Every now and then you may find an article in Gear Plus that you feel is perhaps a little offensive, so let us clear the air once and for all by stating that:

• Gear Plus does not care about political issues
• Gear Plus does not care about football (or any other sport)
• Gear Plus does not care about religion
• Gear Plus does not care about gender
• Gear Plus does not care about race or the colour of your skin

Fact is, as regards to all these well promoted social issues, Gear Plus does not care about any of them. What we care about is interesting products, relevant industry news and having a bit of a laugh at the industry and ourselves.

We reserve the right to pick on anybody and anything. We try to do it fairly and with some balance but be warned, do not get uppity or take offence at anything in these pages. You, like everybody else, have access to the worlds oldest choice - If you don't like it, you always have the option to bugger off.

Now we do enjoy you visiting our site. We put Gear Plus on the web in the hope that it is interesting and informative for you. So, in order that you feel we have a broader understanding of the world, we have listed a few viewpoints on certain none A/V issues.

Politicians

Oh boy. What a can of worms these silly buggers are. What you have to realize with politicians is that, they spend all day making compromises. "I'll let this slide if you push this through" type of thing. And once you get used to making compromises as a dally habit, it becomes very easy. That sadly is where it all sometimes comes unglued. Although compromising solves a lot of problems, on some points there can be no compromises and that becomes difficult for someone who has developed a strong ability to compromise.

Plus, good old polllies are faced with public opinion. How to get a job done and at the same time retain a good image in the public eye. It's all very difficult for them and in real terms almost impossible to do. Some are better at it than others but this generally means they are the slightly better bullshit artists. They have the knack for selling ice creams to the eskimos and all parties in politics bullshit. Don't kid yourself about it. The only difference between an honest politician and a dishonest one is that the dishonest one obviously got caught.

Although we do not share any political leaning we do have one strong opinion about politicians. Why the hell are these guys not held accountable for their actions. They know that ultimately we as a nation are a fickle bunch. We are led by the nose with the media and ultimately as their sins build up, we get sick of them. So common sense teaches them that, compared to your small business owner, they will only be in office for a shortish number of years. Faced with this potentially short term, they spend most of their time making decisions that are popular amongst the public in the hope they will retain their position. Now if a small company owner ran his business with a short term view to simply being popular, he would probably struggle to last very long.

And as regards being accountable, why is it that politicians can make a whole bunch of ridiculous decisions, screw things up badly, sell off our assets or send entire communities broke and still walk away with a large pension and gold card pass to every perk under the sun. If a small business operator goes broke, creditors hunt the poor bastard down, take his house, car and any other possessions. Quite often his family splits up and the unfortunate looser spends the rest of their life struggling to climb back. Believe us, They do not get the gold pass.

Hell, politicians can set about and bomb the crap out of a country, then sit back on their hands and say, "Oh sorry, but our information was incorrect". Imagine if the small business owner was to stroll down to one of his bad debtors and slapped them a couple of times to help get his money back. He'd end up in the slammer.

So, although we don't care what party is in power, we probably do have an opinion about all politicians and it is that - Politicians would be less likely to engage in dodgy dealing if they were personally held accountable (just like very body else).

Do Gooders (Greenies, political activist, etc)

Sorry, but we probably are a little bias here. We dislike most of these silly buggers because they can become a little annoying. All very passionate about their cause, but generally very selfish about it. Always charging off to protect the fashionable things like wale's, dolphin's, koala's and rainforest's while bypassing the plight of the less attractive things like the Inflamed Yellow Spotted Sydney Dung Beetle.

Putting aside the miniscule few who really have a sincere dedication to a specific cause, the rest are simply media mongers who get off on having their five minutes of fame in the eyes of the press. Once the heat of the camera dies, they are gone in a flash. Back to regroup and become concerned about yet another popular issue.

Generally Do-gooders are found to often be misinformed yet very opinionated. They do not relax and talk calmly about things. They seem to find it impossible to deal with their chosen issue without getting uptight and make it uncomfortable for everybody else. So it's our duty to shit can the lot of them.

Ethnic background

Wogs spick's, chings, darkies and skips (Average white Australian male with his small dick complex). Go for it, add as many derogatory names as you like. We take a bash at the lot of them. Fact is, we challenge anybody to say we are all created equal. We're not. And that's the nice thing about it. It's really one of Australia's strong points that it has adopted a multicultural attitude to it's activities in the world. It's just a shame that we cannot have more of a multinational approach to things. Cultures are a wonderful thing. We abhor a collective group of any nationally getting together and becoming segregated but we applaud and enjoy any and all nationalities joining within the community. Once again, this is an area where we try to be fair and pick on them all equally.

Sport

Nothing wrong with sport. It's good stuff. But when we are confronted with the diehard enthusiast whose ears tend to flap in the breeze because there is little holding them apart, we get sick of it. Sport should be just that, sport. But these days it has become a corporate minefield of sponsorships and business dealings. It is promoted extremely hard and pushed into people faces as if there is nothing else on the planet left to do.

Another sad thing is that people religiously ram sport down other peoples throats when what they are really doing is promoting television watching. Australia like to think of themselves as a nation of active sportsmen when really, they need to be honest with themselves and admit, they are a nation of non active sports watchers.

Roger Waters summed it all up in his album "Amused to death", where the ultimate game became watching real life war on television. The scenario being a television with a dead monkey in front of it, having amused himself to death.

Another point about the over promotion of sport is that we are simply succumbing to the now popular activity of viewing "real life Television". That's code for "Inexpensive product manufacture" and it's killing other forms of entertainment.

Lets face it, football, the main sport promoted in the country, is understood by around 16 percent but supported by less than 2.5% percent of the population. And of this 2.5% percent, the largest chunk of them are coerced into it by pier group pressure both at work and at home. Sport is similar to religion in that most people get into it because their parents or friends are involved. The percentage of supporters who research the subject and join of their own accord is infinitesimally small.

Lets get it back into perspective. Sport has a very good place in our lives but we do not enjoy the pressure of the high power promotion or the obsessive behavior of non thinking supporters. Until the media machine backs sport down a bit, we will slag it as much as we want.

Religion

France has taken a bit of a lead in the area by attempting to reduce all religions to the one mold. This has been undertaken partially by the policy of restricting attire. You cannot promote or advertise your convictions with the wearing of a hat in France although strangely, you are allowed to wear a t 'shirt that says "I love God" or probably even worse"I love Nike".

Our great concern in the area of religion is for the poor old Atheist (or agnostic). Think about it, the atheist will never be able to have a tax free club, where they can network. No club bus for the children of atheists to travel to the tax free kids holiday camp. No tax free social activities of any kind. The poor old atheist is forced to sit at home in isolation because, according to Australian law, it's impossible to have a tax free club unless it's called a religion. Hardly fair is it. So, to make up for this unjust situation, we intend to heap it on any form of religion. We will give them stick. No backing off here, they will cop the lot. Oh, and we will probably also place a bit back on the dick head atheists for making such a poor choice.

Gender

What a mine field this is. Impossible to be correct on this one. Hold a door open for a woman and your being patronizing. Don't hold it open and your being an arsehole. If a woman dresses down, she doesn't care and if she dresses up she's drawing attention to herself. And then you have the whole gay issue to deal with. They have another code and bunch of subtle rules to follow. Do you hold the door open for a gay bloke? Do you hold the door open for a gay woman? Is a gay woman in jeans dressing up or down. Once again, we can only confirm, none of you is safe, we will target the lot of you.

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Our summary

One thing that annoys us greatly is anybody who uses any of the above issues as justification for their pattern of behavior. The person who says things like "Oh, you're only picking on me because I'm _____________(whatever)". This will never be true. Believe us, if we ever decide to pick on anybody, it will not be because they have a difference of gender, race or religion. Nor will it be for political or sporting issues. The only reason we will ever pick on anybody will be because they are a dick head and have done something stupid or we are simply doing it for fun. So, save yourself, keep your head down and remain morally and ethically pure, because we are always gunning for new targets. Oh, and click here to dob your neighbor in, as a way of avoiding the heat.

Good luck.

The Gear Plus Team.