. When I say I am in the middle of it, I'm actually only a quarter of the way through it. Though I can say, it's been like an entire story so far anyway. When I got to the end of Part I, I thought, gees, he could have left it there, and it would have been a complete book. Well, in it a student, who is very poor, ends up murdering an old woman (and her sister) whom he is in debt to. A lot of people are in debt to her, as she is loaning money in return for gold watches. Similar to a pawn broker would today. Well, he kills her and takes all the money and gold watches etc. He also escapes. In the second part of the book (which I'm not through yet) he gets arrested and sent to life in prison. This experience (being sent to prison) is based on his own life. He'd been arrested for being a socialist and sentenced to death, whcih was later changed to life imprisonment in Siberia. Later he was released and made to become a common soldier. Anyway, a lot of the book deals with the psycology of the main character, really getting into his head. The confusion in situations, and other things. Well, I can see Australia following what Russia did! Can't wait to be arrested for not being a Right Winged Nazi! Didn't we fight World War Two to keep these bastards out of our country! Now we've elected them. (An old phrase about putting the C**t back into Country comes to mind ... but i won't spell it out here!) Anyway, some of this is already happening. They had an article on the news tonight about a refuge who has been in mandatory detention for seven years here! YEP! Locked up in jail for seven years just because they escaped persecution in their own country in order to try to go somewhere else. SEVEN YEARS! No Crime Commited! Of course, one of the arguements the Government uses is it stops other refugees coming here if they know they'll just get locked up! I really hope this Government is one day forced to flee to another country as refugees! Get those prison cells ready New Zealand! I watched that "King Arthur" movie today. I am wondering why it got made! I really didn't feel an affinity with the characters, and most of all, I didn't see the point of the movie. Sure, there was the occassional expression of, "All men are free" and such, but that is really coming across as a cliche for having battles in movie now! Though I liked the cinematography and stuff, I still couldn't grasp the whole point of the movie. It really seemed to me to be a way to cash in on the popularity of the "Lord Of The Rings" battle scenes and stuff. (Maybe to a lesser extent Gladiator's battle scenes). In the end, I felt it was a waste of my time. Hope I don't accidently see it again. Oh well, that's enough ranting from me now! Time to get back to doing something constructive!