Group projects are not

things I normally get involved in by choice. My working life has required a great deal of working in (mostly small) groups. I like to leave them behind when I am taking some time away from work.

But, I belong to a group of knitters and crocheters who meet once a month in our local library. They have, and continue to be, a wonderful group. They are friendly. They support me and each other. I regard them as good friends. A group project with them is something I can do.

We have done several now. They have been done for the "Christmas Tree Festival" which is held once every two years. It is held up the hill in the same building as the other council library. We have covered trees in blanket squares and turned them into charity blankets after the event was over. We made a lot of crochet "smiley" faces and hung them and then passed them out to children and others in need of a smile. 

We are already working on what we hope will be next year's tree. A tree made of knitted and crocheted "wind spinners". The spinners can be passed on individually later. I have provided most of the yarn in the sense I proof read a thesis for someone. I did not want to be paid for doing that as I felt the person needed support but the result was a very, very large quantity of cheap acrylic yarn appearing in front of me with the words, "Use it for your wind spinners. Is it enough? I could get some more." 

There is more than enough. I took most of it to the library yesterday and members of the group went home with almost all of it.  

We were planning on doing all the work ourselves but the person who is the "Community Officer" saw several spinners we had made and inquired about them. When we explained he was enthusiastic and a meeting with the man who is responsible for the "community shed" has led to a promise a collapsible tree frame will be made by them. They will provide the necessary timber. It is becoming more of a community project. 

And it is a community project. Anyone can join in. If someone does not have knitting and crochet skills then we will happily teach them. If they need woodwork skills then the woodworkers will help. The library staff like the idea and don't mind the few hours of mess once a month. Other library users will wander over to see what we are doing and play with the spinners. It is working as a means of bringing people together.

I know there might be some ups and downs before we get the tree up in late November 2027 but I believe it will happen. It will be good. It is not something we expected any sort of funding for, indeed did not ask to be funded. That a small amount of timber can be bought and turned into a tree frame for us is an unexpected but very welcome addition to the project. 

I thought of all this as I was reading through the list of community projects being funded by the current federal government. The multi-million dollar grant to the golf course in his electorate is just part of the problem. There are too many projects there which are not community projects. They do not potentially benefit everyone or allow for everyone to participate. I have just read the comments of someone who was trying to justify the way the money was being spent. The argument was that the projects would help migrants "integrate". We are being asked to believe just 94% of the funding has gone to electorates which favour the present government, electorates they naturally want to keep. Apparently that is "normal" and "acceptable" just as it is equally acceptable there is no means of applying for a grant. They happen by invitation only.

If the same sort of process occurred here at this level for the project our little group is working on then several of us agreed that we would have said we did not want to accept anything. It would take away part of the value of what we were doing. The Christmas Tree Festival is for everyone. You do not need to Christian or a church goer in order to participate. It is a community event. Any community organisation or group within the council area can join in. Anyone can join our knitting and crochet group. People have come along and done their cross stitch and their macrame before now and may in the future. 

We want it to be a real group project - one where everyone interested in it can join in to the best of their ability.  

I am tired of being lied to by

politicians and the journalists they pay. It is likely that the vast majority of people would feel this way if they were more aware of what is going on. They are not.

"The room was full..." we were told but we were not told the next three words "of empty seats". No, not all the seats were empty. Not even the most loyal journalist could report our Prime Minister talking to an empty room. They could try to make us believe that there were many more people there. It was apparently important to do that.

The reality is that the biggest international auditorium of them all was not full. There were more empty seats than occupied seats. Some of those seats were occupied by Downunder's own delegation. Almost all the rest were occupied by representatives of the countries who depend on aid from this country. They were there to protect their own interests. 

I have been unable to ascertain whether any leaders of those countries were present. My informant (who was there) did not see any but tells me "there might have been". That person was not in a position to actually look around. 

"It was what we expected but it was embarrassing. I think he genuinely does not realise how little people think of him."

As I pointed out several days ago the only person to meet our PM when he arrived in the United States was our own country's Ambassador. There was no US official there, not one. We did not get informed about this on any news service of course. What we got was the story about him meeting with one of the "big tech" people. I do wonder what that person made of our Prime Minister. I wonder what he made of our present government's attempts to control access to the media and the technology which powers it. How convenient to be able to keep the "hacking" story until such time as it would make the maximum impact - the maximum impact here. All this of course is designed to try and make us believe that the "Digital Duty of Care" legislation is not just desirable but essential to protect us from harm. Really?

I do believe AI is potentially dangerous. Of course it could be. In hands which wish the rest of us harm it could be very dangerous. It would also be dangerous to allow any government so much control over what we see and hear. People are already asking whether it means that discussions about issues like biological sex or climate change would be controlled under the proposed legislation. They are issues about which there are very strong opinions. Are we really in need of being told that only one point of view is acceptable? 

Our Foreign Minister has tried to describe us as a "middle power". If we are one then it is because our official language is English. It is not because of anything we do or say on the world stage. We may have a large land mass but our population is small. The idea that what we do or say can have any sort of major influence on the major powers is nonsense. We have little, if any, influence almost anywhere. It is why we fund football teams in neighbouring countries instead of projects which have actual meaning and value. 

Those "selfies" with the big names at that meeting mean absolutely nothing. If we want to make a difference then we need to start here and do some hard work. How many people really want to do that?  

Show some compassion?

A year ago a small boy went missing from a remote property in the north of this state. He has not been found.

Yesterday his parents appeared in a pre-recorded video appeal. It was part of the ongoing police investigation. There was also the announcement of a million dollar reward for anyone who was able to lead the police to find an answer to what has happened to the child.

Social media do your bit? Apparently not everyone feels sympathy for the parents. This is so even after the police have made it very, very clear they are not considered to be anything but victims in an appalling tragedy. 

The mother is "not crying" and that is apparently a capital offence in the twisted minds of some people. That she might be weeping at all hours of the day and night off screen does not seem to occur to them. Not everyone openly displays emotions, especially to strangers. It has been clear from the start that this family is a very private one. They live in a very isolated manner on a remote property. It would be a very hard life even if everything was going well. It must be almost unbearably difficult now. 

There are others who claim the transgender grandparent must be responsible. The police looked to them simply because that person was, we are told, present on the property and apparently inside the house at the time of the disappearance. They would not be doing their job if they ignored that. What else they know or were told is not something the rest of us are privy to and speculation is not helpful.

And the theory an eagle may have taken the child? It is unlikely in the extreme. He was four years old. He may not be very big but he was a great deal bigger than a baby. The idea he might have been "snatched" that way is so unlikely the police will almost certainly have rejected it. It is one of those wild theories beloved of conspiracy theorists perhaps but not helpful.

There are any number of other cases of children disappearing and never being found again. I do not think I can even begin to comprehend how difficult it would be to be a family living with this sort of situation. Their lives would be so far from normal any decent individual should only feel compassion.

Some years ago a large reward was offered for information about another event. I remember being at a conference. People were discussing the situation and saying how good it would be to get the reward. I looked at someone I knew and wondered how insensitive people could be. Her child had been murdered some years before. It had taken all her courage to leave her husband for a few short days to come to the conference. I did the only thing I could think of I moved over to her as she stood there saying nothing and said, "It's stuffy in here. Do you feel like getting a bit of fresh air?"

The fresh air was good. The silence was even better.  

 

 

If you try to hide information

or "misinformation" then it is more likely people will believe it.  Someone needs to tell the government this. Their "Digital Duty of Care" Bill is a disaster waiting to happen.

At first the Prime Minister tried to tell us that it was not about trying to censor what we can see and hear but he is now suggesting that "extreme" views could be considered "misinformation". As such they could be removed by no less a person than the Minister. The Minister would have the power to decide what should be removed too.

It does not matter how the government tries to explain this Bill or how hard it tries to wrap it in terms of "protection" it remains dangerous. It is, and always will be, censorship. 

We have censorship in this country, of course we do. There is what most right minded people would consider censorship of pornography, of violence and like material. The very making of such material will normally have other penalties attached to it if the creators are caught. This is not about that sort of censorship at all.

Does this Bill cover something like views about "climate change" the government does not approve of? We are being told "no, of course not" but the reality is that the Prime Minister said as much when he mentioned "extreme" views yesterday while in New York. Does it cover a view about "gender". We already have a problem with that. Does it mean that this can no longer be discussed? Do we all need to accept the current legislation without being able to debate it?

They are just two major issues we hear a great deal about but the Digital Duty of Care Bill would allow the government to go much further than that. It could prevent valid criticism of the government and debate about issues of concern.

Many people in this country are unaware of the fact this government is actually giving millions of dollars to media outlets. Overall it hands out $1.8bn to the media. Most of it goes to the ABC and SBS but there are still substantial amounts handed to other broadcasters. All governments have been required to fund the ABC and SBS is similarly treated. What is not the same are the large sums given to commercial interests. The idea that they are not expected to give back anything in return is ridiculous. An analysis of the way matters are reported, even when they are being critical, is enough to suggest  otherwise.

The reality is that the media needs government funding to function. It can no longer rely on people paying for their news or entertainment funded by those services. That is enough to prevent the media from being too critical. Bring in a Digital Duty of Care Bill and there will be even less criticism or analysis. The Bill needs to fail.   

"We looked you up on AI"

and it was all wrong."

There were two indignant young people looking at me. I looked at their father and he told me, "Lesson about not relying on an internet search."

He shooed them off to find actual books to read. Then he pulled out his very fancy phone and showed me the search they had done. If it was not so serious it might have been rather funny.

The children know me. They knew the answers to the questions they were trying to ask. I say "trying" to ask because they were asking their questions in a very straightforward way. They were doing what an adult who has no knowledge whatsoever of a topic might do. 

The first difficulty, that my name on the internet is slightly different from the one they know me by was explained to them by their father. He encouraged them to use that one so they would get some results.  He felt that was reasonable but, from there, he encouraged them to ask the questions. 

The two children found how they asked a question mattered as much as what they asked.  They discovered they needed to have some information before they started. They discovered what that information was could influence the answers they were getting. Staying on track and getting back on track when a question did not give them answer frustrated them.  Going down rabbit holes of other information was something that did not work for them. Their father moved them away from those. 

They were eventually left with some information about me they know is right. The older of the two has new ideas about how questions need to be asked. Both of them still have a long way to go before they can do a search which might lead to answers about anything. It was a lesson which will almost certainly stay with them. 

Their father and I had a quiet laugh. Apparently this blog is written from the perspective of a cat. It is not of course but we both think it might be simpler if it really was written by a cat. 

We are losing markets.

not the "markets" the economy talks about but the smaller markets we once depended on. 

Yesterday I saw the message about the Bowerbird market not happening in November without surprise. The reasons given were the increased cost of running it at the venue it has been held at for so long and the smaller number of people who were prepared to have a stall at it. 

I have no doubt both of these are true. There are also other reasons. There is a huge difference between running a stall at a market now and the sort of stalls which appeared at country fetes or school events when I was a mere kitten.

At the two teacher school I attended there were no such events or stalls but the "town" (in reality not much more than a hamlet) had an annual "Show Day". It would be held on "the oval". This was nothing more than a patch of land which had been marked out as one with the goal posts for the "footy" at each end. The boundaries were marked out from time to time by someone but it was a "make do" affair. The summer cricket pitch would get marked out at the beginning of the season and wiped out when the football season began. 

On Show Day there would be tractors and "utes" (pick up lorries) and pens with cattle and sheep on the oval. There might be new farm equipment on display. 

None of this was of any real interest to us children. We were much more interested in the single, small "show ride" that went round and round to some sort of tinny popular music and the stall which sold sweets.

The sweets were home made. They had to be home made. The women made them. There was nowhere to buy anything like that. The local shop sold a little bit of chocolate, "Life Savers" and a few packets of things like licorice. It was not unusual for them to have "run out" of all those things. The sweet stall was where we stocked up. We saved our pocket money for the stall. Would there be what we wanted there? Would we get there before everyone else?

Mum of course tried to prevent all this. She was largely successful. Our pocket money was severely limited. We did not dare spend the sixpence for Sunday collection the next day either. No, there was a limit on what we could buy. 

We tried to tell Mum that toffee apples were good for us. They were a form of fruit weren't they? Somehow we never managed to snag a toffee apple. (Looking back I suspect the apples inside them were not that good. It was hard to get apples. They came by train from the city and were grown in the hills behind where I now live. Bush kids did not get them daily.) 

There were "toffees" in "patty pan" cases. They would have "hundreds and thousands" sprinkled on top. We could usually get one of those. Then there would be "peanut brittle" made with the more butterscotch sort of toffee and Russian toffee, a sort of caramel made with condensed milk and there were marshmallows in square ice cream cones. There must have been other things but I know these were the things we wanted to buy if there were any left by the time we were allowed to get there.

There would be a "cake stall" as well. The women would make cakes and biscuits and compete with one another over the even sizes and the icing. The way an almond was place in the middle of the ginger nuts mattered. The "butterfly" cakes would have home-made jam and "cream" in them. We wondered how they were made because Mum never made cake like that. Cake was for birthdays only. She just did not have time for baking. We all hoped she would buy one of the luscious looking sponge cakes. Would she buy quandong  jam and make us eat it? 

I wonder what happens at country shows now. Do things still get made and sold? I suppose they must but there is almost certainly not as much of it. Peanuts would almost certainly be banned. There would need to be warnings on labels along with a list of all the ingredients. 

And what about the city events? I have not heard of cake stalls at school events in quite a while. Go to any other sort of craft fair where food is sold and there are so many rules and regulations I would not even consider being involved. We are told it is all about "safety" and making sure "allergies" are properly considered. If something goes wrong then the consequences can be severe. 

If you do have a stall of any sort it will be hedged around with all sorts of occupational health and safety regulations. Almost anything you make will be considered a hazard of some sort. There will be labels about environmental issues and whether items are "responsibly" sourced. Insurance, once never even thought about, is now an expense that needs to be factored in.  Even the age of those attending and helping will be an issue. Almost anything that can become an issue will be an issue.

Is it any wonder that big markets sometimes do not go ahead? The craft fair I once attended no longer comes to this state. It simply became too expensive. The venues built for events like that have raised their prices to cover their overheads. Prices spiral up and up and then the event collapses. 

I am fortunate I experienced those country shows and the country cooking. I cannot remember any of us being sick - except from more toffee than was good for us! 

 

There was nobody at the airport to meet him

but our Prime Minister was boasting about a meeting with a very senior figure related to AI. He has told us how important this meeting was. He has told us how that same person was listening to him say how important the new laws restricting social media access are.

Now our Prime Minister, popularity rating around thirty-two percent, is about to tell the United Nations this country needs a seat on the Security Council. This is the same Prime Minister who, just a couple of days ago, dismissed the problems of the care and well being of very young indigenous children as a "state issue, not a federal one". (Of course the issue of fighting fires was a federal issue rather than a state one when his then opponent was in power. We can ignore that...can't we?)

There are a couple of issues here. The first is that a seat on the Security Council means very little, if anything. The Security Council has no power. It can pretend it has but the decisions it makes mean nothing. Nobody has to abide by them. There was actually one of those rare unanimous decisions earlier this month. It related to Sudan and the effect of that decision on the ground has been zilch, zero, nothing at all. If anything the situation is worse than before. Recently an aid worker I had once written a communication board for lost his life there. He had spent a very long day trying to do something for severely malnourished children and was shot on his way to a few hours rest. That is how effective the Security Council is. A seat on it appears to be nothing more than something to boast about. It is not going to make any difference. Forget about it and do the real work, the hard work, elsewhere.

Then there is the issue of the attempts to stop under sixteens accessing social media. That sounds so good, so responsible. It is a real "look at us" moment.  I do not for a moment deny that social media harms but trying to stop young people from accessing it will not work. Trying to stop harm by curtailing their use of it and bringing in legislation to try and curb other types of "harmful" speech or "misinformation" is not going to work either. I may not like some, indeed many, things which are being said and done on social media but it is better it is out there. It is better seen by all so it can be countered rather than have it travelling at the speed of light through other channels. It is much, much better than giving any government control over what is seen and heard.

I suspect that, even among those who know who he is, our Prime Minister, is seen as being of no real consequence. He is seen as the little man he really is. He might appear to matter here but he does not have any real influence on the international stage. That he can fly to the other side of the world as leader of a supposed democracy, even a small one, and not get greeted by someone of importance says a great deal. 

Perhaps it was an oversight - but I doubt it. It is much more likely that others are looking at his moves to control us with some alarm.