Auggie wrote on Jul 17^th, 2018 at 7:10pm:


You don't fight an aggressor by standing there and letting him hit you.
You fight like with like.
Or you die.

Auggie wrote on Jul 17^th, 2018 at 7:28pm:


Good way to be destroyed.
Try that the next time you get into a bar fight and let me know how you go.

It's late and the jet lag is getting to me.
Good night

So Auggie, interesting name you picked...  why?

Yet it’s being shaped by global megatrends – migration, the economic rise of Asia and the ­digital revolution – as much as parish vendettas and opportunism. Amid all this hyperactivity are three levels of government ­trying to plan, act, delay or stitch up someone else for the growing pains: traffic congestion, queues for public transport, less open space, overcrowded schools and hospitals, more crime and a simmering backlash against migrants.

Occupational therapist Kate Priddle, a mother of two, has lived in Eastwood for eight years. She likes its vibrancy and multiculturalism, but to her mind population, traffic and aggravation have suddenly grown “exponentially”. “Being in the car is always stressful,” she says of the slow local journey times that cut cruelly into family life. “I feel as if I’m always rushing, chasing my tail.” Sick of ­battling the traffic, she changed jobs to be at a ­hospital closer to home but getting her son and daughter to activities is a constant battle. “When is the pace going to slow down?” Priddle says, exasperated. “Are proper plans being put into place to deal with all these growth issues? It seems developers have all the political sway.”

“Yes, and it’s all the immigrants coming here that are making it worse,” the woman says, her eyes soft, more a wistful postscript than a Hanson-like knee to the groin. “Oh, no, I have no problem with them,” Dominello fires back, both hands pushing at the awkward idea now out in the crisp morning air. “It’s not the fault of migrants, let’s not blame them for this. My family migrated here from Italy. The real issue is overdevelopment.”

At the Eastwood night markets on a gloomy Saturday, early evening trade at the food stalls is at a low burn. School coaching colleges have emptied; the Maximum Joy Company dessert bar is already busy at 5pm. There’s an amiable crush of people in the Village Superfresh, specialising in Asian ­vegetables. In Eastwood, 62 per cent of people are overseas-born, mainly from China (25 per cent), Korea (8 per cent) and Hong Kong (5 per cent).

Recently, provocative posters have popped up at bus shelters and light poles on main roads in Ryde. NO MORE ASIANS / IT’S NOT THE FACE OF AUSTRALIA / WE SPEAK ENGLISH and so on in a rambling screed. It’s the fourth time the signs have sprouted. Community leaders think it’s the work of outsiders. Labor councillor Peter Kim, who has Korean ancestry, says anti-migrant sentiment in Ryde is low. Among the older, ­Australian-born constituents Kim encounters in pubs and clubs, “a few people tell me they feel they are being pushed out by recent Asian migrants”. He listens to their concerns and laments there isn’t more interaction between “Asians and Caucasians”. According to Kim, Ryde’s Asian-Australians are increasingly worried about “the return of the White Australia Policy”. He ­collected 2700 signatures in a fortnight for a ­petition opposing Pauline Hanson’s Citizenship Bill, which included strict English language tests and an eight-year wait to become citizens.

“There’s a bipartisan position in NSW on migration,” says Dominello, days after Labor leader Luke Foley had been excoriated for ­comments about “white flight” in parts of Sydney. “Both the Premier and Leader of the Opposition have said, ‘We need to be at the table when it comes to ­population policy because we have to provide the schools, roads, rail, hospitals.’ It’s very hard to plan ahead when you don’t have controls over the amount of people coming in.”

Grendel wrote on Jul 17^th, 2018 at 7:57pm:


The original Auggie was Caesar Augustus and was more interested in politics than SJW causes.

Grendel wrote on Jul 17^th, 2018 at 9:10pm:




I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy

  Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,

And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city

  Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle

  Of the tramways and the ‘buses making hurry down the street,

And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,

  Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me

  As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,

With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,

  For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.