THE election hopes of the West Australian Liberals plummeted yesterday after new leader Troy Buswell refused to deny claims that he sniffed the chair of a female staffer after a meeting in his office in 2006.

Mr Buswell allegedly lifted the woman’s chair and started sniffing it in front of her, and later repeated the act in front of several staff members.
...
The extraordinary allegation follows damaging revelations in January that Mr Buswell snapped the bra strap of a Labor staffer in a drunken escapade last year and made inappropriate comments to female MPs.
...
Party president Barry Court, whose wife, Margaret, runs the Victory Life Church, conceded that the chair-sniffing behaviour, if true, was unacceptable.

But he denied he was overly concerned and said Mr Buswell was a changed man.

“We’ve been through this before with bra-snapping and it’s all over, it’s all finished,” Mr Court told ABC radio. 

Date: Mo Apr 28 2008 21.13:03
From: troy buswell [tbuswell@liberals.gov.au]
To: Barry Court [bcourt@liberals.gov.au]
Subject: Re: FW: List Of No-Nos

barry.

as you can see chair-sniffing wasnt on the list!!!  in fact the list mandates chair-sniffing!!!  ABSOLVED

troy.
****
TROY BUSWELL
LEADER, WEST AUSTRALIAN LIBERALS
& LOVE-MAN

> Date: Mo Apr 28 2008 21.11:24
> From: Barry Court [bcourt@liberals.gov.au]
> To: troy buswell [tbuswell@liberals.gov.au]
> Subject: FW: List Of No-Nos
>
> Buswell--
>
> I am struggling to contain my EXTREME FRUSTRATION with the most recent instance of your serial and creative lewdness, which
> I had naively presumed was over following our joint authorship of the BELOW LIST.  I am shaking with disgust as I write this.
> It is out of morbid curiosity and nothing else that I ask: Can you provide me with any plausible defence for your actions? Any
> defence at all?
>
> My God, Buswell.  My God.
>
> Barry Court
> President, Liberal Party
>
> P.S. Please also refrain, just this once, from simply returning this email to me with an item on The List in strikeout and then
> claiming to be “ABSOLVED.” It’s in strikeout, you twit.  You’re not even reading this bit, are you?  You’re already replying.
> P.P.S.  DIE.
>
> > Date: Fr Jan 16 2008 18.30:52
> > From: Barry Court [bcourt@liberals.gov.au]
> > To: troy buswell [tbuswell@liberals.gov.au]
> > Subject: List Of No-Nos
> >
> > So glad we were able to achieve consensus on this.  Here for our records is a definitive list of Forbidden Activities:
> > -bra-snapping
> > -inappropriate comments
> > -drunken escapades of any kind
> > -chair-sniffingNOT-SNIFFING
> > -nuzzling ones face amongst a spectacular set of knockers whilst singing “ABBA” lyricsTHE CHAIR MUST BE SNIFFED

Tags: politics, international relations, australia, chair sniffing, barry court, troy buswell, chair-not-sniffing

AN OAP built a suicide ‘robot’ using plans downloaded from the internet before it blasted him to death. And the 81-year-old man, from Australia’s Gold Coast, left notes which gave clues to his plans and state of mind.

The man, who lived alone, was said to be struggling with plans by relatives to move him into a care home.

He trawled the web for hours searching for a way to kill himself and downloaded instructions to build a complicated machine able to remotely fire a gun.

After setting up the device in his driveway with a .22 semi-automatic pistol loaded with four bullets, he put himself infront of it and set it off. The machine fired a number of shots at the elderly man’s head, which alerted a next-door workman to make the grisly discovery.

Okay, some points.

1. For the non-British people out there, OAP stands for Old Age Pensioner. Someone who’s retired, basically. It does not stand for Owner of an Automatic Pistol, although it should.

2. I don’t like the fact that even lonely eighty-year-old Australians have to die post-modern deaths these days. Look at the story again. A man searched the internet ‘for hours’ (he lived alone. How do we know this?) to find a way of killing himself. Eventually he found a blueprint for a genocidal robot that had the intelligence and audacity to exterminate octogenarians. He then built the robot, and it shot him. Except it didn’t really, because HE ALREADY HAD A GUN. Why didn’t he just shoot himself in the face? Why? What was the point of the robot? He just wanted to get into the paper, and it worked. The allure of celebrity chases us all to the grave. When robots start opening PR agencies, humans will be extinct.

3. I would do anything - that’s anything - to see those notes which gave ‘clues’ as to his ‘state of mind’.

What they didn’t say:

Woke up this morning, felt great. Went to supermarket to buy ingredients for fruit salad. Made fruit salad.  Looked at weather forecast on internet. Sunny. I knew it would be sunny. I live on the Gold Coast. Der! Went to local school to address children on the danger of firearms. Drew pictures of bunny rabbits with some of them afterwards.

What they might have said:

Die. I want to die and I want people to know about it. I’ve been ignored all my life and now my ungrateful offspring want to put me in a home. DIE. (Must find robot).

4. Next week’s suicide story: MAN DRESSES UP AS TELEVISION SET AND JUMPS IN BATH.

Tags: technology, robots, australia, suicide