An open thread where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
(Prefer to join a more focussed discussion? Try our recent roundtables for recent lively discussions or browse our archives for topics of interest)
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Frist! Because I’m in London and have been for a week, doing a course on mathematical modeling of diseases at Imperial College. Not only is the course great, but I discovered yesterday that one of the other students is a nobel laureate – from Australia!
Lack of internet access and being very busy has kept me from LP. No withdrawal symptoms though …
To coincide with the 10th anniversary since the release of ‘The Director’s Cut’, Fantomas have just released the dvd ‘Director’s Cut Live-A New Year’s Revolution’ where they played the album in full at a NYE show in ’08/09 in San Francisco.
Here’s a trailer of the DVD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZY_-6Ywso4
Also congratulations to the Boomers wrapping up their three game series (2-0 lead) against New Zealand tonight in Brisbane sealing their spot at the London Olympics.
Wei Te-sheng’s new film “Seediq Bale” is released this weekend:
Oh joy! Hawthorn, who will play to intimidate and hurt Geelong, are hurt and intimidated. Bad luck for Menzel and Franklin to be seriously injured ‘tho totally accidentally. Watched it again from 6am woot.
@ 3 looks good!
Leaving immediately to go looking for deadfall orchids in a very old forest.
Is everyone at Imperial College diseased, SG?
The daughter is in junior band performance at school fete today so we are off to that later. Also, the (very well presented with good book of essays) set John Cassavetes: Five Films arrived yesterday so the next few nights are going to be interesting.
There better be a TV at the 5 yr Birthday Party this arvo or I’m off to the Como to watch the second half of the Eagles showing the Magpies how to fly.
akn@4, I just googled ‘deadfall orchids’ and there was nothing to enlighten me. Can you tell me a bit more about them please?
Rudd ready to forgive and forget
http://www.news.com.au/national/labor-mps-behind-a-kevin-rudd-comeback-say-he-is-ready-to-forgive/story-e6frfkvr-1226133560845
Terry — anything originating in The Murdochracy or its affiliates is suspect. They are campaigning for regime change.
I rely on nothing from them that isn’t independently corroborated. If they declare sunset, I want a second opinion.
Is Philip Adams also a part of the Great Big Right Wing Conspirac, wrongly doubting that PM Julia is going a great job?
Adams is a flatulent windbag, with delusions of pertinence.
And one might add, that a pig with lipstick is still a pig.
And finally, FTR, I reject the caricature of my position as entailing conspiracy. I’ve written at length here recently on media and implied no such thing.
The more work I do on my protocol design, the more attack vectors I find that can’t be closed given my constraints.
I can’t work out if that’s good or bad.
I know zombies are very popular with a lot of people at the moment – zombie films and TV shows, zombie fiction, Jane Austen and zombies, zombie economics – Could someone enlighten me on one point? There is a program on RN about zombies which has just finished and they defined a zombie as someone who looks like a human being in every way, but lacks consciousness. “Nothing going on” in the brain, as they said.
In that case, why do zombies form hordes and behave in ways which appear aggressive to humans? If there’s nothing at all going on up top how do they know to do this?
@17 Helen ..unconsciousness?
@Helen, zombies (in horror fiction) need to eat brains. They don’t have to think about it, they don’t have to plan how they’re going to do it, there’s no sense of aggresion per se: zombies just sense a living brain and pursue it relentlessly.
I’m hunkering down at home after being on a site where I have been terrorised by magpies. I’ve tried explaining to the magpie that I really was no threat and that, indeed, the very tree it is nesting in only exists because of my activism, and furthermore the tree that it launches its attacks from was actually planted by me, but the magpie is relentless – ungrateful sod. In an ideal world I could delay my work until the squawking infant has left the nest, but the season is against me there. Thankfully the wagtails are much more pleasant company – they seem to have been rather busy on their nest this year – it’s quite a magnificent structure.
In IT, zombie machines are those what have been captured by some hostile program, joined to some other network and are at the disposal of some other person. Typically these run spam or do DDS attacks …
@ 20, just wear a hat, bigger is better, and ignore them. Show no fear, don’t look up. I’ve had more aggro from a wagtail nesting in my shed than any magpie. He didn’t seem to like me climbing up to check progress every week or so.
I think there must be truth in the idea that magpies that have been harassed (by schoolkids most frequently) then become primed to swoop nearby humans. I haven’t had any trouble with the magpies that nest in the tallowwoods on my block over the years, but the butcher birds have taken a huge dislike to just one of the neighbourhood dogs — a brindle pig dog that is a bit untrustworthy– and they persecute him relentlessly all summer. I think he has brought it on himself at some stage by snapping at them or possibly getting hold of one of their young. He has the most unnerving habit of coming up behind you and silently staring at your back. His owners bought some chickens and they all disappeared overnight with not a single stray feather left behind.
@22. Yep, I wear a hat and have become more adept at ignoring them…actually, I’ve used earplugs – because it’s the swooping noise that is the worst part, but this one magpie is very aggressive for some reason and having its feet in the back of your neck and wing across your face is hard to stay chilled out about. Magpies are only ever aggressive when they are in these fragmented areas of vegetation….in the proper bushland I’ve never had a problem with ‘em.
I’ve noticed that hi-vis clothing really seems to aggitate them, especially the ones with the reflective strips….I’m on a roadside remnant and I think hi-vis is compulsory within 3 metres of the road edge, but I’ve abandoned that to try and pacify this bird.
lol @ the wagtail story. I’ve never had a problem with them, but I have seen them trampolining on the tail of larger bird to try and get them to move on and away from nests, they seem fairly fearless for such small birds. I have a friend who was photographing the progress of a wedgetail eagles nest up on the Oodnadatta track and mum came back sooner than expected…my friends was extremely lucky he was wearing a hat that day.
For those interested in such things Sean Marsh has just become the third Aussie in history to score a century on test debut away from home.
He’s currently 130* just 22 short of beating the away record (set by Clarke at Bangalore, 2004) and obviously ahead of Dirk Wellham’s 101 at The Oval in 1981.
Charlie Bannerman’s 165* at Melbourne in the first test beckons …
Mind you … Bannerman’s 165* (Ret.Hurt) out of 239 team runs has only been approached once by an Australian … that must have been some pitch. The next top Aussie score was 18, and the next 3 team innings were 196, 104 and 108. Bannerman was one of four to exceed 20 in the whole match.
As afficionados know, almost exactly 100 years later in the centenary test at the same ground, Australia won a much higher scoring game by the exact same margin — 45 runs … spooky.
ABC Radio National News on the NAPLAN results advised that ‘reading skills in Queensland had deteriated’
Love it !
Fran @26
There was nothing spooky about it. The centenary test preceded by a few months the announcement of Packer’s circus which was a series of made for TV fixed super tests.
Look at how easily Allan Knott gave up his wicket (the Pom’s 20th wicket) just as they were 45 shy. Wasnt spooky at all, was the hand of Kerry.
Irony is sometimes hard to do on the Internet …
salient green @9: by ‘deadfall’ I mean those orchids living on branches that have been broken and dropped by wind and age. There’s a stretch of river not far away, 20 minutes by car, hard up against national park with a magnificent row of casuarinas interspersed with red cedars (yep). It’s farm land and the owner is happy for us to take what we want once it’s hit the ground otherwise the orchids, mainly lamb’s tongues and one Sarco Chilus (so far) just die. We’re also taking drinking back water from the creek which is yummy. If you’d like 12″ of branch covered in lamb’s tongue let me know (mods will give you my email) and I’ll send you one. Top day, by the way, hard windy and cold under a bright sky.
My theory on aggro maggies is that they are the ones who have not been properly raised, because mum was hit by a car whatever. I saw the mother maggie down at the park teaching her youngster not to swoop me and the dog. She did a finely judged interception and put the kamikaze kid right off his swoop. He has not tried it again. Sadly, some mums don’t make it through the season and their young have to raise themselves.
grace @ 31 – you might be right. There is a bird that visits my backyard that insists on continuously swooping one of my cats. That cat is hopeless at hunting, but if he was ever to catch a bird it would be when being swooped.
Helen, zombie hoarding behavior is probably an example of self-organizing criticality. Like bees, etc they don’t need to show much more than instinctive behavior to appear organized.
@ 24, good read thanks. My resident wagtails made a nest in the U of a piece of heavy wire which was hanging from the Cypress rafters of my old shed, and had a couple of cultivator points on it. They add to the nest each year but once it got a bit tall and tipped over, threatening to spill the babies.
I taped it up with some duct tape which I removed when the young had flown. One of the young that year had some unusual pied markings on the wings and it’s a real thrill to see it around the orchard still and it seems a bit tamer than the rest.
akn, thanks for that info and the offer. I live in SA and have visited Tassie 3 times and ache for it. We plan to retire there, perhaps Golden valley/Deloraine or south of Hobart somewhere, in 10 to 15 years.
In the meantime, I’m just soaking up what ever I can about Tassie. Cheers.
That is a very interesting point about Magpies, Grace. If memory serves, they are one of the species where cooperative breeding is the norm, so it may be that disruption in the local population could have a larger effect than for species where only the parent bird/s are involved or where the young are independent at a very early stage.
Just finished reading Five Bells by Gail Jones – an antidote to all the rubbish flowing around us. Words carefully used can still tell the truth. Is anyone else in Australia writing as well as Gail Jones?
Salient green: much as I love Tassie it’s not where I’m at…which is a forgotten town in the Hunter Valley…never appears on the weather maps…old gold country not far from Barrington Tops. A place so small that it can’t be named because the locals will identify me with their kerosene and pedal powered internetz machines. But good luck heading for Tassie. Lovely place and not so many sheep as SA.
Point of information:
Now plainly, I’m against offshore processing and mandatory detention, but taking off my “I play nicely with others” cap and putting on the one that says “Unscrupulous Government Spiv” what would be the reason for capping the outflow of folks from Xmas Island at 800 over four years?
If you believe that the measure will “stop the boats” and “break the people smugglers’ business model” then why not simply offer a straight 1 for 5 swap open-ended?
Note that the voters of Lindsay for whom the policy of cracking down on vulnerable people was designed aren’t supposed to be bigoted xenophobes. No sirreee Bob … No. They just wet their pants over people coming on boats and “queue jumpers” and want to go after people smugglers with business models. So in theory, it doesn’t matter if a few more “furriners” come in because that’s all hunky dory right? The people in Malaysia aren’t even mostly those Muslims.
Can someone who likes the ALP’s approach here explain?
The maggies at my place, which seems to be a border, are two separate clans. Depending on where I put out the dog food, one or the other group has dibbs. Woe betide any raiders.
I’m trying to restrain my Jack Russell youngster chasing them off. They have never worried us, the Deerhounds allow them to get rice from their trays as they eat.
Watching Tony Hancock on GO..gold!
GEM actually.
“”"”Watching Tony Hancock on GO..gold!”"”"
I went to school with a lad named ” Toe knee hand cock”.
A very sensitive boy, as i recall.
akn, looks like I assumed wrong but glad to hear you’re in a good part of the world anyway and the hunter valley is on my list of places to visit and bushwalk in the next couple of years.
My reddish-brown hair is exactly the particular hue to ensure all manner of birds will swoop upon me during nesting season.
jumpy reminds me; I went to school with a boy named Robert Sole; quite bright but dreaded prize giving……………
Wantok@45
I have a Polish friend that speaks about ten languages, he gets a giggle up sometimes when reading the birth notices in the paper.
Hair colour makes a difference? I have heard bald men say that they have particular trouble with magpies.
I saw a really large, bright meteor late last night, out to the west. I half expected there to be something in the news this morning about meteorite strikes but perhaps it burned up in the atmosphere.
I believe them to be the petrol station orchids one buys on the way to a Sunday luncheon.
Salient Green: know Barrington like the back o’ my hand and can recommend easy to hard spectacular walks. Let me know when you’re blowin’ through.
DrSusanC: I’ve been outed as an orchid fraud! You’re correct there about the species of plant.
akn @49 do you know what’s the story with the the former Barrington Tops Guest House, the oldest commercial building in the area burnt down around 2006, the property left derelict, never rebuilt and barbwired and sectioned off including the egress into a NP constructed walk up along the Williams River?
CMMC @ 44, I have a variegated head of hair myself, mousy-brown to rather blonde with a smattering of grey [as my hairdresser describes it]. I seem to only ever have trouble with mudlarks seeking it out as nesting material. On one occasion I was sitting at an outside table at a pub on Rundle Street and a mudlark decided it would swoop in for a closer look, landing right on my head, much to the amusement of passers by. What was interesting about this to me is that my first instinct was to lean over and wrap my arm around my pint to protect it from possible predation, rather than worry about my scalp. I suspect this is race memory or some such thing – never try to get between a South Australian and a pint of Coopers Sparkling Ale.
Hats with big eyes on top keeps the Magpies off.
Amused by how The Australian which ran a campaign to get Rudd dumped is now running one to get him back as PM
This just in:
Pest control household brand Mortein has announced it is killing off its mascot of over 50 years, Louie The Fly.
Gosh … I always wondered if that r@cist trope would ever be dumped. It would have been nicer had it occurred when I was still in infants school — it would have truncated at least one line of abuse — but I suppose it’s a case of better late than never.
OTOH, it’s said that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I suppose I survived it all …
Philomena @50. No further info I’m afraid on the guest house or the fire. I only stayed there once as a guest and it was great. As kids we made good use of their fireplace on completion of the two day trip down the Williams River – lost of jumping over unreturnable waterfalls and not a trip I’d contemplate now. I wouldn’t let the barbed wire intimidate you if you wanted to walk up to Rocky Crossing!
Apropos an article out today (Sept 12/11) in which Wikileaks has revealed cables between DFAT and the US over watering down Howard’s requirement of compulsory pilotage for shipping transiting the Great Barrier Reef (marine park?) … to a genteleman’s agreement requiring voluntary pilotage. I recall Rudd saying that the Chinese had ‘ratf*cked’ the Copenhagen climate talks. If ever there was a Federal department that could give lessons to the Chinese in how to ratf*ck Australian interests it would have to be DFAT.
The revelation also goes to the complete irrelevance of the Australian Conservation Foundation whose current CEO, Don Henry, was apparently unaware of this agreement. All that lobbying and duchessing, Don, to what purpose when snotty private school chaps in DFAT just ignore you?
dear anyone
another anniversary:-
http://ffrf.org/day/view/09/10/#stephen-j.-gould
yours sincerely
alfred venison
Quite right too, Alfred. My favourite science writer whose ‘The Mismeasure of Man’ was a magisterial destruction of reactionary forms of psychology.
akn@55 Thanks. I did do the walk. Awesome. There’re rumours about an insurance job with the site but rebuilding now is prohibitive.
It is annoying that people staying in the independently enterprised cabins overlooking the derelict site have to climb through barbed wire to get to the river and the national park walk. I was told NPWS won’t do anything about this as very many private properties across NSW abut or cross through NP. Too many to challenge.
“This just in:
Pest control household brand Mortein has announced it is killing off its mascot of over 50 years, Louie The Fly.
Gosh … I always wondered if that r@cist trope would ever be dumped. ”
???
Russ
Yeah, I don’t get that one either.
Maybe, no white people are named Louie? or they don’t target white flies?
Russell
Based on the character’s inflection, register and name, what was his ethnicity, in your opinion?
What allusions did this ethnicity summon amongst the WASPs in late 1960s/early 1970s Australia?
oops {What allusions did this ethnicity
summon(make) … } recomposition error …Fran – Louis was a fly, he didn’t have ethnicity. He sounded like an Australian fly trying to sound like a gangster from Chicago: we didn’t seem to have an Australian stereotype for ‘threatening’ they could use, but thanks to our familiarity with American gangster movies, they could throw that in.
After your comment on The Honeymooners, and now poor Louis, I’m concerned about your childhood – all that analysing and no laughs.
His persona was of a lower class Italian NY mobster/thug. He was, as per the Italian stereotype “bad and mean and mighty unclean” — and a pest to be exterminated.
Having my fellow pupils toss that ditty in my direction for about 8-10 years was not such fun, though by about Year 5 I was hardened against it, and able to set it into a broader cultural context.
I did decide early on that being Australian in the usual sense was not an attractive option. That was probably a good thing. Had my peers made it easy to conform, I might have been tempted to do so. Instead, I found one could live without conforming, and indeed, that there might be an upside to being at odds with almost everyone.
Fran – I had several boys from Italian migrant families in my class, but we never figured out Louis’ nationality, so the insult was never used. We just assumed he was an Aussie fly trying to sound tough.
I don’t think we associated Italians with being mean or unclean – on the rare occasion the word dago was used it never sounded genuine: it was meant to be bad, but we didn’t know why exactly. Teasing the Italian kids just meant calling them Luigi. We didn’t think Italians were dirty because they owned the local deli and fruit shop, which were spotless, and if you visited their houses they were also spotless, though old and unfashionable. The looking down on Italians at school would have been a class thing – they appeared poor because their houses were old, unfashionably furnished, and their mothers all dressed in plain black.
Only years later did we find out they had acquired several houses and a vineyard and were worth millions.
And just if you think Louis (as in fly) was close to our taunt of ‘Luigi’. No, Louis to us was the more expensive Catholic boys school in the next suburb: St. Louis.
Fran @62:
This WASP didn’t realise ethnicity played any part, so I’m gobsmacked to learn of your experiences. Glad to hear you turned them to your advantage though.
The creator of Louie the fly?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_Courtenay
Tis true.
I’m the first here to mention Sam Stosur’s stonking great win yesterday? What a game she played.
I’m no tennis fan but from the passages of play I saw replayed at the home of a tennis-enthusiastic colleague, she certainly seemed very composed and disciplined (as well as having all of the skills one assumes elite players will have). I recall hearing her speak on the radio, perhaps a year or so ago when she was doing pretty well and facing the challeneg of playing Serina Williams then and she struck me as unusually thoughtful and articulate for a top sportsperson and to be reflecting constructively on her challenges. She even managed the interview without once saying “absolutely”, “fantastic” or “amazing”. She immediately went up in my estimation on that basis alone.
I knew little substantive about her tennis, but concluded at the time that with an attitude and grasp of her challenges like that she ought to be able to maintain her personal performance much closer to the top of her band more often than many of her peers. I was quietly confident that she would eventually win a couple of big finals, given the vicissitudes that affect all sportsfolk.
Fran – it occurred to me, as I fell into the arms of Morpheus last night, that maybe the Italian kids were insulted less in Catholic schools because the Pope was Italian, the Holy City was in Italy ….
Of course if your parents had sent you to Catholic schools you would have had a whole lot of other issues to analyse …….
As for sport, I was just at the dentist and there was sport news on the radio, which led to the discovery that for both of us, the most humiliating episodes in our lives was sports-performance related – probably true for many in this sports mad country.
Perhaps so Russell … mind you — I’m glad I didn’t attend a catholic school …
I learned from an early age — about 5 years — that life as non-Anglo was not going to be easy. I was at first resentful that nobody had prepared me for this when I went to school — though in the Liverpool area, where I first attended, I got nothing of this, so perhaps my parents can be forgiven. I wasn’t long at West Ryde however before I was set straight on how repulsive an attitude my ethnicity (which included catholicism) was. It’s a pretty hard thing to process as a five- to six-year-old. Cultural identity is not a thing at that age I had though a great deal about. That others apparently had thought about it and knew mine was horrible does take you aback, especially when it comes from adults and teachers. What does one make of that? Nothing good, I can assure you. I began in kindergarten to wonder what it was that I had done to deserve being from “a mixed marriage to a w*g”. These were concepts I could barely understand, nor did I have any idea what I might do to assuage those who seemed so aggressively hateful or at best passively malign.
It was tempting to damn all who were anglo-Australian, but then, exactly one half of my relatives were Anglos, and neither side of the family had any useful guidance on the matter. Both sides shrugged their shoulders — the Italians because they saw themselves as supplicants, and the Anglos because, perhaps, they shared some of the impulses but were embarrassed. My Anglo gramdmother, though innocuous, was certainly no kind of deep thinker on cultural matters and so was useless.
The result was that I had little good alternative to spending my very early years trying to work out where I stood on matters of ethnicity as well as gender and class, merely in order not to fall to pieces under perpetual cultural assault. My mother insisted that education was the way forward, and so I made it my business to learn all I could, and to deny my accusers their grounds of attack. I was never going to come second in any academic exercise to any of them. I adopted formal register when speaking, carried a “Little Oxford Dictionary” in my cardigan pocket and regarded my detractors with an air of world-weary disdain. I made such a virtue out of being alone, that my parents once had me looked at by the school counsellor for autism.
Had I not spent so little energy trying to sustain frivolous relationships, I doubt I’d have read and though as much about the world as I had by the time I was ten. In a more rational world than the one I lived through, I’d have managed that without being driven to it by adaptation to abuse, but it is the case that one can do more than make the best of the cards one is dealt, and although I still feel some pain reflecting on those days, I’m not sorry that I took the path I did. At times today when I feel as if matters are grim politically, I reflect on those days and am reminded that the pursuit of reason and justice always comes at a cost, that the line is not straight, and it is for those who affirm it to bear those burdens and suffer those turns so that one can look oneself in the mirror and be pleased at who stares back.
oops {but it is the case that one can do no more than make the best of the cards one is dealt}
{though = thought} {grandmother}
Gosh … how careless of me!
That sounds like a very stressful childhood, Fran. I think that if I had been in that situation, I would have just chosen to imagine that I would soon grow up to be like Sophia Loren – nobody seemed to mind that she was Italian. Perhaps your method of dealing with it has been the more productive one, though.
Fran, thanks for that. I can’t imagine the damage that must have been done to kids in your position who lacked your skills and intelligence.
Oh Please zoot.
My first 7 year was in a majority Maltese/Italian( rural, sugar cane country ) school, with all the shit that went it. Some of those blokes are my mates, even today. That experience didn’t turn me into whatever Fran pretends to be.
Add to ME@77
And I do lack Frans skills and intelligence.
Thanks Russell & Zoot for the words of support.
I certainly found school, most particularly infants and lower primary taxing and went each morning armed with a slew of ready-made insults and cunning plans to mess with the minds of my tormentors, by the time I was ten I had already concluded that my own personal travails notwithstanding, I was actually not that badly off in the grand scheme of things. Even looking no further than my own school, other kids had worse stuff to deal with than I had — abusive parents and older siblings, serious learning difficulties and so forth. So although I indulged myself the occasional moment of ‘woe is me’ the more I began to get a picture of the “macro”, the less right I felt I had to feel sorry for myself. It also occurred to me that self-pity was utterly unhelpful. Understanding how the world worked in practice was far more useful. It helped me deflect the abuse through most of high school and by 1976 — when I completed my HSC, it had largely passed. There was a brief resurgence in hostility to Greeks in the late 1970s and then of course the Vietnamese and then the Chinese but through the 1980s being of Italian descent was almost chic.
It would be wrong for people reading this to conclude that on the whole, I was unhappy as a child. I doubt any child’s life is free from stressors, and if there is such a person I’m yet to meet him/her. By and large I recall being part of a supportive extended family, having enjoyable holidays once or twice each year and feeling as if I could cope with whatever came my way. And as I said, I feel as if my childhood experiences contributed to a more robust grasp of what justice and equity demand of each of us.
jumpy @77, @78: Thanks for sharing.
It’s Sydney, Fran. Had your mob been living in Newcastle, where the general population was a grab bag of European migrants and descendants of the original colonial population, you’d have had a different experience. My best mates all the way through primary and high school were of Greek and Bosnian origin. I thought that the whole of Australia was like that and it came as something of a shock to discover places like The Shire and the upper North Shore on moving to Sydney. Ryde is still a peculiar place, in my view, suburban, deeply Protestant, culturally embattled. Still, things do change over time – Fat Pizza and Shift and Swift might help ease the burden.
With regard to the lifestyles of the leading families who are entrenched within the Health Services Union: as a consequence of imperial nepotism and corruption the HSU may well go down in Australian union history as the union that ended unionism. Well done the ALP mates.
@akn, I spent a large chunk of my childhood in Newcastle and my experience mirrors yours – my best mates and academic rivals were a mixture of Greeks, Italians, “Slavs” and “Balts” alongside the other Anglos throughout primary and high school. However, I distinctly remember my surprise at arriving there at age 7 from the much more Anglo enclave of the Lower Blue Mountains and seeing so many people with dark hair – it was just so different from what I was used to in the people around me. I also remember my orthogonal surprise at arriving in Sydney for my uni years and hearing some of the ignorant stereotypes about immigrant ethnic groups from people my age who had not grown up in such a mixed environment.
Hi tigtog: yes, ol’ smoke city was a good place. I think that the culural dominance of the working class has something to do with it; we were all members of the working class which created a very flat social structure. The professional bourgeoisie were present but without much cultural influence.
On another matter: champion axeman David Foster supports same sex marriage: http://www.smh.com.au/national/world-champ-axeman-backs-gay-marriage-20110909-1k11r.html.
Now, there’s a man. Love him.
Thanks for that AKN.
Legend.
akn said:
I don’t doubt it. Even my partner, who grew up in Fairfield, attests to this.
One of the quite bizarre experiences I had a few years back was on a visit to Port Macquarie for several days. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was odd about the place but it just felt different in some intangible way. After a time it occurred to me that it was the absence of ethnic diviersity that I was noticing. It was as if I had, without knowing it, stepped onto the set from Village of the Damned and was mingling with the extras.
Then, near the other end of the spectrum, was the Saturday morning when I first moved into Marrickvlle, and I found I was the only blond, and quite possibly the only Anglo-Celt, in a busy shopping centre.
Fran – Port, huh? That is the retirement village of the damned at least.
Yes Paul, great isn’t it? I spent yesterday in Bankstown which, like Parramatta, these days is a veritable league of nations. And a perfectly civil space.
All of the anti-refugee stuff is mere old white Australia, anti-immigrant sentiment in another form and all based on self doubt, ignorance and fear.
Here’s the Oz kind of supporting te carbon price legislation.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/historic-carbon-debate-begins/story-e6frg71x-1226136150980
Anthony you would have to be extraordinarily naive if you think that the HSU was the only union in which there is imperial nepotism and corruption. Look to the AWU for a start. But don’t stop looking there. The trade union movement is riddled with corruption.
I caught some of Concetta Fierravanti-Wells last night in parliament. My goodness that was embarrassing.
She was attempting, it seems, to defend Blue Scope Steel from claims by Paul Howes that more than macro-economic factors lay at the heart of their troubles, and that they were not guilty of poor strategic business thinking.
You’d be mistaken if you imagined that what followed was an analysis of the weight of the former or an analysis of their business decision making, but you would of course be wrong.
Apparently Blue Scope Steel is a paragon of business acumen because Paul Howes gave Julia Gillard the knife with which to politically assassinate Kevin Rudd.
Being a lefty is useful for analysis I find, but it adds nothing to analysis here. A working knowledge of English and an interest in parliament is all one needs to conclude that Ms F-W is wasting oxygen in the parliamentary precinct.
I received in the mail today some correspondence from the NRMA. Apparently a board position is being determined. I mostly ignore these things but on a whim I took a look this time.
There were two candidates and just for giggles I thought I’d set the bar low and see if I could determine if one really was worse than the other. One of them looked like a footballer (which as it turned out, he was because when I looked at the name, it was “Geoff Toovey” who IIRC was a half-back for Manly. The other chap, “Lew Stowe” was even less easy on the eyes but as it turned out, reading the CVs only made things worse.
I decided to see if, parsing the lines, I could deduce anything of relevance in deciding what they thought about the world, or at any rate, anything a person who believed in equity and sustainability might find slightly more or less offensive. I have to say this really was like that South Park episode where Stan has to choose between two school mascots — a giant douche and a sh|t sandwich.
Mr Toovey was “passionate” about “unfair rises in the costs of motoring like more tax on petrol”. I’m assuming that’s a pitch for LNP voters and a vote for a filthier environment. He was also in favour of widening Mona Vale Road. Ok … so again, Liberal electorates are being subsidised.
He’s in favour of some sort of member discount card, some sort of loyalty program I assume. I’m going to discount the possibility that the businesses in the scheme include those in which he has a beneficial interest, because that would be wrong.
What about Lew Stowe?
Apparently he operates “an international security consultancy”. So he’s a Halliburton kind of guy. Well isn’t that fab? Apparently he has buddied up with Peter Ryan, ex NSW top cop. I’m guessing he is therefore pitching for law and order types — i.e. he’s also a rightwinger. He works with defence contractors? Check. He lives in Cremorne.
So you get to choose between a corporate type with ties to defence contractors who lives in a blue ribbon LNP seat or some guy who played footy and also wants to destroy the environment while appealing to people who have urban assault vehicles.
Hmm … into the recycling bin with this ballot.
Queenslanders lost $4000 a minute on poker machines in August
QUEENSLANDERS lost $4000 a minute on poker machines in August – the most ever recorded in a month across the state.
Experts were unable to explain the spike, but Mission Australia Queensland claimed up to 40 per cent of regular punters had a “problem”.
Gambling Help Network chairman Derek Tuffield said he believed some gamblers were still trying to “win their way out of financial trouble” but he could not attribute the surge to one factor.
The rise comes as the Gillard Government faces pressure over efforts to help problem gamblers with controversial pre-commitment technology.
Apparently though the “carbon tax” impost is the big problem … How many trucks in that convoy would it take to haul away the coins in those slot machines? More than went to Canberra I daresay.
Where is Katz?
He has not posted here for a little while. I miss him.
Katz are you alright?
Awww…
That’s cute GregM. I could be totally wrong, but I seem to remember him saying something about a trip OS.
Oh that’s right: miss him. You never miss me do you Greg? Why, after all the attention I’ve given you over the years, invited you to invite me, offered you advice on hotness, hammered you for absolutely no good reason, hammered you for lots of good reasons – you miss him. Well go miss him in a ditch. You and Katz can pash each other for all I care. Imma find another neck, a neck that knows a good thing when it bites it. Goodbye. And don’t be sucking up to me by offering advices on the cat. Ingrate. Why, imagine missing a lawyer. What the frack is wrong with you anyway?
Casey I don’t miss you for you are ever- present in my life. And a joy that is so long as I can keep you away from my neck.
But since you have decided to turn your mind otherwise can I suggest you turn it to Anthony K Nolan, aka akn? He needs your minisrations urgently. He would not, I am sure, be at all troubled by your long lunge at his neck.
Love to your cat. I hope it is in the most robust and rude health. Its wellbeing is always my paramount concern.
Fran #93, another way to look at that statistic is Queenslanders in August lost 9c per minute on each machine. $5.40 per hour.
Denmark to Be Led by Its First Female Premier as “Leftists” Win (my scare quotes: FB)
A closely contested election in Denmark resulted in victory on Thursday for a center-left coalition led by the Social Democratic Party, ending a 10-year run in power for a center-right coalition that adopted some of Europe’s toughest immigration controls. {…}
The Social Democrats’ campaign was based on Ms. Thorning-Schmidt’s promises to raise taxes on Denmark’s banks and its wealthiest citizens to pay for better schools and hospitals, and to finance a $4 billion expansion of what is already one of Europe’s most generous welfare systems. Her most headline-catching nod to austerity came with her proposal to add 12 minutes to the average Dane’s working day, and she also acknowledged the need to take action on the deficit, which is set to rise to 4.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2012, well above the European average.
ASTP said:
Perhaps, but bearing in mind that $5.40 per hour was also “lost” by people who have never been acquainted with a poker machine or never go into clubs and during hours when even those who do go into clubs to play weren’t there and when the club was closed …
That’s a huge number.
Meanwhile, in the US, a Tea Party candidate is asked a question about what he’d do about an uninsured 30-year-old with an unexpected life-threatening condition, and when somebody calls out rhetorically “Let him die?” his supporters cheer.
US cultural and political hegemony isn’t doing the world any favours, that’s for sure.
Fran: then it is circa 16c per minute ($9.60 per hour) during trading hours (not all machines trade the same hours).
Perhaps as you say, it is a lot. It is certainly less than the $1200 per hour that is often mentioned.
For comparison, what is the August figure for NSW? Unless you have a better comparison.
What is the amount lost on horses? Scratch Tickets? Lotto tickets?
SATP @ 102 – only about 30% of the population play the pokies at least once a year, and of those only about 10% play weekly – eg only 3% of the population. So they have a lot of money to lose to make up for those who don’t play or hardly play at all.
And its claimed that the addicts are responsible for a large proportion of the losses (rather than those who may say play weekly but only spend a small amount). So its quite conceivable that there are quite a few addicts out there who manage to push $1200 into a machine over an hour.
The pokie owners are worried about the proposed changes because they know they’ll lose a lot of money if the addicts don’t keep giving them money.
Its not as if the money will be lost to the economy anyway. It’ll get spent elsewhere in the end though maybe or boring things like food, clothes, mortgage repayments and rent
SATP – btw looks like gaming machines are responsible for about 60% of all gambling (by $ amount) in Australia.
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/0825_gambling.pdf
Chris: The proposed changes will affect the occassional, or discretionary gambler, not the habitual gambler.
The closest thing Australia has to a pre-committment measure was when Qld introduced the $20 maximum on poker machines. Poker machine activity halted overnight. (within 3 days the legislation was overturned, as the state govt was going to lose too much revenue)
Simultaneously with Qld poker machine activity dropping off a cliff, Qld TAB activity went through the roof, like it was launched in a moon rocket.
Last time money was diverted from poker machines it indisputably was not spent on boring things like food, clothes, mortgage repayments and rent. Why would it this time? (Sort of like repeating the question expecting a different answer)
“it is claimed” and “its quite conceivable” aren’t reliable measures of evidence.
Steve- “another way to look at that statistic is Queenslanders in August lost 9c per minute on each machine. $5.40 per hour.”
So even if the govt were not to compensate Queenslanders for cost of living increases due to the introduction of a carbon price, in order to be no worse off all Queenslanders need to do is not gamble for two hours a week.
SATP – As illogical as it might sound, the addicts go in every day thinking they are going to win, not lose. So the precommittment is likely to work for many of the addicts.
btw the proposal also allows for machines without precommitment but those machines must have much lower bet limits to greatly restrict the amount of money a gambler can lose. So the occasional gambler is still able to play without registering.
SATP said:
That figure is a theoretical maximum. AFAIK nobody has suggested that anyone achieves that in practice, but clearly, losing even $200 per hour would be a lot for someone on $25 per hour income.
The more serious dishonesty comes from people like Tim Ball of the Registered Clubs Crows who cited a $3.2bn figure for conversion of the machines with new algorithms. (Tim Costello kept calling them “logarithms” on Fran Kelly’s Breakfast yesterday).
The PC suggested $1000 per machine. There are 200,000 machines and not all of them are high impact machines. The maths says he’s is lying.
This (admittedly old) study seems interesting:
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/99d3b5096368c2e9ca2569de002842b7?OpenDocument
This is effectively a levy on the poor.
FB #106, hehe yes, that may work, just not gamble for two weeks. Perhaps all of Australia could just not smoke for a couple of weeks to compensate themselves for the carbon tax. Just as much chance of that happening.
Reality: They’ll vote out resoundingly any government that imposes a carbon tax.
Chris: There are currently no machines that are compliant with the protocols for gamblers not needing to register. First such machines will have to be manufactured, then the sites will have to spring for the money to buy them.
Easier not to, as they won’t be used much. The problem gamblers will still gamble heavily, as they’ll be gaming the pre-commitment.
The result won’t change. Problem gamblers will gamble their heads off, discretionary & occassional gamblers will stop.
A very poorly thought out policy, by one ..er.. MHR in Tasmania.
Fran: I can’t comment on how much it will cost to convert the current machines, but many will have to be replaced. It will cost a lot of money. It will not be possible to do it in the time frame suggested.
There isn’t even a machine developed yet, that will meet the new requirements.
Not that it matters, as the bill won’t pass parliament, and won’t become law.