Working from home

should not be a "right". It may be something some people can be fortunate enough to negotiate but it should not be a right enshrined in law. 

It would be patently unfair to do this...and so it is what the government in a neighbouring state is trying to do. That news has been in the media over the past few days. It is there this morning in an article by one of the columnists. 

The columnist has raised the issue by saying one of his mates owns a furniture business. When attempting to employ new people apparently questions are being asked about whether they can "work from home". How can you work from home if you are supposed to be selling a sofa or a kitchen table and chairs in a showroom? 

Teachers, members of the medical professions, emergency service personnel, carers in nursing homes, cleaners, transport workers and shop assistants are just some of the people who obviously cannot work from home. Why then should anyone else have the "right" to work from home? What makes them so special?

Yes, I know the arguments about it allowing some people to care for their families as well. I know the arguments about dropping the kids off at school and picking them up later. I know the arguments about "saving money" and not needing to spend time travelling to and from work.

I also know from actual observation that some people abuse the privilege. They meet someone for "coffee" in the shopping centre. Oh they have their laptop out. They pretend to be "working" but in reality it is a nice little social interlude. 

"I suppose I had better go and do some work," one such WFH person told me yesterday. He had wandered in to the shopping centre in search of coffee and a bun after dropping the kids off at school and going to the gym. It was well after ten in the morning. My morning had begun late too - the meeting didn't start until 5:30am - and I had done almost two more hours on top of that. I had been to the library as well. I am supposedly "retired" so perhaps I am allowed to be a little lazy...or maybe not. I grabbed the things I needed and left again because I need to get something done before I go to a funeral this afternoon. As I pedalled off I saw him walking slowly across the car park. His car was probably parked there. 

There are people who really do work when they WFH of course. They are the rare and disciplined people who have strict routines. They do not get distracted. Their roles allow it but they will still go into their workplace at regular times. They are available when needed. They are not picking the kids up from school or having coffee with a friend or doing their weekly shop on work time. 

Yesterday a friend called me and asked, "Cat can the kids come to you for an hour or so after school? It's my day off but I have been called in to a meeting and I need to see what is going on. I should be back a bit after four."

Yes, they could. They go to the local primary school. The older one will walk the younger one safely here. They will do any homework at the table. I will give them a snack and drink if they need it. They will read or draw until their mother picks them up. Attending a meeting on her day off is not unusual. She is a busy hospital doctor. I am happy to help because she cannot WFH. Her patients are in a hospital bed. It was also her day off and she was working.

"If you can work from home like that someone else can do your job from an even more remote location," she told me of the gym goer when she came to get her two. She had one of those "one of my patients has just died" looks I know all too well. It is inevitable in her area. You can't do her sort of work by staying at home. She hugged me and went off making plans with her two boys to make a favourite meal for their father. He will eat it when he gets home from his long shift at a different hospital. WFH is something they will never do but they will be catching up on the "paperwork" after the boys are in bed tonight.   

The abortion bill

failed in the Lower House last night. It had been presented in the upper house of our state parliament by one of those members of parliament I call "single issue" members.  

Let me try and explain that. They are people who go into parliament with one issue that is of extreme importance to them. Getting elected in order to deal with that issue has been the most important thing to them. They recognise that other things will need to be dealt with but they will do everything they can to get their issue dealt with before anything else.

These people do not usually make the best members of parliament. They inevitably forget they are there to represent the people who elected them. Those who elected them may have elected them for other reasons entirely, often because they are members of a political party the elector "always" and unthinkingly supports.

In this instance the member has not even stayed with the party she stood for at election time. She has moved to another party, one which supported her bill.

I have never had to face the abortion issue at a personal level. I do know people who have and I know it is an issue surrounded by intense debate. My personal feeling, as far as I believe I can have one, is that it is an issue that is best left for the woman who is pregnant to discuss with those she chooses. The decision should be hers. The idea that parliament can legislate a blanket decision in one way or the other is something I find disturbing.

It will be interesting to see what is said in the media over the next few days. Will the outcome be largely ignored? Will those who voted for the bill be interviewed? Will they be criticised? Will the activists make another attempt? 

It is likely the supporters of the bill will not go away quietly. They have stirred up public opinion. They will be expressing forms of righteous anger at the outcome. That there are many other issues to be dealt with in parliament will be of little importance to them. Failure is not an option for people with such strongly held beliefs. For them this is not democracy at work. They will see it as a failure of democracy. 

This is an issue which stirs up public debate but for many people there is no "right" or "wrong" here. There is no room for debate. The view they hold is the only possible one.  There can be no possibility of "agreeing to disagree". 

It all reminds me of too many other issues right now...or perhaps I am just wrong about everything.  

 

I was told of two deaths

yesterday. 

The first was of one of the regular dog walkers. I had actually known of her much longer than that. Her mother was a teacher in a school with which I was associated. It was obvious this woman was the cause of some anxiety even as a teenager.  She was "scatty", forever "getting into strife". I heard many tales about her. 

Somehow she married and had a child. The marriage did not last. The child, now an adult, mothered her own mother. She checked every day.  

She ended up living in the house her mother had lived in. It was on my regular bike route at the time. I knew, and still know, the people who live opposite that house. The husband had to sort out more than one issue with water, with electricity, with something falling down and more. Her three barking dogs were an irritation to the entire neighbourhood.  She would spend hours walking them. In summer she would put them all in her battered little car and they would head off to the beach.  Eventually there were two dogs and then just one.

I sorted out some minor legal issues for her more than once. "Because you know about these things Cat. I don't. Things confuse me." They did too. She was not trying to be helpless. She really was incompetent. You could tell her to do something and then watch her struggle to do it in the way she had been told. Left and right confused her of course but up and down did too. 

I saw her last week. She was tying her dog up next to the place I park my trike. We spoke to each other. I thought she seemed even vaguer than usual, a little slower too. She was several years younger than I am but, as someone else my age remarked that day, "She looks so much older but she is so accident prone."

I was told she had walked the dog one last time in the rain. Then she went home and lay down on the bed and did not get up again. It was a shock for her daughter but I suspect it might also be a relief. She was a responsibility for all of us but, somehow, we will miss her.

The other death was of a woman much closer in age to the Senior Cat, ten years younger perhaps at the time. I met her once when I was about eight. She was the daughter of Brother Cat's second grade teacher. For some reason we were visiting the teacher at home and she happened to be there. 

Even then she was an organised person. Her parents had a wonderful garden and she had another such garden. How she found time to do it is a mystery to most people. She had a career in nursing. She married and had three children. One of the children is profoundly deaf. Her husband was badly injured in an accident and it left him with a brain injury and unable to work. She carried on and became involved in several arboreal projects as well. 

When my mother died she kept up contact with the Senior Cat. She would appear occasionally with something from her garden. He would respond in kind. We had invitations to her home. She was there at his funeral and talked positively of his garden. 

It was only her own ill health in the last few years which meant she moved out of her home reluctantly. Several months back someone else brought her to see me. We had a wonderful morning tea full of silly and amusing stories and reminisces. 

I was quite literally about to finish sending an email to organise a visit to her when the email appeared telling me of her death. I scrapped the email and sent another off to someone else. Did they need food for the refreshments after the funeral? The response came back later in the day. No, they don't. She had already organised for caterers to deal with it. Only the tea and coffee need to be dealt with and that would be enough.  It was typical of her thoughtfulness and her ability to organise. The church will be full.

They were two such different people. I went to bed last night wondering how the first person would have turned out if the second person had been her mother. 

What is the point of travelling

if you only want the sort of food you could get at home?

In the hope of some useful hints I have been following a "travel" page. On that page this morning there was someone asking if it was okay to bring her "snacks" with her. Her argument was that it would be good to have some "familiar" food. This was particularly so if she was feeling tired or concerned about the food around her. The list of things she wanted to take sounded enough to feed her while she was there.

I could understand this if you were going to a country where the culture and food were very different. My parents went to China with a couple who took food for the entire trip because they did not trust the available cuisine. (This was almost forty years ago. I trust things are different now.) My parents tried the local cuisine.They liked some of it but not all of it. They took the advice of the tour guide though and saw it as part of the experience.

I have not travelled to any place with a wildly different cuisine but I ate Chinese style in Singapore because that is what my friend cooks. (In the supermarket where we bought a little food for breakfast we might have been shopping at the local supermarket here. The brands and packaging were identical.) I have eaten Korean food with Korean friends. I have eaten Japanese sushi with caution because of the vinegar (and had, sadly, to curtail the experience). I have eaten Indonesian and Malaysian food cooked by students I was tutoring. I have tried all sorts of cheeses and sausages and breads in Europe. I have tried (and rejected) haggis. I am not fond of meat. I would be cautious in some places but only because I do have a couple of genuine allergies.  I like to explore within those boundaries if cleanliness is part of the experience.

Food exploration should be one of the pleasures of life if we are fortunate enough to go on the journey,  

Last year Middle Cat and I travelled with one "emergency" food item each. That was on the advice of the travel agent who booked our tickets. There was a chance we would be delayed for several hours between planes. Yes, there would be food at the airport but it would be expensive and not what either of us would want to eat when flying.  In the end we did not need it but it was 50gms each of security I suppose. I ate very little on the plane. The lovely hostess was a bit concerned but I did not need it - just give me enough liquid please, preferably water or juice.

Of course I was thoroughly familiar with British food. Put me in a supermarket there and most things are familiar even now. They are often the same brand. The names of most things are the same. If I want something "different" or "local" I know I am going to have to look for it. There is plenty to be found. 

I came home with two packets of what my BIL called "birdseed biscuits" (seeded crackers to those of you in the USA) and that was simply because there is nothing quite like that here. 

The four Palestinian Activists

just sent to prison in England were not sentenced as "terrorists". They were sentenced based on the damage they had done to both people and property. In sentencing the judge took into account the reason for their offending and "terrorism" was perhaps mentioned but it was not how a finding of guilt came about.

There were a great many comments in my Twitter feed about the situation. Some were in sympathy with those who have gone to prison. Others felt they had received a fair sentence. Still more would have liked the sentences handed down to be far longer. Almost all of them failed to understand how the sentences were decided. Perhaps the media could have done a better job of explaining - but that would involve using words the protestors and their supporters would find offensive. 

My view? If you want to protest then do not break the law. There is no point in breaking the law. It is not going to gain you any sympathy. There are better ways of protesting. 

There are also better ways of getting things changed.

I have no sympathy with those who head off in a "flotilla" to challenge a naval blockade. It might be a feel good exercise that gets a lot of publicity but not all of that has been positive. The "protestors" were putting their lives at risk. (No, it was not from the navy which blocked them.) Yes, their views might get some air time but in reality they are not going to change the situation by doing that. 

Do you want to change something you see as wrong? Mobilise a lot of people to write to your members of parliament or send letters to the media. Do not buy the products of a company you think is breaking the law. Ask others to do the same.  Get public figures on side. Ask them for an interview if you know they sympathise. 

It is hard work. The "feel good" adrenaline fix is not there. It is just hard slog. It probably will not achieve rapid results. It may not achieve the desired result at all - but protesting in a way that breaks the law is even less likely to achieve results. People believe it will of course. It may even seem that it has but the reality is that behind those protests are a lot of ordinary people who have protested in a law abiding way.  Those with the ultimate power to do something will listen to them first.

So someone donates $200m towards

housing returned servicemen, men too old and frail to work...and people are complaining. 

The same person has just donated another plane to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. That makes two now...and people are complaining. 

That comes on top of around $800m in tax last year...which does not take into account all the other expenses of employing the people who also work for the companies which raised the money to pay the taxes.

Apparently it is wrong to be "rich", the "billionaire" sort of rich. No, I am not talking about the world's first "trillionaire". There is a funny little red line under that one. I am not sure that sort of money is the sort anyone understands, not even the person who is apparently "that person". 

No, the person in question is a fairly ordinary sort of billionaire. They had a great start having inherited from "daddy's company" but most of it since then has come from hard work. It has come from the hard work of themselves and other people.  This does not make them popular. 

I have often wondered what I would do with a great deal of money. A "millionaire" was a rarity when I was a childhood. I most certainly did not know anyone who was a millionaire. Inflation has changed that. I sometimes wonder what the millionaires of my childhood did with their wealth but I do not remember people talking about it much. I suspect that any generosity on their part was done more quietly. There was no social media for others to talk about it.

It is the comments by others that have irritated me in the past few days. Someone said the donor of the $200m "probably spends more on lunch" and that it was "probably tax deductible". The returned servicemen's organisation saw that donation very differently. They were grateful for it. The donor will have seen that it goes where it needs to go too. That is how they have become as wealthy as they are.

No, I do not envy that ultra-wealthy person. I suspect life if actually very difficult for them. They would be working many hours a week. They know the decisions they make affect the employment of the thousands of people they employ and ripple outwards into the community. The plane they donated to the flying doctor service might well be used by one of their employees in an emergency. There are other programs they fund for the same sorts of reasons. In part these are business decisions. They have taken on huge responsibilities. I would not want to take on those responsibilities.

I wonder whether those criticising the donations being made think the life of a billionaire is simply long "business" lunches and dinners?  

School assemblies

as I knew them are a thing of the past.

For me it meant the entire school lining up in rows - under the watchful eyes of our teachers. We did this outside of course. Our schools did not have "gyms" or "halls". Most schools did not even have any sort of sound equipment beyond a microphone.

School assemblies were held on Fridays unless there was something special to be announced or some sort of special event. On Fridays however we lined up, "stood up straight" and we went ahead with the words about being "proud" and "saluting the flag" and honouring the monarch of the day. We sang the old national anthem and a song about our country. 

It never made me feel proud or pleased. I found the whole ritual rather dull. I thought of other things even as I mouthed the words. I suspect many other children felt the same way. It was just something we did. Yes, I have mentioned this elsewhere.

The topic came up in the paper this week. We had a young columnist asking about the new national anthem. Apparently it is not sung in some schools because of "cultural sensitivities".  These are not just indigenous sensitivities either. These are the sensitivities of newer immigrants to this country. 

S.... called in yesterday and we were talking about it. Her two grandchildren have assemblies but they are not assemblies as we knew them. Her grandchildren have been required to walk around a ceremonial fire of some sort. They have been required to put their hands on the ground and chant "always was, always will be aboriginal land". They have been required to write "sorry" letters to aboriginal people following assemblies in which they are told they are living on "stolen" land.

From talking with other parents and grandparents in many schools this sort of thing is apparently not unusual. It follows on what is being taught in classrooms...and that is what the curriculum requires.

"So, how are they supposed to learn to be proud of their country?" S... asked me. It's an interesting question.

The national anthem changed while I was living outside the country. I never had a chance to have my say. If I had been here I would have campaigned against the present anthem. As I have said more than once it sounds like a "dirge". There were alternatives but I suspect the vote was rigged in favour of what the Prime Minister of the day decided.  

I wonder if a more singable alternative would have made any difference. Would more people know it, would they sing it? 

The reality is that almost everyone I know only know the first few words of the current national anthem. We have long since lost any interest in reciting words about being "proud". The country we knew is very different from the current we know now. 

Change can be good but I wonder what the very young would think if they had to do what we did...and how do they feel about what they are required to do.