Blacktown Police: not Sports Star struck.

http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/blacktown-police-facebook-page-post-about-phillip-hughes-causes-online-uproar/story-fnii5s3x-1227139185859

Got to say I don't agree with Cops very often But I definitely agree with this and thought similar when I saw the 3 flags including (national State and Indigenous) at half mast. He played cricket he was very good at it and by all accounts a great guy....
But Half mast flags are meant for national tragedies and as he wasn't indigenous not sure if they should have half masted that one.

The administrator of the Blacktown LAC page responded to the criticism by asking why state flags were lowered for Hughes’ death but not for people who die “in the service of this great country”.
Blacktown police have come under fire over a Facebook post.

Blacktown police have come under fire over a Facebook post. Source: News Limited

“Or perhaps someone could explain to the relatives or the men and women why flags were not lowered to half mast for national heroes as opposed to sporting heroes,” the response said.

Mind you I dont know how many Aussies get masses said in the Vatican for them

THE Vatican cricket team will attend a mass in Rome for Phillip Hughes, as family and friends prepare to farewell him in his home town of Macksville on the NSW mid-north coast. The Vatican Cricket XI, or St Peter’s Cricket Club, will attend along with representatives from the Pontifical Council for Culture and supporters of the Vatican team.

      THE ELEVATION by the mass media and gov't circles of sporting identities above such genuine "national heroes" as soldiers killed in action, as well as police on duty, ambulance officers and firies, and volunteers from various rescue and lifesaving agencies; isn't the only example of newspaper and TV services getting their priorities so "arse 'round"...

ALSO consider such other examples as:

* THE Ebola scare -
AT the same time as less than 6000 people died from Ebola so far this year ~ over a million will have died from Malaria, nearly a million from influenza, and hundreds of thousands each from car accidents, cigarette smoking, and AIDS infections..

* Terrorist Attacks -
The truth remains that anyone reading this probably has less chance of encountering a terrorist attack than falling under a bus or tripping down the stairs at home ! And then, of course there is the disproportionate and biased reporting of incidents in America or Europe while much bigger massacres were occurring at the same time in central and western Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan..

* Natural Disasters -
EVEN THOUGH floods and landslides, cyclones  and hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis, forest fires and the likes, will kill more people in any year than all of the wars and terrorist attacks combined, they often still only get a fraction of the news coverage ~ and over a shorter duration..

* Man-Made disasters -
CONSIDER how much and how many times over the last century, the various "news" services and various government departments have been complicit in "cover ups" and glossing over such corporate outrages, the likes of ~
+ Hiding the dangers from Tobacco smoking;
+ DDT, dieldrin and chlordane;
+ Exposure of British servicemen to atomic tests in the 1950s;
+ PCB spills in northern Japan in the 1960s;
+ Unnecessary use of unhealthy (and often hidden) food additives;
+ Dangers from asbestos, lead, mercury and heavy metals exposure were known but hidden away for decades before becoming "public knowledge" over the 1960's, '70s and '80s;
+ Union Carbides gas leaks in Bhopal, India back around 1980;
+ GMOs in foods;
+ "Fracking" technology being used to extract Shale oil and Coal Seam gas..

AND the lists go on...