NEWS THIS WEEK 8 AUGUST 2011

On the weekend Nathalie from Easy Peasy Kids featured in various news sites showing us how easy it is for someone to build a fake profile on Facebook and friend over 70 friends in a short time. Her aim was to show parents just how pervasive social media websites such as Facebook can be.

Similarly an anonymous user also created a fake facebook page using a teacher’s photo and name and set about trying to portray him as a paedophile.

What do you think of the 10 year old French model Thylane Lena-Rose Blondeau who made headlines last week for posing in magazines dressed as a woman thrice her age?

Remember Maddison Gabriel? In 2007 Maddison, then 13 years old, was named as Gold Coast’s Face of Fashion Week much to everyone’s dismay.

I blogged about it on my other Mum’s Word blog.

I didn’t know what’s happened to Maddison so I googled her name and a news article from 2008 came up saying that an American paedophile, Martin Robertson, requested newspaper articles on Maddison as research for his book.

Maddison’s mother, obviously horrified, accused the media of sensationalizing her daughter’s modeling career and bringing her to the attention of Robertson.

But Hetty Johnston, founder and executive director of child protection group Bravehearts, said Mrs Gabriel had an unrealistic take on the situation.
“If your child is taking part in Gold Coast Fashion Week and the media are going to report on it, well, they’re also going to report on the models, aren’t they?” Ms Johnston said.

I came across this UK article that created some new buzz words SMOG (Smug Mother of Girls) and DMOB (Defensive Mother of Boys) and this article just makes me sad. Nothing good can come of this. Nothing.

But an article in smh.com.au illustrates that the mother-daughter relationship is generally more tricky than the mother-son relationship.

Mothers are twice as likely to be critical of daughters as they are of sons, according to a British survey published last year.
It’s not unusual for women to describe daughters as extensions of themselves, and most bring the baggage of their own childhood.

And now onto our groceries. Sexy subject I know. But I read three things this week that made piqued my interest.

The first is people substituting expensive bananas for cheap carrots when they check their groceries through the self serve checkouts.

Tattoomummy and I chatted about it on Twitter and we both agreed that it is stealing and we even came up with the crazy notion that if you can’t afford bananas buy other fruit. Tattoomummy suggested apples and mandarins. Though she did point out that she buys her bananas from a farmers market at half the price of the supermarkets.

The second, Kelloggs due to increased production costs to have decided to shrink the size of their cereal boxes, while remaining the same price, instead of increasing prices and keeping the cereal boxes at the same weight. Mr Lucy said Kellogg’s was reducing size rather than increasing price as “we didn’t want to hit consumers in their pocket when they get to the checkout”.

I think I can see the merit in this but my kids don’t understand portion control and that box of cereal in my house will just run out sooner forcing me to buy another box….or perhaps I can bake my own bread and we can all have toast for breakfast.

The third story isn’t surprising at all. Cakes sold in our leading supermarkets are riddled with additives that cause hyperactivity in children, a consumer investigation has found.
The Australian Consumer Association, Choice tested 97 cakes in Coles and Woolworths and found two Woolworths bakery cakes to be the worst offenders.

Yep, baking at home is sounding a whole lot more attractive right now.

1 Comment

  • At 2011.08.09 21:37, Grace said:

    Great news updates !
    I am living evidence that mother/daughter relationships are far more tricky… and yes, yes, yes…they are far more critical of daughters than sons !!! (I feel another blog post coming on…)
    Carrots over bananas is definitely stealing. But it’s the supermarkets’ fault for changing their system to a less customer friendly one (even though more cost-effective for them) and for charging a bomb for bananas !!!
    Okay, off the soapbox now…

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