WOW…

This one also came from the Weekend Australian: Israeli President ‘a rapist and a pervert’

Now, it’s not really surprising to read a story regarding some form of sexual indecency between someone in public office and a female subordinate. My favourite moment involving the now resigned Israeli President Moshe Katsav is the press conference given by the Israeli Attorney-General, Menahem Mazuz. During this praticular conference, Mr Mazuz announced that all rape charges against the former President in several (!?!) different cases were to be dropped after a plea-bargain agreement.

Oh, and that “the ‘national interest’ would have been ill served by having an ex-president put on trial for rape”. Of course. I can see how it would be damaging to national well-being if a former (or even current) leader were to undergo trial for a felony. I mean, this isn’t Italy we’re talking about, right?

Just remember kids: “In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.”

Never a truer word was spoken.

I used to catch a taxi a month at most, and thought that I must be a really unlucky person to be getting all of the taxi drivers who either didn’t know their way to my destination, hadn’t showered, had no manners, or just couldn’t hide the fact that they simply hated their job.

Now that I travel weekly to Canberra and catch at least three taxis a week, I know that it wasn’t just bad luck. I even had one fall asleep at the wheel recently. My favourite though, was the one who was on a loud speaker mobile phone call when I got into the taxi and continued the conversation throughout the journey, obviously having missed my destination over the sound and taking the wrong direction to get me there when he realised and had to ask again. The conversation was not in English, but I knew enough of the lingo to know he was also taking the piss out of myself and my colleague.

At least half of the drivers I have had this year have taken a phone call whilst I have been in the cab. A few of those used loudspeaker, the rest using wired or Bluetooth headsets.

So far only one has text messaged.

Melbourne’s Taxi drivers are the worst, followed closely by Sydney (but they seem to know how to get from A to B), Adelaide’s are quite disgruntled and Canberra’s are quite nice.

I have most experience with Melbourne drivers, and of them all, only two seemed reasonably happy and were talkative beyond a grunt and “are you flying virgin or qantas?”

I had to argue with two about my destination as it was too far for them. One stopped and took off as I opened the door as my destination was not far enough away.

At least four have needed me to direct them all the way to my destination, which on two of those occasions was St Kilda, an obscure and unknown suburb of Melbourne.

This shouldn’t be accepted. Imagine the Taxi drivers in London or Tokyo behaving this way. It just wouldn’t happen.