There has been an increase in attacks on Indian students and workers in Melbourne’s inner west. Clearly, it was time for the police and other community leaders to take notice and do something about these race-related crimes. Did they they put a spotlight on the people who were doing the robbing and bashing? Did they talk about their intention to bring the perps to justice and enhance the safety of public spaces generally, and work with the Vic government to help change the attitudes of Bogan Youth? Hardly. The response of the Victoria Police was to recommend that young indians should stop talking so loudly in their own language and should not be louchely and recklessly carrying things like iPods and laptops on their daily commute. In short, pull your head in and stop flaunting your great wealth before our simple peasant folk, in case you get yourself bashed. And robbed.
Inspector Scott Mahony complained that the police had been blamed unfairly in the story, because “members of the indian community” had complained at a public meeting that their countrymen were noisy and obnoxious. Right, that lets the Victoria Police off the hook completely, because if someone’s fellow-countryman says something denigratory towards them, of course you take the totally unbiased opinion of this codger and publicly run with it!
This reminded me of Lauredhel’s article about other victims of crime and how the use of the passive voice, and constant advice to the crime victims both actual and potential to take defensive action themselves to not get themselves raped, or get themselves robbed, makes the perpetrator invisible and takes all the light and heat off the people doing the crime.
It’s not the first time this has happened. A Sudanese boy, Liep Gony, was bashed to death by two white thugs in October 2007, and the police blamed the incident on the Sudanese community who, they thought, had failed to assimilate properly.
I use a train and a bus daily on the routes to, from and around inner Western Melbourne and I can tell you from long experience that a lot of students are deafening. Not Indian students – students. Anyone who says that’s an Indian thing really hasn’t been out lately. It’s about being young and silly. (Some) students travel in packs, yell to each other, and generally seek attention. They’re immature and sometimes quite irritating. Duh – they’re young! This in no way excuses crimes against them, I would have thought. The idea that Indian students are somehow “flaunting” their iPods and laptops, also, is simply racist. I see thousands of caucasians and others using their laptops and ipods, and schoolkids carrying valuable musical instruments, every day. It’s good defensive practice to keep smaller items packed away, but to say that one ethnic group may have their laptops on show and the others are “flaunting” them simply betrays an underlying idea that one group is entitled to have these things and the others are behaving in a manner not befitting their station.
The Victorian government should examine ways of improving community attitudes on the one hand (well, not making them worse’d be a start), and the appalling lack of any personal safety on the “public transport system” at night, instead of blaming the victims of the crimes. And they should start to get a bead on the invisible perpetrators.
“A Sudanese boy, Liep Gony, was bashed to death by two white thugs in October 2007, and the police blamed the incident on the Sudanese community who, they thought, had failed to assimilate properly.”
As I recall it, it was then Minister for Immigration and all-round stuff-up merchant Kevin Andrews who really ran demented spin that somehow the Sudanese were to blame for violence against their community.
What a lowpoint in Australian political history the last government was.
This post doesn’t really seem to understand the case its discussing.
The attack on the Indian students was a violent robbery. A few racial slurs were thrown in for good measure but the perpetrators came prepared with brass knuckles, it wasn’t a random event.
The police advice was to not flaunt valuable items – which is good advice to anyone who is walking alone in a crime-ridden area. Talking loudly is also a good way to attract attention to yourself.
Police ability to prevent crime is pitiful throughout Australia – but playing this event up as some sort of hate crime is clutching at straws.
I think we have been too quick to judge Inspector Scott Mahony of racism. His advice that Indian students walk in brightly-lit areas, not speak too loudly and not display iPods reminds me of my own mother’s advice from time to time — “Don’t go down to King Street” — or the advice given to Australian travellers by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. My mother wasn’t condoning violence on King Street, merely noting that it existed and that one has strategies for avoiding such violence. Similarly, give Inspector Mahony the benefit of the doubt and one could say say that his statement is not racist but, rather, simply made in recognition of the fact that racist thugs DO exist and one does have strategies of falling victim to them.
As an Asian-Australian, I’ve been a victim of true racism: fools yelling epiphets out car windows, attacks on sports fields and the like. Inspector Mahony’s statement does not necessarily — and I’d say, likely does not — fall into this category.
Well said, Ken.
It’s worth downloading and listening to this 10 minute interview with Assistant Commissioner Sandra Nicholson and Inspector Scott Mahony by SBS radio on the 5th February, a fortnight before the Age story ran.
And also noting that Scott Mahony believes he was misquoted by The Age.
One more thing, the advice from Police re. mobile phones, iPods, well-lit areas etc. is the same advice they’ve given the last 18 months to *all* commuters who use Brimbank and Maribyrnong stations.
It may be inadequate, but it’s not racist, and I hate to say it, Helen, but you’re doing an awful lot of projecting here. As far as I know, no-one actually used the word “flaunting” that you quoted, except yourself earlier.
Is this the kind of way of improving community attitudes you’re talking about? Because according to Sushi Das, it’s just about netting “favourable media coverage”.
Immediately we get the “move along, nothing to see here”.
Did the last few commenters miss the bit where attacks on Indian students were excused because of their perceived loudness/obnoxiousness?
Ken, yes, that’s what all mums tell their sons. I can’t read your mum’s mind but if she meant “all young men need to take care in King street”, then fine. If as an asian-Australian she meant “you, Ken, need to take care in King street, more so than if you were an “anglo” Australian” she is acknowledging racism. Here we have “you people need to take care because god knows you’re so annoying, and always flashing your stuff around” – uh, no.
The scare quotes around “flaunting” are in the sense of “so-called” and not in the information tech sense of “this is literal”. If you read the comment threads from news.com.au or such sources you will very quickly learn that people do have this perception. Change it to some other verb, but there is a belief that Indian students shouldn’t be visibly carrying laptops, etc. while other nationalities do so daily.
What you’re all failing to address is that yet again the onus is being placed on the victim to take more defensive measures. The perpetrators have been rendered invisible – no-one’s talking about how *they* should change their behaviour – and it’s obscuring the related issue of the failure of the Victorian government to provide an acceptable level of public safety on public transport.
Indian students and others discuss the comments about carrying ipods and laptops. I certainly don’t seem to be Robinson Crusoe seeing something wrong here.
FCOL, “symbol of wealth” obviously means anything that can be sold or exchanged. Don’t read so much into it…oops, that what The Age wanted the reader to do, and that’s why they did.
“Native tongue” Let’s see. Do you think perhaps he repeated it that night *at the meeting*? Possibly at its conclusion? Maybe running through in list form the suggestions the Police received? Like what usually occurs at the end of such events? There’s no suggestion he was *ever* interviewed by The Age separately.
Helen:
“members of the indian community” had complained at a public meeting that their countrymen were noisy and obnoxious.
I’ll repeat again that you’re projecting. You have no source on any of this except those two articles from The Age – and neither said anything of the sort.
Sushi Das:
I’m fully aware police have to exercise judgement when they repeat or take on board suggestions
Strip the scorn from Sushi’s article and much is revealed.
“members of the indian community” had complained at a public meeting that their countrymen were noisy and obnoxious.
I’ll repeat again that you’re projecting. You have no source on any of this except those two articles from The Age – and neither said anything of the sort.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. If you mean it was not reported in the media that Paul Mahony had claimed that he got his “indians need to pull their head in” from an Indian at a meeting, it certainly was.
Helen, you write:
“I can’t read your mum’s mind but if she meant “all young men need to take care in King street”, then fine. If as an asian-Australian she meant “you, Ken, need to take care in King street, more so than if you were an “anglo” Australian” she is acknowledging racism.”
It hasn’t been stated directly, but this further suggests that we are dealing here with violent racist Anglo-Australians and victimised Asian and African immigrants. I hope you will permit acknowledgement that this isn’t the pattern of recent violence in Melbourne. Most of the recent victims of violence in King Street have been young Anglo men. When the papers first reported the attacks on Indian students, it was young African men who were reported to be the perpetrators (although there may well be others involved – but how do we know?).
“indians need to pull their head in”
Where are these quotes coming from?
What did Paul Mahony ‘claim’ exactly? Sushi’s article states:
But Inspector Mahony is only trying to help. And anyway, he’s justified his comments by saying that it was, in fact, an Indian who first raised the issue of talking loudly, in a recent meeting of the Police-Indian Western Reference Group, which has been set up to improve safety.
That’s it. Where’s the bit about “their countrymen were noisy and obnoxious”? Hang on, the rest was all Sushi, wasn’t it.
Helen, I have no problem with your broader message about ‘constant advice to the crime victims’ etc, and I’m not trying to ignore or diminish that.
I’m just more than a little astounded at what and who The Age thinks they’re trying on here.
…who have not, after being bashed, then been subjected to admonishments from a senior police officer to stop talking so loud and to stop showing off their ipods if they want to stay safe.
The “pattern of recent violence” in Melbourne has been that when it’s white boys getting bashed we hear all about the ethnicity of the perpetrators and how these immigrants are destroying the country, but when it’s brown boys getting bashed we hear how they brought it on themselves with their loud talking and their flashy doodads and watchamacallits.
Well I guess it saves the police time if they don’t have to catch the perps — just lecture the victims instead.
I teach quite a few Indian university students and I haven no doubt they suffer from racism from some people. Scott Mahoney’s advice is a bit barmy, really. I find it hard to see how it would actually reduce crime against Indian students.
But, if memory serves it wasn’t the Victoria Police who blamed Liep Gony for getting himself killed, it was that arsehole Andrews, as Lefty E has said.
Right on mercurius.
I’m half Indian and grew up round Maribyrnong/Footscray/St Albans in the 80s. I remember some of those fights, referenced in films like Romper stomper. Big fights between skins and Vietnamese kids, tho there were other fights between large groups of people based on ethnicity. Including “wogs vs skips” and a variety of other interethic conflicts.
It wasn’t the sort of racism we see now tho. There is a real nastiness to it now. Cept for the skins, there was no sense of “fuck off back where you came from” coming from any of those groups.
The police response is ridiculous tho. Helen said:
“The perpetrators have been rendered invisible – no-one’s talking about how *they* should change their behaviour – and it’s obscuring the related issue of the failure of the Victorian government to provide an acceptable level of public safety on public transport.”
Exactly right.
If the police gave the advice in the context you mention Nick, it shouldn’t have been bandied about the media the way it was and they should have come out and criticised the Age specifically because the comments highlighted Indians and made them more vulnerable to attack in an already tense situation.
It should be obvious that you don’t show stuff worth mugging someone over in and around that part of Melbourne. It was when I grew up. So the coppers should have warned all people in that area, not just Indian people, not to display objects like laptops and ipods. Firstly because if this is a theft issue, not a race violence one, then its not just Indians at risk. Secondly cos it associates Indians with carrying objects that might be worth belting someone for (in the mind of the “thug”), so if this wasn’t a race based thing he has red lighted Indians as probably being worth attacking on the chance they have laptops and ipods. Even if its not obvious after this warning they must be hiding them.
If it is race based violence then this is singularly unhelpful and verges on condoning it. Especially cos the cops in the interviews constantly referred to the Indian people as “they” – anyone who has experienced racism in Australia recognises that “they”. It means “we” includes the criminals…
“There is a perception we don’t care, and we have to do a lot of work around changing that perception,” Scott Mahoney.
Scott, it seems you have done nothing in this interview to change that perception.
Indians do talk loudly, specially into their cell phones- don’t they realise there is amplification built within the phone? Perhaps if they spoke English more often there might not be such a problem. Also, they should really shower a little more often
If someone’s going to talk loudly, I have a strong preference for it NOT being in English. Much less disruptive of my reading if I can’t understand.
The only public transport patrons who really get under my skin are the overwhelmingly white meth heads, swilling alcopops, begging for change, mumbling/shouting incoherently and being openly racist. It’s still surprising how often I come across that complete package, any time of day or night.
Perhaps they do when talking to other community groups as well? But because this was a meeting with a specific group of people it has been misinterpreted to be a message to only them?
Note that nearly all the advice talked about is standard advice given to people travelling overseas. Its given because it might seem obvious to some, but not to many others.
I think you need to separate what the police should be doing to prevent these crimes and what individuals at risk can do to reduce their chance of being a target. The latter is not about assigning blame if people don’t follow the advice – its not a guarantee that you won’t be attacked (and realistically nothing that the police can do will guarantee that either), but reducing the probability of being attacked.
The police would be negligent if they knew there are things that people can do to reduce the probability of being assaulted and didn’t pass on that information.
Clive @16: check out The Chasers “Clive the slightly too loud commuter”. It wouldn’t be funny if it wasn’t that so many people do exactly that. It’s not just Indians, or even mostly Indians, in reality it’s overwhelmingly anglos who do this.
Pretty much everyone else who has settled in the western suburbs of Melbourne has taken it as common sense that you get yourself a car so you can minimise your exposure to the junkies, ex-cons and other assorted desperados who frequent the public transport system during off-peak times. I’m not sure why this idea seems so elusive to the Indian community.
The advice offered by the police is nothing more than sensible advice which anyone should heed when moving through the impoverished areas of any city on earth. The Victorian police aren’t racist, in fact they have been very particular in not fanning racism over street crimes committed in Melbourne.
“get yourself a car so you can minimise your exposure to the junkies, ex-cons and other assorted desperados who frequent the public transport system during off-peak times. I’m not sure why this idea seems so elusive to the Indian community.”
Because it’s repugnant?
I’ve never quite seen a visit to the Western suburbs as walking on the wild side. Gawd, I’ve been known to catch a train over there on occasion. How did I survive? How do you cope, Helen? Are you replacing the pug with a rottweiler in the near future?
And where exactly do you get your info about ‘everyone in the Western suburbs’ PDAA?
Just think of it as lessons learned from 32 years of living in St Albans, Fine. Is there anyone on this blog who lives out this way and disputes my assertion?
I think there are 2 issues here and they are being mixed up.
1. Crime against people – obviously not the fault of any ethnic group, cannot and should not be tolerated. But if the crime is mainly theft etc then its not really racially motivated, its just that the people on the trains late at night in those dangerous areas are mainly Indian so they end up being the victims.
2. Social norms – this topic was discussed at length on an Age blog and there seems to be a fair amount of criticism of the behaviour of people form Indian background (mostly students who are new to Australia). I haven’t seen it myself but obviously there is some community resentment out there of the behaviours of this group i.e. talking loudly on phones, staring at girls etc, ie issues with not conforming to cultural norms. Its not really racism to object to behaviour you don’t agree with, after all Melbournians haven’t chosen to move to India, but we have had a big influx of Indian people (especially students) over the last few years. We should try and understand why there is resentment out there and come up with ways of addressing it, without just referring saying its racism straight away.
“Its not really racism to object to behaviour you don’t agree with”
It is if you only voice your objection to it in those of other races.
Fine, Maggie’s half rottie, although I don’t take them on the train.
OK Chris and PDAA, let me put it a different way.
People are attacking Indian people in Melbourne’s west. Who are these people? We don’t know, because the focus is on the victims and how they are supposedly contributing to their own assaults by being too noisy, too rich-looking, too whatever. The fact that all of us benefit by taking some basic precautions when riding public transport is beside the point. We all know that. But these public statements ignore the attackers to focus on the attackees. Now, for all I know Paul Mahony and his cohort are doing exemplary work to track down the people who carried out these attacks. But the fact is that the words uttered in public are obscuring the agents.
Also, the public transport companies and Victorian government have some duty of care to ensure public safety on their system. If it’s getting to the point where authorities are simply counselling defensive action, and people like PDAA see it as a no-go zone, then this is simply an admission of failure.
Oops – please substitute ‘one’ and ‘one’s’ for ‘you’ and ‘your’ in the above. Don’t mean to accuse kat in particular.
Helen, the reason we know little about the attackers is that the Victorian Police have made a conscious decision to not publicise this kind of information in regards to steet crimes, lest they give the Herald-Suns/Andrew Bolts of this world more ammo to continue their race baiting about Sudanese gangs. Believe me, the Police are trying to do the right thing. I agree that people should be able to catch public transport at night without being in fear, but the reality is that if you habitually use public transport at night, then you will eventually confront violence either against yourself or someone else.
kat @ 24:
So you find it irritating when people talk loudly? So do I. So what?
Because it is definitely racist to generalise from the behaviour of a few to an entire community, which is what a lot of commenters are doing.
And in any case, the loud talking isn’t what’s really on your mind, is it? What’s really on your mind is this…
…but kat it is racist to object to Indian people, or any ethnicity, moving into your suburb. You clearly resent the “big influx of Indian people”. That is racist of you. Sorry, it just is. It is racist of you to resent their presence. They’re perfectly entitled to be here.
There is resentment out there because some racist people object to Indians moving into their suburb.
I’m not leaping to conclusions here or “saying it’s racism straight away”. Kat, it’s your own words that are the evidence. You state that there is a “big influx of Indian people” like it’s a problem. From your own mouth – it’s racism.
And the way of addressing the problem is to stop being racist.
Game, set and match Mercurius. Bravo.
Oh please mercurius. You claim Kat “clearly resents” the influx of Indians when she doesn’t say that at all and then your cure for racism is “to stop being racist”. Problem solved.
Helen @ 26
Does everybody really know that? Commonsense isn’t as common as we’d perhaps like. I know from personal experience back in my younger days
I’m not suggesting that they are contributing to their own assaults and I don’t believe that the police were meaning to imply that either. But it is good policy for them to inform people of what they can do to reduce the probability of that occurring. Its not like the police are *only* just telling people to adjust their behaviour and not pursuing the criminals.
And do you know that the attackers were ignored in the all of the statements that the police have made or is the focus on the potential attackees a result of the way it has been reported? Do you know that they didn’t update the community on what they are trying to do to stop future attacks from the policing side? Sure they could publicly say “don’t rob and bash people, we’ll catch you eventually!” but how effective is that going to be in practice?
I actually said it wasnt my experience but on the blog on The age had people saying that……and i dont belive i have to accept every cultural aspect of every society on his planet as good just because it exists…..there are lots of cultural norms both here and in other countries that i totally disgree with…..ie the whole carrying around the australian flag thing that seems to be popular with young white males these days…is it racist for me to say i obeject to that?
…..i was just trying to say that thdre is obviously resentment out there and just saying to peopel “dont be racist” isnt going to work….and for that i was jumped on and basicallyw as called racist…..well taht will stop me commenting on here again
Hell no, we don’t negotiate with terrorists. They elected Hamas, and the peace process isn’t going anywhere until they renounce violence and accept Israel’s right to self-defence.
Looking for root causes is meaningless and counterproductive when the Gazans are being led by an organisation that wants to see the State of Israel driven into the sea.
…
Wait, is this the right thread?
Is this any more repugnant than the Indian caste system that seems so beloved over there. They worship the cow, but not the lepers crawling around the gutters looking for crumbs. At least the lepers dont have cell phones and are usually rather quiet.
PDAA Is there anyone on this blog who lives out this way and disputes my assertion?
Yep, I travel almost daily on the sydenham line, and while it’s true there are some very ugly people on the line, of all ethnicities, it’s hardly threatening. I’ve called the cops once in eight years, for something that happened one carriage down, that was nuisance behaviour, not actual violence.
I think most people are very welcoming of indian students (though there’s one bit of cultural assimilation they as a generalisation need to learn, and that’s the use of deodorant).
I agree it’s a bit outrageous for the police to say such things, except it appears there’s a whole lot of inference and filling the gaps going on, we don’t know what the copper really said, and we don’t know what he would have said in response to a different question, such as what are they doing to catch the perps. So I think the outrage is a bit confected. Which is not to deny there’s any racism in VicPol, but this is pretty weak evidence.
Mercurius @ 29:
No, it’s not. That is not a way of addressing the problem at all.
That is a throw away comment.
Zero tolerance does not work, old boy.
Not in cutting down on crime, and not in cutting down on racism.
A shame really. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could solve entrenched problems like violence and racism with throw away comments and denunciation?
“…but kat it is racist to object to Indian people, or any ethnicity, moving into your suburb. You clearly resent the “big influx of Indian people”. That is racist of you. Sorry, it just is. It is racist of you to resent their presence. They’re perfectly entitled to be here.”
.
Further to this point Mercurius it isn’t a problem if anyone is racist -it is only a problem when they discriminate through their actions and deeds .
You aren’t getting all geared up to start prosecuting ‘thought crimes ‘ are you ?
You can’t always associate liking certain things with exclusion .
Murph, acts of omission can hurt just as much. As when the victims of crime are told that if they just didn’t act so much like themselves they wouldn’t be victims. Sure, that’s not necessarily racist… but in this case “the victims” are singled out by their race, so it’s racist.
The Police very carefully avoided telling anyone else that they should conceal expensive possessions or talk quietly. But them someone asked WTF, so suddenly they changed tack and tried to pretend they were just offering standard victim-blaming that applies to everyone.
In a way I don’t mind the police standing up and vigorously claiming that they can’t stop crime, do not want to stop crime and are not equipped to stop crime so instead the general population should try to do it. Ideally we’d have preventive policing units just like we have preventive healthcare units and disaster preventive units. It makes perfect sense and I had hoped that the ecognomes would be all over it because it’s so much cheaper than mopping up after the fact. But no, they actually prefer the mopping up because GDP goes up.
I’ve travelled on the Werribee line all my life, specifically the past 5 years to and from work in Melbourne.
Some of my observations re Western suburbs public transport mesh with Wilful @ comment 36. There are always interesting and (to use a horseracing term) “colourful” people on public transport – and the Werribee line is no different. But I don’t think it is particularly threatening.
I wouldn’t suggest that any particular group of people are louder than any other, or flashing their money or wealth than any other. But commonsense suggests that you don’t draw attention to yourself needlessly by talking loudly on a phone or flashing your iPod or laptop.
Then again, with Indian students who may have come here from their homeland for schooling (or, to that end, any overseas student that arrives here) who is to say that they have that common sense?
They might not have been told by their parents from day dot that they need to be careful in these situations. They may ot have had it engendered in them as public transport veterans that there are certain do’s and don’ts to observe.
If they don’t have this knowledge, they may well end up in preventable trouble. And its not just Indians either – I seem to remember recent news stories of US tourists with anglo-appearance being targeted as well.
Its a message that needs to be conveyed to all communities. From what I’ve read and heard of the issue, this racism allegation seems quite trumped up. I don’t think Sushi Das has done herself any favours here.
It should be noted that these attacks on the Indian Students are occurring during off-peak times such as late at night. Of course it is much safer to travel in a pack with the office crowd. A friend of mine who works as a V/Line station attendant also reckons the peak trouble periods are mid-morning/lunchtime and late at night.
The advice given to the Indians is the same advice that Police give at school assemblies and community events all over the whole state when giving public safety talks etc. It is just silly to think that this advice is being targeted at Indians.
Helen,
This may, I stress, may, be part of a much wider picture. Perhaps to some extent we’ve become horrifyingly innured to racism here in Oz since the Howard Years and specifically the Cronulla Riots.And so see it as discrete, very lamentable ewvents.
A week or two ago I read a couple of articles (now lost in cyberspace) of the possibility of the resurgence of fascism as a consequence of the GFC. Belesconi in Italy has encouraged vigilante thugs to attack black migrants there – shades of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and apparently there is concern about the possibility an upsurge of far-right fascist racial violence in Britain (as well as left wing non racist violence), also a consequence of the GFC.
I worry that what we’re seeing here is the resurgence of an ugly neo-fascism.
the stupid on this thread, it burns
We live next to some barrow-boy poms. Those people never talk, they ALWAYS YELL (MADGE HAVE YOU SEEN THE CATS BOIL ANNOINTMENT? YES ITS TO MY RIGHT ON THE KITCHEN COUNTER ABOUT A METRE FROM YOUR CURRENT POSITION), can keep one awake at night. Still there’s no law against it … yet.
Some local reporting from the Brimbank Leader
http://brimbank-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/brimbank-council-plea-for-police/
Helen,
When you say you want the focus to be on the perpetrators, not the victims (which I agree is sensible), do you also want to highlight the ethnicity of the attackers? I know you’ve mentioned ‘Bogan Youth’, which strikes me as a label that would be used for white men, but as you acknowledge we don’t know. Or, at least The Age hasn’t told us (!). So why speculate? Is it racist to imply that ‘Bogan Youth’ are always and everywhere responsible when you don’t know? And what if it turns out that some of these attacks are being perpetrated by, e.g., Sudanese youth? Is it appropriate for the police ‘spotlight’ that fact so that ‘heat (?) and light’ can be applied?
“Now, for all I know Paul Mahony and his cohort are doing exemplary work to track down the people who carried out these attacks. But the fact is that the words uttered in public are obscuring the agents.”
No one can be this naive. Do you ever wonder why journalists don’t just print interview transcripts?
BBB
Err, actually murph it’s a problem a little sooner than that. It’s a problem when, because of racist attitudes, people start blaming bashing victims instead of focusing on the perpetrators. Which is the entire point of this thread. Which has been entirely missed by a lot of commenters.
Do you see the problem? Because some people don’t like the behaviour they perceive amongst some Indians in their midst, they are more inclined to seek reasons why the victims ‘brought it on themselves’ instead of stopping the violent perpetrators. I’m not after anyone for thought crimes, but it’s clearly a problem if the way people are thinking about this situation leads to less help for the victims or wishy-washy attempts to excuse the violence because the victims are ‘irritating’ somehow.
Actually zero tolerance has worked a treat here in New York where I’ve been living. The cops started arresting fare evaders in the 1990s and found that a lot of the fare evaders had outstanding warrants for far more serious crimes than just fare evasion. Eventually, the police who had been non-plussed about being fare coppers actually started looking forward to their missions — it was like a fishing expedition and they’d turn up people they’d been looking for for years because the perps who were gun-running or stealing also wouldn’t stop to swipe their ticket at the turnstile.
Net result? Its safer in New York today than any time in history, and from the sounds of it safer than Melbourne (they also have the toughest gun restrictions in New York outside DC, which helps a lot too, despite the chagrin of the gun-nuts). Zero tolerance works, old boy. It’s a shame the police didn’t show more of it at Cronulla and towards the revenge attack hoodlums.
Now, with racism, it’s an attitude, not an act, so going after people punitively for their beliefs is not appropriate. But arguing toe-to-toe with them in a zero-tolerance fashion is quite appropriate. Racists, anti-Semites, and so on deserve nothing but ostracism and scorn for their attitude in my opinion. I’ll defend their right to say what they like, but I’ll metaphorically tar and feather them when they do. When they adjust their attitude, they can hold their heads up with pride again. Until then, I’ve got nothing but scorn for them. Which is a lot milder punishment than the fists, broken bottles and baseball bats they dispense on their targets.
Regarding Inspector Mahony’s comments, I don’t wanna be too quick to label it as racist. You could argue he is simply giving good advice to vulnerable members of the community as to how they can protect themselves. Regarding the “talking loudly” bit, is he implying that Indians talk loudly, or simply that talking loudly in any foreign language may not be a good safety strategy? I dunno.
His advice may possibly have promoted ignorant stereotypes of Indians, but it also may save someone’s life.
As a parallel example, it is surely good advice and common sense to advise a woman to minimize risk of sexual assault by limiting alcohol consumption and avoiding walking alone in high risk places. But some could interpret that as putting all the onus on the victim, or as giving ammunition to those who would say “It’s her fault for being drunk and walking by herself.”
I agree strongly with Helen’s earlier point about a major, major issue being glossed over in all the talk about the supposed social habits of Indians – the fact that Melbourne’s public transport system is woefully understaffed and provides little to no security for its patrons. Train stations have become the city’s prime meeting points for teenage wannabe gangstas, and the powers that be seem to think that playing classical music over loudspeakers is a better thug-deterrent than actual security.
The Government, Police and Connex all need to pull their fingers out quick.
The disagreement I have with the theme of the post is the proposition that the police are victim-blaming (or encouraging it) by informing people that they believe certain behavior puts people at more risk of being attacked. Statements that police have made have been taken in isolation from other actions they may be taking to catch the criminals and portrayed as the only action being taken.
It has also been suggested that they only give this sort of advice to specific ethnic groups when I think its pretty obvious that its the sort of advice they would give to anyone from the general population who may want to know what sorts of things they can personally do to minimise the risk of being attacked. Is this so unreasonable given there appears to be an ongoing problem?
FWIW I’ve never felt unsafe in New York city even very late at night/early in the morning, primarily I think because there are so many police around (at least in the touristy areas anyway). But doesn’t the zero tolerance approach lead to a lot of people ending up in prison?
Heh. Chris, yes it does. That’s kinda the point. And that’s probably why you feel as safe in New York as you do. All those highly visible police and a lot of the criminals being locked up.
The other side of the coin is that New York also has some of the most generous social welfare programs in America. The city and state provide a lot of health insurance, housing, food stamps and aid to people who otherwise would be on the street or breaking into homes to get what they need to survive. That is the other major factor behind New York’s crime reduction success.
Meanwhile, back on topic….
No one can be this naive. Do you ever wonder why journalists don’t just print interview transcripts?
To answer your attempt at a putdown, I wonder why journalists print this and not that. Why are crimes in our society often portrayed with the victim up front and the invisible perpetrator? That is an important part of the story. I don’t see how any reading of my post would show I was assuming such a thing.
It’s all about engaging the readers’ interest, by giving the story a protagonist they can identify with. Plus, when crimes are first reported the perpetrators are often unknown, so there’s nothing much that can be said about them (unless you want people to speculate).
Also it can be used as a device to elicit sympathy for the victim and outrage at the perpetrators as in
‘Meanwhile, back on topic…’
Oh must we?
‘On the historical examples of the application of zero tolerance kind of policies, all the scientific studies conclude that it didn’t play a leading role in the reduction of crimes, a role which is instead claimed by its advocates. In New York, the decline of crimes rate started well before Rudolf Giuliani came to power, in 1993, and none of the decreasing processes had particular inflection under him. In the same period of time, the decrease in crime was the same in the other major US cities, even those with an opposite security policy; finally, in the years 1984-7 New York already experienced a policy similar to Giuliani’s one, but it faced a crime increase instead.’
Mercurius @ 47: ‘arguing toe-to-toe with them in a zero-tolerance fashion is quite appropriate. Racists, anti-Semites, and so on deserve nothing but ostracism and scorn for their attitude in my opinion. I’ll defend their right to say what they like, but I’ll metaphorically tar and feather them when they do.’
The scurrilous nature of the yr post at 35 lay not in the recourse to authoritarian methods of engaging with commenters here, but in the fact that you accused a commenter here a number of times of being racist when it was far from clear that they were. My reading of kat’s comment @ 24 is that s/he was (somewhat clumsily) trying to articulate the opinions of people OTHER than his/herself.
Righteously crusading against racists is an exercise in disingenuousness and authoritarianism when one is simply rounding on people who do not have sufficient mastery of the lexicon to avoid making verifiably non-racist comments.
Still, as far as hiding disingenuousness and authoritarianism behind a veil of righteous crusading, it was a spiffing effort.
The scurrilous nature of the yr post at 35 lay not in the recourse to authoritarian methods of engaging with commenters here, but in the fact that you accused a commenter here a number of times of being racist when it was far from clear that they were. My reading of kat’s comment @ 24 is that s/he was (somewhat clumsily) trying to articulate the opinions of people OTHER than his/herself.
Righteously crusading against racists is an exercise in disingenuousness and authoritarianism when one is simply rounding on people who do not have sufficient mastery of the lexicon to avoid making verifiably non-racist comments.
“Jikajika”, the amount of spittle being sprayed here seems to indicate you have some other kind of beef with Mercurius which should perhaps be taken to another forum. I actually agree with you that Mercurius misunderstood what Jaz meant (and apologies to Jaz for not taking that up earlier.) However, a simple “I think you misread Jaz’s tone and meaning Mercurius etc” might be better than going the full stoush. Thanks.
We have all misread others’ posts or verbal statements on occasion.
No worries, Helen.
Apologies if I was overzealous myself, Mercurius.
“As a parallel example, it is surely good advice and common sense to advise a woman to minimize risk of sexual assault by limiting alcohol consumption and avoiding walking alone in high risk places. But some could interpret that as putting all the onus on the victim, or as giving ammunition to those who would say “It’s her fault for being drunk and walking by herself.””
Yes, what that advice precisely does is put the onus on the woman to protect herself and does end up in gratuitous victom blaming. As advice, it stinks.
It’s the same thing with this issue of Indian students. Telling them to speak more quietly and conceal their goods won’t stop them from being bashed and does put the emphasis on them as people who are at least partly at fault, rather, than the perpetrators, who are entirely at fault.
And what Gummo Trostsky said above. Of course the victim is going to be foregrounded and the perpetrator backgrounded in initial news reports for those reasons.
“As advice, it stinks.”
No, as advice, it’s excellent. As an indicator of blame, or responsibility, it stinks.
FDB, I don’t think it’s good advice on just a pragmatic level either. Sexual assalt on dark streets by total stangers is comparatively rare. It sets up a scare for women which is largely unnecessary. But, I guess we’re getting a bit OT.
“Sexual assalt on dark streets by total stangers is comparatively rare”
True enough, but it is one of the few kinds of SA that the victim can do relatively simple things to avoid. As opposed to not letting yourself get caught alone with someone you know but don’t entirely trust, or not having an evil brute of a partner, or what have you.
Anyway yes, getting plenty OT.
@ Fine:
What I was trying to get in my earlier comment is that advice that is good in one context can sometimes be counter-productive when taking in a different context.
If he was speaking only to Indian students, or to people who carry laptops around, then the advice makes sense. However, since the message was disseminated to the whole community (and somewhat insensitively I mght add) then it gets interpreted in different ways, such as blaming the victim.
I actually think the media may be more at fault here for the way it was reported – “Indians told to keep low profile”, etc. I don’t think the police are wrong to instruct people on ways they can minimise their risk of attack – they need to be sensitive about it however.
By the way, I don’t actually buy this whole thing about Indians displaying their signifiers of wealth and talking loudly. When riding the trains, I’m constantly annoyed by loud-talkers and people blaring music out of their ipods and phones, but I can’t remember any specifically being Indian. And while there are heaps of Indians on the trains at night, they are usually reserved, in my experience.
Not to say that they don’t do it any of these things, but they don’t stand out for these things. Indians stand out because there are lots of them. And that’s really what its all about, in my opinion. Some people are gonna get resentful because they see Indians as swamping Melbourne – just like recently people complained there were too many Africans, and before that too many Asians. So the people who are inclined to view Indians negatively are then more likely to notice perceived negative behaviours – loudness, flaunting wealth by carrying a laptop, yadayada.
By the way, have you noticed that 90% of high school students on train have iPods? Rich arrogant bastards, our kids.
Eurasitn Sensation: absolutely!
True enough, but it is one of the few kinds of SA that the victim can do relatively simple things to avoid.
Stop there and think about that one, FDB, please.
It means womens’ right of travel and simply occupying space is limited (and more on topic, people who are in the Outgroup de jour).
It’s not good enough just to enjoin us to limit our freedom of movement.
Not good enough.
I am / was a drummer like you. I had to bump out late at night and walk through some pretty scary places. Try Hosie’s tavern at 3 am. Are you saying I should have given up playing in bands as a “safety measure”? Can you see how that goes beyond just a safety measure?
Sorry to appear to go O/T on my own thread, but I think this is germane to the topic.
…Gah, Eurasian Sensation, sorry!
I think the advice given is really stupid. The students come from India, not Utopia. I’m sure they would be quite familiar with the idea that when travelling on public transport in a major city, it is a good idea to keep your middle class gadgets in a safe place and not have them out all over the place for everyone to see. Certainly I would assume that anyone from such a cosmopolitan, urban country as India with it’s great contrasts of wealth and poverty would know how to take some fairly basic steps toward their own safety. So I guess I would call the advice extrememly patronising.
As an ex-Sunshineite I am appalled and upset by some of the ridiculous rascist behaviour going on there. On the other hand I thought it was great that the Indians organised themselves and marched on the Sunshine police station. I want to apologise to the Indians and I hope the rascist Sunshine groups wake up to themselves. They’re giving the place a bad name.
@ Helen-
Regarding the sexual assault stuff, I believe it was my fault we got off topic. But I’m gonna stick with that for one sec, because I think my comment and FDB’s are being taken slightly out of context. I don’t mean to imply that women (or men for that matter) shouldn’t be able to walk through certain areas or should limit their behaviour. However, the reality is none of us are invulnerable, and that certain things put you at greater risk. Which f*cking sucks, but that’s the unfortunate reality. I’m sure that all of us if we have or had a daughter, would warn her not to get into certain situations. There’s a difference between that and blaming the victim – only that the two get frequently confused.
@ Rebel L -
I agree that the advice the police gave is pretty simplistic and most people would know that anyway. Yes it is a bit patronising. But I still think it may be useful – just because something seems obvious doesn’t mean that everyone heeds it. Sometimes people need a little reminding, I know I do. And remember that Melbourne is not known as a dangerous place – you wouldn’t normally be as cautious as you would in say, Lagos. I’m quite comfortable walking around with my iPod at night in my cushy little corner of Melbourne, as I’m sure many are – an Indian hearing the police statement might feel a bit patronised, but at least would be a little more mindful of what risks are out there.
“I am / was a drummer like you. I had to bump out late at night and walk through some pretty scary places. Try Hosie’s tavern at 3 am. Are you saying I should have given up playing in bands as a “safety measure”? Can you see how that goes beyond just a safety measure?”
Certainly not Helen. I was discussing the advice that young women avoid spending time alone in dark public places if it can be easily avoided.
In any particular situation, a particular woman will weigh that advice against other concerns, and decide that the (as Fine points out) very small risk is worth taking; just as you did.
I’m sure I don’t really need to say this, but just for the record it’s appalling that any such calculation of risk needs to go on. But as long as there are evil thugs out there… it would be foolish not to think about it.
I’ve been reading a bunch of travel guidebooks lately. They all go to some lengths to specify the dangers and annoyances that can befall travellers, and how to minimise your risk.
They warn that for a woman to wear revealing clothing in, say, Italy or Spain, may lead to wolf whistles and propositions. In many countries, they warn single women not to walk by themselves at night through certain areas. Take a taxi, or go home with a group of people you know.
Now, Lonely Planet and similar publishers seem to be progressive organisations. I can’t imagine any deliberate sexism on their part.
Tell me, Helen, should such advice be excised from their guidebooks because it ‘blames the victim’?
And if not, how does this differ from the well-meaning advice of the Victorian Police?
Interesting claim Paulus, can you provide quotations? Meanwhile I’m checking through the 1/2 doz LP guides just pulled off the bookshelf.
Sure. In LP’s Bali guidebook, they observe that while Bali is relatively safe for women travellers, nonetheless:
On Lombok:
Wow. I’ve never been in Bali. Of the seven guidebooks here only the USA one and the Queensland one give that kind of advice. Some of the others say you can expect attention if you travel solo but they don’t give that specific advice about avoiding certain activities.
Paulus, that’s quite different – that’s advice for how foreigners to act when they are tourists NOT IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY. The whole point is that there is should be no reason for anyone to feel unwelcome here, and to have to hide their identity isn’t any sort of long term solution.
It’s basically an admission of failure for the police to suggest that the best migrants can do here is to somehow pretend not to be.
wizofaus, much the same phrasing as Paulus quoted from the Bali guide is used in the Qld guidebook I’ve got.
To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed that some of the LP guidebooks do adopt that line – women, stay off the streets at night. they don’t all. Others just say, look this is how you can expect people to behave, and they don’t tell you how to respond to that, which seems both more sueful & more appropriate coming from a guidebook.
Laura are you serious? There are guidebooks for Queensland that recommend women don’t wear revealing clothing?? That would surely be one way to stand out…
Lol, no, sorry, it’s more about avoiding night-time ‘danger’ and it struck me particularly because, well, as an Australian I don’t feel willing to settle for being advised to ‘avoid walking alone late at night in any of the major cities’. It also says ‘With intoxicated men stumbling up from the bar, rural pub rooms are probably best avoided.’ (p.67.)
I agree with your comment at 71: coming from the police, words like that would be totally unacceptable. It’s surprising to see it in an LP guidebook. They also say ‘don’t tolerate any harrassment or discirmination’ so it’s a bit confused IMO. They’d do better to just say without mincing words that rural Qld pubs are patronised by drunk rapists, if that’s what they actually mean.
I did stay in pubs in Chillagoe, Laura, Cooktown and a few other joints whose names I don’t remember, and while I never actually found a shit on my pillow as Robyn Davidson did (in Alice Springs) there were gropers and frotters in every one of those pub’s bars.
Sorry Helen, this is dreadfully off topic.
Paulus, it’s not about not giving warnings. It’s about the way the warnings are expressed, right down to their very grammar, to imply that the onus is on the woman to make sure that no crimes are committed against her, and that if they are, then it will be her own fault. That is not the same thing as saying ‘The streets are full of potential rapists,’ which is the same kind of warning as ‘These waters abound with lethal blue-ringed octopi.’
What’s interesting and significant here is the way that non-hegemonous groups (Indians, women) are addressed and made the subject (‘You will get yourself raped/robbed’) rather than the object (‘Rapists/robbers will rape/rob you’) of the warning sentence. But has anyone ever seen a warning saying ‘Middle-class white Anglo men are likely to get bashed here’? And yet, there are many places where the statistics overwhelmingly indicate that that is the case.
Anyone else in Melbourne feel that earthquake just then?!!?
Earthquake. Yep!
Thought it was possums at first.
Then I thought: possums in the roof don’t make the chairs move around.
Pavlov’s Cat
Those warnings are given to middle class male WASPS daily in local gay inner-city press. The greatest perpetrators? Aboriginal and Lebanese males aged 15-26. Happy?
Not at all. Quite the reverse.
Meanwhile, you have completely missed my point. And the ethnicity of the perpetrators has nothing to do with anything.
Oi fAG tAG, there is no daily gay inner-city press anywhere in Oz,
And the greatest perpetrators of gay bashing are NOT Aboriginal and Lebanese males aged 15-26.
Comment 78 is so full of mendacious troll crap I suspect it’s probably John Greenfield again.
The response of the Victoria Police was to recommend that young indians should stop talking so loudly in their own language and should not be louchely and recklessly carrying things like iPods and laptops on their daily commute…. ”
*
Just imagine for one moment, if the police representative had said, in response to a spate of gay bashings, “the Victoria Police”, … … …, “recommend that gay men should stop talking loudly like Jeannie Little,…”, and then advised them to avoid displaying gay symbols such as single ear rings etc. There would be an outcry from the gay community.
*
One has to wonder why Indian men are considered less worthy than gay men.
*
By the way, I am a white, anglo-celtic, hetero, ex-NSW Police officer. I don’t have an axe to grind either way, but there is no way that gay men would be expected to modify their behaviour, to reduce their exposure to the risk of violence, but Indian men are expected to do just that.
.
So are women. Phillip, congratulations on surviving your police career at all, much less with your decency intact.
I felt the need to mention this although I’m sure it won’t go down well. Maybe there is a bit of hostility around towards Indians due to things like a lot of local jobs being sent to India and the way some Indians that have come out here treat and act towards locals. I don’t necessarily mean Australians either but how a number of them treat locals in countries they move to.
For example (and I’ve heard more than a few stories from other people) my mother works for an Indian doctor. This doctor depsite being perhaps the most dodgy, unprofessional doctor I’ve ever come across almost seems to get off on treating locals (white Australians) like shit. Putting aside the fact she treats my mother like a joke, it’s her attitude towards patients and others that is staggering. It really seems like some come out here with an attitude that they are superior and that’s before getting to the notorious “tightness”.
Even if fully booked Indians are always allowed to not make appointments and barge in to see her or one of the other doctors immediately despite everyone else sitting there in the waiting room. She refuses to see unemployed people and those on disability pensions and hates seeing old age pensioners. An older lady died recently when prescribed the wrong medication by her and another almost died from her being too cheap to have oxygen on the premises.
Then there are all the handymen, IT people that can’t stand her because she always refuses to pay their advertised price or quoted fee this despite the Merc sitting in the driveway. She usually let’s my mother deal with all that, which in turn means they get aggresive towards her. My mother has never had a holiday in the seven years she’s been there, her boss refuses to put her on permanent part-time (even though she makes obscene profits) and almost has to beg her to get her minimum wage increase when it’s adjusted. Her husband works high up in the defence force and supposedly is disliked by most who work with him and they live in perhaps the most affluent suburb in Adelaide. I could go on but anyway.
While it would be easy to just write this and the “they’re taking our jobs” aspects off I must add that this isn’t foreign to Australia. I keep in regular contact with a local woman in Singapore who works for an egineering company and she says Indians are despised there as they treat the local Singaporean employees like garbage and I also talk to a native American-Indian in the US who has worked under a few Indians and she too says they seem to almost take delight in treating her and fellow American-Indians like dirt.
Helen says:
Its probably true that these crimes are “race-related”, but not in the cliched way that Left-liberal commentators normally trot out. BTW I love the sneering class prejudice packed into the phrase “Bogan Youth”.
There is evidence that African gangs are a major player in this form of street-hassle. This is one of the many cans of worms that Left-liberals have left lying about the place after their generation-long experiment with unregulated “diversity”.
The Indians appear to be easy targets due to their gererally lighter-build, cash-carrying and lonesome profession. The Sun-Herald reports on African attacks on Indians, and the politically correct cover up:
Of course one Liberal party official did call a spade a spade. Kevin Andrews had the temerity to suggest that some Africans were not integrating all that well. For his troubles he and his supporters were roundly condemned by all the usual suspects, including Helen and LeftyE
Too bad for the poor bloody Indians getting routinely bashed after a days honest work. Or this bloke, whose apparent crime was to stumble into the path of some of these thugs. (Warning: these images are not for the feint-hearted.)
Your mother has a rotten person for a boss, Jacques. She happens to be Indian. The same stories could be told about every nationality. My brother’s a tradesman btw. You should hear the stories he tells about all the rich Anglos that won’t pay their bills.
I could tell you stories about the great Indian students I teach at university, who are smart, funny and extremely nice. So you could use them for your examples just as easily. Or my elderly parents could tell you about the great Indian doctor they visit.
Anyway, what has your comment got to do with Indian students being bashed?
Yes, She does have a rotten boss, plenty of them around which is why I also mentioned the experiences of people in other countries who deal reguarly with Indians. I know younger Indians aren’t as “bad” as they seem to be more tolerant (supposedly the daughter of my mother’s boss is pretty nice and openly admits she can’t stand her mother’s “Indian ways”).
Now while I think for the most part these are just thugs looking for easy targets, I mentioned what I did as perhaps an underlying reason why Indians might be getting singled out (if they are). Maybe the parents of these thugs have had bad experiences with Indians or have lost their jobs due to businesses “restructuring” overseas?
They only ‘seem to be more tolerant’ Jacques? Some Indians aren’t so ‘bad’, but they’ll just revert to ‘Indian ways’ as they get older? Not just a little prejudiced yourself are you? I think you’re indulging in the classic dog whistle.
dog whistling? FFS, I’m a left-wing guy for crying out loud and some lefties wonder why they get constantly get ridiculed by right wingers on anything to do with race.
This is the exact reason why I was hesitant to say anything as I knew someone would be incapable of having a mature discussion on this and would try and paint me as racist.
I’m painting you as a person who’s not using any logic. Anyone can come up with a stereotype and find a person to fit with it.
Let’s see… I have a family member whose boss is Australian and she’s horrible. I’ve heard her husband is just as bad. I have contact with people overseas who have Australian bosses and they say they’re bad too. Australian tend to be noisy and pushy in public. Maybe that’s why they’re getting bashed up?
You can find examples from any nationality and spin a negative tale about them.
Chinese belong to Triads and they’re bad gamblers, Vietnamese are shocking drug dealers… it used to be Italians, but they’re not so bad now…Greeks and Turks are just mad fuckers who are always at each other with knives.. you know about Jews and money…the English never wash and they’re teeth are rotten…the Irish are charming but they’re ignorant micks…Americans tend to be fat and stupid…you can’t trust people from the Middle East, could be terrorists and Indonesians are just as bad… and as for Kiwis, if their country’s so beautiful, wtf are they doing here?… Add your stereotype please.
Sorry, I submitted too early. My point is I could find individuals who fit those cliches. But they’re meaningless drivel. And that’s all you’re really doing Jacques.
As for the ‘dog whistle’ comment. That’s exactly how that phenomena works. It’s all about saying how you find certain behaviour wrong (bashing up Indians), but you can understand it, because we all know that they’re not very nice people and maybe that’s why it happens.
I think it’s perfectly logical to think that stereotypes that are widespread, become widespread because they broadly match peoples experiences. “Coming up with” a stereotype is not the same thing as acknowledging one that is already widespread.
I will meditate with amusement on this thread, whenever I read in this saintly blog about bogans, rednecks, Liberals, Hansonites, patriarchs, capitalists and Xtans.
Hee hee. Leftists. If youse didn’t exist I’d have to make youse up, just for the amusement value.
J de M, I was going to point out that you were trying to make a case with one data point, your unpleasant doctor, (oh god knows they’re completely unknown in the Anglo world, of course!) but Fine has more than adequately done that for me.
The former head of the AMA, Mukesh Haikerwal, was beaten nearly to death in his supposedly safe suburb of Williamstown a couple of months back. I suppose you’d say because his GP countrywoman was so horrible, he had it coming? If your mum’s boss was bashed, raped or robbed would you say she had it coming?
The fact is Jacques, it wouldn’t matter if all the stereotypes were true; if Indians were all loud and obnoxious and rude and annoying in public places, it would still be illegal to attack, bash or rob them. It’s the law! It would not make it morally right, either! And “I’m a Leftist” isn’t a magic spell; it’s something you have to walk the walk with.
There’s a difference between acknowledging the motivations of those who would do the beating, and saying that the victim had it coming. Victim’s can’t control the actions or motivations of those that do them harm, but they can control their own actions. Is it fair that someone speaking in their native language gets beat up? Of course not. But it’d be foolish to not consider that speaking English might be a lessor sacrifice than losing one’s health or life.
Fine, Lets be reasnonable here, stereotypes exist for all races in most cases for some reason whether they be positive or neagtive. Where there’s smoke there is fire and it would be pretty naive to think otherwise.
I commented on the thoughts of the way some Indian immigrants are towards local people of their adoptive country in Australia, Singapore and the United States in an attempt to discuss the possibility that this could be an underlying reason in young Indians being bashed here coupled with the whole “they’re taking our jobs” thing. Have I said anywhere they deserve to be ridiculed or worse beaten up? Of course not.
Look maybe I’m just doing a bad job articulating what I was trying to say here and will just leave it at that.
Helen,
Firstly, I didn’t use “one data point” I used the experiences of local Australians, Singaporeans and Americans to make a point that I think you have clearly misunderstood.
Secondly, I find your post a bit insulting and what I was talking about when the Right ridicule the Left on anything to do with race. Now you’ve got me supposedly advocating the bashings of Indian people! Madness.
Desipis @ 90 & 93, articulates what I was trying to say in regards to stereotypes and the possible motivation of the thugs.
But the problem is that you’ve come up with a few examples of horrid Indian people. I’ve come up with other examples of really nice Indian people, that you’ve either ignored (the nice doctor who treats my parents), or minimised (the Indian students I teach). It also implies that all these negative traits don’t appear in other nationalities. There’s awful people everywhere. Do you think there’s more awful Indians than any other nationality in Australia? If you don’t think that, then what is your point?
Sure, there are some rude Indians out there. But for every Indian you come across who is rude, you will find at least one other who is lovely and friendly. It’s only when someone is already inclined not to like Indians, they will take the nice ones for granted and only focus on the negative.
But honestly I can’t imagine that the type of thugs that are bashing Indians are thinking anything like “Indians take our jobs”, or “Indians are rude”. They are just not into that kind of sociological analysis. (Although as someone said earlier, if their parents are expressing that sort of opinion, perhaps that adds some prejudicial influence)
More likely, the thought process of the attackers goes something like this:
* I want something to do which will make me feel tough.
* Come on guys, let’s go start some sh*t.
* Indians are a good target – they talk funny and look funny.
* Plus, they probably won’t fight back much.
* Oh look there’s one now, by himself. Easy.
But honestly I can’t imagine that the type of thugs that are bashing Indians are thinking anything like “Indians take our jobs”, or “Indians are rude”. They are just not into that kind of sociological analysis. (Although as someone said earlier, if their parents are expressing that sort of opinion, perhaps that adds some prejudicial influence)
I don’t think the fact that people fail to go through specific thought processes before beating up on others is much comfort. I don’t think the two anglo high school kids on the train the other day, bemoaning “asians and indians taking over”, had thought things through to any great extent. And people who bash / rob aren’t famous for thinking things through, either. And I do think it’s to a large degree the parents’ influence, but peers and the ‘shock jock’ media culture as well.
Fine @ 96,
Yes, I’ve met some nice Indian people too but I suppose I was meaning to say on average relative to my experiences. There are a lot worse white people and more of “us” of course but I meant on a per capita type basis. I haven’t ignored what you said Fine, not only do I believe you but I know it to be true. If we were solely talking about local Australians having some issues with Indian immigrants that’s different but as I suggested with those friends in Singapore and the US it doesn’t seem to be isolated to Australia. The traits that make up the “stereotypes” of Indians here are pretty similar to that of locals of other countries.
Eurasian Sensation @ 97,
I wasn’t already inclined to dislike all Indians and still don’t just sometimes I’m not sure if they respect the local people of their adoptive countries all that much. You’re probably right with the sociological analysis of the thugs, I wouldn’t pretend to claim I know how they think (just thought I’d mention that for Helen) and was just throwing it out there as maybe the points I raised could have formed some basis behind their motivation. I doubt it too.
I’m curious, Helen and others (and just for intellectual argument’s sake, not to condone any actual violence, which I deplore)…
What would be your opinion of the Huron’s, say, or the Apache’s, scalping and killing the Europeans whom they felt (not without cause) were invading their homelands and displacing them? What about the Aboriginal response to invaders of a visibly different race? Do you think their actions were justified or not? If not, why not?
When the Indian students and doctors start stealing the real estate, poisoning the flour and impregnating the blankets with the smallpox virus, we’ll have an analogy. But probably not before.
Yep, this is getting a bit crazy. Now Indians are invading our land and stealing it from us. At least Jacques has the honesty to say he doesn’t like Indian people or think they’re very nice ‘on a per capita basis’. Sad, but it explains the thinking.
Oh and killing off the buffalo. Lots of buffalo in Footscray.
j_p_z, those groups aren’t races.
If you don’t appreciate the difference between criticizing people for their attitudes, which they can choose; and their ethnicity, which they can’t choose, then I guess a great deal of these discussions will be lost on you.
Gee, I don’t know. I guess it would depend on how loudly the invaders were speaking? Ask a silly question…
J_P_Z’s, please stop throwing punches, you’ll knock yourself out.
does it make a difference that most of the Indian students are international students thus not australian citizens, thus they r being told how to behave in their guest country and not in their own country as someone implied above
Also I think we may be beyond the sort of racism where just bc u have Indian genes u will b assumed to have particular traits, this debate is more over cultural differences
PC: in the context of this issue, what matters is what people think, or what they think they perceive. You saw The Matrix, didn’t you?
Mercurius: “those groups aren’t races”
Last time I checked, “Indians” weren’t a race either.
“which they can choose”
So you think all human attitudes and cultural dispositions are 100 per cent fungible, eh?
The rest of your blithering is on about the same level. You’re not interested in trying to understand any thing, you’re only interested in massaging your sense of superiority. Good luck with that.
most of the Indian students are international students thus not australian citizens
Good point. These people are giving us their money, or their parents’ money. They are an export industry: one of our few remaining export industries, after successive Australian governments and corporations have continued the dig it up, cut it down and ship it out mentality, and neglected R & D and actually making stuff.
Heaven forbid we should show a bit of welcome and respect to a cohort of people who are bringing THEIR money into OUR country, that is, buying one of our few remaining exports. (That doesn’t mean people have to bring money into the country to get respect, but my point is the bashers are not doing themselves any economic favours as well as the other good reasons for not bashing.)
Another sad and depressing topic is how many of these young people are being taken for a ride by unscrupulous “tertiary institutions”, landlords, and so on, but that’s a topic for another day.
This is a joke, I hope.
1. America and Australia were invaded. Then the invaders took much of what was vital and life sustaining away from its existing inhabitants and then the invaders killed large numbers of them. Violent resistance to these aggressions was all too ineffective but quite justified if it was committed in the name of liberty and self-determination and in defence of their property.
2. Indian students have been invited into this country in return for a considerable fee. They are taking nothing from the current inhabitants. They don’t kill anyone (if you discount their moonlighting as taxi drivers). Most of them are law abiding and respectful of local customs. If these Indians started doing to us what my forebears and their contemporaries did to Aborigines, then I hope that we would fight back more effectively than either Aborigines or Native Americans.
In short, it is sometimes permissible to kill others for what they do. I know of know case of it being permissible to kill another human for what s/he is.
Umm, damned homophones.
I know of NO case.
Katz — see my reply to Dr. Cat. People act upon what they perceive to be true, which need not correspond accurately to what “the case” is. See the recent judgment on the Greyhound beheading case in Canada.
Now I don’t require you to take all this into consideration, but then again I don’t expect you to be able to tell a hawk from a handsaw, either.
Here’s a cupcake. That sticky sweet stuff on the top is what we call “frosting.”. But you can call it “glurble” if you like, and no one will criticize you, because here in the safe room, everyone is exactly the same.
Don’t you wish you could stay in the safe room forever?
In Australia, people of the Hansonite political persuasion often use the word “invasion” to connote “immigration”. They are not the same. Different.
jpz, if brains were toast, you’d be needing some Vegemite.
Matrix? Deluded schizos?
The Matrix was a movie and not real life. Sometimes it’s easy to tell a hawk from a handsaw.
The Canadian hacker was found not guilty but it is unlikely that he will never see the outside of a state-run facility for the term of his natural life. In this case the dignity of the law was protected, not the killer.
As the hacker case shows, there’s no such thing as a safe room (or bus seat). Get over it.
adrian — why? To add something else that wasn’t… brains?
Someone please check with adrian to make sure his attempts at insults at least make some sort of sense in the future.
Meantime, if this is a taste of your wit, what am I supposed to make of your considered opinions?
Can I ask all the other easily-riled simpletons in the gallery to please note that I am not condoning or excusing the bashing of anyone, anyone at all. On a criminal level, it’s a criminal thing, end of story. On a theoretical level, I believe it deserves a more careful discussion than YOU ARE THE RACIST, but then again I’m not physically there where you are. Maybe in your serene judgment (see adrian above), y’all think it’s a crisis of sufficient magnitude to warrant the suspension of reasonable thought and investigation.
You know, like the War on Terror was.
But jpz, you’ve yet to show evidence of having a resonable thought about the issue. All you’ve done is blither on about ‘The Matrix’ and cupcakes and compare Indian students who have been invited to Australia and pay a shit load of money to be here with European invaders of the US and Australia. This does seem a strange analogy.
Are you implying that people who assault Indians think of them as invading their country and stealing their stuff? If you think that, could you show some evidence that that’s the case.
I see that Katz fails entirely to grasp the point (but who knows? maybe it’s my fault for not being clearer), and is then reduced to witless slogans like “Get over it.”
Hee hee. I suppose I should “do the math,” too.
Quick! Somebody else had better tell me “don’t go there” before I accidentally do. I’m not going to argue this further, because I think y’all are wilfully misinterpreting my skepticism to portray it as a defense of malice, which it’s not. And rather than contribute –even unwittingly– to a defense of violence, I prefer to parachute out. Good luck with your controlled auto-pilot narrative. Oh, and by the way, that there is a cliff about 100 kilometers ahead.
Gee, I sure hope you don’t drive over it or something.
It takes a particular kind of person to describe others as “simpletons” while blathering on about cupcakes, handsaws, safe rooms etc etc and making about as much sense as a piece of toast without vegemite.
Memo to jpz: just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense
and just because you think something makes sense, doesn’t mean it does.
Try this on for size you yawning yank: If bluster was bread, you’d be toasted.
“if bluster was bread, you’d be toasted”
That still doesn’t make any sense, and it isn’t even funny, either (which is often a species of making sense). Just thought I’d point that out before I duck out of this thread.
Generally I try to steer clear of threads that are about domestic strictly Australian issues. Perhaps this is one of those, and it was unwise for me to rattle on about things I have no personal experience with. I thought there was an abstract theoretical side to the question, but I could easily be wrong — or at the very least, seem to have put the question in a way that was sufficiently opaque for people to read it in odd fashions.
Oh well. Sorry for the interruption. Back to your regularly-scheduled stoush.
jpz, your first comment here was to make a snarky comment about leftists. Your second was to make an analogy which doesn’t work. Perhaps you’re just being too opaque, but I for one have no idea what your argument is and even if you have one.
Fine — fair enough. It’s possible my comments may appear scattershot b/c I think there are numerous disparate issues in play here, and perhaps I’ve been flitting about between them w/o making proper distinctions.
I’ve been unwilling to write a manifesto-size comment b/c I bet the issue, inasmuch as it’s an Australian issue, contains components I can’t see accurately; on the other hand, inasmuch as it’s a human-behavior issue, I have fully-formed opinions.
So I’ll make you a deal. In another 24-48 hrs or so, after this thread has run its course and Australians have fully had their say (to which I defer, left or right) then I’ll try and summarize my argument in a way I hope you’ll find intelligible, and then you can try to sink it if you can.
Does that sound fair? I feel like this whole thread is getting to be about me, which doesn’t seem cool.
Cheers, til later…
Fair enough.
Is this supposed to encapsulate an insight into how folks form opinions? On the contrary, it’s a truism summed up by such observations as “there’s nowt as queer as folks” or “different strokes for different folks”.
It’s one thing to recognise how people form opinions. The important thing is to persuade them to change their opinions to your opinion. That is the ultimate point of debate.
One could be a pessimist and surrender to the expectation that people’s minds don’t change. However, the record shows that it is possible to change popular opinion. For example, very few in the West today support the institution of slavery.
Blog posts such as this one serve as practice for getting right the arguments against bashing up Indians simply because they look, sound and smell different.
Compared with exorcising arguments supporting slavery construction of these arguments and rhetorical devices should be pretty simple.
History is on my side. I recall similar things being said about Balts, Italians, Greeks, Irish, Vietnamese. Now these folks are just part of the multi-hued background of life in Melbourne.
I sleep in for only a couple of hours and the rest of you start hanging shit on JPZ. Or vegemite toast, it seems, if two and two make a metaphor. Is this what makes stoush these days?
The actions of the Native Americans you’ve cited, JPZ—and that of the first Australians by explicit comparison—were definitely, in my view, justified on the frontiers and afterwards. The history of North American and early Australian ‘settlement’ were notable by both sides’ explicit dismissal of the other side’s custom and law. In the American West, the conflict was militarised to the point that you write them up even now as the Indian Wars; on the Australian frontier, spearings and punishments on the Indigenous side more often followed customary law than not, while white settlers’ reprisals and ‘dispersions’ were more often done outside both English custom and blackfella law.
There’s no analogy to be made, however, with popular resentment of immigrants to Australia, which is a phenomenon marked by almost universal adherence to all applicable laws.
The appropriate analogy would be if the bogans and crackers of Melbourne’s West began to correctly attribute blame to the Australian Federal Departments of Education & Training, and Immigration, for the influx of subcontinental students to their train lines. If that conflict hotted up and the OMG REAL RACISTS started acting in their own interests, against the Government and system of education-for-profit, certainly violence would be appropriate and justified—by the State, that is, which nowadays enjoys a rightful monopoly of violence.
Go get ‘em, Victoria Police.
Oh, and Jack:
Don’t we all, man. It’s getting pretty damn hard around here to call a spade a spade.
And while we’re all piling on to j_p_z like Steeler defensive linemen sacking an opposition quarterback, allow me to point out his most egregious and unforgivable error.
The sweet stuff on top of a cupcake is neither “frosting” nor “glurble”. It’s called “icing”.
Question for Helen: does the phrase ‘Bogan Youth’ encompass African and Asian immigrants?
BBB
BBB, I always thought they could be distinguished by the awfulness of their poetry — or is that Vogon youth?
Mind you, slogans like “we grew here, you flew here” are probably worse than Vogon poetry.
Mercurius, it just seems strange that Helen would want to single out ‘Bogan Youth’ – presumably on racial and, as Jack and Liam have noted, class grounds. And at the same time, Helen says “People are attacking Indian people in Melbourne’s west. Who are these people? We don’t know, because the focus is on the victims and how they are supposedly contributing to their own assaults by being too noisy, too rich-looking, too whatever.”
One way of reconciling the two is to acknowledge that Helen’s position is compromised by her own prejudices, of which she seems hopelessly unaware. But then that’d be speculation. Which is why it’d be good to know what ‘Bogan Youth’ includes, at least from Helen’s perspective. I’m sure you see how all this fits together.
BBB
Someone give that man a cookie. Um, biscuit.
Bingo Bango Boingo, you’re committing thoughtcrime. Please report to the Ministry of Love first thing on Monday morning.
But leading on from BBB’s question, I wonder if people of Aboriginal descent can be ‘Bogans’? Or is it just Anglos?
Damn, now I’m committing thoughtcrime too. See you in the cells, BBB.
I am a Hindu from non Indian background. Our Hinduism evolved by taking away the cast system for good reasons. The Indians who come to Australia are of the higher or richer cast and carry on as if other people belong to the lower cast. I have spent months on a spiritual journey to India only to be disappointed by the attitude inherent with Indians. The rich Indians are rude because they see themselves above everyone else whilst the poor are arrogant just to survive and this is carried on as subsequent trait amongst Indians in Victoria. Remember your mums advise, we are all equal and the same!
Kurly @ 133,
What you’re saying is kind of what I was alluding to.
Yes BBB @ 130 I see what you did there, but you’re being a bit sneaky methinks.
First. most everyone on this thread is in furious agreement that the police and media and public attention ought to be on focused on finding and punishing the perpetrators, rather than finding fault with the victims.
So it’s a bit disingenuous to ping somebody — in this case Helen — for trying to do just that.
Do we know the perpetrators and their motives? No, we don’t. Maybe it’s ‘bogan youth’, or Aboriginal, or Sudanese, or Lebanese or Melbourne’s mafia, or junkies, or whatever crime gangs.
But what’s the difference between those labels? Some are racial labels, and others are cultural/classist stereotypes.
I think it’s a bit precious of you to object to the classist labeling of ‘bogan youth’ as possible perpetrators, when in other contexts, in other conversations, racial stereotypes are attached to possible perps with gay abandon. I hear a lot of hair-chested rhetoric elsewhere about how we should identify suspects by their racial characteristics because its “the truth”, but you seem a little miffed that anyone would dare apply a class label..WTF?
‘Bogan Youth’, to me, seems like a cultural label, and yes maybe with bit of classist sneering built in. But here’s the thing: applying a class or cultural label is by far a lesser sin than applying a racial one, and actually goes some way to help understanding the motives of the criminal, which is what we all furiously agree we should be focused on.
…Why? Because firstly a lot of crime is related more to socioeconomic and psychological factors than to racial ones. Identifying perps by a class label actually has a greater chance of being a realistic depiction of their situation — and that is far more valuable to a criminologist than knowing their race.
We know that people attack other people for reasons that have more to do with perceived disadvantage, actual disadvantage, hopelessness, alienation, desperation and a host of similar factors. Those factors are not located in the genes, they are located in the societal milieu of the crim and their victim.
That’s why ‘bogan youth’, for all the difficulty you may have with it, is a valid way speculate about such crimes.
It’s also a convenient label to hide the racial factor, which is a bit close to the bone for many. Look at the photos from the Cronulla and Macquarie Fields and Redfern riots. For some reason, the first two weren’t discussed as “White people today went on a rampage” but the Redfern ones are always discussed as “Aboriginals on a rampage”. Instead, the Cronulla and Macquarie Fields rioters are described as “bogans”, or “thugs”, or “riff-raff” etc. — anything to avoid identifying their ethnicity. Maybe the reporters just don’t think the ethnicity of the perps is as relevant in certain special cases.
“Bogan” is a description of behaviour not of background or social class. Persons of any social class can and do behave like “bogans”.
In a still more emphatic manner “bogan” is gender specific and age specific. It is almost never applied to females, nor to persons aged over 30 years.
“Bogan” is also pejorative. Very rarely do persons refer to themselves as “bogans”. It’s historical predecessor was “bodgie”. Interestingly, in Melbourne at least, “bodgies” evolved into “sharpies”. Unlike bodgies or bogans, sharpies were proud to identify themselves as sharpies.
However, it is probably true to say that the term is also racialised. Mostly members of ethnically European communities are labelled “bogan”. This fact reinforces Mercurius’ comments above.
In this sense, the term “bogan” acknowledges and legitimises the supposed rite of passage of white male youths into adulthood. Linguistically, the term “bogan” provides a “free parking zone” for behaviour that if committed by other groups would be labelled as criminal.
“I am a Hindu from non Indian background.”
Isn’t this impossible? Are you accepted by an indian hindu as a hindu or do you face discrimination?
I had thought being a Hare Krishna were the acceptable way to be a non indian hindu.
“Bogan” is a description of behaviour not of background or social class. Persons of any social class can and do behave like “bogans”.
Get real Katz. Anyone who has lived in Melbourne for (at the very least) the last 30 years understands the class issues that are deeply ingrained in the use of the word ‘bogan’. Hence the following from Wikipedia which is absolutely spot-on:
“The term bogan (pronounced /?bo?g?n/, rhyming with slogan) is Australian and New Zealand English slang, usually pejorative or self-deprecating, for a person who is, or is perceived to be, of a lower-class background. According to the stereotype, the speech and mannerisms of “bogans” indicate poor education, cheap clothing and uncultured upbringing. ‘Bogans’ usually reside in economically disadvantaged suburbs (often outer metropolitan) or rural areas[1].”
But you are right to say it is racialised, although to a greater extent that you realise. You will certainly never hear of an Sudanese or Vietnamese ‘bogan’, even if they fitted the lower-class / disadvantaged profile described above. Hence Helen’s apparent racial prejudice.
BBB
BBB, my definition of a bogan is Katz’s, not yours. Generally the subset of young men who bash and rob people are indeed lacking in income, education and social skills. That’s not somehting they’ve chosen, and I would point to our society’s demolition of public education and other factors rather than blaming them individually. But that’s a story for another day. (And there are successful bogans with money in our society too.)
BBB ought to read his Wiki crib more carefully.
By BBB’s definition, it would be impossible for a young white male from a lower socio-economic group not to be a “bogan”.
Yet the Wiki entry clearly identifies a bogan by behaviour not be origins.
Many youths who are sons of bourgeois families deliberately adopt bogan behaviours.
I didn’t say that there wasn’t a correlation between class and behaviour. I said that being a bogan was a lifestyle choice available to all white male youths.
I believe that I have realised quite adequately the extent to which the status of bogan is racialised. I beleive that BBB has not understood the extent to which it is sexualised and the extent to which it is age-dependent.
Actually, Helen was criticising another socio/economic group/gang: that dangerous subculture endemic to Victoria, who get around in gangs, wear boots, caps and leather jackets, drive fast in flashy, noisy cars, carry batons, handcuffs, walkie-talkies and guns, and have warrants from the Governor of Victoria to enforce the law—or at least, she was criticising the un-Australian views of their community leaders, who seem to be vastly out of touch with the sentiments of the Australian mainstream. Oh why can’t they just assimilate?
Man, Mercurius, you say that like it’s a bad thing. Or at least, the word “classist” seems to imply that economic inequality wouldn’t be so bad if we just didn’t point out their own poverty to the poor.
And the answer to Helen’s question:
Is “probably not”, at least, without goading a whole lot of middle class white people into furious tizzies. NTTAWWT. That’s what we do.
[Back to early lunch: cold chicken, champagne and a whinge]
How do you criticize someone for an attitude that is clearly linked to their cultural or racial heritage?
Some people do it on the opinion pages of broadsheet newspapers, others do it hanging out of the windows of cars. Me, I like to say it with pipe bands. Yeah, with drums.
There’s no sensitive treatment of social/religious/class differences like forty men with moustaches marching up a street playing “Lillibullero”.
Well, ‘rich bogan’ is not a meaningless phrase, nor is ‘bogan family’. So it’s not economic class or gender or age. I agree it’s behavioural. Indeed there is a conspicuously bogan rich family a couple of streets from where I live. Their house is ostentatiously crass and the man drives (too fast) a Hummer, which has a sticker on the back saying ‘if you don’t love it, LEAVE!’. They hang a flag outside their house on Australia Day and a pair of huge glittery glass balls on either side of the door at Christmas.
Also, there are benign bogans and malevolent ones.
Here’s some related reading.
I’ve got that AC/DC song in my head now.
I can see why Indians would be offended at the idea that they should moderate their perfectly legal behaviour so that they may attract less attention – after all, if you have been assaulted for doing nothing wrong, then it makes sense that we should focus our ire on the assailant, rather than placing any onus of responsibility on the victim.
On the other hand, there is a case for taking precautions (particularly if they do not impose any real cost on you) to minimise any potential “situations” that often arise in public. It’s just common sense. Growing up in an area that had a lot of Indigenous people, one thing I learned was that they do not particularly like to make eye contact with other people and become very agitated, and in some cases aggressive, when others look at them for more than about half a second. (When I was much younger, I once made the mistake of acknowledging, in a neighbourly half-smiling way, an indigenous person who got on my local bus just after me – he took it as a sign of aggression and was visibly annoyed).
It’s apparently an Indigenous cultural belief that staring at others, particularly elders, is unacceptable (unlike some places, such as China, where staring at people for prolonged periods of time apparently isn’t rude at all). So there is an understanding that if you want to avoid unnecessary argument and even physical conflict, regardless of who “started it”, staring at Indigenous people on trains or buses is really not a very good idea to begin with. It’s just not worth the trouble.
By the way, I have in fact witnessed other people come to blows precisely over the cultural misunderstandings that I have illustrated above. On that one time I commited a major faux-pas (by staring at an indigenous person), I was able to laugh it off and nothing came of it.
I think ‘bogan’ is now a behavioural, not classed based. If you want to see Eastern suburb bogans, go to the spring racing carnival. Wannabe Warnies in sharp suits and blond tipped hair smashed out of their heads befor the first race.
But, it can also be a self-deprecating term and it can be a benign term as well. It’s become complex. It’s certainly not a completely gendered term. What about ‘bogan chicks’? Or the recent series on SBS, ‘Bogan Pride’?
I’ve always associated boganism with proud and oblivious tastelessness, which does indeed transcend class. Education, at least of the ‘broad classical liberal’ variety (or at least it used to, somewhere between the rise of free state education and the rise of the notion of education as a commodity), also transcends class, and I think it’s formal education of which boganism is most exactly the opposite.
A bogan is someone who has your cultural roots but who you would consider as your cultural inferior. They have failed to thrive.
eg Andrew Bolt
keep your bloody hands off my cultural roots! smash ya head in.
“Proud and oblivious tastelessness”, Mr Cat? Like loud talkers who like to indulge in conspicuous consumption, in front of people who may be less well off than them?
Gee, they give themselves away in all directions when they assume ‘Mr’ as the default gender position, don’t they.
FWIW, PDAA, I might well categorise the people you describe as bogans, yes.
All this talk of ‘rich bogans’ seems to completely miss the class issue. Class is not about how much money you’ve got *now*. And the mere fact that there are male and female, rich and poor, etc. ‘bogans’ shouldn’t mask the central aspects of the stereotype for which the term is typically shorthand. But clearly Helen is using the word ‘bogan’ differently from how I would use it, or how I understand it. So the question is answered.
BBB
In all fairness to Helen’s position in general, there’s something a little wrong when the reported police statements aren’t along the lines of: ‘young men, prejudiced or otherwise, should not travel or drink alcohol in groups and prejudiced young men should not go into areas in which they are likely to encounter people against whom they are prejudiced’. I suppose that would be objected to on the basis that it lumps the (relatively) good in with the bad, although of course it is generalised in the same way that all this rubbish about ‘loud’/iPod-flaunting Indians is generalised.
BBB
What would you say it was about, BBB?
I can remember a first-year politics lecturer telling us that our class was defined by what our fathers did for a living. It was so long ago I had not yet acquired the feminist equipment to give him what for. But this struck me then and still does strike me now as spurious, and I’m wondering what your criterion or criteria would be.
PC, clearly class status has a social component completely independent of how much money is in the bank. This is why the upper middle classes reserve their strongest venom for the so-called upstarts.
BBB
Maybe Ute Man can come along and straighten all this out for us?
I agree. For a potted summary of class in Australia in 2009 encompassing socio-economic, cultural and ethnic/racial factors, we need Ute Man. I only hope he’s in the cabin of his Ford F100, doing the Clark Kent quick-change into his famous steeltoed lacky-sided boots, footy shorts and flannies to get prepared for the super job ahead.
My 2¢ opinion is that boganism in modern Australia was best epitomised by the career of Mark Latham MP. He got relatively rich working as a pollie though he cultivated his public housing roots, did his best to antagonise wankers, fucking floggers and the rest of the literati though he was himself a university graduate and author of pompous books, and grated deeply with almost everybody, whether they voted for him or not. (Disclosure: I did, happily).
His boganism wasn’t about being rich or poor or powerful or powerless. It was because he was a dickhead.
All this time I thought “bogan” was just the accusative singular declension of “bogus”.
No? Nothing, huh.
(runs away)
Or one of the Boganii, victims of Caesar’s march down the Via Appia (Club)?
BBB, pretty sure there are no Sudanese bogans because the Sudanese haven’t been here long enough to adpot the sub-culture. But there are definitely Asian bogans, and most likely Vietnamese ones, sometimes complete with mullets, moccasins and tight-fitting stone wash jeans.
Spot on Liam
Well of course, and 18th and 19th century British fiction shows us how minute and sometimes incomprehensible those class differences were perceived to be. But I wasn’t disagreeing with you, BBB, I was asking a straight question because I really want to know what you (and other people) think: what, given that the Marx class schema described mid-19th-century urban newly-industrial Europe, do you think constitutes the spectrum of class markers in post-industrial Australia in 2009?
You already said it PC – it’s teh edumakayshun.
Disagree Liam. Latham was at times a big yob, a dickhead, a bully, a joker, a stooge even, but never a bogan.
A bogan just can’t stop being a bogan at whim. This was by very definition a bogan. There are legal aid lawyers at this very moment, who dearly wish that their clients could appear for just five minutes less bogan-ish-ness for their own self interest.
OTOH, being a yob, a mug, a goose, a dickhead, an arsehole, a creep etc. are free from socio-economic-class and to a large degree racial strictures. You can be a middle class tosser who acts the yob or a underclass nouveau riche likewise and often they play footy together on Sat arvo.
And although there are similarities between westies and bogans – imo, true bogan culture dates post Hawke Govt. There is something inter-generational-unemployment-welfare-mum-housing commish-no apprenticeships-no-manufacturing jobs-bongs4breakfast-on the gear or on the game-video-watching/thieving-culture that just didn’t exist in the same way or to the extent prior the economic restructuring of the 80’s.
The meaning of bogan however, I submit is changing rapidly and is now being used to describe yobbo behaviour, and gauche celebs and sports stars are now “cashed-up bogans” etc whether or not they attended the local grammar school.
Well said Liam – and I would trackback to other groundbreaking and fruitful discussions of boganism as cultural rather than economic group on this very blog – if I could find them.
Me, I’m over Bogans. Nowadays, I find myself much more more aggravated by city 4WD owners. They’re all rubbish drivers, road hogs, they make everything more dangerous for everyone else, you cant see past the fatarsed losers at corners or reverse parks, reversing over children, absolutely self-centred, society-denying, McMansion-on-wheels road shows – the worst cultural excrescence of the Howard era personified. There’s a turd in the pool, fellow Australians, and it is the urban 4WD owner.
We need a name to truly er… name them, and welcome the humble Torana-driving Bogan back into the fold (provided its 4 cylinder). I fishtail with our Bogan comrades them against the Toorak tractor brigade. In circlework we stand.
LE
Keating Towers
My opinion, PC, is that the concept of class is completely meaningless in modern Australia.
Income, wealth, future expectation of income, education, ethnicity, accent, parents, employment status, housing, postcode, taste in music, taste in beer, Ford vs Holden, ABC vs footy, country vs western …
Which of those ingredients go into the ‘class’ recipe? Your set of factors will be different from mine, which will be different again from BBB’s.
I look at my friends, and I just can’t place them into any class framework. Some have more money than others; some have more eclectic tastes; some can speak the Queen’s English real proper like. Some are arty-farty, others think Star Trek is the high point of human civilisation. What does it all mean in terms of ‘class’?
Jo, you’re definitely right about “dickheads” not being a subset of “bogans”. Dickheads come in all varieties of class. In a Venn diagram of the categories “Australian Dickhead” and “westie”, Boganité is in the relatively small intersection. (NB: I’m using “westie” in its Sydney derivation). One can have all of the cultural characteristics of a westie—accent, fashion, values, to name a few usual class markers—but if there’s no sense of being a dickhead, Boganitude is absent.
Simply: “westie” is not an epithet. “Bogan” starts fights.
Amen. And I think you’re right about the Hawke years.
Lefty E, the current vehicle of choice, I submit, is the purple early 2000s Barina with a frangipani sticker.
Ah yes. Jo, I dunno if this is a reply to my initial offering of education as the opposite of boganité (nice, Liam, very nice) but either way it gives me the chance to elaborate. By ‘education’ I did not mean ‘what school you went to’ or anything even remotely like that, though I know that a large proportion of the population regards that as an extremely important class marker. I was talking about education not as a commodity to be bought but as a form of self-development to be experienced, as facilitated by formal learning. One kid from the local state high school who paid thoughtful attention in History and English and Social Studies is, to my mind, ‘classier’ than one who went to Snotty Girls’ Grammar to meet suitable boys from Snotty Boys’ College, learn to be a horrible 4WD-driving snob, and get spoon-fed enough facts and given enough hints about what would be in the exams to scrape through her HSC.
I mean, Sam Newman went to Geelong Grammar. I rest my case.
Pavlov’s Cat @ 170 – “social class” and classiness in terms of social behaviour are quite separate things.
I’m more inclined to agree with Paulus that class is a pretty meaningless concept these days in Australia. There are in some places in Australia where “old money” as a measurement of class has some value but I suspect most people simple don’t care. And even the very financially well off would consider themselves to be middle class or even working class if they work in a trade.
PC – Bogan has changed its meaning so rapidly, it’s now apparently interchangeable with terminology for certain behaviours or ‘tudes which weren’t so class-based.
Bogans didn’t attend private schools ever. This is what being a bogan meant. Even attending the local systemic catholic school was out of the bogansphere; attending school full-stop was bordering on un-bogan behaviour.
Sam Newman is a prize arse, creepy clown and misogynist of the highest order – but he was never a bogan.
However nowadays, bogan is just interchangable with yob. Yobs are everywhere from the house-o to the houses of Parliament.
I don’t think where you went to school can be a determining factor, because you can’t tell where people went to school just by how they act.
Round these parts the bogan vehicle of choice is a white Daihatsu Charade (aptly named) with glittering mag wheels and a ‘muffler’ that instead of muffling the engine noise, amplifies it.
Come to think of it, how come cars these days are equipped with amplifiers instead of mufflers? You could stick a tennis ball covered with glue down most of them. Now there’s an idea.
Sam Newman is the stereotypical jock.
IMO, a million social miles away from the stereotypical bogan.
Jo, while it’s impossible not to agree with “The meaning of bogan however, I submit is changing rapidly”, I’ll submit that probably speaks more about semi-ignorant and one-size-fits-all homogenising, Australian neo-snobbishness. Like ‘white trash’ in the States.
“However nowadays, bogan is just interchangable with yob. Yobs are everywhere from the house-o to the houses of Parliament.”
Yes, Australia is becoming a more egalitarian place in terms of accessibility to boganhood.
Our leading light, Australia’s world-renowned King Bogan, winner of the Nobel Prize for Boganité, Shane Bloody Warne, attended Mentone Grammar School. I know nothing about it, but it sounds posh.
I wouldn’t call Sam Newman a bogan.
I see him more as a caddish snob, a set of patterned behaviours that are at least as old as Tom Brown’s School Days, and therefore much older than the oldest bogan.
FWIW I wasn’t calling Sam Newman a bogan, I was using him as an example of an argument about the difference between ‘education’ and ‘which school you went to’.
I’d disagree with that too, though. The jock is an American stereotype, for a start, and a relatively recent import. And ideas about class in the US are substantially different from those in Australia.
“boganite”
Heh heh. You know, if you lopped off the little accent aigu (or is it grave, I can never remember), you might have just plain Boganite, a zesty little flavoring to sprinkle onto Vegemite.
Or it might also be the mysterious alien substance Boganite, which is the fatal weapon against the superhero Latte-Man (or Latte-Person really, s/he wouldn’t want to seem sexist…)
“Latte-Person! Save us from the depredations of the Kronulla Krim!”
“C-c-c-can’t move… Too weak… Ungh, rays of deadly Boganite have got me paralyzed… If, can, only… reach the soy milk… in my aluminum water bottle…”
When a thread derails on the interwebs, does anybody pay attention?
The accent’s acute, crowd pleaser. But-a then-a so issa da speaker, kapeesh?
(I coat my beret with elited uranium for protection against just this kind of boganite-attack).
PC, I realised you weren’t and I wasn’t disagreeing with you, just having my own stab.
For lack of an Australian equivalent, I still can’t think of a term that more roundly describes Sam Newman than ‘jock‘.
Some of us are attending to the outpouring of righteous indignation over a perceived slight to white people, while the idea that there might have been a slight to Indian people is viewed as sheer over-sensitivity.
Suggestion: What about I change “Bogan youth” to “yobbish element”. Is that more accurate? (After all, there are plenty of bogans who don’t bash.)
BEEP
Foolish Earthlings of low birth and coarse manners! Your Boganite is useless against my next generation PinotProcessors!
mmBUZZ, mmCLICK
I’d go with ‘thugs’ Helen.
Lest Sam Ward pop over and cry foul.
[Ahem]
Some of us are *trying* to enjoy a thread derail. Besides which, Helen, “yobbo” derives from a similarly class-signifying epithet (white, working class, adolescent and delinquent), just a British one. The Yanks have “punk”, which is different again.
Now, back to sledging white people. Australia’s leading bogan, Paulus, though admittedly not yet on the world stage, is not Shane Warne but Kyle Sandilands, Massive Dickhead.
Often enough, when trying to understand the minutiae of Australian class and society, I turn to the essential reference collection, TISM. In this case we need look no further than ”The History of Western Civilisation”.
PC, was at work and in a hurry, and I understood what you meant, but was being overly anxious to work through again, what was and what apparently now isn’t the meaning of ‘bogan’. And being a Port supporter PC, I would have thought you’d be totally effluent in boganese.
Anyways, coming from Sydney, we maintain an open racial book for thuggery up here with our Anglos working in tandem with our Islander, our Asian, our Aboriginal and our Lebanese youth
gangsgroups to make up impressive year-on-year assault and rob stats on vulnerable migrants, old people, shopkeepers, taxidrivers, anyone in the wrong place and of course, each other. Go-oooo Sydney!The drunk man who runs the local wine cellar gave me a lecture last week about what wine to order for my wedding. He reported that chardonnay is ‘now widely viewed as a bogan drink’ (exact words) and only the abject, non-self-respecting types will lower themselves to be seen drinking it. What was the other white wine he said to get? I can’t remember.
Sauvignon blanc has now taken over the chardy mantle, Laura. As long as it’s from New Zealand.
‘What was the other white wine he said to get?’
Champagne – believe me please.
Good point.
Pffft. The Adelaide Hills and the Clare Valley rule.
Laura, I’m guessing chardonnay became an allegedly bogan drink the moment that Kim (daughter of Kath) calling Brett’s workmates a pack of shunts was first screened around Australia.
Ralph the Kidney, yes, I can see why you might have a substantial investment in the question of what people drink.
Yes, it all went downhill when people started referring to it as Chaaaaaaaaaaaaardy (wocka wocka wocka)
“What was the other white wine he said to get?”
Laura, my bet would be pinot grigio.
It was indeed the Sauvignon, thanks Fine.
“Jock” may be used in the US, but “jockstrapper” (shortened to “strapper”) I can date to 1967 in Melbourne, PC. Used amongst a subset of male undergraduates to describe a group of males fervently desirous of beer, snooker, footy, rowing, cards, beer and raucous song. Probably smug and caddish, many of them.
The “strappers” were contrasted with the “pounders” (who pounded their desks late at night as they studied [!!!] during their university terms). Probably smug, and likely scornful of strappers. I’ve heard “jocks” or “jockstrappers” used now and then ever since. Not necessarily a US import?
More recent equivalent? Perhaps “blokey”?
yasou
“What was the other white wine he said to get?”
Skip the easy ones — go with the viognier! Or better yet, the gewurtztraminer.
Think of it, how often do you get to ease back in your chair and say, “Mmmm, that’s good gewurtztraminer.”
spaetlese traminer
or
trockenbeeren auslese
All sound a bit foreign really.
You cant go past porphyry pearl for a wedding, dear.
Nah, a nice bit of Blue Nun is just right.
Hah, foolish Tellurians, you have never enjoyed the exquisite splatter by splatter savour of the juice from crushed cateagle eggs run through the aged and extracted bowels of a primate hung like a garden nose on a frame made of *untranslatable* to drip drip drip into a jerrytang pooncan for our easy sippin’ pleasure.
Yes, that’s right. You primates are all muddy pink and pinky brown on the inside when it comes to the juicy poteen crunch.
Boskone abides.
But is also getting rather irritated by Scarlett O’Hanson’s dilatory response to our FaceSpace twitterfriend request.
You’re so right wilful – this ones arsks it best – Yob or Wanker?
Savvie Blanc won’t go the way of Chardy as per Kimmie, cause it doesn’t taste like shit. It sort of tastes like nothing when it’s very cold, which is ace. The aformentioned pinot gris, gewurtztraminer and comeback kid riesling all in the good taste booklet at the moment, but a nice Kiwi Savvie Blanc and your guests will be doing very well, Laura. (& don’t go for the Oz semillon blends imo- well depending on the food and the colour of the napkins…good luck)
Blue Nun – jeez, a bit fancy Fine! Other top tipples besides the Lindemans Porphyry Pearl, were the Orlando Cold Duck and the Minchinbury Sparkling Hock.
I’ll have the prawn cocktail and the steak diane thanks…..
Sauv Blanc from Marlborough, NZ. Good wine. Pricey but it’s a wedding not a BBQ. Besides, the appellation Marlborough offers deep Ducal and British firmness with hints of hauteur.
good health!
bottoms up!!
yes, another sip, why not??
“Blue Nun – jeez, a bit fancy Fine! Other top tipples besides the Lindemans Porphyry Pearl, were the Orlando Cold Duck and the Minchinbury Sparkling Hock.”
And, jo, dont forget the Ben Ean or the Chicken Kev (on a menu comeback given recent government environmental copouts).
There are semillon blends and semillon blends. Fox Creek (Southern Vales) made a semillion/sauvignon blanc a few years ago that they called ‘liquid lemon meringue pie’. And it was.
Jo, I remember Cold Duck being used as a signifier for clueless boganism in the 1975 Adelaide University Footlights Revue. Now we would all kill for a glass of Fox Creek Vixen or d’Arenberg Peppermint Paddock*. One of the consolations of ageing is that you get to watch what went around coming around.
Also, I’m curious about how the soi-disant Lady Bracknell got through the security doors there. ‘She’ is clearly an impostor.
*fabulous red bubbles, darling
Ambigulous @ 196,
Rugger-buggers.
& don’t go for the Oz semillon blends imo- well depending on the food and the colour of the napkins…good luck)
This reminds me that the drunk cellar man suggested I get all the same brand of wine so the labels matched each other, and showed me several sets of $10 a bottle sparkling / red / white so I could choose which label design went best with my wedding ‘colours’ lol.
The obvious stupidity of this aside, I’m probably going to do it anyway and get the $10 Zilzie wines he suggested – is this a really bad idea? Can’t afford more than $10 a head for booze, since that’s going to soak up the whole stimulus payment.
Shop around Laura and bargain. Times tough!
Make your decision based on your budget and stick to it. Your guests will be more than happy with whatever food & grog you are providing, except the few who are never happy and you only invited them cause they are family or your hubby’s rellies etc.
Matching napkins and wine labels….not serious!
“Can’t afford more than $10 a head for booze, since that’s going to soak up the whole stimulus payment.”
So, Laura…. you’re (very wisely) not going into hock?
Cheers!
Paul B: “rugger buggers”? a few may have been rugger chaps, but were still called “strappers”. Probably not buggers: devotees of Lord Onan*, perhaps.
PC: circa 1976 in Melb a cheeky young wine maker sold “Dead Duck” replete with a label showing a departed duck, an ex-duck, a duck wot ‘ad dropped off it’s perch, etc.
* the Lord Onan shall Always Provide
For sparkling, us expatriate bogans of New York have been getting stuck into the Prosecco! Poor man’s champers and very nice too!
There’s one obvious solution to this issue of providing wine for a wedding, as long as you don’t mind accommodating an extra guest, and then you could spend your stimulus on the honeymoon instead.
On the other hand, water may soon be more precious than wine.
“This reminds me that the drunk cellar man suggested I get all the same brand of wine so the labels matched each other”
Laura, even better, you can buy cleanskins for your wedding, and then design your own labels for them. I don’t mean your bottle shop’s lucky dip selection. Visit a couple of good wineries, sample them first, and if you’re happy, order direct from them.
Just to give you an idea, we went with a McLaren Vale winery called Pertaringa. $80/dozen for the whites ($6.66 a bottle), and $105/dozen for the reds ($8.75 a bottle).
The labels we used, by the way, were Avery L7765 (8 to an A4 sheet). It was a very enjoyable family production line we had going one afternoon to print and affix them all.
All our guests were tres impressed!
In fact, many family members took an empty bottle home with them as a memento.
(And good on you for soaking your stimulus straight back into the economy!)
Oh, oh…please follow PC’s advice – Clare Valley and Eden Valley Riesling are flag bearers for taste, and value. The rest of the world should be so lucky!
If you were buying for a wedding, I’m sure you could bargain someone down to around $10 a bottle. The Peter Lehmann Eden Valley Riesling can be had around $13, and it is stunning. Bury me with a few please….
“Can’t afford more than $10 a head for booze, since that’s going to soak up the whole stimulus payment.”
Why not decant? Brown Bros have 20litre casks of red and white that are a good drop and come in under $120 a pop. The cardonay snobs will not even notice. Then you can lash out more on the champers.
I don’t think that you should stop at designing your own labels. Recently we had a wonderful family gathering where we designed and made our own bottles. The children enjoyed the whole process, and it did them good to understand that glass isn’t just something you buy in supermarkets. And the bottles were so much nicer and more individual than the ones you tend to get in the shops.
And because we carved the names of the wines in the mould, we didn’t have to bother with labels at all.
Our guests were really stunned with the look, and it really complemented the table setting and marble candle holders and Waterford glasses. Presentation is so important these days.
Can the LP hive mind please just write me a list of nice wines at around ten dollars a bottle that I can take to the wine shop? I am completely ignorant here, having been ordered off all drink a couple of years ago.
lol at Adrian.
The wedding is in three weeks and a bit so no time now for labels and decanting abd that stuff, even if I could be bothered which I can’t
Hats off to your industrious family, adrian.
I’m surprised, however, that you didn’t also spend a few months earlier on, hand-crushing the rocks to make the sand that was melted to make the glass. Children these days seem to think that sand just somehow “comes” from beaches. Sadly, they just don’t appreciate geological processes properly, not like we did when we were lads.
Good tip on carving the wine names into the moulds. We won’t forget that. Hurrah for individuality, craft skills and good old common sense.
Laura
all the best for Sat 4th April !!!!!
or whenever it’s on,
Ambi
No probs, Laura
The label stuff wasn’t really important, just something we did for some slightly kitschy fun.
I was more wanting to point out that you can order cleanskins from some pretty top notch vineyards, and for a lot cheaper than you’ll pay in the store. For any given wine recommended, it’s worth exploring that option for a wedding to help keep the costs down.
Right, here’s my two cents:
WHITES
The Peter Lehmann Eden Valley Riesling is indeed lovely.
Wirra Wirra Scrubby Rise (in spite of its name) Sauvignon Blanc is good, as are most Wirra Wirra wines.
Yellow Tail Semillon Sauvignon Blanc is good value, apparently.
Any Wolf Blass white is likely to be good value.
REDS
Not a big red drinker so I’m going by the official recommendations: Taylors Promised Land Shiraz Cabernet and Angoves Nine Vines Shiraz Viognier are at the top of the list I have here.
Most of these are a dollar or three over $10, but you can get discounts with things like mixed dozens and half dozens, as long as you get to pick the mix. Don’t let them talk you into anything as they are probably just trying to get rid of whatever it is.
Also, Dan Murphy’s have really excellent, genuine, visible markdowns on almost everything. I checked and there’s one quite close to you.
Ahem…seriously though, anything by Peter Lehmann or Yalumba is usually good at that price range. Yalumba make a SB which you can get for $8.99 or similar which is pretty decent. Doesn’t have the fragrance of a NZ SB, but is still a good wine.
They stock it at the Summer Hill Wine Shop, which is good enough for me!
Knowing how Dan Murphy’s screw (if you’ll pardon the expression) wine makers, not to mention how they force independent retailers out of business, I refuse to go there any more.
Also, their service sucks.
There are still a few independent retailers out there and most offer decent prices and on-line delivery.
Either that, or as someone suggested, order direct from the winery.
Agree that direct to a winery is best shot by miles – no-one gets ripped off, you’ll get delivery, and quality product – I assume.
Much as I do love the SA wines, another idea might be checking out which wineries really copped it in the fires, and giving them a hand while drinking fine wine. Jane Faulkner in The Age recently singled out Serrat, and Roundstone in Yarra Valley as prime targets – both excellent wine-makers too.
Up in Beechworth, I hear some people will have no vintage at all this year, though wines do tend to premium price end in that gorgeous part of the world.
Back in the Barrosa, Long Hop have a fantastic range of moderately priced wines across the blends and colours – I’m sure they’d be worth an e-mail.
“another idea might be checking out which wineries really copped it in the fires, and giving them a hand while drinking fine wine. Jane Faulkner in The Age recently singled out Serrat, and Roundstone in Yarra Valley as prime targets – both excellent wine-makers too.”
Errr, yeah but that’ll stuff your budget. Melbourne restaurants and bars are jumping on this, and well might they, but the upshot is that anything halfway decent from a fire affected operation will likely be well above $10 a bottle.
Maybe a (token? or is that harsh? Fuck it!) round of something along those lines… a Yarra Pinot or summat, if you feel like being supportive, is a good notion. Otherwise, my advice is to go for a really good beer.
I mean, you need wine, but to make it a bit original, hook yourself up with a few slabs (or a pallet!) of Coopers’ Vintage or somesuch. Make the beer a feature, instead of a last redoubt de Boganité.
Ute Man
This NRL bloke: Anthony Watmough.
Watmough – is that ‘is name or a question he’s askin’?
Nice thought FDB
“Otherwise, my advice is to go for a really good beer.
I mean, you need wine, but to make it a bit original, hook yourself up with a few slabs (or a pallet!) of Coopers’ Vintage or somesuch. Make the beer a feature, instead of a last redoubt de Boganité.”
And putting the spotlight back on Beechworth, the Bridge Road Brewery up there is the best food beer I’ve had in a while. Available as stubbies, and very classy long-necks.
Mmmmm
Ta VC!
I’ll check that out meself. I loves me food beer.
I’m a fan of some of the Holgate range too – maybe cos they’re housed in the Keating Hotel – though I’m not sure if they got in fire trouble.
Good luck for the wedding Laura, and in the years after may all your problems be little ones.
From Bogans and Indians to serious wine and beer advice: MSM you dinna compete.
“From Bogans and Indians to serious wine and beer advice: MSM you dinna compete.”
Still picking on tremulously robust and overpriced whites though.
Heh, Nabs.
We dry, urbane whites have nothing to fear of course.
Youse can’t have a wedding without Passion Pop. A better leg opener has never been invented.
hey, Utey, didja go with the passion and end up a Pop?
I heart Passion Pop.
I reckon at least one of them tin lids at home is a passion poppette, the one in the middle owes her existance to one too many crownies and the last one wuz sedatives from the dentist. I carn’t even remember bein’ awake.
So, the middle one was when the missus had one too many Crownies and mistook youse for Johnny Farnham? Are you sure?
And the last one was when youse mumbled “sore” about ya tooth and the missus s’posed youse wanted “more”? Legend, mate. Bloody legend.
At least the Passion Poppette has a decent foundation. Did the missus give her Passionola in her babies bottle? Better’n “formula” any day.
geez “Passiona in her babies bottle” I meant
dunno how pianolas got into this
Too many crownies was me – the first kid scared me so much comin’ out I wasn’t too keen on doin’ it again.
The dentist story is this:
Me mate Slagger took me to the dentist to have me wisdom teeth taken out in the chair. Instead of knockin’ me out they gives me a couple of pills and a few needles and start pullin’ on me head like an old horse. By the end of it I didn’t really care much as them sedatives make yer feel pretty good.
Anyway, Slagger suggests we have a coupla cleansing ales on the way home and I was too far off in fairyland to say no. So we have a couple and a couple more and then I makes that fateful phone call that means I’m havin’ so much fun I don’t want sex for two months: Hi love I’m at the pub be home later. Fair dinkum the thin lips and hands on hips come straight down the phone but I didnt care.
So then about 2 in the morning slagger dumps me on the front step and pisses off in the taxi and the wife comes out swearin’ at me and I don’t remember what happened next. I wakes up with me trousers gone and a case of shaggers back worse than Bob Hawke. I’m real confused by then. Then I see there’s a vase on the bedside table an’ it’s got a flower in it and I smell bacon and eggs comin’ from the kitchen, and the wife comes in with a big smile an’ give me a kiss and this big breakfast in bed.
You can understand by then I thought maybe I’d slept two months or somethin’ cos’ normally drunk on the front step is silent treatment time, but I bail up the eldest kid and ask her if she knows what’s going on.
She says: Dad, you come home drunk and Mum had to drag yer into the house, she tries putting you in bed and getting yer clothes off and while she’s pulling yer trousers down you yelled out “leave me alone lady I’m married”. Then the door shuts and I dunno what happened after that.
Nine months after that wee get a baby bonus from uncle Kev.
Ute, that’s so sweet.
“In vino veritas” (get ya mate Four Eyes to translate).
Basically it means the missus realised when you said “leave me alone lady I’m married” that ya tellin’ the truth, you’re a top bloke – always faithful – ‘n so damn HOT that sheilas are always puttin’ the hard word on ya. She saw yas in a new light. She wanted some of that amazingly attractive man – the bloke she married.
Weird, eh?
Not as weird as passing off old Dave Allen jokes as your life story though, Ute Man you old rascal.
Every Dave Allen joke was old, even when he was alive and telling them.
Dave Allen
As Irish as River Dance, bless ‘im and begorrah. And don’t be too harsh on Ute Man, David Rubie. From what I’ve seen, you appear to admire a very similar classic car. Coincidence?? I wonder.
Maybe there’s a bit of Ute Man in all of us blokes. And a bit in his ….. nah, I’ll leave the reminiscing to him.
Helen – I can tell you from long experience that a lot of students are deafening. Not Indian students – students. Anyone who says that’s an Indian thing really hasn’t been out lately
.
True. But it’s also true that Indians speak loudly both on the phone and off. Different cultures have different norms viz speech volume and emotive emphasis. Just ask an Italian what they really think of Anglo-Saxon manners. Indians are loud and they speak on the phone in inappropriate places – like libraries.
.
They’re actually not being rude intentionally, it’s just their way and I’ve noticed many have moderated their behaviour. And the local students are, yes, deafening. Why? Because the current generation of high.school universities students are loud because they are (generally speaking) obnoxious and have no manners. The result of indulgent parenting. Sorry – true!
.
I don’t thing the cops are excusing thugs who do this they’re just saying don’t call attention to yourself. The train lines west and north of Nth Melbourne station have more than their fair share of arseholes. And the Indians are the latest in a long line of hardworking migrants who raise the cockles of resentiment amongst the dregs of ‘Straya. We shouldn’t blame victims but we should advise them on pertinet points of street wisdom and if that means not drawing the attention of thugs and bigots it’s sadly necessary.
.
It’s also entirely reasonable to advise those newly arrived to our shores of local etiquette – when in Rome etc – sadly the formerly high standards of Melbourne’s civility have taken a dive straight into yuck.
Yobbo – Police ability to prevent crime is pitiful throughout Australia – but playing this event up as some sort of hate crime is clutching at straws.
.
Sorry not true.
.
There’s plenty of racial tension and Indians are copping it big this season. From the same people who always bring you the same old highj standards of ugly speech, dirty clothes, drink sodden brains and absolutely lack of utility. Yes they may be thugs and thieves but they’re bigots too.
.
If I were Indian in Sunshine I’d be organizing and packing weaponry. Hey I’m not Indian but if I have any reason to go to Sunshine I’d like to have at least three guns.
OK I am going to see the wine man tonight and order the drink. I’ve just finished transcribing everything here that seemed to be a genuine suggestions.
I really like the idea of supporting Yarra Valley wineries but whenever I can deal with local businesses I prefer to do that, and also the cellar man has promised that if we run out on the day he will bring more around.
I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m a bit afraid of being talked into just buying whatever he wants to sell me actually.
Good luck Laura. Stick to your price and what you want.
Good luck Laura, I will be interested to see how it turns out.
As you rightly deduce, sales people anywhere have their pre-determined sales stock that they’re pressured to sell.
Hold firm!
Hr s clp frm rcnt blg :- ‘Wh r th rcsts ttckng ndn stdnts? Th g dd nt sy. Bt Jhn Ry t strln Pltcs pnts t:
“Strng tht th plc sy nthng bt th ttckrs? Nt rlly. Pst rprts ndct tht th ttckrs r mnly frcns. nd w mstn’t ndr ny crcmstncs lt nybdy knw hw dngrs frcns cn b, mst w?’
t rmnds f th whn th vl skf gng wr crryng t thr rcst rp ttcks,th nt-rcst nqstrs trd t rvrs th rt nd cntr blm.
Looks like it’s apologising time again.
I would like to unreservedly apologise to the entire Sinhalise community for this racist attck from the Tamils.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25500384-5001021,00.html
Binder if you are responsible for the attack you should apologise for it. And be prosecuted for it.
If not, then what is your point?
It is, from the account you have linked to, a terrible and reprehensible attack and its perpetrators should be identified, pursued, arrested, prosecuted, convicted after a fair trail then severely punished according to law.
However unless you were a participant in the attack, or a supporter of such vile acts who has repented of condoning criminal violence, there is nothing for you to apologise for. And nothing for us to apologise for any more than there is for members of our Tamil community who had nothing at all to do with this despicable act.
So again, what is your point?
I suspect GregM that you and Binder are now dueling with swords made out of the same irony.
Just another minor blogosphere bingle.
4 Indian Students get bashed in Glenroy, one in a condition so severe that he is battling for life, if survives will may be impaired for life. Enlightening rewards paid for the crime of pursuing knowledge.
Jokers wake up, it is real and whole lot of respect goes to the police still trying to keeping them shut
God bless and all the best
The Indian govt may declare Australia an unsafe destination: http://www.theage.com.au/national/india-fury-on-student-bashings-20090528-bozs.html
Well, it is, isn’t it?
Enlightening rewards paid for the crime of pursuing knowledge.
.
Indeed. A most bitter enlightenment..
The proof is in the pudding my dears.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24337433-2862,00.html
Yes, the ressentiment on LP has increased alarmingly on LP. The whole ‘we hate white working class ‘bogan’ suburban Australians’ is really ugly and difficult to understand. If it’s not ‘Clare’ it is rugby league players, or ‘anglos’ from Melbourne’s western suburbs who use public transport, or pretty young white women full stop. It is pretty obvious that close to 100% of LP posters are white Australians, so the ressentiment is even more obvious. Sad.
Oh cry me a river, Embrace, for the poor, poor white people of Melbourne. We have made exploiting overseas students, often in substandard ripoff “schools” and “colleges”, into a lucrative export industry. We make them our cash cows and when our youths start attacking them, we scold them about being “too loud”. Australia’s international reputation is being trashed, questions are being asked about our treatment of people from other countries.
It’s possible to scratch ones’ head and chew gum at the same time, you know, Embrace. It is perfectly possible to understand that the underclass who were born here have a raw deal and suggest how that could be addressed, while still saying that if racially motivated attacks are on the up then the police and other authorities should do something about that, as well.
Still, your superpowers impress me, Embrace. I didn’t know it was possible to look through the intertubes and ascertain the skin colour of posting thereon. You’ve got to admire that one.
If the attacks are racially motivated then perhaps the police would use different strategies to reduce them, but otherwise I don’t think an increase in racially motivated attacks should attract any more or less police resources than an increase in non racially motivated attacks. And fundamentally I think racially based attacks are better tackled by the community at large rather than the police.
As a person of a minority racial background my experience has been its very rare to have problems with people who get to know you. Organising community events where international students get to mingle with people in the areas they live in and commute through is going to do achieve much more than throwing more police at the problem.
“… From the same people who always bring you the same old high standards of ugly speech, dirty clothes, drink sodden brains and absolutely lack of utility. Yes they may be thugs and thieves but they’re bigots too. …..”
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Quoted from Adrien at 246.
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Is that any way to write about Australian immigrants of African descent, as suggested in the link provided by Tom Jones, in 259?
As long as the decendants of less recent immigrants continue to refuse to believe that they could possibly be at fault and continually attempt to point the finger at more recent immigrants and claim that they’re solely responsible for the problem of violence against Indian students, the problem is going to continue. Of course the Hun would talk up any wrongdoing by anyone of African descent, because that’s what they do. Therefore a lot of bigots can feel good about themselves but not much else will happen.
Unless you’re one of the direct descendants of the Wurundjeri people, you’re an immigrant, “Tom Jones” and “Phillip”.
Pointing the finger at the Vietnamese are you, Helen?
Since commenters seem to be no longer commenting in good faith on this thread (I don’t know who would take that comment seriously, GregM, please go over to News Ltd or MSN for that kind of stupidity), or maintaining any sense of respect for the subject of the thread, I’m closing comments. Signing off with a further apology for the fact that my country persons are using this problem to take cheap swipes at other ethnic groups. Could do better, people.