An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
64 Responses to “Saturday Salon”
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I can’t believe I’m frist.
I can’t believe you are frist either
It would be useful for polling day planners if the AEC could provide a link for the eventual polling booth locations to Google maps and Google street view. Saves us driving around checking each site with the camera in toe and individually mapping these is inefficient.
Google docs works well for Campaign Co-ordination – any other interesting uses of technology for polling day purposes?
Racism and muder in Oz
The labyrinth of issues of students / workers from the Indian sub-continent has so many aspects, I’m not sure many of us can begin to understand it. I certainly can’t.
A couple of things that run through my head….
* India is going through a massive re-alignment of it’s economic and social tectonic plates. Something equivalent to the “Enclosure Movement” during the 18th and 19th C in England, Ireland and Scotland but now with far greater numbers. (Don’t mention the world-wide catastrophy that re-structuring created!)
This massive dislocation of rural, village and small town life, throughout India, has people walking away from land, farmed by their families for generations, and drifting.
* Suicide rates of farmers has sky-rocketted, in proportion to their soaring indebtedness to money lenders – significantly to buy commercial seeds and fertilizers, largely the aim and inevitable result of the infamous “Green Revolution”.
Some interesting leads from: http://www.navdanya.org/
In the breast of farmers, hope that the next good crop will solve all their previous financial worries, and set them and their families up for a better future, so often fails to match reality.
* I’m sure it was the Brisbane Indian community newspaper somewhere in September of 2009 that ran a series describing the lengths families go to, to borrow money so their children can live other than as a landless, homeless, farm labourers or urban slum dwellers, especially by going overseas. Including the problems it creates for the parents when the promo spiel isn’t as good as predicted – and the loan repayments don’t materialise from Affluence Central.
If you doubt that loans aren’t available to such near destitute farmers:
How many unemployed, financially inept, and socially illiterate people in Oz would be turned away by Pay Check Lenders and their (still operational?) 49 – 120% interest? More so in India – but with an openly corrupt and opaque police force the implications of default are life threatening.
* India has had a huge amount of dam construction over the past +/- 30 years. The figures of homeless people generated from these range from 30 – 66 million.
Try the writings of Arundhati Roy, eg “The Chequebook and The Cruise Missile”.
but also http://www.narmada.org/
If the dam construction was supposed to help farmers, it appears somebody forgot to tell those not on the international financial roller-coaster.
It seems their misguided – read: corrupt, self-interested and contemptuous politicians – are more likely to be helping CocaCola with a bottling plant, or the current owners of the on-going crime of Bhopal (why does the name ‘Monsanto” come to my mind?!), or a British iron ore mine forcing people from their farms in the mountains of Kerala etc, than the citizens of India.
* Rural disclocation and increasing poverty are such that the Naxalite rebels claim they have something like 50,000 (armed) insurgents whenever they want. [The term “Maoist” habitually gets used with “Naxalites”, but as in the case of the Nepalese insurgents, I have no comprehension as to what this may mean about their politics. Suffice to say, the foot soldiers - the canon fodder - are the poor caught up as disposable pawns in a game beyond their control: a humanitarian crises that another geurrila war won’t solve. As the murderouos war in Sri Lanka has shown - an omen for India?]
Watch for the word “Terrorist” to describe destitute, hungry and homeless Indian farmers who determine not to be written out of their own future.
* Why are professionals serving offal in cardboard through the night to the obese anyway?
Is it racism that educated, intelligent and highly motivated people from the third world are doing the menial jobs we avoid?
I know of one Indian doctor delivering pizzas in Brisbane! I can appreciate there needs to be processes to ascertain that his credentials are credable – but to be a dubba-walla for us in the affluent west, for crying out loud!
If we’re going to strip the intelligensia out of the third world, at least we should have the sense to make use of their abilities (eg the family story of Australia’s current High Commissioner to India), rather than have resourceful people flounder in the least desirable jobs, the least desirable accomodation – and tossed from light pole to gum tree by people we do our best to avoid.
To blame “them” for wanting – for themselves and their families! – what we have already appropriated from the world’s resources, generates the careless impression that reinforces all the queries about our own level of racism – Yes? No?
The Raj took previous generations of “indentured labourers” all over the world to do their menial jobs.
What has changed?
The search for a better life leads to a violent death in a park in Melbourne – and Griffith.
What will be left for / of the family back home – an unimaginable debt on top of a personal tragedy?
Well, today I’ve turned 65. So, in the cant of the 18th century London underworld, I’m officially an Old Codger.
Currently reading Dan Cruikshank’s The Secret History of Georgian London. How the wages of Sin Shaped the Capital.
So far, its excellent. His hypothesis is that the wealth of the London sex industry (which exceeded all other economic activities according to the figures he gives) was the reasson for the economic prosperity of Georgian London and its architectural shape. So far, I have only one quibble. Discussing the witch-hunt against homosexuals in London by the Society for the Reformation of Manners in 1726, he laments that four of the accused who were condemned to death would have got a fairer trial if they had had a defence counsel. Trouble is, the use of defence counsel in criminal trials was highly unusual during most of the eighteenth century. The accused were expected to conduct thier own defence, in the same way as all prosecutions were brought by private individuals. Still, its well worth a look at. Judicious in its arguments, careful with its interpretation of the historical evidence, and, as one would expect with Crickshank, a delight to read, it seems to be a very good history of 18C criminal London and its connection with the sex trade.
If I change my mind about it by the time I finish it, I’ll let you know.
Intend to recommend it to some of my economic historian mates, see what they think of it.
Happy Birthday, Paul! What a nice pre-occupation to have while celebrating one’s 65th! The wages of sin are not death but prosperity!
I go along with your perplexity on the Indian student/racism/murder ML@4. And to hear Julia Gillard foaming at some silly, minor Indian nespaper cartoon depicting the Vic police as KKK sympathisers is ridiculous. Shades of the muslim world and that Danish cartoon.
I don’t know if the recent Melbourne tragedy is rascist in its origins. We may not know until someone or group is arrrested and convicted. Is there any suggestion that these attacks are the actions of a few? Or copycat crimes? Has anyone been caught to date?
Happy birthday Paul. Is an old codger in Dickensian terms the equivalent of a grumpy old man today?
Thanks, Patricia WA and Pablo.
The word apparrently originated in the early 18C in Tom King’s infamous Convent Garden Coffee Lounge, a well known haunt of thieves, highwaymen, rakes and prostitutes and was part of an extensive language used to confuse the unitiated.
I have consulted that bible of 18C slang, Francis Grose’s The Vulgar Tongue. Old Codger is not in it. From Grose’s entry, I suspect it is a derivative of Old Roger, which meant The Devil.
Murdoch’s vanity press published this article about failure in Afghanistan today.
I particularly liked this exchange:
I might also add that the clocks are also the same.
I recommend the article strongly.
Many happy returns, Paul. BTW, would “Tom King’s infamous Convent Garden Coffee Lounge” also have been a well known haunt of hyperactive, green-fingered nuns?
Happy Birthday Paul
Mervyn, I agree with you: “Is it racism that educated, intelligent and highly motivated people from the third world are doing the menial jobs we avoid?”
Just found out that secondary teaching is restricted in Australia to those from non-English speaking background countries with a IELTS or ‘International English Language Testing System’ score of 7.5. Effectvely cuts out those who got their masters in Australian universites that required a IELTS score of 6.0 for admission.
Happy B’day, Paul. Has your pension gone up at all[disability to age
]?
Happy 65th Paul. Have a lovely day.
For Paul B.
@5 – Happy birthday, Paul!
Happy Birthday Paul!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJQM5xBaRXI&feature=related
(Couldn’t find any chihuahuas, hope some corgis will do & just strike out Ma’am and put in Paul.)
I’m late to the party again, but Happy Birthday Paul!
Happy birthday, Paul!
Happy Birthday, Paul!
last call for anyone else who wants Tuscan Kale/Cavalo Nero seeds. email me at saintfurious{at]gmail[dot]com.
Bloody hot today. Trying to think of a secondary income stream for my business when it becomes the norm that more than half the days in summer become the sorts of days that my OHS policy dictates we can’t work. bleurgh, roll on autumn.
Happy Birthday Paul.
As an historian, you may be interested to know that at the very moment your mother was suffering labour pains associated with you, HMAS Australia had its funnel lopped off by a kamikaze attack.
Coincidence? You decide.
ooh Happy birthday Paul you ole codger
Is it also coincidental that Mick Jagger retired at 65?
Happy birthday Paul.
The wages of sin may be death, but the hours are good.
Thank you all for the birthday greetings and videos. I enjoyed them immensely.
Katz @ 20,
I don’t know if this is a case of Jungian synchronosity or what, but I just put a new post on my blog and … well, see for yourself.
http://beingahistoryheadandotherthings.blogspot.com/2010/01/two-beautiful-young-men-devoted.html#comments
It does mean I’m off the disability pension and on the aged pension but the rates the same, except now its taxable … but if I go o/s since I was born here I can stay as long as I like. Apparently that’s different if you’re a naturalised migrant. At this my social conscience protests.
FB – ooh, yes please.
Lucky I saw this, as I must have missed previous advertisements.
Check your inbox
Interesting Paul.
Now, if those two rebel chappies had flown an aircraft fashioned out of tea chests at their British enemies, that would truly have been spooky.
I guess the lunatics and the heroes are sorted out from each other by those who actually get to write the history.
“The wages of sin may be death, but the hours are good.”
Oh noes! It’s the lolocaust!
Happy Birthday Paul Burns. And may you have many many more and live well into your 100’s and become a drooling pain in arse socialist blight upon the hide of capitalist Australia.
Happy Birthday Paul! Was going to add “it’s all down hill from here”…but thought it’s all up hill from ..ah shit you know what I mean.
Casey,
)
I’m trying hard. Though I’ve taken a bit of a break from active politics to concentrate on my writing. (Except at LP, of course.
Katz,
I thought it was weird I mentioned kamikaze in that post, and then you provided a link to kamikazes as part of your birthday greeting, about the same time I was writing the post. And, yes, it is a rather odd tale. There were one or two Forlorn Hopes on both sides during the War of Independence, but so far as I know, only this one suicide attack.
Thanks, Zorronksky. Somehow, despite myself, and a chronically wasted and extended yoof, so far I’m holding up okay. Touch wood.
Happy birthday, Paul!
Paul
Ambi and joe2,
Thanks muchly. joe2, I nearly fell off the chair laughing.
Good, Paul, it was a toss up between that and the very cute Orangutan with the wink.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIbBqX1z23Y&feature=related
Happy Birthday, Paul. The geek in me has to point out that you are now One Million and One years old (in binary).
Happy birthday Paul, and congratulations on the milestone.
[Just found out that secondary teaching is restricted in Australia to those from non-English speaking background countries with a IELTS or ‘International English Language Testing System’ score of 7.5. Effectvely cuts out those who got their masters in Australian universites that required a IELTS score of 6.0 for admission.]
Can we make all teachers meet this standard? If I hear ‘those ones’ one more time, I’ll scream!
Polyquats,
That’s very odd. One would think if you’re smart enough to get a Masters you’re smart enough to teach English as a second language.
joe2, orangatang was good, but you were right, the kitten trumped it.
So what’s violin kitteh? Chopped liver?
You should have a birthday more often, Paul. I can’t stop laughing about the bubble bath babies who followed on from violin kitteh!
I’d forgotten how funny toilet humour can be! The joys of the internet!
Cell Phone Usage May Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk
Great news for mice and us older citizens. I plan to strap one of those mini mouse phones on my head and take myself off the ‘do not call’ list.
It was David Bowie’s birthday on Friday. He turned 63.
Thanks to everyone for your birthday wishes/videos yesterday. It was a most enjoyable day.
Patricia WA, you’re right about that baby bubble bath one. Hilarious. (Imagine having it as a ring tone on a mobile.
Couldn’t find a duck, so I’m cooking up a leg of lamb/celery/carrots/onions/mushrooms/parsnip/Italian tomatoes conconction in my stockpot that one of you gave me an idea for last week. Smells wonderful.
Add my felicitiations Paul. May you profit from good health and felicitous circumstance as well during the coming year …
furious b @19: just as a matter of interest, if it is not too much trouble, what are the OHS rules for heat? How many days does this take out of yr work schedule? Seems to me that outdoor work hours will become more circumscribed as things heat up.
Happy Birthday, Paul (sorry about the off-by-one error).
Your lamb pot roast / stew sounds fantastic.
Just got charged 10c surcharge for a plastic bag at
Toys R UsBlack Flag Anarcho-Syndicalist Bookshop.10c is ludicrous. Should be $5 per bag if you want to change people’s behaviour. 10c is just a donation to shop
profitscommunity-distributed surplus.Baraholka,
Where did this happen?
Toys R Us
So I was walking down Sydney Road today, and I came across a wond’rous sight.
I’m actually in the market for an ambulance-chaser at the moment, and I’m sorely tempted to use these guys just 4 tha lulz.
That’s a scream FDB and I guess you’ll need an ambo chaser if you over-expose?
My camera phone’s so crap it took me 4 attempts, but I had a near-hysterical-with-laughter and rather comely Dutch tourist watching traffic for me.
FDB I hope you suggested a cool reward.
Wasn’t thinking fast enough. And there was a pub right there!
You need the Lone Ranger then?
Sorry, now you’re lost me.
I’m sure he’d come in handy though.
I think it was Casey called you Tonto. By the way was that taken near Staley St?
Ah yes, soy Tonto. I keep forgetting.
Further south than Staley – corner of Merri St, just south of Glenlyon.
anthony – “furious b @19: just as a matter of interest, if it is not too much trouble, what are the OHS rules for heat? How many days does this take out of yr work schedule? Seems to me that outdoor work hours will become more circumscribed as things heat up.”
Anthony, we do a bit of urban bushland work too, so it gives some flexibility. We also work way down south [often coastal] a LOT, which unless the wind is a strong northerly gives us significantly lower temps than Adelaide metro. We have a few contracts that are reasonably close to home base, so we’ll prioritise them on hot days, start early and work short days if we need to.
WE don’t work at all on fire-ban/extreme fire risk days, but I don’t as yet have a simple temperature policy…..often it’s very site specific depending on the geography, access, shade v open veg, proximity of cleared land, ability to access the vehicle – but that stuff is all part of the risk/hazard assessments we do. At the moment I have only have one site that is really worrying me, I just hope we get enough low fire risk days to do it, or we are not going near the place.
The upside is that a couple of extra degree in winter gives much greater flexibility to do more work then. The other upside, is that increased temps and dryness will disadvantage certain weeds. There is a new guide to blackberry that has just been released and the mapping projections factoring in temp rises are quite interesting.
Anyway, I was supposed to be drafting our new OHS policy on the weekend, which is why it was on my mind…I didn’t get very far with it..it’s too hot to think at the moment! I have a new mapping toy arriving soon, so worst case scenario is we just spend the summer working out how to use the thing!
Someone, somewhere, must perceive this to be good news:
If some LPer has the inclination, it might be good to do a post with a roundup of some links to donatable orgs providing aid to Haiti. The devastation appears to be enormous.
Gimme that old time religion …
Haiti disaster blamed on pact with devil
Also calls earthquake a blessing in disguise
From the man who popularised AIDS as god’s plague …
Maybe that erstwhile presidential candidate should have read this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/14/haiti-history-earthquake-disaster
Paul B
I oppose both the death penalty and cruel/unusual punishment, even for heinous criminals, but statements such as Robertson’s above do press my buttons enough to wonder whether I wouldn’t enjoy the opportunity to beat him into a catatonic state with a large rubber hose.
For those of you who wish to donate to the Haiti Earthquake relief effort and wish to avoid dodgy right wing NGOs my contacts/comrades/friends in South America tell me the organisation linked to via the following link, (top right hand corner) is reliable.
http://www.haitiaction.net/
Just sayin’.
Roberson is exceedingly weird, full of insane apoicalyptic fantasies, (and, as some-one who has a soft spot for apocalyptic fantsasies when it comes to global warming, I reckon I know what I’m talking about.)