To the wonderful world of PS sports this week in which the Chief Executive of the Australian Anti-Doping Agency ASADA went into bat for a female member of the world’s equivalent of ASADA – WADA – who resigned from WADA after a round of bullying.
The victim, an Olympic athlete, felt obliged to walk away when her complaints went unheeded.
WADA, according to the head of ASADA, should have investigated the complaint as the athlete concerned was “one of the most respected voices in the anti-doping community”.
But in his fervor to press favour, our ASADA father may have taken a step further than he intended.
“All sports administrators must listen to the athlete’s voice,” our ASADA man said.
“Without the athletes we have no sport.”
HH-Hmmm. Far be it from PS-sssst! to state the obvious but aren’t there at least a few sports surviving without athletes?
If WADA maintains its stance, maybe bullying will be one of them!
Sinking funds
Staying with the wild world of PS sports now for the story about a quiet day in the national Sport and Recreation Branch back in the 1970s when the annual Government grants were about to be announced and staff members were phoning the various sports to advise them of their windfalls.
At one point it became obvious the sport of Yachting was not happy with its share of the pie and was making its dissatisfaction known to the staff member who had called them.
After many minutes of heated discussion, to which the whole branch was a silent witness, the desperate caller played what he hoped would be a calming argument.
“If you think Yachting was hard done by” he said consolingly, “Rowing is in the same boat!”
Needless to say the entire branch erupted into loud uncontrollable laughter, leading the caller to explain to his client that he had ‘committed a Po Far’, which just made it worse.
And they tell us there’s no fun in the public service.
What would ‘they’ know?
Cop this!
Important announcement from the national Minister for Health now that private health insurance is to be injected with new rules next year, smoothing the playing beds for families and other consumers to give them a fair go in the PHI stakes.
According to the Minister we’ll have choices between Gold, Silver, Blond and Basic coverages and will know very clearly what each one means.
Only minor hiccup was in the good Minister’s official announcement which seemed to extol the virtues of brightly coloured police officers as the ones offering the best of deals.
“Silver and Gold polices provide more comprehensive cover ….” the Minister was quoted as saying.
Of course it’s a typing error – ‘policies’ has lost one of its eyes – so one wonders which of the new insurance categories would offer the coverage needed to get it back!
Spinning giveaway
To another great giveaway to be given away now with DVD reviewer Rama Gaind offering free copies of the murder mystery Spinning Man starring Guy Pearce, Pierce Brosnan, Minnie Driver to three lucky winners chosen from PS News’s Australia-wide readership.
To join Rama’s winning circle all you needed to do was identify the type of car driven in the film by Evan Birch.
The answer was a grey Volvo and the first three readers with the correct answer to emerge from the PS News Barrel of Booty were William M from the Federal Department of Agriculture and Water Resources in Queensland, Roz D from the South Australian Attorney-General’s Department, and Phil B from Austrade.
Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone for taking part. The DVDs will be on their way to their new homes shortly.
For another chance to be given a giveaway, simply follow this link to this week’s competition.
Good luck!
Bare facts
And finally, the final word has been allocated to Philomena S of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services who has one more witty witticism and capricious commentary on something fun and funny.
This time it’s wildlife.
“A bear walks into a bar and says to the bartender, “Give me a whiskey and …….. cola.”
“Why the big pause?” the bartender asked.
“I’m not sure,” said the bear.
“I was born with them.”
Till next week (if you’ll come back!!) …….
