Christmas Day 1974 is a date

indelibly etched into the minds of any Dowunderite old enough to remember it. It is the date on which a category four cyclone hit the top end of the country, almost destroyed a city, displaced many thousands and caused weeks of chaos and hardship.

Another, and equally powerful, cyclone is going through the area as I write this. There will be harm done but it will not be on anything like the same scale as before. Building regulations have changed and that will help a lot. Disaster planning has improved. Even more importantly communication has improved.  Even the most remote communities are likely to get some information. 

In the north there are still people who speak little or no English so the warnings will have been given in multiple local indigenous languages. The bigger problem will be to get people to heed the warnings and go to local shelters if their own homes are at particular risk. 

Christmas Day 1974 was my first close-distant encounter with a natural disaster that required a response. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. My parents, also called on to help, had no idea either. They were old enough to remember the war but did not see active service. Any other natural disaster had passed them by but this one was different. It was in our country. Yes, it was thousands of kilometres away and the communications coming through were patchy at first but it did not take long for organisations like the Red Cross, Anglicare and the Salvation Army to set to work. 

The Senior Cat was sent off to help organise accommodation. Mum was helping with food and clothing and other basic supplies. I was given a table as a desk and more paper work than I had ever seen before. Looking back I can only think that someone had made a mistake. I was in no way qualified to do what I did. I was taking down often intimate details about people and their families so they could get the assistance they urgently needed. I can still hear the scream of the woman wearing nothing but shorts and a sleeveless top that this was all she had in the world. She had no ID of any sort and no idea if the rest of her family had survived. To this day I am thankful I was not the person who had to help her. 

Late yesterday afternoon someone who has family up in that area asked me, "Is that what started you on your job?" I had to say that no, it was not. The first communication board for that purpose came some years later - but perhaps the earlier experience prepared me just a little? I do not know.

What I do know is that I am fortunate to live in a country where things can happen quickly if there is a need for it. I also know it is when people do not heed warnings that they are more likely to find themselves in trouble. Now I am hoping people in the cyclone area have heeded the warnings they were given.   

Nobody wants to start WWIII

which is perhaps why President Putin still believes he can get away with snatching territory. 

Yes, he might have had to "fight" for it but he clearly believes he is big enough and strong enough to get away with it. He simply does not care if a few people get hurt on the way. It doesn't matter if it costs him a little. The prize is too big for that.

I have met someone who has spent some hours in the company of President Putin. This person has met many, many world leaders over the years. It is part of their job to do just that. This is what they had to say, "He is the most frightening person I have ever met. There is no warmth to him at all even when he appears to be smiling. He is completely cold, vicious and brutal."

This came from someone who has met Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe, the Kims in North Korea and others. They were "not nice people" but Putin is worse.

Why then is President Trump suggesting that Ukraine should simply surrender to President Putin's demands? The answer is not a desire for an end to the war of course. It is about power, oil and trade. It is about Trump's own business interests in Russia itself.

Putin wants the old USSR back. Moving into Ukraine is just a step in that direction. Denying them NATO membership is essential if that is to occur. He won't move immediately but he will make it impossible for Ukraine to survive. There will be a "referendum" of some sort to suggest that the people of Ukraine have willingly rejoined the union and then there will be other moves. It is a long term plan but Putin believes he has time and right on his side. He really believes he can simply take over again.

It is why he must not be allowed to succeed this time and it is why Europe must not allow him to succeed. Ukraine has really been fighting alone - and that has to stop.   

It is a COP out for us

apparently. There are wails and gnashing of teeth and claims of "it's not fair". We lost the "right" to host the next big climate talk-fest.

I am so upset - not. It is something we should not even have considered bidding for, let alone spent almost $4m on with no result. I am never ceased to be alarmed and concerned by the apparent inability of the "leaders" of this country to recognise that we are very small fish in a very large pond.

Why on earth did anyone even believe that we might be able to host the next "climate" conference in this country. Yes, it is a large land mass. Yes, it is the biggest island or the smallest continent but perhaps its claims to fame should end there. For the most part it is so sparsely inhabited it is really scarcely inhabited at all. I can remember when the last tribe of people who had no contact with white civilisation finally came into view. Their isolation was partly due to distance but might also have had something to do with desire.

The population of this country is far less than the state of California. Our trade with the rest of the world is small. We are isolated in many ways. It is something which causes many problems even in an age where communication appears to be almost instantaneous.

Why anyone would believe we were able to host a conference of the likely size of COP31 in a city many people, even the proposed delegates, could not find on a map is beyond me. Would we be able to house them, feed them, transport them and find suitable conference facilities for them? We were told we could by those putting in the bid but I doubt it. Even getting people here could have proved a challenge. Put on extra flights - the very thing they are telling us we should cut back on? Allow the state's main airport to open outside curfew hours? 

The cost would have been huge. I am told it was all about "putting us on the map" and providing business, especially climate related business, with "opportunities". I am told it would end up "paying for itself". I do not believe that.

Now I am told that our Minister for Climate Change and Energy is to be in charge of a major part of the next COP in Turkey - the country to which we lost out. He is widely seen as inept, so inept they kept him in the background at the last election. Yes, he is a power player of some sort inside his own party. He must be in order to retain his position. Is he good at it? No. Is he the best they have? No. There are now some who hope he might be booted from his position on the grounds he has to concentrate on his new role. All I can say is that the next COP will go even further downhill than this one.

Please, could we just forget any sort of COP? We need action now.    

The job cuts at the CSIRO

are cause for alarm. For those of you in Upover and Elsewhere the CSIRO is the  Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is a government agency here. It is responsible for scientific research with a focus on commercial and industrial applications. The CSIRO works with similar places around the world - or should do.

Some of the things they have successfully developed include things like the Hendra virus vaccine for horses and biological controls for pests like myxomatosis and calicivirus. They continue to work on things like reducing damage done by rust in wheat crops and increasing the nutritional content of barley. 

Their work on Wi-Fi technology, plastics (including the first successful polymer bank notes), ceramics for the space industry and much more have all had international benefit. In summer many people bless the insect repellent Aerogard developed by the CSIRO.

Like any big research organisation they have also had their failures and other research facilities have beaten them to solutions. Our geographical location has been a hindrance in the past and continues to be now, although to a lesser extent than before.  

 It is going to get more difficult as they cut another three hundred and fifty staff. That the cuts are coming from health, from biosecurity, from agriculture and food production and from environmental research is alarming. Add the aging buildings and sometimes equipment in many places and there is a problem.

We cannot expect the rest of the world to do the research for us and then simply use it. We need to be doing our own and sharing it. There is something very wrong with a government which can even consider going to the enormous expense of hosting a climate talk-fest here but not adequately funding the research needed. 

Defamation cases are notoriously

hard to win...and getting harder. Our ideas about what is defamatory change too. 

I came across a page on the New Zealand parliament's site recently. It talked about "unparliamentary" language and gave some examples of what has been considered offensive in the past. 

One of the first, in 1933, is "shrewd old bird". Many people would now take that as a compliment. 

They were finding "pipsqueak" offensive in 1936. It is likely the meaning was not quite the same at that time but is it offensive now?

In 1959 someone apparently found being called a "kookaburra" offensive. Well I suppose those birds do have a raucous "laugh".

In 1963 it was said of someone that he "sits on his behind". Lazy? I have heard it said often. 

There were more on that page but it was clear that the acceptable language in parliament has changed over the years. I was also aware that, in parliament, there is a lot of name calling. It is also possible to say things you cannot say outside parliament and be immune from prosecution for defamation. It is generally not wise to do this but it is done from time to time. 

Outside parliament it is a different story. Defamation is more common than many people realise. It does more harm than people realise too. We are all too ready to believe the worst of people, not the best. It is why the news media has a particular and special responsibility to be accurate. The problem is that accurate news might not sell as well. If you depend on advertising for the income which sells the "news" you want to present then you can be sure it will be "sensationalised" and often far from accurate. 

The problem with the BBC doing this however is that it is showing an unacceptable bias. It is even worse that our ABC mindlessly repeats it. Think of it as the BBC broadcasting stolen goods and the ABC receiving and broadcasting stolen goods. 

In the case of Mr Trump suing the BBC the stolen goods are the manipulated words they broadcast. It was a stupid thing to do but no doubt the journalists and editors involved thought it served a purpose. Trump is unlikely to get anywhere with his outrageous claims for compensation. He is out of time and out of jurisdiction.  That said however it should still tell the rest of us that the behaviour of the BBC was wrong too.

It can happen to other people as well - and all too frequently does. There will sometimes be the "apology" read out in the news services on the following day or appearing (usually not too obviously) in the paper.  All too often the media knows the damage they intended has been done. Even paying "compensation" is seen as part of it.

When it comes to the rest of us though it is much harder. It is all too easy to defame someone and cause permanent damage. The words we use do matter. 

 

   

Going to university is apparently

now a "right" if you are "neurodivergent". 

I am still not sure what "neurodivergent" means to the people who are telling me this.  It does not seem to mean the young man I once met who was so severely dyslexic he could not read. He was also highly intelligent and had gone through school with the help of his mother and a school which treated him as if he was blind for the purposes of learning. He did go on to university with the help of more "readers" but he also worked incredibly hard - harder than most students I know.

The adjustments made for him were necessary and fair. He was also prepared to do the work, indeed do the extra work required of him. I have no issues with that at all.

I do have issues with students saying that adjustments must be made for them because they find the university style of learning does not suit them. There is one student in a recent report saying the curriculum "does not suit (her) needs". There is another saying "the lecture room is too noisy".  Perhaps the first student is simply not doing a course suited to them. The second student needs to be aware that there is a partially hearing student in some of the same classes. That student sits at the front of the class. Yes, I know it is not quite the same thing but the student is making the adjustment there - and his teachers appreciate it. Good teaching is generally considered to require interaction between teacher and students. There will be noise at times.

The man in the unit across the way from me is doing a degree by "distance" learning. He is studying "on line". He attends lectures this way. It is not easy. "You can't always hear what another student says but it is the nature of on line learning," he told me recently.  As an older student he is making adjustments for this. 

I still give help here and there to students who ask for it. I am also aware there are other students who seem to be fragile and unable to cope with the work required of them without extra help.  They have been nurtured through school with "extra help" and "extra time" and "consideration". They have been given extra tuition and their anxious parents have demanded papers be remarked and higher grades given. More than one teacher has given in to the pressure. 

Are these students really worthy of it. Do they really have these "neurodivergent" issues it is claimed they have? If so, how do we help them? Is it reasonable to expect other students to accept these students need so much extra assistance? 

Or should we start recognising that not everyone can do everything and that getting to the top also requires us to work? 

 

  

Searching for music is

not something I need to do very often. I needed to do it yesterday because someone called in and asked me about something I thought I had never heard.

"It was in the sixties Cat. You must know it. It is driving me mad. I can't think of it. It goes like this..." 

Oh yes, "It goes like this..." I thought to myself. Perhaps it did. It was equally possible that the person in question had "misremembered" it. She does not describe herself as being "musical". Why she thought I should be able to remember something still puzzles me.

I was one of those rare teenagers who was not firmly attached to "the radio". I did not wander the streets holding one. There was no such noise in our house. The Senior Cat listened to the early morning news on "the ABC" (our Downunder equivalent of the BBC, not the US version). We were expected to remain silent while that happened. It was a bit like going to church on Sunday and being expected to repeat the sermon. There was just a chance he might ask something to be sure at least his two eldest kittens had been listening.

Apart from that the radio did not get turned on again until the evening news service from the same source.  Even then it did not always happen...and there was always the paper to read.  The paper was a news source in those days - the first ever one from the Murdoch stable.

But news services and papers do not teach you about the music teens were listening to at the time. We heard snatches of it when we were in other places but we knew very little about it. There were occasional songs which one of our teachers taught us. We were incredibly proud of J.... he often appeared on ABC television as a "filler" - someone who would provide a few minutes of entertainment in between other programmes. It was because of J... we knew about the "Yellow Submarine" and "Lily the Pink" but he also taught us about "The Quartermaster's Store" and "Gaudeamus Igitur".  

"Try again," I told the person standing there and looking at me in so much frustration. It did sound vaguely familiar - but not quite right. I listened three more times. It was not like trying to do reverse image search on the computer. 

Then she said, "I think the organist at my church played it once. He gets a bit modern sometimes."

I had it then and said, "I think I have it...but it's Bach...they borrowed it and did things to it."

"It isn't Bach. He's been dead for ages, long before they wrote it." 

I found Procul Harum's "A whiter shade of pale". Yes, that was what she had been trying to find. Her version was barely recognisable even when I had the church organist reference. I showed her the more than one reference to Bach that came up with it.

"I didn't have it exactly right did I? Still can't believe that Bach wrote anything that modern."

She went off happily enough but I played it through again. Modern? Perhaps...or perhaps music has no age.  

 

The "Game of Wool" on Channel 4

is not something I can watch here in Downunder. It might be on a pay channel I do not have access to but it is not on any other channel I am aware of. That has not stopped me following the outrage at the way my ancestors approach to knitting has been treated.

For those of you who are not familiar with the show it is hosted by, among others, Tom Daley - the Olympic swimmer who made headlines when he sat by the pool knitting. He probably gave knitting a boost when he did this. Here was an Olympic athlete knitting - and a male Olympic athlete at that. 

I have to admit I was pleased to see him knitting. I thought it might increase the profile of the craft and convince some that it is not a "hobby for little old ladies".  Yes, there are some little old ladies in nursing homes who now knit nothing but "squares" because that is all they feel they can now knit. Careful though! I know one "old lady" in a nursing home who can still knit prize winning standard socks and who knows how to adjust patterns to fit the recipient and much more. I would still go to her for advice.

I also know that knitting is not just a female occupation - look at Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably, Franklin Habit and Stephen West and many others. One of the most extraordinary things I have ever seen was a Shetland lace shawl knitted in cobweb weight wool - and it was made by a man.  Men knitted long before women. I have told many people it was an at least seven year apprenticeship at one time. Women were expected to spin the yarn for the men to use.

In Shetland, Fair Isle, the Orkneys and surrounding areas knitting was used to supplement the income of poor crofting families. Those incredibly fine Shetland shawls were made by men as well as women, by people who were not able to do the very hard physical labour on the croft or at sea. Their hands needed to be kept smooth so that the very fine yarn did not snag and break. These are things which experienced and well informed knitters know about.

"Fair Isle" knitting has many variations but it is not done with big needles and thick wool. Garments made that way are simply not practical. They are uncomfortable to wear. Whoever was doing the research for the program failed to understand that very basic thing indeed. 

I wonder where else they will go and what other myths they will perpetuate. Will they go to Aran and retell the false idea that each family had their own pattern or that ganseys were also knitted the same way?

There is an immense amount of knitting history still to be explored. It is difficult to do because there are not nearly as many such items to have survived. There are only rare examples from before the nineteenth century. We do have information from that time though and we need to continue to preserve it. Carol Christiansen and her team are doing an extraordinary job in documenting some of it but it needs support. I doubt the Game of Wool will do much to help that.   

So it is not a "Great job"

anymore?

I have to confess that those "great job" words irritate me. I hear them far too often. It seems to me that parents are constantly telling their children that. They are saying it for actions and achievements I would have thought were...well let me say just average and what I would expect of a child of that age in those circumstances. 

Apparently now it is actually the wrong thing to say to a child too... according to the "experts". Apparently it "makes them dependent on your affirmation rather than their own motivation".  In other words it makes them do it to please you rather than because they want to. Really? 

If ceasing to say "great job" will motivate children then someone has found the solution to getting them to do what they need to do. It will be wonderful...but it won't be because the world does not work like that.

Everyone needs a little praise and encouragement at times. It is where, when and how that is done which matters. I don't think "great job" does it. I also do not believe that giving everyone a prize and making sure they are "included" on an "equal" basis is the answer to social ills. 

Many years ago I said "that's good" to one of my young students in the classroom. I was met with a furious, "No, it isn't!" My intended praise was not acceptable. He was genuinely upset.

I kept him back for a moment at recess time and told him his response had not been polite. I also told him that what I actually meant was he had improved - and he had. He looked at me for a moment and then said, "Sorry...but we do know who's top miss." He was right and I accepted it. Then he gave me a lop sided smile and rushed off before I could say any more. 

Yes, of course they know. All the "inclusion" or the "diversity" and "equity" training we fling at them, and even at adults, is probably nothing more than an attempt to paper over our differences. We do notice differences. They do exist. It is how we react to them that matters.

   

Ditching "Net Zero" as a policy

has been a long time coming for the present Opposition. It is the right move. People are beginning to realise that it is an unattainable goal under the present Government's "renewables only" policy. It always was but the "climate change...climate change" mantra and the endless talk about both "Net Zero" and "climate change" in the media had (and still has) many people convinced. 

Ditching the policy does not mean doing nothing. It may actually mean doing much more. We may need to do much more but if we are not hamstrung by the "renewables only" idea then more may be done.

I wonder about all this. I wish I had the time and the energy to really fight the big business interests that are the drivers behind the "renewables only" push. I can put my paws to the keyboard of course. There is the occasional letter in the paper. I write here. I talk to people. 

Will people, the people we vote in to parliament, listen to us? I am beginning to doubt that. We are told we live in a democracy, that the "will of the people" is what matters. We are told we can change things with a change of government, that what "the majority" want is what matters. 

I am not sure I believe that any more. We voted against a national "Voice" to parliament in a very expensive referendum. We voted against putting something potentially very powerful and very divisive into the preamble of our Constitution. It was the right thing to do but now a neighbouring state government has gone ahead and done a similar thing at state level. They did not consult the people, just a small group of political agitators. The consequences of their decision are yet to be felt. They have handed a potentially very powerful tool to a small group and it may well, despite protestations to the contrary, end in tears and harm done. 

Now our state government is saying they want to do the same thing. They do not have a mandate to do this. It is an idea that, like "Net Zero", is being driven by a small but powerful lobby with its own agenda.

We are so worried about the effects of social media on children we are banning their use of it. While we are doing this we are allowing the media to tell us that we need a "renewables only" power supply and that a Voice for a minority along with a "multicultural" approach to everything will save our social fabric. 

Is it time to start thinking for ourselves instead?   

Special consideration for what?

There is a case being reported in our press of someone who is suing an airline because they feel they are being discriminated against because of their disability. Their claims include being able to take their own wheelchair into the actual passenger area before being assisted into their seat by their carers and then have their carers sit either side of them in the seat of their choosing. That seat would be in the very first row.

There is another demand being made by a transgender prisoner. They are complaining because they are not being given the opportunity to mix as freely as the other prisoners. This is despite the reason for their being incarcerated is the rape of a very vulnerable child.

A further demand is being made by parents of a profoundly disabled child. They want two full time carers allocated to their child at school and those carers not to be used to assist any other child.

Our "Equal Opportunity" legislation is a wonderful thing when it is used properly but are these examples a proper use of it?

My late friend J... once tried to turn down an invitation to speak at a major international conference. He would have been one of the "keynote" speakers. He told them he would be happy to record something and let the organisers have it but he did not feel he could put two airlines to the extra work of getting him there and back. This was before there were air bridges at all locations and they would have had to go to considerable trouble to get him on and off the planes in question. 

There was quite a kerfuffle about this. J... was important and his contribution was something they really wanted. Nobody had given any thought to how difficult it might be for him to travel. He never liked any sort of "fuss and bother" if there was an alternative and he thought he had offered them an alternative. One of the organisers however thought otherwise. He called his local MP, someone I suspect he knew well, and explained the situation. J... was consulted about how he might travel. Would he need to travel alone or would someone need to go with him? J..., more than a little embarrassed by what he saw as unnecessary fuss, said he could manage on his own if they could get him on and off the various planes. He would simply stay, rather uncomfortably, in whatever seat they allocated until it was time to get off again.

J...'s situation actually changed the way airlines thought about the needs of people with disabilities. He did not ask for more than he absolutely needed. I travelled on the same first plane for another purpose and, on discovering we knew each other, a seat swap with someone else was arranged and J... at least had company that far. It was an experience for both of us. 

It still influences my life today. I had no trouble getting extra help when I travelled...and I made very sure I thanked those who helped.

I wonder about the person who is now demanding so much extra help. Is this reasonable?

And what of the person serving a very long sentence for the rape of a vulnerable young person? At the start of their sentence there was no suggestion they were "transgender". That came later. They have undergone their transition at the expense of the state. Other prisoners apparently find this person "intimidating" which has led to almost solitary confinement. 

Prisoners who have committed offences against young children are generally loathed even by other prisoners. They find life in prison even harder than most. Was a male to female transition seen as a way out, a way of making life a little more palatable? Has this person actually convinced themselves that this was the problem all along? Are they actually entitle to mix more and is it in their best interest to do so or do the interests of the majority have to be considered first?

The parents demanding their profoundly disabled child has two full time and fully dedicated carers so the child can go to school "like everyone else" are well aware of what this would cost. They are already receiving a very large amount of assistance at home. Someone is always with their child. The child has around the clock care. Their presence in a "mainstream" classroom is highly disruptive and how much they are learning is being questioned. The family was offered a placement in a special learning facility but refused to accept it. Does the law allow them to challenge the provisions which could have been made?

The first case might cause the "fair and reasonable adjustments" to be adjusted - or it might simply be seen as going beyond that. The second may or may not cause changes for one individual but impact many. The third will be seen by many as simply unreasonable given there are so many demands for extra assistance in the mainstream classroom.

I recently went overseas. I requested some extra assistance but it was the minimum that I needed. I made very, very sure that I thanked those responsible for giving me the help I needed. In all this I tried to remember my friend J... who, before any sort of Equal Opportunity Act, thought it was not good to ask for extra assistance when he believed there was another way around the access issues. That led to changes that might not have occurred if he had complained and demanded.    

"Lower than a snake's navel"

is the only way to describe people who deliberately interrupt events like Remembrance Day services. The "snake's navel" is a phrase I heard used by someone to describe a person they felt had no respect at all for others and it is appropriate here.

I listened with disgust to a teenage boy on his phone to someone about the way he had been "dragged" along to a Remembrance Day event yesterday. "And it was all this weird stuff about remembering the f....soldiers who died..." 

I won't go any further than that except to say that he apparently left in the middle of the event and is now being held to account for his complete and utter disrespect. Perhaps his father should have known better than to expect him to go but I happen to have known his grandfather. He was a Vietnam veteran and it would have upset him deeply. His son grew up with a father who had episodes of severe depression as a result of his experiences in Vietnam. He is now father to the boy who appears to believe it is of no importance. 

There are almost no WWII servicemen left but there are still men who served in Korea, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan and in "peacekeeping" roles elsewhere. It is all very well to try and be pacifist and hope for peace but these people deserve support and, for the most part, respect. Taking a few minutes out on the eleventh is the very least we can do. It is very least we can give those men.

The boy on the phone apparently feels differently. He was clearly very angry indeed. He has apparently now been told he will not be able to go to "schoolies" - one of those gatherings of the young around the country to "celebrate" the end of their school lives. It is one of those rites of passage for those who have just finished their final year of school and their final examinations. There were no such events when I left school. We went off to summer jobs. A lucky few packed backpacks and headed for other places. Yes, we had fun too - and plenty of it. It was just different. 

Remembrance Day would come in the middle of the exams and it still does but we would still be reminded to think of it. It was clear this boy's father wants his son to be aware. It is a severe punishment for his disrespectful behaviour. Is it fair? I do not know them well enough to comment. I suspect it might be because this boy is known to be something of a trouble maker. Several weeks ago I heard one of the other students in the library telling him to "F... off if you don't want to work. We do."  The students working in there are generally serious. They are there looking for mutual support and help, not disruptions. If they want to talk more generally they will go outside. He was disrespecting that too.

Perhaps the conflicts are just too distant now. Perhaps all the violence on screen does not seem real. That frightens me. Disrespect for such things frightens me too. The teenager lounging on the railings next to my little parking space has a lot to learn about life - and respect for others.   

 

   

"The Dismissal" fifty years ago

today is something the Labor party in this country still holds as wrong, as something which should never have happened. They still claim they had a mandate to govern and that the Governor-General did not have the power to dismiss a government about to knowingly do wrong.

I suppose it depends on which side of the political fence you are on whether you see the dismissal of Whitlam's government as right or wrong. The constitutional issues around it are still hotly debated. Even in law school the issue was one which caused considerable debate. Was it legal? Was it right? Did the Governor-General actually have the power? Was the Chief Justice right or wrong? 

For most people it was a simple matter of the Governor-General consulting the Chief Justice of the High Court and being told, "Yes, you can do that." If you were and are a Labor voter then this was wrong. If you voted or vote in any other way then it was right.

Of course it was much more complex than that. It was not a simple matter. Yes, the government of the day was proposing to break the law of the land and borrow money in order to keep the country running. It had run out of money because they were spending too much.

The programs the government was putting in place were popular. There was the precursor to Medicare. It is why we still have those cards the present PM likes to tell us are "all you need to visit the doctor". That is not correct but it sounds good. Indigenous land rights were coming into focus. That they have gone far beyond anything originally intended is perhaps something that nobody could have foreseen. That single mothers would get financial support was seen as a good thing but nobody could foresee the social consequences would not always be what the policy intended. 

Those of us who were school librarians welcomed the injection of funds into school libraries. That this had unintended consequences for the publishing industry is another issue. At least the university students were no longer paying to do their degrees.  Of course that had the unintended consequence of many more students applying and entering courses they were not really capable of doing. That resulted in lower standards - something which is still a problem. 

All I am saying here is that government policies which sound good do not always have the long term consequences they are intended to have. They can be put in place with the best of intentions and nobody can foresee the consequences. 

With respect to the Dismissal however there was more than just a little disquiet behind the scenes. The government was first being warned not to spend so much and then the public servants who advise the government were telling them they could not spend so much, that taxes would have to rise and money would have to be borrowed from other sources. Advice of this sort was coming thick and fast but the government was not listening. The programs were popular. They were in power. They could do as they liked. 

When the government was dismissed we had an election. The people could have chosen to vote them back in - and did not. Labor might like to claim unfair dismissal, even illegal dismissal, but there was an election. They lost. 

Perhaps it is time that Labor accepted that result rather than the continued anger at what happened prior to that. Fifty years in a long time to hold a grudge against democracy.   

If you want to eat then don't bleat

because your food has to come from somewhere. 

Yes, I have stolen that idea from the headline in this morning's paper. It just said "eat or bleat" but I knew what the article would be about. There are people complaining because their nice new housing development houses are next door to the farms which put their food on the table. They don't like the noise from the irrigation systems, or the shots from the bird scarers. They are complaining about the dust in summer and the fertiliser use in spring. 

That these places actually supply the food they are eating, about twenty percent of our national food supply, is apparently of no consequence. The farmers and market gardeners need to go somewhere else.

The first garden I can remember properly is the one the Senior Cat had in the small rural township where I was born. There had been no garden in the "place on the hill" but as soon as we moved into the township proper the Senior Cat set about developing a garden. Everyone else had a garden too. It was how people got most of their fresh fruit and vegetables. That is what the "back garden" was for and that was what was expected of you. 

In all the years which followed the Senior Cat had a garden in all but one place. He tried there but was defeated by the salinity of the only available water supply. Rainwater was too limited and too precious to use for anything but drinking. The water from the tap came from a far distant reservoir. It came in an old "inch" pipe which ran across the top of the ground. In summer it could be too hot to put your hands under the "cold" tap. Plants simply died when watered in this way. The Senior Cat buried his disappointment and studied for his Latin III exam instead.

But we had gardens in other places. Moving the school sheep into our back garden during a bushfire did rather a lot of damage but the Senior Cat just sighed and set about repairing the beds. (We had to keep spraying the sheep with water to keep them safe while the fire went through the paddock (field) across the road outside the school.)

When he returned to the city he used every available space. It took time because the garden had not been cared for at the first house. At the second there had never been a garden. It had just been a vacant block of land overgrown with weeds. The garden he developed there was so productive we were giving food away to the neighbours on a regular basis. The Senior Cat was an "organic" gardener and the garden we left behind was still in good shape when I left. I am told the new owners have ripped it all out. It was apparently "too much work". Yes, gardens are work.

If you do not want to do the work yourself though there are people who will do it. If you live in one of those new housing developments and all you want is a patch of "lawn" and a few shrubs that is up to you. I know more than one young person who has more than that. They were encouraged by the Senior Cat and, after the usual late teen exams and the like, they are building their own gardens. They have no problems with the farmers and market gardeners working nearby, indeed are on good terms with them. They understand the need for the fields of this and that and the tomatoes in the glass houses.

I am not sure where the complainers think food is going to come from. They remind me of the people who buy houses near the airport, who use planes to fly interstate and overseas, and then complain about the noise.  

"What do you know about Buckley v Sussex?"

I was out buying a new keyboard for the computer when I was bailed up by someone I do not know. He knew me though and apparently thought he could ask.

My answer was, "Very little. I am not going to express an opinion on that one." 

I am not sure what is happening with respect to the case brought by someone called Jennifer Buckley against someone called Jasmine Sussex.  Buckley claims Sussex vilified her by saying the transgender Buckley could not breastfeed her child. Buckley had apparently taken a cocktail of drugs to produce some sort of lactation process and the infant was being offered the result. Buckley claims Sussex's subsequent comments were "hurtful".

Really? I suspect this case has much more to do with trying to get a legal decision in favour of the transgender "chest feeding" group and those who support them.

Is it time to accept the biological reality that some people are simply unable to breast (or chest) feed their babies? There are people who could do it and choose not to do so and some who simply cannot do it. That is their business not mine. 

I am much more concerned about the welfare of the child in all this. Perhaps I am wrong but I cannot see any way that taking a cocktail of drugs in order to produce some sort of artificial secretion is beneficial to the child. It seems to me that it might actually be harmful. The infant is still being bottle fed. This seems to be more about the parent than the child. 

I have occasionally seen fathers bottle feeding infants. If the baby is being bottle fed then it seems to me that this is an excellent thing. It gives father and child a bit of that so-called "bonding" time. I do not remember seeing the Senior Cat do this with my siblings but my brother and brother-in-law both helped out as their children grew older and the Senior Cat did the same for his grandchildren because he had the time and the ability to do that. That is surely what matters? They had the ability to hold baby and bottle and they were ready to take the time for the sake of the infant.

I know there are transgender activists who will disagree with me. They will claim the physical act of chest feeding is so important it should take precedence in this case. They will tell me this is about the well being of the infant and their relationship with their parent. I will just wait for a decision to be made by the court.   

    

If you are profoundly deaf

you are not going to hear the "public address" announcement on the railway station platform. Let me explain.

I had to be out and about yesterday. It involved multiple train journeys.  A couple arrived. They were signing to each other. They clearly expected to catch the train. 

Then there was an announcement about an "incident". The train would be coming - eventually. This came over the public address system. The woman had clearly heard a noise but shrugged as the man signed a query to her. I took a deep breath and used my very limited sign language to try and explain. My effort was met with signs and smiles in return. 

The really nice thing about this was their delight in finding a hearing person who was at least willing to try and communicate. We had a halting conversation and I found out they had come a very long distance indeed for a meeting of deaf people who use sign language as their primary means of communication. They went on to ask if their interstate pension cards would work here and I showed them the sort of card they would need. Fortunately they had those too. I even managed to explain they must validate their trip by holding it against the reader. I thought that would be it. Not so. 

Now there are two types of trains on this line. One stops at all stations and the other runs "express" from about half way along the line. The train which runs "express" was the one which was delayed. The board which indicates the trains coming in was already showing the train which stops at all stations but it was not the train which would be coming. They were looking at the board and something made me tell them the train coming in was an express train. They would need to get off at one station and catch the train coming in from the spur line to get to where they wanted to go. 

I still cannot quite believe it but I somehow managed to make them understand this. They left the train at the correct station and gave me a wave and a signed "thank you". 

I came back later than I intended because of the earlier delay. As I was getting off the train there they were too. The man immediately signed that they had managed their journey and that they had been for a very long walk. We laughed with one another as he told me they were very tired. His partner shook her head and told me he would be good after a cup of tea. They were going back to the caravan they were staying in at the campsite not far from here.  

We smiled at one another again. I felt very comfortable with them by then. I was relieved I had been able to help but I do wish the railways provided visual as well as auditory information...and even their auditory information could be improved.  

 

At an estimated cost of $1bn

do we really want to have that climate conference here? What's the point of it anyway?

I have often wondered about "conferences" of any sort. Yes, I have attended a few. I have even spoken at some. Once or twice I raised a laugh but I suspect I sent people to sleep more often.

At conferences I have been informed by a very few and stimulated by no more than two or three. I have endured many more speakers who do not have their presentations in any sort of order and speakers who should never have been asked to participate.

The most useful part of any conference I have ever attended has been making contact with some of those present. I will not call them "delegates" because too many of them have not been delegated to attend at all. They are there as professional conference goers. Their presence there is expected. People will look around and say, "Where is... Isn't s/he here this time?" Then there are sighs of relief as everyone realises that someone is not present and cannot bring up arguments everyone else has heard before. There is also relief when the very-VIP has opened the event, circulated briefly and left. Other participants know these people are all too often there for nothing more than the photo opportunity, the news story, the party policy.

The massive cost of running the COP climate conferences is ridiculous. We have been told that this small city could have an influx of 55,000 people and the cost could be a billion dollars. It is madness to think we could do this. If we actually spent that billion dollars on reforestation we would do far more for the environment than any conference would. Conferences are about talk, not action. Yes, we need to talk about what needs to be done but not at conferences like that. Scientists are quite capable of communicating without that sort of thing. They do it all the time. 

There is talk of the other major party in what is known as "the Coalition" here also dumping the idea of "net zero". It would be the best thing they could do. They could then make some actual environmental plans that might work, that might actively involve the rest of us.

Our local Mayor is at the current COP right now. I wonder why she is there. Chatting to others perhaps - or falling asleep during the presentations?  

"Is there a war in Sudan?"

I was asked yesterday. 

The person who asked me was absolutely sincere about this. He went on, "I thought there was a bit of trouble there, but nothing too serious." 

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. We were waiting for a meeting to start and I did not want an argument. He was obviously sincere in his belief.

"Yes, it can't be too serious," someone else chimed in, "If it was Cat would be doing some work..."

"Actually there is a war," another person said. She looked at me and then said, "Here's K... We can get started." 

She ran through the agenda and then said, "And at the end of it I am going to ask Cat to say something because it is clear some of you have not been watching the news recently."

I looked at her wondering what she wanted me to talk about. She mouth "Sudan" and I guessed what she wanted me to say. There was another item on the agenda that related to it.

This woman runs excellent meetings. They do not get out of hand even when the topics are highly contentious. As we went through the items I wondered what I could say that would be useful. It is not a situation I know a lot about. How can I when we do not have the sort of aid workers I work with going in at present?

In the end I kept it simple. I said yes there was a war. I explained about the two main warring parties. I explained about the coups, about the demands for democracy, about the famine and the genocide. I kept it basic because I suspected the person who had asked the first question knew nothing and that several others might know very little. I also know that two of the people there have attended "pro-Palestinian" marches on more than one occasion. Given their backgrounds this is not surprising. 

At the end I told them how more people were killed in Darfur on a single day this last week than had been killed in the entire Gaza war. I told them, "This is why the people I know are not going in to help. It is why aid agencies are struggling to try and do anything at all. The three aid workers who were killed recently were colleagues of someone who works with someone I know. That might sound as if it is nothing more than a very distant relationship to me but it still upsets and disturbs me. They were real people with families and they were there to try and provide the basic human rights to shelter and food. You all know I have no time for feel-good protest marches but, if you must go, protest about the situation in somewhere like Darfur."

They won't do that of course but I left them to think about it. The news media has a lot  for which to answer.   

  

China is not a friend

of Downunder. Why would it be? It has no reason to be. China knows it can simply walk in and take over our entire economy at any point it likes.

No, I am not trying to be controversial. I am simply being realistic. We do their bidding or they take over. They need our mineral and agricultural resources and they will simply take them if we do not do as they want. 

I said this to someone yesterday as we were waiting in a queue. He is someone I have known for some years. I know his politics are what might be termed "far left". He is a firm believer in "we are part of the Asian region" and our relationship with China. The idea that it might be a relationship of convenience does not appeal to him at all.

His reaction was swift and he spent time trying to convince me I was wrong. China is a great friend. Our economy would collapse if we could not sell to China. Other countries are only too ready to step in if we do not keep to our side of the bargain. They are supporting the all important moves towards "net-Zero" and more. It was the previous Prime Minister who did so much harm by questioning where Covid19 had come from and nobody really believes it came from China. 

People around us could hear this man talking. He was getting rather agitated even though I had simply quietly answered his question about our "friendship" with China. I had not said anything more. My turn came and he tried to keep lecturing me. I was beginning to wish I had not even answered him. 

I tried moving on with the groceries I had bought because a friend is coming for lunch today. He followed me out to where the trike was parked and had his hand on the handlebars to try and prevent me leaving until he had finished what he wanted to say. I knew I was safe enough because there were plenty of other people around, some of whom I know. 

Help came from an entirely unexpected source. A friend of his. someone I know and thought shared his views, appeared. He turned to them and spluttered out what I had said, demanded that his own views be supported. The other man looked at him and then at me and said, "Actually I think Cat may be more correct than you are.  Have you placed a bet on the race yet?"

I know he was referring to the Melbourne Cup - a horse race which seems to cause a lot of interest and far too much betting. My harasser was diverted and they went off together. I saw the other man again about twenty minutes ago. He gave me a wave and called out, "He lost his bet."

I think he would lose a bet on China being a friend too. Is there a growing awareness we need to start making friends elsewhere too? I hope so.  

Pre-paying for power is

suddenly an issue, or so it would seem. Our state newspaper is certainly making an issue of it this morning. There is apparently a "Right to Power" report that has someone writing an editorial about the problem in our APY lands - the remote indigenous communities. Yes, there are problems in other areas too but this is the sort of story which makes news material.

What the report is saying is that there are far too many households where the power gets cut off automatically when the money runs out. This can happen up to sixty times a year, more than once a week. There are around sixty-five thousand households on the pre-payment-meter scheme. The claim is that people are choosing between things like keeping their houses cool or keeping the refrigerator running

I read it all with interest because we lived in a remote area with no power. Our source of power, put in almost six months after we arrived was a 32v power plant. It was enough to keep the lights on and, if the engine was running, to use an iron for a brief period. It was not enough for heating or cooling or the use of any sort of refrigeration or cooking facility.  There was no power at all in the school. If it was very hot then we worked with the windows open and hoped there might be a bit of air coming in. At night the temperatures would still be so higher that we would sleep on top of the mattresses. We could not sleep outside because the wild life made it unsafe. 

But, we did have a refrigerator. It was kerosene/paraffin powered. We thought of it as a luxury even though it was also an essential for Mum who was working as a full time teacher. It was where you kept the weekly forequarter or hindquarter of hogget which came each week. It was where Mum put the milk she made from powder each morning. There was not much else in it because there was no need to put pumpkin and potatoes in there and everything else had to come from packets or tins. 

Now there are different expectations even in the most remote communities. There is an expectation that power will be available at all times for keeping their uninsulated housing cool, their refrigerator cool, their freezer running and the television running. There might be a computer and other devices which draw on the power supply. All this is expensive, even more expensive when there are days and days over 40'C and nights not much cooler.  Too many people in these areas also live on government welfare.

For the first time I can remember the editorial is questioning the government's headlong rush into so-called renewable power sources which have dramatically increased the cost of power to remote communities, sometimes by as much as forty percent. Is it time to rethink this...and perhaps rethink some other remote area issues as well?  

I have been inside a prison.

I went to visit one when I was doing my teacher training. It was a visit arranged by the person in charge of the "special education" group. We also went to what would once have been called a Borstal or a custodial youth training facility.

The prison disturbed me deeply but not as deeply as the youth facility. The idea that you are locked away, unable to escape, unable to choose what you eat and who you can speak to while every moment of your life is controlled by people who do not have your best interests at heart was, and remains, frightening. I cannot help wondering if those who are released early into "home detention" realise how fortunate they are. Probably not. If they did the vast majority of them might never have gone to prison in the first place.

But what if you were born into a sort of prison? I thought of this again on Saturday because I met a female member of a cult like religion in the chemist. I had not seen her for several years, indeed thought her family might have been moved at the whim of their "leader".

When she saw me her first reaction was to look around to see who else was present. There were apparently no other "brethren" present because then she spoke quietly to me.  We quickly caught up on my news. Her sympathy on learning of the Senior Cat's death was genuine, a quick touch of my arm included in it. She was pleased I had somewhere else to live. It was the sort of casual conversation I might have had with any casual acquaintance until she told me her news.

It was told with difficulty. I know her husband. He is a very controlling man, controlling even within that group. Her children? Did I dare ask or would they no longer be able to be mentioned? I asked. "They are...they have..."

She could not bring the words out. All three children have left the cult. I thought they might. The eldest boy was ready to leave when I first knew him.  He simply walked out of his place of employment in a firm belonging to a cult member when they refused to let him marry the girl of his choice. She left too. I have no idea what has happened to them but I hope they are as happy as they can be. The second boy was still at school. He apparently left on his final day at school. He knew what was waiting for him.

Their younger brother obviously tried harder to stay but it became too much in the end. His mother thinks he is somewhere in another country altogether "because N... had a card...to say he was safe." She meant her neighbour had been sent a postcard. N... would have told her this over the back fence when she was sure this woman's husband was out. They are not supposed to speak to one another. 

I remember the first born telling me that living at home was like living in a prison. According to him everything they did was controlled. They had no books apart from those deemed essential for school and their religious books. There was no television or any other form of entertainment. It must have been a soulless sort of existence without any form of celebration at all. 

It is little wonder that the cult now has a separate school and that they are trying to restrict contact with the outside world more and more. A conversation, however brief, with me is against the rules but this woman was almost desperate for someone to know what had happened. Her children no longer exist for the cult members. They are never mentioned. It is as if they have never been born. She is held to be the one responsible for their departure. Proper parenting should have prevented this. It was her responsibility. Her husband was deemed too busy running his business. It is a very successful business and they have no financial worries. Despite the departure of his children their father is still a very active senior member of the cult. He is not at fault. His wife is at fault.

I wonder what would happen if this woman was released from her prison? Would she have any idea how to live outside it? 

We parted knowing I cannot invite her in for a cup of tea and she cannot do the same for me. There is not even any form of home detention for her. I doubt she would know how to handle it. How can she forget giving birth to three children and then losing them?

 

It is time to be rid of "net zero"

and a great many other "fashionable" things.

I know it is not going to make me popular saying that. It isn't because I do not believe the climate is changing or that some of that change is caused by human activities. It is because I believe that "net zero" is more about money and control than it is about saving the planet from destruction. It is also about laziness.  Too many people do not want to do the hard work and too many more do not want to give up their comfortable lifestyles with the cars and the air conditioning and all the power hungry modern conveniences.

I met the "would be a member of parliament" for the neighbouring electorate in our local shopping centre yesterday. He was a surprise in that he is a very small man in the physical sense, no taller than I am. He was chatting to people and spoke to me as I was about to prowl past. "You're the one who writes the letters to the paper," he said. Someone must have told him. It is hard to be anonymous if you are a short cat wearing a bicycle helmet. 

We spoke for a moment. He gave me one of the inevitable shopping bags with his name printed on it. I will use it to pack something into at some point but probably turn the bag inside out. We talked about net zero too. He wanted to know what I thought. The party is still dithering over this at federal level. Their coalition partners have had the courage to dump it. 

I was honest. I said I thought the policy should be dumped but there needs to be something in its place. There needs to be something which says, "We are serious about the environment and intend to do something about it." We need to embrace nuclear power - even if it ends up being more expensive. We need research into "fusion" power on an industrial scale, not just poorly funded university research. We need massive planting programs and more. It could be done and it could be done as political policy but it needs to be sold.

I think the "would be member" was a bit surprised. Someone came up to harass him about something else. I went off to the chemist thinking about a potential letter to the editor .  

How can you make a treaty

with your own citizens? It seems the government of a neighbouring state has gone ahead and done just that - and done it against the wishes of voters and advice from some constitutional lawyers.

This is the same state which now requires at least one major hospital to treat indigenous people before all other citizens - not on the basis of need but on the basis of their self-declared "aboriginality". Where will they go next?  Will there be "reparations" and "land seizures" as some have claimed?

There are major and legitimate concerns about these things. That it divides citizens by race is bad enough but there are unanswered questions about how far this "treaty" will affect many other areas of life. 

What sort of "treaty" is it in fact? Only our federal government has the power to sign a treaty.  If this was an actual treaty it would mean those who claim to be aboriginal would need to give up their passports, their right to all present government payments, their right to vote and more. None of that is going to happen.

This government has acted against the clearly stated wishes of the people of the state. They rejected the "Voice to Parliament" in the referendum. Now the state government is bringing in the same thing but at a state level and perhaps with increased powers. They are "investing" millions in this.

I would be happy to see millions invested if I believed there would be better outcomes for people who are genuinely disadvantaged but history has shown it does not work that way. The outcomes are rarely advantageous for anyone apart from those at the top. These moves have shown over and over again that money is simply wasted. 

Someone I know was praising the move to me last night and hoping this state will shortly follow. As he was doing so I was looking at the person being interviewed. His partner was looking at the person being interviewed. We looked at each other. We did not need to say anything but we were both aware that you could pass that person in the street and have no idea they are "aboriginal".

Is it racist of me to believe that someone with just one great-great grandparent or perhaps even great-great-great grandparent is no more aboriginal than they are of some other heritage? Are they really that disadvantaged? Why aren't they English, Irish, Dutch or Chinese?

A friend who speaks some Pitjantjatjara was appalled when I told her that being "aboriginal" allowed you priority treatment at the hospital in that state. "But that's racist," she told me.  

Obviously there are people who do not see it that way. Is it time to review our ideas about who is actually aboriginal perhaps? 

The strange shirts worn by leaders at

APEC summits and beyond in order for the "family" photo to be taken should have been raised when the Downunder Prime Minister wore "that t-shirt" the other day.

I know nothing about "Joy Division". The article in the paper really left me no wiser...apart from the fact that it was apparently a "group" of some sort. Well, groups get odd names and, if the source of this name is correct, then it is also nasty. Why would you name any group after women forced into prostitution?  I will leave my comments on that there.

What puzzled me was why the Prime Minister was wearing that sort of t-shirt at all? Why wear something like that in public? 

I know there will be people who will say, "so what?" but it is something I found slightly strange. An ordinary plain polo shirt would not have bothered me. I have seen more than one leader dressed that way. Work clothes would not bother me. A former leader in an open neck shirt with a beer in hand, another with fire fighting gear on, a third in a work shirt and old hat, a fourth in jeans and a plain t-shirt. All those things, from both sides of the political divide, seem to be acceptable but not the t-shirt.

Other people have commented on the t-shirt in question. They have said things like "childish", "teenage", "inappropriate", "a bit odd" and "not what you would expect from a Prime Minister". I was left simply puzzled. It just seems odd to me.

Then I thought of those shirts and other garments worn by leaders for the "family photo". I have quite liked some of the shirts and other garments but the people in them often look faintly ridiculous. They are garments they are not ever likely to wear again. Are they languishing in wardrobes? Have they been given away? The Downunder raincoats might be quite useful I suppose - if you live in a cool enough climate where it actually rains. The very traditional Korean mumu though, or the batik shirts in Malaysia?

I wonder what would happen if the group consisted of women rather than men? I suspect they would have a "family" photo in their own clothes.   

So there won't be an interest rate cut?

Apparently the inflation rate is too high to have an interest rate cut. I suppose that makes sense. 

There will be a lot of mortgage holders who will be disappointed on Tuesday if our Reserve Bank does not cut the interest rate by yet another 0.25%.  I have heard people say they are "relying" on it.  That seems rather foolish to me.

I also wonder whether anyone will realise that the nice little hand out people got to pay their electricity bills has something to do with it. That nice little hand out kept quite a lot of things artificially low while the government boasted about the way the push for renewable power was going to save the economy and make us a world leader in both renewable power and manufacturing.

It is not going to happen. 

I am on a very low income but I could have managed without the hand out. Many people I know could have managed without the hand out. Yes, it was nice to have but I did not need it. I am careful with my money and will go on being careful. Yes, my power bill was up but it was not as high as it could have been. I was cautious about using the heating but there were times when it was essential to use some power for that. I will be even more cautious about using the cooling from the same system in summer but not everyone can do that.

Now I am wondering how many people went out and bought something they did not really need or simply went on buying their "coffee" because the extra seemed to be there. Was inflation fuelled by this? No, that would only have been a very small part of the equation. I only need to look at prices in the supermarket to realise that many things are noticeably higher in price - and often noticeably smaller with it. A little while back I bought the ingredients for the fruit cakes I give my cousin and Middle Cat at Christmastime. The cost, even when "on special", was almost thirty per cent higher than it was last year. Basics like milk and bread are much higher. We have a potato shortage at present and there were some in the supermarket for more than seven dollars a kilo. Nobody can afford those sort of prices. 

A friend is coming for lunch today. It is a fairly regular event. She always insists on bringing her own sandwich - a result of unexpectedly staying one day when she happened to have her own sandwich with her. I would be more than happy to provide the sandwich but she prefers to feel "independent". I will make her multiple mugs of tea but there are people I know who would struggle to do that - or they will do it and then drink water for a couple of days because the price of tea and the power to boil the water is too high.

This week I bought some new sheets - having put a rear paw through one of the old ones. I hesitated over this - one set or two? I bought two sets because I could and because they were labelled as "half price". They are not half price of course. The store will still be making a profit but I wonder how much they paid for them if they can apparently afford to do this. Now I hope I will not need to buy sheets for a very long time and I am grateful I could afford to buy two sets. Have I added to the inflation figures? Hmmmm...

Will the lack of an interest rate cut actually reduce inflation? I think it might take more than that. I do not envy the Reserve Bank board members their decision making process.  

"The power lines have to go somewhere!"

There is a lead story in this morning's paper about the massive new power lines which will be needed to carry our "renewable" energy in and out of the city. Predictably it is also about the farmers who will lose some of their land so that the lines can go across them. The article says farmers will be "compensated" but will they?

Of course they won't be compensated. They will get an inadequate one off payment. It will be at the lowest possible rate the government can get away with and it will be paid to farmers out of our taxes - and their taxes. 

Yes, we need power. The lines are always going to have to go somewhere.  The problem is the plans for these are across prime farming land. We have already lost far too much farming land. 

One possible route is across the farming land in the area in which I was born. It is difficult to imagine the true extent of the likely harm the monstrous pylons will do. It will not simply be that the land around each pylon is no longer able to be used. The pylons have to be put there in the first place. It will be at least one year of cropping which will be destroyed by this process and then less land available every year.  There can be no compensation adequate for that. 

The person who has just spoken to me about this in the very early morning quiet just shrugged. He has never lived in a rural area. He clearly thinks his power is a simple mater of flicking a switch. It isn't like that at all.  

The town is dying because

people are no longer coming in to it to shop or wander the main street.  This is the complaint from someone who owns a small business in a small country town in the hills behind me.  

The hills behind me are littered with small "towns" like the one in question. They are really villages, indeed some of them might be labelled "hamlets" they are so small.

Most of them consist of some sort of main shopping strip with a few streets branching off at the sides. There might be a supermarket of some sort, perhaps a chemist, a cafe or two, and the "gift" shop or the mini art gallery. Tucked into this there might be a medical centre with reduced hours, one or two might have a "playground" for children next to a church and the cemetery which is a reminder of things past. There might be a "green" with dying grass and a war memorial to the men who went and did not come back.  If you are lucky there might still be a decrepit "community hall" of some sort.

There is one such town which is a tourist attraction - if you believe the advertising. Yes, it has a history of German settlement in the late 1800's and some "quaint" cottages but little else apart from the shops designed to entice tourists. I have been there and have no desire to return.

Many of the people who actually live there commute down the freeway into the city for work. Some will drop their children off at school along the way. At weekends there is sport but not much else to keep you entertained. 

If you want a quiet lifestyle then yes they can be lovely places to live in but I know you will do your serious shopping elsewhere. Those quaint little shops are not for you. They are there for "tourists". They sell things you do not need every day of the week, if you need them at all. The occasional "art and craft" exhibition or event is not going to keep local businesses alive.

I have no idea what the answer is and I doubt the locals know either. The little place I was born in is now a larger country town. It is not in the hills but it is a similar sort of area. Some of those who live there commute to the city to work. They expect all the amenities of city living and, for the most part, they can get these. At the same time they now believe they are "living in the country". 

No, they are not "living in the country" at all. They are living in semi-rural suburbs. Such places can be just as lonely as suburban living and those who really live and work there are being stifled by you who believe they have nothing to offer.  

"I want to do a PhD!"

One of the students for whom I have occasionally read an essay was standing there outside the library. He was saying this to several other students and they were all laughing.

It is that time of the year again here. The students will be faced with external exams, exams set not by their teachers but an external authority. They will be marked by other people. The future careers of these students will, for the greater part, depend on their results this time around.  Will they get an "ATAR" high enough to get into their chosen courses?

I have watched some of these students since they started their secondary school years and one or two even earlier than that. I don't envy them as I might once have envied them. The world has changed too much for that.

The little group saw me of course and one of them said, "J... reckons he wants to do a Project Half Done."  I have heard and seen that before. It's a joke but a joke with a serious side. I have told more than one of them how some doctoral studies never reach completion, indeed how some undergraduates never finish. 

This little group will probably finish their undergraduate degrees in things like computing, engineering and physics. They are about as motivated to succeed as any other student I know.  

Will they go on to do doctorates? I have no idea. It is possible one or two of them might do further study. They will probably need to do it in order to even get jobs of the sort they believe they want. Doctorates might be in the mix but, if they are, I wonder what they be about. It is unlikely I would understand the topics in sciences like physics. 

What I do understand is that there are doctorates being done which are of dubious value and likely of no interest to anyone else. How much value is there in "a participatory audiovisual exploration of haunting in Palestine"?  Apparently "ghosts are more than symbolic" and someone is being paid a student grant to do this. Someone else is doing a doctorate on the architecture of Chinese temples of a certain period (I have forgotten which period) and someone else is looking at "Animals as builders: Exploring animal buildings as sites of agency, rights, and politics". The first and last of these examples come from an article in the Spectator. The middle one comes from an article about research grants here. It is one of the less embarrassing research topics being funded.

I am not sure how these topics get funded. There must be people who are passionate about such things but where are they? I have colleagues who are struggling to even get permission from "ethics" committees to do what seems to be basic research into issues of communication between doctors and patients in hospitals. Another of my colleagues has just had a request for permission knocked back. It was to do some work on ways in which increased capacity to communicate will led to greater participation among migrant women from a particular cultural group. Perhaps I am wrong but I think these things have some value for all concerned. 

Getting a doctorate was once considered a real achievement. You worked very hard for it. There would be nobody around you who understood what you were doing. It was the nature of a doctorate. A person with a doctorate was respected for their academic achievement. The right to use the title "doctor" was considered to be something special. Now a range of people use the title in their daily professions but some have done no more than what amounts to an undergraduate degree in some form of alternative medicine. It is little wonder that using the title "doctor", unless you are actually a member of the mainstream medical profession, is considered showing off by many here.

And perhaps there are too many "projects half done" out there. We need to rethink the whole business...or perhaps we could do what the Italians do and call someone with an actual doctorate "doctor doctor"?  

Rebuild our manufacturing?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the Prime Minister's latest "plan". (It seems he has a "plan" for everything.)

Now he is trying to tell us that, along with business, we can become a great manufacturing "powerhouse" again. This can happen although we now only manufacture a quarter of what we did in 1960.

Even though I was a mere kitten I can remember manufacturing in this state. The Senior Cat would always try to avoid travelling along the main road into the CBD if there was a change of shift at "Holden's". They made cars there and they employed a lot of people, almost all of them men. They were mostly the sole breadwinners for their families.  It was interesting to watch them leave work but we were warned that working hard in school was the way to avoid work like that. Our parents were not snobs, far from it, but they knew what factory work could be like.

Not far from there was the Actil plant which made bed linen and towels. I remember there was a food manufacturing plant of some sort on the other side of that road. In the area we lived in at the time there were "the sugar works" and "the cement works" and "the fish place" and the place that made the immense ropes which attached the ships to the wharves. The wharves were busy with the "wharfies" carting sacks of wheat and barley and wool into the hulls of ships. The wool had been "scoured" at a place just north of the CBD. It has all gone. Any big ships docking do so at the outer harbour and they are almost always tourist vessels. 

Move on and there were places where fruit was dried for export, jams were made for the bread which used the flour which was milled.  They still exist but in a much smaller way. One such place has just filed for bankruptcy. The oven-bake bread rolls my BIL likes come from France. 

We used to deal with the wool ourselves, some of the very finest wool in the world.  The last wool scourer in a neighbouring state closed halfway through this year. That leaves another facility much further north of our CBD to do the work but do it in a much more limited way.  Mulesing issues, drought issues and more have decimated the wool industry. Environmental activism has not helped. 

And then there are the unions with their endless demands for "better wages and conditions". They may represent just 13.9% of the workforce but they are still powerful. Many former high ranking unionists are now members of parliament. These people have simply priced us out of most world markets. Why pay twice or more as much when you can get the same thing in countries where the wages and living conditions are half as good?

We won't build high technology industry here. It needs more than reliable power and a reliable workforce. It needs the know how and the ability to pay for it to even start up. 

Unless we lower our financial and lifestyle expectations and are prepared to put in more hours per week rather than reduce them none of this will even start. Industry says we have fifteen years to do it but our school children are behind in not just STEM subjects but the language capacity to do those subjects. 

It is going to take a major revolution not just a Prime Minister with a "plan" to get anything done at all.

AI is dangerous and

we need to be better educated about this.

I do not use AI in my work. It tries to wriggle in sometimes and I have to push it firmly out again. The reason for this is that if AI gets it wrong then the rest of us on the team could put someone's life in danger, someone could die, a building could crumble, a bridge could fall down, a road might not be where it is supposed to be, a fight make break out, someone could be insulted and start anything from a minor altercation to a war or they might commit suicide. No, I am not exaggerating. Communication needs to be accurate - or as accurate as we can make it. There is no room for the sort of errors that AI can make.

This last week someone had tried to rely on AI for information and ended up screaming desperately for help from one of my colleagues. The mess was eventually sorted out and calm has descended again but much was said about AI while all this was going on. People have been warned again. Do not rely on AI to give you the correct answer if your life and the lives of people around you are at risk. Please just do not do it.

Now there is a story in this morning's paper about a lawyer who has apparently relied on AI to support a case s/he was preparing. The court has, rightly, complained it has been misled. The cases "found" by AI do not exist. They do not support the arguments put to the court. Apparently there has been another such case in another state with a similar result. 

This is serious, more serious than the general public realise. Accuracy is very, very important in law. Getting a comma out of place can change the entire meaning of something. There can be no "but this is what they actually meant" in law. It is what is there on the page which matters and nothing else. Relying on AI to provide something accurate in an area which is so important is dangerous. It could mean someone being incarcerated for a crime they have not committed or a murderer going free. Yes, extreme examples but still possible.

The judge in this instance has said that Gen-AI cannot be trusted to provide accurate information. If that is all the judge had to say on the topic I would be surprised. 

We are being told that AI is the way of the future and that we will need it more and more. I am wondering how it will be used and by whom. Perhaps I am wrong but I am beginning to think we may need more and more people who are well educated and can think for themselves because the idea of AI taking over is not going to work well if we really need accuracy - and accuracy may save many situations and lives.   

The latest report on net zero

is showing net negative. Why can't the government and the media just give up on the idea and actually do something useful?

Apparently we could build eight hospitals and four hundred aged care facilities each year for what the net-zero policies are costing us. If that is really the case then I suggest it is time to start building.

I am in no way opposed to the idea of caring for the environment. I know that questioning the "net zero" idea leaves me open to the idea that I am a "climate denier" and much more. I am not. No, I am not.

I think we have a climate problem. I think we have a population problem. I think we have a people problem in all sorts of ways. I think we need to think about our life style and more.

Why do we still allow people to own 4WD vehicles in the city? Why in fact do we allow many people to have cars at all? Do they really need them? I am told yes they do. They are "necessary" for carting the kids to school and after school activities, going to the gym after work and doing the weekly shop. Even while people are saying that those whose jobs tie them to a desk are demanding the "right to work from home". 

The reality? The vast majority of children in this state live within walking distance of their schools. For those who do not there is public transport or government supplied school buses in rural areas. How often do you really go to the gym after work - and do you really need to go to the gym or do you do it because it is "the thing to do"? Walking to the bus stop to catch the bus to work everyday might be a better (and much cheaper) option. Oh, sorry! That takes time does it? You didn't get up early enough? You haven't got the kids out of bed early enough? 

It all did happen once but we now seem to believe that the world has changed so much that cars are essential...and too many people believe that the electric vehicle is the answer to all this. Really? Have you actually looked at the environmental damage caused by creating one and then maintaining it? Is it really any better than any other sort of vehicle? 

China's one child policy was a social disaster but surely we can encourage people to limit their families to a policy of "replace yourselves" to just two children? Isn't that responsible?  It is surely responsible from the "net zero" point of view? Maybe not you say? It is just a thought.

It just frightens me to think of the money being poured in to a fantasy, the idea that this country can achieve the unachievable and do it ahead of everyone else. The idea that we will be held up as an example of how to do the impossible in a morally and financially responsible way is laughable...if the politicians were not so serious about causing the destruction of it all.

The answers may not be simple but I do know that politicians and all those with their financial interest in "net zero" are failing to do the one thing that could be done and might have a small but real impact. Please, could we plant more trees? Could we plant a lot more trees? Could we plant the other plants to go with the trees? That may not be "the answer to everything" but it might help - just a little bit more than that electric car.