Please do not tax education

or the books which help to do it.

There is apparently a robust discussion going on in Upover at present. Their government introduced VAT or "value added tax" into their fee paying schools. The discussion revolves around whether they were right to do this, whether it has brought in any money, what the effect is on the overall school system and more. Those who oppose any form of "private" education - oddly known as "public" by some - think this has been desirable. Others do not.

We have the same sort of discussion here. It comes on every time there is any tax payer money spent on the fee paying system. There are people who strongly oppose spending any money on the "private" school system, so much so there have been serious attempts to ban it altogether.

I went to both public and fee paying schools. My parents worked in the public system and it was natural that this was where I and my siblings should go. Then, in my last year, it was no longer possible to do that. The school I was attending, the one the Senior Cat was principal of, could no longer cater for me. It could no longer cater for anyone who wanted to complete their secondary education. This was just the way things worked in rural areas. Students who wanted to go on had to move on. 

There was a choice of course. You could head to the nearest school which taught what you needed or you could go further afield to the capital city. Going to the nearest school might be two or more hours away so your parents might find someone willing to take in a "weekly" boarder, often a relative. The school would almost certainly still have a limited range of subjects and facilities simply because it would be a "country" school.  Or you could head off to the capital city. Boarding with a family might still be an option but it was much more difficult to find. Boarding school was the answer for many families. It still is.  We could do away with all this I suppose and have state run boarding houses for students from outlying areas like they do in Shetland but is that really the answer? 

The real issue however is should those who are already being taxed pay additional tax because of the choice they make to educate their young?  Most people would see that as wrong. I see it as wrong. I see it as wrong because I do not believe you should tax education. It is education which leads to employment which leads to paying taxes and a better standard of living for everyone. Education provides the services we need. 

I know not everyone will agree. There will still be people who say adding VAT to school fees is the right thing to do. 

Will they also argue that adding VAT to books is the right thing to do? Is it right to tax people who want to read? That is what happens here. There is our equivalent of VAT, the GST (goods and services tax), on books. It is something which should never have happened. Those who do not buy books do not see this as a problem of course. They do not see it as taxing knowledge. They simply shrug and say, "If you want to read..." 

I do not see reading in the same way as I see going to a football match. If I buy a book for myself then I potentially have that book for as long as I need it. The football match is over in a few hours and most of it, if not all, is forgotten a few months later. Information inside a book, or just the story itself, can remain with you forever. 

Education, including all means of accessing it, should surely not be subject to additional forms of tax? No doubt the topic will be back under robust debate when the next budget is being handed down.  

  

No, parents must be responsible

and be held responsible. You are not going to get children under sixteen off social media by trying to make "big tech" responsible. It will not work...or rather, it might work but not in the way the government intends.

I am fed up with the "ban". It is not working. You only have to walk through the shopping centre after school is out or watch the gang waiting to catch the train. You only need to be anywhere under sixteens are gathered and more than one of them will have a phone out and they will be looking at video clips and more. Of course they will. They have the technology in their hands.

The answer to banning under sixteens from social media is complex of course, even answering the question of whether they should be banned is not a simple "yes" or "no". The problem is that the government brought in legislation which has a secondary purpose. This is not about getting under sixteens off social media. It is about controlling social media. 

If they had simply wanted to prevent under sixteens from using social media then most use could have been wiped out instantly by making it illegal for an under sixteen to have a phone. That would have been the most radical solution. Parents would not have accepted that. They would have cited all sorts of "safety" reasons. 

There is an obvious answer then isn't there? Under sixteens can only have phones with a limited number of functions. They "need" phones that can make and receive calls, make and receive text messages. What else do they need for "safety"? Nothing. Such phones exist. They are not expensive. They are far cheaper than the phones which can access social media. They work on much cheaper plans. 

There could be a government scheme for all of this. You want your child to have a phone? We will allow your child to have one from this range. It will not be able to do more than we allow. Here kids, you can choose from bright yellow, lime green, hot pink, punk purple. We will be able to see if you are using something else. If we catch you using anything else then your parents will be held to account. 

It is not the role of "big tech" to deal with this. So, why is the government doing it? The answer to that is almost certainly a desire to try and control the use of social media or, at very least, the desire to be able to monitor everything which is said and done there. When the ban on social media doesn't work they are hoping for two things. The first is that the "big tech" owners will bring in measures that drastically reduce our ability to access information. A great deal of the information out there is inaccurate but so is the information passed on to us from "official" sources. The latter however is what the government of the day wants us to know, even if it is not true.  The second is that, when the information flow has been reduced and directed in ways the government finds more acceptable they will be able to still further control the growth of AI and the forms of information which are available. 

Social media may be a "scourge" but trying to control it now is something which might be working in North Korea and might work for short periods of time in places like Iran. Is that what we want? 

Delivering a parcel should not be

difficult but it seems it is.  The group of units in which I now live have letter boxes of course but these are some distance away out by the footpath. They are not secure. We are not permitted to put any sort of lock on the box which belongs to us. 

As most people get very little paper mail this is probably of no great concern. The local "postie" tells me it never takes her long to deal with the mail for all twelve units. 

I get most of my mail, such as it is, delivered to a post office box at the local post office. It makes sense. I can access it any time. It is the "street" address we had to have when we set up the micro aid group forty something years ago. It is secure.

The problem is not with letters it is with parcels. There are some places which will not deliver to a post office box. They use "courier" services rather than post mail. That can be a problem. A parcel went missing some weeks back. I have not received compensation for that even though the courier service was well aware they were at fault.  This parcel, again something to be shared out to a craft group, was "unable to be delivered to a safe location". It is still "on board" for delivery. 

In this instance I can only assume that the person doing the deliveries is not a regular post office person. It will be one of the many people who deliver parcels outside regular hours. They have other jobs. The parcel delivery job is extra, a job to be done at nights or weekends. It might be they could not find their way down the path in the dark. Yes, the parcel might get there in the end...when they can find time. 

Someone in another unit did have a parcel delivered yesterday. The parcel delivery person was going to leave it with me. He asked if I was L... and I shook my head and pointed to the unit in question. I was talking to someone in Venezuela at the time and it was difficult enough or I might have asked if he had the parcel being delivered to me.

Getting parcels in the post is not the huge excitement it was when I was a mere kitten. Parcels were rare. They came right to the front door, delivered by someone wearing a post office uniform and a cap. Now, unless a signature is required, they get dumped wherever the delivery person decides is convenient. 

The parcel should have been here three or four days ago. I am now wondering if it will take another three or four weeks to be returned to the post office which might let me know it is available. If they do then the "it cannot go to a post office" message will make even less sense than it does now.  

Is it "free speech" or is it

something else? 

I do not watch "breakfast" television or listen to early morning radio. I do not know the person at the centre of a "row" of some sort. The person in question apparently interviewed someone whose views are unacceptable. I know very little about that someone too. From what little I do know I do not think I would care for his views either.

That said, does he have the right to be heard? It is a question which should be debated at the highest levels and it should be debated seriously. It is no good simply saying "his views are abhorrent and he must be banned".  All that is going to do is make his views even more attractive to people who are already leaning in his direction. There will be others who have not even thought in his terms who will also find his ideas attractive simply because he has been banned. They will seek him out.

His removal from breakfast television (whatever that is) has reminded me of Giggle v Tickle again. One of the people behind that, the one who is attempting to retain as "girls only" space, tried to get our ABC (the Downunder version of the BBC) to publish her side of the arguments being put forward. They have published, interviewed, discussed and more the other side of the arguments. The bias they are displaying is clear. It matters not that the ABC is the publicly funded broadcaster whose charter demands they not take sides. They are not going to allow her side to be heard...at least yet. I cannot help wondering if this will change should the matter go her way in the High Court. 

If the High Court comes down on the other side then there is no hope for us as a country. I wonder if they will even be able to do what it is clear must be done. The government certainly intends to do nothing.  Why should it? It will just upset the very vocal minority group who will be able to manipulate the media into presenting the story so that they appear to be the victims.

It is that "victimhood" approach which is so successful. Behind the scenes of some of the major media stories there is a very different story being played out. One of the few aid workers left in a war zone told me recently that a "foreign" news crew came in. They filmed a "distraught" father holding a "dead" child. When the filming was finished the child went back to what he was doing. The crew apparently did not see this as a problem "because it is the sort of thing which is happening". Is it? Quite possibly it is but is it happening in the way which the media is telling us? One side of the story will have it that there was no "real" violence surrounding the kidnappings in Israel and that no children have been abducted by Russians in Ukraine. The protests in Iran are apparently all against America and the ebola outbreak has been contained and...I could go on. 

The reality is that "free speech" is intent on selling us the story others want us to hear. Sometimes it is a reasonable representation of what is actually happening but the reality can also be very different. The people on that maritime flotilla heading to Gaza want us to believe the worst about those who perhaps prevented them from likely being, at best, taken hostage. They have succeeded in meeting the Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister. The media is telling their story - and many people believe it. Is the reality different? It might be. We are only being told one side.

It would be good to have other views sometimes, even views we find abhorrent. We need to teach children to think about what is actually being said and encourage them to search for alternative views. 

 But...speaking up has consequences.

Has the Prime Minister benefitted from

what might be called "insider trading"? 

There can be no doubt he would have had to pay another $200,000 in tax under the new regime he has just pushed through parliament. It has been pushed through in coalition with the watermelon crew. That the new regulations not only break election promises that were said to be "cast iron" they are, if economists are to be believed, going to harm the economy. 

Of course they are being sold to us as the opposite. They are supposedly going to allow "young people" to "get their foot in the door" and "allow them to climb the housing ladder". I believe none of that. 

I do not know much about economics on that scale. I have, as far as I can, to trust those who know more than I do. They know much more than I do too. I hear people who have been running successful enterprises which are making a profit and employing a growing number of people tell me "this won't work". No, explained to me I can see it won't work the way the government says it intends things to work. Their moves are going to do more harm than good.

What has really convinced me however is the behaviour of our Prime Minister. He knew what the government intended to bring in last year. He sold three properties at that time. He sold them under the "old" rules. Doing that saved him paying another $200,000 in tax. That is a lot of money. He knew it would. Was it deliberate? 

He was asked this question in parliament - and refused to answer it. The Speaker ruled it out as well. It is a simple question. He could have said it was not deliberate. He could have said he was given advice to sell for other reasons. He did not. He refused to answer the question and treated the female member of the opposition who asked it with what I will politely call "disdain"...it was rather worse than that. He got away with that too.

The government has such a large majority in the lower house that he will almost certainly get away with it - at least for now. That he may be guilty of the worst form of insider training is not something even the media seems prepared to take up seriously. There have been hints of improper behaviour, nothing more and nothing less. 

This morning's paper also carries a news story about a journalist who was required to remove an interview with a far right personality. I have no time for the person he interviewed but  does it mean this person should be silenced? It seems the media is now doing the government's bidding. Is it also doing the bidding of the government here and keeping quiet an act which, if proven, would see a business person sent to prison? 

I might be quite wrong about all this but other people are asking the same questions. Is this simply some sort of conspiracy theory that needs to be dealt with or is it a serious issue? Is it time for some answers? 

There were just eleven people at the funeral

I attended yesterday. It was by invitation only. There were just eleven of us. 

Would I have gone without an invitation, if it had been an open to all event? 

If I am honest then the answer is "no". The person being farewelled was a difficult, cantankerous, downright rude at times sort of person. I did not avoid him but I did not actively seek him out. He was simply there as one of the old people on my regular bike route. When he had to move into a nursing home I saw him only as one of the other residents when I went to visit people I thought of as friends. 

His children had long since moved to other parts of the world. They did not come back. I dealt with a few things for him but only at the request of his eldest son. His eldest son was polite about it, very polite. He was the one who gave me the invitation to attend.

"Dad wanted you there. He had no time for us. He called us "useless" when we moved away. He never forgave Mum for dying so early."

The eleven of us stood around the coffin. It was a cheap coffin, the cheapest there is. He had chosen it himself. He had chosen who would be there.  He had left the instructions to be given to his eldest son and his son had carried them out. His daughter and other son were there but no other family. There was the priest, a representative from the nursing home, three people from the funeral home, me and two former neighbours. 

I thought of the other funeral I had attended on the previous Friday. The church it was held in was full. Good things were said.

This time the priest did not seem sure what to say. Nobody else was asked to say anything. I wondered what I would have said. I think I would have said "lonely by choice". It is a hard thing to say about anyone but in this case it would be true. He chose to be lonely. 

There was no standing around and chatting afterwards but as I was about to go his daughter suddenly hugged me tightly.  He did not need to be lonely and I suspect they tried harder than he ever admitted. 

 

 

  

Being a monocultural society

is not possible is it?  The redheaded politician has been accused of calling for that. 

Dig a little deeper into what she is actually saying and it is not that but it might easily be taken that way. There are apparently a good number of people who want it too. 

I do not believe any society is "mono-cultural". There have been attempts of course but have they really succeeded? I suspect that even in the last outposts of ultra-communist countries there are differences. There will be regional history, a regional custom, a regional word in use and so on. People who live along a border will share commonalities with people who live on the other side of the border.  The idea that you can simply stop sharply at a border and have a completely different culture just does not work for me. People have been taking on language, food and all sorts of cultural practices from those around them for as long as we have existed. Trying to stop that does not work even in China or Cuba or North Korea. A tiny country like Bhutan is not immune to change any more than a large one.

Of course change was once much slower. Perhaps it was so slow we did not really believe it was taking place - but it was. 

When I was a mere kitten a trip to Europe was a major undertaking. It was the sort of thing for which people saved for many years and almost certainly only did once. Many people never did it.  They never moved off the massive island on which we live. There were a great many people who never went to another state. There were people with whom I went to school who had never been to the capital city. Some had not even been into the big fishing port at the base of the peninsula. 

An outsider might have looked at that and said "mono-cultural". They would have been wrong. There were subtle differences in language and pronunciation even there. People who lived inland did not eat fish unless they happened to be visiting that port or the other major town on the coast. People who lived along the coastline did but transporting fish inland was not done for lack of refrigeration. Now you can buy frozen fish in the nearest township which has a "supermarket". You can add a packet of frozen chips too along with and the "Chinese" or "Greek" or "Italian" ready meals. Nothing is going to change that. Our food choices are not mono-cultural. It is unlikely they have ever been that. 

As a child I ate quan dong pies because the quan dongs grew where we lived. It was "free" food and people were not wealthy. Eating kangaroo or wallaby meat was common for many people. It was food you did not need to buy. (I have tasted it and cannot handle the strong flavour of it.) Now it is an expensive "healthy" alternative you buy at a specialist butcher in the city.

More than one area in this state was settled by German migrants very far back. Go into those areas now and it is not just the names which are different but the food often is as well. There are cook books based on it. Even when I was at school there were children who came from families where German was spoken at home and they had to learn English at school. Sundays, whether you were Catholic or Lutheran, were spent at church and in communal gatherings. That has changed now but it still influences life there. 

We were never mono-cultural. We could not become mono-cultural. I can see where there is need for change however. There have been calls for "sharia law" and that concerns me. A country needs just one legal system and ours is, rightly, regarded as a good one. There are schools which have been set up for minority groups but these can be a means of isolating children from the mainstream of society. There are government funded programs designed to retain other languages and other cultures. Those things can do harm if they are used to isolate people. We need to be aware of the potential harm which can be done even when we are told to "celebrate diversity", 

Getting the balance right and doing it in the way that does the most good is what matters. We are never going to be mono-cultural.