The Perth Royal Showbegins at the Claremont Showgrounds today and runs until next Saturday the 6th of October.
The Perth Royal Show is Perth’s biggest community event attracting around half a million visitors from the city and the country every year. It has a history spanning over 170 years and serves to showcase WA agriculture, small business and entertainment.
Thanks to the State Government’s support of Australian Year of the Farmer, all children aged 12 years and under will enjoy free entry to the 2012 IGA Perth Royal Show when accompanied by an adult.
A new addition to the show this year is the Perth Royal Show App which will help you find your way around the show and plan for a great day out.
98five Sonshine FMis broadcasting live from the show during the week days so I’ll be down there for a big chunk of the show.
I’m really looking forward to presenting my Morning Café radio programme, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., Monday to Friday next week.
I’ll have a range of interesting guests and will probably get involved in some interesting situations.
If you’re thinking of heading to the show this year, make sure you drop in to our broadcast centre and say hello. We’re be overlooking the main arena right next to the Members’ Grandstand.
Broadcasting from the show instead of our Como studios will almost double the distance I’ll have to cycle which will be great training for our cancer ride coming up in a few weeks.
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No funny, quirky post today but I’m hoping that you’ll give me a few minutes so that I can tell you about a huge issue.
Every day millions of girls, many quite young, are raped to make money for others. They’ve been kidnapped and forced into sex slavery.
Human trafficking enslaves about 27 million people around the world. That is more than the population of Australia. Of these modern day slaves the UN estimates 79% of them are caught up in sexual trafficking. According to “Save the Children” at any one time across the world, around 1.8 million children are being abused through prostitution, child pornography and sex tourism. In the UK there are 5,000 child prostitutes. 75% of them are girls.
In December I’ll be traveling to Bangladesh and India to learn more about the Girls Off the Streets initiative through SIMaid. I talked about the upcoming trip on my radio program with SIMaid representative, Kieran Johnson. You can listen to our chat by clicking the play button on the audio plaer at the bottom of this post.
In Bangladesh there are approximately 500 000 children living on the streets due to poverty or abuse. Many girls who live on the streets are sexually exploited.
The Indian Government states there are 2.8 million people prostituted in India, but human rights groups claim it is more like 15 million. 200 girls are entering into the sex trade every day with 80% of them doing so against their own free will.
I’ll be traveling to both countries with SIMaid to witness the work they do to stop trafficking and sex slavery while transforming the lives of young girls rescued. My role will be as a storyteller, communicating the need online, on radio and to churches back here in Australia.
I currently need to raise money for my travel costs (around $3000) and if you’d like to contribute please email me via my Contact Page so that I can let you know where to direct your money.
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What are you like at queuing? We’ve recently seen queues for the iPhone 5 at outlets around the world.
Here in Perth we’ve seen people camping out for the latest land releases and parents in Sydney are queuing from 3:00 a.m. on enrolment days to secure a place for their children in before and after school care.
They arrive in the middle of the night with deck chairs, blankets, beanies and flasks of coffee while they wait to be first in line when the care centre opens its doors on enrolment day.
It is a nightmare being played out across the city, with the popularity of cheap before- and after-school care soaring, especially in parts of Sydney where there has been a surge in the birth rate and where parents believe their children receive a gold-plated service. – News.com.au
I must admit I’ve queued overnight a few times but it was many years ago. (I’m sure there’s a line in there about being young and foolish.)
I think I did it two or three times for concert tickets. If I remember rightly I queued overnight for Joe Jackson tickets a couple of times and once for Clannad. I also stayed overnight on the pavement outside Subiaco Oval once many years ago to get a good viewing spot for the WAFL Grand Final in the early eighties. That uncomfortable night was well worth it to watch Swan Districts take the flag.
Have you queued for anything? How long are you prepared to queue for something you really want? What has caused you to wait in line and for how long?
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The Call were one of my very favourite bands and so when lead singer and bass player Michael Been passed away in August 2010 at the age of 60 it was a sad day indeed.
Although The Call were never megastars, you might remember some of their songs such as The Walls Came Down or Let the Day Begin.
Let the Day Begin is the title track from their 1989 album. The song reached number one on the US Mainstream Rock chart, by far their biggest hit. While none of their other songs reached those heights on the charts, they built a strong catalogue of stunning music.
The Call formed in Santa Cruz in 1980 by vocalist/guitarist Michael Been, Scott Musick, and Tom Ferrier. Been and Musick were originally from Oklahoma. Been was previously a member of Chicago band Aorta, and then, between 1969 and 1971, of Lovecraft, the successor band to the psychedelic rock group H.P. Lovecraft.
Beginning with their self-titled debut in 1982, the Call went on to produce a total of 10 albums by 2000. The eponymous premiere album was recorded in England, and Been later recalled that the band was in an exploratory phase at this point. Been noted in a 1988 interview, “The Call was a compassionate album, but it probably came out as anger.” Peter Gabriel liked the band so much that he asked them to open for him during his 1982 “Shock the Monkey” tour. – Wiki
They never classed themselves as a ‘Christian’ band but their music causes has always caused me to stop and think. It still causes me to re-evaluate my relationship with God and to feel deeply about stuff in a way that most ‘Christian’ music can’t. Here’s a snippet from an article run in Contemporary Christian Music Magazine quite some years ago.
Though the Call is marginally connected with Christian music, Been’s not given to aligning himself with it. In fact, he says he never even heard of the Cornerstone Festival before The Call’s slot on the fest’s Encore stage in July.
“I’m not even aware of that world, really,” Been explains. “I found the Christian market to be a whole different culture, and I didn’t care for it very much. It hasn’t been very exciting or interesting or innovative, although I love Over the Rhine, Bruce Cockburn and Mark Heard. I just find it sad that we make distinctions with music – to me it’s depressing that there’s even black music and white music.
“I [wish] Christian musicians wrote more about their life experiences instead of trying to be so ‘on the nose’ with spiritual language. It doesn’t give people room to be who they are at the stage they’re at in life. I like to write with the feel of parables, not in strict language. I’m attracted to people who tell me a story, and then I see what it stirs up in my own life. But putting Psalms to music? Taking 30 lines from the Bible for a song? That’s why I like religious books, for instance, rather than books on religion.”
Unfortunately, at least one recent development has further soured Been to Christian music. “Of the 10 major Christian market radio stations, six have refused to play the Best of The Call because of my involvement in The Last Temptation of Christ,” says Been, who played the role of John the Baptist in the film. “I never thought the movie was blasphemous. We were trying to do something important. Of course, if I publicly denounce and regret my involvement in it….
“It just doesn’t feel good, these rules and regulations and laws. There’s a whole lot of language you have to be hip to. I’m always asked, ‘Have you accepted the Lord?’ ‘Are you saved?’ All these codes and passwords. Well, you know, there was a different question asked many years ago in Ireland or Scotland, and it’s more to the point: ‘Do you believe in the blood?’ My answer? ‘Yes. I believe in the blood.’ I’m not quite sure what that other stuff means, but hopefully we won’t go ‘I got it! I got it!’ during our lives because once you say that, you’ve just proven that you haven’t got it.”
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In 1999 Kerry and Annie Hilton left New Zealand with their four children and moved to Kolkata, India to work and live amongst the poor. Naively, they signed up for an apartment in the middle of the day.
It was only when Kerry was taking a walk at night that he discovered they had moved into the largest red light area in the city. Their new neighbours were thousands of women forced into prostitution by trafficking and poverty. That was the beginning of a business named Freeset.
Freeset is located in Sonagacchi, the largest, most infamous sex district in Kolkata, India. Within a few square miles more than 10,000 women stand in line selling their bodies to thousands of men who visit daily. Many are trafficked from Bangladesh, Nepal and rural India. For others poverty has left them without options. The cries of their hungry children drive them to sell their bodies.
At thirteen, Sonali* was stolen from her village, dragged to the back streets of Sonagacchi and sold into prostitution. Her first customer drugged and raped her unconscious body.
Bashanti*, a daughter of poverty-stricken parents, was sold into the sex trade by her mother, sacrificed so the rest of the family could eat.
In India, prostitution is big business and thrives on exploitation and slavery, robbing the poor of dignity and innocence. (*Names have been changed.)
Freeset is a way of helping women escape a demeaning and exploitative life by giving them work making products which are sold around the world.
Freeset is a fair trade business offering employment to women trapped in Kolkata’s sex trade. We make quality jute bags and organic cotton t-shirts, but our business is freedom!
We would like to see the 10,000 sex workers in our neighborhood empowered with the choice of leaving a profession they never chose in the first place.
I had the privilege of speaking to Kerry on my radio program this morning about the work that Freeset does and their plans for the future. You can hear our conversation by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.
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What are you like at queuing? We’ve recently seen queues for the iPhone 5 at outlets around the world.
The Call were one of my very favourite bands and so when lead singer and bass player Michael Been passed away in August 2010 at the age of 60 it was a sad day indeed.