CANZUK we do it?

There is a proposal being aired for a much stronger association between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It appears in my main Twitter feed occasionally. 

If the figures are correct then support for the proposal is high in some respects and not others. The idea of "free trade" is one which gets very high approval at around ninety-five percent. Express travel through partner countries was lowest but even that was around fifty-six percent last time a survey was conducted. 

The biggest concerns were, understandably, around housing, health care and agriculture agreements. There are also some fears about those outside the bloc being able to find ways to abuse any such agreement. 

It comes at an interesting time. Migration is under the spotlight here. It is a topic being used to advantage by the red head who leads the party considered to be "far right".  What she is saying and what others like to pretend she is saying are not quite the same thing but there are issues which must be considered. 

"We need migrants but they need to be migrants who will integrate and find their place here. They cannot be people who bring their problems and prejudices here and expect us to change. Current migration policy is almost actively encouraging the latter and not the former," one former federal politician informed me recently. As a member of the party currently in power I found that point of view interesting. 

CANZUK is unlikely to become a unified bloc for all purposes with so many issues which would need to be resolved. Right now we even have a problem with a trade agreement between us and the UK. We are told this is because of concerns about agriculture. That is only part of the story. The present government here has endeavoured to craft an agreement which is politically advantageous to them too. It is not simply about what is good for the country. It is designed to retain power. There is nothing new in that but it is not something they wish the rest of us to know about.

I suspect it is all going to go nowhere, especially at the present time. We will learn nothing more about it while the present government is in power. There is still a widespread belief they can win the next election - with a reduced majority. A CANZUK agreement would not suit their agenda at all. 

The benefits of four countries which have English as at least one official language and similar governance and legal systems should be able to work closely together. This is not the European Union with diverse language and legal systems. It is something which could be much more cohesive. We could do with some of that in the present world. 

Blame the algorithm?

The federal government is attempting to push through more "social media" laws. This time they are asking for "opt out" laws to be passed. They are laws designed to give social media users greater control over what they see in their feeds.

That is the argument anyway. 

This is the same government which is, at least in part, blaming their own unpopularity on "the algorithm". It is also complaining the rise of our redhead's party is due to the same algorithm.

Here is our very own Minister for (among other things) Social Media complaining 

    "the power of online is so strong, the algorithm is so strong that it is overwhelming our public institutions and this is problematic for everybody". 

Really? It is all the fault of Elon Musk and X is it? Is this why there is apparently a wide spread belief the government, particularly the Prime Minister, is lying to us? It doesn't have anything to do with the actual, verifiable fact we are not getting lower electricity bills?

Wrongly used social media is a blight on everyone but demanding the social media giants control the content is wrong. Allowing the government to control the content will doe even more harm. The present government would be more than happy to both blame the algorithm and collect massive fines from social media for failing to  ensure that nothing which harmed the government's chances of re-election was made available. 

There are other things which could be done before that. One would be to require, as required by law, the ABC to actually observe their charter to provide fair, balanced and accurate reporting. It could demand the same of a good many the other media outlets which the general public relies on for news.

There is a good deal of information in the state newspaper this morning about the collapse of an inquiry which was supposed to uncover what would have been appalling instances of "racism" in a major football club. Had they been true then people would possibly be facing court. They were reported as true and kept on being reported as true even when the first doubts were raised. Now someone who was responsible for many of the allegations being made is facing court on a charge of the embezzlement of a large sum of money. It was money intended for indigenous communities.  He was also making claims that the indigenous players themselves have said are not true. Their fellow team mates say the same but the damage done is still great. They have been said to have been subjected to racism and some of the claims are horrific. Living with those claims and having to deny them may be almost as hard as incidents of racism.

The Prime Minister is claiming the purpose of the legislation is to allow people to be in control of what they see. Really? It seems very unlikely to me. The vast majority of people have no idea how such things work or how they are being manipulated. It will also allow the government of the day to heavily influence, indeed ensure, that most people only see what the government wants them to see.

It might be simpler if the government just banned social media for everyone perhaps?  Would that work? 

A school principal has lost her job

over her refusal to endorse  "Wear it purple day" in her school. She was the head of a school where the pupils are under the age of twelve.

"Wear It Purple Day" is apparently a day that encourages people to "create a safer, more supportive and more inclusive world for LGBTQIA+SB young people," according to its website. I had never heard of it.

The school principal felt those matters were not something which should be discussed at school. They should be discussed at home and inside the family. She felt it was not like ANZAC Day or even NAIDOC week where schools do discuss issues around war and racism. 

I will not go into the rights and wrongs of discussing these issues in school although I will admit I would not personally feel comfortable about doing so with young children who were not related to me. Is this really what school is intended to be about?

I know there are people who feel very, very strongly about these issues. They are much more vocal than they were even five years ago. There are court cases which relate to these issues. Some of those cases remain unresolved. People have lost their jobs over these issues. They have been shunned and banned. It has all become very nasty at times. I still do not believe that this is what school is about.

School should surely about giving students the skills and capacity to read, write, calculate, reason and argue? Am I wrong in thinking this? Perhaps I am. Have parents stopped discussing these issues with their children? Perhaps they have. Perhaps they do not have time to deal with such things?

I do not believe people should be losing their positions over these things. The principal in question is apparently just opposed to the issues being discussed in schools. I wonder how she feels about the continuing publication of books about these issues. The local library has many of them. One mother I know has complained to me that she feels it is not appropriate to have books about "gay grandfathers" on the shelves. I wonder if they are really necessary - or appropriate.

We do need to be open about these things if children ask questions but my guess is that most children do not. Why would they? They might think someone is "different" but such differences usually mean very little in childhood.  

It seems to me we are teaching children to believe something is far more significant than it might otherwise be. We are telling them that differences are more important than similarities. I am not sure it is a good thing.  

I have been making a book list

for someone and came across another list. The second list was intended for students in their senior year at a Catholic high school somewhere in the United States in 1965.

It is an extraordinary list. The books on it are books which even the brightest university students would now struggle to read. 

It begins with  four books to be read "before September" - presumably the start of the school year.  There is a book by Thomas Merton and I know nothing about that. Then there is Harper Lee's  "To Kill a Mockingbird" (now banned in some places), Antoine de St Exupery's  "Night Flight" comes next, then Ivan Turgenev's "Father and Sons". 

I have read just two of those and only glanced at the Turgenev.

It goes on to other books. The first on the list is Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a young man". When I was about ten the Senior Cat was studying that as part of his university degree and I remember him reading me the part where Stephen's mother is washing his ears. It is not the sort of thing most ten year olds hear about I suppose. I did read the book later.

The rest of the list covers some interesting material.  It ranges from things like "Lord of the flies" and "The thirty-nine steps" to "War and Peace" and "Crime and Punishment".  I have read Lord of the Flies and The thirty-nine steps but gave up on the other two. 

In between there is Paton's "Cry, the beloved country" and Shute's "On the beach". They are interesting choices for their time and were probably considered controversial as well. Willa Cather appears too, as does F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Le Carre.

It is a mixed list but there is serious literature on it. It is an interesting list because I have just shown it to the only neighbour I know who does any reading for pleasure. He looked carefully at it and then said, "Well, I have heard of some of them but the only one I have read is Lord of the Flies. It was a set text in my last year at school." This neighbour is twenty-two years younger than I am. His children have not read any of these books. He thinks they will not even have heard of anything on it. The idea of them reading four books on it before the beginning of the school year made him laugh.  "Not a hope," he told me.

I know quite a number of teenagers in their final two years of school and I have to admit that not one of them would be likely to read anything on that list by choice. They might read one or two of the shorter and better known books if they were forced to do so but most of those books would not be read except under duress.

So, what are they reading? Is that the right question or should I be asking, "Are they reading at all?"  I know some of them are not reading now. Hopefully they will go back to books when Year 12 has ended and before university begins.  

 

Ecclesiastical vestments are not

something I know much about. The subject is likely of no great interest to most people. I certainly never planned on needing to know anything.

As a child I went to Sunday School and, where there was no Sunday School, I was expected to "sit quietly" in church. I suspect I went more often than many children, often twice on a Sunday when we were in the city. I went to the Presbyterian Sunday School on alternate Sunday mornings and endured the Christian Science version on the other Sunday when we lived in the city. The Presbyterian one was something my brother and I actually looked forward to attending. Looking back I realise we must have had some exceptionally good teachers there. They were not "do-gooder" older women but young and enthusiastic people who provided activities.

But, for all that, the Presbyterians were a "black and white" lot. I do not remember anything colourful about the clothing worn by the Ministers or Teaching Elders. The only thing which marked them out were their plain "bands" and clerical collar. The same was true of the ministers who appeared out in the remote rural areas. There in fact the preacher was more likely to be the Senior Cat in his Sunday suit and tie. 

My brother and I found the occasional Church of England service "colourful" compared with what we were used to experiencing but the occasions were rare. I did not set foot inside a Roman Catholic church until I was an adult. Since then I have been to many others as well - for weddings, funerals, baptisms and more. I have been inside temples and synagogues too.

And most of these places have been more decorated than the very austere Presbyterian churches I knew as a child. It is always one of the things I find extraordinary about religion in general - the enormous amount of great art, architecture, music and literature religion can generate.

So, why ecclesiastical vestments? I never thought I would try to make anything remotely related to one. Next year however "the church on the hill" the Senior Cat attended is having their 175th anniversary year. Planning is apparently well underway for this. As I see and hear this from the oldest parishioners (I see them often in the local shopping centre) I know that they are concerned they might not be there to experience the year in the way they would most like to do. They want to participate but they may not have the ability or the energy to do it. 

I also know it is going to be a great deal more work for the priest than many of them understand. He is a good man. He works hard. He was a regular visitor to the Senior Cat. They spent hours discussing woodwork and teaching techniques. There was very little "religion" in those visits and I know D... got as much from them as the Senior Cat did. D... may have been given some timber from the Senior Cat's shed but I have always wanted to thank him in another way. 

So, I sat and thought and then I did some research. The result has been a "stole" - that long, thin scarf like affair that the priest wears over his white robe on Sundays. They come in different colours according to the time of the church year and some of the modern ones come in many colours and designs. Many of them are as beautiful in their way as the oldest ones from centuries back. Could I knit one with one hundred and seventy five colours in it? One for each year of the existence of the church on the hill? 

It had to be long, but not too long. There had to be a cross in the centre at the back and one on each end. I had to find something that would provide all those colours. I had to shape it so that it will not bunch up at the back. There were more challenges. 

The result has been something knitted from very fine weaving cotton and embroidery thread. The weaving cotton is green - for what D... will call "ordinary time" and a pack of cheap Indian embroidery thread provided the colours. As most of the greens (and there were a lot of them) could not be used I still had to experiment. I have made no attempt to sew or weave the ends of the single row "flashes" into the fabric. That proved impossible. The thread just slips out again.  Two days ago I pinned out something which is 2.8m long and 10cms wide. I sprayed it to keep it flat and it has been drying. When my friend M... gets back from visiting family I will pass it over to her to see what she thinks and, if approved of, then ask someone else to line it so it can be used.

Yes, definitely a challenge and I would do it differently if I needed to do another one but I have managed to learn a good deal on the way.

This is a not very good photograph of it. Now I can go back to other things instead. 
 

And now for a longer and much more serious

post. (And yes, I think I have managed to do that back up all by myself. I still think it is a complicated way of doing it but it seems to be done...and I checked that what I put there before starting came up.)

But, much more seriously, I want to say something about a very disturbing new website. It is called "Call It Out" and the purpose of it is to  provide " a simple and secure way for ANYONE to report incidents of racism and discrimination towards First Nations Peoples."

Now I have no time for racism but this site is saying the incidents have to be towards "First Nations Peoples".  The site mentions "stolen land" so I am assuming they mean the descendants of the people who lived here before white settlement. 

However that in itself is a problem. There is no actual legislation defining a "first nations person". There is nothing said about how you "identify" either. My friend M... always ticks the "prefer not to identify" box on a form if he has the opportunity. He sees no point in "being aboriginal". He sees himself simply as a person like anyone else. I hope I see him and his family and aboriginal friends in just that way. I try to do that. They have never made it difficult and we have shared some wonderful occasions together. 

It was M... who sent me the link to the website. He sent it along with the words, "What fresh hell is this?" He sees it as encouraging a belief in racism even where it does not exist. I suspect he is not far wrong.  He does not see it as being used by those who might have some real cause to believe it. In his view it is more likely to be used by those who "identify" on the flimsy basis of one great-grandparent or the like. 

And that is just part of the problem. This is just one way "racism". It does not cover the indigenous woman who, being given shelter in a women's shelter run by the Catholic church, told a nun who sat down next to her "get away from me whitey". The nun quietly rose and sat down again further away. Was the comment racist or not? Can racism work in one direction but not the other? It is a problem not addressed here and which never seems to be addressed elsewhere. 

And then there is the problem of how you define "racism"? Here is what users of the site are being told,  

" All reports of racism and discrimination can be made to Call It Out: anything that you feel is unfair or unjust towards First Nations People based on race can be reported (e.g. interpersonal or structural bias, prejudice, or discrimination). You can tell us as much or as little as you like in your report."

Is it racist to complain about Aboriginal flags flying at an event which is supposed to unite all of us? Is it racist to complain about "welcome to country" ceremonies when there are no visitors from another country present?  

I could go on. The site disturbs me because I think it is encouraging a belief in racism where perhaps none exists. If we have something like this (and we do in the Equal Opportunity Commission) then the definition of what racism is has to be much clearer. The problem is that I suspect it will not suit the activists who see racism and disadvantage at every opportunity - and they make it so much more difficult for every other person who sees things differently.  

Short post for now

 The computer needs to be backed up and I am on the laptop instead so today it will be a short post. I am going to try to do some clearing out now that I have finished my last project! Paws crossed.