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Historic week for the Tories in the UK as they pass their bill to dismantle and privatise the National Health Service. There’s some detail here http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/03/lib-dem-nhs-bill-clegg-health
This is a stunning victory with the Liberal Democrats supporting the bill despite promising last election to do the exact opposite.
I’m guessing this sort of coalition in the spirit of right wing bi-partisanshipp will provide a useful example to Tony Abbott who will now want to follow the footsteps of both the UK and the US to lead us forward (down into the pits of hell for poor people.)
Anyone been following the case of Trayvon Martin?
Honestly? What can you say? The banality of the crime is mind numbing. Gabrielle Giffords was bad enough. But this kid was just walking on a public street, on the way home after buying something to eat at the local store.
We’re entering the 21st century. We, the human species, have conservatively 3000 years of civilization to fall back on and the nation, which likes to think of itself as leading the free world, has a law, which allows a person to shoot dead another person because he feels threatened? But it’s not just Florida, 50% of US states have this or a very similar law. In Colorado it’s called, the “Make-my-day”-Law. Because killing people’s too serious for Americans, they have to give it a stupid name and make a joke about it.
tssk quite right. I have said before on LP I am a pragmatic voter, preferring a government that can function effectively before automatically assigning my vote to one ideology or another. Terms and conditions apply of course, but I figure that if a government is inept, then it will fail in it’s execution of its policies anyway.
Like many folks, I am disappointed by the current federal government, but alarmed by the prospect of an Abbott-led government. In Abbott I see an uncompromising overly aggressive and negative persona, but masking a screaming/ranting little boy inside. By analogy, think of the moment in the Wizard of Oz when the diminutive Wizard himself is finally revealed.
Amongst my cohorts I am not alone, in fact we all prefer Turnbull to Abbott.
The difference (to my group) is an apparent willingness for Turnbull to negotiate a better outcome for Australia as opposed to Abbott’s manic screeching like an unruly child in a shopping centre.
So I go to the polls today wondering if a new State government will embrace a respectful position with the vanquished party. It is my hope: – I am tired, so tired of the adversarial posturing, like some piss-house theatre at the public expense.
Therein sits my hint to the federal wannabes who wishes to attract my vote.
Joe @ 2 – an atrocious result of a combination of racism, bad laws and fear. Not the first time its happened either, though race has not always been a factor. There have been other cases of people with guns at home, perhaps legitimately in fear, but at least from an Australian’s point of view clearly using excessive force with a “shoot first ask questions later” attitude.
Reported a researcher has uncovered boxes and boxes of banned books confiscated by customs before 1966. Among them Gore Vidal’s The Pillar and the City, which I know I read before 1966. Its violence shocked me. I do remember that.
@2,4 well, yes, and the same applies here in Australia. Doomadgee bashed to death on the floor of a police station, and Mr Ward cooked to death in the back of a paddy wagon.
In the free, liberal, democractic, human-rights enlightened West, the victim being black is still a ‘mitigating circumstance’ when it comes to crimes of violence against their person.
Joe,
only the last few days, since it became TV news. Think the clue is the US gun culture. If not for that the boy would still be alive. The whole thing is monstrously shocking.
I note, with the recent failure of Air Australia, that once again we have a situation where the employer had been deducting superannuation contributions from employees pay but not passing these on to the super funds; I thought we had sorted this rort !
My highlight of the week was reading an Ian Verrander article in the SMH which listed some of the mining taxes being proposed, or already legislated, across the globe in parts of Africa, Sth. America, Central Asia etc, which showed how the MRRT is in fact benign in world terms. Then within half an hour I turned on ABC24 and there was Abbott claiming that the only people who would be celebrating the passage of the MRRT would be “our competitors in countries such as…” most of which appeared in the Verrander article. Of course none of the (so called) journalists at the doorstop, or subsequently, pulled him up on it but I’m sure you knew I was going to say that.
Technology trapped Malcolm Naden without which he’d probably still be on the run. Motion sensors were installed in various huts and cabins that he had been known to use and it worked a charm when one went off and the police (at the pub) were suddenly alerted and rushed off to capture him.
I’ve no idea about whether he is guilty of murder and assault; but he’s certainly led an incredible life for the past 7 years–he’s probably barely spoken to anyone in that time living rough in very rugged and quite mysterious country.
After such a life he will be incredibly grateful for three meals a day and roof over his head and he probably won’t get too hard a time from other inmates. It would be way more of a punishment to be left out in the wilderness in the Barrington Tops for the winter! Apparently he was quite relieved it was over. There’s definitely a film in this story.
Well the Fairwork Australia ruling on low paid workers in the community sector begins to hit. It’s nice to have a tiny bit more in the regular pay, that’s for sure, and the organisation can (just) afford that. But for our small not for profit in the disability sector it means the back pay owed is roughly $74,000, payable over the next two/three years.
This is enough to bankrupt the organisation, as the compensation packages available via the Feds are incredibly thin and the application process is of course defiantly complex and time consuming for an already overworked general manger. We may get some, we may not. If not then the solution we’ve agreed as workers is to take the back pay, and then donate it straight back to the organisation, which will still cost the organisation, because we’ll all lose some in tax of course. But it will save our jobs and the programs and services we deliver to our members.
This is a classic case of a government appearing to do something worthwhile. But actually unless the recurrent funds emerging from government reflect their own policies and rulings…well. Many in the community sector will suffer and some of the most disadvantaged in the community will lose services and programs. It’s a shame, but it’s true. I support the ruling, and I ask the governments involved to actually read it, think clearly about the implications and make changes to their community sector support, quickly, quietly and without endless paperwork and overly complex “workshops” all over the country, about the ruling, run by career bureaucrats and consultants earning vastly (vastly) more than the people they are talking to.
I’m off to vote Labor now in a state that would appear to be about to hand over its government to developers because “it’s time for a change”. Sigh.
For many months I have absorbed, subliminally, the mantra of Abbott, Pyne etc over the ‘school halls’ fiasco so called and I guess I swallowed it at face value. I have just now returned from voting at my local school, in the new school hall, and what I see for the first time is a valued and much needed all weather, multi-purpose facility that is cherished by the the kids and their teachers and valued by the broader community. Interesting how one’s attitude can be influenced by relentless negativity and brought into clearer perspective by actually seeing and experiencing.
@12 did you also see the price of it? ( about triple the usual )
Oh, and ticked up on the credit card too.
The national audit office was scathing about it.
Wantok,
the ‘relentless negativity’ ™ was not about the facilities, it was about the wanton waste. What did that school hall cost, and what could the local builders have done it for if it was a private customer?
The criticism is highlighted by the difference in outcomes between schools which managed their own facility builds versus the schools that let the government handle things.
Eric Sykes #11 I recently became aware of the strange case of the pay increases for disability workers when helping a neighbour who works in the sector. Terrible situation. The legislation is passed, but the NGOs do not have the money to pay for the pay increases so the pay increases are not yet activated to a great extent.
What did these apples cost, and what would they cost if they were oranges?
A few points:
- As the NASA engineers quipped, ‘faster, cheaper, better: choose any two.’ This was a massive building program in which world-class facilities were built, many of them in under a year, in thousands of sites across the country. I drive around NSW a lot, and I see a lot of independant/private schools developing their own rather grand BER palaces (with a chip-in from their own building funds), still under construction, whereas the public schools got theirs’ done 1-2 years ago already. They were done faster, and better — they ain’t gonna be cheaper.
- Ask the tradies who had work and their families who had food on the table in the middle of the GFC and property crash whether it was ‘wanton waste’.
- Per square metre, public buildings always cost about 3 times as much as the private/commercial equivalent. But it’s apples and oranges. Because public buildings have much higher standards of safety and much higher wear-and-tear to contend with. How well would the average private dwelling or commercial premises cope with hundreds of people using it on a daily basis for fifty years? Your typical Westfield looks shabby after 10 years, whereas as we all know school buildings never get replaced in your lifetime….That’s what the school halls had to be built for, and that’s part of the reason they cost more.
- Another reason they ‘cost more’ is because the BER Federal program, which had no official department/resources of its own, had to rely on respective state government departments and outsourcing to get everything done: from the site surveys, to OH&S, to planning and development (in 1/3 the usual timeframe), to building, to certification and sign-off. Usually in a public building project all those different costs come out of different “buckets” (i.e. planning department has one bucket, construction has a bucket, auditing and certification has another bucket, etc…). In the BER, it all had to be measured out of a single bucket, whereas usually the headline costs look smaller because a lot of the planning/development/surveying/certification costs get drawn out of their respective buckets. That’s just basic public accounting for you (something private builders don’t see and don’t consider when they all scream how much cheaper they could do it…they’re only delivering about 1/3 of the total job…)
- So, for example, BER projects in NSW really did cost quite a lot more than those in other states. That is something you should lay at the doorstep of the NSW government to ask why they can’t seem to deliver projects anywhere near as cheaply as other states can. There might be some good reasons, there might not, but it is a furphy to point out ‘BER waste’ as a national ‘government waste’ problem, when the auditing reports revealed quite clearly that different state governments achieved different levels of efficiency…clearly some state governments had a better management system than others…
- But, let’s just say, for shits and giggles, that the BER had awarded these thousands of building contracts to thousands of small contractors on every one of the thousands of sites, because using those small contractors would have been “cheaper” in each individual case: how much ‘wanton waste’ would you then be whinging about because of the huge management overhead, inefficiencies, and inevitable bodgie brothers make-goods that would be needed to deliver thousands of buildings from thousands of suppliers…oh, and you’ve got 9 months to deliver them in…it would be a case of losing billions to save millions…
- We’ve become a society that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. John Howard taught us well.
Mercurius @ 6 – I think the Domadgee/Ward cases were worse because those men were in custody.
I think this US case is more about how a gun culture makes existing problems so much worse. Without a culture of personal defence using guns it most likely at worst would have ended up as a bashing, but more likely harassment/arrest by police. Given the shooter was told by 911 not to follow and go outside and instead let the police handle it, I hope he’s charged with murder.
That US shotting, I shook my head when I read about it and moved on because I thought they were talking about something that happened in the 50′s.
I’m shocked to hear that it was only recently. As for gun culture being blamed, you’re all going to love this….one idiot tv host who should know better blamed the victim for wearing a hoodie.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/hoodie-had-a-role-in-teens-death-tv-host-causes-outrage-20120324-1vqhr.html
FFS. I guess we can take comfort that the ‘blaming the victim for what they wear’ arguement is no longer just applied against women.
I’d love to see Rivera say it to the boy’s parents. What a sick sick joke the man is.
The British Tories have also begun their privatization experiment in the South west, contracting out provision of children’s health services in Devon. I’ve put a post up on my blog arguing that the NHS needs privatization but that Cameron’s bill is not the right way to do it. When this goes pear-shaped it will put the brakes on essential NHS reforms for a generation.
Over the next week or so I’m thinking of posting up a few alternative reform ideas for the NHS. I think saving that moribund system from collapsing is a really interesting problem in health planning, far more interesting than what’s going on in the USA.
Mercurius, thanks for the ammo to hit the local Abbott parrots at the pub with. Even the evidence of a beautiful new school,
and yes all built by small local builders, escapes these ‘know the cost of everything and the value of nothings.”
@16
Massively over heating the building industry also exacerbated the cost blowout and ” allocating ” initial contracts rather than a tender process compounded the problem. Had a tender been called, big builders would have been begging to compete in that environment. ( 3 weeks tops )
Both lay at the Govts feet.
That said, they’ve borrowed so much since, it’s hard to keep up.
What’s our credit card limit BTW? must be getting close to it.
The Trayon Martiun shooting was really ugly tssk. People used to engage in morbid humour about “driving while black” but it seems that walking near a gated community while black and wearing a hoodie can get you shot dead under Florida’s “stand your ground” provision, permitting use of deadly force when “threatened”. It seems this chap, Zimmerman pursued Martin even after the police advised him it wasn’t needed.
Admittedly the teenager was carrying skittles and “soda” so that’s obviously a worry. Who knows what he might have done if Zimmerman had not had a gun?
oops … Trayvon Martin
Finally, some candour in politics. I wouldn’t vote for him, but points for lack of spin:
Santo Ferraro, One Nation
I’ve been catching up on iview, the Penny Wong and Tania Plibersek episodes in particular. I was charmed, by Annabel Crabb, too.
Fran @ 22 – I used to work with someone who drove around the NY state area quite a bit for work. After getting a new car he was suddenly being pulled over by the police a lot more. Couldn’t work out why until someone pointed out that the car he drove was commonly driven by black people. His solution? Install ski racks on his car – problem solved! No longer an interest to the police.
jumpy at #13
“did you also see the price of it [BER]? ( about triple the usual )”
“The national audit office was scathing about it.”
Both those statements are false.
The National Audit was not scathing about the efficiency, satisfaction received, function or costs of the BER.
What your statements reflect is a disinformation campaign promulgated by the opposition media and the COALition.
If you wish to be better informed than that you can read 2 reports on the BER which comprehensively expose the disinformation campaign.
Grog
http://grogsgamut.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/anao-report-on-ber-fact-meets-narrative.html
“Today an Auditor General’s report (all 201 pages of it) into the BER (known in the report as BERP21) came out and found that err, actually the stimulus spend on schools was run quite well. …….Does the media read the report and report the findings in the full context of the report? Hell no, instead it scours the report looking for any sign of negativity that they can then blow up out of context (and often contrary to the meaning given in the report), … ”
Possum
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2010/05/05/the-ber-audit-report/
Have a pleasant read.
There is no constitutional right to bear Skittles.
Case closed.
Apparently Katz, before going out to the 7-11 to buy skittles, he had been watching basketball, which says it all really. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t cover that either.
Before anyone gets all ” bad whitey “, Zimmerman was of Hispanic decent.
As terrible as this tragedy is, had Trayvon Martin been white, would the outrage be as widespread and vocal ?
@27
I did, sort of, read the report on primary BER but gave up at the ” principal satisfaction survey ” where almost half of em didn’t bother to reply to it.
Merc is somewhat correct with
his exaggerationI got to work 7 days a week instead of relaxing on the dole.
( oh, and no-one starved, tradie or not,
It’d be interesting to view the results of black Floridians popping off whites strolling by black neighbourhoods.
Probably not, but only because if Trayvon Martin had been white, then Zimmerman would almost certainly have been arrested and charged (eta: so while there would still have been outrage at the shooting/shooter, there wouldn’t be the same outrage against the justice system).
Fran@24: read the whole thing. He’s massively taking the p*ss. The spin is reversed, you could say.
There, fixed that for you.
Poor Jumpy, the glass is always half empty for you, isn’t it?
You should be aware that a survey return rate above 50% among a population gives a statistical error bar of about zero-point-zero-puffteenth percent. Opinion pollsters (and researchers everywhere) would kill for the kind of return rate that the BER got from Principals.
But still, I admire your stout effort to shore up your bubble of disinformation against reliable reports. One has to work very hard these days to maintain the trollumnists’ talking points against the rising tide of reality.
Hmmm. Doesn’t Zimmerman’s surname provide a tiny clue?
His father was European (Ashkenazi) Jewish. However, Rightists do have a rather unfortunate history of refusing to view Ashkenazi Jews as whites. It appears that this habit isn’t entirely extinct.
@30, Jumpy, if Trayvon Martin had been white, he would still be alive. Same with Domadgee and Mr Ward in the paddy wagon.
That is what the outrage is about.
And nobody is getting all “bad whitey”. Your multiple efforts to change the focus off the real issue are pathetic, but unsurprising.
OMG … you think? Perhaps you’re right. How did I miss that?
The Age and SMH Opinion pages contrast the major parties attitudes to Industrial Relations
Former NSW Liberal Parliamentarian Ross Cameron claims that a minumum wage keeps kids from getting jobs, its very hard to read full of disrepectful stereotypes. Cameron is too hard to bother reading
http://www.theage.com.au/national/minimum-wage-means-jobseekers-wasting-time-20120323-1vp2m.html
Adele Horin discusses the reality of casul work for an increasing number of people who are rung and offered work if they can be at work in an hour. see http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/casual-attitude-lets-rights-slide-20120323-1vp2l.html
This issue, Jumpy is not about ‘bad whitey‘ but about a bad bad system that others non-middle class folk and non-Europeans. It’s about the culture of violence and vigilantism and why that always bears down most heavily on the most marginalised. It’s about the US obsession with frontier culture and the individual, about the parochial and narrowminded usages of US society and of course the manifestation of all these tendencies in the argument over personal space, government and the free exercise of things said to be covered by the 2nd Amendment (but which arguably are not)
Ooops…
(I do hope that the London Olympic organisers have their MP3s of Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport ready to play when Australians ascend the dais collect to gold later this year…)
To a degree it is about “bad whitey” to the degree that Whites accept the fact that political, economic, judicial and cultural systems are engineered to privilege them and to marginalise others.
It is laughable that anyone believes that the United States is “post-racial”. Examples of systemic racism in the US are numberless and only infrequently leave tangible evidence. For a ludicrous example of systemic racism, see the case of Henry Louis Gates.
Merc …
Were I SBC, I’d be asking for a royalty cheque …
Arguably Katz, but only in the sense that people who are still not, for the most part empowered, adapt to the rules set by those who are. Most northern Europeans have very little say in these usages and although they are relieved of one vector of oppression, their privilege is for the most part more apparent than real.
@ 13:
I seem to recall, just over a year ago now when a walloping big cyclone was bearing down on the Innisfail district, that the good burghers of Innisfail took shelter in their brand-new, above-flood level, Category 5 Cyclone-proof shelter.
It was otherwise known as the Innisfail State School Hall, built as part of the BER program.
Have you ever stopped to consider that the high cost and large size of many of the school halls built under the BER was because one of the purposes in their “multi-purpose” capability is that of an emergency shelter capable of accommodating the entire town in the event of a bushfire or a flood or a tropical cyclone or any other likely natural disaster for that district?
Split hairs, if you like, FB. You have acknowledged that there exists some measure of guilty complicity.
Jumpy, this isn’t about “bad whitey”, I can’t actually believe that you said that? Honestly, what’s wrong with you?
Obviously– in big letters, that even with terrible eyesight, nobody should be able to miss– this is about an unjust law. And it’s not just about acts of discrimination resulting in a loss of dignity, this has resulted in an innocent child being shot dead. It is arguably the greatest responsibility that a state has to protect it’s citizens (and if you like, especialy it’s children) against this type of crime.
This is an incredible example of state authorized injustice. We should all be shocked. It should focus our minds on how important politics and legislation is– and how we can get it wrong. And how we all need to shoulder the burden of demanding a just and fair society.
A week ago 9 Afghani children were murdered by an American serviceman. That man, also felt ‘threatened’. That’s the only way, you can explain such behaviour, (other than that he’s psychopathic.) But the issue isn’t going to be solved by killing the offender– that’s an easy way to avoid dealing with the actual problem.
And with an eye on current political practice, if the solution also makes you feel good, if it’s reassuring (the Clinton-esque joke), if you’re not challenged by it, then either it’s not a big problem, or it’s not a good solution.
I don’t know Fran, I think the economic disadvantage, the class issue, isn’t as important today as it was a century ago. We need to look for answers to many of our current problems not in the redistibution of wealth– although that’s always important too.
Increasinlgy though, and I think that the shooting of Trayvon Martin is a good example, mis-information is no longer being challenged due to political expediency. It’s hard to pin down just what the logic of corporate culture is (it’s so diverse)– I don’t think we can capture it by pushing it into a Marxist framework.
I mean in this case it seems to me that “stay your ground” type laws reassure racist bigotry.
“Stay your ground“?!
@37 said
You have proof of this?
Or is it a racist gut feeling?
Terangeree@45
None of the ” school halls ” i was involved in was Cat 5, a subject of much humour on site.
Joe @47
Almost 37,000 people committed suicide in the US in 2009, of all races, be outraged at that.
Based on what? What has changed in fundamental terms? Are working people qualitatively more politically empowered than in 1900? Do representatives of working people occupy a single seat in the congress or any state government? Is there any political influence over infrastructure or health or education by workers? Do they get even faux consultation on any substantial policy?
Is there even a substantial organisation of working people with a media arm in the US?
Not as far as I can tell. What this means is that the working population are at most poltical bystanders. Should they speak up and demand an end to bigoted wag the dog bully pulpit politics in their name? Of course.
It’s the case though that oppression oppresses. It messes with people’s heads. It politically and culturally atomises. It turns the oppressed against each other in pursuit of relief. That’s why we Marxists are against it and why the boss class is at best indifferent to it.
That’s not a pass — and we see often enough amidst the ranks of ostensible ‘radicals’ and faux friends of workers, those who try to make a virtue of backwardness, who adapt to it and who, sooner or later, are consumed by it. Keith Windschuttle was once a leftist of sorts.
On the other hand, we should not make the opposite error, go all “aristocracy of labour” and neo-Marcusian and attribute cultural power and authorship where it doesn’t exist.
@jumpy,
I don’t know any of my “white” friends who’ve ever spent the night in jail for being drunk and disorderly (Domadgee and Mr Ward). How many of your “white” friends have ever been taken to jail rather than being told to go home and sleep it off?
If Trayvon Martin had been white it seems from Zimmerman’s past history and American history generally that he wouldn’t have been judged to “not belong” in that gated community, and that even if he’d still been considered as “up to something” he probably would have been given the benefit of the doubt as to it being a “mischievous prank” rather than some criminal endeavour. In which case Zimmerman would most likely have given him an avuncular warning about getting himself back home and keeping out of “mischief” rather than deciding that the boy was obviously a criminal who deserved to be shot.
Tigtog
“” How many of your “white” friends have ever been taken to jail rather than being told to go home and sleep it off?”"
Most of them. (Tradies an pro Fishermen mainly)
Your last paragraph is all conjecture based on biased perception,not fact.
I’ll grant you that my last paragraph was conjecture, but it was based on who gets shot by who in the USA, it’s not just a “biased perception”. It’s simply a fact that non-black folks don’t that often get shot by black folks, but black folks get shot nearly every week by non-black folks.
This qld election result has put me in a gloom gloom mood.
Here is my doom-sayer prediction of what will happen in terms of global economics in the next few years:
[excessive (extremely lengthy) Hanrahanning deleted - please note the request in the OP ~ moderator]
Yeah well, I dunno Jumpy, you are a maniac…
Good on you Jumpy, demanding “proof” of a counterfactual statement. Belligerently missing the point is one of your smartest moves.
Well, here’s the closest you’re gonna get to “proof” of a counterfactual in the Australian case:
Aborigines are around 22-in-100 of the prison population (ABS, 2005), but around 3-in-100 of the general population (ABS, 2006). In a fair justice system, this situation could only arise if Aborigines are commiting crimes at 7 times the rate of non-Aborigines.
So, if you believe Australia’s justice system is fair, then you have to believe that Aborigines commit 700% more crime than non-Aborigines. That is not a counter-factual, it’s in the data. So:
You have proof of this?
Or is it a racist gut feeling?
As for the US situation, Zimmerman is merely the latest efflorescence of an old American pastime (Graphic warning, violence, don’t click the link if you enjoy peaceful Sunday mornings).
For a more pleasant (if that’s the right word) illustration, go listen to Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit.
I was all for the school halls scheme. Oddly enough Wantok’s conversion highlighted something I had missed.
Almost all election booths are located in school halls.
The cynicism of the funding makes me feel a little ill now.
As for the shooting case….it’s bizarre that some (not here of course) are talking about the kid wearing a hoodie as if that made it ok.
I’m sure if the racial positions were reversed somewhat , say a white guy wearing one of those ‘hoodies’ (you know, the white ones with the holes cut out for eyes) and he was shot by someone black that this whole ‘stand your ground’ defence wouldn’t have flown.
These arguements are all silly anyway. This shouldn’t be about race. This should be this simple. Kid goes out to the store to buy skittles and gets shot in the head by a vigilante. If I was a parent, black white or green I’d be worried as heck tat my kid might be next because he looked at the shooter funny or because he walked on the grass.
The issue of young people wearing hoods is rather archly illustrated here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002463358
I read Piers Ackerman with caution. But here is a link, the subject of which I can identify with.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/piers-akerman-a-loss-that-marked-the-death-of-civility/story-e6frezz0-1226309007329
I think it is true that civility has been lost in politics irrespective of who started it or not. I thought Newman’s speech last night showed some graciousness to the departing government, Anna and his direct opponent, Kate Jones.
May that graciousness extend to allowing Labor to carry Party status in the parliament, and maybe even a revival of statesmanship and goodwill.
Read the column Geoff and while throughout it Piers couldn’t resist having a kick at the ALP (whereas Tones gets off scott free) I agree totally with the sentiment.
And the reason why Piers can give the ALP a good kicking in his column is the ALP’s own fault. I wouldn’t call Tony Abbott civil, in fact he’s one of the biggest headkickers out there. But everyone in the ALP have been more than happy to contribute to this loss of civility, this politics as a media sport.
I disagree. Let the ALP have nothing more than the rules provide. If the LNP allows them party status, it won’t be out of grace but a desire to hobble them further. Their perks of office were, after all, a part of the problem.
They need a metaphoric hot bath, maybe some epsom salts and a coarse loofah with which to remove the necrotic tissue accumulated over 14 years of life in fantasyland.
Fran@61, noted, but I respectfully disagree. A degree of latitude here would be OK – like “pairs” in parliament. Good grief, it could even lead to a more civil and constructive parliament!
tssk @60 Agree, esp. about Abbott.
I think the role of the media has been noteworthy too because it’s role has changed. The media used to report on what was happening, and might have offered editorial comment to overview something or draw attention to something relevant. Today however their role is to provide entertainment. “News” has been commodified, it exists now more for the economic rewards of the media itself, rather than the more noble gaol of informing citizens.
Truth and perspective suffer, influence and favours are peddled…
In the Guardian/Observer this morning, an interesting opinion piece about Western ignorance about the rise of China. The final paragraph is a bit weak but the main thrust – that China is not what we think it is and that western powers are stuck looking backwards and unable to properly understand how the world is changing – is very interesting.
Mercurius@56
Your stats seem, at face value, to be accurate but may be skewed by the amount of people that engage in criminal activity who “always tick the Aboriginal box, always ” in the belief ( true or not ) that they will receive free legal representation and a more lenient sentence.
I remind you of your comment @37
Do you retract it ?
You have proof of this?
Or is it a racist gut feeling?
Jumpy, stop embarrassing yourself. You are clutching at straws, as usual. Out of your depth, again.
And of course I don’t “retract” a counterfactual. It’s a speculation — how can one retract a speculation?. And there’s no point getting shirty about it, because it was YOU who first put forward this little counterfactual brain-buster:
Do you retract it? Or would you prefer to keep making a fool of yourself?
Haha. poor Merc
Mine was a question, yours was a statement. You do see that right?
The folk ( some of them good ) who engage in unlawful activities always, as a standard practice tick the ” Abo box”(their term) ,but you won’t read that in a book of coarse, thus revealing you naivety.
The embarrassment is yours.
And honest question to you; Have you ever left School?
Only that could explain your lack nous on these issues, out of your depth you might say.
Oh, and ease up un the racist talk please.
““always tick the Aboriginal box, always ””
I don’t get it. Who is being quoted here? Or is this right-wing simpletonism?
Patrickb@67
A lot of government forms have a question Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander decent? Yes/No.
If ( heaven forbid ) you are arrested ,charged and held you should be presented with such a form.
cheers
There is speculation that Nicholas Sarkozy might benefit electorally from the Toulouse killings. This would not be the first time Sarkozy profited from high profile terrorist dramas. He should to prominence when as a minor political figure he starred in a drama when a kindergarten was taken hostage by a man with explosives strapped to him. Sarkozy insisted on conducting the negotiations personally, persuading the man to release the children and take off the explosives. Sarkozy then shot up in the polls at the same time as special forces shot the unfortunate nutter dead.
The Guardian has an article on the possible electoral fall-out
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/24/toulouse-shootings-assassin-jewish-school
It is difficult to take what the Intelligence service saying seriously here. Firstly, it is completely out of the ordinary for an Algerian Frenchman to go to Afghanistan to look for a bride – Algerians and Afghanis share virtually nothing culturally or linguistically. It seems to me incredible that a modern day intelligence service should not be aware of this. Moreover, how is it possible to summon someone for questioning because you visited Afghanistan. If you are a citizen what possible legal grounds do you have for such a summons? If it happened to me, I would just tell the police to naff and certainly wouldn’t bother showing them any holiday snaps. Besides, what did they expect to learn from such questioning anyway?
If they really believed his visit was suspicious then they should have done what the Australian intelligence services would have done in such a situation: used Islamist informers to try and build up a relationship of trust, then use them to suggest an attack on an Army barracks and finally leak it to News Limited before arresting him on the eve of the attack.
Seriously, it is such an obvious strategy to deal with potential extremists, its hard to understand what is wrong with French intelligence. I guess anything outside blowing up Greenpeace vessels is too difficult for them. Its hard to know what to make of their statements except they are either lying or incompetent, but most likely both.
Grey@67 You mean like Anna aced up during the Queensland floods? it was a bit of a sugar high for her I think.
faustusnotes,
Sidelined by history? This kind of lead really gets up my nose. As if there’s only one history? Written by us, I presume. And we’re going to sideline ourselves?!
Here’s a somewhat strange (and I mean this in the nicest way) article by Robert Fisk, When did we stop caring about meaning?, in return!
Yes Joe, it’s written from the perspective of the master race, I grant you. But it’s at least trying to recognize that the “west” has a blind spot where China is concerned. And it doesn’t just focus on the raw power of China’s growth.
Re-read that article and it’s a very good find, faustusnotes. Thanks.
@66 Yes Jumpy, I’ve left school. And now an honest question to you: Have you ever been to one?
Zimmerman had a long history of increasingly vexatious calls to Neighbo(u)rhood watch, many about ‘suspicious-looking’ black people in the area. The guy has a problem with black people. That is why I say if Trayvon Martin had been white, he’d still be alive. Racism exists, you know, it isn’t a conspiracy funded by Greenpeace and the CIA.
During the 15 years I was in the private sector and outside of schools, I once had occasion to visit central Florida, where the shooting occurred, and spend a few days in suburban areas nearby. The population mix there is pretty diverse — a lot of old Southern conservatives who long for segregation, up against a progressive activist younger university-led movement who want more fairness in their society. It’s a fairly tense mix. But mostly, it’s like Canberra with palm trees.
I’ll say it again: If Trayvon Martin had been white, he’d still be alive. If Rodney King had been white, he wouldn’t have been so savagely beaten by the cops. This stuff is obvious to everyone who isn’t a racist simpleton.
And I’ll ‘ease up’ on the ‘racist talk’ when the last racist on earth dies, ostracised and unlamented, in a ditch. Once again, Jumpy, it was YOU who first made insinuations in this thread about ‘racist gut feeling’, so it’s no use crying uncle about it. It was you who first posed counterfactuals and then demanded others to retract theirs. When you gonna learn not to start fights you can’t finish?
yesterday thomas mulcair was elected leader of canada’s new democrat party (ndp) on the fourth ballot:-
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ndps-mulcair-plans-structured-opposition-to-tackle-tories/article2380671/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/03/25/pol-thomas-mulcair-ndp-leader.html
alfred venison
for you, Mercurius:-
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2012/03/24/edmonton-anti-racism-white-supremacists.html
a.v.
Zimmerman may or may not be a racist. If he isn’t there are millions of Americans who are. Zimmerman’s attitudes are of marginal interest in this affair.
Of far greater import are the attitudes of law enforcement authorities who mete out justice according to racist principles. These authorities habitually give people like Zimmerman a pass, encouraging their behaviour and thereby threatening the security and lives of people of colour who distrust and fear the police.
budget air travel experience
http://www.flixxy.com/rc-plane-with-camera-flies-around-scenic-germany.htm
Geoff H @3:
Hear, hear!
“every anarchist is a socialist but every socialist is not necessarily an anarchist” – attributed variously to rudolf rocker, aldoph fisher, or, by chomsky, to one of the haymarket martyrs. with respect, Fran Barlow is a state socialist. i, however, am an anarchist. for state socialists, the state is a tool for realising socialism & the ultimate classless society with material abundance, for anarchists the state is itself not a tool but in fact the major impediment to the realisation of socalism. thre’s the nub.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
when I was living in London my partner once called the police to report some kids vandalizing the school fence across the road from our house. The 999 respondent’s first question? “Are they asian?”
enough theory, enough quotations, enough names.
here is anarchism:-
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/europe/2012/03/201232361251966806.html
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n
a.v.
Not quite right. The state is inevitable while there are social classes, and social classes are inevitable while there is material scarcity. The state is an impediment to the realisation of social|sm so long as it obstructs the development of the forces of production, typically, in capitalist society, by privileging the protection of existing relations of production.
The idea that one can simply wish away the state in a society that is class divided is a departure from materialist analysis in the direction of quasi-Hegelian metaphysics.
A preference for “state social|sm” has nothing to do with it.
Speaking of Hegelian metaphysics and wishful thinking, I am sure I read somewhere yesterday that Barnaby Joyce is going to switch to a lower house seat and then if he wins and Abbot wins the election next year Barnaby will be the deputy prime minister.
Please tell me that this plan is correct! The prospect of Barnaby as deputy PM has to be worth a few points of primary vote!
Oh it appears to be true faustusnotes. With the added bonus that Truss is backing the incumbent.
A manure fight that had to be had, though, I thought Barnyard might be keeping his head down a little bit longer after his recent outing as agony aunt to billionaire families. And part of a multi- millionaire family, himself, when he has been posing a small town accountant.
oh Barnaby, the gift that keeps on giving. I’m sure he’s personally convinced that Queensland is going to win the federal election by itself, no matter what, and this is surely just going to add to his enthusiasm in going off-message. I think we can expect some right clangers from him once the carbon tax is bedded down …
no one proposes to wish away the state; some contend it can be used to further socialism, others think the use of the state in this way corrupts the user & confounds the quest.
a.v.
Barnaby to Emma Alberici on Lateline.
Looks like the Travyon case is a lot more complex than first portrayed.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/was-trayvon-to-blame-shooter-claims-teen-punched-him-slammed-his-head-into-ground-20120327-1vvns.html
Given witness corroboration of some of Zimmermans story I can now understand why the police have not made an arrest without further investigation.
Still, it’s likely that without the gun culture in the US Travyon would still be alive.
alfred venison: not that I was a socialist before going to work for the NSW state government at all, having educated myself sufficiently about Marx’s promethean enthusiasm for modern industry to understand that he had bought into the same cornucopianism that characterises earlier modernist utopians like Saint-Simon and Fourier, but the experience of working in child protection for five years turned me into a dedicated anarchist. We’re from the government and we’re here to help. Right.
Ootz: “always a pleasure Emma” from Barnaby through a mouth so twisted with anger that the words were in danger of deforming. The best ABC interview I’ve seen for ages. Got him a beauty on the nanny state nonsense. I hope he does make it to the lower house so he can better represent Gina’s interests.
@90, Chris, that link is an embarrassment to journalism, and you should be embarrassed for swallowing it so credulously. So the authorities have declared what happened, case closed, huh?
The headline itself is so offensive “Was Trayvon to blame?” really? FFS, was a 17 year old kid to blame for getting fatally shot? Really? Are you f@#$# serious? I am sick to death of this victim-blaming culture. We blame rape victims. We blame boat-people. We blame shooting victims. What the f!@#$ is wrong with people!?
Try this link for the whole story (ad will play before article shows):
http://abcnews.go.com/US/neighborhood-watch-shooting-trayvon-martin-probe-reveals-questionable/story?id=15907136
- Police coaching eyewitnesses.
- Police leading witness with suggestions of what happened.
The killer is still at large and still armed and still dangerous, people. THAT is the real story here.
Mercurius @ 93 – heh. I was going to add to my previous comment questioning whether the time gap between the media first reporting what happened and the police releasing the details would mean that even if what the police have said now is true that the outrage is so established that we’d be forever stuck in conspiracy theories with the case.
I think you’ve answered my question.
Can’t follow the link with what I’m browsing currently but will have a look later. But a couple of responses to what you said:
- I think the smh headline is needlessly provocative – but hey they’re trying to get hits. There are circumstances under which it could be true – ie IF Zimmerman had questioned him without being violent and Travyon did respond with violence and Zimmerman was in a situation where did genuinely feel in fear of his life. But that is far from established.
- given the circumstances I think it’s right to be quite skeptical of what the police have been saying.
- should also be skeptical of reports about Zimmerman’s history as well.
And if you can hold the outrage for a moment and read what I wrote, you’ll see I never said I agree that what was reported recently is true, just that it looks a lot more complicated than has been reported before here in Australia.
In relation to Trayvon Martin– now we’re being told that he was suspended from school for having ‘traces of marijuana in a book.’ This is starting to sound a bit like the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case– if Martin’s character can be tarnished, it won’t matter that he was the person shot.
Thinking about what Zimmerman said happened, it’s plausible, but is it likely? Martin may have responded aggressively to being ‘controlled’ by Zimmerman, afterall for most of us, freedom of movement is self-evident. But how many people react by starting a fight and then attempting to kill the other guy by hitting his head against the pavement? Well, if you believe Zimmerman, ‘Thank God, because luckily he had his revolver with him…’
But I wouldn’t pay money for this kind of plot– not that I don’t like Spaghetti Westerns. Or vigilante story-lines per se.
And anyway, the thing is, that in America, like in Afghanistan two weeks ago, we’ll never know what happened. The antagonists, in the larger perspective, both the black and the conservative white movements cannot find consensus with one another. They are so war-torn, there is such deep distrust that these types of breaks in the social fabric can’t be healed in contemporary U.S.
Truth requires common belief. That’s why we used to make such an issue of lying. The boy who cried wolf and all that. But perhaps you don’t recall…
In other news, DSK has been charged in France in relation to prostitution. The bigger they are, I guess.
Chris@94 Spot on.
My original @30 question was asking( sort of) would the headline in a Florida newspaper ” Neighbourhood watch man found dead in gated community, killer at large” receive such global coverage and expressions of outrage.
I would have been happy with any answer, unfortunately only bile followed.
Joe @ 95 – yes the marijuana allegations are totally irrelevant.
There’s a lot of scenarios between Zimmerman’s claim of self defence and Zimmerman just walking up to him and shooting him. The truth is somewhere in between. For example, Zimmerman could have started a physical altercation by attempting to physically restrain him until the police arrived. But you’re right, we’ll never know the truth unless someone happened to video it (you never know!). Apparently there are 911 recordings of part of it so perhaps they can be further analysed.
Zimmerman’s Hispanic heritage has been totally erased by many media reports too (at least in Australia). I wonder if its incompetence or intentional?
Chris,
I think it’s just a result of the existing antagonism(s). The pro-gun movement is broadly speaking associated with middle-class white folk and opposed to social rights. Social right are mainly contested by black people.
I personally, don’t think that the US can get back on track. I think they’re in long term decline faced with external and internal issues, which they can’t overcome. Neo-conservatism has been a terrible mistake.
I think that Abbott’s political approach is taken from the US. Abbot also lacks the political commonality of purpose, respect for the opposition and sense of community that is needed to make politics work. This will simply lead to an increasingly fractured Australian community and then stalemate.
(The left, in my opinion, is to some extent responsible for this– but that’s another story.)
@jumpy, it is rather interesting that you think that your question at #30 was whether ” Neighbourhood watch man found dead in gated community, killer at large” would receive such global coverage and expressions of outrage.
I interpreted your question at #30 as whether “Neighbourhood watch man kills unarmed teen in gated community, killer at large” would receive “such global coverage and expressions of outrage”. Seeing as how, if the dead teen were white, then his race would not have been immediately mentioned by the media (since unless qualified, that’s what mainstream media assumes)? And his killer would never have been let go without formal questioning in the station by the police in the first place if the dead teen had been white? Then the outrage would indeed probably have been less, because standard investigative procedures for an unlawful killing would have been seen to have been taking place.
Now, I think the global coverage would have ended up being rather similarly widespread (unarmed dead teens make for good headlines), but the expressions of outrage would have had quite a different tone, and wouldn’t have taken until a month after the killing before they started to make a global impact. Also, if Zimmerman and his father hadn’t been so very, very, very quick to attempt to deflect accusations of racist prejudice by pointing at his Latino mother, would Zimmerman ever have been identified by the press as “Hispanic”? Whaddayareckon?
Just a general point with respect to the reliability of the Florida police with regard to the killing of Trayvon Martin – they logged him as a “John Doe” despite having his cellphone in their possession.
Since he’d just purchased some small snack items at a 7-11, presumably he also had a wallet on him with some student ID or drivers license ID. Even if he didn’t, the phone should have been all they needed to establish exactly who the owner was and that the owner’s next of kin should be contacted regarding his death. The Florida police followed none of those procedures.
Trayvon’s family had to report him as a Missing Person and be totally jerked around for almost a day before the police told them that Trayvon was dead and in their morgue.
Add in the neighbourhood witnesses who report that the police tried to make them sign off on the police’s preferred version of the story rather than what they actually heard and/or saw?
If ever an independent inquiry was called for regarding the handling of a case, then the Trayvon Martin killing is one.
Tigtog @ 99 – according to an ABC news report Zimmerman was taken for medical treatment first (he was bleeding from the back of the neck and his nose when police arrived) and then taken to the police station for questioning. Have you seen something that contradicts that?
Tigtog @99 thanks, you may be right.
there is quite a lot of info around and trying to caste a judgment is folly at this early stage, toward either men IMO.
I have seen images of T.M.( supposedly) with a rack of gold teeth (said to be a gang trait ) on his twitter or facebook or whatever under the moniker @No_Limit_Nigga. This is by NO way reason to be shot and may not be true but we jump to judgment at our peril.
I have not done that, have I?
dear akn
from marines to drones – you, like me & the so, must be over the moon, eh?
yrs venison
This is big folks. It looks like the F.R. has nailed News on local Pay TV piracy.
[A secret unit within Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation promoted a wave of high-tech piracy in Australia that damaged Austar, Optus and Foxtel at a time when News was moving to take control of the Australian pay TV industry.]
http://www.afr.com/p/business/marketing_media/pay_tv_piracy_hits_news_OV8K5fhBeGawgosSzi52MM
Wow Joe2, what a scoop!
Pretty clear why Murdochistan keeps lobbying to overturn media ownership restrictions. They don’t want the scrutiny.
Right now, these media corporations wield more power and influence than most medium-sized national governments. So, as a true GenXer, I am more fearful of Murdoch than my own government. I want the nation-state to intercede and protect me against the power that these robber-barons are seeking to wield over the society in which I live.
They’re phone hackers, they’re influence-peddlers, and they’re pirates. We need a democratic pushback, massive and determined, against these carpet-baggers.
Politicians, it’s time you boycott News Ltd. journalists, interviews and programs. Starve the fuckers out!
@Chris, I’ve seen reports that the police took Zimmerman’s statement, but didn’t question him. Most police stations have entirely different rooms for the two procedures. I myself, for example, have given witness statements at a desk in the general Detective’s department.
a.v. – yes, all the way with LBJ (again).
“- I think the smh headline is needlessly provocative – but hey they’re trying to get hits. ” – How cruel is that to Trayvon’s parents, Chris? Talk about using people as a means to an end. We’ve all been up in arms about Akker’s lack of respect for dead Jim Stynes. Think about it.
“I have seen images of T.M.( supposedly) with a rack of gold teeth (said to be a gang trait ) on his twitter or facebook or whatever” Be very careful, Jumpy; the egregious Michelle Malkin and others have actually circulated falsified pictures, that is, pictures of gangsta-looking individuals who are not TM.
The way some people bend over backwards trying to think of a scenario in which the black kid was at fault nauseates me. Here is a link for people who would like to educate themselves rather than reinforce their prejudices.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/two-thoughts-on-trayvon-martin/254879/ (and subsequent posts)
People who are circulating the (mainly unfounded) stories about Trayvon Martin as some supposed “other side of the story” are saying the following:
If you punch someone who has been stalking you with a car and has now come out to chase you on foot (clear self-defence), you may be summarily executed.
If you use a gangsta-ish name on your facebook, you may be summarily executed.
If you wear a hoodie while black, you may be summarily executed.
If you look like the picture Michelle Malkin circulated, because of your poor fashion sense (turns out it wasn’t Trayvon Martin at all) you may be summarily executed.
If you experiment with marijuana, you may be summarily executed (Tremble, Melbourne private school students!)
Mercurious@105 Absolutely! This is a fear I have carried for years.
Here’s another well written commentary on the Trayvon Martin case, with an interesting comments thread.
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/03/23/trayvon-martin-disgrace/
joe2 @ 104 – Wow!
tigtog @ 106 – ok. I can see how the two could get confused. Would have to wait for police records to be released to really know.
btw the wikipedia page on it is quite informative, and helpfully as they do has references to pretty much everything stated on the page. btw Apparently there are *5* investigations (FBI, Justice department, State justice department, police, police review) into what happened either starting or already occurring now.
I haven’t been up in arms about Stynes (never heard of him before yesterday). But yes, I as I said previously it was needlessly provocative. Not that general media cares about such things.
There have been a few photos wrongly attributed as Trayvon even on his tribute pages! People do a facebook search and just assume there is only one person with his name
From the initial reports that I read/saw it seemed a pretty clear case of murder (it sounded like Zimmerman had just walked up to Martin and shot him). But as I mentioned previously as more information comes out it appears to be a lot more complex than that (and this statement should not be taken as a belief that Zimmerman is not guilty of any criminal act, nor that Trayvon Martin is guilty of any criminal act).
But this is what happens when you have liberal gun laws – both right to own and “The stand your ground defence law” which I hadn’t heard of before which makes it much harder to prosecute cases like this. And although this is not the same, there are plenty of non inter-racial examples of homeowners in the US using what would in Australia to be considered excessive force resulting in death, but is legal in the US.
There is also a law in Florida that makes the police department automatically financially liable for compensation if they arrest someone in a cases like this and the person they arrest is later found to be immune under the “stand your ground” law. That may go some way in explaining why police wanted to investigate further before making an arrest.
Still no report on ABC News about local pay tv piracy charge against Murdoch. Do they only read Newslimited for their stories?
I think it was on AM this morning, joe2, but since I was half asleep and dodging Sydney traffic, I can’t be sure.
Ah … that’s where I’m ahaead of you then. I found about him at least a week before you and maybe more. I’m practically an expert on Jim whatsisname …
Apparently he was from Ireland and did some good stuff to do with football, or something, though apparently he messed up in some semi-final game and cost his team the match and wasn’t very good at training.
If someone called “akkers” was disrespectful, then whoever he is, that seems really bad, though with a name like akkers, it seems unlikely that he was all that respected anyway so maybe he gets a pass on the basis of diminished capacity.
Zilch on World at Noon and at all ABC newsites, adrian. Exactly in line with Newscorp who have also not yet mentioned a thing about pay tv piracy. Aunty and Newscorp seem joined at the hip.
OK, to clarify. Jim Stynes, who was uniquely famous as a Melbourne footballer for being quite a wonderful person instead of notorious for gang rape or misogynistic comments, died recently. Jason Akermanis, another ex-footballer and a well known asshole, made derogatory comments about him.
If I say that Akkers was the genius who said a rape victim “wasn’t expecting a cup of milo” when she visited her attacker’s house, that might ring a bell as it was widely reported.
The meeja seemed to have no problem recognising that Akermanis’ comments about Stynes were out of line, but not to realise that headlines like the SMH one were likely to flay Trayvon Martin’s bereaved parents must mean the subeditors are beyond stupid. Or evil.
Careful now Fran, you don’t want to start up another ‘yobs vs. w*nkers’ stoush like the one from last week.
Yeah, for we ex-pats, thats when you notice you didnt grow up in Melbourne. Fair dinkum, I’d never heard of Jim Stynes, and I’ve been here 10 years.
Apparently very well-regarded though, it would seem.
Of course not. I was just adding my knowledge on the subject to the general pool. In the absence of any knowledge to the contrary, I’m willing to take the word of others who knew more of him than I (i.e. pretty much anyone) that the fellow was one of the world’s more worthy people.
Fran said:
Yea, I don’t really keep track of football (AFL or otherwise). I do however know that Adelaide has two teams in the competition (I can even name them!) and that the government is spending half a billion dollars on upgrading a stadium that the AFL and Australian cricket association who have million/billion dollar TV deals should be pay for instead.
Helen said:
Well I’d imagine they got plenty of hits just from reporting what Akermanis’ said? More than they got from reports about Stynes’ death in the first place I bet. Probably makes them more evil/greedy than stupid.
I’d definitely go with evil, Chris, especially in the light of the other topic (News Corp piracy revelations).
Sorry everyone for my excessively Melbourne-centric choice of comparison for the Trayvon affair.
Helen,
I grew up on the NSW North Coast and I know who Jim Steynes is– but I was a Melbourne fan, when I was a kid. AFL is awesome, don’t really understand the intricacies of it, but the atmosphere at games is tops. Mind you I remember freezing my a*** off in Melbourne at the footy, maybe the coldest day of my life. SCG solves that, though. Best crowds are at the cricket though. Best. Eva.
The best cure for Melbourne weather is Etihad Stadium,a roof, Brilliant!!!
I’m from the tropics and enjoyed a State of Origin (NRL) there in June 09 in a t-shirt. BEST AS!!
How good is the music coming out of Oz atm?! I am totally blown away by all the great stuff that’s been coming out the last couple of years. Everything from The Grates, Jezabels, Blue Juice, Tenpenny Joke, Sarah Blasko, to some of the Oz hiphop, Illy, Thundamentals, Seth Sentry… Putting the music in Europe to shame.
Now this bloke echo s most the sentiment amongst my friends, Aboriginal or not.
Anthony Dillon ( please read)
I’m genuinely surprised at the lack of social soccer in the north west of Sydney. No2 son was keen on playing, but he’s at that difficult age — 18 — and getting into a team when you’re not an accomplished player is not as easy as one might imagine.
He tried unsuccessfully to get into five teams in the area. We thought he’d finally found one and went out and bought boots and shinpads for a trial, until today, when all the places in that one were apparently taken. It seems that below that level, there’s only indoor soccer, though he’s now feeling a little discouraged. Getting rejected one more time seems a little daunting.
I must say that I am genuinely surprised at how difficult it is even in a place which is by no means in the middle of nowhere or under-resourced.
Sounds pretty shite Fran, does he know anyone privately in a team? Might have to hang out with a few of the lads first, before he can have a run?
What is the North West these days, anyway? Hills District? Certainly lot of sports fields out that way, iirc. Did a fair bit of surveying work out there in the uni-hols a few years back. And it was wall-to-wall McMansions there (and also in SW Syd down around Narellen.)
Simply Fran, he goes down to the local park with a few mates and has fun.
Happens globally.
That, or buy him a rod and reel for Easter.
joe@125 – don’t forget Fred Smith – the best of them all IMHO. His latest album all about Afghanistan is brilliant, and he’s great live as well.
The North West is a big area Joe, but in my case I was thinking of an area with Epping at the rough middle and bounded by Hunters Hill, North Ryde, Pennant Hills, Thornleigh, Glenhaven, and down to Ryde …
He doesn’t have transport so one of us was probably going to have to commit to a bit of ferrying about …
Fran,
can I recommend a motorbike– there are some dangers associated with them in Sydney, but in general, if you don’t drink and ride and you’re fairly responsible, Sydney is made for them. No parking problems, ride straight up to the entry, avoid most of the traffic, the weather’s ideal (although maybe not this year), cheap…
Used to go to the Bayview Tavern in Gladesville for standup sometimes, but other than that never spent much time in that part of town.
My favorite stand-up venue used to be at the Harold Park Hotel, but they built units on it. They had an open-mike section followed by two main acts. I recall, one of the main acts cancelling and on short notice, a friend of the organiser standing in. And he didn’t tell any jokes, there was no real comedy, it was just stories. It was unforgettable. There was some stuff about all the things that his Grandmother used to tell him when he was a kid, like why tea with milk in it stays warmer longer than black tea, and how the reasons that his grandmother used to give him were mostly wrong, but the observations were always right. Anyway, it was good stuff.
Bit of folk stuff is good too, Adrian. Talk about a tough stage name though, Fred Smith! Is that a pseudonym? (Is he an agent from the Matrix?)
Miss the Woodford Festival, as well. Time to think about getting back to Australia… Just in time for Rabbits.
Yeah, I think his real name’s Ian Campbell-Smith. Don’t know how I’d classify his music, but it’s sure got a keen sense of humour.
the harold park hotel is still (again?) a pub; quiet, but might have stand up in the evening; i don’t know. harold park race course, though, is flattened completely, gone, with large excavations & heavy construction under way; preparation for building a new housing complex for thousands. some older outbuilding structures look like being preserved. i forget the name of this development or its builder. australand did over an old, derelict container park on blackwattle bay (on the other side of the bay from the sydney fish market) a few years ago & turned it into a modest array of walkup flats & town houses; maybe its them again, but the scale of the development is much larger this time. same at the other end. wentworth park (large in size) & the racecourse (smaller in size) are also site of a forthcoming large housing complex & more thousands. some public space is said to be part of the plan. eventually, frank gehry’s uts business school building will be just beyond. blackwattle bay, on the glebe side, and federation park are well established, conjoined public spaces & are not being developed & are well tended. a glance at a gregory’s (or memory lane for some) shows a lot of development under way or on the way. pressure on bus services, light rail, shops, traffic flows & open public space. council literature doesn’t plug “sydney: city of villages” anymore. oh yeah, verity firth (labor) used to be our state rep, but jamie parker (green) is our rep now, clover moore (ind) is the mayor & i understand that businesses with addresses in the city get to vote for mayor, too, now (“corporations are people, my friend”, one vote, one “person”, eh?).
a.v.
Wow av,
last time I saw it, I though the Harold Park Hotel was basically torn down.
The paceway gone, Wenty park gone too? Well the writing was on the wall– did some bar work in both places (again while at uni). Wenty park apparently was built from the plans of a baseball park in the US somewhere. (I remember getting $15.60/hr for bar work mid 90s and compulsory union membership, although that was on the way out.)
I dunno, kind of sad that these little social microcosms are gone. Sydney’s soul is ugly.
@av and Joe, there hasn’t been regular stand up at the Harold for a few years now, not since the last time someone tried to resurrect it there after a too-long hiatus and couldn’t make a go of it. There’s regular stand up in Glebe at the Roxbury Hotel on Wednesdays and at the Friend In Hand on Thursdays. The Mic in Hand room at the Friend is probably closer to what the nights at the Harold used to be like, although it’s a much smaller upstairs space and therefore doesn’t get as out of hand as the Harold sometimes did. Comedy on the Rox on Wednesdays is a highly structured stand up contest for new comics hosted and headlined by pros – different vibe because of the ultimate cash prize. The Roxbury also has impro/v on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is different again!
Yobs vs wankers?
oh yes, the cluster of walk-up flats between the australian youth hotel & the old grace bros building, that were public housing, are all gone. flattened & no replacement yet. not sure if there will be much public housing in what will go up in that lot, but its a flat field of rubble now that used to be about ten walk-up flat units.
a.v.
A man has gone to the Family Court in NSW to attempt to force his former partner to carry his child to term.
As it happens she’s having it anyway (whether as a truly independent decision or “counselled” by fundie “pregnancy crisis centres” we’ll never know – she’s only sixteen), but the judge, Justice Peter Murphy, stated that past precedents still hold and that
”…a foetus has no legal personality and cannot have a right of its own until it is born and has a separate existence from its mother”…[and]… said there was no common law right of a father to enable him to force the mother to carry a child to term.”
Good thing sanity still rules in some states of australia. The complainant then asked for a court order to allow him into the birthing ward while she was in labour. This kind of ex is very dangerous for a pregnant woman. I hope she gets through it all right with minimal trauma.
Re 139, am sure the woman could work out for herself if she needed to go full-term, without needing to turn up at court.
The crackpot should butt out, final decision is hers and he shouldn’t seek to employ the system to impose his solutions over the head of the main protagonist in the situation, the woman.
Welcome to West Virginia, methinks..
Helen @ 139 – it’s a very strange situation to take someone to court to get an order for them not to do something they weren’t going to do anyway. Unless it was a very clumsy way of trying to find out whether she was going to have an abortion or not.
I do wonder whether its a bit of a setup (eg he knew she was not going to have an abortion) and someone thought the situation was one which they might be able to set a legal precedent for the future?
The article also states he is going to apply for full custody after birth so it appears he isn’t that familiar with the system.
George Galloway has beaten Labour in West Bradford by a shtonking great margin, and also thrashed the Tories and Lib Dems. The Guardian is swinging it as some kind of desertion of labour by migrant voters, but it’s pretty clear that Galloway has sucked up pretty much every form of voter in the electorate. Now his Respect party is going to look at taking on some other parts of the North.
Could this be a sign that the Tories’ reform agenda is losing its electoral shine?
faustusnotes @ 142 – only 50% of eligible voters bothered to turn up? That’s a pretty bad democracy health indicator.
That is troubling, though in context, if it’s the Tories and LDPs who have not turned up that may well be a clue to the politics of the UK right now. Maybe the shine is going off both Cameron and the broader right-of-centre consensus around neo-liberalism.
Spain is looking decidely unhappy under official conservative rule. Spain, (which admittedly has twice the population of Australia) is set to announce $50billion in budget cuts and tax rises — which will make ours look pretty modest by comparison. Official unemployment is over 20% and they’ve just had a strike which by all accounts was supported by about 85% of full time employees.
Turnout in West Bradford was actually pretty good, it seems!
http://www.ukpolitical.info/by-election-turnout.htm
Chris, turnout was only 60% in the 2001 general election of 2001. They don’t have a democratically elected upper house and they have a police force that can kill people with impunity. There is a great deal wrong with democracy in the UK!
they have a police force that can kill people with impunity”
Well, maybe. Then again, they also have a uniformed police force which doesn’t carry guns. Return to Australia after a few years abroad, and you can easily start mistaking it for South Africa.
Honey bees is another issue, confounded by the nexus of science, business, media. Maybe the real problem is that pesticides are so encompassing today that we can’t test what bees do in environments without them (without completely changing the setting and going to Siberia, or somewhere.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/29/crop-pesticides-honeybee-decline
They also have a police force with impossibly compromised links to a major
newsdisinformation organisation.Fran @ 144 -
Yes, I wonder if their polls track who didn’t vote this time and what they voted last time.
Well that’s certainly going to help their economy!
faustusnotes @ 146 – I guess I would have thought that if the general population was really annoyed at the current government they would turn out in droves to register their protest. Even at a general election it looks like there is significant proportion (40% you say?) who just don’t care. That is a very bad sign for the UK.
It’s not just the UK, Chris and it’s not just the economically and academically disenfranchised, who aren’t voting. Voting is seen by many of my German friends as a waste of time.
Oh yes Chris, it’s a very bad sign. They don’t even vote on the weekend, which is surely the first marker of a civilized electoral system. No compulsory voting, and serious problems of funding – the tories were recently caught red-handed selling “access to the policy committee” for 250k a pop. They will “listen to your concerns” at that price…
Last election in Germany was Saarland. Here’s a graphic with information about the election participation in Saarland since 1947.
In Baden Wuerttemberg, the election in 2006 was 53.4%, in 2011, when the Greens won it was 66.3%.
Perhaps one of the factors effecting participation is the inability of democracy to function in societies that are split. Elections are very effective in communities, where there is a broad consensus about the goals of the community, democracy is not a technique for generating broad consensus.
——————
An interesting quote from the Guardian article about the Galloway win:
Also worthy of noting from the article is:
And something, which is no doubt setting marketing companies hearts fluttering, and which is a sign of the electronic-times we live in:
By the way, what do people think of the images of the French police force in the press at the moment? My pre-school aged daughter wanted to know if they were bank robbers!
clearly not bank robbers, Joe. Ninjas, maybe?
French ninja cyborgs. Coming to a screen near you!
[warning: batteries not included, you must be over 18 ye..]
Jaques de Molay @137 – that was a classic. I also enjoyed I’m on the Drug that Killed River Phoenix, aka (He’ll never be an) Old Man River.
not all non-compulsory, first past the post polities have a participation rate as bad as the americans, or, now, the british. in canadia elections are first past the post & non-compulsory. national, provincial & municipal. currently, there are five national political parties, one of which runs candidates only in quebec (bloc quebecois) and another which runs candidates in all provinces but has returned a member only once (the greens). all pubs, clubs, and even the airport lounge, are not allowed to serve alcohol during polling hours. their federal election turnout has been as high as 79.2% (1963) to as low or lower than last year’s 61.1%; the 2008 turnout of 58.8% was an all time low.
canajun parties need to persuade people not only to vote for them, but to vote period. they can be slack about this or they can exert themselves. i remember both liberals & conservatives dropping off literature & offering my parents a volunteer on election day to pick them up & drive them to a polling station & back. they did this up & down the street, especially where they knew pensioners lived. sometimes it worked out, for the parties, but, as mom voted liberal & dad voted conservative, they more often than not stayed home, where, as they joked, they kept eyes on each other. especially in winter, despite the ride. also, western canada has long voted, and continues to vote, conservative by a large margin, and many “provincial particularists” there resent that the final complexion of the national government is determined by swing voters in ontario & quebec, however the west votes. but now with harper for pm they’re wallowing in smug self-satisfaction.
currently, the federal liberal party is led by an ex npd (social democrat) who left the ndp (the party that invented medicare)
because they were going too far to the left. the federal ndp (since last week) is led by an ex liberal who left the libs because they were going too far to the right. the head of the conservatives & current prime minister was associated with a western sovereigntist party in his early days.
abstention from voting there goes up & down and seems to have many determinants.
a.v.
Mr. Venison,
but if I have been able to understand correctly, what you wrote above, you’ve said, generally, people don’t vote, when they don’t think that their vote will matter (there’s a strawberry on top related to parties calling on people to vote.)
Why should people participate in an election, when they’re not involved in the political process– and feel that they can’t be/ it’s broken?
Thanks Tim, it certainly is as is Ol Man River.
Once again in the interests of good taste a very under-rated TISM classic in ‘The Last Australian Guitar Hero’ (great lyrics/story):
dear Joe
i think that might account for the small core of people who don’t vote at any election & maybe some westerners. but i don’t think it accounts for the motivations of people who vote in some elections but not in others. its their psychology that intrigues me. what are the motivations of people when they drop out & having dropped out what motivates them to come back?
it would be nice to have a participation rate break down by province & territory for the federal elections and provincial elections for comparisons. with that data i’d ask if there is a higher rate of participation in provinces where seats change often than in provinces where seats don’t change much? do more people turn out in ontario & quebec than in alberta? one day i might look into that. one day.
and at the provincial level, even though they vote conservative at federal elections, each western province (except in alberta) has had an ndp government at some time. something’s happening there for them to vote socialist locally and conservative federally. but is there a different rate of participation for federal and for provincial elections? are participation rates for provincial elections in western provinces higher than the participation rates in these provinces for federal elections? the same could be asked of ontario & quebec.
in the case of my parents, my father, who always voted conservative federally when he voted, never voted conservative at the provincial elections when he voted; always social credit. mom didn’t always vote in provincial elections, either, but when she did she voted social credit until the ’60s and then liberal, which is an incredibly long shot in alberta. i don’t know what motivated that except perhaps a desire to be consistent when she voted. given social credit ruled with large majorities for 40 years i don’t know why either of them voted in provincial elections. first past the post is a big part of the problem but non-compulsory voting opens up intriguing avenues for speculation about people’s motivations for participating or not.
a.v.
p.s. – over to the current saturday salon.
I am disgusted that we are considering or planning to import even more labour from overseas.
Firstly we owe it to our own population to train them. The problem is, insufficient attention has been given to training, even though the issue has been apparent for years.
Secondly, companies as well as government, don’t wish to train people. They want their recruits to hit the ground running and are happy for someone else to have trained them. They will pay for machinery worth millions, but not train operators. Set up infrastructure worth billions, but not train operators.
Thirdly, guest workers may, depending on their origin, return a large proportion of their earnings to to their homeland. That’s nice for them, but further shifts the benefits of industry away from Australia.
Fourthly, guest workers have a chequered history around the world, including Australia. There’s plenty of reading of post WW2 guest workers. It is not always good, and so should be approached carefully and in an informed way. It is in fact immigration by stealth, because a large proportion will probably remain in Australia. Again, that may be OK, or maybe not. But an analysis at least ought to be done before wholesale importing of labour is allowed.
That there is a shortage of skilled labour – yes there is. But we have a fund of untrained people who could be trained – they deserve first shot.
That’s because machinery doesn’t walk away and work for a competitor
Though perhaps they could setup HECS like schemes where the training debt is eliminated without cost over a number of years if they stay at the same employer. Its rather dangerous territory though balancing the dangers of exploitation versus making economic sense for companies to invest in training budgets.
I think we should be very careful about temporary work visas, especially to make sure they are not being exploited, but I think we should have some, especially for those people who come from nearby countries – eg Pacific region countries.
Chris @ 163 You have expressed the most cited fear of training, that the expense ends up benefiting someone else. Whilst it is a reasonable concern, my understanding is that is far from universal in practice. That is, many, or most trainee’s, don’t rush off and go to the competitors. Employers can reduce attrition rates. There are a lot of cost-free things that can be done to retain employees. But employees have a role to play as well. Probably true to say that both need training to be good employers and employees.
I have seen cases of exploitation, where trainees are ditched at the end of their time, but again not in a lot of cases.
Government could do much more to address the issue generally than simply import “experienced” workers, effectively neutering our own.
Chris, that lack of loyalty by employees has its (fairly recent) roots in the behaviour of employers – when you’re made to feel like a disposable cost you start behaving like one.
Agree David, loyalty has largely become a quaint old relic.
You want a payrise? But we just paid for your training!
Yeah Nick, but it is way more complex than that. For example if the training makes the person more productive or other benefits flow to the employer, a pay rise may be very well justified. Training can multi-skill a person, a benefit to both parties… there are so many reasons for supporting training.
DI @ 165 – I think it’s a two way street. I used to work for a smallish medium sized business where the owner was involved in everyday decisions. I had a talk to him one day about the company pay for MBA training and he complained he had paid for them in the past for employees but they had mostly left not long after.
So he paid for half and I left not long after. I did leave for reasons other than salary (a once in your life kind of opportunity came up) but I can see how my actions my have influenced his future decisions on training. And this was a company which generally had rather high loyalty.
Geoff @ 168 – that is true, but the employer still needs to recover the cost of training otherwise they might as well just have recruited someone with the required skills in the first place.