Except for Ant Rogenous, who spent the day making treasonous foodstuffs, the country has spent the weekend getting misty-eyed over ANZAC day.

That’s fine and everything, but the reality is that many, many more Australians have died at work than in any war, and that globally the numbers of people dying in their workplace is staggering. Many more Australian families will have lost loved ones to the dangers of ordinary jobs than to the guns of the Taliban.

In 2006-2007 alone, 270 people died while in paid employment in Australia, according to the Australian Safety and Compensation Council. The ILO estimates the annual global figure for work-related deaths to be upwards of two million. As they put it:

One death every fifteen seconds. Six thousand a day. Work kills more people than wars. And it injures and mutilates, too. Almost 270 million accidents are recorded each year.

Apart from death at work, there are countless injuries, maimings, and episodes of psychological distress. Often, these are caused because employers have failed to ensure that workplaces are safe. Anyone who counts themselves a leftist should be concerned with making sure that a safe workplace is available to every single worker, and getting angry when it isn’t.

Tomorrow is Worker’s Memorial Day, an international day of commemoration for those who have died at work. Unlike ANZAC day, it’s not a national(ist) celebration, but one that’s marked all over the world.

There are many events happening in Australia, many at lunch time. Try to get to one if you can, or at least pause for a moment’s thought.

Brisbane
9.30am Rally and March from Queens Park (Cnr George, Mary and William Street, City) to Parliament. ACTU President Sharan Burrow to address rally at Parliament.
Details: Tania Reeves QCU: (07) 3846 2468

Melbourne
10.30am Victorian Trades Hall Council will hold a joint ceremony with Industrial Deaths, Support and Advocacy Inc. at Argyle Square,(off Lygon St) Construction unions will also hold a rally and stop work at 10am on the steps of Trades Hall.
Details: VTHC (03) 9659 3511

Sydney
One minute silence across NSW building sites (various times) and an event at 12.30pm at Reflection Park, Little Pier St, Darling Harbour opposite Sydney
Entertainment Centre.
Details: Claire Johnston, Unions NSW, (02) 9881 9112

Canberra
10am Memorial Service 189 Flemington Road Mitchell (Parking off Lysaght Street)
Details: Unions ACT (02) 6247 7844

Perth
9.30am Gathering at the Perth Esplanade, opposite the Bell Tower, March to Solidarity Park, Parliament House for official commemoration.
Details: CFMEU (08) 9221 1055

Adelaide
10am Ecumenical Church Service at Baptist Church, 65 Flinders Street, Adelaide
11am CFMEU rally, Victoria Park.
Details: SA Unions (08) 8279 2222

Tasmania
11am Memorial Service in main auditorium, Baha’i Centre of Learning 1 Tasman Highway, (behind ABC Hobart)
Details: Susan Wallace, Unions Tas, (03) 62349553

Darwin
A minutes silence in workplaces – May Day 1 May.
Details Union NT: Melinda Simpson (08) 89 415712

When planning funerals today, the cosmically awful Bette Midler rendition of Wind beneath my Wings is thankfully OUT – and funky groovy hip rad mad toonz with a hidden or sarcastic message are, like, IN:

It’s unlikely a mournful sombre mood could prevail through a funeral rendition of Ding Dong the Witch is Dead. But this was a last musical message played at a final farewell in South Australia and it is part of an increasing trend away from hymns towards popular, rock and novelty songs, a leading funeral provider says.

Other funeral ceremonies have been accompanied by the blaring rock tones of Another One Bites The Dust, Stairway to Heaven or even Highway to Hell.

Personally, I think I’d go for American Pie. It’s so long that it would drag the whole thing out painfully; it harks back to my mispent youth of country pubs and cover bands; and the lyrics would leave everyone scratching their heads about why the hell I chose it. All of these things would make me happy in the afterlife (if I actually believed in such a thing).

What would Grods-plodders go for?

Riding my bike to work this morning I scored the double whammy of bicyclist experiences: abuse and near death.

First I was riding up a suburban one-way street (the right way) and preparing to turn right where the road met another at a T-intersection. The dude in the car behind me leaned out the window and yelled, “Get out of the middle of the road, dickhead!” You see, my crime was that I’m apparently supposed to give way to vehicles behind me.

Then I was cruising down a major-ish road in the bike lane when a car turned left into a side street right in front of me without indicating. I was so busy screeching my tires and fighting to keep control of the bike that I didn’t have time to extend a middle finger and yell some combination of swear words at him.

Sometimes I just can’t shake the impression that people in cars hate my guts and want me dead. All I want to do is get to work.

Not only do they run away, but they get sick too. One day Napoleon looks a little lethargic and is off his food, and the next morning he looks like he’s about to slip away to the big scratching post in the sky.

So you take some time off work, borrow your friend’s car, take the cat to the vet, hold him still while the vet shoves a thermometer up his arse, inspect the holes in your t-shirt from the cat’s claws that appear while the thermometer was shoved up arse, hold him still while the vet gives him a needle in the back of his leg, inspect the holes in your skin from the cat’s claws that appear while the needle was inserted in his leg, hand over your credit card for it to be violated, and further torture cat for next eight days with pills shoved down his throat.

And what gratitude do you get from the little shit in return? None. Not even a thankyou.

Great story in the paper about a cat-of-death in the USA:

OSCAR the cat makes his grand entrances just as life is about to leave.

A hop onto the bed, a fastidious lick of the paws, then a snuggle beside a nursing home patient with little time left.

“He’s a cat with an uncanny instinct for death,” said David Dosa, assistant professor at the Brown University School of Medicine and a geriatric specialist. “He attends deaths. He’s pretty insistent on it.”

In the two years since Oscar was adopted into the dementia unit of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, he has maintained close vigil over the deaths of more than 25 patients, according to nursing staff, doctors who treat patients there and an essay written by Dr Dosa, published in yesterday’s New England Journal of Medicine.When death is near, Oscar nearly always appears at the last hour or so. Yet he shows no special interest in patients who are simply in poor shape or even patients who may be dying but who still have a few days.

I am the angel of death

(Do you like the way I surreptitiously managed to sneak in a Friday Napoleon post by disguising it as bizarre news commentary?)

UPDATE: I Can Has Cheezburger? has a lolcat take on the death cat story.