The four Palestinian Activists

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

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

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

There are also better ways of getting things changed.

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

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

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

So someone donates $200m towards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

School assemblies

as I knew them are a thing of the past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfit to ever work again?

There is more than one story about someone who has been declared "unfit" to work and, once compensation has been granted, returned to work. There is actually a name for this - "compensation neurosis". It has been the subject of some research too. 

The topic came under "discussion" again yesterday when it was announced that someone who received a very large sum in compensation, then became bankrupt, is back at work in a role where bankruptcy should disqualify them.

Downunderites will probably know who I am talking about. It raises all sorts of questions, not least questions about the original sum paid out. Not one person I know believes this situation should ever have arisen.

When large sums of compensation have been awarded to people then arrangements are often made for its use. There will be a trust fund set up. The money awarded can only be used for certain purposes. It is not there to provide additional luxuries but to compensate the person for what they have lost. 

It is of course what should have happened to the more than two million dollars given to the person who was under discussion. Other advice should have been given too - and there should have been ways of ensuring it was adhered to so as to prevent the subsequent issues arising.

The rules around bankruptcy are clear too. That the "employer" in question believes it can bypass those rules is a clear indication they are using the appointment for political purposes. The original compensation was paid for the same purpose. This is no way suggests that the alleged incident did not occur. It is not something that has ever been decided in a court of law. The payment was made without such a decision ever being made. It was a sum of money most people in that situation will never see, indeed most will see no money at all.

There are questions which need to be asked here. I can understand why so many people were questioning and criticising events around the issue yesterday. There will be more people doing it today. 

It could have been avoided if someone had taken charge and ensured the compensation had been invested and used as intended.   

 

"No space in special education units"

and no "specialist classes" available so your child is going to have to go into a "mainstream" class. He might be twelve and not able to count to twenty or have difficulty in going to the toilet alone but he will be just fine in the mainstream classroom.

This is not an NDIS issue. It is an education issue for all students. The article in this morning's paper is saying what most people have known all along. Some children need to be educated in a setting outside the "mainstream". What is more some of them will do well there.

I had a long and very happy association with a school for cerebral palsied children. It was a very good school. For years after it closed the students got back together for an annual reunion and invited me to come along as well. No, I was not a student there but I was part of "the gang". I had helped to run the Guide group and that was enough. I went in and out and I still have friends I made there.

I remember writing a letter to the national newspaper talking about the academic successes of the students and their ability to mix with the rest of the community. The abilities of individual students varied widely of course but overall they were encouraged, indeed required, to make the best they could of themselves. The school had given them an excellent education and the ability to mix with the rest of the community. 

Some years ago I had to go to a funeral for one of the students. There were two well known politicians and several other public figures at it. M... had made his mark on the community. He had held down a job in the "morgue" of a newspaper and been very active in community affairs. 

Later I spoke at another gathering to farewell another student. He had obtained a doctorate in mathematics. He worked at a university and published research papers. We had corresponded over the years, came together at another university and spent hours in discussions about a wide range of topics. He was proud of his old school and how it had encouraged him to move on when he was ready. His body let him down in the end but he always said he would not have achieved his academic successes without the early years at his "special" school.

That school produced more than one severely physically disabled student who went on to higher education and obtained a degree. It had a class for students with a hearing loss. 

I am so tired of having to argue that "special" schools are just that - special. The school I knew so well provided physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupation therapy on the same grounds as the classrooms. The  teachers were specialist teachers. 

Asking a general trained teacher with a class of twenty four or more other students to know and understand the learning difficulties of even a "bright" child with cerebral palsy is not the best thing for the child or the teacher. All the arguments about "socialisation" and "integration" can sound good but in reality they do not hold up. They might appear to hold up. It is no doubt "nice" for the parents to believe their child is going to an ordinary everyday school "like everyone else" but a really good special school can be even better if it makes demands of the child in a supportive environment.

We did no favours when this state did away with the "special" schools and the less able children now in the mainstream are not always doing as well as they might - far from it. Those who advocated for "inclusion" and "mainstreaming" did the authorities a favour of course. It is cheaper, much cheaper, to have a child in the mainstream with some "assistance". That it might mean they do not reach their full potential is seen as a problem for their family, not the rest of us.  

 

Can you "revive" a language

which has no current speakers and no written past?

There is a short article in this morning's paper about someone who is claiming to be doing that. She claims to speak two of the fifty or so indigenous languages which were spoken here before white settlement and to speak them "fluently".  There are four of those languages she claims are "strong" and another eight are "fragile" - meaning they are spoken only by the old. There are eleven more she claims are being revived through "historical resources".

I have written elsewhere about this. I want to know what it is this woman believes she is saving. That she is well meaning and determined I have absolutely no doubt. I also have no doubt she is mistaken if she believes what she is reviving is a language which was once spoken.  

There are a number of reasons for my doubts about her claim. These languages were spoken by very small groups of people. The population prior to white settlement was tiny. The speakers of these languages had no means of transport. They travelled by foot They did not go far. There was no written language. Nothing has been left behind in the form of manuscripts. Their vocabulary was limited to the world around them. It did not take long for these languages to become so corrupted that what was "saved" even at the time was essentially a different language. The information gathered at the time was not done for the purpose of "saving" a language or a culture. It was often done with the purpose of converting "heathens" to Christianity. Some information was never shared. 

What are we actually saving? What are we "reviving"? Is it really possible to teach young indigenous people these languages of the past and expect them to use them and pass them on to the next generation? What is the value of doing that in this context? Who benefits?

When we lose a language we lose a unique way of thinking, of seeing the world around us and understanding it. That's important to acknowledge but we also need to acknowledge that this has already happened in some places. Nothing is going to change that.  

 

 

The rise of "One Nation" is

hardly surprising but it seems the present government and opposition is surprised by it. Surely they could see it coming?

I can never see myself voting for One Nation but I can see why the popularity of that particular political party is rising. It is almost inevitable it will. Their "policies" are just what many people want to hear, what thirty percent of the population want to hear. 

One Nation now has a seat in the lower house of our federal parliament. It may have many more come election time unless the government and opposition manage to inform voters about what is actually possible. If One Nation managed to get enough seats to form government... well that is a nightmare scenario. 

They could not actually govern using their policies - go and look at them. They would not work.

But - and this is surely important - the reason for the party's dramatic rise in popularity is because they are saying what many people want to hear. It is this other parties need to be listening to and working on so voters understand what is possible. 

Someone who apparently reads this blog recently left a comment which criticised me for my apparent support for a cut in numbers of people coming into this country. As she, rightly, pointed out her mother received good care from people coming in and showing willing to do that work. I can say the same for the Senior Cat and many others I know. Too many people born here see it as demeaning. They won't do it. 

I know that attitude all too well. I also understand why it might be seen that way. The conditions are often very poor. The pay is atrocious. Those who do the work are often treated with extreme disrespect. At the same time nobody wants to do the work. 

We need people who are willing to do the work. We also need to provide good working conditions and pay them well. We fall down at that point. It does not mean we can accept anyone as a migrant into this country just because they will do the work. 

There is a letter in this morning's paper where someone has finally been able to question "multiculturalism" and whether it is even what migrants want. Yes, some of them come here hoping to live a better version of the lives they have left behind. They do not want to integrate or change. They want life here to be like life at "home" just rather better. They want the rest of us to change to accommodate them rather than change themselves.  When they are told they do not need to change or adapt or integrate then we have a divided society which leads to the rise of the likes of "One Nation"...and that will divide us still further.  

   

"Fix the edubabble" - the curriculum?

I mentioned the "national curriculum" recently didn't I?  It appears again in this morning's paper. It appears alongside those who have been given "honours" for the King's Birthday - which we, oddly, celebrate today with a public holiday.

One of those so honoured is Terry Tao, mathematician. Terry went to school with cousins of mine. They thought he was "odd but nice". He was much younger than them of course, about seven years younger by my reckoning...and in the same year level for maths.

I did not like maths at school. I am no mathematician. I managed to get through "statistics" at university. I had to look up the formula for something recently because it is years since I used it - but at least I knew where to look and, once I had found it, what to do. Perhaps I am one of the lucky ones. Still, I prefer languages to sciences. 

This morning's report is more than a "we need to get back to basics" sort of report. There is a strong element of "we need to be rid of some of the garbage" in it. 

School was not "exciting" and it was often not very "interesting" for me. I expect it was the same for most children. We went to school because we had to go to school. Once there we worked because we were expected to work. We were taught to read, to write, to do arithmetic. We were taught about plants, about animals, about explorers and other countries.  We painted and cut paper and threw balls to one another. At the end of it we were not considered to be "educated" but to have the foundation on which to get an education. There was no mention of politics or sex education or "feelings" or "race" or other religions. Those things were taught at home, if they were taught at all. 

We had no television, let alone the internet or videos on phones. I read as many books as I could find. There must have been other children like me and we all grew up. Many of us went on to get better "educated" as apprentices or as students at colleges and universities. We survived without bars on the campus or the demand to do extra "politically correct" units as compulsory parts of the course we had chosen to do. 

Our knowledge of the world has expanded since then. It has sizzled and bubbled and risen over the top and then down the sides at a rate with which nobody can manage to keep up.

Looking at it that way I would have thought that knowing the basics really well would be essential. It is surely like me knowing my basic maths so well I can look up the formula I needed and then use it. Yes, I have to know about the formula and how to use it but I cannot do that until I know the basics. I need to know that two and two make four here and know it instantly.  I need to know my basic number facts before I learn how to "code" to use a computer.  I need to be able to read well to do this. I need to know how to find and understand the meaning of words which are new to me. 

Is this about more than "the basics"? I think it is. It is about knowing them so well they are the deep foundations on which the rest of our knowledge is built. Learning these may not be fun and it may not be interesting but it is essential. It is about learning to work, not about being entertained at school.  I suspect those who have written the most recent report are correct - and that they will be ignored. 

  

Reaching 112yrs of age

is not something most of us will achieve. The woman who was celebrating that extraordinary milestone was the subject of an article in yesterday's paper. 

Her advice on how to do it was "take an interest" - in life. 

I thought about people I have met who have reached, or almost reached, the century.  How did they manage it? Was it taking an interest in life?

Our much loved, indeed adored, Senior Cat was close to the century. He might have made it but felt he'd "had enough". He told us this. He didn't want the fuss that might have come with waiting a few more months for that marker. Up until then though he certainly took an interest in life, in other people and the world around him.

My godfather did reach that far. He was also keenly interested in other people. "Tell me..." he would say and then listen carefully despite his hearing loss. It was always an extra effort for him.

I knew someone who was a hundred and three. She only moved into aged care for a short time - and was not impressed. Her children had insisted. It might have been kinder to leave her where she was. With a little help from the neighbours she was doing very well on her own. One of the boys next door is doing his final year at university courtesy of her tuition in mathematics. Interested in life? Interested in young people? Yes, very much so.

Occasionally I have reason to go into one of the local nursing homes. The residents who are intellectually able soon seem to become less able. There is little, if anything, to challenge them. They do not want "bingo", "community singing", "concerts", old films or simplified church services.  The books on the shelves of the "library" are "romance" or "westerns" and I am told to "get me a good crime yarn Cat" or "can you get that new biography?" 

I will be dropping in to one such place today with the order of knitting wool which arrived yesterday. The boy who delivered it knew what it was as I had asked him to look out for it. He was fascinated by the idea that someone who is five times his age is still taking an interest in life. 

"Would she knit me a football beanie?" His team apparently has no commercial merchandise available.

"She will teach you to knit one for yourself," I told him. He did not look at all sure about that idea. He is much more interested in computer games. I do not see those as the same sort of "taking an interest". Perhaps that is the problem.  

Taxes do not always work

the way they are seemingly intended to work. 

The UK government has apparently added VAT (our GST) to their "public" (private) school woes. What has happened is possibly the reverse of what has been intended - or apparently intended. Pupils are leaving those schools and going to state schools. Every time they do I am told the taxpayer has to fork out another £8,600 for another student. They would not be getting that back in VAT.

So, why did they do it? 

The same issue comes up regularly in Downunder. There are complaints about "funding private education", about the way it gives "wealthy" families "advantages". 

The reality is different. If every student who now attends a fee paying school went to a state school the actual tax burden would be higher on everyone.  It is cheaper for the government to provide some of the education funds to the fee paying school system. It does not stop the complaints but the government is trying to find a balance between getting students where they want them and keeping taxpayers happy. 

Governments like to have students under their control. It is why we have things like "the national curriculum". It is why there are demands to teach certain topics and how they must be taught. Fee paying schools cannot ignore the national curriculum but they can teach it in other ways and with other emphases. The same applies to "home schooling". In this state your "homeschool" family is monitored for that very reason. Is your child being taught what the state demands? 

  The same ideas also apply to the recent tax changes. They are not designed to make it easier for young people to own their first home. The changes to items like the "capital gains tax" are not aimed at young people at all. They are being applied to houses bought before 1985. Economists, who generally know something about the consequences of these things, are saying there will now be many more people who find they owe more than the "asset" they are paying off is actually worth - what is known as "negative equity". 

Why has the government made the changes? It is not actually going to solve their revenue problem but it will give them greater control over the revenue they are getting. People will move into the forms of investment the government prefers.

All this has been carefully explained to me. I do not pretend to understand "big" economics. I do know that the cost of everything has gone up so quickly that what I am being told about "intergenerational equity" is wrong. Perhaps someone can explain if it is supposed to work differently?   

A diagnosis of cancer

has come as no surprise to me. No, not for me so far but for a more distant cousin.

He has been a smoker, a heavy smoker until recent years. He "cut back" to twelve a day and then six a day but could never quite give the habit up. Now he is paying the price.

The first warning came a couple of years ago. He had a cancer growing under a finger nail. They removed it and part of his finger as well. 

Then, late last year, it was "prostate cancer". Oh it was not aggressive and it was "treatable".  Well yes, perhaps it is or was. I know other men with similar problems. One was diagnosed about eight years ago, had surgery and is "just fine". 

More recently other problems have developed for my cousin. His wife phoned me early last evening and said, "He's been diagnosed with an aggressive bladder cancer. They did a scan and it is in his hip and thigh bones as well."

He is currently enduring a month of radiotherapy. How much good this will do they have no idea. He is considered to be "too old" for surgery to remove his bladder. As the cancer has already apparently metastasized  I wonder about this.

It has come at a time when there is a government advertisement I see between the two parts of the news service I watch. It is an advertisement designed to encourage people to give up smoking. It tells people that smoking can cause "eleven different types of cancer". Bladder cancer is mentioned in it. 

I wonder if the advertising has any effect. I wonder if my cousin has seen it and, if he has, what his thoughts are about it. I wonder if he wishes he had never begun to smoke.

The Senior Cat, like the vast majority of men his age, smoked. It was a habit they took up during the war. The Senior Cat was never a heavy smoker. It would be the occasional cigarette here or there but he quit entirely when I was kitten in early primary school. He saw something on the desk of one of his lecturers at university. The lecturer concerned had been diagnosed with lung cancer. That was enough for the Senior Cat. He went over to eating peppermints instead. Never a fat man the little weight he put on was probably a good thing.  

I have never even tried to smoke a cigarette but it has not made me immune from the consequences of smoking. In my lifetime I have had to endure the second hand smoke of other people's addiction. While I genuinely believed the school library should always be open at lunch time I was also relieved I did not have to endure the smoke laden atmosphere. When there were staff meetings at university I would sit as close as I could to the always open window. My good friend A... would insist on it being open. We did not smoke. No female member of staff did. It was the men. 

"You don't think it is going to happen to you," one of the professors told us when he had to tell us that another one had been diagnosed with cancer. These were intelligent people but tobacco addiction is hard to kick, very hard.

Middle Cat and Brother Cat do not smoke. Their children do not smoke and their grandchildren had better not even think about it or their parents will have more than something to say. Most people I know do not smoke now. Some did but they have stopped. It has been hard but they have done it. Anyone who does smoke knows to stay well away from me. I will cough and sneeze and I feel as if I am choking on their smoke. Where is the pleasure in that?

I am so grateful I never felt the temptation to try. It may not stop me getting a cancer diagnosis at some point but at least I will know that it has not been directly caused by a decision I made to smoke. I just wish my cousin had made the same decision. 

We have a new member of the judiciary

and she has moved straight from being a member of parliament across to that position. She retired from politics at the state election.  She is now an associate judge in the Supreme Court on a salary of over $400,000 a year.

This alarms me. We are supposed to have a system of "separation of powers" in this country. 

You know what I mean don't you? The system which separates the government from the administration of law. It has not happened here. I am absolutely certain this woman would have known that she was going to be appointed to the judiciary before she "retired". The government had almost certainly worked out she would be considered "surplus to requirements" in parliament so they found a way of moving her to a position where she will be sympathetic to whatever else they have planned.

It might work I suppose. 

It has been tried before in this country and it will be tried again. There have been appointments to the High Court which have very definitely been political appointments. To the credit of the judiciary they have often produced results the appointees (or those appointing them) did not want. 

A member of the High Court also went on to be one of the best Governors-General this country has ever had. He worked successfully with two strikingly different governments. More than once he informed a government something could not be done. As a law student I, like many other students at the time, met him and liked him. He was a known thorn in the side of some senior public servants. It is what he should have been too. 

I wonder how this woman will work. How will she feel if the law informs her she needs to go against the wishes of her former colleagues? 

The courts are there for us to test the law. They are there to apply it.  They are not there to do the bidding of the government.  

School buses are an essential

part of the life of many rural students here. They also serve other purposes.

I tried explaining this to someone yesterday. He apparently comes from a very wealthy enclave in a large American city. Students there apparently get taken to school by their parents in much the same way that students get taken by their parents and grandparents here. It was not something he knew much about.

He had asked me because one of the big yellow school buses had appeared outside one of our local shopping centres. He wanted to know about it. There was a well behaved group heading into the local cinema complex and they had obviously come on the bus.

It brought back memories of those buses. The Senior Cat was once the head of the school with the most bus runs in the state. They were also the longest bus runs. One started at seven in the morning and finished at around five at night. Two more of the destinations were not much shorter. 

The buses travelled across unsealed roads. They stopped at the rural mail boxes where the farm started. The farm house would often be another three or four miles away. More than one of the children would then need to walk home or, if they were lucky, there would be a vehicle of some sort sitting there and they would ride home. One boy began to drive an adapted "Mini" at seven. The distance to the house was simply too far and nobody could come to get him. 

The buses were never the Senior Cat's direct responsibility. His eyesight issues meant he could not have the "commercial" or "heavy goods" licence to drive a school bus. The buses were the responsibility of his deputy.  The buses were driven by the teachers. It was a very long day for them and for the children at the end of the runs.

There were no mobile phones then. Even the "land lines" were patchy. You could be miles away from one too. If the bus broke down or had a flat tyre you had to hope that someone might come along the same road or that the nearest farm house was not too far away.  If there were very senior boys on the bus then you might be able to fix something with their help. There was one "spare" bus at the school and the deputy might be able to drive out and collect the children and bring them into school. It was a constant worry. It is probably still a constant worry. 

At the previous school I had travelled on those buses once a week. We had to go to another school for "woodwork" and "domestic science". These subjects were a compulsory part of the curriculum but these were mostly farm students who knew more about woodwork, metalwork, cooking and sewing than their teachers. We endured the journey down the twenty-two tight bends in the hill and hoped the bus would not break down. I always felt ill. 

I never envied the students who needed to travel on those buses every day. The older students would try to do their homework because there would be farm chores waiting when they arrived home. The younger students would often fall asleep and be carried off the bus by older siblings or a waiting parent.

The service was, rightly, free. It is still free. The buses were not supposed to carry other passengers or parcels but in reality they did. It was sometimes essential. When the mail van needed a part that had to come from the city the school buses left the mail at the same places the students were left. Other people would collect theirs from the box at the gate. They would have been alerted by the family whose box it was. 

There was no internet. The phone service worked on a "party" line and the whole system only worked because people knew one another and worked together.

The stranger who had asked me the question looked disbelieving when I told him all of this.

"Did you get a bus like that when you started school?" he wanted to know. 

I shook my head. "I rode my tricycle. It was only a mile and half."

"But someone went with you?"

"Not after the first week."

He looked shocked. "They wouldn't let you do that now."

No, they would not - but I am glad they did then.  

 

"We should just get rid of them"

I was told yesterday. 

In between the heavy showers someone was out there "clearing up the mess the trees leave". He was not a happy man at all. 

There are some lovely street trees around here. There are not nearly enough in my view. This man thought there were too many. 

I know this man by sight, not name. I know his wife in the same way. She is one of those meek women who does as she is told. He's a bully. No, he has never hit her but I suspect he abuses her in ways neither of them recognise. 

He likes everything to be absolutely neat and orderly. Their "garden" is mostly paving with a patch of lawn and some rose bushes pruned to within an inch of their lives. I have never seen the back garden but I would guess it is more paving and a little lawn. He has complained to the neighbours about their trees.

The trees he was complaining about though are two street trees. They are both London plane trees and they are genuinely lovely trees. So what if they drop their leaves for winter? In summer they are home to a lot of bird life. As I pedal past on a hot day it is noticeably cooler under those trees. More than once I have seen older people just stopping for a moment or two beneath them. Young children race around them. One of the local boys climbed one last summer. It was not done out of mischief but to rescue a small kite belonging to a much younger child. A mother and child were picking up leaves and counting a couple of days ago. A friend who "scrapbooks" searched among the leaves for "that perfect leaf". 

Most people probably go past without noticing anything in particular but they would notice if the trees were not there. The idea of simply "getting rid of them" is not something I ever want to contemplate. 

I have been advocating for more trees for almost as long as I can remember. They make a vast difference to the urban landscape. We could cease all the "global warming" discussions if we planted enough trees and other greenery. Yes, it has to be right sort of tree, the right sort of greenery but once it is there it makes a difference. It can make ten or more degrees of difference on a hot day. We use less power to cool ourselves when there are trees there. 

We need more trees. The power demands of the AI centres mean we will need even more trees than before. The idea of getting rid of perfectly healthy and very useful trees just because they drop some leaves frightens me.  I pedalled on without comment.   

There is transport chaos this morning

and the weather is very damp with it. 

The news is telling us that two of our train lines have been closed because someone has been hit at a junction. There are no "substitute" buses available. People have been told to catch the regular buses. 

I am concerned for the person who has been hit. I am concerned for the person who hit them too. I will always be concerned because, years ago now, I had a conversation with a train driver who had hit a child. The child did not survive. There was no fault on the train driver's part. You simply cannot stop a train when a child, fooling around, falls off the platform in front of you as you are pulling in. The driver was completely exonerated and still felt responsible. He almost gave up driving at the time and, years later, the incident still caused him deep anguish. He had gone back to work but never drove that route again.

I wonder what will happen this time. It is not the sort of thing most people will think about I suppose. They will, for the most part, be annoyed their morning commute has been disrupted.

I used that line recently. I actually caught the return train at the station where the incident occurred. There is a major road leading to and from the city to the port area no more than two hundred metres away. Buses travel along that road but there would need to be additional buses. Those buses already on the route do not travel half empty in peak hour. They are already carrying maximum loads. The "advice" to use them is not going to be a great deal of help to most people.  

Not even all the buses are running. There are two routes that come in this direction. One does a loop around the city. The other goes to a seaside suburb and then loops further around.  They cannot go where they need to go either. 

Add in the road works and another "incident" and the chaos has increased to a level rarely seen. People in this city and surrounding suburbs are not used to this. The long commutes of people who live in some other cities are something some people simply are not used to and not prepared to tolerate.    

That said the disruption could have been minimised. There should be a plan in place to deal with such a contingency. We do not have a big rail network. 

I am fortunate, very fortunate. There was a message this morning informing me "Meeting cancelled". I am very glad not to be going out into all the chaos.