There are better ways to honour people than roadside tributes

I don’t recall people laying flowers at the scene of fatal accidents in the 1980s. They didn’t do it when my two best friends Tom and David were killed when the car they were backseat passengers in flipped tail over nose. I was in the car behind and while we never saw the crash happen we were on the scene moments later – that’s something you never forget. I was 16 at the time.

Fast forward to today and it seems that a child can’t even fall of a tricycle these days without people laying flowers, crosses and pictorial tributes. If placed near where people live they can become distressing. When left to the elements they become nothing more than a pile of litter.  And, as we tragically saw this morning they can be a dangerous distraction.

The police were totally justified in removing the large pile of tributes left after a tragic accident that killed four teenagers in Lyndhurst last week, after they were linked to another accident at the same intersection where a woman was killed.

According to The Age, Acting Senior Sergeant Jeff Smith from the major collision investigation unit said he believed a roadside memorial to the earlier crash had been “over the top” with piles of flowers, framed photographs, road signs covered with messages, graffiti on the road and posters climbing as high as three metres up traffic posts.

“Unless I’m horribly wrong the tribute has distracted her, you couldn’t help but be distracted by the stuff that’s around there,” he said of this morning’s accident.”

Acting Sergeant Smith angered youths in the area after removing the tributes.  Local resident Erica Maliki told the Herald Sun: “I’m speechless. They have taken these flowers away. They should have moved them, not taken them away.”

Sorry Erica, they should have been taken away – what’s wrong with a single bouquet of flowers and a cross?

When my friends were killed 25 years ago it never even occurred to me and the rest of my frends to go back to the scene of the accident to honour them. In fact it was the last place we wanted to be. We simply gathered at a park where we always hung out and just talked about them. Before the accident David, who was interested in supernatural events, pointed to a big tree near the park and said that if one of us died we should try and make the tree shake as a sign from beyond. Who could have imagined that just a few months later we’d be sitting there waiting for that tree to shake. 

These little memories helped us deal with our loss. We didn’t need some sort of shrine to show the rest of the world that we missed them.

I personally remembered them in my own ways. I had a crappy little Polaroid photo of the three of us pinned to my bedroom wall for years and I even took it with me when I travelled to Europe several years later – I’m sure they would have come with of they were alive. I still have that picture in an album.

But the most effective way that I honoured their memory was recognising that it could have easily have been me dying in the back of a upside down Torana while Ambulance officers tried in vain to save me as petrol poured onto their backs (true heroes those men).  This made me vow not to squander my opportunity at life.

As Acting Sergeant Smith put it today: “If they want to pay tribute to someone and give them some respect, drive safely.
“Show them that they did not die for no reason, that someone learnt a lesson out of it.” 

I hope the kids in the above picture heed that advice and not take their own lives for granted. I hope they get out of the small world they live in and embrace every opportunity they get to better themselves through education, travel and clocking up as many life experiences as they can.

Parental guilt trip neglects the real offenders

 

We’ve become such a judgemental society that now the smallest thing blows up to become the biggest issue of the day. Party boy Corey is a case in point, where the reaction and subsequent publicity about a kid whos party got out of hand was way out of proprtion with the actual event.

This week’s fodder for the tabloid press, talback hacks and the swarmy bitch Anna Coren is a mother who dared put her toddler’s mishap at the hands of her pet dog as a boys-will-be-boys thing.

Alicia Cottier has become the most hated mum in Australia since, well since Corey’s mum pissed off to the Gold Coast leaving him to, if you believe the hype, destroy the entire City of Casey.

Why? Because when her two-year-old son Noah tugged at the mastiff-stafforshire cross’s ears and it lashed out and bit him on the face, she refused to have the dog destroyed saying that it as the boy’s fault and refused to have the dog taken away or put down.

Warning fatigue

We are all going to die. The question is how.

I’m not talking about our individual mortality, but as a species. If global warming (has that earned proper noun status yet?) doesn’t kill us, genetically modified food, terrorism, over-population, exotic influenza, US foreign policy and all manner of pending catastrophies will vye for the title of biggest fuck-off threat to mankind.

Which is why I am finding difficult to grasp the concerns about Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay channel deepening project. What started as a temporary threat to the bay’s ecology is now the total destruction of the bay and all life within it; according to some of the protestors who welcomed the dredging ship Queen of the Netherlands into port.

Follow that dream, before it’s too late

The shock death of Heath Ledger attracted predictably large numbers of tributes and comments on the newspaper web sites. Among the polite, non-judgemental messages of condolence was the usual scattering of “he took drugs so he deserved to die” bullshit pieces of divine wisdom, that are sadly to be expected when this sort of tragedy occurs.

 

Then there were the “why would a famous person who has it all want to kill themselves?” comments, which demonstrate there really needs to be a lot more education about the hideous scourge that is depression.

Hidden amongst the comments on the Herald Sun web site was this one by Dustyn of Richmond, who I’m sure is a nice fellow if not foolishly naïve enough to think that we actually give a shit about his fantasies.

The Usual Suspects

Another Australian Open Tennis tournament, another display of foolish thuggery concerning Greek, Croatian and Serbian fans.

If Sudanese or other Muslim kids so much as fart in Melbourne there are calls for their deportation and claims they simply aren’t assimilating. Yet we allow these buffoons, many of whom have never been to the country they so love to champion through their thuggery, bring old hostilities to a sporting event under the guise of supporting players from their countries who, unlike them, have moved on from all the hatred they love to spew out – interestingly, while many happily like to “fight for their country’s honour” on Melbourne’s streets, they won’t be caught dead in their country for fear of having to do National Service. What patriots!

Bank on being shafted

Banks are holding us hostage knowing they benefit from a kind of Stockholm Syndrome approach by customers who have foolishly allowed them to justify their want to bend over and fuck their customers. A reason for this is the customer’s mistaken belief that adding to billion dollar profits benefits “mum and dad” shareholders of whom which they are or want to be.