Except it’s not.

Nowadays, you have to cough up $8 for the privilege of parking within cooee of most Sydney beaches.

At nippers on the weekend, I spotted a ranger hiding in the bushes waiting to pounce on one poor family whose money had run out.

Most of us wouldn’t mind if the proceeds were being ploughed back into infrastructure.

But with the growth of spending on spin doctors – Sydney City Council will waste $11 million on communications this financial year – it’s being diverted from roads and rubbish.

In the past five years, parking meter revenue in inner city and beach hotspots has risen by 50 per cent.

Now they’re targetting working-class Liverpool, with $2-an-hour meters in the CBD.

This could mean big losses for retailers.

Last week I drove around the city for 45 minutes as $100 burned a hole in my pocket, destined for a friend’s birthday present.

Eventually I gave up and bought something on eBay.

Councils would do well to heed the example of the tiny English borough of Dudley.

It’s been named the town with the most empty shops, with 29 per cent vacancies.

The reason? The introduction of punitive parking charges.

Like lemmings off a cliff, shopping centres are following the councils by cutting back free parking.

An NRMA survey has found more than half of the respondents have changed their shopping destination to avoid meters.

Instead of gouging money from ratepayers, councils should make greater efficiencies.

One way would be through amalgamations.

On average, general managers at Sydney’s 37 councils earn around $250,000 a year.

Merging into one mega-council would save millions.

Of course, this is never going to happen.

The mayors quite like wearing those fancy robes.

They serve as a reminder of the haves and the have-nots: those who can still afford to take their kids to the beach, and those who cannot.

Take the teenagers who allegedly led police on a high-speed chase in a stolen car, ending in a dramatic smash at the Banksia Hotel early Monday morning.

They suffered minor injuries.

Cue the tearful father on the 6 o’clock news: “He’s a good boy. He only took the car because the keys were in the ignition.”

Right. So it’s the car owner’s fault, is it?

Apparently they wanted their car to be used as a weapon to endanger police and anyone else on the road.

Then, the father detailed his son’s punishment.

“I just said to him we’d better go to church tonight to thank the big guy upstairs because how do you walk out of that?” he marvelled, shaking his head.

Instead of thanking God, how about giving the little ratbag a swift kick up the backside?

While you’re at it, give yourself an uppercut.

What were your son and his 13-year-old friend doing roaming the streets at 3.30 in the morning?

Calling it a ‘joyride’ glamorises a brazen act of criminality.

There was nothing joyful about the death of 19-month-old Skye Sassine, killed when alleged thieves smashed into her parents’ car on New Year’s Eve two years ago.

It prompted the New South Wales government to introduce legislation carrying a three-to-five year jail term for drivers who refuse to stop for police.

The 16-year-old has been charged under Skye’s Law.

But it’s been an abject failure.

Police say there’s been an increase in the number of youths involved in high-speed pursuits over the past 18 months.

Almost 450 charges have been laid since March last year.

Speaking to the media, Justin Sassine accused offenders of “spitting” on his daughter’s legacy.

Mr. Sassine said some offenders are walking free because of lenient judges.

But it isn’t the fault of judges or politicians: It’s absentee parents.

Last week, a 15-year-old boy was charged after taking three girls on a joyride in a stolen car, which crashed during a police chase through Bonnyrigg Heights around 4.10am.

What parent in their right mind lets a young teenager stay out all night?

Then there’s the Bali Boy.

Who would let a kid with drug problems wander off in an area with a dealer on every corner?

The chief prosecutor said the boy’s parents should have taken more responsibility for him.

The father responded by saying his son was a “good boy” who’d been led astray.

Denying your child’s bad behaviour only makes it worse.

“These parents facilitate the continuation of unacceptable behaviour… because there are no consequences,” says  teenage counsellor Kathie Keeler.

In pop psychology, such parents are called ‘enablers’.

But I’ve coined a new term for this scourge of the suburbs: the dump-and-runners.

These are Mums and Dads who are too busy, exhausted, or dysfunctional to care for their kids, so they simply walk away.

In 1965, the typical child spent about 30 hours a week interacting with a parent; by the 1980s it had declined to 17 hours.

Clinical Psychologist Sally-Anne McCormack says parents are leaving their kids at video arcades, public swimming pools or local libraries all day, because it’s cheaper than hiring a babysitter.

“People are really busy these days and we don’t have the supportive family systems or communities that we used to have, ” she says. “But it’s absolutely not OK to dump and run.”

When it comes to teenagers, this negligence can have deadly consequences.

Police hope the photo of the crumpled Hyundai involved in Monday’s crash is a blunt reminder to young people about the dangers of joyriding.

But I doubt it.

In some suburbs, it’s become a rite of passage for adolescents marking the transition to manhood.

According to the head of Criminology at Townsville’s James Cook University, Associate Professor Glenn Dawes, offenders almost always come from low socio-economic backgrounds with parents or older siblings who are unemployed.

“Getting behind the wheel of a car allows many young men to feel grander, more powerful, and produces feelings of invincibility,” he wrote in a paper presented at a Prevention of Crime Conference convened by the Institute of Criminology.

He says it’s exacerbated by car advertising, which “celebrates danger, irresponsibility and excitement”.

The UK is tacking the problem by giving young drivers better training and the opportunity for legal off-road drag racing.

It’s not a bad idea.

But ultimately, the responsibility must be borne by the parents.

Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned curfew?

Knowing exactly who your kids are associating with?

Keeping a close eye on them at all times?

I’m not advocating cotton wool parenting.

Kids need a degree of independence in order to learn from their mistakes.

But there’s a difference between independence and recklessness.

The decision about whether to be a good boy, or a bad boy, can be one of life or death.

Tracey Spicer is a 2ue broadcaster, Sky News anchor and principal of spicercommunications.biz

Lives are at stake here, people.

Reading the series of letters exchanged between the Prime Minister and Opposition leader, I’m reminded of two kids in a sandpit.

Julia: Tony, why won’t you be my friend? We’ve got to stop those other kids playing in our sandpit. It’s getting too crowded!  I can’t protect it by myself. See? (Turns around.) That nasty teacher, Mr French, tied my hands behind my back. The bully!

Tony: (Kicking sand in her face.) Well it’s your own fault! What happened to that fence I built? That kept them away for ages. And it was only made of Lego! Remember, I even built that really cool place for them, you know, where all the birds crap.

Julia: But most of them ended up back in the sandpit anyway! (Starts crying.) Look, it’s not my fault. That goody two shoes – what’s his name, you know, looks a bit like Tin Tin – knocked it down.

Tony: Oh yeah?! Well he’s in your class so it’s your fault too. Nah nah ne nah nah. Why don’t you ask your little friend, Bobby Brown? Last week, I saw him pissing in the sandpit. Or how about that girl with all the names that dresses up like a fairy all the time?

Julia: Come on, they are not my friends anymore and you know it! OK, I’ve got an idea. How about this: Anyone who tries to get into the sandpit gets sent to the office for a caning! Come on, let’s go and talk to the Headmaster.

Tony: I dunno. Sounds a bit cruel.

Julia: Oh duh. And putting up a fence wasn’t? Remember those kids that ended up in the sick bay after getting zapped? How did you put an electric current through Lego anyway?

Tony: None of your beeswax. Anyway, you’re right. But I’m still not going to help.

Julia: Why not? We both want the same thing. And no one wants those strange smelly kids playing in our sandpit.

Tony: Because I want to be class captain. If your plan wins, you’ll be class captain. So there! (Takes his bat and ball and goes home.)

How about we all start behaving like adults for a change, hmmm..?

“I want to be a role model for all the short and stocky men out there,” he says.

Meanwhile, Hugh Jackman reveals all on the cover of the Australian Women’s Weekly about how stay fabulous in your forties.

“I’m doing it for all the insecure men out there. You too can look like this!” he grunts between his 112^th and 113^th rep.

Of course, this is all happening in a parallel universe.

Generally, men don’t feel the need to take off their clothes to justify their existence.

So why do some women?

This wasn’t what the suffragettes had in mind when they fought for women’s emancipation all those years ago.

Emmeline Pankhurst, speaking at the Women’s Franchise League in 1889: “One day, women will be able to remove their clothes in public and be judged on how hard they work out at the gym. Ah, what a glorious day that will be!”

Let’s start with Deborah Hutton’s cover shot.

The TV personality is blessed with natural beauty: A glorious mane of hair, symmetrical features and an athletic frame.

Her attributes are enhanced by a personal trainer and a bevy of beauticians – all at the fingertips of a woman with the means to afford them.

She wrote that she did the photo shoot, “because lack of body confident is such a big issue for so many women”.

There’s no doubt Ms. Hutton is a smart, charming and savvy woman.

I called her while on air at 2ue last week: “Most 50-year-old women don’t have the money or time to look as good as you do. This photo doesn’t depict a middle-aged body. Can you see how this might make women feel inadequate?” I asked.

“I don’t understand why women would feel like that,” she replied. “I work hard at looking this good.”

That answer was akin to the pretty girl at school turning around to the dowdy ones and saying, “Nah nah nee nah naah”.

In the words of Erica Jong, women are their own worst enemies.

As the deputy editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly, Bryce Corbett, wrote in his column, “I think we (men) are less inclined to feel that one man’s attractiveness is somehow a slight against the rest of us. The sight of Brad Pitt’s abs… don’t send me into paroxysms of self-loathing”.

The same week, New Idea published a cover shot of Julie Goodwin in her swimmers.

I think it’s tremendous that she did the shoot, “for all the little teapots out there – short and stout. We should all be comfortable in our own skin.”

Most middle-aged women are shaped more like an apple, pear or hourglass than the stick figures we see in magazines.

And yet, once again, our worst enemies come out of the woodwork.

Julie Goodwin was criticised by social commentators for pretending it’s fine to be overweight.

“It fascinates me that my health can be commented on by someone who has absolutely no medical data on me,” she wrote in her blog. “Not my blood pressure, my fitness, physical strength, activity levels… or genetic predispositions.”

While I applaud the MasterChef winner for challenging the “cookie-cutter mentality that thinner = healthier” I think it feeds into the judgement of women based on looks alone.

Julie Goodwin is a great cook, loving mother and popular performer.

But now the media will routinely reprint the body shot, stripping her of any complexity of character.

Deborah Hutton has a rare gift of reaching through the camera to the audience on the lounge at home.

But instead she’ll be remembered for her ‘t and a’ rather than talent – and the hydra of criticism that reared its ugly heads.

“When is the persecution of women by women going to end?” asked one blogger. “Some of us are fat, some of us are thin. So f*#king what?”

Perhaps more worryingly are the opportunities lost.

Instead of stripping off for women’s magazines or commenting on each other’s bodies, we should use our time productively.

It could be spent reading a good book, playing with the kids, painting a beautiful picture, or building a career.

Women are still struggling to reach the upper echelons of business.

Do we really want to be seen as decoration?

Occasionally, I read the news on TV.

But I work hard to improve my skills rather than my appearance.

Whenever I’m tempted to spend an extra half hour at the gym or beauty salon, I glance down at the poem taped to my desk.

Here it is, paraphrased.

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; This is to have succeeded”.

You won’t find wise words like that in a glossy women’s magazine.

Barreling along Sydney Road Fairlight, the truck driver was texting on one mobile phone while speaking on another, steering the rig with his knees.

I hit the horn and indicated – in no uncertain terms – he should stop before he kills someone.

Still clutching the phones he slowly and deliberately raised his middle finger.

If only he’d read the story of 21-year-old Sarah Page, a serial texter from New Zealand.

“It’s fine Mum, I do it all the time!”  she’d protest.

Until she wrapped her car around a pole in 2009.

Sarah suffered massive brain injuries. Her family turned off her life support.

The police returned her belongings including a mobile phone.

There was a message in the drafts folder: “I’m on my way to Napier,” it read.

The time was 3.59pm, seconds before she crashed.

Her sister Sam says the tragedy has taught her a valuable lesson.

“It only takes a split second while you take your eyes off the road for tragedy to occur, and sending a text is just not worth it,” she writes in a heartbreaking blog.

In 2007 around 45,000 Australians crashed while using a mobile phone. A further 145,000 had a near miss.

Using a mobile phone increases the risk of an accident four-fold.

Your eyes are off the road for up to six seconds each time you look down to text.

And yet we keep doing it.

A survey in Victoria has found 70 per cent of motorists aged between 18 and 25 admit to texting while driving.

Around one in five say they surf the net.

I had no idea about the extent of the problem until hubby got a new work car, the Hyundai iLoad.

From that height you see it all: The businessman tapping away on the iPad secreted in his lap; the middle-aged Mum sending an email with her two precious kids in the back; the Gen Y who treats it like an extension of his arm.

So what are our state governments doing about it?

4/5ths of f*#k all.

Sure, there’s a $265 fine and the loss of three demerit points.

Last financial year, more than 50,000 NSW drivers paid a whopping $13 million in mobile phone fines.

But it’s not changing our behaviour.

And it’s the same the world over.

In the United States, around 3000 people were killed last year by so-called ‘distracted drivers’.

In one incident in Missouri a 19-year-old truck driver sent or received 11 text messages in as many minutes before causing a highway catastrophe, which killed two people and injured 38.

This prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to urge all US states to ban the use of electronic devices while driving.

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood calls it “an epidemic”.

In Utah, texting drivers face three months jail and a $US750 fine.

Arkansas bans all mobile phone use for drivers between 18 and 20.

And in Japan, you can’t use a phone in your car full stop.

This was being considered by Australia’s transport ministers in last year’s draft national road safety report, which found even hand-free devices dramatically increase the risk of crashing.

Talking on the phone can impair your performance to that of a drunk driver blowing 0.08.

”In my view it is as dangerous as speed and drink driving,” said Superintendent Max Mitchell, the acting assistant commissioner, traffic services branch.

NSW police supported the idea of a ban.

Mark Stevenson, an epidemiologist who studies driving distractions, called for more drastic measures: ”Vehicles could be manufactured with in-built blockers so drivers cannot receive phone reception when the car is turned on.”

Such devices already exist.

But no one seems to have the guts to effect change.

We need to acknowledge that this is the new drink driving.

Therefore, we should tackle it in the same way with a combination of hard-hitting ad campaigns and tough penalties.

Why not double, even triple, the fine?

It is inexplicable that mobile phone doesn’t cop the same double demerit points as other offences over the holiday period.

I believe we should turn texting drivers into social pariahs.

The problem is, we all think we won’t get caught.

Like the truck driver on Sydney Road, we give the middle finger to those trying to curb our freedom.

Let’s hope it doesn’t take the death of a loved one for us to realise the error of our ways.

Tracey Spicer is a 2ue broadcaster, Sky News anchor, and principal of spicercommunications.biz

Right now he or she is probably bashing someone, taking drugs, or stealing stuff.

Of course, it’s never their fault.

It’s always the “harsh” or “draconian” laws of the country in which the crime is committed, which is inevitably described as “primitive”.

When will we realise that we are the real primates?

Forget about the annoying American with the too-wide smile, crushing handshake and Hawaiian shirt with the volume turned up to 11.

Remember Annice Smoel?

She was the Melbourne mother who spent four nights in jail, facing up to five years, for stealing a $60 bar mat.

Smoel shouted at the Chief of Police after fleeing the scene of the crime, leading to a wild chase along the beach.

She then tried to bribe the police, before blaming the Australian government for not doing enough to bring her home.

Imagine if a Thai tourist stole something from the Australian Hotel at The Rocks, led police on a chase along Circular Quay, shouted at Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, tried to bribe him, then asked for consular help?

At the time, Ms. Smoel accused the Thais of being both sexist and racist: “This is a complete joke. The Thai authorities have no compassion and no respect for Western women or the wrongly accused.”

Those two words pretty much sum up the typical defence used by rogue Australians – and the media – when they fall foul of the law.

After the arrest of the Bali Boy, talkback radio ran hot with stories of drugs being planted on “innocent Aussies” on their “family holidays”.

There were claims of scams, run by the police, to extort money from unsuspecting tourists.

And yet it was all found to be fiction.

The Bali Boy turned out to be a troubled young lad who’d wandered off to score drugs and chicks behind the back of his naïve parents.

Which brings me to the supporters of Schapelle Corby.

On the Save Schapelle Corby blogspot, Neville writes that “a 14-year-old boy, who’s (sic) only real crime was that he was hormonally active… gets enticed to buy marijuana by a drug trafficker who operates in Bali with impunity as an assault on visiting tourists”.

He recommends that the boy be punished by removing his X-Box for a month.

Neville then claims police officers crushed up Ecstasy tablets and put them in Michelle Leslie’s urine.

And that the Bali 9 should be released on the grounds that police murdered the man who took payment for the heroin to stop the money trail leading back to them.

Frankly Neville, I’d like some of the drugs you’re on.

Your claim that Indonesia is “punishing” Australia is actually arse-about.

In the words of one blogger, “Australian tourists need to learn that just because they might come from the west that doesn’t entitle them to completely shit all over another countries laws and authorities and then cry at the government to get them out of it”.

Cheap airfares are a good thing. More than 6-million Australians took a trip overseas last year. And most of us behave like decent, upstanding citizens.

But we don’t want to be known for our export of loud-mouthed bigots.

“Ah the bad Aussie tourist. If you’ve never come across one then you probably are one! There is nothing quite like bumping into “Wozza” (or Shazza) in his (or her) [insert local beer] singlet. They’re usually half sloshed before midday, wandering around looking for an “Aussie” bar “or at least somewhere that speaks bloody English!” Or somewhere that serves “real food, not this bloody [insert local delicacy] shit”, writes Justin Jamieson, publisher of Get Lost! magazine.

Perhaps the most disrespectful incidents occurred during Anzac day commemorations at Gallipoli, leading to a strict alcohol ban.

Young Aussies, who saw it as a slightly more exotic Oktoberfest, were sleeping on war graves and leaving the site strewn with rubbish.

Each year, almost a-thousand Australians are arrested abroad.

Including 28-year-old Julian Lunt, who’s been charged over a Kuta nightclub brawl on Friday night in which four men were stabbed.

Lunt faces up to nine years behind bars over the fight, which allegedly began over a cigarette.

According to the Jakarta Globe, the Bounty nightclub is frequented by tourists drawn by the venue’s cheap, highly-alcoholic drinks served in goldfish bowls.

No doubt we’ll soon see excuses about the venue’s duty of care and the exploitation of innocent tourists.

Now, I’m no saint.

Like most Australians I’ve mucked up overseas.

But if you do the crime, do the time.

And when you travel overseas, remember you are representing your country.

Alongside the undies and the toothbrush, try to pack a healthy dose of respect.

Tracey Spicer is a 2ue broadcaster, Sky News anchor and travel writer with Holidays with Kids magazine.

How good is it to relax on the couch to watch the cricket and – hang on, my phone’s beeping.

Gee, I’d better respond to some of those work emails.

And there are notifications on twitter. Someone’s tagged a photo on facebook. Looks like there’s a job offer via LinkedIn. And I should check out who’s on Google+ while I’m at it.

Seriously, do we ever turn off anymore?

Whatever happened to downtime?

And what’s it doing to our health?

We’re becoming a nation of addicts: Work is the new heroin.

At Christmas lunch, we jostle for the best angle to take a picture of the spread, before sending it via social media to our ‘contacts’ around the world.

Describing the event is more important than experiencing it.

It becomes part of the construct of your ‘brand’.

Life is a blur of snatched conversations, abrupt text messages and perpetual phone hockey.

We listen half-heartedly to our loved ones’ concerns with an ear out for the next interruption.

That beep or red light indicates you’re in demand.

Like an insecure lover, we look surreptitiously to see if our feelings are requited.

Recent research by an HR software company found two-thirds of Australians continue to work while on holidays.

Guilty as charged, Your Honour.

I felt like I’d lost a limb when I couldn’t get a phone signal on a remote island for our 10^th wedding anniversary.

What if someone needed me urgently?

Hubby’s calm response put me in my place: “What’s more important than your wedding anniversary?”

In the quest for the holy grail of work/life balance we’ve sold our souls to the devil, otherwise known as apple.

Technology is blurring the line between work and home like never before.

If you hacked into the computers of most Australians, you’d find work contacts on facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ outnumber friends.

“We’re a nation of workaholics,” according to David Page, managing director of software company NorthgateArinso.

“Australia has a reputation for putting a priority on work/life balance, and we may be losing that with the uncontrolled introduction of technology into the workplace.”

Sure, working from home is a boon to those with small children, and baby boomers caring for elderly parents.

No wonder the ‘sandwich generation’ has embraced it.

I can write an 850 word column for this newspaper while the kids play happily in the background.

Meanwhile, Skype and videoconferencing mean we don’t have to travel so much for work.

But I can’t help but think life was easier when technology was distinct.

In the late 80s there was work technology like mainframes, terminals and disk drives the size of refrigerators; and lifestyle technology like TV, radio, Nintendo, and home phones the size of large dumbbells.

Now, the tools are largely the same.

Soon we’ll be able to watch TV and check our emails on the same screen.

Er, come to think of it, you can do that now. Beam me up, Scotty.

The catch is, it doesn’t make us any better at our jobs.

A study by a university in Rotterdam published in the Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace found, “It is likely that the smartphone with its always-on culture disturbs the important process of recovery and may even lead to a decrease in productivity and performance levels in the long run”.

Much of the addiction is driven by insecurity, both job and personal.

One friend was pleased she’d be the envy of her colleagues when she received a new iPhone 4S through work – only to realise she’d be on call 24/7.

“There’s a bit of believing we’re all indispensible, and we like to feel we’re an important part of the group,” David Page says.

According to the director of the Centre for Work + Life Professor Barbara Pocock, ‘While job insecurity is part of this, there is also an addictive element to the long hours”.

We need to feel needed.

And if we aren’t getting a big enough burst of serotonin from sugar or sex, we’ll search for it elsewhere.

“I’m sooooo busy,” we lament, in a race to see who can have the first breakdown.

One-in-five Australians spends more than 48 hours a week working, yet we’re increasingly unhappy.

And we’re passing it on to the next generation.

Remember the ad where Dad asks his son to get a beer from the fridge?

We’re buying our kids smartphones before they reach puberty: A chip off the ol’ block.

So before you go to that weekend barbie remember to pack the esky, the snags and the beers, and leave the mobile at home.

All work and no play is making our national character a dull boy (or girl, for that matter).

It’s time to bring back the motto “No worries” before it’s too late.

Maybe one day we will see the return of the great Australian weekend.

Tracey Spicer is a 2ue broadcaster, Sky newsreader and principal of spicercommunications.biz

Imagine the confusion on the faces of the three-year-olds at their End of Year Sing-along for parents at the Inner Sydney Montessori School.

(God forbid that they could be called Christmas carols!)

Instead of being allowed to sing, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” their rosebud lips were twisted into wishing everyone a “Happy Holidays”.

They became confused. Eyes welled up. Parents were furious.

The song sheet had been expunged of all reference to the birth of Christ.

“We hope you have a Happy and Safe holiday. We wish you the best joy and zest and a wonderful New Year,” staff wrote.

Talk about the elephant in the room.

They must have spent days working out how to avoid referring to the actual reason for the school break.

Memo Montessori: It’s all about a baby born around, ooh, about 2011 years ago. Christians, who incidentally make up 64 per cent of the population, reckon he’s the Son of God. You know that fat bloke in the red? Well, it ain’t all about the presents.

Happy holidays is an American term popularised in the 1970s to describe anything from Thanksgiving to Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Winter solstice, Christmas Day and the New Year.

Supporters say it’s an ‘inclusive’ response to the growing non-Christian population.

But there’s nothing ‘inclusive’ about the way it’s being interpreted by those at Montessori.

They are excluding the vast majority of Australians.

By choosing a consumerist term like Happy Holidays, they’re playing into the hands of the religious right who believe there’s a War on Christmas being waged by atheists.

Since the start of the new millennium, radio ranters in the United States have been battling those who are “taking the Christ out of Christmas”.

Like the government of Virginia.

In 2005 it hosted Hollydazzle, which sounds like a low-rent porn shop on the Strip.

Instead of a giant Christmas tree, they had a Tree of Illumination.

Hopefully, it shed some light on their folly.

Subsequent litigation scared governments at the local and national level into crucifying Jesus all over again.

(Ah, how history repeats!)

Civil libertarians argued taxpayer-funded Christmas displays violated the constitution, because of the separation of church and state.

In 2006, New York public schools won a court case, allowing them to ban the display of Nativity scenes.

The following year at a school in Canada, children sang a version of “Silver Bells” with “Christmas” replaced by “festive”.

Famed atheist Christopher Hitchens was exultant: “Don’t you find the tinsel and incessant stuff on the radio and the TV, don’t you find it gets you down? Don’t you find it’s cheap and tinselly? I certainly do,” he said.

I despair when it becomes a battle between militant atheists and God’s warriors.

These days, Christmas is a combination of religious and pagan rituals.

Erecting and decorating a tree, hanging wreaths, sending cards, giving presents, hanging mistletoe are all pagan rites; celebrating the birth of Jesus, the Feast of the Nativity and the Incarnation, are Christian traditions.

The point is this: Christmas means different things to different people.

For those in a position of power to remove the bits they don’t like is just plain wrong.

Especially when they’re in charge of children.

Fortunately the tide is turning in the United States.

Department stores like Macy’s have ex-communicated Happy Holidays.

And in Boston, the Mayor has replaced the infamous ‘holiday tree’ with a Christmas tree.

But in the UK, producers of the kids’ TV series Thomas the Tank Engine have just replaced Christmas with “winter holidays”.

And the plague keeps spreading here, with shopping centres, kindergartens, and governments determined to drive a wedge between those of different faiths.

They use the excuse that it might offend immigrants.

But most Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists – and even atheists like myself – aren’t in the least bit upset by Christian celebrations.

In Malaysia depictions of the birth of Christ are on full display, while the term ‘Merry Christmas’ is becoming popular in China and Japan because of the influence of the West.

So before we start singing Frosty the Snowperson, O Little Town of Palestinian Joint Rule, or Vertically Challenged Drummer Child of Indeterminate Gender, let’s remember what we all love about Christmas.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all men, a drink with mates, the neighbourhood barbie, and kids singing your favourite carols out-of-key.

Let us not cast ourselves in the mould of Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding.”

Tracey Spicer is a 2ue broadcaster, Sky News anchor and principal of spicercommunications.biz

It’s been reported international experts are considering labelling video game addiction as a mental health disorder.

What next. Chronic inability to eat your greens?

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from doing the dishes?

Existential angst about exercise?

There are reports of kids as young as 10 fast asleep on their computers, unable to be roused for school, after playing Minecraft all night.

Haven’t their parents heard of boundaries? Discipline? A swift kick up the rear end?

One Sydney mum claims her 13-year-old is so addicted to computer games, he’s only gone to school intermittently over the past two years.

“He starts punching holes through the walls, throwing things around and threatening you … all this has to do with the most addictive game, World of Warcraft,” she says.

No it doesn’t.

All this has to do with you, mum.

You have to show him who’s boss. And you probably should have done it a long time ago.

Life is not one long episode of Freaky Friday.

 This reversal of the parent-child relationship is poisoning the modern family.

And we only have ourselves to blame.

Take the obesity crisis.

Last week, a mother was complaining to me about her son being picked on at school because of his weight, as he shoved an entire bacon and cheese pull-apart down his throat.

“Oh, it’s his favourite afternoon snack. He’s so hungry after a big day at school,” the woman beamed.

She’s literally killing him with kindness.

It’s the same with video games.

Parents allow their kids to go online to socialise with friends, but forget to teach them about the “Off” button.

We ain’t perfect.

But we have set a limit of one hour a week of technology time, aside from homework.

Any more and our son becomes bug-eyed.

Think about any addiction – drugs, alcohol, shopping.

Most people can moderate their behaviour.

For some, it’s impossible.

“Anything pleasurable can become an uncontrolled pattern,” according to psychiatrist Dr. Tanveer Ahmed.

“In kids who become addicted to video gaming, you have to look for an underlying disorder: anxiety, depression, or bullying.”

These are the kids who need to be protected from themselves.

And if parents don’t do it, who will?

In Korea, where 30 percent of the kids are addicted to video games, the government has set up a firewall after midnight.

Do we want to live in a society where Big Brother dictates what we can and can’t watch?

Australian mental health experts want internet addiction to be classified as a disorder, so the government puts money into treatment options.

But I don’t think our taxes should be spent on something that could be cured with one simple word – “No”.

Kids can drive you nuts with their nagging.

Some days, we feel like putting them in front of the electronic babysitter and hiding in the cupboard with a small glass of scotch.

But parenting is a marathon, not a sprint.

We can’t throw our hands in the air and say, “You win. Do whatever you want”.

If we do, we’ll end up with a generation of selfish good-for-nothings whose only achievement is the high score on Grand Theft Auto.

In the words of Dr. Tanveer Ahmed, “Often parents are a bit soft. You’ve just got to be harder”.

Tracey Spicer is a 2ue broadcaster, Sky News anchor and principal of spicercommunications.biz

It was from a second cousin twice removed.

“You’ve got to help,” he pleaded.

“My neighbour knows someone in the UK who knows someone else who knows a lovely couple who want to come and live here and the bl#*dy government won’t let them! Decent folk they are, but they keep getting knocked back. You wouldn’t be able to help them, would you?”

After I gently refused to a) bribe an official from the Immigration Department or b) get a fake visa, the conversation turned ugly.

“I don’t understand why we let those bl#*dy terrorists in on boats, let ‘em live in the lap of luxury, and tell upstanding folk like this to p*#s off!” he lamented.

I was perplexed.

“You don’t know any of these people,” I said. “So why are you accepting one form of illegal immigration and rejecting another?”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“Well, those British folk, they’re just like us, aren’t they. They’re the kind of people we want in this country. Not those, those towel heads who want to blow us up.”

This conversation illustrates the fear and loathing underpinning the asylum seeker debate in this country.

We all have a degree of discomfort with difference.

For some, that degree is greater than others.

This is why we aren’t tub-thumping about the 58,400 who’ve overstayed their visas – many of whom came by plane – while wailing about the 4700 who’ve arrived by boat in the last financial year.

The difference is ethnicity: The majority of those who outstay visitor or tourist visas are British, American, Chinese and South Korean.

We’re accustomed to Asian immigration from the Gold Rush of the 1850s.

Britain is the motherland; American our cultural conquerer.

The Middle East and central Asia are unfamiliar to us, in the same way that the Mediterranean was before the Greek and Italian immigration of the 1950s.

So while we vilify boat people for not paying tax, taking our jobs and clogging our cities, we’re strangely silent on the real illegals.

As Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria chairman Sam Afra says, “There is something wrong with the system, but nobody’s talking about it”.

Psychologists call it cognitive dissonance – the discomfort of holding conflicting ideas simultaneously.

This feeling is reduced by justifying, blaming and denying.

There’s a disconnect between our anger towards boat people, and our apathy about overstayers.

So we justify it by blaming the asylum seekers.

Take terrorism, for example.

Willie Brigitte – who conspired in the plot to bomb the national electricity grid in the cause of violent jihad – breached a tourist visa.

Jailed terrorist cell leader Abdul Benbrika lived illegally for years after arriving on a visitor’s visa.

And Jihad Jack was born here.

None of these men came on a leaky boat like the so-called ‘illegals’ who, actually, are not.

“It is a misconception that people who arrive by boat are illegal immigrants. Australia is obliged to assess asylum seekers’ claims,” Human Rights Commission President Catherine Branson QC says.

There’s no doubt the federal government’s program is a shambles.

The fact that taxpayers’ money is being wasted fuels community outrage.

But we need to overhaul the entire immigration system, rather than vilifying the poor souls who risk their lives at sea.

Yes, security checks must be more rigorous; successful applicants should hold a required skill set; and migrants need to learn the language.

But first we need to find those who exploit the system by arriving on a plane then staying illegally.

Instead of terrified phone calls in the dead of night, we should be having a frank discussion in the cold hard light of day about those who fly under the radar.