Channel Seven lawsuit outcome

So the woman at who claimed a great many things after her two year affair ended with a Channel Seven heavy, is reportedly dropping the case and is expected to pay Channel Seven's legal fees.

Well, she did try to play the media (not a great idea when you're trying to play the media against the media), by all accounts took far more than any reasonable person could have expected to get in settlement and then, despite having been paid off with non-disclosure agreements in place, disclosed company information, presumably in the hopes of gaining support for her case.

Of course, whilst her initial case was given all the coverage of a visiting Royal, something tells me that now things haven't been found in her favour (possibly due to her actions) the whole thing will be swept under away quietly.

If reports of her having to pay Seven's legal fees are true, I'll bet she'll be wishing she'd quit whilst she was ahead.

Outrage when a man uses the system against a woman

So here's an interesting (and sad) story about a woman who isn't able to travel outside Australia because her ex put her on a family flight watch list.

The watch list is designed to prevent divorced partners leaving the country in custody disputes, yet there's outrage when a man uses it to prevent his ex taking their children overseas.

The reality is that women leaving the country with children and never coming back (otherwise known as 'International Child Abduction') make up the majority of cases, which is why I think this isn't considered a crime (it's usually a breach of court ordered visitation rights, but not a crime).  Many sites like to claim that every one of those women are doing so to flee domestic violence, but that isn't always the case, and they rarely have anything more than anecdotal evidence to back it up.  But if a man does the same thing, he's portrayed as an evil man.

I paid particular notice when they go into the details that she's spending thousands of dollars on legal fees to fight this, but "he's getting legal aid".  How many men have to pay thousands of dollars on legal fees in custody battles when their former partners get legal aid?  Apparently there's outrage when the genders are reversed.  Maybe she's got lots of money (maybe she got the lot in the divorce) and he's left broke.  Legal aid isn't available to people who have money, so stating that he's using it when she has to pay is indicative that she has money and he doesn't.

When the media starts reporting on all the divorced fathers who can't afford to mount a challenge to visitation rights because their ex is using legal aid but they have to find thousands just to appeal what they consider unfair access, then I'll feel sorry for this woman.

In closing, I'm not saying that this particular guy is or isn't guilty, but if there's one thing we've learned in the last year, it's that the media chooses which stories to report and which ones to hold back, which stories to beef up the details and which stories to leave out what they consider 'unimportant details' and which groups to hold up as the 'usual suspects and bad guys' and which groups should be given a free pass.

Given my recently acquired (in the last couple of years) skepticism of the media, I'm not inclined to take any case at face value until they start reporting crimes between men and women equally.  They can pretend all women are great and all men are evil all they like, but those of us who live in the real world know that both men and women exist at all ends of the good/evil spectrum.

Police searching for woman who abducted 6 year old girl

I guess it's hard to hide that a woman was involved in a serious crime like abducting a child when the only person (of three) who is known is a woman.

Notice how it's not until the 3rd paragraph that it's identified that they're looking for a woman primarily.

Not much is known about the situation, but given that someone knew the name of the woman, but not the men, suggests that the woman was known to the family, but the men might have been hired muscle.

Personally, I would have lead with "a X-year-old woman named Y and two men are wanted for the abduction of a 6 year old girl", not this pussy-footing around about "we're searching for a girl... she may be at significant risk... oh, and the main person we're looking for is...".

A little girls safety (and possibly life) is at stake here.  Can the media put down their PC agenda for ONE FREAKING MINUTE and get the message out there NOW.  As it stands, a person has to actually click on the link to the article to get the photo and name of the woman in question.

Famous person pays through the nose to see his children, media doesn't care

So Karl Stefanovic is no saint and I'm certainly not a fan, but when he walks away from his marriage with less than 10% of the assets, on the condition that he can see his children whenever he wants, you know the Family Courts system isn't fair.

But notice how the media chooses to focus on how Karl liked getting drunk, rather than asking WHY he liked getting drunk.

That being said, the man makes $3 million a year, so it'll only take him a few years to recover from the hit (assuming his career doesn't drop off), but he'd never get that time back with his kids if his ex-wife had chosen to withhold access.

I'm hoping that someone in the media talks a bit about this, but I seriously doubt it.

Woman who killed eight children probably not going to be punished

So Raina Thaiday, the woman who killed seven of her own children and one child of another family, probably won't be punished because she thought she was saving them.

But don't worry, she's being treated now and is allowed out into the hospital grounds despite having two relapses since being taking into custody.

Her schizophrenia, brought on by excessive cannabis use, was to blame, she's just an innocent victim in all of this.

Don't worry though, she's being treated.

Just forget about any kind of punishment of any kind because it's not like cannabis is illegal or that it's not her fault that she used to smoke more of it in a day than most people see in a lifetime.

It's also not like we force schizophrenic people from being treated, so I guess that's 'punishment' enough.

So I guess our benevolent lawmakers are happy to chalk all of these deaths up to mental illness and not Domestic Violence.  Because it's not socially acceptable to show a woman committing Domestic Violence.

I wonder how many cases of man on woman Domestic Violence could be discounted if they were allowed to do the same.  But we all know that the anti-male establishment wouldn't allow that.

I'll put money on her ending up with a lucrative government position as a spokesperson for mental illness and wind up as Australian of the Year, a bit like Rosie Batty.  Ironically, if they don't count Thaiday's victims deaths as Domestic Violence, then we can't count Luke Batty's death either, since his father had a history of mental illness.  There surely can't be one rule for men and another for women, can there?

I don't know what makes me more sick, the media excusing some of the most inexcusable actions of women (not one word of the article does anything other than try to explain how it wasn't her fault) or the legal system being 'compassionate' to women, deciding that she shouldn't receive any kind of punishment, not even for endangering children when she was smoking the excessive amount of cannabis that resulted in the condition that contributed to eight deaths!

The simple fact is that the media has an agenda, that gender is to paint men as violent and women as victims.  But if we're comparing Greg Anderson to Raina Thaiday, the score is 1-8, but I don't see a SINGLE MAN being promoted to the level Rosie Batty is for what Raina did.  But I guess Greg is an easier target for allegations for what transpired in the lead up to that fateful date, since dead men tell no tales.

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.

Female driver hits male, media doesn't feature gender

So a woman who was declared a "drug driver" hit a cyclist and left him for dead.

I notice how the headline and sub-heading have no mention of the fact the the driver who did this was in fact a woman.  It's not until the end of the (rather long) first paragraph that the man was hit by a woman.

Knowing how soft the courts are on women, she'll likely be out in 18 months, despite the person she severely injured not being able to ever run again or return to work as a podiatrist, which is really saying something since it's hardly a career that requires a lot of physical activity.

Female student attacked, media does usual thing

So a poor female student was violently attacked whilst waiting at a bus stop, but the report holds back that the person doing the attack is also a woman.

As usual, the media features in the headline that the victim is female, but holds back that the perpetrator is female.

Same as this story about a FEMALE driver who was drunk and talking on her mobile phone when she pinned a 5 year old girl during a crash.

The drunk woman then left the scene of the accident because she felt intimidated.  Way to go media, you're defending a woman who broke two laws and hurt a little girl.

Would a male who had done the same thing be defended by the media in the same way?  Probably not.  Especially if he'd had a history of the same thing as this particular woman is supposed to have.

Public lambasted for lack of intervention during attack

So the media has decided to call out people who "did nothing" while one young lady was being attacked.

Things that were noticed about the article:

• The headline features that a young woman was viciously bashed, but only mentioned that the attacker was also a women later in the report.  Had the attacker been male, that detail would have been in the headline;
• The attack was noted to have possibly been racially motivated and, even though we can see that the attacker is clearly not Caucasian in the video, race is otherwise left out of the article;
• The victim is either Asian or dark haired Caucasian, so it won't be declared a hate crime.

Here's what we know about the media: had people around the area intervened and taken the attacker down, the video would have been edited to show a bunch of men (because women don't usually intervene physically) taking down a woman of a racial minority.

You want to know why people don't want to intervene these days?  Because we all know that the media can't be trusted to show the whole truth and are more than happy to edit videos to progress their agenda.

Better to just stay out of the videos altogether.

Fake media - helping to dissuade people from helping others for years!

Someone poisoned David Lawrence, media hides who

So there are two different reports about the death of David Lawrence here and here.

One of them only mentions that his "partner" or someone close to him might have killed him.

The second one mentions that the home of his FEMALE partner at the time has since been raided.

As usual, the media plays down or covers up when WOMEN kill or assault men, preferring only to report on cases when men kill or assault women.

This is one of the reasons why I WILL NOT PAY FOR any subscriptions claiming to be 'news', when clearly they filter out details or rearrange facts to suit their agenda.

It's disgusting and it doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon.

Female author stabs man, media defends

So a woman has been sentenced to 13 years jail for stabbing her housemate 22 times, killing him.

Notice how the report leaves out that the 'author' is actually a woman in the title?  I guess it's kind of assumed given that the author was pregnant.

Then the report goes on to list out all of the reasons why she did what she did, thereby arguing that she's not really a bad person, she was just:

• Hungry due to suffering morning sickness;
• Pregnant;
• Suffering withdrawal from alcohol and cannabis;
• Angry that he hadn't been "providing for her like he promised"; and
• Craving cigarettes.

It's interesting that she got such a long sentence, although I guess it'd be hard to defend killing someone.  I mean it's not like she permanently disfigured a man, put him in a wheelchair for 4 months and injured him with a knife so badly he needed 243 stitches.  She would have only been given 3 and a half years for that.

Woman defrauds men for $2 million, gets 18 months minimum

So a woman has defrauded multiple men out of more than $2 million, yet only gets 18 months jail minimum:

http://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/02/23/13/53/sydney-lonely-hearts-fraudster-gets-6-yrs

Contrary to what I normally do, I've posted the full link to the article because, as people will notice, the link itself reads "Sydney lonely hearts fraudster gets 6 years", which isn't even half true as the full sentence is only three and a half years, with a minimum sentence of 18 months.

As usual, the media focused solely on the poor woman, what drove her to doing it (she's a mother of four and takes care of her mother and brother) yet doesn't mention the impact on a single one of the victims, who may never get their money back since this poor woman is supposed to have spent the "money on cocaine, gambling and building a house".

This other 'news' website reports that she also spent the money on plastic surgery and cars.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but only one of those three things even remotely relates to taking care of anyone.  Gambling and using cocaine never helped raise children or look after relatives.

She really isn't a victim at all.  As usual, the stories of the real victims here, the men, will never be told by the media, who never want to paint men as victims or women as perpetrators, so will avoid it as much as possible.

Compare the 18 month sentence to the four year jail sentence issued to a man who 'only' stole $80,000 from 87 victims on Gumtree.  The difference was that this man had no contact with his victims, didn't continually lie to them, only the main lie that he was selling something that he didn't have.  So woman steals $2 million and gets 18 months jail, man steals $80,000 and gets 4 years jail.

I guess that's equality.  Feminists must be outraged!

How divorce provides disincentives for investment

In Australia, there's a very real imbalance with regards to how finances are dealt with when it comes to divorce and, specifically, child support.

Put simply, the rules are set to cover 95% of the applicable population, with the other 5% expected just to suck it up.

Consider Case A - Unfair to men:

A couple get divorced and they have one child together.  The husband, let's call him Harry, has to pay $300 a week in child support, which is based on the fact that his ex-wife, who we'll call Debbie, earns a decent wage.

Harry's ex-wife Debbie then re-marries and has another child to her new husband and decides to cut back on work or quit altogether.

Child Support Australia then re-calculates Harry's child support payments and INCREASES them to account for the fact that Debbie is no longer earning.

The outcome: Harry must pay MORE money to support his child because of the lifestyle decision his ex-wife made in a new relationship.  What's worse for Harry is that there currently exist no safeguards in place to ensure that the money that he's paying to his ex-wife for child support is even spent on his own child.


Now consider Case B - Unfair to women:

The same couple get divorced, only this time Harry remarries and has a child with his new wife.

Since Child Support Australia calculates amount payable as a portion of your income, the amount Harry is required to pay in child support to his ex-wife is REDUCED because he's now got two children and the total amount he can reasonably be expected to pay is now divided by two.

The outcome: the ex-wife, who may have been relying on that weekly payment to put food on the table and the lights on, is now going to come up short.


Now consider Case C - Disincentive to invest:

Same couple gets divorced, man decides that he's going to buy an investment property, which is negatively geared to the tune of $10k a year.  Since Child Support Australia doesn't allow deductions for negative gearing, the net loss of roughly $200 per week must come out of what money Harry has left after paying child support.

Fast forward 10 years, Harry is still paying child support, only the property is now positively geared and making $200 per week.  Since this income is now considered in calculating child support payments, his payments to his ex-wife go up proportionally, despite him taking the hit for the first 10 years.

Fast forward another 2 years, Harry decides to sell the house and walks away with $200k in capital gains, which is first taxed by the ATO for capital gains tax, then taken apart by Child Support Australia as being profit.

The outcome: any man paying child support is going to pay for an investment property out of what he has left after paying taxes and child support, but once that investment turns a profit in either selling for Capital Gains or in increase in rent, he has his child support adjusted.

The alternative would be to allow deductions of child support due to negative gearing, however this would negatively affect women as some men would load themselves up with multiple properties in the interests of avoiding paying child support.


Conclusion:

As stated above, the laws are in place to cover 95% of the population, however as I've shown above in Case C, the current system is a massive disincentive for people paying child support (usually men) to invest in property since they get no concessions in payments early in the investment in the loss-making portion, and get stung at either the profit making, be it positive cash flow or capital gains.

Give that child support can last 18 - 21 years, that's a big chunk of what would otherwise be prime capital building years.

I guess the only suggestions I can make are:

1. If planning to purchase property, opt for long-term holdings rather than flipping houses profit method.  Making $100k in two years may look good on paper as a side project, but won't look as good when your ex-wife gets a hefty chunk of money from the investment without lifting a finger.
2. If you already hold properties and would like to sell, hold off on selling until child support payments have stopped.  Simply waiting a couple of years could save you thousands.
3. Consider investing in lower cost, lower time investments like shares, bonds and ETFs.  You're going to have to pay money to support your child one way or another, but property investment carries a lot more unpaid time cost and capital improvement cost that can only be deducted from your post-child support money.  Simply paying that money as a percentage of dividend yield is a far simpler in the short term.

Please don't take the above post to mean that I'm advocating to minimise support of your children.  I am only pointing out that the whole system is designed for the 95% and that the 5% ends up in circumstances that cost tens of thousands of dollars and are a massive disincentive to bother in the first place.

One of the common complaints I read from ex-husbands is that their respective ex-wives have no accountability for the money: "I pay $500 a week and my wife doesn't work, wears Prada, smokes and drinks".  Perhaps things would be better if there was a mechanism whereby the wives were required to account for the money a bit, but knowing how the media loves to just shoot down any suggestion that women be held accountable for anything is "sexist" and could be open to abuse by former spouses (men) whilst simultaneously defending the decision to allow the current laws brought in under the Gillard government making false accusations against men in divorce cases legal, the chances of any changes in this space are minimal.

It really is one law for men and one law for women.

Strange 'extortion' attempt

So here's the story of a poor woman who sent some photos of herself to a guy she was chatting with on the internet whose girlfriend found out and tried to get her fired.

Firstly, I note how the whole article mentions extortion, yet by all accounts the jilted girlfriend only tried to threaten her off her man and sent photos to her boss to try to get the woman fired.  I saw no mention of "give me $20k or else".

Secondly, it's not until the sixth paragraph that we find out the online abuse (or 'extortion') came from the guy's fiancee, NOT the guy himself.  In the article's defense, it was written in chronological order, so taking six paragraphs to get to that little detail is somewhat forgivable.

Thirdly, the woman worked in retail, so getting fired from a job in retail because some random stranger wasn't likely to happen, but even if it did it would hardly 'ruin her life'.

True to form, there's only a handful of paragraphs where the gender of the abusive person is mentioned, whereas had the offender been male every other paragraph would have started with "The man then..."

Remember, the media lies by omission and will play down or leave out details they don't want featured.  Had it been a man doing those nasty things the headline would have been "Man sends images of woman to her boss".

I don't often agree with lawyers, but...

So a talk show host has been chatting with the lawyer of the man accused of killing his spouse and the talk show host was surprised when his lawyer commented that the man wasn't bailed soon enough.

Here's what we know so far:

• The 52 year old man with no criminal history had been in custody for 44 days before he was bailed; and
• His wife, who said she feared for her life, was later murdered after his release.

His lawyer is correct in that:

• The 52 year old man hasn't been found guilty of murder (yet), so should be presumed innocent (so the headline that reads "DV Killer Lawyer" is technically overstepping and would be open to a libel lawsuit should the man be found innocent; and
• The man has no criminal history and had been held for 44 days before being bailed.

Now, I'm not stating one way or another who did what, but to hold a person for 44 days before granting them bail is a sure-fire way to get someone pretty angry.

Imagine how you feel if someone just came along one day out of the blue, put you in a holding cell and told you that you couldn't even apply for bail for a month and a half.  Would your employer be happy to hold your job for you?  Would you even have a job?  Who would feed you pets, pay your bills, clean out your fridge, etc?  Remember, this isn't a man who went overseas for six weeks who could plan for this, this was a person who should be considered to be innocent until proven guilty.

Like I said, I may consider the outcome from this situation appalling (assuming he's guilty), but to assume we should just keep all men accused of domestic violence, INCLUDING THOSE WHO HAVE NO CRIMINAL HISTORY, is completely doing away with the system of innocent until proven guilty for men (but leaving it in place for women).

A bit like how the justice system has let a female socialite and daughter of a politician out of jail after serving only 2 years for her part in a murder, when her accomplice, a man, was sentenced to 11 years jail.

Interesting response to comment about single mothers

Here's the response from a single mother to a politician who called single mothers lazy and ugly.

I don't agree with either of them much, but I completely disagree with her paragraph in which she writes: "perhaps we need to ask Aussie men, instead, why they're leaving their families in droves and the government is having to support their ex-families."

We don't need to ask them, because 70% of all divorces are initiated by women, so it's a safe bet that the reason the 'droves' of men 'leaving' their ex-families are doing so because they're being ordered to by the Family Court, who is being driven by the desire of their respective wives to get out.

I'd be curious to know who ended her marriage, because statistically speaking it was more likely to have been ended by her.

Disclaimer: some people claim that the higher number of divorce initiations by women is accounted for by the women filing when they discover their respective husbands cheating, or if the husband is abusive, however the same argument applies the other way.  Men aren't likely to just walk out because they're unhappy, a concept known as 'frivorce' (frivolous divorce).

Terrible stories, difference in reporting

So here we have two stories:

• Mother daughter found dead in Melbourne; and
• Violent husband who was out on bail kills wife.

Just to compare:

1. Title:  It's alleged that the mother daughter story is actually a murder suicide, but the news headline is 'found dead'.  The other article is about a violent husband.
2. Detail:  The first article doesn't mention details at all about what state the mother and daughter were in, so we don't know how the mother killed the child and then herself.  The second article clearly uses the words "murder" several times and reports about "stabbing multiple times".

I'm not looking to demonize women here, but the news clearly covers up or glosses over details when the perpetrator is female and sensationalizes details when the perpetrator is male.

Just like the case of that mother who killed six children: we don't know the names of ANY of the fathers of her children who lost their children, yet we know Rosie Batty's name even though she only lost one son.  We all know Luke Batty's name after his father allegedly killed him, yet we don't know the names of a single one of the children murdered by their mother.

This is why real news should include 100% of the details.  If you're only reporting 20% of the details because of the gender of the offender, then you're the fruit drink of news: a watered down substitute.

UPDATE: Man severely injured by ex-wife "in self defense"

So here's the media reporting on the case of a woman who stabbed her ex-husband multiple times and cut him open, leaving his intestines hanging out "in self defense".

So the media is going full defense mode for this woman, starting with the emotive "I don't want mummy to go to jail" headline, right down to all the eye-witness reports claiming the guy brought the knife and came at her.

The guy may have brought the knife, but the mere fact that the media has brought together all of the 'facts' that make this guy bad and haven't mentioned a single detail from the other perspective, except that the guy was "upset that one of his daughters didn't want to see him".

Remember, the media lies by omission.  Hopefully the courts won't be reading reports from these people and will actually be presented with ALL of the facts.

Because we all know that reasonable self defense ALWAYS ends in people with multiple stab wounds and intestines hanging out..

UPDATE:  So it appears the courts have judged her guilty with sentencing pending.  Apparently she could be sentenced for as many as 10 years in jail.  Only right since he wasn't only left with his intestines hanging out, he also needed "hundreds of stitches", a minor detail that the previous news article failed to include.

NEW UPDATE:  The woman in question has been sentenced to five years jail, with a minimum sentence of three and a half years.  I guess that's what you get when you give someone a 15cm wound to their bowel and a 10cm wound to their chest.  The attack put him in hospital for 28 days, had him confined to a wheelchair for 4 months and required a total of 243 stitches (105 in his chest, 138 to other parts of his body).

Despite the full extent of the damage this woman caused, the media still tries to portray her as a kind and caring woman.  I surely can't be the only person sick of the media playing advocate for women who commit gross acts of violence whilst blaming men for everything.

How come she was even free to murder a 2nd person?

So here we've got the news that a woman in Austria is being moved to a men's prison, presumably because she's so dangerous.

What the report DOESN'T go into is how a woman who killed her husband by walking up behind him and shooting him in the back of the head before carving the body up and storing parts of them in the freezer and burying the rest under her ice cream shop was able to get away with the first murder.

Is this because the Austrian police didn't do their job?  Or they did their job and they're just hopeless?  Or because they let her off with a warning?  Or did they give her a pass because of her gender?

All we know is that she'd killed two men that, as far as we know, weren't bad people, yet the media isn't telling the story of either of the poor men who died at her hands (or gun), only their killer.

You can be sure if it'd been the other way around there would have been a national vigil for the poor dismembered female victims of a brutal serial killer.  No, these were just males who died at the hands of a woman, who, incidentally, is too dangerous to imprison with other women.

Woman steals children 31 years ago, media plays it down

So a woman who took her children away from her husband 31 years ago, a man who apparently had been having an affair (and no mention of being abusive) but the media play down the impact on the man or the children and don't even try to contact the women to find out whether they knew their father was still alive.

Remember, child abduction isn't considered an international crime if the 'abductor' is one of the parents because, and this is key, the majority of children who are abducted from the family and taken to other countries are taken there by their mother, NOT their father.

If there were more men than women, you'd bet there'd be a law against it.

What's interesting about the case involving the four Vincenti sisters is that even this article makes out as though the father had used the law to abduct the children, when he actually used the law to enforce his daughters being brought back after 2 YEARS when they were only supposed to be in Australia for a ONE MONTH HOLIDAY!

The media loves to tuck this information down towards the bottom of the article and if they bothered to actually report the whole story, they'd see that the mother had been using the media (and the girls) to try to negotiate a custody arrangement that suited her more because she's too busy to visit her OWN FOUR CHILDREN in Italy because, you know, work and University.