http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-10/boat-race-protester-allowed-to-stay-in-britain/5145644
Australian protester allowed to stay in UK after discrimination fears
An Australian jailed for disrupting one of the world’s most famous boat races has escaped deportation after arguing he did not want to expose his wife and daughter to racism in Australia.
Trenton Oldfield disrupted last year’s annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race in London, when he swam out into the River Thames to protest “entrenched elitism”.
Mr Oldfield, 37, was convicted of public nuisance and sentenced to six months in prison over the protest and was then ordered to leave the UK.
But he successfully appealed to Britain’s Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, saying Australia “is a particularly racist country” and his wife and daughter, who are of Indian decent, would face discrimination.
“I don’t think I could put either Deepa or my child through that,” he said.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Why, heavens to Betsy, we all know the bikie brigade, the check shirt and moccasin roadies, the navy blue singlet lot, and battered- Akubra hat groupies are amongst the most racist peoples on the planet.
But you know, and I know, and you know that I know, I know that you know etc etc the man concerned didn’t want to come back to the land of Oz so he used the silliest argument he could think of…. 🙂 🙂
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Probably why I called him a twit.
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Jack Kornfield, prominent Buddhist scholar and teacher, has written a book on forgiveness. I think I saw a copy in the bookcase in the upstairs lounge.
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Yes, Ato, but I prefer sticking to articles pertaining to Australia.
The article on the Australian man threatened by deportation to Australia was on first reaction by some of you, a typical boozy Aussie, wrecking a nice rowing competition. The pommies were typically slack in dealing with this and his defence of Australia being a racist country was dismissed outright by you.
But as I tried to point out. There is more to the story. His protest was very much AGAINST the pommies and their engrained elitism between the toffee nosed Cambridge – Oxford ‘boys’. Something even you Ato could have reacted to very easily seeing you generally put yourself on the left of things.
Now, you can again, as you did once when I put a very well researched article by the Guardian about the plights of the self imposed Greek economic collapse and decline, go into a huff and puff by attacking me, instead of the premise on which the article was based, (or The Guardian) but that then reflects more on your own lack of insight or bankruptcy in giving a well reasoned reply or an ability in understanding.
I know you might not like to hear controversial subjects, but the P/A is for everyone to put pieces up no matter what the subject…praising, criticising, Greek mythology, Zorba jigging about, anything, even about Christmas Puddings or as you put it ‘boring memorabilia’.
Ah, a fair go for everyone, this…our Australia.
I don’t think ‘fuck off’ is a good answer. Apology coming?
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Yes, I apologise. I shouldn’t have been that polite!
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Yes, you have learnt a lot from Mandela.
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An apology in the true Oosterman spirit.
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You are such a tease, gerard. You (and Helvi) keep talking about apologies and just when I think one or both of you are finally going to manage to get one out – nothing.
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Any good erudite pieces for the P/A coming along Voice?
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Have you ever thought of writing one yourself?
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At the latest count 497 for the P/A and forty paid for on the ABC The Drum…and you? Come on it is your native Franca lingua anglaise as well, easy peeces.
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497? Bullshit.
You aren’t counting this one are you? Because, well, you didn’t write it.
And no, even including this one you’re nowhere even close to 497.
But, I had thought we were talking about erudite articles.
After you’d changed the topic from apologies for some reason.
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True I did not write this, so why expect an apology for an article put up originally by the ABC?
OK, lately I haven’t always graced the P/A with my own, even so let’s deduct the 30 or so of articles gleaned from other sources, that still leaves about 450 or so, even 400 is still a good effort. I don’t expect anything because I love writing. A reward on its own.
And you Voice…what about you? Why the fear? You are more than I equipped with the language skills. You seem to react always to others but rarely initiate much. Why is that? Let go, be fearless.
I always put my neck out. (and in my own name)
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“why expect an apology for an article put up originally by the ABC”
I don’t know. Why expect an apology for an article originally put up by the ABC? Is it some kind of riddle?
“that still leaves about 450 or so, even 400 is still a good effort.”
No, you’ve written nowhere close to 400.
“I don’t expect anything because I love writing.”
I should hope not! The very idea.
” Why the fear?”
You’ve lost me again. Are you referring to why you’re too afraid to apologise?
“I always put my neck out.”
It’s a lovely red colour.
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Please, Voice, I don’t see any posts here by me, I have posted a couple replies here on Dot to hph, I totally agreed with ato’s Mandela post the other day, I spoke to viv and alge about music on Sunday morning…what’s your problem?
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How rude. What’s yours?
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Voice, your entire raison d’être is a wrecker of blogs and people. You just get your lollies from belittling and trolling. No contributions of any kind. Just cowardly reacting negatively under a host of many pseudos and on many blogs. You have your own unique signature, that of a relentless negative and extremely spiteful person.
What happened to you?.
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My problem is that you lump me with Gerard, you are the ONLY one…that’s what gives you away when you write on other blogs. Are you half of your husband ? …I’m a whole person, me, never mind I’m married.
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That’s far enough. Where I came in here was that for all your talk about apologies, both of you, you STILL haven’t apologised to Sea Mendez for accusing him of being me. He’s been far too much of a gentleman about it to me for me to suggest you apologise to ME for it.
Nowhere have I lumped you together with gerard, Helvi. I merely said you were both talking about apologies a lot and neither of you have apologised. Fact.
After a circuitous route through ridiculously overstating the number of articles gerard has written, and goodness knows what the rest was about …..we finally end up here with both members of the tag team. Far from apologising you’re both making snide remarks. Not only that, it appears that another blogger has lumped Helvi together with gerard and she thinks it’s me. Someone else you now owe an apology to. Unless it turns out to be someone as interesting, smart, and fair as Sea Mendez, you might just owe me an apology too.
It’s no skin off my nose. It’s just that every time either of you starts writing about apologies, it reminds me. Nothing more or less than that. No big deal. Nothing to get excited about and go running off at tangents.
But hey, if that’s what one or both of you wants to do, knock yourself(ves) out.
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Oh. And as for you know the person lumping you together with gerard is me because I am the only one who does it. How do you know I am the only one who does it? Is it because you know that the person who is lumping you together with gerard is me?
Try To Think. Hint: google “circular logic”.
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I’m getting dizzy.
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Australia: The country with the most racists, the most uneducated, the most criminals, the worst in health care, the worst in… EVERYTHING!
Why don’t some people just get the fuck out of here?
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Tell this to the ABC. That’s where it came from. Feel free Ato.
Anyway, here is one on the best countries as well.
http://www.clicktop10.com/2013/07/top-10-best-countries-to-live-in-2013/
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I thought Ato had tongue in cheek.
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Have you ever in your life learned from others, apologized? How good are you in following Mandela in forgiveness? Have you ever thought people might be a bit tired of you singing the praise of everything Greek?
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No more racist than any other country on Earth. But remember who often incites some of the racist problems – shock jocks come to mind. It gets blown out of proportion. Remember the Vietnamese? Before that the ‘wogs’. There a new bunch in town! The world has become smaller because of instant communication. That silly Aussie protestor just doesn’t want to leave pongoland – he’s a twit.
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protester ….
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I don’t know if he is a twit. Perhaps he had reasons. Trenton Oldfield is not just a ratbag, he is an ( Australian) academic and publisher.
This from The Guardian.
Oldfield told the judge he had targeted the race because it symbolised a society where many people were deprived of opportunities.
He said his plan to disrupt the annual event crystallised after he returned from seven months in Canada looking after his wife’s dying father.
“I was vulnerable in terms of realising how short life can be,” he said.
He continued: “I realised certain people’s quality of life was much better than other people’s. When I came back to the UK and saw the poverty and saw the laws the government was passing that were going to make people’s lives significantly harder … for no apparent reason, I think I was very emotional.
“I saw the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race as a symbol of this issue. 70% of the cabinet are Oxbridge graduates.”
The wider target, he said was “elitism and the inequality that arises out of elitism”.
He likened the protest to boycotts of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and sporting boycotts targeting apartheid-era South Africa and said “established people” such as David Cameron, John Major and Alan Milburn have all recently spoken out against “entrenched elitism” in the UK.
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The name Trenton Oldfield just sounds like it belongs to a twit. I knew nothing of his background but I did understand he is a serial protester of sorts. I honestly thought swimming in the course of the boats was pretty weird and I doubt achieved anything but a bit of ‘fame’ in the news. I wouldn’t give him any more thought than what I have already done (which is too much).
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He did draw attention in a ‘huge’ way to the inequity of the English culture whereby those that are lucky to be born into upper class will remain there, while those not so lucky will keep their place as well, into the tenements and subservience to the rich and privileged. I would have thought a worthwhile and good Australian quality.
Look up his name and see the attention his stunt brought to bring into focus the dreadful habits of the poms and their culture. I mean, having ‘A house of Lords’.
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Yes, that’s exactly what I thought except…last Sunday at a Christmas party in Sydney we met up with a young friend who went to the same high school as our son. She left some 10 years ago to live and work in England. She got married had a child and two months ago decided to, with her English husband and young child, to live in Australia. I, naturally was curious enough to ask her, between sipping a nice merlot, what the Poms know or thought about Australia. Her answer; they don’t really read or hear much about Australia, but they did think that Australia was very racist. That is indeed something, coming from pommie land. So, there you have it. Of course, that is just one single opinion.
We could dismiss this as typical pommie nonsense or perhaps reflect there might be some truth in it. Could this perception have come about because of our harsh treatment of refugees? This has been given world wide publicity.
Yes, I know with whales and sharks we do have unlimited sympathy but with boatpeople from Asia?
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Well, we all know about pommies exporting criminals to Australia. They have history. I think they should go and see what kind of treatment they might receive in, say, deportation to Afghanistan. Swimming is probably a capital offence there. At the least they would probably cut off his flippers.
Moreover it says a lot about what a pack of wankers those poms are – fancy stopping a race because there was a bloke stupid enough to get in the road. I mean, what are those round bobs on the front of their boats for ? Designed to turn certain death into mere soft tissue damage !
Wuzzies. Contrast that with the family of that poor teenager bitten by a shark off Coffs. They were on the news saying that they didn’t want it to turn into an excuse for a shark massacre – saying that when we share the ocean, sometimes we pay a price. Guts and glory, not whinging pissweak pommie so called activists.
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Notice how I avoided mentioning the cricket ? Hahahahahaahha
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Almost one half of all Australians were either born overseas or had a parent born in another country and one in five people confessed to have faced some form of racial discrimination. In the year 2009 there was a surge in number of hate crimes targeting specifically Indians. There were more than a 100 reported assault incidents reported by the Indian students out of which 23 had unmistakable racial undertones. Not to mention the Cronulla riots of 2005 which is a beachfront suburb, there were a series of racially driven mob confrontations. Though, the situation has improved comparably in 2013.
In the list of ten most racist countries, both Australia and the UK feature together with Germany, India etc.
http://listdose.com/top-10-most-racist-countries-in-the-world-2/
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To be fair Gerard, the bulk of 100 reported assaults in Indian students where by Indian nationals.
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Yes, you are right. I think the article mentioned that of the hundred or so assaults only 23 were racially motivated.
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I don’t know if anyone can be sure that such attacks are racially motivated. One can just be in the wrong place and cop it from some drunken/drugged idiot. Some may be and others may be not so.
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I must say, Emmjay, I respect those family members who did not want revenge-killing of the animal.
I have a simple, personal life-attitude in this matter : Don’t play in their territory. If I do, I know the rules. I won’t blame anybody, except myself …afterwards.
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hph, there are a heap of other things that are more likely to kill you than sharks: http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/these-eight-things-are-much-more-likely-to-kill-you-than-shark-attacks/story-fnjwkt0b-1226777036820
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