Exploring the bus system

 Yesterday I have discovered that Middle Cat finds it too difficult to get on and off. I find it extraordinary that she is less mobile than I am. Plans for exploring London by bus are now on hold. We might try the Tube today but it would mean walking to Queensway to get the direct line to Tottenham Court Rd.If she can manage it then we can spend hours in the BM.

There are many other places I had planned but some of them will be inaccessible for her as they have too many steps or too much walking.

I went twice the distance yesterday. Late in the afternoon I went to the little shopping street near the hotel and finally found a few postcards for people I cannot email. Today I also need to find a post office and some stamps.

Writing this on the iPad is very difficult but at least you know I am alive.

Today we ventured further afield

 And used a bus but Helen found it much more difficult than I did together on and off. This going to be a problem. She also needs to stop and rest frequently. We went to South Kensington and had a light lunch in a cafe before going into M&S,s food and picking up some salad for another meal.

We came back by taxi to a new room here.it is on the ground floor and the bathroom has a walk in shower which is so much more accessible.Helen had a snooze while I went to try and get a screw top bottle opener. I was not successful but the lovely Afghan refugee looking after the hardware shop offered to open the screw top on th water bottle at any time!

I also bought four postcards. Some of you might be lucky but they are hard to find. When Iwas last here they were cheap and plentiful. 

There will be more witterings later.

We are changing plans

 And not doing all the planned travel because Middle Cat is not coping with the idea of our next destination which was York tomorrow but that means a train ride and two changes on a Sunday. I do know what Sunday trains can be like. 

We have to find out if we can stay here for longer or get somewhere else— proper posts will have to wait until I can access a proper key board 

We spent yesterday at the hospital

In the emergency department and have nothing but praise for the much maligned nhs. The staff are definitely overworked and underpaid!

Middle. Cat. was given very thorough attention. It may have helped that we had come by ambulance! All this was due to her fall in Singapore. We left the hospital almost twelve hours later with a diagnosis of a mínor but very painful crush fracture in the base of her spíne. 

Today we need to make some decisions about the rest of.the trip.

Today we fly to Heathrow

 It is a very long trip of course but not as bad as it once was. This time we are in the air for about fourteen hours. Middle Cat will need at least a day to recover so it is a good thing we have four nights before we need to go to York 

We’re having a difficult time

 But it is interesting. Middle. Cat had a fallbut fortunately break anything, She is finding it difficult to get around,

We went to    a  Chinese Medical Centre and they were very kind and very thorough but it took them three hours before they were satisfied..

We were going to spend the day with my good friend R… but she had left a message to say her father had died very suddenly. We did not want to intrude on her family at this sensitive time.

We did see her today and she told me she is happy and glad he went so quickly. She was still very anxious I should see my goddaughter and the new baby. He is a delight and it will be so good for them to have him in their lives right now now.

We have not seen much of Singapore but I am still glad we made the stopover.

Tomorrow is the long flight to London and I am not. Looking forward to that, especially for Middle Cat but she wants to go on!

Singapore is so clean

 And tidy too. The only rubbish seems to be cigarette butts and the occasional piece of paper 

On the train people give up their seats to the elderly and disabled or parents holding children It is very different from Downunder.

We had a traditional meal with our friends yesterday and a lot of conversation with it!

I am writing this on the iPad but it is not easy 

We are in singapore

 And have walked too far Middle Cat has done too much so we’re having a quiet day with my friend. R.

The days of big department stores

are over it seems. There was a nostalgia piece in our state newspaper yesterday. It was written by one of our local columnists and former radio personality. He is well known for "stirring the pot" on occasions. He can be very abrupt, indeed downright rude at times but he was spot on yesterday.

He wrote about how people "dressed up to go to town". This was at a time when the central business district was also where you went shopping for anything not locally available. There were no "shopping centres" or "shopping malls". They simply did not exist. The population was very much smaller then than now.

I remember the "dressing up" bit. My mother and my grandmothers would wear "best" dresses, stockings, hats and gloves. In winter they wore wool overcoats over dresses or skirts. Mum's mother wore a corset to "hold herself in".  The Senior Cat would wear a suit. My brother wore his school blazer over a white shirt and tie. We girls were in our second best dresses rather than our Sunday dresses. Our shoes would be polished.  We would not even have questioned if we might wear our comfortable home clothes.

In the city there were "department" stores to visit. I remember them well. They each had a flavour of their own. Myers had a "bargain basement" where Mum would pick up the remnants of fabric she made her every day clothes. Just before I began at teacher training college she picked up two remnants and made me the two dresses that lasted me, along with a single winter skirt, all through my three years there. The remnants cost 95c and $1.20. The skirt, a pleated one, was "on special" at a very upmarket tailoring establishment called "Fletcher Jones". It cost $12 and last me through for nine years. I had to endure hemlines going up and down!

David Jones was considered more "classy". They had someone playing the piano near the books on the ground floor and haberdashery was hidden on the sixth adjacent to the auditorium where the Book Week display would be held.

John Martin's had the Christmas Pageant. We knew about that but we were never in the city to see Santa Claus arrive behind all the floats. It was not until we were adults that we went to see it - or watch children watching it. I went once with Ms Whirlwind and several of her classmates. It was enough. 

There was Cox Foy's which had a sort of fun fair on the roof. In all the years it was there I never ventured that far. I did not like the basement of Harris Scarfe's. It felt as if it was going to fall in on me.  They were along the same street which has now become a pedestrian mall. The buses no longer travel along it. You are much more likely to be hit by someone illegally riding a skateboard. 

There was the Arcade with the only restaurant I ever ate in as a child and the lane which led to the main bookshop which published our school text books and the place which sold the "pineapple crush" drinks we were allowed to have just that once on a very hot day. 

All of those things are long gone. Myers and David Jones are now filled with tiny areas that sell individual brand names. John Martin's and Cox Foy's no longer exist. They have gone along with Miller Anderson's, Moore's on the Square and Peoplestore's. 

I am not sure we are any better off now. The big shopping malls seem soulless to me. I traverse them reluctantly wearing jeans. I don't own a dress and I have no dress up sort of gloves or a dress up hat. Stockings? Please do not mention them! 

   

Is immigration too high?

I cannot answer that question. There are too many variables for anyone to give an accurate answer.

Is immigration necessary? I can answer that question. Yes, it is. How many people we allow to enter the country is not the question we should be asking. We need to ask, "Why is immigration necessary?"

One reason of course is our aging population. More and more people are living longer and longer. That is true everywhere. My godfather died just last week at the age of a hundred (and five months!) He was an old man, a man who should not have lived as long as he did given his war service and the injuries he sustained then. Excellent medical care helped as did a caring family. 

Even people with no family to care for them are living longer but they often need extra help, perhaps to stay at home or to live in a facility for older people. It means an increase in things like age-related dementia and the need to care for those who acquire it. 

We need help with the delivery of all sorts of services and skills like building housing. Those things are very obvious.

We do not need more yoga teachers however much we might argue that yoga is good for our physical and mental health. We do not need hairdressers or manicurists or any other similar skills.

We also do not need people who are not going to integrate into our society and accept our laws, our Constitution, or our culture. It is time to stop thinking about "multi-cultural" affairs and think about a cohesive society. This in no way should stop someone retaining some aspects of their birth culture inside their own homes, aspects which do not break the law of this country. It should not prevent us from enjoying a greater variety of cuisines or a range of other cultural activities. Such things add to the capacity of everyone to accept one another. The idea that these things should in any way take priority over the laws and Constitution or the foundations on which this country was first built is wrong. 

What we do not need are laws and policies which encourage or even prevent people from integrating into society. This happens all too often.

We are also far too ready to accept people into this country and then expect them to work at the low level jobs that those who were born here do not want to undertake. Surely we should be asking questions when a plumber who has qualified in England cannot get a job as a plumber here? Why does a doctor who qualified in Scotland choose not to come? Is it because of all the difficulties put in his way? Why is an engineer from Taiwan (with excellent English) driving a taxi? There are plenty such examples to be had and it is time to do something about it. We need to recognise and acknowledge their skills and do so in a timely fashion.

We also need to insist that at least some of the unemployed people here are not able to simply appear to seek work. They need to actually seek work and accept work which is offered to them. They need to actually attend and finish training courses. Many do of course but those who fail to attend and finish training courses and then accept jobs which are offered them are making it much harder for everyone. It also means increasing immigration in ways which may not be best for society. 

Any "multicultural" approach must also recognise that there is no single "indigenous culture" and no single "indigenous language". What was there when white settlers arrived was a very diverse range of cultures and languages. What often remains now are no more than remnants and even those are often so tainted by interaction with others they would be unrecognisable to those who lived them two hundred and fifty years ago.  Yes, it is hard to realise how much we have lost but what are we actually trying to retain?

Claims that we are some sort of "highly successful multicultural society" are something we need to which we need to give much more thought. It might be that it is the very thing which is causing division rather than cohesion. 

Research grants are available

 if you wish to study something a little different.

There was a recent report about the Downunder Research Council handing out millions of dollars of research funding and what the money would be used for - or at least some of the money.

Some of these grants seem a little odd to me. One university has been given $752,000 to "examine the form and development of Chinese temple theatre architecture in mainland China".  I am sure this is research of great importance and that the Chinese government is delighted someone is interested enough to follow up this very important topic. It will no doubt have a great deal of relevance in modern Communist China and here.

Then there is the $216,000 grant to "explain how the Asterix comic book series is relevant to the cultural history of France". Well, I quite like Asterix so I suppose there is something in this which is important enough for such a large grant.

More importantly there is the $458,000 to "understand gender inequality in opera". I am sure that is absolutely vital research for the preservation and development of opera in general.

All this matters because another university has been given $909,000 "to determine the optimal length for on-the-job napping". I was not even aware that this sort of thing was done let alone that it was so important. Yes, I know Winston Churchill was said to have short power naps but how many other people do?

But then there is the $1,293,000 to "improve understanding of whale watching tourists". This must be a massive business to need this sort of funding.

Yes, please pardon the sarcasm. I can think of better things to do with the money that is apparently available. (If we are doing social science research then a better understanding of the value of libraries, who uses them, how and why would be a very valuable piece of research. It may remind government why they need to be funded and kept open,)

It is difficult to take the above examples as serious, academic research of value to the wider community. They may be topics of great interest to someone and they have obviously managed to write a research proposal to that end. It is claimed they were "vigorously peer-reviewed" but I would ask, "By whom?"  

Volunteers are an essential

part of our society. There was another call for volunteers in our state newspaper yesterday. This was not a call for volunteers for a specific group but a more general one. 

It did not surprise me. It is becoming more and more difficult to volunteer.

No, you cannot simply put your hand up anymore and say "Yes, I'll help." 

I volunteered again this year at the state's annual agricultural show. It is the big event for the state's agricultural industry and is a very important event for farmers and others. I was working in Handicraft, an area which would seem harmless. 

Not so. I had to have an up to date "Working with Children" certificate from the police. I also had to complete a "Safe Work" certificate for the organisation. We could not be on the premises without these things and we had to wear our own safety vests at all times. It all sounds perfectly reasonable doesn't it? 

It is also something, apart from the safety vests, which was only brought in three years ago. Yes, it has been a sudden and apparently urgent requirement brought in because there have been changes to legislation which make it necessary.

There are problems with this. The Working with Children certificates may deter anyone who has been convicted of a relevant offence from applying for one but not someone who has not been caught. This will always be a problem. The certificates are expensive to get and not all organisations are willing to pay for them so the expense can mean some potential volunteers will not be willing to pay for these themselves. In my case the organisation which runs the Showground was willing to pay for them. It is a not-for-profit charity but it is also an essential part of the state's agricultural industry. Should the government be demanding the organisation pays or should they waive the fees? It is something which causes debate. I did not see or interact with a single child over the entire week I was there. Children are not permitted to be in the area at that time. So, why the need for a certificate? It is another thing which causes debate.

The Safe Working certificate is very basic commonsense. Mine notes I achieved 100% in the test you need to pass. It was not difficult to do. I do not know who wrote the test but it reads more like "we need to do this" than any serious attempt to ensure people know the rules.  Even so it will have taken time to develop, almost certainly by a volunteer committee of some sort! 

All this is simple compared with the hoops some people must jump through in order to volunteer or encourage others to volunteer. You want young people to join the church choir? It will go all the way up to the Archbishop or the Moderator or the Deacon or something else according to the denomination. Work with Scouts or Guides? Oh the paperwork! Help with Meals on Wheels? The "food service" training needed! Hear children read in the classroom under the eye of the teacher? Training days on top of all those checks! Teach English to migrants? You need a National Crime Check for that. Work with vulnerable NDIS recipients? We will throw everything at you and see if you can pass.

I suspect people give up. It is all too difficult, especially when time is limited. There are other things to do. The ability to commit to regular hours each week is more difficult than it once was. Put all the other barriers in place as well and it is too much to handle. 

Yes, I do understand the concern for the safety of others. There are "bad" people out there ready to take advantage. They are also a very small minority of people - and they have not yet been caught. The vast majority of people will do the right thing. We just need to let them do it.

 

 

Eating on the footpath

is not something I can remember ever occurring when I was very young. We children did eat those currant buns outside the bakery in the place where I was born, of course we did. It was fun to get a small, warm bun and eat around the currants and lick our sugary fingers in a most unhygienic fashion. 

What did not happen was adults "having coffee" sort of sitting. It would not have been legal to place a table and a couple of chairs on the footpath and let people sit there. Even the "beer garden" of the local pub was hidden away. Eating and drinking in public like that was something which simply was not done. There were in fact very few places to eat out at all. You could get something like "fish and chips" but pizza and "burgers" were unheard of. 

Fish and chips of course came wrapped first in plain "butcher" paper and then in a double layer of yesterday's news. You tore the top open and dived in. It did not happen often. I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I did that in childhood.

I still don't eat out very often. It will be interesting to see how Middle Cat and I cope with this while we are away. It might be why we decided we wanted "self-catering" accommodation in some places - no, not just because it is cheaper. It may actually not be much cheaper. 

What we will not be doing is sitting at a table located out on the footpath somewhere. The weather might be against it but it is also something that we are not used to doing. We might well do it in Europe where, at least in the south, it is much more common. It is unlikely we will do it in Scottish rain.

There are a great many places here where it is possible to eat outside. I wonder why people want to do it in the immediate area because the cafes concerned all seem to be close to busy roads. Why eat to the smell of car fumes and the sound of car tyres swishing past? They are no quieter than it would be inside. There are people passing all the time. Why would you want to have to constantly shift your seat so someone can move through the area? 

There is also the issue of food and drink falling on the surface others are walking on. Perhaps European cafe owners are more aware of that or people are tidier or the seating is arranged differently. I do not know. The last time I was in Europe was many years ago and the weather was not conducive to sitting outside.

It is a while since I have properly been on a picnic too. Middle Cat and I would take the Senior Cat out to the beach occasionally but he found it easier to stay sitting in the car. We would eat fish and chips there so he could watch the waves and the boats coming in and out. It was something he loved to do and actually found very relaxing.  That is the way a picnic should be. Middle Cat and I have occasionally found the need to get a drink and something small to eat but we have not sat outside a cafe to do it.  We find a quiet spot and watch the waves or the birds or just enjoy the greenery. 

I wish I understood the attraction of eating outside a cafe like that. It is so different from the occasional picnics with Grandma and Grandpa. The tartan rug would be spread out. Grandpa would light a fire in the hole he had carefully dug and make tea for the adults. We children would be given home made lemon cordial. There would be sandwiches out of the wicker picnic basket. We would brush away the ants and bury all the "rubbish" in the fire hole at the end of it all. Grandpa would stamp on the earth over the hole to be certain the fire was out. Around us there would be bird song and human chatter. 

I think I prefer that to the sound of car tyres and people moving irritably past me on a crowded footpath. This is not Europe where one can find a small cafe without main road traffic rushing past.  

When did school based "therapy" become

a "thing"? 

I can understand the need in some situations but it appears to be more than some schools can handle. They are not specialist schools with a team of on-site trained staff.

I had a long and generally very happy association with several schools for children with both physical and intellectual disabilities. Two of those schools had a wide range of physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy available at school during the school day. The staff worked with children individually and they came into the classrooms to help with issues we had. I worked with them to set up the physical means by which some children were able to communicate without speech. Through it all I knew that this was all highly specialised and individualised therapy designed to allow a child to function at their maximum capacity. It was hard work but it was rewarding.

Doing away with specialist schools meant those services were no longer available on site as they had been. Providing those services is much harder, much more expensive and by no means always as successful. How can it be when teachers without specialist training are expected to observe and describe issues and work with the therapist and parents as well as child to bring about a possible solution to a problem? There can be no quick discussion with the occupational therapist during a lunch break or a call to the physiotherapist because a seating issue has occurred. It is much more likely you will need to wait for several days and then only meet if the time is made.

If  you talk to anyone it is much more likely you will find yourself talking with the support worker provided for a child who is finding it difficult to emotionally or psychologically cope with school. Even that may not occur. Those workers are only there with the permission of the school anyway. They are not there as of right and they can be asked to leave at any time.

I suspect most schools are willing to have such workers there. It will often be a matter of "if anyone can help..." but they can only be there under certain conditions and they must be "within line of sight" - or able to be seen at all times. Yes, some come into the classrooms but others need to work elsewhere. You cannot have a child trying to concentrate on standing upright and being watched by other children who should be concentrating on a maths lesson. That child needs to be out of the classroom - for their own sake as much as the sake of the rest of the class. 

Apparently schools can now have many such therapists visiting the school and there are still many parents who need to take their children to physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy away from the school. It is just one of the many problems which have increased since the closure of specialist facilities.  

 

  

So they want a "bedroom" tax?

I had to move out of a "four bedroom" house to a "two bedroom" unit which is about a quarter of the size.  It was difficult. I gave away a great many books I would have preferred to keep. I also gave away many things of great sentimental value. I knew it had to be done but it was hard to do.

I had no choice about moving out. Brother Cat, Middle Cat and I tried to work out how to keep the house with the idea that Youngest Nephew will need somewhere in the future but we could not do it after the Black Cat's demands were met.

I know that I would not have felt happy living alone in a house that size when there are families who need housing. It would have felt morally wrong to me. I know I am lucky to be where I am, to have a "roof over my head" but it does not feel like "home".  But, I am also not happy with the way the house was sold or the fact that it will almost certainly be knocked down a few years from now and two small dwellings put on it.

People do want to keep their houses. They want to keep them for a variety of reasons. Around the corner from the old house there is one which is currently rented. It belongs to a man who lost his wife at a young age. The house belonged to her parents and she had grown up there. He is away teaching in the country now but, when the time comes, he will return to the house and his memories of his partner. Two doors down from there the house on the corner has been empty for more than a decade now. Occasionally someone goes in and mows the "lawn" - really just weeds. It has long since ceased to be a tax issue. The family apparently does not want to sell "Dad's place". 

There are three houses with single residents in that same street. All of them are elderly. They have long since lost their partners but they do not wish to move.They are comfortable there. Around the next corner there is someone who cannot move out of the house. It would leave them homeless because of the terms of the will. 

On one corner of that street a house is being built. The architecture is not in keeping with the rest of the district. It has at least five bedrooms, a garage for two cars and parking for more. The house has been lying there unfinished for over a year. 

I could go on. In every street there is a house which would be ripe for the government to bring in a "bedroom" tax because the houses are not being fully utilised. 

There are people I know who would like to move out but the cost of moving out is also high. There are all sorts of taxes and charges to be met. "Downsizing" costs too much both financially and emotionally. It is not a simple matter of "finding somewhere smaller". If you have lived in an area all your life, or at least for the majority of your life, your services are here. You know your doctor, your shops, your neighbours and more. Moving somewhere else can be very hard to do. It was why I worked so hard to find something within a certain radius and why others do the same.

When things like a bedroom tax are raised little or, more likely, no thought it is given to the psychological as well as the practical side of all this. A bedroom tax sounds like a good idea perhaps, a good idea until the social and emotional implications are considered. 

I stayed within the area and it is good to be able to go into the local library or the post office and have people address me by name, to be able to go on caring about some of oldest and frailest of residents. I may not do much to actually help but if they want to chat for a few minutes in the shopping centre I know it is important for them. Yes, at times it drives me mad. I want to get on - but then I think it might be me one day.

I will shortly be away travelling for five weeks and I have mixed feelings about leaving the familiar safety of this area, a place where I understand the traffic flow and know where help is to be found if I need it for myself or others.  I will miss seeing people I know.  Travel will be good for me but moving permanently against one's wishes is something else. Bedroom taxes might sound as if they are part of the solution to the housing problem but there is more to housing than the number of bedrooms available.   

Saying "thank you" to the police

has been under discussion after the deaths of two police officers in a neighbouring state. 

The two officers were allegedly shot and killed by a man who apparently calls himself a "sovereign citizen". As I write this the heavily armed man is still on the run. He is apparently an excellent bush man who knows the territory around his disappearance and knows it well. 

It is an appalling situation for all concerned and a reminder I would much rather not have of how dangerous the job of policing can be. 

While this has been going on the police union in this state is making demands which cannot be met under current funding. Their leader is criticising the senior management over the type of policing model which has been put in place and more. 

I do not know as much as I would like about this but I do know that, for the most part, members of our police force are not trained to communicate as well as they might be. They are trained to do things in ways which I find unacceptable but there may be good reason for this.

I remember when, because they could find nobody else, they came to inform the Senior Cat of his cousin's death. They came mid-evening. The Senior Cat was getting ready to go to bed. He was ninety-four or five at the time, a frail old man on a walker. There were two officers, one of them a woman who told him calmly and sensibly what had happened. She used words she had obviously been trained to say. They were adequate in the circumstances and "correct" but entirely lacking in empathy.  She was doing her job, a difficult job.

All that was not a problem but what was a problem was that the male policeman refused to sit down even after I asked him to do so twice. He stood close enough to be a threat and made no attempt to say anything. I doubt it was intended but it was intimidating rather than reassuring. It is likely he behaved this way to be ready to restrain the Senior Cat or myself if necessary. I can recognise that but it did not help, especially as I then had to make a call to a cousin in another state and inform him so cousin D's sister could be informed. 

This approach is typical of our police force. They lack training in communication skills and it seems they are trained to put up a sort of barrier between themselves and those with whom they are dealing. This is not simply imagination on my part because a member of the force who had transferred from Manchester actually raised it with me one day on public transport. It is rare to have a casual conversation with any member of the police force here.  On another occasion I nearly got myself into trouble for intervening when another of the force was getting irritated with someone. I had to point out that the person they were questioning did not understand the question being asked. A little training in asking questions might help but it seems they get none.

The discussion around the issue yesterday revolved around members of the public not thanking the police for doing their job. It's a fair point but it is difficult to do when they stride through the shopping centre and snap out their order for a takeaway coffee without making eye contact. Communication is a two way thing and our police need more training in that. It will make their job much easier and perhaps there could be a campaign to get the general public to say "thank you". 

All that said if you live in this state and you are going to the state Show this week there will be police around. Perhaps you could give them a "thanks for your service" and see if it helps them?  

The Brittany Higgins saga

is not yet over. It should have been over long ago. Perhaps it should never have occurred in the first place.

I am no "conspiracy theorist". I am of the view there are generally good, rational reasons for things that have happened.  It may make life less fun but it definitely makes life more comfortable.

The Higgins saga is a curiosity rather than a conspiracy. Ms Higgins alleges she had non-consensual sex with another member of staff in the office of a then Senator at the parliament building in our nation's capital. The story did not come out immediately. It took Ms Higgins two years to go to the police. That in itself is enough for some conspiracy theorists especially as her story about the incident was in the public domain by then. When it did enter the public domain there were  accusations that she had not been supported by her bosses in the office. The damage was great enough to undermine the government of the day. It was a story which caused great harm to all concerned. The then Opposition pounced on it and used it to help them bring down a government at the next election.

The matter was taken to court as an allegation of rape, an allegation which was never proven. Ms Higgins was alleged to be unable to continue with the case due to the mental stress it was causing. It was receiving immense publicity. Despite the lack of a conviction Ms Higgins received a multi-million dollar payout from the new government on the grounds she would never be able to work again. 

There is a widespread view that someone who claims to have been raped is to be believed and many people will say they believe the story told by Ms Higgins is true. To say otherwise is to bring the wrath of the PC police on your head.  In the case of Ms Higgins very few people dare to question what she has alleged. 

Despite claims to the contrary Ms Higgins had the support of her then boss - the Senator. She also had the support of the office staff.  She was advised to go to the police. I have a friend in similar circumstances. She lost her job and her reputation making a similar allegation against a public figure. I know how hard it can be to go to the police and say, "This was done to me." I also know that many women are not believed when they do make a complaint. It is particularly difficult to make if you have been drinking alcohol.

In this case Ms Higgins does appear to have been successful in being believed, certainly the matter ended up in court. I have never read the transcripts but what was reported was interesting if you find sordid details of any interest. Certainly the media was very sympathetic towards her and so was the now government. I cannot remember any other case where a multi-million dollar payout has been made even when a case has not been concluded and no finding of guilt on the part of the alleged perpetrator has been made.  It is little wonder there are multiple conspiracy theories floating around the case.

Ms Higgins own behaviour has added another layer to the already complex web covering the incident. She "tweeted" some statements alleging that, among other things, she had not had the support of her former boss. It may be that she believed this at the time she wrote them but by then the Senator had had enough. The tweets were, in her view, defamatory. There was evidence to show she had been very supportive. She asked for an apology and did not receive one. In her view her reputation was damaged. When she had exhausted other options she took Ms Higgins to court - and won.

It is only a partial victory however. The financial cost has been huge. The sum awarded in damages is substantial but it is unlikely to cover the cost of taking the matter to court. It is also likely all this has occurred with no real result. Supporters of Ms Higgins are, to put it mildly, not pleased by the result. They are strongly opposed to it. They want the Senator to be held responsible for something which did not occur. They want Ms Higgins to be free of any responsibility for what may or may not have occurred.

Yes, it is all interesting in its way. It is not yet over. Costs still have to be awarded in this case. It may well be that there will be "no order as to costs" meaning each side must pay their own. If that is so then the Senator will still have incurred a severe financial loss. 

All this bothers me because the initial case has never been resolved. The alleged perpetrator took the matter to court too. He also claims defamation. The judge found him guilty "on the balance of probabilities" rather than "beyond all reasonable doubt". It is a finding which has caused quite a stir in legal circles and more than one suggestion that it was wrong. 

It may well be that it was not simply Ms Higgins alleged mental state which caused the abandonment of the trial. The likelihood that the prosecution believed they would lose is a major source of concern even among those who believe Ms Higgins' story. 

Whatever is going on the matter is not finished yet. Does it mean that there was a successful attempt to bring down a government? Or does it mean that everything which occurred was a sordid chain of events that happened to occur at the time? Is there something more to the story? 

I have no idea but the conversation I had to endure hearing on the train yesterday was interesting to say the least.  

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.