No, HE IS a man

and he should not be competing against a woman in something which is titled "women's".

Yes, I know I have made it quite clear that I do not care for the Olympics or all the fuss. Now may I also make it quite clear that I do not care for "boxing" too? 

I think the so called "sport" of boxing is not a sport at all. It is just downright dangerous at the best of times. The idea that you punch someone until they fall over and get "knocked out" leaves me cold. There is nothing "sporting" about it. I do not believe it teaches people anything except cruelty. 

Now there are apparently questions about the sexuality of some of those supposedly competing in the Olympics in the boxing classes. There are complaints, I suspect very valid complaints, that some of those competing in the women's classes are not women at all. They are men. 

Yes, I know there will be people who will scream "transgender people have rights" but this is not about transgender rights at all. It is about physical differences. Men are not women. They are built differently. There is no medical procedure which can change the fact that men tend to be taller, stronger and faster than women. Even men who have undergone a "sex change" will have an advantage.

The men who compete as women are perhaps not the best athletes. They would almost certainly not beat a field of male runners but they can still have an advantage over women. There are reports of this, of women who have trained long and hard only to be beaten by men who masquerade as women. Is that really fair?

All that though pales against the idea that a man can go into a boxing ring as a "woman" and compete against a woman. Even with all the medical procedures and treatment men will have an advantage. It is a very dangerous advantage. They could very easily land a punch which will kill. You can say it is foolish of women to want to box at all, and yes it is, but if they do then they should not be expected to face up to a man however he identifies.

I cannot imagine how anyone who throws a fatal punch in that so called "sport" would feel...and why should those responsible for not only allowing but encouraging it feel any different? Surely this is wrong? 

The post office is there as a

service. It is not there to "make a profit". It should be a government run service. It should not be a private enterprise. 

Like banks post offices are an essential service. Yes it may well be that not as many letters are sent these days. I had a letter yesterday. It told me that the health fund I belong to is "going digital".  I don't like that for a number of reasons, not least because there are still people who do not have access to the internet. Many of them are elderly. Others are too poor or are unable to read. There are security risks. 

Send a letter to someone and unless there is a very deliberate act of opening something not addressed to you then the contents are private. Send an email and a hacker can read it. They can get the most personal and private information about you. It is the way the world now works.

Some years ago now a young man I know was at a Christmas party with his parents. He was talking to someone very senior in a government department charged with security. The very senior man was telling him there was no way the site under discussion could be hacked. The young man told him something like, "If you assure me I will not be prosecuted for doing so then I will show you it can be done." Yes, the challenge was there. It was taken up and the young man, still at school, proved him wrong. He was not prosecuted but he was hauled in to show them what he had done. He now works in that field.  It is a constant battle to keep things secure. We have recently been shown that "human error", a misplaced something, an extra digit or some other small thing can have catastrophic results.

This is why, like it or not, we still need some information to be sent in other ways. 

Add to that too. We need a postal service because we cannot send actual objects over the internet - or not yet. Not everything can go by expensive courier services.  I ordered some "glow in the dark" yarn for someone yesterday. Imagine sending that over the internet. In a secure packet it will not be glowing. It will not cause alarm.

But post offices are closing down in the way banks are closing down. I can still prowl into our local post office. The people behind the counter know me. They have worked there a long time and I have been using it for a long time. Out in the street we can say hello to each other by name. I even get shown pictures of new pups on their  phones. How long will this go on? We lost the banks and they want to take away the ATM. 

"People don't use cash." They do of course but it means shops have to travel a distance to bank it when once an employee could simply walk a few metres into the bank.

These "closures" of essential services are not simply about not running at a loss. They are not simply about breaking even or making a profit. They are about controlling the way we do things and the amount of information being collected about us. For all we might be "embracing new technology" it is coming at a cost. It is coming at the cost of human relationships.

Perhaps I am just too old but there are things about all this I do not like - however damn "convenient" it might be!

 

Not all brain injuries are

visible. If you are reading this today I hope you will take that in and consider it carefully.

There is a story in this morning's paper which has also been commented on in the editorial. It is about a man who has had a very traumatic brain injury. It has left him unable to remember anything after 2019. He has no short term memory. He has hallucinations, terrifying hallucinations. At one point he thought he was a corn flake. He cannot work. His wife has to remind him to do everything. The strain on their relationship must be enormous but she has stuck by him.

He is the very sort of person our National Disability Insurance Scheme should be helping. They are telling him he is not eligible. 

Middle Cat knows a former police officer who had an accident in the course of his employment. He also has a brain injury. It was considered "catastrophic". To an untrained eye he looks normal. When he is tired there is a slight suggestion of a physical incapacity but that is all. Internally this man struggles too. The effort he has put in to retraining his brain so he can do things requiring multiple steps has been enormous. He is someone I have met on several occasions and I admire him but I know not to interrupt him if he is doing something because he cannot cope with interruptions. He needs to focus just on the task he has set himself.

We all knew a farmer who fell from a horse. His wife was a teacher at a school where the Senior Cat was once the Principal. Like the other wives she stuck by him. He recovered enough to return to his work as a farmer but when he was tired his problems were obvious too.

I know other people who have had "closed brain injuries" which have been severe enough to affect their ability to function in every day life. Look at them though and you would not be aware of it. It is not until they perhaps speak or attempt to do some apparently simple task that it becomes more obvious. This is when it can become a real problem. 

I remember the man who used to catch the train at the same time as me. One of the things we needed to do was "validate" our tickets in a machine each morning. This seemingly simple task was beyond him. He would struggle each morning. I watched him for some weeks and then I spoke to him. Perhaps because I have a more obvious problem he admitted he had a problem and why he had it. He was in danger of getting a hefty fine if he did not do it properly.  It was a cause for stress each morning. He was not considered eligible for a special pass because he was actually going to work. Eventually he was given a pass he paid for but did not need to validate but he endured months of stress first. 

It is not easy if you "look like you're okay" as this man put it. There can be very real struggles there to complete every day tasks. There can be little things that can cause big problems and trying to convince others that they actually exist can be very stressful.  

I know that. I had an example the other day. You can get by in this world without a licence to drive. I was asked, as I sometimes am, for my "drivers' licence" because it is considered to be "photo ID". I don't have a licence. Learning to drive was beyond me. I don't have the necessary visual-spatial skills. I have a "proof of age" card instead. It has a photo on it too...and I look as normal as anyone else on that. You just don't always know. 

Poker machines are designed

to be addictive. They work on the principle of a "reward" although not many people would see it that way. The "reward" is that something happens when you press the button or pull the lever or whatever it is you do when you play. Things move, lights light up and there is a noise.  At least this is what my brief, distant observation of those infernal machines tells me. I have never  "played" on one in my life and I never wish to do so.

They have come to my attention over the last couple of days for two reasons. The first is the concerns about a teenage boy who is so heavily into "gaming" that he is failing at school and causing other serious issues at home. His parents stopped to speak to me while they were out walking their dog. (The dog stopped first. It always does.)

Then there was the article in my news feed which has been repeated in this morning's paper.  It talks about the history of poker machines in this state. It is not a pretty history.

We did not have "the pokies" here until 1994. At that time the government, under immense pressure from the hotels,  allowed them to be introduced. Until then anyone who wanted to "play the pokies" would go interstate. There were actual bus trips for pensioners to do this, day trips across the border to a neighbouring state where they could lose money. I sometimes wondered what those trips were like going out happily and then coming home in a more sombre mood?

Since then, so the article claims, $8bn have been lost to the pokies. Some of that, about forty percent, has gone into government coffers. The rest has lined the pockets of the owners of the machines - who are not necessarily the hoteliers themselves. The hoteliers have made more money with "cheap" meals and "happy hour" drinks. Neither thing really exists of course. They know they will get the money back in other ways. 

I have known people severely impacted by these games. One of them lived with his mother. She was a pension. He was on unemployment. Both of them spent almost everything they had at the local hotel. They were addicted and it showed. The house was piled high with rubbish. They were not clean. They were not eating properly. The stove did not even work and there was no microwave as a substitute. There was no washing machine. All this had gone in favour of playing the pokies. It was an extreme example and a very sad one because, despite all this, the man was one of the most polite I have ever known.

I have known three marriage break downs because of addiction to poker machines and people spending so much that rent or the mortgage or something else vital was not being paid for. I have known an employer pay someone's partner instead of the employee in an attempt to reduce the problem. 

Access to poker machines can be very, very harmful. We all know that. We have all read and heard stories of people who have committed fraud and theft to feed their addiction. The government would appear to be as addicted as those who play. The money that comes in every year goes into general revenue. It is a useful "drop" into the murky depths of government expenditure. Other people can pay for the consequences while the government keeps the powerful "hospitality" lobby happy.

I thought of all this as I read the article and thought about the boy failing at school. I knew him when he was in primary school. He was intelligent and somewhere near the top of his class. He seemed friendly and happy enough. Now he is apparently failing and moody. Perhaps I am wrong but it seems to me that an addiction to playing certain sorts of computer games can be just as harmful. They operate on the same false "reward" principle.

It really seems to me there is no reward in this at all...unless you are the owner or the designer or the government.  

Dear Bank you really

have no idea have you? 

This should be a simple transaction. Here is the bill. We wish to transfer the money I take out of this account to another account in order to pay the bill...and you cannot do it. You cannot do it because the account is with another bank.

This is what you tell me. Your bank is connected to the other bank via Osko but you cannot do it. I can pad over to the other side of the bank and they "might" do it - for a fee. Alternatively you can (please make sure you are sitting down) "write (me) a cheque" for a smaller fee. 

I opted for the cheque as there was no choice. Internet banking will not do this particular transaction so Middle Cat and I will have to wait.

And we wait, and we wait. We wait because the young man behind the counter is on his first day in the job. He has no idea what to do. He cannot even update the details I give him. He does not know how to feed material into the electronic reader. When he fails that test I tell him, "Think of the machine as a person. It reads that sheet in exactly the same way - from left to right and from top to bottom." He looks at me bemused. How do I know so much?"

"Turn the screen around so I can see it," I tell him. He looks fearfully around and the person next to him - dealing with another "complex" issue tells him, "Let her see it. She seems to know what she is doing."

I get him to a point where he can find the money which has been deposited on my card. It means we can make the actual payment. The "teller" next to him now comes to help...but insists on him doing it all himself. They both forget to ask for my "photo ID" and I pass it over telling them, "You need to write this in there or it will not go through."  Oh. The new boy painstakingly fills in the details.

By then I feel old enough to have forgotten the relevant PIN. Middle Cat heaves a sigh. I try to be nice to the new boy. Has he had any training at all? No. 

The cheque gets written. We head over to the other bank - outside the main shopping centre. Middle Cat takes the cheque in and deposits it. 

Back in the car she looks at me and says, "The nice woman in there wanted to know why the other lot had not used Osko."

We would like to know too!  

People need spaces to

pursue their interests. There are few people who would disagree with this but it has become even more obvious to me over the past few days.

The Senior Cat left a large shed full of machines and timber and the things that go with "making stuff from wood". My brother was bequeathed the machinery. He took what he could use and what timber he could use. A young nephew-by-marriage of Middle Cat took the other machinery and some more of the timber. The priest at the local church, encouraged by the Senior Cat, took up woodwork as a hobby and he took more timber. There were also screws and "biscuits" and glue, paint, tools and the like. Much of it has gone.

But there is still timber in the rafters and along the shelves at the side. It would make wonderful toys. The "Toymendous" group would like to have it. This group makes toys, lots of toys, for charity. They make very, very good toys and they always need timber. Middle Cat called them. They have nowhere to store the timber, indeed nowhere to go themselves. Their current location has to be vacated by October.

I have a valuable collection of craft books. I will not have room where I go and I offered them to a local group. I did not get a response to either email which was strange - and discourteous. It is a group I know well enough to know they could use the collection. Yesterday I phoned and was curtly informed they had discussed the matter and did not want the books. They have "no room" for them. I was not even thanked. Perhaps they were embarrassed at having to turn down something of value to their members?

Groups like this need spaces. They need room, permanent room. We spend millions of dollars each year on sporting facilities. Many of them have "club rooms" built with funding from government. Sport is considered to be a good thing, something that brings people together in an active and healthy way. Ask the government to support an equally important activity that brings people together, supports mental health, gets people out and involved and there is "no money". 

It is time to rethink our priorities when it comes to people. We need to stop assuming that everyone is interested in and capable of playing sport or that, at very least, they want to watch it. It is time to get people involved in other activities as well.  

It is more difficult to volunteer

now than it once was.

I was interested to read a front page story in this morning's paper about the concerns of our "Country Fire Service". The CFS is the organisation which is responsible for fire fighting in rural areas. They do an absolutely essential task and they do it almost entirely on the willingness and skills of volunteers. To be a CFS volunteer requires commitment and training. It is not one of those things you can simply "go out and do".

The CFS is, rightly, concerned about the increasing number of times they are also being called out to do things the police or ambulance services would once have done. "There's been an accident? Is it serious? Look we haven't anyone available right now but let's call the CFS and get them to send a vehicle out to check." Some poor individual on the volunteer roster then has to head out and check, make some decisions they are likely not qualified to make and then send in a report. 

It is not what they are there for. It is not what they are trained to do. It is not a responsibility they want or the police or the ambulance services want them to have. It is a manpower issue.  

The CFS is struggling to retain volunteers and get new recruits. This is hardly surprising.

I thought of all this because I volunteer in other places as best I can. Many years ago now I began as a volunteer at the state's annual show. This was something I never intended to do but it was one of those things which happened. I am not indispensable, far from it. Earlier this year, when asked to go again, I almost said no. The reason for that was the increasing requirements on volunteers. When I began I simply arrived and was told what to do and how to do it. It was the same for everyone. 

Three years ago they introduced a requirement that everyone did an "occupational health and safety" certificate. It is a very basic thing but (1) it takes time and (2) it is almost entirely irrelevant to the area in which I work. There are other questions they could ask which would be far more relevant. None of us are driving a fork lift or operating electrical equipment or using liquids. Nevertheless we all had to be able to show we had done the certificate and we have to carry it with us.

This year we were told that not only was that necessary but we all had to have a valid "working with children" certificate. As volunteers we do not have to pay for these but again they require time to fill out the form and follow it up if the police do not get back within a certain time.  I have mixed feelings about these certificates. They do not prevent the wrong people from working with children. It simply means that those with ill intent have not yet been caught or convicted of any offence. Still, I put in the paper work. I have my certificate. The really strange thing however is this, in the area in which I work children are not allowed. They are only allowed in an adjacent area if they are under the care of a "responsible" adult - a parent or guardian. 

There are "training days" run by at least three organisations of my acquaintance. I recently refused to do something for them because I would have been required to do a training day in order to go and help people who have "left their glasses at home" fill out a form... something I have been doing for years. The person in charge understood but the "training" is completely irrelevant to anything I would ever do there - or even could do there.

I was speaking to someone on Tuesday about this. Like me she has volunteered for a long time and said, "I have never even spoken to a child there." The certificate is just an added burden for her. It may even be that some people will simply cease volunteering. This will not be because they have done anything wrong and cannot get the certificate. It will be because it is "just another thing which makes it difficult".

Now I just wonder what one of those many committees charged with such things will think up next. It might be better if they volunteered instead.