possessing a smoking implement

A couple of days ago there was a newspaper report about a police raid on a Meth Lab in the Perth suburbs. A woman was arrested and charged on a series of charges, one of which was ‘possessing a smoking implement’. I really don’t know how the law works on this one. There are literally dozens of stores selling smoking implements around the city and suburbs, but the sale of these implements is not deemed to be illegal; just if you have one in your possession?????

Yesterday I did a computer collection from three sources and got some very nice machines. One place I went to was a residence in the northern suburb of Ballajura. It is a very nice area and in front of the house I visited is a lake of what looks like about 10+ hectares in area. It is a very attractive outlook for the surrounding dwellings.

Every household in W.A. with a backyard swimming pool has to register it with the local council and regular inspections are made by council officials. Special childproof locks and fences ensure that kids cannot easy have access to the water and possibly drown. Our pool in Bicton was regularly inspected and we had to make some modifications to security over the years, but when we tired of swimming and converted it into a large pond, council informed us that we no longer had to stay on the register and security was not an issue. I figured that every council has small lakes within their areas and to fence them off would be very expensive and certainly look crappy. And so that is how we had an unregistered pool/pond without inspections. Crazy??

Yesterday’s newspaper also had an interesting article about some students (boys) getting expelled from a Baptist College quite close to where we live. It seems that on a school camp, the lads took along a joint and several boys had a toke. The word got out and the lads were sacked. Parents of the boys appeared on TV saying that the treatment was harsh and one fellow suggested that if they really were Christians they would forgive the boys and reinstate them. It seems that each student enrolling at the college signs a contract of behaviour and as in a TV game show….’dope is on the list’.

I taught all my teaching career in government schools and have always felt that private schools take the kids from wealthy families and if those kids muck up, toss them out and they have to return to a government school. Government schools can only expel a child for the most serious repeat offences. Perhaps government should legislate to force private schools to take a percentage of bogans in their cohort. For non-Australians; Bogans are rude and rough rednecks.