Possum takes on Andrew Bolt on the topic of his distorted and inflammatory misuse of statistics:
Andrew Bolt has been banging on about Africans again- Sudanese and Somalian born Africans in particular and their crime rates compared to the Victorian population as a whole. It stems back to some arsehattery about how Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon might have produced statistics that Bolt found misleading on the issue of Sudanese migrant crime rates in Victoria last year – stats that she gave in response to a Kevin Andrews spiel about the same.
I like Possum’s analysis for its nuance, but I can’t help but wonder about the question of poverty, and where that fits in all this? I mean, the distinct offender rates are very high when compared to the population as a whole, but what about when we factor in information that has bearing on socio-economic status, like income level, education and location. Perhaps comparing to the population as a whole is one of the main barriers to nuanced analysis here?
Where’s the thingo that says no. of comments so you can click onto it.
As for Bolt’s racism. all I can say is, I hope he doesn’t go on about this on Insiders. at least when he’s being a climate change denialist, he’s only making himself look stupid. But this stuff is dangerous. I haven’t forgotten the Hanson years and don’t many other Lp-ers have either.There’s no place for incitement to racism in our society.
Bolt is so paranoid he has to blame Christine Nixon for Howard’s defeat? Come on! Pull the other one.
Bolt describing Kevin Andrews and “honest man” after his behaviour around the Haneef saga last year says all we need to know about his credibility and grasp of reality.
Possum says “These are extraordinary numbers by any yardstick and point to not only dysfunction within the community itself, but the abject failure of existing Federal and State government funded (and independent community sector) migrant support services.”
I haven’t read what Andrew Bolt wrote. Did he say stuff that was a lot different to what Possum said?
Also, why might the Government and independent community sector support services not been as successful with this particular migrant group?
Apparently Possum is as big a racist as Bolt – looking at the stats in that way. Dangerous, dangerous talk. Definitely an incitement to racism charge should be brought against them both. Fortunately Possum at least has the decency to point the finger to the real culprit here – the government.
The writer of that piece doesn’t deny the main point in Bolt’s article: that Christine Nixon used the stats in a misleading way, while denying there exists a problem in those particular (Somali and Sudanese) communities. In fact, when you remove the personal attacks on Bolt and his readership, what you are left with is actually an endorsement of what Bolt wrote.
The real issue ‘Possum’ seems to have is that Bolt should not alert the wider community to these stats – however true they may be – lest they make the situation worse. This is the attitude assumed by Police Command, which dropped ‘assaulting police’ charges against four Sudanese youths. Senior police have since apologised to the arresting officers for not consulting them first.
“The problem is that the rest of us have to live with the fallout of the steaming little turds he leaves on the carpet of public opinion….”
Priceles.
The main criticism of Bolt in the Possum post is that he doesn’t moderate racist comments particularly well (besides some general broadsides against tabloids, etc.).
The only difference in the points they make is that Bolt says we should cut immigration, while Possum blames the government failing to coordinate migration resources.
Thanks Tony.
Is discussing the statistics really going to make things worse?
I’m no expert however I think a lot of the support for Pauline Hanson came about because she said things that many people felt were not allowed to be said. She may or may not have been accurate but not letting people say things means facts can’t get a look in. Once people know more information they may see things more clearly but when people don’t feel entitled to a contrary opinion they may close up and their feelings fester.
Is the fear that people will see the statistics and feel differently towards a particular migrant group? If so, I wouldn’t think that people who live alongside the migrant community would need to see the stastics to know there is an issue.
But that’s a big difference Leon – Bolt appears to believe that Somalians are inherently more likely to commit crimes, hence shouldn’t be allowed into the country. Possum is arguing that, yes, they are committing crimes at an above-average rate, but that’s entirely the fault of governments here. I actually think both positions are a bit extreme: it’s not at all unlikely, given their background, that Somalians are inherently (I’m not assuming genetically, although it’s conceivable) more likely to commit crimes, and if Governments fail to recognise this and give special attention to such groups, then there will continue to be elevated levels of crime. But there certainly seems no reason to assume that we as a society (and a species) would be better off by keeping Somalians out of our country.
I’m quite willing to bet that once Somalians have been here long enough, crime rates among 3rd and 4th generation Somalian groups will be no greater than average, just as (I believe) is the case for every previous migrant group.
What about adjusting for sex? Is there are higher percentage of men in the Somali community? If young men are more likely to commit crime (which may or may not be the case, I don’t know, but I’d like to), a higher proportion in a given community could also explain a higher proportion of that population committing crimes. For me, there are two few unanswered questions still to draw the same conclusions as Possum (or Bolt).
‘too’ rather than ‘two’, and ‘many’ rather than ‘few’
need sleep
(Btw, I can’t find any stats backing up my claim about 3rd/4th generation immigrants – however apparently some studies out of the US have shown that in some areas 3rd generation immigrants commit more crime than 1st generation immigrants, which, if true, is curious).
James – these things are indeed dangerous, yet as Marlin said – to not talk about them is to vacate the field for bigotry and ignorance and the likes of Bolt, where we get the observable reality of statistics – but bastardised as it’s pushed through the prism of Bolt’s business model; herding the eyeballs of the intolerant into advertising based on pushing the buttons of his audience and stroking their prejudices.
.
When you actually look at what’s happening in the Somalian community in Victoria via the crime numbers, we see a community that is not statistically different from the broader Victorian community except for the ages of 10-30. Maybe I should have been more explicit in pointing that out in the article since it is an enormous difference between Bolt’s view of all SOmalians being dangerous and we should tell them to bugger off and my own view which is far removed from that sort of horseshit.
.
Surely the numbers highlighting the profound difference between young Somalian migrants and the broader Somalian and Victorian community gives us an insight into where some resources might need to be deployed – especially since a fair chunk of this community migrated through the humanitarian refugee program? If we think that our humanitarian refugee program should stop after we let them through the gate and tell them to sink or swim, then quite frankly we’re a nation of idiots.
.
Klaus, there’s slightly more females than males – the census has it at 1382 female to 1241 male.
Klaus is right to mention poverty, but it seems to me that there’s another very obvious factor at work – race. Cops target ethnic minorities. A friend of mine was running a student newspaper in Victoria Uni in Footscray in the 90s and he ran a survey on Asian students and the cops. After interviewing a couple of 100 students (randomly chosen in the cafeteria) he was astonished to find there wasn’t a single one who didn’t have a tale/complaint of police harrassment. And these weren’t members of street gangs, they were uni students. If that was the experience of Asian students in Foostcray. how much worse is it likely to be for Africans? More importantly, how is this likely to be reflected in the crime statistics given that crime statistics measure, not crime as such, but police activity.
Having hung out a Bolt’s blog for several years (and been banned from commenting, I now post there under a different pseudonym) I can tell you he is unambiguously a racist. Mind you, he reckons Greens are Nazis as well. Nothing is beneath him.
“Klaus, there’s slightly more females than males – the census has it at 1382 female to 1241 male.”
Cheers, Possum. So that answers that question.
What about poverty? That seems an obvious area which needs to be accounted for: are young Somalians over-represented in crime stats when compared to those with similar levels of income, education, or who are concentrated in the same areas? I’m asking a lot here, but for me these are essential questions if we are to determine whether this is a genuine problem for this group as such – and requires programs targeted at supporting Somalians specifically – or if we might see similar variation were we to look at any delimited group in the same socio-economic position.
Unfortunately Klaus (or fortunately if you dont like nosey people like us poking around in your anonymous socio-economic business), the Census data doesn’t allow us to cross tabulate country of birth with income in the way we would need to look into the poverty issues involved. The Victorian crime data certainly doesn’t, only having age, sex and origin on distinct offenders being publically available.
But I’m with you – education and income would probably account for a good chunk of the higher incidence of crime. But in the age cohort of 15-19 where more than 1 in 10 Somalians in Victoria that age are recorded as a distinct offender in the crime stats (that is a really extraordinary number). I would be really surprised if education and income made up even half the difference compared to the broader population.
.
I can’t emphasise how startlingly high that number is in the general social statistics scheme of things.
.
The only way to find out would be to gather that data independently and go from there.
Thanks, Possum. Given that I’m unlikely to do that work myself, I’ll have to keep my eyes open for anybody who does. Of course, one of the things that an approach like Bolt’s will preclude, if it gains political traction, is just that sort of close investigation of the problem, it’s nature and actual scale.
Another interesting question might be the types of crime: presumably if these are proportionally different to those committed community-wide then this will also give some indication of the nature of the problems faced by Somalians in Australia.
That too would be excellent data Klaus, but yet again the Victorian police don’t release offence type by birth origin. This is probably the most dangerous part of this sort of thing – we just don’t have the full data we need, being forced instead to make do with second best data. But the more simple the data, the more likely it is to be abused by simpletons.
Without wanting to appear to defend Bolt, I would say that Nixons deliberate fudging of the figures is what makes this a story. If all it is was Bolt off on a racist tangent, then most people would have no trouble condemning it.
Nixon either through stupidity or coverup attempted to mix 2 similar (not identical) sets of figures and declare she was right and Bolt was wrong on the crime figures.
Without touching on any of the other issues people have brought up here (poverty/etc.), it does seem better to grant Bolt this one “gotcha”, and chalk it up to Nixons desire to cover her ass after apparently lying over the figures when Bolt brought them up last year (?).
Then fight the racism battle as a seperate issue. Defending Nixon when she has made an error (deliberate or accidental) just because it might make Bolt or his supporters happy is a bit of a waste of time.
Klaus, when you say “Of course, one of the things that an approach like Bolt’s will preclude, if it gains political traction, is just that sort of close investigation of the problem, it’s nature and actual scale” what do you mean?
Do you mean that if the government cuts back the numbers of immigrants from Somalia we wont need an investigation or do you mean that an investigation would be deemed too sensitive because the government won’t want to admit there is an issue, or did you mean neither of those things?
What I mean is, Bolt’s way of framing the debate gives no space for thinking about the nature of the problem or any of the finer points about scale, or even about what the available data doesn’t tell us. I meant ‘political traction’ broadly in the sense of occupying a lot of space in public debate and being felt by politicians to require urgent response rather than the formulation of considered policy.
By contrast, Possum teases out the nuance of the stats and shows that it’s actually a quite particular group within that community. This is the kind of detail that is important to good policy formation, I would think.
Thanks Klaus. I agree.
I now work with refugees, including a range of new communities from African countries, albeit not in Victoria, and my state does not have a significant number of Somalians.
There are a range of reasons why some refugee populations or subsets thereof end up over-represented in the statistics. Nearly all of them, but particularly the Africans, often struggle to make the leap from Centrelink to employment due to patchy or little education, trauma and extreme culture shock – and of course, a great deal of racism and discrimination. Many of our African refugees include families who have children who have known nothing but refugee camps. They have had no opportunity for education, the camps were not safe, there was no recognisable social structure in them that translates to living in Australia, and violence is often a norm. So imagine knowing nothing but an unsafe, unsanitary AFrican refugee camp as your home, a place you reached after the deaths or loss of many of your family, a place where you get a meal a day and school may or may not exist, and a place that may well be regularly attacked by groups fighting in the area. Now imagine coming directly from there to Australia. How well do you think you would adapt?
One thing that happens to many refugee families when they arrive in Australia is often family breakdown. Children typically adapt faster than their parents to the new culture which causes instant tension. Kids find out they have rights which directly challenge how most traditional African families operate where the father is the head of the household and his actions are unquestionable. Now all of a sudden he ahs no status, can’t get a job, and his kids are learning the new culture twice as fast. Domestic violence is another tension that often erupts. The fact that we give Centrelink payments to kids over 16 means that all of a sudden to the kids don’t just have rights, they can ignore mum and dad and strike out on their own. This completely contravenes African family models. So we get refugee kids leaving home, often supported by social services, forming their own groups and relationships, and like most teens, it frequently leads to trouble. On top of all this, they may have very limited social skills and grown up in unsafe conditions where if someone threatens you in any way, you make sure they can’t walk by the time you’re finished.
I’m painting broad-brush, but I would hope it’s not too hard for most LP readers to understand, what with the extremes that refugees go through before they get here, and the severe disadvantages they face in virtually all aspects of their life, why young men from a war-torn country might find themselves in trouble with the law a lot here.
And I haven’t even gone into just how different our laws are to learn and adapt to; many of them are quite literally nonsensical to many African cultures. My favourite recent example – a cop here arrested a young African man driving without a licence. He was cautioned and the law was explained to him. He looked at us like we were insane and said ’so you’re telling me if I buy a car like I did, I can’t drive it?’.
Cultureshock, and the rapidity with which it is expected that refugees learn how to live and succeed in Australia, are probably the two biggest factors that are hard to quantify but form the biggest challenges. They pervade every aspect of life, starting with language.
and btw, just so you have an understanding of just how damaging comments like Kevin Andrews’ were – African communities I work with are still talking about it, and the hurt and fear it caused is palpable. For people who have suffered severe persecution, as basically all our African refugees have, his comments re-traumatised people. And there was an immediate spike in racist attacks against African refugees. Yes, it’s anecdotal because many are still too afraid to report such incidents to the police, but every African community I deal with tells me categorically, and can go through precisely what happened before and after those comments.
So racist scum comments like Andrews’ and Bolts’ cause real mental and physical pain to people who have already survived conditions we can’t even imagine, and they directly embolden the racist scum in our society to act on their fantasies. It is beyond despicable.
Thank you for that myriad.
What measures do you recommend, what do you think should be done and how?
This isn’t OT: We live in Canberra. We had a bloke called Angelo do a couple of hours a week around our garden some years ago. Angelo was employed as a gardener at Government House when Sir William Deane was GG. Angelo was due to retire in 2001 and expressed to me a few weeks before the event his real anxiety: that he’d lost his Government House spade – I’m serious here, not gilding the lily and indeed, he was mightily anxious that he’d be held to account for not returning the spade on his last day at work.
Anyway, what happened is that Angelo got a farewell ceremony on the day of his retirement that Sir William and Lady Deane both attended and – you guessed it – one of his parting gifts was that the GG’s office had had his spade silver-plated.
Now, when I look at the people I want to inhabit Australia with, it is people like the William Deanes and the Possums and the people like “myriad” in this thread.
I don’t really want to be in the same country as “Tony of South Yarra” or “Andrew” in the thread of a few days ago.
It’s a case of instinct and decency, not political alignment that matters. Full marks and every best wish to Possum. No marks to “Tony of South Yarra” who, for what I care, could sensibly take the Harold Holt route.
Could be that their skin colour has a lot to do with the crime stats. These kids may be getting into trouble with the law for petty crimes like public drunkenness for which white kids might only get a warning. I understand this accounts for the over representation of Aboriginal people in crime stats.
Having said that, I agree with Myriad’s comments. Most of these people have never known what it’s like to live a “normal” life where they are safe, have decent accommodation, jobs, access to education and don’t have to live in a constant state of terror. I’m not surprised that when they are finally in a place that offers them the “normal” life that we take for granted, they start to fall apart.
We as a society have to give them an enormous amount of support as they gradually adjust to lives not filled with the constant and ever-present threat of violence and death.
Soldiers returning from war zones often find it very difficult to pick up their lives as if they’d just been on a holiday and they’re returning to their own culture. These poor devils not only have to make the adjustment to peacetime when all they’ve known is war and violence, but also have to learn to live in a totally foreign culture. I think they’re doing a remarkable job.
At least Bolt didn’t go into a racist rant about Africans on Insiders this morning. I was fearful he would. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t his usual terrible self – he was – in any case one would hope the other journalists wouldn’t have let him get started.
I have a friend who works with settling African refugees in Victoria. I think she’s back up everything myriad has to say. She’s also mentioned to me that one the difficulties is that refugees get settled in poorer suburbs which already have overburdened social services, which doesn’t help the refugees much either. They have hig needs that simply aren’t being met.
The difficulty in living in a country full of William Deane’s is; There would be nobody to foot the bills.
Hi Hannah’s Dad, sorry to take a bit to get back to you. Some might be surprised to know I work for DIAC; but I’ve only been doing so for a few months, so please bear this in mind with regard to whether I have the best insight vis. what to do to help our refugees settle. So I’ll try not to talk philosophy, and talk more some of the practical barriers I’ve already seen that we could do something about, big and small:
– ps these are in no particular order.
– modify the Adult Migrant English Program to be much more flexible & therefore give people the hours of english learning they need. At the moment it’s a fixed 510 hours per adult, plus an allowance of a 100+ more hours if required (eg big literacy & numeracy issues). The reality is some refugees take much more, and some take a lot less. I’m pleased to say that Evans, Ferguson and Rudd have already commissioned a review of the AMEP which will be delivered shortly, and I am very hopeful this will be one of the key outcomes. Another necessary modification for the AMEP is to tailor it more towards helping people get work – work literacy is very different from conversational english – eg ‘occupational health and safety’.
– once humanitarian entrants are granted entry to Australia, they are automatically permanent residents. As such, they get treated like all other P.R. This looks good until you remember they arrive comparatively disadvantaged to everyone bar the poorest in our country. So barriers such as expecting them to pay their HECS up front to be able to attend university or full fees for TAFE course need to go.
– equally as important, the ridiculous restrictions on Centrelink, which mean that if you study part-time you lose half your entitlement, which means of course it’s unliveable, need to go. Most of our humanitarian entrants who want to pursue uni are severely disadvantaged by this. They would have a far greater chance of success if they could ease into our tertiary academic environment through part-time study, without this meaning they have to find work at the same time. This plus the HECs / fees form formidable barriers for our newest community members pursuing recognised Australian qualifications, which lead to jobs.
– revamp Australia’s overseas qualification recognition system, and introduce more fast-track transition courses. For eg, no doubt a Tanzanian trained nurse would not meet Australian standards, but they do have the fundamentals and a, say, 18 month refresher/retrain is vastly more appropriate than sending them back to the beginning, which is what happened now – I thought we had a skills shortage?
– give DIAC the power to audit and enforce access & equity for all government depts, including state government payments. Language is a massive barrier for our newest community members, and most gov’t agencies don’t give their staff cross-cultural awareness training & competencies, and either don’t fund or massively skimp on interpreting & translating services.
– ensure that cross-cultural competency training is delivered by independent accredited professionals to all police, GPs and dentists as a starting point. Just as there is a Doctor’s priority interpreting line paid for the by the Feds, so there should be for policing as well. I’d make a bet that this alone would reduce the amount of ‘crime’ by newly arrived migrants.
– along the same line, introduce for the Australian Translating & Interpreting Service (TIS) a base annual stipend for interpreters, to make it worth their while accrediting. At the moment it costs about $1000 to be an accredited interpreter, and you are only paid by what work you do – $75/hour for telephone and $150/hr for on-site. What this means for people in small language groups is there is no incentive at all to find the $1k to get accredited, and many services rely on relatives, or unaccredited interpreters – or we simply don’t have them available for certain languages. Yet the expectation is that interpreters be available at least by phone essentially 24/7. A stipend of say $5k a year would be greatly beneficial.
– improve and lengthen the orientation to Australia courses run in overseas posts for people accepted to come here. There are clearly big problems.
– increase fed gov’t funding for settlement services to cover a mandatory 12 months, not 6; and increase funding for settlement programs that cover humanitarian entrants from 12 months to 5 years. Basically we outsource the initial settlement service to providers like Centacare (don’t get me started on the secular/faith-based service thing), and in those first 6 months an incredible amount of information and orientation is crammed in; so much that you can imagine much is lost. Many families don’t cope at all well when the 6 monnts ends, and end up being covered by the Settlement Grants program, which is much more ad-hoc and limited in budget. Covering every entrant for 12 months would be much more realistic.
– build more public housing as fast as possible. The housing crisis has had a profound impact on the ability of new arrivals to settle.
– reduce the intake of skilled migrants (about 40,000 would do it I reckon) and divert the money saved from that bureaucracy into allowing more places for family members of refugees accepted by Australia, and to increase services and training opportunities for them.
– ensure that cross-cultural awareness training in mandatory in all schools & run by appropriate bodies, and fund more initiatives based on the Boston Dialogues model to break down racism in the neighborhoods where refugees settle.
that’s my initial wish-list.
Thanks for the comprehensive list myriad. Do you think there is anything that the migrant community itself could do to better assist themselves?
What did you have in mind, marlin?
I honestly have no idea klaus. I just thought that given the likelihood that the government won’t fund myriad’s wishlist there may be some things the refugees can do help themselves.
Thanks myriad.
A whole lot more worthwhile stuff there than we would get at certain other sources of ‘information’.
And “don’t get me started on the secular/faith-based service thing” is something I well understand having seen some ’stuff’ in service provision not related to immigrants.
“the ridiculous restrictions on Centrelink, which mean that if you study part-time you lose half your entitlement …”
Myriad, is there some special rule for humanitarian entrants and/or permanent residents? For Australian citizens, you can happily study part-time for years on end while claiming Newstart, at the full rate (not that that’s a king’s ransom).
Paulus, I think so – but I’m still getting to know the intricacies involved. Permanent Residents do not get the same access to Centrelink as Citizens. Which is why increasing the time you have to wait to become a citizen (from 2 year to 4) has had very serious consequences for humanitarian entrants in particular. It significantly decreases their ability to help themselves, through such things as pursuing education.
Marlin – most of our new communities pretty quickly organise themselves into associations, work together to support new arrivals, and are encouraged to learn how to advocate to government (ier politicians in particular). The best thing I think they can do is learn to lobby well and work together. Older migrant communities working with new ones is also effective, but takes some give on both sides.
But remember we are talking refugees. They arrive with their clothes on their back and that’s it, quite literally, for the vast majority. Learning Australia as fast as they can and adapting as best they can is an enormous task that takes years. I also want it to be very clear that every refugee comes here desperate to work. They do not lack motivation in my experience, unless really struggling with PTSD or similar. Heck even if most of my wish-list went unanswered, a more supportive and tolerant Australian community that would put more job opportunities their way would make a hell of a difference.
Possum, I know this is a worthless post but for the record… nice one mate…seriously
LP is a forum who’s contributers are way,way beyond my level of education… but I know what I like
I like what you do
It’s quite simple. Kudos to Possum for exposing that Andrew Bolt simply demonstrated what is wrong with comparing apples with oranges.
This issue is disturbing me on a number of levels.
First, as Possum’s graphs show, there is a distinct crime problem amongst a particular cohort of Somalian refugees. As has been said, that is almost certainly related to the complex interaction of factors such as the violence they were exposed to in their homelands, poverty, family breakup and the difficulty of adjusting to life in a country that has little in common with Somalia, and were already stretched support services are struggling to cope with the scale of the adjustment problem they face.
The main dispute between Possum and Bolt is obviously not the actual figures, but the use of those figures. Bolt, in his reactionary way, uses the figures to stir anti-Somali sentiment amongst his readers. As far as I can tell, nowhere in his comments does Bolt remind his readers of the harrowing backrounds of Somalian refugees, or plead for extra support be given to help them adjust. Possum, and some of the commentators on this blog, add that needed nuance.
However, I have two concerns with Possum’s piece that I would like people to comment on. First, is the following statement:
“We’re only talking about a community of 2600 people, if we can’t fix this we probably couldn’t find our arse with a map.”
What concerns me is that statements like this play down the scale of the problem. How easy is it really to fix these sorts of problems? What proportion of volunteers or social services professionals in Australia have extensive experience dealing with the nature of the problems of young Somalis in Australia? Is there a record of succesful programs for other ethnic groups than can be replicated for Somalis? I’m not an expert in this area, but I would like to hear here from those that are.
Second, I worry that articles like Possum’s aren’t particularly constructive – at least in terms of improving politcal discourse in this country, or even helping the issue at hand. Sure, they make centre-lefties like most of us feel better – that Bolt and his followers is a racist git and all that. But surely what we are most worried about (apart from the welfare of Somalis themselves) is that Bolt’s views are likely to reflect sentiment of a lot of ordinary Australians. People that don’t read blogs, don’t read nuanced reports, but do worry about the safety of the communities they live in.
Aren’t we really in a battle for the hearts and minds of such people? Don’t we want to convice them that the problem can best be dealth with by more support, rather than cutting down on migrant intakes from Somalia? Do we think that Crikey polemics are the best way to do that?
I’m sorry Possum if you think I’m being unfair here. But now you have lifted the profile of your blog to a journalistic level, I think you have think to more carefully about what you want to achieve. If all you want to contribute is insightful psephology, combined with the occasional clever and funny rants against the conservative MSM, then fair enough. But I think you could contribute a lot more by not stooping to their level, toning down the polemics, and demonstrating the real value of a balanced, statisically assisted, perspective on complicated issues.
Sorry about the typos!!!
I’ve answered this LO over at my own site – I feel a bit uncomfortable taking up LP comment space talking about myself.
Hey PaulH – where the hell do you get off making comments like “I don’t really want to be in the same country as “Tony of South Yarra” or “Andrew” in the thread of a few days ago.”
You abused me on a previous thread because I used equity in my home to buy some bank shares – called me an ‘anti-social blot’. (how buying shares is anti-social I have no idea). Now however – you’re abusing me on a thread that deals with racism – I strongly object to that, and think you should apologise.
You know nothing about me apart from the fact that I buy shares. Do you object to the fact that by buying shares I must be well-off and therefore worthy of abuse? Do you not like people who have money?
I’ll tell you a story that links the two threads (being well off and African migrants). Last year on Xmas eve I jumped in a taxi that was being driven by one of the darkest skinned Africans I’d ever seen. We got into a conversation and he told me all about how he’d emigrated to Australia after spending 3 years in a refugee camp, got married to a women in a pre-arranged marriage by the families back home, had two young kids and was loving being in Melbourne. He told me all about how they celebrate Xmas – as I recall the festivities go on for about 10 days. It was a great yarn.
I arrived at my destination and the taxi-fare was about $30. I had $300 in my wallet and on impulse I gave it all to him saying ‘keep the change’. The look on his face was priceless – it made my day and his. He clearly needed it more than me.
Paul – if you look after your finances and take opportunities to invest well then perhaps you too will be able to have moments like these.
Making ridiculous and offensive comments on weblogs to people you don’t know says a lot about you. Perhaps you’re the one we’d better off without.
If I read Bolt and thought he had resonance, and if I asked possum to STFU I’d be a Labor Outsider too!