Las Vegas, Austria, Virgin Blue and Freddo Frogs. With kangaroo and strine on the side.

Now I am not a great fan of America and all things American, especially when they are foisted on us and absorbed unknowingly and unwittingly. Or worse by subterfuge.  I must be the only person in the known Universe who didn’t ever watch, and doesn’t like the sound of accordingly, Seinfeld. Not funny. I wouldn’t buy an American built car either, and after flying a US based airline once or twice, you can keep those too.

I have been there a number of times, so am not talking from hearsay or guesswork. I don’t like their food, their cars, their ignorance of all things non-American or the lifestyle. I retain a special dislike for Las Vegas where I always felt I had been held captured and consistently asked to say “G’day”.

Ho ho.

I have some American friends, one a genuine North American Indian. He loves America he tells me. He can’t stand Americans though. I guess he of all people has good cause.

I especially don’t like their attitude of lack of responsibility for anything. Not My Fault. And I’ll sue to prove it. A crack in the footpath and a trip means suing for damage and trauma. A doctor makes a diagnosis error and is sued for all he owns and loses his practice. A dog snaps while you pull it’s tail and makes a nasty gash in your hand. Sue the owner and have the dog put down. Drop a cup of coffee and sue McDonalds for not telling you it was hot. Or the best yet; the judge suing for billions because a little suburban dry cleaner lost a favourite suit.

The trouble is, we are starting to copycat this here and I find it disturbing that we have followed this nasty trend. It is causing the costs of things to explode, to have events cancelled as the cost of insurance in case of litigation for something puerile is ridiculous and even make people stay at home when they could be out and about enjoying themselves.

At least there was a shred of common sense shown last week when the High Court decided that a pub was not responsible if you hurt yourself walking or driving home. Let’s hope there is a knock on effect to other similar areas.

But no sooner had this decision been announced than people everywhere started screaming “compensation”.  And for what? Because some clod in Virgin Blue got his Silver button mixed with Everyone button and accordingly, for a brief moment in time, all those with a Virgin Blue Velocity card became a Gold Member with all the privileges thus attached.

Compensation? For what exactly? How did it hurt you (I can see that if we were in America you’d probably be suing for mental anguish or trauma or intense disappointment or something but we aren’t). You can’t sue Virgin Blue for stupidity. And do you also sue all the ISPs as they were a party for delivering the message? What about Microsoft for creating Outlook and Windows that is was probably created on. Why stop there? BHP who made the copper cable in the phone line (I assume). God (or would it be Ikea) for making all the trees out of wood that carry the phone lines? Or the estate of the American bloke called Edison who “invented” electricity?

See what I mean? How intensely ridiculous and all over a mis-managed email. Sure their response was not that flash but I am guessing they were more in the “what the hell have we done and get it fixed ASAP” rather than “how do we take advantage of it” mode.

Let’s face it; if you were a corner store and mistakenly told all your customers that they could all upgrade from a Freddo Frog to a box of Belgian choccy for nothing, you’d be trying to fix it too.

The world would be a far better place if we transferred all this litigious energy into something useful such as educating Americans that we are not in Europe, that’s Austria, where oddly, the hideous Chrysler 300c is made. Or that we don’t ride kangaroos down the main street, unlike them we do speak English and of course, we don’t need to keep playing war so the economy keeps nicely ticking along. For the rich people on the right side of the fence of course.