Renaming things, places and even people

is apparently becoming more common but renaming Lake Ontario? Will future generations need to be taught "Some Men's Horses Eat Apples" instead? (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and America rather than Oats?)

"Renaming" has been going on rather a lot around here too. It is a sort of "political correctness" phase we seem to be going through. I am not sure it works.  Local people are still referring to the library complex in the hills behind me by the old name. I suspect they will go on doing that. It is simple, easy to remember and say. The "indigenous" name given to it is not simple or easy to remember and almost nobody knows how to say it. Other things have also been given "indigenous" names. I put the word into inverted commas because there is nothing certain about the correctness of the words used and the language they are in belongs to a plains tribe, not a hills tribe. The majority opinion appears to be that the renaming is more about the political views of a tiny minority than any deep felt need to change the name.

There has been some discussion about naming a small street or lane in the city centre after a nun who rose to fame some sixty years ago for her rendition of the Lord's Prayer and her work with domestic violence victims. Sister Janet never sought fame. She just went on being a nun. Renaming a short lane after her might cause some people to ask about her in the future. I am not sure how she would feel. My guess is that she would feel embarrassed. 

I am told that there have been calls to rename the Nashville Airport the Dolly Parton Airport - or something of the sort. The dear woman is dead but it might not hurt to remind people of how much good she did. I might not have been too keen on the sort of music she is associated with but I am very keen on the way she did so much to encourage a love of reading. I just wish I had kept the letter she hand wrote to me before International Literacy Year.  Honouring someone in that way is renaming that can be good. 

Our capital territory has a policy of naming only those who are no longer here but worthy of recognition. Anyone who cares to do so can learn a great deal of history from those names. That is the intention. School students there are perhaps a little better informed than most people. 

Recently we renamed an electorate here. I am not sure that should have been done. I admire the work of the woman it is now named after but it has also obliterated and important part of our past. We need to think about whether this is the right thing to do.

And that of course where the problem lies in renaming Lake Ontario and calling it Lake America.  Ontario is not an English or French word. It is a word which was used by the native North Americans. It is far older than white settlement in either country. It means something like "great lake" or "shining/sparking water". It does not belong to American culture or Canadian culture. It belongs to the people who were there before that.  Retaining their name for it was long ago seen as the right thing to do. Renaming it will do nothing for the relationships between two countries. The name does not belong to either of them.  

Banning someone from Facebook

 at the "request" of entitled parents who have failed to make their little darlings understand that actions have consequences? I suppose it can be said that filming the little darlings and putting the result up on your political party's FB page also has consequences.

I mentioned the "protest" a little while ago. The action has escalated. I suspect the parents are still intending to take the member of parliament in question to court. It will be interesting to see how far it goes.

I have no time for the MP in question and I will never be voting for him but did he have the right to do it? That is the question which has to be asked. 

It will be for others to answer it but there are some interesting ideas here. When is it permitted to film others who are publicly protesting? What is the point of protesting if you are not there to be seen and heard? When does it become an "invasion of privacy"? Are some forms of protest able to be filmed and not others? Is where a protest taking place a political act (in this case the steps of the state parliament) or something more private? Does the age of the protestors (or just some of the protestors) mean they cannot be filmed?

They are just a few of the many questions which immediately come to mind. Opinions on all this seem to vary widely.

Footage of the protests held on the same day right around the country was shown on television. It is still widely available on the internet because it was "reposted" over and over again. The MP who has been barred from FB is by no means the only person who filmed what was going on. There were others, including the protestors themselves, who filmed what was happening. The protestors have shared the footage. I have been shown some by students who attended the protest and by others to whom it was sent. Apparently it is reasonable to film each other and pass it around but when the MP whose party they were opposing films it and posts it then it becomes an offence which is labelled abhorrent. He is accused of paedophilia because some of them are "minors" and he "caught" them "kissing in public". 

All this of course is about denigrating the political party in question. Those protesting will consider it even more urgent now that the same party has apparently just won a resounding win in a by-election. 

Will all this go further? Quite likely it will but I wonder if those who protested and their parents have considered it might not have quite the effect they were hoping for? 

I hope I am wrong because the possible consequences alarm me. 

I found this below in my time line this morning. It seems relevant right now.  

Translated from French

We will broadcast, via television, numbing entertainments, always flattering the emotional, the instinctive. We will occupy minds with what is trivial. With incessant chatter and music, to prevent the mind from questioning, thinking, reflecting. Günther Anders

"On diffusera, via la télévision, des divertissements abrutissant, flattant toujours l'émotionnel, l'instinctif. On occupera les esprits avec ce qui est futile. Avec un bavardage et une musique incessante, pour empêcher l'esprit de s'interroger, penser, réfléchir." Günther Anders

"Emotional support" animals

are not "assistance" animals. There are people who might like to claim that emotional support animals are vital to their well being but it does not give them the right to have their animal enter every establishment.

I am writing this because apparently someone has taken a small, community owned and run cafe in Scotland to court because the cafe refused to allow her to bring her "emotional support" dog into the cafe.  I do not know all the details. I only know what was sent to me to read. 

If the reporting was in any way accurate this appears to be a case of someone wanting to have special consideration in circumstances where it was not justified. She wanted to take her dog, an animal of which she is fond, into a cafe which does not permit dogs which are not assistance dogs to enter.  It sounds perfectly fair and reasonable to me.

I happen to like dogs. I may not like them as much as I like cats but I get on pretty well with dogs. I am not like Middle Cat who will engage in "conversation" with a dog at every opportunity but I do talk to dogs who are tied up next to where I park my trike. I acknowledge dogs. For the most part they respond with wagging tails and eye contact. I only pat with permission and if I sense they are looking for it. I am wary of dogs who do not respond in a friendly manner. I do not interfere with dogs who are assistance dogs. They are trained and they are working when I see them.

But dogs who are not assistance dogs are not trained. An assistance dog may give emotional support to a war veteran with PTSD but their role goes much further than that. The same is true of a guide dogs for the visually impaired. An assistance dog has been taught how to behave in a shop, on public transport and elsewhere. The owner of the assistance dog will know what the dog's role is. They will know it is not merely their "friend" who gives loving licks. A working assistance dog is not a friend at all. It is a partner, a trained partner.

I have seen similar problems here. There are entitled people who believe they can bring their dogs through the shopping centre and even into the supermarket. Recently someone had their dog in the child seat of a supermarket trolley and got upset when told that this was not appropriate. The manager of the supermarket happened to be a short distance away and came over. The customer was politely told to shop elsewhere. The customer went off in a huff but the other customers applauded the manager. Some days later a local woman with a guide dog was in the same supermarket and one of the staff was willingly helping her reach something she could not find. The dog was standing there quietly waiting. It was working.

A friend of mine has a hearing dog. My friend  is profoundly deaf. It is her second dog. Early on there were issues with her first dog but now people in her local area know about the dog and to what it can alert her. She can go into the local shops with it and, like a guide dog, it will sit quietly and wait. It is trained and it allows her to be safely alone during the day, do the shopping and occasionally enjoy coffee with a friend on the beachfront. She came to see me recently and travelled by train to do it. The dog came too and there were no problems.

Recently I was told I could no longer park my trike where I had been parking it at a community facility here. Things had changed and it was now a safety issue. I did not jump up and down. I accepted the decision. A week or so later I had an email saying "can we talk about this because we think we can accommodate you in another way?" I really did not expect that and I appreciate it. If I had complained and threatened legal action I don't think that would have happened.

 I wonder what the woman complaining about the cafe not allowing her dog in believes. If the reporting is correct it could lead to the cafe closing for good because of the legal costs. Will she say "serves them right"? Will she feel proud of her actions or will she find other people shun her for them?

The Nepalese and Tibetans I know

here are genuinely lovely people. They have all made a lot of effort to fit in to the community around them. They volunteer. They have made the effort to learn English. They expect their children to be polite and work hard in school.

These people have come from one of the most beautiful areas of  the world. It is also one of the most dangerous.

I am not sure the rest of us really appreciate this. Tourists head off with the idea that it will be interesting, perhaps even exciting. They think they know it will be "different" and that they will "experience another culture". There is an idea there that somehow they are being courageous in going somewhere so different. One or two of them might try and learn a couple of words in what they believe is the "local language".  They will usually travel in a group. 

There are also the "spiritual" travellers. I will not call them "tourists" because many of them are Nepalese who are returning for genuine spiritual reasons. Among them there will be a tiny number of other people, often "Westerners" who are genuinely in search of an experience which can be impossible to explain to other people. They are not those caught up in some sort of mystical belief imposed on them by an experience at a temple somewhere but those who have spent years trying to come to some sort of limited understanding of the world they are experiencing. 

And there are aid workers I work with who go in and out for limited periods of time who, like the spiritual travellers, may experience something a tourist will not experience.  They know there are risks but something drives them to go anyway. There are schools, hospitals, bridges and roads to be built. Nothing happens there the way it happens in their comfortable western existence. They need to be prepared to learn as much as they must be prepared to teach. Their work is nothing like the work of those who go in with aid organisations. Aid organisations have teams of people who can work together and support each other. They will have equipment and more.

Yesterday I sat down with three people who know the disaster region well. We went through the old communication boards. We updated them. Phone calls were made. Emails were sent. Funding for air tickets was found. There are people we know who have now packed their backpacks and are on their way. They will help the local people with rebuilding things like bridges in Nepal.

In Tibet it is a different story. The Chinese government has so far not asked for assistance and has actively denied entry to outsiders. The Tibetans need help too but will they get it?  Think of them too please. 

  

Parents are threatening legal action

because their little darlings were filmed shouting obscenities and using some very threatening language at the "protest" last week.

Apparently it is acceptable for their children to behave in this way but not acceptable for others to film them doing this.

I have no time for most protests. They are a waste of time. They simply irritate everyone else. They are "feel good" events for those protesting but they do little, if any, good. They often do more harm than good. They can even bring about more support for the cause they are protesting against. 

In this instance they are likely to be doing more harm than any good at all. The protestors were missing school classes and university lectures. They were using far left rhetoric in order to protest against far right ideals. Neither group is balanced.

Some of the school based students would have been there with the support of their parents. They were likely told they had to have excuse notes from their parents in order to attend. It is likely these are the parents who are now complaining the loudest. They are likely the one who are threatening legal action.  

The reason they are doing it? There is the possibility that the protestors might be seen. They might be seen not just for the time they were there at the protest but at some point in the future. If the footage appeared on the internet then someone else might not view it favourably. It could affect their future employment. 

All that is speculative of course. How many employers for the most everyday and mundane sort of positions are going to trawl through protest footage to find those involved? In reality it will be very few. 

But yes, there will be some and it will have consequences. There will be people who will miss out on employment in more sensitive areas later because they behaved foolishly when young. They will learn the hard way that actions have consequences.

In this case though parents and schools also need to be held to account. Both need to teach students there are other ways to make themselves heard. Teach them how to do that in an acceptable and responsible manner. Quite a number of those protesting will be able to vote at the next election.  

There was a letter in the state paper

yesterday, the first letter. I finally got around to reading it after several people had asked things like, "Did you see...?" and "Was that you? and "Do you remember?"

The letter was talking about the writer's experience of the school library at a school where I was the librarian for a year. It, embarrassingly, mentioned me by name. 

I do not remember the child that was then. If they came up to me in the street and introduced themselves I may still not remember them. This would not be through any lack of interest on my part. There were around six hundred children there and I simply cannot remember all of them. I wish I could. 

I especially wish I could remember all those who came rushing into the library at lunch time to change their library books before going off to play. I wish I could remember all those who came to learn the basic chess moves or call me over to demand an end to a dispute about the way a word could be used in Scrabble. I wish I could remember the name of the child who, not having finished a jigsaw puzzle, wanted to know if I could "keep it safe".  I would be really interested to find out about the career of the boy who wanted to know about dinosaurs other than the muttaburrasaurus. He would have been about six at the time and it was not the usual childlike interest. It would be so good to know whether the regulars went on reading and what they read now.

The school library was the place where I felt I could make an actual difference to the lives of children who came from mostly poor backgrounds. The library was "free". All they had to do was come to school and head for the library at lunch time. I know the other staff thought I was odd. I could have done occasional lunch time "yard" or "playground" duty like they did. Instead I kept the library open. Often it meant I had a ten or fifteen minute "lunch break" and not the half hour I was supposed to get. It did not matter. I had children in there and reading. I had mothers coming in to help cover new books and talk to me about what book to buy their child for a birthday or Christmas present.  There were parents who thought reading was not important but I hope I changed that. I know at least some of them told others how important reading was for their children.

I almost stayed in school libraries. Being a school librarian then was a fascinating job. Encouraging children to read was something I felt passionate about. It was very difficult to leave but I knew it was only part of what I needed to do with my life. I went on to other things.

I know I made the right decision but it was a difficult one. To stay in school libraries would have been easy in many ways. I miss the thrill of a child asking, "Are there any more books like this?" or telling me, "It's an absolutely super book and you really ought to read it." Now there are schools without libraries. Those that do seem to have computers rather than books. If a child wants to read fiction then they need to belong to the local council library network. 

We have lost something along the way, something important. The letter in the paper might have caused me some embarrassment but at least it told me that there is one former child out there with grandchildren. Those grandchildren are being encouraged to read because the child is now a grandparent who had access to a school library. The expense of rebuilding school library resources has to be met if we are going to meet the needs of all children. 

Yes I do have "private health insurance"

and yes it is essential and yes it is a lot to pay. It will soon be even more. 

I resent paying it but it really is essential. I am not just older but, when I need a hip replacement or cataract surgery or something else which comes with age, I cannot afford to wait for years.  Nobody can afford to wait for years but, for me, it really will be the difference between living reasonably independently or existing in a nursing home. 

I cannot expect my family to care for me. In my case "family" means Middle Cat. The reality, as our GP pointed out to Middle Cat, is more likely to mean that I will be doing things for Middle Cat. We live close to one another and she has multiple health issues which have led to time in hospital.  Middle Cat is the one who travelled with a backpack of medication. 

Yes, she has private health insurance too. Without it she would likely not be alive. 

Brother Cat would almost certainly have had a lower limb amputated if he had been forced to wait for treatment for a serious infection. It was initially thought to be something else but help brought in because there was insurance to help cover the cost means he is walking around on his own feet. The long term saving and his ability to go on helping his family and his community is surely worth it? 

Private health insurance really is not an "indulgence". You are not "fortunate to be able to afford it". You are simply doing the responsible thing. It is not, as some people suggest, "queue jumping". It is saving the public health system for others who also need it and ensuring you can give back where possible.

The present government sees this differently. They are about to make private health insurance for older people more expensive. It means I will struggle to pay for it but others will not be able to afford it at all. They will go on to the "waiting lists". They will become less rather than more able. Eventually it will cost more to care for them. The move is a short sighted one designed to suggest they are "saving" money and spending it in areas where it is needed even more. In typical government fashion they can make it sound good until you start to actually think about the consequences.

Does the government really want me to stop paying a contribution to my own health cover?    

It seems "Book Week" is now

more about dressing up in a costume than reading a book.  Has this happened because books are not being read any more? 

This morning's editorial is talking about some schools no longer having libraries and there is the inevitable article about "bought" or "home made" costumes. Going to school dressed up as a character in a book is becoming competitive it seems.

I worked in school libraries for a time. I might have stayed there if I had not had the burning desire to see that as many people as possible had a means by which to communicate, that they could read and enjoy books. School libraries were important back then, very important. There was actually a "School Libraries Branch" for the Education Department.  Money was spent on school libraries. 

Other staff thought I was odd because I took just a few snatched minutes to eat a sandwich at around lunch time. It meant I could keep the library open through the lunch hour. It meant the library was over flowing with children almost all the time. Libraries should be like that. 

And "Book Week"? Yes, we had Book Week. It was the week I would talk to the "Mothers' Club" and the School Council about how much the books we had bought were being used and how many more we needed. It was the week I would talk to the young readers about more "book things" as they would call information about how books actually came to be. There was the competition run by the state newspaper where you "wrote a book" and illustrated it. Much of that would be done in the classroom but there would be children lined up in the library to get help from me or older children. The best of these would go up to a big store in the city centre to go on display. There would be author visits to schools. New books would come out just in time for Book Week.

There was not a costume in sight. There was no need for them. The children would draw pictures of their favourite characters and there would be "morning talks" about books they had been reading. There were endless questions around "are there any more like that?"

Half a century later we seem to have lost sight of what a library is in a school. Some schools do not even have libraries. They have become classrooms. The textbooks and any non-fiction material is sought on line. Reading fiction for pleasure? It is still done of course but it is not considered nearly as important any more. 

I am not sure how we expect school students to move to university and do the research of the future if their imaginations have not been stimulated by fiction.  Putting on a shop bought "costume" is not going to help much. 

I don't have much time for the "Brethren"

by which I mean the "Exclusive Brethren" or "Plymouth Brethren". My personal contact with them has been varied but I am wary of them. Let me explain.

Those that I know, and they vary from place to place, lead lives which are separate from the rest of the community. They mix as little as possible. They do not eat with anyone outside their own church and those people must be "in fellowship". They do not live in any form of communal housing. There must be no common walls or shared facilities. 

Out in the community they do not normally engage in social conversation with other people. Their manner with shop assistants is abrupt. Self-serve in the supermarket suits them nicely although their use of computers is otherwise limited to business use or essential study. Their children are now educated separately if at all possible. While certain things must be taught the Brethren elders will remove "unsuitable" material from the text books.

Outsiders are not welcome to attend their Sunday services. Inside their buildings women sit separately from men. Their participation in the service is limited to singing the hymns and, sometimes, choosing them. During the week there are prayer meetings and Bible study. They use a version of the Bible that is slightly different as well.

Women are subject to the authority of men. They must wear skirts or dresses. Their hair must remain long and they wear a "token" (ribbon) or headscarf to show their "submission" to male authority.

I have known several of them from time to time. There were quite a number of them living in this area some years ago. I still see some of them around. I came to know them through their children. 

They are not barred from voting but many of them abstain from voting on the grounds that only God has authority over them. This does not mean that they feel free to break the law, far from it. They are generally very law abiding people. They will drive excessively hard bargains but they generally do not break the law. 

There is an inquiry of some sort going on in another state at present which has, among other things, been questioning their involvement in an election campaign. Their involvement has been considered very right wing. The left wing dominated inquiry is trying to suggest their support for the opposition candidates amounted to a "political donation".  I find this curious.

I find this curious and a little disturbing. I am not sure I would welcome their involvement if I was attempting to enter politics. It may actually have done more to harm than to help. 

There is however something very odd about all this. Those running the inquiry have apparently not considered that, on the left, there are organisations like the union movement and "Get Up" and more which also involve themselves in political campaigns. 

Is the involvement of the Brethren really any different or is it because they are seen as a "cult" by some and they are involving "God"? I may not like all the Brethren do and believe but, so far, they have not harassed me the way some union members and the Get Up group have.  So, tell me, are they so different they need to be stopped from their political activities? 

I have never eaten and Oreo

and I am not likely to do so by choice. The same goes for all the other sugar laden "cream" biscuits on the supermarket shelves. I had the occasional "Monte Carlo" or similar as a child. This would happen if we were visiting someone else and they were offered to us. We had to check with Mum first and there was no guarantee she would say "yes" but, on most occasions, permission would be granted and we would "remember our manners" and then nibble them slowly to make them last. I still prefer shortbread (the sort which is homemade with a recipe which comes from Scotland and is made with actual butter) or ginger nuts.

Now it seems the "Oreo" is a thing. I have seen them on the shelves in the biscuit aisle of the supermarket and apparently they appear in school lunch boxes. It is their appearance in school lunch boxes which is apparently cause for "jealousy" and a mother has demanded they not be allowed because her child is envious of a child who gets one when her child does not.

I wonder what on earth is going on here. Since when did the appearance of a biscuit in a lunch box mean your precious little darling was so upset no other child could have one. No, we are not talking about an allergy here. We are talking about "I want one too" and a parent saying "no" for some reason or another. 

I can totally understand the allergy issue. It would only be the most irresponsible of parents who would knowingly pack something which would cause another child to have an allergic reaction. The question apparently does not arise with the biscuit. There may be little or no food value in the biscuit as such but they appear to be sweet and it is likely a small treat in a lunch box that probably contains a sandwich or a wrap and perhaps some celery or carrot sticks and some fruit which has already been cut up in the hope that it will be eaten. 

The idea that all children should be denied something because the parent of one child cannot afford or does not want their child to have something is plainly ridiculous. Where on earth would that have to stop? 

I remember all those days at school when the "lunch orders" would be brought in by the "lunch monitors" and the classroom would be filled with the smell of hot pies, pasties and sausage rolls or fresh yeast buns. These would be for those we thought lucky enough to be buying their lunch that day. Envious? Of course we were but we would not have demanded they stop buying their lunch. My brother and I were allowed to do it just once a term. It would be on the last day of term and we had to get full marks in arithmetic, mental and spelling in some weekly tests in order to do it. Yes, we worked for it. We might have thought it was "not fair" but we did not dare say it and the idea of our mother complaining other children bought lunch more often would have been unthinkable.

I wonder about the mother who made the demand. What is she teaching her child? Does she also demand her neighbours do not have a new car or a holiday because she cannot afford it? 

"Oreo envy" is surely part of childhood. It teaches us we cannot have everything we want and that is surely a good thing.  Telling us other people should also do without is not.   

I do not understand football

and I understand the passion some feel for the game and "their" team even less. I suppose I should say I do not understand the passion for any form of competitive sport or the support of any team. I really am not interested. I am of Mark Twain's view that golf is a good walk spoilt, that physical competition of any sort is good exercise spoilt. 

This is not simply because I have never been able to participate in any form of competitive sport myself. That is not even quite true because I have been required to throw balls at certain times in my life. I have even done so quite successfully. Did I enjoy the experience? No. It was simply something which I was required to do so I did it. I have also been required to score for netball and softball...and had difficulty not yawning while doing both.

My interest in any form of sport starts and ends with the game of cricket. I cannot pretend I understand the game but the psychology of it does interest me if there is nothing else going on. I would go to a cricket match with some knitting and a book.  

I know. I am absolute heathen when it comes to sport. I cannot even get interested in the medal count for the Olympics.

So the current uproar about the footballers who allegedly behaved "inappropriately" towards a woman who had agreed to attend their celebrations at their request leaves me wondering yet again about the whole sorry business called "sport". Yes, "sport" is a business. It is not a recreation. It is there to provide "entertainment" to the masses but it is also there to buy and sell a commodity and make a profit. That commodity of course is the individual player. A good one can be bought and sold for an extraordinary sum of money. This is a human being we are talking about but how many people actually think of the player in those terms?

The idea of the selling and buying slaves in the old Roman market place is abhorrent to most people. It should be abhorrent. Buying and selling slaves to and in America was even worse. We tell ourselves how bad "white" people were for doing this while conveniently forgetting that there were any number of African "kings" and "chiefs" who were also complicit in the trade. That the same thing is now happening in sport is something we do not recognise as problematic.

Perhaps that is part of the problem. Do the players themselves have an inflated belief in their worth? High on adrenalin after winning a match shouldn't someone have kept them together and watched them? How can they be responsible human beings when they are also being told they are a commodity worth a great deal of money to someone, especially when they have won a game? Those who "own" the players are no better than the "whites" who bought them to sell to plantation owners or the "kings" and "chiefs" who sold them to those whites. 

If we stopped paying people to play what should be normal, ordinary exercise an entire industry would collapse - but would we really be any worse off?  

There was always going to be an appeal

in the "Mushroom" case. Men are much more likely to commit murder than women. Men commit 85% to 90% of known murders. It is also interesting to note women who commit murder almost always do so in an "intimate" setting. In other words the victim is likely to be a partner or family member. 

In the case of Erin Patterson, the woman found guilty of murdering three people by feeding them beef Wellington containing death cap mushrooms,  extended family members were involved but the intimacy was at one step removed. That alone makes it a little more unusual. 

I am not watching the appeal as such. Most of what goes in a court of law is, to be blunt, dull. It is not "exciting" in the way a television series will try and suggest. I am, for the benefit of some students, keeping an eye on what is going on. So yesterday I looked at the grounds the defence is making their grounds for appeal.

There are apparently seven grounds for appeal by the defence. These are things the defence thinks are "wrong in law" or "not fair" or "a mistake". The defence is raising several which relate to the actual evidence presented. I do not know enough to comment on those, nor do I wish to comment. I can comment on a couple of issues.

The first of these is the claim the jury should not have been staying in the same hotel as any of the prosecution or the media.  The thing to note here is that there can be no communication between them. The defence is attempting to argue that it is a "fundamental irregularity" and that "it has fatally undermined the integrity of the verdicts".  More than once a case has been thrown out of court because a juror has discussed, searched and even spoken to someone they should not have spoken to but it has to be shown to have happened. It cannot be a matter of "we think having them the jury and others involved in the same case in the same place influenced their decision".  Jurors who are sequestered are kept separate by court officials and the matter was raised at the time of the trial. Will that succeed as a ground of appeal? It is unlikely. If it did then it would not be cause for the case to be dismissed but could result in a retrial. 

The other interesting thing being argued as a ground for appeal is that the defence is arguing the defendant's right to silence was "compromised". Why are they arguing this? A defendant in a murder trial does not have to give evidence. The defence is arguing that the prosecution attempted to bring in evidence that was ruled inadmissible. The defence now says they had to bring in that evidence instead. They are claiming this forced the defendant to give evidence in her own defence but they apparently agree the evidence itself was of a speculative nature. Yes, the defence can sometimes bring in evidence ruled inadmissible for the prosecution to bring in. Choosing to use it as a ground for claiming the defendant had to give evidence may alone be enough to cause this to fail.

The treatment of the defendant in the witness box is being appealed too. There is a suggestion here of "here is this poor woman being accused of murder and you are being nasty to her". That is not the way the law works. If you give evidence in any trial you have to expect to be treated harshly by the side which has the most to lose. You can be sure the KC working for the defendant came down hard on every member of the prosecution's team.  

There are other matters also being claimed as grounds for appeal. They relate more closely to the case. 

There are three possibilities here/

The appeal succeeds and the defendant is found "not guilty". This is highly unlikely.

The appeal succeeds and the defendant is granted a new trial. This is possible but there will be serious issues with this. Finding a jury without a knowledge of the case would be well nigh impossible.

The appeal fails. The defendant stays in prison. That might lead to an attempt to find a means of appealing to the High Court. The issue of the sequestering of the jury might have some possibilities there but again it would likely result in an order for a retrial.

And on the other side the prosecution is appealing the sentence. Thirty-three years or life? 

I wonder about the other family members - especially the two children.  

 

 

"There are 350,580 recipients with autism"

 I was told in the email sent to me. I had queried something and the figures were sent to me in a chart. 

"The NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) is not working." I was told and the person telling me this was clearly angry and frustrated.

 I was concerned from the start that some would take advantage of it and this is clearly what is happening. Below are the figures for "disability" in this country. We are a "crook" lot aren't we? The numbers are through the roof...if you believe them.

Much of the problem lies in the first line. The idea that 44.9% of recipients need funding because of "autism" as their primary disability is something we need to be investigating urgently. I can almost hear the "but you don't know..." and "you have no idea..." coming at me right now. But I do know and I do have some idea. How many of these are children who are not diagnosed with any other disability?  

Let me start by saying that severe and profound autism are severely and profoundly disabling, not just of the individual but of everyone around them. Those with the condition and those who care for them need financial, physical and emotional support. It is a twenty-four hour, seven days of the week issue that can impact an entire family.

Now, let me go on. A child who is "fidgety" or has a problem attending in a classroom or whose behaviour does not always meet the standard considered acceptable is not "autistic". That child may or may not have a problem but it is not a disability. It is an issue which may need to be addressed but it is not a disability. Just because your little darling is not top of the class (and would not be top of the class even if they were doing the work) does not mean they are disabled. There is every chance your child is within the normal range of ability and is not paying attention. They would prefer to be doing something else. Be thankful if that is the case because the parents who have children who are not within the normal range of ability are often feeling overwhelmed.  

Yes, the scheme was started with the best of intentions but it has been hi-jacked by some who see it as an acceptable way of explaining why their child is not top of the class and not always well behaved. The idea that their child might not be because they are in fact "normal" is not acceptable.

I looked down that list. The numbers receiving assistance for other disabilities is about what I would expect but I also know there are still people who are not getting all the help they need and some who are not getting any at all. 

We did away with "special schools" and "opportunity classes" on  "inclusion" grounds - and to save money. We have attempted to reduce the number of people on disability pensions. The NDIS has taken over from that and the cost has exploded. It was a mistake. All it has done has made some people see "free money" and take advantage. Getting NDIS money is not supposed to be "easy" and for many people it has not been. Once on the scheme it can be addictive too. The child has progressed or a permanent solution to an adult problem has been found but money keeps coming. Monitoring all that is impossible. 

Yes, I know all that. I hear from parents and other recipients. I still do not believe that there are 350,000 something individuals with such severe autism they need the level of support they are likely getting. Let's work on this so that those who really need support are getting it.   

Someone has stolen a teddy bear

from a child with Down Syndrome. It might not seem like much to most people. "Oh, just a retarded kid. She'll get over it" attitude is the one which seems to prevail amongst a certain class of people. Others have been much more concerned. They have offered to buy her a new bear, an identical bear. Thank you but no thank you.

The child's mother is absolutely correct here. She does not want her child to be given a new bear that looks like the old one. She wants the old bear to be returned. Why? Because Down Syndrome or not the child knows her own bear. 

I am with the mother on this. I am with the child on this. It has to be the original bear. This is not a "lost" bear. It is a bear which was stolen. Someone took it away from where it was looking out across the fence. It was tied to the fence. Someone had to come along and cut the ties and take it away. Why on earth would you do that?

Years ago now I found a soft toy rabbit in our local area. It was obviously much loved. I looked around for "lost" notices. I put up some "found" notices. I mentioned it in any number of places.

And then I got the phone call. Did it have.... Yes, it did. Can we come right now and get it? Yes, they could. It took about twenty minutes for them to get there. The small child who owned it looked as if he had not slept for a week. His parents looked much the same. I handed over the toy and the small boy began to cry. One hand held the toy by the leg and the other was clutching my trouser leg. We all three hugged. His parents wanted to reward me but there was no reward on earth better than seeing the joy on the child's face and hearing the sobs of equal joy.  

The Senior Cat showed the small boy how to do a very simple "magic trick". The small boy's father quickly learned it so they could teach the rabbit and they went off - a complete family again. 

I saw them several times over the next few years before they returned to their home country. The toy rabbit was the last thing the little boy's great-grandmother had made for him and she would not be there when they got back. The child would never know her but his parents did. Yes, that toy was part of the family. I suspect it still is. 

It is remembering that and the way my mother gave our toys away as we moved from one place to the next which makes me so aware of how important that bear is. Mum did not do it intending to be cruel. She simply had no reason to feel sentimental. That we might did not occur to her. I would still like to have my train set.

Anyone with any conscience at all would give that bear back.  

Hunting for a lost parcel

is something which irritates, annoys, infuriates me. 

A friend in the United States had sent me "something". She did not tell me what the "something" was or how large or small it was. No, it was to be a "surprise". It was a "thank you for the hours of work you put in". 

That was nice of her, indeed of the whole team behind her. I was more than happy to help. There was a small boy who was going to be a lot less frustrated as a result of a team effort. All I had to do was direct things from afar...and at odd hours. 

No, that was not the problem. I had ordered from the company in question (yes, yarn of course!) and they had my old address. The dear friend who ordered the yarn used my new address but the system somehow rejected it and went back to my old address.

How do I know all of this? Because my friend sent me an email yesterday saying it had been delivered. She had just checked the "tracking" and there it was saying "delivered and left in a safe place".  Oh. I thought about this.

I have never wanted to go back to where the Senior Cat and I were living. It brings back too many memories and reminds too strongly of how much I miss him. I know the people who live there now have changed things and that the street is changing too. The neighbours across the way have told me that. 

But...would they have the parcel? It was supposed to have arrived on Thursday. They might have returned it already if they had been out and about. If it was small it could go in a post box with "RTS" on it for "return to sender". 

I swallowed hard and put on my bike helmet. Armed with a note for the people now living there I pedalled off. 

They were home. They saw me through the window. They have no curtains. We were told to take the old curtains down and they have never replaced them. 

The mother came to the door with a smile on her face. Yes, she knew who I was. I explained about the parcel. Yes, they had the parcel. They had been away for two nights and it was there when they came home. 

The parcel was duly produced and passed over. Did I want to come in and see what they had done to the place?

I declined. It would have felt intrusive and I really did not want to see how different it is now. 

We were told that they were likely living there as a temporary measure. That they would move on and renovate yet another property. There have been changes to regulations since then and they will likely to stay a lot longer. 

As I was leaving the mother said quietly to me, "We like it here. We have heard a lot about you and your father. It has helped us get to know the neighbours. Thank you."

I was the one supposed to be thanking her but I pedalled off feeling a bit more comfortable. The new regulations may not be to everyone's advantage but I hope they might provide the new family with the same good neighbours we had.   

"Jason Arday is dead"

came the blunt statement from someone I know. I knew who he was and I knew some of the story. It is a very upsetting end to the story for him but it is by no means the end of the story. 

As someone else pointed out Arday was primarily responsible because he was not honest but the university was also responsible for not doing a thorough check of his credentials before employing him. The government there can be held responsible for the demands they are making about "diversity, equality and inclusion". The rest of us are also responsible for going along with all this and not speaking up. 

There are similar problems here but they have not, so far, resulted in suicide that I am aware of. We have a "professor" of "indigenous agriculture" who, despite his claims to the contrary, is not a member of any indigenous tribe. Research by more than one person outside academia has shown his ancestry is in no way related to any "aboriginal" tribe. He still holds the position of professor and still continues to make the same nonsensical claims about aboriginal "farming" and agriculture and ways of living. He is being permitted, indeed encouraged, to continue teaching this to students. They are being expected to regurgitate it - and they will if they want to pass. 

One university has introduced a compulsory subject for all students which touches on all these things. No, you do not dare to disagree. 

There are "subjects" being researched and taught here which do not have any basis in sound research. They are there to satisfy the demands of "diversity, equality and inclusion".  They are not there to satisfy any sort of academic rigour.

Yes, we are supposed to be a multi-cultural country. If we are to be one then "diversity" is a given.  For me "equality" and "inclusion" are a given. It is what any normal, ordinary and decent person does.  It means equal opportunities and inclusion based on those opportunities. It does not mean excluding others just to make way for those who are less able or less qualified. If an equally qualified and able person satisfies all the other requirements then it may well be a very good thing to appoint them if they meet the demand for "diversity" but they need to be at very least as able and as well qualified but ability and qualifications need to be the first consideration. Failing to do put those first is not doing anyone any favours.

Arday did no favours to his fellow "black" academics. He has actually done a great deal of harm. The university did no favours either. It is going to take those responsible some time to regain the trust of others - if they can at all. It has left many more people with a low opinion of what happens inside universities and yet more opposition to demands for diversity, for equality and for inclusion simply for the sake of those things. 

Something good may come out of this if we can start to think of people as individuals first and members of any group second.  

 

So you want to write a history

of the local area?

Our local council is looking ahead to the 175th Anniversary of the council area. It has therefore been announced they intend to spend $190,000 of rate payer funds on producing a history of the area. Sounds good?

There are local history groups and they are apparently expected to work together to make this happen. It all sounds rather lovely doesn't it?

There has been an immediate backlash suggesting it is a waste or ratepayer funds. My opinion has naturally been sought by a few locals who oppose the project, are bewildered by it, who support the project but not in the proposed form and so on. 

What has not been mentioned in the press is that there are already two books about the area which were written by a trained historian as well as some smaller works. I happen to know about them because my parents were involved in a small way in the research for the second. That book is a history of the church on the hill behind us but it covers much more than that. It covers more than that because the church was there first and it was effectively the place which governed the community before there were local councils. The history of the settlement of the area does not extend very far back when you compare it withe so much history in the United Kingdom.

The current proposal does not seem to involve a trained historian. It involves volunteers and a "coordinator". Will it work?  I know some of those who will likely be involved. They are intelligent people but they are not historians. Chemists and bankers do not necessarily know how history is researched and written,

It is also intended to fund a $10,000 grant to "indigenous" people to cover the history before white settlement. I do not understand the purpose of such a grant. Speaking to other people they do not understand it either. It would appear to be a political gesture designed to make us believe that there is a way of accessing some special knowledge not available to the rest of us. 

I suppose it is both these things which leave me wondering just what the project is intended to do. At very least the work which has already been well and carefully done should be used in any future endeavours. This is not just a suggestion aimed at saving time and money it is because, while the work needs to be updated, there is a great deal more material that did not go into the original book. There were some interviews conducted. Many of those people are no longer alive but some are. They are also elderly, very elderly. I doubt the groups have the skills to interview them quickly. Going through original materials also takes time and care. There is a need to be alert to clues as to where more material might be found. You also need to know when to stop gathering material. I could go on but most people will see genuine problems here.

The other grant with respect to indigenous people is a waste of money. There is no written history prior to white settlement but that is only part of the problem. There is nobody alive now who has such a strong genuine connection to the past that they can add to what little we have been told we know. Even that is doubtful. The grant is going to a plains group. As far as anyone can tell their history and culture is quite different from that of the people who lived in the hills. They did not mix much. They were not disposed to be friendly towards one another. There are no documents recording their history. We can say people lived in the area. There is a little that can be picked up or guessed at through a few artefacts but anyone who attempts to say "this is the language they spoke" or "this is what their stories were" is simply lying or being fooled. It is a problem faced by archaeologists and cannot be solved by giving grants to political groups who claim some indigenous heritage.

History is important. We can learn a great deal from it. The Gaelic proverb  "cuimhnich air na daoine bhon tàinig thu" or "remember the people where you come from" is one I found when helping my father's cousin with our clan history. It seems to me that we could all pay more attention to it - but it must be done with care and skill.  I am not sure it is going to happen here. 

The little darlings skipped school

yesterday. They went to "protest" on the steps of the state's Parliament House.

I was supposed to attend a meeting in the city. It was cancelled because of the "event". 

The person who cancelled informed me about the event later. He had to get into the adjacent building and was booed and heckled on the way in. That he had nothing to do with the protest was apparently the point rather than not the point. According to the protestors he should have been joining in their revolt. Anyone passing should have been joining in according to some of them. The people they were protesting about are, according to them, that dangerous.

These young people were using their "right" to "freedom of speech" to call for another group to be banished. I cannot say "banned" but many of those in the group may well have agreed with a ban if such a thing were possible. That group is political party. It is not a radical far right group attempting to bring in a different legal system or espousing anti-Semitic views. It has a homosexual person in a prominent position in the party. It is not, despite reports to the contrary, anti-immigration or opposed to all environmental measures. 

So, what was it they were protesting about? They do not like the "policies" of that particular group? That is up to them. I happen to think the so-called policies lack any detail and are likely unworkable. I would not vote for the party myself and I know surprisingly few people who will admit that they might. There are other ways of getting my own views across. They don't include attending expletive ridden rallies organised by a student who is a member of an extreme left group.

The person I was supposed to be meeting went into his office. He could hear what was being said. He is most definitely not a fan of the political party being protested about but he has seen many protests come and go. He accepts they are part of student life. 

This protest? "I would like to have taken some of them in, sat them down, chatted to them. I would like to know whether they really believe the drivel they were being fed. My guess is the majority of them were not thinking at all. They were caught up in the thrill of the protest, the time out of school." 

Yes, I suspect he is right. It is said most students were university students or from the two city high schools. There were about a thousand of them. That is all. They did not come in their thousands from all over the state. There were far more people who protested the Vietnam war when I was that age. I suspect we might, even without the benefits of easy social media communications, have known more about the issues we were concerned about. 

The "leader" of the protest is a young radical with ideas that often appeal to the young until they think about them. They appeal until how they might be implemented and what the consequences might be become apparent.

The little darlings will be back at school today. Some of them will be enthusiastically informing those who did not go how much they missed by not attending. I hope they discover they also missed an important lesson or two or three.  Late yesterday afternoon I also overheard one who apparently had attended saying it was "boring".  Hopefully more of the attendees will feel that way and work towards being able to actively and positively participate in the future of this country.   

Transgender athlets who compete

on women's teams are again in discussion. The football people have just cleared a transgender person to play on women's teams. There were, and still are, concerns because this person is considerably larger and stronger than others on the same team or the teams they play against.

Comments are now being made by well known figures and not just those who are required to play on the same or on opposing teams. I have also heard a good many other comments from local people. The general consensus is that this person should not be allowed to participate if others are at risk.

Some clubs are now saying they would prefer to forfeit rather than play on or with teams who include trans players. Those at the top are demanding they continue playing.

Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost something called "common" sense.  This is something which would say, "some people are different" and "it is not always possible to be inclusive". It would recognise potential harm to the majority. 

There are some things it is not possible to be inclusive about. Is the exclusion of this person really any different from excluding a blind person from driving a car on the roads? The blind person may want to drive but the safety of others demands they do not. 

I am a short and not very mobile person. I have a poor sense of balance. It would not take much to knock me over. If I had wanted to play basketball in my childhood I would have been told I could not. This would not simply have been because I was hopeless at such things but because it was considered "dangerous". I would have been knocked over. There were some rare occasions when the team did include me. I would be the person with the ball at the very start of the match. My instructions would be to "throw the ball to X... and then get off the court". Even so there would be an adult there ready to grab me and get me off safely. The opposing side was pretty good about it too. They knew the game was going on safely without me. It was the team and the game which mattered.

Now it seems that the individual matters more. In this case it is an individual who has all the characteristics of a sex with whom that individual does not "identify".  Teams are being asked to consider the individual before the group. That can be important but in this instance the individual does have alternatives. They are not barred from playing. It is just more appropriate and safer for everyone else if they do not play with that group. Is that exclusion or is it something else? 

    

Farming is not an occupation

for the faint hearted or the lazy. It is not "easy". You do not simply fling some seed into a machine and drive up and down a field or a paddock and hope the seed goes in to the right space at the right time. You cannot just leave it there to grow either. Cows do not milk themselves. Sheep do not shear themselves. Fruit does not pick itself.

I have never lived on a farm. I occasionally visited on one as a child. Whenever we did my brother and I were expected to help with the work in just the same way as the children who lived there. Brother Cat could drive a tractor at age eight because it was expected he would do just that when he spent a weekend with a friend. He had just one lesson and then he was, slowly but carefully, taking the tractor down the rough lane to where it was needed. There was no "mucking about". This was serious adult work done by children because there was nobody else to do it. I was left behind to feed calves and the family  hens, collect the eggs and help in the kitchen. Sexist? Perhaps it was but it was, and still is, essential. 

I could still feed a team of shearers. Their work may not be quite as onerous as it once was but it is still hard work and I was taught to appreciate that. They need to be well fed. My paternal grandmother taught me that.

My paternal grandmother came from a farm and she came into her marriage with a work ethic that never left her. She knew how to make the most of every cut of meat and just how far it would go. The fruit trees in the garden were there to feed the family all year round, not just when the fruit was in season. There would have been hundreds of women like her who could do just the same things. They had to do them or the family would not have had enough to eat. 

Yes, they may have been farmers but they were not "rich". The idea that farmers are "rich" is probably one of the greatest falsehoods ever perpetuated. The farm land may well be "worth" something but that something does not translate into actual wealth. 

It is these things that governments seem to willingly misunderstand. Governments want to dictate what can be planted, how it can be planted and when it can be planted. They want to charge for allowing it to be planted and they want to tax the fuel and the fertiliser being used. They will tax the money obtained for selling the crop while telling you how much it can be sold for and to whom you can sell it. 

All these things will supposedly come from a "department of agriculture" where the "experts" work. They are the same experts who told the farmers to plant the wrong sort of clover which caused the sheep eating it to drop the lambs too early. They advised one sort of wheat which brought in lower yields and was prone to a disease. There are gluts brought on by their advice and market demands.  Farming now requires computer programs - and not just to work out how much hay to give the cow in the milking shed. 

Perhaps it is good we have moved on from the "shoe box record keeping" of the farmers of my childhood but the idea farming is "easy" still exists. Farming is not easy. It has never been easy and the new tax regulations are just making it harder. If politicians thought about where the food for their "business" lunches came from would it make a difference?  

   

It is Census day

and we are all supposed to be counted. I have filled out the form on-line and most people probably will do it that way. It will make putting the results together and analysing them much faster...but will it really tell the government what it needs to know?

A census is supposed to assist in planning for the future. The most famous census in history was supposed to do that...and tell the Romans how much they could expect in the way of taxes.

Yes, it is important to know how many people were in the country on the night...and whether they are residents or visitors. The form does not ask you about residents who are out of the country on the night.

The form asks you which languages you speak at home. It does not ask if you speak another language elsewhere or if you can use another language. 

The form asks you for "sex assigned at birth". That's a fair question. It goes on to ask how you "identify" with respect to "gender". Was that really necessary? Are we suddenly going to have ten or twenty percent of people deciding to identify as something other than their assigned sex and is that so important that it has to be part of the census? 

There are other questions that could be simplified. There was no category for "Christian" in the question asking about religion. There was one for "no religion" and there are some very public figures who are currently trying to encourage people to use that if they no longer go to church, chapel, mosque, temple or synagogue. That people might believe something and not attend a place of worship is apparently not something of importance to them. It might also be said nothing was asked about "Sunni" or "Shia" in relation to Islam, 

I went on through the form and finished feeling as if the really important things had been left out. There was no question about undertaking any sort of physical activity. In this sports mad country that might be very useful to know.  Did you play sport in the past week or go for a walk or ride a bike or swim? Do these things matter? We are told they do.

And there was the other question they did not ask....have you used you local library. There are figures from elsewhere that the use of libraries is far higher than the government wishes to acknowledge. They are the most used resource in the community, far above even the beloved ovals and courts of sport. We should have been investigating that.

Instead of these things the "gender diversity" crew had their questions included. They will now use the results to demand more specialist places and services while telling us how we need to be inclusive. 

I just wish the census had been a bit longer and a bit more inclusive.  

Unschooling?

There are apparently around three thousand children in this state who do not attend school. Some of them are being "home-schooled" but others, according to something I have just read, are being "un-schooled". 

I had not heard this term before but apparently around seven hundred or so children in this state are not on any sort of regular time table. They are apparently deciding what they will do and when they will do it almost all the time. There is supposed to be some sort of "learning plan" but they are exempt from the other requirements.

I wonder how that works. Are they actually learning? I suppose they must be but what are they learning? 

According to the article the unschooling approach accommodates children with autism and ADHD.  Perhaps it does.

I have a friend who, due to a disability, did not attend school until she was thirteen. She had a range of people who helped her learn but she largely taught herself. I say that advisedly. A... was a self-starter. She wanted to know things. From a very early age she was curious about everything. She was reading at two and has never stopped. I know people think it has all been easy for her but in reality she has worked extremely hard. There was a timetable of sorts. It was flexible. It had to be because her teachers were not always available.  A...found school frustrating. I remember her complaining about the amount of time that was wasted there changing lessons, waiting for a teacher and for the rest of the class to catch up. She ended up at a very well known university. There she has written books and her lectures are popular. The latter surprises many people. It does not surprise me. She understands "learning". I often wonder what would have happened if she had gone to school from the usual age of five. "Unschooling" suited her.

I wonder how many children "unschooling" really suits though. The problem is that the rest of the world does not work that way. Most people's work involves routines. There are regular tasks that need to be done and done at certain times.  If you have gone through your school age years not needing to do that then how do you cope? 

 

Old family photographs can be

interesting, frustrating, infuriating, dull and matters for debate. Who is the person third from the left in the front row? Is that Uncle S.... in the back row? Which one is Aunt J... and which one is Aunty R....?

Brother Cat came across a photograph last week and sent it on to me and Middle Cat to see how many people we could identify. He could remember the occasion but could only name a few in the extended family photograph. 

I have not heard from Middle Cat. She has probably only glanced at the photo as she is in the middle of helping the sister of the man who died last week.  I only found time to look at the photograph last night. Brother Cat had named the few people he knew correctly but, quite rightly, assumed I would know more.

The event was the family gathering we had to celebrate the Golden Wedding Anniversary of my paternal grandparents. Both of them came from large families. There were eleven in Grandpa's family and nine in Grandma's. Not all of them were there of course as some were no longer alive and others had moved a considerable distance away. Those that were there must all have been living in the city by then.  

I found the photo disturbing. Yes of course many people in the photo were elderly even then (my grandparents married rather late) and I did not expect them to still be with us. It is what you expect with a very old photograph and this one was taken half a century ago.

It was not that which disturbed me as much but two other ideas. The first was that so many marriages do not last a great many years now. I was talking to a teacher recently and she mentioned that just over half the children in her class are from "single parent or blended families".  Her school is in a "good" area. I could not help wondering what other schools might be like.

The second thought I had was that the photo was of a family occasion - the sort which does not happen as often now. Of course that relates to the breakdown in so many marriages. It also relates to the smaller family sizes. I am one of four. Both my parents were one of only two but that was exceptional at the time. My paternal grandparents wanted more children but my grandmother was unable to carry them to full time. My maternal grandparents would have stopped at one if the first had been a boy. They did not really want children at all. It was all so unlike the eleven in my paternal grandfather's family and the nine in my grandmother's. And Grandpa's family was particularly close and supportive. Even my generation maintains contacts within it.

I wonder what will happen if people come across photos fifty years from now? Will they know any of those people? Will they recognise others? Will any contacts have been maintained? What sort of society will they be living in? 

Does anyone else find it disturbing? 

Speech and sign language or....

just speech? The perennial issue came up in a discussion on a website yesterday. There are strong views on either side when discussing the education of the profoundly deaf.

I am in the "speech and sign language" camp. I have been right from the first time I met a profoundly deaf person. She was a girl about my own age. We managed to maintain a sort of friendship for as long as the long bus journeys back to our homes in the country took. 

It was very clear to me even then that lip reading cannot do all the work for the vast majority of people born with a profound hearing loss. Lip reading requires intense concentration. No two people speak in quite the same way. It is impossible to lip read some people. To ask a person with a profound hearing loss to rely on nothing but speech is unreasonable. It adds immensely to the stress of their lives - and often the lives of those around them.

Of course the argument is made that allowing the deaf to sign from a young age means they will not make the effort to lip read or communicate with speech. It is an argument I have heard many times. I disagree. Other people feel differently.

I was not really involved in the discussion yesterday. I was much more concerned with trying to sort out something else. Despite that I was trying to keep an eye on what was being said and eventually found a moment to add something that is not being addressed in most discussions. 

It is this. Deafness is a very, very isolating thing. It is even more isolating if you do not have spoken language learned naturally as a child. The acquisition of sign language can be just as important here. Older people need stimulation just as much as younger people. A profoundly deaf person who cannot sign also has to make a far greater effort to communicate. If they do not have the capacity to use a sign language they are at even greater risk of developing dementia because they are not getting the same level of stimulation.

Age related deafness is of course common. Many people mask it well. They unconsciously learn some lip reading skills among people they know. They rely on other cues as well. The problems associated with all this should concern all of us but they are not the same as the problems are for a person who has always been profoundly deaf. We need to be aware of that. Wanting a child to be "only aural-oral" may seem right to parents and others but it may not be the best thing for the child, especially later in life. If both speech and sign can be achieved might that not be a better option?  

There was a violent altercation

in the street yesterday. Two boys from the local high school were pounding each other and another, much smaller boy, was sitting on the footpath with blood streaming from his head.

I was about to stop (very cautiously) when someone else came running up. One of those fighting ran off and the two who were left were being questioned by someone who obviously knew them. I left them all to it.

What was going on I do not know. I suppose I do not want to know but I am aware that there has been more of this sort of behaviour since the Covid lock downs. There is less tolerance. 

The one sitting on the pavement obviously has Chinese parents. That might have been enough. There was an article about the origins of Covid in the paper and it might, if a parent had said something, caused a teenager to say something to a younger and more vulnerable child.

It could have been anything else at all. The young one sitting on the pavement may not have been blameless. That two more were fighting in a serious, hard way was what I found so disturbing. There were the occasional physical altercations at schools I went to but I was never aware of anything quite as serious as yesterday's violence,

Yes, it was violent. I found it quite frightening. I have been left wondering whether the amount of violence seen on screens has left us somehow believing that this is how we now settle arguments. Is there any room left for discussion and negotiation in our lives?

It is not helped by those in authority who appear to condone violence even when they appear to be condemning it.   

"No you may not go and protest"!

Apparently school students are "going out on strike" to "protest" next week. They are "protesting" against "racism".

Now I will protest against "racism" too. Nobody should ever be treated as any less or more worthy on the basis of their identity. I could not care in the least what colour your skin is or where you come from. My only concern is the colour of your thinking and how you care for other people.

Does it mean I would go out and "protest" like the students are being urged to do? Absolutely not. 

The protest is supposedly about a far right political group, one currently (and alarmingly) popular in the pseudo-polling done by the so-called "polling" companies.  The protest is being organised by the leader of the national student union. That person is a member of a group called "Socialist Alliance". It is about as far left as it is possible to get without actually saying "old style Communist". It is inevitable the two will clash. 

Students, many of them secondary school students, are being "encouraged" to walk out of classrooms and attend the "rallies" being organised. All this can now be organised via social media.

We could not have done anything like this as teenagers. There was no social media. We would not even have considered doing it. The closest anyone came to anything like it were the few brave souls who skipped school for an afternoon.  The reason they did it was to see the plane carrying the Beatles land at the airport. There were not many of them who did it. I did not know anyone who did it,

We were kept firmly in school. Our Latin teacher had an alarm clock with her. It rang at the moment the plane was supposed to be landing.

I was asked last night what I would do now if students left to attend a protest. My answer was, "Nothing."  I would say nothing. I would instead have set a series of short tests which counted towards final marks in the subjects they missed. I would inform them of my intention. I would tell them the tests would not be repeated. They would tell me it was "not fair" and I would agree that life is "not fair".  I might suggest they write me a piece about the issues they were protesting about, why they felt so strongly about it and how protesting had helped. When they had done that then we could discuss it...actually discuss it.

Of course I would almost certainly be overruled in all of this by a school principal worried about the potential publicity, one who might even believe they should be protesting. My fellow teachers would be equally and possibly vehemently opposed to my proposed actions. I would perhaps even be accused of supporting the far right. After all if you do not support the far left you must surely support the far right? That there might be a much more reasonable and balanced position somewhere between them is not to be contemplated.

I am grateful I am not the school principal who will have to handle this. I also wonder how the student organising all this is doing in their studies. 

  

"When did you retire?"

is a question which may not be asked quite so often in the future.  The idea of continuing to work beyond the "usual" retirement age - now sixty-seven - was apparently being explored on a television program last night. 

I did not watch the program. I was working. I have not "retired". 

That said, I do not do the excessively long hours I once did. I am more willing than I once was to hand on work to younger people. 

"But you have time to do it!" I am told. Perhaps I do, although I have less time than many people realise. Time is not the issue. The issue is making sure that people younger than I am are ready and able to take over. 

I worked hard all through the Covid pandemic. There were not nearly so many people going out into the crisis and disaster zones for the sort of purpose which might need a communication device. There was an opportunity to train up other people, encourage them to take over where I was leaving off. In a way Covid did me a service.

But I saw the advertisements for the program aired last night. There was someone in their nineties "still working". Someone else said they could not afford to retire or they would be homeless. Someone else said liked working so much he saw no need to retire. 

I was taught Leaving (approximately old style "O" level) mathematics by a man who was seventy-seven at the time. This was in a church boarding school. He was not the only older member of staff and, like at least one other, he should not have been there. He was not a good teacher. If it had not been for a mathematically brilliant student the rest of us would have been lost. I am forever grateful to that boy. He was aware of how poor the teaching was and he would give anyone who wanted it another quick but much better explanation in five or ten minutes at lunch time.  I knitted him a football beanie in return because he gave the rest of us so much help.

The Senior Cat "retired" in name only. He went on teaching until two days before his death. He did it differently though. Instead of restoring order to problem schools he taught individual pupils. One of them stopped me only yesterday and said, "I wish your father was still around. I'd so like to him I've been promoted." It would have delighted the Senior Cat. His idea of retirement was to take it a little more slowly and enjoy the challenge of helping someone who found learning difficult.

I wonder about other people though. A real estate agent Middle Cat and I both know has just retired at eighty. Her house selling record was extraordinary but the firm she worked for was taken over by another company. They do things differently and she was not comfortable with the idea of a "hot desk". When we met in the supermarket she told me, "I suppose I am old fashioned but I liked the idea of knowing I had my own space organised the way I like it." 

Perhaps then this is one of those things which will cause people to retire. The nature of work will change. It will change to a degree where older people no longer feel comfortable with the way things are done. I have long since adapted to computer based work - but can I adapt to AI?

Like the Senior Cat though I have other things I want to do. I want to write other things. I want to make things. I want to go on helping some of the much younger students with their essays - and give the occasional able but unmotivated student some encouragement. There is a huge gap in my life left by the Whirlwind but there is another young one who needs support...and the Senior Cat would encourage it. 

I hear people say they will do "this" or "that" in retirement. Sometimes I wonder whether they will do anything at all. Is it why they sit for hours over a "coffee" in the local shopping centre? Is it why they "go for a walk" but it is really just a bored stroll around the block? Do they have hobbies or are they really spending hours watching sport and scrolling on their screens?

Today I have a friend coming. She will turn ninety at the end of the month - and looks ten years younger. She takes a lively interest in the world. If I suggested she was "retired" she would smile and say something like, "Not really. I just don't get paid the way I once did." 

  

Identifying a body is not

a pleasant thing to do. It was something Middle Cat had to do yesterday. As a retired physiotherapist and because it was someone we both knew rather than a family member it was less disturbing than it might have been. Still, despite all the problems he represented, we both felt saddened by the death of this person. 

S...was morbidly obese. His death at the age of sixty-four will not surprise anyone. Middle Cat and I are actually surprised he did not go at least ten years ago.

My association with his family stretches back to my time in teacher training college. I knew his sister there. She was one of those students "everyone" knows. Her lovely Greek name would have been enough but she also had (and still has) a lively personality to go with it.

I met her father later, one of the many "old" Greek men in the district. He was the sort of man I greeted in Greek, not English. He spoke English but a sort of politeness dictated I use the Greek "kalimera" in the mornings. 

And then, still later, I met S...  Middle Cat sent him over one day because I was having computer problems. 

"S... should be able to fix it. He's very, very good at fixing that sort of thing. I will just one warn you though, he's very overweight." That was an understatement. How Middle Cat managed to get him to visit us is something of a mystery. He avoided strangers. He shopped at the very beginning or the very end of the day. There had to be as few people around as possible. The rest of the time, apart from visits to the doctor or his "computer mate", he hibernated at home. He did on line courses to keep up his Centrelink payments but the reality was that nobody would consider employing him. He was on and off "sickness" benefits and alternated them with "unemployment" and occasional "disability" benefits.  He would do a bit of remote work from time to time...and he would come to visit me and the Senior Cat. 

We all tried to get him to diet but nothing worked. He had no will power at all. His eating habits were wild and unpredictable. His sleeping patterns were equally unpredictable. Knowing I would be up (and almost certainly working) he would phone me at six in the morning. He would eat breakfast with us. I would restrict him to just two slices of homemade bread.  He would accept this, do whatever he had come to do or wait for me to read the seemingly endless forms he had to fill in.  Those things done he would hoist himself in to his beat up old car and go again until the next time. In between he would phone me with questions about things which were worrying him.  Yes, he was distinctly odd. 

Last year and the year before he spent time in hospital but it did nothing for his weight. He phoned me from there one day as the afternoon tea trolley was going around and complained there were no biscuits and no bananas. Once home again he was back to old eating habits.

His clothing had to be made for him. His sister, who lives in another country, would order it for him. 

The house was, and still is, full of things he would order on line. I am not tidy but Middle Cat says are homes look sterile compared with his. You had to negotiate your way through. 

Yesterday my BIL was on his way out when he saw the police cars there and an ambulance just arriving. Knowing the other neighbour who has done so much to help was not home Middle Cat went over to say she was one of the people S... used. She was asked to identify the body lying on the floor. Hopefully it was a quick death but there has to be an autopsy. At least his sister did not see him like that. 

I thought back to the last time we talked. He had, as always, phoned me at a very early hour. I had told him what he needed to do and left it at that. Now of course I wish I had spent a little longer listening to him. He was a lonely man, a very lonely man.