New proposed hiring quotas for men and women

So someone is now pushing for hiring quotas to achieve 40% women AND men in companies - this should be fun!.

So this means that companies will need to show that they are at least taking steps to try to achieve quotas.  I say they should start with government organisations first, you know, just to set the example.

Given that there are far more women than men in most government jobs (except at the top, as we're always told), this should mean that men would be given preferential treatment for the following government jobs including, but not limited to:

• Teaching
• Nursing
• Admin
• Department of Justice
• Department of Health and Human Services

Remember, there can't be one rule for men and a different rule for women!

United Airlines vs Emirates

So Emirates have decided to take a swing at United Airlines whilst United is under siege for dragging a man off an overbooked flight.  I somehow doubt that they'd have dragged a woman off a plane in the same manner.

Personally, I don't like either airline.

United Airlines treated my friends and I like suspected terrorists on every single internal flight we took whilst travelling around the USA.  This meant that they took everything out of our bag, felt us up and then ordered us on our way.  This system only worked to our benefit in Las Vegas, where we didn't have to wait the whole line to then wait in a second line, we just got felt up straight away.

Once I got on the flights, they were actually ok.

Also, on my flight back to Melbourne they announced that the flight had been overbooked and offered to put up anyone who was prepared to stay in a hotel overnight and fly them business class the next day.  There were people LINING UP to volunteer!  I would have taken them up on the offer, had I not been due back in Melbourne for work two days later.

Emirates, however, treated me like crap on connecting flights from London to Melbourne via Dubai.

The reason?  Because I was a single male travelling on his own, which meant that I was a 3rd class citizen, that I should move when told to, that I could be yelled at by passengers and staff who weren't aware that my moving was because I'd been told to and even that they refused to take away my food tray (and the trays of my fellow single men) well after meal time was over and the lights had gone out.

Given that my crappy flight with Emirates was around the time airlines were flexing their muscle on flying bans, I wasn't about to kick up a big stick about how I was treated, since I still wanted to travel and didn't want to find myself stuck somewhere unable to fly.

If you ask me, I wouldn't want to fly with either, but United Airlines treatment of me was due to over-the-top security.  Emirates were just being horrible people.

Waleed makes fun of Pauline Hansen, misses the point

So Waleed Aly is making fun of Pauline Hansen for asking Australians to buy non-Halal certified chocolate to not support the Islamisation of Australia.

However, anyone who knows what she's complaining about isn't whether it's Halal by virtue of what it is, it's whether the company that manufactured it has paid extortion money to Islamic groups and passed that cost onto consumers who don't care.

The concern is that it's a covert Jizya (a Muslim tax on non-Muslims).  We shouldn't pay any price for companies to be extorted for the religious beliefs of others.  Do we pay for foods to be Kosher certified too?

That is THEIR belief and, as Waleed has quite rightly pointed out, if the chocolate is vegan anyway, paying someone to certify something that is already Halal is like paying PETA to certify that peas and carrots are vegan: it's obvious to the people who know, it's irrelevant to people who don't care and people who don't care shouldn't be forced to pay ANY money to a religion to which they don't belong.

But don't worry, the media has Waleed's back: they'll continue to mock Hansen on his behalf.

Women's rights, getting the analogy wrong again

So a woman in Texas is trying to bring in a $100 fine for any man who masturbates outside of a medical clinic.

Her argument is that it's equivalent to the laws that ban abortions on the grounds that it's "an act against an unborn child".

What they fail to realise is that an abortion is the removal of a fetus that has already combined sperm with an egg.  Bringing in this fine is more like fining a woman every time she has her period, since the two 'emissions' relate to un-used procreation components, not the combined one.

But why let facts get in the way of a poorly thought out analogy.

Travelodge UK: It's ok to accuse guests of pedophilia

So a widower has found himself waiting for the police after the manager at a Travelodge in England called the police when he and his daughter checked into a hotel.

So they 'apologized', but maintain that it's company policy.

I guess we should just accept people randomly calling the police on fathers under the banner of 'it's better to be safe than sorry'.

Where will it stop?

Alec Baldwin lying about girl's age

So, Alec Baldwin is in hot water over a move he did with a 16 year old girl.

How do we know he was lying?  He's what's written:

"I was 47, and it never occurred to me to ask how old Nikki Reed was," Baldwin wrote in his new memoir Nevertheless.  "When I found out, just as we finished, that she was 17, I flipped out on the producers, who had told me something different."

So, just to make it clear, "it never occurred to me to ask" and the producers had "told me something different".  Two completely contradictory statements.

Apparently she was actually only 16, so he even got that wrong.

Personally, I think he just needs to shut the hell up because people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.  Then again, it's not unheard of for Hollywood to disregard the age of young girls.  Just ask Roman Polanski.