So, what's in your lunchbox?

I know I wrote about the "food police" some time ago. You know the people I mean, the adults who have taken all the fun out of school lunch times.

They were under discussion last week. I spent almost four full days working at our state showground helping to set up the Handicrafts area. Those of us working there get rewarded with morning tea and lunch from the kitchen run by the Country Women's Association. They know how to feed us!

We get fresh scones for morning tea and cake. At lunchtime there is a choice between a sandwich, pie or pasty or soup and a roll. There is also a second course of some sort - fruit crumble and custard is a favourite but there might be sticky date pudding or trifle - all made in the kitchen there. It is good "tucker". It is the only time of the year I actually eat cake. If I want something sweet during the rest of the year it is likely to be biscuits. I just don't make cake apart from the Christmas cake. It would go stale before I ate it even if other people had eaten at least half of it.

The women in the kitchen know me after fourteen years of volunteering and they know my order will be a brown bread cheese and salad sandwich. When they were getting us to write the lunch orders the other day the woman who had come up from the kitchen looked at me and asked, "The usual Cat?" I said yes please and that was it.

But school lunches are not like that. Yes, the food police would probably approve the sandwich. They might applaud the fact that I never eat the second course (because the sandwiches are large and well filled). Children however are different. Their fuel needs are different. They would likely want a pie or pasty in preference to a sandwich and they would likely want the second course...and more perhaps.

The idea that a child is going to be satisfied with a "healthy" lunch of hummus and carrot sticks and perhaps an apple is nonsense. It is not the way children function. More often than not the carrot sticks will get left in the lunch box and the apple might too. (No, don't cut the apple into quarters and cut out the core. It goes brown and won't get eaten that way either.) A child is more likely to eat a Vegemite (Marmite) sandwich than a browning apple or overly soft banana. They would prefer to have a hot pie in winter to the healthy salad enlivened with chick pea chips. 

Yes, we ate white bread sandwiches with Vegemite in them for the most part. We were hungry. We had been active. I do not remember many children being fat or even mildly overweight. I was a very skinny child (and just wish the same was true now). The lucky children bought their lunch - pies, pasties and sausage rolls for the most part. There were "cream" buns and other delights too. Even the home packed lunch box had home baked cake or biscuits. There was often a piece of fruit - and most of us did eat that. We were in fact more likely to eat it then than children are to eat it now. 

I think that says something. Children will eat that fruit if they see it as the "sweet" thing after the sandwich. The food police have taken the fun out of seeing how far you can spit an apple pip! 

The excellent food we are provided with as volunteers is almost exactly like the food we are as children at school. We know we are going to burn a great deal of energy.  Our lovely and very hardworking Convenor found her pedometer showed she had walked sixteen kilometres one day. Perhaps children need the opportunity to exercise more - without adult supervision so that it is not seen as a chore? 

Home ownership should not be

an impossible dream but apparently it is for many people. We are constantly being told that the generations below me are finding it "difficult" or "impossible" to buy their own home.

Is that really true? I suspect the situation is far more complex than is suggested. It is about a great deal more than "not even being able to save for the deposit" and the "need for two incomes" and more.

Most people did not own their own home until they were in their fifties at the earliest. What they owned even then was often a "basic three bedroom house" which they had spent more time and money on. Yes it was on that famed "quarter acre block" but the house itself had started as something very ordinary by today's standards. I think that may be part of the problem now. People want a great deal more than they wanted in the past. 

Now the government is saying they have just made it much easier for people to buy their own home. "All you need is a deposit of five percent," the Prime Minister is saying. 

Oh, please read the fine print. You are not going to own your own home at all. The government is going to co-own it with you. You will still have a mortgage to pay and all the responsibility for caring for it. If you need to move for any reason there will be financial penalties. 

And the price of housing is going to go up still further. It will go up simply because more people will be looking to buy. The housing "crisis" is actually going to increase under this policy. We are also going to have some unfortunates who lose their homes because they cannot afford to go on paying the mortgage, a mortgage they probably should never have been able to get in the first place.  

This policy is not the answer to housing the increasing number of migrants the government is bringing in to try and prop up the economy. It is not the answer to housing those who are already here or were born here.

Home ownership should be possible but we need to change our ideas about what we can afford and how we can make it happen.   

President Zelensky is the legitimate

President of Ukraine. For Sergei Lavrov to suggest otherwise and use it as an excuse to continue the war is to say "Russia does not want the war to cease until we have what we want". 

I think we all know that. Zelensky is legitimate because the Ukrainian constitution expressly forbids elections during war time - and Ukraine is under invasion. It is a war zone. Perhaps Lavrov thinks otherwise because his President still calls it a "special military operation".  It is nothing of the sort of course. It is an illegitimate attempt to cease territory which does not belong to Russia.

What makes all this even more interesting is that the Russian government is not a legitimate government. Under their Constitution a President can only have two terms in power. Putin has been there for six terms (sixteen years) so far and shows no signs of relinquishing the role. He was Prime minister too and the Director of the Federal Security Bureau before that.  

 Putin had "elections" held in the annexed territories and those "elected" sit in the Duma. These so-called elections were illegal under both international law and under the Russian Constitution in which international law takes priority over state law. This effectively means that the entire Russian government is illegal - and yet they are trying to say the elected President of Ukraine is illegal?

 Putin has had elections rigged, banned opponents from standing (and imprisoned them) and murdered dissidents. He has taken children from their families and had them "adopted" into Russian homes. He is using prisoners as front line "soldiers" knowing they will not survive but giving them the false promise they will come back as free men. 

We criticise the Prime Minister of Israel - and rightly so. Netanyahu is to be condemned but is he really any worse than Putin? The situation in Gaza is immensely complex and the reporting is - let's just say "biased".  Despite that we have hundreds or thousands of people "protesting" against his policies when there is no more than a whisper about Ukraine. 

There is something very wrong here. I can only imagine that, when the war is over, Zelensky will be relieved to hand over his role to someone else. 

Remote area schooling is expensive

and still does not offer the same resources as urban schooling.

There was one of those "human interest" articles in the paper yesterday and it was being discussed this morning by two former neighbours I happened to see. They hauled me into the conversation because, as they said, I experienced remote area schooling.

My initial year at school was fine. It was at a three teacher school in a moderately sized "town" (small village to those of you in Upover).  Some children came in from surrounding farms but quite a number lived in the town itself.

In my last two years of "primary" however I went to a two teacher school. My parents were the teachers. The Senior Cat, who taught me and my brother, had four year levels to teach and a further year of "correspondence" classes to supervise.  It was, to put it mildly, difficult to do. One reason for this was because intermarriage in the area meant there were a number of very "slow" learners and another was that some of the students were simply "marking time" until they were old enough to leave school. They would then go back and work on the farm. Then there were the handful of students who wanted to go on to a much better secondary and tertiary education.

I had already been promoted above my age group, indeed was almost two years younger than anyone else in my "year". My brother was not quite so badly off being only twelve months younger. The son of one of the "roving professionals" (people who came to do things like banking or teaching) was also given accelerated promotion. It was the only way to cope with a very, very bright child. (He later became a solicitor.) We were left largely to learn alone. There was no choice about this. 

The school had very limited resources and it was the Senior Cat who first organised the  box of books from the Country Lending Service each term. (My brother and I and the future solicitor also borrowed books and shared them with each other.) Even so many of the children did not read the books which were sent. They could not read well enough. Their parents did not read. There were no books in their homes.

Most of the local students came in via the two "buses" - in reality mini-vans that had extra seats put in for the morning and afternoon runs. During the day they served as farm vehicles. (No, there wasn't a seat belt in sight!) 

Then the Senior Cat had the task of setting up an Area School in another part of the state. It was a very difficult job because there were small two high schools within the distance of school bus travel. Some parents had wanted their children to attend one or other high school but they were forced to send their children to the local "area" school. This was where the school bus would take their children, There were two "streams", one for public examinations (rather like O and A levels) and another for rural studies. If you were "smart" you did PEB (Public Examinations Board). Yes, classes were small but subject choices were non-existent - no languages, no classics, no history or social sciences. The Senior Cat taught English and maths and ran the school. He would often have to leave us to work alone while he dealt with other problems.

This sort of thing went on as we moved around. I longed to do a language and history. I wanted to do "art" but was sent to "dressmaking" because all the girls did that. That I could not even thread a needle was not a consideration until the Senior Cat managed to get permission for two of us to do "art by correspondence". There were units for that and I took all the history of art units and somehow managed to get through the rest with a creditable pass, still working by correspondence, at yet another school. 

I say all this but also admit I was well off. I did not have the sometimes two hour bus journey in the mornings and another two hours at night. Homework had to be done on the bus because there was farm work to be done when you arrived home. That a few students managed to get to university was nothing short of miraculous. 

Of course parents who could afford it sent their children off to boarding school but that was, and still is, a huge expense. Even boarding with a family in the city and going to the local public high school was beyond many people. There were other issues with that as well. My parents sent me to a boarding school for the final year and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. (What saved me was the "Matron" of the girls' boarding house recognising this and, quite illegally, sending me off to my paternal grandparents each weekend. I would not have survived the year or managed to learn much without that respite from the constant bullying. It was simply too late to send me (or anyone else) as a boarder.)

Even now if parents do afford it there is the expense of getting their children home for holidays. Most of the time "exeat weekends" (half-term) would see some students staying on at school or, if they were fortunate, being invited to stay by day students.

I worked as a "junior housemistress" in another boarding school. It was a good deal better than the one I attended but there were still issues, most often because of the immense distances the students had travelled to actually be there. It does make a difference if your parents are not there when, as one girl had happen to her, you are fitted with a back brace for scoliosis and your parents are almost a thousand kilometres away. Others had braces on their teeth and one girl was an insulin dependent diabetic. It was very hard for them to deal with all this and all the other issues of growing up. 

The boarding school several streets from here is very different but it is still not "home" and the school is acutely aware of that. They do the very best they can but the cost is enormous - and not just financial. 

As the mother in the article in yesterday's paper mentioned, perhaps the very least the government could do would be see that students who must leave home to continue their education were given some financial assistance - at least enough to get home for the holidays.  

Book Week was something

we celebrated by writing books...and then getting our pupils to write books. This was many years ago and I wonder what would happen if the same "competition" was reintroduced into schools. It won't happen.

The state newspaper ran this competition and the schools participated. Not all children wrote books of course and the "books" were often nothing more than an illustrated school "composition" made into a book like format.  The books and other book related items would be displayed at a major department store in the city. They had a sixth floor auditorium used for such things and school groups could visit during the week.

It was all hard work but a lot of learning went on. I remember teaching my year six students about book binding. We read Cynthia Harnett's "The load of Unicorn" which they rated as "a super story miss!" There were no budding authors in the room but they all helped to produce a respectable display at school. The following year I was promoted to school librarian and organised another display for Book Week.

Book Week was about reading and writing all those years ago. Yes, it is a long time ago and things have changed. Now Book Week seems to be about dressing up as a character in a book. There are costumes available from the cheap shop at the shopping centre and from the "untidy" shop near another shopping centre and even in one of the supermarkets. I have heard parents and grandparents worrying about the costume a child is going in and more. I am not sure what this has to do with books.

Yesterday the knitting group met at the library. Our year 8 student was present. She is one of those highly intelligent, hard working students who likes to be involved. Her school was "celebrating Book Week"  and she told us, "Everyone was supposed to dress up as something or other. There were a whole heap of things you were supposed to do but it didn't have much to do with reading. I took a sick day and went to woodwork with my mum and learned how to do something I have wanted to do for ages."

I would not normally condone something like skipping a school activity but it was right for R.... She did not need that "heap of things" that "didn't have much to do with reading". From other reports the day was undoubtedly fun for most of the students but one of the teachers admitted to me "There was very little learning going on."  Some of the costumes would have been simple but many would have been costly. Some of the students were not free to participate in all the activities because they come from different cultural backgrounds. 

The school thought it was a successful day and perhaps it was but how much more the students could have achieved if they had been asked to turn one of their creative essays into book form. Some of them are old enough to write "chapters" and more. What about researching and writing some simple non-fiction for a younger sibling - and then illustrating? There are potentially no end of activities more valuable than dressing up and playing games and they might end with actually reading more books.  

The last link with the past

or that is what it feels like.

My godfather died yesterday. He was 100 year and 5 months old. Yes, old. His death was not unexpected.

For all the past week I have been helping to set up the Handicrafts display at the Showground but my godfather was on my mind. I had planned to go and see him tomorrow - and now it is too late. He was the last direct link with the Senior Cat, one of his closest friends.

L... was a "returned" serviceman. He served in the navy during WWII and considered himself one of the "fortunate" men who came home even though he did so with a hearing loss and a permanent back injury.

When he signed up he went to the recruiting centre with the Senior Cat. They both intended to sign up at the same time. The recruiting officer looked at the Senior Cat and, without even sending him to the medical officer, failed him on the grounds of his eyesight and his very flat feet. L..., very tall and skinny, was accepted.

L... and the Senior Cat remained friends. Together, with a close knit group of friends, they had been through girlfriends and the early years of "the Marriage Bureau" as they called the church youth group. Later they went to the weddings and christenings and funerals. The Senior Cat moved around the state as a teacher but L... and others were always there in the background.

When they both retired L... would visit regularly. P, his wife, would play bridge with a group of friends on Tuesdays. L... would occasionally drop her off at the venue and then come on to us. As he and the Senior Cat grew older they spent more and more time sitting at the kitchen table over a pot of tea. L... liked the tea my mother first made and then I made. We had rainwater, a distinct improvement on this city's tap water. He would often go home with a bottle of rainwater for another pot during the week.

I did not see much of him as a child. We were out in the country and it cannot be said he took his duties as a godfather very seriously. When my mother died his visits became more frequent. Then P... died and L... came every Tuesday until he could no longer drive his lovingly tended car. I would send him home several hours later with at least one meal to just heat up. Yes, he could cook quite well but "it's not as much fun for just one".  His own two children saw to it that he also had help from the Meals on Wheels service or, at weekends, ate with them. Yes, we all wanted to see he was "alright" because he was such a polite and grateful man. 

Unlike many very old people he did not want for help and it was only a "stroke" which eventually put him into a nursing home. He admitted quietly to me, "I'm not complaining Cat but this place is not where I wanted to end up." No, "community singing" was not what a partially hearing man wants to "enjoy" when he would rather be reading a book or doing a difficult jigsaw puzzle. He pretended to join and pretended to enjoy it all. He was polite to the end. 

Throughout his life he advocated for other returned servicemen. He had help from the government department which attends to their affairs but he gave back as much as he received.

Middle Cat and I went to visit, not as often as I would have liked  but at least we managed to do it - except for this last one time. I wish I had followed my feeling and gone last weekend. I wish I had seen him that last one time. Perhaps I would have felt that way whenever I had last visited him.  He was that link with the Senior Cat and I will miss him for that and for himself. 

  

Taking away NDIS funding

for children with "mild to moderate" autism is long overdue. I know that statement will not go down well with anyone who now has funding or believes their child should have it. I will not however make any apologies for saying it. You have been fortunate to get any funding at all. If you get some extra help in another program then be grateful for it.

I am tired of "he's on the spectrum" being used as an excuse for anti-social and unacceptable behaviour. I am tired of it being used as an excuse for some children being restless and not working in school.

School is a place where children should expect to go to work. It is not a place where there should be expectations about entertainment. Yes, the entertainment might happen occasionally. That can happen in any work place but you should not expect school to be "fun" all the time. 

I have a friend whose IQ is far higher than that of most people and her achievements are many. I have also heard people say things like, "Oh well it's because she is so intelligent. She didn't really have to do any work."  

That is completely and utterly wrong. She has worked. She worked from the very start of her education and she still works today. There is always something new for her to learn.  She works at a prestigious university and also as a very, very high level translator. Nights will often find her studying vocabulary ready for a meeting between people who can influence world events.  It is not an easy role and the idea that it comes easily to her is something that frustrates her. She keeps telling her students they need to work and work far harder than they think they do. 

This does not seem to happen in school. Learning to read is hard work for most children. Learning to deal with numbers and other concepts is - or should be - hard work for most people. If you are hungry it can be very difficult to concentrate. "Breakfast" clubs can overcome the problem in families where there is genuine financial hardship. The same club is not the answer for a child whose parents simply don't care or can't be bothered to see they have breakfast. It is not the answer because there will be other problems as well in an instance like that. If you are tired because you have been up playing computer games or watching television then that is a parenting problem. It does not make you "autistic" or "on the spectrum".

Severe autism is a very serious and real disability. It is not a mild behaviour issue which would once have marked you out as a "bit eccentric". It is not a quirky behaviour which might be amusing or annoying, It is behaviour which seriously impacts your ability to function in society. There really is a difference. Severe autism can disrupt the life of everyone around that child and they need help as much as the child. Poor behaviour which is excused as "on the spectrum" needs to be reviewed and handled. It may be hard work but it does not require massive sums of money taken from those who really need it.

The child with the second i-pad is also getting $18,000 a year in funding for a range of activities that have made no noticeable difference to his behaviour. If offered a special treat for good behaviour he can behave perfectly but his mother insists that he is special and in special need. Meanwhile the child in the wheelchair is struggling to be comfortable at school but is working hard "because maybe I can get a job one day". I hope he gets that job. He will have worked for it. 

Knitting while walking

was once very common. There are a good many early examples of this. People (men as well as women) knitted socks and gloves, shawls and garments as they went to and from their places of work. They spun wool and knitted it while tending the sheep and much more. 

Someone posted a picture recently of a woman doing this and mentioned she could not knit without actually looking at it. Obviously these people, mostly women, did.  

I saw many women actually doing this when I was a mere kitten. Every female teacher I knew in primary/junior school and every rural female teacher I knew in secondary school knitted while on yard duty. Teachers had to do yard duty by law but in rural schools the discipline problems were, for the most part, minimal. The female staff could safely knit. If something did go wrong they merely handed the knitting over to a child and dealt with the grazed knee or the knocked elbow.  

In this way my mother and the other female staff kept their families in warm winter woolens. They knitted for their children, for the men in their lives and sometimes for those who were not able to knit because of physical or intellectual limitations.  Even children knitted. I remember the pink "jumper" (pullover/sweater) one of the year five students had knitted. It was mostly garter stitch and there was a glaring mistake in the front. I suspect her mother had knitted the bands but the rest was her work and she wore it. 

By the time I was in secondary school I was expected to do plain knitting, Most of the girls I went to school were expected to do the same. We might not have reached the dizzy heights of "stockings" and "socks" and gloves that the previous generation knitted for the troops but we could knit. We all used the cheap, hard wearing wool that was sold by the department stores or at the local draper. There was even a "wool bank" in some places where people could buy their wool a skein at a time. (Yes, you wound it yourself for the most part.)

The local draper was just a couple of hundred metres from my paternal grandparents home. I would go there with Grandma and watch the "flying fox" being used by the assistants as they took the money from the customers. I could safely wander around the counters laden with zippers and buttons and cotton. The fabric was stacked in rolls against the walls. 

On the right hand side were the boxes of yarn. I suspect it was mostly, if not all, labelled with the beehive of what is now Patons but once had the Baldwin name as well.  When I was around eight there was a very large amount of angora brought in. I remember Mum and Grandma and many other women standing there as the manager/owner of the shop spoke to them. Even on "special" it was probably expensive because Grandma had been asked to make something from it in what was clearly an economical way.  That year every little girl seemed to have an identical green or yellow bolero made from two rows of angora and two rows of sock yarn. I still have the pattern somewhere but, alas, the angora is no more. 

People still knit of course. I am going to help at our state show today. There will be some lovely knitting to display. I doubt that those who have done the knitting will have done it while walking. They do it as a hobby now, not a necessity.  

  

The "Economic Reform Rountable"

about to be held in Canberra is unlikely to produce any meaningful change. We only need to look at who will be present to realise that.

The union movement, a body which now represents less than 14% of the workforce, has four seats at the table. Their latest push is for a four day working week. 

The mining industry, which may only represent 2.2% of the workforce but is one which powers the present economy, has only one seat. They do not want to see a four day working week. Neither do the other major companies. "Small business" does not want to see it either.

Yes, we need tax reform. This government is spending more money than ever before, money they are "borrowing" from future generations.  Where that money comes from right now is something that will be under "discussion" but we can be sure it will not come from meaningful tax reform.

For some reason or other this government is still "popular" according to opinion polls. This has to be because the government is not doing what needs to be done and, for the most part, people are not well educated with respect to the economy. Most people see it as easy to tax business more, especially what they see as being big business with massive profit, rather than do some hard work on reforming the tax system. 

I have real concerns at the way the present government is still so much under the thumb of the union movement. As a country we do not have a reputation for hard work. As one columnist puts it this morning there are too many bludgers and people who are prepared to bludge - or live off tax payer funded benefits. We have a disability support scheme which is out of control and far too many benefits for special interest groups. Yes, it is nice to have those benefits, those schemes and those special programs but how much is it saving the economy or producing an actual benefit?  There are too many people, especially children, on the NDIS scheme. "If we can get him/her on the NDIS then it is a bit more money coming in." How often have I heard those words said about a child with "autism" which is sometimes no more than a difficulty in paying attention in class and poor behaviour with it? There are families who are getting a financial benefit for poor parenting when families whose lives are being turned upside down because of the erratic and often dangerous behaviour of a severely autistic child are still getting nothing. 

There are "programs" for "indigenous" students whose claim to be indigenous is nothing more than possibly a great-great grandparent. There are financial and other benefits for the claim though and they must be respected. 

There is funding for all sorts of special interest groups to maintain their "cultural heritage". I happen to think that cultural heritage can be important, especially for refugees, but where do you draw the line?  

The government spent almost a billion dollars on just part of the funding for specialist programs for  "indigenous" people - just 3.8% of the population - but all the "closing the gap" reports suggest that there is little to show for it. 

Yes of course money can be saved but it will not be done because doing it would be politically unpopular. The union movement will soon have many people believe that a four day week is a good idea as long as it benefits them. That will mean four days a week for five days pay, no extra tax and no extra effort.

Somehow the mathematics of all this does not work for me.  

So one in four children are "disabled"

or at least sufficiently "different" to require funding from the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the NDIS? Getting funding from the NDIS now seems to be a badge of honour rather than something to hide. The "well s/he is on the autism spectrum" is all too often said with pride rather than concern.

Yes, I know someone will come back at me over that. Let me say here that severe autism is a very, very serious disability. The stress can cause families to marriages to break up, families to break apart and so many other issues that I too want to scream in frustration.  I have been into court with a boy who got into trouble because all the attention was being lavished on his severely autistic brother. Fortunately the magistrate realised it was a cry for recognition and not the beginning of a criminal career. The situation was dealt with in the way I hoped it would be dealt with and the boy has become a very worthwhile citizen who does a great deal to help others.  

But I do wonder at some of the people who tell me a family member is getting NDIS funding. Some of them at least seem to be getting funding for issues which were once simply dealt with at home, at school and in the community. 

Looking back at the "Opportunity Class" I cared for while a teacher was ill I know all those children would now be in "regular" classrooms.  Perhaps they would all be getting NDIS funding too - funding for extra tuition perhaps. I wonder how much benefit it would be for them or whether they might have achieved more in that classroom of just sixteen children. Sixteen was considered to be a very small number at the time. Regular classrooms had at least forty and often as many as forty-eight or fifty children in them. Somehow we managed to teach and they managed to learn.

I know of a child getting NDIS funding for a condition she will eventually learn to handle for herself. When she can her parents want the funding to cease. "She has to learn to be independent." At home she is required to do as much as she safely can for herself. 

I think this is the way NDIS funding should be viewed. Some children will always need it. Others will only need it for a short time and to a greater or lesser degree. Still others should not be getting funding at all. 

Some of the children who are receiving funding are children we once regarded as a "bit different" but we still accepted them. I once taught a boy who had permission to leave the room without seeking my permission. He would rush for the toilets and then return again almost as quickly. The other children simply accepted this state of affairs. If he had missed something important when he was out of the room I just told him. I asked him once if he was getting teased at all but he told me no and observation suggested he was popular enough.  It might have helped that he was very intelligent and willing to help his friends.

I wonder what would happen to him now. Would he be marked out as receiving NDIS funding and having someone monitor his every trip to the toilets?

There is the great niece of a friend of mine who is physically frail. She was a very premature baby and there have been some ongoing medical issues. She started school this year and has some NDIS funding because of eye sight issues but her parents are concerned that she is not getting the assistance she needs because a highly disruptive boy in the same room is getting attention. I have not met either child but her great aunt, a former special needs teacher, spent some time observing. She is of the view the boy needs to have much greater expectations placed on him. He is taking the time little K... should be getting to be able to see the work she wants to do. 

Almost everyone I know has a story to tell about this sort of thing. I suspect it is too easy for some people to get funding for their child and others who need it more are missing out. I do not believe NDIS funding should be available for mild behaviour issues which could be handled in other ways or learning issues which relate to those issues. I do wonder how many parents would back away from funding if their child was required to attend a special class or a special school in order to get it. I suspect there would be quite a few. 

I just wish the funding was going where it is really needed and there was less going to the "squeaky wheels". 

 

 

So it was a major delay

was it? 

The media was reporting a "major" delay at our international terminal a couple of days ago. As Middle Cat and I will be using that terminal in the not too distant future I read the article.

Oh yes, a "major" delay - all of thirty minutes. They had to put human beings on to deal with it. The "electronic" gates were not working. The flight to Denpasar was delayed. 

All this is absolutely dreadful of course. We cannot possibly have this sort of thing happening. It is shocking, especially as the pilot apparently made up time and the plane landed on time at the other end. I wondered why I had wasted my time...but it might have been important given our travel intentions. 

At the same time I remembered a journey made back from London one year. At that time there were no international flights in or out of this city. There are not that many now but at least there are some. At that time you took a domestic flight to an airport in a neighbouring state and then caught the international flight. It added many hours to the journey. Most of the time it took around thirty-one to thirty-two hours to get to London.

I hated the journeys I made. People could still smoke...and did. The food was, to put it mildly, dreadful. I have serious issues with balance and the sensation of ascending and descending is something I would not wish on anyone else. Once up any turbulence will make me feel ill. Yes, I am dreading the air travel portions of this trip even now. Perhaps it is an excellent thing that Middle Cat will be there too...not that she is a particularly good traveller!

But, back to that journey. It was three days before Christmas. It meant that planes were crowded everywhere. There was a problem somewhere along the way. We landed unexpectedly in Bangkok and something was done to the electrical wiring. The captain assured us that it was not really a problem but he was being careful. It did nothing to reassure me of course.

We then flew to Darwin and then to Perth. There were undoubtedly reasons for all this but the passengers were getting restive. It was 3am when we arrived in Perth. The airport was pretty well deserted. We were told first that we would be changing planes there and we all had to get off.  By then it was about thirty hours into the journey. People were tired and worried about the delays. There were no mobile phones back then. I had almost no local currency on me of course. I had not been expecting to need it. I decided not to phone my parents from there. I would wait until the next destination to tell them of the delay. It is unlikely I would have been able to make what was then a long distance call anyway.

We sat there unable to sleep or do anything. There were crying children and babies screaming but most of the adults were silent by then. I remember trying to play "I spy" with some children in the primary age group just to try and allow their parents to deal with younger and more fractious ones. 

And then, something happened. Someone came in and opened up a refrigerator somewhere. He came out with a lot of those tiny tubs of icecream and the little wooden spoons that went with it. He handed out one for each baby and young one. Peace and quiet! We adults were finally given drinks as well but it took time.

We were on our way again, flying over my home city. Of course all the connecting flights had been missed by then and I stood in the next airport looking at the harassed woman behind the check in counter. Yes, she knew what had happened. Sit down there and I will see what I can do but I am not sure...

I was close to tears by then. I was exhausted and finding it difficult to even put one paw in front of another. Eventually she beckoned me over and told me that they were putting me on a flight that left in about four hours. Go and sit over there. The police have been informed and they will keep an eye on you and make sure you don't miss the flight. She took my parents' number and called them to say which flight I would be on. I put my forepaws over my luggage and tried to doze off but could not. I did not feel hungry but I did feel thirsty. I was also too frightened of missing the flight to try and find even some water to drink.

The next flight was crowded too. There was only tepid coffee 

I endured the last leg of the journey and was wheeled off the plane into the Senior Cat's arms. He had a bottle of rainwater in his hands - and no hug has ever felt or  drink has tasted so good.  

"Putin is getting what he wants

it would appear at present. He has had that meeting with Trump."

Yes, perhaps that is what he really wanted. He has no intention of ending the attacks on Ukraine until he gets what he wants. For the moment that would appear to be a large and very valuable part of Ukraine's territory and an agreement that Ukraine will not seek NATO membership.

Such a move will leave Ukraine vulnerable to further attack and defenceless. Yes, of course what Putin wants is control over Ukraine again. It may even be that these moves will give him that. After all he only has to threaten to attack again if Ukraine does not bend to future demands.

The idea that this was some sort of "peace" summit is nonsense. It was nothing of the sort. It was two men, both powerful in their own way working out how much they think they can get away with. They both know that the rest of the world will allow it to happen. The EU won't put it at risk because it puts the EU at risk - both strategically and economically.

"Well, the Ukrainians shouldn't have gone to war," someone told me yesterday. This man had just asked me what I thought the outcome of the meeting would be. My response was that the Ukrainians would be the losers in any "agreement". Their constitution might require the agreement of the people via a referendum but the reality is that they will almost certainly be required to give in to the aggressor.  The idea that Ukraine should simply have allowed the takeover and let the rest of the world stand idly by is apparently quite a popular one. Yes, we let that happen with the Crimea - and look what has happened. 

Putin wants to end the war - but only if he can be seen to be the winner of his "special military operation".  He has lost more than he has gained so far but a large slice of Ukrainian territory and the suggestion to the Russian people that Ukraine is now part of Russia again will do a lot for his popularity. He will also move on to some of those smaller territories he has his eye on and they will perhaps fold almost immediately because he will be seen as having defeated Ukraine. Yes, he wants to rebuild the old USSR. 

Trump wants to end the war there and in the Middle East. It will make him the "greatest President of all time" and get him the Nobel Peace Prize for which he longs. 

Oh where is that remote island with no means of escape and no ability to contact the outside world? That is where these two deserve to be.   

It was A level results day

in Upover yesterday. There will have been cheers, jeers and tears too. Someone I know, whose family moved back to the UK seven years ago, sent me a message to say his results meant he had achieved his dream of getting in to the university of his choice to study what he wants to study.

There may not seem anything unusual about this until you know that he has lost both parents in the past three and a half years and has a disability as well. It has not been easy but he was focussed and then more and more focussed.

I thought of this and looked back at something I had written at the time. Yes, we were all concerned. He was struggling but he came to get some help from the Senior Cat and then some more from me. 

"I was so lucky," he told me in the email. No, he was not "lucky" at all. He worked for it. We were the lucky ones as we were in the fortunate position of being able to help.

Exam results days are stressful. I am grateful that the results no longer get printed in the state newspaper. My brother and I were never allowed to join the crowd of students outside the printing works for the first copies at some unearthly hour of the morning. 

"It won't change your results," Mum told us. She was probably more concerned about the Senior Cat tossing and turning all night. He would rush out as soon as he heard the paper land on the lawn. Our results would be looked at first of course but then he would spread out the paper and take the list of numbers and names he had been keeping so carefully and work his way through the other students in our classes. 

Every year the phone would ring all day. There would be disappointed parents and tearful teens of course. There would be sighs of resignation and queries about repeating subjects or queries about "perhaps leaving school".  

I remember one boy whose results were so bad that everyone queried them. It turned out he had simply handed in papers which were nonsense because he wanted to leave school. He was back at school the next year. There was the girl who wanted to be a nurse. Her results were not good enough even at a time when it was relatively easy to enter that profession. She came back to school too and, with some help from one of the teachers, she repeated the year and went on to train as a nurse. 

There were other students too, students who did "well enough" or "as well as expected". And there were one or two who exceeded expectations. I remember the look of bewilderment on the face of a friend whose family did not get a paper. She had come in to the small township not even remembering it was results day. The Senior Cat had seen her outside the general store (co-op) and congratulated her on passing everything. She had not expected to do that.  Her own parents had to be persuaded to let her return to school and she went on to run a business of her own in a neighbouring township.

But the boy who contacted me yesterday wrote, "I just wish I could tell Mum and Dad and your father ..."

I sent a congratulatory message back and said, "I think they know."

He can read that in large, black print on the screen.   

  

Is this really an Equal Opportunity issue

or is it another way in which a law which had good intentions is being abused?

There is a "bar" in the CBD which want to ban anyone under the age of 21 after 9pm at night....and there has been an immediate outcry. They cannot do this! It is a breach of the Equal Opportunity Act! How dare they!

I know many people will disagree with me but I still believe that one of the biggest mistakes we made was lowering the age of majority from 21 to 18.  It was a mistake on many levels. 

Yes, I know the arguments about being able to go and fight for your country, about being able to go to work and being able to pay taxes and more. Yes, you can have sex and bring children into the world. If you happen to be a "single mum" then you will be encouraged to keep the child even if you are as young as sixteen or, in one case known to me, fourteen. 

Apparently all of this should give you the "right" to drink alcohol in a bar at age eighteen at whatever time of the day or night you wish. Really?

In this instance I think it is perfectly reasonable of the owners of the venue. It is after all their venue. You are there at their "invitation", nothing more and nothing less. They are not denying you the right to drink alcohol at their venue. They are simply saying they do not want you to do it there after a certain time.

There are in fact many other venues for the young at which they can imbibe alcohol. They may not be as "sophisticated" but they do exist. (Can a "bar" be sophisticated? I have not been there and am never likely to go but perhaps someone can enlighten me?)

I am not the only person who believes that universities took a turn for the worse when the legal age to both vote and consume alcohol was lowered to eighteen. "The "bar" on any university campus should be barred, "one of the law school staff told me. He had a point. As I am allergic (yes, actually allergic) to alcohol it was no hardship to me and I do not believe it would be any hardship to anyone else. Students do not need to consume alcohol at eleven in the morning to eleven at night - or later. Arguments that it is "controlled on campus" are nonsense. 

As I understand it (and I may be wrong) the legal age for the consumption of alcohol in America is twenty-one. I think it was brought in, against great opposition, by the Reagan administration. It showed a measurable difference in the number of road incidents in that age group. 

If I had my way we would raise the age at which you could get behind the wheel of a car to eighteen at minimum. We would also raise the age for the consumption of alcohol to twenty one at minimum and the age for voting to twenty one as well.

No, it would not be popular but perhaps young people need to earn the right to do these things by  continuing to study or paying some taxes first? 

  

I was talking to a policewoman

yesterday and I say "policewoman" and not "policeperson" quite deliberately. She has had enough of the demands being made on her to be "gender neutral". It is making her job more difficult.

I was surprised by her views. In my, admittedly limited, dealings with her she has been someone I would expect to happily go along with the demands made of her in her line of work. Yesterday though it was clear she had finally had enough. There had been an incident while she was at work. Someone who had openly broken the law insisted that they could not be arrested and, when they were arrested, insisted on not being placed in a cell with someone of the same sex as themselves. They claimed to "identify" as the opposite sex.

"Bit difficult to believe given their appearance," she told me. 

Nevertheless the "rights" of this person were apparently greater than that of the arresting officer. 

"And the next thing is that they are out on bail and they will use what happened to say that we are discriminating against them."

I do not envy the police officer. I felt guilty adding to her troubles by relating another incident. While I was apologising for telling her about it she kindly said, "No, you should report something like that. If she is still doing that sort of thing then someone needs to talk to her again. A trip to court might help."

Yes, they know her. I don't know how much good talking to her will do. This person is mentally ill, aware that what she is doing is wrong but still mentally ill. It is not normal behaviour to harass other people and beg because your own dole money goes on cigarettes and alcohol. I had observed her demand money from a very elderly woman yesterday. It was not the first time and it probably won't be the last but I happen to know the other woman is in her nineties and living on a pension. Taking ten dollars from her "Because five is not enough to get bread" was not something I wanted to hear or see. 

We left it at that but I watched her move on through the station car park and was glad when the train arrived. It is not an easy job. 

 

  

Banning digital devices in school

for the first three years and then limiting them until year nine is now a policy for one fee paying school in this state.

The school will still use screen based learning for years 4 to 9 but it will be on a much more limited basis.  Years 4 to 6 will be limited to an hour a day and 7- 9 for half a day. It will be interesting to see if this improves student performance.

The school already ranks highly in NAPLAN outcomes and this is being done with the support of parents as well as teachers. They are following work already being done in Finland and Sweden where standards are apparently improving.

I hope someone is monitoring this initiative closely. It will take time and there are always problems doing research into this sort of thing but it might be worth it.

Interestingly one of the youngest students has apparently said it is good because it gives them "more time to read". Does it? If that is so then it suggests that children do not see screen time as reading time, or not as active reading time.  To this child at least "reading" involves an actual book. This could be a very good thing. Many years ago now a profoundly physically disabled child who could do nothing for herself told me that reading was "the best thing ever because I can do anything if I am reading". Perhaps even able bodied children can be made to feel this way. 

It is going to be work for the teachers of course. They will no longer be able to rely on all the screen based material which is available. It may be that they will welcome this. They will be able to go back to actually teaching.

My guess is that, if there are good teachers there, then the children will become more engaged. They will learn to focus more on what they are being taught. I suspect that interaction and cooperation will increase too.

Hopefully, like the other young student quoted, "School will be more fun." 

The Palestinian people have the right

to self-determination. That will not happen while Hamas is there. This is the problem in a nutshell perhaps?

Our Prime Minister has said that we will "recognise" Palestine next month. It has, rightly, caused alarm among those who know anything about the situation in the Gaza strip.

Hamas is still in control there. The stated aim of Hamas is the destruction of the state of Israel. For them Israel cannot be allowed to exist. 

If Palestine is recognised then Hamas will claim they have been recognised. It will encourage them. Even talk of recognition has Hamas claiming that the October 7 attacks were justified and only the beginning of their campaign. They now claim to be planning more such attacks and that they are winning not just the physical war but the propaganda war as well. 

There is also the Palestinian Authority. It is both weak and corrupt. If it had been much stronger and much less corrupt then the October 7 attacks might have been prevented.  

  On the other side the current Israeli government wants to destroy Hamas. They claim it is the only way to bring about lasting peace in the region. The Israeli Prime Minister also has personal claims of corruption against him and they need to be dealt with as soon as possible. He has no interest at all in having this happen even though it means the extreme right wing of his coalition has control over him. 

While Hamas is in control in the Gaza strip the news we get from there will put out a consistent story. We are being told there is a "humanitarian crisis". Yes, there is a crisis, but who is responsible for it? The answer to that is not the simple "Israel is responsible because they will not allow food aid to be distributed by the United Nations" that we keep being told. The reality is very different.

There is food in Gaza and more could go in. That is a reality. Whether it should be distributed by the UN authorities is another question. To be blunt, Hamas controls the distribution of food through the UN agency. You need to be an open supporter of Hamas  before you "might" get some food. It is being sold at highly inflated prices in order to fund the war. People are starving because they cannot pay these prices. This is the reality of life under Hamas. It is not a popular viewpoint and it is denied by many.

Of course there is some aid which gets in and some which is simply handed out. There are those carefully edited stories, almost all from one news agency which suggest that thousands of people are rushing aid lorries. The air drops, a highly unsatisfactory way of delivering aid, are being used by Hamas to tell the world how dire the situation is - even though it is largely of their own making. 

There have been occasional news stories in the media here which talk to people who have been in to the Gaza strip and come out again. They repeat what we are being told elsewhere but all too often what these people have seen is controlled by Hamas in the same way the "Palestinian Health Authority" controls information about the numbers of casualties and shows pictures of starving children.

Like most people I am deeply disturbed by the situation there and by the situation in places like Sudan and Ukraine and Haiti and other war zones. I hope I am also sufficiently informed to know that the situation is not always the one we are being told it is and that the solution is not a simple one of a ceasefire or ceding territory to an aggressor - or that "recognition" will achieve anything. Such "recognition" may do more harm than good unless other things come with it.  

Using public transport at night

is not something I do any more. It would not be safe. I do not ride my tricycle at night so getting to and from the station would not be possible. I know I am vulnerable in other ways as well.

My purse was snatched recently. I got it back almost immediately as someone else saw what was happening, gave chase and downed the individual who knew I was not able to do that myself. 

It was partly my fault. I was putting my library card back in the purse outside the library rather than inside. I should not have allowed myself to be distracted inside the library. Normally the purse goes at the very bottom of my backpack. I need to be more careful.

But, back to the transport issue. Yes, I still use the train. I can still just manage to get the tricycle on and off the train. Quite often there will be another passenger boarding who will help. I get no help from the drivers (who are responsible for putting the wheelchair ramp down) and have even been told I cannot use that ramp if it is down. No, legally it is not their responsibility to help and I can understand that putting the ramp down is not something they want to do. It should not actually be something they need to do in my view. Their main job is to drive the train safely. There should be a guard, an old fashioned guard. 

Now we have "transit officers" on some trains. I have come across quite a few of them. Their attitude varies greatly. Some of them are very helpful. They will help me get the trike on and ask which station I am alighting at. It helps a lot. There are others who sit and stare as I struggle to get on, as people with prams struggle even more and look hard done by if they actually have to get the ramp out for a wheelchair user.  They will stare at their phones and chat to friends. I have not seen a ticket inspector in quite a while but perhaps these transit officers do more when there is an inspector present.

We really do need to return to the days of guards.  More and more elderly and disabled people are using public transport. Seniors in this state get transport free - as they should. This is not because I believe in the "something for nothing" approach but keeping older people off the roads is generally a good idea. I know many older people who have ceased driving for their own safety and that of others. The cost of one major incident on the roads is so high that taxpayer funded public transport for Seniors makes sense. At the same time seniors need to feel safe. If at all possible they need to be seated before the bus or train moves off. That isn't always possible but a transit officer needs to be alert and watching. 

At night, after the 7pm deadline though there are supposed to be transit officers on all trains. Too often I have heard there are none on our local line. It is probably regarded as "safe enough", unlike the other lines. This is not "good enough". 

Next week Middle Cat will need to take me to the Showground twice. It is the week Handicrafts are judged and set up. These will be early morning trips. The idea of doing the same trips on public transport would stop me from participating. It is why I almost never go anywhere in the evenings. I just wonder how many other people feel the same way.   

ADHD?

 The label "ADHD" or "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" is apparently being given to one in twenty children.  That means I should have had two children in the year six class I once taught. I had none. I cannot remember any other teacher at that time who was concerned about the same thing.

Oh, we had "dreamers" and students who did not always seem to be paying attention but we could bring them back to attention relatively easily and quickly. There was one I would send out to finish his work among the bags and coats in the "porch" outside. This was not a punishment and he did not see it as such. He just seemed to be easily distracted and then he distracted others. I would get a rueful, "I am sorry  miss...I talk too much."  I would say, "Yes, you do but I know you can finish it out there." He gave me an impulsive hug the day I left the school.

Now he would probably be given something like Ritalin to "calm" him and he would not have the same sort of lively, friendly personality. When he was not irritating everyone he was popular and intelligent but he was easily distracted.

I thought about all this when I read about some research which suggests children with "ADHD" do not necessarily do better with medication. It is difficult sort of research to do and even harder to come to any sort of valid conclusions but I would be inclined not to medicate any child. I would be much more inclined to try and change the environment in which they were living. 

There was no internet when I taught young M...  The only computers were those delicate machines which had to be kept in an air-purified, air-conditioned room at the university. Students would show-off by carting around their print-outs on long folds of paper. I would get the print-outs from Brother Cat and his friends and use them for classroom activities.

Now there is the internet and a great deal of learning is done by way of it. Children expect things to be animated and, above all else, entertaining. The idea of sitting in four straight rows facing a blackboard or even a more modern whiteboard is not how they see learning. This may well be the problem, not the child. 

It would be very interesting to have three groups of children and follow them through school. One group could have access to all the screen time which is now usual. The next group could have no access at all and be taught in traditional ways. The third group could have some controlled access to screen time. We could then test them at intervals and look at the results. I would be interested to see just how "badly" that non-screen time group would do - or whether they might just do as well, or better, than the other two groups. 

And I would try not to medicate any child to "calm" them. 

So who does get a visa?

Middle Cat and I are making final travel plans for our long awaited trip. I wish I felt excited about it. I should be excited. I am not -yet.

I think the problem is that there is rather a lot to do between now and finally putting a paw on the first plane. Perhaps I will feel differently when I do that. This trip has been far too long in coming. 

We had to get the "ETA" to enter the UK - an electronic authorisation to enter - and they came through with no difficulty. Our other destination, Singapore, we just fill out cards before landing. There is no reason to suppose we will have a problem there.

Some people will find it much more difficult to do something like enter this country. There are others who will not be permitted to enter at all. Whether this is right or wrong will depend on someone's individual circumstances.

I have a friend who was born in the UK. One of her children was also born there, the other was born here. It means that there are differing rights of equal generations down to enter, work and live in the UK. This is so even though their ancestry in all other respects is equal. That seems strange but it is how the law works.

Yesterday there was a piece in our state newspaper about a woman who had been granted a visa to enter this country although she was an outspoken supporter of Hamas. Today there is another piece saying that her visa had been withdrawn. She is openly a supporter of a proscribed terrorist organisation.  Apparently there are two opposing points of view on this. 

Who do you allow to enter the country? There are people I would prefer were not allowed to enter the country. It is likely most people feel the same way. That a visa was ever granted to the woman I have just mentioned is something we should be alarmed about. It suggests that the process for review may not be working. She is apparently a well known "agitator" who expresses her views loudly and openly and the government had concerns about her. Whether you believe she should or should not have been granted a visa it was first granted in contravention to government guidelines. There have been other people with much less radical views who have not been permitted to enter the country and give a single lecture at a university.

The question of who gets a visa and who does not get a visa will always be a difficult one. If radical supporters of terrorism are getting visas and much less radical people with no criminal history are not getting them there is a problem. I know of someone who has been denied a visa because he openly criticises the provision of puberty blockers to young children. Is he a radical? The government thinks he will cause distress and denied him a visa.

Perhaps politics as well as community safety is at work here.  

The NDIS is out of alcohol control

and I very much doubt "changes to section 10" of the Act which is responsible for it will make much difference.

The information for it came to light after one of our Senators accused the informant of "making it up". Yes, I am sure that the Senator in question will be feeling angry and embarrassed by the evidence. He is not going to want to accept that there were two hundred and ninety three claims for alcohol last year - and a total of $46,777 was apparently spent. That is serious money.

Given the general lack of oversight and the ease with which dubious claims can be made I do not believe this will be an end to the story. I have seen some of this sort of thing at first hand. 

Just last week I saw a profoundly disabled NDIS recipient in the local shopping centre. She had been brought there by two "carers". The carers were sitting there having a cup of coffee and a chat with two friends. N...was just sitting there. There was no attempt to include her and she was not given a drink - something she can manage through a straw.  Yesterday I saw her grandmother in the same place and I mentioned seeing N...  

"Yes, they were supposed to be taking her to the doctor. Apparently it takes two of them to do it and the entire morning." 

 N..'s NDIS money is used to pay for this. Her parents are deceased. Her grandfather tries to keep watch on what her money is spent on but constantly runs into problems. More than once he has queried expenses and he will query this one but, by then, it will be too late. The outing was not just about taking N... to the doctor but a couple of carers enjoying themselves. 

It is one of just many such stories of waste, of lack of accountability and more. The money is there. It is seen as endless.

Of course some of it goes where it is supposed to go. It may be that even most of goes where it is supposed to go but the system allows two carers to spend part of their morning socialising on government money intended to care for a person with a disability. It is what allows someone to charge more than twice the amount he should to mow a lawn. It allows someone to be paid to put the bins out when a neighbour has offered to do it for nothing. 

I would like someone to go as far back as records allow and find all the instances they can of alcohol being bought. These people need to be prosecuted. If the NDIS recipient has asked them to do it then they also need to be prosecuted. It is not what NDIS money is for. It is not there for alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, sex-services or holidays. It is there for the basic right to the activities of daily living and it has to be always for the benefit of the NDIS recipient. 

I suspect there would be an outcry if there was a very close investigation of how NDIS money is being used. There will be an "investigation" of course - but the rorts will continue.  

 

Our tax system needs to change

but not in the way the current Federal Treasurer would seem to believe. 

I am not an economist but it does not take an economist to know things need to change.  We cannot go spending beyond our means. Our standard of living is, quite simply, far too high. The Treasurer is doing nothing to change that. He appears to simply be intent on increasing taxes to pay for it. 

Taxes cannot be increased forever. We are already finding that "big business", the companies which actually run the economic engine of the country, are moving off-shore. It is "big business" which has the money to innovate and expand, not the "small business" companies or the "mum and dad" businesses. Of course the latter two can do some of it but they cannot pour millions of dollars in to develop a new process or build a new factory.  Tax "big business" too much and it will leave.

Employing people in this country is an expensive business. It is of course expensive in most places but here there seem to be all sorts of additional expense - like payroll tax, the superannuation guarantee, maternity and paternity leave and a "holiday leave loading". I still cannot get my head around the fact that many, many years ago I was actually paid extra to take my annual leave. Then there are all the training requirements that have nothing to do with the actual job but are concerned with "equality" and "awareness". These are another tax on business too but they are not always recognised as such.

We pay tax at the local level, at the state level and at the federal level and a "goods and services tax" on almost everything. All those things require oversight and constant vigilance to see we don't pay less than we should. The Senior Cat's estate has just paid to have a "tax return" done three and a half years after his death because the estate has not been "finalised". There has been no income into it for the last eighteen months but we paid an accountant to inform the tax office to inform the executors about what they already knew.

The government went to the election promising not to do away with what is called "negative gearing". Now the unions want to bring it in and are pressuring the government to do it. They say it will ease the housing supply but it has been tried in the past. It has not worked. Economists say it will not work. People who rent do not want it because rents will raise to cover the cost.

Somewhere there is an answer to all of this but it will require a very different mindset from the current one. Some unpopular decisions need to be made but I suspect our present Treasurer is too weak to even contemplate them.   

There is a place for special schools

for some children. The idea that this is not so is rooted in a false belief about "equality" and that, by sending a child to a school not suited to their needs, the child will somehow have an equal opportunity otherwise denied to them. This is wrong.

I know something about those apparently old-fashioned "special" schools. I have visited many of them, worked in three of them, done research in more. I had a long, happy and close association with one just by sheer chance. I still have close friends who went there. 

Those friends are fully integrated members of the community. They may now be retired but they went on to finish school if they were able. They went on to post secondary education and some went to university. The school produced two students with doctorates and more. 

It also provided physiotherapy, speech therapy, specialised assistance for learning difficulties and much more. There were Guides and Scouts and a social club for older students. They went out and about in the community and learned to volunteer their skills where they could. 

It was not a perfect school because no school can be that but it was a good school, a very good school. I do not know one ex-student who resents their time spent there. They were, and still are, proud of the school and what it achieved.

It is no longer there of course. The Education Department took it over and closed it down. All children would be "integrated" into the mainstream. They would "thrive" there because they would be treated "like everyone else". 

It has not worked. Parents now carry the burden of trying to get their children to physiotherapy, speech therapy and more. Teachers do not have the specialist training or the time to deal with the many learning issues associated with not being able to perform acts of daily living in the same way as everyone else. They do not understand the complexities involved and they do not have the almost instant access to things like wheelchair seating issues or a broken communication device. 

At the same time we are told that the child will have "friends", that able-bodied children will willingly include the child in all their activities. No, that does not happen. It may happen occasionally or when the able-bodied children are pushed into including the child but it is rare for it to happen all the time.  

This is what parents and children tell me. They tell me this even when the child is falling behind and parents are looking for outside tutoring in the hope their child can "keep up" with every other child.

Yes of course there are children with disabilities who thrive in the mainstream.  I know one child with a sight issue who is managing extremely well and has plenty of friends but it is taking constant vigilance on the part of his parents. I know of another child who has a mobility issue but is academically very able. He has gone from a big state school to a smaller fee paying school with a very different philosophy and is now doing very well. I know of a child with Down Syndrome who is very happy in a small class in the Catholic system. It can happen but it has not been easy for any of them. It has taken hours of discussion and support from others. 

For many children that will never happen or can never happen.  A severely autistic child  may be highly disruptive and others will, rightly, complain their own learning is being disrupted. A child with a profound hearing loss is not going to build vocabulary at the same rate and will often be confused in class.  

So a neighbouring state is setting up new "special" schools and being condemned for it by the very people who should be supporting them. Equal opportunities do not mean being put in the same classroom as everyone else and simply hoping that some extra assistance (if you can get it) is the answer to everything. It isn't.  

What does Julian Assange really stand for?

During his time in Belmarsh there was a lot of sympathy for Julian Assange. He was seen as the "good guy" falsely imprisoned for telling the world how dreadfully badly governments, particularly the US one, were behaving.

Over this last weekend he was involved in a "protest" march which was actually supporting a group which has committed unspeakable horrors. 

Yes, I know that what is going on in the Gaza strip is appalling. I also know it is getting plenty of the wrong sort of publicity.

Night after night there are reports on the news service about the starvation in Gaza. The Israeli government is criticised - and rightly so - for their part in this. There are pictures we are told might "distress" us.

I have yet to see hear much criticism of Hamas. We are told of course but the fiercest condemnation is directed at the IDF.  We are told they will not allow aid in, that they will not allow aid to be distributed, that they are intent on prolonging the war and more. This suits the international narrative.

Does Assange really believe this is an accurate narrative, one worth of his support? If he does then he must not be reading any of the words written by those who have immediate sources of information. Is he supporting Hamas because he really believes they are in the right, that kidnapping and murder and the destruction of Gaza are right? 

Statehood for Palestinians has to come but it has to come through the vote of the people in free and fair elections. It has to come about without Hamas playing any part in those elections because their aim is to destroy Israel.  Assange should understand that. He should also understand that standing there at the front of the crowd with some other noteworthy fools is just playing into the hands of Hamas. 

"Writers' Weeks" have changed

and not for the better it seems.

Yesterday there was a post about the removal of two Jewish comedians at a "Writers' Week" on the other side of the world. Apparently the staff at the venue said they would feel "unsafe" if their appearances went ahead.

Unsafe? Presumably they were concerned that protestors might turn up and disrupt the events if they went ahead. Surely it is the protestors who should be removed, not the performers? 

It made me think about the last Writers' Week where I live. For the first time ever I did not go to anything, nor did I bother to watch any of the "live stream" at the local library. I just did not want to hear any of the "writers" who were speaking.

Yes, I put the word in inverted commas because too many of those who were speaking were not actually writers at all. They were activists, politically correct activists who had a message they were intent on telling the rest of us. They were there to tell us not just what they were thinking but how we should be thinking. 

The past balance was not there any more. Any pretence about that has now been removed.

I used to love Writers' Week. It only came on alternate years. It really was for writers. There were some public events of course, both free and paid for and a lot of school events, but there were sessions for writers too. I was lucky enough to go to many of these. I may still be a kindergarten level writer but I did learn a lot. I heard well known writers from all over the world talking about their craft and their concerns.

There were some fiery sessions at times. "Just sit tight Cat, Patrick will rile someone" and "Max and Alec on the same panel? This will be interesting." I can still hear my mentor, the late Judith Wright, saying these things about Patrick White, Max Harris and AD Hope. There would be discussions about "the Ern Malley" affair. 

Patrick White was a Nobel Prize winner of course. He was rude to everyone I ever heard him in conversation with - and that was many people. He was as dismissive of me as he dared to be when Judith was standing next to me. I still managed to learn from what he had to say. He came and he participated. I am not sure how willing he was but he was there. 

The "Ern Malley" affair was a hoax. Look it up if you are interested. The Senior Cat knew Max Harris well and we kittens were warned about how pompous he could be. He ran a bookshop in the city - a shop selling "remainders" at reduced prices. The general view was that he deserved to be taken down a peg or two. Really though he did not do too badly out of it. If he had actually read the postcard he was sent he might not have been fooled at all.

These things were topics of discussion of course but they were not seen as radical politics of the left or right. We listened to Russians and Peruvians on how they approached the characters they wrote about. We listened to South Africans and Indians about they tried to invoke a sense of isolation in an otherwise crowded space. We listened to arguments about grammar and poetical forms. At any time some writers would be gone. They would be out visiting schools and talking to students.

All that has gone. The sessions are now held in the parklands. The "writers" have sometimes not actually written their books at all. They speak from a stage and barely mix with the readers, if at all.  They are there to promote a politically correct or controversial message or their latest "best-selling" book which is borrowed but returned unread from the library.  

Two or three years ago I asked why two very good Downunder writers had never been at the week. Had they ever been asked? The answer was, "No. That's not the sort of writing people want to read." Really? There are multiple copies of their books in the library system but they are rarely on the shelves. There are always waiting lists for any new books by those authors. I have met both of them but only briefly. They seemed to be very nice people and they both work with young writers. Perhaps they will one day be invited to sit on the stage and talk about actual writing. I can hope.

Trying to sue for something which

happened more than forty years ago? 

A man with a troubled, criminal past is now trying to sue the Education Department in this state. He claims that back in the early eighties he was sexually abused and bashed by a teacher at school. He further claims that this has caused his PTSD and substance abuse issues which have led to his twenty-eight year serious criminal career.

The teacher being accused is no longer alive to defend the claims. His accuser is looking for $1.5m in damages. He is claiming the Education Department failed in its duty of care towards him. The case is apparently continuing.  

It raises some interesting issues. There is no "statute of limitations" here - a time limit within which an issue must be raised.  The question of whether it is reasonable to wait forty years is something is one of those issues. There are other issues as well.

The most important of these is whether there can be a fair trial after forty years in a case like this. There is no DNA evidence available. There are apparently no witnesses to the events which are being claimed to have taken place. 

On the assumption the complainant is a truthful person how accurately can he remember something which took place forty years ago? 

I am said to have a good memory for most things but I do wonder how much and how accurately I would remember some events. Yes of course something like that can be "etched" into memory but what about the details?

Some time ago I heard a woman talk about her time in an orphanage. It was a place which was later investigated and condemned by some. She had nothing bad to say about the place. I discussed it with her afterwards and we agreed that many of those who condemned the place were those who were troubled when they arrived. They were children who often came from violent and difficult situations. They made trouble for others where they could. They were punished for things like fighting, disobedience, insolence and more. 

We agreed some of them would have turned the memory of those punishments into a memory of acts of abuse against them. Punishment was often physical in the time we were discussing.  Some of them would genuinely believe their "memories".  A strapping when your pants are down? Turning that into a memory of sexual abuse if you were a troubled child and then an adult with further issues would be all too easy. These complainants are not lying. They will be telling the truth as they see it. It is a major issue with such historic abuse cases. But can you blame all your life choices and criminal history on one instance of abuse after forty years? That is surely a different question. 

The person bringing the action in this case was apparently already a trouble maker in school. He admits he was in the teacher's office without permission. What was he doing there? No doubt the court will hear the answers to those and many other things.   

If you want to "protest"

then please do not go on a "march".

I have written about this before. Ignore me if you wish but I think it is worth repeating. 

The "Free Palestine" group wants to "protest" by walking across Downunder's iconic bridge. They wanted to do it this weekend and, last I heard, "negotiations" were still taking place. 

The police do not want them to do this - and rightly so. It is an issue of public safety. The bridge is there for vehicular traffic. It is there for getting people to and from work and other necessary purposes. It is there for emergency traffic. It is not there for "protestors".

Of course some people will say that this is the purpose of the "protest" and that, by marching there they will draw public attention to the issue. These people have been drawing attention to their issue for months now. It has not changed anything. It is unlikely to change anything. They are still "passionate" about their cause but their numbers are less. The view of many others is that "they are a bit of a nuisance" and "they should just give up" and "they need to get a boot in the backside" and more. It is perhaps fair to say that there are many other people who are less than sympathetic towards the continued disruption they cause.

I am not sympathetic either but it is because my view is that this is no way to protest about anything.  It may once have helped. It is likely protesting against the war in Vietnam did have some effect. That was in an era with no social media as such, just a little "talk back" radio and the "letters to the editor" in the physical paper delivered to the front garden and a little on television. Now anyone with an internet connection can protest on a world wide basis. 

The group which is demanding the "right" to walk across a bridge are apparently not aware of the much more effective means of protest available. In all likelihood most of them would quite possibly be incapable of using the most effective means available to them. They simply could not write an original letter, affix a stamp and post it to one of the people capable of making a decision which would influence a desired outcome. This would require literacy skills many of them seem to lack. This would also require a genuine knowledge and understanding of the issue they are protesting about. Of course it is much harder to do this.  

Is it time to be rid of "net zero"?

The leader of a very right wing party with representation in Downunder's Senate is making a political move which may force the Coalition to make a much stronger commitment to the issue - one way or another.

Until now the Coalition has been on line with the issue. We need to get to "net zero". They committed to it in Paris and then elsewhere. How to get there was not described in any detail. It was just a commitment that a country of twenty-seven million people was agreeing to this policy. We were going to change the world by 2050 and most of it would be done by 2030. Our commitment would mean that rising sea levels would be halted and that our "Pacific neighbours" would be safe.

All this sounded good, very good. People were excited by the idea that we could do it. Nobody mentioned the miniscule contribution we make to those harmful "greenhouse gases" or any of the problems we might have in reaching the target. The cost of doing it was mentioned but not in a way which might cause alarm.

We had a power outage last night. I managed to recover most of what I had been doing. I apologised to the person on the other side of the world and we went back to what we were doing. Then it happened again and again. It was frustrating for both of us. Eventually my colleague sent a message, "I didn't think you lived in a third world country!"

No, I don't...but it might well become that. The "net zero" approach of the present government is not working. It is not likely to work. It is not taking into account our geography or our population numbers or the way we currently house that population. What is more our efforts are not going to make any difference at all. We could do more good and do it much more cheaply by planting more vegetation, particularly trees, which could also feed, clothe and house people as well as caring for the other living things on the planet. 

Of course doing it that way would require a great deal more hard work, hard physical work at that. The present government wants to do it in a way that seems "easy". You plant solar panels and windmills. That you need to import these and the food you can no longer grow on the ground you have covered with solar panels is not relevant to the "net zero" argument...or is it?  

I have said all this before but of course nobody is listening. Who wants to listen to anything that might actually require some work? Even if I had the time, the money and the energy I do not think I have it in me to launch another massive campaign. I did that once but the way the world works and communicates has changed. 

The reason for that power outage last night? A tree had fallen across power lines.